Cursed: Dominate and Stalk... 1 point or 5?

[xterminal]

Hi there, long time listener, first time caller, etc. etc.

The RNG has FINALLY been nice to Evermuncher, my Cornac Cursed who's died three or four dozen times this week (I got a named stralite greatmaul and voratun mail at level 14, and just went through the maze one-shotting EVERYTHING, whee!), so now I'm faced with actually making a decision I've been pondering the last week, and wondering if anyone else has tried this out and how effective it is.

The basic cursed build seems to focus class points on gloom-gloom-gloom and rampage-rampage-rampage. I've been wondering: instead of cranking the entire gloom tree up to 5 ASAP (I'm still trying to max the first three parts of rampage), how much real benefit would there be to cranking either stalk and/or dominate up? (Lesser question: preternatural senses to 5, or just leave the 1 point I put there in order to get blindside?) I've always just left them at 1, because dominate seems to work just fine on pretty much everything with one point in it, as does stalk... but now I've got a ridiculously overpowered weapon and I'm thinking maybe those extra percentage points that come from levelling stalk and dominate may offer more tangible benefits than cranking up gloom.

Anyone gone this route? Am I still going to end up flayed alive in the daikara, as I usually do?

[SageAcrin]

Dominate doesn't really level all that strongly. L1's nice, but you really don't need to level it.

Stalk's pretty good, but it's still more of a boss fight benefit. If you're finding you're having big problems with bosses, it's worth considering over a Gloom heavy build.

[stinkstink]

Gloom-light builds are fine. The main benefit to pumping Dominate is extending the duration, and 4's enough to cap it. I'd max Frenzy first if you haven't already, as that's going to be your skeleton squisher in Dreadfell.

For Preternatural Senses, I like to float points in for Lake Nur and the Sandworm Lair, then take them out for the Maze and Daikara, before putting them back in for Dreadfell.

[nate]

I don't think points in Stalk or Dominate are all that good-- not for either of them.

Stalk 1->2 gives you unimportant Accuracy and 1%/2%/3% damage. Let's assume that you hit a boss 4 times in a row, then pop an infusion. Stalk 1->2 netted you 1.25% damage per turn.
Next 5 turns? You do slightly better, at 2.75%, net 2% once you've spent ten turns on a mob. That's assuming you don't do anything weird in-between, or hit and run, etc. And of course, for regular mobs, it's hard to find ones that should take 4 hits to kill. I rarely invest more than a single point into Stalk. (For the really hard bosses, the ones that count, I get one or two hits in before I have to do something different. Almost no benefit from stalk when it matters most.)

Dominate is a nice ability to have, but it's far from essential. Sometimes, I end a 50 with Dominate 5, sometimes, with Dominate 1.

So I think you can get more for your points by putting them into Frenzy or Slash, and that's where my points go.

I like Preternatural 5 a lot, but I imagine it depends on your playstyle. It expands the useful Blindside range, but more importantly, it just gives you intel.

You certainly don't have to crank Gloom line to all 5s. I like 1/1/1/5 myself, and that level of Sanctuary is still optional.

Cursed have such diminishing returns from talent points (thankfully made up for with stat scaling) that I think you could totally get away with putting your surplus anywhere. I try to max Rampage, Tenacity, Surge, Brutality, Sanctuary in that order, then extra points go into Preternatural Senses, Blindside, Frenzy, Slash, Reckless Charge, again, roughly in that order.

[SageAcrin]

I believe Stalk levels up your Stalk on the target once per strike, so stuff like Frenzy can instantly L3 it.

It's not a lot of damage, but it's damage on everything, when you're fighting a boss. I consider it more of a lategame thing, but still, not too bad.

[nate]

Frenzy just levels your Stalk once, regardless of how many hits you get in. (Just checked to make sure.)

In general, the difference between putting points into Stalk and putting points into, say, Frenzy, is relatively small, but Stalk slightly outshines the alternatives when you're fighting something requiring a lot of sequential hits, and you don't have enough hate for activated talent use. In other situations, the alternatives slightly outshine Stalk. When I play, I don't find that the situations in which Stalk shines come up very often (maybe not ever), but of course the first point in it is a no-brainer.

[SageAcrin]

Hum, guess I recalled wrong. My bad, sorry.

[NovastormMegaton]

Hey xterminal, I have had 2 Cursed winners and they both followed the same rough path, this is the latest one:

http://te4.org/characters/17275/tome/e9 ... bdbfc97397

As far as Stalk and Dominate, I found them both valuable to put more then 1 point into, but it is a very low priority. Dominate is good, but generally situationial. You often won't use it when on cooldown, because the extra turn of rampage is more valuable. The biggest value of Dominate is in it's pinning and resist breaking, and the latter is more useful in the end game not the early game. As far as Stalk is concerned, it is a slightly higher priority but also not a high priority. While it is valuable as a generic damage buff, in general you will be looking for better survivability and utility after putting 15 (or 16) points into Rampage. A caveat to this if you are having accuracy issues, Stalk can help with that if that's a thing.

I personally value Prenatural Senses very highly and feel it's very nice to have it at 5 before level 25. As your general scouting tool, it grants you great knowledge of what is coming up, allowing to buff yourself(if that's a thing) or avoid bad situations all together.

Gloom is sweet and each gloom effect is great, but 1 point in each is usually good until you have spare points to put in.

Take all this info with the fact that I run a low activation's build. If you were to post your character I could give you more specific advice.

Rampage 5/5/5/0(1)
Endless Hunt 1/0/0/0
Strife 1/5/1/0
Gloom 1/1/1/1

After this point you can build to your discretion.

Hope that helps

-D