1.4.9 demonologist guide by yours truly (HIGH SKILL CEILING)

[ster]

ster's Demonologist guide

Demonologist is my favorite class because i have a completely broken brain and also it was my first Insane win and i kind of took to it after that. It's also a class that's pretty hard to understand since there's so little documentation on it so here's a guide to try and help with that.

e: yes this is a guide made by insane players for insane players but everything works on normal

tl;dr "optimal" build
1/1-4/1/1 Shield Offense
1/1-5/1/5 Combat Techniques
1/1/5/1 Shadowflame
5/5/2/4 Demonic pact
1/1/3/0 Infernal combat
3/5/4/1 Doom shield
1/1/5/0 Spellblaze

1/5/1/5 Ogre/Shalore
5/5/1-3/5/0 Combat training
1/5/1/0-1 Survival
1/1/1/1 Torment
0/0/0/0 Black Magic
1/2/1/0 Physics 5/1-3/1-2/0 Chemistry OR
1/5/1/3-5 Light

Prodigies: Arcane Might, Windblade/Cauterize/Flex
Demon seeds: Fire imp early, quasit late (mainhand), phys/blight resist (offhand), fire imp (body), vim-on-hit and per-turn (ring)



First, my Insane winners:
http://te4.org/characters/208724/tome/1 ... 5e7457b60e - First win, horrendously bad skilling (Doom covenant, tried to invest in staves) and used the vault to IIRC take out some of the black set after returning from the east. I'm not proud of this and to be honest the build was awful and got carried in the endgame by earthen fury randart. Proof of concept, i guess?


http://te4.org/characters/208724/tome/2 ... d3d85947e4
Refined version of the build, using Unstoppable Force salve to max healmod and saves. Blood of life was used because of a doomed hornet swarm rare in ruined dungeon getting the drop on me, ring of the dead to one of the overpowered wyrms catching me with osmosis shield off (I did room of death early that run to prove a point to the discord that USF completely broke osmosis shield).

Cauterize procced twice on completely outlandish burst damage - once because of a PM randboss in grushnak pride braiding like 20 brittle clear oozes with me and then hitting them with AoEs, and once to atamathon who rolled sawbutcher so he had Furnace to completely punch through my resistances (and he did alarmingly well, doing 2k per turn minimum even if i healed it back).
Got through High Peak with a 200 block shield and still wasn't taking any damage from most fights due to the huge healing, though I also got sawrd from rak'shor which pretty much trivialised everything past that.
http://te4.org/characters/208724/tome/7 ... 2b35a1b838
Similar to above but took winblade instead of cauterize and didn't regret it, as a massive AoE with no resource use was great to throw into my regular rotation. Also took harmony which i wouldn't recommend for convenience since it's a pain in the ass to regularly proc, but it probably saved me vs Lina and Atama so whatever. This character also had the worst Elandar i'd ever seen, who spawned with (most notably) Weapon of Wrath for about 1k damage per hit and like level 20 thick skin. Used blood of life vs him due to infinite damage loop from link of pain me->him and martyrdom (or he just one shot me directly haha), and ring of the dead vs lina but w/e superbosses aren't relevant. Copy the second build if any imo, not this.

I had another run that died in High Peak using staves, but for whatever reason it wasn't registered. Notably it lacked the usual problems with demo because of flexible combat gloves with second wind and corrosive cone beating armor and damage was slightly better than normal but acid damage type is annoying to build around and the stuff that really makes the build work are rare and basically require vaulting so i wouldn't recommend.

Race

This is a weapon damage class which doesn't care about powers immensely so you probably want to go ogre for 2H mainhand + shield. Extra infusion and infusion power is a nice bonus too, especially if you use salves. Standard ranking applies because i don't want to have to explain why dwarves and undead are shit tier and why Shalore is strong. Doomelf may be useful too for more mobility/crit shrug and status effect reduction/Pitiless but neither of the elves have that much synergy.
Stat priority

Str > Mag > Cun = Dex> Whichever of the two you didn't max, or Wil if your racials use it.

Level str and mag roughly equally in early levels till you reach requirements, then level stats biased toward str.

Dex gives you more accuracy and crit shrug, cun gives you crit. I favor the former but i like precise strikes on this class despite it not being that great of an idea in general. Go with cun first if you don't want precise strikes.

Category unlocks
Inscription -> Light/Tinkers -> Inscription -> Spellblaze or an escort category of your choice/Harmony

Both your locked categories are mediocre but Spellblaze is probably the best way to use the wyrm bile cat point so you can land statuses in High Peak. Some escort trees (Conditioning for stamina ignoring and vit/ufr, Harmony for gspeed, Light + Tinkers for overkill durability) do have some merits too.

Inscriptions
Roughly the standard set (Movement, Heroism, Regeneration, 2 of Wild/PD/Another heroism). Note that I don't recommend shielding because having close to 100% uptime on heroism is much better for this class since osmosis shield only works on damage to your HP.

If you're using salves do something like Movement/Heroism/Regeneration/Injector/Injector.

Ogres should throw in another of Wild/PD/Heroism/Shielding too, or a second movement inf.

