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Credit to sbhennessy for his/her reply to Cassidy's Oracle build which can be seen here
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I also recently got Titan Quest and my first char is an oracle.
Here are some things I have found out along the way (1.20 from level 1)
Mods:
TQAdvanced with relic removal, and relics in uniques, 10x uniques on monsters and chests, show damage.
TQVault used for storage of items that are not being currently used.
(Yes the above makes the game easier, but I prefer fast paced action instead of slow farming and slow pulls) (these mods did not get put on until after I beat typhon the first time)
With my oracle I started with spirit. I actually started by maxing out cascade with one point in life drain, and just using my staff single shot. I raced up the mastery tree to get the Lich king, but only had one point in him because thats all he seemed to need. My storm secondary was naked except for mastery points and 1 point in the nimbus line.
Once I got enough energy regen items, and some mana leech I was able to use the ternion attack nonstop. I had previosly tried to use it but the energy cost was way to much. I pulled points out of life drain and cascade and dumped them all into ternion and arcane lore. I also put one point in the spirt ward and its modifier aura, very nice for helping against undead.
At level 30 or so I was getting hurt pretty hard by the dragon guys and I could not single shot them, so I started to experiment. I maxxed out the lich king and his absorption power at the cost of my terion attack. My lich king and outsider actually killed typhon, I just ran around like a little girl.
In Epic I decided to try out some of storms spells, lets just say without massive -energy and -recharge the storm spells are nothing compaired to ternion. So even at level 35 I am still using ternion, lich, wisp (new since epic).
So to sum it up from level 1 to 35:
Offense at level 1-12: staff + life drain + cascade works well
Defense at level 6+: Lich king (keep on dumping points in him, 1 in death nova and max out wraith shell, dont get arcane blast its too mana expensive for him, and he wont use his other powers)
Once you get some energy leech or a large enough energy pool switch over from life drain to ternion
Offense at 12-??: remove all points from cascade and life driain and dump into ternion and arcane lore. Go shopping for a green lightning staff of thunder and stick a full zeus on it. Be sure to get a raptors tooth with 33% slowed attack, and look for anything else that gives slowed movement.
Grab the Strorm nimbus power, but the mods to it are optional, they improve your damage so little that you should be pumping up your storm mastery instead to grab the wisp and his power.
Defense - pick up sprit ward and spirit bane to help out with undead, let your lich tank by using the ctrl button to move him into mobs. With a high level lich and high levels of wraith shell he will almost never die.
At level 25 you can have your sprit mastery done, your lich king done (max in the king, 1 in death nova, max in shell) so he is a perfect tank, 1 in death ward, 1 in outsider, 1 in spirt ward and bane, and ternion and arcane lore maxed out. Your storm line is very weak though, just 1 point in the mastery and 1 point in nimbus. time to work on this.
25+
Offense: Ternion + lich + wisp + Outsider
Defense: Lich + kill em fast + slower attack/movement/stun mods from relics/charms
Once you get storm mastery maxed (around 33 or so) you will have 1 point in wisp, 1 in nimbus, and 1 in eye of the storm. Eye of the storm has the biggest bang for the buck on your ternion attack and it also helps your lich and wisp! Max it out before any other skill. This will take you to 38 or so.
When to not use ternion attack:
Once you find enough -energy% you could switch over to ice shards, but I warn you: The AI seems to not care so much about total damage done to it, but the frequency in which you are attacking it. Ice shards is a spam spell and thus I am able to pull all of the mobs off of my lich and onto me. This is VERY bad. And thus I do not recomend Ice shards.
So whats left? lightning and chain lightning. These do huge amounts of damage all at once, and stun. Perfect. Big problem... massively long recharge rate on them and huge energy cost. You need a bunch of -energy and -recharge for them to be better than your ternion attack.
I dont have the eq to run lightning.. what do I spend my points on?
Squall is very nice and is both offensive and defensive.
Thunderball is a great way to stun, but I find the fragments only useful some of the time.
Max out static charge to increase your ternion lightning attack is an easy way to go.
I think what I am going to do is go with squall. Great to drop it on all the mobs swarming your lich and then blast em with ternion.
One question I have.. can storm surge be activated by ice shards? This may be an awesome combo of spamming shards so you get a bunch of surges going off. Although I did read that storm surge has a bug that its damage is not being modified by int or any of your skills, so it may be worthless.
Monday 25 June 2012
Titan Quest: Primorac’s Elementalist Build
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Credit goes to the original poster of this guide, Primorac. His original post can be seen by clicking here
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Greetings everyone!
First of all, I’d like to make 3 things clear:
1 – This is the first guide I try to write, so please apologize in advance for whatever you think is wrong, incomplete etc.
2 – English is not my first language, so don’t expect me to have a vast vocabulary or perfect grammar. I just hope I can make myself understandable.
3 – Feel free to use, publish or translate this guide, but please do it without any changes. I don’t see how anyone could profit from this, but if this opportunity ever exist, it’s a wrong thing to do. Don’t do it. J
I – Introduction
I’m a long time action-RPG fan, and always believed that area of effect spells is the way to go. Most of the times there are quite a few monsters to kill, so why kill one at a time when I could damage a whole area and take them all out in a single strike? It’s generally the fastest way to advance in this kind of game. With that in mind, my first impulse while checking TQ’s skill trees was to build an Elementalist (Earth/Storm) based on the area damage spells (Volcanic Orb / Eruption). And so I did. I gathered with a group of friends and played the whole game, on all difficulty levels.
After playing through all the game, I think I learned a lot from my mistakes, so I went on and built a second char (again, an Elementalist). I played much better with her, picked the skills more wisely and also got a few more nice items, either found or traded ones. Finally, with a better knowledge of the game and a nice item inventory, I built a third (and last) Elementalist. This guide was written based on my playing with this guy. As you can see, it was made based on a twinked char (a char who got items from other chars – generally higher level ones), which has affected a lot of my decisions and play style. Oh, it’s important to say that this is for PvM only. You’ll find no considerations about PvP here, since I’ve never even played PvP on TQ.
Here I’ll try to show you what I did regarding to attribute, skill and equipment choices. I’ll also try to tell you how I advanced through the game. By no means it’s the right or best way. It’s just a way I found to be effective and fun. So, if you have other items or if you’re playing untwinked, you’ll probably play the Elementalist class quite differently than me. Like I did, I strongly encourage you to find your own play style, even if it’s not the most effective in terms of killing power. What you should get most of your game is FUN. One of my intentions in writing this is that you adapt things to your own play style and have the most effective and fun build for you without having to play the whole game to discover things for yourself, possibly saving quite a long time.
As a final word on this introduction, let me say that this guide is more intended at new/inexperienced players, as I consider myself one of them. The game is fairly new, I’ve been playing it for just about a month, and there’s still A LOT to learn. There’s a lot of stuff regarding the mechanics I don’t know about, so this guide won’t go into deep details of how things work in the game. That said, even if you are an experienced player you might find some useful information (at least I hope so).
Now, on to the guide.
II – The idea
Ok, the basic idea of this build is to be able to kill things as fast as possible, but without neglecting safety. I tried to find a balance between killing speed and survivability. That said, the way I achieved it is to keep monsters stunned as much as possible. If it’s stunned, it can’t hit you. And to do that, the greatest strength of this build is the possibility to spam spells that stun or disable monsters in a big area.
III – Attribute Points
This is a very controversial area, and from what I read in forums most people disagree with me on this one. But to my experience and my play style, it’s better to get enough attributes to use your gear and then dump the rest in health. For this build in particular, getting super high int won’t make you kill monsters much faster, but having over 1500 more HPs can mean staying alive after one or two hits.
So, when I finished the legendary mode, at level 55, my attribute points, including equipment bonuses, were these: Health – 5261 / Mana – 2021 / Str – 50 / Int – 519 / Dex – 150.
IV – Equipment
This is a very important section. Any build, of any kind, will greatly benefit from proper equipment. This build in particular is extremely dependant on proper gear. I say this because it’s main characteristic come from an equipment bonus: -x% recharge. This is what allows us to spam VO, Squall and Eruption, thus stunning and killing everything on the screen very fast, even if each spell on it’s own doesn’t deal much dmg. I’d say a good bonus percentage to recharge time is 90. 80 is still quite good, but less than this will start to bother when you keep clicking the mouse button but VO doesn’t come out. Of course, if you can get to zero recharge time (-100% recharge), do it, but don’t sacrifice too much of other bonuses for it.
