Doombringer Guide & Analysis

[geckola]

Doombringer Guide & Analysis [1.2.5]

One of the aspects I enjoy most about ToME is the almost limitless diversity in class/race combinations and playstyles. Doombringers come equipped with a unique toolbox of interesting talents and reward a thoughtful aggressive/defensive playstyle. My hope is that, after reading this guide, you will be equipped with a solid understanding of the Doombringer's core mechanics and be able to put a creative spin on the class to match your own unique preferences and playstyle.

If you are short on time and just want to look over the complete build, feel free to skip down to the final part of this guide for a link to the character. A huge thank you is in order to everyone who took the time to answer my questions as I worked on developing this guide. Also, this guide would not have been possible without the dedication and hard work of other players who have written guides, inspiring this guide's design, formatting, and discussion. I'll add updates as things evolve with the class and, of course, suggestions are always appreciated. Most importantly, have fun and enjoy.

Contents

I. Class Overview
II. Race Selection
III. Suggested Stat Allocation
IV. Important Escorts
V. Other Generic Trees
VI. Prodigies
VII. Inscriptions
VIII. Recommended Items
IX. Talents
X. Final Thoughts

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I. Class Overview
There are a number of compelling reasons to play Doombringer. Here are some of their class defining mechanics.

1. Doombringers can typify a smart "offense is the best defense" approach to tackling encounters. Your ability to select when and how to engage a group of monsters is one of your strong suits. However, your ability to safely disengage from a steadily worsening situation is, at times, problematic. Wanderer's Rest can be considered "best in slot" as the artifact solves most of your disengagement issues.

2. You have access to some powerful "reset buttons" that allow you to press on and secure a victory in otherwise "unwinnable" encounters. Blazing Rebirth is a full heal with a very manageable downside. Cauterize Spirit clears every debuff currently affecting you at the cost of health. Surge of Power is a strong instant heal and stamina recovery talent that also adds a small heroism effect.

3. With Fearscape Shift, you have access to one of the most potent initiators in the game. The range, damage, area of effect, and heal over time in demon form are substantial. However, what truly defines your initiator is the fact that it grants telepathy: all in a huge radius, providing a significant boost to your battlefield awareness. After shifting, taking a moment to look around will help you in identifying priority targets and potential escape routes.

4. Fiery Grasp grants Doombringers an on-demand silence that ignores LoS. Difficult spell caster hiding behind a group of other monsters? Grasp him. Archer attempting to kite you and your mobility is on cooldown? Grasp him. Challenging boss hammering away at you with spells? Grasp him. Sure, Antimagic gets Aura of Silence and you can pick up silence on torques, but Doombringer gets this powerful effect built in with no tradeoffs.

5. Unlike Berserkers and Marauders, you lack Unstoppable. You don't have the shielding of Archmages or the Damage Smearing of Temporal Wardens. Unlike your metaclass cousins, you lack Bone Shield's passive defense. You enjoy jumping into the fray and getting the attention of monsters and excel at this; however, finding creative approaches to maximizing your survivability will be an ongoing adventure.

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II. Race Selection
Pick your favorite; however, these five deserve special mention.

Halfling – You have plenty of great non-racial generics that demand your talent points and 1/1/1/1 gives you everything you need. Luck of the Little Folk gives you an easy road to 100% crit all and a 12 life rating improves survivability and scales well with Blazing Rebirth and Surge of Power. Indomitable is incredible as always.

Shalore – Excellent racials and provides more room for varied class talent builds as Grace of the Eternals doesn't stack with Blinding Speed (freeing up points). A racial tree investment of 1/5/1/5 is excellent but might limit your selection of other generics. Timeless wipes debuffs, extends Destroyer, and cooldown reduction allows for another rotation of talents.

Cornac – The extra cat point grants the opportunity for five inscriptions or an extra escort talent tree.

Skeleton - Staff builds will likely want to max Dex to get the most out of the additional proc damage. Greatswords can also benefit from Dex with additional critical damage. For */5*/5 you gain a significant shield, heal, and extra life. Since you don't have to breathe, you can roam walls in Wraithform at your leisure. Without infusions, your ability to remove debuffs will be weaker; however, you still have Providence and Cauterize Spirit. Silence immunity will go a long way towards increasing your survival. You may also want to consider 5/5 Precise Strikes for the additional accuracy and critical chance.

Doomelf - I have yet to unlock them due to always wanting to save Melinda. Haste of the Doomed could open up additional options for boots (instead of Wanderer's Rest which is otherwise required). Resilience of the Doomed's critical multiplier reduction also seems great to smooth out incoming damage spikes. Pitiless might have some interesting synergy with Endless Suffering and Latafyn's active ability for burn stacking. It also gives you a more reliable method for extending Fiery Grasp to lock down casters.

