ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This is my insane winner:
https://te4.org/characters/3802/tome/f2 ... ef1993dae5

I've never won on insane but I've come close on sawbutchers in the past. Hopefully this'll be a pretty quick writeup. I do expect it to be nerfed, especially certain aspects.

This is a little different from previous wyrmic builds and has some odd weaknesses and strengths. I essentially played it as "breathe and swallow wyrmic"


Strengths -
Massive AOE Damage
Extremely Tanky
Survivable
Can easily clear Sludgenest for 600+ turns
Ranged

Weaknesses-
Bad early game
Bad at clearing Stormshield/Boneshield
Best in Slot items are generally going to be artifacts
Single target damage is lower than most other classes
Limited on infusion spots
No class talents to escape if surrounded



Races:

Very Good-
Thalore
Yeek

Good-
Any 0 xp race.

Doable-
Everything else

Impossible-
Undead (literally, you can't play undead wilders)

I haven't tried Krog much so I can't say much about it.

Stats :
Takes some consideration.
Split Str/Will power early on until you have 40 Will.
Then go pure str until level 22
After that :
Will>Str>Cun>Con

Prodigies:
ICCtW and Elemental Surge are the two best.

Meteors and any defensive prodigies are also options. Elemental Surge is just a good offensive AND defensive prodigy for Wyrmics (comes with a mini-spine of the world, and a magic equivalent version)

Elemental Surge is probably the better prodigy at 25 but you'll almost certainly never have 50 cun at 25, so ICCtW is probably first.

Short Build
1/5/1/5 Cold Drake
1/1/1/5 Sand Breath
1/1/1/5 Fire Drake
1/3/3/5 Higher Draconic
1/1/1/5 Venom Drake
3/1/1/5 Storm Drake
(There are extras - I put them into swallow and Wyrmic Guile - there's nothing wrong with using them for Combat Techniques and the speed talent)
Generics
1-3/1/5/1 Fungus
1/0/0/0 Mindstar
0/3/0/1/0/0 Combat Training - remember to take out weapon mastery at start
1/1/1/4 Call of the Wild (if extra cat point, 5/5 nature's balance for extra talent to reset)
1/1/5/5 Harmony
3/1/1/1 Antimagic

Class Skills
Most of these are self explanatory as to WHY they were distributed how they were.
Cold Drake-
Max icy skin ASAP. As this will be done, Ice Breath will almost certainly be the first breath you take as you're closest to that breath anyways. Ice Breath is also your best CC skill.

Sand Breath
1/1/1/5 - Swallow luxury
Swallow is a surprisingly good lategame investment. Not only does it boost your crit rate, the boost in life threshold is very helpful. It's also handy for rebuilding EQ. Sand Breath is probably your worst breath - it does the least damage and has an underwhelming status effect, and should be maxed last.
1/1/1/5 Fire Drake
This is your most damaging breath. It does a lot of upfront damage and has a hefty dot.
1/3/3/3 Higher Draconic
Guile,Slash,Chromatic Fury are all spots for luxury points.
Unlock at 20, and immediately refund whatever you took before hand to be able to get a point in chromatic fury. This instantly doubles your breath damage. Chromatic Slash does a lot of damage but you're actually mainly in it for the speed with this build. Guile gives fairly low status resist for one of these talents, but it's a passive and boosts your breaths.
Venomous breath should be great, but anything dangerous clears it instantly, meaning that it's best used for throwing on trash mobs to trigger your elemental surge. It's the only breath that might not be worth 5/5 even with this build - 3/5 is radius 8 breath and it has no up front damage.

1/1/1/5 Venom Drake
Float points in acidic spray early to actually kill things. Early game you're just going to be running around kiting everything. Corrosive Breath is your most reliably damaging breath - it does the highest burst damage and disarm is much more rarely resisted.

3/1/1/5 Storm Drake
5/5 Lightning Speed luxury. Lightning breath is one of the nicer breaths, doing a good amount of burst with one of the better effects (stuns). However, late game it falls off due to stun resists becoming more common.


Generics
1-3/1/5/1 Fungus
The first point in wild growth has the greatest effect, with 3 points being the next sort of breakpoint. Ancestral Life is great late game but early on it's mostly noticeable for the equilibrium regen effect.
1/0/0/0 Mindstars (COULD go 5/1/1/1 , depends on preference)
This is actually just for the 30 physical power for a point in them. Mindstars are your best weapons and a lot of the time you'll just bump attack something while waiting for breaths to come off CD. The 18 sustain effect isn't actually worth activating until after you're hitting people or very late in the game, as mindstars no longer reliably have willpower to offset the effect.

