1.6.7 Insane Corruptor Guide

[GrayStillPlays]

So, the last Corruptor guide was written in 2016. A lot of the talents seem to have changed in some way, so I'll go into some thoughts on the Corruptor after the TL:DR and stuff. Here's my guy.

Build TL:DR

Class Talents
Corruption/Blood: 5/1/3/5
Corruption/Shadowflame: 1/1/5/1
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/5
Corruption/Vim: 5/1/0/0
Corruption/Blight: 5/2/5/5
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 5/1/0/0
Corruption/Plague: 3/3/2/3

Generic Talents
Race/Higher: 1/1/4/4
Technique/Combat training: 5/1-3/0/0/0/0
Corruption/Curses: 1/2/5/5
Corruption/Torment: 5/2/1/0
Corruption/Hexes: 3/2/1/5

Corruptor Thoughts

First let me mention this build was inspired by knifebutton's Higher Doombringer. I saw what he had did with that, and thought it would apply very well to the Corruptor. The Corruptor was a very fun character to play, not too one dimensional, but not so complex that it takes a big brain to get the rotation correct. The Corruptor isn't really a glass cannon, it's more like a somewhat rusted cannon. The defenses aren't paper thin, but they're not great either. The Corruptor's best defense is, however, it's ability to put out ridiculous damage and kill effectively anything in the entire game in 6 turns or less. This is a real thing, after fighting every main story boss and what not in the game, nearly everything died within six turns. Even Aeryn ended up dying as collateral damage thanks to a 16k Corrosive Worm splash. The only fight that wasn't 6 turns was the Master, because he spawned like 10 levels above me and I had a hell of a time chewing through his gigantic spell save.

That's the name of the game with Corruptor though. Hit hard and fast, stack the hell out of blight damage, get your crit up to 100%, and absolutely obliterate everything before it can deal any real damage to you. I'll go over how the various talents felt, and how much I used them in reality. I'll also mention that the build assumes you'll be taking Adept as one of your prodigies, which I really like for Corruptor.

Index

1. Cheat sheet
2. Build rationale and analysis
3. Change log

Cheat Sheet

Stat distribution priority
Max Magic, put points into Con when Magic is full, then Cunning, then Dex.

Category Point Order
Bone, Shadowflame, Inscription, Inscription

Inscriptions
Dissipation, Movement, and then the rest Shields/Shatter Affliction/Rune of Reflection. The Corruptor works best with shields rather than healing or regen, you want to stop stuff from hitting the Bone Shield in the first place.

Prodigies
Corrupted Shell, then Adept.

Equipment priority
Blight Damage, Global Speed Boost, Magic, HP, Spell Crit, increase crit multiplier, respen, resistances (having high resistances will be your main form of protection when your shields fail you).

Alchemist Quest priority
+2 generic, +2 class, +4 Spell Crit

I missed the class points quest!
+4 stats

Analysis and Rationale

The Corruptor is excellent at debilitating stuff and dealing a ton of damage. The ability to pick and choose your battles with Fearscape, as well as use it defensively on some trash mob if you have to in order to let stuff cool down is fantastic. Fearscape can also crit, so in the end even with just 1 point in it, it was hitting the bad guys for 150-200 and healing me for 200-250.

The global speed boost gear interest, such as say a ring that has blinding speed in it, is due to the way Corrosive Worm works. The worm explodes in 6 turns, however through the use of Flame of Urh'Rok and various speed boosts, you can shove 9+ turns worth of actions into that time. That provided some absolutely ridiculous Corrosive Worm explosions, and is what evaporated Elandar, Aeryn, and half of Argonial's HP pool at the same time. Just for fun if you go to my character sheet, you'll see messing around I hit the training dummy for 187k damage.

Poison Storm was another incredible MVP. The poison blight damage it puts out can crit, and can get up to insane levels as the various blights can stack, creating instances were the storm was passively dealing thousands of damage to each creature in it's radius, while also putting various extremely crippling debuffs on them. The pulse of the storm can also trigger Virulent Diseases, which further stacks more blight damage.

