[1.6.4 and previous] [Insane] [Embers] Annihilator Guide

[Razakai]

Regarding turrets - is flamethrower solely good due to the high damage scaling, or does the life/armor/resists + status immunity heavily contribute to the power?

[Razakai]

Hm, I didn't realize the life rating on it was set so high. I'll drop that as well as the damage for the next patch.

[Razakai]

My current branch has HW scaling exclusively from steamgun damage.
Compared to a lot of other things, the turnaround between testing and release for annihilator was quite short. It also coincided with a busy irl time for me, so it's only now I'm able to sit down and bug fix/balance.

[GlassGo]

Reactive Armor is just Doomed’s Deflection

Exoskeleton you meant, I guess.

I do have some minor objections here and there, but class is in the proccess of changes so there is no point to talk about it now - except one thing.
Turrets were meant to be a supportive measure, not your main ultimate weapon, and even if it's not like this now - it will be in the end.
So taking turrets is indeed noobtrap as it deprives player of class points he can use on anything more useful - like your defence for example, or at least 1/1/1/1 in HW that alone could deliver you right at 25 level easily with Shockstaff's AoE crits/stuns, Flamethrower's SO (Bolter's HWE not always hit now, hopefulle wll be fixed in next patch), which is why I said that concentrating on turrets alone killed Kruz so much times.
I for example did Dark Crypt without even single source of scouting - no Track or anything like this.
I'm sure turrets woudn't save me there at least without scouting.

[GlassGo]

you said turrets was a noobtrap right now

Yes, and I still say so. If no - why Kruz died so many times doing the same routine - pour all points in turrets, hit 20th and die?
I guess you mean he is a bad player.
Or I'm - but my like 4 character who wasn't ambushed by randboss near Korpul Shade scrambled through early-midgame like nothing, with only dangerous situation in Dark Crypt.
So it is Kruz playing worse then me or I'm better then he is - decide already!

Turrets is your defense you buffoon. You get a nice chunk of Armor that still outpaces everything to HP to be fair

I saw how skeleton-brawler bro threw Kruz character and like oneshotted it. Where was these turrets, what took them so long?
Are you seriously don't notice the fact that his last successful run only happened because he decided not to use Turrets as trashcan when he buried his classpoints before, and like, decided to change tactics - for a once?

but other than that you have Exoskeleton and literally just tinkers, which you can't invest in, to deal with nonweapons since weapon damage is absolutely not a threat still.

Have you heard even once about Magnetism tree?
You are simply amazing - combination of HW 1/1/1/1 and Magnetism what carried me through early-midgame.
Exo saved me before I got Lightning Web, then it was only LW since it bugs out Exo.

You act like it's this huge drain on your points when you literally can just go 5/1/2/2 early

.

You can, but I saw like Kruz went 5/5/5/5 in it every time and died. Turrets alone is dangerous for you, not beneficial.

get the things you want to splash out into like 1/1/1/1 heavy weapons then go back and max Upgrade and put more into Hunker Down.

Now you are telling the same what I told you - you can't rely on Turret tree alone. Why if it's so good?
Yes, you need at least 1/1/1/1 in HW for at lest mobility.
Instead I saw Kruz bought inscription slots and used Movement Infusion - ffs why?

I don't give a toss about what Kruz does on his moment to moment play, there's a reason why he couldn't even win poss on madness and it's not related to his skilling.

And I don't care about this. I care about what I saw - fully invested in Turrets - died. Again and again. With no tools to prevent this since Turrets ate like 15 points.

Nice, I've heard of playing deliberately awful builds to try and force Insane to challenge you the cathpilled way but I've never heard of playing deliberately awfully. Especially on a class that is literally forced to spend a point on a track.

The point was I won with my "awful" build.
Later on I have found Track on lite, Hypervision Goggles - I would better take stats, thank you.

Anyway, since this is easymode of rage you have kinetic stabiliser so there's no reason why you would ever get into a situation in Crypt where you can't place down a turret and have it be useful by face tanking a soul rot or blood grasp.

You won't make it without Track.

Here, I don't care about bugs of the vault.

[Bursade]

It seems that the first page of this post is entirely missing

[GlassGo]

Just cut off from the thread it started and moved here. )

[Snarvid]

It seems that the first page of this post is entirely missing

Yes. dajawn was an alias of a poster who got banned, and got the new alias banned also. All posts of said alias were deleted. The events were discussed here.

[GlassGo]

Side effect of this crusade for forum justice is that we now have no Annihilator guide...
Too sad.

[tabs]

Made it to Slumbering Caves before getting totally wrecked by an Arcane Blade/Wyrmic randboss Titan. He burned my last 3 lives.

https://te4.org/characters/190198/tome/ ... 907657a9d7

Some things that might give others ideas:

Turrets

Use them. Love them. Cherish them. They will carry you through most of the game. 5/1/1+/5 in my opinion. Even when their damage falls off, they will tank a hit or two and block enemy (but not your!) movement and projectiles.

Shields

When Annihilator first was released I thought this tree was trash. Either I was dumb or it got buffed (or both) but it's a solid defense for you and your turrets. Max the first skill and then block + Pain Suppressor Salve will make you hit the resistance cap (or near enough) for 4 turns. Flat reduction from the last skill is nice versus some DoTs.

Chemical Warfare

Between your turrets and other skills you actually use quite a few active Steamtech talents and can build Miasma stacks efficiently. Note that instant-use ones don't count. Using Fumigate with 5 miasma stacks does impressive damage and will strip quite a few buffs.

Cat points:

inscription slot (steam gen) --> inscription slot (movement) --> Chemical Warfare

You use a LOT of steam all at once. Double generators early will help you unless you get really lucky and find a 10+ steam one. Annihilators have pretty poor mobility, so a movement infusion is a godsend to augment Rocket Boots. Chem Warfare last because you'll have other places to put points for a while.

[GlassGo]

Flat reduction from the last skill is nice versus some DoTs.

With Adept it goes beyond 200 - it's not just "nice for DoTs", it's one of your maindefence tools, I got through dark crypt on insane without track on autoexplore with shield tree.