ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Sometimes I run a blinding sun infusion early on but I quickly replace it with a countermeasure type.

Is it worth it to use them full-time?

The various offense runes are definitely worth considering for undead; Two of them are the only Rune/Infusion way to heal status, the third(Lightning) is a good way to prevent one-shots(something higher difficulty players swear by), and the fourth(Acid Wave) is the general best offensive rune and can be useful if you have a good burst damage setup against crowds, and want to maximize it.

Sun Infusions are good short term and can be sorta useful long term for Antimagic characters. I never really use Insidious Poison, even after they gained the ability to remove Magical effects(IIRC), though.

They're not incredible, but they're not bad situationally.

Yeah, I'm now rather likely to use the burning runes on my undead (to remove physical effects). Something like two shields, one escape, and a burning rune.

Acid Wave runes are good for melee classes, especially defense-based ones (it reduces Accuracy, too). Bulwark may want to spend a lot of time blocking (with 0 Defense), but they have the durability to go into the thickest crowd, and only physical damage is reduced by Shield Wall.

Offensive runes have ~20 cooldown, so they're not useful as your PRIMARY offense.

If you can find a way to leverage them as a secondary offense they can be great.

Many people use Acid Wave in exactly this way -- it's a set-up for some high-damage attack, or it's a set-up for blocking.

They're great as a status removal + a minor spiteful "screw you!" to the jerk who gave you that status. Very satisfying if you happen to finish someone off.

never.

Once in a while I use the offense infusion you get as the Alchemist Brotherhood reward, or the Rune of the Rift. The others I only use on a more temporary basis if I can't find something more useful.

I've always wanted to try a Shalore Temporal Warden with the lightning rune. I suspect that with some fiddling, you could keep up the effect permanently, which sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

donkatsu wrote:I've always wanted to try a Shalore Temporal Warden with the lightning rune. I suspect that with some fiddling, you could keep up the effect permanently, which sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

I've many times to design a build that could cast Timeless quick enough to keep all buffs going forever, but IIRC, they all required level 70 characters...

Looking back at every of my characters that went beyond level 20 or just won, i notice that i have never used the following :
-Sun
-Insidious Poison
-Invisibility
-Heat Beam
-Frozen Spear
-Acid Wave
-Lightning

Teleport/Phase/Wild/Shield/Movement/Manasurge/Regen/Heal/Heroism are simply must have to ensure a character survival.

And due to the very limited amount of what you can inscribe, even when buying with category point (but in that case you sacrify a category unlock, so it's already a hard decision impacting your character a lot) you can't even have all the ones that are must have (and antimagic block half of them), there's no place left for the other ones.

Other than boosting their effect i can't see me using them , all my winners have survived only thanks to the must have ones.

I've used Sun, Insidious Poison and Frozen Spear. I need to experiment more.

Sun generally seems a bit weak. Perhaps if I get stronger versions the blinding would be more useful? I'd like them much more if the illumination debuff also decreased defense.

Insidious Poison I had good fun with on an antimagic character. Its great for dealing with Bone Shields, Healing bosses and magical debuffs.

Frozen Spear was reasonably useful for a Skeleton fighter I had. Instant ranged damage with a chance of freezing is good when you only have melee attacks and not much crowd control. Mind curing effect is obviously useful. Freeze could be more reliable though.

My wight Paradox Mage winner used her burning spear rune heavily to get rid of physical conditions, allowing her to save her Body Reversion for healing and mass debuff removal. So they have uses for undead. Not so much other races. The ones not using those condition-removing attack runes probably don't play undead races.

Technically I've used Sun and Poison infusions, but only when I find one early and have an empty inscription slot and nothing better to put in that slot yet.

Blind is a great condition, and I've enjoyed using Sun infusions, but I just can't justify keeping one when I find a nice dual-coverage Wild infusion or a good Regeneration infusion or a Teleport rune.

I think the game should give another rune/infusion slot, so all those much less usefull inscriptions could then be more used for just more than "experimenting".

Because as much fun as it sounds to have Sun, Lightning, Heat, Acid, Freeze, etc... they're simply taking a slot that would be then much better being used by the other inscriptions that actually increase the survivability of the character in every situations.

With an extra slot available, once you have got the must have inscriptions for your character survival, you may then have no more problem in taking one of the less usefull inscriptions too.

That extra slot could be the result of a quest leading into a consumable item too instead of simply giving an extra slot for nothing.

You can already get five slots(three base, two from category points).

Adding a sixth doesn't really change that situation. It's less that the offensive stuff isn't useful, and more that it's harder to replace the healing and support effects.