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
Well I just ‘beat’ torchlight and I’d figure that I’d post some tips for the destroyer class. I played the game on hard and my strats seemed to work on that difficulty, I can’t speak for very hard but anything below should do it. Lets see where to start.
Skills
There are a lot of ways to build classes but I’ll discuss what worked for me.
Slash Attack- This is your starting skill, and it is your bread and butter for a long time, until level 25 for me, luckily I didn’t find the game difficult enough to spend not a single more point on this skill and I would recommend doing the same as this skill becomes useless once a berserker acquires devastate.
Dual Wield- This gives a larger damage bonus than martial weapons, unless you plan on not dual wielding (not recommended) get this skill, although I would still recommend saving your points for better passive skills that are available at level 20.
Adventurer – this skill is quite useful but I found myself putting few points into it, its good to get exp, and the potion bonus is really nice but I’d rather save it for later and make my character stronger with more potent skills, potions are usually strong enough to beat the game, though if you play further you may wanna pick this up
Crit Strike- This skill owns, and the sad part is we gotta wake to level 20 to get it, hopefully you saved points and can get this maxed asap, like at level 30.
Devastate – This skill plain owns, I used it exclusively as soon as I got it, you attack much faster than slow slash attack and hop around obliterating enemies, you don’t even need to invest points in it to be good, one would suffice to beat the game, which is also somewhat recommended as the bonuses aren’t terrific and it will burn mana quicker the more points you put into it.
Soul Rend- I myself prefer slash attack, it’s a shorter animation and has a bigger area of effect, though be youself, you can use this til 25 if you want.
Martial Weapon Expertise – adds only 4% dmg per lvl, less than dual wield but does help you equip better weapons earlier which is useful since you can often find some higher up weaps from the merchant, overall not that powerful I didn’t invest many points in it.
Titan stomp- one point in this gets you some breathing space if you get surrounded, I was never smart enough to cast it when surrounded but if you are a quick thinker might as well grab it.
Frost shield – a really good skill with a really bad duration, lasts a meager 20 seconds, powerful but I prefer Shadow Armor thank you very much.
Block and Parry – see Critical Strike
Shadow Armor – A lot of stuff is trying to kill you in this game and we have to face it at point blank range, you will want to max this skill early, and with block and parry aim to reach the max block rate of 50% which is easily done by maxing both skills or coming close. Beware though there was a bug where if you recasted the armor before it ended you would get the graphic but not the extra block rate. Btw blocking owns it negates the damage of an attack completely.
Entropic aura- this skill seems good but I was sick enough having to recast shadow armor all the time to have another skill to cast.
Armor expertise – this skill is somewhat useful but I favor other stronger passive skills. Save your points for block and parry
I didn’t cover all the skills cuz I’m lazy and a lot of them I didn’t get, I got what I needed for my build which focuses on getting my block rate to 50% so they miss a lot and rampaging around with devastate critical hitting quite often (35% with gear).
Stats
With stats I would recommend putting points into strength and defense, though I found a lot of good gear that required magic so I found myself spending points in it to get those high +critical strike stats which usually always require magic from my experience.
Sword/Shield or Dual Wielding or 2hand
I got my block maxed(with shadow armor cast) without a shield, and you really need damage in this game so I don’t see needing a shield in this game, especially since they are somewhat rare and kinda weak. Two handers have less space for stats since its only one item in your hand and they are also more rare than one handers, if you really want go 2hand but I gotta say Dual Wielding is the best for a Berserker build.
Armor
Uh get gear with +critical strike its prob best stat, defense is always good, hp is alright, use your judgement
General Tips
Use a town portal scroll when you enter a new level incase you die, it saves a lot of time, I’ve even had levels respawn on me when I forgot to leave a portal up.
Go ahead a put spells on your pet, they can be an added bonus but overall I didn’t find any spells overly helpful.
Uhhh what else… bring a lot of potions to the last boss
Happy hunting everybody blah blah blah
Alright, you've got some pretty bad advice here. I'll try and fix it:
Slash Attack to 3 to get 100% weapon DPS, I don't like leaving this at 1. This combines your Dual Wielding weapon's DPS, meaning spamming this over auto attack = double your DPS. Basically, the only attack you'll need.
