Concept Build: "I have four health bars" (RIP)

[Doctornull]

http://te4.org/characters/52902/tome/e1 ... 31fe4d11c3 (currently level 12)

Life: it's red, like Coke Classic, so it's Lifebar Classic
Psi: with Solipsism, this turns into Diet Lifebar
Mana: with Arcane / Aether / Aegis, this turns into a Lifebar which builds in reverse
Feedback: okay, this isn't really a lifebar, but it heals me and feeds into two of my other lifebars

His unlocked categories are pretty narrow, and I anticipate them staying pretty narrow, as he'll have to heavily invest in all of them to reap their major benefits.

Class:
Psi / Absorption: Feeds my Psi bar, gives me free bonus staff-bonks, and of course reduces damage which keeps me alive. I plan to cat-point this to 1.20 around level 20, so he can block Arcane damage with his Thermal Shield... that will allow a certain trick, I hope.
Psi / Solipsism: Necessary for the build. I'd like advice on which talents specifically to max out; right now the first one and the last one look excellent to 5/5, but I'm not sure about the middle two.
Spell / Arcane: Necessary for the build, for Disruption Shield. Also for things to spend Mana on, so he doesn't run into his shield ceiling too quickly.
Spell / Aether: Helps with Disruption Shield, and actually works pretty well with the rest of his talents, since the Psi ones are mostly sustains or passives.

Generic:
Spell / Aegis: Helps with Disruption Shield, and of course helps generally with not dying.
Psi / Feedback: Necessary for the build. He's maxing out the passives (5/?/5/?), and I hope to max out the others, but the points may need to go elsewhere.


... and that's it so far. He's got two free cat points at level 12. Things I'm considering:

Something else to spend the Yellow bar on? Psi / Discharge: goes nicely with Psi / Feedback, and that 3rd talent makes me drool.

Something else to spend the Dark Blue bar on? Enhanced Mobility, so I can run away when some mage-hunter jerk uses Silence?

Spell / Meta? He's locked into building Willpower so he'll have lots of Mana for those hungry sustains, and Disperse Magic is a very handy boss-nuke and condition-remover.

Corruption / Blight? Corrupted Negation is one of my favorite boss-nukes in the game, and Dark Ritual is pretty spiffy too.

Wild / Fungus?

Celestial / Light?


Advice welcome!

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

4 health bars? HP, Mana (from disruption), Psi (from solipsism...) What's the fourth?

[Doctornull]

4 health bars? HP, Mana (from disruption), Psi (from solipsism...) What's the fourth?

Feedback

It's an alternate storage form of health, which turns into regular health over time, or with certain talent usage.

Sure, I could die with a full Feedback bar, but I could also die with an empty Mana bar if something bad happens to my Dispersion Shield.

[SageAcrin]

That build does not need more defensive talents. If you die with that combo, it's probably on you and any combo of talents wouldn't save you; Also, you have tons of good places to put defensive points right now, anyways, so more defensive categories would be wasted.

For the status stuff, just use infusions instead.

You've fundamentally gotten a good blaster setup with the Arcane, you just need more damage options or offensive support.

It's hard to really expand on Arcane heavy builds(there's not a lot of Arcane damage outside of Archmage). I'd suggest Meta for Spellcraft/Quickened Spells and Blight for Dark Ritual/utility stuff. You'll get one more category point after that(assuming you make it that far and you want five inscription slots-which, with this setup, you do); I'd go for something like Shadowflame or Time Travel, as it's really hard to linearly support Arcane builds that far. Both of those give you specific excellent utility tricks.

[Doctornull]

Thanks!

The things I see him lacking are:
- Mobility
- Status cures
- Debuffs (status inflict / buff removal)

If he went for Chronomancy / Timetravel, he could take Spacetime Weaving for mobility, with its Instant teleport spell. Hmm. You're totally right about the utility of Timetravel, it looks like a very nice toolkit.

Spell / Meta gives him status cures and a debuff (and a relatively harmless way to blow off some excess Mana since Disperse Magic is kind of expensive), plus spellshock & immunity to his own effects... but he'll mostly have that anyway, thanks to Absorption.

In place of Quicken, I was considering Eye of the Tiger, and hopefully both the Staff of Arcane Supremacy and the Staff of Archmage Tarelion. With those to reduce baseline cooldown when Aether Avatar is unavailable, I should be alright even with my very limited selection of attack spells... right?

On the other hand, Quicken will reduce the cooldown of Disruption Shield, won't it? Hmm.


He's going to spend a cat point on Absorption to get it to 1.20, that's set in stone. (Maybe I'll go do that now, just so I don't screw it up...) With a high Thermal Shield and Absorption Mastery 5/5, his Arcane resistance should be high enough that he can use his Arcane Storm offensively (or at least weather the storm comfortably while it hurts his enemies).

[Finguld]

I think you should take a look at putting points in Dismissal and Thick Skin

[Doctornull]

I think you should take a look at putting points in Dismissal and Thick Skin

Yeah, I'm working towards Dismissal now.

However, if I can get Aether Permeation, that obviates Thick Skin. I'd prefer to just stack Arcane resist if possible.

[Doctornull]

RIP, brave Aerin the Aether Absorption Adventurer.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find much synergy between the Aether part of the build and the Solipsist part.

Also, I think I screwed up the Solipsist pacing, but it might be that the Solipsist package just wasn't working with the Magic-heavy gear I used... it didn't really feel like the Solipsism tree pulled its weight in terms of benefit per talent point, but that's perhaps because I was playing a lifemod 0 Adventurer rather than a lifemod -4 Solipsist.

