Guide: Corruptor (beta 43)

[bricks]

Character guides, fun! A few observations:

• I think you mean "Movement infusion," not "Lightning speed."
• Ghoul is probably a better Corruptor than you suggest, though it would take an adapted playstyle.
• Minor quibble - you misspelled "Strength."
• Dark Portal is amazing, it's a controlled phase-door plus damage plus debuffing. I don't think you can ever have too many escape options.
• I don't think you've evaluated the bone tree properly. Bone spear isn't incredible, but it gives you something to do against blight resistant enemies, plus it's a beam spell. Bone grab isn't useful for fleeing enemies (how often does that happen anyway?) - however, if you can survive a turn, you can cast it on an enemy in melee range and then back away. Bone shield is definitely good for preemptive defense but it's a meager long-term defense strategy. Overall I'd take an inscription slot + a good shielding rune over the Bone tree.
• I agree with Frumple - Virulent Disease is very nice, considering it takes no time to cast and it softens up the most dangerous enemies to a caster. I'm surprised you praise teleport and call damage-over-time useless - that's a pretty straightforward combo.
• I'm surprised you go into depth on Harmony at all - without stacking gear you won't have the willpower to invest in that tree.
• Re: general tactics, if you need crowd-control in the early game, sun infusions are great.
• Could just be me, but I almost always go for more inscription slots over locked trees, as fun as they may be.

[Bicho]

Character guides, fun! A few observations:

• I think you mean "Movement infusion," not "Lightning speed."
• Ghoul is probably a better Corruptor than you suggest, though it would take an adapted playstyle.
• Minor quibble - you misspelled "Strength."
• Dark Portal is amazing, it's a controlled phase-door plus damage plus debuffing. I don't think you can ever have too many escape options.
• I don't think you've evaluated the bone tree properly. Bone spear isn't incredible, but it gives you something to do against blight resistant enemies, plus it's a beam spell. Bone grab isn't useful for fleeing enemies (how often does that happen anyway?) - however, if you can survive a turn, you can cast it on an enemy in melee range and then back away. Bone shield is definitely good for preemptive defense but it's a meager long-term defense strategy. Overall I'd take an inscription slot + a good shielding rune over the Bone tree.
• I agree with Frumple - Virulent Disease is very nice, considering it takes no time to cast and it softens up the most dangerous enemies to a caster. I'm surprised you praise teleport and call damage-over-time useless - that's a pretty straightforward combo.
• I'm surprised you go into depth on Harmony at all - without stacking gear you won't have the willpower to invest in that tree.
• Re: general tactics, if you need crowd-control in the early game, sun infusions are great.
• Could just be me, but I almost always go for more inscription slots over locked trees, as fun as they may be.

I´ve done quite a lot of misspelling here, but it is readable

The only bad guy I´ve encountered during the game is Worm that walks (100% blight res), by time you unlock bone tree (30+lvl) you already have (or soon will) wimsense/curse of vulnerability and fearscape. I see no reason to go for physical damage. Bone shield is the best shield, especially against corruptors, with bone shield you can survive until taking boss into fearscape (if he is a mage) or just kill him.

As I have already said damage over time corruptor is a poor choice (in my point of view). I took teleport because movement infusion is rather useless in dungeons (with halls of 1 space) and vaults and especially effective against anomalies, which can oneshot you if surround you and blow up at the same time.

Of course I didnt go into that tree! I didnt go into half of the trees here, just gave theoretical view of them. Moreover Tyren have said that using vim increases your equlibrium leading to ~100% failure chance.

Inscriptions are for pussies (joking), just wasting cat point for rune/inf is the last thing I want to do. Even investing cat point into blood tree will gave ~20% damage increase from that tree (which is our main source of damage).

[Parcae2]

I've got to agree that at least a point in Dark Portal is mandatory. Corrupters only get one mobility talent - they should use it! By the same token, Ghoul is a decent choice - Flames of Uhr'rok cancels out their global speed penalty, you don't really need a global speed bonus since your spells aren't as spammable as an archmage's, and they have tons of hitpoints, some innate disease resistance (I think? Very important in case you wind up being swapped into the path of your own spells) and, best of all, they have a very nice mobility talent.

One think to bear in mind about Draconic Will is that it preserves you from all negative effects, not just ones you can save against. Disperse Magic is useless against you for the duration, for example. It goes very nicely with Shalore - 10 turns of being invulnerable to anything that isn't direct damage is amazing.

[eliotn]

Not sure if this is a bug or feature, but I was following your guide for corruptor, and used a movement infusion in the fearscape. And I noticed that every time I moved I healed health. This makes movement infusions even more awesome for a corruptor, for easy regeneration.

I hope to finish my corruptor, I am close to Dreadfell and only have one death in the sandworm pits due to wraithform misuse.

Edit: I filed a bug report and DarkGod said "not a bug". So I think this should be put under infusions.

[lies]

Thanks for the excellent guide! I wish I'd read this before making my corrupter

I can sort of verify the pacification hex thing. On a character that has 100% stun immunity, pacification hex will still daze me. The problem, though, is that high spell saves will negate the hex itself.

