ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hi all,

I've won on normal/adventure twice, once with Bulwark (which I now find boring) and once with Cursed (my favourite class).

I'm looking for another class that is low fuss for normal difficulty. By that I mean you can autoexplore and get into and out of fights quickly without having to pedantically hit a heap of buttons in the right order.

That probably means largely passive/sustain based, with most decisions being to do with positioning and which ability to use this turn.

e.g. my current Shadowblade is a drag to play because for my build to survive you have to activate Highborn's Bloom, then Essence of Speed, then Time Shield, then the instant giving physical power, then then maybe the one letting you fight invisible guys, then Rush/Shadowstep depending on situation to start the actual fight, then Hide in Plain Sight if the rush took away stealth, then cycle instants and dual weapon talents, Snap, cycle instants and dual weapon talents again... ugh. I find this fairly effective but so fiddly and tedious that I got to the prides and stopped. I'm not sure whether I want to finish the already boring mid-late game with that character.

Any low fuss class suggestions? Please also say what makes it a low fuss choice.

I haven't played a ton of classes, but I can suggest Antimagic Berserker, who has few buttons to push and largely plows through enemies with sheer power. Bloodbath, antimagic shield, unflinching resolve...quite a number of your potent defensive talents are all passive. With the right regen infusions and wild growth maxed, you can just leave regen infusions on all the time, giving you such huge healing that only the most dangerous enemies in the game can threaten you at all.
If you go Halfling or dwarf, then your saves can also be boosted to the moon.

Smash, Chop, and Stomp.

A class that you can autosplore on normal/adventure mode without worrying?
All of them.

Melee focused mindslayer would fit that request fairly well, imo. You mostly just bump into things.

Arcane blade may also work fairly well. Flame kills everything until mid-ish game, by which point you can just arcane combat (i.e. bump attack) pretty much everything to death. Aegis up and set a couple shield runes to auto if you don't feel like micromanaging those and you're in pretty good shape.

Warden can be pretty low button press variety, too. Load up on the passive effects, nab the hounds, and you can more or less just command:blink then shoot things and watch your passive temporal clones blow everything up. Fairly low effort, not much need for much talent management (though you kill things much more quickly if you do, obviously enough).

Could also consider mod classes -- forge knights, ferex, can be pretty passive in the "bump everything and it dies" sense, as well, just as an example. Most of its fiddly bits are in updating your equipment, and you only have to do that occasionally.

Thanks for the suggestions.

HousePet wrote:A class that you can autosplore on normal/adventure mode without worrying?
All of them.

There's more to it than that. It's about not having to run away to get ready, nor do a bunch of short-term active abilities to survive the fight once you find yourself in it. e.g My shadowblade I gave as an example before can autoexplore with no loss of ability at all, but has too much fiddly button pressing going on.

dukereg wrote:Hi all,

I've won on normal/adventure twice, once with Bulwark (which I now find boring) and once with Cursed (my favourite class).

I'm looking for another class that is low fuss for normal difficulty. By that I mean you can autoexplore and get into and out of fights quickly without having to pedantically hit a heap of buttons in the right order.

This boggles my mind. Bulwark is boring and bump'n'play Cursed is not? To me that's the epitome of boredom.

I think a Brawler might be fun. It's mostly choosing with which kind of hit you want to kill stuff. Not as simple as Cursed but no blocking mechanics to bother with either.

actually, brawler does have a "open palm block" talent, shich i am pretty sure works like a normal block, except without a shield.

my suggestion would be a sun paladin, if you have him.
to be more specific, a shield sun paladin.

brandish does a lot of damage.
retribution lowers your damage taken by half, and annihilates everything once it absorbed enough.
weapon of wrath gives you second damage type, which deals quite a lot of damage.
second life, makes you really hard to destroy.
wave of power, path of sun and sun rays, give you an ability to attack at range.
shield offence provides stun, big damage with 2 guaranteed crits, and if you run out of block, you can just shield slam someone.

if you run out of positive, you just cast any of the light trees and you can continue, but that wont even be necessary since the sun rays both gives you positive, and blinds all enemies near the target.

shield paladin is both durable and can pack a punch.

from my experience, outside of vaults, a luminous horror is the only enemy that can contest him on the same lvl, and even then, its not that difficult.

Lolwut? You're bashing one class because one skill works a bit like shields, yet suggest another Shield class with very clunky resources management?

Check out the Brawler winners on the boards. How many of them have specced Open Palm Block. I can tell, not many.
For Sun Paladins the rate is much higher.

which part of what i said was "bashing"?
i only stated that there is such a talent.

I, for one, would definitely recommend a Brawler. I've some great fun with Halfling Brawler and it eventually led to my first win on Normal/Adventure, easily doing 10k+ damage in three attacks.

Brawler can be fiddly if you use combos, but you shouldn't have to worry about setting up temporary effects.

I'd also suggest oozemancer. Order matters a little, but not much and they're far tankier than their life rating suggests.

I wouldn't suggest sun paladin. While they can be incredibly tanky they're fiddly as all get out. A shield build can get away with careless play more than on almost any class with just a shield rune on autocast-visible, but they need a lot of fiddly management to deal damage well. Even two handed has to worry about Sun's Vengeance to keep positive energy up.

I've started a low fuss Dwarf Berserker. Going ok, almost finished the East in a few hours, as opposed to days with my fiddly Shadowblade.

I think I'll try a Brawler next based on what people have said. My previous attempts couldn't survive spellcasters e.g. in the prides, but I've heard enough good things about it now to do some low-fuss theorycrafting.

Faeryan wrote:This boggles my mind. Bulwark is boring and bump'n'play Cursed is not? To me that's the epitome of boredom.

Yeah, boring is subjective, changes over time and is partly about theme. I didn't find Bulwark boring until I beat the game with it, and now I do. As for Cursed, I just like the theme and gameplay and how the two work together.

Zicher wrote:I, for one, would definitely recommend a Brawler. I've some great fun with Halfling Brawler and it eventually led to my first win on Normal/Adventure, easily doing 10k+ damage in three attacks.

How all this damage?

dukereg wrote:

Zicher wrote:I, for one, would definitely recommend a Brawler. I've some great fun with Halfling Brawler and it eventually led to my first win on Normal/Adventure, easily doing 10k+ damage in three attacks.

How all this damage?

The winning character is here, check the build. The standard procedure was (Rush if I was far from the target) -> 4/5 Axe Kick (an incredible disabler - if it connects, all target's talent fail for four turns) -> 5/5 Flurry of Fists -> 5/5 five-combo-points Haymaker.
Flexible Combat prodigy helped a great lot for some extra attacks, 76% critrate was not too shabby either and the randart gloves purchased at Wondrous Emporium were just awesome.
One of the Slime Tunnels bosses succumbed after the single attack series (no Rush, he was close) from ~10k maxHP.

I think I'll try a Brawler next based on what people have said. My previous attempts couldn't survive spellcasters e.g. in the prides, but I've heard enough good things about it now to do some low-fuss theorycrafting

That is a valid concern. Not more than week ago i ran an Antimagic Orgre Brawler and the caster crowds were the problem. Now doing a Skeleton Brawler and the caster crowds in the Prides are problematic.

When doing a Brawler pay extra attention to defensive methods. He can kill fast but goes down equally fast (especially a bikini/mankini wearing ones which I did)