Wickiet the Sillier (RL) (Nightmare)

[Snow]

Pulled a win with a Cormac Temporal Warden that wasted a catpoint by boosting a tree (not even a good one), and opened Temporal Hounds at 10. I was not building optimally, and I was doing so on purpose to see how far I'd get.

https://te4.org/characters/191722/tome/ ... 3573a001db

Temporal hounds with about 4/5 in the different skills could tank Amatathon. Nightmare or not, that's still a fuckton more damage than you're going to be facing for almost the entire game. Per hit at least. And yes, he DID crit them. They did not die. At all.

I died of course, but that's because I couldn't kill him by playing conservatively due to his regen. I left them alone with him for 20-50 turns, and they didn't die. I let them tank his aggression and whittled him down to 80 before I had to bolt because he focused on me. Sent them after him, hid out of sight, regenned (and so did he), and did it over again until I just kinda said '- it'. Maybe I could have won if I had a way to shut off his healing so I could wear him down. Either way, the hounds take a lot more investment than other time warden skills need, and during the time you're pumping those skills you're vulenrable, but once you get Temporal Vigor up enough that they'll survive 3 or 4 rounds with no hp, they become supertanks that you can throw at a 'nope'. Between that and wormhole / dimensional step / phase door runes / whatever to break line of sight, you can keep most things concentrating on them while you shoot the nope very dead. It's a different playstyle, it doesn't have as potent a killtime, but anytime I wasn't being screwed over by Corrupted Negation I felt very safe.

[Cathbald]

Nice seeing someone enjoying the hounds and congrats on the win!

Hounds are my favorite summons and can indeed tank absolutely everything in nightmare and below. Even in insane they still won't die faster than their respawn timer most of the time. You do sacrifice damage while you're building them up but opening the tree at 10 is the best idea since you can start investing in damage again by the time theirs drop off. TW has the extra points to spare anyway.