1.7.4 Insane Temporal Warden Guide: Hounds (and bows)!

[bobojoe4343]

Hello - I am bobojoe. I am an average player with about 500 hours in TOME and I typically play on Insane/Adventure because I am addicted to auto exploring and that inevitably results in a couple of really dumb deaths. Despite all my shortcomings, I have managed to win on Insane/Adventure with ~10 classes.

Back in 1.5, Cathbald proved that you can solo the entirety of Insane with only Temporal Hounds. Seeing as that was from several years ago, I thought I'd give it a shot and see if doggos are still viable as the TWs primary means. Long story short, no... they are not. They simply don't scale well enough with damage to effectively clear some of the Randbosses and Uniques floating in late game Insane these days. However, mix in a little bit of bows on top of the doggos and you are in business! Basically, the idea was to slam together some ideas from a basic bow TW on top of going "all in" with Temporal Hounds. It was very effective... The dogs could tank for days as well as effectively clear trash and rares while you blast the uniques/randbosses. I went with Shalore due to their excellent racials - especially Timeless for extending Invigorate for crazy cooldown reduction. Note - this is not at all "optimal" or "best" way to play TW but it got the job done and it really was a lot of fun... dogs and arrows zipping everywhere! Here is my dude. Obligatory deaths from my crippling need to auto explore... all before Dreadfell.

Build TL:DR

Class Talents

Chronomancy / Blade Threading 1/3/1/5
Chronomancy / Bow Threading 1/5/5/1
Chronomancy / Temporal Combat 1/5/1/0
Chronomancy / Temporal Guardian 5/5/5/5
Chronomancy / Temporal Hounds 5/5/5/5

Generic Talents

Race/Shalore 1/5/1/5
Technique/Combat training 3/1/5/5/0/0
Chronomancy / Chronomancy 1/5/1/0
Chronomancy/Spacetime Weaving 5/5/0/0
Chronomancy/Fate Weaving 1/1/1/5

TW Thoughts

So Temporal Wardens are kind of this strange hybrid machine, bouncing between melee and ranged. But for this build I essentially never melee'd unless something was next to me and I need to Blade Wrap it to try and get a stun status (except very early game where melee dmg is better than bow dmg). Early game is rough - no doubt... the first 15 levels or so felt pretty bad while we were still getting everything online. Since we are investing so heavily into Temporal Hounds starting at level 10, we really had to rely on them. Unfortunately, since our MAG stat is still fairly low, their early game damage is limited and survivability is low until we get the next talent tiers. Also, we don't have much (if any) bonus damage modifiers to physical/temporal at this point (which the dogs inherit). However, once we get through the early game slog and some baseline gear along with access to Blink Command and Breathe Command, dogs become killing machines... zipping all around, corner sniping, tanking, killing, repeating. All while we stand back and click a few buttons every now and then to shoot arrows at stuff. They carried all the way through Dreadfell, Rakshor, Armory, Backup Guardians...

Then, we get to prides, and they kind of turned more into meat shields as our bow damage started to really shine. We still use dogs to blink around and breathe AOE to clear trash and position to block incoming projectiles, pathing, etc. But we mostly used bows to get rid of dangerous mobs.

Typical fights went along these lines:
Cast shield, cast webs of fate, cast Blink Command to get dogs where we want them, cast Invigorate, cast Timeless, cast Breathe, cast Warden's Focus on main target, cast Arrow Echoes on main target, then cast Singularity arrow. Toss in some auto attacks and then repeat as necessary.

Last fight was pretty easy and I think it was done in under 15 or 20 rounds. Strategy for me was this, I started by Dimensional Stepping down to the bottom left corner below Elandar. From there, I popped all my pre-fight cooldown (reflection shield, Webs of Fate, Grace of Eternals) then I Blinked my dogs onto her and then Dissipated her. I got kinda lucky because she immediately stone walled but since my dogs were adjacent, the walls exposed her to me and she was trapped in by the dogs. From there, I blew my typical fight cool downs (see above) and she died in a couple of turns from Arrow Echoes. From there, Argoniel was pretty simple... Same fight sequence and she was dead in a couple of turns also. I never had to close a portal.

Anyways, onto the build.

Index

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

Cheat Sheet

Stat distribution priority
MAG, WIL (we pump willpower to help reduce the paradox fail chance), STR/DEX (STR helps boost PES buff)

Category Point Order
Temporal Hounds!, Fate Weaving, +1 to Temporal Hounds!, Inscription

Inscriptions
I used Shielding (then Reflection once I found it), Shatter, and Movement Infusion. Once I unlocked 4th slot, I used a Stormshield until the final fight when I replaced it with Dissipation

Prodigies
Arcane Might and PES.

