A Pile of Steaming Ooze – a Tinker Oozemancer Guide for 1.5

[martinuzz]

Thanks for this guide it had a lot of good tips!
Just got my first nightmare win: https://te4.org/characters/1005/tome/98 ... 4061820a7d

Went with PES and Fungal Blood. Fungal Blood is really awesome (if not just plain OP) for the extra turns, but quite micromanagement intensive. I'll probably try PES and Superpower next time.
I did get really lucky with some drops. Two awesome Heroism infusions (they go up to +41 to all and die at -1500 when PES enhanced) and 2 crazy medical injectors got me through the late game. After getting to the East, I never even needed to use my regen infusion to heal, only used it to trigger more fungal blood. So damn tanky this build, don't even need heals. I did die once after going East to some randboss drake in an intimidating cave that instakilled me with 11k damage from a dozen or more Furnace Vents but apart from that I not once felt even slightly threatened late game.

For the sorcerer fight I swapped out the Tree of Life for the Guardian Totem. I didn't get Limnir's amulet until after winning the game, the Tome dropped in High Peak. Sadly, I transmogged Goedalath (which also dropped in High Peak) or it would have been a better Limnir's.
Atamathon didn't even get to put up his reflection shield, too many mind parasites with some good use of Slime Roots and Nature's Balance to get it off cooldown.

Having a go at the ID now let's see how long I can survive. Just bump attacking things now mostly.

So yeah, great guide, very powerful build.

[grobblewobble]

I'd like to add that if you play EoR, Kruk Yeti make great oozemancers. Won insane with one: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=46362

Resilient body makes you sooo hard to kill.

[martinuzz]

Diving into the ID. At ID 116 now.
Finally met 2 uniques that managed to bring me to negative HP.
I wonder how much further this ooze tank can dive.

Note: mirror matches are doable. Won 6 or 7 so far, NPC doesn't know how to gain extra turns from fungus + fungal blood.

[Azriel]

Superb guide, thank you alot .

Also got my first insane win and a deathless one too. Character is here.

The only main difference talent wise was 4 points in Resolve since AMS went off a few times too often for my liking.
My willpower was kinda low so that's maybe why Resolve was needed.

Was also my first time trying tinkers. Tinkers and salves are overpowered .

[Throckmorton]

Thanks for the great guide.
What's up with meditation? I'm just starting out with Oozemancers (lev 12) and I can't tell whether it's better to have it on, or off, or selectively use it when needed. This guide leaves the skill at one point - do you use that skill at one point, or are you just satisfying requirements for further skills?
I am at the point where I would like to keep my new antimagic shield up, but my fail chance goes from 0% to 8%. I'm feeling the difference...

[Arcvasti]

Meditation halves your damage which is really bad. It's just for equilibrium regeneration during resting before you get reabsorb and for turning on right before healing yourself and then turning it off right afterwards.

[bta]

Getting to the point of fighting the Weirdling Beast was a challenge. But, once I got there and suited up with stored supplies through the items vault, I was a tank.. with nuclear powered, autonomous, drones shooting lightning bolts AND they shielded me and healed me. Tinkered up Oozemancer is the most durable class I tried so far.

What I mean is:
a) Plate of the Blackened Mind (which took a hilarious bit of effort getting my strength up from 10 to the required 48) is the beefiest suit of armor my people have found so far.
b) Nexus of the Way and Eyal's Will, each with Razor Edge tinker items combine very nicely with maxed cunning and maxed psiblades talent.
c) Mitosis and Living Mucus talents make Acid Splash talent more effective than my weapons in hand - the oozes fight invisible stealthy creatures and I can cast Acid Splash area effect on a corner and the oozes go chasing anything nearby.
d) Oozebeam and Slime Spit are long range with short cooldowns. I look forward to adding Acidbeam to my options.
e) Without Heroism and PES, I crit about 50% of the time.
f) Nature's Touch talent heals me for most of my life, if Heroism and PES are active, Nature's Touch heals for about 8/5 of my health - more than I can use. But, I rarely need it.
g) Leaves Tide talent protects me and any nearby friendlies while also damaging nearby hostiles.
h) Steamtech pushed most of my attacks and defences further: Crystal Plating on my armor, Razor's Edge on weapons, Grip on hands, Alchemist's Helper on belt, Rocket Boots on feet, White Light Emitter on Summertide Vial and Grounding Strap on cloak. I have not added tinker items to anything else yet. Oh, medical injector with unstoppable salve at the ready in case Armageddon comes early.
i) most of my steamtech items were made by another of my more talented characters and passed on through the items vault. And, manufacturing of said items is scalable to my level and said items weigh very little or nothing at all.

Very satisfied customer!

Naturally, I save all the tinker schematics I find to pass on through the vault. (edit) oh, and I'm level 30 Cormac just now getting to Dreadfell before going to the Far East. Necromancer Ruins is the only other challenge so far; my oozes want to attack the Krogs and I was not seeing the invisible necromancers. Yet.