Another thing to consider are resistances. It’s very different playing with negative resists and maxed ones. With high HP and high elemental resists, you don’t need to worry about a lot of one-hit-kills that annoy most people. Sure, there are still a lot of dangerous threats out there, but at least you got this part covered.
+HP, +energy, -x% energy cost, +energy regeneration: these are also nice mods to have on your items. +HP will help keep you alive. The energy bonuses will help you use less energy potions. This build demands a lot of energy, since you will be spamming spells non-stop when fighting. More energy always helps, even though it’s not necessary at all given that you can buy potions from vendors.
One other bonus I really like is +x% movement. It doesn’t really help us much in terms of dmg output, but once you have it, it’s tough to let it go and run slowly again.
Regarding +x% to elemental dmg and +x% casting speed, the more the better, but imho they’re not more important than any other bonus listed here;
The thing is finding a balance of all the available equipment you have. For example, if you can have -70% recharge and +300% elemental dmg, it is better than having, say, -85% recharge and no bonus to elemental dmg at all. In my case, I have -91% recharge and +30% elemental dmg. I know a lot of people would say this elemental dmg is ridiculously low, but it’s enough for me. I could easily lose 15% on recharge to get another 40-50% elemental dmg, but I prefer the way it is. The same thing goes for resists. Find your own balance according to your own gear availability and you’ll do fine.
Now, the gear I’m currently using: The Full Archmage Set (chest, hands, legs, head), Aphrodite’s Favor amulet, Heka Staff, Eye of Horus and Seal of the High Priest rings. I won’t display all the stats of the items because this guide is getting quite long and you can check them on various websites.
One last thing about the equipment: plan ahead to use better gear as soon as possible. Use the +int bonuses to equip higher items. The attribute bonus from an item can be used to equip itself, differently than the latest versions of D2. For example, if you have 100 int and two staves, one that has an 100 int requirement and gives +50 int, the other has 150 int requirement and +50 int. Equip the first one, than the second. I know this seems logical to a lot of people, but since we’ve had games with a different system it’s good to emphasize this point.
V – Skill Points
Here’s the TitanCalc link for my skill choices up to level 55 (when I “finished” the game), followed by a brief explanation of each skill: CLICK HERE.
Volcanic Orb (12 points): this is the basis of the build. It’s an aoe spell that recharges very fast. With all the gear on, it recharges faster than the time to cast, so you can spam it at will.
Conflagration (1 point): important for the area increase, I don’t think it’s worth it to max this skill. Burn dmg takes a while to process, and I don’t like to have to wait for things to die. Instead of waiting, I’d just throw another VO anyway, so only 1 point in this skill.
Fragmentation (12 points): VERY important skill, it grants the much desired stun effect to VO. Also, the fragments from it cover even more area than VO itself, damaging and stunning additional targets. You just have to get used to the timing. Once you do, this skill is great! For untwinked play, I max this skill before VO.
Earth Enchantment (12 points): it works on spell dmg, so it basically increases the damage from VO and Eruption, which is a good thing.
Volativity (12 points): has a chance of increasing dmg from fire attacks, including spells. This is what we want: increase the dmg of our attacks. So, max it.
Core Dweller and it’s tree: this is really unnecessary. I just put points here after all the rest was at the target level. I picked this skill instead of others because the Dweller sometimes serves as a shield, which can be handy and life-saving. But this is occasional, don’t expect much (at least on this build) from your lava friend.
Summon Wisp (3 points): this little fella is useful because of Eye of the Storm. I’ve put 3 points because, together with +2 from the amulet, it gets the Thunderclap skill, which sometimes stuns enemies.
Eye of the Storm (8 points): this skill from the wisp is very handy, as it adds quite a lot of elemental dmg (including fire, despite the skill description). It doesn’t trigger always, but it happens often enough to deserve 8 skill points.
Squall (12 points): I still didn’t actually use all the skills in the game, but I dare to say this one is the best of all. Squall has so many benefits, both defensive and offensive, that I can’t imagine this build without it. I’m sure if I were responsible for the game, I wouldn’t allow it to be this powerful. Anyway, let’s list it’s goods:
- it has HUGE radius, often hitting foes offscreen.
- it’s recharge time is very quick, allowing you to spam it at will
- it’s duration is long enough to deal with any situation – just recast it if needed.
- it deals quite a lot of dmg, often killing monsters by itself.
- it ALWAYS makes ranged attackers (including casters) miss their attacks. This is like having 100% dodge ranged attacks.
Obscured Visibility (6 points): as if Squall weren’t good enough, this skill boosts it to an almost unfair level. It lowers the damage output of monsters and, most important for this build, it reduces their resistances. Reducing resistances are a big plus, especially at later stages of the game, where monsters have higher resists. It’s better than improving your damage by the same amount in this case, obviously.
Static Charge (12 points) and it’s pre-requisites (1 in each): I got this one for the sole purpose of enhancing Squall dmg. Yes, Squall is so good that it deserves this boost.
VI – Level Progression
If you’d like a somewhat detailed description of game progression, in this section I’ll present the most important events in each stage.
Normal Greece:
The beginning of the game is quite easy, just go around killing stuff and use potions when you need – don’t forget you can teleport back to town to get more of them faster. The first thing on my mind is to be able to wear a set of good items as quickly as possible. That said, instead of getting abilities, for the first levels I just pumped the masteries themselves for the int and dex bonuses. Of course, regarding to attributes, I’ve just put points on int and dex. Plan according to your own equipment availability to use better gear asap.
If you’re playing untwinked, you’ll do better if you get VO early on. But I wouldn’t recommend spending more than a point – I’d say it’s more important to get Conflagration and Fragmentation before that. After you have all 3, start putting points only in Fragmentation and VO. Conflagration is more important for the radius, which doesn’t increase with more points – leave it for much later. Anyway, don’t be scared of experimenting with skills, you can change them later by using the mystics. It costs gold, but that should be no problem. What you CAN’T ever change are the skill points you put on the masteries and the attribute points.
At level 18, I got to the first Telkine. As expected, he didn’t pose any problems. I had 1 point in VO, 1 in Conflagration and 1 in Fragmentation. The rest went on the masteries. Regarding the equipment, I was wearing the Pyromancer’s Set, Loratian Greaves, the Staff of Nabukhuthnusar, 2x Cartouche Ring and a green amulet.
Normal Egypt:
As I hit level 20, I maxed the Storm Mastery, thus allowing me to wear the Archmage’s Set using the least possible dex (I don’t count equipment bonuses because I don’t intend to wear +dex gear). Also, I can use pretty much any staff in the game, and I start using Heka Staff. Now the game will be a breeze for a long period. I’ll just max Earth Mastery and finally start allocating points in the skills.
The second Telkine was easier than the first one, given that my gear and my skills were better. I took him out at level 26, by using Squall to lower his resists and spamming VO and Eruption. Having the Wisp’s Eye of the Storm to help me, he lasted about 10 seconds.
Normal Orient:
This is, as expected, the toughest part of the game. But we’re still on normal mode – compared to what is coming, it’s piece of cake. The third Telkine was as easy as the second, dying in about 10 seconds and taking almost no life from me. Typhon himself took a bit longer, but was also very easy. Just spam Squall and Eruption on him, while running in such way that you avoid being hit and also keep him taking the damage from Eruption.
I finished the normal mode at level 32, pretty much what I expected. All side quests were done, my char has zero deaths, so it’s safe to say that this build was working so far. Then again, pretty much every build can finish normal with no problems, especially with good gear, so the real test is still to come…
Epic Greece:
The Greece part on Epic is still quite easy. No monster will be a big threat if you’re playing focused. Melee enemies are generally easy and will die before ever getting to you. For the ranged foes, you’re gonna have to make a better use of Squall, a skill that gets more important as you advance through the game.
