1.4.9 Corruptor Guide

[bpat]

Alright so I haven't played Corruptor that much in a long time but not much has changed since I won on Insane two and a half years ago. Mostly Draconic Will and Virulent Disease were nerfed and Corrosive Worm and Poison Storm were buffed. Here's a link to my winner but I don't recommend looking at it and copying the build since it is far from optimal. If you want a tl;dr build I'll put it at the top but seriously you should read the whole thing.

tl;dr build

5/1/0/0 Sanguisuge
5/1-5/1/1-5 Vim
5/1-5/1-5/0-1 Plague
5/5/1/5 Blood
5/4/5/0or5 Blight
1/1/1/5 Bone (unlock at 10)

1/1-5/1/5 Shalore racials or 1-5/1/1/5 Doomelf racials
1/2-5/1/1or3-5 Hexes
0/0/0/0 or 1/1/1/5 Curses
1/1/1/5 Light or Tinkers for Unstoppable Force Salve, Second Skin, Focus Lens, and Grounding Strap (unlock at 20)

Stats: Mag > Cun > Dex > Con/Str
Inscriptions: Shielding, Shielding, Movement, Movement/PD/Lightning, Wild/Lightning
Prodigies: Cauterize at 30, Spine of the World at 42

Races

Go Shalore or Doomelf. Both have incredible synergy thanks to Timeless/Pitiless with this class and other races have zero synergy.

Stats

Mag > Cun > Dex > Con/Str/Wil, only get Wil if you have racials that benefit from it otherwise it is the least important stat.

Inscriptions

Shielding, Shielding, Movement, Movement/PD/Lightning, Wild/Lightning is a solid setup. You don't want Heroism or Regeneration on this class, but Shielding and Lightning are far better than usual. I would even consider Rune of Reflection for a third Shielding.

Prodigies

Your Bone Shield is highly vulnerable to DoTs and you have no status resistances from talents, so you will likely want one of Spine of the World or Draconic Will. Note that Draconic Will in no way works with Timeless but Spine of the World can be extended by it. You could probably get with skipping both of these if taking Tinkers (pls nerf Unstoppable Force Salve) but not if taking Light. Keep in mind that some statuses ignore saves so don't get too overconfident with Unstoppable Force Salve.

You probably want Cauterize in case Bone Shield is dispelled or you are hit with physical attacks without a damage shield up.

Eye of the Tiger is good since you will have high critical chance late game and most of your spells have very low cooldowns.

Worldly Knowledge is good if you didn't get an Anorithil escort or if you want both Light and Tinkers without sacrificing and Inscription slot.

Arcane Amplification Drone is a solid damage booster but you risk killing yourself if pulled near it, especially if you apply DoTs to it. If you are careful, this could be very powerful.

Pain Enhancement System is okay if you have extremely low spellpower and can't get diseases or Hexes to stick, but this shouldn't be a problem with proper equipment selection so PES is not recommended.

Overall I like Cauterize at 30 and Spine of the World at 42 but more offensive setups can work too.

Category points

Always go Bone at 10, Light or Tinkers at 20, and Inscription slots for the last two. You do not need Shadowflame or Torment. If you didn't get an Anorithil or Tinker escort, then take an Inscription slot at 20 and spend your fourth category point to boost Bone.

Class Categories

Sanguisuge: 3-4/0/0/0 early, 5/1/0/0 core, 5/5 Life Tap luxury

Drain doesn't do great damage and has a troubling coodlown but you need it for vim management. 3/5 is a good breakpoint for range and 4/5 gives it range 9 which lets you use it second in your rotation often which is important.

Bloodcasting is useful when you miss Drain or get Mana Clashed with Drain on cooldown. Duration isn't important since 1/5 is enough to either kill your target if it's weak or Dark Portal away and wait for Drain if it's not.

Absorb Life is useless since it takes a turn to turn on and off. Probably would be useless if it was instant since the vim gain is trivial compared to that from Drain.

Life Tap would be decent if not for the prohibitive 40 vim cost. If you really want this, get it very late, since you have better things to spend your points and vim on until then.

Vim: 4-5/0/0/0 early, 5/1/1/1 core, 5/5 Vimsense and Dark Portal luxury

Soul Rot is your best range 10 spammable damage spell, especially early when the extra crit chance is most significant. It does less damage than Blood Grasp disregarding the crit boost late but has a much better cooldown.

