Hello, this is my first guide, made more interesting because I myself am still learning the game! The reason I'm posting something like this is because almost every guide I come across is outdated in some form or another, and/or highly opinionated. So, this is more like an arranged collection of my notes, thoughts, opinions, and experiences picking up the game. As of the time of this writing, I have not won yet, and I play on Roguelike normal, so higher difficulty levels may not apply to the contents herein. That said, this post will be updated with: suggested information, ideas, or strategies as they're put forward. So, feel free to correct me, offer ideas or information. One last thing, I have been trying to adjust my train of thought in that there are no truly worthless skills, only ones useless to the player. For a 'worthless' skill to be useful, one needs to adjust their thinking. If I come across a skill that I cannot think of a use for, I'll note it, because that is usually indicative of poor design and necessitates another look. Also, I would mention that I will not be listing formulae or equations to determine scaling here. For the new player, casual player, or those who just hate keeping those things in mind, it just obfuscates things. I'll be giving numbers that you can use to ballpark.
Wyrmic Description
This class is certainly an interesting one, featuring a close-ranged battlecaster playstyle with a focus on melee and crowd control in particular. You'll find that very few talents are single-target, and as such benefit from being either in the thick of things, or a chokepoint just outside. As such, one may picture them as a half-draconic berserker diving in and promptly erupting into carnage. Properly kitted out of course. One of the most noticable features (some might call it a flaw), however, is the flood of class talents to spend points on. Some suffice early game with a single point and fall out of favor later, or require heavy investment to be viable for long periods of time. Which they are, unfortunately, comes down to playstyle, experience, and critters you have trouble with. One fact of the matter is, however, that you simply will not have enough skill points to get everything you might want to the power level you want it at. You will either have to sacrifice potency for versitility or vis versa. That said, almost every tree has the capacity to be pumped and be useful to SOMEONE.
Wyrmic Stats
Wyrmic's stat requirements are... odd. All of their draconic capabilities unlock from willpower, but most scale with strength and weapon damage.
- Strength
Weapons, damage, scaling, all of the little rings and knicknacks packrats pick up 'just in case' and then forget about, Wyrmic makes heavy use of Strength, and this should always recieve a minimum of one (1) point per level. - Dexterity
Aside from a paltry amount of defense and crit shrug-off potential, wyrmics benefit almost from nothing in Dexterity. Some who prefer to stay out of the thick of it may prefer bows, though. I suggest just using gear if you MUST have dexterity for something. - Constitution
There's a big divide between those that hate putting points into Con, those that swear by it. First, ignore the saves bonus. It's too low at any level to make a difference. Ever. It's the HP and reliability of skilling up Thick Skin now and then that we put points into Con for. So, 4 hp per point. At 60 points cap, that's 240 hp from constitution (remember you do start with at least 8-10) which isn't much. There are times where you will die by literally 4 hp though, or scrape by with 1. For Wyrmic though, you'll have enough points to max a third stat tree, and cunning is the only other choice, for critchance primarily. - Magic
Wyrmic will, barring the questionable usage of unlocks, never have use of this stat. - Willpower
Skills unlock with willpower, and your equilibrium 'pool' increases with it as well. This means more equilibruim you can use before you accrue a fail chance. I personally like to keep it roughly even with my Strength, at least in point expendature. That said, very little scales with mindpower so you don't have to max this, if you aren't going anti-magic. - Cunning
Crit-chance (0.3% per), and 0.3 mindpower per point. This usually synnergizes well with maxing willpower, or point candy for extra crit%. It's either this or Con, though one could split points between the two once Strength and/or Will are maxed. - Luck
A bit of extra crit-chance never hurt but unless you get a randunique with this in spades, I'd ignore it.
Suggested Expendature
Max STR, Max WIL, bring CON to 30 or 40, dump the rest in CUN. We bring CON up to make our early game a bit easier, and so we can max thick skin sooner, since level 10-20 you can probably eke together enough +con equipment to get at minimum an extra 10 points, but later you'll find plenty of +con artifacts and egos.
Wyrmic Class Skills
This class has a wide variety of skills and playstyles that go along with their usage. I can't speak for lategame viability at time of writing, so instead of giving 'YOU MUST PUT X POINTS IN X' of other guides, I will try to explain the skill tree, notes on each skill and the scalings thereof, and thoughts on each. Remember, well-designed talents are never worthless, only useless to players that can't make use of them.
Two-handed Assault
Two-handed weaponry boasts the highest weapon powers available, which our skills scale from, making each one more powerful through using the powerful offensive tools. The tree itself favors low point investment for wyrmic, as fully half do not synergize or scale well. These skills are stamina-based, and none of our other skills use stamina.
- Stunning Blow: A low-cooldown debuff with a good stun chance that can last forever. Deals (123>133>141>147>152)% weapon damage which is higher than one would think given two-handed weapon's base damage, but the real pleasure is the (3>4>5>6>7) rounds of stun. This means that from 4/5 onward you can stunlock. The 7 rounds of stun and an extra 5% weapon damage though isn't worth another class point though, so I would advise against going 5/5.
