Tales of Maj'Eyal - User contributions [en]

Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-31T23:42:39Z

Ploots: /* Ogre staff build */

=Ogre staff build=

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3604865&perpage=40&pagenumber=180#post455030006

Arcane Blade is one of my favorite classes! And has been since it was considered garbage, but still had the Greater Weapon Fighting tree (which was fucking sweet). That was back in like ... b30something.

You are a super insane single target damage burst character. You can flurry for thousands of damage. Tens, if you get very lucky. You have decent mobility and good surviveability, but your early game is pretty weak. It's not really until 20ish that you really start rolling. Your AoE is also super shitty, so you really need to pick your battlegrounds wisely. Kite into corridors, phase door proactively instead of after a few turns of getting destroyed, use your mobility infusions liberally. Lightning AB at least can destroy a line of enemies fairly well, but that stops being as useful later on, when more wide open vaults become common and shit will go through walls to get at you.

Playstyles/Races:
So, the default playstyle for this class, as you'd think from the way the gear you start with would be straight wielding a 2h weapon, but this is actually pretty weak. You really want to dual wield in some fashion, either 2 actual weapons or sword and board - even though you have reduced proc chance for Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction when dual wielding, hitting 6 times with Flurry or 3 times with Assault more than makes up for this.

If you want to go with (short)staff + offhand (dagger, shield), go lightning, if you want to go with non-staff weapon (dagger, 1h, 2h) + offhand (dagger, shield) go earthen missiles. Life Drinker is a fucking insane offhand dagger if you find it, as it's free extra spells and healing.

My element/spell suggestions are based on this: Fire sucks, it's all DoT damage. You can't get multiple activations to stack in one turn or even over multiple turns. Earth is the best single target damage with Earthen Missiles and it has physical resistance penetration and bonus physical damage. Lightning works best with staves as projectiles (aka Earthen Missiles) don't work with the staff accuracy bonus. Confusing! However, unfortunately, you don't get access to the upgraded lightning tree, so you can't get the lightning res pen + bonus lightning damage sustain. However, not too many things resist lightning damage by default, but holding onto Elemental Fury if you find it is a good idea.

Ogre, Shaloren, and Cornac are the strongest race options.

Ogre has an insane 13 life rating per level, gives you an extra infusion slot, makes your infusions much stronger and AB synergizes very well with the infusion cd reduction on crit (you'll be critting multiple times most turns)... and you can wield a 2h weapon in your main hand, causing you to do a bunch of extra damage with your main hand and have wider access to gear (and remember, short staves are fairly rare). The obvious downside to this is the reduction in proc damage, but this is the upside to that earthen missiles aren't procs! Also, while it's a large reduction, your damage is still insane even if you go with 2h staff in mainhand + offhand with lightning.
Shaloren has the most busted racials in the game in that almost every class loves at least 3 of them, but I feel like Ogre is a slightly better fit for AB, but you can never go wrong with a bunch of global speed, crit chance, and a second, stronger Relentless Persuit.
Cornac also ends up giving you an extra infusion slot, thanks to how many trees you want to unlock in earth builds, and levels quickly, which is nice because it gets you to the levels where you have your cool toys faster. And AB is a class that could spend an extra 30 generics, let alone the 12 you'll get from not having a racial tree, so it's not as big of a downside as with some classes.

(I realize this is basically me suggesting the best 3 races in the game, but Ogre and Cornac do at least have good synergy with AB!)

So, early game, you either want to meticulously dance points in and out of Lightning or just condemn yourself to being a really shitty melee class. It's tedious as hell, and I run an addon that makes it so you can change points anywhere, instead of just in town (as I just find it makes things tedious, and that's how it used to be, although I understand the change, as you were never meant to be able to do that). Or you can just accept wasting a few points and going like 3 points into lightning. In 1.4, you can choose what spell Arcane Combat will proc, so this is no longer a large disadvantage.

Stat distribution: This class very much suffers from MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependency), as they have high stat requirements in abilities for Strength, Magic, and Dexterity (if you're going dual wield or shield offense) and really want Cunning (for Arcane Cunning and crit chance) and Will (for max mana and stamina, as they have a ton of sustains). Tricky! Fortunately, they have ways to circumvent this in Inner Power and just by holding onto a metric fuckton of gear swaps with stats on them. If you weren't aware, if you're wearing +stat gear, you can level up a talent and then take the gear off, but you still retain the talent level. Focus on getting enough magic and str for your talent unlocks, then dex for that unlock. The weird thing about strength, if you're going staff is that ... staff doesn't scale with strength, so you'd actually rather put as few points into this as possible, and use Inner Focus and gear swaps to unlock things. In the end, you're going to want Magic and Cunning maxed out, along with Strength if you're wielding a non-staff mainhand weapon, with leftovers put into Will and/or Dex. But you can max out 3 stats with some leftover change, so you're not under too harsh of restrictions here.

Categories: So, you're going to want to unlock Spell/Stone (at 10) and one of Shield Offense or Dual Techniques (at 20). Two-handed Maiming is a fairly shitty tree, imo, so I wouldn't bother unlocking it. If you get the chance to get Celestial/Light, I would certainly take it (though just taking a level in the heal is fine, as it lets you put more generics elsewhere and allows you to get 6 infusion slots, if you're an ogre) - it's a very strong tree that works well with Spell/Aegis.

You're a class very strapped for both types of talent, your priority in Alch elixirs should be Generic points -> Class Points -> Stats (although phys crit is also good).

Class Skills:

Technique / Combat Techniques - I usually go 1/1/1/5 in this. Rush is good, but the cd reduction isn't that fantastic. Precise Strikes sucks, Perfect Attacks is a 1 point wonder, and Blinding Speed is Global speed, yesssss. I wouldn't put more than 1/0- or 1/1/1/1 into it until later into the game, though, as you want to get other things up and running.

Technique / Magical Combat - You eventually want to 5/5/5/5 this, although if you miss out on the class point elixir (which would suck, but generics are still more strapped) I'd leave points out of the last ability. You only want 5/1/1/1 in this early, though. Having 5 points into Arcane Combat is important pretty early.

Cunning / Dirty Fighting - 5/1/1/3. The titular talent here is somewhat underrated, I find - A lot of bosses/etc have stun immunity, so it sucks! Except the important thing to note about it is that if the target isn't stunned this does not take an action. So, you either stun a thing for a long time, where stun is incredibly strong, or you hit it for free. Fuck yes. Backstab isn't that great, switch places gives evasion, but whatever. Cripple is very strong, but there's a cap on how much you can slow enemies, which is 40% (iirc), so you want to stop putting points into it then, and 3 is usually about right, mileage may vary.

Spell / Lightning - 5/0/0/0, for the proc. You can put points into Chain Lightning, but I don't think it's worth it, same for Feather Wind (which requires 5 points to be worth using) and Thunderstorm.

Spell / Earth - If you want to use Earthen or Lightning as your proc: 1/2/1/4. Meh at stone skin, pulverizing augur is alright, and making it able to dig 3 can be neat, though the second point is droppable. Mudslide isn't worth more points, though it is worth using for awhile early-on. Stone Wall is a get out of jail free card and can make line of sight blocks (although you'll still get fucked by dreads, banshees, xorns, etc. I'm pretty sure the change to vorns burrowing instead of wall-walking was to weaken this). If you want to use Pulv Augur: 1/5/1/4.

Spell / Stone (Only for using Earthen as your proc, obviously) - 5/1/1/5. Earthen Missiles is your main damage source. Body of Stone isn't that great, you're not really hard-casting spells. Crystalline Focus is how you get around phys resistant things and gives you extra damage.

Spell / Enhancement - If you're going eartn, 1/1/1/5. Fire/lightning hands are alright, but nothing special, not worth points into, as we're not focusing on those elements. Inner Focus! This spell scales oddly, but in the end gives you +42 stats on a class that needs everything. Give it a look every now and again to see if another point will give you more stats, and then actually level it (though it does sometimes run into odd rounding issues with the display). If you're going lightning, 1/1/5/5. Sadly, daze sucks, but bonus % lightning damage is good, and it's a proc.