0/3/0/1/0/0 Combat Training
Thick skin to taste. Weapons mastery isn't something you're going to use unless you find Ureslak's set, and even then you might not WANT to hit people with it as some of the effects are much better than others. 1 point in accuracy for early game, and it works with mindstars (even though willpower is their accuracy stat)

1/1/1/4 Call of the Wild
Rush this ASAP. It lets you double up your breath attacks - until 4 points breaths won't be reset with it. But once you have this, you can chain all of your breaths twice in a row.
1/1/5/5 Harmony
Standard for Harmony. You won't be able to have the sustain to use elemental harmony.

3/1/1/1 Antimagic
You CAN skip antimagic, but then you need to give up a slot for the dissipation rune rather than 5 generic talent points. That said, if you DO go anti-magic, do it pretty late.




Build Path
Juggle acidic spray points early game. Max icy skin, rush Ice Breath and 1 other breath in your class skills. I prefer Fire, but Lightning is also viable (these two trees have the best 1 point abilities before the breath - Acid is the best breath but Corrosive Mist and Dissolve aren't very good in this setup)

Burrow/Lightning speed is your basic escape combo, but Sand Breath is your worst breath, so you're going to get it later than the first two.

In your generics, rush Nature's Balance 4/5. This lets you have 4 5/5 breath attacks in 5 turns very early. It will still do pathetic damage until you get to level 22 though.

Inscriptions
Healing
Regeneration
Wild - Phys or Magic
Wild - Mental
PRIMAL/Healing/Dissipation

Primal Infusion Combo
If you're lucky enough to find a primal infusion, use it immediately, basically-
Use it either when you're in danger or when equilibrium is high. If both resist % and affinity % are high enough, your character is essentially invulnerable unless they take a hit for more than their max HP value (which is probably possible on Madness). This is part of why Antimagic is still viable even though you almost certainly can't use Antimagic shield - with Resolve and Primal Infusion generally you'll actually heal from the damage. Combo it with Healing Nexus, and generally you'll have all your equilibrium go away in the next 1-2 turns.

It seems to some conflicting info in here?

Like, you say you don't care for weapon damage by not putting points into weapon mastery and use mindstars instead but then you take ICCTW? Isn't that one a bit wasteful with a mindstar build?

Congrats on your win, welcome to Insane! I don't know much about Wyrmics, but I'm curious about your race choice of Yeek. The fragility inherent in Yeek would seem like it would exacerbate the tough early game which you note as a weak point for the build, is this just to rush to 22nd level as fast as possible? And is that what you expect to be nerfed? Being able to spam a bunch of really powerful AoE cone attacks is quite good but doesn't seem out of line with some of the other bananas stuff possible in this game.

I don't know if you have expansions but:

If you have Cults, I would imagine both Drem and Krog would ultimately synergize very well, as both have very powerful racial abilities from level 1 - Drem's Frenzy will improve your breath spam significantly (adding 4 more breaths to your initial rotation, much more than a cat point into Call of the Wild, and this should only get better as your speed improves) and From Below It Devours has a taunt and pull combo that could shore up the weakness you note in having no tools to escape when surrounded. Krog's "everything I do also stuns" should help round out their early game, their ability to add a resist of their choice (likely physical) will help stack with their Wyrmic and Antimagic resistances, they're straight up better at Antimagic than everyone else (+0.2 initial mastery, with another +0.1 via the Antimagic quest), and Fuel Pain is pretty strong against damage spikes. Krog also have a unique sword and mace item set (Dedication and Perseverance) that, if you get it, has pretty good buffs.

If you've got EoR and are willing to save or mod to choose escorts (I always run the Select First Escort mod for this purpose) then Tinkers would seem to be a good choice for the class, dropping an inscription. Something like 4/1/1 Physics (first point free on unlock) and Chemistry 3/3 (likewise) for Crystal Plating, dual Crystal Edges (would also give you light damage on weapon attack to start building that surge), Alchemists Helper, Iron Grip, Grounding Strap, Mental Stimulator with tier 5 materials gives +10 all stats, another +10 cunning, +30% crit power multiplier, +25% fire/nature/acid damage, immunity to disarm, +50% stun resist, and access to Salves/Medical Injectors, which are much more flexible than infusions and very helpful for AM characters in particular.