- Fearless Cleave: A high-cost but 0 cool down attack that could be used every single turn at great cost to stamina. This deals damage in an arc of 3 in the direction you choose after taking a step. If you don't move, it's underwhelming at only 61% but deals 122% (twice the minimum) to 3 things at once. This is a one-point early game investment generally, as we have a skill which scales better, gives a passive benefit, and doesn't require movement (Ice Claw). That said, Fearless Cleave's use comes as a gap closer with AI that tries to back away, as this lets you move and attack in the same turn, pursuing them.
- Death Dance: Many wyrmics will be in a situation where they're surrounded more than once. Death Dance is actually the only attack that will deal lethal damage in a burst in every direction wyrmics get access to. That said, the bleed means something has to be adjacent to you 5 turns and live to be truly effective, and 5 class points to go from 173% to 213% damage is underwhelming when we're talent starved. I myself do not use death dance past early game, and unbind it from hot keys as if I am surrounded and have nothing else to spend a turn on, something is wrong. If you find yourself using this skill and then teleporting out or bolting, however, it can make a good harrier skill.
- Execution: Execution is amazing as either a 1 point skill, or more in depth 5/5 investment, to taste. At a moderate cooldown of 8 rounds and a somewhat expensive stamina cost, this skill is notable not for it's capacity to deal grevious harm to already weakened creatures (though it is there), but for the ability to critical hit on command. Many excellent critical hit effects are available on ego items, artifacts, and random artifacts, and being able to set them off at will is powerful, even if the attack does not have your usual crit multiplier.
Shield-Offense
Since Wyrmic benefits well from being tanky, shields are an obvious choice, and this tree can make a big difference in the effectiveness of your melee capabilities, to make up for giving up the higher base damage of two-handers. It does boast a stun, though not as long as two-handed, but I have heard it synergizes very well with the Venom skill tree. I cannot confirm this as of 1.4.x myself.
- Shield Pummel: A low cooldown low cost attack on par with Stunning Blow in terms of stamina and cooldown. This skill is a double attack, striking with your shield (which can have nasty on hit effects too). The second attack is stronger, and if both hit, they are stunned. This skill is usually not taken 5/5, though, because of how the stun scales. At level 2 and 4, the stun increases to 3 and 4 rounds respectively. Damage scales nicely as well, dealing (133>146>157>166>173)% on the first attack and (162>180>193>204>214)% on the second.
- Riposte: If you utilize block as much as possible, riposte can really shine, but even if you only use it occasionally the passive is solid at a single point. Generally, however, you won't want to be spending enough time in pure melee to make use of this, and therefor it will not usually merit investment beyond one point. Riposte offers extra counterstrike duration and strikes, and counterstrike by itself doubles your damage as it is. If you do utilize shields as much as possible however, riposte offers an increasing crit chance on the counterstrike at (12>15>17>19>22)% that scales with your dexterity, and 4/5, increases the number of counterattacks by 1, and the duration thereof.
- Shield Slam: Combines the offense of an attack with the defense and counterstrike opportunity of blocking. This high cooldown and hgih cost ability allows us to attack 3 times at (43>56>67>76>83)% shield damage, and immediately go into a block. This can function with 1 point, but some shields do have good damage output and on-hit effects. I would personally only invest a single point here, and increase it if you find yourself using it often.
- Assault: A moderate-high cost but low cooldown attack which, if it connects, will yield an immediate TWO critical hits from your main weapon. This skill is arguably better than Execution for this reason, if not the lower cost / cooldown. The scaling is not shabby but not great either. If you invested in Shield Pummel, I would not spend further points in Assault, because it functions very well with just 1. Otherwise, the shield attack and two main attacks all scale at (123>133>141>147>152)% damage. Assuming they all hit, this means you'd deal 1.5x shield damage, and 3x weapon damage, along with the on-crit procs of your weapon, for a total of a potential 4.5x damage attack every 6 rounds. Depending on your equipment / style, this can be well worth investing in over Shield Slam.
Combat Veteran
This tree gets a lot of hate in existing guides, and people tend to treat it as a dump-tree. This is understandable as almost everything it offers can be attained better elsewhere. That said, this depends upon your personal preference, and your style. Since these are all passive, at least it won't be filling your already crowded hotbar, and some can yield a good single point investment return.
- Quick Recovery: Increase your stamina regeneration by (0.6>1.2>1.6>2.1>2.5) points / turn. Less than 1/4th of our total potential talents use stamina. Very little investment to yield return is to be had beyond the first point for Wyrmic.
- Fast Metabolism: Increase your life regeneration by (3>4.3>5.5>6.5>7.5>) life/turn. This is significantly more helpful than Quick Recovery, but it is outshined by the Fungal tree, once proper invested. That said, the early game difference is positively staggering with just a single point, which speeds your regeneration by a staggering 12x base. For one point (two total) in the class tree, this can be worth it alone early on, but you won't notice it that much later.
