[RC2]Once More, Shalore Corruptor (the OP DPS Build WINNER)

[Alphabet]

Character Sheet
Want a build that does thousands of damage a hit? Want a build that can do splash damage of 10,000+? Want to kill every boss in one or two hits? Then you've come to the right place. This build relies on pure offense and no defense. You are essentially a glass cannon, but it doesn't matter because you will kill everything before they get the chance to hurt you. Later on, you will have a pretty good defense as well. Using a Wild Infusion + Timeless will let you have a 30% damage reduction to everything for 10 turns. Combine that with Draconic Will for extra survivability.

Pros of the build:
EVERYTHING (including bosses) dies within 1 or 2 turns
You can clear the "overpowered multi-hued wyrms" room within 2 turns.
You can one-shot kill a lvl 90 "overpowered multi-hued wyrm"
You can kill the last boss in 3 hits.
Your spells can do 7k+ dmg a hit with temp buffs (2k to 2.5k without temp buffs) (AND the spell heals you for half the dmg it dealt)
Your 2-square radius splash dmg of 12k+ dmg (up to 5k without temp buffs)
Your 7-square radius splash doing 2k to 5k dmg to everything
Your 10-square cone splash doing 2k to 5k dmg to everything
With +45% global speed buff, most bosses will not have time to attack you before dieing.

Cons of the build:
EVERYTHING will kill you in one or two hits if your bone shield isn't up (even a regular enemy will do hundreds of dmg to you)
You are VERY weak in the beginning
You must pick a shalore and corruptor as your character combination, this type of build will not work with anyone else


Summary:
The reason why this build is strong is because we will concentrate entirely on offense. Corruptors (and reavers) are unique due to their bone shield. It lets you absorb any 7 attacks. For this build, you will not get any defense for yourself. Corruptors also get tons of +crit skills, and an AMAZING splash damage skill. Shalore is probably the best magic class in the game. Grace of the eternal lets you act twice in a row after you use it (even if it's only +14% global speed you will always act twice after). Two actions = two nukes = dead enemies. People think "Oh, 20% global speed is only an extra turn every 4 turns." What they don't realize is when that extra turn comes. That extra turn always comes right away, and being able to nuke twice is a godsend. Shalores also gets +crit, a skill to remove any detrimental effect, a skill to increase the time of any positive effects, and an overpowered invisibility that lets you attack anything you want for 5 turns. The Shalore's last ability will also remove any negative status ailments on us, which is really important.

My thoughts about my progress:
The beginning of the game was difficult. I died a couple times because I was being stupid. By the time lvl 30 hit, things were getting easier. By lvl 40, I was one-shotting everything. By lvl 50, I could one-shot almost every boss in the game. For every boss fight, I would do the same thing: I would cast my +speed spell, buff myself up, and proceed to kill the boss in one or two turns. For the last fight, I turned on all my buffs and used Corrupted Negation to remove the boss's shields/buffs. Then I started firing spells. Both bosses died within a couple of turns, and they only managed to remove 4 of the 7 bones in my shield. I was more worried about my ally Arial, because a random splash damage from my spell would probably have killed her in one hit since she only had 8k hp. If Arial wasn't there, I could have killed the last bosses a lot faster. Regular enemies and Elites weren't a problem, as they usually had less than 2khp. One spell casting would kill them. Uniques with hex/curse/banes were nasty until I managed to get my hands on the Draconic Will prodigy. Draconic Will + timeless = no more worries about status effects.

Every difficult time I had was in the beginning/mid game. Dreadfell's master was super difficult. And it was impossible for me to kill Celia in the crypt that's next to Last Hope. The Lake Nur fortress boss was also really difficult. For those bosses, you might need to enter the dungeon earlier and then leave to level up elsewhere (such as farportal). Melee bosses aren't a problem due to Pacification Hex. Some worm/uniques have 100% blight resistance. If you have no way of reducing the blight resistance, then just run to the next floor.

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How to build the character
Gear priority:
Spell crit rate > bonus blight% damage or bonus all% damage > crit multiplier > spellpower
Remember, we don't care about defense. So you can use a tier 1 glove with a high crit rate/multiplier. And at 100% crit rate, a 33% crit multiplier means a 33% increase in total damage. It adds up fast because you can find really high crit multiplier gear. The Overskill skill seems to be affected by your %dmg or crit. So if you overkill for 5k dmg, you will do splash damage to everything around for 10k if you have 100% blight bonus. For my gear, I had +100% crit rate, +294% crit multiplier, +170% blight, +49% all, +25% blight penetration, and vimsense reduced enemy blight resistance by another 50%. Try to get +crit rate as soon as possible. Once you hit around 40% crit rate, your Soul Rot spell will consistently one-shot most normal enemies, since the spell already has a +32% crit rate.

Things to watch out for:
Stun and confuse are killers. Especially in the early game. Stun prevents you from killing your enemies quickly. Confuse is just nasty. However, in the late game, you will have tons of protection against status ailments. Also, be careful of displacement shields. DOT (damage over time) spells are also very dangerous because they eat through your bone shields.