I highly underestimated the power of Blood Grasp. As you get into the late game and stack all of that blight damage and crit multiplier, and your crit gets to 100%, Blood Grasp can net you a titanic pool of HP. Again on my character, just messing around you'll notice I have 3800 HP. That stack of HP is effectively your defense when something chews through your shields.

Corrupted Shell is there to start you on your way to a mountain of HP, and Adept works well because there's some interesting break points that can be reached, as well as some bonus things such as an extra turn of Domination Hex, an extra Bone Shield if you find any + talent level gear in Bone at all, or a range 10 Blood Spray if you find any + talent level gear in Blood at all. Beyond that, Adept is just nice because it makes you do everything better by about 10-15%, and as Corruptor is a class of percentages, it turns a lot of 50%s into 55%s. Because there's a lot of multiplicative stuff in Corruptor, it helps even more. So, for damage it increases Dark Ritual (crit damage), Blood Fury (crit and bonus damage), and the base spell damage, creating large boosts in overall damage as all that stuff combines on top of one another.

I'll mention too, Domination Hex was hilarious. It works on nearly everything that isn't a main boss, and just for fun I cleared out most of the prides just using it. I'd hit a randboss, and the chaos would begin as it would start AoEing the hell out of everything and everything would go ballistic fighting back. I also Dominated all of the stair guardians to just waltz up High Peak. In the early game, it's it's own defense mechanism, allowing you to substantially weaken pain in the ass randbosses etc.

Weapon Choice

Staves, but special mention goes to the obvious dagger of choice, Life Drinker. The Blood Grasp it puts out is no joke, often hitting for 1.5-3k on it's own, as well as providing the various benefits the spell does. It also appears things like Bone Spike, a passive that just shoots a crappy little bone spear through stuff with 3 or more magical debuffs can trigger on-spell abilities like that Blood Grasp, so it was going off all the time.

Class Talents

Corruption/Blood: 5/1/3/5

[5] Blood Spray: A fantastic talent. Great damage, great cone effect, great diseases, just all around good.

[1] Blood Grasp: While somewhat mediocre in the early game, in the late game as all of your bonus damage and crit multipliers start to stack, the bonus HP you can get from this becomes fairly ludicrous. I typically had an extra 1-2k HP simply thanks to this. I floated points and took them out once I found Life Drinker. If you have extra points laying around, this isn't a bad place for them.

[3] Blood Boil: Loved this too. I often followed Blood Spray on a group of enemies with this. The slow is substantial and absolutely punishing (we're talking I had a 74% global slow with 3 points), and the damage isn't bad at all. It's got a very respectable cool down as well at 8. 3 points for diminishing returns.

[5] Blood Fury: More crit and more damage when you crit? This is just awesome. Worth putting a few points into early and maxing later. You should have 100% crit by the end game, so for me this was a permanent 49% bonus Acid and Blight damage.

Corruption/Shadowflame: 1/1/5/1

[1] Wraithform: A 1 point wonder and the main "get out of dodge" card combined with a movement infusion.

[1] Darkfire: Never used it. Gotta pay the tax to get to...

[5] Flame of Urh'Rok: Worth every point. You're going to have plenty of Vim when you can finally afford this, and it's star bonuses involve a 22% Global speed buff with Adept, as well as Fearscape healing you. Obviously there's some resistances as well, but the speed and the healing is what we're looking for.

[1] Fearscape: When you think you might have a tough fight, this is where you go. Effectively everything that is not a demon will hate being here, and honestly I brought demons there as well from time to time just so I didn't have to fight some boss mob in the middle of a ton of rares/other uniques. It can crit, so since you'd be stacking crit multiplier by the end even a single point can generate some decent damage and healing. Interestingly Poison Storm doesn't "come with you" to the Fearscape, it stays behind in the main realm, so cast that after you Fearscape.

Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/5

[1] Bone Spear: This actually does insane damage, it's more a matter of having too much stuff you want to put points into as a Corruptor and not enough points. The base abilities also focus on Acid and Blight, rather than buffing Physical damage.

