[1.6.7] The bumping predator (Insane )

[ooli]

It's solid. You hide, and you bump, no button press, no resource management. Bump and hide.

The My winner is without the new expansion

Concept:
You hide in Stealth to reach your foes.
When you strike it, the auto-critical hide you in Cursed Miasma generated by Predator.
When you are in trouble your sustain will generate Ooze and Nightmares by Cursed Aura
You just bump thing until they die without realizing what strike them
At level 18, you get Shadow Veil from Ambush to do the bumping for you. Yeah the build is solid enough: Shadow veil is not a death sentence, it's a fast forward. I shadow veiled Argoniel and elendar and the master and the ambush.

NB: In the guide I use "Nightmare" to refer to the "Terror" creatures that the Curse of Nightmare spawn randomly.

Defenses

1. Ooze

(3 when you have 20 Cun, 5 at 30 Cun.5/1/1/5 lvl40)
it the 75% decrease of damage, since it's divided by 4 into you and your 3 Oozes at max level. And it's free. I dont see any defense mitigation better that this one. Get the max ooze for your available Cunning.
At level 30 plus you might want to spend some point in Indiscernible anatomy.. Reducing Critical against you is crucial. That's the only thing that can kill you

• Stealth

(5/1 at lvl5, 5/1/1/1 at 12. 5/1/3 for 4 turn of 25%resist all with Assassination and 5/1/5/1 at 32)
Put Stealth on auto cast when available... and dont bother pressing it
Dont half-ass the investment here. You want 5 Stealth as soon as possible (lvl4). It'is your ONLY closer. The only way to reach foe without dying.No button, no gimmick.. you walk toward them in stealth, eventually take a few hits, mitigated by Ooze, and bump them. The higher the Stealth (boost CUN ), the more secure
Dont be scared: foes act like they see you, but they dont, you can close in.
Shadow dance, is your escape.
Sometime you were unlucky. The foe strike you one too many time. Ooze didnt activate. Then Shadow dance let you Stealth again and go out of the way, the time to heal a bit while fleeing. Before bumping back

• Predator

(1/1-3/1 early on 1/5/5 middle , 3/5/5/1-3 late)
Put 'Savage hunter" on auto-cast when available
How good is this ? A few round into the last fight Argoniel was targeting Elandar thanks to my Cursed miasma.

Cursed miasma is your crowd control. When in miasma (and you always are, since you crit as soon as you're out of Stealth)
Foes far away cant target you since miasma block sight, inside it foes are hurt and need some stealth detection to hit you, and 15% of the time, they will strike each other, or your ooze, or your Nightmares.

• Cursed Aura (1.2)

(1/0 until lvl7, then 5/4, then 5/5/0/0 till end, 1 category to get it at 1.2)
Aura of Nightmare should always be at 4.
It does 100 damage to anyone in a radius 10 very early on. Nightmare serve as decoy while you bump.
Then Aura of Misfortune must be at 4
40% dam increase if it can kill, plus 18% evasion.

I went early on with Aura of Madness, because the decrease cooldown let me go into stealth faster and refresh Heal, and Shatter Rune faster.
In the end, with tougher enemies, I switched to Aura of Shroud: it let you get 70% resist all pretty fast and easily . I'm not sure what best.

Offenses
Stealth... that's all. 150% dam increase with crit, is enough... as you raise CUN first, you soon crit all the time anyway.
else...

1. Assassination

.
(1/1/1-3/5)
The 25% resist all for 4 turn when getting out of stealth is great. Garrote is barely noticeable, because of Shadow veil, it seems to never hold.
And Marked for Death (put it on cast when enemy are visible and dont bother), it's the reason I reached the 6k damage for the 1st time ever. I shadow veiled a boss in slime tunnel.. and got the achievement from the Mark of death activating for 6k from all the shadow veil damage I did



Other:

• Ambush

(1/1/1/1 then 1/1/1/5 when you have point).
get it for Shadow grasp.
Put Shadow grasp on use when enemy are visible, and never bother.
It's safer to grasp them, than to rush into an enemy who might have friends close by.