Infusions/Runes/items:
At least two shield runes and a wild infusion. You will also need a teleport torque. For shoes, get something that lets you jump away. You will also need some way to heal yourself. Either healing lights (DO NOT get the celestial/light skill tree with a category point) or Nature's Touch. You can also use your spell Blood Grasp. There's a belt (nalorian belt?) that gives you a shield skill which is useful in the early game. Using timeless after a wild infusion will also prolong the +dmg resist, which helps a lot. In the beginning, try to get as much survival gear as possible. Keep anything that removes magical/physical effects, so that you can remove poisons/disease/burns/etc. You also need an item that gives +VIM on cast. Because you will run out of VIM in the early/mid game. Either you can do that, or you will need to stair scum by going down, hitting the enemy with Drain, and then going back up the stairs. Repeat until you have full VIM. You will need full VIM to kill bosses. At the end of the game, you don't need any of this protection so gear up on anything that adds more damage. Your offense will be so high that you will kill anything that's a threat to you too quickly for them to do anything. Level 20 to 30 is the transition period from defense to offense. If you can reach level 30, then you're set to beat the rest of the game.

How combat will work:
In the beginning of the game, you will try to survive. Always keep bone shield up. Once bone shield is down use your first shielding rune. If you can kill the enemy before the first shielding rune is gone, then do so. If not, take out whatever you can and start running away. Once the first shielding rune is down, you should have either 1) killed the enemy or 2) have run far enough away. The alchemist's wall teleport is great for this. The reason is because, by the time the enemy reaches you again, your bone shield should have reset again. Remember to put your bone shield on auto-cast.

Stat points:
Magic power > Constitution > Dexterity
Willpower is useless. Willpower only affects the amount of VIM you get after a kill. With 60 willpower, you only get 6 VIM. That's useless, and especially when the Drain skill will refill 400+ VIM points with one casting. The dex is to increase your global speed racial buff. Basically, maxing dex will give you about +45% global speed.

Class skills:
You can see my build in the link. I had an extra 7 skill points to use, and nothing to use it on. Virulent disease = worthless. Leech = worthless. Dark portal = somewhat worthless. Fearscape and Flame of Urh'Rok = worthless because you can kill much faster than fearscape can ever do.
Skill priority you should max first:
1: Soul Rot, Drain, Bone shield
2: blood spray, blood boil
3: Blood grasp
4: Blood fury (only after some points in +VIM skill "Willful Tormentor"), Dark Ritual
5: Corrupted negation (to remove all boss's shields and buffs and is great for enemies with bone shield), Vimsense (gives a +50% dmg increase, enemies will be running around with -50% blight resist)
6: Life Tap

Generic Talents:
If you have alchemy skill, get lvl 1 gem portal as fast as possible. It's the best escape skill you can get and alchemist works perfectly with this build. Do not get the Celestial/Lights skill tree. Celestial/Lights will just get you killed because the heals/shield costs a turn to use. You will heal/shield for 500hp and the enemy will hit you for 600 hp. Do not get Celestial/Lights skill tree, but definitely get the Healing Light skill. But healing isn't a major issue because Blood Grasp will heal you for half the damage dealt and it has a 5 turn cooldown. Secrets of Eternals will let you attack enemies for 5 turns, doing full damage while invisible. Grace of eternals will let you move twice after it's activated. In [RC3], you will have an additional 3 generic talents to use.
1. Magic of the eternals, Timeless, lvl 1 armor training
2. Overkill
3. A couple points in willful tormentor and blood vengence
4. A couple points in Grace of Eternals and Secrets of Eternals
5. pacification hex (this is actually a great skill, but we'll be killing everything within 1 or two turns anyway so we don't need this. But getting lvl 1 of this early in the game will save your butt often. Just be careful of the VIM cost. This skill is what lets you win the Ambush after dreadfell)

Prodigies:
Draconic Will, you MUST get this. It will make you immune to status effects for 5 turns. Use "Timeless" after and you are now immune for 10 turns, and Draconic Will only has a cooldown of 15 turns. This will let you easily kill anti-magic users or curse/hex/bane users.
If you have alchemy, get crafty hands. It's an easy +30% all damage and +15% crit rate. The +30% all damage will translate to +90% after you crit.

[supermini]

Several points:

1. Flames of Uhr'rok give you a global speed bonus. Yes, they cost vim to sustain, but vim regain rather than the size of vim pool is the main issue for corruptors once they have torment up. And it ties into fearscape, which can make some of those fights you had trouble with a breeze.

2. Overkill splashes blight damage, not acid - unless that was changed and tooltip was not updated.

3. I would go into cunning after magic and con for crit% rather than dexterity which gives you...what exactly? Defense?

4. Life tap is probably overdoing it at that point.

[Alphabet]

Several points:

1. Flames of Uhr'rok give you a global speed bonus. Yes, they cost vim to sustain, but vim regain rather than the size of vim pool is the main issue for corruptors once they have torment up. And it ties into fearscape, which can make some of those fights you had trouble with a breeze.

2. Overkill splashes blight damage, not acid - unless that was changed and tooltip was not updated.

3. I would go into cunning after magic and con for crit% rather than dexterity which gives you...what exactly? Defense?

4. Life tap is probably overdoing it at that point.

Oh hey, you're right. I didn't take a look at the skill properly. I went back and fixed my post. The dex is for +global speed skill. I didn't need the cunning for %crit since I already reached 100% crit a long time ago. The problem with fearscape was that I didn't have enough category points at the time since I got alchemy instead.

Difficulty in the beginning was mainly due to not putting out enough DPS to kill the boss quickly and not having enough defense to survive. Strangely enough, I didn't die on those bosses. All my deaths were instead due to confuse/stun/DOT attacks or after I teleported in front of a unique after losing both my sheilds and bone shields.

1 death to Celia
1 death to teleporting in front of a unique
1 due to stun/confuse
1 due to displacement shield reflecting the shot back. I only had a shielding rune up and the reflected spell one-shot me