So, the last Corruptor guide was written in 2016. A lot of the talents seem to have changed in some way, so I'll go into some thoughts on the Corruptor after the TL:DR and stuff. Here's my guy.
Build TL:DR
Class Talents
Corruption/Blood: 5/1/3/5
Corruption/Shadowflame: 1/1/5/1
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/5
Corruption/Vim: 5/1/0/0
Corruption/Blight: 5/2/5/5
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 5/1/0/0
Corruption/Plague: 3/3/2/3
Generic Talents
Race/Higher: 1/1/4/4
Technique/Combat training: 5/1-3/0/0/0/0
Corruption/Curses: 1/2/5/5
Corruption/Torment: 5/2/1/0
Corruption/Hexes: 3/2/1/5
Corruptor Thoughts
First let me mention this build was inspired by knifebutton's Higher Doombringer. I saw what he had did with that, and thought it would apply very well to the Corruptor. The Corruptor was a very fun character to play, not too one dimensional, but not so complex that it takes a big brain to get the rotation correct. The Corruptor isn't really a glass cannon, it's more like a somewhat rusted cannon. The defenses aren't paper thin, but they're not great either. The Corruptor's best defense is, however, it's ability to put out ridiculous damage and kill effectively anything in the entire game in 6 turns or less. This is a real thing, after fighting every main story boss and what not in the game, nearly everything died within six turns. Even Aeryn ended up dying as collateral damage thanks to a 16k Corrosive Worm splash. The only fight that wasn't 6 turns was the Master, because he spawned like 10 levels above me and I had a hell of a time chewing through his gigantic spell save.
That's the name of the game with Corruptor though. Hit hard and fast, stack the hell out of blight damage, get your crit up to 100%, and absolutely obliterate everything before it can deal any real damage to you. I'll go over how the various talents felt, and how much I used them in reality. I'll also mention that the build assumes you'll be taking Adept as one of your prodigies, which I really like for Corruptor.
Index
1. Cheat sheet
2. Build rationale and analysis
3. Change log
Cheat Sheet
Stat distribution priority
Max Magic, put points into Con when Magic is full, then Cunning, then Dex.
Category Point Order
Bone, Shadowflame, Inscription, Inscription
Inscriptions
Dissipation, Movement, and then the rest Shields/Shatter Affliction/Rune of Reflection. The Corruptor works best with shields rather than healing or regen, you want to stop stuff from hitting the Bone Shield in the first place.
Prodigies
Corrupted Shell, then Adept.
Equipment priority
Blight Damage, Global Speed Boost, Magic, HP, Spell Crit, increase crit multiplier, respen, resistances (having high resistances will be your main form of protection when your shields fail you).
Alchemist Quest priority
+2 generic, +2 class, +4 Spell Crit
I missed the class points quest!
+4 stats
Analysis and Rationale
The Corruptor is excellent at debilitating stuff and dealing a ton of damage. The ability to pick and choose your battles with Fearscape, as well as use it defensively on some trash mob if you have to in order to let stuff cool down is fantastic. Fearscape can also crit, so in the end even with just 1 point in it, it was hitting the bad guys for 150-200 and healing me for 200-250.
The global speed boost gear interest, such as say a ring that has blinding speed in it, is due to the way Corrosive Worm works. The worm explodes in 6 turns, however through the use of Flame of Urh'Rok and various speed boosts, you can shove 9+ turns worth of actions into that time. That provided some absolutely ridiculous Corrosive Worm explosions, and is what evaporated Elandar, Aeryn, and half of Argonial's HP pool at the same time. Just for fun if you go to my character sheet, you'll see messing around I hit the training dummy for 187k damage.
Poison Storm was another incredible MVP. The poison blight damage it puts out can crit, and can get up to insane levels as the various blights can stack, creating instances were the storm was passively dealing thousands of damage to each creature in it's radius, while also putting various extremely crippling debuffs on them. The pulse of the storm can also trigger Virulent Diseases, which further stacks more blight damage.
I highly underestimated the power of Blood Grasp. As you get into the late game and stack all of that blight damage and crit multiplier, and your crit gets to 100%, Blood Grasp can net you a titanic pool of HP. Again on my character, just messing around you'll notice I have 3800 HP. That stack of HP is effectively your defense when something chews through your shields.