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III. Suggested Stat Allocation
Str > Mag > Cun > Con = Dex > Wil

As with any class, staff builds may wish to limit investment in Str in favor of other stats. Doombringers really shine when both physical and spell critical chance is high (favoring Cun) while Blazing Rebirth and Surge of Power scale well with additional health (favoring Con). Con may gain additional value when paired with 5/5 Chant of Fortitude. Dex improves critical damage on greatswords and proc damage on staves and might be an option on some builds in place of Con as a 4th stat.

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IV. Important Escorts
You'll meet nine throughout the game and have a good selection of viable options. Here are a few suggestions.

Sun Paladin – At 5/5, Chant of Fortitude will provide a significant boost to health and saves. More health translates into stronger Blazing Rebirth and Surge of Power and a more comfortable level of survivability as you lack strong damage shields or invulnerability. On the other hand, Chant of Fortress provides a sizable damage reduction when facing multiple ranged enemies and synergizes well with Abyssal Shield and Premonition. You can elect to unlock this tree to 5/5 one of the chants or plan for five Sun Paladin escorts if your goal is Chant of Fortitude. Even one level of Chant of Fortress is great.

Seer – Premonition. This will contribute significantly to your survivability against casters.

Anorithil – I recommend picking up Celestial/Light and investing at least 1/1/1/3 into the tree. Since it's likely you'll end up with spare generics, 1/1/1/5 or even some combination of */1/*/5 is a great investment. Barrier crits and provides an alternative pre-engagement shield with a one-turn setup. Healing Light also crits and provides additional sustainability.

Warrior – Vitality.

Thief – One point in Piercing Sight. One point in Heightened Senses if desired.

Alchemist – Unlocking Stone Alchemy for Extract Gem early leads to a sizable increase in your spending power for randarts. Imbue Item combined with Crafty Hands can net you significant bonuses at the cost of 5 generics and a prodigy. Staff builds will want to pick up a level of Channel Staff or Staff Mastery prior to revealing the tree at Angolwen in order to hit 1.3 mastery.

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V. Other Generic Trees
Here are some additional non-escort options that may fit your playstyle in certain builds.

Harmony – Grants you a solid answer to disease/poison and casting Infernal Breath out of demon form grants you a 41% global speed boost that stacks with everything. Assuming you're not hit by a different element before hitting yourself with fire, 200% global speed is easily reachable. However, you'll have to decide if the additional micromanagement is worth the significant bonus.

Staff Combat – A viable and effective playstyle for Doombringers that want an alternative to traditional 2h weapons.

Vile Life - You often have better options than 5/5 Blood Splash but it's an option worth considering.

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VI. Prodigies
While Cauterize is what you'll likely take at 30, your options for a second prodigy are relatively open.

Arcane Combat - Additional weapon damage that will factor into most of your high damage talents.
Cauterize – Almost always the best choice at 30 and meeting the pre-reqs is trivial for you. Take this.
Corrupted Shell – Improves survivability. Gets better with Chant of Fortitude. Improves Blazing Rebirth and Surge of Power.
Crafty Hands – If you took Imbue Item and have excellent gems, this can be very solid. Lifebinding Emeralds will power up healing from Fearscape Shift, Infernal Breath, and other sources.
Draconic Body - An emergency heal for emergencies.
Draconic Will - Strong on everyone. Even stronger on Shalore with Timeless.
Eye of the Tiger – Cooldown reduction allows for additional talent use, especially when paired with the cooldown reductions you'll obtain through Dethblyd and Detroyer for Draining Assault.
Flexible Combat – Free glove attacks 60% of the time. Awesome for any melee class.
Giant Leap - Extra mobility with respectable damage.
Irresistible Sun - Solid AoE damage that can be added to your usual rotation.
Swift Hands - Allows you to swap to your Temporal Shield offhand instantly. Better with Charm Mastery.
Temporal Form – Additional damage, resists, and assistance with groups of fire-resistant mobs.
You Shall Be My Weapon! - Physical damage nuke that might become more interesting with 1.3 Ogres.

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VII. Inscriptions
A lot of this comes down to personal preference. I tend to favor shielding runes. Always use your first category point to unlock an infusion slot for the Mental/Magical Wild unless you are going for an early Stone Alchemy unlock.

Rune of Reflection – Can be used before engaging with Fearscape Shift to improve survivability and push out additional reflected damage. Can substitute for a traditional shielding rune at your discretion.
Physical Wild + Mental/Magical Wild - Favor cooldown over damage resist. Substituting one of these for a different inscription later on might be an option once your immunities and debuff removal options improve.
Heroism – A great emergency button that complements all of your other emergency buttons.
Heal or Regeneration – I appreciated the targeted poison removal of Heal to cleanse stoning poison on demand. Heal can also be used immediately after Reckless Strike to offset some of the resulting self-damage.
Teleportation – Mandatory if not using a psychoportation torque.
Movement - Mandatory if not using Wanderer's Rest or playing Doomelf.

