ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've been thinking about which new R/C combo I want to try. First run with Cornac Sun Paladin in arena mode was fun, I went with shields instead of 2handers and won easily. BUT I was thinking to myself, what if I could do both - then it dawned on me, - Ogre!

So if you get the passive up to 5 you can wield a shield in the offhand along with a 2handed weapon. Would it make sense to stretch yourself thin with going for both shield and 2hander skills? Or is that sub optimal? I'm thinking it could be really powerful late game when you open up the various categories and get skills increased fully.

Thoughts?

while we're at it, how about an Ogre Bulwark with a 2hander and shield? haha

Coldbringer wrote: Would it make sense to stretch yourself thin with going for both shield and 2hander skills? Or is that sub optimal? I'm thinking it could be really powerful late game when you open up the various categories and get skills increased fully.

Yes, 2-hander+shield is super strong. Most of the really good talents are great with just 1 to maybe 3 points in it; diminishing returns usually make heavier investment a very low priority at best.
Having access to all of the best talents from Sun Paladin is incredibly strong. By the endgame you will never have to use a normal bump attack, because you have so many good damage talents that you can chain them forever. And multiply the damage on all of them with Counterstrike.
And even before talents, a 2-hander just hits quite a bit harder, even with the penalty (which can be reduced negated with +size items).

Ogre Bulwark is decent too, but not nearly as strong as Ogre Sun Paladin. Their talent set is just not as good.

It's been my experience that Ogre + shield + two hander = awesome on any class. It's a heavy expenditure of points, but the shield talent that gives you two auto weapon crits really makes up for it.

You can see what people have to say on it in the spoiler celestials subforum. Short version is, it's super good despite both the power penalty for ogrewielding as well as the proc penalty, which actually hurts sunpal pretty bad.

Having both the sunpal weapon trees is wicked good, and going 2H provides enough damage that the proc damage penalty isn't too painful a hit.

2H + offhand is ridiculously useful on basically every class that uses weapons and doesn't care about powers (ie most melee classes). In the case of sun paladin it's especially good since you have so many strong buttons to press from guardian tree, shield offense and the crusader tree

This is the only race/class combo I've ever reached the final battle on Roguelike with. Felt like I couldn't do enough damage quickly enough to be really competitive in the final battle, though -- by it was my first try at at and I hadn't wanted to read any spoilers first, so maybe I was just doing it wrong. But up to that point, it was fantastic.

Fael wrote:This is the only race/class combo I've ever reached the final battle on Roguelike with. Felt like I couldn't do enough damage quickly enough to be really competitive in the final battle, though -- by it was my first try at at and I hadn't wanted to read any spoilers first, so maybe I was just doing it wrong. But up to that point, it was fantastic.

Were you attacking Argoniel first?

Fael wrote:This is the only race/class combo I've ever reached the final battle on Roguelike with. Felt like I couldn't do enough damage quickly enough to be really competitive in the final battle, though -- by it was my first try at at and I hadn't wanted to read any spoilers first, so maybe I was just doing it wrong. But up to that point, it was fantastic.

I had a similar experience with my Ghoul Doombringer on normal, the final bosses just destroyed me, best I could do was get one down to about 75% health. Up until that point I'd had an easy time with 99% of the games content. I think whether or not you stop them from charging the staff in the Volcano zone has a big impact on how strong they are.

Glad to hear you had good success with the r/c combo though, I think even getting to the final battle on Roguelike is an achievement in and of itself

Coldbringer wrote:best I could do was get one down to about 75% health.

final boss is pretty much just a noob trap fight on NM-, elandar will never survive for any amount of time and then you can take your time on argoniel, and usually will have to due to hexes and her extremely high durability. doing it the other way around lets E hit you with high power spells at 150%+ global speed so you die fast.

oh, and i'm not entirely sure what failing charred scar does but i think it removes the ally you get in final fight (Aeryn) who makes a big difference since she'll fight the other boss for a few turns and usually put argoniel's burning and empathic hexes on CD at least, if not do a bit of damage

I had to lose the final fight a few times to figure out what to do.

By this stage it is all about the gear you have on. You need to focus on crit chance, dmg multiplier, crit multiplier, resist penetration, and base damage, to ensure you do tonnes of damage quickly. You also need to apply effects. The best are slow, gloom, curse, forget talents, disease. Forget about things like +42 fire damage etc. These are pointless. It is your base damage that makes all the difference.

You also of course need mobility and a way to remove negative effects.

Changing gear is often the difference.

I spend hours on the training dummies making notes to understand and find the best combos.