ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

http://te4.org/characters/70701/tome/8d ... ddc3343a63

(mostly) Everything up until High Peak with this guy was a breeze. Two stupid deaths to Vor and his fanboys and a critical Flurry from a boss in the Slime Tunnels. Should've known when to fold 'em. The only close call I could've done nothing about was in the Guarded Barracks, but I lucked out with only 10 or so HP remaining.

Adventuring Parties and Orc Patrols I am mortally terrified of, Teleportation Rune really helped there, with min. range of 15 it always puts me on the far side of the map, rarely more than a Ghoulish Leap away from the exit. How do you guy deal with those? They're bearable on normal, but on nightmare I find them way above my capabilities.

I'm a Class Points tight ass, so I spend a Category Point to improve Pugilism sparing me 4 class points to get the maximum duration on Axe Kick and maximum amount of combo points from the other tree talents.

Steamroller looked really promising on paper, but turned out way useless. I'm thinking Swift Hands next time, finding myself switching though Torques of PP/CM and a sweet Wand of Conjuration all too often. Also I thought I would max Concussive Punch and Butterfly Kick at some point, but never ever using Butterfly in the early 30s I decided to go with Backstab instead. Really helpful on a number of occasions, none more so than against Elandar. Concussive Punch looked really appealing with the damage bonus from Steamroller, except I never managed to keep it up. Pass. Also Light of Foot. Useless.

I fought a bunch of High Peak bosses, nothing special there, but I was starting to get real anxious at that point so I just got to the top as fast as possible and might have missed out on the really bad ones.
The Final Fight is where it got ugly. I though I could kill Elandar faster, but got swarmed pretty bad. If it wasn't for guaranteed crits from Backstab it would've been way worse. Died once closing the portals, then two times until I managed to separate from the crowd, with only a Shodowwhatsitsnamedemon and a Champion of Uhr'rok in the vicinity. At level 90 something that guy was pretty bad. By the time I dealt with him the Sun Paladin was dead, but had managed to kill all remaining monsters except for a Wyrm. From there on it was a simple but tedious fight against Argoniel, thankfully Psychoportation and Ghoulish Leap were enough to put enough distance between us to allow stamina recovery.
I though biting gale rune would halve his stun resistance, but it only lowered it by about 6 or 7 percent, gonna use Controlled Phase Door next time, could've spared me a live closing the portals.
All in all, I felt like a real weakling in the final fight, compared to totally dominating everything else. Oh well, a win's a wind and finally being able to read those murals sure was rewarding.

What do you guys thing, would this kind if build stand a chance on Insane?

Question: as a ghoul, wouldn't it be better to take advantage of the first racial talent to pump Str instead of Con, for more physical power? With single hits capped at 50% of your max life, methinks you could easily go with a bit less max life. (Plus, if you want to try and abuse Swift Hands next time, extra carrying capacity can't hurt.)

Having maxed Cunning and Dexterity I was really torn between Strength or Constitution next, but the false sense of security that a high HP pool gives took prevailance. Also a bunch of things that scaled with Con factored in - Retch, Vitality, Unflinching Resolve - which, being immune to Stun, Confusion and Blindness by the late game, I never took, and the shield from The Untouchable. All of those turned out not so great in the end game, so I'm definitely going with Strength next time. Brawlers get plenty of Con from Unified Body anyway.

PS. Made a suicide run against Linnaniil, probably could've beaten her had I Rune of Teleportation. Or remembered to use Psychoport instead of that god awful Wand of Conjuration. I guess I really wanted to retire this guy.