ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This is currently in the theorycrafting stage. The goal is to create a melee Adventurer that can complete Madness in a reasonable amount of time and effort. Since Unstoppable can no longer be extended with Timeless, it seems like the only way to achieve that goal is to create a build that can survive indefinitely while still dealing enough damage to kill enemies. This build is an adaptation of my Arcane Paladin build, but while that build is designed for extreme damage with moderately high defense, the Human Shield is about extreme defense with adequate offense. If you have ideas on how to improve this build, please share your feedback.

I've selected numerous talents that can absorb a flat amount of damage and combined them with talents that boost effective health or provide sustainable healing/shielding. These talents each absorb a flat amount of damage per hit, but all except shield block are capped at reducing a certain percentage of the total damage. We can get around this cap by combining enough talents that their individual percentages add up to 100% or more, thereby negating almost all damage taken up to a certain threshold. When you add in armor and resists, we can achieve extreme amounts of damage reduction. After that, we only need to worry about really big hits--this is where Second Life comes in, and maybe even The Untouchable armor or Cauterize prodigy.

For damage, I'm relying mainly on Arcane Combat + Earthen Missiles since it provides good damage output for 2 category points, and since EM counts as 3 spell casts per proc it can be combined with +mana and +vim on spell crit items to sustain resources in lengthy fights. I think the healing proc from Shield of Light can crit as well. Once you have 100% spell crit chance, roughly +4 mana on spell crit, and roughly +5 vim on spell crit, you should be able to keep fighting forever without running out of resources. We don't really use stamina, and positive energy can be replenished with Celestial/Light skills and the Crusade attack.

The biggest issues I foresee are managing status ailments in long fights and killing mobs with Vitality. Being able to chain Draconic Will, Movement infusion, Providence, and Wild infusion is probably sufficient to manage status ailments, especially once you get Relentless Pursuit. Shalore's Timeless would be a nice bonus, but we'd have to cut a generic category to get it and I doubt that it's worth it. Vitality could potentially be countered by swapping Mercy into the mainhand, using items with "wounding" procs, or maybe even just bumping them long enough for EM bleeds to stack up. I suppose you could work Healing Nexus into the build to counter Vitality, but it would cost a lot of points.

My first attempt got to level 22 on Madness (Adventure); while far from being a win, it's a good start considering that I was autoexploring 90% of the time and I had never even cleared Trollmire on my previous Madness runs with other builds. I didn't have any deaths until the last level of Scintillating Caves, where I got stuck in a room with 3 random uniques and the zone boss. I was trying to push the character to see how much punishment it could take, so naturally you could live longer if you were scouting and avoiding tough fights. The damage from Weapon of Light tri-wield attacks was sufficient to kill things throughout the T1 zones, so I delayed unlocking Magical Combat and Stone to focus on defensive talents.


Race
Due to the number of categories we need, I think Cornac is the best option. Another race like Shalore could be chosen if you drop one of the generic categories.


Categories Overview
These are the categories I'm planning to unlock, in order, and their endgame talent levels. We could optionally drop one category for a 4th inscription slot. I'm not sure at this point which is the better option. Having a 4th inscription is really helpful, but three inscriptions seems viable.

Character Creation:
1. Psionic/Absorption, 5/1/5/1
2. Celestial/Combat, 5/1/2/5
3. Celestial/Light, 1/5/1/5
4. Spell/Conveyance, 5/1/0/0
5. Spell/Aegis, 3/5/1/1
6. Chronomancy/Flux, 1/2/0/0
7. Chronomancy/Energy, 2/0/0/0
Level 10:
X. Technique/Combat Training, 1/2/0/0/0
8. Celestial/Guardian, 1/1/5/3
Level 20:
X. Spell/Staff Combat, 1/5/0/0
9. Spell/Stone, 5/1/1/5
10. Technique/Magical Combat, 5/1/5/0
Level 36:
11. Corruption/Doom Shield, 5/1/0/0
Wyrm Bile:
12. Corruption/Demonic Strength, 1/1/4/5

I haven't seen the endgame values for these skills with Madness gear, so it may be optimal to shift some points around. For instance, it may be better to drop Thick Skin entirely and put an extra point in Energy Decomposition. It may even be worth dropping a couple generic points from Staff Mastery and put them elsewhere. We could steal some class points from Psionic skills if necessary. This talent spread assumes you get both the Elixir of Focus and Elixir of Foundations. You might have more generics depending on which escorts you get. The Corruption trees need to wait until late game because you need high spell crit chance and items with +vim on spell crit to counter the vim drain from Abyssal Shield and Osmosis Shield.


