Character advice - Cornac Sun Paladin

[rasputin303]

I am enjoying my first good run on Roguelike mode with a Sun Paladin, who is currently level 34 and ploughing his way through Reknor: http://te4.org/characters/135230/tome/0 ... 42f559d490

I can't really imagine why a Sun Paladin would side with the Grand Corruptor and corrupt the heart of the Sandworm Queen, but this guy did. Maybe homesickness for the East has driven him slightly insane?

Category point
Anyway, my big question is: assuming I survive that long, what should I do with my level 36 category point? I've pretty much maxed out everything I want/need in terms of generic points, so I figure I should unlock a new generic category to give me something to sink points into for the rest of the game. So my options are Vile Life or Hexes. I've never used either before, so I could do with some advice...

Generally, my only problem so far has been with crowd control of big, strong mobs (I nearly died in the Orc Ambush)... my character lacks abilities that can damage lots of monsters at once (except Retribution, which I have only recently leveled up enough to be useful).

Hexes looks like it's mostly ball spells that can affect multiple bad guys, but I wonder if any of them are actually powerful enough to make much of a difference against late-game opponents?

On the other hand, Vile Life's first two abilities look boring-but-useful, and I'm wondering whether there might be useful synergy between Healing Inversion and Bathe In Light as a kind of area-of-effect life-draining thing? Also Vile Transplant looks like it could be pretty fun if used at the right time... I have very little stun or confusion resistance at the moment, so it would be good to be able to turn the tables on whoever is stunning/confusing me.

Other options: unlock Radiance - looks meh, and also I can think of other good ways to invest class points for the moment; extra infusion slot - boring but safe, and I do like having lots of infusions; upgrade a talent category - probably pointless?

Shield
I have a really good T5 voratun shield, which I found early in the game and have been using up until recently. I've just swapped it for a T4 shield that also has warding - mainly because I've never seen warding before and wanted to find out what it was. I also have a wand of warding, so I've got warding at level two. In general, is warding worth it? Is it better than the extra +1 skill level / 50ish point of block of my voratun shield?

Morrigor
Again, I was lucky enough to find this cool weapon pretty early on, and I've been using it for most of the game. Any good ideas for what talents I should try to steal from which enemies? I've got level 3 Cold Flames at the moment, but I'm sure I can do better...

Other stuff...
Any general guidance? I'd like this character to at least to try and clear some of the prides, or ideally win! So far it's been a lot more fun than my play-on-autopilot Adventure Oozemancer winner.

[Red]

Cat Point-Inscription. Hexes are meh, Vile Life isn't too bad but isn't too good, and Radiance is meh. Note, this is power advice. If you just want fun, go ahead and try one of the corrupted categories.

Shield-So long as you remember to use your wards, the T4 is probably better. Wards fully block any one attack of the appropiate element, whether it be 5 damage or 500000. However, the best shield, in my opinion, you could get is one that has the Earthen Fury (I think) ego. This adds damage equal to your block value to all shield attacks, and that is a huge bonus on Assault or Shield of Light attacks.

Morrigor-Ghoulish Leap isn't a bad choice, but I dunno.

[Atarlost]

You can only have 5 inscription slots and you have two cat points coming unless you skip the backup dungeon guardians, and they'll come in pretty quick succession. I haven't looked at hexes, but Vile Life is at least something. You won't generate very much vim since will is your dump stat and what you do generate will tend to decay. You'll tend to start fights with no vim and only get vim at the end. Hexes have a poor reputation even on the vim classes. For you they're garbage. That leaves Vile Life or Cunning/Survival. Vile Life's first two talents don't require vim so they're potentially useful, but you're not building for crits so Blood Splash is weak and you're only doing one applicable kind of elemental damage (from Weapon of Wrath) so Elemental Discord is weak. I would go Cunning/Survival and curse your escort luck.

It looks like you only saved one generic from an adventurer but made the Elixir of Foundations so if you max Thick Skin (using equipment swaps) and Bathe in Light you have 7 points to find a home for. Max Charm Mastery and put the others in Piercing Sight to make it a little easier to see invisible orc mages or Heightened Senses if you wind up wearing Blackened Mind and carrying the eggsac without lots of +light or +infra equips.

I think I would go with the Voratun shield. The ward talent doesn't scale with level so having two ward sources may do very little for you. Additionally, the voratun shield has more resistances which means it can block more damage types. There are quite a lot of things that do fire damage and a few fairly common foes that do acid damage that the voratun shield can block but the stralite can't. And, of course, it does more damage.

