Ogre Saw Paladin
Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 4:56 am
First, this is not a detailed sun paladin guide. If you want such a thing go to see Micbran's (actually ster's). I'm just introducing a sun paladin build, which is not detailed in that guide, and is probably pretty op (at least in my case).
Here's my winner https://te4.org/characters/235359/tome/ ... 4cefc0719c. He got some additional stats and class points from a forbidden tome, but those are not needed. One death was in dreadfell, fighting 2 archmage uniques and one was invisible. I killed the other and thought I was safe and started walking away and met my death like 3 turns after. The other one is from Atamathon, who got some nasty class combinations.
Got the 100 sludgenest achievement and killed Linaniil with ease, killed Atamathon eventually, and also killed the Hypostasis of Entropy. Final DPT was over 10k.
The core idea is being an ogre, getting both Crusade and Guardian tree, and wielding a saw instead of a shield in off-hand. Steam can be regenerated with one of the 2 fixdarts, Steamcatcher and Steam Powerd Boots. In all my runs, at least one of them has been dropped. And if they don't show up early, or if you're lazy switching equipments when resting, you can actually use a steam generator before High Peak (what I did). This build just does enough damage to almost one-shot anything before High Peak. Plus 100 steam is actually quite a lot, I was able to clear 2 floors of High Peak (without the hidden vaults) without recharging steam.
Reasons to Use Saw instead of Shield:
0) saws are counted as shield for shield-related skills (aside from weapon mastery, which you don't have any way).
1) one more attack when bumping. And though on your character sheet the saw damage is probably only half of the shield, the actual Shield of Light damage are about the same, because the character sheet shield damage does not count the off-hand penalty while saw damage counts, and in combat both counts. The lower base damage of saws doesn't matter a lot because of no mastery of either.
2) saws are likely to have more offensive bonus, and they can attach weapon tinkers.
Stat: enough MAG for talent unlocks > STR > MAG > CUN > DEX/CON
Prodigy: Arcane Might at lv30 and Flexible Combat at lv42.
Category Point Usage: Crusade tree, Tinker, inscription, Guardian tree in order.
Inscription: early Healing+Movement+physical Wild, when you get the fourth add a Heroism, and replace Wild (first) and Healing with injectors as you find good injectors (with 70% cd or less). The first injector is used for status cleanse (and heal if you really need some), and the second a full time Pain Suppressor effect. If your Healing infusion is really good and your resistance is already good, you may keep the Healing and give up the Pain Suppressor Salve (I did regret replacing my Healing, with a number close to 500 and 7cd).
Escorts: Tinker (necessary) and Thief/ temporal explorer for Track/ Precognition (necessary). If you select your escorts and know that one will spawn in trollmire/korpul you can actually try to betray a temporal explorer to get Dream Walk. It's like a free Phase Door rune without buff so that if you're surrounded you have an option to escape. Other good ones include Unflinching Resolve from warriors, Disarm from loremasters, Arcane Eye/ Vision from seers and Device Mastery from thieves.
Alchemist Rewards: +2 generic points, +4% spell crit, these 2 are highly recommended.
Equipments: You want damage for your main weapon, and debuffs on hit and general bonus on your saw (you don't have saw mastery and off-hand penalty reduce, so the damage of your saw is not going to be high any way. and you can make saws from 1Hs, so keep an eye on these drops.). To exploit the Flexible Combat, you want a gauntlet with war-making ego. See Cathbald's hand-gear guide for the detail. You also want 100% stun immunity and 100% physical critical chance. Other general bonus you want first are spell crit, crit multiplier, physical damage, physical speed and physical damage penetration, and those you want next are armor (though if this is too low you should try to raise this first), max hp, resistance, STR and physical power, MAG and spell power, saves, on-hit debuffs...
Special mention to 2 specific bonus: -10% spell cd (found on shoes and diggers), + Combat Training mastery (found on cloaks, and a very low chance on amulets, and some fixdarts). You should always equip these as long as the other bonus from the item is not way too bad.
