1.7.4 Insane Ghoul Reaver Guide
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2021 3:06 am
So, the last actual full Reaver guide looks like it was done around 2013. There is some cool math and thoughts threads, but I figure I'd throw together an actual Guide. A lot of the issues with the Reaver (most of which were mentioned in the scattered thoughts thread) appear to have actually been addressed, and I think it's a very solid class. More on that later. I also wrote the Corruptor Guide that's up, so some of the language will be the same.
Here's my guy.
Build TL:DR
Class Talents
Corruption/Scourge: 2/2/1/1
Corruption/Reaving Combat: 3/5/5/1
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/4-5
Corruption/Vim: 1-5/1/1/1
Corruption/Rot: 4/4/5/3
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 1/1/1/1
Corruption/Plague: 4/5/4/3
Generic Talents
Race/Ghoul: 1/5/5/2
Technique/Combat training: 3-5/0-1/0-1/2/0/0
Spell/Staff Combat: 5/5/1/0
Corruption/Torment: 5/1/1/0-1
Corruption/Hexes: 1/1/1/5
Reaver Thoughts
I think Reaver is in a really good place right now. I tried it a few years ago, and the issue was there seemed to be a bunch of category unlock taxes, some of the categories (plague) were set to 1.0 instead of 1.3, and it mostly just kinda seemed like a discount Corruptor. Going through things now, the class felt extremely good from 1 to 50, and was an excellent essence of "warrior mage". Basically, a character that is at it's heart a caster using spells, but prefers to do so in melee range rather than hang back because it can take a beating. I wasn't really sure when I started where I wanted to go with it, but I knew I was going to lean into the dual-staff wielding rather than two traditional weapons, and I'm glad I did. I also knew I wanted to go Ghoul after trying a few different races out, let me go into that.
Reaver is pretty good at what it does. Great AoE, great debilitation, decent defensive options, great longevity and status clears with Vile Life, but it's really lacking in two main places. The first is an Insane issue, which is it's lack of one-shot protection. The Ghouls "can't get hit for more than 50% of your life" ability takes care of that. The other is the mobility/escape options, and Ghoulish Leap was fantastically useful for both of those. In the end, going Adept, you end up with a ridiculous 11 square jump that you can do even while pinned, which is really what the class wants. If you choose to put the Wyrm Bile point into Ghoul, it goes up to 13, which is probably overkill but is still pretty funny. Ghoul also has Retch, which is blight damage, and since you'll be stacking as much blight as you can handle, you get a mass of value from it. Retch is also considered non-disease blight damage, so you can get your Virulent Disease procs from it, and...this is weird, but although Retch doesn't appear to "crit", for some reason Blood Splash counts it as a "crit", so it'll give you a Blood Splash proc.
Gnaw gives you another disease for Cyst Burst and spreads with it, which means you get to make your Catalepsy even more stupid. It's also good for the '"haha" just because when you spread Ghoul Rot and Catalepsy pretty much everything dies and rises as a Ghoul...which also has Ghoul Rot. So you get these instances where you end up with a screen filled with Ghouls now and again. Anyway...
Index
1. Cheat sheet
2. Build rationale and analysis
3. Change log
Cheat Sheet
Stat distribution priority
Magic and some Cunning (you'll need at least 50 to get MoD at 25, and MoD's bonuses scale with Cunning so it's good to have regardless), then Strength, then Con with whatever's left over.
Category Point Order
Rot, Inscription, Inscription, and if you find a cool escort category that's probably where this last point would go, you COULD also put it in bone to get 5 bone shields with Adept, I just through it in Staff Combat and came out with a 10% damage increase or so.
Inscriptions
Dissipation, Blink, Stormshield, Shield/Reflection, Shatter Afflictions
Prodigies
Master of Disasters, then Adept. You could also go Ethereal Form for a more defensive build.
Note: I've now done additional testing with Arcane Might. While Master of Disasters provides more up front benefits, Arcane Might will provide roughly 30-70% damage in the late game, so taking Arcane Might instead of MoD is not a bad choice.
Equipment priority
Blight Damage, Crit Multiplier, Global Speed Boost, Magic, HP, Spell Crit, increase crit multiplier, respen, healing mod.
Alchemist Quest priority
+2 generic, +2 class, +4 Spell Crit
I missed the class points quest!