Prodigies

Take arcane might since it's a huge boost to all the stats you want. 2nd prodigy is your pick of flexible combat (if you have dakhtuns or second wind/cripple/dominate/disarm gloves since those procs are really strong), naloren (if ogre), cauterize so you don't die, or windblade for a strong AoE that doesn't use resources.

Other worse prodigies like meteor crash and eternal guard technically help you but they're just bad compared to the power ones listed above.
Class talents

Technique/Shield offense
1/1/1/1 early, more in Shield Pummel and 4/5 Riposte luxury

Gives you some buttons to press and lets you actually counterstrike things. Assault is your most damaging ability too. Note that all shield attacks will have trouble beating enemy armor in late game because you have no mastery and it really shows.

Shield Pummel is like your only stun but it also does no real damage due to being shield based, so just stick one point in for unlocks and maybe put more in if you get enough stamina management to afford talents that don't do good damage.

Riposte lets you counterstrike which means that Demonic Madness and Shield Slam aren't wastes of turns. 4/5 it later on for a second counterstrike.

Shield Slam just exists for you to block while still hitting a dude with your onhit effects since the damage sucks. No amount of points can make this better but you should still use it since you have a bunch of things that proc off counterstrike.

Assault does stupidly good damage even on 1/5 and usually will oneshot normal rares and shield slam/demonic madness > assault is going to be the capstone for your damaging abilities for a long time

Technique/Combat techniques
1/0/0/0 early, 1/1/1/5 around Dreadfell. Points in precise strikes luxury.

Rush is mobility. Get a point in it at level 1 and use it whenever you think you might die.

I like precise strikes but it's probably not optimal, however your crit rate will likely suck with bad luck so putting points into dex and using it isn't all that bad given that you will have really high global speed most of the time.

Perfect Strike lets you hit dreads and other stealthed dudes. That's it pretty much and 2 turns is long enough.

Blinding Speed gives you more things to do in less time. This is obviously good. Also you bump attack a lot instead of waiting on cooldowns so it's pretty much a straight dpt boost.

Corruption/Shadowflame
1 point in Wraithform to start with, 1/1/1-5/1 midgame.

This is actually pretty good when it starts unlocked, especially since you don't have as much of a use for max vim and can sustain fearscape for a long time compared to other defilers.

Wraithform is a great escape and a nice instant armor buff in the earlygame, and is essentially required to do Searing Halls consistently. Note that you can cancel the buff while inside a wall for a quick teleport if you're desperate. Not worth more than 1 point since it has all of its utility there. Note that you can't rush through walls even with this on.

Darkfire is garbage and only for the unlock.

Flame of Urh'Rok gives you global speed and a fairly nice amount of fire/darkness resist, the two most important ones on insane. It also lets you actually use fearscape so invest in it ASAP when you have the vim to sustain it (About 70 after the sustain cost is fine if you have good vim on hit seeds).

Fearscape is like your version of Temporal Reprieve or Stone Wall or whatever: lets you recover HP (very rapidly) and cooldowns for minimal costs, and you can also use it to thunderdome rares to death if you're with an escort or want to split up a pack of them. REMEMBER TO TURN THIS OFF IF YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF VIM. Osmosis Shield going down can kill you.

Corruption/Demonic pact
5/5/1/4, with luxury extra points in Twisted Portal.

Literally the whole reason why you're here.

Demon seed is pretty much the whole reason that you're here and i'll cover it in its own section. Other than leaving it at 1/5 until you get a Fiery Cleansing seed (extremely important) you should mostly level it up whenever possible since higher demon tiers are generally better. The actual attack is OK but being blight damage isn't great since you don't do too much of that. You also may want to float points in case you want specific high level, low tier seeds by endgame.

Max out Bind Demon by level 8 since it gives you more things to put demon seeds on. On insane you may want to do this after drowning Last Hope in order to maximise the chance of getting a good fire imp seed to trivialise the early game.
The actual demon summoning from this isn't great at most parts of the game but it spikes in power a lot with tier 4 and 5 demons and throwing a daelach or champion of urh'rok at a randboss can be fairly viable up until about dreadfell. They will die quickly if they draw aggro though.

Twisted Portal is a nice escape but unfortunately you will have to unequip all of your demon seeds that you don't want dying (yes, even with suffuse life) before using it which is tedious but not dangerous since you can swap them instantly. Its precision is also terrible unless invested in, but it's a good enough escape to be worth at least 2 points and maybe 4 in.

4/5 Suffuse Life in midgame (it uses ETL) with the rest of your passive defenses. The lifesteal from this applies to everything and scales with healmod so you'll usually bounce back from like half HP straight to full if you have 250% from USF/bathe in light. It also revives your demon seeds if for whatever reason you summoned them in.

Corruption/Infernal Combat
1/0/0/0 early (and if you get black plate keep it that way), 1/1/3/0 late.
Put a point into flame leash early for mobility reasons. You're here for link of pain but demon blade is (low) free damage since it's instant so why not use it. Link of pain itself is great since you can link trash mobs with no resistances to bulwark true grit randbosses with 90% resistances and they will still take the majority of the damage done. Greatly simplifies dealing with Argoniel too. Don't put points into this until very late (perhaps before high peak) just in case you get Black Plate, which is both close to best in slot and offers link of pain as a usable ability anyway.