Of course, Talos is quite hard (he’s found just before the Minoan Labyrinth). His Fire attack will stun you for a long time, and then he’ll use a stomp attack to keep you stunned even more, and finally unleash powerful critical blows. Another problem is that he won’t get stunned by your attacks, so you have to be constantly on the run. I advice you to clear the area of monsters, leaving him for last. Then, keep your distance, avoid get hit by him (especially by the stunning fire attack), and use your normal staff attack to take him down. It takes quite a while, but it’s not that hard. And keep potions ready, because you can use them while stunned (and that will probably save you life).
The Telkine should pose no problems. I took him when I was level 38. As usual, just spam Squall, Eruption and VO on him while using potions as needed (I didn’t have to use any, but we never know…).
Epic Egypt:
Egypt is actually easier than Greece (imho), since the Stalkers are fast and sneaky bastards. Just pay attention to the boss of the library. It’s poison attack actually took my HP bar to less than one fourth because I went too careless to the fight. I pressed the potion number on the quick bar like a maniac… lol, that was a close one.
At level 40 there’s a good gear upgrade as you’re able to wear some legendary amulets and rings. So, I used at that point 2x Celestial Band and the Polaris, which gave me a bit more of –recharge.
Of course, if you wanna kill the Manticore, it’s a particularly tough part. But it’s not that tough. Just run in circles around it, while spamming both Squall and Eruption. It took me a while to take it out, maybe a minute or two, but at least it didn’t hit me. The same goes for the Telkine, but he was faster than the Manticore.
Epic Orient:
Now playing on epic, I took my chances against the Dragon Liche. By using the “run around in circles spamming Eruption and Squall” technique, I took him out easily.
By level 45 there’s another important gear upgrade: it’s possible to equip the Eye of Horus. At this point, I used just one of it, because I was still wearing the Polaris. When I switch to the Aphrodite’s Favor (therefore losing the –recharge on the ammy), I’ll put another Eye of Horus on. At last it’s possible to spam VO and Squall as fast as they can be cast. Eruption, too, will have a very quick recharge time, which allows us to cast it almost as often as desired. By this point, it’s a safe bet that more energy potions are going to be needed. But you should have tons of gold by now, so it’s no problem.
Again, there was no trouble in this part of the game. Just spam VO and Squall, with the addition of Eruption to quicken the kills, and it’s not that hard. I got to the Telkine at level 46, and took him out easily. Typhon was himself even easier. In under 10 seconds he’s down.
At this point the char is pretty much complete, apart from a few item switches and getting more skills to increase damage output. But the way the char will be played from now on won’t change. Therefore, I made a 2 min video of an Olympus run. So, if you’re interested on seeing how this char plays out and performs, check it out!
Legendary Greece:
Ok, this is where the game really starts. Normal mode is kind of a tutorial. Epic’s just a warm up. In the legendary mode is where the fun really begins. Now every action must be taken with caution, every foe is a dangerous threat… Alright, not EVERY foe. But it’s pretty hard, so we gotta play focused, keep those potions ready, and avoid as much as possible ANY hits.
If you hadn’t understood yet what I meant when I said that Squall is possibly the best skill in the game, now you probably will. You’re gonna use it in practically every ranged enemy, and a lot of melee as well. It makes our lives so much easier and the kills much faster.
At this point I reached level 48, time for the final equipment upgrade: I was finally able to wear Aphrodite’s Favor and the second Eye of Horus. The main skills are also almost maxed. So, to tell you the truth, I exaggerated a bit when I talked about the difficulty. We just have to play focused and slow down the pace a little bit. Just don’t expect to run right through the hordes of enemies while spamming your spells. Careless gameplay will often result in a quick death.
The Hydra shouldn’t be tough. Just keep moving and throwing Squall and Eruption at her, and in about a minute or two she’s dead. The same goes for the Telkine, but it’s faster. I finished Greece at level 50.
Legendary Egypt:
Just like in Epic mode, Egypt is easier than Greece in legendary for this type of char. I didn’t have any problems at all through it. One minor detail: while in this part of the game, I decided to swap one Eye of Horus for a Seal of the High Priest. This gave me a bit more poison resist, and I only lost 2% in –recharge, so I think it was a good swap. I kept this setup to the end.
I got to the Telkine by level 52 and it was piece of cake. At this point, all the needed skills are maxed, so from this point on the new skill points gained won’t help much, but since they are no good unspent, I put them in Core Dweller.
Legendary Orient:
Again, there’s really no secret here. I kept doing the same things I did the rest of the game, only much more carefully. Some monsters hit very hard, but none of them could one-hit-kill me.
The big Neanderthal fella has killed me a few times before, so I knew what was coming and took precautions. Just don’t let him stun you – it would probably mean a quick death. The Telkine was pretty easy, as was Typhon. As many people have said, there are far more dangerous monsters populating TQ’s world, which might seem illogical given that we expect the last big bad boss to be the toughest one. I don’t know what to think about it, except that it must be really hard to make a great game, and Nival has done a great work on this one.
VII – Videos
I’ve captured some videos in an attempt to show how the char plays out. I’ve uploaded all the Telkine duels, my first Olympus run on legendary, plus one or two others. I think this is enough to get the picture of this build. There are both high and low quality videos, for those who have slower connection.
http://rapidshare.de/files/30032232/Legendary_1st_Telkine_-_Low_Quality.avi.html (2,28 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30034584/Legendary_1st_Telkine_- _High_Quality.avi.html (15,5 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30034846/Legendary_2nd_Telkine_-_Low_Quality.avi.html (1,56 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30036004/Legendary_2nd_Telkine_- _High_Quality.AVI.html (10,3 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30036309/Legendary_3rd_Telkine_-_Low_Quality.avi.html (1,43 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30037912/Legendary_3rd_Telkine_- _High_Quality.avi.html (9,75 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30039266/Legendary_Olympus_1st_Run_- _Low_Quality.avi.html (5,94 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30044370/Legendary_Olympus_1st_Run_- _High_Quality.avi.html (41,2 MB)
VIII – Final Words
It was great fun playing this build, and I found it to be very effective. It’s viable to play untwinked, and it’s a great “farmer”. I’d like to present a lot more detail and ideas in this guide, especially in the equipment section, but I think it’s very long already. Maybe we can discuss it in the forums. Oh, and btw, you can contact me about errors, or with suggestions, on primorac_tq@yahoo.com.br... Just please don’t send flaming emails, as those will be promptly ignored.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. And I’m sorry for any mistakes. See ya around!
Credit goes to the original poster of this guide, Primorac. His original post can be seen by clicking here
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Greetings everyone!
First of all, I’d like to make 3 things clear:
1 – This is the first guide I try to write, so please apologize in advance for whatever you think is wrong, incomplete etc.
2 – English is not my first language, so don’t expect me to have a vast vocabulary or perfect grammar. I just hope I can make myself understandable.
3 – Feel free to use, publish or translate this guide, but please do it without any changes. I don’t see how anyone could profit from this, but if this opportunity ever exist, it’s a wrong thing to do. Don’t do it. J
I – Introduction
I’m a long time action-RPG fan, and always believed that area of effect spells is the way to go. Most of the times there are quite a few monsters to kill, so why kill one at a time when I could damage a whole area and take them all out in a single strike? It’s generally the fastest way to advance in this kind of game. With that in mind, my first impulse while checking TQ’s skill trees was to build an Elementalist (Earth/Storm) based on the area damage spells (Volcanic Orb / Eruption). And so I did. I gathered with a group of friends and played the whole game, on all difficulty levels.
After playing through all the game, I think I learned a lot from my mistakes, so I went on and built a second char (again, an Elementalist). I played much better with her, picked the skills more wisely and also got a few more nice items, either found or traded ones. Finally, with a better knowledge of the game and a nice item inventory, I built a third (and last) Elementalist. This guide was written based on my playing with this guy. As you can see, it was made based on a twinked char (a char who got items from other chars – generally higher level ones), which has affected a lot of my decisions and play style. Oh, it’s important to say that this is for PvM only. You’ll find no considerations about PvP here, since I’ve never even played PvP on TQ.
Here I’ll try to show you what I did regarding to attribute, skill and equipment choices. I’ll also try to tell you how I advanced through the game. By no means it’s the right or best way. It’s just a way I found to be effective and fun. So, if you have other items or if you’re playing untwinked, you’ll probably play the Elementalist class quite differently than me. Like I did, I strongly encourage you to find your own play style, even if it’s not the most effective in terms of killing power. What you should get most of your game is FUN. One of my intentions in writing this is that you adapt things to your own play style and have the most effective and fun build for you without having to play the whole game to discover things for yourself, possibly saving quite a long time.