Shield Offense or Dual Techniques are both going to be 1/1/1/1. They're good, but you need the points elsewhere, and the nice thing about them is mostly that you hit a bunch of times with the skills, proccing arcane combat and explosions. If you're going with lightning, putting more points into Flurry or Assault is alright.

GENERICS

You are super fucking strapped for these, holy shit.

Racial / Ogre - 1/5/1/5. The first skill is only alright, you want to be hitting everything so whatever, although it can be fun to use it with Bathe in Light. Grisly Constitution is insane, it makes your inscriptions much stronger and wielding a 2h with something else is also really good. Scar-Scripted Flesh is going to activate a bunch without raising the chance for it to activate and it only activates once per turn. Writ Large is a strong skill and a free inscription slot.

Racial / Shaloren - also 1/5/1/5! Convenient! The cd reduction is all that you get from the first talent, which is almost useless, but it's a ton of free global speed. Activate after Blinding Speed has worn off (or vice versa), as they won't stack. The second talent is free crit chance and damage, the third skill is... alright, but not worth more points, and the 4th talent is the most broken ability in the game.

Technique / Combat Training - 0/1/5 and then 5 into whatever weapon talent is important for you (aka, is in your main hand). If that's a staff, get staff training from Angolwen (and weep that you have to get channel staff first). NO THICK SKIN? Spell / Aegis is better. NO MASSIVE ARMOR? Spell / Aegis is better. Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light are the best defensive trees in the game, you can get both.

Cunning / Survival - 0/0/0/0, get some form of 1/1/1/0 from escorts if you can, though. Those skills are good.

Spell / Conveyance - 5/1/0/0. Targeted Phase Door is a good GTFO, but I can't really justify the extra points into teleport.

At this point, you have like 15 generics left, and Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light left. Which hurts. It's actually worth considering only going like 2-3 into your weapon skill for these.

Spell / Aegis (IF YOU HAVE CELESTIAL / LIGHT) - 1/3/1/1 - while these are good, they're not as good as with Archmage, and can sorta be 1-point wonders. If you don't have Celestial / Light, obviously you put more points into these - More like 4/5/1/4.

Celestial / Light - 1/1/1/5 - which also hurts to say, as this has some great talents. Celestial/Light on ABs is mostly about having a way to deal with negative status effects via Providence, as ABs don't have a class-based way to deal with negative status effects. Healing Light is also another heal that can crit to heal you for 500-600 (with a single point investment!) and provide a free shield on top of that. Bathe in Light is only alright on ABs, though the downside of enemies healing doesn't matter as much, because you usually oneshot most things anyway. It's way better on Archmages who can generate 3-4k worth of shields effortlessly, so extending those has a ton of value. You can also pre-cast Providence and Barrier if you know you'll be going into some scary shit (opening vaults, stair dancing).

If you're a Cornac, you're going to want more points in Aegis and Bathe in Light and probably 3 into Armor Training.

My generic distribution recommendation is what I'm least sure about, so muck around with those if you want. You really want to hope for anorithil escorts, to save you generic points.

Inscriptions: You'll eventually end up with 5. Phys Wild, 2 Shields, Heroism, and Targeted Phase Door/Movement (I prefer Movement) or a strong regen or even a strong heal aren't bad here. Early game, you're going to want Phys Wild, Shield, Heal/Regen (once you can wean off your manasurge in some fashion). While this does mean you don't have a manasurge, and it will bite you in the ass after getting mana burned, I feel like not having one is better. It's worth it to hold onto Manasurges in your inventory along with spare Phys Wilds for situations where you know you'll be manaclashed or mana burned.

Prodigies: You know what's fucking broken in this patch? Arcane Might is fucking broken in this patch. Take it at level 30 every time. The damage increase is actually absurd. At 42, you have a number of options to go for, but Flexible combat is the best damage option, and as ABs want to oneshot everything, up to and including the final bosses, it's my favorite option. You hit 6 times with Flurry, so you can proc it 6 times. And activate Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction off it. Fun! Add on really strong gloves with procs and you can cause a truly silly amount of particle effects and lines of damage.

Defense options for 42 are Cauterize and Draconic Will. Cauterize will save your ass from getting oneshot (and you have way more than enough shields to absorb the cauterize damage after it activates) and Draconic Will is another status effect fix. If you'd rather something you don't have to remember to use, Unbreakable Will is also a status effect fix, but it's not as good.

You could also consider Eye of the Tiger. You can get a completely silly amount of CD reductions per turn, but it isn't really that great. If Arcane Might wasn't so strong, Flexible + Eye could maybe let you Flurry every turn, but as strong as that seems... I think Arcane Might is still stronger.

==Tips==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348463

This is mostly off the top of my head but since it took me several ''fucking'' days to finally win with one most of this should be right.

'''1-5''': (Trollmire through Prox, pretty much): Took out point from Dirty Fighting becuase I'd never remember to use it, class pts into Arcane Combat/Flame evenly, pick up Heal ASAP, then get Armor Training by level 2 and Weapon Mastery by 3. When you kill Prox assuming you're cornac you'll be able to max Flame which is a pretty important point. You can fight Bill right away but if you find no +defense gear it'll be RNG. On runs where I had a shield by this level I put my cat point into shield defense and picked up shield bash, otherwise I waited.

'''6-10''': (more starter dungeons): Max Arcane Combat. That pretty much goes without saying! A courtesy point in Rush helps because you never know when that'll come in handy. At 8 you can pick up Arcane Feed which is pretty important, not worth maxing immediately but a couple points in it right away is good because crit chance is always welcome. By 10 you should probably have Heal at rank 3 or so with everything else put into combat training, I tend to skip phase door for now because nothing should be dangerous enough to merit it. When you hit 10, spend the category point if you find any nice shield runes (or at worst, heal infusions I guess).

'''11-15''': (finishing t1s, Ben, Assassin Lord, SWL/Maze shenanigans): If you're a shield build which is what I'm mostly speaking in terms of, 12 is the best level in the world because it means you get Assault. Hopefully you've been prioritizing strength! Afterwards you want to immediately get Arcane Destruction because they kinda go hand in hand. Destruction doesn't need to be maxed ASAP even if it does give a good chunk of physical power, as the damage from it doesn't go up per leveling. Similarly, Assault only scales so-so so there's no rush there either but the second point into it isn't terrible or anything. An extra point or 2 into Shield Bash isn't a terrible idea, nor is working on Riposte since ABs need it at 5 to get the extra counterattack as opposed to Bulwarks who only need it at 4. Welcome to having too many goddamn things that need points. Pray for t4/t5 weapon drops from chests in SWL and Maze.

'''16-20''': (Old Forest, Ruined Dungeon, Slaver Compound if you decide to do it, Daikara): If you haven't picked up Teleport yet this is probably the time! Things are mostly in full swing at this point for you, and you can probably afford to run Shielding or Arcane Shield from the Aegis tree. On any rare that looks scary (mostly a ruined dungeon problem, or if you're doing something crazy like checking graves in old forest/daikara) don't hesitate to stand back and spam Flame because it's pretty decent damage! For Weirdling Beast, go in with Arcane Combat/Arcane Feed turned off and then turn them back on after he devours Fiery Hands because you can probably just gib him outright with those up due to Assault's overwhelming damage combined with Arcane Destruction.

'''21-26''': With your 20 cat point grab the Step Up tree and then proceed to max it out while ignoring everything else because if you don't do this I will become an angry ghost and haunt you because Step Up is amazing. At 24 if your Blight resist is shitty and you're not confident don't even go into dark crypt. I did it once with basically 0% blight resist but I had Wrap of Stone for emergency stone tombing that saved my life but I seriously would not recommend it even though it can drop amazing shit. Urkis won't be terribly scary for you but keep in mind a phys/magical wild is pretty handy because Hurricane sucks shit, as he's pretty prone to being stunned (if you want to be a bigger dick and took the starting point out of Dirty Fighting, put it back in for this.)