Shadow Veil.
It's the only button you need. You can focus your gear on darkness damage, and darkness penetration just to prepare for it.
It bump for you. And it bump hard, without having to stress about being, stun, diseased, poisoned, or anything
Put it on Autocast when enemy are close. So you Shadow grasp then, and Shadow veil them. And they are dead, or you bump a bit

• Dark Sustenance

(1/1/1-3/1-3)
Is here to give you hate for Cursed miasma. I suspect, it's great in itself. At the beginning, I even raised it to 1/4 because the regeneration steal was so good.
The damage steal is good. The resistance steal is tricky, it ONLY reduce target Resistance to get you to your 70% max resistance.. eg: If a dragon has 100% fire resistance, and you're already at 68% fire resistance. The dragon will just lose 2 % and become 98% fire resistant so you can reach your 70% max.
So the best way to use it, as a resistance lowering tool, is to have lower resistance yourself.. kind of bad

But the best part? You NEVER click it. It auto select enemy for you, you just want to bump, remember

• Cursed Form

(1/1-4/0-1/0-1)
Is here for Cursed Aura. But once you begin getting perma stun, you might raise it to 1/3-5 depending on your available Res Stun Gear

• Vile life

(1-5/1-5 )
Corrupt the Heart to get it. 1/1 is fine. The heal is so good (since it crit all the time from the Cun you have) I raised it to 4/1-3 in the last bastion in the east. It gave 100 heal/ turn.. I didnt need it, but I wonder if you can use it with Arcane Shield from Aegis
Best part? nothing to click.

• Finer Energy manipulation

(1/1-5/1/5)
Ok.. Till level 20 I was without it. i was bumping with sword and dagger (both at level 1/1, juggling point out and it to 3/2 because I wouldn't commit and it was enough to kill anything.. even without any STR nor DEX.Thanks to the Physical power boost from Predator)

And my carac were all in CUN (for stealth) and the rest in WIS (mindpower for Cursed miasma Stealth level)
I didnt know if I wanted to use Chronomancy / Temporal guardian, to use MAG for my weapon.

My only concern was that my dagger will still need Dex to get boosted. BUT I ended up using a Tier 3 dagger for all the game : Spelldrinker. And it's damage were a lackluster.. I just wanted the disperse on hit, and mana Steal so ambush and shadow grasp could be chained in longer fight.
So I suggest:
skipping Finer energy manipulation and Solipsism.
Replace with :

Temporal Guardian
(5/1-5/1)
MAG for weapon and Guardian Unity as a secondary mini-Ooze

AND
Absorption
(1-5/0/1-5)
For the Telekinetic weapon and some more protection

AND for your generic
Scoundrel
(1-5/1-5/1/5)
For even more debilitating effect, in case they manage to see you

• Solipsism (skip-able)

I just unlocked it because I found the Crimson robe(give +15% speed for solipsist user) in the East, and wanted to use it to it's full extend.

I had so many category , and unused points, I could get it to 1/1/5 immediately and figured the speed boost might help.
Also, I was at the point , in the east, where I was still hoping for Curse of Madness, to decrease my Stealth cooldown with mania. So less HP meant mania will trigger more often.
And then I switched to Curse of Shroud, because all my good weapon were Shroud, and the bonus in Resist All from Shroud was reassuring.
I guess +50% speed cant be bad, when you just bump



(Staff Combat: Just because I saved 2 Alchemist, and didnt know if I wanted to use staff yet. Turn out I liked my weapon better)

Prodigies
Armor of Shadow
When you do Darkness damage (from your misama, or Nighmare) you unlit your spot. When on an Unlit spot, you can activate stealth (need 5/1/5) just NEXT to your foes. More Stealth = more damage done, less chance to get hit.
And the prodigy give you great Stealth bonus and Armor
The 20% evasion with the 18% from Curse of misfortune, make you avoid most melee/ranged hit (and that's only when then manage to see you in your miasma)

That's it. you dont need another one
I suspect Adept it the most useful for Cursed aura joy, and more Stealth
Or Ethereal Form since with all your evasion, you're rarely hit

But have fun.. I tried eye of the tiger hoping it will reduce the cool-down of Stealth with all the critical strike

Stats
Cunning > Willpower > Magic
Switch magic for Will if you use Temporal Guardian

Gear
Always make sure you have on 1 Nightmare, and 1 Misfortune gear spared for Head, cloak, hand.. etc.
When you find better item, you still want to get 4 Nightmare and 2-4 Misfortune gear on you.
Always keep them both at 4 minimum, for the Nightmare distraction and field damage, and extra damage on bump from misfortune
I also liked Mania from Madness.
Once your Curse are on point, Then Select
Negative life (for more triggering of mania ) or +HP/ Damage Darkness/ Damage Physical / Res Pen Darkness/ stun resist

Inscription
anything that dont break stealth (only instant, and regen) ..
1 or 2 Heal/regen , 1 shatter affliction, and Dissipation (the only button you might have to click when seeing though mages)

escort
Nothing that break stealth (only instant talent or passive). Else You might be tempted to use Conversion, or Telekinetic leap, it will break stealth and do more harm than good.
Resonance Field (instant) is gold. Put-it on autocast when available, and dont bother


Why this built?

