Meteoric Madness Build/Leveling Guide - Madness Winner

[cctobias]

So I crunched the numbers and this seems like a workable 1.3 Aegis version of the build:

Race
Cornac is required, for category points and lack of generics for Shalore racials.

Stats
Magic > Cunning > Dexterity

Class
Techniques/Pugilism
1/1/2/4 = 8
Techniques/Unarmed Discipline
5/0/0/0 = 5
Techniques/Magical Combat
5/1/1+/5 = 8+ (Note: In 1.3, you need 5/5 Arcane Destruction for max range/damage.)
Spell/Stone
5/1/1/5 = 12
Techniques/Battle Tactics
5/5/0/0 = 10
Spell/Meta
3/1/1+/4 = 9+
Spell/Arcane
1/1/1/5 = 8
Spell/Temporal
1/1+/1/5 = 8+
------------------------------
Total = 72 talents, 8 categories

Generic
Psionic/Augmented Mobility
1/5/0+/0+ = 6+
Techniques/Unarmed Training
5/5/5/2+ = 17+
Spell/Conveyance
5/1+/0/0 = 6+
Spell/Aegis
3+/5/1/1+ = 10+
Techniques/Combat Training (buy)
5/1/5/0/0 = 11
Spell/Staff Combat (buy)
0+/0+/0/0 = 0+
------------------------------
Total = 50 talents, 4 categories

I used Psionic/Augmented Mobility instead of Psionic/Absorption because we're too tight on class points, plus this gives us a nice speed buff to replace Shalore's Grace of the Eternals. You would need to use the Succor addon to get 5/5 Bathe in Light from escorts. The build needs the Elixir of Focus for class points; Elixir of Foundations is recommended, but not required. I didn't include any points in Staff Mastery because it's not strictly required and can be gained from escorts. If you wanted to actually unlock Celestial/Light or get a 4th inscription, you could drop either Spell/Arcane or Spell/Temporal. I would also consider dropping Step Up to get 5/5 Quicken Spells, as long as you can support another 80 mana sustain.

Mmmm could work, losing timeless is pretty painful due to its usage as a condition remover. Some pretty torturous trade offs, really. Losing Shalore is a rather large speed decrease as well. Be interesting to see if it works, Barrier is also fairly good since it crits even at one pt its nice.

I wouldn't make any build on Madness depend on all escorts. 5-6 might be ok with addons. Even with the two addons succor + make them not stupid addon I still lost two and one of my saves in Reknor was frankly utterly heroic: it involved a spawn into Reknor 2 with like 10 enemies around with 2 rares and a randboss, whom I axed really fast but then a unique was in another corridor separted by a open edned wall and then an orc pyromancer and cryomancer came up from another direaction; I immediately used a speed increase to kill the unique, and in the mean time the orcs were attacking my escort while I was out of sight, I then ran back to him targetted phase doored him away from the orcs, killed the orcs then ran east and 20 sqaures north and dug a long zig zag tunnel while other mobs started accumulating at the entrance getting just enough deepness to hide him inside before the mobs tried to get in; I then rested to reset CD and cleared it out and did my normal telepathy, rush ahead and clear things that is fairly safe with escorts since they move ten times slower.

I kind of wonder if its possible without bathe in the light. I know that one is what really makes big shields, but its mechanics are kind of cumbersome for melee. Displacement shield can also be pretty cumbersome too.

If it was possible to do Shalore + aegis + disp shield and not Light that would be ideal. But I think BitL its fairly clutch for AM. Or maybe aegis and light and not displacement? I dunno. Its really hard to make an adventurer that is not Cornac sometimes.

Edit: I think you can get away with no Arcane Destruction unless its also much more awesome damage in 1.3. Its not key to the build just nice extra at 1 point.

[cctobias]

Very sad. In 1.3 Unstoppable can no longer be extended by Timeless. So this build may not work in the new version.

Gesus, how can a melee character ever have a chance to survive MADNESS?

Seeing that temporal wardens damage smearing got a nerf too, I don't know if a non-item vaulted non-adventurer roguelike melee character can complete madness in 1.3 at all (yes, this is a challenge for all you mad people out there, lol).

Its hard to say because there are so very few defenses known to be sufficent for Madness. I am not entirely sure how SeeJust survives on his rather unique alchemy/chronomancy wins (of which he has multiple with various variations). Obviously that is not melee, I think he uses mostly Throw Bomb, and he may even be using extra range type stuff.