+4 stats
Analysis and Rationale
The Reaver is honestly great at what it does. Engage at range if needed, but eventually close and just stand in the middle of stuff blowing everything up with diseases and Overkill. The early game is effectively soul rot, drain, bone spear. As you move to the mid game, more serious issues are handled with Epidemic, Worm Rot, Gnaw, Dark Portal, Cyst Burst, Catalepsy. Nothing really survives that. If you're dealing with something with full disease resist, Corrupting Strike takes care of that. At the end game, channel staff effectively deletes everything that isn't a boss/unique. Those take 2 channel staves. Corrupted Strength gives you a free melee attack when casting a spell that takes a turn, and Channel Staff is considered a spell, hence the warrior mage theme. You get into melee combat, channel staff and this also gives you a melee attack. You have excellent mobility with Ghoulish Leap, great sustainability with Retch, and a guaranteed extra Disease with Ghoul Rot.
I tested Master of Disasters compared to Arcane Might. Master of Disasters not only provided approximately 10% additional damage, but also pushes your spell power and physical power up to fairly ridiculous levels, so you get to beat everything's saves...forever. Since they're so high, you're always spellshocking everything all the time, so the other two cross-tiers are typically getting tossed on stuff as well. MoD just turned out to be a very valuable prodigy. Adept could be replaced with Flexible Combat if you're looking for just raw damage and you have a busted set of Gauntlets, or Ethereal Form for some ultra high defense. I just liked Adept here because it makes you do everything a little better, including stuff that isn't even in class, like device abilities. It changes a few break points as well. Just note when I talk about the Class Talents coming up and the break points, these are WITH Adept. They can be different without it.
The build probably doesn't even need Strength, you could just as easily go Dex for more defense, but finding 1-handed staves was a pain in the ass for the first 90% of the game, and I didn't feel like I was lacking anything having that strength at the end, so I think it's just personal preference, but it definitely makes that first 90% of the game a lot easier.
Weapon Choice
Staves, but make sure you attune them to Blight. Oddly the staff in your off hand doesn't get it's own attunement icon it looks like, so just swap them, get them attuned, and off you go. You'll probably need to float points in regular melee weapons though in the beginning, because for a while it can be a pain finding 1 handed staves. Luckily Reavers can dual wield anything so you have options.
Class Talents
Corruption/Scourge: 2/2/1/1
[2] Virulent Strike: Useful in the early game and a good filler attack later on. 2 points for the 3 disease duration setting. It's also considered a spell, so you get that extra melee attack with it.
[2] Ruin: Gives all melee attacks Blight Damage (great for the first half of the game, and for later when you channel your staff in melee range) and also does some healing. The healing actually gets pretty significant when you start stacking healing mod.
[1] Acid Strike: It's fine I guess. It's something else to attack with and it's an AoE, but it's Acid which isn't really what we're looking to do with the build.
[1] Corrupting Strike: A fantastic 1 point wonder. It hits hard, strips nature sustains, and reduces disease immunity by 100% for 2 turns. It's also considered a spell, so you get your extra melee attack with it. If the amount of nature sustains or the disease immunity reduction length went up with points I could see putting more in.
Corruption/Reaving Combat: 3/5/5/1
[3] Corrupted Strength: Lets you use anything in your off hand and it gives you that free melee attack when casting a spell. 3 points for diminishing returns.
[5] Bloodlust: Each attack with a melee weapon gives you stacking bonus spell power for a short time. This gets pretty nutty as it stacks 10 times and you can fill it pretty quickly, since you're getting say 2 attacks with Corrupting Strike, and then a third bonus attack with Corrupted Strength. Spell power makes literally everything you do better, so it's nice to have it as high as possible.
[5] Carrier: Gives you disease resist and allows you to spread diseases with melee attacks. The returns get diminishing, but it's a passive 'always there' kind of thing, so I went 5 with it.
[1] Acid Blood: Kinda cool, I think it's worth the 1 point. Does some acid damage when you get hit, which is meh, but in the end it was reducing stuff's accuracy by 35, which even with scaling is pretty decent. 3 points would allow you to reduce armor as well, but Channel Staff ignores armor, so I'm not sure how valuable going the 3 could be.
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/5
[1] Bone Spear: This can actually do some pretty wacky damage, but there's just so much other stuff to put points into, and we're focusing heavily on Blight rather than physical. Still, in the beginning of the run, it's a great damage spell.
[1] Bone Grab: I hate to say it, but I used this maybe a handful of times. Ghoulish Leap really spoiled me and allows you to really go where you want.
[1] Bone Spike: It's free damage I guess, it also counts as it's own spell so you can get gear procs and what not with it.
[4-5] 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. The same is true if you decide to put your Wyrm Bile point in here. If not though, Adept gives you it's full value at 4 points.
