ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

EDIT: As of 2020/05/19 this guide is outdated & I am currently too busy to update it (not to mention I haven't played ToME in months), please read Chronosplits comment below if you want to use it.

credit to bpat & Cathbald for parts of the guide format

Doombringer was my first insane win so I wrote this guide because the one linked
at bpats wiki page is pretty old & it has a few things I disagree with.

Strengths

Very fast paced (and fun!) gameplay
Insane burst damage
Range 10 pull & multiple ways of engaging and disengaging
Cauterize spirit is probably the best cleanse talent in the game
Built in resistance penetration
Sustain thats basically pitiless on hit


Weaknesses

Mandatory start
Uses vim
Struggles in longer fights
Dependent on dispersable sustains for defense
Resource problems

if you want a tl;dr build (with some points to spare) use the one below or just copy one from my winners

Cornac with arcane might & flex: http://bit.ly/2lFiXwH (0 deaths)
Ogre with ICCtW! & naloren: http://bit.ly/2nhm2nI (2 deaths)

Class categories

1/5/3/5 Combat techniques
0/0/0/0 Combat veteran
1/1/5/1 Shadowflame
4/1/1/3 Brutality
1/5/1/5 Torture
4/2/1/5 Wrath (unlock at level 20 or 36)
1/2/0/0 Fearfire (unlock at level 10)
1/1/1/1 Heart of fire

Generic categories

0/5/0/0/5/0 Combat Training
1/5/1/0 Survival
4/1/1/5 Oppresion
0/0/0/0 Hexes
1/2/5/5 Demonic Strength
1/5/1/5 Light

Race: Cornac
Stats: STR > MAG > DEX > CUN
Inscriptions: Movement, Heroism, Heroism, Healing/Regeneration, Wild (Mental or Physical)/Phase Door/Movement

Prodigies: Arcane Might at 30, Flexible Combat at 42.
(edit: as Arcvasti said in the comments, consider going I Can Carry the World! over Arcane Might at level 30)

Races

Higher - 2.5/5 only thing this has going for them is highborns bloom.
Cornac - 4.5/5 extra cat point makes early game much easier. Notable in that it lets you get a escort category & 5 inscriptions.
Thalore - 3/5 drem is better overall and the experience penalty sucks.
Shalore - 4/5 grace saves class points & you even have buffs to extend with timeless.
Doomelf - 4/5 tp (through walls!), crit shrug & you even have debuffs to extend.
Halfling - 4.5/5 first racial gives big crit chance if you pump CUN, evasion is great & with the last racial you can probably afford not running a phys wild.
Ogre - 5/5 offhand and infusion boost (& help with saturation) is great, especially with two of naloren, ICCtW & flex (2 weapons also helps with fear stacking)
Krog - dont read this guide if you want to play AM doombringer.
Dwarf - 3.5/5 second racial is great & the saves from the third are nice (especially for those rares with hexes/impending doom/inner demons).
Drem - 5/5 great racials, last makes getting away easier and frenzy will probably let you burst down everything that isnt a elite boss whose name starts with A.
Yeek - 3/5 summons, 15% exp bonus & extra global speed are good and doombringers life rating mostly makes up for their low base life rating.
Skeleton - 1/5 extra life, immunities and lacking the need to breathe is useful but you really want infusions.
Ghoul - 2/5 second and third racials are pretty good but not worth having no infusions.


Stats

STR: invest here first, you use a 2h weapon
DEX: second stat to max after getting requirements. crit shrug, accuracy & needed for precise strikes if you plan on using it (which you should be doing).
CON: heal mod is nice but you dont have the points
MAG: after getting requirements max this third (or maybe fourth after CUN if you didnt take light or arcane might, not much of your talents use spellpower)
WIL: don’t invest, stamina problems mostly disappear when you hit level 22 and vim on kill is irrelevant
CUN: crit is great though you probably wont have points for it, should probably prioritize over dex if halfling

Inscriptions

Use Wild (Phys), Movement and Regeneration/Healing/Shielding/Rune of Reflection early.

Movement: great for escaping & repositioning, stun & pin immunity early on are great too. Should run at least one late, maybe two.

Phase Door: if you find one with good numbers and uptime this is pretty good since you have many ways of getting to mobs/getting them to you.

Heroism: run two late & set them both to autocast so you can chain them permanently, double heroism is great on doombringer since it helps with not getting burst and
with good heal mod draining assault will heal you to full every time you use it (and it has like 2 cooldown with destroyer & dethblyd).