The deathless run in online vaults has both damage smearing and aegis.

I don't think a non-vaulted run for marauder was all that possible in 1.2.3 either. The marauder that did it after the HP increase (tomisgo) used dual Mercy setup which was farmed for and vaulted.

A previous Marauder (stition) had done it before the HP increase. In 1.2.3/4 (i.e. version this guide was based around) without something like the special %damage effect of Mercy Marauder don't do enough damage to kill the final bosses even with extended Unstoppable as far as I can tell.

Perhaps the final boss and other things are still viable with a really well played marauder but its not done by killing them while in Unstoppable or even Unstoppable + pot of invuln. If you watch the video of the "normal" Marauder he kills the first guy in final fight fairly fast then thinks about the situation for about an hour and calculates he can't kill argoniel while staying in Unstoppable. In that Video those guys have close to 50k which is 10x less hp than what they have now. He hits the first boss (El-whatever) for a ~25k flurry, this build can do triple that with one skill AND AND has another skill that does double that AND attacks roughly 3-4 times faster with bump attacks.


So I don't really think Zerker or Marauder is really much of a Madness character anymore. A farmed out tricked out extremely specific Marauder may be able to do with Mercy solely because of the %health based damage, but even with the most excellent randart dagger/swords that can possibly be generated I think Marauder and zerker both may not really finish Madness anymore due to HP inflation. As a sidenote this is one of the reasons I ran this build this way. So, and I could be wrong on this, Marauder seems to be Madness viable with an caveat in that its only the Mercy/No-Mercy Marauder that can still do Madness due to HP inflation.

As far as I can tell, without extraordinary artifact type procs/effects, all vanilla classes currently capable of Madness do so via some type of defense allowing them to outlast things and enough offense to get the job done. While a Marauder can hit ungodly hard for Insane and lower; that still winds up being a drop in the bucket on Madness.

At the time of 1.2.3 an adventurer build like this (or some variation etc) is the only thing that did enough damage to mimic marauders pre-HP inflation.

So in a sense outside of Adventures Madness Unstoppable actually got killed a while ago, except in a particular corner case. To kill El, who has 450k HP, you would need to do 18 flurries for 25k damage each after all mitigations. Even with a no-CD flurry that is 18 rounds of Unstoppable just to kill one of the final bosses. Now it may be possible to stand against those bosses for a bit of extra time, but considering flurries CD is actually 12 you can see that Marauder without 2 Mercys is going to wind up fighting those bosses for a considerably longer number of "turns" than 18 and would need some kind of pretty decent defense besides Unstoppable, unless they can somehow regen CD and resources away from the bosses.

Considering the first madness Marauder killed El in like 3 rounds, yeah it was a big change .


So while Mex's class Tier post does list Zerker and Marauder as Tier S that is sort of iffy or heavily caveated. Basically the "kill fast" strategy died in Madness for non-adventuers without special vaulting when the HP inflation happened. Marauder was just barely able to do it pre-inflation. This build was meant to bring back that strategy by doing an asston more damage.

So first we lost "normal" Marauder/Zerker to HP inflation now we have a much smaller maximum time on Unstoppable. So not only would a Marauder need to do 10x the damage they did before for parity (what was it like 1.0 when they inflated it?) but they now have less than half the time to do it.

When it comes to Madness I would now say a Marauder just does not compare to an AM or even a Necro. Maybe the Mercy build still works I dunno, but Unstoppable may be too short for that as you need to get something wounded fairly well to get the really big damage on that.

Anyway I think the take home point here is that outside of extreme cases Unstoppable has actually been dead in Madness for quite some time. Only for Mercy or an Adventurer build that does literally 3-4 time the damage of a really good Marauder has it been at all applicable.

In reality this Unstoppable change is extremely marginal in its effects. On Insane a good marauder can kill any single boss (ignoring Ata and AM boss, though this may be true too) before normal non-extended Unstoppable wears off. Its only for Madness that its such a big hit due to the ~10x jump in HP. You can take either of the final bosses to 50% health in one skill with a really good flurry on Insane.

At the same time in Madness since the HP jump was so large even a 2.5x longer Unstoppable (7->18 turns) is not actually enough to make up for need 10x more damage.

So in reality this change doesn't make marauders actually perform that different. Mostly that is probably not the point of the change. Its mostly just to make Timeless less problematic for "super" abilities.

Certainly this build is affected greatly by this but that is really because HP inflation magnifies the dynamic.

