Strengths
- Nearly invulnerable late game
- Good damage in longer fights
- Great at weakening enemies to the point where they can't do much
- Herald of Oblivion is incredible throughout the entire game
- Easy to maintain high insanity in longer fights
- Poor burst damage (takes forever to kill anything)
- Takes a while to build up insanity
- All escape and debuff management talents require insanity or setup
- Weak to physical enemies because of forced light armour
- Most talents are pretty bad individually, only good with synergy
This build skeleton is the minimum you should take to succeed with this class.
1/1/1/1 Nether
5/1/1/3 Madness
2/1/1/4 Void
1/1/1/2 Entropy
1/1/1/2 Timethief
4/2/1/2 Oblivion (unlock at level 10)
4/1/1/1 Rift (unlock at level 20 or 36)
3/1/5/0 Chronophage (unlock at level 20 or 36)
0/1/0/0/0/0 Combat Training
4/1/1/2 Doom
1/5/5/0 Calamity
5/1/2/2 Beyond Sanity
1/1/5/5 Harmony (optional, unlock with Wyrm Bile category point)
Stats: Mag > Con > Cun > Dex
Inscriptions: Movement, Wild, Heroism/Regeneration/Healing/Phase Door/Controlled Phase Door (x2 if Cornac or skipping Harmony)
Prodigies: Armour of Shadows at level 30, Windtouched Speed at level 42 if taking Harmony or Temporal Form if not
Races
Cornac and Doomelf are good for surviving the horrible early game and do well late with the extra Inscription for Cornac and Pitiless for Doomelf. Drem should be neat too but whatever OP stuff you can do with it is probably overkill. Otherwise good races are good and bad races are bad.
Stats
Stats: Mag > Con > Cun > Dex
Inscriptions
You probably will only have three or four slots. Movement and Wild are essential, the others can be generally good ones like Heroism, Regeneration, Healing, or Phase Door. I used a Controlled Phase Door because I had over 50 out of phase from items haha.
Prodigies
Armour of Shadows is really nice at level 30 since you need armour hardiness so it saves you generic points from Light Armour Training. Windtouched Speed at level 42 is very good since the cooldowns round down, giving you stuff like 2cd Dark Whispers and 5cd Essence Reave but this requires taking Harmony. Equip a totem or torque with some EQ talent on it so you don't have to spend more then 1/1/5/5 in Harmony. If you don't want to take Harmony then Temporal Form is very good, especially if you get Precognition from an escort since it lets you tune your paradox very high for an incredibly potent Anomaly Flawed Design. Other interesting prodigies are Worldly Knowledge (for Light), Spine of the World, Corrupted Shell, and Cauterize.
Category points
Oblivion at level 10 because Unravel Existence is amazing. Probably take Rift at level 20 and Chronophage at level 36 since Rift actively helps you not die while Chronophage just makes you better at what you can already do, though you can swap the order if you want. If you're going to skip either of these then skip Rift and take Chronophage. Harmony with the Wyrm Bile category point is good though you could also take Light or Tinkers if you want or just skip it and take an Inscription slot instead. Light with Harmony would be really cool because of the Healing Nexus + Bathe in Light combo but you could only do that as Cornac or with Worldly Knowledge unless you drop Rift.
Class Categories
Nether: 1/1/1/1 early and core, 2/5 Halo of Ruin luxury
Netherblast goes through your summons which is nice. Its pretty bad on paper compared to other casters' spammable nukes but it's decent enough for damage early and rotation filler late. You may want to float some points in here early so you can actually deal damage. The darkness and temporal parts of the damage of all Nether talents crit separately which is nice for spellsurge and such.
Rift Cutter does marginally more damage than Netherblast if both parts hit. The entropic backlash is nontrivial early so make sure you don't accidentally do too much damage to yourself by spamming this talent.
Spatial Distortion is one of your early survivability talents since it gets enemies away from you. Unfortunately it costs 20 insanity so you need to use Black Monolith and one other insanity generating talent before you can use this. It generates a ton of entropic backlash so you'll often want to use Entropic Gift shortly after this early.
Halo of Ruin generates charges on all Demented spells but only consumes them upon casting a Nether spell. Netherblast's damage over time is a magical effect so it's useful for Nihil. Rift Cutter and Spatial Distortion are good for keeping enemies where you want them. The crit chance boost is nice but don't worry about holding your charges, it's best to spend them often since you generate them so quickly. You could put a second point here for the 6 turn pin on Rift Cutter but it's not essential.