Because I use this Addon: Player AI: https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/player-gai
It will get you killed more often than not.
This addon click all the button available and rush to the enemy.

So it will break stealth before reaching the enemy if I have any clickable button.. For that in early game I couldn't even use a totem. The Addon use those too and break out of Stealth before you want to


But by limiting the amount of button available to the AI, and having the best passive defense possible, I could manage to have my first Insane win in a few hours.

This addon prevent you from using any ammo build.. because It will never recharge and once out of ammo it will bump mindlessly on the enemies for little damage.
And prevent from using Chronomancy because it will try to change the Paradox level on a loop and crash the game with the dialog popping. (passive Chonomancy not giving any button to clic is usable... basically Temporal Gardian, that's all)

Without the addon you might have better option once you use the core build: Stealth/ Ooze/Predator/ Cursed Aura


Here I am exactly 1473 hours on record playing tome.. As I announced 5 years ago, with my first (and only) Nightmare win that's the time I needed to beat Insane.. I'm very slow and lazy

[visage]

First, I just want to say that this is a hilarious character concept! Absolutely lovely.

As an alternate to running Spelldrinker for mana regen, you could run Raze and mana-on-spell-crit gear. ...though I suppose that still leaves you without the disperse-on-hit. That would allow you to swap out your weapons for mindstars (or staves), boosting your mindpower and thus the effects of Shrouded Hunter while also allowing you to drop Temporal Guardian. That might not be a net improvement, though.

(Going much further afield, another source of mana regen would be steamsaws + demon seeds + mana-on-spell-crit, but that's got a much higher cost in category points.)

[ooli]

for mana regen, you could run Raze and mana-on-spell-crit gear.

The mana need was just because of the Player AI Addon..
Without the Addon, you wont keep casting Shadow veil, when you see you're in the middle of the orc lair, and low on mana. You'll back up and regen a bit.
So it's just a problem linked to the addon. (I love the addon btw. It's just that it is not very good at playing so far)

That would allow you to swap out your weapons for mindstars (or staves), boosting your mindpower and thus the effects of Shrouded Hunter while also allowing you to drop Temporal Guardian.

That is a great point. Mindstar must be the good weapon of choice. I will try on Madness (expect a win when i'm 2100 hours in TOME, in 5 years)
So with your 8 categories as a Cornac, you go:
1-Stealth
2-Ooze
3-Predator
4-Cursed Form for Cursed Aura
5-Sustenance (to feed hate for Predator)
6-Scoundrel
7-Finer energy manipulation for Telekinetic weapon
Get 500 gold (fast on Madness) to buy Mindstar Mastery

At level 10 , I'll have 2 categories left :
8-Assassination
Wait to have 750 gold to raise Mindstar at 1.2 then

9- Ambush
Sound like a plan.. not a viable one on Madness.. but a plan anyway

[visage]

Yeah, I agree it's unlikely to be madness-viable.

7-Finer energy manipulation for Telekinetic weapon

If you're using mindstars, it may make more sense to use Absorption instead of FEM. Of course, that is somewhat at odds with the player-AI mod, since to get full value out of absorption you'd want to be juggling shields.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Probably can't take either of them if you're trying to run it as an AI anyway cause TK Grasp is a button that will get hit that will loop the player (0 CD - and that's generously assuming that it can even navigate the inventory popup, which I doubt).

[visage]

Probably can't take either of them if you're trying to run it as an AI anyway cause TK Grasp is a button that will get hit that will loop the player (0 CD - and that's generously assuming that it can even navigate the inventory popup, which I doubt).

The AI addon in question does not seem to have any problem with that... though the "run back and forth between the exits" loop is pretty annoying.