I wouldn't fault Unstoppable or Timeless, in reality Madness HP totals need to be rethought out. Obviously Madness is not fair or sane or whatever. But right now its not really fitting the class design trends. What it has done is marginalize one class that was quite challenging at the time, marauder, and made another class, AM, play exactly the same but take longer for the runs(which isn't really anymore tactically interesting). So it just wasn't a good change really.

Whereas the change to the Unstoppable/Timeless interaction makes sense, and I think Stition's Madness marauder wasn't even shalore (tomisgo's Mercy maraduer was shalore).

So that's my two cents on that. I think its the undermining of the "cannon"/large damage playstyle by HP inflation more than anything else that is problematic.

[Mex]

Excellent analysis cctobias. Proportionally AM is even stronger now due to the nerfs hurting other classes much more.

I think necro is close to AM in terms of power but with the whole thing being more annoying in practice we might not see an actual win.

As for the standing of marauder/zerker it would help to get a word from tomisgo as to their viability.

I also had the suspicion after the x10 HP that it wouldn't be possible but i think tomisgo pulled it off with both classes?

HP x10 asks me the same question 10 times and just drags the game out, "hey can you stay alive for X rounds?" yes, yes I can can you please hurry up and die now?

EDIT: Guess I'll reply to the thread too. The interaction/point investment in AM are very tight to the point that you may as well just play AM instead of trying to make an alternative build. Having said that you have to deal damage, remove statuses, prevent statuses, prevent damage as a core to any build in Madness and be able to do so infinitely or faster than enemies.

[Mankeli]

I think necro is close to AM in terms of power but with the whole thing being more annoying in practice we might not see an actual win.

Yeah, those guys are slow to play. Building up the sacrifice shield takes three freaking turns/keypresses so when entering to a new dungeon you ALWAYS get in with the bone golem ready. That means that you will have to go the previous town to assemble the golem, then go back to the new dungeon, kill some dudes until sacrifice runs out, then go back to the town rinse and repeat. The mechanics of the sacrifice shield should be changed period.

Also, there is one a real downside to sacrifice shield powerwise that may be relevant in the endgame especially: You have to be able to keep 1) the summons and 2) the bone golem alive for one turn. When my necro died in dreadfell my bone golem was annihilated in one turn, for example. And the damage the monsters deal doesn't get any smaller. Also, you need space to put those summons in in the first place. This can potentially be hard to do in a tunnel and can't be done at all when inside a stone wall.

After my archmage run is completed I'd like to do a cheat necromancer just to see how it plays out in the East. Like go the level 50 immediately etc.

I also had the suspicion after the x10 HP that it wouldn't be possible but i think tomisgo pulled it off with both classes?

Yeah, but those guys used the vault. Of course even getting to the point where you can use the vault is extremely impressive. I've gotten to level 21-23 on madness roguelike melee a few times but no further than that.

[Mankeli]

cctobias:

Yeah, this is what I've been thinking too, good post. Except that I think that endgame temporal warderns probably are easier than marauders but one can just replace the word "marauder/zerker" in your post with temporal warden, it doesn't matter really, the points still stand.

But my point was that now it would be simply impossible, not possible to do even in theory no matter how freaking stition you are lol. I've tried many madness melee characters and they are hard but I didn't want to close the door completely because there are players that are better marauder/temporal warden players than I am. I was skeptical about others' chances before. But now I pretty much am ready to close the door for melee characters.

I've watched stition's old dreadfell madness vids and the difference at that point of the game is really clear: Back then, you could kill dangerous things fast enough, nowdays you can't, simple as that. I think I also saw the the final fight vid.

[cctobias]

Excellent analysis cctobias. Proportionally AM is even stronger now due to the nerfs hurting other classes much more.

I think necro is close to AM in terms of power but with the whole thing being more annoying in practice we might not see an actual win.

As for the standing of marauder/zerker it would help to get a word from tomisgo as to their viability.

I also had the suspicion after the x10 HP that it wouldn't be possible but i think tomisgo pulled it off with both classes?

HP x10 asks me the same question 10 times and just drags the game out, "hey can you stay alive for X rounds?" yes, yes I can can you please hurry up and die now?

EDIT: Guess I'll reply to the thread too. The interaction/point investment in AM are very tight to the point that you may as well just play AM instead of trying to make an alternative build. Having said that you have to deal damage, remove statuses, prevent statuses, prevent damage as a core to any build in Madness and be able to do so infinitely or faster than enemies.