Past that the order of things doesn't really matter as much, but past 20 is a good point to start grabbing Inner Power as well as putting more points into Rush. I usually don't start dipping heavy into Cunning until level 30+ so I leave Arcane Cunning at 1/5 freeing up some class points. Generics are pretty self-explanatory, I was afraid of picking up escort trees (and also got fucked over on anorithils) so I opted to max most of Aegis and pick up controlled phase door/teleport, but for the longest time I only had 1 or 2 points at most in both shielding and arcane shielding, and only 1 in the Aegis talent itself.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348941

Yeah strength is really the big thing early on since Arcane Destruction is great and if you're shield build then Assault is a huge deal. After you've gotten those you can at least slow it down a bit to focus on your other stats. Lucking into equipment early on is really nice, too. With the change that lets you skip floors 1-2 of t1 dungeons after completing 3 of them, as an AB I tend to go back and do them anyway while hoping to thin the artifact pool or otherwise luck into some good rares. It's a little boring but it can be a big help! Also I kinda forgot to mention this but raise Combat Accuracy as needed, if you don't find gloves with amazing +acc you'll probably need 3 points in it in by your early-mid teens.

I still want to win with a dual-wielding AB but jesus christ throwing dexterty into their stat spread is awful.

==Other Links==
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38775 (version 1.0.5 guide)

Guides

2016-01-19T17:51:57Z

Ploots:

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* [[Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3]]
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* [http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=44649&p=204232 Marcas' In-Depth Bulwark Guide [1.3.1<nowiki>]</nowiki>]
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==Other Specific guides==
* [[Arena guide|A Guide to the Arena]]
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Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-19T17:51:30Z

Ploots: Ploots moved page Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.1.5 to Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3: Updated with a build for the current game version.

=Ogre staff build=

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3604865&perpage=40&pagenumber=180#post455030006

Arcane Blade is one of my favorite classes! And has been since it was considered garbage, but still had the Greater Weapon Fighting tree (which was fucking sweet). That was back in like ... b30something.

You are a super insane single target damage burst character. You can flurry for thousands of damage. Tens, if you get very lucky. You have decent mobility and good surviveability, but your early game is pretty weak. It's not really until 20ish that you really start rolling.

At the moment, the best way to play it is Ogre with a 2H staff in your main hand with whatever the fuck good dagger you can find in your offhand (although you can go with Ogre 2H Staff + Shield or a non-Ogre class with 2 daggers or Sword and Board. Using just a 2H is pretty meeeeh). Ogre is a really fucking strong race at the moment, and being able to use a 2h staff and flurry means you aren't hoping a short staff drops for 20 levels. Cornac isn't bad either, I find, as this class has a lot of generic sinks and can use the extra cat point. You really want Celestial/Light if you go this route.

So, early game, you either want to meticulously dance points in and out of Lightning or just condemn yourself to being a really shitty melee class. It's tedious as hell, and I run an addon that makes it so you can change points anywhere, instead of just in town (as I just find it makes things tedious, and that's how it used to be, although I understand the change, as you were never meant to be able to do that). Or you can just accept wasting a few points and going like 3 points into lightning, although this makes your Arcane Combat weaker later, as you want it to only proc Earthen Missiles.

Stat distribution: This class very much suffers from MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependency), as they have high stat requirements in abilities for Strength, Magic, and Dexterity (if you're going dual wield or shield offense) and really want cunning (for Arcane Cunning and crit chance) and Will (for max mana and stamina, as they have a ton of sustains). Tricky! Fortunately, they have ways to circumvent this in Inner Power and just by holding onto a metric fuckton of gear swaps with stats on them. If you weren't aware, if you're wearing +stat gear, you can level up a talent and then take the gear off, but you still retain the talent level. Focus on getting enough magic and str for your talent unlocks, then dex for that unlock. The weird thing about strength, if you're going staff is that ... staff doesn't scale with strength, so you'd actually rather put as few points into this as possible, and use Inner Focus and gear swaps to unlock things. In the end, you're going to want Magic and Cunning maxed out, with leftovers put into Will then Dex. But you can max out 3 stats with some leftover change, so you're not under too harsh of restrictions here.

Categories: So, you're going to want to unlock Spell/Stone (at 10) and one of Shield Offense or Dual Techniques (at 20). Two-handed Maiming is a fairly shitty tree, imo, so I wouldn't bother unlocking it. If you get the chance to get Celestial/Light, I would certainly take it (though just taking a level in the heal is fine, as it lets you put more generics elsewhere and allows you to get 6 infusion slots, if you're an ogre) - it's a very strong tree that works well with Spell/Aegis.

You're a class very strapped for both types of talent, your priority in Alch elixirs should be Generic points -> Class Points -> Stats (although phys crit is also good).

Class Skills:

Technique / Combat Techniques - I usually go 1/1/1/5 in this. Rush is good, but the cd reduction isn't that fantastic. Precise Strikes sucks, Perfect Attacks is a 1 point wonder, and Blinding Speed is Global speed, yesssss. I wouldn't put more than 1/0- or 1/1/1/1 into it until later into the game, though, as you want to get other things up and running.

Technique / Magical Combat - You eventually want to 5/5/5/5 this, although if you miss out on the class point elixir (which would suck, but generics are still more strapped) I'd leave points out of the last ability. You only want 5/1/1/1 in this early, though. Having 5 points into Arcane Combat is important pretty early.

Cunning / Dirty Fighting - 5/1/1/3. The titular talent here is somewhat underrated, I find - A lot of bosses/etc have stun immunity! The important thing to note about it is that if the target isn't stunned this does not take an action. So, you either stun a thing for a long time, where stun is incredibly strong, or you hit it for free. Fuck yes. Backstab isn't that great, switch places gives evasion, but whatever. Cripple is very strong, but there's a cap on how much you can slow enemies, which is 40% (iirc), so you want to stop putting points into it then, and 3 is usually about right, mileage may vary.

Spell / Fire and Spell / Lightning - ignore.

Spell / Earth - 1/2/1/4. Meh at stone skin, pulverizing augur is alright, and making it able to dig 3 can be neat, though the second point is droppable. Mudslide isn't worth more points, though it is worth using for awhile early-on. Stone Wall is a get out of jail free card and can make line of sight blocks (although you'll still get fucked by dreads, banshees, xorns, etc. I'm pretty sure the change to vorns burrowing instead of wall-walking was to weaken this).

Spell / Stone - 5/1/1/5. Earthen Missiles is your main damage source. Body of Stone isn't that great, you're not really hard-casting spells. Crystalline Focus is how you get around phys resistant things and gives you extra damage.

Spell / Enhancement - 1/1/1/5. Fire/lightning hands are alright, but nothing special, not worth points into, as we're not focusing on those elements. Inner Focus! This spell scales oddly, but in the end gives you +42 stats on a class that needs everything. Give it a look every now and again to see if another point will give you more stats, and then actually level it (though it does sometimes run into odd rounding issues with the display).

Shield Offense or Dual Techniques are both going to be 1/1/1/1. They're good, but you need the points elsewhere, and the nice thing about them is mostly that you hit a bunch of times with the skills, proccing earthen missiles and explosions.

GENERICS

You are super fucking strapped for these, holy shit.

Racial / Ogre - 1/5/1/5. The first skill is only alright, you want to be hitting everything so whatever, although it can be fun to use it with Bathe in Light. Grisly Constitution is insane, it makes your inscriptions much stronger and wielding a 2h with something else is also really good. Scar-Scripted Flesh is going to activate a bunch without raising the chance for it to activate and it only activates once per turn. Writ Large is a strong skill and a free inscription slot.

Technique / Combat Training - 0/1/5 and then 5 into whatever weapon talent is important for you (aka, is in your main hand). If that's a staff, get staff training from Angolwen (and weep that you have to get channel staff first). NO THICK SKIN? Spell / Aegis is better. NO MASSIVE ARMOR? Spell / Aegis is better. Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light are the best defensive trees in the game, you can get both.