- Spell Shield: This one has a lot of hate because of the rediculous degree the bonuses are nerfed when applied, and wyrmic meshes VERY well with antimagic. If you aren't running Anti-magic, or feel you desperately need unholy amounts of spell save, this skill offers a BASE value of +(9>18>27>36>45) to spell saves. The actual number that you'll end up with is muchmuchmuch lower, due to how hard the formulae hit bonuses to saves. Still between this and decent equipment, you'll make most saves when they count.
- Unending Frenzy: This skill does wonders to replenish stamina, especially for high fatigue tanks. Problem is, Wyrmics again don't use their stamina much. I would not invest in this skill as part of any 'build' but only on a very serious as-needed basis. Still, offers 5 stamina per kill by any means with a single point invested, and those kills can come from any means, so if you ARE highly using your stamina skills and manage to run out in an extended area where you can't rest (Nur), this MIGHT help. I'd probably just float the point though.
Sand Drake Aspect
This tree is one of the most up-front powerful and useful. There is no skill here which cannot be helpful. This earth-aligned tree thematically and mechanically fits very well with wyrmics who favor melee as their primary source of damage, and offers healing, high damage, blinds, AOE attacks, and battlefield arrangement both predictable and unpredictable. A careful wyrmic could, in theory, build entirely around this tree, and melee options, with a few supporting skills elsewhere. It also offers crit-chance and physical resist passively, up to 10% resist physical.
- Swallow: I truly wish this skill was named 'Devour'. This skill offers an instant, mid-battle heal based upon the level of what you swallow, an execution attack, nature damage, and the hilarious mental image of just running around nomming everything you meet. Swallow will deal (206>225>239>252>263)% weapon damage as nature damage instead (On-hit effects apply, though the damage is not converted), and will attempt to instantly kill and eat anything the attack hits that is, or brings below (14>19>23>25>28)% of their max health. This includes undead horrors that rely on hundreds of points of below 0 life. With a low cost and cooldown, I personally love this skill. As an added bonus, it offers +(3>6>8>10>12)% crit rate on physical and mental attacks for each point.
- Quake: This is a high cooldown, low cost, high damage AOE with several interesting effects. First, it deals (171>188>201>212>221)% weapon damage in a radius of (2>3>4>4>5) around you. It then provides a knockback of up to 3 tiles, repositions you randomly within the radius of the attack, and will SCRAMBLE THE TERRAIN within the area, in any non-fixed environment. This can alter lines of sight, lines of effect, entomb you or others, open rooms, or close them. Don't use this without a pickaxe. This is, however, a potent method of changing an engagement and a great attack too. What's more, it can crit.
- Burrow: Incredibly powerful even with a single point, and perhaps outright broken when invested in, burrow is both an incredible utility and buff, which can become instantaneous. First, this skill allows you to dig automatically in any stone, sand, or dirt wall that can be dug in a single turn while active. This doesn't work in vaults, forests, fungal forests, or fixed terrain. Second, you ignore (19>22>25>27>29) points of enemy armor, and (10>11>13>14>15)% of their physical resistence. The cooldown and duration increases with levels, ranging from a cooldown of (32>20>17>15>14), and a duration of (3>4>6>7>8) turns. At 4/5, it also becomes an instant-cast. It is, however, slightly expensive to use in equilibrium. This skill, along with Quake, are very highly geared toward melee.
- Sand Breath: Moderate cost and cooldown, Sand Breath offers a powerful AOE blind that hits far more often than not, and isn't bad damage either. It hits in a cone of (5>6>8>9>10), and deals (117>153>179>201>220) physical damage at 60 strength, and scales with your strength. The blind extends from 3 turns to 4 at 4/5. Do bear in mind that you can activate Burrow and ignore armor and physical resist to help pierce through.
Fire Drake Aspect
Surprisingly enough only 2 of the 4 skills in this tree offer fire damage, and one of those two deals scratch damage. People generally only actually level Bellowing Roar and leave the rest of the tree alone. This is not especially surprising because they aren't up-front powerful. Still, this tree offers a powerful AOE confusion, healing, knockback, fire damage, and up to 20% fire resist.
- Wing Buffet: Considered tax by most, this skill offers very little up front. Enemies can resist knockback, and the knockback isn't very far either. Still, each point offers +4 physical power and +4 accuracy passively. This skill in my opinion is best left as a 1/5, because the passive is unremarkable due to diminishing returns, and the knockback strength does not scale. Still, the skill is not as worthless as one might think. True, the 135% weapon damage (167% at 5/5) in a radius of 3 (6 at 5/5) is not particularly impressive, and many things you NEED far away from you have knockback resistence, BUT what this does excel at is buying a few turns, or more importantly, possibly opening up a path for an escape. This skill is BEST thought of as an AOE heave that can crit and deal damage, and used similarly. It would be far more useful if the knockback strength scaled.
- Bellowing Roar: A medium cost high cooldown AOE confuse that lasts 3 turns, and deals some impressive damage in early / midgame, but the damage itself falls off later. Still early on it can clear rooms and trash, and is a good early investment. The confuse is good throughout, too. The radius is impressive as well, at (3>4>6>7>8), which can send an entire horde running about willy nilly for a few moments. This is useful for anyone, really. It is commonly maxed, and maxed earlier on where the damage shines the most.