Don't use Vimsense like Track, use it like an AoE Curse of Vulnerability since almost all your damage is blight. It scales with spellpower so don't bother with this until late.

Leech sucks. You really don't want to be hit in the first place so you don't want this. One point for Dark Portal access.

Dark Portal is your only mobility talent. The disease ignores spell save and actually does more damage than Virulent Disease, but you don't want to use this offensively unless you know you will be safe.

Plague: 3-5/0/0/0 early, 5/1/1/0 core, 5/5/5/1 luxury

Virulent Disease does crazy instant damage on a very low cooldown. It applies spellshock so use this immediately on foes within range. The stat drop is very significant if it hits Strength on a physical enemy or if it hits Con on an enemy at max life. Only downsides are range 5 and checking spell save.

Cyst Burst mostly exists to set up a big Catalepsy or cleaning groups of weak enemies. No need to go past 1/5 until investing more in Catalepsy.

Catalepsy is your only stun and also your best source of burst damage with the Timeless/Pitiless combo. The stun checks physical save which means you need to pass both physical and spell save if using Virulent Disease or Epidemic to apply the disease, so you will need to apply the disease with Dark Portal or Blood Spray if you want to stun an enemy with very high spell save. This talent cannot crit, but it benefits greatly from diseases critting.

Epidemic doesn't get much better with more points despite its decent damage thanks to its long 13 turn cooldown but it's a reliably range 8 Catalepsy activator that ignores disease immunity if you need to apply a stun to disease-resistant foes. Against foes without high disease resistance this is usually not worth using.

Blood: 3-5/4-5/0/0 early, 5/5/1/5 core

Blood Spray is your best source of reliable AoE damage and its disease ignores spell save. The disease stat drop is not listed in the tooltip but it is significantly lower than that of Virulent Disease and closer to that of Dark Portal's disease.

Blood Grasp heals you which is only relevant early and if your Bone Shield breaks so it's less great than it seems for healing. However, its damage is fantastic so you will want to use this often in your rotation even when at max life, though it's worth holding if you expect Bone Shield to break soon.

Blood Boil has too long a cooldown to be useful offensively. The slow makes it an okay filler but I don't think it is worth more than 1/5 for unlocking Blood Fury.

Blood Fury is an incredible damage boost but you cannot afford the 60 vim sustain cost until mid-late game since Bone Shield takes priority.

Blight: 1/2/0/0 early, 5/4/5/0 core, 5/5 Poison Storm luxury

Dark Ritual is great once you have the crit chance to make good use of it. Its in a weird spot where it costs much less than Blood Fury but you still want Blood Fury with this because of the crit chance increase.

Corrupted Negation deletes magical and physical sustains and buffs such as damage shields. 2/5 removes 3 which is good for early game, 4/5 removes 5 which you will want later. You have to beat their spell save to remove sustains so make sure you keep Dispersal Gloves for those situations where you can't beat their spell save. Note that this can hit you and will remove Bone Shield so be very careful not to use it on yourself. This is a range 10 AoE so you can hit enemies before they see you if you have vision of them from an item or telepathy.

Corrosive Worm is a massive damage buff that is most useful in long fights, since most of the damage comes after 6 turns. Using Catalepsy before this ends is a great way to maximize its impact. This talent cannot crit.

Poison Storm is a go big or go home talent. The small radius can be a significant issue (it's 1 less than Virulent Disease's range) but the effects are potent at 5/5. The effects are very powerful disables (healing reduction, damage reduction, and talent fail chance) at high spellpower and talent levels and the damage is solid too if enemies stand in it for long despite its inability to crit.

Bone (locked): Unlock at level 10, go 1/1/1/5 immediately, Bone Spear luxury

Bone Spear is your only hope of killing Worms that Walk but even then you're better off running away than trying to fight, especially if it's a rare or higher. The damage is respectable early so consider floating 3/5 or so into it, refunding once the difference between your blight and physical damage gets significant.

You really don't want to be near enemies so Bone Grab is the opposite of what you want.

Bone Nova is stun padding I guess? Completely useless.

Bone Shield is your best talent and one of the best talents ever. You want 5/5 in this immediately. I'll write more on this in the strategy section below.

Shadowflame (locked): Don't unlock

Wraithform is great, moving through walls is very useful with a Movement Infusion. This is the only useful talent in this category and you would go only 1/0/0/0 if it was unlocked.