Corruption/Doom Shield
3/1/0/0 early, 3/5/4/0 late, investment in Blighted Shield and 5/5 osmosis shield luxury. Good category that has two of your main defenses in.

Osmosis Shield is your main form of defense. The tooltip is badly worded and actually explaining why it's so good is hard, but basically it heals you for any damage taken up to the point based on block value, scales with heal mod, and at TL3 cures physical effects too (fairly reliably, the absorb value never scales up too high compared to the damage you take. consider replacing phys wild if you want). The healing also all stacks up so at the end of the turn you'll fully recover if the shield took significant damage. Makes you difficult to kill in sustained fights, but does nothing against ridiculously high burst damage, but as long as you take care in Old Forest/High Peak/Vor Armory those should be avoidable - anywhere else needs to spawn something completely absurd to do it.
3/5 is the breakpoint where further investment is minor, but i'd do it anyway in the very late game just to squeeze even more effectiveness out.

Hardened Core gives you armor and spellpower, both of which you want (spellpower not as much). The armor you get from this is completely ridiculous and lets you get to about 100 in midgame and with great drop luck, 250 by endgame though it's more likely to be about 180. Pair with hardiness increasing items and you will essentially never take damage from physical rare+, except maybe sawbutchers and archers.

Demonic Madness is a weak aoe with nice confusion effect and a free block at tl4. Puts block on CD but who cares? You won't ever actually manually block. Use this when shield slam is on cooldown and you want to counterstrike with assault or farstrike. As usual with shield attacks don't expect this to do huge damage since you have no shield mastery.

Blighted shield is worth 1 point in because it will try and spellshock everything you counterstrike on, though the chances of it affecting anything relevant isn't great even with Shattered Mind.

Corruption/Doom covenant
Don't unlock, the Dark Reign buff will never come into play against anything relevant and you don't actually deal enough dark damage except with a 1 turn (wow!) duration buff. DG buff this bad category pls?

Corruption/Spellblaze
Reducing saves is actually a really strong effect given that you have access to Silence, Disarm and Doomed Nature which all basically remove the offensive capabilities of things you hit with them. None of the other talents are worthwhile.

1/1/5/0 if any, maybe more in Rain of Fire luxury but i wouldn't recommend
Rain of fire costs a stupid amount of vim per turn for a small chunk of free damage and also costs an entire turn you likely won't make back with the meteor damage.

Only Ashes Left only helps on things that were basically dead anyway, though it's still free damage regardless.

Shattered Mind helps redeem this bad category with a decent chance of talent failure and the save reduction helping you land confusion, stun, blood lock, spellshock and whatever your gear gives you. Still likely to be better to max a low effort escort tree than this.

The 4th talent is like a really really terrible overkill.
Generics
Useful investments for generics are a bit rarer than class points and for whatever reason demonologist has the most generic points out of any class so you have quite a lot of free points to invest here. On lower difficulties or if you don't like inscription slots you could unlock another escort tree or Harmony (just for elemental harmony sustain, the actual equi stuff is useless because you use vim) if you don't think you want any of your unlocked generics. Also pick a race with heavy generic investment (luckily all the good ones need this anyway).

Racials:
Ogre is 1/5/1/5, same with Shalore and presumably Doomelf is similar but potentially 1/5/1-5/5 instead. Do whatever with other races, it was your own mistake for picking them.

Technique/Combat Training
Annoyingly this is 1.00 mastery despite this being a full fledged melee class.

Max Thick Skin whenever you have the gear for it, 3/5 armor training early and 5/5 later when you have the points, max weapon mastery ASAP or float 3 points if you want Naloren later. Invest points in Combat Accuracy as fit, and probably stop at 3 if any since you have Perfect Strike if needed.

(tldr 5/5/0-3/5/0)

Cunning/Survival
1/1/1/0 midgame, max out Charm Mastery luxury

Piercing Sight means stealth rares don't one shot you and Charm Mastery is really strong if you know what you're doing with it.

Corruption/Torment
1/1/1/1 luxury.

Still not a great tree even if it starts unlocked honestly, but everything here is good disperse magic fodder at least.

Wilful Tormentor lets you sustain Flame a bit earlier and that's it.

Bloodlock checks spell save so it probably won't land on any of Argoniel/Elandar/Linaniil/Atamathon which you want to prevent healing from if they get any, but it's instant at least so it can't hurt.

Overkill is actually fairly strong against summoner and necromancer types as well as being dispersion fodder so you might as well invest in it.

Blood Vengeance is pretty much useless at all levels. You don't have enough good spells to be worth constantly


Corruption/Black-magic
1/0/0/0 early, debatably 2/5/0/0 if you're running out of other things to put generic points into.

Bleak Outcome gives you a bit more vim on kill early game. Once you get good enough vim on hit you don't need this.