I'd do an Aether / Absorption crossover again, but it would NOT feature Feedback or Solipsism.

Aerin's memorable deaths included:
- Dreadfell vault (surprise high-level Orc Blood Mage)
- Melinda (died twice)
- A greater multi-hued wyrm in Vor Armory backdoor, but not the Room of Death... I guess it was on its way back from a bathroom break?

Thanks everyone for your input! Maybe someone more skillful than I would be able to make it work.

[SageAcrin]

Glancing over the final sheet, I think you ran into the problems I always have, when looking at total tank Adventurers.

A: Damage is a big deal, and it's surprisingly hard to play a character with very low damage. Sure, you didn't do awful damage or anything, two staff Manathrust isn't bad. But you just didn't really have any strong hits, relatively speaking, outside of Aether Breach. Not bad, but more of a DoT.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it makes things more difficult.

B: Spending multiple Catpoints on defensive Class categories. Your Generic, as an Adventurer, is valuable, but every single Class point counts to high impact, and it's hard to justify anything but the best of the best.

Absorption's cool and all; I have an Adventurer I'm poking at on and off that is running it...but my projection is 1/1/1/3 for it. Double catpoints and a heavy invest in it isn't worth it, you could be spending all those points heavily boosting your damage(Dark Ritual, for instance).

Solipsism is the same way...strong but hard to justify. And these choices lead to A.

If you want to try it again, I'd suggest ditching the second Absorption catpoint and the Divination for Blight and something else.

If you really want, you could go for Guardian for the last slot, as that seals you totally as a tank and gives you another insane set of tanking skills...

[Finguld]

I wouldn't take solipsism past the first talent unless you are going to put a lot of points into dismissal also 2-3/5 in the first talent is probably best unless you have a lot more psi than health. More points in it early means you probably had your speed reduced a lot in tough fights. I think by the early 20s you have to get dismissal and thick skin maxed.

[Doctornull]

The whole idea with Absorption + Solipsism + Feedback was that attacks would generate Psi via Absorption to re-fill his blue health bar, and then Feedback would turn the remaining damage back into Life & Psi as well. That did actually work pretty well on popcorn and even early bosses, but it failed spectacularly on mid-game spike damage, and unfortunately Disruption Shield also tends to blow up in a messy way under the same circumstances.

More mobility, more de-buffs (to reduce boss / rare spike damage), more forced movement, more spike damage: any of those would have improved his survival chances.

Also, his main damage spells were not things he could cast near himself - especially not Aether Beam, which he got much more use out of than Aether Breach. He would have benefited greatly from Meta in terms of being able to sit in his own kill-zones.

Ah well, maybe I'll try an Aether Archmage, see if I can make it work better at 1.3 mastery.

[Atarlost]

What about going antimagic? That lets you use equilibrium as a health bar against everything but physical and mind damage and lets you grab an offensive mental tree and focus entirely on mindpower and mindcrit. And with three good generic trees you don't have to spend catpoints to unlock you can easily afford to double catpoint absorption.

Class:
psi/absorption x2
psi/solipsism
psi/disruption?
psi/assault?
psi/projection?
psi/psi-fighting?
psi/focus?

Generic:
wild/mindstar*
wild/antimagic*
wild/fungus*
psi/feedback

[Doctornull]

Wow, that's a great idea! Thanks!

Psi / Absorption (x2)
Psi / Focus (at first to attack, also later to boost Absorption)
Psi / Solipsist

Psi / Mental Discipline (just to boost Absorption)
Psi / Feedback
+
Wild / Antimagic
Wild / Fungus
Wild / Mindstar Mastery

... damn, that's a nice solid core. It needs some mobility, but if equipment won't provide that, he can afford to blow a cat point just to get Dream Walk, or he can take Wild / Slime for the attack and mobility options, or maybe one of the Doomed trees (Force of Will?) so he can do some attacks from a non-life resource pool... though I do like the elegance of having fewer bars on the screen.


EDIT: Here I am, trying this out:
http://te4.org/characters/52902/tome/17 ... 8f2bf4ed78

He's 15th level, so his only trees so far are Psi/Absorption, Psi/Focus, Psi/Solipsism, Psi/Feedback and he got lucky with a lonely Alchemist in the Trollmire for one rank of Psiblades... and just now Wild/Harmony from a certain generous sandworm patron.

Even with that very limited skill set, he's been very successful. Every single one of his deaths was entirely my own fault, stuff like mis-clicking in the Sandworm Lair or taking on three Adventurers at once (and he only died that time because one of them was an Oozemancer).

[Doctornull]

Generic:
wild/mindstar*
wild/antimagic*
wild/fungus*
psi/feedback

So I just wanted to report back...

I've got Quadbar the mighty:
http://te4.org/characters/52902/tome/d6 ... 25b2342d1d

... using Mucus and now Fungus (after the Urkis unlock) to keep Equilibrium low, and oh my god Mucus is amazing, easily strong enough to carry even a mediocre build, so I dunno if his build is as good as I think.

---

Even after doing the Antimagic training and Urkis quest, he still had to pay a cat-point for Antimagic, and he didn't get a point in Resolve free. He did get a +0.10 bump to the category, so that's nice, but he might as well have bought it at birth.

I suspect that Mucus + one more category, probably a ranged category, will be plenty to finish the game with.

Thoughts?

[Doctornull]

Just to follow up on this, Quadbar was a winner. Details here:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=38704

Cheers!