[1.0.1] Slimer the Cornac Oozemancer - Winner

[Vanir]

http://te4.org/characters/18250/tome/c1 ... 480a3dcaed

Easiest playthrough ever ^^

I thought about writing a guide instead of the usual guide/character report mess but since im pretty sure the Oozemancer will get nerfed ill just write it here.

Why Cornac? Because i forgot you can unlock the fungus tree for free. You have so many good things to spend generics on that getting a race tree is kind of redundant.

I was kind of overwhelmed by the many skills to choose from (and theyre all green!) at first but the general idea was to focus on nature damage since there just arent many skills that do acid damage outside the acid blades(?) tree.

I obviously raised Slime Spit first and then Mucus, because Mucus is the main damage dealer of the Oozemancer.
After that i went for Acid Splash, since i lacked aoe and got the escape skills (Oozewalk and Slime Roots).

The Mucus Oozes are basically just bad cannon fodder in the earlygame so i spent points in the Ooze tree instead for much much better damage sponges. Mitosis wont work most of the time so i raised Call of the Ooze (btw it doesnt matter at all what your Mitosis hp max is Call of the Ooze summons oozes with different hp max).

After that Indiscernible Anatomy was raised of course for the immunities i usually get a mental wild for.

In the Oozing Blades tree i basically beelined for Unstoppable Nature since nature resist is pretty common (mainly undead).

As for generics: I got Natures Touch and then concentrated on Am after that i got Natures Equilibrium.

Stat distribution was basically maxing will and then leveling cun and con evenly. Cun always got leveled to 20 30 etc first since you get cun/10 ooze maximum.

Prodigies were Eye of the Tiger for obvious reasons and Tricky Defenses that combined with one of the category point made for an awesome Antimagic Shield.

I tried to get the 2 class and generic points from the alchemist quest and managed to mess it up by going to the wrong alchemist and just clicking yes yes oh wait noooo! Since i wanted to look at the buffed Wild Growth infusion i actually made the spellcrit elixier. (shouldve got the emerald)


How it actually played? ^^

Oozemancer easily has the best dots in the game and the instant damage output is comparable to archmages. Acid Splash will clear rooms since it covers the floor in mucus. Endgame mucus can do 9k damage in one cast (actually a lot more since the duration gets reset every turn but im too lazy to calculate that). I killed some stairbosses in High Peak without even seeing them. I just came around a corner and saw a pile of loot after firing Acid Splash at a critter. Acid Splash/Mucus will also summon Mucus Oozes that act as obstacles for your enemies and fire beams at foes.
They inherit your damage boni so they will hit pretty hard en masse. They also fire at stuff you hit with a talent for free if you have Unstoppable Nature and somehow they managed to do up to 300 damage with their beams (maybe they get the damage mods twice?). 129 cunning = 12 oozes >.>

If you looked at the char in the vault you may notice that i have both Ureslaks Molted Scales and the Girdle of Preservation in my Inventory and dont have them equipped. The reason for that is the incredible survivability Oozemancers have in the mid/late game. You get a better controlled Phase Door that resets cooldowns (Slime Roots), a potentially free action perfect teleport on any tile with mucus in los and easily the best damage avoidance skill in the game: Call of the Ooze.

Call of the Ooze doesnt look that awesome at low lvls but i could summon 7 oozes with 410 hp and 50% all resistance.
If you yourself get hit that damage is split between you and your oozes. If you combine that with Antimagic Shield youre pretty much invulnerable. Also Call of the Ooze deals acid damage, which is important for its synergy with Natural Acid.

You also get incredible disables that you dont really need cause of the stuff i listed above. Mind Parasite is comparable to Burning Hex in how much it screws with talents. Everytime a talent gets used 2 get put on a 3 turn cd. If you use that and Slippery Moss which is an instant cast 10 turn duration radius 4 debuff that causes talents to fail and waste a turn nothing should be able to threaten you effectively.

Oh and Aura of Silence is just incredible if you remember to use it. It will trivialize the entrance room of the mage and necromancer prides.

If Mindstar Mastery wasnt bugged in this version you could have pretty good melee skills as well.


Now one might want to spam the talents all the time and thats possible if you use Natures Balance, which will effectively reset the cd of all your talents. If you want to reset the cooldown for Natures Balance just use Slime Roots.

Wont i run out equilibrium if i do that? No since standing on mucus lowers it by 25 per turn and the nature gift that uses the most equilibrium is probably Natures Balance which costs 20. I didnt use meditation once.

The obvious weakness of the oozemancer are poison immune things but those are easily dealt with by just standing behind your oozeshields. Also Natural Acid lowers the nature resistance of enemies that were hit by acid, which means it can go negative and amplify your damage. Theres an equivalent skill for acid damage but i see no reason to focus on acid. This means that the direct damage you can deal is pretty significant.

Oh and just put Mucus on autocast when enemies are visible.


About the equipment:

I just chose the equip with the highest mindpower and mindcrit. Resistances were secondary. I got pretty lucky with the mindstars and is it just me or do the normal mindstars even the rares/randarts get really bad modifiers compared to the artifacts? They almost always have worse mindpower/crit than artifacts that are 2 tiers below them. That usually isnt the case with artifacts of other kinds of items. Maybe i shouldve combined a few but still.

I bought 3 artifacts from the merchant and while the ring was decent the other 2 were basically useless.


How did i manage to die while playing an oozemancer? >.>
Darkgod kindly spawned 3 lvl 500 horrors next to me and after getting 2 of them to 50% i thought the bladewind of the bladehorror wouldnt reach me ... it did and instakilled me. I got my revenge on them at lvl 43 though when i came back from the east and it was much easier since they didnt resist mucus all the time. (getting down 50k hp just with Slime Spit and Oozebeam was a bit tedious). Btw they werent worth any xp and didnt drop anything ;_;

I cleared the crypt pretty easily thanks to the Antimagic Shield and saved Melinda.
The Room of Death got beaten before i went back (2 casts of Acid Splash = 1 dead dragon)
After killing everything in the game before high peak i searched my inventory in vain for a plain voratun amulet and killed a certain golem for his.
The fight was pretty easy since he really hated my meatshields and just disliked me. Btw Leaves Tide can make golems bleed. I actually almost managed to get myself killed at the end by using the Wild Growth infusion. It kills your oozes. Also for this fight i actually wore Ureslaks and the girdle.

Unsurprisingly the last battle was really easy. (I keep using that word sorry for the repetition ^^)

All in all a very fun to play class if you can overlook the lack of challenge once you got your build mostly done. Playing a Cornac probably made that worse for me, cause i lacked an experience penalty. I hit lvl 50 long before entering high peak and i didnt use farportals.

I dont know how to nerf this class without removing one of the few dots in the game thats actually worth using. Everything usually dies so fast that stacking dots is just wasting real time and often also ingame turns since theyre so ineffective. Lategame i would just use Acid Splash and wait a few turns till everything was dead. Of course the same will happen if you play Corruptor or Archmage lategame. But the Oozemancer just needs to cast his spell once and it will kill rares/bosses too while summoning distractions. Combine that with the probably best survivability and escape mechanism among the casters and the moments where youre just steamrolling the lategame content but get a nasty surprise and are actually forced to think for a few turns disappear.

[Parcae2]

I've been having a similar experience with my Nightmare Roguelike Oozemancer. Only level 32 so far, but it almost feels like cheating.

[jenx]

Let's hope then it gets nerfed soon.