Stripped Life is the only other worthwhile talent in the tree since the spellpower boost is actually fairly significant, but you need to have 5 stacks of bleak outcome on a thing which isn't happening on really trash mobs and won't be relevant after you kill a big guy.
The other two skills are completely useless.

Celestial/Light
If you don't have Embers DLC or you got an anorithil escort instead of a tinker, you should spend your level 20 or 36 category point on this.
1/5/1/5 core, more in Healing Light or Barrier if you have free points still.

You're mainly here for Bathe In Light (can crit, raises healmod and gives you fairly significant healing) and Providence for free status removal. Unless you get seriously absurd amounts of spellcrit and crit mult barrier and heal light will usually be worse than runes, but invested and with that much you can make them work.

If you take this instead of tinkers, prioritise extra heal mod, spellcrit and critical multiplier more.

Tinkers (Steamtech/Physics and Steamtech/Chemistry)
Unlocked from escort if you have EoR. Absolutely amazing and you are completely dependent on getting the tinker escort to make this build fully work (that, or stacking heal mod to stupid levels with really good gear luck). Light is NOT a good enough substitute but it will still be workable.

Salves are really good here since USF boosts healmod (very important) and saves (less so, but it will save you from entropy at least) significantly, and the other salves' affinity boosts Note that demonologist currently suffers from a bug that makes tinkers outside of their demon seed slots unviewable, but they can still be attached and detached by clicking on them.

Physics: 1/2/1-2/0 whenever the schematics drop
You'll want a point in Electricity for Grounding Strap (50% stun immunity) and 2 in Mechanical for Iron Grip (disarm immunity, and if you get Steampowered Boots or another source of steam regen it's not a bad extra attack) and Kinetic Stabiliser to avoid dark portal related one shots. Everything in Smith is pretty useless since demon seeds will be better. 1 point in Electricity also gets you Black Light Emitter, or a second for White Light Emitter if you want it for whatever reason.

Chemistry 5/1-3/1-2/0
Unless you luck out on random drops and get a +0.25 or higher amulet of perfection for this category you'll need 5 in Therapeutics for the Unstoppable Force Salves. 2 in Chem gets you black light emitter and 3 gets you Alchemist's Helper, which might not be the best idea but they do boost elements you sometimes use and 1 point in Explosives for the headlamp. A second point gets you Ablative Armor which is a decent alternative to body armour seeds if you have every single relevant status resist maxed which probably won't happen.

Which tinkers?
Head: Either Focus Lens for the blindfight if needed (remember swapping tinkers is instant) , otherwise Headlamp
Cloak: Grounding Strap for stunres. It might not hurt to use fireproof coating against Atamathon if you didn't max the resistance out i guess?
Hands: Iron Grip for disarm immunity. Everything else uses steam for no gain since you don't want to use a generator. If you get steam powered boots you should probably still use iron grip since it's instant, reduces armor and lets you proc unarmed hits sometimes.
Belt: Alchemist's Helper to boost your off-types or Back Support for fatigue. Fungal Web is also good with healmod stacking but most likely you will be at full health anyway if you're using unstoppable salve
Boots: Kinetic Stabiliser to avoid being oneshot by dark portal funtimes, or nothing.
Lite: Whichever of black or white light emitter, Imo black is better since the light radius penalty is cancelled out mostly by your headlamp and it boosts a damage type you will sometimes use.


Staff Combat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfxWhx1 ... e=youtu.be
The build here isn't actually practical and is being nerfed for whatever reason in 1.5, so staves are pretty much unviable. Play AB if you want to use shortstaff procs for whatever reason.

Demon seeds
I'll write more on demon seeds later because there are enough to warrant their own post. Here i'll just say which are the best imo since there are a huge amount of trash ones.

Weapon: Fire Imp gives you a lot of extra damage early and falls off about midgame. Switch to Quasit seed for essentially 150% the bump attack damage, at range 8 every couple turns which is kind of ridiculous. The seeds that add disarm (lasts longer than duration at TL4-5!), silence-on-hit and Doomed Nature (think spell feedback but on nature classes - completely shuts down psiblade melee enemies and summoners which is huge) are nice to swap to for specific situations if you want, and Corrupt Light gives you a large all-damage boost if you're willing to precast it and endure the really annoying light removal effect.

Shield
Pick one of the resists or telepathy. I like to keep physical resist (quasit) or blight (dolleg) since those are capable of really high spike damage. If you don't have a better tracking method a max level duadethefhrg seed (i can't spell this) gives telepathy: all and you should use this in high peak since not being aware of dangerous uniques there will kill you.

Armor
Use Fire Imp until you get relentless pursuit at least since it is literally a close-to-free instant status clear that removes everything. Actually using Fire Imp for the entire game is good too. If you have all your relevant status resists maxed, relentless pursuit and provi/salves to remove statuses then pick uruivellas seed for +20% global speed or champion of urh'rok for stats and HP. Ablative armor tinker is also potentially good in that situation since crit shrug is a huge defensive boost.