- Devouring Flame: Almost universally hated, considered worthless AND useless both, like a Glacial Vapour for wyrmic. They're right. As an attack. The thing with Devouring Flame is, don't consider it an attack. Think of it as a debuff. First, it won't hit you, so you can drop it at your feet and ensure something doesn't just run out of it. Second, this can last a pretty long time at 5/5 (10 turns, half its cooldown), and the damage scales with Mindpower, though poorly. Finally, it will heal you for some of the damage dealt, which means it takes 1 turn to set up, offers DoT effectively, and free healing. It's essentially like using Glacial Vapour while in Shiver form, but you don't actually need to be in the midst of it to heal. The initial radius of 2 is not that helpful at 1/5 though, but it can increase up to 5. Instead, this shines best when used on a large clustering of creatures who'll be in place awhile. For example, while confused, or stuck outside a choke-point. It can offer an extra 15-20 healing even at just 1/5 per turn, and that only goes up a LOT as you invest in it. This is an AOE buff / debuff, not an attack.
- Fire Breath: The reason people tend to put a point in devouring flame in the first place. Fire Breath sticks to fire's usual DoT method of delivery. This little sucker can grow into a 10-radius cone of 25% chance 3 round stun, and deals more damage than any other breath weapon in total. For comparison, Sand Breath deals generally 2/3 as much as Fire Breath. Because it's DoT, this is best used as an engagement, so the damage is ticking while you're layering on the pain with other things. As an important side note, there's a misunderstanding about the flameshock aspect of Fire Breath. This effect is added on TOP of the normal effects, using a low-damage flameshock effect that layers on top of the regular burning. This means it remains useful and potent against stun-immune enemies. It also delivers a substantial chunk of it's burn damage on cast, rather than over time.
Cold Drake Aspect
Cold damage is not an uncommon resist, but what's important to note is that some of these skills deal ICE damage, which comes with an inherent chance to freeze. This tree offers slows, a self buff which can offer a good extra spike of armor and damage to attackers, battlefield control, and freezes, which can take threats out of the fight for a few possibly crucial turns. A max of 20% cold resistence is possible, and offers bonuses to saves passively.
- Ice Claw: This is a short(er) range low cost, moderately low cooldown ice-damage cone. At 1/5, it functions much like Fearless Cleave without the move, offers +4 to all your saves per point, and scales very well with weapon damage at (168>195>215>233>248)% in a cone of (1>1>2>3>3). This has a chance of freezing everyone hit, and can therefor take high threat targets down on the priority list for a few turns. Frozen enemies can be attacked for a reduced amount, or worked around to deal with others. In single combatant situations, it's free turns for cooldowns.
- Icy Skin: The only sustain out of our drake talents. At a low sustain cost, you can keep this on almost constantly for almost the entire game, with only early game offering a threat of failure from equilibrium. It offers an armor bonus which scales with your mindpower (not that much though), and not insubstantial cold damage to anything attacking you, which stacks with other effects from equipment. Best of all, it also increases your max health, so this skill is useful throughout the game. The life increase scales with talent level, but the retaliation and armor scale with mindpower. The life increase runs from (3>5>8>10>13)%, the armor, however, can range from 9 at 5/5 to easily 14 at higher mindpower, or even more. It doesn't scale amazingly well, but every bit helps, and for such a low sustain, it doesn't hurt.
- Ice Wall: This is your battlefield control, and can block off choke points for a few turns to let you make an escape, rope out a boss to deal with the chaff (or vis versa), and runs a 25% chance to freeze anything other than the user or allies near one of the walls. Best of all, it runs that check for each wall nearby. It begins at a short, 4 turn barrier 3 tiles wide, that deals a paltry 3-4 ice damage per wall tile. At 5/5, however, this becomes a 9 wide barricade lasting 9 turns, and the range of each wall's attack increasing to 2 tiles at 4/5. This means that at any given time an enemy in the middle of the wall is within range of 5 ice tiles, each hitting it with a 25% chance to freeze each time they take damage from it. The damage itself is not the point, this is for crowd control, battlefield control, and an 'OH CRAP' button. It's transparent, but blocks enemies and projectiles.
- Ice Breath: This lovely little doozy of a breath weapon comes equipped with ice damage that scales with strength, can crit, and runs about on par with Sand Breath in terms of damage output. What shines, however, is that it has the standard 25% chance to freeze, and it deals a 20% slow for 3 turns on anything caught in the blast. This can be a great closer when you need to bolt, or an engage to try to squeeze out another round.
Storm Drake gets even less love than Fire Drake, which is understandable as only one of the skills actually shines, and that skill is right at teir 1. Still, this offers up to 20% lightning resist, passive movement speed boost (a big one), an omnidirectional damage peel, stun, knockback, and AOE dazes. One of the biggest weaknesses of this tree, however, are long cooldowns.
