http://te4.org/characters/6429/tome/28a ... fc5c8ffa1b
By far my easiest win yet. A very straightforward game, I punched things. Hard. A lot.
For the most part, I just followed this guide here:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=35981
But this would be one hell of a boring character report if I didn't give any of my own input, wouldn't it?
First up, race choice. Honestly, it was no contest. Thalore are just too damn good, especially on a class that has generics to spare. Lack of stun resist is one of the biggest weakness of the class in my eyes, but the huge boost to physical save made it almost a non-issue in the early game. And since you need to heavily pump both Dex (to unlock pugilism talents) and Cun (to unlock Unarmed Mastery and Exploit Weakness) early on, I didn't have the points spare for Con and thus couldn't get many points of Thick Skin until much later. In the absence of Thick Skin then, the racial resist all bonus really helped me toughen up in the earlymid-game when things started to get a little dangerous (Daikara, Elven Ruins, Dreadfell). And of course, Disease immunity is nothing short of a godsend. Due to shitty luck, I never found the magic/physical wild I wanted through the entire game, but without diseases to worry about I realized I didn't really need it nearly as much. And then the Treants. They were extremely helpful against Atamathon (which I'll go into more later), and outside of that were still pretty nice from time to time as a way to draw fire away from myself (their taunt is very effective).
Skill progression pretty much exactly followed the guide. After maxing Exploit Weakness at around 38 or so, I maxed the following skills, in order:
- Heightened Reflexes - Extremely nice. The guide suggests pairing it with Slow Motion, but that would have been overkill IMO. It's like a mini movement infusion every time anyone shoots at you. Makes you able to often close the gap on spellcasters on it's own, no Rush, Spinning Backhand, or Movement infusion necessary.
- Precise Strikes - With the huge amount of Dex I had, this was about 25% crit chance. Massive damage boost. I only had about 50-55% crit chance without it, so maybe if you get a lot of crit gear you won't need this, but it was amazing for me. Small note here, I noticed that the 10% slow is multiplicative of weapon speed, not additive. This means the penalty is much smaller on faster weapons, which is great for Brawlers. Leather gloves with the Brawler ego have a base attack speed of 50%. Precise Strikes slowed that to about 55%. A puny, inconsequential price to pay for such a massive crit bonus.
- Spell Shield - My phys and mental saves were already solid from Thalore racials and all the Cun, Con, and Dex I was getting, but my spell save was pathetic. I got this to stop my fear of getting loaded down with spell effects and spellshocks and stuff.
- Uppercut - Maxed this out with my last few points as I was traversing High Peak. It was either this or Counter Attack, and I figured the longer stun duration would be more helpful against the sorcerers. I'm not really sure if it was or not, they died fairly quick either way.
I followed the guide's suggestion of 2 movement infusions at first, but after a death to the Master as a result of being incapable of running away (doorway blocked by minions) followed up by a crappy psychoport, I realized I wanted a TP. I kept that for most of the game, only swapping it back to another movement right before trying Atamathon (TP is useless in such a small area) because at that point I was powerful enough that I didn't care if I was surrounded, I'd just kill everything anyway. So the defensive nature of the TP was much less useful than the utility of the movement.
Early game was made almost trivial after picking up a pair of purple T3 gloves (brawler's and warmaking IIRC) from the leather shop in Last Hope right after clearing all the T1 dungeons. Being able to open shops right from the get-go has to be one of my favorite of the recent changes.
The Thalore XP penalty was a pain in the mid and late game, but was easily solved by running lots of farportals. Which was boring, but it did net me lots of money which let me buy a lot of artifacts from the merchant. On the subject of the merchant, I got extremely lucky with him on my first try, netting a downright disgusting pair of gloves right after returning from the East which I used the rest of the game. After that however, he mostly gave me crap.
And finally, the matter of Atamathon. Just like the farportals, his fight was long and annoying, but not really challenging. The elements which I believe were crucial to my victory were:
- Being REALLY beefy. 1.7k HP, a 550+ shield rune, 40% resist all, and very high other various resists and I could still just barely stand 1-2 turns next to him.
- Mobility. 5/5 Rush and two movement infusions. One may have been enough, but I felt much more safe with two.
- High burst. Packing as much damage into that 1 turn opportunity before retreating was important. Although, I could have done less damage and still finished him eventually, it just would have been even more painfully slow.
I'd thought that brawlers were really weak before (and if the rarity of brawler winners in the vault speaks truth, maybe they still are) but I was just doing it wrong in the past. In particular, I think trying for AM was just crippling myself.
