ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

edit: Bringing this up to date for 1.2, please pardon any messes.

I'm honestly sort of surprised no one's tried to make a bulwark guide yet. Let's (hopefully) fix that.

Bulwarks revolve around going around with a one-hander and a shield and generally being tanky, dealing with enemies by blocking their attacks and then hitting them with multi-hit talents that (hopefully) cause big numbers to pop out and (hopefully) making up for their bump damage being pretty lame. It's not terribly flashy, but it gets the job done.

I'm not going to pretend this is going to be perfect and as such welcome people's constructive criticisms and additions.

Race Selection:
Cornac: Neither the levelling speed or the extra category point are terribly important to bulwarks, so this is kind of an ehn choice. I guess the AM crowd likes not having to split generics with racials but otherwise there isn't anything really to get enthusiastic over here. Not overtly terrible, but not much to offer.

Higher: Well uh you can see dudes from 11 squares away instead of 10 so maybe you have a reason to level Rush up to 5 again?! Yeah this has arguably less to offer the class than Cornac does.

Shalore: Only 9 base life , but otherwise there's a fair amount to like here and bulwark deals with most earlygame threats fairly well anyways, which is where the lowish life would be most relevent. Dex-scaling haste is nice, extra critmult is nice, and Timeless is pretty great as both a status cure and a means to get more (and better) swings in.

Thalore: +6.5% allres and some extra phys/mind save? Sounds pretty alright by me. Wrath of the Woods is also pretty nice, particularly if you build Willpower.

Halfling: I guess Indomitable is something, as is the crit boost for your non-Assault talents. Otherwise I'm not too thrilled by this. 12 HP is nice though.

Dwarf: Power is Money is nice, though somewhat at odds with the likelyhood that you might need to pay a visit to the randart merchant at some point. Otherwise eh, 12 HP is nice, but you don't really need more armor, you have Shield Wall and plate.

Skeleton: Well you level slow as molasses and you can't use infusions. That's the bad. The good is oh god those racials are a tank's wet dream.

Ghoul: Eh, not a huge fan of slow on a melee class, although that *is* an awful lot of HP. Admittedly my read on ghoul isn't the greatest, so I'll leave the discussion as to whether or not this is a good idea to others.

Yeek: Uh... good question! I honestly don't like yeeks and don't particularly care to think about what they're good with so, again, leaving this one to other people.

Stat Distribution:
Strength: Unless you're doing something incredibly weird this is going to be your primary stat since, you know, it is how you deal damage and all.
Dexterity: Affects both how effective Shield Wall is and the odds of Greater Weapon Focus kicking in, so I'd consider this either secondary or co-primary.
Constitution: Well you need 50 post-equips to take Eternal Guard and obviously getting Thick Skin is always nice, but I consider it to be less important than Str/Dex on a bulwark.
Magic: Unless you want to take Spectral Shield or Arcane Might, no.
Willpower: Boosts stamina! Also does various AM things if you want to pal around with those wacky Zigurites and becomes a factor into damage if you want to take Superpower. If you don't fall into either category, then you might want to spare some points here anyways, but it's not a huge deal.
Cunning: Doesn't have much of an effect unless you pump it a lot, and you're probably not going to be doing that, so this is either stat #5 or #6 by default.

Class Talents (and Block):

Block (CD varies based on talent level): As long as you have a shield, you can use this. If some jerk takes a swing at you while you're blocking and the block negates the attack's damage, he gets put under Counterstrike, which sets his Defense to 0 and lets your next however-many swings get extra damage against it. Needless to say, this is a pretty key component of the bulwark's gameplan so stuff that makes it better is pretty desirable. At base it gets shut off if you get hit, only allows counterstrikes if the attack gets fully sponged, and only covers physical damage plus anything your equipped shield grants a resist to, but there are ways to fix all three of these issues.