As a final word on this introduction, let me say that this guide is more intended at new/inexperienced players, as I consider myself one of them. The game is fairly new, I’ve been playing it for just about a month, and there’s still A LOT to learn. There’s a lot of stuff regarding the mechanics I don’t know about, so this guide won’t go into deep details of how things work in the game. That said, even if you are an experienced player you might find some useful information (at least I hope so).
Now, on to the guide.
II – The idea
Ok, the basic idea of this build is to be able to kill things as fast as possible, but without neglecting safety. I tried to find a balance between killing speed and survivability. That said, the way I achieved it is to keep monsters stunned as much as possible. If it’s stunned, it can’t hit you. And to do that, the greatest strength of this build is the possibility to spam spells that stun or disable monsters in a big area.
III – Attribute Points
This is a very controversial area, and from what I read in forums most people disagree with me on this one. But to my experience and my play style, it’s better to get enough attributes to use your gear and then dump the rest in health. For this build in particular, getting super high int won’t make you kill monsters much faster, but having over 1500 more HPs can mean staying alive after one or two hits.
So, when I finished the legendary mode, at level 55, my attribute points, including equipment bonuses, were these: Health – 5261 / Mana – 2021 / Str – 50 / Int – 519 / Dex – 150.
IV – Equipment
This is a very important section. Any build, of any kind, will greatly benefit from proper equipment. This build in particular is extremely dependant on proper gear. I say this because it’s main characteristic come from an equipment bonus: -x% recharge. This is what allows us to spam VO, Squall and Eruption, thus stunning and killing everything on the screen very fast, even if each spell on it’s own doesn’t deal much dmg. I’d say a good bonus percentage to recharge time is 90. 80 is still quite good, but less than this will start to bother when you keep clicking the mouse button but VO doesn’t come out. Of course, if you can get to zero recharge time (-100% recharge), do it, but don’t sacrifice too much of other bonuses for it.
Another thing to consider are resistances. It’s very different playing with negative resists and maxed ones. With high HP and high elemental resists, you don’t need to worry about a lot of one-hit-kills that annoy most people. Sure, there are still a lot of dangerous threats out there, but at least you got this part covered.
+HP, +energy, -x% energy cost, +energy regeneration: these are also nice mods to have on your items. +HP will help keep you alive. The energy bonuses will help you use less energy potions. This build demands a lot of energy, since you will be spamming spells non-stop when fighting. More energy always helps, even though it’s not necessary at all given that you can buy potions from vendors.
One other bonus I really like is +x% movement. It doesn’t really help us much in terms of dmg output, but once you have it, it’s tough to let it go and run slowly again.
Regarding +x% to elemental dmg and +x% casting speed, the more the better, but imho they’re not more important than any other bonus listed here;
The thing is finding a balance of all the available equipment you have. For example, if you can have -70% recharge and +300% elemental dmg, it is better than having, say, -85% recharge and no bonus to elemental dmg at all. In my case, I have -91% recharge and +30% elemental dmg. I know a lot of people would say this elemental dmg is ridiculously low, but it’s enough for me. I could easily lose 15% on recharge to get another 40-50% elemental dmg, but I prefer the way it is. The same thing goes for resists. Find your own balance according to your own gear availability and you’ll do fine.
Now, the gear I’m currently using: The Full Archmage Set (chest, hands, legs, head), Aphrodite’s Favor amulet, Heka Staff, Eye of Horus and Seal of the High Priest rings. I won’t display all the stats of the items because this guide is getting quite long and you can check them on various websites.
One last thing about the equipment: plan ahead to use better gear as soon as possible. Use the +int bonuses to equip higher items. The attribute bonus from an item can be used to equip itself, differently than the latest versions of D2. For example, if you have 100 int and two staves, one that has an 100 int requirement and gives +50 int, the other has 150 int requirement and +50 int. Equip the first one, than the second. I know this seems logical to a lot of people, but since we’ve had games with a different system it’s good to emphasize this point.
V – Skill Points
Here’s the TitanCalc link for my skill choices up to level 55 (when I “finished” the game), followed by a brief explanation of each skill: CLICK HERE.
Volcanic Orb (12 points): this is the basis of the build. It’s an aoe spell that recharges very fast. With all the gear on, it recharges faster than the time to cast, so you can spam it at will.
Conflagration (1 point): important for the area increase, I don’t think it’s worth it to max this skill. Burn dmg takes a while to process, and I don’t like to have to wait for things to die. Instead of waiting, I’d just throw another VO anyway, so only 1 point in this skill.
Fragmentation (12 points): VERY important skill, it grants the much desired stun effect to VO. Also, the fragments from it cover even more area than VO itself, damaging and stunning additional targets. You just have to get used to the timing. Once you do, this skill is great! For untwinked play, I max this skill before VO.
Earth Enchantment (12 points): it works on spell dmg, so it basically increases the damage from VO and Eruption, which is a good thing.
Volativity (12 points): has a chance of increasing dmg from fire attacks, including spells. This is what we want: increase the dmg of our attacks. So, max it.
Core Dweller and it’s tree: this is really unnecessary. I just put points here after all the rest was at the target level. I picked this skill instead of others because the Dweller sometimes serves as a shield, which can be handy and life-saving. But this is occasional, don’t expect much (at least on this build) from your lava friend.
Summon Wisp (3 points): this little fella is useful because of Eye of the Storm. I’ve put 3 points because, together with +2 from the amulet, it gets the Thunderclap skill, which sometimes stuns enemies.
Eye of the Storm (8 points): this skill from the wisp is very handy, as it adds quite a lot of elemental dmg (including fire, despite the skill description). It doesn’t trigger always, but it happens often enough to deserve 8 skill points.
Squall (12 points): I still didn’t actually use all the skills in the game, but I dare to say this one is the best of all. Squall has so many benefits, both defensive and offensive, that I can’t imagine this build without it. I’m sure if I were responsible for the game, I wouldn’t allow it to be this powerful. Anyway, let’s list it’s goods:
- it has HUGE radius, often hitting foes offscreen.
- it’s recharge time is very quick, allowing you to spam it at will
- it’s duration is long enough to deal with any situation – just recast it if needed.
- it deals quite a lot of dmg, often killing monsters by itself.
- it ALWAYS makes ranged attackers (including casters) miss their attacks. This is like having 100% dodge ranged attacks.
Obscured Visibility (6 points): as if Squall weren’t good enough, this skill boosts it to an almost unfair level. It lowers the damage output of monsters and, most important for this build, it reduces their resistances. Reducing resistances are a big plus, especially at later stages of the game, where monsters have higher resists. It’s better than improving your damage by the same amount in this case, obviously.
Static Charge (12 points) and it’s pre-requisites (1 in each): I got this one for the sole purpose of enhancing Squall dmg. Yes, Squall is so good that it deserves this boost.
VI – Level Progression
If you’d like a somewhat detailed description of game progression, in this section I’ll present the most important events in each stage.
Normal Greece:
The beginning of the game is quite easy, just go around killing stuff and use potions when you need – don’t forget you can teleport back to town to get more of them faster. The first thing on my mind is to be able to wear a set of good items as quickly as possible. That said, instead of getting abilities, for the first levels I just pumped the masteries themselves for the int and dex bonuses. Of course, regarding to attributes, I’ve just put points on int and dex. Plan according to your own equipment availability to use better gear asap.
If you’re playing untwinked, you’ll do better if you get VO early on. But I wouldn’t recommend spending more than a point – I’d say it’s more important to get Conflagration and Fragmentation before that. After you have all 3, start putting points only in Fragmentation and VO. Conflagration is more important for the radius, which doesn’t increase with more points – leave it for much later. Anyway, don’t be scared of experimenting with skills, you can change them later by using the mystics. It costs gold, but that should be no problem. What you CAN’T ever change are the skill points you put on the masteries and the attribute points.
