My current build, cruising through Insane and currently at level 48 is:
Race: Drem
Class:
- Spell / Meta
- Chronomancy / Temporal Hounds
- Chronomancy / Flux
- Chronomancy / Spellbinding
- Demented / Path of Horror
- Demented / Nether
- Demented / Oblivion
- Demented / Scourge Drake
- Celestial / Light
- Psionic / Augmented Mobility
- Tinkers
- Wild-Gift / Harmony
- Windtouched Speed
- Hidden Resources (if I ever trigger the precondition)
The basic idea is pretty straightforward: Hounds are ridiculous tanks for a caster, and this build's offenses pass right through them. All of the duration-extension and cooldown-reduction means that it's easy to keep on stacking Attenuate. The combination of Drem's Frenzy and Scourge Drake's Augment Despair is the real damage boost -- you can land two Attenuates in a row and then extend the duration of the effect up well past 10 turns before collapsing all of that pending damage into a much shorter duration.
I ended up going with Scourge Drake over Seal Fate for a few reasons:
- Category point pressure. I'd be hard-pressed to take Seal Fate without also taking Undead Drake to double its effects.
- Reduced competition for paradox. I'm casting Attenuate a lot with this build, and any paradox spent elsewhere cuts into the number that can be cast.
- Running Oblivion means I want to be running other maledictions than just Attenuate. Seal Fate works at cross-purposes to that, while Scourge Drake works towards that.
- Spellbinding: Right now I'm only using this for the spellpower boost. However, my impression from other Attenuate runs is that it's necessary for being able to reliably land Attenuate on high-SpellSave targets. The damage boost is also quite nice.
- Nether: Netherblast is my other source of active damage, apart from Attenuate. It doesn't cost Paradox, it provides Insanity to power Augment Despair, and it procs Nihil. I have a point each in the other skills for the odd occasion where Rift Cutter or Spacial Distortion is handy.
- Oblivion: It turns out that this is mostly there for the duration-extention provided by Nihil. The rest of the skills are occasionally useful, particularly summoning a Harbinger in longer fights. I thought that All Is Dust would be core to this build, but at the moment I mostly use it when I want to give my paradox a rest.
- Scourge Drake: This is here primarily for Augment Despair, but Decaying Grounds gets a special mention, since it applies a malediction to targets every turn that they're in the area -- that makes it a lot easier to proc Harbinger.
- Drem: Frenzy is the defining skill here, but From Below It Devours is frequently a very nice distraction... even if Attenuate tends to kill it much sooner than it otherwise would expire.
Am I wrong in deciding that Augment Despair is a better choice than Seal Fate?
The build has no inherent resistance penetration other than SpellShock, but these days it seems like it's reasonably easy to get a fair amount from gear alone -- my current character is sitting at 68% Temporal res-pen, and I haven't even started to take advantage of the workbench. Would it make sense, though, to swap something out for a source of res-pen? If so, which would make the most sense -- Entropy, with its corresponding advantages and disadvantages? (That would certainly make it easier to trigger the precondition for Hidden Resources.) ...or perhaps Timeline Threading would synergize well with the rest of the build apart from being expensive from a paradox perspective and the problem of landing it on high-SpellSave targets?
(I'd been hoping to finish an Insane run with a build before posting, but my interest in grinding through the lategame has been flagging of late so this is at least half a "are there better options?" post.... At some point I should really take a look at that "shorter ToME" mod and adapt it to my own sensibilities.)