Tomisgo is last Marauder to do it, but he did it dual wielding Mercy which deals and extra 3% of the targets missing health with each hit.

I am not sure but I was basically assuming this allowed him to get past the normal numerical damage limits a marauder would normal hit the wall on.

But yeah he would need to tell us how it actually plays to understand how it fits in Unstoppable, as I am not sure. I am kind of assuming a fight starts slow and ends fast due to the weapon effect.

It is interesting to me that someone seems to have done it recently with a skeleton skirmisher and he uses the corrupted sandworm heart skill line.

[daed4]

http://te4.org/characters/32594/tome/44 ... 4c368e3fb0
Said character.

Still wondering how he didn't blow up violently. I guess his armor is really good. But magic doesn't check armor, does it?

[cctobias]

http://te4.org/characters/32594/tome/44 ... 4c368e3fb0
Said character.

Still wondering how he didn't blow up violently. I guess his armor is really good. But magic doesn't check armor, does it?

Armor is very strong since it reduces damage before any modifier (+damage, crit mult etc.) but no it does nothing against spell including physical like Earthen Missile.

250 or so armor can completely neuter even very good melee damage, but would take full damage from EM. Which is what happened to the character in this guide for Argoniel. I literally had to kill him with EM procs alone due to his high armor, even with over 70 Armor Pen.

However a Skirm could also get some good mitigation from the shield stuff and if built in a certain way that could work against various spells. Dunno.

[daed4]

Again, that skirmisher has none of the magical prodigies for shields.

I'll be good and say he's a demigod that can beat tome4 while jerking off and drinking beer, just playing with his left foot and without looking.

[GlassGo]

Hello, I stole your build for my Insane, if you don't mind.
Given fact, I beat Normal with AB, your build is something I familiar with (and always want to try somehow enhanced AB).
Long story short, I want to ask - if Timeless is useless for Unstoppable, what do you think about Lethality\Snap?
And if no - what do you think about Stealth tree, and Shadowstrike?
Description say "these bonuses are guaranteed for spell crits even if the target can see you before it hits".
The only thing I don't know about is should char use Stealth in that moment, or can get just without it.

All it instead of Meta tree, assuming we have Combination Kick for sustains.

PS Almost forgot It was beqautiful build-math indeed. )

[cctobias]

Hello, I stole your build for my Insane, if you don't mind.
Given fact, I beat Normal with AB, your build is something I familiar with (and always want to try somehow enhanced AB).
Long story short, I want to ask - if Timeless is useless for Unstoppable, what do you think about Lethality\Snap?
And if no - what do you think about Stealth tree, and Shadowstrike?
Description say "these bonuses are guaranteed for spell crits even if the target can see you before it hits".
The only thing I don't know about is should char use Stealth in that moment, or can get just without it.

All it instead of Meta tree, assuming we have Combination Kick for sustains.

PS Almost forgot It was beqautiful build-math indeed. )

I haven't been checking these boards much and it was just luck I caught this within a few days. So my information may not be accurate for the latest builds. With that said ...

Well Timeless is still awesome but yes in regards to Unstoppable specifically it won't give you the extra time anymore. This question actually has many facets to it.

1) I have not tested this in recent versions, but previous tests show Snap does in fact reset unstoppable. I considered at some point and ruled it out. More on this later.

2) On Insane you will most likely find you do not need to extend Unstoppable, if you achieve the damage numbers and have the movements numbers I sketched here. So the question is actually something specific to Madness.

3) Stealth on Insane would almost certainly, IMO, be mostly useless. First Insane itemization is very different, you can get enough crit/crit mult to make the relative advantage of stealth and shadowstrike becomes considerably less favoabler versus Normal/Nightmare. Secondly since this is a melee build it will not leverage stealth anywhere near as well as a ranged build. Ranged stealth is doable on Insane but melee stealth even on Normal or NM takes significant itemization, due to the extra melee check. Stealth would take far too much itemization and force you to lose other more important things and its benefits can be reliably re-created by the superior itemization of Insane. Bottom line you can get 100% crit on Insane and pretty good crit mult. A range build is a different story as the section of the description you mention comes into play better. You can take a look at my Light Mage build guide in the Shadowblade forum for more information. Baiscally when the extra raw stealth check occur for you melee attack and it fails you will be bumped out of stealth. Since its raw and each attack and things are higher level. Its gonna suck for this build. Ranged stealth only checks once and and only against Hide in Plain sight, its vastly superior and range makes the checks even more favorable (10% better per square).

