ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hi , im sofocles, ive also written guides for reaver,arcane blade and archmage (arcane).

Marauders can be played very similarly to berserkers, only marauder dont have nearly as many hps.
You can play both normal and Antimagic marauder. I played Antimagic because
1 marauder can burn stamina pretty fast
2 resolve gives you stamina,
3 hi wisdom increases both mindpower (for am and fungus) and stamina
and of course increase in survival at the cost of no teleport.

Races: Ill name a few that i find particularly interesting
- Thalore: AM marauders will always be short on generic points, therefore, thalore wasnt optimal, if not AM marauder it would be a good choice
- Skeleton: You need both str and dex, and skeleton gives both. So i think for a normal marauder it could be interesting. Skeleton usually needs very high investment so be careful.
- Cornac: Excellent choice for AM marauder (my choice)
Not bad either: dwarf, halfling.

Prime stats: Str , Dex and Wis.
Even if you use daggers all the time you will need str to boost your damage.
Cunning is not really needed as marauder get a lot of interesting bonuses to their crit chance.

Talent Categories
Dual weapons: 5/ 5/ 1 / 5
- Dual training: easy 5/5 early
- Dual weapon defense: improves your defense , deflect chance based on cunning though
- Precision: not really needed
- Momentun: Endgame choice? No real need.

Technique Dual techniques: 1/ 3 /1/1
Diminishing returns makes investing more points not that good. But one point on each ability as soon as possible. You could max flurry

Technique: Battle tactics : 5/5/?(1)/0
Greater weapon focus: midgame max
Step up: VERY important max before orcs
Bleeding edge: one extra ability when others are on cooldown.

Technique: Bloodthirst 5/5/1/5
Blood bath: Early 1, much latter add as your crit chance goes up
Mortal terror: increase crit? instant max
Bloodrage: I dont think its that good
Unstoppable: 30s MUST. AWESOME , it will save your life many times. Combine with heroism! (get below 0 on a heavy beating and when you think ur gonna die, then use this and instantly recover to 1 hps! (get a good heroism that has a really low -700hps death thing)

Tecnique: Combat techniques 5/1/1/5
Rush: Early 1 - 2 points, max around 40
Precise Strikes: meh... youll get to around 100% crit chance without it, so skip it to avoid the slowdown
Perfect strike: very situational
Blinding speed: good stuff Max in 30s

Technique: Combat Veteran ?(4)/0/0/0 Not that important
Stamina boost can be a worthwhile investment, would like to hear more opinions

Cunning-dirty fighting: 1/1/1/1
One hit wonders: you really want to get cripple

Cunning-tactical: I never really saw the interest in this line . Locked and never unlocked 0/0/0/0
More defense? what kills you are casters mostly

Generic talents:
Technique: Field control
Technique :mobility
Both are not needed. Casters have big AOE so moving one or two squares doesnt really change must.

Technique combat training: Here's an interesting choice: Daggers only or 1h + dagger? I went with 1h+dag so, heavy investment here
Thick skin 5/5
Armour training: 1/5
Combat accuracy: 5/5
Weapons mastery: 5/5
Dagger Mastery 5/5

Technique: Thuggery 1/?(2)/5/5
Skullcracker: nice daze, 1 point enough
Riot born: i put 2 points, but i would have loved to put more, there was no chance
Vicious strikes: More critical (not critical chance) and penetration, really nice
Total thuggery: Really nice increase in crit chance but because of sta requirements, must be maxed (wait till 35 onwards)

technique: Conditioning 5/0/0/0 A very interesting line, im very unsure as to how good it is
Vitality: has sinergies with fungus, (heals, heal mod, and sudden growth)

Cunning survival: piercing sight from thief escort

Wildgift- Antimagic 5/3/0/0
Resolve: gives stamina
Aura of Silence: powerful weapon against casters, 3 for increase duration and radius, can really shut down a caster.