Technique/Shield Offense (unlocked, 1.3):
Shield Pummel (8 Sta, 6 CD): Two shield strikes, stuns if the second hits. Reasonable cost and cooldown, can deal pretty decent damage, and is a stun. How much you want here is a matter of how much you value stun, but the duration is never going to be that special.
Riposite (passive): Lets you counter even if your shield doesn't fully sponge an attack's damage and lets you get more of those nice little counterstrikes. Even gives you extra critrate on them (scales with Dex). You only need four points here, which gets you two additional counterstrikes, but those four points should be a priority.
Shield Slam (15 Sta, 15 CD): Welcome to Overpower's replacement in 1.2. Three shield strikes that do rather poor damage, but gives you a free block regardless of whether Block is actually on cooldown. While you *can* get the mult above 100%, doing so is a bit of an investment you're probably not looking at this talent for eye-popping numbers.
Assault (16 Sta, 6 CD): Shield strike, then two autocrit weapon strikes if it hits. This is a really good attack talent, especially if you're boosting critmod.

Technique/Shield Defense (unlocked, 1.3):
Shield Wall (30 Sta sustain, 30 CD): Gives a bunch of (Dex-scaling) Armor and Defense as well as Stun/Knockback resist at the price of -20% physical damage. Stuns are bad and getting hit with them makes you sad, and all that armor is going to be relevent for pretty much the whole game through, even if it does lose some of its luster late. Maxing this talent out should be your first priority.
Repulsion (30 Sta, 10 CD): Knockback and daze. Not a particularly brilliant combo if you ask me. Even if you want to make a getaway, there are better options.
Shield Expertise (passive): Boosts damage on the shield strikes from your attack talents and gives some extra saves. It's alright but not really a priority since the gains aren't particularly brilliant.
Last Stand (50 Sta, 30 CD): Roots you in place and makes you (hopefully) harder to kill. Not a huge fan given the immobility.

Technique/Combat Techniques (unlocked, 1.3):
Rush (22 Sta, 34-18 CD): It's Rush. Lv4 at 1.3 mastery in this these days gives you 10 range on it so you don't really need more than that.
Precise Strikes (30 Sta sustain, 30 CD): I find that your accuracy tends to be good enough without this, though some may find the extra crit rate to be nice.
Perfect Strike (10 Sta, 25 CD): Need a way around invisible jerkholes? Perfect Strike has your answer, but I find that you don't really need to spend too much here.
Blinding Speed (25 Sta, 55 CD): Well five-turn haste is nice.

Technique/Combat Veteran (unlocked, 1.3):
Quick Recovery (passive): Aids stamina management, level of investment to taste
Fast Metabolism (passive): Supplements regen infusions, but scales fairly badly in 1.2.
Spell Shield (passive): Helps you from getting stuck under Curse of Death/Impending Doom (hopefully), level of investment to taste but spell save isn't a huge deal.
Unending Frenzy (passive): No.

Technique/Battle Tactics (locked, Lv10+, 1.3):
Greater Weapon Focus (25 Sta, 20 CD): Gives a (Dex-scaling) chance of extra, similar melee strikes. Counts as a proc (I believe) so overkill accuracy shield hits like this. It can wait a bit but you should have this 5'd by Dreadfell.
Step Up (passive): Drop a dude, get free movement boost. Between this and Rush, bulwarks are actually pretty mobile dudes. Getting this up to 5 should be a priority.
Bleeding Edge (24 Sta, 12 CD): Single weapon strike that deals a 7-turn DoT based on your one-hander weapon damage (which of course can be cured off by half of everything) and for whatever reason has 1.5x the stamina cost and twice the CD of Assault. The heal mod reduction is a bad joke as well, few enemies pack any sort of healing and the ones that do don't justify using this talent for that.
True Grit (70 Sta sustain, 30 CD): Ways around resists exist and even without that this talent isn't going to be as impressive as you'd want it to be considering its costs.

