(1.4.3) Exhaustive Wyrmic Guide.

[anathema]

Didn't read everything yet, so these are mostly random things i noticed while reading different parts.

About races. There is a good part personal taste involved in picking race, but i think Thalore deserves special mention. Guardian of the wood is a very powerful passive, you get a respectable health per level, and wrath of the woods can be set to auto use when enemies are visible (if you dont want to cast it manually at the best time); this all makes it a very forgiving race choice that often also happens to be one of the best for wyrmic.

About wild growth+icy skin. I would personally recommend against activating both early game, and just sticking with wild growth for awhile. At 1 point, icy skin is certainly not worth it, so you need to invest a decent amount into it to even think about using it early, however the armor is not great, and with little armor hardiness is even less useful. At the same time, the life% will in the early game add an amount comparable to what you can get on 1 piece of equipment. The downside is the fail chance you get from the increased equilibrium, and thats a fatal downside if your natures touch fails when it counts. Add to that the point investment and there is my point; its not worth it. Icy skin is by no means bad, but the cost is quite high early on, and its better saved for sometime in the mid game (imo). You could go for a build that hardly uses equilibrium stuff early on and ignore most of the downside, and then it would probably be useful early. Actually, rather than altering your description of the two skills in question, i would just add a general section regarding all the sustains you might be using (so including elemental harmony) and if/when to use them.

Anyway I gotta go now, I will probably add some more suggestions later. Nice job writing all of this up, must have taken a long time!

[Atarlost]

Yes, wing buffet can be a cone of a moderately more powerful physical attack. But for the points you'd put in to increase it's range you have a lot of better choices since you other tools dealing a cone's worth of attack than wing buffet if a cone's single attack is all it has going for it. It's great for the one point you put in, sure. But more than one, I really wouldn't bother, personally. The knockback is the *point* of the skill, and if the knockback isn't something you need or can use, then the skill should not be invested in heavily.

No there aren't. Ice claw maxes out at the range wing buffet starts at. Max range wing buffet is available as early as level 3. Breaths don't start up until level 12. And it's not a moderate power attack. My last wyrmic winner averaged 598 damage per hit not counting crits or procs with Wing Buffet. He did 637.59 with fire breath. His physical crit rate was 63% compared to mental 55%. With a 1.9x crit multiplier that comes to 937.07 for wing buffet and 999.10 accounting for crits. But then there are procs. 20% chance to gain 10% of a turn off of randart boots. 17 light 20 temporal off of randart gauntlets. 35% chance to blind, 41% chance to corrode armor, 4 acid, and 8 fire off a randart ring. Another 15% chance to corrode armor off a randart amulet. And a 50% chance of dealing 326.04-978.12 damage in radius 1 because the rotting titan almost always drops the blighted maul, but even without that the damage gap is less than 2% just from other randarts and the debuffs are better.

Even with a less extreme weapon a decent tier 5 with the random weird melee procs you get from randarts will outperform a non-DoT breath. But both of my two handed wyrmics to reach high peak used the blighted maul and I didn't have the item vault yet for either of them. It's not exactly rare since it's linked to a unique monster. The other took cold drake aspect and spent the whole game wishing ice claw were as good as wing buffet.

[Snow]

Anyway I gotta go now, I will probably add some more suggestions later. Nice job writing all of this up, must have taken a long time!

Thank you for the compliment. It took... oh a few hours of writing, checking, and a few interruptions. Still if it helps folks, I'm glad. Also I'm adding your comments to the community section.

Also regarding the icy skin + wild growth equilibrium floor at lower levels, yes that does bring an inherant risk with it, but don't forget the very first point in Icy Skin gives 10-20 points of cold retaliation, which is huge at first level and for a few levelspast. Since Wild Touch isn't actually available until level 4+, you're primarily healing up with infusions, and even after infusions tend to be very solid. I personally use Wild Touch as an emergency heal rather than the go-to standard until I'm more set up.

[stinkstink]

Also regarding the icy skin + wild growth equilibrium floor at lower levels, yes that does bring an inherant risk with it, but don't forget the very first point in Icy Skin gives 10-20 points of cold retaliation, which is huge at first level and for a few levelspast.

Those points would be better spent boosting Acidic Spray until it beams, even on melee builds. Killing enemies before they reach you is better than killing them after they hit you, and leaning on Acidic Spray and Bellowing Roar is a good way to survive the early game before your weapon damage catches up.

[Atarlost]

Also regarding the icy skin + wild growth equilibrium floor at lower levels, yes that does bring an inherant risk with it, but don't forget the very first point in Icy Skin gives 10-20 points of cold retaliation, which is huge at first level and for a few levelspast.

Those points would be better spent boosting Acidic Spray until it beams, even on melee builds. Killing enemies before they reach you is better than killing them after they hit you, and leaning on Acidic Spray and Bellowing Roar is a good way to survive the early game before your weapon damage catches up.

There's no reason to waste points on Acid Spray on a melee build. Having Wing Buffet (six range as early as level three) already puts you ahead of zerks for the early game and they can clear on all difficulties. You may need to buy a mindblast torq at higher difficulties, but that's way cheaper than putting talent points somewhere you don't want them in the long run.

I don't think very highly of Icy Skin either, but Ice Wall does have some utility value. Note that Icy Skin's value at first level is irrelevant. It has a four level prerequisite. 10-20 retaliation is not useful for so many levels past fourth.

[stinkstink]

If you're so concerned about min/maxing for endgame that you aren't willing to leave a few points in Acidic Spray, you can always float them. One of Wyrmic's strengths is that it gets to bypass how much the early game sucks for melee characters without having to rely on shops.

Saying Ice Wall has "some utility value" has to be understatement of the year. It's one of Wyrmic's best defensive talents, one of the three that IMO every character should have (along with Lightning Speed and Burrow), and is disgustingly versatile for its moderate cost and cooldown.

[Davion Fuxa]

I find it funny people are arguing what talents are better on Wyrmics. It looks like the changes to the class have done well to improve it!

[Atarlost]

If you're so concerned about min/maxing for endgame that you aren't willing to leave a few points in Acidic Spray, you can always float them. One of Wyrmic's strengths is that it gets to bypass how much the early game sucks for melee characters without having to rely on shops.

Saying Ice Wall has "some utility value" has to be understatement of the year. It's one of Wyrmic's best defensive talents, one of the three that IMO every character should have (along with Lightning Speed and Burrow), and is disgustingly versatile for its moderate cost and cooldown.

Floating talents prevents you from leveling up in the dungeon. Unless you mean only the first dungeon by "early game" that's far more painful than a shopping trip. If you don't start with enough bonus cash for that you also don't need to not play as melee in the early game.

I've done better without ice wall than with it. It's nice, but it's not something every wyrmic should take because it's third in an otherwise dubious category. Cold is not a very good damage type to focus on without more resist penetration than wyrmics get and cold drakes aspect only has cold damage. Venom drake aspect has similar issues.

[Snow]

Just wanted to add -- Wild Growth doesn't apply to Fungal Growth. Or if it does, not correctly.

Also the Fungal Growth description is a bit misleading. The regen isn't for 35% of the heal per turn, it's for 35% in total.

[RARaines]

How tenable is say a Yeek Wyrmic that is all about the breath skills and bellowing roar? I'm coming back after quite a break (1.0.6 or so was when I stopped). I got about to level 50 a few times and then made a dumb mistake and doom came early. I was really wanting to be able to get that chevo.