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VIII. Recommended Items
Here are some general recommendations. Feel free to mix things up as preference dictates. Wanderer's is game changing. I've also been meaning to experiment with cooldown reduction items to stack on top of Dethblyd and Destroyer for Draining Assault.

Primary Weapon – Dethblyd (your class specific greatsword), Latafyn (if burn focused), T5 greatsword (with insanity and/or cripple), or staff (for appropriate builds)
Secondary Weapon – Shantiz (for quick swap) + T5 shield that grants Time Shield (for emergencies)
Armor – Plate of the Blackened Mind (confusion + fear resist)
Hat – Crown of Burning Pain (fire dmg + meteors). Defeat Shisshy at full power for best stats.
Gloves - Dakhtun's Gauntlets (this will skyrocket your critical damage) + Dispersion Gloves (for when needed). Also consider gloves with high elemental damage procs to get the most out of Abduction.
Boots – Wanderer's Rest (gives you a reliable method of disengagement + pin immunity)
Belt – Lots of options. Recommendation for one that grants +health and +vim.
Amulet – Vox (for silence immunity and vim) + Choker of Dread / Black Core (for blindness immunity)
Rings – Lots of options. Wheel of Fate (with slow and/or insanity on hit), Ring of the Dead (for extra life)
Light – At your discretion.
Misc – Torque of Psychoportation with silence, cooldown reduction, or crit damage reduction.
Other – Gwai's Burninator (incredible AoE damage that rivals Infernal Breath), Rod of Spydric Poison (damage + pin), Rod of Annulment (for bosses)

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IX. Talents
Each talent includes recommendations on degree and time of point investment. In most cases, you'll have some extra points left over after investing in the core talents to customize your build to you liking.

Starting Class Talents: Rush (1), Draining Assault (2), Incinerating Blows (1), Burning Sacrifice (1)
Starting Generic Talents: Racial Talent (1), Combat Accuracy (1), Dismember (1)

General Talent Rotation
1. Pre-combat buffs (Reflection/Shielding, LoTLF [if Halfling], Blinding Speed/GotE [if Shalore])
2. Initiate with Fearscape Shift.
3. Post-initiation buffs (Destroyer, Perfect Strike)
4. Obliterating Smash
5. Rush, Abduction, and/or Gwai's Burninator for remaining enemies.

Class Talents
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>> Technique / Combat Techniques (1.10 / Unlocked)
Note: Shalore players should utilize Grace of the Eternals over Blinding Speed.
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Rush (1/5 or */5) – First point immediately, optional points late.
You will want a point in this when starting out. It provides excellent engagement mobility with respectable damage and a useful daze. Additional points increase range and decrease cooldown. Every additional point is typically a solid investment and you can reduce the cooldown further with items; however, you will have a lot of critical talents demanding your investment all the way through the mid-game before you can reasonably increase this further.

Precise Strikes (1/5 or */5) – Required for later talents.
If you are playing Shalore, you have the option to ignore this talent and the remainder of the tree due to Grace of the Eternals global speed boost as it doesn't stack with Blinding Speed. Scaling off Dex, this skill provides additional accuracy and critical chance at the cost of 10% combat speed. You will easily reach 100% critical chance if you are playing Halfling. If you plan to max Dex, 5/5 becomes a consideration; however, Dismember gives you critical chance with no drawback.

Perfect Strike (1/5 or */5) – Late.
The extra accuracy translates into reliably hitting things and spills over into critical damage with greatswords. Due to accuracy scaling, an extra 100 points from the talent won't translate directly onto your character sheet; however, I took this to 5/5 and cast it before every fight. The blind-fight bonus this grants was also useful against stealth on numerous occasions. At 1/5 or 5/5, this will become a part of your regular pre-fight buffing routine (it's instant cast). If you are planning to take Infernal Breath, this will likely remain at 1/5 so you can spare the talent points.

Blinding Speed (5/5) – Late.
If you are anything except Shalore, this is an easy 5/5. If you are Shalore, you don't take this as it's strictly worse and doesn't stack with Grace of the Eternals. However, you'll want to wait until at least mid-game for this talent as there are usually more pressing talents to acquire in the early game. Granting global speed, this stacks nicely with Flame of Urh'Rok. While only lasting for five turns, global speed is so valuable that I would take this even if the duration was less due to the amount of extra damage you can put out. Some argument can be made for a 4/5 break point if you need an extra class point.

