Updated Alchemist Guide: the beginner friendly class

[HousePet]

Yep.

[munch]

Sounds good! Thanks for finding this.

[grobblewobble]

Information about Smoke Bomb is incorrect.
Once a smoke cloud is created, it does not interact with burning at all.

Thanks for the correction.

Munch, I will rewrite the part about golem powers later.. playing through Nightmare for the first time now, and some of my opinions are shifting a little, will revamp the guide later.

[suberg]

Dont pick meteor prodigy, simply dont. Meteors 1shot your golem or make him hostile for 1 turn. With body of fire it becomes even more random. Golem is nice till dreadfell. Also if there is enemy with fearscape u gonna fight alone. Dispersion gloves can help a lot here.

[Moroteuthis]

Eskatin's Ultimatum is an excellent weapon for your golem. I've been running an alchemist on Insane lately, and found the aforementioned weapon before the end of Dreadfell. It greatly increases the utility of your golem, especially after a good bomb hit. I suspect it would do quite well on Normal in the later levels as well, where the golem isn't as awesome as he once was. Mountains of extra melee damage against a wounded enemy.

[freem]

Dont pick meteor prodigy, simply dont. Meteors 1shot your golem or make him hostile for 1 turn. With body of fire it becomes even more random. Golem is nice till dreadfell. Also if there is enemy with fearscape u gonna fight alone. Dispersion gloves can help a lot here.

In the current version of Tome, the golem never become hostiles to it's master. About the scapes (fear and dream) the solution is to use supercharge golem, this will bring it in the plane instantly, but yes, dispersion gloves are the best solution here.

[tabs]

So I'm having major trouble scaling my Alchemist's damage into the endgame. I've stacked as much single element damage boosts, crit, crit mult, and temporal form and still am only landing bombs for 1.5k on average. Given that this is only once per 3 turns, the overall DPS is pretty poor. Is there anything else I can do?

[grobblewobble]

Given that this is only once per 3 turns, the overall DPS is pretty poor. Is there anything else I can do?

Well, being a Shalore helps, as it lets you reset the bomb CD timer for two immediate bombs upon sight.. and for best damage I recommend Energy Alchemist. Living Lightning adds a fair bit of damage.

If you can link a character sheet I will check for any further advice.

[Number43]

There's also a high single target attack at the end of the acid tree, in addition to living lightning there's an aoe attack in the lightning tree, and the sustain at the end of fire adds damage. It does less damage than your normal bombs, but you could put some points in shockwave bomb to use when other stuff is on cooldown, you can otherwise use channel staff when you aren't doing anything else. Last thing is you can try for some gear with some spellpower based attack talents on them.

[tabs]

This was the character. I entered High Peak and couldn't put a dent in the first Stairboss. Essentially suicided it.

[ster]

This was the character. I entered High Peak and couldn't put a dent in the first Stairboss. Essentially suicided it.

it would probably help if you'd have bothered to get a second prodigy before high peak but i guess normal players don't have that luxury


e: i know normal gear is bad but how did you have like no penetration and minimal damage boosts from items? wizard hats and robes especially tend to have stupid levels of those on randarts yet you're using a +10% light damage robe (instead of heavy armor)??? nightsong which is literally worthless? it's like you made no attempt to optimise gear and complained that your non-optimised damage was awful

[Micbran]

I'm kinda with Ster on this one. All you have a couple of spellpower boosts and then the damage boosts from your staves to make up pretty much all of your damage which for a single damage type nuker like alchemist is a little low. To me, +% fire damage and penetration has always been easier to find than cold (and dark but that's irrelevant for alchemist) so that's what I've usually gone, despite most of the Fire tree talents being kind of crappy. But probably best not to listen to me, I've only ran a couple of glass cannons (like one so not even a couple) and most of them ended up with a high number of deaths on normal before winning.

[grobblewobble]

Not to hammer it in but yes, more items with +cold damage would have helped. Regarding rings, if you are unlucky with drops you can always imbue a pair of them with +damage / crit gems (like diamonds).

I also notice you put a lot of emphasis on +healmod on your items. That's great if you have ways to heal, but without a regeneration or healing inscription it doesn't help much..

As for the race, doomelf must be one of the most challenging races to play alchemist with. An alchemist has no use for Pitiless that I can think of, and the other racials aren't particularly helpful either. Not recommended.

Hope you have better luck next time.

[Number43]

I mostly play normal, and I've never entered high peak at that low a level, and I agree much of your gear was awful. And again, doomelf isn't a good fit for alchemist.

[bpat]

Doomelf should be great with Alchemist idk what people are talking about. No race has any significant synergy with Alchemist and Doomelf has mobility that Alchemist desperately needs. Also extending Flash Freeze and Thunderclap with Pitiless are both solid options.