Morrigor is very, very strong. That unspecified magical damage is equal to your magic stat and you have a very high magic stat so, yeah, this is your endgame weapon unless you find both parts of the tier 5 sun paladin sword and shield set. Ghoulish Leap is a good choice. Bone Shield may be as well.

[Red]

Vim does not decay, and it fills up every level up, so if you save it for bosses you'll have plenty for those fights.

Other than that, solid advice.

[Atarlost]

If vim doesn't decay a 1/1/5 Vile Life is also possible. Healing Inversion removes the drawback of using Bathe in Light in combat since the inverted healing will knock out the shields it creates, though that gets costly in terms of actions used.

Unless you get a noncombat vim generator (I think there's a charm ego that gives vim on use that would work) you won't get much use from them in the endgame, though. As a cornac you'll probably hit 50 before High Peak and that's just a string of bosses with little other combat so you'll be skint when you get to the sorcerers.

On the other hand if vim doesn't decay having a vim bar means more resources for antimagic enemies to convert into damage. At least I'm pretty sure vim is one of the things Mana Clash effects.

[rasputin303]

Dead!

Haha! I didn't even get to level 35... ran into a rare lightning troll necromancer who Impending Doomed, lightninged and rigor mortised me, plus I got whacked by a lot of skeleton mage spells. I thought Second Life would save my bacon, but although the log says it triggered and supposedly restored about 500 life, I died anyway without getting another turn. I guess I misunderstood how it works. But mainly it was my own fault for playing carelessly, I wasted at least one turn before I realised that I was in trouble, and that's one turn too many in Roguelike mode.

But thank you both very much for your help anyway, lots of good advice to bear in mind for my next playthrough. Sigh... Back to the Trollmire...

Things I did learn from my first Sun Paladin run:

• Path of the Sun makes the game fun - it gives you so many fascinating tactical options and often feels like you're getting several free turns.
• Wave of Power combined with Block completely solves any problems you might have with archers - just block their arrows first. I only had one point in Wave of Power, and was still doing massive damage on counterstruck archers - I got the Size Matters achievement for this, so it was outperforming all my other attacks at the time. The fact that the range scales with Strength rather than talent level makes it useful as a one-pointer too.

[Atarlost]

If you're starting a new character, I think cornac is probably one of the worst races for a Sun Paladin. You have more generic points than places to spend them so the extra has to go into a generic category unless you buy staff combat from Angolwyn and there aren't very many good choices. Staff builds aren't very well supported by gear. The only artifact that's good for you is Bolbum's, which isn't exactly endgame quality, and the only egos you're looking for are cruel and greater and the latter is particularly rare so randarts are a crapshoot.

I'd lean towards Shalore if you want the eastern start or halfling if you don't.

If you do want to run a cornac I'd take Stone Alchemy if you get an alchemist escort. Even if you just max extract gems and skip imbuing you'll dramatically increase the number of merchant randarts you can get.

[Red]

If only someone had written a guide for Sun Paladins. If only. /shameless self plug

Then again, you seem to like to use positive consuming powers, so maybe my guide isn't for you. All the same... Ghoul ghoul ghoul. They kick ass as Sun Paladins.

[rasputin303]

Thanks! I did read your guide before I started, but as it was the first time I'd ever played Sun Paladin I didn't expect to get very far and just wanted to try out all the different abilities. If I have another go and want to seriously try and win, I'll be more ruthless in my build. I do think some of the positive talents are fun, though I expect you're right that a negative only playstyle is more efficient.

I think at the moment, I'm generally not disciplined or knowledgeable enough (and too focused on trying new things and having fun) to mount a serious attempt at winning in Roguelike mode... But I'll keep plugging away. It's great that you guys are so supportive and helpful when idiots like me get stuck.

[Red]

Idiots like you? Don't act like you're so special-I am very much an idiot too. A few people, like Mex, can claim to not be idiots at this game, but when you get right down to it everyone is gonna be stupid at one point or another when playing, and we were all new at one point, so don't feel bad just because you aren't winning Roguelike yet. I haven't either, but I still have fun playing.

[Atarlost]

If only someone had written a guide for Sun Paladins. If only.

I was working on one, but then I got bored with test character #3 (non-staff two handed). I'll try to clean up what I have and post it.

[Red]

Please do. That was based off my first decent Sun Paladin and I only did it because there were no up to date guides at all. It'd be good to have a much more experienced guide for modern Sun Paladins.