Dual Wield is overshadowed easily by Martial Weapon Expertise. It loses 2% damage bonus each level, but each point lets you equip a weapon one level earlier (as well as reducing the stat requirements). That destroys the 2% you're missing out on from Dual Wield because higher level weapons = more damage (more than 2% per level at least). I have points in Dual Wield after Expertise is maxed.
Adventurer is pointless. Kill things faster = more experience, so save your points for your damaging skills. Also, potions are rarely needed when you get the below skills.
Titan Stomp was meh. Low damage knockback with stun wasn't useful in many situations. Maybe one point for utility.
Frost Shield is the best thing to happen to the Destroyer ever. 5 points here = 40% of all damage reduced. Once it's 20 seconds is done, put it back up. And you're putting points into block and parry? Max this.
Shadow Armor gets the same kind of love as Frost Shield.
Entropic Aura is a one point wonder. Makes you're Destroyer an even better tank, not that you need it.
Armor Expertise is marginally useful for -requirements, but Frost Shield and Shadow Armor better have lots of points before this gets some. Even then, your offense is priority since your defense is pretty beastly with those two as is.
No points in Block and Parry. Such terrible returns on your investment.
Crit Strike is whatever you can afford after everything else is decent as you will Crit noticeably more, but not enough. Or you might have taken a liking to some other abilities, go for those first if that's your fancy.
Also throwing in + Defensive Skills solely for Heal/Drain Touch if you don't wish to use any potions. Not the best return, but enough to warrant some points.
To play the Destroyer is easy:
Get yourself some nice leech on a weapon (Enchants and Skulls do this real well), and Drain Touch if you can't get enough. Pop Frost Shield + Shadow Armor. Run into a whole truckload of enemies and Slash Attack anything that gets near you. Standard attack for health leech as necessary or Heal if that's your thing (...or both). Bosses become a joke as you can leech more than they'll ever hit you with considering you're taking 0 damage from almost a third of their attacks and over 50% reduced damage for the ones that do connect.
Now, go play VH.
Forgot to say Doomquake should get 1 for utility. It's a spammable ranged AoE, good for thinning the truckloads before you go rushing into the truckloads.
1. Stat points:
A. Very easy! Almost everything goes to Defense since you'll never do much damage anyway, that's what your minions are for.
B. You might want to spend a few points on other things to get gear, particularly strength since it allows for the better armor and quite a few of the minion bonus unique items are strength-based.
2. Skill points:
A. Four obvious skills to max as soon as possible: imp, then pet mastery, then charm magic skill, then Burning Bind.
B. The "thorns" reflect damage effect is not particularly useful. Focus on boosting the damage that the minions inflict.
C. One point in each golem is sufficient, and you can have both out at once.
D. The only skill non-summon skill you'll want is Terror, which you can spam to stall for time while your minions kill things (two-three points is plenty).
3. Spells:
A. You get six spell slots, four on you and two on your pet. All four of yours should be charm spells, which means potions for healing and scrolls for utility. All summons have vastly increased cooldown timers for the pet, and having your pet summon is inefficient. The basic setup for your spells is two skeletons of different levels (i.e. I and II), one set of archers, and one set of zombies. You can use more skeletons, but you can only have one set of archers and one set of zombies out at a time so having two archers or two zombies is pointless.
B. Skeletons are your infantry. Get two copies of the spell of different levels so you can spam them. Each spell can have up to 5 skeletons out at a time, though you'll rarely want to sustain all five. Keep the two spells hotkeyed together so that you can alternate back and forth rapidly for a constant stream of minions. Higher roman numeral spells (i.e. I->II) make the skeletons cost slightly more and last longer. Cooldown is always three seconds for you, but 30 seconds for the pet. Skeletons are always summoned near you and ignore cursor placement. The rare spell Blood Skeleton is equivalent to spell level VI or so of the basic skeletons. The blood skeletons cost more to summon, but they drain health and heal themselves and you. While they are better than normal skeletons, they still die rapidly and are not a reliable source of healing.
C. Skeleton archers are more or less an attack spell and have to be recast into the middle of each fight. Keep this spell on right-click and cast the archers ahead of where you plan to move. The archers typically summon where your cursor is, but will show up elsewhere if there isn't enough space. They have very short range, and it may take a few attempts to get them into position. Cooldown for you is 5 seconds, so you can just try again. Higher roman numeral spells cost more, summon more archers (3 at level I, 4 at level II, 5 at level III) and last longer. Cooldown for the pet is 30 seconds, though having a second set of archers is nice since they deal very good damage. Archers are very flimsy but can be replaced rapidly. If you cast any summon archer spell, all of the archers that you summoned disappear.