@OnkOnk: breath damage scales off strength.

[[/color]

OnkOnk wrote:It seems to some conflicting info in here?

Like, you say you don't care for weapon damage by not putting points into weapon mastery and use mindstars instead but then you take ICCTW? Isn't that one a bit wasteful with a mindstar build?

Breaths scale very strangely - the damage for them is only from strength and willpower. Mental power affects the stick rate of the breaths. Icctw is the only real prodigy you can take to increase your breath damage all the time (meteoric crash and elemental surge have CDs) and the phys power it grants does increase mindstar damage, though that's only 10-15% of your overall damage regardless. The mindstars are used to boost your breath crit rate mostly, and you won't have the stats to hit with non mindstar weapons.

Basically chromatic fury doubles your damage at 22, then ICCtW gives roughly +25% more damage at 25. So there's a HUGE spike from level 21 to 25.



As for yeeks, they wind up about 300-400 less HP at 50 than the times I tried as Thalore. That means 2300 instead of 2600 HP, which isn't that big a deal, just need a few more points in wild growth. The free 1.5 turns on dropping below 30% HP is great for repositioning. Both thalore and yeek racial summons go well with the build as you should have 100 or so will to boost their stats. Wild growth and icy skin mean you get a LOT of bonus HP early, which offsets yeek fragility. The whole point of yeek is to make your weakest period as short as possible.

I have embers and cults but one of the breaths doesn't scale with chromatic fury(bugged ATM) and both require very different builds. Tinkers is always a viable option, and would be good if you never found primal.

My fear for drem and krog was that this build is very weak until lvl 22, and they have XP penalties, but I also just haven't had time to use them much yet.

The current breath nerfs on git are to the CD and EQ of them rather than the damage(12->20 each), which would leave this as a viable. I know primal will get nerfed as well (that's the main bonkers part - for 22 turns, you can spend 20 of them almost literally invulnerable and ignoring EQ costs for 16 of them, and are then able to do it again after another 40 turns, with primal also having a very high uptime. Pretty much nothing before high peak can live through 12-13 breaths, 4-5 autos, manaclash,and swallow. And if it can, you cast burrow, lightning speed, and run away to redo your combo)

Burning hex is basically the nightmare of this build.

I played a yeek wyrmic during the beta, and the new first fungus talent and buffed yeek talents made it definitely one of the easier early game combos (of any class) I've played

Ah - that's my Wyrmic inexperience, then. I was thinking you still had to defeat the Tempest prior to unlocking Fungus and that therefore your early game would be helped by more HP, I see now that you don't.

Thanks for the guide! It helped me get my first wyrmic win and my first 1.6.0 win.

I had been skeptical of mindstar wyrmics before, but now I'm a believer.

The reworked Wyrmic Guile really boosted the damage output, and Swallow seems to succeed a lot more now.

I picked up a Disengage by betraying a Sun Paladin, which helped with the escape-when-surrounded thing. The lower single-target damage is barely an issue post-lv25 (then again, everything is an issue pre-lv25) since the breaths are so OP (can't imagine clearing the new crowded Prides with any other class now). The last battle with Argoniel and Elandar was probably the quickest and most painless that I've done--I reassigned a bunch of points from Harmony to Antimagic; maybe that helped?

Nevuk wrote: The current breath nerfs on git are to the CD and EQ of them rather than the damage(12->20 each), which would leave this as a viable.

So, breaths really aren't viable without Chromatic Fury. ...but Chromatic Fury makes them too good, and the response is to nerf base breaths instead of changing Chromatic Fury's effects?

What is the design vision for breaths?

What about Higher to use Highborn Bloom? (This does work on EQ talents right? I've never actually tried it.) You're probably going to blast a bunch of breaths in a row at the start of most fights, and so it seems like you'd get your money's worth, especially if the EQ cost of breaths is going up. Might leave more room for EQ sustains or using AM shield.

So, Breaths were nerfed and Wyrmics overall were nerfed. Weirdly, the nerfs seem to hurt normal wyrmics more than a pure breath wyrmic. Pure Breath wyrmics were already extremely bursty and reliant on taking things down in their first 12 turns anyways, and this doesn't hurt their opening move much.

Changes :
Wyrmic Guile no longer gives str/will
Breaths are 20/20 EQ/CD cost instead of 12/12
Chromatic Fury now gives less at 5/5 than it used to at 2/5 for res pen.