Technique/Warcries (locked, Lv10+, 1.3):
Shattering Shout (20 Sta, 7 CD): Good area and reasonable CD. Damage scales decently though not wonderfully with Str and isn't weapon/shield-based so it gets around armor should that come up. At least consider it if you're here.
Second Wind (50 CD): Restores a good percentage of your stamina, which is pretty nice for managing it. Not something you necessarily need though.
Battle Shout (40 Sta, 30 CD): Mostly serves as a weaker healing/shielding thing if you've been stacking healmod. Doesn't really scale well, so if you care it's not really worth more than a point.
Battle Cry (40 Sta, 30 CD): Yeah lowering enemy defense really isn't worth this. You have good accuracy and can hit dudes with counterstrikes. You're going to hit, on average. It does kill evasion/concealment bonuses in 1.2, however, so if you're looking for a way around that...

Technique/Superiority (locked, Lv10+, 1.3):
Juggernaut (50 Sta, 40 CD): Most physical damage in the game tends to be in weapon form, and Block pretty much always covers the ones that aren't, so this is a pretty questionable investment. Does grant some extra chance of shrugging off crits in 1.2, however, and it *does* last for a while
Onslaught (10 Sta sustain, 10 CD): I don't really understand the point of this talent. Knockback is questionable for melee-based characters and this has a per-turn stamina drain attached. It's considerably cheaper in 1.2, at least.
Battle Call (30 Sta, 10 CD): Getting jerkholes into your face so you can kill them is pretty nice, though.
Shattering Impact (40 Sta sustain, 30 CD): Seems pretty questionable since Bulwark is about doing multiple mid-sized hits per action, not one big one like Berserker does.

Technique/Two-handed Weapons (locked, 0.9):
What are you doing put that down why does Bulwark even have this tree, play something with an actual weapon tree if you want to play around with two-handers, those exist now.

Technique/Archery Training (locked, 1.1):
Well I'm pretty sure you can still use slings with a shield so this isn't as oh god why as the last one. Given that you lack Sling mastery though this is entirely in the realm of niche as far as I'm concerned though.

Cunning/Dirty Fighting (locked, 1.0):
The only reason to care about this one is Cripple, which is pretty great if you build Cunning. That's not likely to be most of you though.

Generic Talents:
Technique/Combat Training (unlocked, 1.3):
Thick Skin (passive): It's Thick Skin, it gets 5'd eventually by 99% of everyone I'm sure.
Armor Training (passive): Armor is only as good as how much Armor Hardiness lets it cover, so this is something else that you'll 5, though it can wait a bit.
Combat Accuracy (passive): 5 if you really like overkill accuracy for your GWF shieldbonk procs and other stuff, otherwise you can get away with 2 or 3.
Weapons Mastery (passive): Chances are you're using a conventional one-hander, so uh yeah.
Dagger Mastery (passive): And by the same token, uh no.

Technique/Conditioning (unlocked, 1.3):
Vitality (passive): Cut poison/disease duration by potentially more than half and heal a portion of your maximum life over time when knocked below 50%? Okay sure.
Unflinching Resolve (passive): Con-scaling chance to shrug off a grab bag of potentially unpleasant status? Sign me up. Lv4 at 1.3 mastery gets you everything on the list, I believe, so the only reason to 5 it is for the extra 3% or so chance.
Daunting Prescence (20 Sta sustain, 8 CD): Eh. Doesn't scale as well as you'd like all things considered, and since it's not required for Unflinching Resolve in 1.2 you can ignore it completely.
Adrenaline Surge (24 CD): It's there if you want it, but you can probably make do without.

Cunning/Survival (unlocked, 1.0):
Heightened Senses (passive): Stick a point here and move on if you care about either of the next two here. If you don't, ignore it.
Charms Mastery (passive): Nice to grab eventually, but only that.
Piercing Sight (passive): Spotting invisible jerkholes more easily is nice, but again, it's only that.
Evasion (30 CD): Reaaaaaaaly not something you care about.

Technique/Field Control (locked, 1.0)
Not really worth unlocking. If you're in need of Track, either keep an eye out for items that grant it or sacrifice an anorithil escort to zigur.