Cunning / Survival - 0/0/0/0, get 1/0/1/0 from escorts if you can, though. Those skills are alright.

Spell / Conveyance - 5/1/0/0. Targeted Phase Door is a good GTFO, but I can't really justify the extra points into teleport.

At this point, you have like 15 generics left, and Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light left. Which hurts. It's actually worth considering only going like 2-3 into your weapon skill for these.

Spell / Aegis (IF YOU HAVE CELESTIAL / LIGHT) - 1/3/1/1 - while these are good, they're not as good as with Archmage, and can sorta be 1-point wonders. If you don't have Celestial / Light, obviously you put more points into these. More like 4/5/1/4

Celestial / Light - 1/1/1/5 - which also hurts to say, as Bathe in Light is super fantastic, but status effects are your primary concern, and providence is busted against status effects.

My generic distribution recommendation is what I'm least sure about, so muck around with those if you want. You really want to hope for anorithil escorts, to save you generic points.

Prodigies: I recommend going offense on these, with Arcane Might and Flexible Combat. Flexible Combat is sick, as you hit 6 times with Flurry, so you can proc it 6 times. And activate Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction off it. Fun! Add on really strong gloves with procs and you can cause a truly silly amount of particle effects and lines of damage. Arcane Might is just really good for wailing on things, but if you want to replace a prodigy for something defensive (Cauterize, Unbreakable Will), it's what you replace.

Inscriptions: You'll eventually end up with 5. Phys Wild, 2 Shields, Heroism, and Targeted Phase Door/Mobility or a strong regen or even a strong heal aren't bad here. Early game, you're going to want Phys Wild, Shield, Heal/Regen.

==Tips==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348463

This is mostly off the top of my head but since it took me several ''fucking'' days to finally win with one most of this should be right.

'''1-5''': (Trollmire through Prox, pretty much): Took out point from Dirty Fighting becuase I'd never remember to use it, class pts into Arcane Combat/Flame evenly, pick up Heal ASAP, then get Armor Training by level 2 and Weapon Mastery by 3. When you kill Prox assuming you're cornac you'll be able to max Flame which is a pretty important point. You can fight Bill right away but if you find no +defense gear it'll be RNG. On runs where I had a shield by this level I put my cat point into shield defense and picked up shield bash, otherwise I waited.

'''6-10''': (more starter dungeons): Max Arcane Combat. That pretty much goes without saying! A courtesy point in Rush helps because you never know when that'll come in handy. At 8 you can pick up Arcane Feed which is pretty important, not worth maxing immediately but a couple points in it right away is good because crit chance is always welcome. By 10 you should probably have Heal at rank 3 or so with everything else put into combat training, I tend to skip phase door for now because nothing should be dangerous enough to merit it. When you hit 10, spend the category point if you find any nice shield runes (or at worst, heal infusions I guess).

'''11-15''': (finishing t1s, Ben, Assassin Lord, SWL/Maze shenanigans): If you're a shield build which is what I'm mostly speaking in terms of, 12 is the best level in the world because it means you get Assault. Hopefully you've been prioritizing strength! Afterwards you want to immediately get Arcane Destruction because they kinda go hand in hand. Destruction doesn't need to be maxed ASAP even if it does give a good chunk of physical power, as the damage from it doesn't go up per leveling. Similarly, Assault only scales so-so so there's no rush there either but the second point into it isn't terrible or anything. An extra point or 2 into Shield Bash isn't a terrible idea, nor is working on Riposte since ABs need it at 5 to get the extra counterattack as opposed to Bulwarks who only need it at 4. Welcome to having too many goddamn things that need points. Pray for t4/t5 weapon drops from chests in SWL and Maze.

'''16-20''': (Old Forest, Ruined Dungeon, Slaver Compound if you decide to do it, Daikara): If you haven't picked up Teleport yet this is probably the time! Things are mostly in full swing at this point for you, and you can probably afford to run Shielding or Arcane Shield from the Aegis tree. On any rare that looks scary (mostly a ruined dungeon problem, or if you're doing something crazy like checking graves in old forest/daikara) don't hesitate to stand back and spam Flame because it's pretty decent damage! For Weirdling Beast, go in with Arcane Combat/Arcane Feed turned off and then turn them back on after he devours Fiery Hands because you can probably just gib him outright with those up due to Assault's overwhelming damage combined with Arcane Destruction.

'''21-26''': With your 20 cat point grab the Step Up tree and then proceed to max it out while ignoring everything else because if you don't do this I will become an angry ghost and haunt you because Step Up is amazing. At 24 if your Blight resist is shitty and you're not confident don't even go into dark crypt. I did it once with basically 0% blight resist but I had Wrap of Stone for emergency stone tombing that saved my life but I seriously would not recommend it even though it can drop amazing shit. Urkis won't be terribly scary for you but keep in mind a phys/magical wild is pretty handy because Hurricane sucks shit, as he's pretty prone to being stunned (if you want to be a bigger dick and took the starting point out of Dirty Fighting, put it back in for this.)

Past that the order of things doesn't really matter as much, but past 20 is a good point to start grabbing Inner Power as well as putting more points into Rush. I usually don't start dipping heavy into Cunning until level 30+ so I leave Arcane Cunning at 1/5 freeing up some class points. Generics are pretty self-explanatory, I was afraid of picking up escort trees (and also got fucked over on anorithils) so I opted to max most of Aegis and pick up controlled phase door/teleport, but for the longest time I only had 1 or 2 points at most in both shielding and arcane shielding, and only 1 in the Aegis talent itself.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348941

Yeah strength is really the big thing early on since Arcane Destruction is great and if you're shield build then Assault is a huge deal. After you've gotten those you can at least slow it down a bit to focus on your other stats. Lucking into equipment early on is really nice, too. With the change that lets you skip floors 1-2 of t1 dungeons after completing 3 of them, as an AB I tend to go back and do them anyway while hoping to thin the artifact pool or otherwise luck into some good rares. It's a little boring but it can be a big help! Also I kinda forgot to mention this but raise Combat Accuracy as needed, if you don't find gloves with amazing +acc you'll probably need 3 points in it in by your early-mid teens.

I still want to win with a dual-wielding AB but jesus christ throwing dexterty into their stat spread is awful.

==Other Links==
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38775 (version 1.0.5 guide)

Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.1.5

2016-01-19T17:51:30Z

Ploots: Ploots moved page Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.1.5 to Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3: Updated with a build for the current game version.

#REDIRECT [[Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3]]

Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-19T17:51:00Z

Ploots:

=Ogre staff build=

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3604865&perpage=40&pagenumber=180#post455030006

Arcane Blade is one of my favorite classes! And has been since it was considered garbage, but still had the Greater Weapon Fighting tree (which was fucking sweet). That was back in like ... b30something.

You are a super insane single target damage burst character. You can flurry for thousands of damage. Tens, if you get very lucky. You have decent mobility and good surviveability, but your early game is pretty weak. It's not really until 20ish that you really start rolling.

At the moment, the best way to play it is Ogre with a 2H staff in your main hand with whatever the fuck good dagger you can find in your offhand (although you can go with Ogre 2H Staff + Shield or a non-Ogre class with 2 daggers or Sword and Board. Using just a 2H is pretty meeeeh). Ogre is a really fucking strong race at the moment, and being able to use a 2h staff and flurry means you aren't hoping a short staff drops for 20 levels. Cornac isn't bad either, I find, as this class has a lot of generic sinks and can use the extra cat point. You really want Celestial/Light if you go this route.

So, early game, you either want to meticulously dance points in and out of Lightning or just condemn yourself to being a really shitty melee class. It's tedious as hell, and I run an addon that makes it so you can change points anywhere, instead of just in town (as I just find it makes things tedious, and that's how it used to be, although I understand the change, as you were never meant to be able to do that). Or you can just accept wasting a few points and going like 3 points into lightning, although this makes your Arcane Combat weaker later, as you want it to only proc Earthen Missiles.