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>> Technique / Combat Veteran (1.30 / Unlocked)
Note: You can safely ignore this tree as you will never encounter stamina issues.
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>> Corruption / Shadowflame (1.30 / Unlocked)
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Wraithform (1/5) - Early
One point in this early is an incredible investment towards your survivability and required before Sandworm Lair to deal with the off chance you get stuck in a collapsing sand wall. As an instant cast, you gain the ability to walk through walls (you still require air) and a small boost to armor and defense. The wall walking becomes much more effective when paired with telepathy: all from Fearscape Shift so you know where you are going. The real use of this skill; however, is to activate it, walk into a wall, and then immediately cancel the effect for a psychoport-like teleport in emergencies.

Darkfire (1/5) – Required for later talents.
One point is required in order to pick up the later talents. You almost always have better options than casting this.

Flame of Urh'Rok (5/5) – Mid (after 1/1/1/1 Heart of Fire)
A better global speed boost than Yeek's get with some nice added resists. It also allows you to use Fearscape Shift and Fearscape without killing yourself. You'll be able to handle the 90 vim sustain cost by mid-late game without issue. If you are planning on taking Harmony, you'll have to hit yourself with fire before sustaining this in order to benefit from the 41% additional global speed. I don't think it's worth the hassle.

Fearscape (1/5 or */5) – Mid-Late
This works on almost everything and is amazing once you have the vim for it late game. You get plenty of utility at 1/5 and a little more than double the damage and healing at 5/5. You won't need to use this often but the utility this talent grants you at even 1/5 is important. Add more points as desired depending on how much you value the extra damage.

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>> Corruption / Brutality (1.30 / Unlocked)
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Draining Assault (5/5) - Early
This talent serves as your workhorse for extra damage, healing, and vim management. Comboing this after Abduction will kill most non-unique mobs reliably. In most cases, you'll max this early and spam it whenever it is up to give you that extra damage boost to kill enemies that much faster. The damage scaling is surprisingly solid due to the two strikes and, since it's pretty much your only reliable way to maintain a reasonable vim level during prolonged encounters, getting this up and running early will make your life considerably easier.

Fiery Grasp (4/5) - Early
It's an on-demand pin/silence at 4/5 that ignores line of sight. It's one of your most class defining talents and you can land it reliably on most bosses after the save reduction from Obliterating Smash. Grasping a boss or unique monster will often win you the fight outright. You can also grasp casters and archers who are priority targets that you can't otherwise reach. I tend to open with this whenever I see threatening spell casters.

Reckless Strike (5/5 or 1/5) - Late
At 100% crit chance with Dakhtun's, the damage this can put out is impressive. One point is required for the fact that it grants you 50% resistance penetration: all when used in Destroyer form. Since this ignores armor and resistances, it also becomes a reliable way to kill high priority, high resistance targets (e.g., luminous horrors). This was my killing blow against Atma when his reflection shield was up and, as you can imagine, is safer with Cauterize.

Share the Pain (*/5) - Optional with reservations.
Not recommended as you will want to quickly burst down groups and high threat targets rather than sit and take damage. If you find yourself with some spare class talent points, 5/5 gives you a 50% counter attack chance. This can also kill you with reflected damage if you're not careful.

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>> Corruption / Torture (1.30 / Unlocked)
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Incinerating Blows (5/5) - Early
Providing additional burn damage and a 25% chance to proc AoE burn, you will max this skill early. When modified by 5/5 Destroyer form, the AoE chance increases to 75%. The talent's built in cooldown mechanic limits the extra giant AoE but you can still reliably. proc the smaller AoE when paired with Destroyer. Helps tremendously with room clearing.

Abduction (3/5) - Early
Getting Abduction to 3/5 will be one of your most pressing talent point investment goals in the immediate early game. At 3/5, you get solid damage and an excellent break point for range (after 3/5, you get an additional 1 range per talent point along with additional damage). The skill functions as an essential follow up after your initial engagement with Rush in the early game to eliminate high priority targets such as casters and unique mobs. In Destroyer form, this will hit 5 times and can end up being your highest damage dealer with enough extra on-hit damage from gear. Staff builds will likely take the damage to astronomical levels.

Fiery Torment (5/5) – Early-Mid
Without this talent, you would run into serious problems due to your relatively mono-damage focus. With this talent, you get an incredible 50% fire resist debuff that can put enemies at 0% to -50% fire resist in a single turn. When the effect expires, it deals a portion of all of the damage you inflicted during the five turn duration. If you've decided to invest in Eternal Suffering, this will unfortunately get extended to the point that you will almost never obtain the end of effect bonus damage.