[1] Bone Grab: Mostly used to keep the Berserker or whatever off of you. Some people go for 2 points for the extra duration, I floated some points in but I took them out because 1 was just enough, anything that needed more than 1 point was dead before the duration mattered or had a way to break out of the grab.

[1] Bone Spike: It's free damage I guess, it also counts as it's own spell to cause stuff like Life Drinker to proc.

[5] Bone Shield: The crowning jewel of the tree. With Adept and any level of + Bone talent gear you can actually get 5 shields instead of 4. I had that because I found a + Bone necklace...but then I found a necklace that gave a +0.4 to Blood AND Plague and that was way too good to pass up.

Corruption/Vim: 5/1/0/0

[5] Soul Rot: Great damage and a low cool down. It's part of the "make corrosive worm delete everything in the game" rotation.

[1] Dark Portal: Mostly used as a get out of death card along with wraithform and a movement infusion, but it can also give diseases if you want.

Corruption/Blight: 5/2/5/5

[5] Dark Ritual: I love this entire tree. Dark Ritual is an easy 5/5. It was increasing my spell crit multiplier by 75%.

[2] Corrupted Negation: I mean, it's damage+AOE dispel, AND it works on physical effects. If you have spare points, you could do worse than to put them here. I did 2 points for 3 effects removed.

[5] Corrosive Worm: Say hello to the talent that will let you get stupid damage done. If you want something really dead it typically goes like this. Fearscape, Wrath of the Highborn (instant), Highborn's Bloom (instant), Blinding Speed equipment effect if worn (instant), Curse of Vulnerability, Epidemic, Corrosive Worm, Poison Storm, Soul Rot, Blood Spray, Cyst Burst due to having probably 3 diseases at this point, Blood Boil, Drain, Catalepsy and then right around now Corrosive Worm should explode for a bagillion damage, if your global speed is high you'll probably get another 2 spells off though, so another soul rot, and a Blood Grasp or something is fine. There's probably even a more min/max'd way to do this, but this just killed everything in the game so I called it a win. Some folks put 1 point here due to the strong diminishing returns, I just decided to go balls to the wall with it.

[5] Poison Storm: It does incredible damage, stacks blights, and also sometimes throws down impressive debuffs. It lasts for a good long time as well. I basically used this in every single fight that wasn't an insta-kill due to a blood spray or something.

Corruption/Sanguisuge: 5/1/0/0

[5] Drain: I mean it's a good spell for what it does. It does good blight damage, gives you Vim back, and has a decent cool down. You could get away with 3 points here if you wanted to stack points in something else, but honestly I used it SO much that it was worth the extra points.

[1] Bloodcasting: I mean, whatever. I guess it did stuff. Good for when you get Anti-Magic drained I guess.

Corruption/Plague: 3/3/2/3

[3] Virulent Disease: This could easily be a 5/5, but with Adept I got away with 3/5 and it still had fantastic damage.

[3] Cyst Burst: It seems like some folks just go with 1 point here, I went for 3 for the 3 radius with Adept and strong Blight Damage considering you're almost always using it when you have 3-4 diseases stacked.

[2] Catalepsy: Used more for the damage than for the stun. 2 points for diminishing returns.

[3] Epidemic: Awesome and one of the first things I'd always throw out due to reducing disease resistance.

Generic Talents

Race/Higher: 1/1/4/4

[1] Wrath of the Highborn: It was "do 29% more damage and take 29% less damage" for 5 turns for me, which is pretty significant since again, most interactions were over in 6 turns. More points just lowers the cool down.

[1] Overseer of Nations: Whatever, just there to get to...

[4] Born into Magic: With Adept this is up 24/7 from spellcasts at 4 points instead of 5. Since 98% of the damage you do is Blight Damage, this basically says "Do 20% more damage forever."

[4] Highborn's Bloom: 6 turns of not using resources means you don't need to worry about any Vim issues if you need to escort some big boss to the Fearscape. Notice the 6 turn amount again? Adept allows you to have 6 turns at 4 points instead of 5.

