Reaver Guide (close combate)

[sofocles]

Hi, welcome to my 2nd guide, this one is about reavers.
Reavers have imho a very interesting way of playing, you need to constatly have enemies in melee range but you usually need to ignore them! I find the system to be interesting and different from many other classes:

Race:
Ghoul:?/5 I chose ghoul in hopes to spread ghoul rot and because he can vomit blight dmg.. but i couldnt consistently do so and ghoul has HUGE mobility issues so unless you can find a way to spread ghoul rot (which would make it very fun) i think its a difficult choice, playstyle is complicated though (which makes it an interesting challenge).
Shalore:4/5 - crit bonus.

Corruption / Sanguisuge
Drain: 4 (5) / 5 , you need it to replenish vim, put points early then dont until you feel ur lacking vim
Bloodcasting: 0/5 worthless , only situation would be when manaclash ability drains all ur vim, doesnt happen that often (escape when it happens)
Absorb life: 0/5 worthless (you get enough vim)
Life tap: 0(?)/5 Could be interesting i didnt go for it

Corruption / Vim
Soul Rot: 5/5 Fast 3/5 Quick cheap high dmg bolt, max it later
Vimsense: 5/5 no need before master, at master 2/5 , one point is useless, Important to note: It can get resistances below 1%, and believe me if somebody has -40% blight dmg, he will die very fast. Max very late.
Leech: 1/5 i maxed it , and i think it isnt so usefull, i dont use vimsense all the time. Other stuff is more important.
Dark portal: 1/5 Wonderfull solving mobility issues and, even better, getting mobs packed together for diseases, also to escape.

Corruption/ Bone: Powerfull, could be great BUT physical dmg makes it endgame not combo well... bone grab, boneshield are musts
Bone spear:1/5 Does good dmg, but physical, one point very early
Bone grab:1/5 One Wonderful point will solve So many mobility problems get it ASAP,
Bone nova: 1/5 maybe early if you think its usefull
Bone Shield: 5/5 The only reason you're still alive, Max it ASAP

Corruption/ Plage: I found this DOT line very powerfull endgame and completely useless before , you need very high spellpower. You should have some of this around orc ambush, wich is difficult since you need around lvl 30.
Virulent desease: 5/5 INSTANT spell DOT that decrease 1 stat 1 point very early can stack 3 (3 stats down)!
Cyst burst: 4/5 needs increase area, 4 points gives u radius 3
Catalepsy: 5/5 Instant Killer at high lvls,
Epidemic: 5/5 This one is a difficult choice, the reason i max it is because is ignores resitance, and one there, lowers it, therefore, making it easier to land virulent desease and also posibility to spread, but it takes a full turn, so some people might try to completely forget it, just remember if you do, high disease resistance mobs will ignore all this line.

Corruption Scourge: Early Line mid teens
Rend: 1/5 A spell IF you have Blood-edge weapon use it early in boss fights
Ruin: 5/5 Increase dmg and heal sustain, early max
Acid strike 1/5: Aditional aoe dmg (to add to overkill) the more the better!
Dark Suprise: 1/5 Very good spell Abuse the Always crit on 2nd hand with weapons: "Cripple if crit", or "wound if crit" or a weapon called "corpathus"

Corruption: Reaving Combat (what imho makes a reaver a reaver) (Extra category point to go to 1.5)

- Corrupted strength: 5/5 This ability changes the way you play the game, always needing you to have enemies in melee range for a free attack, I am not sure how this ability works: The free attack is blight dmg but based on your weapons so im not sure if +physicial dmg affects this skill or not or if it is+blightdmg ... also when you crit a spell, do you crit the melee attack? can the melee attack crit by itself?. if you cast a spell on a melee target you get the spell + the melee attack so that means you melee dmg can get really high. ALways use spells if possible Use bone grab (which is a spell) to bring an enemy closer while dealing dmg to another one.
Remember you dont know who will be the target of the free melee attack.
- Bloodlust: 5/5 more spellpower = more everything , mid 20-30s to max
- Carrier: I 3/5 Endgame, but id max it earlier if not a ghoul
- Acid blood: 2/5 with Category point = lvl 3 you get the acuracy, dmg and armour reduction bonus.