Rings
First 2 tiers are vim-when-hit, T3-5 is vim-when-hitting-things, T6 is vim per turn. Upgrade these linearly until you get a tier 5 and a tier 6 seed, though if you're using more vim draining sustains than osmosis shield you might need two tier 5 seeds and to switch to a tier 6 to restore it over time. After you get about 2-3 vim per hit is when it starts to become essentially limitless btw.

Itemization
In general, Heal mod > MaxHP > Armor > +Physical/Fire (early on) damage/penetration. > Crit/Crit mult > Elemental resists, stun/confusion resist (if you can get 100% either of these, they are priority 4) > Stamina regen > Powers or size for ogres/Offelement damage and penetration > Other status resists > Defense/saves though i am highly defensive in my gear picks since it allows for you to make more stupid mistakes and not die. Healmod and maxhp aren't that good after early game when you have 250% heal mod from BiL or USF and enough maxhp that the extra doesn't make much of a difference, and you can stop after about 150 armor haha.

Special mention: Charms like disperse magic gloves for sustains, stone wall hat to buy time, track lantern/gloves and mindstar of sand if you need to dig as well as a bunch of standarts with activated abilities, stamina when hit gear. This class thankfully needs disperse magic gloves less than usual due to Fearscape immunity and easy final battle which is good since you can't startscum for them like normal.

More in depth gear list:

Weapon: Naloren/Sawrd/Murderblade or a good randart are ideal 2H, not entirely sure about 1H but iirc black spike is really strong and other fixedarts kind of lacking. Weapon damage generally is the most important thing here.

Shield: Prioritise block value mostly, resistances and max hp are nice secondary bonuses. Shields won't do good damage unless you get blackfire aegis, maybe lunar shield or an Earthen Fury ego one, in which case ymmv osmosis shield is still strong with ~200 block so it may be worth the offensive tradeoff even if you're an ogre

Gloves; "of regeneration" "of war-making" "of the nighthunter" and "of the iron hand" are the good flexible combat egos since they do extra melee attacks instead of normal procs. Will of Ul'Gruth or Dakhtun's Gauntlets are my favorite fixedarts here, as well as anything else that gives phys dam and penetration. Obviously dispersal gloves are strong but i usually just swap to them if an enemy has a really dangerous sustain rather than full time use unless they're a good randart.

Cloak: only good ego here is +HP and some crit-related ones really. For artifact cloaks wrap of stone is essentially best-in-slot and destala's scales gives you another attack which never hurts. Randart cloaks with combat training mastery are also ridiculously good since your base mastery is low.

Hat: Lots of good egos here. Wizard hats are one of the best randart base types, especially if they roll a lot of +damage egos for physical. In addition there's significant heal mod, max hp and stamina when hit (which helps somewhat with your horrible stam issues) available here. For artifacts, Garkul's helm, Malsek The Accursed's Hat and Black Crown are the main ones worth looking out for, as well as Eastwood Hat if you have tinkers.

Amulet: Fixed artifact ones are pretty mediocre but randart ones very powerful. Combat speed, talent mastery (for relevant trees obviously, perfection in Black-magic isn't doing anything), +phys damage and crit multiplier are all possible and some provide unique benefits that can't be obtained outside this slot.

Body armor: Black plate (both variants), tarrasca, kroltar and voratun T5 double dragon double eyal randarts are all good finds. Early game you might want thalore-wood cuirass or iron mail of bloodletting for heal mod. In general you want armor from your armors and maxhp/heal mod/stun immu are fairly common so you can probably get both on the same piece if you're lucky.

Belt: Lol calm waters is the only good belt unless you get the girdle of preservation which you probably won't. If you get a crazy +2 size +30% phys crit and similiar amount of crit mult on a randart belt that's also worth looking into but belt egos are usually garbage.

Boots: Egos for these suck too except one or two - look out for phys penetration + blindside and stun/silence resistances. Standarts are a lot better though, with many standart boots giving significant mobility increases, namely wanderer's rest, boots of the hunter and aetherwalk of which IMO hunter is the best since it provides significant stat bonuses too. Eden's Guile is also very strong and worth investing in Cun for though the fact it takes a partial turn is a bit annoying. Also note that eden's guile and blinding speed don't stack. Steam Powered boots gives you a way to regain steam without a generator which is potentially very useful.

Lite: Summertide phial will probably stay with you until you get merchant randarts for the heal mod, or Wintertide for mental cleanse. If you don't get that then you're pretty much stuck with a bright brass lantern of health. Anyway, egos on these are fairly good but you just won't find them usually. All damage pentration, Track, heal mod and maxhp are all fairly strong. Don't be afraid to use a low lite radius lite source though you will want to monster detect some more since you can be one shot out of LoS rarely with bad lite.

Tool: Many good candidates here. Thorny skin totem will make you completely invulnerable to melee and hugely raise damage of Earthen Fury shield procs if you have one (seriously you get like 600 armor nothing is scratching that on insane), Fortune's Eye is a free track, some other fixedarts give significant heal mod boosts and randart pickaxes can have Perfect Strike and act as very strong stat sticks. I like pickaxes here because you have a lot of things competing for charm cooldown in general and they can give significant crit, hp and some armor penetration also.