Attributes
The main stats are Magic > Cunning > Dexterity and maybe a bit of Strength for requirements. Telekinetic Grasp + Beyond the Flesh can be used to temporarily wield a gem to meet stat requirements.


Class Talents
Psionic/Absorption
NOTE: Spending any talent points in this category will automatically grant you the Telekinetic Grasp and Beyond the Flesh talents. You can only sustain 2 of the "Shield" talents at a time. Talents in this tree don't require you to take lower talents as prerequisites.

Kinetic Shield: 3+/5
This gives great reduction for the most common damage types. This will be sustained throughout the game. I think it's worth 5/5, but if necessary you could steal a couple points from here.

Thermal Shield: 0+/5
I think Kinetic Shield + Charged Shield cover the most dangerous damage types, so I would probably leave this skill at 0/5 for endgame. It's definitely worth floating extra points here in the early game, however, because these damage types are common there. You could invest here permanently instead of Charged Shield if you prefer.

Charged Shield: 3+/5 or 0/5
I prefer this over Thermal Shield in the late game, so put as many levels as you can afford here.

Forcefield: 0+/5
We don't have a reliable way of generating psi in combat, so we could only sustain this for ~5 turns. However, this skill could make us basically immune to damage when combined with all our other damage reducers. I allocated 1/5 in the base build to use in emergencies, but you could put additional points if you want. Note that unlike the other skills in this category, this one requires at least 1/5 in all the previous talents.

Telekinetic Grasp
We get this for free. Use it whenever you want to wield a different weapon or gem in your telekinetic (TK) slot. You should keep a good attack staff in the TK slot most of the time, and wield a gem in the TK slot as needed for stat requirements or specific bonuses.

Beyond the Flesh
Another freebie. You should sustain this at all times to get the full benefits from your TK slot. Note that this skill makes weapons use Wil/Cun instead of Str/Dex for damage, but staff damage is unaffected since it's based on Magic.

Celestial/Combat
Weapon of Light: 5/5
I max this skill as soon as possible because it gives us reliable damage in the early game while also boosting and refreshing our damage shield. The damage scales pretty well with spellpower. While dual wielding a 1-hander (ideally a short staff) + dagger and TK wielding a staff attuned to light damage, you can easily bump everything to death in T1 dungeons even on Madness difficulty. The amount of added shielding per hit may be relatively small at endgame, but we hit at least 3 times per turn and we're reducing incoming damage so much that any amount of sustained healing/shielding becomes significant.

Wave of Power: 1+/5
This skill is very useful throughout the game as an opening attack and for kiting mobs. It becomes extremely useful once you get enough +Str gear to scale the attack range. However, it's fine at 1/5. This talent counts as a "melee attack" for the purpose of triggering effects like Arcane Combat and Shield of Light.

Weapon of Wrath: 1+/5
This skill has a lot of damage potential, both from the direct on-hit bonus and from the Martyrdom debuff it puts on enemies. It could be left at 1/5, but 2/5 is an efficient breakpoint.

Second Life: 1/5 early, 5/5 eventually
This isn't as good as Cauterize, but I think it should be good enough that we don't need that prodigy. Since we reduce incoming damage so much, each hit point becomes worth much more than it would be to the average character. It might take, say, 2k damage for the average character to lose 1k hit points after factoring in defenses. For us, it would generally take 5+ times that much damage (once all the defensive talents are online).

Chronomancy/Flux
Induce Anomaly: 1/5
This probably isn't useful to our build. Just 1/5 for the prerequisite.

Reality Smearing: 1+/5
This reduces all damage you take by 30%, and since we don't really use paradox there's no drawback. I'm not sure whether this stops working when you max out your paradox, but that will affect how many points should be invested. Be careful not to use paradox-based skills (like auto-cast Energy Decomposition) when your paradox spikes from taking damage.

