[b20] L40 Skeleton Arcane Blade - advice welcome

[Grey]

So I have now gotten further in the game than ever before. I think not having a completely overpowered character helps - I am suitably afraid of everything! Having said that he does still have damned tasty damage output:

http://te4.org/characters/363/tome/dfee ... 1cc000edf0

Biggest problem is he's a skeleton, which means my only healing is from the Reassemble ability. It's pretty nice with high dexterity - currently healing over 500 - but the cooldown is insanely long. Thus I'm riding with two good shield runes, and teleporting away if they're ever both on cooldown. I'm hoping for a wand of healing at some point, but I've been hoping that for a long time...

In the east I've done the shade fight (in which I lost my 1 spare life - check the video thread for an entertaining fight), the Vor armoury, the Temple of Creation and I'm now doing on Limmir's little quest. I'm desperate to get his ring-making going so I can get some higher damage resistance. I have some plain stralite rings so a few ruby/jade combos would be handy.

Now I don't want any spoilers, since my knowledge of what lies beyond is vague (and I like it that way), but some advice on character development would not go amiss. My dilemnas at the moment:

1. I've 12 class points to come, and my options, as I see them, are Lightning, Blinding Speed and Sunder Armour. Lightning would be good for an extra damage time on Arcane Combat, in case of fire resistant thingummies. Blinding Speed would obviously come in handy for boss fights, especially when everything's on cooldown. Sunder Armour is good for extra damage on opening hits and getting some APR (which I lack). Some more points in Perfect Strike might not hurt either.

2. I've 8 generic points to come. 1 will definitely go into maxing Health, the others I guess I'll spread between the other combat talents. However there's also the option of spending 6 points maxing evasion. My low Cunning may preclude me from that though - I can probably muster the cun-boosting items to grab the talent, but it won't be as effective in general. Still, the returns on the combat talents are pretty low.

3. I've 30 stat points to come, and I'm not sure whether to max strength or dexterity first. There's also constitution, but it won't give me that much more HP. Strength obviously increases damage output. Dexterity... increases arcane combat triggering, spellpower (2 Dex = 1 Mag essentially) and phys power from arcane destruction. I'm not sure which would increase my overall damage more! I'm leaning towards the Dex at the moment though.

4. Equipment-wise I'm pretty happy with my set, but is there anything in particular others think I should improve on? I'm trying to keep a decent secondary weapon set of one-hander + dagger, preferably slime-based, but I rarely switch since stunning blow is such a useful combat opener. If I had played a Cornac I would have maybe opened up the dirty fighting tree and stuck to dual-wielding, but Skeletons are so much more fun :D What I could really do with for equipment is an item with some good regen attached, as healing between battles is a big chore. Oh, and should I be worried about the negative Luck on that pearl?

Incidentally, I've played with a high save build (bought the chants tree from a sun paladin escort) and it has worked out extremely well for the most part. Blights almost never stick, and I don't need to keep stun res maxed to stay alive. It's also great to be immune to things like pinning traps and disarming attacks. I'll likely swap in my defender's helm of constitution instead of the tasty randart helm to boost my phys save a tad more.

[Dervis]

You seem to be doing fine, that crystalline maul probably smashes everything to dust pretty fast.
Without spoiling too much, there are rewards to be collected by going back to the West... and just because you're amazed at your damage output don't go rushing into the end fight because it's really hard.

Concerning choices. I like maxing out Dexterity on Arcane Blades and Precise Strikes 5/5 is golden on high Dex characters. You might also want to pick up Probability Travel as a panic escape.

[Grey]

The crystalline maul is working rather nicely. The only thing that hasn't fallen easily to it was my shade...

About how good does precise strikes get when maxed? I always thought the speed penalty was a bit prohibitive.

I don't like Probability Travel - last mage I had that used it got cocky and killed. Besides I don't have the mana pool to sustain it easily. I'd rather stick to phase door and wands of teleport for my escapes :)

[Dervis]

Precise Strikes goes up to 25-30% when maxed, so it pretty much outweighs the disadvantages. Even if you don't really like the extra crits you can just use it as a hit boost against specific high-defense enemies and that way you don't have to dump points into weapon combat.

[Grey]

I have Perfect Strike as a hit boost, and a lot of my damage comes from the Arcane Combat triggering, so I'm not too sure it would benefit my character that much. Reduced speed would be quite a liability when I have little healing and must concentrate on not taking damage at all.

Hmm, 30% more crits means on average 15% more damage for 10% less speed. But then it ain't as simple as 15% more damage, as some enemies I would have killed with a regular hit anyway, whilst on others the extra damage would help against armour, or just help as burst damage against bosses... Blah, I do enough damage without :) It's my defenses that really need improving.

[Dervis]

Arcane Blades have virtually no defenses, you probably figured that one out already . They do have a really high damage output though.
You pick your fight... trash an opponent in a couple of attacks and run away to lick your wounds... it gets tiring after a while :S.