[Snarvid]

My guess is that the 1.6 changes to Ancestral Life will invalidate the Fungal Blood unlimited turns mode, although with PES and truly bananas healmod you *might* be able to squeak something out of nature's equilibrium alternating with Slime Roots. Would depend on what exactly counts as a heal, and whether healing infusions now trigger Ancestral Life (will post a dumb question about it), but with % of turn being granted per 100 life healed Fungal Blood's low heals probably won't amount to much.

However, even without it... wow, the amazing toolbox of options that Slime Roots and Frenzy open up together! It does give you more EQ management problems and it eats into your action economy (if every fourth turn you're teleporting rather than attacking), but getting Slime Roots up to "reset 3 skills" level (with a +Slime item, category point, or Adept prodigy) lets you combine Frenzy's "non-instant class skills don't go on cooldown the first time they're used" with Slime Roots resetting Frenzy +2 generics, infusions, or class skills you wanted to use twice (such as Acidfire, since it stacks). (With Slime Roots resetting just 2 skills you can do this as well, but 3 gives you a ton more flexibility.) I'm also much more comfortable with going Acid rather than Nature as a main damage type on a Drem Oozemancer than on default (since the generally higher cooldowns on Acid attacks don't matter as much), which is nice to have a legit opportunity to explore Corrosive Blades when the time comes and should limit the negative impact of Waters of Life/make high level Mage Hunters easier to deal with. And finally, the bananas amount of meat shields that a Drem Oozemancer can pump out between Frenzy allowing Call of the Ooze without cooldown and Slime Roots resetting From Below It Devours should give you a lot of space for your slow, stacking damage to grind out a kill. Really flexible and powerful as well as a ton of fun, assembling slimy combos on the fly as needed for your specific situation!

NB: Only learn Grasping Moss on a Drem Oozemancer - since Moss skills put each other on cooldown, you don't want to be cluttering your bar with additional skills on cooldown that will dilute Slime Roots. A free action damage + slow + pinning AoE is pretty nice, though, especially if you are next to an opponent, have 3 skill reset on Slime Roots, and hit them with Thorn Grab and Grasping Moss before hitting Frenzy and Roots-ing away.

[Snarvid]

Frenzy now patched with fixed cool down - for the best, I think.

[Snarvid]

Thanks, glad it helped!

I’m not intending to update it for 1.60 - I hope that a number of things in the current build will be changed over time (most notably, spell based damage on enemies). Until that happens, I don’t feel like I have reliable advice that will help other players survive in the current build - I’ve got no business trying to map out a path to victory for others when I am getting 1-2 shot by enemies I would have rolled over in 1.5, and on characters who are significantly specced for durability.

Oozemancers also lost a lot of their interesting kit with the nerf to Ancestral Life, which is kind of a bummer - I'm glad Frenzy went fixed cooldown, but Ancestral Life could have stayed as it was if Frenzy was going fixed without making Oozemancers Madness-winners. It may be that there are useful new tricks I haven't discovered, maybe something around Adept/Windtouched Speed/Eye of the Tiger that will refill that part of their kit and make them capable of really solid talent loops, but I'd have to play with them much more to discover such things and I think I'll be trying to win 1.60 with Summoners hiding around corners until 1HKO spells chill out a little.

Till then... I dunno, Krog seems potentially interesting to use Slime Roots to reset Wrath of the Wild and give you very long stunlock windows, and Nature's Defiance might work well enough with Toxic Cannister, AM Shield, Resolve, and Ancestral Life that you could consider running a Steam generator if you find the blueprint for it (although Steam Boots would be ideal), especially for Drem who could double up on cannister via Frenzy.

[GlassGo]

What about Krog? Playing it, and he is... bridy good. (acrually all my krogs are women like ogres haha)

[hexxyg]

Update for 1.7: Oozemancer still rocks
Here's my winner: https://te4.org/characters/274452/tome/ ... c9df9647f9

1. Suggest to take Cornac and unlock Psionic/Feedback from defiler escort instead of taking inscription at lvl1. It provides free instant shield and heal
2. Adept in 1.7 is super strong so my prodigy choice is Adept at 25 + Windtouched speed at 42.
3. It's very important to manage escorts:
- Defiler for Feedback cat
- Sun paladin for skate
- Temporal explorer for Dream Walk
These 3 escorts provide extra defence and mobility which in turn allows to use your inscriptions for other purposes.
4. The hardest part of the game is T2 and until you get lvl 25. From that point the build is very solid
5. Suggest to put some points in Con on lvls 10-20 to provide more durability

[kurtgr]

Great ideas. Any suggestions on how many points to put into the Psionic/Feedback. So far I've only had one in Feedback and one in Resonance Field.

[Chronosplit]

Great ideas. Any suggestions on how many points to put into the Psionic/Feedback. So far I've only had one in Feedback and one in Resonance Field.

Conversion is the big prize here. Huge heal that recovers all of your resources at once, and it can crit. It's so big that I don't think you'll need many points, though EQ reduces always handy.