D. Zombies move slowly but they are summoned where you place the cursor, making them the equivalent of paratroopers. One cast summons all three. Unlike the archers, they almost always go where you place them and they are very handy for fighting enemies from ledges or in small rooms. Like the archers, if you summon a set of zombies all of your current zombies disappear. Higher level spells add poison damage to the zombie attacks.
E. Aloe Gel and Flaming Sword are also summoning spells but they are not Charm spells and they will not be particularly useful. The final Charm spell fires a projectile that makes enemies switch sides. While fun to play with (you can charm the champion monsters) it is difficult to aim and not particularly effective.
F. If you put charm spells on your pet, they will also be cast with your specialization bonus, but since the cooldown timers are increased the summons are dubious or useless. The pet makes good use of Heal All, Heal Self, and Web. Frost is effective, but has the side effect of shattering enemies which will make it hard to keep up the supply of imps. Fireball is very helpful at low level for some offensive punch since the summons don't do much damage until you start piling on spell masteries and buffs.
4. Equipment
A. There isn't much equipment that helps this build, though there are quite a few uniques that give minor bonuses to minions. Most are fairly useless since their bonuses are tiny compared to the bonuses given by your specializations, though extra hitpoints and extra speed are useful.
B. The build works well for very hard and hardcore because you really don't need anything from your gear except the ability to survive. More armor, more health, more resists. Bonuses to movement speed and mp are also helpful but not critical.
C. Your weapon is largely irrelevant, as maintaining the army is a full time job and you won't have much time to attack personally. Very few weapon effects are useful, but improvements to casting speed are a good bet if nothing obvious shows up. Mana steal is helpful at low levels.
C. I am not certain if magic find affects minions, but this build is essentially a Fishymancer converted to Torchlight.
Honestly, I don't recommend points in Imps early on, I usually skip them. Just buy the summon spell scrolls instead.
I also like to max Armor Mastery, +40% to armor is beastly. (Then again, I play VHHC only).
Also, making a summoner without maxing the final golem is just silly. Get that guy maxed out. Max Charm Spell Mastery as well.
Imps are entirely useless early-mid game. Their damage is subpar to even the skeletons and they have no tanking ability. You'd be far better off maxing Alchemic Golem and Burning Bind first, and then Pet/Minion Mastery after.
The Alchemic Golem will likely have more health and armor than even your pet unless you're lucky enough to get a Burrower or Goblinhound morph, and upgraded its damage is superior to any other pet/minion you could possibly have aside from an Elemental pet. It tanks like a beast and its AoE spinning attack does huge amounts of damage. I'd say it's the best minion you have, even superior to your actual pet since you can just resummon it instantly every time it dies.
Early game you want to focus on getting tank pets out to survive, and once that's down you can start adding DPS to your horde in the form of skeletons. Early game your own added DPS, in the form of Ember Lightning/Lance or even just wanding, should be enough while the Alchemic Golem and your pet tank. Imps should be the very last pet you add due to their limited usefulness. You should be maxing skills in this order: Alchemic Golem -> Burning Bind -> Pet/Minion Mastery -> Charm Spell Mastery -> Beam Golem -> Imps.
The basic skeletons are not really that useful. Without the Blood Skeletons' healing ability and assuming you're not spamming Heal All or something, they die quickly and their damage isn't actually that great. Instead of staggering (having two different ranks of the same spell) Skeleton spells, you should just have the one rank of VI and then Skeleton Archers, and have your fourth spell slot be Web or something with utility. I'd say the VI Archers are far superior to V Skeletons, and there comes a point where you can actually have too many minions - the horde might bottleneck enemies in tight corridors, preventing your workhorses like your pet and Alchemic Golem from reaching the enemy.
Itemization is important for the summoner as well. Just because your DPS doesn't come from your weapon doesn't mean your gear doesn't matter. You're looking for +minion modifiers, +damage and +speed particularly to help your horde do more damage. There are a lot of uniques in the game with 2-3 +minion modifiers, with the ultimate trophy for your summoner being the Rayleigh Claire.
The most important suggestions I'd have for anyone who wants to play a summoner alch though, is probably to get the Ocular Golem+Persistent Skeletons+Longer Alchemist Buff Duration mods.
