Demonologist on Insane RL

[elboyo]

Having gotten a few NM RL wins, I have decided to give Insane a serious go.

I want to use the Demonologist and I was hoping to get some advice from other players. When I checked the characters vault it showed that no one has ever won the campaign as a Demonologist on Insane, so I couldn't simply check their build and pull info from that.

I seem to consistently fail between level 12-15 when I encounter a boss with substantial burst damage. Even if I buy a T3 shield from Last Hope, I can't seem to mitigate enough damage with Osmosis Shield to survive a real spell barrage.

[Effigy]

I think Demonologist has what it takes to win Insane, but the main hurdle is the early game. You're stuck doing Searing Halls without drowning NPCs for loot/xp, and the Demonologist is relatively weak during the early game. I've tried it before, but I think I died before level 20.

Ultimately, I think you can win if you're persistent and play smart, but you'll probably have to reroll a lot and you need RNG on your side to some extent. Once you get to level 30+ I think you'll be quite strong. I'd strongly consider unlocking Celestial/Light as well. I'd also recommend a Teleport rune.

If you haven't, I'd recommend getting a mindblast torque or tentacled totem from Shatur or Zigur if possible when you get to the mainland. In order to enter Zigur you'd have to respec any vim-based talents before entering the worldmap, but Shatur sells tentacled totems fairly often. These items help a lot for fighting high-damage enemies on Insane+. Be careful with tentacles though--if something kills the tentacle before its duration expires, you take a bunch of damage.

[elboyo]

How would I remove my Vim skills outside of a town? I would be going straight from Searing Halls to whichever dungeon it ports me to.

Searing Halls seems to be going a bit better from the past few times I tried it. Using Wraithform for the Defense/Armor bonus will usually see me through.

Thanks for the tips.

[Effigy]

Ah, true. I suppose you can't respec the vim talents. I use an addon that let's me respec outside of town, so I don't normally have this issue. In any case, you can still access Shatur and hopefully get a tentacled totem there. The tentacles do about 40-50 damage per attack and you can have up to 2 summoned at once. They're fairly tanky as well. Shatur sometimes sells mindblast torques, but I think they are only T1 so the damage is a bit low.

Wraithform helps a lot, but moreso for escape than for the armor bonus. In the Searing Halls, you can walk through walls to escape fights that are going badly. Also, if you walk into a wall and end the Wraithform buff manually, it will randomly teleport you in a large radius. Unfortunately you can't walk through certain types of terrain, like trees.

If you didn't know, it's pretty much standard practice on Insane+ to go to all the towns and drown rare+ NPCS for loot and xp. You do this by trading places with them in order to move them into a water tile, then wait until they drown. You can also use this addon to get an item that simplifies the process, but the end result is the same.

[elboyo]

I had heard of drowning NPCs before, but I had never actually done so.

The scariest part of Searing Halls is before you make it to the first building. There is too much space and all the enemies have a huge engagement range. The extra 7/6 armor/defense is usually what allows me to survive the starts where there are 3 or more of the melee enemies that create a prolonged fight and slowly overpower my heal/regen infusions.

The worst experience that I've had was getting ported into the center of three rares when leaving Searing Halls, immediately going up the steps to escape them, and coming up next to 2 more rares. Needless to say, I died.

[fateriddle]

Srsly? I find the normal boss the least threatening. A group of rares is my usual headache, and a high level unique in the early dungeons can be unbeatable.

Usually you would like to drown a few NPCs to get to level 4, before fighting starts. It is likely a level 5-6 rare minion will be in your first map, fighting it at level 1 is no joke.

I kinda stuck in mid game, some mid level dungeons are crowed with rares to the extent that almost every monster you meet is a rare or more... or at least feel that way.

[elboyo]

The burst damage that murdered me right before I posted this topic was the Possessed (Kor'Pul) that had rolled Arcane Blade skills. I got hit with two lightnings in one round and immediately died.

I've got a character at nearly level 27 right now. I lost my Blood of Life to an anti-magic unique. Other than that I seem to be doing fairly well.

Speaking of which, are there any good ways to protect yourself from losing all your Vim to anti-magic?

[Effigy]

To my knowledge there's no way to avoid losing your resource to Mana Clash, except maybe a spell save. You just need a way to recover from it afterward. This is where the Teleport rune really comes in handy, and you can use ring demon seeds to regain vim on hit or when hit.

One thing you have to learn on Insane+ is that you can't fight everything and expect to win, at least the first time you encounter it. Some enemies are just too dangerous to fight and need to be avoided, and maybe come back later to kill them when you're more powerful.

I recommend against fight the Possessed in Kor'Pul in melee range. It actually always spawns with Arcane Blade skills, in addition to whatever randboss skills it gets on Insane+, so you're better off kiting it around and using ranged skills if possible. That may not be an option on Demonologist unless you got a charm that does ranged damage. If you have to melee him, I recommend using stuns to puts his spells on cooldown and/or effect removal to strip Arcane Combat if possible.

[elboyo]

I realized that I really had no idea what any of the boss skills in the starter dungeons were while playing Nightmare because most of them didn't get any actions to use an ability.

Currently 1.2 levels away from my first prodigy and that will probably sync up with entering Dreadfell.