Stat distribution: This class very much suffers from MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependency), as they have high stat requirements in abilities for Strength, Magic, and Dexterity (if you're going dual wield or shield offense) and really want cunning (for Arcane Cunning and crit chance) and Will (for max mana and stamina, as they have a ton of sustains). Tricky! Fortunately, they have ways to circumvent this in Inner Power and just by holding onto a metric fuckton of gear swaps with stats on them. If you weren't aware, if you're wearing +stat gear, you can level up a talent and then take the gear off, but you still retain the talent level. Focus on getting enough magic and str for your talent unlocks, then dex for that unlock. The weird thing about strength, if you're going staff is that ... staff doesn't scale with strength, so you'd actually rather put as few points into this as possible, and use Inner Focus and gear swaps to unlock things. In the end, you're going to want Magic and Cunning maxed out, with leftovers put into Will then Dex. But you can max out 3 stats with some leftover change, so you're not under too harsh of restrictions here.

Categories: So, you're going to want to unlock Spell/Stone (at 10) and one of Shield Offense or Dual Techniques (at 20). Two-handed Maiming is a fairly shitty tree, imo, so I wouldn't bother unlocking it. If you get the chance to get Celestial/Light, I would certainly take it (though just taking a level in the heal is fine, as it lets you put more generics elsewhere and allows you to get 6 infusion slots, if you're an ogre) - it's a very strong tree that works well with Spell/Aegis.

You're a class very strapped for both types of talent, your priority in Alch elixirs should be Generic points -> Class Points -> Stats (although phys crit is also good).

Class Skills:

Technique / Combat Techniques - I usually go 1/1/1/5 in this. Rush is good, but the cd reduction isn't that fantastic. Precise Strikes sucks, Perfect Attacks is a 1 point wonder, and Blinding Speed is Global speed, yesssss. I wouldn't put more than 1/0- or 1/1/1/1 into it until later into the game, though, as you want to get other things up and running.

Technique / Magical Combat - You eventually want to 5/5/5/5 this, although if you miss out on the class point elixir (which would suck, but generics are still more strapped) I'd leave points out of the last ability. You only want 5/1/1/1 in this early, though. Having 5 points into Arcane Combat is important pretty early.

Cunning / Dirty Fighting - 5/1/1/3. The titular talent here is somewhat underrated, I find - A lot of bosses/etc have stun immunity! The important thing to note about it is that if the target isn't stunned this does not take an action. So, you either stun a thing for a long time, where stun is incredibly strong, or you hit it for free. Fuck yes. Backstab isn't that great, switch places gives evasion, but whatever. Cripple is very strong, but there's a cap on how much you can slow enemies, which is 40% (iirc), so you want to stop putting points into it then, and 3 is usually about right, mileage may vary.

Spell / Fire and Spell / Lightning - ignore.

Spell / Earth - 1/2/1/4. Meh at stone skin, pulverizing augur is alright, and making it able to dig 3 can be neat, though the second point is droppable. Mudslide isn't worth more points, though it is worth using for awhile early-on. Stone Wall is a get out of jail free card and can make line of sight blocks (although you'll still get fucked by dreads, banshees, xorns, etc. I'm pretty sure the change to vorns burrowing instead of wall-walking was to weaken this).

Spell / Stone - 5/1/1/5. Earthen Missiles is your main damage source. Body of Stone isn't that great, you're not really hard-casting spells. Crystalline Focus is how you get around phys resistant things and gives you extra damage.

Spell / Enhancement - 1/1/1/5. Fire/lightning hands are alright, but nothing special, not worth points into, as we're not focusing on those elements. Inner Focus! This spell scales oddly, but in the end gives you +42 stats on a class that needs everything. Give it a look every now and again to see if another point will give you more stats, and then actually level it (though it does sometimes run into odd rounding issues with the display).

Shield Offense or Dual Techniques are both going to be 1/1/1/1. They're good, but you need the points elsewhere, and the nice thing about them is mostly that you hit a bunch of times with the skills, proccing earthen missiles and explosions.

GENERICS

You are super fucking strapped for these, holy shit.

Racial / Ogre - 1/5/1/5. The first skill is only alright, you want to be hitting everything so whatever, although it can be fun to use it with Bathe in Light. Grisly Constitution is insane, it makes your inscriptions much stronger and wielding a 2h with something else is also really good. Scar-Scripted Flesh is going to activate a bunch without raising the chance for it to activate and it only activates once per turn. Writ Large is a strong skill and a free inscription slot.

Technique / Combat Training - 0/1/5 and then 5 into whatever weapon talent is important for you (aka, is in your main hand). If that's a staff, get staff training from Angolwen (and weep that you have to get channel staff first). NO THICK SKIN? Spell / Aegis is better. NO MASSIVE ARMOR? Spell / Aegis is better. Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light are the best defensive trees in the game, you can get both.

Cunning / Survival - 0/0/0/0, get 1/0/1/0 from escorts if you can, though. Those skills are alright.

Spell / Conveyance - 5/1/0/0. Targeted Phase Door is a good GTFO, but I can't really justify the extra points into teleport.

At this point, you have like 15 generics left, and Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light left. Which hurts. It's actually worth considering only going like 2-3 into your weapon skill for these.

Spell / Aegis (IF YOU HAVE CELESTIAL / LIGHT) - 1/3/1/1 - while these are good, they're not as good as with Archmage, and can sorta be 1-point wonders. If you don't have Celestial / Light, obviously you put more points into these. More like 4/5/1/4

Celestial / Light - 1/1/1/5 - which also hurts to say, as Bathe in Light is super fantastic, but status effects are your primary concern, and providence is busted against status effects.

My generic distribution recommendation is what I'm least sure about, so muck around with those if you want. You really want to hope for anorithil escorts, to save you generic points.

Prodigies: I recommend going offense on these, with Arcane Might and Flexible Combat. Flexible Combat is sick, as you hit 6 times with Flurry, so you can proc it 6 times. And activate Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction off it. Fun! Add on really strong gloves with procs and you can cause a truly silly amount of particle effects and lines of damage. Arcane Might is just really good for wailing on things, but if you want to replace a prodigy for something defensive (Cauterize, Unbreakable Will), it's what you replace.

Inscriptions: You'll eventually end up with 5. Phys Wild, 2 Shields, Heroism, and Targeted Phase Door/Mobility or a strong regen or even a strong heal aren't bad here. Early game, you're going to want Phys Wild, Shield, Heal/Regen.

==Tips==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348463

This is mostly off the top of my head but since it took me several ''fucking'' days to finally win with one most of this should be right.

'''1-5''': (Trollmire through Prox, pretty much): Took out point from Dirty Fighting becuase I'd never remember to use it, class pts into Arcane Combat/Flame evenly, pick up Heal ASAP, then get Armor Training by level 2 and Weapon Mastery by 3. When you kill Prox assuming you're cornac you'll be able to max Flame which is a pretty important point. You can fight Bill right away but if you find no +defense gear it'll be RNG. On runs where I had a shield by this level I put my cat point into shield defense and picked up shield bash, otherwise I waited.

'''6-10''': (more starter dungeons): Max Arcane Combat. That pretty much goes without saying! A courtesy point in Rush helps because you never know when that'll come in handy. At 8 you can pick up Arcane Feed which is pretty important, not worth maxing immediately but a couple points in it right away is good because crit chance is always welcome. By 10 you should probably have Heal at rank 3 or so with everything else put into combat training, I tend to skip phase door for now because nothing should be dangerous enough to merit it. When you hit 10, spend the category point if you find any nice shield runes (or at worst, heal infusions I guess).

