ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

trying a skeleton reaver... any suggestions ?
i havent found any ability that will increase my save throws... so, maybe not a good combo?

You want an ability that increases saving throws?
You're a skeleton reaver. Chop the hell out of anything in your way, and pop a bone shield when you have problems.

Most classes don't have anything that increases saving throws anyway, I believe. You can get by with the ones you naturally have.

The other races can use wild infusions, though
Still, Skeleton Reaver is fine, probably one of the most powerful characters you can build.

Skeletons do have Resilient Bones which reduces detrimental effect duration by 46% when maxed. Great pick for undead is the Light tree from Anorithils - it has heal, shield and Providence which can remove multiple status effects.
You also get Relentless Pursuit in the East and that reduces duration or outright clears negative effects as well.

Skeletons can get by with classes that have any decent amount of saves. (For those without, it's sorta a box of RNG...this is why I don't suggest Skeleton Archer and Rogue, despite them being popular, because you can just find no save gear, get no saves from stats, and die horribly from every status attack.) Reaver builds Strength and Magic, at least, so that's reasonable save coverage.

If you want better status handling, Celestial/Light and Techniques/Conditioning have Providence and Unflinching Resolve, respectively, both of which work great for Reaver-you can get them by saving Anorithil and Warrior escorts, respectively. Chant of Fortitude from a Sun Paladin escort can help a bunch, too.

Generally speaking, it's a pretty decent combo, you get good Generic sinks(Which generally is good for Reaver) and Reaver doesn't have to level incredibly fast and likes the skills.

I've been mucking around with Reaver. My suggestion for the earlygame: Level Drain to L2, get Bone Spear L1, and spend your first class points getting Drain to 3, Soul Rot to 3 and Bone Spear to 3 in the order of your choice(I prefer Drain->Bone Spear->Soul Rot). From there you play sorta like a higher durability, less flexible Corruptor, just spamming magic at everything. You could probably use a staff short term, if you wanted to be really silly, but I prefer the added damage from physicals at short range casting.

I've got ideas for the later game, but I'm currently in the middle of that run, so I can't say anything solid until I've tested it.

You can get along with resilient bones just fine.

As for the build, I'd avoid bone spear entirely.

Just use his melee skills and drain and you should be fine.

Bone Spear's a beam that averages out a bit worse than Lightning.

It's not great, but I like having actual crowd control. Reaver doesn't get a bunch, mostly that and Bone Nova.

Spells are Reaver physical skills.

And the basic physical skills don't actually scale well. Ruin is 120% to 170%, all of the other physical skills are the same 50% or so gain, and that doesn't boost the Corrupted Strength physical(which you should definitely 5, because you're using that all the time).

So you're effectively boosting one attack's damage 20% or so by 5ing one of those skills. Actually kinda bad scaling in practice-that's a worse gain than Death Dance, and that's often left at a 1 despite being one of the few physical damage burst options for a Berserker. None of them unlock notable abilities or side effects with leveling, either. They're great L1 skills, but leveling them is a waste-get more versatility, you're going to lack on it no matter how hard you try, but get as much as you can.

At least, that's my thought on it.

The problem is that bone spear doesn't qualify for anything resembling crowd control by a long shot. It doesn't impair dudes, it sure won't kill them unless they're already softened up, and the only enemy who's going to be concerned by it is the one that gets hit by Corrupted Strength.

Also, the physical skills scale plenty fine as it is considering it's a dual-wielding class. With Corrupted Strength tacked on they're basically approaching rogue Flurry in terms of power (a bit less since you obviously can't get up to 150% offhand damage, but you get to use big boy offhands and have Ruin, so that helps a bit). And then of course, you're getting to do that 3 times in a row between rend, acid strike, and dark surprise.

There's not that much versatility you're going to be missing out on considering you can grab important stuff while maxing that tree, or at least leaving the actives in it at 4/5. You can still get bone grab, you can still max bone shield, you can still max carrier, you can still max vimsense/leech, hell, you can even max acid blood if you wanted to.

Fair enough.

I've always been more of an options-oriented player, and I recognize I may miss out on more optimal play due to that.

having played not for long with the skeleton reaver i also worry about crowd control
i was planning on getting the bone spear to attack somebody far while stricking with that special ability from the reaver (u cast a spell )u attack an enemy near for free)
still im not sure how to deal with big stuff, the winner build (dotting) doesnt look very appealing
hows the "self healing" ability at high lvls? (ruin, life drain or whatever) does it help? or do enemies hit too hard? if its going to be ridiculous amounts of life being healed then id rather skip it completely... but then again i was really hoping that would save the skeleton (self healing making the regeneration infusion less important)

also found that even in mid teen lvls, the "no wild infusion" regeneration sucks big time. why? end up working with 2 arcane shieds + bone one... still they drop very very fast, some enemies destroy them in one turn

I chose the class because of the "no dex required" thanks to being able to use to big weapons... so i was really hoping to get up and close with mobs,

Also why does the best equipment for a class drop when ur not playing it.... (snif)

Basically, max the passives and bone shield, as well as vimsense and leech. Try to get the Light Tree from an escort. A few points in the first disease skill are also a nice option, since it doesn't use a turn, yet grants you a melee attack due to corrupted strength and spreads with your attacks as well.
Also get a Teleportation rune as early as possible. That one really helps a lot with getting out of sticky situations.
As for Healing, the Light tree + Vimsemse with Leech + the Bloodcaller Ring from the Slaver Compound + Drain should work pretty nicely for that, especially coupled with reassemble and a few shields.

I think only spells that take a turn trigger Corrupted Strength, so the instant disease skill shouldn't.