- Lightning Speed: The star of Storm Drake, and thank goodness it's not buried in the tree because people only generally 3/5 it in guides anyway. This little doozy is great with 1 point, or at 5. For each point, you get ROUGHLY 10% extra movement speed passively. It caps at 50% at 5/5, but it's generally something like 9-12% per level. When activated, however, it transforms you into lightning, blitzing your movespeed up 496% to 837% faster for (2>3>3>4>4) turns. It gives you 30% physical resistance during that time, and sets your lightning resistance as high as it can go. If you act outside of movement, however, it ends the effect early. This is basically an equilibrium-funded movement infusion of the gods, because in 4 turns, you can move I believe 36 tiles, as long as you aren't caged in. This is an amazing disengage or engagement, and is useful throughout the game.
- Static Field: Nobody likes this skill, despite a rather unique mechanism. Static field will deal damage dependent upon the current health of what it hits, and it hits a radius of (1>3>4>6>7) It'll deal less damage to rares, bosses, etc. The things you really need to blitz down as fast as possible. Depending upon their health, this skill can be debilitating or useless. It also does moderate fixed lightning damage on top of the percentaged damage. It scales from mindpower, and crits with mental. The percentage drain cannot be resisted with lightning, physical, all resist, etc. It can, however, be saved against with a phys save. It deals full drain to the chaff, 2/3 to elites, 1/2 to bosses and uniques, and 1/3 to elite bosses. At capped Willpower and 50~ cunning, but no other boosts, the base drain is 16.6% down to 6.6% and 54 lightning damage at level 1, but gets up to 28.7% for normals and down to 11.5% for elite bosses at 5/5, and deal an extra 112.8 lightning damage. on top of that. This means you can CHUNK an entire room of high health enemies, possibly the single highest damaging attack in your arsenal. For example, let's say you're up against, say, a randunique just cropped up and has a nasty 2,500 health. Well he's about to take 496 points of damage, and everythign around him is softened up too. A great engagement, and this is without any power boosts from gear, prodigies, whatever. Still, the later you use this in a fight, the worse it is, so unless you engage with it, it has little usage.
- Tornado: An interesting skill for pointing at one thing in particular and saying "YOU! YES YOU! - YOU! And all of your little friends too!" The tornado is a short/shortish range 'projectile' that will track its target, knock aside and damage antyhing that gets in the way, explodes for damage AGAIN, and stuns. The tornado scales from mindpower, and the stun chance is mindpower VS phys save. The damage, however, ranges from (Assuming minimum values to buy the skill) about 21 for things in the path, then a radius 2 explosion of 42 physical + 42 lightning at 1/5, to 48 for things caught in the path and a radius 4 explosion of 93 lightning + 93 physical, and a 6 turn stun for the target. It scales decently well with mindpower, too. At 60 will and 50 cunning, it'll do 68 to anything in it's path, and 127 damage of phys and lightning. Many things will be hit for both, and knockbacks aplenty. The range and radius of the explosion all increase with investment. The range increases at a rate of (3>4>5>6>6), the explosion radius at (2>2>3>3>4). Generally I would use this on the most threatening thing in a crowd for the stun, but the travel path and explosion is a decent AOE in itself. It doesn't affect the caster either, so this may be worth using, and then running out of the scattered group with lightning speed.
- Lightning Breath: Of all the breath weapons this is perhaps the most underwhelming. The usual cost and cooldowns, with variable damage for each thing hit between 100 and 300 damage. Because of how lightning damage works, this will usually hit in the range of 200 or so, give or take 50, putting it on par with the other breaths. The effect, however, is a mindpower-scaling daze chance. That's... kind of it. Daze is a nice status effect when you can keep applying it, but since anything from burning ticks to poison to something looking at them funny will end it, I don't care for this breath weapon. From my understanding, this is not an engagement tool. It is not a tool to be used mid-fight. It's to be used just before you disengage and flee or reposition around another choke-point. Because of the daze, do not use this with venom or fire breath until they've finished ticking.
Venom Drake Aspect
Another tree highly regarded, along with Sand Drake, and is one of the more common focuses. This tree offers our standard 1% resist per point in the tree (capping at 20% again), mind power, and it also offers solid damage, an infrequently resisted element, and a very nice debuff attached to the skills. It also has a nuke-attack. For battlefield control, engagements, and utility however, this tree lacks.
- Acid Spray: For somethis is the one point wondertax that helps out early on, and is then forgotten about. It scales with mindpower, and the base damage isn't terrible either. The range increases with each level (5>6>7>7>8), with a low cooldown of 6, and becomes a beam at 4/5. Between 1 and 5, it increases in power about 2.5x. It also comes with a nice 25% chance 3 turn disarm, which can render some combatants harmless if it actually works, but can't be relied upon.
- Corrosive Mist: A fan favorite, this is a caster-centered AOE that follows you, deals acid damage each turn they stay in the mist, and it also debuffs their armor, defense, and accuracy. The damage is never quite spectacular, but the radius increases to (2>3>4>4>5), and the debuff will last (2>3>3>3>4) turns, and I believe it will be reapplied as long as they stay in the mist. The debuff itself scales from mindpower, as does the duration (though I'm not entirely sure how, these numbers were taken at stat caps). The actual debuff seems to increase in power 2x base from levels 1 and 5. At a moderate cost and cooldown, this is a good damage-ticker, and helps you in melee, both to hit, and to avoid being hit.