'''11-15''': (finishing t1s, Ben, Assassin Lord, SWL/Maze shenanigans): If you're a shield build which is what I'm mostly speaking in terms of, 12 is the best level in the world because it means you get Assault. Hopefully you've been prioritizing strength! Afterwards you want to immediately get Arcane Destruction because they kinda go hand in hand. Destruction doesn't need to be maxed ASAP even if it does give a good chunk of physical power, as the damage from it doesn't go up per leveling. Similarly, Assault only scales so-so so there's no rush there either but the second point into it isn't terrible or anything. An extra point or 2 into Shield Bash isn't a terrible idea, nor is working on Riposte since ABs need it at 5 to get the extra counterattack as opposed to Bulwarks who only need it at 4. Welcome to having too many goddamn things that need points. Pray for t4/t5 weapon drops from chests in SWL and Maze.

'''16-20''': (Old Forest, Ruined Dungeon, Slaver Compound if you decide to do it, Daikara): If you haven't picked up Teleport yet this is probably the time! Things are mostly in full swing at this point for you, and you can probably afford to run Shielding or Arcane Shield from the Aegis tree. On any rare that looks scary (mostly a ruined dungeon problem, or if you're doing something crazy like checking graves in old forest/daikara) don't hesitate to stand back and spam Flame because it's pretty decent damage! For Weirdling Beast, go in with Arcane Combat/Arcane Feed turned off and then turn them back on after he devours Fiery Hands because you can probably just gib him outright with those up due to Assault's overwhelming damage combined with Arcane Destruction.

'''21-26''': With your 20 cat point grab the Step Up tree and then proceed to max it out while ignoring everything else because if you don't do this I will become an angry ghost and haunt you because Step Up is amazing. At 24 if your Blight resist is shitty and you're not confident don't even go into dark crypt. I did it once with basically 0% blight resist but I had Wrap of Stone for emergency stone tombing that saved my life but I seriously would not recommend it even though it can drop amazing shit. Urkis won't be terribly scary for you but keep in mind a phys/magical wild is pretty handy because Hurricane sucks shit, as he's pretty prone to being stunned (if you want to be a bigger dick and took the starting point out of Dirty Fighting, put it back in for this.)

Past that the order of things doesn't really matter as much, but past 20 is a good point to start grabbing Inner Power as well as putting more points into Rush. I usually don't start dipping heavy into Cunning until level 30+ so I leave Arcane Cunning at 1/5 freeing up some class points. Generics are pretty self-explanatory, I was afraid of picking up escort trees (and also got fucked over on anorithils) so I opted to max most of Aegis and pick up controlled phase door/teleport, but for the longest time I only had 1 or 2 points at most in both shielding and arcane shielding, and only 1 in the Aegis talent itself.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348941

Yeah strength is really the big thing early on since Arcane Destruction is great and if you're shield build then Assault is a huge deal. After you've gotten those you can at least slow it down a bit to focus on your other stats. Lucking into equipment early on is really nice, too. With the change that lets you skip floors 1-2 of t1 dungeons after completing 3 of them, as an AB I tend to go back and do them anyway while hoping to thin the artifact pool or otherwise luck into some good rares. It's a little boring but it can be a big help! Also I kinda forgot to mention this but raise Combat Accuracy as needed, if you don't find gloves with amazing +acc you'll probably need 3 points in it in by your early-mid teens.

I still want to win with a dual-wielding AB but jesus christ throwing dexterty into their stat spread is awful.

==Other Links==
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38775 (version 1.0.5 guide)

Guides

2016-01-19T17:47:23Z

Ploots:

[[Category:Guides]]
Need some help? Check out these guides for assistance.

==New Players==
Guides meant for newer players.
*[[Survival guide]]
*[[Zone order]]
*[http://te4.org/dl/thirdparty/t4walkthrough/index.html Cornac Bulwark walk-through (old, beta 34)]
*[[Goon Zone Order Progression]]
*[http://te4.org/wiki/Goon_Survival_Guide Goon Survival FAQ]

==Class Specific==
Guides for specific classes.

* [[Walk-through for Dwarven Solipsist|A Guide to winning with Dwarven Solipsist on Normal Roguelike (complete!)]]

===Afflicted===
* [[Goon Cursed Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Doomed Guide 1.1.5]]

===Celestial===
* [[Goon Anorithil Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Sun Paladin Guide 1.1.5]]

===Defiler===
* [[Goon Corruptor Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Reaver Guide 1.1.5]]

===Mage===
* [[Goon Alchemist Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Archmage Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Necromancer Guide 1.1.5]]

===Chronomancer===
* [[Goon Temporal Warden Guide 1.1.5]] (outdated)
* San0ix' In Depth Temporal Warden Guide [1.3.1] [http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=44001 Forum Version] [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493308370 Steam Version]
* [[Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3]]

===Psionic===
* [[Goon Mindslayer Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Solipsist Guide 1.1.5]]

===Rogue===
* [[Goon Marauder Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Rogue Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Shadowblade Guide 1.1.5]]

===Warrior===

* [[Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Archer Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Berserker Guide 1.1.5]]
* [http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=44649&p=204232 Marcas' In-Depth Bulwark Guide [1.3.1<nowiki>]</nowiki>]
* [[Goon Bulwark Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Brawler Guide 1.1.5]]

===Wilder===

* [[Goon Oozemancer Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Stone Warden Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Summoner Guide 1.1.5]]
* [[Goon Wyrmic Guide 1.1.5]]

==Other Specific guides==
* [[Arena guide|A Guide to the Arena]]
* [[Npc immunity list|A List of Monsters by Immunity]]

Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-19T17:46:19Z

Ploots: Ploots moved page Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.1.5 to Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3: Updated to reflect the overhauled class.

=Paradox Mage in 1.3.3=
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3604865&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=179#post454989722

Gravity is really good and easy to use. You have huge AoEs, physical immunes are pretty rare, and you branch out into any other damage spells you want once you invest in Gravity Locus because it turns half of all damage you deal physical.

Beyond that, you've just got an incredible grab bag of utility skills that synergize with each other in all kinds of ways, but it's helpful to think of them in small groups. The Speed Control tree interacts extremely well with the Gravity tree; Gravity Well slows enemies down while Speed Control makes you go faster, which has a multiplicative effect on how many actions you get compared to your enemies.

Stasis and Flux is probably meant to be an either / or choice. Both trees give you defensive abilities and ways to mitigate Paradox; every Paradox mage needs those things but unless you're a Cornac you probably don't have enough category points to get each. (Although I suppose in theory you could max one tree and then x/5/0/0 the other if you wanted to prioritize being nigh-unkillable over offense.)

Temporal Reprieve and Time Stop serve the same function but I like Time Stop much better, it has more overall utility while Temporal Reprieve is stronger defensively. You can drop Gravity Well with Time Stop up and still get the full duration, the damage penalty just means you can't nuke stuff down for free. Contingency combined with either spell is crazy good, and will save you from yourself if you're like me and tend to play too fast.

Matter Weaving, Energy Decomposition, the Fate Weaving Tree, and Precognition + Foresight all give you slightly different kinds of passive damage mitigation. Take as many of these as you need to feel safe.

Disintegration, Energy Absorption, and Entropy all give you anti-caster/boss/sustain tech. Same deal, if you're afraid you can't brute force your way through a boss fight, pick one or two and invest as needed.

Redux, Energy Absorption (again), Temporal Bolt, (and Timeless, if you go Shalore, which you should) used to be the single strongest feature of the class, now the interaction is merely Really Good (tm). Nowadays I would probably focus on the speed differential first and leave this till mid-late game, though.

Timeline Threading is for people who don't go Gravity. Spellbinding is probably broken but I'm not confident enough in my math skills to figure out how to get the most out of it, so I ignored it.

Spacetime Folding seems incredibly goofy and I was never even tempted to put points into it.

For a more concrete answer, here's my winner: http://te4.org/characters/38764/tom...3f-1b55553a4bdb

This was pre-nerf but I wouldn't change much, except that the prodigies I took were stupid because I was already unkillable at that point and didn't care, and without Redux allowing me to recast all my nukes over and over again I would probably drop Matter Weaving (or only take 1 point) and maybe take a point out of Celerity and max an additional damage spell instead.