Equipment priority
HP (early), physical/temporal dmg, physical/temporal penetration, physical crit change, increase crit damage, defense, stun/confusion/silence resist, resist all. Also, if you can get a good "heal yourself and friendly units" in your tool, it can be really nice for healing yourself and your dogs back up... especially since we only have 4 inscription slots.

Also, For those newer to Temporal Wardens, in the equipment screen, your "main" page should be Bows/Quiver and your "off hand" page should be 1H/dagger or dagger/dagger. When you use a "melee" talent, the off hand set will automatically be used. Same goes for ranged... your main set will automatically be used. You dont need to worry much about the "off hand" weapon stats... I went with something that had high accuracy and base damage to potentially help land that status from Warp Blade or kill something in one shot that had run into my melee range.

Alchemist quest
Class points, Generic points, MAG/WIL, Defense

Escorts
Since this was a 'dogs' test playthrough, I pretty much select +5 magic whenever it was offered to scale dogs stats higher. The only non stat that I took was Last Engineer Standing for the crit shrug. However, since we aren't strapped for either Class or Generics points, you could take a category if you wanted instead of boosting Temporal Hounds. Something like Chants would have been useful since we are only taking 4 inscriptions.

Weapon Choice

Nothing special here really, just remember that your bow is essentially a stat stick and doesn't contribute to damage number directly. Ideally, you want to get a bow with the max range as soon as possible (range 10). Your quiver is where the raw damage numbers come from. You want a quiver with high base damage and good crit rate. From there, the rest of the equipment priority is the same.

Class Talents

Chronomancy / Blade Threading
[1] Warp Blade - our only reliable status apply but you have to be in melee range. I used this more than any other melee ability but it just doesn't scale well. 1pt.
[3] Blink Blade - Kind of interesting. Think of it like a melee 2 mob AOE where you zip around at random. You can use Wardens Focus to take out the randomness but I think I used this maybe a dozen times after T2's. 3pts to make the early game less terrible.
[1] Blade Shear - never used this once. just a 1pt tax.
[5] Blade Ward - We have plenty of class points to spare and maxing this gives a 30% change to parry melee attacks. Heavy diminishing returns but again, we have no where else to puts points. 5pts

Chronomancy / Bow Threading
[1] Arrow Stitching - not good. rarely used this outside of very early game. Does allow us to shoot through our dogs, which is nice. 1pt tax.
[5] Singularity Arrow - big damage at the epicenter and a nice 3 radius when maxed. Our primary bow based AOE attack - this was oneshotting most rares late game. 5pts
[5] Arrow Echoes - this is our boss killer. At 5pts, this fires off FIVE extra arrows per TURN for FIVE more turns. All of these do 150% damage... its really insane actually. 5pts.
[2] Arrow Threading - we don't need much here since we have a ton of willpower but this does help some to keep our paradox out of dangerous levels. 2 pts

Chronomancy / Temporal Combat
[1] Weapon Folding - a crappy flat +temporal damage buff to our attacks. 1 pt tax
[5] Invigorate - this talent is just awesome. At 5 pts, give a healthy amount of HP regen (60 per turn for me with my healmod) but we are here specifically for the 2x cooldown speed for all talents. When you cast this and Timeless, you give a massive 15 turns of this... 5 pts.
[1] Weapon Manifold - 1pt gives us the ability to randomly apply some status effects at a very low percentage. Not super reliable but we aren't strapped for class points so 1pt is fine.
[0] Breach - we have no reliable way to apply statuses from bow range so this isn't helpful. 0pts.

Chronomancy / Temporal Guardian
[5] Strength of Purpose - this is our bow weapon focus and max our weapons rely on MAG instead of STR. Great synergy with Arcane Might - max asap. 5pts.
[5] Guardian Unity - one of our defensive layers. At 5 pts, it will negate 60% of the damage for any hit we receive for more than 15% or our HP - this is transfered to a clone which will last 2 additional turns. This is cool because the clone can deal damage at 50% decrease modified and acts as another meat shield. 5pts
[5] Vigilance - Helpful for seeing stealth mobs but we are here for the flat 30% chance each turn to recover for ANY status. 5pts.
[5] Warden's Focus - This is part of our "boss kill" routine. You basically drop this on any mob you are targeting to get a massive 30% change to crit and 30% crit power. If you target a high level mob (ie. boss/unique), you will take 60% less damage from every other mob on the screen that is lower level. Just a great talent all the way around. I typically used this every time before I used Arrow Echoes for that massive damage burst. 5pts