Attenuate: 0/5
This doesn't seem very useful to us and would probably just lead to spawning anomalies at high paradox. I think there are better places to spend points.

Celestial/Guardian
Shield of Light: 1+/5
1/5 is all we need to get the bonus shield attack each turn, which is a significant DPS increase from on-hit effects. I'd strongly consider putting additional points here since it scales both the shield bash damage and the heal-when-hit effect (which I think can crit), but I could only afford 1/5 in the base build. Again, any amount of healing we can get is extremely useful due to how much we reduce incoming damage.

Brandish: 1/5
This is a good attack, and those are in short supply for this build. However, we can't really afford more than 1/5 here unless we cut a class category.

Retribution: 5/5
This helps spread incoming damage out over multiple turns, allowing our existing damage shields to last longer and be healed by Weapon of Light. If that wasn't good enough, it deals AoE damage after the shielding effect wears off. Try to max this fairly soon after you get it.

Crusade: 3/5
It hits twice, removes a debuff, reduces up to 3 talent cooldowns, and has negative cost...this skill is awesome! This is definitely our best attack skill and will be used often. The important benefits max out at 3/5, and the skill only gets a marginal damage bonus from additional points.

Spell/Stone
Earthen Missiles: 5/5
This will be our main damage source, combined with Arcane Combat. This should be rushed to 5/5 to get the third projectile after unlocking Stone. Avoid manually casting this spell because it can't be procced while it's on cooldown.

Body of Stone: 1/5
Just for the prerequisite. We'll never actually use this since we're already bypassing the cooldown on Earthen Missiles through Arcane Combat and the other bonuses aren't worth being immobile.

Earthquake: 1/5
We're just taking this for the prerequisite. You might end up casting occasionally for the stun.

Crystalline Focus: 5/5
This and the previous two talents can be delayed until you start facing mobs with high physical resist, but you'll probably want to max it in the midgame.

Technique/Magical Combat
Arcane Combat: 2/5 midgame, 5/5 eventually
This skill is essential for maximizing our DPS in the midgame, but during the early game our Cunning is too low to get a high proc chance, and initially we won't even have any spells to proc anyway. Leave this at 1/5 at least until you have 5/5 Earthen Missiles; you don't really need to go past 2/5 until the late game.

Arcane Cunning: 1/5
This adds a respectable bonus to spellpower, but 1/5 is good enough.

Arcane Feed: 0+/5
This is a fairly strong skill since it provides crit chance for both attacks and spells, plus some mana regen. The sustain cost is irrelevant since we don't really use stamina. You could put anywhere from 0/5 to 5/5 here depending on how much crit chance you get from items.

Arcane Destruction: 0+/5
It would be nice to get 5/5 for some extra damage in the endgame, but this is mainly a place to throw extra points once everything else is squared away. I left it at 0/5 in the base build because it's not essential.

Corruption/Doom Shield
NOTE: This requires the Ashes of Urh'Rok expansion.

Osmosis Shield: 5/5
With a good shield, this should heal a significant portion of the damage that gets past our other defenses. It also has a chance to remove physical debuffs when we get hit. I don't think this is sustainable until the late game, since we rely on +vim on spell crit to regain vim during combat.

Hardened Core: 1/5
This seems like a nice armor and spellpower bonus for one point, although I don't think it's really worth more than that in our build.

Demonic Madness: 0/5
Since it only hits once per target, has a fairly long cooldown, and deals darkness damage, I don't think this is worth taking in our build.


Generic Talents
Celestial/Light
Healing Light: 1/5
Get 1/5 early to have a reliable cost-free heal. Given how many other sources of healing/shielding we have, I don't think it's worth putting additional points here.

Bathe in Light: 2/5 early, 5/5 eventually
Even though we're a melee build, our damage should easily outpace the healing/shielding this skill gives to adjacent enemies. This talent is great for keeping yourself topped off during a fight or pre-buffing a damage shield before engaging a tough mob.

Barrier: 1+/5
This might be worth additional points at endgame since it can crit, but for most of the game 1/5 is fine. I didn't have any extra points for this in the base build.

Providence: 5/5
Get 5/5 as soon as possible. We really need the effect removal this provides, and the lowish heal-over-time is actually pretty good in this build.