Regeneration: sustained healing is great till you have double heroism and still good then.

Healing: doesnt scale as well as regen but being instant and poison & bleed clear make this good always (especially early on).

Wild: late you dont really need one (assuming your stun & confuse immune which you should be) since you have cauterize spirit & relentless pursuit, but a phys one (for disarm & blind) or mental (silence & hexes) are still useful.

Shielding/Reflection: useful for managing saturation, but your probably still better off using healing/regen.

if your playing undead for some reason go shield or reflection, acid wave, biting gale/another shield/heat beam and phase door (take light also, its way better than another rune)

Prodigies

Flexible Combat: this is great with draining assault hitting twice & abduction hitting 4 times in destroyer form (4 and 8 times respectively if your an ogre with an offhand weapon!)
and share the pain will proc this often too (also helps with fear stacks).

I Can Carry the World!: more damage, 0 fatigue and infusion boost is great.

Legacy of the Naloren: overkill damage and great procs, notable synergy with ICCtW! in that Naloren has 140% strength scaling.

Windblade: disarm is a great debuff (and you can extend it too!) and the aoe is nice.

Arcane Might: simple and effective, crit buff based on spell crit & phys power boost based on spellpower and weapons (gloves too if your going with flex) scaling with magic is pretty good.

Cauterize: great defensive prodigy, helps with not getting burst.

Draconic Will: goes well with the hit and run playstyle of doombringer.

Worldly knowledge: if you really want light & the game refused to spawn an anorithil escort (or they died).


Category points

Fearfire > Wrath/Inscription > the other one > Light/Inscription
If Cornac spend your first category point on a inscription.

Class Categories

Combat techniques: 1/1/3/0 early 1/1/3/5 core, everything luxury (dont put points in blinding speed if shalore)

Rush: useful for escaping, put 1 point asap. Cooldown drastically gets lowered with more (and alot of gear lowers it too), could max late if you want
Precise strikes: big crit and accuracy buff if you pump dex, also most of your talents use spell speed which makes this better than usual (& you have flame of Urh'Rok for bump attacking)
Perfect strike: makes accuracy problems disappear, 3 points is enough to hit everything & 4 turns is enough to kill most mobs
Blinding speed: more speed is always good, max this after dreadfell

Combat veteran: 0/0/0/0 early and core, nothing luxury

Quick recovery: could float one here if you have a slow computer & havent found stamina regen gear
Fast metabolism: healing from this is too small to be useful, not even helpful for resting since you can just pop a heal
Spell shield: spell save is almost useless and definitely not worth points
Unending frenzy: you dont even have stamina problems and this is pretty bad even if you did

Shadowflame: 1/0/0/0 early 1/1/5/1 core, wraithform luxury

Wraithform: walking through (most) walls is op, put a point in this asap (could also be used to tp away if you cancel it while in a wall)
Darkfire: you arent a caster
Flame of Urh'Rok: some global speed and resists, max this as soon as you have around 250 vim & have nothing more important to get
Fearscape: you will probably never use this but it could save you in emergencies if you remember to use it, put 1 point after 1 in flame of Urh'Rok

Brutality: 4/1/1/0 early 4/1/1/2 core, everything luxury

Draining assault: one of your main damage talents, 4/5 this asap and spam it to keep your vim and hp up (after you get your first damage prodigy & around 150+ heal mod this should heal almost always get you to full hp)
Fiery grasp: silence and pin is useful, I didnt bother with this since most of the time you can kill the mob with abduction instead (though unlike abduction this goes through other mobs)
Reckless strike: guranteed hit with big % damage that goes through everything, be careful with it though since it damages you also
Share the pain: retaliation damage, goes amazing with flex since it can proc things like cripple and dominate giving you more hits, probably worth maxing late

Torture: 1/5/0/0 early and core, everything luxury

Incinerating blows: burning shock is great, scaling with spellpower sucks though. Could put more here to help apply it but its probably not worth it
Abduction: massive damage in multi hit & range 10 pull, max this asap so you can kill almost anything from range 10
Fiery torment: lowers fire resist by 50+ (works well with tirakais maul) & has the same effect as corrosive worm (though unfortunately the effect scales with spellpower)
Eternal suffering: reducing buffs and extending debuff is amazing, highly recommend maxing this late

Wrath: (locked) (unlock at level 20 or 36) 4/2/1/5 core, detonating charge and obliterating smash luxury

Obliterating smash: aoe armor and save lowering is great, useful for big groups too
Detonating charge: good engage if you dont want to use abduction for some reason (unlike rush this cant be used on a empty tile).
Voracious blade: helps with clearing trash, not worth more than 1
Destroyer: main reason your here, makes your stamina and damage problems disappear while giving a lot of stun & disarm resist.
Using abduction while this is up will probably kill anything thats not a randboss (& even some randbosses!)