Corrupted Shell is there to start you on your way to a mountain of HP, and Adept works well because there's some interesting break points that can be reached, as well as some bonus things such as an extra turn of Domination Hex, an extra Bone Shield if you find any + talent level gear in Bone at all, or a range 10 Blood Spray if you find any + talent level gear in Blood at all. Beyond that, Adept is just nice because it makes you do everything better by about 10-15%, and as Corruptor is a class of percentages, it turns a lot of 50%s into 55%s. Because there's a lot of multiplicative stuff in Corruptor, it helps even more. So, for damage it increases Dark Ritual (crit damage), Blood Fury (crit and bonus damage), and the base spell damage, creating large boosts in overall damage as all that stuff combines on top of one another.
I'll mention too, Domination Hex was hilarious. It works on nearly everything that isn't a main boss, and just for fun I cleared out most of the prides just using it. I'd hit a randboss, and the chaos would begin as it would start AoEing the hell out of everything and everything would go ballistic fighting back. I also Dominated all of the stair guardians to just waltz up High Peak. In the early game, it's it's own defense mechanism, allowing you to substantially weaken pain in the ass randbosses etc.
Weapon Choice
Staves, but special mention goes to the obvious dagger of choice, Life Drinker. The Blood Grasp it puts out is no joke, often hitting for 1.5-3k on it's own, as well as providing the various benefits the spell does. It also appears things like Bone Spike, a passive that just shoots a crappy little bone spear through stuff with 3 or more magical debuffs can trigger on-spell abilities like that Blood Grasp, so it was going off all the time.
Class Talents
Corruption/Blood: 5/1/3/5
[5] Blood Spray: A fantastic talent. Great damage, great cone effect, great diseases, just all around good.
[1] Blood Grasp: While somewhat mediocre in the early game, in the late game as all of your bonus damage and crit multipliers start to stack, the bonus HP you can get from this becomes fairly ludicrous. I typically had an extra 1-2k HP simply thanks to this. I floated points and took them out once I found Life Drinker. If you have extra points laying around, this isn't a bad place for them.
[3] Blood Boil: Loved this too. I often followed Blood Spray on a group of enemies with this. The slow is substantial and absolutely punishing (we're talking I had a 74% global slow with 3 points), and the damage isn't bad at all. It's got a very respectable cool down as well at 8. 3 points for diminishing returns.
[5] Blood Fury: More crit and more damage when you crit? This is just awesome. Worth putting a few points into early and maxing later. You should have 100% crit by the end game, so for me this was a permanent 49% bonus Acid and Blight damage.
Corruption/Shadowflame: 1/1/5/1
[1] Wraithform: A 1 point wonder and the main "get out of dodge" card combined with a movement infusion.
[1] Darkfire: Never used it. Gotta pay the tax to get to...
[5] Flame of Urh'Rok: Worth every point. You're going to have plenty of Vim when you can finally afford this, and it's star bonuses involve a 22% Global speed buff with Adept, as well as Fearscape healing you. Obviously there's some resistances as well, but the speed and the healing is what we're looking for.
[1] Fearscape: When you think you might have a tough fight, this is where you go. Effectively everything that is not a demon will hate being here, and honestly I brought demons there as well from time to time just so I didn't have to fight some boss mob in the middle of a ton of rares/other uniques. It can crit, so since you'd be stacking crit multiplier by the end even a single point can generate some decent damage and healing. Interestingly Poison Storm doesn't "come with you" to the Fearscape, it stays behind in the main realm, so cast that after you Fearscape.
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/5
[1] Bone Spear: This actually does insane damage, it's more a matter of having too much stuff you want to put points into as a Corruptor and not enough points. The base abilities also focus on Acid and Blight, rather than buffing Physical damage.
[1] Bone Grab: Mostly used to keep the Berserker or whatever off of you. Some people go for 2 points for the extra duration, I floated some points in but I took them out because 1 was just enough, anything that needed more than 1 point was dead before the duration mattered or had a way to break out of the grab.