And you should keep one of the steam-regenerating fixdart, and some useful charms in your inventory.
Tinkers: Weapons - Crystal Edge main, Silver Filigree backup, Razor Edge if you need it, Acid Groove if you don't need Razor Edge but have no Crystal Edge. Body - Spike Attachement early, Crystal Plating later. Head - Focus Lens main or Head Lamp main if you need accuracy, Air Recycler backup for water breath and silence immunity. Cloak - Grounding Strap. Hand - Iron Grip (note this also has an active instant unarmed attack). Belt - Fungal Web. Feet - Kinetic Stabiliser or Rocket Boots if you have Mechanical 2. Lite - White Light Emitter.
Class Talents:
Two-handed Assault - 4/1/3/0 core. Stunning Blow 4 high priority. All talents here does not include off-hand saw attack.
Shield Offense - 1/1/1/1 core. Assault is the only useful talent.
Combat Veteral - 0/0/0/0 core.
Combat - 1/5/1/5 core, anything luxury. Second Life 5 high priority.
Sun - 1/4/5/5 core, Sun Ray 3 luxury. Path of the Sun 2 high priority. Some may claim that Suncloak should also be high priority but myself is not a fan of a buff that takes a turn.
Crusader - 1/2/5/4 core. Flash of the Blade 4 high priority.
Guardian - 5/1/3/4 core, Retribution luxury. Don't use Brandish ever, it's not worth the high positive cost.
General Talents:
Ogre - 1/5/1/1 core, Scar-Scripted Flesh luxury. No need to hurry for Grisly Contribution 5 and start ogrewielding. Only do this when you've found a good shield/saw and have spare points.
Combat Training - Heavy Armor Training 3 and Weapon Mastery 5 core and high priority. You may want to float 3 points in Combat Accuracy. Thick Skin, Heavy Armor Training and Combat Accuracy luxury. Light Armor Training luxury only if you've found a robe with decent offensive bonus and your total armor is not too low.
Chants - 1/1/2/0 core, Chant Acolyte and Chant Radiant 1 luxury.
Light - 1/4/1/3 core, everything luxury. Barrier 1 high priority, set it to auto-use when no enemy in sight.
Physics - 4/1/2/0 core, Mechanical 2 luxury.
Chemistry - 3/1/1/0 core.
Positive Management
Your positive will be plenished with the auto-casting Barrier when resting, but in fight they can be consumed fast by Shield of Light, and you still need them to get further heal from Shield of Light, and use 2 important talents - Mark of Light and Flash of the Blade. The main way to regenerate positive in fight is using Absorption Strike and Crusade, as well as Sun Ray combined with Sun's Vengeance. Whenever you get a Vengeance of the Sun effect and your positive is not near full, you should use Sun Ray. Plus, utility skills like Path of the Sun, Suncloak, and all Light talents also generates positive so feel free use them if you need positive.
Side Note - How to combat the Hypostasis of Entropy
This is from my only experience combating this thing, and though I won, the following may not be fully correct.
Make sure you have some good physical penetration, and better change your belt to one with reduce damage from summons. Use Silver Filigrees on your weapons. You may want to actual equip your steam-regenerating fixdart because the fight can be long. If your inscriptions other than the Heroism and Movement are not very good, you may want to replace one or both with magical Wilds.
Copy the glyphs from one of the High Peak floors, put it into the egress. Equip the Staff of Absorption in your off set, tinker it with Crystal Edge, and wait it to recharge. Then enter the portal.
The fight seems not begin until you approach IT close enough. So feel free approaching a bit. When IT's in range of your Staff of Absorption, cast your buffs (Sun Cloak, Barrier, Bath of Light etc.) and activate the Staff. Then switch to your main weapons, charge to IT and let the epic battle begin. You'll get an entropy debuff which can only be cleared by entering an atropy zone, but I've found that rushing towards those zones are actually a bad idea since you're not damaging IT and ITs shadows can chase you with ease.