Technique/Combat Training: 5/1-3/0/0/0/0

[5] Thick Skin: It's universal damage reduction. It's one of your defensive layers because you honestly don't get many.

[1-3] Heavy Armour Training: Mostly to taste here. I always say I'm going to wear some heavier armor, and then end up in robes.

Corruption/Curses: 1/2/5/5

[1] Curse of Defenselessness: I just didn't need to use this much. I used it on the Master because he spawned so high in level compared to me and his saves were ballstic, but nothing really enough to warrant more than 1 point.

[2] Curse of Impotence: Again, I didn't use this much. Not because it isn't good, just because as a Corruptor, you're busy mowing stuff down rather than trying to take less damage. Still, 2 points was a good break point. It was -26% damage and that's a pretty big deal.

[5] Curse of Death: I actually used this a lot for crap that had massive blight/acid resistances (basically worms that walk) and it's also good to toss down if you want at the beginning of the Corrosive Worm rotation because it'll be passively doing great damage. You could easily get away with 1 point here though and put those 4 points into something else.

[5] Curse of Vulnerability: Makes everything hit harder which in turn, makes your Corrosive Worm that much more stupid when it busts. There's diminishing returns, but what the class does is damage, so I went all the way with it.

Corruption/Torment: 5/2/1/0

[5] Willful Tormenter: 5 points gets you a fairly decent chunk of Vim. Adept turns up impressive here, turning +111 Vim into +140 Vim.

[2] Blood Lock: I used it a couple of times. 2 points with Adept gets you 9 turns of locked HP values, which is plenty.

[1] Overkill: Crazy diminishing returns after 1 point, but holy crap this talent was useful. You deal so much damage that this single handedly clears rooms.

Corruption/Hexes: 3/2/1/5

[3] Pacification Hex: Long lasting daze effects, 3 points seemed like a good breaking point. I used it a lot when I was going to be dealing with a room full of stuff that wasn't going to insta-die.

[2] Burning Hex: 2 points for diminishing returns.

[1] Empathetic Hex: I feel like it's free damage...but I never used it because I was too busy casting other stuff and typically my job was to slow down and debilitate the hell out of anything that was remotely threatening.

[5] Domination Hex: I really loved this Hex. With a range of 10, a duration of 9 turns with Adept, and the ability to use it on basically anything that's not a main campaign boss, the havoc it caused was worth the price of admission. It's best used when the first randboss comes into view, so that he goes forth and just obliterates everything, or damages other randbosses. Then when he's used all his stuff and everything is dead, you can go in for the clean up.

Prodigies

Corrupted Shell: I mentioned before, but a mountain of HP is basically your defense if your shields get knocked down or get dispelled, and with Blood Grasp and the Fearscape, you can actually generate a lot of healing. It increases armor, armor hardiness, saves, and defense as well, so it's kind of a jack of all trades defensive skill.

Adept: This is one of those talents that's just good all the time, forever. It has a 100% up time, it makes everything you do slightly better, and makes stuff you DON'T do better as well. It even increases the talent level of stuff like Relentless Pursuit, lowering the cool down for instance. It increases the talent levels found on gear, turning the 3.0 Blinding Speed ring I found into a 3.9 Blinding Speed ring. It also has some additional bonuses to spells, such as enabling an extra Bone shield with gear, a range 10 on the Blood Spray with gear, a 9 turn domination, and freeing up a point for constant Born into Magic procs.

Inscriptions

Infusions

Movement: I use this on almost every character that isn't undead. In the early game it keeps you alive, and in the late game it's good because positioning will make you do a ton more damage and it's still good for keeping you alive.

...that's basically it for infusions. The Corruptor benefits way more from shields. A wild infusion if you're worried about silence is fine.

Runes

Dissipation: Needed for big stacks of buffs that Corrupted Negation can't chew through. You can use it on yourself to remove magical debuffs if you want too.

Shatter Afflictions: What you want instead of a Wild infusion most of the time. More shields.

Shield/Rune of Reflection: More shields.

Changelog

3/5/20: Guide created.