Corruption/Vim: 5/1/0/0
[1-5] Soul Rot: Great damage and a low cool down. This is pretty much your standard opener/channel staff ability before you start being able to channel staff 24/7. You can float points in here as needed. I ended up with 2/5 in here because I floated too hard and forgot to take one out. Honestly it's useful enough for most of the game that any amount of points in here isn't really a waste.
[1] Dark Portal: I used this a bunch because it gives you an extra disease for cyst burst and catalepsy if needed. It also kinda bunches up enemies and can put you in melee which is nice if you aim it right.
[1] Vimsense: Something to invest in late in the game. It's actually pretty useful for all it does, and while it does make stuff B-line to you, by the time you're using it...nothing really scares you anymore, so it saves you time rather than having to go out and find the stuff to kill.
[1] Leech: I'm really not sure how much value I got out of this. Honestly you could probably just not put a point in this and be fine. I was just using Vimsense a lot so I figured why not, I'd throw one in here.
Corruption/Rot: 4/4/5/3
[4] Infestation: This talent does it all. Blight and acid resistance, blight affinity, reduces damage and spawns carrion worms, and then on top of that when the worms explode they do blight damage and heal you. Very diminishing returns, but you could honestly not put that point in Leech and go 5 here and feel good about it. The damage reduction is really more substantial than you think. One of my deaths was me forgetting to put the damn thing on auto-sustain, so it got dispelled and I got hit way harder than I was expecting by an Archer/Marauder combo.
[4] Worm Walk: This is a really neat spell. It's a teleport by itself, 4 points with Adept gets you full teleport accuracy which is hot. But if you use it on a worm mass (which you'll have a ton of thanks to Infestation and Worm Rot) you get a titanic heal and vim return if you teleport on top of the worm mass.
[5] Pestilent Blight: Anytime you deal Blight damage, this allows you to either silence, disarm, blind, or pin something. At level 4 it happens in a radius 1 ball, and there's a rider effect that your worms ALSO get this ability, just at a reduced percentage and turn duration. Still, despite there being a cooldown for you, I think it's pretty worth the 5.
[3] Worm Rot: Does acid/blight damage for 5 turns, removes physical beneficial effects each turn, and after the 5 turns, it hatches into a worm mass. At 3 points with Adept, even if it gets removed early (catalepsy) it still has a 100% chance to hatch into a worm mass. It's also it's own disease, so just more stupidity for Cyst Burst/Catalepsy.
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 1/1/1/1
[1] Drain: It's fine for what it does. I used it pretty much all the time in the early game.
[1] Bloodcasting: I mean, whatever. I guess it did stuff. Good for when you get Anti-Magic drained I guess.
[1] Absorb Life: I never used it however...
[1] Life Tap: ....THIS I used all the time. It's instant, which is fantastic, and considering the stupid amount of damage you do and the heal mod you should be stacking, this provides a ridiculous amount of healing even at 1 single point.
Corruption/Plague: 4/5/4/3
[4] Virulent Disease: This could easily be a 5/5 if you want. There's diminishing returns, but literally EVERYTHING this class does is Blight related, so I mean, at least you're getting your point's worth.
[5] Cyst Burst: This is a real MVP here. No reason not to swing for the fence with this talent, so it gets the full 5.
[4] Catalepsy: Used more for the damage than for the stun. Typically this will erase whatever it hits. 4 points with Adept gets you a huge 4 radius ball and a 5 turn stun if anything actually survives this.
[3] Epidemic: Awesome and one of the first things I'd always throw out due to reducing disease resistance. Also reduces healing which is a nice kicker.
Generic Talents
Race/Ghoul: 1/5/5/2
[1] Ghoul: A little extra strength and con, which is fine, but the real value is not being able to take more than 50% of your total health in one hit. This is your 1 shot protection.
[5] Ghoulish Leap: This is so good. I used it ALL the time, both to get into combat AND to get out if I was in a bad spot. With Adept and 5 points, you get a gigantic 11 square range with an 8 cooldown and a 31% global speed increase for 4 turns. You can do some cheeky stuff as well, like leap 1 tile, zone change, and start the zone with the global speed buff, which is how I started each of the Prides.
[5] Retch: It's AoE blight damage that chills out for 10 turns, heals you (probably for a ton if you're stacking heal mod), and ALSO removes beneficial physical effects from non-undead and negative physical effects from undead. It also negates your built in -20% global speed from being a Ghoul.
[2] Gnaw: Mostly this is just another unique disease to put on stuff to make Cyst Burst and Catalepsy hit even harder. You'll get a chuckle now and again though when you have a dozen Ghoul buddies hopping all over the screen infecting everything with even more diseases. 2 points for a 6 turn duration on the disease and the actual Ghoul summon with Adept.