If you have any feedback feel free to post it here, but please don't question this build for roleplaying reasons (e.g. saws are cruel weapons and good paladins shouldn't use them).
Here's my winner https://te4.org/characters/235359/tome/ ... 4cefc0719c. He got some additional stats and class points from a forbidden tome, but those are not needed. One death was in dreadfell, fighting 2 archmage uniques and one was invisible. I killed the other and thought I was safe and started walking away and met my death like 3 turns after. The other one is from Atamathon, who got some nasty class combinations.
Got the 100 sludgenest achievement and killed Linaniil with ease, killed Atamathon eventually, and also killed the Hypostasis of Entropy. Final DPT was over 10k.
The core idea is being an ogre, getting both Crusade and Guardian tree, and wielding a saw instead of a shield in off-hand. Steam can be regenerated with one of the 2 fixdarts, Steamcatcher and Steam Powerd Boots. In all my runs, at least one of them has been dropped. And if they don't show up early, or if you're lazy switching equipments when resting, you can actually use a steam generator before High Peak (what I did). This build just does enough damage to almost one-shot anything before High Peak. Plus 100 steam is actually quite a lot, I was able to clear 2 floors of High Peak (without the hidden vaults) without recharging steam.
Reasons to Use Saw instead of Shield:
0) saws are counted as shield for shield-related skills (aside from weapon mastery, which you don't have any way).
1) one more attack when bumping. And though on your character sheet the saw damage is probably only half of the shield, the actual Shield of Light damage are about the same, because the character sheet shield damage does not count the off-hand penalty while saw damage counts, and in combat both counts. The lower base damage of saws doesn't matter a lot because of no mastery of either.
2) saws are likely to have more offensive bonus, and they can attach weapon tinkers.
Stat: enough MAG for talent unlocks > STR > MAG > CUN > DEX/CON
Prodigy: Arcane Might at lv30 and Flexible Combat at lv42.
Category Point Usage: Crusade tree, Tinker, inscription, Guardian tree in order.
Inscription: early Healing+Movement+physical Wild, when you get the fourth add a Heroism, and replace Wild (first) and Healing with injectors as you find good injectors (with 70% cd or less). The first injector is used for status cleanse (and heal if you really need some), and the second a full time Pain Suppressor effect. If your Healing infusion is really good and your resistance is already good, you may keep the Healing and give up the Pain Suppressor Salve (I did regret replacing my Healing, with a number close to 500 and 7cd).
Escorts: Tinker (necessary) and Thief/ temporal explorer for Track/ Precognition (necessary). If you select your escorts and know that one will spawn in trollmire/korpul you can actually try to betray a temporal explorer to get Dream Walk. It's like a free Phase Door rune without buff so that if you're surrounded you have an option to escape. Other good ones include Unflinching Resolve from warriors, Disarm from loremasters, Arcane Eye/ Vision from seers and Device Mastery from thieves.
Alchemist Rewards: +2 generic points, +4% spell crit, these 2 are highly recommended.
Equipments: You want damage for your main weapon, and debuffs on hit and general bonus on your saw (you don't have saw mastery and off-hand penalty reduce, so the damage of your saw is not going to be high any way. and you can make saws from 1Hs, so keep an eye on these drops.). To exploit the Flexible Combat, you want a gauntlet with war-making ego. See Cathbald's hand-gear guide for the detail. You also want 100% stun immunity and 100% physical critical chance. Other general bonus you want first are spell crit, crit multiplier, physical damage, physical speed and physical damage penetration, and those you want next are armor (though if this is too low you should try to raise this first), max hp, resistance, STR and physical power, MAG and spell power, saves, on-hit debuffs...
Special mention to 2 specific bonus: -10% spell cd (found on shoes and diggers), + Combat Training mastery (found on cloaks, and a very low chance on amulets, and some fixdarts). You should always equip these as long as the other bonus from the item is not way too bad.
And you should keep one of the steam-regenerating fixdart, and some useful charms in your inventory.