At level 18, I got to the first Telkine. As expected, he didn’t pose any problems. I had 1 point in VO, 1 in Conflagration and 1 in Fragmentation. The rest went on the masteries. Regarding the equipment, I was wearing the Pyromancer’s Set, Loratian Greaves, the Staff of Nabukhuthnusar, 2x Cartouche Ring and a green amulet.
Normal Egypt:
As I hit level 20, I maxed the Storm Mastery, thus allowing me to wear the Archmage’s Set using the least possible dex (I don’t count equipment bonuses because I don’t intend to wear +dex gear). Also, I can use pretty much any staff in the game, and I start using Heka Staff. Now the game will be a breeze for a long period. I’ll just max Earth Mastery and finally start allocating points in the skills.
The second Telkine was easier than the first one, given that my gear and my skills were better. I took him out at level 26, by using Squall to lower his resists and spamming VO and Eruption. Having the Wisp’s Eye of the Storm to help me, he lasted about 10 seconds.
Normal Orient:
This is, as expected, the toughest part of the game. But we’re still on normal mode – compared to what is coming, it’s piece of cake. The third Telkine was as easy as the second, dying in about 10 seconds and taking almost no life from me. Typhon himself took a bit longer, but was also very easy. Just spam Squall and Eruption on him, while running in such way that you avoid being hit and also keep him taking the damage from Eruption.
I finished the normal mode at level 32, pretty much what I expected. All side quests were done, my char has zero deaths, so it’s safe to say that this build was working so far. Then again, pretty much every build can finish normal with no problems, especially with good gear, so the real test is still to come…
Epic Greece:
The Greece part on Epic is still quite easy. No monster will be a big threat if you’re playing focused. Melee enemies are generally easy and will die before ever getting to you. For the ranged foes, you’re gonna have to make a better use of Squall, a skill that gets more important as you advance through the game.
Of course, Talos is quite hard (he’s found just before the Minoan Labyrinth). His Fire attack will stun you for a long time, and then he’ll use a stomp attack to keep you stunned even more, and finally unleash powerful critical blows. Another problem is that he won’t get stunned by your attacks, so you have to be constantly on the run. I advice you to clear the area of monsters, leaving him for last. Then, keep your distance, avoid get hit by him (especially by the stunning fire attack), and use your normal staff attack to take him down. It takes quite a while, but it’s not that hard. And keep potions ready, because you can use them while stunned (and that will probably save you life).
The Telkine should pose no problems. I took him when I was level 38. As usual, just spam Squall, Eruption and VO on him while using potions as needed (I didn’t have to use any, but we never know…).
Epic Egypt:
Egypt is actually easier than Greece (imho), since the Stalkers are fast and sneaky bastards. Just pay attention to the boss of the library. It’s poison attack actually took my HP bar to less than one fourth because I went too careless to the fight. I pressed the potion number on the quick bar like a maniac… lol, that was a close one.
At level 40 there’s a good gear upgrade as you’re able to wear some legendary amulets and rings. So, I used at that point 2x Celestial Band and the Polaris, which gave me a bit more of –recharge.
Of course, if you wanna kill the Manticore, it’s a particularly tough part. But it’s not that tough. Just run in circles around it, while spamming both Squall and Eruption. It took me a while to take it out, maybe a minute or two, but at least it didn’t hit me. The same goes for the Telkine, but he was faster than the Manticore.
Epic Orient:
Now playing on epic, I took my chances against the Dragon Liche. By using the “run around in circles spamming Eruption and Squall” technique, I took him out easily.
By level 45 there’s another important gear upgrade: it’s possible to equip the Eye of Horus. At this point, I used just one of it, because I was still wearing the Polaris. When I switch to the Aphrodite’s Favor (therefore losing the –recharge on the ammy), I’ll put another Eye of Horus on. At last it’s possible to spam VO and Squall as fast as they can be cast. Eruption, too, will have a very quick recharge time, which allows us to cast it almost as often as desired. By this point, it’s a safe bet that more energy potions are going to be needed. But you should have tons of gold by now, so it’s no problem.
Again, there was no trouble in this part of the game. Just spam VO and Squall, with the addition of Eruption to quicken the kills, and it’s not that hard. I got to the Telkine at level 46, and took him out easily. Typhon was himself even easier. In under 10 seconds he’s down.
At this point the char is pretty much complete, apart from a few item switches and getting more skills to increase damage output. But the way the char will be played from now on won’t change. Therefore, I made a 2 min video of an Olympus run. So, if you’re interested on seeing how this char plays out and performs, check it out!
Legendary Greece:
Ok, this is where the game really starts. Normal mode is kind of a tutorial. Epic’s just a warm up. In the legendary mode is where the fun really begins. Now every action must be taken with caution, every foe is a dangerous threat… Alright, not EVERY foe. But it’s pretty hard, so we gotta play focused, keep those potions ready, and avoid as much as possible ANY hits.
If you hadn’t understood yet what I meant when I said that Squall is possibly the best skill in the game, now you probably will. You’re gonna use it in practically every ranged enemy, and a lot of melee as well. It makes our lives so much easier and the kills much faster.
At this point I reached level 48, time for the final equipment upgrade: I was finally able to wear Aphrodite’s Favor and the second Eye of Horus. The main skills are also almost maxed. So, to tell you the truth, I exaggerated a bit when I talked about the difficulty. We just have to play focused and slow down the pace a little bit. Just don’t expect to run right through the hordes of enemies while spamming your spells. Careless gameplay will often result in a quick death.
The Hydra shouldn’t be tough. Just keep moving and throwing Squall and Eruption at her, and in about a minute or two she’s dead. The same goes for the Telkine, but it’s faster. I finished Greece at level 50.
Legendary Egypt:
Just like in Epic mode, Egypt is easier than Greece in legendary for this type of char. I didn’t have any problems at all through it. One minor detail: while in this part of the game, I decided to swap one Eye of Horus for a Seal of the High Priest. This gave me a bit more poison resist, and I only lost 2% in –recharge, so I think it was a good swap. I kept this setup to the end.
I got to the Telkine by level 52 and it was piece of cake. At this point, all the needed skills are maxed, so from this point on the new skill points gained won’t help much, but since they are no good unspent, I put them in Core Dweller.
Legendary Orient:
Again, there’s really no secret here. I kept doing the same things I did the rest of the game, only much more carefully. Some monsters hit very hard, but none of them could one-hit-kill me.
The big Neanderthal fella has killed me a few times before, so I knew what was coming and took precautions. Just don’t let him stun you – it would probably mean a quick death. The Telkine was pretty easy, as was Typhon. As many people have said, there are far more dangerous monsters populating TQ’s world, which might seem illogical given that we expect the last big bad boss to be the toughest one. I don’t know what to think about it, except that it must be really hard to make a great game, and Nival has done a great work on this one.
VII – Videos
I’ve captured some videos in an attempt to show how the char plays out. I’ve uploaded all the Telkine duels, my first Olympus run on legendary, plus one or two others. I think this is enough to get the picture of this build. There are both high and low quality videos, for those who have slower connection.
http://rapidshare.de/files/30032232/Legendary_1st_Telkine_-_Low_Quality.avi.html (2,28 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30034584/Legendary_1st_Telkine_- _High_Quality.avi.html (15,5 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30034846/Legendary_2nd_Telkine_-_Low_Quality.avi.html (1,56 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30036004/Legendary_2nd_Telkine_- _High_Quality.AVI.html (10,3 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30036309/Legendary_3rd_Telkine_-_Low_Quality.avi.html (1,43 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30037912/Legendary_3rd_Telkine_- _High_Quality.avi.html (9,75 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30039266/Legendary_Olympus_1st_Run_- _Low_Quality.avi.html (5,94 MB)
http://rapidshare.de/files/30044370/Legendary_Olympus_1st_Run_- _High_Quality.avi.html (41,2 MB)
VIII – Final Words
It was great fun playing this build, and I found it to be very effective. It’s viable to play untwinked, and it’s a great “farmer”. I’d like to present a lot more detail and ideas in this guide, especially in the equipment section, but I think it’s very long already. Maybe we can discuss it in the forums. Oh, and btw, you can contact me about errors, or with suggestions, on primorac_tq@yahoo.com.br... Just please don’t send flaming emails, as those will be promptly ignored.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. And I’m sorry for any mistakes. See ya around!