- Dissolve: I'm fairly sure entire characters have been built around this skill. Dissolve attacks 4 times, dealing (35>46>54>61>67)% weapon damage as acid damage. At levels 2, 4, and 5, one of those attacks gains a 25% blind chance. This means 3 out of 4 of those attacks will have a blind chance at 5/5. Dissolve will take offhand weapons into account, and SUPPOSEDLY shields, but I have not noticed the latter myself. I have heard that decked out and at high levels, dissolve can deal over 1,000 damage in one turn reliably. For reference, assuming all four attacks hit, it deals a max of (140>184>216>244>268)% weapon damage, but deals on-hit procs each hit, and can crit.
- Corrosive Breath: Like all the other breath weapons, this can extend to a radius 10 cone of good damage, a little more potent than Sand Breath, but without annoyingly common resists. It scales from strength, and runs a scaling, mindpower based 3-turn disarm chance similar to Lightning Breath's daze. This is useful for groups of weapon-reliant enemies that you're about to face-tank. A decent method of engagement.
Combat Techniques
At a category point and class points that may be better spent elsewhere, this is a very... disrespected unlock choice, and some might even criticize it should be removed or replaced with something more useful. Still, for those wyrmics that are preferring to instead augment melee abilities with draconic abilities rather than vis versa, this may be for you.
- Rush: An increasing range and decreasing cooldown with point investment mean that for regular use it makes a poor 1 point wonder, but for occasional use this is a decent one for some mobility when you're trying to save infusions or lightning speed for an escape. The restrictions, low damage, and daze are mean that this skill doesn't really shine compared to some others.
- Precise Strikes: This scales with your dexterity, which wyrmics otherwise don't increase save perhaps to equip a dagger in an offhand, reduces attack speed, and boosts accuracy and crit-chance. While these effects would concievably stack with the passives offered by the teir 1 drake aspect skills, there's no real reason to worth a category point and skill points to raise this to the point of being useful. Still, if you have the tree already unlocked and plan to be a diet-wyrm wyrmic, this could help shore up the failings.
- Perfect Strike: A massive accuracy steroid, and blindfighting for a short duration. High cooldown, not insignificant cost, but granting up to 100 accuracy, it pretty much ensures that barring evasion, you will hit. Admittedly I don't really see a benefit to this, save perhaps to make absolutely sure that Dissolve does it's job beyond all shadow of doubt.
- Blinding Speed: OK, now this one might be why people would ever unlock this tree. Blinding speed offers a short-term global speed increase at a significant chunk of stamina and a boggling cooldown. You can get at 5/5 up to 45% global speed boost, which makes your faster movespeed from lightning speed all the more crazy. Still, I do not personally see a need or use for it, given all the other tools available.
Higher Draconic Abilities
The commonly unlocked tree and point sink for our already strained pool. It's a bit of a mixed bag of useful to useless, player by player, but it seems to be one of the most commonly heavy investment trees. For good reason too. This offers resists, penetrations, passive stat boosts, cooldown reductions for breath weapons, a nice attack, a potentially potent debuff, and a passive attack speed boost.
- Prismatic Slash: Need damage, don't care what element it comes from, and like big booms? Max this. Like extra attack speed? Max this. Point-starved and playing almost exclusively at range with your high movespeed and long range AOEs? Tax. It does scale nicely, however, at (161>178>191>202>211)% weapon damage, with a burst of a random element in a radius around you, in an also not insignificant amount. The real hilight though is the extra passive 12% physical and mental attack speed it offers.
- Venomous Breath: This one has people both proclaiming it to be great, and others to be horrible. Venemous breath is a low(er) damage DoT that cripples. It lasts a flat 6 turns, but with scaling damage based on strength, and a mind-based crit chance like other breath weapons. It deals this as nature-damage, and each point gives 3% nature resist, and 4% nature damage, totalling out at +15% resist nature, +20% nature damage delt. At 60 strength, with 5/5 this deals 70 nature damage per turn for 6 turns. Or if you prefer, it totals to 420 total nature damage, incurring a 23% chance to fail any action beyond basic attacks and movement. A fantastic opener to a fight you can't burst down.
- Wyrmic Guile: This gives us a free bonus of 2 cunning points per talent level up to 10, reduces breath cooldowns for up to half (6) at 5/5, 56% knockback resistence, and 30% stun / blind resist. There is... no reaosn not to cap this if you have the points, but nothing you can't live without. Still, those breath cooldown cuts help.
- Chromatic Fury: OK this one is a tiny bit underwhelming for a tier 4, but only a tiny bit. You gain 2% extra damage and 4% penetration in cold, fire, acid, lightning, and physical up to 10% and 20% respectively. The passive for this skill is a POTENT and POWERFUL...0.5% extra resist for those elements for each point in chromatic fury. Or +2.5% resists. No, no I don't know why you'd bother with 2.5% either. I think the passive was probably 1% but it got nerfed or something? Personally I'd rework it and make it activatable. Keep the damage and pen as passive bonuses, but make it so the next skill you use after activation gives you 1/1/2/3/3 wards of the associated element for a few turns.
