Raze Wyrmic Guide

[tremonius]

This mini guide tries to answer the question 'What good is Raze on a Wyrmic?'.
This has been puzzling me for a while but I think i cracked it.
Note that I will not go too much on specific trees. this build needs a few key skills and it is ready to go. Anything else will work, according to your tastes.

The key point with Raze is that it adds some damage each time you do damage. So Raze Wyrmic tries to maximize the number of times he/she does damage each turn (and not the amount of damage).
Note: You need vaulted items OR be very very lucky in your adventures!

Pros: A lot of damage per turn, melting everything around you. Using Wyrmic skills that are not used often. Easy stat and skill progression, few skills needed to be effective.
Cons: You remain a Wyrmic. You can die fast if not careful. You also NEED vault access.

Part 1: Built Theory

Raze does darkness damage, each time it hits: ~26 darkness with 5/5 points for 100 level mindpower according to tometips but this is extended to ~50-80 damage with items and criticals, since +% darkness damage items are easy to find. Up to 15 times per turn is the raze limit. This means that raze will hit 15 times for X darkness damage. I don’t think it procs on spell hit items/abilities. The damage is not delivered at once but in 15 separate instances (important point for damage blockers).
So the purpose is to get up to 15 raze hits per turn, every turn.

Caveat: For this build to work you need at least one vaulted item: the elemental fury ring, which splits all your damage to fire/cold/lighting/arcane (4 types). With elemental fury, each of your damage type, adds 4 raze ticks. In order to get almost a constant 15 raze hit all the time, you need to split THAT damage again.

How is this done? Well, elemental fury splits the damage in four but if you take Mental Tyranny as prodigy it splits the damage in 8 since it is split in fire/mind, lighting/mind, ice/mind, arcane/mind. That is 8 procs of Raze for each damage type. You can easily stack 2 different sources of range damage (i.e corrosive mist and devouring flame). So now you can have a permanent 15 raze proc situation!

Alternatively, you can use a second item, the pendant of the moon and the sun which splits damage to light/darkness. With fury, that means immediately 16 damage types, i.e 15 Raze procs for each damage type you do. So a permanent addition of 300 - 900 damage to ALL your damage procs (raze from 20 per hit (5/5 Raze) to 60 per hit (5/5 with loads of +darkness % items). In my play through I found this item around level 45 so I had already the Mental Tyranny prodigy, if you have the pendant vaulted, you can take another prodigy instead of mental tyrrany. I guess any item that splits damage in types works, as long as it splits all damage not only melee. Probably the Temporal Form prodigy that splits damage to 50% temporal also works.

This is the theory behind the built, almost constant 15 Raze proc everytime you do damage. This will translate late game to ~900+ damage per turn in a large radius.

Damage
You do Darkness damage. That is all it matters.
For melee, it adds some damage to your hits but this is not such a big deal, normal Wyrmic can deliver the pain just fine.
The difference is that you can easily stack damage ticks each time you get hit (the +x damage on melee hit items). It is not difficult to get up to 5-7 types on melee hit. This translates to again 15 raze procs each time you get hit with the elemental fury. This means that a lot of white mobs just die by hitting you, scaling well from very early game up to late game.

Ranged damage is where this build differs from normal Wyrmic behavior (i.e. Wyrmics with strong weapon attacks or breaths). All the skills that you did not use before are now very good! This build prioritizes damage per turn instead of strong damage, so neither first level Wyrmic skills neither breaths are really needed!

Main skills:
Ice wall. It was not useless before but now it is awesome/absurd. This skill will take you to the end of the game. It is your main protection (9 turns of blocking an area or some dangerous mob) AND now it will do very good damage. From level 4, each icewall does damage to anyone within 2 radius. If you cast icewall in the face of a unique, you will block its path (no damage to you!) AND you will do damage to each from 2-6 icewalls depending on the geometry of the area and the cast angle. Don't forget that the last skill from Call of the wild Tree gives you another cast of ice wall at 3/5. Watch them melt behind the wall! this works from early game without elemental fury surprisingly well up to the end.