Titan Quest: [Oracle] Build for Compendium
=================================================================
Credit goes to Cassidy of titanquest.net. His original post can be seen by clicking here.
=================================================================
My first build for the Compendium (see thread in Gameplay).
Oracle - Raziel, The mobile Appocalypse (V1.15)
1) - Overview -
The Oracle is, without doubt, the games current hammerdin - capable of damage in the tens of thousands distributed over a large area with minimal dependance on good starting gear. A good Oracle can run Typhon and most of the other bosses, solo Legendary (with a little care) and is an awesome character to start with - possibly even a little overpowered. None of the existing builds/threads really did this character justice IMHO, particularly in terms of progression - thus my first build for the compendium will be an Oracle.
2) - Skills and Stats -
The Oracle uses the Spirit and Storm trees, with the primary focus being on Ternion, lightning damage, summons and buffs.
Stat wise, put enough points into str and dex to wear your target gear (this will be high if you don't know what you'll be finding). The rest should be plowed right into int - mana isn't really a problem, just suck down the potions.
=== Spirit ===
Ternion Attack - 12 points (max). This is the heart of the build, giving three attacks from a staff - practically tripling the effective damage! Initially it has a minor penalty to elemental damage, but eventually this becomes a 5percent bonus.
Arcane Lore (synergy to above) - 6 points (max). If ternion if the heart, then this is the soul of the Oracle. It allows the ternion attack to strike over a wide area, up to a 2.5m radius.
Dark Covenant - 1 point. A nice buff, particularly late game. This burns health in exchange for an increase to energy regen and (with synergy) elemental damage - which is what we are trying to max. This also applies to allies, but doesn't last all that long (unfortunately).
Unearthly Power (synergy to above) - 8 points (max). See above.
Summon Lich King - 15 points (max) - Probably the best ranged pet in the game, the Lich King tears opponents apart with energy attacks, sustains himself, stuns and slows and even does percentile damage to enemies. Trust me - you want one. Building him to max allows him to use a variety of different attacks (such as the lovely soul blight).
Death Nova (synergy to above) - 1-12 points. Heals the Lich and does percentile and vitality damage. Very, very nice late game. Max if you have extra points.
Wraith Shell (synergy to above) - 1 point. Makes the lich harder to kill by means of damage absorption and resistance.
Arcane Blast (synergy to above) - 1-16 points. Allows the Lich King to fling powerful stunning and slowing projectile volleys. Awesome for fast moving, melee mobs. Max if you have extra points.
Death Ward - 1 point. Just gives you a little bit of hp when it runs low, a useful last breath when you get careless.
=== Storm ===
Storm Wisp - 1 point. A great little summon that is virtually unkillable due to an enourmous dodge percentage. Area effects can hurt it though. You want it due to Eye of the Storm, which buffs both your resistances and elemental damage.
Eye of the Storm (synergy to above) - 8 points (max). See above. While it doesn't go off all that often, when it does it buffs your cold and lightning resistances by 33 percent and your elemental damage by a whopping 100 percent (maxed) !.
Storm Nimbus - 10 points (max). The reason why we use a storm mastery. Nimbus gives both cold and lightning damage, with percentile plusses in its synergies. Eventually reaches 23 cold damage, 19-75 lightning, which is why this build focusses on lightning.
Heart of Frost (synergy to above)- 1-8 points. Increases percentile cold damage and slows enemies in a small radius around you slightly. Not bad, max if you have extra points.
Static Charge (synergy to above) - 12 points (max). This allows your character a chance to retaliate with lightning damage (not all that helpful) and adds a nice percentile damage to lightning damage, 76 percent eventually.
=== Other skills to consider ===
Deathchill Aura and Ravages of Time (synergy) - Another aura, with an extremely small radius that slows enemies, damages them slightly and reduces their damage outputs. Consider using it in Legendary or if you find that mobs consistantly get too close for comfort.
Thunderball and Concussive Blast (synergy) - Gives a nice stun, reasonable damage late game and with synergies can be another obstacle to throw in the way of oncoming mobs. Stun and then blast 'em to oblivion!
Squall and Obscured Visability (synergy) - Does minor damage, but lowers enemy resistances and damage output as well as making ranged enemies miss. Some like this, some don't.
Summon Outsider - I suggest you put a point into this, as it gives a strong summon to use when facing bosses.
Chain Lightning and synergy - A pretty nice skill, what it lacks in stunning power it makes up for in quick casting time and pure style. Drops a powerful, single bolt onto a target, synergies allow it to arc to others. While the stun is extremely short, it can be cast quickly in response to enemy archer packs - giving you just enough time to direct a torrent of crackling ternion death their way.
3) -Character Progression-
Initially a single point into ternion will suffice.
Next, climb the Spirit mastery tree until you unlock Arcane Lore, which you should max to allow you maximum spread of your ternion damage. Now get yourself a lich.
Now get Nimbus and maximise it. Then start climbing the Storm tree, while maxing ternion - (1 point ternion, 2 points mastery) putting a point into each of the essential skills.
I prefer doing this to maxing ternion and other percentiles early since the base damage of the early staffs is low enough to make increased percentile damage negligable early game (boosting your int and nimbus inititally actually gives higher returns). If you have high level starting gear you may wish to get the percentiles up higher, faster - although you should be killing so fast you will barely notice.
Once the Storm tree is maxed, maximise Static Charge (for permanent lightning percentile increase) and Eye of the Storm (when the wisp buffs you, damage goes through the roof).
Now finish climbing the Spirit tree, getting the synergies for your Lich, Dark Covenant/Unearthly power and a point into summon outsider. By this point in the game (medium-late epic) you will appreciate the stun/slow the lich is now capable of, the extra damage pump from Unearthly Power and the extra summon to call out if things get sticky.
Finally, once these are all done, either put some points into the other skills mentioned or maximise the '1-x' skills such as the lich's synergies and Heart of Frost.
4) - Lets talk Strategy -
The strategy for an Oracle is remarkably simple - once you start firing, the sheer volume of projectiles will form a torrent of electrical death - obliterating mobs in a heartbeat thanks to the splash damage from arcane lore.
With all your combined elemental/lightning damage percentile boosts (including your wisp's) you'll have around 200+ percent! Now multiply this by 3(ternion), taking it up to a whopping 6x damage. Applied to your staff's lightning damage and the damage from Nimbus...ye gods...
Simply destroy melee monsters before they get to you - if they manage to, either tank the damage (not a good idea out of normal) or fall back, periodically firing. Ranged monsters should be dealt with similarly, blasting them good before they can focus fire you.
If things become dicy, fall back and bring out your outsider to help divert enemy attention away from you. The idea is to simply pour damage into enemies whenever you can.
5) -Gear-
The beauty of the Oracle is that it can survive and solo Legendary Typhon with store bought items (of course anything you find along the way will help
). Try to get yourself a staff with high lightning damage, + lightning damage and + percentile.
Run Typhon and get some gear for your other characters in need!
6) -Weaknesses-
While an Oracle is an incredible killing machine, it does have a low hp. Thus massed ranged enemies in legendary are to be feared. Fast moving, tough bosses like Toxeus and Manticore can also give you a hard time. Finally, casters and bosses that do huge area damage can roast you if you get careless or cocky.
These problems can be solved, to an extent, by using your summons wisely - if you are in an area in which you know a powerful boss resides, use the ctrl key to move your lich/wisp in first and try to get their attention focussed on the summon. If else fails, drop your outsider and leg it!
Massed ranged enemies can be dealt with by using either squall (which causes them to miss a lot) or thunderbolt (which stuns them long enough for you to vaporise them).
Have fun!
Credit goes to Cassidy of titanquest.net. His original post can be seen by clicking here.
=================================================================
My first build for the Compendium (see thread in Gameplay).
Oracle - Raziel, The mobile Appocalypse (V1.15)
1) - Overview -
The Oracle is, without doubt, the games current hammerdin - capable of damage in the tens of thousands distributed over a large area with minimal dependance on good starting gear. A good Oracle can run Typhon and most of the other bosses, solo Legendary (with a little care) and is an awesome character to start with - possibly even a little overpowered. None of the existing builds/threads really did this character justice IMHO, particularly in terms of progression - thus my first build for the compendium will be an Oracle.