Wyrmic Generics
Wow you're still reading this? Alright. Wyrmics can be a little generic-starved but nowhere near as much as class skills. Of particular note, they start with Fungus unlocked, Harmony available, and Call of the Wild unlocked as well. Fungus is incredibly potent once it gets set up with regeneration infusions, and other trees they start with access to have their high points too. For the purposes of this guide, I will NOT be going into anti-magic, or any other tree which the wyrmic does not begin the game with access to. Nor will I be discussing race trees, as I find race to be a matter of personal taste anyway. As a final note, you won't have that many spare generics just investing in what's already unlocked, if you have a race tree you choose to use talent up heavily (such as Dwarven 'Money is Power'). Baring sources of free generics, you may find yourself having to sacrifice something to cover another priority.
Combat Training
As melee-casters, we will undoubtedly be relying upon this tree to eat our generic points. I'm always personally torn between pumping points into here and getting the other trees set up early. Still, it's a matter of taste, as long as you consider what you're experiencing, and what areas you're failing in.
- Thick Skin: I think everyone knows what this one is, but for first time players who... have either cheated this class unlocked or are just browsing, Thick Skin offers 4% to 15% Resist All, and is gated behind ungodly amounts of Constitution. Most do not pump con enough to fill this tree fully, but instead get con up to a base level and then just equip gear which provides boosts when it's time to level this up. Resist All globally reduces all damage you take, provided that damage does not have penetration attached to it. This goes from physical damage to blight, to darkness, to mind. What have you. That's helpful for everything.
- Armor Training: As melee-ranged battlecasters with little use for stamina, there is almost no reason not to wear the thickest, heaviest, most monstrous piece of armor you can strap on. We want massive armor. We want shields (if you're into that kind of thing). We want to be able to stand there and cackle at the horde clawing at the metal before raining down death and destruction, or just devouring them wholesale. The actual scaling numbers aren't all that important, because this is one that wyrmic almost always wants to max outright, and get to 3 ASAP. Still, they offer extra hardiness, armor points, and crit reduction, as long as you're wearing heavy or massive armor. Which you should be. Tankier is better.
- Combat Accuracy: Some people max this, some don't. I find a minimum of 2/5 is absolutely necessary, with the rest coming from skills or equipment. Still, your skills CAN miss, and some reward hitting more frequently than not (dissolve). I would reccomend only putting points in this when you notice you start missing at critical moments, or too often for comfort. A viable tactic is floating a few points here until you get something with accuracy you'll be sticking beside for a long time.
- Weapon Mastery: From the As of axes, Cs of clubs, and Ss of swords, wyrmics spend most of their time whacking things over the head with something sharp and/or heavy as much as possible. This skill helps make sure that you can do that. Since it makes weapons stronger, it also makes our SKILLS stronger. (I think.) So max this.
- Dagger Mastery: OK-- remember what I said about dexterity? It fits here. THAT SAID! If you truly honest to gods want to use daggers, consider dumping CON or CUN and raise DEX and this as needed. Why would you do such a thing? Offhand damage, to stack with Dissolve, and handy stats on daggers you actually plan on using. Still, I'd say 'Don't do it.'
Call of the Wild
Just because it's bog-standard for wilders doesn't mean it's useless. Still, this isn't commonly invested in too heavily. It's a utility tree, plain and simple.
- Meditation: This skill gives us passive equilibrium 'regeneration', or active, if in a hurry. One point should suffice for 9 out of 10 players, but if you find yourself darting out of battle with high equilibrium and not much time before the next engagement, it may be worth pointing a bit. It'll raise healmod too. Since it's instant, this can be turned off immediately if trouble comes up.
- Nature's Touch: Here's our one direct heal, and it can be shared! Some people only put a single point in this and let scaling take over from there, especially since the Fungal tree gives us... other options in health recovery. Still, it's to taste, and not insignificant at early levels. Always worth at least one point.
- Earth's Eyes: Nature's Vision spell, with a meditation-enabled short range ESP. The usefulness is limited, but can be worth a point and set to auto-use when enemies aren't around with meditation enabled to make mapping take less time than just pressing 'Z' and hoping something doesn't eat you.
- Nature's Balance: Investment of this is to taste. If you find yourself staying in fights long enough that cooldowns become a problem, or get chain stunned but somehow this doesn't get included and you NEED to do something, this can reset your various talents' cooldowns. I wouldn't take it past 4/5 though, since there are no (to my knowledge) tier 6 talents, but it does cooldown a 7th random nature gift.
Fungus
Fungus doesn't look too awesome at first glance but, then that's always been true of fungus. It disguises how helpful... and deadly it can be. The industry standard is a 12 point investment here.
- Wild Growth: A 15 equilibrium sustain that you want on 24/7. Between this and Icy Skin, you'll probably have a fail chance on everything early game, but it is worth it with just a few points. What this does, is on top of enabling the rest of the tree for use, it extends the effectiveness of regeneration effects. Like Regen infusions. At 5/5, it will make a regen infusion heal 10 rounds instead of 5, for the same amount. What that means is, it doubles their effectiveness. Some healing infusions also have a 10 round cooldown or so...