Darkfire can actually kill Worms that Walk. It can also kill two charges of your Bone Shield.

Flame of Urh'Rok gives some global speed and resists at the cost of like all your vim. You're limited by cooldowns so this doesn't help much.

Fearscape lets your talents cool down if you use it on a weak target at the cost of like all your vim and Bone Shield charges unless you can somehow afford both it and Flame of Urh'Rok.

Generic Talents

Hexes: 1/2/1/1 early and core, 1/5/1/3-5 luxury
All hexes are mental effects, thus they test spellpower vs mind save.

Pacification Hex is good at keeping melee foes away, and even if they cleanse the daze (which they often will), it will often daze them again later. Every turn they spend not moving or removing the daze is a turn they spend not attacking you and if they use their only physical cleanse on this before you stun them with Catalepsy they will not be able to remove it.

Burning Hex excels in long fights. It punishes them for using talents, which occurs at least once per turn more often than not. The damage is irrelevant but the cooldown increase is independent of spellpower making this a solid investment both early and late.

Emphatic Hex does very little damage compared to the damage of your talents.

Domination Hex works on rares, randuniques, and randbosses. 3/5 is a good breakpoint for duration since if you pit two rares or higher against each other, one will kill the other pretty fast.

Curses: 0/0/0/0 core, 5/5 Curse of Vulnerability luxury
All curses are magical effects, thus they test spellpower vs spell save.

If you can apply Curse of Defenselessness in the first place, you don't actually need to lower their spell save making this pretty pointless.

Curse of Impotence doesn't do much since you care about the number of damage instances rather than the quantity of damage in an instance. It will preserve your damage shields but that's it.

Curse of Death does surprisingly good damage but it is darkness damage and it can't crit. Epidemic also reduces healing but at 1/5 this is even better for that purpose with its 10 turn duration.

Curse of Vulnerability greatly buffs your damage, especially against foes with high resistances. Treat this similar to Vimsense.

Torment (locked): Don't unlock

5/5 Willful Tormentor gives you the vim for Flame of Urh'Rok. Too bad this combo costs two category points for just 20% global speed. This isn't very good but it gives a buffer for Entropy, Disperse Magic, and other sustain removal.

You already have plenty of ways to prevent healing and this is your worst one. Only redeeming things are it being instant and Providence might remove this instead of something important.

Overkill is great at killing Summoners and Necromancers. This would be a great 1/5 talent if not for the category being locked and it being the only good talent in it.

Blood Vengeance is bad because you rarely take life damage and if you do, you have bigger problems than 1 turn of cooldown on your talents.

Survival (locked): Don't unlock

Heightened Senses is useless.

5/5 Charm Mastery is great if you know how to use it.

Piercing Sight helps you not get killed by stealth mobs since they shred your Bone Shield. This is a good choice from Thief escorts.

Evasion makes you get hit less and thus improves your Bone Shield's longevity.

Light (Anorithil escort): Unlock either this or Tinkers at level 20. Core: 1/1/1/5, luxury: 5/5 Bathe in Light and Barrier

Healing Light is useful early. Late it helps recover from Cauterize.

Bathe in Light is great blocking small damage instances and it also buffs and extends your shields. Very good against small damage instances. Healing enemies is low enough to be mostly irrelevant.

Barrier is like another Shielding Rune, which is always nice. It can crit making it extremely potent late.

Providence is your mini-Draconic Will. Damaging effects like poison, bleed, and disease can quickly shred your Bone Shield and this prevents this from happening.

Physics and Chemistry: Unlock either this or Light at level 20.

Important Tinkers are Unstoppable Force Salve, Second Skin, Focus Lens, and Grounding Strap. You will want to dedicate both Medical Injectors to keeping up Unstoppable Force Salve 100% of the time so the other Salves don't really matter.

Shalore racials: 1/1/1/5 core, Magic of the Eternals luxury

Grace of the Eternals boosts your Global Speed, which is okay but you are still limited by cooldowns.

Magic of the Eternals is a simple passive damage boost.

Secrets of the Eternals lets you avoid some damage if your Bone Shield breaks, which may save your Cauterize cooldown if you're lucky.