Spell/Conveyance
Phase Door: 5/5
Max this quickly in the early game. It's invaluable as an escape tool, for relocating troublesome enemies, and for keeping friendly NPCs alive.

Teleport: 1/5
We can only afford 1/5, but it's worth getting as soon as possible. This is a great emergency escape button.

Displacement Shield: 0/5
This build is designed around reducing each hit as much as possible, so the benefit gained from avoiding hits is much less than it would be for most classes. Furthermore, this doesn't trigger if you already have a normal damage shield active.

Spell/Aegis
Arcane Reconstruction: 3+/5
This is a very strong heal and it's a good idea to get 1/5 quickly. Healing Light will be used more during the early game, but eventual this skill will be your main on-demand heal. This can also be used to create a damage shield for pre-buffing in the mid-late game. 3/5 is probably good enough, but it might be worth going 4/5 if you get extra generics from escort rewards.

Shielding: 1/5 or 5/5
This makes all of our damage shields stronger. 1/5 is fine for most of the game, and it may even be worth leaving at 1/5 permanently if you don't do much prebuffing of shields with Bathe in Light. I like 5/5 to get the extra shield duration since Bathe in Light and Weapon of Light will normally refresh the shield duration to 2 turns minimum, so +1 turn ends up being a 50% increase.

Arcane Shield: 1/5
One-point wonder. Creating a damage shield from healing effects greatly increases their efficiency while also boosting our effective life. It doesn't scale that well with extra levels though.

Aegis: 1+/5
Use this to supercharge your existing damage shields. It's fine to leave at 1/5, but 2/5 is worthwhile if you can afford it.

Chronomancy/Energy
Energy Decomposition: 1+/5
This provides very strong protection since it reduces all damage types by up to 30%. Could probably work fine at 1/5, but add additional points as needed based on your spellpower. You probably want to use Spacetime Tuning to set your base paradox to 400-600 (depending on your Willpower) to maximize the benefit of this skill. We're not normally using paradox skills, so anomalies shouldn't be an issue. If you put this on auto-cast, I recommend setting "request confirmation" so you don't accidentally use it with high paradox.

Energy Absorption: 0+/5
You could skip this entirely, although it seems potentially useful with point investment. Note that you can't leave your paradox "overtuned" if you plan to use this, since you'll start spawning anomalies.

Redux: 0+/5
In the past this only affected Chronomancy talents, in which case it's not useful to us. However, the current wording just mentions "talents" so there may be some abuse potential here. I left it at 0/5 in the base build, but it's potential worth investment if it actually affects any kind of talent.

Entropy: 0+/5
I'm not sure if this is worth the point investment, but it could be quite useful in some situations. This only works on sustained talents, so unfortunately it's not an answer to Vitality.

Technique/Combat Training
NOTE: Buy this for 50 gold from a weapon shop in Last Hope to save a category point.

Thick Skin: 0+/5
It would be nice to get 5/5 here, but we have better places to invest our generics. I included 1/5 in the base build because the first point is very efficient, but you could potentially put more points or just leave it at 0/5 if you need the points elsewhere. I wouldn't go past 3/5 in this build.

Armour Training: 2/5
You need 2/5 in order to use shields. Additional points would be nice to increase armor/hardiness, but we're already tight on generics. It's not likely that you'd want to wear massive armor anyway because of the increased mana cost from fatigue. You might even end up wearing The Untouchable at endgame anyway.

Combat Accuracy: 0+/5
Add as many points as you feel you need. 2/5 and 3/5 are both efficient breakpoints. I put 0/5 in the base build because I can generally get enough accuracy on gear to hit reliably, and the staff accuracy bonus doesn't apply to Earthen Missiles due to a bug so we don't really benefit from stacking accuracy.

Weapons Mastery: 0/5
You may want to temporarily put a couple points here during the early and mid-game, but you need to respec eventually. This gives no benefit when you're using a staff, but it can take a while to find a decent short staff, and it will take a while to unlock Staff Combat due to the high cost.

Dagger Mastery: 0/5
Like with Weapons Mastery, you may want to temporarily put a couple points here if you're using a dagger while leveling. Respec all points when you transition to staff.