Technique/Combat Training: 3-5/0-1/0-1/2/0/0
[3-5] Thick Skin: It's universal damage reduction. Just put as many points as you can spare into it.
[0-1] Heavy Armor Training: Mostly to taste here. You'll probably end up in robes though. Float as needed.
[0-1] Light Armor Training: For when you end up in robes.
[2] Combat Accuracy: I found 2 points to be pretty good for this class. Can float if needed.
Spell/Staff Combat: 5/5/1/0
[5] Channel Staff: This will eventually kinda be your "1 button beats 95% of stuff in the game" ability.
[5] Staff Mastery: More damage for the free melee attack you get from channeling or casting spells in melee with stuff.
[1] Defensive Posture: Extra defense and armor which is sweet. Crazy diminishing returns and there's a lot of other stuff we need out points for.
Corruption/Vile Life: 1/1/1/1
[1] Blood Splash: You get this category unlocked for free when you eat the corrupted Sandworm heart, which is pretty awesome. Everything in here is insanely useful, even with just 1 point in it. Blood Splash will end up generating a metric ton of healing thoughout the course of the game.
[1] Elemental Discord: Again, just a fine 1 point ability for this build. It just sits in the background, freezing a million orc cryomancers and what not.
[1] Healing Inversion: This is one of those abilities that you won't really use very often, but when you do need it, you're really glad you have it.
[1] Vile Transplant: Fantastic status clear. Only works on Physical and Magical, so it won't clear confusion, but it's great for disarms/blind/hexes etc. With Adept, 1 point gets you 3 status cleared. It's got a short range, but considering we almost always want to be in melee, it was really made for us.
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 more than 140 Vim.
[1] Blood Lock: I didn't end up using this much. 1 point 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. All of the splash damage is ALSO blight damage. This is like...probably the best 1 point you can spend in the entire build.
[1] Blood Vengeance: So, I'm not really sure how much value I got out of this. Like...I'm sure it was there as a sustain, just quietly doing something...but you could probably get away with a 0 here.
Corruption/Hexes: 1/1/1/5
[1] Pacification Hex: I really didn't use any of these hexes except Domination hex much. There's just so much other stuff you'd rather be doing as a Reaver.
[1] Burning Hex: Same here...
[1] Empathetic Hex: Same here...
[5] Domination Hex: God I love this hex. It's kinda useful pretty much all the time, forever. From using various randbosses to AoE the hell out of everything chilling with them in a room, to causing complete chaos in the Prides, to simply dominating the stair guardians and waltzing right up High Peak, Domination hex is just super useful. It has a titanic 10 range too, so you can track/premonition, sit out of sight range of the creatures, snag the randboss, and just watch the fireworks...and then clean up whatever is left. 5 levels with Adept gives you 9 turns of hilariousness. Just make sure to use it on something at range because your Ghoul Retch will probably harm it and break the hex.
Prodigies
Master of Disasters: I'm really liking this Prodigy. Cunning is just a useful attribute pretty much all the time, and this gives you a mountain of spell/physical power, which is very welcome since spell power effects pretty much everything in the entire build. You throw out so many spells/effects that everything will pretty much be Spellshocked/Brainlocked/Off-Balance all the time, which is a nice rider.
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 increases the talent levels found on gear, turning the 4.0 Blinding Speed ring I found into a 5.5 Blinding Speed ring. It also has some additional bonuses to spells, such as enabling an extra Bone shield with gear, a 9 turn domination, and adds a ton of percents to all of the various things the class does like affinity/resists/blight procs/etc. It gives you that 11 range Ghoulish Leap with an 8 cooldown as well.
Inscriptions
Runes
Dissipation: Needed since it's your only way to clean magical effects off people.
Shatter Afflictions: You're undead and you can't use any wild infusions, so this is pretty useful.
Shield/Rune of Reflection: More shields.
Stormshield: Nice extra defense layer when stuff starts hitting extremely hard.
Blink: I wasn't sure how much I'd use it, but honestly I ended up using it all the time. Coupled with Ghoulish Leap, you can pretty much get anywhere, or get out of anywhere.
Changelog
12/28/21: Guide created.
1/1/22: Additional testing and notes done on Arcane Might instead of MoD.
Notes
I had a lot of fun with this staff/Ghoul Reaver. It really felt like the perfect melding of "warrior mage". It had lots of mobility, lots of AoE, lots of debilitation, lots of healing, and lots of survivability. There really hasn't been much written on it, and I know back when I was playing my corruptor there were so many talent taxes you had to pay as a Reaver it was like...why play one when you could just be a Corruptor. Now I'll say though, it feels like it's own class and it feels very solid.