Timeless resets the cooldown of Virulent Disease and many of your other spammable talents. The double Virulent Disease -> Catalepsy combo (with optional Blood Spray/Epidemic/Dark Portal at the start) is highly potent, but it will not refund any vim if it scores a kill so use it sparingly on weak foes. Important buffs to extend are Providence, Spine of the World, Lightning Runes, and damage shields, but it sadly does not extend Draconic Will. Don't be afraid to use this to purge debuffs, though usually you'll want to use Relentless Pursuit for that purpose when it's available. This also lets you reset cooldowns out of a stun so it can bring back Dark Portal when you're stunned and need to escape.

Doomelf Racials: 1/1/1/5 core, Haste of the Doomed and Resilience of the Doomed luxury

Haste of the Doomed apparently has its cooldown massively reduced with high talent point investment for some reason so it could be worth dumping spare points into. Anyway it's an instant teleport and a non-instant teleport, both of which are amazing on a low-mobility class. The range sucks but it can often get you behind a corner and out of sight.

Resilience of the Doomed reduces debuff duration, but you really want to not have debuffs get applied in the first place so this is underwhelming.

Corruption of the Doomed is pretty similar to Secrets of the Eternals. Stealth is worse than invisibility but the extra damage is good.

Similar to the Timeless combo, extending diseases with Pitiless right before Catalepsy is very powerful. This also gets rid of pesky buffs like Blinding Speed, Providence, and damage shields. You can also extend the cooldown of talents affected by Burning Hex or put on cooldown by Catalepsy's stun, shutting your target down even harder over long fights.

Strategy

I'm going to mostly talk about Bone Shield because it is the most important and strategically deep aspect of Corruptor. Bone Shield will hold up very well against non-physical attacks that do single instances of damage, like Manathrust. Bone Shield will break fast if hit by physical weapons (not War Hound or Shadows, but actual weapons), if hit by a DoT like any poison, bleed, or disease, as well as talents that damage an area over time like Inferno and Earthquake. Bone Shield activates to prevent life damage; this means that any damage instance blocked by a damage shield, Lightning Rune, or Ward does not trigger Bone Shield. Because of this, you should focus on wards and status resistance over armor and damage resistance in terms of equipment. If you are in range of only foes that don't often use DoTs (like Anorithils and Summoners) you are safe to let your Bone Shield take hits. If not, then cast a damage shield or the relevant ward ahead of time. If you anticipate being hit by statuses, use Providence before you need to since it usually lasts long enough at 5/5. Also remember to always have Unstoppable Force Salve on, even if you don't think you're going to get hit by statuses, because some invisible guy might pop up and apply three statuses in a turn. Note that you can and should use robes thanks to Bone Shield, even on Insane difficulty.

As for non-Bone Shield related strategy, Corruptor is really simple so just button mash haha. A solid trick for vim management is to use Drain second in a fight (like Soul Rot -> Drain -> Blood Grasp), since usually the third spell will kill anything under a rare (and most rares too!). Of course if your damage is not high enough to three shot something don't do this. It's worth restating that you shouldn't be dumb with Dark Portal because you really don't want it on cooldown when you need it, but other than that everything is covered in the above sections.

[Velorien]

Great guide! I've been waiting for something like this forever. I especially appreciate detail like checking against spell saves and ability to crit since you don't get told those in-game.

Is Drain really enough as the sole source of vim management? I always find myself running out of vim in extended fights, doubly so if I use skills like diseases or hexes that don't refund vim on death.

Also, do you have anything to say on stat distribution?

[bpat]

I totally forgot to do the stat distribution, I'll edit my main post to include it. The gist of it is Mag > Cun > Dex > Con or Str (for encumbrance). Cun gives crit, Dex gives crit reduction which keeps your damage shields up longer, and the fourth stat hardly matters. You should probably take Wil third or fourth on Thalore and Doomelf since their racials use it and none of the stats really matter aside from Mag and Cun.

Drain is your only source of vim management other than Bloodcasting and vim on crit items (which are very helpful). Make sure you don't miss Drain because then you're kinda screwed. With high blight damage Drain should refill you to max late game meaning you have eight turns to spend your entire vim pool. Also you should try to finish foes off with expensive spells like Blood Grasp while using cheaper ones like Soul Rot early to get a better refund for the same amount of damage.