Rings: There are some fairly strong on-hit effects here such as gloom and blind, as well as fixedarts with decent on-spell-hit (IIRC void orb gives arcane vortex and exiler rethread, though those won't be too strong since you don't buff those damage types). Rings also can get a lot of +damage for specific/all damage types and max hp/stun resist.


Early game strategy (including Searing Halls to level 12 or so)
Searing halls strat; Put a point into Shield Pummel, Demon Seed, and all of your movement abilities. Save Rush for last. Do all your early combat by pulling enemies toward you with Flame Leash, then hitting them with all your melee abilities. Demon seed the first thing you see ASAP for a flame imp seed (it's guarenteed to work on the first try even on normal rank enemies for whatever reason). Once you get into the areas with walls you can use wraithform to quickly retreat and it becomes much easier.

Kill everything to reach level 4 and put your points into Osmosis Shield and Hardened Core to make the boss easier. After you leave Searing Halls, check every store for good T3 gear to buy and drown every rare+ (you can use demon seed on these btw, do it after they start drowning and rush/PD rune away) and flame imp mainhand from Last Hope rares will carry you through early game with no problem, though even a TL2 one is good. After drowning max out bind demon asap, put 1 point into all your shield offense skills when possible, and 3/5 osmosis shield sometime around level 10.

On Insane you should hit level 12 after Trollmire and Kor'Pul roughly, which is when midgame starts for you as you should 3/5 demon seed (put this off for a couple levels if you didn't get fire imp body seed! it's crucial).
Set the level of ruined dungeon early btw, preferably either before level 6 or after unknown tunnels. You will need to clear this (at least 1 guardian) to farm ritches for salves if you use tinkers.


Midgame strategy (L12 - East)
Scintillating Caves -> Rhaloren Camp -> Norgos -> Sandworm Lair -> Gloom -> Unknown Tunnels -> Maze -> Halfling Complex -> Forest -> Daikara -> Nur 2 (NOT 3)/Ruined Dungeon if you use salves, avoid otherwise -> Hidden Compound whenever idk -> Dreadfell (open all vaults) -> Spellblaze/Dark Crypt if you're on a low difficulty and hate yourself -> SherTul fortress-> Reknor -> East

Regarding skilling, max out your main sustains and passives now and you basically won't die anymore - 5/5 hardened core, 4/5 suffuse life, flame of urh'rok+fearscape. Put points into demon seed whenever available and then go invest into blinding speed and luxuries.

Endgame
When you get to the east, do Vor Armory and hope you don't die, then return and buy merchant randarts in any slots that aren't great. Imo best pride order is rak'shor > eruan > gorbat > vor > grushnak but prides in general are easy except for Grushnak lobbies so this shouldn't be too bad in any order. Just make sure to do eruan second if you didn't get enough ritch stingers to make T5 USF and you use salves. For high peak just avoid fighting anything in there since it will kill you lol and final fight is basically won if you link elandar to argoniel. If elandar somehow gets durability from random class rolls then you will probably want to close portals (don't close them all though since link of pain lets you ignore their resistances if you link something with no resist to A/E).

Regarding seeds, switch to quasit or utility demon seeds on weapon and uruivellas on body if you want since fire imp ones have likely finally worn out.

You will also likely have huge stamina issues in prolonged fights now which is pretty much only fixable by ignoring it and bump attacking since you can't die as long as osmosis shield is up. Second wind gloves + flexible combat or stamina-when-hit items are the best ways to regain stam if you're concerned about that.


And that's all i have to say really. Thanks for reading my dumb guide.

[ster]

Demon seeds

- Demon seeds have tiers and you can get seeds equal to the ETL of demon seed and in slots based on the raw TL of bind demon. There are 2 types of demon per tier and i have listed them roughly in order of tier.

- You can swap demon seeds instantly (think infinite swift hands lol) so if you're really concerned about optimal play, take all of them off except a fodder one when tping out with twisted portal and swap around passive bonuses

- Demon seed level is equal to the enemy you used demon seed on, so last hope rare+ give you level 20ish ones which lets you cruise through early game if you get fire imp.

- Every 10 levels (1, 11 .. 41) talent level of talents granted by seeds increases by 1, but ones with non-talent based bonuses tend to scale linearly with level.

- If i didn't mention anything it scales with on a talent, it's either spellpower or nothing.
weapon

fire imp - decent chance on any melee hit to shoot fire projectiles to multiple targets in LoS. scales with spellpower but drops off around midgame. worth noting that if you've got a few enemies in a corridor the bolts from this proc will hit the first enemy a bunch of times.

wretchling - sustain that gives arpen (70 or so at max) and converts all your melee damage into acid. consider using if your base damage is really bad compared to their armor/lots of physical and no acid resist

quasit - think wave of power but it has a 2 turn cooldown and minimal (2 vim lul) cost. does 200% damage at talent level 5 and you're in desperate need of things that do weapon damage higher than bump attacks and you have stam issues so this is basically perfect once fire imp seeds stop outdamaging your main melee lol

water imp: flame leash but 10 range basically. don't use since flame leash is usually enough. note this also gives mana regen in case you want it for another talent.

