Weird Wyrmic Add-on 1.2.5 Tank Guide

[tacobowl8]

Weird Wyrmics: The next tankiest thing to Sun Paladins

I have always found fun in incredibly tanky builds. Something about being a juggernaut of sorts. It was to my great pleasure that I found a build in the Weird Wyrmic class that gave me such an experience.

First, a bit about Weird Wyrmics. Weird Wyrmics is a rework of the Wyrmic class that was done by grayswandir76. It basically gets rid of all the class talent trees, and puts in elemental and supporting trees in their place.

Here is a link to the addon: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =337515090

Just for a quick overview of the trees:
Draconic Form: This tree provides skills based on the points you have in the various elemental trees. It also provides some passive buffs.

Draconic Might: This tree is mostly support/utility with an armor shred, AOE confuse, Wing Buffet and Swallow

Fire Aspect: This is all about setting your enemies on fire and doing damage over time.
Ice Aspect: This is all about freezing your enemies.
Lightning Aspect: This is all about speed and dazing your enemies.
Sand Aspect: This is all about blinding your enemies and physical resistance.
Blade Aspect (locked): This is all about bleeding your enemies dry with two handers.
Stone Aspect (locked): This is about utilizing a shield to be tanky.


So, with that primer out of the way, lets get into my build/guide. As I said earlier, I love tanky builds; the tankier the better.

Race Choice:

Cornac: The main draw of the Cornac is the extra Category point you start off with, and unfortunately, we are not wanting for Category points. By the end, I had 5 inscription slots, invested a point into improving the Fungus tree, and unlocked two trees. I do not recommend a Cornac for this build as they offer little and others offer much more.

Higher: Highers are nice, but not for this build. Right off the bat, one of their race talents is useless as we don’t use spells (Born Into Magic), and two of the remaining three offer us little (Highlord’s Bloom, Overseer of Nations). While vision is nice, when you are incredibly tanky with a built in movement infusion, it is less than necessary. Highlord’s Bloom could help, but we never really have any resource issues. Gift of the Highborn is always nice for the instant cast regeneration, but it does not offset the fact that we can gain much more elsewhere.

Shalore: Shalore are quite nice, but we can do better. Their healthpool is lackluster. Grace of the Eternals is a nice global speed boost, but we already have access to a good movement speed boost and are aiming for tank over damage. Magic of the Eternals is wonderful for the crit chance. Secrets of the Eternals is forgettable. Timeless is the main reason we would consider Shalore. Being able to use Breaths and other cooldowns, then use them again quickly is nothing to scoff at. However, for this build, I want tank, and for the most tank, I go antimagic for the extra fungal skill. That means Shalore is out.

Thalore: Thalore are known to be a good overall race and that does not change here. They have a sizable temporary resist all and damage boost in Wrath of the Woods. Unshackled gives physical and mental saves which are always nice. Guardian of the Wood is a standout here, giving resist all, blight resist, and partial disease immunity. Nature’s Pride is nice for the extra bodies, but is never really necessary. This is what I went with.

Halfling: These guys are fairly tanky, but there are tankier. What they do provide is crit chance, something we love as mental crit is hard to come by. They also provide defense, saves, and a way to cleanse stuns, dazes, and pins. While not what I went with, I can see a slightly less tanky build using Halflings to great effect.

Dwarf: These guys are stereotypically tanky, but what they provide overlaps with what we would be building for anyways. They give us armor, saves, more saves, and an escape mechanism. We are stacking as much armor as possible, and while saves are nice, we end up with enough to get by. The escape is also useful, but we have a built in movement infusion which makes it less valuable. These would be a good alternative to Thalore and Halfling.

Yeek: We want a tank. Yeeks are pretty much the opposite of tanks. Yeeks could possibly work with a more mage style Weird Wyrmic, but they won’t meet our requirements.

Ghoul: Ghouls are great. They have an enormous hp pool, movement options, Str and Con for generic points, and a self heal in retch. The major downside to them is they cannot use Infusions, meaning the easiest source of healing, regeneration infusions, are not available to them. This pretty much renders the Fungus tree useless and as such are a bad choice here.

Skeleton: These guys have a built in damage shield, heal, and reduction to the duration of debuffs. This is all fine, except that we already have a heal available to us from the Call of the Wild tree we start with. The damage shield is nice, but not necessary if we are going to be making full use of the Fungus tree. These guys are ok, but I wouldn’t recommend them for this.