Notes

This is my third guide. I wasn't expecting to have as much fun as I did with Corruptor, but once you get rolling around level 25 of so, it's fun destroying everything so bad that you want to check how many HP of damage you did that time. The Corruptor is good by the virtue that it has the appropriate talents that make what it does better. Basically a way to lower resistances, a way to increase crit multiplier, and a way to increase crit and base damage. It also focuses nearly completely on blight damage, allowing you to be single minded when stacking damage and leading to some insane damage results.

[whitelion]

I've not played much corrupter but I usually find myself going for a phys/mental wild on casters over shatter afflictions because the former can remove silence. I might switch over if I get 100% silence immunity, but that requires Vox, which isn't guaranteed, or gearing for that. What has your experience been like as far as dealing with silence?

[GrayStillPlays]

I don't think running a wild until you can get some decent silence immune early is a bad idea (I ran one early because every cool down on shatter affliction I had access to was just awful). Just off of the top of my head, even with only 44% silence immunity I never found myself having much trouble with it. I'd say it's up to your taste though.

[visage]

It seems to me that a key checkpoint for this build is the ability to handle the Grand Corrupter and the Protector at 25. What do you recommend in terms of talent distribution in order to optimize for that? What's the game plan for winning those fights at that stage?

[GrayStillPlays]

The grand corruptor you can kind of trivialize as long as you have the Rune of Dissipation. Killing Urkis to get the rune was extremely easy, because you can isolate him in the Fearscape and the Fearscape effectively heals any damage his Hurricane can do to you. I did Urkis at 24-25, and then the Grand Corruptor right after him. Typically I'll save the Eel Skin Armor or whatever I might find so I at least have a 20-40% lightning resistance when I mess with him, just to make it a bit easier on me.

The fight with the Grand Corruptor was over extremely fast, I'm not sure if it's because I damaged them so fast, or because the "cut off point" for them to offer you to team up is lower because you're a Corruptor just like them.

Effectively though, you want Fearscape, Rune of Dissipation, and at least 1 point in in FoU. You're not really looking for the Global speed, you just want to make sure you that you get healed in the Fearscape and the Grand Corruptor doesn't. At that point, because you will have dispelled the Grand Corruptor's bone shield and FoU they're actually very squishy, just like you are because the Corruptor doesn't really have many defensive layers. From there it was the typical Corrosive Worm rotation with Poison Storm. The big talents I had maxed when I did The Grand Corruptor was Bone Shield and Poison Storm. Most of the other talents, like Soul Rot and Drain I actually only had 3/5 in or so (I think I actually only had 1 or 2 points in FoU).

The Protector is a weird fight because I've never had them focus on me, typically the Grand Corruptor and their minions do most of the work and I just throw spells. It was just the typical corrosive worm rotation though, I didn't Fearscape or anything because Fearscape hadn't cooled down. Typically when there was a lot of mobs around and I didn't feel like doing the normal combo, a Blood Spray into a Blood Boil (I would just check that the blood spray stuck some diseases on the creatures) was a good way to start combats like with the Protector. It just ensures everyone is slowed down so you can react to issues that arise easier.

Basically as long as you have Drain, Blood Spray, Soul Rot, Corrosive Worm, Poison Storm, Fearscape, FoU, and having Highborn's Bloom, at least a few levels, will make this easier because you might not have a mountain of Vim at this point, you'll be fine. Blood Boil is also always good here because 5 turns with that brutal global slow is nice, even if it'll only be like 50% or so at that point.

[visage]

The grand corruptor you can kind of trivialize as long as you have the Rune of Dissipation.

Huh, interesting. So you make do without the movement infusion from 25 through 34, then?