Corrosive mist: pathetic damage normally, now it melts mobs at radius five for 7 turns when maxed.
Devouring Flame: competitor for the most useless skill of all, can now give you a radius 5, 10 turn inferno. Cast it, block with icewall and watch them melt.
Leaves Tide: now with extra extra damage, stacking nicely with corrosive mist AND adding some protection.

Part 2: Playstyle
Suggested Race
I took Orge for the extra hit points and infusion (Wyrmic has not many defenses so health bar and infusions/runes are your main defenses.
Cornac if you want to reach level 30 fast and play with extra points (not really needed but why not)
Shalore for timeless.
Halfing for crits all the time. The rest as you like, all should work eventually apart from Yeek which will probably not make it out from the caves easily. But who knows.

Runes/Infusions.
Your main source of protection. The best you can find. Movement to get you out, regeneration for fungus (one was enough for me).
My Final configuration was (Ogre): movement, shield, heroic, regeneration (you have fungus for free), wild and another one to your liking.
Stats: Willpower, Strength, Cunning and Constitution. Strength for PES obviously.
Prodigies: Mental Tyranny/PES or if you have the pendant of the sun and the moon, PES and another defensive prodigy.

Defense
You suck at taking a lot of damage or status effects. Don’t do it. Ice walls everywhere. Block paths, encase dangerous foes. Remember you can cast 2 ice walls in 3 turns with the fourth skill of call of the wild and block both sides. Most foes will be probably dead by the time icewall goes away if they did not run away. You are ranged damage mostly.

Run away the moment you feel threatened. Movement, Lighting Speed but also Quake (to rearrange the field and get a clear path) will get you out. Run away, recharge come back and ice wall them again. Psychoport torques as well. Don’t forget you can borrow in walls while lighting speed-ing.

Wild (physical,magical preferably) is also useful obviously

Regeneration set to cast when available as per normal fungus practice. Simultaneously casting shield and heroic infusion gives you an effective health bar of >3000 points for burst damage situations. Be aware fungus WILL NOT save you if you are in dire straits. Just get out the moment you smell danger.

You probably need strong +stun defense items, one of your ring slots is permanently taken by elemental fury. On insane, this is quite easy.

You are not a weakling, you can take a punch and the many options of escape and re-positioning will make you escape a lot of nasty situations.

Mindstars to get extra mindpower (raises Raze damage), have armor penetration and, if lucky and find storm mindstars, plenty of attribute points. Unfortunately, getting good level 5 mindstars is difficult in the west but if you want, hunt adventurers (on your own peril. You are good at it but you are not immortal).

Armor, the best heavy armor you can find, if it adds darkness damage all the better.

Things to be very careful about:
Tinkers and anything that block X amount of damage. If X is bigger than your Raze damage, you will do 0 damage! If your raze proc is less than 30, you will have issues, especially early game with a Psyshot for example. Run away if possible or you may have to take out elemental fury and hope that normal bumps will do the trick. Late game this is less of an issue as the raze damage gets too high for them to block.

Anti-magic shields. For some reason, I can’t seem to raise the equilibrium and drop the shield on rares. I did over 20K damage to a rare once after many turns and his equilibrium remained to 30, with a 157 point antimagic shield that blocked all raze damage each turn. Taking out elemental fury, you can drop them easily, they tend to be pretty inoffensive.

Rare Archers. Yeah, they will end you. Icewall them and kill them quickly. VERY annoying. They can oneshot you even in late game. But I guess after 1.5 you are not the only one with this problem.

The rest, you destroy pretty handily. Just don’t get pinned. And don’t stand next to Randbosses like Doombringers and others but this is obvious.

Play strategies.
Early game (until you reach the vault and get elemental fury basically).
Assuming you drawn everything you can find, you start at level 5-6 with some good items hopefully.

Early game is ok with wyrmic but you can be killed pretty fast if unlucky. Hit and run tactics and hide behind ice walls or run far far away with movement infusion or Lightning speed. Hit with acidic spray (Max ASAP), run away, redo. Get a nice mindblast torque to start racking up mind damage. Not difficult to find a 100-200 damage torque in Zigur, good up to T2 levels.