- Fungal Growth: This is a one-point wonder honestly, but it can help early game with Nature's Touch, and Swallow. It adds a bonus regen effect (that's also affected by Wild Growth) for a percentage of the heal. Now this is important: This regen BLOCKS regen infusions, BUT you can right click them to cancel a lesser regeneration instantly, without taking a turn.
- Ancestral Growth: From a single point in, this skill is incredibly useful. From 5 points in with a good mindpower, it's broken. What this little beauty does, is it makes regeneration effects decrease your equilibrium as well (rather significantly) in battle, and when they're applied in the first place, they will give you a great big chunk of a turn. No I don't know how getting PART of a turn works, but people swear by it. When this and Wild Growth are maxed, you are able to treat regeneration infusions as almost instant, and keep them going perpetually with 1 or 2, which sucks away equilibrium, and keeps your life nice and full. Still gotta worry about burst damage though.
- Sudden Growth: Typically a one-point wonder, if you don't have a race tree this may be worth using for more. What this does is that it will take your current regen rate, and give it to you 6x over at once. This means you can, for example, take the full dose of a regen infusion at once, and still have the rest of the turns ticking down. If maxed, this will mean about 10 turns worth of regeneration in an instant.
Harmony
This is an odd bit of utility that you can get unlocked without a cat point if you repeat the action that unlocked the class in the first place. Not very highly regarded, and not many people use it. It does have some pretty interesting uses, however.
- Waters of Life: Poisons and diseases can become pretty deadly as levels go on, or you've just escaped something horrible and are watching in horror as you count down to death. This will make the damage turn into healing (proccing Fungal Growth possibly?) but retain the other negative effects. Nice as an emergency measure but not otherwise noteworthy.
- Elemental Harmony: Temporary buffs when you get hurt by base elements for a few turns. This passive is somewhat difficult to use intentionally, especially as Wyrmic skills no longer affect their casters. Still, none of them are outright useless, even at one point, but they are unreliable. Since this must be sustained, this also limits it's usefulness even if you chose to put 5 points in. Supposing you did max it, however, the duration of each buff and the magnitude would increase. Whether it be gaining 44% global speed from fire, 14 armor from cold, +5 to all stats from lightning, +16 life regen from acid, or +13 resist all from nature, any of the common spells or on-hit effects can usually proc SOMETHING, but actually using it is largely limited to activating it and forgetting it.
- One with Nature: A moderately high cost long cooldown activatable that lowers a few infusion cooldowns slightly, and removes infusion saturation effects. I do not personally see a big use for this, given at max level it only lowers cooldowns by 3 turns, but it'll cover all of your infusions. Still not useless at one point, as it IS an instant cast, and you can use it between regen infusions to keep their cooldowns low.
- Healing Nexus: Now this one is situationally useful, but the situations it's useful in are distressingly hilarious. Healing nexus is an AOE debuff that prevents all healing of those affected, and instead heals YOU for a portion of the blocked healing. Not too terribly many enemies heal overmuch, but some... some are just hilarious, like the Weirdling Beast, who heals almost constantly, for staggering amounts. Each stolen heal recovers equilibrium as well, and points increase the radius and duration of the effect, as well as the magnitude. At max points, this talent will heal you for 95% of the stolen heal effects. I do not personally know if that's worth it in the long run, but even just a single point can screw some enemies over.
Cunning Survival
Since escorts offer three of the four big skills here and none of them are entirely required, this is usually not unlocked, which also saves in generic points.
- Heightened Senses: This lets us detect and disarm traps at 3/5, I'm not too clear on the actual mechanics there, though. What this is used for primarily is to see further out of our range than we might with just light range. Infravision basically, which can extend almost to the default max range if levelled highly.
- Charm Mastery: If you find yourself making heavy use of torques, wands, or totems, this can decrease the cooldowns to something reasonable. Also works for activatables. Ranges from 11% reduction to 40% reduction. (IE, 30 seconds becomes 12. Of note, 30 turns is the typical cooldown on a psychoport torque...)
- Piercing Sight: Increases stealth and invis detection significantly, and it scales with cunning. Even a single point is amazing, and should always be taken at least once by an escort.
- Evasion: This activatable skill consumes nothing more than a turn to use it, and grants a miss-chance based upon cunning and dexterity to avoid damage entirely, as well as a defense steroid. The duration depends on willpower. Since Dex is not a common wyrmic stat, and Cun is a luxury or candy-stat, this means it's not usually worth heavy investment.
Intermission
Wow so this far and we've just covered skills and impressiosn they offer, as well as some very rough ideas of what they might be like to skill and use. Let's remember numbers aren't dead set, and the wiki is a good source for formulae and hard numbers. Still, almost everything scales nicely enough for its purpose. So if you're still reading rather than just hunting, let's take a moment to go to the lobby and have ourselves a snack.
Back yet? Good. Following this look at the skills we have at our disposal, I'll be discussing some theoretical playstyles (I say theoretical as I've not yet won with any, even commonly accepted viable ones) which should logically be viable. I make no promises of optimal however.