2) - Skills and Stats -
The Oracle uses the Spirit and Storm trees, with the primary focus being on Ternion, lightning damage, summons and buffs.
Stat wise, put enough points into str and dex to wear your target gear (this will be high if you don't know what you'll be finding). The rest should be plowed right into int - mana isn't really a problem, just suck down the potions.
=== Spirit ===
Ternion Attack - 12 points (max). This is the heart of the build, giving three attacks from a staff - practically tripling the effective damage! Initially it has a minor penalty to elemental damage, but eventually this becomes a 5percent bonus.
Arcane Lore (synergy to above) - 6 points (max). If ternion if the heart, then this is the soul of the Oracle. It allows the ternion attack to strike over a wide area, up to a 2.5m radius.
Dark Covenant - 1 point. A nice buff, particularly late game. This burns health in exchange for an increase to energy regen and (with synergy) elemental damage - which is what we are trying to max. This also applies to allies, but doesn't last all that long (unfortunately).
Unearthly Power (synergy to above) - 8 points (max). See above.
Summon Lich King - 15 points (max) - Probably the best ranged pet in the game, the Lich King tears opponents apart with energy attacks, sustains himself, stuns and slows and even does percentile damage to enemies. Trust me - you want one. Building him to max allows him to use a variety of different attacks (such as the lovely soul blight).
Death Nova (synergy to above) - 1-12 points. Heals the Lich and does percentile and vitality damage. Very, very nice late game. Max if you have extra points.
Wraith Shell (synergy to above) - 1 point. Makes the lich harder to kill by means of damage absorption and resistance.
Arcane Blast (synergy to above) - 1-16 points. Allows the Lich King to fling powerful stunning and slowing projectile volleys. Awesome for fast moving, melee mobs. Max if you have extra points.
Death Ward - 1 point. Just gives you a little bit of hp when it runs low, a useful last breath when you get careless.
=== Storm ===
Storm Wisp - 1 point. A great little summon that is virtually unkillable due to an enourmous dodge percentage. Area effects can hurt it though. You want it due to Eye of the Storm, which buffs both your resistances and elemental damage.
Eye of the Storm (synergy to above) - 8 points (max). See above. While it doesn't go off all that often, when it does it buffs your cold and lightning resistances by 33 percent and your elemental damage by a whopping 100 percent (maxed) !.
Storm Nimbus - 10 points (max). The reason why we use a storm mastery. Nimbus gives both cold and lightning damage, with percentile plusses in its synergies. Eventually reaches 23 cold damage, 19-75 lightning, which is why this build focusses on lightning.
Heart of Frost (synergy to above)- 1-8 points. Increases percentile cold damage and slows enemies in a small radius around you slightly. Not bad, max if you have extra points.
Static Charge (synergy to above) - 12 points (max). This allows your character a chance to retaliate with lightning damage (not all that helpful) and adds a nice percentile damage to lightning damage, 76 percent eventually.
=== Other skills to consider ===
Deathchill Aura and Ravages of Time (synergy) - Another aura, with an extremely small radius that slows enemies, damages them slightly and reduces their damage outputs. Consider using it in Legendary or if you find that mobs consistantly get too close for comfort.
Thunderball and Concussive Blast (synergy) - Gives a nice stun, reasonable damage late game and with synergies can be another obstacle to throw in the way of oncoming mobs. Stun and then blast 'em to oblivion!
Squall and Obscured Visability (synergy) - Does minor damage, but lowers enemy resistances and damage output as well as making ranged enemies miss. Some like this, some don't.
Summon Outsider - I suggest you put a point into this, as it gives a strong summon to use when facing bosses.
Chain Lightning and synergy - A pretty nice skill, what it lacks in stunning power it makes up for in quick casting time and pure style. Drops a powerful, single bolt onto a target, synergies allow it to arc to others. While the stun is extremely short, it can be cast quickly in response to enemy archer packs - giving you just enough time to direct a torrent of crackling ternion death their way.
3) -Character Progression-
Initially a single point into ternion will suffice.
Next, climb the Spirit mastery tree until you unlock Arcane Lore, which you should max to allow you maximum spread of your ternion damage. Now get yourself a lich.
Now get Nimbus and maximise it. Then start climbing the Storm tree, while maxing ternion - (1 point ternion, 2 points mastery) putting a point into each of the essential skills.
I prefer doing this to maxing ternion and other percentiles early since the base damage of the early staffs is low enough to make increased percentile damage negligable early game (boosting your int and nimbus inititally actually gives higher returns). If you have high level starting gear you may wish to get the percentiles up higher, faster - although you should be killing so fast you will barely notice.
Once the Storm tree is maxed, maximise Static Charge (for permanent lightning percentile increase) and Eye of the Storm (when the wisp buffs you, damage goes through the roof).
Now finish climbing the Spirit tree, getting the synergies for your Lich, Dark Covenant/Unearthly power and a point into summon outsider. By this point in the game (medium-late epic) you will appreciate the stun/slow the lich is now capable of, the extra damage pump from Unearthly Power and the extra summon to call out if things get sticky.
Finally, once these are all done, either put some points into the other skills mentioned or maximise the '1-x' skills such as the lich's synergies and Heart of Frost.
4) - Lets talk Strategy -
The strategy for an Oracle is remarkably simple - once you start firing, the sheer volume of projectiles will form a torrent of electrical death - obliterating mobs in a heartbeat thanks to the splash damage from arcane lore.
With all your combined elemental/lightning damage percentile boosts (including your wisp's) you'll have around 200+ percent! Now multiply this by 3(ternion), taking it up to a whopping 6x damage. Applied to your staff's lightning damage and the damage from Nimbus...ye gods...
Simply destroy melee monsters before they get to you - if they manage to, either tank the damage (not a good idea out of normal) or fall back, periodically firing. Ranged monsters should be dealt with similarly, blasting them good before they can focus fire you.
If things become dicy, fall back and bring out your outsider to help divert enemy attention away from you. The idea is to simply pour damage into enemies whenever you can.
5) -Gear-
The beauty of the Oracle is that it can survive and solo Legendary Typhon with store bought items (of course anything you find along the way will help
). Try to get yourself a staff with high lightning damage, + lightning damage and + percentile. Run Typhon and get some gear for your other characters in need!
6) -Weaknesses-
While an Oracle is an incredible killing machine, it does have a low hp. Thus massed ranged enemies in legendary are to be feared. Fast moving, tough bosses like Toxeus and Manticore can also give you a hard time. Finally, casters and bosses that do huge area damage can roast you if you get careless or cocky.
These problems can be solved, to an extent, by using your summons wisely - if you are in an area in which you know a powerful boss resides, use the ctrl key to move your lich/wisp in first and try to get their attention focussed on the summon. If else fails, drop your outsider and leg it!
Massed ranged enemies can be dealt with by using either squall (which causes them to miss a lot) or thunderbolt (which stuns them long enough for you to vaporise them).
Have fun!
Wednesday 20 June 2012
Torchlight 1: My Destroyer build
Hello all,
I've been lurking on the forums ever since I found out about Torchlight. I played D2 for many years after it came out, and eventually switched to playing a modded version of D2 (Median for those who've played it before). In both versions of the game I often used builds others had created which, now that I look back at it, is something I kind of regret. I certainly had fun playing those games but I've decided to try something new and come up with a build prior to playing Torchlight and provide it for others to possibly use!
Warning: If there is anyone who does not want to know the character skills before release, then don't continue reading.
This build is designed for use on the more difficult game settings (hopefully Hardcore), though it could certainly be used on the less difficult settings. It's intent is to maximize crowd control while dealing out significant damage and minimizing damage taken (which I suppose is somewhat ideal, and I hope it works). This build is complete at level 93 (don't know if I'll have the patience to finish the build before trying another character), not taking into account Fame skills points. I didn't include them as I'm unsure how many the typical player will accrue while playing. Also, it doesn't include spells or your pet because, again, I have limited knowledge of these at the moment. Anywho, here goes! (Any skills that aren't included are meant to be left at 0 skill points):
For a description of the skills go to: http://en.runicgamesfansite.com/rgwiki/ ... =Destroyer
Berserker Tree
Lvl 1:
Slash Attack - 10 skills points (SP); This will be the primary way to spread the damage to the monsters that have been stunned (more on this later)
Dual Wielding - 10 SP; This build will dual-wield, and this skill will passively improve our damage while doing so.