Here's my guy.
Build TL:DR
Class Talents
Corruption/Scourge: 2/2/1/1
Corruption/Reaving Combat: 3/5/5/1
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/4-5
Corruption/Vim: 1-5/1/1/1
Corruption/Rot: 4/4/5/3
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 1/1/1/1
Corruption/Plague: 4/5/4/3
Generic Talents
Race/Ghoul: 1/5/5/2
Technique/Combat training: 3-5/0-1/0-1/2/0/0
Spell/Staff Combat: 5/5/1/0
Corruption/Torment: 5/1/1/0-1
Corruption/Hexes: 1/1/1/5
Reaver Thoughts
I think Reaver is in a really good place right now. I tried it a few years ago, and the issue was there seemed to be a bunch of category unlock taxes, some of the categories (plague) were set to 1.0 instead of 1.3, and it mostly just kinda seemed like a discount Corruptor. Going through things now, the class felt extremely good from 1 to 50, and was an excellent essence of "warrior mage". Basically, a character that is at it's heart a caster using spells, but prefers to do so in melee range rather than hang back because it can take a beating. I wasn't really sure when I started where I wanted to go with it, but I knew I was going to lean into the dual-staff wielding rather than two traditional weapons, and I'm glad I did. I also knew I wanted to go Ghoul after trying a few different races out, let me go into that.
Reaver is pretty good at what it does. Great AoE, great debilitation, decent defensive options, great longevity and status clears with Vile Life, but it's really lacking in two main places. The first is an Insane issue, which is it's lack of one-shot protection. The Ghouls "can't get hit for more than 50% of your life" ability takes care of that. The other is the mobility/escape options, and Ghoulish Leap was fantastically useful for both of those. In the end, going Adept, you end up with a ridiculous 11 square jump that you can do even while pinned, which is really what the class wants. If you choose to put the Wyrm Bile point into Ghoul, it goes up to 13, which is probably overkill but is still pretty funny. Ghoul also has Retch, which is blight damage, and since you'll be stacking as much blight as you can handle, you get a mass of value from it. Retch is also considered non-disease blight damage, so you can get your Virulent Disease procs from it, and...this is weird, but although Retch doesn't appear to "crit", for some reason Blood Splash counts it as a "crit", so it'll give you a Blood Splash proc.
Gnaw gives you another disease for Cyst Burst and spreads with it, which means you get to make your Catalepsy even more stupid. It's also good for the '"haha" just because when you spread Ghoul Rot and Catalepsy pretty much everything dies and rises as a Ghoul...which also has Ghoul Rot. So you get these instances where you end up with a screen filled with Ghouls now and again. Anyway...
Index
1. Cheat sheet
2. Build rationale and analysis
3. Change log
Cheat Sheet
Stat distribution priority
Magic and some Cunning (you'll need at least 50 to get MoD at 25, and MoD's bonuses scale with Cunning so it's good to have regardless), then Strength, then Con with whatever's left over.
Category Point Order
Rot, Inscription, Inscription, and if you find a cool escort category that's probably where this last point would go, you COULD also put it in bone to get 5 bone shields with Adept, I just through it in Staff Combat and came out with a 10% damage increase or so.
Inscriptions
Dissipation, Blink, Stormshield, Shield/Reflection, Shatter Afflictions
Prodigies
Master of Disasters, then Adept. You could also go Ethereal Form for a more defensive build.
Note: I've now done additional testing with Arcane Might. While Master of Disasters provides more up front benefits, Arcane Might will provide roughly 30-70% damage in the late game, so taking Arcane Might instead of MoD is not a bad choice.
Equipment priority
Blight Damage, Crit Multiplier, Global Speed Boost, Magic, HP, Spell Crit, increase crit multiplier, respen, healing mod.
Alchemist Quest priority
+2 generic, +2 class, +4 Spell Crit
I missed the class points quest!
+4 stats
Analysis and Rationale
The Reaver is honestly great at what it does. Engage at range if needed, but eventually close and just stand in the middle of stuff blowing everything up with diseases and Overkill. The early game is effectively soul rot, drain, bone spear. As you move to the mid game, more serious issues are handled with Epidemic, Worm Rot, Gnaw, Dark Portal, Cyst Burst, Catalepsy. Nothing really survives that. If you're dealing with something with full disease resist, Corrupting Strike takes care of that. At the end game, channel staff effectively deletes everything that isn't a boss/unique. Those take 2 channel staves. Corrupted Strength gives you a free melee attack when casting a spell that takes a turn, and Channel Staff is considered a spell, hence the warrior mage theme. You get into melee combat, channel staff and this also gives you a melee attack. You have excellent mobility with Ghoulish Leap, great sustainability with Retch, and a guaranteed extra Disease with Ghoul Rot.