4) Stamina is real issue with this build. With what i sketched out it is possible to do the build OK, but you do need to rest because of CDs and stamina. Both CDs and Stamina are equally limiting. Figuring out how to rest safely is a key part of playing Madness.

5) Snap takes a lot of stamina to use. The issue with Snap and Unstoppable is that Unstoppable->Snap->Unstoppable is a metric asston of stamina. Stamina is hard to replensish and you need it for some key abilities.

If you can solve the issue of #5 you should be able to make something that is workable. However solving #5 is something that most likely would require significantly altering the build, either its itemization or some line to replenish stamina in some way. It may be possible. Doing without taking a serious hit damage is tricky. Lethality is a good line though in many regards. However Ithink this is only necessary on Madness. On Insane you can kill pretty much everything before Unstoppable runs out.

[cctobias]

I just wanted to add to the above post that it is probably the case that Snap does not work on Unstoppable any longer. I am not entirely sure and haven't tested it but I believe Unstoppable is now termed as "Fixed CD" and things like that are probably not affected by things like Snap or Metaflow.

There are two things that can happen to a talent on CD either its CD can be reset or it can be reduced by X amount and further another thing that can happen is to have the duration extended.

I would assume neither of those CD affects can work on a Fixed talent.

[fateriddle]

Let alone whether it can beat madness after unstoppable nerf, this is almost the best arcane magic based adventurer build I've seen. I'd probably made two adjustments:

1. Finer Energy Manipulations for Absorbtion. The build is short on class points, Finer Energy Manipulations uses generic points, and Realign removes three physical debuff plus healing, not something to pass by. Reshape Weapon/Armour only works on armors, but one point in it can't hurt.

2. I don't find Meta too useful, so I replace it with Rampage, put in 5/1+/1+/0, you've got 7 turn 300% move speed, 50% attack speed, 10 saves, 20%+ damage, 40 per turn damage shield. Speed is the essence of this build, rampage has perfect synergy. It can always serve as a run-away measure, which is valuable; and in fight it boosts at least 30% damage. The nice thing about rampage is it can be constantly triggered passively(8% hp loss), you'll find yourself rampage all the time in a fight. Since you won't get battle/tactic any time soon, rampage makes the game experience much smoother.

[cctobias]

Let alone whether it can beat madness after unstoppable nerf, this is almost the best arcane magic based adventurer build I've seen. I'd probably made two adjustments:

1. Finer Energy Manipulations for Absorbtion. The build is short on class points, Finer Energy Manipulations uses generic points, and Realign removes three physical debuff plus healing, not something to pass by. Reshape Weapon/Armour only works on armors, but one point in it can't hurt.

2. I don't find Meta too useful, so I replace it with Rampage, put in 5/1+/1+/0, you've got 7 turn 300% move speed, 50% attack speed, 10 saves, 20%+ damage, 40 per turn damage shield. Speed is the essence of this build, rampage has perfect synergy. It can always serve as a run-away measure, which is valuable; and in fight it boosts at least 30% damage. The nice thing about rampage is it can be constantly triggered passively(8% hp loss), you'll find yourself rampage all the time in a fight. Since you won't get battle/tactic any time soon, rampage makes the game experience much smoother.

Yes I think finer is the better choice after more experience tooling around with things. This build has enough generics to get some into the tree. I don't actually think it matters much, but its pretty much clearly better.

First, Meta is always very useful on Insane+ simply with 3 in Disperse Magic. However without Metaflow being able to reset Timeless this tree can be thrown out or relaced with other things. I had Rampage in a "first draft" of this build but i eventually threw it out. What i would replace Meta with I would have to think about, it probably would not be Rampage on Madness but on Insane its perfectly fine. This build does so much damage compared to Insane HPs that you actually don't need sustain removal. I like Rampage all in all, in the end on Insane you can go with anything. The build will work on Insane no extra tree at all IMO. With excellent equipment it can kill anything before Unstoppable is over Ithink.

Honestly though if I played this on Insane I think I would try to alter to not use Unstoppable at all. I think I said before that i don't actually like it. I have a build that I think can tank Madness, has tanked it up to Briagh and going back east. But its not compatible with this build as it must use a shield.

[fateriddle]

I have a build that I think can tank Madness, has tanked it up to Briagh and going back east. But its not compatible with this build as it must use a shield.

What about a build that evades everything? Evasion, misleading, Buckler Training, Repel etc.