I think you're underestimating Overkill. It's one of my favorite skills in the game. It turns every single kill into an area effect. I'm not sure of the mechanics of it, but at high levels I do more overkill than direct damage (16000 is my current record). I think it re-applies damage +% to the overkill damage, and at high enough spellpower (e.g. from spellsurge items), it actually goes over 100% of the leftover damage, resulting in whole groups exploding from a single bloodgrasp. Even in early/mid-game, it really helps with groups that either survive your blood spray or were too spread out to get hit by it.

Also: Eye of the Tiger. Since everything you do will be a critical, this can help keep your damage dealing spells off of cooldown.

[greycat]

10.3 Arcane might.
?
I dont really understand mechanic of this prodigy, if it increases ego of your weapon it might be one of the best prodigies in tems of pure damage, if it converts 50% of damage to arcane then it's useless.

It adds a new stat multiplier to your weapon. E.g. if you have a two-handed sword, it has "Strength 120%", meaning it uses 1.2 times your Strength as the primary input into the damage formula. With Arcane Might, that would become "Strength 120%, Magic 50%", meaning it uses (1.2 * Str + 0.5 * Mag) as the primary input into the damage formula.

That would only be useful if you're using your weapon to deal damage -- either by whacking things with it, or (I think??) by using Channel Staff.

[emblempride]

Even then, staves don't get the 50% bonus. My Alchy was sad to find this out... would've won if I had picked a better prodigy too, I bet... or not.

[lukep]

Even then, staves don't get the 50% bonus. My Alchy was sad to find this out... would've won if I had picked a better prodigy too, I bet... or not.

? It should, and it really looks like it does, it just never shows up on the tooltip for the item.

[emblempride]

Even then, staves don't get the 50% bonus. My Alchy was sad to find this out... would've won if I had picked a better prodigy too, I bet... or not.

? It should, and it really looks like it does, it just never shows up on the tooltip for the item.

Ah. Not sure about Channel Staff then. There wasn't any noticeable damage increase that I can remember.

[DeaTh-ShiNoBi]

You mentioned in your guide that Fearscape works on everything in the game, but Fearscape "fizzles" when I attempt to cast it on any Elder Vampire and The Master. I've been able to Fearscape other mobs standing right next to them, including other types of Vampires, but Elder Vampires and The Master are most definitely immune to Fearscape. Are other mobs in the game immune to Fearscape? I've only just beaten Dreadfell, so far. Is this a new change that's happened in the past 4 months, or has nobody tried Fearscaping The Master before?

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Add the third boss in the 60 wave arena mode to that list. (The fire one.) Don't recall the name, but spell 'fizzles' without costing a turn or triggering cooldown every time you attempt to cast on that one, as of a few betas ago anyway.

[Pigslayer]

Fearscape doesn't on enemies immune to effects or plane-shifting. It's the same with dreamscape.

[grobblewobble]

Thanks for the guide! It did help me.

Overkill
*
Blood spray is enough to kill groups of foes.

This is something I disagree with, however. Overkill is cheap (only 8 vim to sustain) and it adds quite a lot of splash damage. You only need to invest 1-2 points for good effectiveness and you need to buy the first point in any case.

[Faeryan]

Thanks for the guide! It did help me.

Overkill
*
Blood spray is enough to kill groups of foes.

This is something I disagree with, however. Overkill is cheap (only 8 vim to sustain) and it adds quite a lot of splash damage. You only need to invest 1-2 points for good effectiveness and you need to buy the first point in any case.

Overkill on my opinion is what makes Corruptor a *CORRUPTOR*, the basic crit increaser bolt with Overkill is enough to win the game on normal.
Dunno how the overkill damage is calculated but often the overkill splash does more than the initial damage of the bolt.
Overkill makes diseases fireworks on groups of enemies.

[grobblewobble]

5.4 Plague.

The whole tree is a waste of class points. We do instant damage almost all the time, no need for damage over time things.

update ( thx to Frumple)
Virulent disease
****
Probably worth investment because it's an instant talent and reduces some stats (reducing magic for mage, dex for archers, str for melee). Consider it as an alternative to going for Life tap. Invest only after main damage spells.

This is a tragic mistake. Do not believe it.

Diseases are not really damage over time. Because of catalepsy, they are actually burst damage. The writer of this guide clearly did not understand what Catalepsy does.

Casting catalepsy (AoE spell) removes all diseases on the monsters in the area you cast it on. All the damage that was still going to be dealt over time is now dealt to them instantly instead.

So if you cast virulent disease (does not take a turn to cast) and then follow up with catalepsy, you are dealing massive damage numbers, and it only takes 1 turn to cast both. It gets even better with Cyst Burst. Cast virulent disease, use cyst burst to spread it around, then catalepsy to instantly vaporize a whole crowd of monsters. Add more diseases with epidemic or dark portal and the damage numbers become ridiculous.

Diseases are the most damaging ability a corruptor has, so be sure to invest in them.