Madness: 1/1/1/1 early, 5/1/1/3 core, Cacophony luxury
Though it may not look like it, Dark Whispers is probably your most important offense talent. Early it doesn't do much of anything but once you learn Unravel Existence it becomes essential for summoning your Herald of Oblivion. Its damage is low but it can be extended by Nihil and All is Dust to do a surprising amount of damage, especially once you get a few stacks going. The power reduction is nice since in combination with Atrophy and Luckdrinker you can save against statuses fairly often. Even though I'm saying 5/5 is core on this talent, you could probably get away with fewer points, but you use this talent so often that you may as well max it.
Hideous Visions occasionally generates minions to tank for you, and if enemies ignore them they deal less damage. They don't spawn often but it's a nice bonus when they do. This talent doesn't scale well enough for it to be worth more than 1/5.
Sanity Warp's damage is pretty bad and Hideous Visions doesn't have a high enough proc chance for this to be very relevant. Take 1/5 so you can learn Cacophony.
Cacophony is amazing since it counts as two effects for Unravel Existence (once for Cacophony, once for the Dark Whispers stack). After you have enough stacks going the damage becomes incredible. It also triples Hideous Vision's proc chance which is pretty great.
Void: 1/1/1/1 early, 2/1/1/4 core, Void Stars luxury
Void Stars are great at keeping you alive against burst damage late, but early they're pretty bad since they lock you out of heavy armour and the entropy generation can be a liability.
Nullmail gives you lots of armour but no hardiness so you need either Light Armour Training or Armour of Shadows to make up for this. The shield is nice but you'll probably only get it once in fights until you have 4/5 Essence Reave.
Black Monolith is way better than it looks. It generates 20 Insanity which is way higher than any of your other insanity generating talents other than Entropic Gift. It's also quite durable so I like to use it at the start of fights to block enemies and their projectiles. It also makes Rift Cutter's second damage instance easier to land.
Essence Reave is your strongest nuke and it recovers Void Stars but it costs 25 insanity so make sure not to use this carelessly since the insanity may be better spent on defensive talents. Invest 4/5 eventually to recover two Void Stars. The damage scales fairly well but not well enough to be worth a fifth point.
Entropy: 1/1/1/2 early and core, Black Hole and Power Overwhelming luxury
Entropic Gift can be a potent nuke, but sometimes you need to use it just to clear entropy, to pull enemies, or to generate insanity and that's fine too. It only does a ton of damage once you get your Revelation + Ruin or other lifesteal going.
Reverse Entropy is nice in emergencies where you stacked too much entropy and don't want to die. The passive part is nice too since it's a lot of value for one point. You don't really need more than 1/5 since you often want to hold your entropy until Entropic Gift comes off cooldown, though 2/5 could potentially be useful.
Black Hole is amazing. At 1/5 it keeps enemies in place for a couple turns, but if you max it can deal a ton of damage and pull in a large area.
You need Power Overwhelming so your non-Nether spells proc Nihil. Shibari tells me it's bugged so the proc only applies with 2/5 or higher because of rounding issues, but that's fine because you want at least 2/5 anyway for the damage and resistance penetration. The last three points aren't as great but it's probably worth maxing late as resistance penetration is quite valuable.
Timethief: 1/1/1/2 early and core, Switch, Suspend, and Split luxury
Accelerate is pretty bad and it costs insanity but sometimes you really need to not be next to an enemy and this talent will help you accomplish that. I wouldn't invest more than 1/5 in here because the buff duration will never exceed 1 turn and the slow duration isn't very important.
Switch is a nice cleanse but sadly it takes a turn to use so it can be put on cooldown by stuns.
Suspend is a better Switch with a longer cooldown. It'll destroy most of your entropy which could be a good or bad thing. Cooldown reduces with talent level but it'll always be pretty high. It has the same issue as Switch where it takes a turn.
Split is like Shadow Simulacrum except actually good haha. Even if the clone doesn't do anything and your opponent still targets you, it makes them deal significantly less damage. Your target also takes less damage for the duration but you can take this opportunity to debuff your enemy, build entropy, wait out cooldowns, etc.