Global Categories:
Other than the obvious "To AM or to not AM" choice that Bulwarks get I'm not terribly sure what other than possibly Stone Alchemy could be tempting for them. Anything else they either don't get much out of or is a one-point wonder grab from escorts.

Prodigies:
Pretty much what I list here is stuff I feel like commenting on in some fashion, not strictly "what I would consider to be good for a build," so don't worry too about something being left out here (like say Garkul's Revenge because there's only so much you can say about +20% damage against over half of lategame enemies).

Flexible Combat: Could be amusing but it's not something I've tried and as such would welcome people's thoughts on it.
I Can Carry The World!: Would you like +40 Strength? Probably. It's a boring choice but certainly something you can benefit from.
Irresistable Sun: Nice for the extra damage and pulling people in, but meeting the damage requirements could be an issue.
Superpower: Great choice for those hanging with the Zigur crowd and pumping Willpower. Extra damage and getting Strength to count more for mindpower than cunning isn't going to go amiss.
Crafty Hands: Well it's an option if you grabbed Stone Alchemy at least. Socket fire opals or pearls in everything, either enjoy your damage or durability boost.
Windtouched Speed: A bit niche but hey, +20% extra global speed.
Corrupted Shell: Probably even more niche but hey, nice for save stacking.
Eternal Guard: Would you like Block to stop getting shut off when you get hit? Would you like Block to last longer? Of course you would. I'm not sure I'd consider running a Bulwark that didn't take this prodigy.
Never Stop Running: Could have its uses but I find that you're typically mobile enough to deal with most things.
Arcane Might: Well potentially this can give more damage than ICCTW or Superpower. Potentially. I'd consider one of the other two before this if damage is what you're looking for though.
Spectral Shield: Would you like Block to cover everything? Of course you would. Acquisition could prove an issue though. Hilarious in conjunction with Eternal Guard.

Worth noting re: shaloren that if you have Eternal Guard, Timeless basically makes your block last four (!) turns; with Spectral Shield, this amounts to invincibilty. I've used this combo and it is as awesome as it sounds (especially since it also takes your best attack talents off cooldown). (Before the very sensible but still tragic nerf in 1.05, it lasted *7* turns, which was not so much awesome as gloriously obscene. )

Yeah, maybe it's just me, but I find field control to be -well- worth the category point, if only for track (at least if it is not obtainable via escort). I find that having a decent range scouting ability is really critical for melee characters on Nightmare and beyond. One WILL otherwise eventually turn the wrong corner or rush the wrong enemy and come face to face with one too many mages, boulder throwers, or shadows ready to blast you.

I find dirty fighting to be a lot better than you give it credit for as well. The dirty fighting talent allows you to more reliably stun those non-completely-resistant enemies you really want to. Switch place can and will save your life even as the uber-tank.

Fair point on Track, though there are items that can replicate the effect (or you could just betray an Anorithil escort for it if you had that option) and on Normal I find you can do well enough without in the first place on average.

Not really agreeing with Dirty Fighting or Switch Place though. An extra stun attempt against the resistant-but-not-immune crowd would be nice... if nearly every enemy and its grandmother worth trying it on weren't packing status cures by the time stun resist starts to come up enough to matter, by which point you probably shouldn't be relying on stuns to get by in the first place. As for Switch Place, generally speaking melee weapon attacks aren't going to be what's killing you or placing you in a position to be killed, and if they are, it's possible that Switch Place could help... but so could a number of other things, most of which are useful in more situations than Switch Place would be so I can't really think that highly of it (and if you are builing Cunning, Evasion is probably the more useful talent anyways).

comrade raoul wrote:Worth noting re: shaloren that if you have Eternal Guard, Timeless basically makes your block last four (!) turns; with Spectral Shield, this amounts to invincibilty. I've used this combo and it is as awesome as it sounds (especially since it also takes your best attack talents off cooldown). (Before the very sensible but still tragic nerf in 1.05, it lasted *7* turns, which was not so much awesome as gloriously obscene. )

Interesting, I'm playing a shaloren berserk that is, of course, awesome but I'm probably gonna give shaloren bulwark a try next. Can you give me an estimation what kind of block values one can expect in the very end game? I haven't gotten very far with shield user and never played a bulwark. The farthest I've gotten was a level roguelike 35 sun pally that got hit for 850 points of damage from an unseen monster and proceeded to perish soon after.