At Level 10 get Undead drake, find items to help you get some points on Raze, you only need +10 magic to get 5/5. This will add not bad damage to ice wall.

Once you get ice wall going, Hit em once if you can with a beam, Ice wall, run if needed. This should carry you part the T1s and T2s if you are careful. I did all T1s and T2s. Usual path: Trollmire->Kor-Pul to avoid randbosses and then hope for the best and do the rest! You are easily killed now, be careful.

At level 20 get another infusion/rune. You have NO need for higher draconic abilities so no cat point there so it is up to you what you do with the rest cat points.

Skills to max out in early to middle game: Acidic Spray (damage/mindpower), Icewall, Raze (if possible with items), in that order

Additional skills: Lightning speed (up to 3 or 4) and Icy Skin (as much as possible), Dissolve (1 is good, more better later on).

Natures Balance (3 points to get a second icewall) and a second Dissolve. Dissolve is the main damage dealer in melee, one or two more first level skills are also useful. 1 point in quake and burrow for escapes as well ASAP.

Fungus: need at least one point in ancestral life (equilibrium management) and them max as usual at your leisure for the rest of the game (i.e 5/1/3/1).
Get Mindstar mastery and raise as needed, same with armor as needed.

Once you reach the Lake of Nur (i.e vault access) with some luck and being careful you will probably get past the 2 levels to face the Beast. This is a tricky fight since it will shut down raze on you. I beat it by NOT having raze on when entering, casting icewall behind it to get rid of the bone shield, running to it once it was frozen, starting raze and dissolve, ancestral life, dissolve, another icewall behind it (now the wall does a lot of damage) and then bumps until done. Once there, get elemental fury. Now you are pretty much unstoppable.

From there to the East (levels 20-35 or some)
You are doing ridiculous damage now with elemental fury and getting Mental tyranny on level 30 (on insane I reached it before entering dreadfall), you should not have any issues in 90% of situations. Dreadfall was ridiculous. Open door, Ice wall just in front or behind the door (try to get as many walls as possible in) to block the door and kill almost everything inside. Additionally, drop somehting like devouring flames on them before you close them off with icewall. That will teach them to build packed rooms….

Vaults, your specialty! Open door, block it with icewall. Is the thing behind dead? No? Do it again. They all die eventually.
Max out the rest of the useful skills as you see fit. Maybe get a breath for range 10 (fire is probably better because it damages over 4 turns->500 per turn easily).
By this time (having elemental fury and mental tyranny) you have enough damage to kill almost anything.

Late game.
Same pattern here but just be careful that now you can also die very fast if you find yourself in a sticky situation. Get out in the first sign of trouble. You can kill almost anything very very fast but too many mages around you is not good for your health either. Icewall remains your faithful friend, it now does close to 1000 per turn, its ridiculous. With some caution, you will kill everything in sight, even the final bosses if you trap them with a nicely placed wall. Dissolve does very very good damage now (with 5/5 psyblades and 2 T5 mindstars) and you can also use breaths by now (you need somewhere to put the points….)

Raze Shenanigans (assuming 5/5 and elemental fury/Mental tyranny):
Cinderfeet boots: ~500 damage per turn where you walk.
That flaming cloak that does 20 damage to everything around you. Now it does ~400. Enjoy.
Icewall,->nature’s balance->icewall. Stay protected within 2 walls, everything else dies while the try to get to you. Or make Icewall sandwiches of large rooms/areas and melt everything.
Icy Skin at >400 per hit. The perfect pacifist warrior. Walk around and watch them kill themselves! This works wonders with mobs that hit you multiple times per turn. Late game, Psyshots also die from afar, I guess because of the mindstar proc.

Conclusion:
The build munched insane. I did die 2 times in the early game and once at level 40 from an archer randboss which froze me and then one shot me. A more careful player (I auto explore all the time) will probably finish it without deaths. Note that this was my 3 try at insane, easier win than nightmare actually due to very strong items.