Tinkers: Weapons - Crystal Edge main, Silver Filigree backup, Razor Edge if you need it, Acid Groove if you don't need Razor Edge but have no Crystal Edge. Body - Spike Attachement early, Crystal Plating later. Head - Focus Lens main or Head Lamp main if you need accuracy, Air Recycler backup for water breath and silence immunity. Cloak - Grounding Strap. Hand - Iron Grip (note this also has an active instant unarmed attack). Belt - Fungal Web. Feet - Kinetic Stabiliser or Rocket Boots if you have Mechanical 2. Lite - White Light Emitter.
Class Talents:
Two-handed Assault - 4/1/3/0 core. Stunning Blow 4 high priority. All talents here does not include off-hand saw attack.
Shield Offense - 1/1/1/1 core. Assault is the only useful talent.
Combat Veteral - 0/0/0/0 core.
Combat - 1/5/1/5 core, anything luxury. Second Life 5 high priority.
Sun - 1/4/5/5 core, Sun Ray 3 luxury. Path of the Sun 2 high priority. Some may claim that Suncloak should also be high priority but myself is not a fan of a buff that takes a turn.
Crusader - 1/2/5/4 core. Flash of the Blade 4 high priority.
Guardian - 5/1/3/4 core, Retribution luxury. Don't use Brandish ever, it's not worth the high positive cost.
General Talents:
Ogre - 1/5/1/1 core, Scar-Scripted Flesh luxury. No need to hurry for Grisly Contribution 5 and start ogrewielding. Only do this when you've found a good shield/saw and have spare points.
Combat Training - Heavy Armor Training 3 and Weapon Mastery 5 core and high priority. You may want to float 3 points in Combat Accuracy. Thick Skin, Heavy Armor Training and Combat Accuracy luxury. Light Armor Training luxury only if you've found a robe with decent offensive bonus and your total armor is not too low.
Chants - 1/1/2/0 core, Chant Acolyte and Chant Radiant 1 luxury.
Light - 1/4/1/3 core, everything luxury. Barrier 1 high priority, set it to auto-use when no enemy in sight.
Physics - 4/1/2/0 core, Mechanical 2 luxury.
Chemistry - 3/1/1/0 core.
Positive Management
Your positive will be plenished with the auto-casting Barrier when resting, but in fight they can be consumed fast by Shield of Light, and you still need them to get further heal from Shield of Light, and use 2 important talents - Mark of Light and Flash of the Blade. The main way to regenerate positive in fight is using Absorption Strike and Crusade, as well as Sun Ray combined with Sun's Vengeance. Whenever you get a Vengeance of the Sun effect and your positive is not near full, you should use Sun Ray. Plus, utility skills like Path of the Sun, Suncloak, and all Light talents also generates positive so feel free use them if you need positive.
Side Note - How to combat the Hypostasis of Entropy
This is from my only experience combating this thing, and though I won, the following may not be fully correct.
Make sure you have some good physical penetration, and better change your belt to one with reduce damage from summons. Use Silver Filigrees on your weapons. You may want to actual equip your steam-regenerating fixdart because the fight can be long. If your inscriptions other than the Heroism and Movement are not very good, you may want to replace one or both with magical Wilds.
Copy the glyphs from one of the High Peak floors, put it into the egress. Equip the Staff of Absorption in your off set, tinker it with Crystal Edge, and wait it to recharge. Then enter the portal.
The fight seems not begin until you approach IT close enough. So feel free approaching a bit. When IT's in range of your Staff of Absorption, cast your buffs (Sun Cloak, Barrier, Bath of Light etc.) and activate the Staff. Then switch to your main weapons, charge to IT and let the epic battle begin. You'll get an entropy debuff which can only be cleared by entering an atropy zone, but I've found that rushing towards those zones are actually a bad idea since you're not damaging IT and ITs shadows can chase you with ease.
If you have any feedback feel free to post it here, but please don't question this build for roleplaying reasons (e.g. saws are cruel weapons and good paladins shouldn't use them).