Class Talents:
- Max Gravity nukes + Dust to Dust, one point each in Temporal Bolt and Time Skip
- Unlock Stasis at level 10, max Time Shield ASAP (or Flux + Reality Smearing if that's your bag)
- Get a point in Gravity Locus + Gravity Well, then split points between maxing those and 1/5/5/4+ the Speed Control tree. (I can't remember for sure where the +1 turn breakpoints for Time Stop are.)
- Whatever you want. More nukes to round out your rotation (I like Stop), more Paradox mitigation (pick up Static History / Twist Fate if you haven't already), general utility stuff (Matter Weaving, Disintegration.) It probably makes more sense to spend your 36 category point on an infusion slot but you could experiment with one of the other locked trees if you want.

Generic Talents:
- Max Dimensional Step ASAP (I originally had Dimensional Shift here too, but that nerf was pretty harsh, so maybe not)
- If you're Shalore Timeless > all else
- Get the Combat Training tree in Last Hope and put points into Thick Skin as gear / heroism / your willingness to put stat points in CON allows.
- Unlock Chronomancy / Energy at level 20, put points into Energy Decomposition and Redux where available.
- Fill out your racial skills, pick up Contingency if you want it.

Stat-wise keep Magic maxed at all times. Personally I think Willpower and sustainable casting in general are more important for Paradox Mages than other spellcasters, so that was my second priority. Cunning is probably viable (especially with Shalore) but honestly the class isn't super crit-reliant; your damage comes from being able to cast 5 spells in the time it takes your enemies to cast one, not in casting one spell for five times the damage, plus the Paradox mechanics mean that your Willpower doubles as a way to increase effective damage. I took Constitution on my winner and didn't really regret it.

=Tips for old versions=
==Tips 1==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=143#post412106457

Raise your Willpower a bit to mitigate backfire effects and gamble on higher Paradox. The damage bonus from high Paradox is quite noticeable; on my Gravity guy I've had 80-90 damage spells go up to like 150-160 at dangerously high Paradox levels (we're talking 15% failure rate and up). I've heard of builds that somehow fart around with 6,000 Paradox, but for that you'll want a shitload of Willpower and a massive investment in the paradox mastery skill and the various paradox reducing talents.

Paradox Mage is mostly just a giant bag of tricks, though. Remember that Dust to Dust is a beam that can hit multiple targets, and use your movement speed and variety of AoEs and status effects to blast groups and cripple strong opponents. You'll definitely want to pick a single tree to focus on for dealing damage, but it's okay to diversify a little for all the fun effects you get from other abilities.

As far as your abilities interacting, there's nothing immediate and dramatic like Reaver disease spreading or Cursed damage multipliers (lol Cursed), but you can stack up a ton of insanely debilitating debuffs on one guy in a pretty short time, making it a lot easier to melt his face. You can also accidentally haste and heal him because of your Paradox

==Tips 2==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=143#post412106540

Paradox Mages are really neat and a lot of people really like them but they're hardly what I'd call a heavy hitting top tier class. The "gotta go fast" aspect of the class is really mostly intended for Temporal Wardens. It's there as an option for PMs but it's not really the focus because super fast movement speed doesn't have much utility for a stand-and-nuke caster with a perfect accuracy phase door like it does for a melee/ranged hybrid like TW. Haste is always good for getting more spells off but you will find yourself choked on Paradox in long fights if you're spamming hard with global speed increases. It's an inherent weakness of the resource mechanic, unfortunately.

You have two real routes for damage; Gravity primary or Beamspam(Dust to Dust/Rethread). Gravity really demands a whole hog investment to be good but has a ton of inherent crowd control. Beamspam with Turn Back the Clock/Quantum Spike support is easier to manage. Neither of them are really outstanding killers; Paradox Mages suffer from comparatively really bad damage bases on their spells which means they get poor returns from % damage compared to any other pure caster, so the problem never really goes away. They have other problems too like a laughably terrible base HP growth(was the worst in the game before Solipsists came out!) that is only compensated so far by their powerful defensive generics.

Paradox Mages are certainly not a weakling class. They have okay damage output, very powerful defensive generics, and a lot of funky ass gimmicks like the ability to literally cheat with See the Threads. If you're looking for a straight up blaster caster that does a ton of damage quickly and easily you want to run far away and go for an Archmage, Alchemist, or Corruptor.

==Tips 3==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=143#post412110798

The tree with stop/slow/haste is one of the best sets of abilities for anyone of any class. 1/5/5/5 it for sure. You're right that matter v. gravity is basically a choice without much synergy. Most of your spells have fairly low base damage, but that's not so bad because you never run 'out' of paradox, and all of your spells will get much stronger as your failure% starts to pick up.

To keep a big room full of enemies mostly incapacitated, start off with Haste (instant cast) then Slow on them. You will now have something like three turns for each of theirs. Slow does enough damage, and lasts long enough, that most swarming chaff enemies will die before it wears off and before they can make it outside the spell area. If there's a heavy contingent of casters, throw a Stop at them. Max out your generic sustain that slows projectiles - if you see an incoming death ball, use your dimension step (also instant cast) to move aside by like one tile.

If there is ever a singular big scary enemy, use the last two talens in the Matter tree. First haste yourself, then Destabilize them, then use your generic talent Redux (instant cast) followed by your final matter-disruption spell twice in a row. It's your hardest hitting spell, it hits for 150% before any crits against destabilized, and it automatically kills anything that you get below 20%. At 5 points, double-casting it with Redux can kill almost anything, and with Haste/slow you can do all that while they have the chance to go once.

At that point, you've sucked down a big load of paradox and maybe not everything is dead. If you fear for your life, use Wormhole (only needs 1 point) to throw up a portal behind you and GTFO for spell cools down and healing. If you do not fear for your life, maybe blast away the leftovers with Dust-To-Dust and keep using a stop or slow whenever one of them is ready - alternate between them to keep someone incapacitated most of the time. Once all of your good spells have been used and are on cooldown is a good time to use your generic Energy Drain - probably one of them will come back to usable.

Other fun talents - remove from timeline does a decent chunk of damage, and if there are two threatening targets (uniques, spellcasters) within range, you can basically call a time-out on one while you deal with the other - they are also destabilized when they come back, and disruption will get its damage bonus.

The 'rethread' beam in its locked tree is excellent. It randomly throws on almost any status effect (including stuns, confusions, and silence), hits in a beam, and does okay damage, all on a very short cooldown. One point gets you the full status effect benefit. This is something you can use while waiting for your power spells to cool down.

In the other locked tree (use your second cat point for it), the ability that gives you a % to resist backfailures is a huge effective boost in your usable px pool. The one that lets you pick out a target to remove from the timeline is great if there are multiple threats nearby, since you can just go all-out kamikaze on one guy and then get all your resources back. Summoning your paradox clone ("you from the future!") is almost as good as it sounds and should be your first step in any difficult encounter. When he summons you back later, you can just run away and wait for it to time out.

Ease of use suggestions - right click Static History and have it auto-cast when no enemies are nearby. This makes it much less tedious to wait and keep your px low out of combat. Right click Haste and do automatically use when enemies are visible, because it takes no time and will be the first thing you use in virtually any encounter.

Good races to use - Halfling, for its good HP, and the fact that you can activate your Lucky Crits (instant cast) right before your destabilize-Redux-disruptx2 combo to get nigh-guaranteed crits from it and guarantee a kill even harder. Shalore, because you can double up on stacking instant-cast Haste abilities and then use your instant-cast Timeless thing a few rounds later to both get rid of any bad status and practically double your 2xHaste duration, plus the passive invisibility can save anyone's life. But get some extra con if you pick that guy, and save the passive crit bonus for last because, while nice, it won't save your life ever.

==Gravity Nuke Build Guide==
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=143#post412111887

I am too lazy to do all the precognition and timeline splitting/peeking into the future crap, so I just build PM's like straightforward nukers.