[1] Bone Spike: It's free damage I guess, it also counts as it's own spell to cause stuff like Life Drinker to proc.
[5] Bone Shield: The crowning jewel of the tree. With Adept and any level of + Bone talent gear you can actually get 5 shields instead of 4. I had that because I found a + Bone necklace...but then I found a necklace that gave a +0.4 to Blood AND Plague and that was way too good to pass up.
Corruption/Vim: 5/1/0/0
[5] Soul Rot: Great damage and a low cool down. It's part of the "make corrosive worm delete everything in the game" rotation.
[1] Dark Portal: Mostly used as a get out of death card along with wraithform and a movement infusion, but it can also give diseases if you want.
Corruption/Blight: 5/2/5/5
[5] Dark Ritual: I love this entire tree. Dark Ritual is an easy 5/5. It was increasing my spell crit multiplier by 75%.
[2] Corrupted Negation: I mean, it's damage+AOE dispel, AND it works on physical effects. If you have spare points, you could do worse than to put them here. I did 2 points for 3 effects removed.
[5] Corrosive Worm: Say hello to the talent that will let you get stupid damage done. If you want something really dead it typically goes like this. Fearscape, Wrath of the Highborn (instant), Highborn's Bloom (instant), Blinding Speed equipment effect if worn (instant), Curse of Vulnerability, Epidemic, Corrosive Worm, Poison Storm, Soul Rot, Blood Spray, Cyst Burst due to having probably 3 diseases at this point, Blood Boil, Drain, Catalepsy and then right around now Corrosive Worm should explode for a bagillion damage, if your global speed is high you'll probably get another 2 spells off though, so another soul rot, and a Blood Grasp or something is fine. There's probably even a more min/max'd way to do this, but this just killed everything in the game so I called it a win. Some folks put 1 point here due to the strong diminishing returns, I just decided to go balls to the wall with it.
[5] Poison Storm: It does incredible damage, stacks blights, and also sometimes throws down impressive debuffs. It lasts for a good long time as well. I basically used this in every single fight that wasn't an insta-kill due to a blood spray or something.
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 5/1/0/0
[5] Drain: I mean it's a good spell for what it does. It does good blight damage, gives you Vim back, and has a decent cool down. You could get away with 3 points here if you wanted to stack points in something else, but honestly I used it SO much that it was worth the extra points.
[1] Bloodcasting: I mean, whatever. I guess it did stuff. Good for when you get Anti-Magic drained I guess.
Corruption/Plague: 3/3/2/3
[3] Virulent Disease: This could easily be a 5/5, but with Adept I got away with 3/5 and it still had fantastic damage.
[3] Cyst Burst: It seems like some folks just go with 1 point here, I went for 3 for the 3 radius with Adept and strong Blight Damage considering you're almost always using it when you have 3-4 diseases stacked.
[2] Catalepsy: Used more for the damage than for the stun. 2 points for diminishing returns.
[3] Epidemic: Awesome and one of the first things I'd always throw out due to reducing disease resistance.
Generic Talents
Race/Higher: 1/1/4/4
[1] Wrath of the Highborn: It was "do 29% more damage and take 29% less damage" for 5 turns for me, which is pretty significant since again, most interactions were over in 6 turns. More points just lowers the cool down.
[1] Overseer of Nations: Whatever, just there to get to...
[4] Born into Magic: With Adept this is up 24/7 from spellcasts at 4 points instead of 5. Since 98% of the damage you do is Blight Damage, this basically says "Do 20% more damage forever."
[4] Highborn's Bloom: 6 turns of not using resources means you don't need to worry about any Vim issues if you need to escort some big boss to the Fearscape. Notice the 6 turn amount again? Adept allows you to have 6 turns at 4 points instead of 5.
Technique/Combat Training: 5/1-3/0/0/0/0
[5] Thick Skin: It's universal damage reduction. It's one of your defensive layers because you honestly don't get many.
[1-3] Heavy Armour Training: Mostly to taste here. I always say I'm going to wear some heavier armor, and then end up in robes.