Fearfire: (locked) 1/2/0/0 early and core, everything but infernal breath luxury (unlock at level 10 because cauterize spirit is op)

Fearscape shift: tp that heals you in demon form and damages non demons, I didnt use this much but its probably worth more than 1 point
Cauterize spirit: amazing low cd instant talent that clears ALL debuffs, run away after using this unless you think you can win the fight very soon
Infernal breath: really weak aoe damage
Maw of Urh'Rok: could put some here for mobs that like to run away (like Elandar)

Heart of fire: 1/1/1/1 early and core, blazing rebirth luxury

Burning sacrifice: helps with trash clearing
Fiery aegis: really weak shield that consumes burns, never used this
Devouring flames: some passive vim regen & damage in fights with many mobs, not worth more than 1
Blazing rebirth: its like reverse cauterize, put a point in this asap and more late if you want to smear it longer and to lower cd

Generic Categories

Combat training: 0/5/0/0/5/0 early and core, thick skin & combat accuracy luxury (if you arent using precise strikes)

Thick skin: good use of extra generics, res all is always nice
Heavy armour training: your always going to be in melee, max this at around level 20 for the hardiness
Light armour training: dont
Combat accuracy: could put 2 here if you want, probably not worth it since you have precise strikes and perfect strike
Weapons mastery: 3/5 asap, max after abyssal shield if you arent going naloren (if you want naloren later float points in this)
Dagger mastery: you want procs & things like respen on your offhand dagger not damage

Survival: 1/1/1/0 early and core, 1 point in danger sense & 5/5 device mastery luxury

Heightened senses: some infravision is useful
Device mastery: charms are great and you should max this late, off the top of my head some notable ones are wintertide phial, boots of the hunter,
wrap of stone, aetherwalk, will of Ul'Gruth, psychoport torque & mage hats with stone wall (nexus of the way and core of the forge too if your ogre)
Track: information is op, 1/5 early since it helps you not die in the t2s & save escorts
Danger sense: low chance to resist debuffs, 1 if you want

Oppresion: 0/0/0/0 early 2/1/1/3 core, everything luxury

Horrifying blows: reduces damage when you hit things, 2 gives 16 damage reduction at max stacks which is excellent
Mass hysteria: spreads fear, useful for setting up fearfeast
Fearfeast: this is like terminus from CoE but instead of doing damage it heals you
Hope Wanes: making mobs lose turns is op, if your an ogre abduction in destroyer form will get you max stacks immediately and if the mob somehow
lives this lets you kill it (or run away) before it can act again (its especially useful in the final fight to kill Elandar before he can do anything)

Hexes: 0/0/0/0 early and core, everything but empathic hex luxury
(though you probably wont have enough spellpower to make these work on anything relevant)

Pacification hex: daze is a decent debuff and this is good at burning mobs cleanses
Burning hex: pretty great, shuts down casters if you manage to land it on them
Empathic hex: useless, you do much more damage than mobs and have much less health
Domination hex: useful for making rares fight each other, 1 is enough to make them aggro each other

Demonic strength: 1/2/5/5 early and core, everything luxury

Dismember: crit chance and lower accuracy and move speed on crit, could put more here if you have spare points
Surge of power: instant hp and stamina gain that can crit, with good heal mod 2 is usually enough
Demonic blood: damage boost scaling on vim and more vim, max this after abyssal shield & weapon mastery
Abyssal shield: gives armor and damage reduction that scales with vim, max this asap (even before weapon mastery)

Light: (locked) 1/5/1/5 if you choose to unlock (optional, consider unlocking with Wyrm Bile category point. Especially on Shalore/Halfling)

Healing light: weak heal that takes a turn, can crit at least
Bathe in light: heals, shields & extends shields. Ignore the low numbers on the tooltip, with good heal mod in practice its going to be like 6x what the tooltip says (and if it crits its basically temporary invincibility)
Barrier: same as healing light but its a shield
Providence: more cleanse is never bad

Misc:

Alchemist quest

foundations > focus > go for invulnerability potion/lifebinding emerald

Escorts

Anorithil: points in BiL/healing light or the category if you want it
Sun Paladin: take the chant that gives hp
Loremaster: disarm is great
Thief: track/device mastery
Seer: all the talents you can get are good, having no mana regen is annoying though
Warrior: UFR (vitality heal is too low) & points in exotic weapons if your going naloren
Tinker: take last engineer standing for the crit shrug unless you want the category
Temporal Explorer: get foresight for crit shrug, you already have track
Alchemist: take +2 mag or stone touch for stun fodder

Gearing

Prioritize heal mod, stun immunity, armor (go for at least 100, around 140 is probably enough) & confuse immunity above all. After that go for gloom on hit, phys crit & crit multi
(& maybe spell crit if you took light and arcane might), phys damage & respen (or fire if your using tirakais maul), resists (important ones are blight, fire, physical, cold & darkness).



Random thoughts:

cauterize spirit can be disabled by silence which really sucks.
you can use draining assault on summons for vim.
barely mentioned tinkers since I dislike using them in AoA campaign, if you want to use them run enough for USF,
pain suppressor salve, crystal edge, grounding strap, iron grip, ablative armor, headlamp & the tp resist boot tinkers.
with windtouched speed, dethblyd & destroyer form draining assault has 1 cd, probably not worth thinking about but harmony does give you global speed (question is does it stack with blinding speed?)
edit: if your still playing in 1.5.10 you can hit yourself with darkfire to proc elemental harmony.
kinda annoying that some of your unique trees don't have 1.3 mastery.
with shalore and BiL you can have around 10+ turns of invulnerability potion (though I personally hate consumeables).

criticism would be nice

I was going to criticize some of the build stuff, but upon further reading it seems fine. I'd maybe suggest reflecting whether a talent is a good place for luxury points in the tl;dr build, like with 1+/5/3+/0 or whatever. You could also mention that Flexible Combat is a great combo with Hope Wanes even on a non-ogre.

I'm a big skeptical that Windblade is in any way a competitive prodigy choice for Doombringer. It doesn't give you that much more damage and doesn't really help with your lack of defense against a lot of enemies that don't care about disarm.

EDIT: Also I Can Carry The World! deserves to be on there for sure since it straight-up gives more damage then Arcane Might.

IMHO Frenzy is more useful than Timeless here. You can spam the moves Destroyer buffs nearly all day long while still in form before casting it again right after, use Fearscape Shift twice when needed to go in and retreat (I always 4/5 this if not max, the Track, range, OOP from equipment, and healing fire radius is worth it and makes for a great way to say hello to mobs), the applications are endless. Also, don't froget that Drem starts in an area that isn't completely mandatory.

By the way, like this guide said be careful with reckless strike. I ended my last DB run and got the OP achievement at the same time by killing the bearscape boss when I was lv50 in one crit.

I'm goimg to give Harmony a credit
1/5/0/0 it and use darkfire to burn yourself to get the sweet 41% globla speed boost!
plus this is going to be removed in 1.6 so hurry up!

arcane might is better than ICCTW on a 120% weapon when you have a bit more than 100 Magic, so it's worse when picking up, but will be better in end-game. Plus it probably gives some physical crit chance, and more physical power, which are better than encumb and no fatigue.

One more thing of note. Some of your most important Generics revolve around max health and max vim. It's worth considering because Eternal Suffering and Share the Pain have a notable vim cost (though not as bad as FoUR), and you obviously want that sweet global speed buff. Other sustains cut into your Demon Blood and Abyssal Shield buffs. Cast in this light (at least to me) these sustains don't end up as much of a no-brainer anymore.

helminthauge wrote: arcane might is better than ICCTW on a 120% weapon when you have a bit more than 100 Magic, so it's worse when picking up, but will be better in end-game. Plus it probably gives some physical crit chance, and more physical power, which are better than encumb and no fatigue.

Ignoring for a moment that at the moment of picking a prodigy is by far the most important time for that prodigy to be useful:

-In endgame you use a fixedart weapon with greater then 120% modifier, making Arcane Might take even longer to catch up.
-50 Strength gives +50 physical power, the physical power gap isn't as large as you make it seem.
-The crit chance bonus doesn't take into account crit bonuses to all kinds of crits, like from Cunning, so the bonus is mostly limited to 25% of any spell crit bonuses from gear. That's not nothing, but it's also not a huge factour in the prodigy.