I got a Stone Warden to 50, though he died at the mages. I saw block values from 200 to 325.

He has two equipped, and couple in inventory: http://te4.org/characters/102240/tome/7 ... 170f8afd12

Marson wrote:I got a Stone Warden to 50, though he died at the mages. I saw block values from 200 to 325.

He has two equipped, and couple in inventory: http://te4.org/characters/102240/tome/7 ... 170f8afd12

Ok, thank you! So it seems that with spectral shield, eternal guard and timeless the damage reduction would be pretty nice indeed.

Mankeli wrote:Ok, thank you! So it seems that with spectral shield, eternal guard and timeless the damage reduction would be pretty nice indeed.

Quite! It was very noticeable on the Stone Warden. Timeless would make it even sweeter.

~200 is around the block value you can expect from most T5 shields, and some artifact shields go even higher (Titanic, for instance, has a block value of 320), so meeting that particular requirement for Spectral Shield isn't an issue so long as you're willing to accept that you may not get there until Lv42.

Though I should point out that, while hilarious, even without Timeless, you can more or less have Block up indefinitely with a T5 shield equipped provided you have Eternal Guard, so Timeless Block is really kind of corner-case. As mentioned, it was better before that tragic nerf.

Just finished a shalore bulwark normal/roguelike. I'm not sure if my character'd HP ever dropped below one thousand in the boss fight. I had stone alchemy and managed to find Goedelath Rock. Also got the usual 4 super merchant items. Prodigies were spectral shield and eternal guard.

So yeah, heal mod close to 200 %, unsetting sun with a nice block value + amazing bulwark AC and defence made this guy pretty hard to damage in the very end game. One stair guardian had displace damage which would have probably killed/seriously injured my character if I had used assault. Luckily, I was paying attention. The final bosses were a complete joke.

EDIT. And this was my first win BTW so first time having a character fighting the bosses. Soon after I finished my other character, antimagic halfling mindlayer normal/roguelike, which had much more trouble with the bosses. So bulwarks <3

I'm playing my first bulwark at the moment and here's what I've noticed

its totally feasible to stockpile enough +magic items to get eternal guard. I only noticed this combo and started collecting at around level 20 and by level 30 I had my 8 base mag +40 from items with some slots unfilled. I swapped in a heroism infusion not realising how hard to replace my regen rune was but I found the extra +mag soon after anyway. You can use a staff for this as the other items will let you wield it and if you find any empty rings you can get them imbued with +stat gems which you're bound to have some of. I got the hundred spells from spam activating/deactivating premonition. Anyone know what counts as a spell for this purpose? (Items spells? abilities granted from items?)


But now that I know shields can block their resist type too eternal guard at 30 seems like the much better option, and getting 40 or so +mag or 25-30 and some strong infusions before level 42 is pretty easy so the combo doesn't require any permanent investment other than maybe some gold to fill out the last slots.

The combo does exactly what you would expect. Since level 42 so long as I hit block every 3 turns I'm invincible. edit: turns out if I have no shield I can't block and if a stun puts my block on cooldown I can't block. Should have found some disarm immunity. Died to a stair boss with even more absurd physical power than my absurd physical save.


Putting points in last stand if you don't have lots of regen/heal/shield is definitely a mistake. The times I got in trouble were when I didn't have enough stamina/mobility/damage to kill my enemies. Maybe with enough infusions/shields the AI would run out of spells (some enemies did_ but I hear there is a smarter AI as well so that probably wouldn't work either. The problem with it is that the most dangerous enemies don't have to stand next to you to hurt you, and that it takes a whole turn to deactivate so you need to kill everyone before you can deactivate it but the people you want to kill have no reason to come near you. It has been useful from time to time, can't say it saved me for sure. It may have, but so would have greater weapon focus or blinding speed, and they can prevent dangerous situations from happening in the first place.