Oblivion (locked): Unlock at level 10, 2/2/1/0 early, 4/2/1/2 core, Unravel Existence and Erase luxury
Nihil's tooltip has some rounding errors, it actually applies to 1/1/2/3/3 not 1/2/3/3/4 enemies. It seems to round up negative
effect durations so Dark Whispers and Prophecies will last 7 and 8 turns respectively at 2/5 and 8 and 9 turns respectively at 4/5. I don't think 5/5 does anything interesting that 4/5 doesn't so I recommend leaving it at 4/5. It can reapply to the same target even if other enemies don't have the debuff yet so make sure your target is actually affected by Nihil before trying to summon your Herald of Oblivion.
The best way to summon your Herald of Oblivion early is as follows: Black Monolith (with Power Overwhelming to apply Nihil) -> Dark Whispers (+1 stack) -> Prophecy (+2 stacks from Twofold) -> Cacophony (+2 stacks) -> Dark Whispers (+1 stack). Only magical effects apply, so stuff like Black Monolith daze won't count. Reapplying effects like Dark Whispers counts though. This guy does way more damage than you thanks to his incredible Void Crash (he hit Elandar for over 2.3k damage the turn he spawned) talent so you usually want to summon him as soon as possible. He inherits your damage mods so if any physical damage gear you have benefits him a little. 2/5 is a nice breakpoint for duration, 4/5 increases duration and decreases cooldown but it's not essential to invest past 2/5.
Erase makes enemies even weaker when you apply your many debuffs to them. The temporal damage isn't really relevant but the damage reduction goes up to 3% per effect which is pretty nice since you often have 4 or so magical debuffs on enemies.
All is Dust would be amazing if it didn't blow up walls. It lets you extend your magical debuffs, which includes Entropic Gift. This means if you stack up a ton of entropy and use Entropic Gift, you can extend it to over triple its duration with this talent. It gets even crazier with Prophecy of Ruin (Revelation) and Cacophony where you can generate even more entropy than you spend and drop an even bigger Entropic Gift after it cools down. Of course this is completely overkill and you will probably never actually do this but it's fun to do to the training dummy in the Sher'Tul Fortress.
Rift (locked): Unlock at level 20 (optional but recommended), 4/1/1/1 core, Pierce the Veil and Zero Point Energy luxury
Reality Fracture's active is rotation filler but the passive part is awesome. Late game you'll generate a rift every couple turns and each hit from one counts as a spell hit for items like Black Robe, Lifedrinker, Exiler, etc. Unfortunately rifts sometimes aggro stuff that you'd rather not aggro but by that point you should have generated enough insanity to manage it. From my observations rifts seem to spawn in a random tile within radius 5 of you. Leave this at 4/5 since the duration is the most important part.
Quantum Tunneling is a great escape talent. Unfortunately it requires some setup but after a few turns of combat you should always have a rift up. The shield can crit making it nontrivial late, but it's still not worth more than 1/5.
Pierce the Veil has a chance to give you better rifts. Nether Breach is whatever, Temporal Vortex is nice if it spawns near an enemy, and Dimensional Gate is really good since the summons deal fair damage and bodyblock for you. The chance doesn't scale that well with points but it may be worth up to 4/5 since it also increases the duration of the Void Skitterers.
Zero Point Energy makes all your rifts better. Sadly Temporal Vortex is bugged so the slow doesn't actually increase. 1/5 gives you most of the value, further points only increase damage but if you took 4/5 Pierce the Veil it could be okay to invest more points here.
Chronophage (locked): Unlock at level 36, 3/1/5/0 core, Terminus luxury
3/5 Atrophy gives -20 all stats after a few turns which is awesome. Further points don't really do anything. This does not count as a magical effect so it doesn't work with Nihil but it also won't get removed by magical status removal.
Severed Threads is bugged to have no cooldown which makes cleaning up trash enemies much faster. It's not worth more than 1/5 since further points don't do that much.
Temporal Feast essentially gives a passive 40% cast speed buff after Atrophy gets going and also reduces enemy global speed by around 10% (or 12% with Windtouched Speed) assuming you cast every turn.
Terminus will probably give you a net positive of turns if you invest enough into it but it's not really necessary. It's much better against groups than single targets but you don't really need the help against groups. It looks pretty good though so it's worth considering, it's just not needed.
Generic Categories
Doom: 4/1/1/2 early and core, Twofold Curse and Revelation luxury
These Prophecies are all pretty bad in a vacuum. Prophecy of Madness is nearly a strictly worse Burning Hex. Prophecy of Ruin does around as much as a generic nuke if all three hits trigger. Prophecy of Treason is a low power confuse with a minor upside, but the self attack is underwhelming since it only does 10% damage. Keep in mind that you can't put more than one Prophecy on the same enemy (not counting the one from Twofold Curse).