Technique combat training:
Thick skin: 5/5
Armour training: 1/5 (melee targets dont live long)
Combate acuraccy: 5/5
Weapons mastery: 5/5

Corruption: torment
wilfull torment 1/5 should be enough
Bloodlock: 1(2)/5 1 is quite short, so timing is important, but its an instant, so you can time it.
Overkill: 5/5 This + corruptstrength means close targets are dead meat very very fast. Deactivate for escorts!!!!!!!!!!!!! (they will all die)
Blood Vengeance: 1/5 early and forget it, by endgame gives you 80% chance... cant get the boneshield again fast enough !

Corruption hexes: unlock for free by siding with dark corruptor (kill her later)
Ive havent got much luck using them you can get around 6-10 points to spend here.
Pacification hex: good to give you time to disease kill a very large group.
Burning hex:
Empathic hex:
Domination hex: Probably the most interesting one to eliminate a wizard threat that will otherwise nuke you to death. 40s

If ghoul:
Ghoul 5/5 awesome +10str +10cons
Leap: 1/5 range 6, good for quite a few escapes,and to get near enemy situations.
retch: 3(?)/5 can max it endgame, combos with epidemic
gnaw 5/5: with max cons it is very powerfull and one of my first choices against bosses. havent consistently made it spread, otherwise if would be godly.

Other: Piercing sight: get it from rogue escort

Corruption curses: boss stuff methinks, i didnt get it.

Brotherhood alchemists:
1) 4% spell crit
2) 2 extra talent points
3) +3str+3con
4) +4 points or +3 mag/wis
5) dex/cun

Escorts: healing light and chant of fortitude , piercing sight, and mag mag mag, cun or str

Points spread:
early str to 30s, const, and magic power after that , get const to 40 to 5/5 thick skin, max magic power then lategame max cun . Endgame magic 60-con 60 cun 60 str 28. If shalore maybe: less con and more str.

Category points:
If ghoul: shielding , teleport , controlled phase door : Master reaving combate , plague and vim
If shalore (or alife race) : Heroism, teleport, movement, Regen : master reaving combat, plague


Prodigies: Unsure : Bloodspring for early , lategame: corrupted shell or Arcane might, also cauterize, endless woes can also be very powerful

Great items that combo with you:
Early:corrupted gaze helmet (you can delay vimsense a lot if you have it)
lvl 4 : corpathus (left hand always) and malediction, spellblaze echos
lvl 5: Bloodedge, spellblade, vox , the warped boots, black robe, dakthun gaunlets

Boss strategy: full boneshield ,1 epidemic + virulent disease 2 gnaw (ghoul) 3vimsense ..... 4bonegrab if away then darksurprise and similar, recasting virulent disease all the time

[eliotn]

What about halfling?

[sofocles]

Also could be very playable, just that i rather have the +10% crit chance all the time than the situational hafling bonus.
In anycase its a matter of taste.

[Umbrall]

Ghoul Rot does consistently spread on melee hit with Carrier but obviously cannot be spread by Ghoul Rot. The Ghoul Rot hit will never spread it as it takes effect before the disease.

The crits of your spell and melee attacks are completely independent. The damage of the attack is based only on your blight damage, and not your physical damage increases.

[sofocles]

Carrier has a max chance of 20% (even with mastery 1.5) so it kinda sucks... whats the meaning of "any existing diseases"

Gnoul Rot is a disease so Cyst Burst should spread it also pandemic should... it sucks that it doesnt.

ok so what you mean is: the free attack is: 1 a normal physical attack (meaning determined by: weapons, str , physical power) then transformed to blight and the added the +% blight dmg, and the crit is physicial crit... IS THAT CORRECT?

[edge2054]

Epidemic does spread ghoul rot (and worm rot for that matter). Cyst Burst is more specific in the description. Rather or not it should be changed I don't know.

"If any blight damage from non-diseases hits the target, the epidemic may activate and spread a random disease to nearby targets within a radius 2 ball."
vs.
"This will also spread any decrepitude, weakness, rotting or epidemic diseases to any nearby foes in a radius of %d."

[jotwebe]

I'm not quite sure why you're emphasizing crits so much. There's no special effect that kicks in with a crit for Reavers, is there? Granted, crit rate from cunning benefits both melee and magic, and it scales linearly - better than high physical or magical power - but is that it?