[GrayStillPlays]

Yeah, that was just the price I had to pay to play effectively. I went Shielding, Shatter Afflictions, Dissipation. I got pretty lucky and had a Blinding Speed item as well as some +movement speed from some boots at the time, so Dark Portal/wraith form was enough to keep me alive. Honestly though, by the time you have Corrupted Shell there isn't really much that will put you in a bad position. I mean, assuming you use Track and don't get in the middle of like, 10 uniques or something, typically you can just Fearscape the biggest bad guy, finish him, Dominate whoever is the second baddest guy, and clean up everything else. I used Domination to flee a few times as well, with a shield, domination, wraith form, dark portal, etc. The two deaths I had were pretty annoying, because they were both pre 20. One was pre 10. Once ridiculous blight stacking, crit multiplying, and blood grasp came on like around 35, things got kind of weird visually, because I would see myself at half health and be like "oh no..." and then I'd see that "half health" was me still at 1500 HP.

[phamor]

I have to admit, during the playthrough the biggest threat to my life was myself. I was around 75% of the game, constantly cursing (pun intended) cus in half of the fights the "enemy" turned off my sustains. Then I realized: Corrupted Negation also affecting me if I am standing in the middle of it
Another time a bunch of light horrors blinded me, but I was like: I don't care, I know all of your position, Blood Spray for you! They have reflective shield on

Anyway, fun build

P.S.: the last point on Highborn's Bloom do nothing, since with adept, you have the same 6 turn duration on lvl 4.

[GrayStillPlays]

P.S.: the last point on Highborn's Bloom do nothing, since with adept, you have the same 6 turn duration on lvl 4.

Oh weird, for some reason I must have thought it didn't. I'll update that.

[Beartrap86]

Don't you have to take rather than dish out 7500 blight damage for corrupted shell or is that an error as printed in game?

[karlkarlsen123]

Great guide, loving the structure and the talk about the general class idea.

[whitelion]

I've been trying Corruptor more seriously and I have some thoughts:

-Unless you really want to hang out in the Fearscape all the time, I'm not sold on Higher over Doomelf. You can just pay life instead of vim for everything else, and by time you get Highborn's Bloom at 24, paying 30hp from time to time is basically nothing. Haste of the Doomed is always amazing, and Pitiless means you can extend your diseases to pretty much double the damage of Catelepsy, or you can put 10 turns of 60-70% slow on someone dangerous with Blood Boil.

-I think Ethereal Form is a competitive prodigy choice, especially if you're going to wear robes and put some points in dex, which is always nice for the crit shrug. It's not that hard to get enough defense that you can ignore almost all weapon attacks, and the extra respen is nice once you go east and everything of consequence has 50%+ all res. Helps if you get unlucky with gear, or allows you to focus on other things. Corrupted Shell can get crazy if you max con and go hard on saves and/or armor (especially if you're also a Dwarf for the extra +50 saves), but while the 500hp is nice, I'd rather have Ethereal Form if there's not some plan to exploit the rest of it.

-As you mentioned, it does take some time before you really start melting things, and you need some points in Soul Rot and Drain early so you can kill stuff, and Bone Shield so you don't die before you can start investing seriously in the stuff like Corrosive Worm that really gets crazy. Corruptor doesn't have the defensive flexibility or utility of AM/PM so you have to be careful if you, say, run into a Oozemancer randboss when you're level 11, since it takes a while to kill them at this point and you have very little defense. It also takes time to get your crit chance up via gear and cun so you can really take advantage of your crazy crit mult.

-Certain enemy types, like Cursed multi-classed with stuff that already has mutli-attacks, are dangerous because all your disables take a turn or two to set up, and even if you can melt them fast, they only need one action to eat through your entire Bone Shield and then some. Having a lot of defense helps, which is another benefit of Ethereal Form. As long as you survive the initial onslaught, Blood Boil is great for giving you some time to work with.

[Hezehoo]

Thanks, really good guide, but I do also argue that doomelf is a better choice than higher/cornac. Though starved on class points, corruptor has plenty of generics and doomelf can make good use of those.

[Boozermonkey]

Agree with most of this. Even at level 30 with a thalore corruptor I am regularly doing over 10k damage just with soul rot. I 2 shot the master and celia. I don't even make it to the 6 turn worm explosion on any fight but on the training dummy I was able to get well over 80k damage on turn 6 when it did, so yeah. Corruptor is hands down the single most op class I've played thus far and the funnest. Think ill even win the game this time because its so damn fun to melt everything.