Corruption/Curses: 1/2/5/5
[1] Curse of Defenselessness: I just didn't need to use this much. I used it on the Master because he spawned so high in level compared to me and his saves were ballstic, but nothing really enough to warrant more than 1 point.
[2] Curse of Impotence: Again, I didn't use this much. Not because it isn't good, just because as a Corruptor, you're busy mowing stuff down rather than trying to take less damage. Still, 2 points was a good break point. It was -26% damage and that's a pretty big deal.
[5] Curse of Death: I actually used this a lot for crap that had massive blight/acid resistances (basically worms that walk) and it's also good to toss down if you want at the beginning of the Corrosive Worm rotation because it'll be passively doing great damage. You could easily get away with 1 point here though and put those 4 points into something else.
[5] Curse of Vulnerability: Makes everything hit harder which in turn, makes your Corrosive Worm that much more stupid when it busts. There's diminishing returns, but what the class does is damage, so I went all the way with it.
Corruption/Torment: 5/2/1/0
[5] Willful Tormenter: 5 points gets you a fairly decent chunk of Vim. Adept turns up impressive here, turning +111 Vim into +140 Vim.
[2] Blood Lock: I used it a couple of times. 2 points with Adept gets you 9 turns of locked HP values, which is plenty.
[1] Overkill: Crazy diminishing returns after 1 point, but holy crap this talent was useful. You deal so much damage that this single handedly clears rooms.
Corruption/Hexes: 3/2/1/5
[3] Pacification Hex: Long lasting daze effects, 3 points seemed like a good breaking point. I used it a lot when I was going to be dealing with a room full of stuff that wasn't going to insta-die.
[2] Burning Hex: 2 points for diminishing returns.
[1] Empathetic Hex: I feel like it's free damage...but I never used it because I was too busy casting other stuff and typically my job was to slow down and debilitate the hell out of anything that was remotely threatening.
[5] Domination Hex: I really loved this Hex. With a range of 10, a duration of 9 turns with Adept, and the ability to use it on basically anything that's not a main campaign boss, the havoc it caused was worth the price of admission. It's best used when the first randboss comes into view, so that he goes forth and just obliterates everything, or damages other randbosses. Then when he's used all his stuff and everything is dead, you can go in for the clean up.
Prodigies
Corrupted Shell: I mentioned before, but a mountain of HP is basically your defense if your shields get knocked down or get dispelled, and with Blood Grasp and the Fearscape, you can actually generate a lot of healing. It increases armor, armor hardiness, saves, and defense as well, so it's kind of a jack of all trades defensive skill.
Adept: This is one of those talents that's just good all the time, forever. It has a 100% up time, it makes everything you do slightly better, and makes stuff you DON'T do better as well. It even increases the talent level of stuff like Relentless Pursuit, lowering the cool down for instance. It increases the talent levels found on gear, turning the 3.0 Blinding Speed ring I found into a 3.9 Blinding Speed ring. It also has some additional bonuses to spells, such as enabling an extra Bone shield with gear, a range 10 on the Blood Spray with gear, a 9 turn domination, and freeing up a point for constant Born into Magic procs.
Inscriptions
Infusions
Movement: I use this on almost every character that isn't undead. In the early game it keeps you alive, and in the late game it's good because positioning will make you do a ton more damage and it's still good for keeping you alive.
...that's basically it for infusions. The Corruptor benefits way more from shields. A wild infusion if you're worried about silence is fine.
Runes
Dissipation: Needed for big stacks of buffs that Corrupted Negation can't chew through. You can use it on yourself to remove magical debuffs if you want too.
Shatter Afflictions: What you want instead of a Wild infusion most of the time. More shields.
Shield/Rune of Reflection: More shields.
Changelog
3/5/20: Guide created.
Notes
This is my third guide. I wasn't expecting to have as much fun as I did with Corruptor, but once you get rolling around level 25 of so, it's fun destroying everything so bad that you want to check how many HP of damage you did that time. The Corruptor is good by the virtue that it has the appropriate talents that make what it does better. Basically a way to lower resistances, a way to increase crit multiplier, and a way to increase crit and base damage. It also focuses nearly completely on blight damage, allowing you to be single minded when stacking damage and leading to some insane damage results.
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