ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Since I got a nice artefact short staff from drowning rares, I am building a short staff ogre sun paladin. Magic is maxed, the plan is to max strength, and to give roughly equal love to dexterity and cunning. Here is the char. I am currently in Dreadfell, and it's time to choose my first prodigy. What do people recommend? Here are the ones I am considering:

Irresistible Sun: Crowd control sounds nice, since this guy likes being surrounded by monsters (retribution!) and having some in melee range.

You Shall Be My Weapon: Single target damage is what wins you the game, and this guy should easily be able to get one or two size categories above big. But that places restrictions on item choice if one makes that a priority.

Giant Leap: more mobility means also more survivability. At the moment, by character is relying on rush and occasionally path of the sun. My plan was to get a movement infusion with the next category point, but this might replace it, mightn't it?

Eternal Guard: this would be with a view to getting spectral shield as the second prodigy.

Arcane Might: I will have to play around on the training dummy, but since magic is maxed, I suspect that this will be a very serious damage boost. It might also make it a viable option to not max strength, and instead pump dex and cun much further?

Cauterize: this is always an awesome prodigy, although on a Sun Paladin, of all characters, I am not sure. Needless to say that Second Life is already maxed. How do the two play together?

Draconic Will (after coming back from the East) or Unbreakable Will: currently my ways of dealing with status effects are: two wild infusions, crusade (oh how I love that talent) and Providence. I still haven't fully figured out how to use Providence optimally. On Insane, there are so many rares that you can't pop up Providence ahead of any rare fight. And if you are already in a fight and find yourself coated in negative effects, Providence is suboptimal, because it will take a turn, which gives your opponents time to coat you in more debuffs. It seems like the two above prodigies would help me deal with that, being instant cast, respectively passive.

Something I have occasionally problems with are stealthed/invisible monsters. I find Cunning/Survival a pretty boring category and was hoping to not have to unlock it. Any ideas on how to cover that weakness?

Some thoughts from the pros would be much appreciated!

elemental surge
you get a nice big shield every time you brandish, or retribution goes off.
if you have a really powerful melee attack, even wave of power could trigger it.
and then thx to the weapon of light, it stays there.
well, the shield can only be triggered only once every 15 turns, so not every attack can do it, but you have a few ways.

also as for the cauterize question.
cauterize works before the damage is taken, and turns it into irresistible fire damage over time.
second life triggers after you are dropped below 0, it sets your life to 1, and then heals you good.

as for stealth... i think a hat of tracking should be able to deal with it... maybe.
if you have something like track, it is always a good idea to map out the area ahead of time, and nuke things from behind the corner.
path of light->sun strike blind (surprise M***** f*****)-> retreat back behind a corner.
if its stealthd, you can then try and find his position with a wave of power, as it doesn't go off without a target.
likewise, if you know that he is adjacent, you can pop a shield/offense talent, since they have auto targeting and cannot go off without a valid target.
if after you move out, the stealthed enemy is 4 tiles away, (3 empty tiles in between) instead of retreting after sunstrike, you could take a move forward. if the enemy moves with the same speed as you, it will end up adjacent. pop assault or or brandish, and the enemy is done for. since blind should last around 2 more turns, you can pop another 2 talents.

if there is a nonstealthed enemy, or enemies, next to your stealthed target, between brandish and retribution, supercharged with counter striking from block, chances are its going to die on its own.

Radon26 wrote:elemental surge
you get a nice big shield every time you brandish, or retribution goes off.
if you have a really powerful melee attack, even wave of power could trigger it.
and then thx to the weapon of light, it stays there.
well, the shield can only be triggered only once every 15 turns, so not every attack can do it, but you have a few ways.

Nice, missed that one. But when you say "nice big shield", it looks like it will not be much more than 200, and also somewhat unreliable (30% of all crits). It seems like the two shield prodigies will give me more (and more reliable) raw damage absorption, no?

Thank you also for the other points!

wait, it son crits? i was sure on "more than xxx of valid damage type"...
and well, it may not be that big on its own, but weapon of light can still prolong it...

well, i guess i remembered it wrong. but after rereading it on tome tips, i still have to say.
shield/offense has multi hitting talents, and sun's vengeance has +crits. so with weapon of light it should be fairly reliable.
and alright, 200 may not be "huge" but considering you don't have to spend turns and resources on it, its decent.

i am sorry for misinforming you and its good that you check the info you get. unfortunately people are mistaken sometimes.

Personally, I would take either Flexible Combat or Eternal Guard depending on whether you feel the need for more offense or defense. There are many good options though.

I ended up going for Eternal Guard. I figured that would be defense and offense at the same time, since counterstrikes are nice!

To my surprise, arcane might was extremely underwhelming. On an unarmoured training dummy, it changed my damage per bump attack from an average of 400 to 480.