Chronomancy / Temporal Hounds
[5] Temporal Hounds - Doggos! More points here immediately - because we are maxing INT, these will end up with massive STAT bonuses across the board. Keep in mind, they inherit you % dmg increase you have from items and do 50/50 split between temporal and physical damage. 5pts
[5] Command Hounds: Blink - Bread and butter talent for positioning dogs. This can be used on an empty space or on an enemy directly to set the dogs to focus them. Using it on an empty space between you and an enemy will block projectiles, etc. Also, this will also always summon a new dog at the target location if you are not at the 3 max already. Max 5pts for 12 range and 10 cooldown. With Invigorate going, this is on a 5 turn cooldown and you can send dogs all over the place! 5pts
[5] Temporal Vigour - Big damage bonus for dogs after blink due to a 50% increase in global speed. Also adds some regen. But the main draw is that this will allow you dogs to remain in play for up to 3 turns when they otherwise would have died. They don't do much damage in this state but they will continue to meat shield which is invaluable. 5 pts.
[5] Command Hounds: Breathe - The important thing to note here is that this applys to EACH dog and originate from each of their positions. So at five points, you have a 7 range cone AOE from EACH dog which does 300+ temporal damage. It also applies a straight 21pt stat reduction to each enemy hit. Really great considering we are stacking some temporal damage. 5pts

Generic Talents

Race/Shalore
[1] Grace of the Eternals - Instant global speed buff. Used every single fight. 1pt for diminishing return but more to taste.
[5] Magic of the Eternals - Oh yes, sweet crit rating and crit power. 5 pts for 10% crit rate and 20% crit power. 5pts
[1] Secrets of the Eternals - a good sustain buffer. Helpful somewhat but out stealth score is so low it isn't that important. 1pt
[5] Timeless - pure magic. This thing can be used to reduce debuff timers but we are really here for pumping the duration of our buffs. It will also reset cooldown timers. Basically every fight we cast Invigorate + Timeless to get a massive duration of 2x cooldown reduction. 5pts asap.

Technique/Combat training
[3] Thick Skin - you should max this. I would probably take 2 pts out of Dimensional Shift and put them here if I could do it all again. 5pts
[1] Heavy Armour Training - 1pt for heavy armor accesories
[5] Light Armour Training - 5 pts for the defense rating. Again, with this and foresight max + some gear, I got my defense score to 90.
[5] Combat Accuracy - We dont have any built in accuracy sustains and we are not maxing DEX so we must invest here. 5pts
[0] Weapons Mastery - nope. 0pts
[0] Dagger Mastery - also nope 0pts.

Chronomancy / Chronomancy
[1] Precognition - off brand track - 1 pt
[5] Foresight - I pumped this simply for the defense increase. Again, I didn't have anywhere else to put points and between this and Light Armor Training + gear, I got my defense to a pretty nice 90.
[1] Contingency - This is a "oh crap" button. If you are being careless and aren't looking at your runes, this will auto-cast whichever you select when you dip below 27% hp. 1pt
[0] See the Threads - This is just track with extra steps. We have Precognition so no need to invest here. 0pts

Chronomancy/Spacetime Weaving
[5] Dimensional Step - 10 range, 10 CD INSTANT teleport. 5pts
[5] Dimensional Shift - This is a means for status clear but it only effects a single status. It knocks down 7 turns off of it so you need to make sure you look at the status to see if it will clear or not. Could invest less here but we have no where else to put points. 5pts
[0] Wormhole - we arent building on Spellpower so this doesnt really scale. Also, can be a little unpredictable consider we need to use dogs to position correctly. 0pts
[0] Phase Pulse - this could be interesting to apply statuses (which this TW really struggles with) but not part of my meme build here. 0pts.

Chronomancy/Fate Weaving
[1] Spin Fate - nothing really important here. very slight defensive bonus. just 1pt to move down the tree.
[1] Seal Fate - never cast this once in my playthrough. 1 pt
[1] Fateweaver - nothing important here either, very slight offensive bonus. 1pt
[5] Webs of Fate - now were talking... the whole point of taking this tree. We cast this every single time it is up. 6 turn 27% decrease in damage while also zipping that damage to a random enemy. This combined to Reflection run can end up doing decent damage. However, we are mainly here for the damage decrease.

Prodigies

Arcane Might: This just give a huge flat increase to damage by adding an additional 50% modifier of your magic stat to bow damage. Really helps taking this at 25 to boost damage.

Pain Enhancement System: Since we will have a high crit percent, this will essentially be on all the time. It's a huge bonus to all stats except strength across the board. More damage, defensive, etc. Not as good as it used to be so there are probably better options but it worked for me.

Inscriptions

Runes

Shielding/Reflection: standard fare here. We can set this up to autocast via Contigency.

Shatter Afflications: we will use this to cleanse statuses.

Movement: Between Dimension Step and this Movement infusion, we have a couple of good options for mobility.

Stormshield/Dissipation: I used stormshield from when I unlocked my 4th slot around level 40 all the way to the final bosses. It's great to add an additional layer of tankiness while Shield/Reflection is on CD.