Alchemist.. invest in cunning?

[Lord Stiamot]

Still brand new, have only played Alchemist I love it. I tend to pump all my points into Magic and Willpower, will an occasional point into constitution and rarely Strength for carrying capacity.

Am I missing out by not adding points to Cunning? It says something about "learning worldly skills" which sounds nice but ultimately expensive where I could be increasing my spell power instead.

What say you?

[Kaja Rainbow]

Cunning gives you crit chance and mental saves and that's it. If you look at the stats in the level up menu, it'll tell you what you gain. Compare this to Willpower which gives you mana, mental saves, and spell saves. It's a matter of priorities.

I definitely wouldn't level Cunning over Constitution (which is pretty consistently one of the most important attributes for everyone--that HP buffer really helps). As for Strength, a trick used by many experienced players is wearing strength-boosting items to qualify for things that require strength, then swapping to their actual gear.

A build focused exclusively on bombs and staff channeling along with golem stuff can probably get away with neglecting Willpower. But if you play around with Fire Alchemy which's better than it used to be, you'll want mana more, it seems.

[Frumple]

Yeah... your general alchie is going to go mag/con for their first two 60s, with a smattering of willpower in there to give them a comfortable mana buffer (and note that a decent +mana piece of equipment can probably manage that much better than boosting willpower, or using one of the mana regain bombs), then max cunning. Even with fire alchemy, an alchie generally doesn't need to max out willpower and, well. More crits is more crits. And if you find a decent mana on crit item... you need willpower even less than before, heh, and can turn that cunning into what amounts to hyper mana regen. S'good stuff.

Basically, though, find the equilibrium point for your playstyle. If you're coming out of longer fights with a large amount of mana left, you probably have more mana than you really need and can afford to skimp on willpower for more con (health buffer) or cun (damage via crit).

Insofar as carrying capacity goes, I'd probably just recommend using the golem for stuff you don't want on hand for immediate swap. Between the two inventories and th'fact that you're gemming most things you don't t.mog, I find alchies generally don't have much encumbrance problems even if they're not investing into strength. Maybe stick a +stat gem in your armor or somethin'.

[skein]

One of the interesting thing about base alchemists is that they are one of the very few classes who have way to many class talent points. You have extra.

bombs 5/5/5/0
infusions 5/5/0/0

golem 5/5/1/1
advanced golem another 12points

For a grand total of 49 points, most characters get 66 points. You have 17 points that serve no useful function. (why alchemists love playing adventurers because honestly the 10 points in infusions, the advanced golem, and the extra armor and accuracy are also pretty optional since the golem does not scale well at all, it is very powerful early up and very weak late no matter how you build)

A base alchemist should probably max magic and con. Then it just does not matter all that much. Any choice you make is going to be largely completely irrelevant to how effective you are as an alchemist. As an alchemist you can eventually just carry gear around to bump any stat to anything you require. so make your tertiary stat choice based on what other trees you open up.

Your golem should drink your focus potion.(those extra 2 class points help a golem a great deal)