This is offset by Nightmare/Insane no longer giving as much bonus HP to enemies (there's a git commit to this effect on 11/2 and I never saw it reverted). My guess is it bumps both breath and weapon Wyrmics down at least a tier, but breath wyrmics are still insane viable (though there are almost definitely high peak bosses you'll have to skip).

The difference is that you may have to kite more. Hit with all of your breaths and nature's balance to hit them again, and if they're still alive run around in circles for a while. Swallow and Mindstars are still a finisher. Healing Nexus remains your counter to healing enemies.


Primal Infusion was massively nerfed, but the combo discussed earlier is still useful as long as you can spare a category point - once you have 2 wilds, 1 regen, 1 healing, there's not really a better option if you go AM (if you go arcane, may as well use the dissipation rune). It gives infinite EQ which is more important (the Higher racial may be useful for this too, but you won't pump magic normally so I didn't think you'd get too much out of the race as a whole).

Smoother Early Game :
I was trying a wyrmic out in EoR, where the early game is MUCH harder, to the point of having to restart a lot so I got a smoother build for it.
Essentially you rely on acid spray, float up to the full 5/5 in it. Yes, one point will be stuck there, but you'll need it eventually anyways. This allows you to go Will primarily, with Str as secondary, and still improve in damage. You only stop floating the points in it after taking Chromatic Fury and having at least two breaths maxed. Thaloren's affinity is also good when combined with Nexus to alleviate EQ issues.

In EoR, you need to take Harmony with your level 10 Cat point for Healing Nexus - it's impossible to kill John without a point in it unless you have disruption mindstars or a stinging totem.
ps:
If feeling ESPECIALLY lazy, invest in the mist ability and turn it on autocast when enemies are adjacent for the 2nd dungeon and autoexplore.

My guess is wyrmics were B tier before, high D/low C tier now.

Dajawn wrote:Garbage guide, 5/5 in all breaths is a terrible idea no matter what and recommending them before Burrow(???????????) is a terminal bpatism.
Also, wyrmic is still B tier, all they needed was 500 more and guarenteed primal infusion to have enough defenses not to be a liability on Insane.
If you're just breathing 1h + shield > mindstars for stat sticks, if you're using weapon attacks then you need 5/5 psiblades still.

Yeah I do usually get burrow before SWL (so after T1s are done). I just level sand breath last as it is kind of awful. Guess I should have made that clearer.

I go 5/5 two breaths, then get the rest to 3/5. End game though, what's better than points in them if you're going pure caster basically? Swallow and Lightning speed are the two I can think of for sure.

Dajawn wrote:---, 5/5 in all breaths is a terrible idea no matter what and recommending them before Burrow(???????????) ---.
Also, wyrmic is still B tier, all they needed was 500 more hp and guarenteed primal infusion to have enough defenses not to be a liability on Insane.
If you're just breathing 1h + shield > mindstars for stat sticks, if you're using weapon attacks then you need 5/5 psiblades still.

It is a BREATH wyrmic guide. I haven't played wyrmic enough to know what build has the highest power ceiling, but regardless, not everything has to be maximally efficient, nor was any such claim made. Besides, what's more awesome, hitting people with a sword like a dozen other classes or breathing epic fire like the awesome part man-part dragon you are? I've been playing a breath wyrmic along these lines and very much enjoying myself. This guide does a nice job of discussion strategies, strengths, and weaknesses for such a build. Overall very fun guide, would recommend.

Do you start with a 2H weapon for the early game and transition over to mindstars later? It seems like mindstar damage is pretty low early game.

DaveStall wrote:Do you start with a 2H weapon for the early game and transition over to mindstars later? It seems like mindstar damage is pretty low early game.

Usually mindstar whenever you first find them. Using 2h is fine for the first dungeon but you don't ever use Dex so you won't be able to hit most enemies period after that without a lot more points in combat accuracy than is ideal. Early game is carried by acid spray.

Nevuk wrote:

DaveStall wrote:Do you start with a 2H weapon for the early game and transition over to mindstars later? It seems like mindstar damage is pretty low early game.

Usually mindstar whenever you first find them. Using 2h is fine for the first dungeon but you don't ever use Dex so you won't be able to hit most enemies period after that without a lot more points in combat accuracy than is ideal. Early game is carried by acid spray.

That makes sense. I hadn't thought about not building Dex.

I have never been able to get a Wyrmic past the T2s. I look forward to giving this a go. Thanks for the guide!