Stat Distribution:
You want Strength. Lots and lots of Strength. Strength is what the majority of your damage will scale off of. After Strength, go for Willpower and Constitution. I would get enough Willpower to grab skills, then prioritize Strength and Constitution. I suggest eventually maxing out Willpower as Nature’s Touch and the Fungus tree scale off of Mindpower.


Class Skills:
***Draconic Form***
We want to 5/5/5/5 this.
These skills scale off of class points spent in the ‘elemental’ trees. The attacks granted by Draconic Claws, Draconic Aura, and Draconic Breath have a shared cooldown amongst their elemental counterparts (claw attacks put other claw attacks on cooldown, etc.)

Draconic Claws: This gives us physical crit chance as well as a melee range elemental attack for each elemental tree that we invest points into. You want to 5 this just for the 13% crit chance at 5 points. 5 points also brings the claw cooldown down to 3 which is nice.

Claw attacks this build has available:
Lightning Claw: Hits the target for % weapon damage as lightning and tries to daze for a number of turns.
Sand Claw: Hits the target for % weapon damage as physical damage and tries to blind the target. If the blind fails, it tries to partially blind, heavily reducing the accuracy of the target.
Stone Claw: Hits the target for high % shield damage and reduces cooldown of block.

Draconic Scales: This gives you a hefty amount of armor and hardiness as well as elemental tree specific resists. We 5 this because 40 armor and 15% hardiness with 5 points is great on a tank to say nothing of the bonus resists we get from having points in the elemental trees.

Draconic Aura: This gives us knockback immunity, pin immunity, and fear immunity as well as an Aura (AOE attack) for each elemental tree we have points in. We 5 this mainly because we like the reduced cooldown on the Aura moves. 5 points brings it down to 7.

Aura attacks this build has available:
Lightning Drake Aura: In radius around you, it deals mind scaling lightning damage and attempts to daze all targets.
Sand Drake Aura: In radius around you, deal medium physical damage and knocks back enemies. It also randomly rearranges terrain.
Stone Drake Aura: In radius around you, deal medium-high physical damage and tries to stun and pin all affected.

Draconic Breath: This is an amazing skill. It grants max life, life regen, and healing factor all scaling on CON. It also gives us access to the various breath attacks.

Breath attacks this build has available:
Lightning Breath: In a cone, deal high lightning damage. % of overkill damage will be spread amongst the remaining targets. Each enemy killed in the initial blast will reduce Lightning Speed cooldown by 1.
Sand Breath: In a cone, deal high physical damage. It will try to blind, and if that fails, will try to partially blind reducing accuracy highly.
Stone Breath: In a cone, deal high physical damage. It will try to petrify enemies.


***Draconic Might***
I went with 1/5/1/3. These are leftover points that you could spend elsewhere.
We don’t really need anything from this tree, but we have points left over after getting the critical stuff.

Rending Claws: This shreds the armor of our foes. Unfortunately, we don’t really need armor shred as we are all about tank, and don’t care if it takes an extra 2-3 turns to kill something.

Bellowing Roar: This does good physical damage in a large AOE around you that can also confuse those caught. I like this, but it isn’t really needed.

Wing Buffet: This will try to knock enemies back and send you backwards as well. We have other ways to escape situations.

Swallow - While swallow is nice, we don’t get much from it. It can instakill enemies at 5% life or below with a chance of doing the same to high health enemies. If it suceeds, you start digesting and get a buff called ‘Appetite’. This will give you bonus physical power, healing modifier, and equilibrium regeneration. We don’t really need these but you can put points here if you want..

***---The Elemental Trees---***
Fire/Ice - While these are great trees, they are more suited to more of a caster type Weird Wyrmic. They don’t really give us any status effects we might want and there are better places to put our points.

***Lightning***
3/0/0/0 early, 5/1/1/5 later
Lightning gives us Lightning Speed which is all the mobility we need.
Later, we want to get points into the capstone ability so our Draconic Might abilities come off cooldown quicker.

Lightning Speed: This acts as a movement infusion with the evasion ability tacked on. At 5 points, you get 708% movement speed and 42% evasion for 2 turns. This is all the movement you will ever need.

Rapid Strikes: This gives bonus combat speed for hitting the same target with lightning damage. You could put leftover points in here if you wanted, but that should wait for end game.

Jitter: This is a sustain that has a chance based on how much damage you take in a single blow to turn you into Pure Lightning, letting you avoid damage by stepping out of the way once per turn. You could put points in here, but only late in the game after you get the core taken care of.

