http://te4.org/characters/18250/tome/ea ... 080b0a3389
When i saw the aether tree i immediately got the idea to combine it with the meta tree. After several failures getting an archmage going i made him a skeleton instead of a vanilla cornac.
My basic strategy was to stack +arcane dmg instead of more reasonable things like saves or immunities just to see how much damage i could do. I did the whole endgame without stun or confusion immunity higher than 30%.
I also didnt unlock a single rune/infusion slot because i didnt need them. After reaching midgame i used the manasurge rune only to regen mana faster when the game slowed down and during the charred scar run.
Since Aether Avatar prevents you from doing anything other than using items or casting spells i concentrated on the aether tree and sustains. I did get Flameshock and Illuminate though for stun and blind.
The usual combat lategame went like this: shield rune + Aegis = instant 1,5k shield then Illuminate or Flameshock depending on the enemies then Aether Avatar and disruption shield which are both instant casts. Lategame i constantly had ~ + 100% arcane damage with the bonus from aether avatar and just spammed aether breach and Manathrust.
The whole purpose of this build was pretty much just piling up absurd amounts of damage with Aether Breach.
At lvl 5 it spawns an explosion of radius 2 in a random tile of the target area, which does damage about equal to a Manathrust, every turn for 5 turns. With maxed Spellcraft i could just cast it on myself when surrounded.
With Quicken Spells and my boots i had 40% faster spell cooldown and Aether Avatar divides the cd of every arcane spell by 3, which meant manathrust could always be cast and Aether Breach had a cd of 2! Also Aether Avatar had a 10 turn duration and a cooldown of 12.
Now with a spell crit of ~60% and the gauntlets which give + 50% crit multiplier and Spellcraft which not only let me avoid getting instakilled by myself but also caused every spell (except Flameshock for some reason) to apply the spellshocked (-20% to resist all) i could get ~1700 dmg with a single manathrust or a single aether breach explosion.
Aether Breach and Aether Avatar both cost ~50 mana to cast so i could quickly charge the disruption shield, which made me despite having no immunities pretty survivable.
I died 7 times and those that i can remember could have been avoided mostly. One death was pretty memorable in the summoner bastion. Even with the pretty large light radius both the boss and the unique multi-hued wyrm something- the prismatic and his other multi hued wyrms all ambushed me at the same time to create the most thorough instakill ever.
Oh and i also managed to die to Atamathon twice. I escaped after getting killed once and returned later just to get the same instakill (x It would have been doable though if my resistances hadnt been so bad
I entered the Sanctum with no lives left and had a pretty challenging fight thanks to my nonexistant immunities. I once again didnt close any portals and concentrated on the corruptor. The paladin died really quickly for some reason, which left me right in the middle of the room with both of them flinging spells at me.
I retreated to the northern part of the room and managed to kill the corruptor there since she closed to melee range for some reason. Elandar though kept teleporting away probably to let me get killed by the monsters that were coming through the portals.
After chasing him around for a while i remembered i had the rod of spydric poison and finished him.
All in all a pretty challenging to play character since its easy to get instakilled without stun resistance which would have helped a lot just for resisting dazes from rush attacks. Once shielded though i became the avatar of arcane overkill with awesome shields and resilient bones let me wait out the debuffs i constantly had on me.
[b42] Dresden the Skeleton Aether Archmage
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