[terri]

Thanks for the guide, it helped a lot about understanding this class and some general stuff!
I just advise that bringing a wand of firewall helps more than usual on corruptors because of worms and wtw and its easier to get than elemental fury
And imho doom elves > shaloren :^)
Btw isnt Endless woes a good damage prodigy for corruptors and catalepsy?

[ster]

should mention the secret yeek synergy that allows them to actually get unstoppable force salve before prides

e: dear god all my shitposts i didn't want anyone seeing are being posted

[bpat]

Usually conjuration is better than firewall for killing WTWs because they won't stand still until next to you which is a bad situation. Endless Woes doesn't have high enough proc chance to worth taking on Corruptor, especially since they only do one of the five damage types. Could maybe be okay with Temporal Form but I wouldn't recommend it.

[Davion Fuxa]

I always wondered if the Whitehoof might be decent for Corrupter. The resistance to Silence, immunity to Poison and Bleed, and some of their Racials look like it would be decent for them. Thoughts?

[bpat]

I haven't tested Corruptor in EoR but in theory Dead Hide should apply before any other reductions making it huge for Bone Shield. In fact, going as much as 5/5/2-5/1 could be worthwhile on Whitehoof. Orc and Yeti don't have any synergy with Corruptor so Whitehoof is a solid choice considering you can have a setup like Injector x2, Shielding x2, and Lightning. Only downside is no Movement Infusions and being generic hungry.

[Davion Fuxa]

I finally got around to checking out what it might be like to start up a Whitehoof Corrupter in the Embers of Rage campaign. That characters progress can be seen here: Davion Deadblight

Some obviously nice things that I can note is that I was able to pick up Chemistry and Physics immediately - along with Combat Training at Kruk Pride (not sure how much you might invest in Combat Training but you might want to make a note about it). Because of the initial investment in Whitehoof talents, I was able to make use of the damage reduction and extra movement speed to help offset some initial defensive and mobility problems; notably, I was also able to keep the damage shield up longer in some situations because of damage reduction and the whitehooves natural immunities to poison and wounds. Most difficult situation occurred in the Vaporous Emporium against the boss, High Guard Talosis due to low level and lack of talents. I also turned back on the final level of the Ritch Hive due to the concentration of enemy pockets with rares - though that is sort of to be expected.

I figured I'd ask in advance though if there is any real benefit to Dexterity on Corrupters, or is it just the third stat to pick up because Corrupters don't have any real benefit from other stats outside of Magic and Cunning?

[ster]

dex gives you crit shrug which is very strong

[Davion Fuxa]

dex gives you crit shrug which is very strong

And it gives Defense and Accuracy. However, none of what Dexterity does applies directly into a Corrupters talents. I'm actually wondering if it might make sense to pick up Willpower for the extra Vim gain on Kill Bounties - it might be due to playing on Normal but Vim Acquirement is a notable issue throughout my run.

[bpat]

dex gives you crit shrug which is very strong

And it gives Defense and Accuracy. However, none of what Dexterity does applies directly into a Corrupters talents. I'm actually wondering if it might make sense to pick up Willpower for the extra Vim gain on Kill Bounties - it might be due to playing on Normal but Vim Acquirement is a notable issue throughout my run.

Willpower is useless on Corruptor since the vim on kill per point of Willpower is very low. Tbh you might just want to go Strength third stat for the encumbrance because Dex and Con are so irrelevant. I value crit reduction more than max life but on lower difficulties Con may be better and will definitely be better next patch when it gives healmod.

On the subject of Combat Training, just get 1/5 in Armor Training. You don't need Thick Skin or anything but if you have literally nothing else to get like if you missed both escort categories then I guess you can take Thick Skin.

[ster]

it might be due to playing on Normal

[Davion Fuxa]

On the subject of Combat Training, just get 1/5 in Armor Training. You don't need Thick Skin or anything but if you have literally nothing else to get like if you missed both escort categories then I guess you can take Thick Skin.

Well, something else to consider is the fact that since I'm playing in EoR - one less Category point. I could pick up Worldly Knowledge but I might leave it be and pick up something else instead - it isn't like I have all that many Generic Points to spend.

[Mordy]

Well, something else to consider is the fact that since I'm playing in EoR - one less Category point. I could pick up Worldly Knowledge but I might leave it be and pick up something else instead - it isn't like I have all that many Generic Points to spend.

On the other hand, learning Tinkers doesn't cost you a category point and you can't learn celestial/light (without a prodigy use) so it balances out.