Wildgift- Fungus 3/1/1/1
Increase survivability and sinergy with regeneration and heal effects

Category points: 1 Blood thirst 2 Battle tactics 1 rune 1 unused (im unsure where to put the last point)
Runes: Heroism, regeneration , heal , Infusion wild: physic

Nice items (am) : Witchhunter, Breath of eyal, Helm of garkul , teech of garkul, Ring of war master, Glory of the pride, Guidance, the guardian's totem

Went to look at your marauder in the vault and couldn't find it. Is it under another name?

Pretty good guide for Antimagic Marauders, but I'm not why you'd want to go Antimagic in the first place considering that Marauders have a shortage of spare generic points and Shalore is the best race for the class (thanks to Timeless). If going Antimagic, you'll want Fungal Blood as a prodigy for the free turns and Flexible Combat for the other prodigy (regardless of whether or not you go Antimagic).

_________________
My wiki page, which contains a guide and resource compilation and class tier list.

Prodigies: I went for superpower, my objective being to kill faster and improve mindpower related abilities.
Fungal blood seems like a good option for a second prodigy. But the problem with fungal blood is that it increases with constitution which i have little of. The removing effect part is sweet though and the free turns even more
Im not sure about how flexible combat. ?unarmed strike? how hard does that hit?

Shalore has a very good Sinergy with unstoppable and blinding speed. But i didnt have that much problems with any boss and caster do indeed hit very hard a marauder. Since you need so much stamina, wisdom is best and that makes it imho much more suitable for AM.

For Marauder prodigy I would definitely choose Windblade.
Fight going south and you're surrounded by mobs and low on HP, pop Unstoppable, then Windblade, room cleared, full HP guaranteed.

For Marauder I would usually favor AOE skills over single target mayhem.

_________________
Stronk is a potent combatant with a terrifying appearance.

Sofocles? Link the character? Please?

Bloodbath generates far more stamina eventually. Even with a low crit chance it's better than this. I'd put 1 point here for the early game.

I recently played a Marauder, here she is: (Silly Shankin' Sally)

http://te4.org/characters/108382/tome/b ... 0655db771a

I came pretty close to winning. It was the first character I had that killed all the backup bosses, beat all the prides. I died in a fearscape in the Slime tunnels, on the last Orb of Command. So close.. So very close..


Anyway, I found I didn't really have stamina problems and I didn't put any points (or very minimal, maybe 3 or 4) into Wisdom. I constantly had Total Thuggery running. Most things died before I ran out of stamina.

I had stamina left when the Fearscape boss killed me, so that wasn't my problem.

I pumped Str to Max and then focused mainly on Con, pumping Dex whenever I needed an unlock.


I think the biggest problem in Silly Shankin' Sally's build was the lack of Dex. I feel I pumped Con too much,the lack of dex hurt me overall.
My other problem was skill distribution, since I haven't really played to that high a level before I didn't realise how skills truly function late game. Dirty fighting was a complete stuff up. I had 1/3/1/0, so no Cripple. Stun barely worked on the creatures I needed it to, ie unique and bosses. I barely used it. Next time it will be 1/1/1/1 Just for cripple.

I took the Giant Leap prodigy first, that was a mistake and I'm sure it cost me at least 3 lives. Windblade was significantly better when I got it, this would totally be the prodigy to get first. Giant leap wasn't that useful, my current escapes served me well and the damage from giant leap, whilst nice with daze, the AOE of it was crap, 1 square radius. Not worth a prodigy imo, rush at lvl 3 does just as good a job, particularly with windblade backing it up.

I'm posting this because I often see posts about 'x character won, build' ubt don't often see failed 'almost' builds that can show people mistakes made.

So now I have a Winner:

http://te4.org/characters/108382/tome/ed227db6-1601-4443-8ec0-32eca3518b28 Krutz. A Cornac Marauder, Anti-Magic.

Killed Atamathon in about 5 turns. I carelessly died a few times during my game 4 times before winning, 3 of those was totally trivial and silly and 1 of those I got caught out and probably could have survived had I have TP'd earlier.

I used a similar strategy to the above guide except I went heavy armour.