Oh and I've gotten pretty good use out of bleeding edge. It's like 400% weapon damage at rank one. Over many turns yes so its only good against bosses and rares, and doesn't work on some of them. I'll have to wait and see if it works on stair guardians and the final bosses before I come to a judgement but it does absolutely huge damage. That's without considering the healing reduction.



The biggest danger to my character has been getting absent minded as I bump through normal enemies to preserve stamina for dangerous ones then bumping 3 times from 1500 to 300hp when an archmage skeleton mage rare shows up so I should have put points in stamina regen just for that reason.



If I wanted to improve the class I'd make an autoexplorebump button to kill everything and cast regen infusions so long as your hp doesn't fall below 70%, you don't take more than 10% damage in a single hit, and there's no rares or bosses on screen. I'd say to make basic combat more interesting but there's only so much you can do to make an invincible tank wading through endless mooks fun and they're already very interesting to play if there's any kind of threat around. edit: maybe giving bulwark some form of natural spiky as part of one of their abilities to clear unthreatening crowds quicker would speed up the mowing without having too much effect on dangerous fights. The other is a general melee issue: evasion. halfling adventurers and stair bosses/farportal bosses or dangerous class mobs like nightmare horrors with switch places have a flat uncounterable 50% or better damage reduction. If you run into an adventuring party of 3 halflings or 2 halflings and a bulwark you have no way to eliminate one quickly. As far as I know there's no way to even mitigate losing anywhere from half to 95% of your damage other than getting to pick your first attack which is just an insanely hard counter to expose players to especially as its not attatched to some ancient anti-melee artifact it's just the natural ability of every bilbo frodo and sam off the street to just not get hit no matter how precise their enemy is. It would make sense for perfect strike to negate or reduce this ability, and would make even more sense for it to be a boost to defense rather than a flat chance to dodge that interacts with nothing.

Just wanted to mention that non-blocking bulwark is also highly potent killing machine and still does pretty well on defense department. I played a ghoul one so no antimagic backup either. Don't think I even used them shielding runs that much.

2H Bulwarks are actually pretty legitimate too. I won on Nightmare with one a little while back (here).
I know it sounds stupid, but they play basically the same as a Zerker, without Bloodthirst and 2h Maiming (granted a big loss) but with Battle Tactics (which is a REALLY good tree).

As soon as you get Windblade, with GWF you can tear through stuff pretty quick. I also suggest Giant Leap (which also works with GWF).
Dirty Fighting is really awesome btw, with Blinding Speed, 5/5 cripple a) hits really hard and b) gives you 100+% global speed advantage over your target! Backstab isn't as great as it is on a Zerker though, because you won't be stunning as much (outside of dirty fighting).

First, i want to say, great guide explains everthing clearly and i agree with everything said.

Then again i feel bullwarks are lacking in interesting and "setting apart" trees.
I would like to see some shield-magic tree and some shield-antimagic tree. How about absorbing spells through your shield to restore stamina? or to create an am shield? or to throw them back?

Many abilities, as you mentioned, are not that good. Last stand? Endgame is full of casters! why would you ever stand still if they can move around and kill you from a distance?

I'm new to the game but have a lvl27 human Cornac Bulwark going.

A question - I'm starting to build up quite a bunch of unused generic points. I've unlocked Harmony, which seems mildly interesting for disease prevention -- I survived the dark crypt without it, though, and that was disease central. I was really amped to go Harmony after the wierdling's healing abilities nearly outlasted my own... but I haven't seen any other enemy healing much at all so I'm losing interest.

So... where to go for Generics? Are there any good unlockables? I haven't gotten many escorts in this game so far, despite being pretty much done the first continent.

I don't want to go AM because this is my first long playthrough and I like lewt... so insta-banning cool items is off limits.