dolleg: blood grasp on weapon hits. it's better than flame imp sometimes, mainly after shield damage has fallen off and you start bump attacking more but the extra lifesteal feels kind of wasted given that suffuse + osmosis is enough. worth considering.

duadethedlen (sp?): active that darkens a bunch of tiles around you for a big all damage boost. really annoying to use but if you have umbraphage or summertide phial equipped then you might as well precast it and switch to a demon seed with a proc/Farstrike to kill things after

uruivellas: disarm talent levels. this completely shuts down anything that uses weapons since at either tl4 or 5 it lasts as long as the duration so as long as you have some stamina you can keep applying it. with arcane might you're likely to beat physical saves too. definitely consider swapping if you're scared of melee enemies even through your armor (e.g. in high peak)

thaurheg: silence on weapon hit. sadly doesn't proc from shield ones but you can semi-consistently disable casters with this, especially if you're using shattered mind for the save reduction. note that this uses spellpower vs mental save, not mindpower like silence on torques.

daelach: useless sustain that does tiny damage on your action (you get more out of movement inf but good luck abusing this) and pins things around you. you're a melee class so pinning things is basically worthless.

wretch titan: proc on melee crit that does a bunch of acid damage and destroys walls. not really useful unless you're focusing on acid and using short staves. since it's a proc if you're ogre wielding it will do pathetic damage and uncontrollably destroying walls is potentially very bad

champion of urh'rok: it's like spell feedback but 60% at level 5 to fail wild gifts, and i think this removes sustains too so psiblades suddenly becomes a non-issue. switch for room of death, summoner rare+ and gorbat especially though the uptime on this is horrible. definitely use anyway, it's a huge advantage no one else gets.

forge-giant: literally just AM inferno talent. if you run harmony for whatever reason it's a free eharmony proc. also gives mana regen.

shield
fire imp/wretchling/quasit/dolleg: fire/acid/phys/blight resist and minor flat armor, scales up to 35% resist 25 flat reduction. a solid pick especially since physical/blight are very common and very damage spiky elements and fire isn't far behind

water imp: darkness respen (typo from dg?) and flat armor. useless unless you find a way to do a lot of darkness damage that isn't for 1 turn only

darkness demon guys: demon telepathy + human at l25 + all at level 50. if you have a level 50 one and no other sources of track use it in high peak since you want to avoid fights, and maybe demon telepathy is useful in the DLCfiler unique area you go to if you rod of recall past level 18.

uruivellas: battle call but you already have flame leash to pull things next to you and IIRC this can place enemies in unfavorable positions so skip

thaurheg: overrated skill for normies - 15% shield block as flat damage reduction and up to 85% or so of block as melee retaliation. flat DR is pretty useless and 15% of shield block is like, 30 with a voratun shield and barely at 50 with summertide. the retaliation isn't strictly bad but it's a sustain that drains vim per turn so you might not want to use it (especially as it's currently bugged and doesn't disable on rest or run)

daelach: basically PM's wormhole with no accuracy issues. if you feel like you need more escapes (usually i don't) then it's good but it's not really anything rush can't do.

wretch titan: cloud of acid on block. doesn't hurt you but the damage isn't that strong to justify using imo - it has no limit on activations per turn so maybe you could abuse this with eternal guard but it still isn't a very practical idea outside of normal

champion of urh'rok: 10% shield block as str/mag for a few turns. not great outside of a precast, +20-32 or so by endgame will add some damage at least though so it's probably worth using 1st turn then switching to another seed

forge-giant: instant block, which actually solves a lot of the problems block has and you'll want to block (with demonic madness or shield slam) somewhat often but this is a more action efficient version that doesn't use stamina so it's a good idea but not really suited to my playstyle. use if you like blocking more than me haha

armor
fire imp: best status cleanse in the game, instantly remove 2-5 statuses for minimal vim cost and 10% hp which is going to be absorbed by osmosis shield anyway. this is ridiculously good and outclasses pretty much anything unless you have overkill status resistance + removal from other sources.

wretchling: acid AoE that damages you but gives you a large amount of resist and affinity. use like a regen infusion if you really want to use it

water imp: i don't know what the point of this thing is. if you kill things (so it's useless vs strong single targets) in melee with non fire damage (which is probably your main damage source since you kill things with it) you can reduce the fire resistance of another thing? if anyone can find a good use for this on demonologist, please share. at least the resist debuff is really high i guess?

quasit: rush talent levels in case you wanted to use it for your Higher Steamroller Demonologist build (please dont)

dolleg: sustain that builds charges when you walk and you can use them to get vim back. not bad when you still have vim issues but level 12 is when they start to stop being so major and you only start getting these seeds at that level

duadeghuivgb: stealth power.....while sustaining.....on an unlit tile.......and not moving. this might be the most useless ability in the game.

uruivellas: global speed, caps at 20%. it's good if you can justify replacing fire imp.