Zero fatigue might matter at some point on Doombringer, but by the time you get ICCTW you have Destroyer Form and thus no stamina problems anyways. That's not the point of the prodigy though.

Arcane Might is by no means a bad damage prodigy, but on a class that uses 2H weapons it doesn't do noticeably better then ICCTW even in optimal conditions and does far worse in the part of the game where that difference actually matters.

Chronosplit wrote:One more thing of note. Some of your most important Generics revolve around max health and max vim. It's worth considering because Eternal Suffering and Share the Pain have a notable vim cost (though not as bad as FoUR), and you obviously want that sweet global speed buff. Other sustains cut into your Demon Blood and Abyssal Shield buffs. Cast in this light (at least to me) these sustains don't end up as much of a no-brainer anymore.

Share the Pain costs 35 vim and Eternal Suffering costs 20 vim. With 5/5 Abyssal Shield and Demonic Blood you get 30% of your vim as flat dr[It's actually even worse then flat dr, but let's pretend for a moment that it isn't.].

Sustaining Share the Pain loses you ~11 points of flat dr and sustaining Demonic Blood loses you ~6 points of flat dr. That's completely trivial.

With 5/5 Demonic Blood, you get 10% of your vim as a multiplicative increase to your damage. No, this isn't the same as inc_dam. No, I don't know why it was implemented that way either.

Sustaining Share the Pain loses you a 3.5% damage multiplier and sustaining Demonic Blood loses you a 2% damage multiplier. That's even more negligible.

In conclusion you shouldn't worry about that interaction at all. Even though Share the Pain isn't really a great talent, it's still worth losing a tiny amount of defense and damage for insulating Abyssal Shield against removal and giving you an extra hit in some fights.

Arcvasti wrote:With 5/5 Demonic Blood, you get 10% of your vim as a multiplicative increase to your damage. No, this isn't the same as inc_dam. No, I don't know why it was implemented that way either.

I have both checked code and tested im dev mod, it is added to the inc-damage, so basically it's equal to +% all damage. So losing that 5.5% is really nothing significant.

I personally prefer building towards "final power", so I prefer AM. Those 140% Str fixdart may not drop.
Anyway, this should no longer become a problem in 1.6, where you probably want both because of the Flexible Combat nerf, and then obviously ICCTW at lv30, and AM at lv42 (or that trident if you're into it).

A lot happened to Doombringer in updates afterwards, but not as much as other Defiler classes:

+Divination is well worth picking up now thanks to 1.00 mastery, at least for the sustains (arcane eye is more useful on other classes due to you having Fearscape Shift). If you have the points that is. Same with Scoundrel or Curses, but if you take Arcane Might you should at least consider a point in Keen Senses for sustain rip padding and spell crit.
+Speaking of Curses, a point in Curse of Defenselessness never hurt thanks to it not respecting saves at all now.
+If you focus on OOP for Fearscape Shift and other teleport sources, Blink runes may be the best thing to ever happen to you. Who cares about casting twice when you have a great positioning and GTFO button on demand (especially with ICCTW boosting)?
+Rune of Dissipation can turn off other people's FoUR. It doesn't make Infernal Breath nearly as good as Wyrmic breaths anymore, but this is especially nice with Elven Cultists when you teleport in.
+Having trouble applying Burning Shock or Hexes? Try Halfling. When Militant Mind is maxed, you get Dwarf-level saves and +50 in all powers when the crowd control is needed most.
+Elemental Surge might just be worth looking into, as even if CUN is only the fourth stat for you the effects of physical and fire don't scale.

-Surge of Power doesn't do percentages anymore, so max HP isn't taken into account. I still think it's worth investing, but for me it's not as high of a priority anymore as it's not nearly as good. I'd put in 3 instead of 5, it tapers off much more now. You can most likely put even less into it if you're a race that warrants high investment, but I'd rather drop Oppression (especially if you're undead).
-That also means CON is now junk to a DB unless you're a race that uses it or you're using life to cast a lot. Chants and races with higher life ratings also used to be factored in to this for huge heals in a similar way to Draconic Body, not anymore.
-Harmony doesn't do that self-damage thing anymore, making The Black Ring even more useless than it was before on it.
-The Flex nerf. I still think this is worth it since talent hits are better on gloves, but it makes something else more desirable as a second prodigy choice because combined with this you might end up destroying walls too with a certain pair of gloves.

Everything else is just about the same.