Eternal Suffering (*/5) – Optional with reservations.
This used to be an immediate 5/5 recommendation for me; however, the recent changes to this skill make it much less attractive. It interacts poorly with Fiery Torment and triggers before your Fiery Grasp silence (so it doesn't get extended). It's usefulness now comes from extending grasp if you are consistent in only activating Eternal Suffering after you grasp and the additional burn damage you can gain (which is no longer as significant). As of right now, I can only recommend this if you are willing to take it to 5/5, critically hit with Reckless Strike, and utilize Latafyn's active ability to immediately consume burns. Unless you love Latafyn above all else, skip this for the time being.

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>> Corruption / Heart of Fire (1.20 / Unlocked)
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Burning Sacrifice (1/5) - Early
You'll get 1/5 at level one for the free attacks and the talent's ability to proc Incinerating Blows reliably when not on cooldown (and when Incinerating Blows is on cooldown). In essence, 1/5 doubles your rate of giant Incinerating Blows procs within the cooldown period and, for additional point investment, increases the power of the extra proc and increases the damage of the free attack when killing a burning enemy. The combination of 5/5 Incinerating Blows and 1/5 Burning Sacrifice already provides sufficient room clearing potential so additional investment can end up feeling “more-ish.”

Fiery Aegis (1/5) – Required for later talents.
It's a poor shield without the bonus from consuming (and immediately ending) a lot of burns. You'll wipe out groups before you need this and the shield is underwhelming against dangerous single enemies.

Devouring Flames (1/5) – Required for later talents.
Unfortunately, many of the same considerations for Fiery Aegis apply to Devouring Flames. You won't have problems with health or vim in any situation where this would have a noticeable effect.

Blazing Rebirth (1/5) – Mid (your first mid-game talent)
This is the reason you invested in this tree and even if you had to spend twice the class points, it would still be well worth the investment. Blazing Rebirth is a full heal with a Cauterize-like effect. Across the next 5 turns (at 1/5), you burn the entirety of the heal away as resist ignoring damage over time. However, for every enemy within your immediate radius that is currently burning, you “share” a portion of the damage instead of taking it yourself. Additional talent levels increase the overall duration of the burn for both you and your unfortunate burning enemies. In many ways, additional points decrease the overall utility of the skill. If you are surrounded by enemies, you'll take very little damage due to the damage sharing and will likely kill them off over the five turns. Against a single powerful opponent, having to use Blazing Rebirth is a good indication that you may want to think about disengaging and resting up.

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>> Corruption / Wrath (1.30 / Locked)
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Obliterating Smash (5/5) – Mid-Late (after Fearscape Shift + Cauterize Spirit)
This skill scales well, slashes armor and resists, and becomes incredible with 5/5 Destroyer. Against groups, this functions as your immediate follow-up to Fearscape Shift and you'll want to position yourself with Shift in such a way that you can maximize the number of targets affected. Since this is considered a weapon attack, it procs everything (including slow and insanity). When Fearscape Shift and Obliterating Smash are both at 5/5 and you've obtained 100% critical chance (Halflings can obtain this easily mid-late game), you'll clear groups consistently with these two skills alone in Destroyer form.

Detonating Charge (1/5) – Required for later talents.
You are a melee class. Knocking things away from you is typically a horrible idea. Fearscape Shift is much better and you have Rush to reposition after Shift if needed.

Voracious Blade (1/5) – Required for later talents.
Extra vim per kill (you won't have vim problems when facing groups) and free empowered criticals after killing something (so no bonus against bosses and uniques). If this skill temporarily increased max vim to synergize with Abyssal Shield, then it would warrant consideration. It doesn't.

Destroyer (5/5) – Mid-Late
Visually, turning into a huge demon is pretty awesome. It also modifies your talents in ways that you will find supremely useful. Obliterating Smash AoE almost doubles, Reckless Strike grants you 50% resist penetration: all, Draining Assault's cooldown is cut in half, and Abduction gains 3 additional strikes. You also gain solid stun/freeze and disarm resists, physical power, and significant stamina regeneration. You'll almost always activate this before using Obliterating Smash and it supercharges Abduction's damage into the thousands with half-way decent on-hits.

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>> Corruption / Fearfire (1.10 / Locked)
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Fearscape Shift (5/5) – Mid (after 1/5 Flame of Urh'Rok and max after 1/5 Cauterize Spirit)
After 1/5 Flame of Urh'Rok, your next immediate goal is to unlock this tree and max this skill (you can work on getting Urh'Rok to 5/5 right after this). Up until this point, you've been initiating with Rush and aggressively targeting threats with Abduction. At 5/5, Fearscape Shift is your formal introduction into Doombringer midgame and your new initiator. The teleport range is great, the AoE on landing is massive, and the damage over time provides welcome healing that will only get better with increased spellpower, fire damage, and healmod. Furthermore, upon landing, you also gain telepathy: all in a massive radius which improves your battlefield awareness tremendously. With Wanderer's Rest, you have a reliable method of disengagement if you launch yourself into a dangerous situation. This will replace Rush as your initiator.