Spell/Staff Combat
NOTE: Buy this for 500 gold from the staff shop in Angolwen to save a category point, then upgrade your mastery for another 750 gold when you can spare it. You need to complete the Apprentice Task quest to gain access to Angolwen.

Channel Staff: 1/5
Just for the prerequisite. This can be a strong skill in the right build, but for us it's just not very useful. Unlike Wave of Power, it doesn't count as a "melee attack" for triggering on-hit effects, and our DPS is heavily dependent on those on-hit effects.

Staff Mastery: 2/5 midgame, 5/5 eventually
This is needed to reach our full damage potential when smacking enemies with a staff. 2/5 is an efficient breakpoint for midgame, but you probably want 5/5 eventually. You could potentially steal a couple points from here since we can lean on Earthen Missile procs for damage.

Defensive Posture: 0/5
Our points are better used elsewhere.

Corruption/Demonic Strength
NOTE: This requires the Ashes of Urh'Rok expansion.

Dismember: 1/5
The physical crit chance and on-crit debuffs are nice, but we're too tight on points to invest more here.

Surge of Power: 1/5
This is nice as an instant heal, but we don't need the stamina recovery and we have other healing options that scale better. One-point wonder.

Demonic Blood: 4/5
This is a nice bonus to spellpower and boosts all types of damage. By the time we start actually using vim, we should have enough recovery on items to keep it full basically all the time, so we should get the full damage bonus from this skill. 4/5 is the breakpoint for maximum effect at 1.0 mastery. You could steal points from here if needed.

Abyssal Shield: 5/5
This isn't useful until late game, but it should provide a significant benefit once we can afford to use it. If my calculations are correct, it consumes less than 4 vim per hit assuming 5/5 and average endgame max vim, so it should be easy to sustain with +5 or more vim on spell crit from items once you have 100% spell crit chance.

Wild-gift/Harmony
NOTE: This is unlocked automatically when you consume the Heart of the Sandworm Queen. Using vim-based talents increases your equilibrium, which could make wild-gifts unreliable to use in the late game. Testing would be needed to see whether having Osmosis Shield and Abyssal Shield sustained will actually make your equilibrium spike.

Waters of Life: 0/5 or 1/5
This is a handy talent when facing lots of poisons or diseases. It may be worth floating a point here in certain parts of the game. You could keep 1/5 permanently if you want the later talents.

Elemental Harmony: 0/5 or 1/5
This is a pretty good talent, but we don't have points to spare for this. Just take 1/5 if you're going for Healing Nexus.

One with Nature: 0/5 or 1/5
Just take 1/5 if you want Healing Nexus.

Healing Nexus: 0/5 or 5/5
This is a potential counter to Vitality mobs on Madness. You'd need 5/5 get make the duration last as long as Vitality, but it seems like it could be very effective.


Prodigies
There are many prodigies that would be useful, but I think we're better off sticking to defensive options for Madness. For lower difficulties, you could probably pick whatever you want.

Eternal Guard
This is the first prodigy I'd pick because it lets us block all the time, adding another layer of damage reduction on top of everything else. We need a shield with high block value to scale Osmosis Shield, so this prodigy lets us get more mileage from it. If you can get a shield with lots of resistances, this gets even better.

Draconic Will
This is the second prodigy I'd pick, only because you can't pick it until after getting back from the East. Status ailments are likely to be our biggest threat and this makes us immune to them a third of the time. If we use Providence and other tools while this is on cooldown, we can hopefully avoid getting overwhelmed with statuses.

Cauterize
This is normally one of my favorite prodigies, but I don't think it's really needed with Second Life. You could use this in place of Eternal Guard if you want, but you're basically trading consistent damage reduction for periodic protection from big hits.

Flexible Combat
This is a good option if you want to skip one of the defensive prodigies. We get extra attacks per turn to trigger all the usual on-hit effects, and we also get the excellent glove procs.

Spectral Shield
This probably isn't worth giving up Draconic Will on Madness, but it does have excellent synergy with Eternal Guard. If you take this, you can use Titanic or a randart shield with really high block value and not have to worry about resists.