[ooli]

The AI addon in question does not seem to have any problem with that

The addon avoid most of the popup inducing talent (Channel staff, +Wards choice from staff, TK weapon choice)

What is still crashing the game:
Paradox setting (so any talent giving a paradox bar bug)
Cursed Sentry (popup to choose weapon bug)
Traps and Artifice (choose trap bug)
Probably any thing from Possessor body change

What is annoying:

... though the "run back and forth between the exits" loop is pretty annoying.

You have to keep 'i" pressed (or your own Inventory shortcut) to open a dialog box, then the loop will stop on reaching the exit

The selections of sustain:
Absorption Shield: it will change them randomly
Poison: it will change them randomly (that's why I try to keep it at 3 poison available to max the chance to keep Crippling poison)
Celestial chants/Hymn (change)


Else:

Nature equilibrium/ Mindstar : it will target the enemy for the heal too
Corrupted negation (blight): the area is so big , the AI cast it on you all the time and you lose your sustain. May be avoidable with Spellcraft (Meta)

Any High Resource talent. You want Essence of Speed? too bad you had to put 1 point in time prison to get there! Now the AI empty your mana pool casting it for 100 mana on simple Rats


etc, etc

I love the addon it force you to choose very carefully your talent (all of them must serve a purpose, or at least not waste too much resource, turn).
Just fixing the crashing bugs would be great. I messaged the author on Steam, but he told me he stopped working on it since he barely play tome anymore. Too bad


The bumping Predator in Insane Vs Linaniil
I killed her 2 times she was able to strike me only a few time, predator miasma stealth is great.
The 2nd death her disruption shield deactivating killed me.. I didnt know she could resurrect twice!!
I should have try to disperse the shield before killing her.

Eye of the tiger work fine with sustain. It decreased Stealth
The reason Mania from Curse of Madness stopped working is probably because I used the Reflection Rune. Mania work only on HP damage but activate before damage reduction apparently.. so pretty often

Madness is punishing.
No way I can handle it with the Addon.. the bumping Predator work fine in the 3 easy T1, but the AI led me to die in Gloom all the time. Guess I'll have to play by myself again! and probably still die anyway

[visage]

If you've switched to mindstars, one category to consider adding is Dread. Putting a handful of class points into Mechanical Arms gets you a big increase to damage output and some survivability.

[ooli]

Just lost my Madness lvl30 Bumping predator in lvl2 of Dreadfell.
https://te4.org/characters/107887/tome/ ... eb086f4c0e

lost 4 lifes on lvl1 to a high Stealth detection Bulwark. Boosted my miasma hidden talent from 2 to 5 as a reaction. And still lost my last 2 life on arrival on lvl2.
I should have try harder to find the Untouchable armor before attempting Dreadfell.
But my run was so easy so far! I guess the difficulty spikes are brutal.

It was a MAG build, because I read that last sorcerer on madness have 400k HP. You basically need the dagger Mercy (which has a 3% enemy HP damage bonus) to kill them. I doubt any Mindstar make %based damage..
Even if one can cast Static Field (18% HP from boss) from Storm drake aspect it can be resisted by Physical save, and no way I can beat a madness boss Phys Save with a MAG build. Or any save for that matter

[visage]

It was a MAG build, because I read that last sorcerer on madness have 400k HP. You basically need the dagger Mercy (which has a 3% enemy HP damage bonus) to kill them.

Well, a Seal Fate build could do the trick, but that's alas not compatible with GAI.

[visage]

It was a MAG build, because I read that last sorcerer on madness have 400k HP. You basically need the dagger Mercy (which has a 3% enemy HP damage bonus) to kill them.

Oh, and Mercy got nerfed into irrelevance. It now has "deals 60 physical damage increased by 1% for each 1% life the target has lost" instead.

[ooli]

Well, a Seal Fate build could do the trick, but that's alas not compatible with GAI.

What a Seal Fate built??? I'm curious
Why aiming for increase of detrimental effect duration, when it seems you cannot land many effect on Madness end boss. And which detrimental are so good, you can use them to eat at those 400k HP !

I let go of player AI for Madness. It get you dead even more often than usual

At the moment I try a build inspired by your post about Stealth adventurer: Throwing Knife, Stealth hidden power boosted by Predator. It work pretty well .. just a pain to reload your knife every so often, make every fight last for hours. Yes, you cant be seen, but a poison resistant healing foes, will stale you for hours. Plus one wrong move where you bump on a foe, and get out of stealth get you killed

[visage]

Well, a Seal Fate build could do the trick, but that's alas not compatible with GAI.

