ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I've put about 100 hours into ToME 4 and before this guy the farthest I had gotten was with a Cornac Rogue who died to the Prides at about level 35. So needless to say I had high hopes of this guy making it to the end. I had great items and a pretty good skill build (more on that later), but in the end I could not stand up to the two bosses and died...

This is hardly the first Mindslayer I tried. I had one recently that made it to the Sandworm Lair just to be one shotted by the Sand Drakes (do I really need my spiked shield on all the time???) then I got unlucky and on the last level hit the boss and proceeded to die again. I learned from my mistakes and on the next guy I put lots of early points into Constitution... And apparently it helped because I got to the high peak and level 50.

Here is the build.
http://te4.org/characters/5409/tome/2b5 ... 6d2a639d45

I went pure focus with a heavy emphasis on the shields and auras. With my Mindlash I was critical hitting for 1200 damage and doing around 700 normally. Pretty awesome... Implode was also very useful against elites/unique and bosses. Honestly with those two skills and the auras/shields I just flew through the prides not dying once...

I found wanderers rest very early and couldn't have gotten as far as I did without the jump they offered... Saved my butt many times.

My deaths were all pretty sad except for one... Most of the time it was one shot critical hits that killed me before I had a chance to spike the shields. Putting a lot into Constitution helped a lot there though and I usually had a nice buffer of health. My one very valid death was against my own shadow... I won the fight with very little life left and most things on cooldown... Sadly I also had a disease on me and two turns after winning I died despite my best efforts.

After I beat all the prides and most of the east dungeons I decided to go back west at about level 47. I discovered that my 10k+ gold wasn't useless and made both of my rings and the light I wore till the end. Had I known I wouldn't be able to get back from the high tower I may have run a few Far Portals and worked up a bit more gold in order to replace my cloak and belt as well... But just didn't find anything good.

Anywho, I flew through the high peak levels not having a problem with any of the guys there... So maybe I was a bit cocky getting to the last fight... I managed to nearly kill one of them before I died.. Down to about 2k health maybe... But after the first death I really couldn't do much... I did great damage, but I couldn't survive long enough to whittle them down... Not sure what I could have done different, except for maybe getting better resistances and immunities (especially darkness damage since my shields didn't cover that). Maybe go skeleton mindslayer?

About my build... I hadn't intended on getting 5 points into all the voracity skills... Only in the last one to be honest... But I didn't get the generic cursed tree like I wanted and I really didn't think the AM tree would have helped me very much, so I just maxed points in voracity. The slow at level 5 is rather nice I must say...

Charged Aura felt rather useless... The damage was blah compared to the Charged Aura and I rarely saw dazed effects later on... I also don't know how much deflect projectiles helped seeing as most of the projectiles shot at me were AOE spells and they hit anyway... Bind was very useful but I can't ever think of a situation to put more than one point into it.. I mean with the focus mindstar I had it was binding for about 10 turns... I also felt like focused channeling wasn't worth more than a point... I only maxed it because I didn't have anything better to put the points into.. The damage/shield increase it adds is pitiful... I also could never see wanting or using projection mastery. The problem with it is that it takes a turn to turn a aura on and a turn to use, considering that I can't see how putting them off cooldown would help since it would be two turns to use them a second time... Just my thoughts on the skills...

One change that could be cool is a setting to autospike a shield if more than a certain amount of damage is incoming... That would have saved some early deaths for me...

As far as prodigies go. I felt like there wasn't a great choice for me... The willpower and cunning that I qualified for mostly didn't fit with my build. I needed things that helped my defense as I was still squishy but nothing really fit the bill... Lucky day was probably the best option since I wasn't going AM. For my level 50 prodigy I really didn't know what to go, maybe the spine of the world one would have been better... Not sure...

Anywho, I might start a new one and try it all over again... Paying more attention to resists on equipment... Oh and for anyone who wants to unlock the wildfire tree, a focus mindslayer does a lot of fire damage. I upped mine by 600k this run and that was without trying...

Congrats on getting there!

Yeah you probably needed some more maens of either healing or reducing damage.
For mindslayer shields I was thinking at high level they could start to aplpy to new elements maybe.

Also prodigies, maybe Draconic Body would have been nice, it's a big heal and it's that much time to survive, maybe you would have been able to kill the first boss and thus be on a one-to-one match then

Perhaps the instantly-cool-down-shields talent can give your shields extra damage type defenses as you level it up?

e.g. at level 3, it lets physical shield block nature, thermal shield block light, and charged shield block darkness. At level 5, it lets physical shield block mind, thermal shield block arcane, and charged shield block temporal.

Or however you want to split up those damage types.

Still not sure what to do with the aura cooldown skill. Maybe it can boost damage penetration, and at level 5 make the auras instant cast.

darkgod wrote:Congrats on getting there!

Yeah you probably needed some more maens of either healing or reducing damage.
For mindslayer shields I was thinking at high level they could start to aplpy to new elements maybe.

Also prodigies, maybe Draconic Body would have been nice, it's a big heal and it's that much time to survive, maybe you would have been able to kill the first boss and thus be on a one-to-one match then

Yes, definitely needed another heal, probably could have done away with the movement one. I rarely used it and the Wanderers rest was pretty much always enough. It is tough though because the Mindslayer shields don't protect against everything, so you have to have something else, preferably two other things to protect yourself. I was very nearly killed several times from Darkness damage and was killed once by Temporal damage... Nothing I can do about those two other than have shielding rune (which can sometimes be hard to come across). So I would totally support them having more elements added as you level the shields.

I think I missed something in the Sandworm Lair in order to get the prerequisite of being close to the Draconic world.. I had the heart but I suspect there is something else. One on one in that fight probably would have allowed me to win for sure. If only i had gotten the one guy.. I was so close...

phantomglider wrote:Perhaps the instantly-cool-down-shields talent can give your shields extra damage type defenses as you level it up?

e.g. at level 3, it lets physical shield block nature, thermal shield block light, and charged shield block darkness. At level 5, it lets physical shield block mind, thermal shield block arcane, and charged shield block temporal.

Or however you want to split up those damage types.

Still not sure what to do with the aura cooldown skill. Maybe it can boost damage penetration, and at level 5 make the auras instant cast.

I really like your idea for absorption mastery. It is a one point wonder as is and giving a good reason to level it up would be awesome, especially if it kept it's cooldown reduction...

Hmm, the Aura one is tough. I've been trying to figure that one out... Maybe it could allow you to instant sustain/cast the next aura?

Just happened in SVN, the absorption thing.

Antimagic (shield) mindslayers just got even more attractive, too. Chop off damage from the top and the bottom. Pretty sexy. Not as sexy as double-tapping the bottom, but still nice