[sofocles]

Why crits? Because After you max magic the only way to increase your damage is through crits... spellpower of course is also very important.
The main stats are str con mag and cun.
I max con mag cun, why dont i max str? because that is for melee attacks and Reavers (although it sounds strange) are casters that get free melee attacks (not melees that sometimes cast) .
You are a always casting spells : if the target is far because its far, if its next to you so you do 2 attacks (spell + free melee) im not sure the free melee can crit, but if it can the bonus to crits also helps there.
- there are also items (like spellblaze echos) that increase spellpower on crit)
It isnt difficult to get +250% dmg on crit and if you crit more than 70% of the time... well you get the idea...

[jotwebe]

Hmm, ok. Shalore Timeless should also go well with vimsense.

[Sianist]

for what its worth i just observed both a spell and the free melee attack both critting at the same time

[jsmile39]

Good guide, my build was mostly the same apart from a few minor and one major difference. I went 5/5 in Dark Portal (as I rolled a Shalore and this gave me a third disease option against bosses). I also built a glass cannon for the most part, just going for spell critrate and critmult (100% and 300% respectively).

Elandar was less than impressed though, and Aeryn wasn't too happy about it either:



http://te4.org/characters/6618/tome/45c ... b082e44b52

Cheers!

[sofocles]

Dark portal 5/5? I think it might be interesting for crowd control but the build is already scrap on category points. What do you NOT get?
Crit mult is very important for infinite dungeon.

for what its worth i just observed both a spell and the free melee attack both critting at the same time

--- if that is true then only spell crit matters.

Hmm, ok. Shalore Timeless should also go well with vimsense.

--- yup but vimsense usually lasts enough for most mobs, on a tough boss fight, its quite good. In anycase there are no other combos with timeless which is a pitty. Ghoul on the other hand gives u str,con and ton of hps... and i just feel its "right" for a ghoul to be a reaver, infecting people... if only ghoul rot spread more...

[jotwebe]

Hmm, ok. Shalore Timeless should also go well with vimsense.

--- yup but vimsense usually lasts enough for most mobs, on a tough boss fight, its quite good. In anycase there are no other combos with timeless which is a pitty. Ghoul on the other hand gives u str,con and ton of hps... and i just feel its "right" for a ghoul to be a reaver, infecting people... if only ghoul rot spread more...[/quote]

Timeless now also reduces cooldowns, so even without a straight combo it lets you get your Bone Grab back faster. But anyways, not trying to argue against ghouls, there's few enough classes where they do well.

[jsmile39]

I only went 3/5 Ruin and 1/5 Carrier, and put cat points into two inscriptions, Light, and Plague (1.50).

Dark Portal has a higher base damage than VD/Epidemic (even with the extra 0.2 mastery). Literally nothing lives through an Epidemic/VD/Portal/Catalepsy combo. That's three diseases capable of a catalepsy trigger for 5k+ each, and ~50% more with vimsense going. I never found anything with enough HP to try this out, but I'd imagine a Epidemic/Portal/VD/Timeless/VD/Catalepsy would do well over 25k damage with vimsense.

1/5 in Dark Portal is certainly viable, I just felt that having a third huge bomb available, that can infect many targets in one turn, was more important than ~20 blight + 5 healing on a melee swing, and ~20% chance to infect on a melee swing. If it's close enough to melee it's either trash and will die to corrupted next turn, or it's elite/rare/unique and will get VD/cata next turn (or Epi/VD/cata if it has more than 6-7k hp).

TBH I think I used Acid Strike and Dark Surprise less than 5 times each, total, the whole playthrough. I could have easily done without them also.

This was normalmode so everything just ended up exploding upon coming into LoS, if you're playing Nightmare+ then things are certainly different!

Thanks again.

[sofocles]

TBH I think I used Acid Strike and Dark Surprise less than 5 times each, total, the whole playthrough. I could have easily done without them also.
.[/quote]

Makes me think we played different styles. I used dark surprise a lot.... the free crit is awesome for effect on crit weapons and the sword "corpathus" , acid strike was even more aoe dmg to add to overkill. I usually got close to groups and wacked at them, i didnt use the plague line until tougher ones or groups that were too big (orc ambush).

Of course i depended on bone shield to keep me alive (and my huge hps) and my life regeneration sucked (ghoul retch and one escort healing light) your aproach does seems safer.

I was thinking that a great thing would be to infect yourself to make your chances of giving a disease much higher. You could have a "softer version" of your disease on you and if you skilled that ability then more and more.