Leveling Guide
The initial steps are the same as usual for Insane+ characters: leave the starting dungeon, go to Zigur, check towns for any inscriptions and charms you need, reroll if necessary, drown all rare+ NPCs in towns for loot and XP, reroll if necessary. On Madness, you'll probably be level ~10 at this point. On lower difficulties I like to buy a mindblast torque for the early game, but on Madness I think it's better to get a tentacled totem of thorny skin. The tentacles are quite tanky, deal respectable damage, and sometimes distract mobs from attacking you. If you summon them on cooldown, you can even have 2 tentacles up at a time. I recommend buying the best Shielding rune or Regeneration infusion you can find for sale. You'll also want to buy a Wild (mental/physical) infusion if you can find one.

You want to wield three weapons (1-hander + dagger/mindstar + TK wield staff) during the early game because each hit triggers Weapon of Light. At this point you're just summoning tentacles and bumping everything to death, but it works well enough because we have so much passive damage reduction. You could theoretically start using Arcane Combat at level 10, but I found my damage was already high enough to kill things since I could take my time and wear them down. Using Arcane Combat would also necessitate using a Manasurge rune, and I was still relying on my Regeneration rune frequently at this stage, and I can't give up Wild or Movement infusions. I decided to postone Magical Combat and Stone, probably until entering T2 dungeons although I didn't get that far in my first run.

I just autoexplored on my first run, but if you're serious about winning on Madness you should be scouting with clairvoyance, inspecting mobs, skipping tough mobs, etc. Time will tell how it plays out in the later stages of Madness. I think this build would be pretty much faceroll on Insane and lower difficulties since it's designed to be almost unkillable.

...or you could skip Thermal Shield entirely. Apparently you're not aware that some Mindslayer trees don't require investment in lower talents to get the next one (only character level counts), and Absorption is one of them. You can go 5/0/5/0 rather than 5/5/0/0 here if you want to save a point.

Interesting! I never knew that. I'll update.

I tried it again and still started having problems around level 20. I'm starting to think this may not be viable on Madness, unless there's some trick I'm not aware of. My deaths are usually from getting overwhelmed with conditions or taking big hits. Most damage can be tanked easily, but some mobs can hit really hard several turns in a row. I've been using Wild + Movement + Regen, but maybe Wild + 2x Movement would help to avoid stuns.

I have considered something like this but I am basically not familiar enough with how to maximize shield defenses to really comment. My concern at first glance would really be damage.

While the build may be able to win, not sure, the kill time for Madness once you get to the east might be fairly low. If we take High Peak as the measuring stick, a normal "White" orc will have 35,000 hp. If we stipulate that EM hits for 3500 hp per proc and also stipulate one proc per turn then we get about 10 turns to kill one white mob. Give or take. A "boss" of that level will have 350,000 hp which will take 100 turns. Let's say for the sake of argument that due to specials this can be cut in half to 50 turns for a "boss". That still quite a lot of turns. Especially in situations where there are multiple rares/bosses. Which is fairly common on Madness.

This may work, but it sounds somewhat slowish in the east. Note: almost everything is slow in the east on Madness, this is still probably faster than AM or Necro.

Madness below level 30 (as an arbitrary cut off) is the hardest part. Almost no build is mature enough to take the T2 stuff. There is a rather particular way to do things, not a specific formula per se. But you simply cannot full on tank things yet. No build can that I know of. You have to use LOS, zig zag tunnels, conveyance etc.

This can be a part of the game where damage can block you out. Sometimes you simply have to go around parts of a zone. This can be where lack of a fast kill causes problems as other things start clumping up on you due to the Hunted! buff. This is one reason I emphasized speed so much in the Meteoric build. Thigns like Necro and AM they often use corner AOEs and persistent and consistent Damage over Time to deal with this. Its not all about burst damage per se, rather the tactics you use for damage need to either clear fast enoug or allow for hit and run decently or you need to due the slick tricks the casters use.

While Madness actually gets slower in the East due to huge HP inflation it actually is a bit "easier" since your build matures. Old Forest is one of the hardest sections of all of Madness.

Have you considered demonic pact over doomshield? One of the seeds can give you blood shield which is a 15% reduction of your block value. Not to mention a counterattack to proc earthen missiles. And suffused life could give you about 10% of your damage as heals when maxed. And all the other goodies the seeds can do for you.