Final bosses where no big deal, icewalls and dissolves worked like a charm. By L50 you are big and scary with many many options that all do a lot of damage per turn.

Automaton what’s his name was pretty ok. Just remember to drop the reflective skin and play him from afar with icewall and dissolve/run away (far far away) tactics.

So there you have it, how to use Raze. This probably works also with staff and a normal weapon but I find mindstars easier to start with (immediately 2 weapons, only willpower matters for damage and accuracy).
Staves might be fun with dual wielding (one short staff and the bottom part of Telos staff) for the +% darkness and constant critical Raze procs late game.

Edit 1: better spelling and grammar

[Micbran]

An interesting concept for a guide and congrats on finding a good use for Raze! Now if only there was a way to make it work super well without vaulting...

Vaulting could make it super fun though... do Raze hits count as spell procs because if so there's what, the ring that casts rethread, some gloves with dust to dust, the black ring, black robe all with "on spell hit: xxx." Might be worth checking out.

[tremonius]

I don't think on spell hit items proc. I tried the ring that casts dark fire and a black robe with 'something on spell hi't as well but nothing happened.

I think that only the initial skill cast counts for the 'on hit' calculation, and for Wyrmic this is nature not spell, as raze comes after that. It probably procs if you cast the other skills from the undead drake tree but not from Raze it self. Shame but it would be ridiculous really, casting 5-6 spells every time, on top of the raze damage.....

[St_ranger_er]

Now if only there was a way to make it work super well without vaulting...

Damn, the fact that some builds just need certain uniques (escorts are similar here) to actually start working, makes me sad. I have a wyrmic build concept, but it requires one exactly t5 unique, which is literally rng(or vaulting) based - is your build start working or not.

Possible solution (besides vaulting) is to allow forging previously founded uniques (match lore in library) through fortress enegy.


BTW, nice found on raze usage! I think i should try it out with mental tyranny + temporal form.

[Effigy]

This is a cool concept. I think I'll try it out. Nice theorycrafting!

[tabs]

A great read! I love guides like this which really drill down into a single mechanic.

[darkgod]

AHAHH I love that! Gonna try it next

[orange<]

This is the best possible use of the vault - getting specific items for crazy and cool builds.

How does the projection ego play with breaths? iirc, breath apply weapon on-hits. So do we see the breath proccing a bunch of projection hits and therefore a lot of AoE Raze damage?

[visage]

iirc, breath apply weapon on-hits.

They do not. Perhaps you're thinking of the assorted AoE weapon-damage talents?

[bpat]

Is the Raze damage high enough that you could just ignore both melee and Breaths and instead use a sling + mindstar set for range 10 damage with 125% attack speed?

[tremonius]

Yes. The point is that any source of damage eventually gives you close to 15 raze procs.

I would say that in the beginning if you get ammo with 3-5 different types of damage on hit, you will get about 5 raze procs. Not very impressive but OK.

Once you equip elemental fury, this becomes 15, which at this point (level 20 or so) it would be around 400 points. Not bad and you don't need the prodigy to keep it maxed with the right ammo. But you won't be able to hit when you use ice wall in that case

[roffster]

Just an FYI, the elemental fury ring can spawn in Angolwen ring shop, so if you keep on rerolling archmage you can get a quick one to vault

[darkgod]

Gone to lvl 43 ! And then died by carelessness, as usual :/ Was a very very very fun build!

[visage]

I don’t think it procs on spell hit items/abilities.

Based on my investigations, Raze triggers "on spell crit" effects but not "on spell hit" effects. So the Adventurer I built to try to do silly things with Raze and Mana Coil is not so exciting. (However, the assorted Fold procs -- Warp, Fate, and Gravity -- do trigger Mana Coil, so it's not a complete loss.)

[Snarvid]

Also on the Adventurer front - it turns out that the Paradox Mage skill Gravity Locus and the Mental Tyranny prodigy are mutually exclusive, so you'll get either one or the other effect but not both.

There's probably a fairly humorous Gravity Locus - Raze - Braid Lifelines - Corona - Arcane Amplification Drone combo in there somewhere, though.