Drem Oozemancers: Frenzy + Slime Roots

[Snarvid]

Although the infinite time via Fungal Blood interaction is gone now that Ancestral Life has changed, Drem Oozemancers are still amazingly powerful and IMO still worthy of consideration among the most powerful class/race combos in the game (outside of Adventurers, of course). Rather than rewrite my whole Oozemancer guide around it I thought I would pull this part of the discussion out for separate consideration.

Drem have Frenzy starting at level 1. An instant speed talent with 3 turn duration (but effectively 4, given that it's 3 turns after the current turn is over), while Frenzy is up the first time you use any non-instant class (not generic, racial, or Prodigy) talent it does not go on cooldown.

Slime Roots is an Oozemancer class skill first available at level 12 that provides non-instant teleport that takes somewhere between 1-3 (non-fixed cooldown) talents off of cooldown. Reaching the full 3 resets requires upgraded Slime mastery, whether from item (Sludgegrip, Oozing Heart, Amulet), category point, or Adept prodigy (if you haven't found Sludgegrip by level 25, I would recommend taking Adept). Slime Roots cannot reset Prodigies but can reset infusions in addition to any class, generic, or racial talent.

Slime Roots can reset Frenzy. Frenzy prevents Slime Roots from going on cooldown. With maxed mastery, the combo is therefore something like "get 3 talents on cooldown (one of which will be Frenzy), teleport with Slime Roots, use up however many Frenzy turns are left, repeat." You can, of course, reset them faster if you really need to repeat a talent in a hurry (if nothing else, you might need to teleport out of your current location). This does impose a fairly high tax on your actions, as you're essentially giving up 1/4th of your turns in order to never have your talents on cooldown and relocate, and puts a bit of additional stress on your EQ generation, but overall I consider these to be modest costs that generate significant extra value.

Options to consider for your 2 non-Frenzy talents to reset include:

- Infusions. Not bad to be able to constantly refresh Heroism or Regeneration, particularly with the new Fungal boost to regen duration (although note that if you're going to use Regeneration it's better to do that before you hit Frenzy so as to not waste one of your Frenzy turns).

- Instant speed talents. Most notable here are Grasping Moss (note that you don't want to invest in any additional Mosses as a Drem Oozemancer, since they all go on cooldown whenever you use one and that will interfere with your cooldown management), Mucus, and Thorn Grasp.

- From Below It Devours. This is extremely important - being able to spam taunting, pulling meat-shields as frequently as you like is a very powerful defensive ability, and also helps you with your EQ management as a. it doesn't cost any EQ to you and b. every mouth in your Mucus feeds you additional EQ.

- Class talents you want to repeat. Sometimes a particular talent will be highly relevant to given battle and you would prefer to repeat it ASAP. Most notably, I have found this to be true for Acidfire, which provides stacking damage and multiple proc chances to blind and remove magical sustains from its target - in some battles, such as when an opponent is packing a high level Blurred Mortality or Osmotic Shield, knocking down their sustain can be the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of additional HP worth of damage. You might also want or need to repeat Call of the Ooze if you feel the need to divide incoming damage by as many directions as possible, and it also turns out to be some of your best single-target damage when executed with a tinker-modded mindstar. (Also worth noting here that this build will see more use from Reabsorb than most Oozemancers due to your much-improved ability to replenish you bloated oozes.). Finally, Oozewalk to remove negative statuses can often be a priority.

- Generic talents. Sudden Growth and Nature's Equilibrium are great heals (though like regen infusions they are best done prior to raising Frenzy) that can snag you a little extra time through Ancestral Life, keeping Leaves Tide up is solid defense and AoE pain, while being able to reset Antimagic Zone and Mana Clash gives you very nice resource destruction and silence options against magic-wielding enemies (particularly in conjunction with Eyal's Wrath).

While the fun of this system comes from assembling specific combos as needed, my standard 2 non-Frenzy talents to include in my first Slime Roots reset are usually From Below It Devours and Mucus. The former pulls aggro and gives me time to start stacking my DoTs, the latter helps manage EQ, starts passively spawning Living Mucus, and sets me up for Oozewalk (which is quite nice under Frenzy as a repeatable status clear and, if you also throw an Acid Splash under your Frenzy rotation, gives you even more mobility).

One more interesting implication of this playstyle to note: in my Oozemancer guide I strongly lean towards Nature as your main damage category, suggesting Oozing Blades is an auto-take and Corrosive Blades a non-starter. This is because when you're building a damage rotation as an Oozemancer, most of the faster cooldown talents you get by default deal nature damage (spit, spores, mucus, mosses) so its much easier to build a rotation off of nature than acid. The downside of this approach is that much of this nature damage comes through poison, and a non-trivial percentage of the game's enemies are either packing Water of Life or poison immunity. With a Drem Oozemancer, I think it makes just as much sense to focus on Acid damage as it does Nature damage - with potentially as few as 3 attack skills in your rotation you can easily do Acidfire/Acid Splash/Corrosive Seeds or Eyal's Wrath, with your Mucus poison damage serving mainly to proc Corrosive Nature. This opens up welcome build space for Acidmancers.

Cheers!

[Snarvid]

And, now patched out, which was why I didn't update the other guide. (And had requested the change a while back, but you gotta play the game you got.)

Oh CapnCrunch, when will you learn?

[Delfofthebla]

And, now patched out, which was why I didn't update the other guide. (And had requested the change a while back, but you gotta play the game you got.)

Oh CapnCrunch, when will you learn?

Never got a chance to play with this. What version was it patched out in? I don't see a patch note related to this anywhere.

[Snarvid]

I think it was a small patch between 1.6 and 1.61. 1.6 let Drem enter Zigur if Kroshkkur was destroyed, and I note it being patched out on Nov 1, but there's no patch date between the two.