I tested Master of Disasters compared to Arcane Might. Master of Disasters not only provided approximately 10% additional damage, but also pushes your spell power and physical power up to fairly ridiculous levels, so you get to beat everything's saves...forever. Since they're so high, you're always spellshocking everything all the time, so the other two cross-tiers are typically getting tossed on stuff as well. MoD just turned out to be a very valuable prodigy. Adept could be replaced with Flexible Combat if you're looking for just raw damage and you have a busted set of Gauntlets, or Ethereal Form for some ultra high defense. I just liked Adept here because it makes you do everything a little better, including stuff that isn't even in class, like device abilities. It changes a few break points as well. Just note when I talk about the Class Talents coming up and the break points, these are WITH Adept. They can be different without it.
The build probably doesn't even need Strength, you could just as easily go Dex for more defense, but finding 1-handed staves was a pain in the ass for the first 90% of the game, and I didn't feel like I was lacking anything having that strength at the end, so I think it's just personal preference, but it definitely makes that first 90% of the game a lot easier.
Weapon Choice
Staves, but make sure you attune them to Blight. Oddly the staff in your off hand doesn't get it's own attunement icon it looks like, so just swap them, get them attuned, and off you go. You'll probably need to float points in regular melee weapons though in the beginning, because for a while it can be a pain finding 1 handed staves. Luckily Reavers can dual wield anything so you have options.
Class Talents
Corruption/Scourge: 2/2/1/1
[2] Virulent Strike: Useful in the early game and a good filler attack later on. 2 points for the 3 disease duration setting. It's also considered a spell, so you get that extra melee attack with it.
[2] Ruin: Gives all melee attacks Blight Damage (great for the first half of the game, and for later when you channel your staff in melee range) and also does some healing. The healing actually gets pretty significant when you start stacking healing mod.
[1] Acid Strike: It's fine I guess. It's something else to attack with and it's an AoE, but it's Acid which isn't really what we're looking to do with the build.
[1] Corrupting Strike: A fantastic 1 point wonder. It hits hard, strips nature sustains, and reduces disease immunity by 100% for 2 turns. It's also considered a spell, so you get your extra melee attack with it. If the amount of nature sustains or the disease immunity reduction length went up with points I could see putting more in.
Corruption/Reaving Combat: 3/5/5/1
[3] Corrupted Strength: Lets you use anything in your off hand and it gives you that free melee attack when casting a spell. 3 points for diminishing returns.
[5] Bloodlust: Each attack with a melee weapon gives you stacking bonus spell power for a short time. This gets pretty nutty as it stacks 10 times and you can fill it pretty quickly, since you're getting say 2 attacks with Corrupting Strike, and then a third bonus attack with Corrupted Strength. Spell power makes literally everything you do better, so it's nice to have it as high as possible.
[5] Carrier: Gives you disease resist and allows you to spread diseases with melee attacks. The returns get diminishing, but it's a passive 'always there' kind of thing, so I went 5 with it.
[1] Acid Blood: Kinda cool, I think it's worth the 1 point. Does some acid damage when you get hit, which is meh, but in the end it was reducing stuff's accuracy by 35, which even with scaling is pretty decent. 3 points would allow you to reduce armor as well, but Channel Staff ignores armor, so I'm not sure how valuable going the 3 could be.
Corruption/Bone: 1/1/1/5
[1] Bone Spear: This can actually do some pretty wacky damage, but there's just so much other stuff to put points into, and we're focusing heavily on Blight rather than physical. Still, in the beginning of the run, it's a great damage spell.
[1] Bone Grab: I hate to say it, but I used this maybe a handful of times. Ghoulish Leap really spoiled me and allows you to really go where you want.
[1] Bone Spike: It's free damage I guess, it also counts as it's own spell so you can get gear procs and what not with it.
[4-5] 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. The same is true if you decide to put your Wyrm Bile point in here. If not though, Adept gives you it's full value at 4 points.
Corruption/Vim: 5/1/0/0
[1-5] Soul Rot: Great damage and a low cool down. This is pretty much your standard opener/channel staff ability before you start being able to channel staff 24/7. You can float points in here as needed. I ended up with 2/5 in here because I floated too hard and forgot to take one out. Honestly it's useful enough for most of the game that any amount of points in here isn't really a waste.