Cauterize Spirit (2/5) - Mid
Here is your mini-Timeless on-demand debuff removal. While your infusions are great at removing a single debilitating status, there will be many times that multiple status effects that you weren't prepared for hit you at the same time. You need 1/5 as soon as possible; 2/5 is the break point where you don't have to worry about it killing you. Save this for emergencies and utilize other forms of status removal whenever possible.

Infernal Breath (*/5) - Optional
After testing this against Obliterating Smash, this unfortunately falls short. By end-game, Smash will be hitting for twice the damage of Breath and you'll likely be using your post-initiation AoE (Smash or Breath) while shielded and before taking damage (lessening usefulness). However, you may find Breath to be a useful pre-initiator (before Fearscape Shift) and, if so, 5/5 is the investment you'll want to make. If you go this route, you'll Breath, Shift, and then Smash as usual. Breath also has use in vaults when you can't teleport and land your Shift optimally. If you just want more post-initiation AoE damage, Gwai's Burninator will typically edge this out. The points for this can come out of Perfect Strike (4 points) and Blinding Speed (1 point) without too much problem. If you require 5/5 Blinding, 4/5 Reckless is also a viable option here for the additional point.

Maw of Urh'Rok (*/5) – Optional with reservations.
The problem with this talent is that it's a waste of vim against standard groups compared to Infernal Breath and strictly inferior to Fearscape against bosses. You can build for 5/5 Fearscape and 5/5 Maw for bosses but you'll likely run into vim problems even with 5/5 Draining. Shalore may have the extra class talent points without Blinding to experiment with this.

General Talents
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>> Techniques / Combat Training (1.30 / Unlocked)
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Thick Skin (5/5) – Mid/Late
Your standard damage reduction. There is almost never a good reason not to max this.

Armour Training (3/5) – Early
At 3/5 you can wear everything. Additional points for additional protection if you have spare generics.

Combat Accuracy (3/5) – Early/Mid
At 3/5 you get a solid break point and can gain extra accuracy with Perfect Strike when needed. 5/5 is never a bad idea with spare generics.

Weapons Mastery (4/5) – Early/Mid
I feel 4/5 is the appropriate break point here in most cases, 5/5 optionally if generics allow. Staff builds will want to skip this in favor of Staff Mastery.

Dagger Mastery (0/5)
You don't use daggers.

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>> Cunning / Survival (1.10 / Unlocked)
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Grab points from Thief escorts. Non-Shalore can go 5/5 Charm Mastery if desired. Otherwise, generics may be limited.

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Corruption / Hexes (1.10 / Unlocked)
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You can go 5/5 Burning Hex for additional shutdown and damage against bosses. It's a great skill and something I will probably build for on a future Doombringer.

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>> Corruption / Demonic Strength (1.30 / Unlocked)
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Dismember (1/5) – Required for later talents.
You gain a passive bonus to physical critical chance and an on-hit accuracy and speed debuff. You'll hit 100% critical with Halfling and Shalore's Magic of the Eternals grants you spell crit as well. It's important to hit 100% critical late game; however, so spare generics can go here if your equipment and racials aren't getting you there.

Surge of Power (5/5) – 3/5 Early/Mid, 5/5 Mid/Late
An excellent instant talent that restores a percentage of your max health and stamina. More health results in more healing, making a strong case for stacking as much health as possible. While 3/5 originally felt like the appropriate break point here, 5/5 gave me an additional 200 points of healing late game and made a noticeable difference.

Demonic Blood (5/5) – Early (max before Abyssal Shield)
The synergy of this talent with everything else that you are trying to accomplish almost demands 5/5 as soon as possible. For starters, you gain additional maximum vim which allows for additional sustains, more talent use, and a more powerful Abyssal Shield. Furthermore, every level improves the talent's significant. passive damage boost that scales with your vim total. With items, you'll be sitting at over 300 vim late game and the extra passive damage will be welcome.

Abyssal Shield (5/5) – Early/Mid (max right after Demonic Blood)
While I recommend taking Demonic Blood to 5/5 before starting your investment in this talent, this is really important to get up and running at 5/5 as soon as possible. Abyssal Shield functions similarly to Mindslayer Absorption shields except that your one shield covers all damage types. Its power is relative to your current vim so expect vim expenditures to weaken the shield temporarily. Regardless, it's a great talent that requires almost no management and improves survivability considerably.