thaurheg: silence resistance up to 100% at 50. imo silence isn't that threatening, it doesn't disable rush or your sustains so you can tough it out or run away. it does disable fiery cleansing though, but so does using this seed

daelach: stun resist also up to 100%. stun is one of the most dangerous effects in the game so if you have a mid level seed with like 80% stunres and some other way of getting it to 100% then you could replace fire imp with this

wretch titan: reduced crit damage from enemies up to 35%. objectively worse than ablative armor tinker if you use tinkers and it's boring and not worth using even if you do have all the status resist in the world.

champion of urh'rok: up to +12 str + mag and 125 extra maxhp. possibly worth considering if you have relentless pursuit but global speed is better for increasing damage anyway

forge giant: 40% reduced status effect duration at all levels. comparable to fire imp if you have other forms of removal since fiery cleansing isn't always available. also lets you swap around seeds but there are like 2 that actually give passive bonuses on the body slot so it's not too great.

ring

t1: 1 vim when hit
t2: 2 vim when hit
t3: 1 vim on melee hit
t4: 2 vim on melee hit
t5: 3 vim on melee hit
t6: 1 vim per turn

pretty much a linear upgrade line, ideally you want 1 t5 demon and 1 t6 to minimise tedium but if you use the other vim draining sustains you might need 6 vim per hit to sustain them indefinitely.

[Micbran]

trolling tomechat, discord and these forums mercilessly.

Didn't even know there was a ToMe discord o_0

For the next patch will ogre still be the very best race for demonologist? Or any other good races that demonologist has notable synergy with?

[The Tapir]

For the next patch will ogre still be the very best race for demonologist?

AFAIK the only major changes to ogre are requiring a category point for the extra infusion and a nerf to the infusion bonuses from grisly constitution, so they should still be one of the top races for demo since ogrewielding isn't getting changed.

[ster]

trolling tomechat, discord and these forums mercilessly.

Didn't even know there was a ToMe discord o_0

For the next patch will ogre still be the very best race for demonologist? Or any other good races that demonologist has notable synergy with?

Losing the extra infusion hurts but you're not really the main one hurting here because demonologist unlocked categories suck and 5 is definitely enough infusions. Grisly got numbers reduced but it still lets you do way more damage than 1H unless you find a strong earthen fury shield in which case the proc bonus is actually really bad for you. So yeah, still go ogre imo (btw Tapir is slightly wrong, ogrewielding reduces accuracy by 20% in 1.5 also but you will probably have an accuracy surplus)

[dadito]

20% raw accuracy will probably end up being next to nothing after scaling kicks in yeah

[Mex]

10% high skill ceiling 20% elitism 70% memes

good guide would recommend

[ster]

10% high skill ceiling 20% elitism 70% memes

good guide would recommend

mods

[Sheila]

mods represent

[Effigy]

Seems pretty good. I'll try this out when I have some time.

[comrade raoul]

Staff Combat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfxWhx1 ... e=youtu.be
The build here isn't actually practical and is being nerfed for whatever reason in 1.5, so staves are pretty much unviable. Play AB if you want to use shortstaff procs for whatever reason.

What's changing?

[ster]

Staff Combat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfxWhx1 ... e=youtu.be
The build here isn't actually practical and is being nerfed for whatever reason in 1.5, so staves are pretty much unviable. Play AB if you want to use shortstaff procs for whatever reason.

What's changing?

shortstaff accuracy bonus is being killed

[ster]

Prettied up the guide a lot and actually added that section on demon seeds i said i'd write.

[qetc]

Hey, used your guide a bit; but I kind of disagree with your assessment of the corrosive cone seed. Although the short staff accuracy bonus is going to get nerfed and the drops that the one dude got in the video were insane; the shield accuracy bonus will still be usable and you have numerous shield abilities that will give you a constant stream of high damage procs. Most of the rare packs late game melted with just the 5 enhanced procs of shield slam/shield pummel in my playthrough, and I didn't have additional procs from flexible combat or a good spell crit rate either. You would have to give up the ogre usage for the massive shield procs, but ogre is going to get nerfed too iirc.

[ster]

Hey, used your guide a bit; but I kind of disagree with your assessment of the corrosive cone seed. Although the short staff accuracy bonus is going to get nerfed and the drops that the one dude got in the video were insane; the shield accuracy bonus will still be usable and you have numerous shield abilities that will give you a constant stream of high damage procs. Most of the rare packs late game melted with just the 5 enhanced procs of shield slam/shield pummel in my playthrough, and I didn't have additional procs from flexible combat or a good spell crit rate either. You would have to give up the ogre usage for the massive shield procs, but ogre is going to get nerfed too iirc.

Yeah I haven't messed with corrosive cone too much i'll admit and it isn't outright awful without staves but i like consistent bump damage from ogre wield and Murderblade/Sawrd are amazing. If you can keep the stam up for shield skills in long fights (these happen a lot more on Insane, i think the Elandar fight ended up being about 600 turns) then relying on shield proc is probably better. If you get more damage procs on your shields (Earthen Fury + Thorny Skin Totem is something like 1500 per hit! You need crazy good luck to get a t5 earthen fury shield, thorny skin totem and decent 1hander though.)

I will likely revise the corrosive cone section of the guide after i win a staff demo anyway since going shieldless might actually be the best option right now (until it gets nerfed lol)