Lvl 15:
Chain Vortex - 1 SP; This will take the place of Titan Stomp as our crowd control skill until we get Spectral Decay. While it doesn't cause much damage, it temporarily stuns all nearby enemies for 3 seconds.
Lvl 20:
Spectral Echo - 5 SP; If I understand the skill's description, this will provide us with a timed amount of added AOE damage to our attacks.
Critcal Strikes - 10 SP; This is key to the build. It increases the amount of damage our critical strikes deal, and increases the chances of a critical strike. The idea being that at level 10 there will, hopefully, be a 10% greater chance to deal a critical strike of more than twice your normal damage.
Lvl 25:
Devastate - 10 SP; This will be one of the main skills the build uses. Not only does it deal massive damage, but it also provides 4 monster debuffs (3 slowing debuffs and 1 armor debuff).
Titan Tree
Lvl 5:
Titan Stomp - 1 SP; This will be the first crowd control skill we come across. It knocks enemies back, provides some damage, and includes a chance to stun (though not as much stun as Chain Vortex). I concentrated on stun because I find it more useful than knocking enemies back and having to run and hit them. Though I haven't played the game yet, so it may not be that bad and Chain Vortex may not be needed.
Martial Weapons Expertise - 10 SP; Another source of passive weapon damage. It also lowers equipment requirements.
Lvl 15:
Frost Shield - 5 SP; A useful defensive skill that reduces the amount of damage taken, provides a chance to freeze enemies that hit you and provides a good bit of knockback resistance.
Lvl 20:
Block and Parry - 5 SP; Increases the chance that we block an incoming attack, whether we have a shield or not (which is nice since we're dual-wielding).
Spectral Tree
Lvl 1:
Shadow Armor - 1 or 5; Summons a phantasm that will fight by your side, mitigating your damage intake. I'm unsure if the 4% chance to block is an added bonus for the character or the phantasm. My reasoning for the 1 or 5 SP is to add 5 SP if the 4% chance to block is for the character, but just 1 if it's for the phantasm. It would be nice to have another passive way to increase your chance to block, otherwise it'd be nice to have someone by your side to take some damage for you.
Lvl 5:
Entropic Aura - 5 SP; We're only allowed 1 aura at a time, and this is the one I chose. This aura is obtained earlier in the game so we'll get more use from it, and on the harder difficulties I tend to go for defensive skills. Keep in mind that Devastate also slows the enemies, so all the baddies on the screen could be moving very slowly while we chop them up.
Armor Expertise - 5 SP; Our first defensive skill. This increases the protection our armor provides and reduces the requirements to wear said armor.
Lvl 25:
Spectral Decay - 10 SP; Our ultimate crowd control skill. This skill provides stun and some knockback, but more importantly it also increase the amount of damage we deal.
The general strategy of the build is fairly straight forward. Keep Frost Shield, Entropic Aura and Shadow Armor "active" at all times. Use your crowd control skill (Titan Stomp or Chain Vortex) and then use Spectral Decay. By this point the baddies should be incapacitated. Then cast Spectral Echo and use Devastate and Slash Attack to finish them off. If needed, Rinse and repeat the process on anything left over (provided we have enough Mana...).
Well, that's my way too specific/lengthy/too-thought-out-before-I-get-my-hands-on-the-game/theoretical build!
Feel free to critique my thought process; I'd love to hear what everyone thinks!
Thanks,
bigbonz
I've been lurking on the forums ever since I found out about Torchlight. I played D2 for many years after it came out, and eventually switched to playing a modded version of D2 (Median for those who've played it before). In both versions of the game I often used builds others had created which, now that I look back at it, is something I kind of regret. I certainly had fun playing those games but I've decided to try something new and come up with a build prior to playing Torchlight and provide it for others to possibly use!
Warning: If there is anyone who does not want to know the character skills before release, then don't continue reading.
This build is designed for use on the more difficult game settings (hopefully Hardcore), though it could certainly be used on the less difficult settings. It's intent is to maximize crowd control while dealing out significant damage and minimizing damage taken (which I suppose is somewhat ideal, and I hope it works). This build is complete at level 93 (don't know if I'll have the patience to finish the build before trying another character), not taking into account Fame skills points. I didn't include them as I'm unsure how many the typical player will accrue while playing. Also, it doesn't include spells or your pet because, again, I have limited knowledge of these at the moment. Anywho, here goes! (Any skills that aren't included are meant to be left at 0 skill points):
For a description of the skills go to: http://en.runicgamesfansite.com/rgwiki/ ... =Destroyer
Berserker Tree
Lvl 1:
Slash Attack - 10 skills points (SP); This will be the primary way to spread the damage to the monsters that have been stunned (more on this later)
Dual Wielding - 10 SP; This build will dual-wield, and this skill will passively improve our damage while doing so.
Lvl 15:
Chain Vortex - 1 SP; This will take the place of Titan Stomp as our crowd control skill until we get Spectral Decay. While it doesn't cause much damage, it temporarily stuns all nearby enemies for 3 seconds.
Lvl 20:
Spectral Echo - 5 SP; If I understand the skill's description, this will provide us with a timed amount of added AOE damage to our attacks.
Critcal Strikes - 10 SP; This is key to the build. It increases the amount of damage our critical strikes deal, and increases the chances of a critical strike. The idea being that at level 10 there will, hopefully, be a 10% greater chance to deal a critical strike of more than twice your normal damage.
Lvl 25:
Devastate - 10 SP; This will be one of the main skills the build uses. Not only does it deal massive damage, but it also provides 4 monster debuffs (3 slowing debuffs and 1 armor debuff).
Titan Tree
Lvl 5:
Titan Stomp - 1 SP; This will be the first crowd control skill we come across. It knocks enemies back, provides some damage, and includes a chance to stun (though not as much stun as Chain Vortex). I concentrated on stun because I find it more useful than knocking enemies back and having to run and hit them. Though I haven't played the game yet, so it may not be that bad and Chain Vortex may not be needed.
Martial Weapons Expertise - 10 SP; Another source of passive weapon damage. It also lowers equipment requirements.
Lvl 15:
Frost Shield - 5 SP; A useful defensive skill that reduces the amount of damage taken, provides a chance to freeze enemies that hit you and provides a good bit of knockback resistance.
Lvl 20:
Block and Parry - 5 SP; Increases the chance that we block an incoming attack, whether we have a shield or not (which is nice since we're dual-wielding).
Spectral Tree
Lvl 1:
Shadow Armor - 1 or 5; Summons a phantasm that will fight by your side, mitigating your damage intake. I'm unsure if the 4% chance to block is an added bonus for the character or the phantasm. My reasoning for the 1 or 5 SP is to add 5 SP if the 4% chance to block is for the character, but just 1 if it's for the phantasm. It would be nice to have another passive way to increase your chance to block, otherwise it'd be nice to have someone by your side to take some damage for you.
Lvl 5:
Entropic Aura - 5 SP; We're only allowed 1 aura at a time, and this is the one I chose. This aura is obtained earlier in the game so we'll get more use from it, and on the harder difficulties I tend to go for defensive skills. Keep in mind that Devastate also slows the enemies, so all the baddies on the screen could be moving very slowly while we chop them up.
Armor Expertise - 5 SP; Our first defensive skill. This increases the protection our armor provides and reduces the requirements to wear said armor.
Lvl 25:
Spectral Decay - 10 SP; Our ultimate crowd control skill. This skill provides stun and some knockback, but more importantly it also increase the amount of damage we deal.
The general strategy of the build is fairly straight forward. Keep Frost Shield, Entropic Aura and Shadow Armor "active" at all times. Use your crowd control skill (Titan Stomp or Chain Vortex) and then use Spectral Decay. By this point the baddies should be incapacitated. Then cast Spectral Echo and use Devastate and Slash Attack to finish them off. If needed, Rinse and repeat the process on anything left over (provided we have enough Mana...).
Well, that's my way too specific/lengthy/too-thought-out-before-I-get-my-hands-on-the-game/theoretical build!
Feel free to critique my thought process; I'd love to hear what everyone thinks!Thanks,
bigbonz
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