Lightning Aspect: This increases the amount of lightning damage you do, gives you lightning resistance piercing, and lets you recover equilibrium any turn in which you dealt lightning damage. Also, while Lightning Speed is active, all lightning damage you deal has a chance to daze the enemy. Not only that, but points here count double for the purposes of Draconic Form talents. Also, the cooldowns of Lightning Draconic Form attacks will reduce the shared cooldown of the elemental counterparts. Non-lightning Draconic Form attacks will give less cooldown to lightning Draconic Form attacks.
This is the capstone of the Lightning tree and it has quite the list of things going for it. If you want a TL:DR, you want to 5 point this.

***Sand***
1/1/5/5
This is where our tank starts.

Sandblaster: This skill deals damage to an adjacent enemy and the three squares behind it, sort of like a radius 2 cone. If you hit things with it, you get a buff (Sand Barrier) that gives defense and % physical resist for several turns. This is great and helps us survive the earlygame. Unfortunately, this doesn’t scale too well into the mid/late game so we invest little.

Burrow: This is an amazing skill, a one point wonder. It lets us burrow through diggable walls and sand. It can also increase the duration of the Sand Barrier buff with more points invested.

Sand Vortex: This is one of our mainstays. I would max it quickly. This is a large AOE physical damaging move that pulls in enemies. At rank 5, this works in radius 8 around us. Not only that, it will also try to blind and partially blind like the draconic form sand talents. Finally it will refresh the duration of your Sand Barrier buff if you have it active. Really, what we like about this is the huge AOE, pull in, and blind chance.

Sand Aspect: This is the capstone for the Sand tree. It gives us bonus to physical damage done, physical resistance piercing, and equilibrium restore on physical damage dealt. It also counts double for Draconic Form talents and reduces the effect that other tree’s shared cooldowns have on Sand Draconic Form variants.
As we deal primary physical damage, this is an easy one to 5.

***Stone***
1/5/5/5
The Stone tree is all about utilizing your shield. A note: this build is much more effective with grayswandir’s weapons mod as it puts partial blocking into a generic talent making blocking much more effective. Even without that, this is a highly serviceable tree.

Heavy Impact: This hits your target for shield damage, attempts to stun, and you immediately block. This is a nifty skill at one point. More points just increase the damage and stun duration. As we get our damage from other places, this is more of a utility skill.

Flesh of Stone: This is one of the two sustains you will want up at all times. This, at the penalty of 50% move speed, will give you petrification immunity, fire resist, lightning resist, physical resist, con scaling chance to ignore critical hits, and a boost to how powerful your blocks are. We don’t need movement speed with Lightning Speed making the downside here negligible if we need to get away. The resists and crit ignore chance are amazing for a tank as well as the increased block power.

Cannonball: This is a short ranged blink that deals physical damage in a radius around your destination. Anything hit has a chance to be dazed and will be put off balance. This is a nice way to move around the battlefield when you are surrounded and the debuffs are just gravy.

Stone Aspect: This is the capstone for the Stone tree. It gives us a chance to do a shield bash on melee strike, equilibrium recovery on damage blocked by your shield, and faster shield actions. It also counts double for Draconic Form talents and reduces the effect that other tree’s shared cooldowns have on Stone Draconic Form variants. We primarily take this for the chance at shield bash and better cooldown on the Draconic Form talents.

Blade
0/0/0/0 - Blade is all about bleeding your enemies dry with a two handed weapon. We don’t put anything in here.



***Generic Trees***

I won’t cover the racial tree here but know that I invested 8 points into it.

Combat Training: I went 5/5/5/5/0 here. This is the typical tanky melee setup.

Mark of the Wild: I went 1/5/1/4 here. We put 5 points in Nature’s Touch for the nice heal and 4 into Nature’s Balance so we can spam more of our Draconic Form talents.

Fungus: I went 4/1/5/1 here. Enough points in Wild Growth to get the max increase to duration of regeneration effects and all the points we can into Ancestral Life to make regeneration effects even gain us turns.

Anti-Magic: 1/0/0/0. I personally went with antimagic so I could get a bonus to my fungus tree. Even so, I never put any points in aside from the starting one in Resolve.

Category Points: I used one point to unlock the Stone tree, one point to boost the fungus tree, and the rest went to infusion unlocks.

Notable Gear: If you can get your hands on the Tarrasca armor, you want to use it. This synergizes really well with our Flesh of Stone sustain. The combination pretty much allows us to keep Flesh of Stone on all the time.

[Red]

Undead can't be Wilder classes at all. Other than that, nice guide.