First winner: Skeleton Archmage with cold/aether focus

[Delmuir]

As a general rule, I don't pay attention to the nitty-gritty mechanics of the game so I don't tend to maximize my characters very well. This time, I seem to have done pretty well... beating it on standard with only three deaths, two to the backup guardian in Daikara and one to a random eternal bone giant boss...because I accidentally double tapped my forward key and apparently that was enough to kill me.

Anyway, Freeze plus aether beam (and later aether breach on top) was my bread and butter against bosses. I used the "Water" category as 1, 5, 1, 1 and Aether was a 5, 5, 1, 5 category.

Illuminate, I got to level 4 as soon as possible by shuffling points off lighting and flame in the first dungeon. Once I had it, and manathrust, and freeze, I was good to go...

Once Ice was available (1, 5, 1, 5), then Frozen ground became a monster skill... ridiculously powerful.

That, Meta, and Aegis (which was a 3, 5, 5, 5) was basically it. Skeleton shield is very powerful. Reduce cool-down is very nice... Meta is a great late-game acquisition.

I finished with an extra category point because I never bothered to put it into another inscription but I'm sure it would have helped. I ran with two shields and a manasurge. That's it. with two shields and the resilient bones, I didn't really worry about status effects very much and honestly, they weren't a problem much at all... mostly early.

I didn't really worry about resistances at all... I focused damage addition and crits. My entire goal was to spot enemies, shield up, and blast the crap out of them before they could get to me. The enemies that were freeze immune AND had the ability to rush (or some other way to close the distance) were my biggest problem, followed by invisible enemies because I didn't focus at all on that, and blood mages or corrupters or whatever ... I made this build a few times before and those little bastards (especially on cult quest to save Melinda... or whatever her name is) one-hit killed me more than once.

I pumped magic until it was ten points over willpower and then I added one into willpower, one in to magic, and one in constitution every level for the rest of the game (until magic was maxed, then will, then constitution, and then cunning and dexterity which didn't max). I entered the high-peak at level 43 and was at 45 against the final bosses which leveled me to 50.

My prodigies were meteor strike and cauterize.

I skipped the Spellblaze and sludge nest but I did just about everything else... it was pretty fun. Last bosses went down fast... didn't bother with portals or even know how to shut them off.