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>> Corruption / Oppression (1.20 / Unlocked)
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Horrifying Blows (1/5 or */5) - Late
The Corruption/Oppression tree is extremely powerful due to the irresistible nature of Hope Wanes and its ability to effectively end difficult as soon as you can activate the debuff. While sustained Horrifying Blows applies a stacking damage debuff to every target that you hit. At level 3, your attacks gain a stacking slow. At level 4, the single target damage debuff becomes 3% per stack. At level 5, your Horrifying Blows splashes to adjacent enemies applying the same debuff. If you find that you have the generics, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, and 5/5 are all solid break points. If you are short on generics, 1/5 is sufficient for the sole purpose of Hope Wanes.

Mass Hysteria (1/5) – Required for later talents.
A neat talent which increases the power of your Horrifying Blows debuff on the current target by 1% per stack while extending its duration and spreading all of the stacks of Horrifying Blows on the target to every other monster in the AoE. As the debuff empowerment never improves past 1%, 1/5 is sufficient.

Fearfeast (1/5) – Required for later talents.
Amazing against large groups and rather underwhelming against single targets and/or small, powerful groups. Using the talent heals you and grants additional turns for every stack of Horrifying Blows on every enemy in range. In theory, it's absolutely amazing. In practice, you will be spending your time wiping out large groups of normal mobs before this can aggregate substantially. I typically leave this at 1/5 but additional investment isn't necessarily a horrible idea if you really enjoy the talent.

Hope Wanes (3/5 or 5/5) - Late
Against bosses and/or difficult uniques, you will be watching your Horrifying Blows stack like a hawk. As soon as the debuff hits 8 stacks, Hope Wanes at 3/5 forces your target to lose 4 turns immediately. At 5/5, this improves to 5 turns. Incredibly, this works against everything as it completely ignores immunities and resistances. Maxing this skill for the extra turn loss is extremely valuable and highly recommended. Completely unique to Doombringers and completely awesome.

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X. Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading the guide and I hope you found it helpful. You can see the entire build here (http://te4.org/characters/150082/tome/7 ... 3a34e4d5f1) from my Halfling Roguelike Normal win with both Atma and Lian defeated. I utilized the Tomes of Knowledge mod after completing the game to unlock Stone Alchemy for 5/5 Extract Gem to help fund farportal runs as I've been interested in checking out all of the combinations. If any major changes to the class emerge from future patches, I'll see about updating the guide with additional notes and suggestions. As time permits, I'll also run the build on higher difficulties and add specific suggestions as appropriate.

[Effigy]

Nice writeup! I haven't played a Doombringer all the way through so far, but your analysis matches how I feel about the talents overall.

[seattlesid]

Very nice. Thanks. ...only bummer is now I'm heavily considering abandoning my level 21 Doombringer and starting over.

Would it be too much to ask you to recall the exact order in which you spent your category points?

[AlexMdle]

Incredibly in-depth. Great job.

[Effigy]

Would it be too much to ask you to recall the exact order in which you spent your category points?

Personally, I would recommend unlocking Corruption/Fearfire at level 10 so you can get Cauterize Spirit as soon as possible. Getting stacked with negative effects is probably the biggest threat in this game, and this skill can single-handedly save you in that situation. After that, I would probably take an inscription slot at level 20, unlock Corruption/Wrath at 36, and get another inscription after using Wyrm Bile. You could bump Wrath up to level 20, but you'll probably be too short on class points to take full advantage of it and having a 4th inscription is very useful.

[seattlesid]

THANKS!

[0player]

Your commentary on the Light tree is...odd.
Bathe in Light is a very strong talent that benefits incredibly from investment with its cubic scaling. Healing Light and Barrier lose much to their more advanced cousins... a healing infusion and a shielding rune, which are BOTH more potent AND instant.

[Effigy]

The main issue with Shielding rune is it can't crit. It's good for most of the game, but it's a lot weaker than Barrier at endgame if you have high spell crit and crit multi. I agree that Bathe is amazing, but less so for melee characters unless you're going to prebuff with it before combat.

[seattlesid]

I know you mentioned staff a couple of times. Is there anything that you'd recommend, with this build, as definite 'do's' or 'don'ts' with a staff user? I'm about to abandon my Shalore Doombringer and go with a Halfling staff user. ...i think...or Shalore...

[geckola]

Effigy & AlexMdl
Thanks for the feedback!