[1] Dark Portal: I used this a bunch because it gives you an extra disease for cyst burst and catalepsy if needed. It also kinda bunches up enemies and can put you in melee which is nice if you aim it right.
[1] Vimsense: Something to invest in late in the game. It's actually pretty useful for all it does, and while it does make stuff B-line to you, by the time you're using it...nothing really scares you anymore, so it saves you time rather than having to go out and find the stuff to kill.
[1] Leech: I'm really not sure how much value I got out of this. Honestly you could probably just not put a point in this and be fine. I was just using Vimsense a lot so I figured why not, I'd throw one in here.
Corruption/Rot: 4/4/5/3
[4] Infestation: This talent does it all. Blight and acid resistance, blight affinity, reduces damage and spawns carrion worms, and then on top of that when the worms explode they do blight damage and heal you. Very diminishing returns, but you could honestly not put that point in Leech and go 5 here and feel good about it. The damage reduction is really more substantial than you think. One of my deaths was me forgetting to put the damn thing on auto-sustain, so it got dispelled and I got hit way harder than I was expecting by an Archer/Marauder combo.
[4] Worm Walk: This is a really neat spell. It's a teleport by itself, 4 points with Adept gets you full teleport accuracy which is hot. But if you use it on a worm mass (which you'll have a ton of thanks to Infestation and Worm Rot) you get a titanic heal and vim return if you teleport on top of the worm mass.
[5] Pestilent Blight: Anytime you deal Blight damage, this allows you to either silence, disarm, blind, or pin something. At level 4 it happens in a radius 1 ball, and there's a rider effect that your worms ALSO get this ability, just at a reduced percentage and turn duration. Still, despite there being a cooldown for you, I think it's pretty worth the 5.
[3] Worm Rot: Does acid/blight damage for 5 turns, removes physical beneficial effects each turn, and after the 5 turns, it hatches into a worm mass. At 3 points with Adept, even if it gets removed early (catalepsy) it still has a 100% chance to hatch into a worm mass. It's also it's own disease, so just more stupidity for Cyst Burst/Catalepsy.
Corruption/Sanguisuge: 1/1/1/1
[1] Drain: It's fine for what it does. I used it pretty much all the time in the early game.
[1] Bloodcasting: I mean, whatever. I guess it did stuff. Good for when you get Anti-Magic drained I guess.
[1] Absorb Life: I never used it however...
[1] Life Tap: ....THIS I used all the time. It's instant, which is fantastic, and considering the stupid amount of damage you do and the heal mod you should be stacking, this provides a ridiculous amount of healing even at 1 single point.
Corruption/Plague: 4/5/4/3
[4] Virulent Disease: This could easily be a 5/5 if you want. There's diminishing returns, but literally EVERYTHING this class does is Blight related, so I mean, at least you're getting your point's worth.
[5] Cyst Burst: This is a real MVP here. No reason not to swing for the fence with this talent, so it gets the full 5.
[4] Catalepsy: Used more for the damage than for the stun. Typically this will erase whatever it hits. 4 points with Adept gets you a huge 4 radius ball and a 5 turn stun if anything actually survives this.
[3] Epidemic: Awesome and one of the first things I'd always throw out due to reducing disease resistance. Also reduces healing which is a nice kicker.
Generic Talents
Race/Ghoul: 1/5/5/2
[1] Ghoul: A little extra strength and con, which is fine, but the real value is not being able to take more than 50% of your total health in one hit. This is your 1 shot protection.
[5] Ghoulish Leap: This is so good. I used it ALL the time, both to get into combat AND to get out if I was in a bad spot. With Adept and 5 points, you get a gigantic 11 square range with an 8 cooldown and a 31% global speed increase for 4 turns. You can do some cheeky stuff as well, like leap 1 tile, zone change, and start the zone with the global speed buff, which is how I started each of the Prides.
[5] Retch: It's AoE blight damage that chills out for 10 turns, heals you (probably for a ton if you're stacking heal mod), and ALSO removes beneficial physical effects from non-undead and negative physical effects from undead. It also negates your built in -20% global speed from being a Ghoul.
[2] Gnaw: Mostly this is just another unique disease to put on stuff to make Cyst Burst and Catalepsy hit even harder. You'll get a chuckle now and again though when you have a dozen Ghoul buddies hopping all over the screen infecting everything with even more diseases. 2 points for a 6 turn duration on the disease and the actual Ghoul summon with Adept.