Grand Oration is pretty useless. Put this on Treason or Ruin to help against random trash I guess or put it on Madness once Treason and Ruin are taken by Twofold Curse and Revelation respectively.
Twofold Curse applies the fraction talent level, so ignore the rounding in the tooltip. Late game you probably want this on Treason since it's the only Prophecy that's decent without Revelation.
Revelation apparently is bugged and doesn't work with Treason but that's fine since you probably want to put it on Ruin. Madness is okay but Ruin's lifesteal is great for building entropy and keeping yourself at max life. It isn't essential but you probably want to max this by endgame.
Calamity: 1/2/3/0 early, 1/5/5/0 core, Fatebreaker luxury
Jinx doesn't really do anything by itself so leave it at 1/5. It's Preordain and Luckdrinker that make it useful. This doesn't count as a magical effect for Nihil but this also means enemies won't remove it with a magical cleanse. Contrary to what the tooltip indicates, the crit chance reduction is 1/1/1.5/1.5/2.
Preordain gives up to 28% talent fail chance at 5/5 and max stacks which is awesome. The effect tooltip is bugged to not count the 7th stack but the actual effect works fine according to Shibari.
Luckdrinker gives up to 20% damage avoidance at 5/5 and max stacks which is awesome. The effect tooltip is bugged to not count the 7th stack but the actual effect works fine according to Shibari. Contrary to what the tooltip indicates, the crit chance increase is 1/1/1.5/1.5/2.
Fatebreaker could potentially save you from death but by the time spending 30 insanity and a turn on this talent is on the table I'm not sure what's killing you in the first place. 2/5 is nice for a good duration breakpoint, more is probably overkill. Unfortunately it's bugged to only redirect one tick's worth of damage rather than a full turn's so it's not very good but after this gets fixed it should be better.
Beyond Sanity: 3/1/1/0 early, 3/1/1/2 core, Chaos Orbs, 2/5 Anarchic Walk, and 2/5 Disjointed Mind luxury
Chaos Orbs give you a damage boost (21% at best). You usually want to keep these unless you want to confuse a hard enemy or use an emergency escape or insanity generation. 3/5 is a nice breakpoint for five orbs and fast enough generation for Anarchic Walk and Disjointed Mind.
Anarchic Walk is an okay teleport. Only eats two Chaos Orbs so it's cheap to use. I rarely bothered with this talent but it may save you a couple of times.
Disjointed Mind is cool, you can get an 8 turn high power confuse with just 2/5 in it. It removes all your Chaos Orbs but you will gain them back soon enough if you have enough points in Chaos Orbs.
Controlled Chaos lets you convert your Chaos Orbs into insanity which is nice in emergencies. Usually if you have enough Chaos Orbs for this you'll have enough insanity that you don't need this. You're only in it for the negative insanity effect reduction to prevent screwing up your cooldowns too much.
Combat Training: 0/1/0/0/0/0 early and core, Thick Skin luxury, Light Armour Training is needed if you didn't take Armour of Shadows
Self explanatory.
Survival: (locked) Don't unlock, you have better places to spend your category points
Harmony: unlock with Wyrm Bile category point (optional), 1/1/5/5 core, Elemental Harmony luxury
Waters of Life is really nice against crazy high poison from Summoners and Oozemancers, it makes you near immortal for the duration. There's no need to invest more than 1/5 because poisons and diseases don't usually last longer than its duration. I like to put this on autocast when available and request confirmation before using. It generates pretty hilarious amounts of entropy against High Peak summoner rares.
Sadly you can't easily deal fire damage to yourself but Elemental Harmony is still nice value for one point since most enemies will apply one of the damage types and the fire and nature give solid buffs and and cold gives a decent buff, and these elements are more common than lightning and acid which give underwhelming buffs.
One with Nature is similar to Writ Large. It's great, use it whenever all your Infusions are on cooldown or whenever you need a specific Infusion to come off cooldown 5 turns faster.
Healing Nexus lets you heal off your enemies. If they have Vitality or something it's amazing but if your enemy is a healing class you may as well use it since it also makes your healing (not regeneration) more potent for the duration, so it usually won't be a waste of a turn. Since it stacks multiplicatively with healmod, it's amazing with Prophecy of Ruin with Revelation for
entropy generation, even when your opponent doesn't heal.