What a Seal Fate built??? I'm curious
Why aiming for increase of detrimental effect duration, when it seems you cannot land many effect on Madness end boss. And which detrimental are so good, you can use them to eat at those 400k HP !

The reason to increase detrimental effect duration is the way some of them stack, in particular Attenuate, Bleed, and Burn.

Say you hit an enemy with Attenuate, so they're taking 100 damage per turn (DPT) for 4 turns. Three turns later, during which you've extended its duration by seven turns, and it's now taking 100 DPT for 8 more turns. So far, not so exciting. Hit them with Attenuate again, and the game merges the two Attenuate effects -- it takes the total remaining damage from the first effect, adds it to the total remaining damage from the second effect, and gives the new effect a duration of the average. So, 800 damage + 400 damage = 1200 damage over (8+4)/2 = 6 turns. Now you've got a single attenuate effect doing 200 DPT for 6 turns. Over time as you keep on extending the original effect and stacking new casts you're essentially multiplying the DPT with each new cast. You can get some really big damage numbers out of that.

I gather that the damage side of Paradox Mage being Madness-viable is because they can do the above, and with Empower (which affects effective spellpower directly, rather than raw spellpower) they can actually land Attenuate on enemies in Madness.


A few months ago I stumbled across someone's adventurer in the vault that used steamsaws, burning damage, and Seal Fate to get what looked pretty close to a legitimate Madness win. Here's the discussion I started about that build. (In that thread, I critique several of the build choices of the original player; my stance on many of those critiques has softened over time... but it's also the case that the last time I looked at the vault entry for that character I think I noticed that they had a demon seed equipped that they couldn't generate.)

At the moment I try a build inspired by your post about Stealth adventurer: Throwing Knife, Stealth hidden power boosted by Predator. It work pretty well .. just a pain to reload your knife every so often, make every fight last for hours. Yes, you cant be seen, but a poison resistant healing foes, will stale you for hours. Plus one wrong move where you bump on a foe, and get out of stealth get you killed

Yeah, accidentally bumping an enemy is approximately the worst thing you can do with those builds, which incidentally makes Confusion really really bad. ...and poisons really do seem to need Mystical Cunning to be good; otherwise too many enemies are immune.

For all that I'm personally partial to Artillery for stealth adventurers, it may be the case that the best option is to focus on Dread for Mechanical Arms -- it doesn't take much investment to get some pretty nice damage out of that... though probably not enough for the Sorcerers on Madness. (In 1.6, you don't need a steam generator if the only use you have for steam is to power sustains.)

[visage]

So, I had the thought to combine the core ideas of this build and Cookedpoo's mindrot cursed... and that turned out to breeze right through I/RL.

The categories I took:

• Starting class: Stealth, Ooze, Endless Hunt, Gloom, Predator, Absorption
• Starting generic: Krog, Scoundrel, Antimagic
• @10: Dread
• Mindstars
• @20: Tinkers
• Fungus
• @34: Psi-Fighting
• @Bile: Inscription
• Prodigies: Armor of Shadows, Ethereal Form

Mindproc items I was using by the end: Crimson Robe, Accursed Hat, Eye of Winter. I think the only others I found were the assorted mindstar fixedarts, and I wanted my offhand mindstar to be a high-quality T5 randart for utility and direct damage rather than another mindproc.

Playstyle was basically to run up to things, hit them with TK Smash and Drakeblood Strike, optionally Mana Clash to remove sustains, and bump them to death. I didn't even bother playing the "mechanical arms don't break stealth, so you can just run in circles" game while that was still an option (prior to finding the Eye of Winter).

Given that I found the Crimson Robe, I probably should have fit in Solipsism somewhere to benefit from its passive boost.

A couple of notes: the item mindprocs break stealth, so that might not have been the best investment for all that it felt quite useful; Scoundrel probably wasn't worth the category for this build, given that there's nothing like Flurry and I was always short on generic points once I started getting all of the free generic categories -- I never put any points into Harmony, for example.

Some potential category swaps to think about: add Darkness for extra zoomies and mind procs, and fuel that with Dark Sustenance instead of Stalk. Add Solipsism as noted above. Potentially replace Scoundrel with Mobility. Perhaps replace Stealth with some other closer (and perhaps Darkness provides that). Perhaps add Cursed Aura, which would almost certainly mean switching to Cornac and having a harder early game.