Technique/Combat Training: 3-5/0-1/0-1/2/0/0
[3-5] Thick Skin: It's universal damage reduction. Just put as many points as you can spare into it.
[0-1] Heavy Armor Training: Mostly to taste here. You'll probably end up in robes though. Float as needed.
[0-1] Light Armor Training: For when you end up in robes.
[2] Combat Accuracy: I found 2 points to be pretty good for this class. Can float if needed.
Spell/Staff Combat: 5/5/1/0
[5] Channel Staff: This will eventually kinda be your "1 button beats 95% of stuff in the game" ability.
[5] Staff Mastery: More damage for the free melee attack you get from channeling or casting spells in melee with stuff.
[1] Defensive Posture: Extra defense and armor which is sweet. Crazy diminishing returns and there's a lot of other stuff we need out points for.
Corruption/Vile Life: 1/1/1/1
[1] Blood Splash: You get this category unlocked for free when you eat the corrupted Sandworm heart, which is pretty awesome. Everything in here is insanely useful, even with just 1 point in it. Blood Splash will end up generating a metric ton of healing thoughout the course of the game.
[1] Elemental Discord: Again, just a fine 1 point ability for this build. It just sits in the background, freezing a million orc cryomancers and what not.
[1] Healing Inversion: This is one of those abilities that you won't really use very often, but when you do need it, you're really glad you have it.
[1] Vile Transplant: Fantastic status clear. Only works on Physical and Magical, so it won't clear confusion, but it's great for disarms/blind/hexes etc. With Adept, 1 point gets you 3 status cleared. It's got a short range, but considering we almost always want to be in melee, it was really made for us.
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 more than 140 Vim.
[1] Blood Lock: I didn't end up using this much. 1 point 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. All of the splash damage is ALSO blight damage. This is like...probably the best 1 point you can spend in the entire build.
[1] Blood Vengeance: So, I'm not really sure how much value I got out of this. Like...I'm sure it was there as a sustain, just quietly doing something...but you could probably get away with a 0 here.
Corruption/Hexes: 1/1/1/5
[1] Pacification Hex: I really didn't use any of these hexes except Domination hex much. There's just so much other stuff you'd rather be doing as a Reaver.
[1] Burning Hex: Same here...
[1] Empathetic Hex: Same here...
[5] Domination Hex: God I love this hex. It's kinda useful pretty much all the time, forever. From using various randbosses to AoE the hell out of everything chilling with them in a room, to causing complete chaos in the Prides, to simply dominating the stair guardians and waltzing right up High Peak, Domination hex is just super useful. It has a titanic 10 range too, so you can track/premonition, sit out of sight range of the creatures, snag the randboss, and just watch the fireworks...and then clean up whatever is left. 5 levels with Adept gives you 9 turns of hilariousness. Just make sure to use it on something at range because your Ghoul Retch will probably harm it and break the hex.
Prodigies
Master of Disasters: I'm really liking this Prodigy. Cunning is just a useful attribute pretty much all the time, and this gives you a mountain of spell/physical power, which is very welcome since spell power effects pretty much everything in the entire build. You throw out so many spells/effects that everything will pretty much be Spellshocked/Brainlocked/Off-Balance all the time, which is a nice rider.
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 increases the talent levels found on gear, turning the 4.0 Blinding Speed ring I found into a 5.5 Blinding Speed ring. It also has some additional bonuses to spells, such as enabling an extra Bone shield with gear, a 9 turn domination, and adds a ton of percents to all of the various things the class does like affinity/resists/blight procs/etc. It gives you that 11 range Ghoulish Leap with an 8 cooldown as well.
Inscriptions
Runes
Dissipation: Needed since it's your only way to clean magical effects off people.
Shatter Afflictions: You're undead and you can't use any wild infusions, so this is pretty useful.
Shield/Rune of Reflection: More shields.
Stormshield: Nice extra defense layer when stuff starts hitting extremely hard.
Blink: I wasn't sure how much I'd use it, but honestly I ended up using it all the time. Coupled with Ghoulish Leap, you can pretty much get anywhere, or get out of anywhere.
Changelog
12/28/21: Guide created.
1/1/22: Additional testing and notes done on Arcane Might instead of MoD.
Notes
I had a lot of fun with this staff/Ghoul Reaver. It really felt like the perfect melding of "warrior mage". It had lots of mobility, lots of AoE, lots of debilitation, lots of healing, and lots of survivability. There really hasn't been much written on it, and I know back when I was playing my corruptor there were so many talent taxes you had to pay as a Reaver it was like...why play one when you could just be a Corruptor. Now I'll say though, it feels like it's own class and it feels very solid.