For early game, Levels 1-20. My stats were driven purely by skills I wanted. If I needed dex, I'd pump dex until I could unlock the skill, as so for strength. You will want to boost Con or gather a lot of +con items so you can get at least 1 point in Thick Skin early, that small bit of Resist All you get on the first point goes a long, long way to survivability early game, It also goes a long, long way when you max it by late mid game. I try and get at least 1 point in thick skin by level 10-15ish.

I used my Cornac free Talent on an infusion early game. So I had regen, heal, movement and wild-physical. End game had heroism too.
It is really easy during the early game to get knocked down to 1/3 or less life, the turn it takes to fire off regen can easily kill you. Heal is Instant use and can be poped just before regen if you need it.

As soon as you clear the first two dungeons you will have roughly 200gold. Make a bee-line to Zigur town and with luck you will be able to buy a Torque of Psychoportation this is a MUST HAVE, it's your only real emergency escape. Movement infusion is great first line escape, but if you get stuck in a corner it doesn't help. They are super cheap to buy as well. If they don't have one, you may get lucky in the other towns, this item is so useful its worth checking every shop capable of selling them. Once you get one, it will pretty much be the only thing in your Tool slot for most of the game.
At this point it is totally worth while going from town to town to check out the infusions for upgrades to your own.

Always keep rings of X resistance, it's very handy to be able to slip on a ring of Lightning resistance. 20% resistance goes a long long way to shrugging off damage, it is in addition to Thick Skin. For the early game you want +fire and +lightning resist.

When faced with a choice between a bit of extra damage or a moderate bit of extra fire/lightning/physical resistance, go the resistance. Less damage/turn means more time to kill something, but without resistance you will die anyway.

I use my level 10 talent point to open up Bloodthurst, I want to get a couple of points into Bloodbath fairly early. The extra regen on this stacks very well with +health mod items and fungus.

I use my Level 20 talent point to open up the Fungus talent you get from Zigur boss after completing the tempest quest thing.
Fungus makes the AM Marauder work really well. 1/1/1/1 alone is excellent, my winner had 3/2/2/3 by end game, but I really only needed 3/2/1/1.

As to what exactly you spend talent points on is partly dictated by your equipment drops. If you have lots of +health mod stuff regen talents really go a long, long way for instance.

Your signature skills: Unstoppable and Total Thuggery don't really shine until around mid game and later. Unstoppable is OK if you find yourself in trouble at lower levels, you really need to make sure you have 1 point in the Adrenalin skill so you can always use unstoppable. Unstoppable uses a lot of stamina, LOTS if you have heavy armour. Adrenalin makes it so you don't have to use stamina to pop unstoppable, really really useful.
Total Thuggery increases crits and penetration and has great synergy with Precise Strikes.

Basically anything that adds Crit chance and crit penetration/damage doesn't really help you until around level 25ish when you start mixing in the skills and natural crit bonuses from weapons. So don't focus on those too early, think of them as investments that pay off later.

As for Prodigies you can't go past Windblade. It is simply amazing. At level 30 you have a respectable crit chance and extra crit penetration and damage and it works well with Windblade. More importantly Popping unstoppable and hitting windblade around a mob will get you kills quickly and thus health. This combo can save your life many times over. I really don't think any of the other prodigies are better than windblade for a Marauder.

For my second prodigy I found Swift Hands to be extreamly handy. I had Edens Guile, and Wander's Rest and could swap to them when I needed the skill, telekentic leap + unstoppable + windblade proved well unstoppable. It was also very handy as I could use a better Tool, a torque of something that had +40% chance to slow on hit, I could swap to my Torque of Psychoportation and use it when needed.

TLDR;

Early game focus on survivability over damage. Torque of Psychoportation is essential and movement infusion + Heal (with fungus).

Mid game and onwards focus on getting +resistance, particularly physical, fire and Lightning over extra damage. Physical resist penetration is also very handy.

The damage will come naturally through skills and you don't start doing big damage until around level 25ish.