ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

http://te4.org/characters/17335/tome/ec ... 54e6d5600e

Comments:
- Ended it with one life left, I think. Good lord that last battle was tenser than it needed to be.

- Anyone silly enough to think you can just bump your way through enemies without paying attention in Easy will STILL get ruthlessly stomped in Dark Crypt, or by boss Forge Giants, or even by Elandar. You might be able to get away with playing a little less carefully through many points due to it being on Easy, but that is a TRAP and you will get ROCKED by moments like the ones I've listed if you haven't learned to BE CAREFUL.

- No, seriously, I lost two lives in Dark Crypt because I was cocky as all get out.

- ... Although I did save Melinda's life by maintaining her health between battles thanks to Bathe in Light.

- I mostly followed SageAcrin's excellent guide here. Enough Magic for Barrier first, then 1/1/1/1 in the Shield Offense tree, then I think Shield Pummel to L5 followed by Riposte to L4. Barrier to L5 and Rush to L5 were both also a relatively early thing. The rest's a bit of a blur, but it's really easy to get a good idea of what you find useful.

- At some point I learned Technique/Conditioning from a successful Warrior escort, which allowed me to get L5 in Unflinching Resolve. That, combined with Providence (AWESOME skill), two of the relevant Wild Infusions, and the fact that it was on Easy allowed me to get away with having pretty much NO Stun Resistance whatsoever. Extremely risky! Don't do this at home, kids, even *ON* Easy.

- The other two major Infusion selections were Teleportation, and then a 400-500 strength Shield that was actually quite helpful in the final battle.

- Rare (and/or Gold Chest?) bosses and their randomized talents/abilities are somewhat dangerous early, so be wary of opening gold chests until you feel your offense and defense are both comfortably useful, or you have a Teleportation rune on you and you're feeling really lucky. They do become trivial at some point (and almost certainly so at L30 when you get Irresistible Sun) and don't usually become a truly major problem again until you're facing Orb bosses... Where you meet someone like Ulsral the Crusher, Forge Giant Fearscaping d-bag extraordinaire, who will take two lives off of you before you decide SCREW IT and just Leap past him before he can get you into his impossible hellish realm again. Seriously, if you die to an immensely difficult Fearscaping boss, it's totally fine if you go past those bastards without fighting 'em.

- Speaking of which. Irresistible Sun is seriously the best thing ever, I freaking love it. My damage was terrible, as I was warned about, early on... But once I got this? Everything started dying EN MASSE. The Orc Prides faced an onslaught of sunlight and fire, and everything BURNED in a VORTEX of solar DEATH. If it really is on its way to a nerfing as I've been hearing, I'll be truly sad... Because though it IS great and helps Sun Paladin damage out a LOT, it does wane a little.

- I picked Cauterize over Draconic Body, but I think either one would help a lot against Elandar, who is a massive tool with his massive damage. Unfortunately, I couldn't protect Aeryn, but she helped in diverting attention while I wailed on Argoniel and LoS'd Elandar's hate away from me. I died ONCE to Elandar, took a deep breath, and came back in and went to town on him. Got plenty of lucky Stuns before I murdered his ass. Again, Irresistible Sun was great for picking off his minions; apparently, you can close those portals, too? But I didn't know how, so I kind of just left them open. I think that battle wouldn't have been NEARLY as hard if I'd known how.

- Easy isn't much more than training wheels to any remotely experience Roguelike player, but it still gave me a run for my money because I suck. I viewed the mode as a convenient crutch for my equipment because I get overloaded by all the options I let myself get flooded with... But now that I've gotten some kind of victory w/permadeath under my belt, I've got the confidence to try for at least a Normal run victory now. Some day I'll be running Insane Roguelike! Someday.

- No, I do not want to try Atamathon on this character. I'd rather the epilogue blurb actually be correct about her living a long and happy life.

Questions:

- Are there other good options I missed, in terms of Prodigies for a Sun Paladin? I didn't want to pump Dex for Swift Hands, because if Irresistible Sun is getting eyed by the nerf bat, then Swift Hands would almost certainly be ruthlessly assaulted by it and I'd rather not get used to something that's so OP in one version and then nuked to oblivion by DG in the next.

- Who else are the tanky classes that you guys enjoy? Wyrmic? Stone Warden? I love just not taking damage, and I've already played Bulwark and now Sun Paladin. Keep in mind that while I wasn't a fan of Sun Paladin prior to 30, it became the roller coaster ride of my life when I DID reach that level, and I kind of prefer late bloomers like this.

Cursed is rather the definition of 'late bloomer', have you considered them? They aren't the biggest tank in terms of defense, but if you go sword/board and get the defense augmenting sustain (Not Surge Or cleave, the other one... Repel? Can't remember the name at the moment), you can get some surprising protection out of it. And of course, sanctuary on gloom can protect you from casters/archers (to some extent), while debuffing things up close to you, so you can finish them with your melee combat abilities, augmented by rampage.

(Also, if you do go cursed, don't fall into the trap of going cornac. Just because you get rampage at level 1, doesn't make them a better race for the class. Other races can do better with the class, but are slower to bloom (and harder to start). OTOH, that might be an improvement, since you said you liked the late blooming classes.)

Not sure what else could be 'tanky', though you could always go corruptor with bone shield, for a tanky mage. (Or reaver, for a melee/mage hybrid with heavy armor, that still gets bone shield).

Sword/Shield Cursed sounds like a great idea. Might try as a Skelly for extra tankiness? Or maybe Thalore because they've replaced both Skellies and Dwarves as the hot new thing.

I also forgot to add in my comments that the Chrono Twins were kind of tough, too. Teleportation came in handy for that one.

I've found mindslayer to be pretty tanky. At the cost of 18 class points, and 5 generics you get 3 instant cast sustains each resisting 3 damage types, which can be turned off to give you huge 5 turn shields with 10 turn cooldown (i.e. there are 9 common damage types which will only harm you for half of your turns.)

If this isn't enough, when these shields block damage they give you psi, and you get a button to take your shields off cooldown!

What's that? Still not enough? How about this.
You get to dual wield two-handed weapons, one of which still attacks things while you're busy doing things like using infusions.