0player
I agree with you on the effectiveness of BiL and a */*/*/* recommendation for Celestial/Light is probably appropriate. As Effigy mentioned, BiL becomes more attractive at higher difficulties to pre-buff shields and even more so as Shalore for the extension. Doombringer feels pretty "bursty" so encounters are often determined within the first few turns. During that initial period, the core Doombringer toolbox already offers a number of substantial options for healing and recovery (Blazing Rebirth, Surge of Power, and to a lesser extent, Draining Assault and Fearscape Shift). BiL is great against bosses due to the differential between damage and health (your health < boss health, your damage > boss damage) so the proportions of your damage vs. boss BiL healing and boss damage vs. your BiL healing are obviously favorable. BiL is also your only method of extending shields, so pairing it with a Rune of Reflection would be great. Your comment also had me start thinking about the potential synergy between BiL and Fiery Aegis. In reality, I think your decision on how much to invest in BiL will come down to how many spare generics you have available.

seattlesid
On cat points, I think Effigy has already outlined a solid plan. Three of my cat points on Doombringer get reserved for Corruption/Fearfire, Corruption/Wrath, and Celestial/Light (leaving me with only one cat point for inscriptions on non-Cornac). I really favor Providence and typically find it worth losing the 5th inscription slot. Corruption/Fearfire is essential due to both Fearscape Shift and Cauterize Spirit and I alternate between picking it up at 10 or 20. The decision will come down to how ready you feel to start making the 5/5 Fearscape Shift and 2/5 Cauterize Spirit investment at 10 (you'll need at least 1/5 Flame of Urh'Rok to prevent the self-damage) vs. adding a 4th inscription slot for a reflection/shield or regen/heal immediately at 10. I'm going to lean *slightly* toward grabbing the inscription at 10 to run Shield/Regen/PhysWild/Men+MagWild, Corruption/Fearfire at 20, Corruption/Wrath at 36, and Celestial/Light with Wyrm Bile.

I feel staff is viable on Doombringer but I also think it's something you need to consciously build for. My first Doombringers went staff until I ended up switching to greatswords for my Halfling run. With a staff build, you'll want as much accuracy as possible for the staff proc dmg bonus which can get pretty massive with Abduction's multiple hits while in Destroyer form. For any non-Halfling, maxing Dex and taking Precise Strikes to 5/5 is a solid plan anyways for the increase to crit chance and accuracy. A great set of gloves can add an additional ~100 dmg/hit of various dmg procs to each melee hit. With the additional spellpower and fire dmg mod from a staff, you'll also see more damage and healing from Fearscape Shift which will be appreciated. The issue with a staff build, however, is that you lose out on Dethblyd which provides substantial cd reduction to your major skills while also granting a +%dmg +%res all on-hit bonus that stacks up to +10%. Without a greatsword, you're also trading away the .4% critpow/acc bonus and are now faced with a tough choice between wearing proc gloves or Dakhtun's. If you're planning to pick up Flex Combat as one of your prodigies, then Dakhtun's becomes incredibly attractive, making this choice even harder.

For staff, I would probably go Mag > Dex/Cun > Str and shoot for something like Bolbum's by mid-game (later trading it away for a solid T5). I might also run Planar Beacon (for 2x Shift) and itemize for healmod without sacrificing too much to really push out aoe dmg and sustainability. I'd like to pick up 5/5 Infernal Breath but, since its dmg scales with Str, 5/5 Fearscape with the extra spellpower seems great on paper. I feel Shalore is the right choice here to free up class points and extend Destroyer as much as possible.

Before the recent changes to Doombringer (pre-Eternal Suffering nerf), 2x whips on swap put out the best single target dmg and I would have argued that 10/5 Exotic was extremely viable (if not the best way to go). For right now, traditional 2h is probably best, but staff can do quite a bit to enhance some of your core talents and should make for an interesting playthrough.

Hope this helps.

[seattlesid]

wow. you guys are just awesome. thank you so much.

[seattlesid]

Regarding this statement in your guide:
"Staff builds will want to pick up a level of Channel Staff or Staff Mastery prior to revealing the tree at Angolwen in order to hit 1.3 mastery."

I think that means that, for staff builds, you want to try and get the Alchemy escort done so you can get Staff Mastery (or Channel Staff) going BEFORE you head into Angolwen so you can ultimately reach a higher level of Staff Mastery. I assume that you will not otherwise reach 1/3.

Yes?

[DuckAndCower]

This is one of the best, most well-written guides I've seen for TOME. I'm getting close to the end of the game with only one (very stupid) death, and thought I should thank you for your excellent guidance. Thanks!

[Morikal]

How do you manage your initial stats?

It looks like I need 36 magic to get Blazing Rebirth at lvl 12... that means I'll need to pump Mag over strength in the early game?
Or do you raise str to some level, then pump Mag to get to blazing rebirth a bit later than 12?

(I'm kinda new, not sure what you mean by mid-game--is it the teen levels? Do you wait and grab this at lvl 20+?)

[twas Brillig]

Midgame usually refers to late twenties to thirties or so. The highest level is fifty, but that's also the point where you start tackling the harder dungeons. ...or, the ones that are meant to be hard and not just death by storm giant.