ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello community,

I am in love with the Way. What are the best and worst classes for Yeeks and how should I build these?

Half thanks in advance, half afterwards.

Posessor is good so you can shield your weak furry healthbar with a robust minion healthbar. Solipsist is good if you can survive long enough to make up for your pathetic early game health pool[Which is to say, its pretty bad]. Berserker is apparently pretty good too, although your starting stats make the first five levels kind of annoying.

same as the best and worst classes for every other race, so archmage/paradox mage/possessor/etc. are best, and alchemist etc. are worst

the relative powers of classes are pretty much the same for all non-undead races, with the exception that oozemancer is particularly awful for shalore (and to a much lesser extent ogre). Even including undead barely changes this.

I'm throwing in my two cents on Yeek Brawler, which I always try to recommend to people but nobody listens to. Your first 1-2 levels really, really extra sucks a lot because you don't start with enough CUN to get Unarmed Mastery, but after you do, it's smooth sailing. Small size means that grappling will be less effective than usual, but a +size belt will fix that, or else just mostly ignore grappling - it's a very strong tree but personally, I rarely even use it except to set up Take Down.

The real strength of this build though is via Quickened. 118% global speed + 167% attack speed on light gloves means that you get 197% total attack speed, equaling out to nearly two attacks per turn. Compare with another +54% from Blinding Speed and you're getting into the realm of absurdity.

Your health sucks, but your health always sucks as a Yeek, so you should get used to that. +2 life per level helps with that somewhat, but Brawler isn't the tankiest of classes - however, Open Palm Block should be able to let you soak up the worst of the damage if you can time it properly.

Overall, this isn't strictly the best build for a Yeek, but it's one of the more fun ones by far in my opinion.

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:I'm throwing in my two cents on Yeek Brawler, which I always try to recommend to people but nobody listens to. Your first 1-2 levels really, really extra sucks a lot because you don't start with enough CUN to get Unarmed Mastery, but after you do, it's smooth sailing. Small size means that grappling will be less effective than usual, but a +size belt will fix that, or else just mostly ignore grappling - it's a very strong tree but personally, I rarely even use it except to set up Take Down.

The real strength of this build though is via Quickened. 118% global speed + 167% attack speed on light gloves means that you get 197% total attack speed, equaling out to nearly two attacks per turn. Compare with another +54% from Blinding Speed and you're getting into the realm of absurdity.

Your health sucks, but your health always sucks as a Yeek, so you should get used to that. +2 life per level helps with that somewhat, but Brawler isn't the tankiest of classes - however, Open Palm Block should be able to let you soak up the worst of the damage if you can time it properly.

Overall, this isn't strictly the best build for a Yeek, but it's one of the more fun ones by far in my opinion.

It does sound like a lot of fun! One minor point, isn't light gloves attack speed 125%? (think tooltip hasn't been updated since nerf in last patch)

Another class to throw in would be summoner - it benefits from the quick levels, and you should very rarely be exposed to damage, so your health matters little.

Best: possessor
Worst: archmage, solipsist, summoner, alchemist

Kruzifixxion wrote:Best: possessor
Worst: archmage, solipsist, summoner, alchemist

By 'worst' I assume you mean behind possessor, or...?

Quidix wrote:It does sound like a lot of fun! One minor point, isn't light gloves attack speed 125%?

Genuinely have no idea, I loaded up my level 20-something Yeek Brawler and copied his attack speed since I couldn't find solid information about it on the wiki or on TomeTips. It's possible, if not probable, that I had some speed buff going on in there.

The point still stands though, multi attacks per turn just by bumping, upgradeable to way a lot of multi attacks per turn via speed buffs.

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:

Quidix wrote:It does sound like a lot of fun! One minor point, isn't light gloves attack speed 125%?

Genuinely have no idea, I loaded up my level 20-something Yeek Brawler and copied his attack speed since I couldn't find solid information about it on the wiki or on TomeTips. It's possible, if not probable, that I had some speed buff going on in there.

The point still stands though, multi attacks per turn just by bumping, upgradeable to way a lot of multi attacks per turn via speed buffs.

Yeah, fair enough - and I do love the global speed buff from Yeek!

The thing is that being a Brawler grants an extra 20% attack speed bonus while unarmed, and this stacks with the attack speed bonus of light gloves (attacks with them take only 80% of a turn). So as a Yeek Brawler equipped with light gloves, you are at 167% attack speed right at the start of the game (at least that's what the gloves tooltip says).

Another point in favor of Possessor - Projection gives you essentially a whole new “you” that can’t use item powers (unless it’s been patched, I haven’t played much recently), and this gives you extra uses of the Yeeks excellent instant racial powers. Assuming you’re making liberal use of Track (and you should) you can do something like Projection -> Rune of Reflection -> Movement Inscription -> Dominant Will -> Wayist -> Psionic Minion -> cancel Projection -> repeat steps through Wayist, which gives you a pretty good start on most non-set-piece battles. (You can also combo this with Temporal Fugue or Forgery of Haze if you can get it on a host, which can lead to some pretty dense Wayist armies.)

Dominant Will is somewhat less good on Insane, but you can often still find something to hit with it, and Possessors scale superbly with better access to rares and bosses. Wayist is still quite good.

Sling Archer is pretty decent, thanks to DEX not receiving any deduction on spawn and abilities like sentinel or shoot down helping with potential threats to your crappy life pool. Between global speed and mobility talents you also won't find accidental melee fights a problem, but you can even grab a shield and Vault with a Cat point. Rapid Fire plus your speed bonus is a big deal either way.

I guess on that case Gunslinger and Psyshot also gets a vote. Strafe and Cloak talents are great for you.

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:I'm throwing in my two cents on Yeek Brawler, which I always try to recommend to people but nobody listens to. Your first 1-2 levels really, really extra sucks a lot because you don't start with enough CUN to get Unarmed Mastery, but after you do, it's smooth sailing.

Umm, but isn't Unarmed Mastery automatically learned at level 1? Just don't remove points from it when you are starting out and you are fine to go.

On topic: I played Rogue Yeek and it worked well for me. It was super squishy but with summons + dominant will I managed to distract most enemies from me and my super high damage + speed helped a lot with dismembering high threat enemies.

I do think there are two ways to answer this:
1. Given that you’re going to be playing a Yeek, what are the strongest options?
2. Given that you’re going to be playing class X, when could you plausibly argue that Yeek is among the best options?

The first answer is graded on a curve - there’s going to be some subset of all Yeek classes that are relatively better than others. The second answer doesn’t necessarily have even a single “yes” answer - it could be that Yeeks aren’t the best choice for anything.

I haven’t played enough Yeek know the answer to 1, but the only plausible answers I know to 2 is Possessor. (I see the Summoner rec and am not a Summoner expert, but PES is so important to Summoner that the class is probably much stronger as a Shalore, while Superpower//Arcane Might Possessor Yeek is potentially comparable to an Arcane Might // PES Shalore unless you’ve got a Sawbutcher body and Razorlock).

I think the game has recently patched out NPC drowning, a huge de facto Yeek buff.

Derael wrote:Umm, but isn't Unarmed Mastery automatically learned at level 1? Just don't remove points from it when you are starting out and you are fine to go.

It is, but I play with the auto-skill at birth option disabled because I hate having points that I can't refund at the beginning of the game. I trade the ability to cheat talents that I don't have the stats for yet in return for actually having control over my build.