* 5/5 Dust to Dust, ignore the rest of that tree
* Max all the stuff in Gravity, max the first one first
* 5/5 in Stop, just use it as one of your leading nukes
* Rethread if you want, but it's damage type is not the one you want, it's damage is low, however it can pin which is big for your gravity spells

Change your staff to physical damage, find physical damage % items, and just run around nuke stuff.

Max Dimensional Step, use it to re-position without taking a turn, every 5 turns (once you are 5/1/1/5).

I don't even get the Chronomancy tree.

Works well enough for me, simplifies the class, makes it so you can play faster and don't have to do all this precognition crap and preparation for fights.

Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.1.5

2016-01-19T17:46:19Z

Ploots: Ploots moved page Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.1.5 to Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3: Updated to reflect the overhauled class.

#REDIRECT [[Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3]]

Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-19T17:45:27Z

Ploots:

Goon Sun Paladin Guide 1.1.5

2016-01-19T17:37:14Z

Ploots:

= Sun Paladins in 1.2 =
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3604865&userid=186603&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post434538585

So Sun Paladins in 1.2 went from "super tanky but took forever to kill things" to "sun-infused machines of pure blinding destruction". There are two ways they can go, sword and shield or two-handed, and both are supremely good now! As expected, SnS is tankier while 2H hits harder, but both cover the other's strengths pretty damn well.

Sword and Shield: Your trees of choice are Shield Offense, which is as amazing as ever, and Guardian. For Shield Offense, you want 4 points in Counterstrike, and everything else is to taste. Of note is that in 1.2 the awful Overpower was replaced by the incredibly good Shield Slam, which hits an enemy with your shield three times (amazing for onhits) and then immediately blocks without checking or affecting Block's cooldown. This allows you to block a ton even without Eternal Guard, and is great even with one point. Shield Pummel and Assault are still Fantastic. Guardian has some amazing skills - Shield of Light both ups your damage and can almost negate chip damage, Brandish is whatever, Retribution is hilariously good at making you incredibly hard to kill and does a nasty spike of burst damage when it goes off, and Crusade is nice for the cooldown reduction if nothing else. You want some good 1h+shield combos - the Temporal Rift in particular is great. There is actually a sword and shield set now, but I haven't gotten it so I'm not sure how good it is

Two-handed: You miss out on Retribution but you do get some insane stuff to make up for it. In Two-Handed Assault I like to max Stunning Blow for the duration, everything else can be left at 1 or pumped as you choose. The guaranteed crit on Execution is craaaaazy good! But the real meat of the build is in the Crusader tree. Absorption Strike is nice for replenishing some positive energy and setting a target up for more light damage. Mark of Light can give you absurd amounts of sustain against bosses, you just keep smashing them and healing off it. Righteous Strength is a sustain that just makes you monstrously strong as a melee combatant. But Flash of the Blade is just absurd - a massive AoE attack that at rank 4 makes you immune to damage for 1 turn. 1.2 also added Champion's Will, a 2-handed sword made for Sun Paladins that makes them titans of destruction, so if at all possible you want that.

Both: The Celestial/Combat tree is amazing regardless of which you use. Weapon of Light, in addition to dealing some extra damage, prolongs shields - particularly amazing on the Rune of Reflection. Wave of Power is a viciously powerful attack at range, and with points invested and high strength can hit targets at range 10 twice with a 75% chance, which is really useful for dealing with ranged enemies given Sun Paladins' relative immobility. Weapon of Wrath doesn't scale well above two or three points but is nice for that. Second Life is just awesome, instead of dying you instead get healed for over 1000 life easy. As for the Sun tree, Sun's Vengeance is the important one there, but to make good use of the effect on it you really should max out Sun Ray (but I never do). Path of the Sun is also important, though - it's one of the few mobility skills you have! Good use of Path of the Sun can allow you to get out of bad situations or close the gap on nasty foes, so don't forget about it. Radiance is pure preference for the category point - the light is nice, the blind resist is great, and the constant dazing of enemies can be quite nice for some passive crowd control. I've heard people swear by Judgment but the damage on it looks underwhelming. I do like to unlock and max Rush just for the extra mobility, it is useful.

For generics, Sun Paladins don't have too many trees, but what trees they have are amazing, so with a good racial you probably won't unlock any new ones from escorts. You get Light, which is still one of the best generic trees in the game and makes Skeleton Sun Paladins surprisingly excellent. The new Chants are all incredibly good, but you either want to max the first or third - a choice of either a ton of extra hp and saves or a hefty chunk of allres. You really can't go wrong there! You'll also want the standard 20 points in Combat Training ASAP, so you're pretty well covered for generics. I ran a Skeleton and a Shalore and both performed excellently.

Your pattern of play is pretty simple: walk up to fools and crush them. You'll be pretty tanky thanks to your Chant alone regardless of your build, and you'll have heals and shields for days. You'll want to run probably a wild, a teleport, and a third rune of your choice early. Your level 10 category point should go to Crusader or Guardian, and your level 20 I like to unlock Rush with, as that's when mobility really starts being an issue. Whether you want Radiance or 5 inscriptions is up to you. Make good use of Path of the Sun for both gapclosing and escaping, it's quite versatile. Good Prodigies include Arcane Might, Irresistible Sun (on theme), Eternal Guard/Spectral Shield, Flexible Combat, Windblade, Steamroller.

The one major tip is that you should probably have Bathe in Light on autocast when no enemies are visible or the like - if you keep your positive energy maxed out going into fights you will be much more effective. The many sustains of Sun Paladins was one of the new balancing factors on them - especially early when your total pool is low, keeping a large number of (admittedly awesome) sustains up will give you a very small pool to actually use your abilities with. Later on this becomes less of an issue.

I think that covers it pretty well.

There's an old forum guide here: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=36847

Goon Sun Paladin Guide 1.1.5

2016-01-19T17:36:16Z

Ploots:

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3604865&userid=186603&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post434538585

Sun Paladins in 1.2

So Sun Paladins in 1.2 went from "super tanky but took forever to kill things" to "sun-infused machines of pure blinding destruction". There are two ways they can go, sword and shield or two-handed, and both are supremely good now! As expected, SnS is tankier while 2H hits harder, but both cover the other's strengths pretty damn well.

Sword and Shield: Your trees of choice are Shield Offense, which is as amazing as ever, and Guardian. For Shield Offense, you want 4 points in Counterstrike, and everything else is to taste. Of note is that in 1.2 the awful Overpower was replaced by the incredibly good Shield Slam, which hits an enemy with your shield three times (amazing for onhits) and then immediately blocks without checking or affecting Block's cooldown. This allows you to block a ton even without Eternal Guard, and is great even with one point. Shield Pummel and Assault are still Fantastic. Guardian has some amazing skills - Shield of Light both ups your damage and can almost negate chip damage, Brandish is whatever, Retribution is hilariously good at making you incredibly hard to kill and does a nasty spike of burst damage when it goes off, and Crusade is nice for the cooldown reduction if nothing else. You want some good 1h+shield combos - the Temporal Rift in particular is great. There is actually a sword and shield set now, but I haven't gotten it so I'm not sure how good it is

Two-handed: You miss out on Retribution but you do get some insane stuff to make up for it. In Two-Handed Assault I like to max Stunning Blow for the duration, everything else can be left at 1 or pumped as you choose. The guaranteed crit on Execution is craaaaazy good! But the real meat of the build is in the Crusader tree. Absorption Strike is nice for replenishing some positive energy and setting a target up for more light damage. Mark of Light can give you absurd amounts of sustain against bosses, you just keep smashing them and healing off it. Righteous Strength is a sustain that just makes you monstrously strong as a melee combatant. But Flash of the Blade is just absurd - a massive AoE attack that at rank 4 makes you immune to damage for 1 turn. 1.2 also added Champion's Will, a 2-handed sword made for Sun Paladins that makes them titans of destruction, so if at all possible you want that.

Both: The Celestial/Combat tree is amazing regardless of which you use. Weapon of Light, in addition to dealing some extra damage, prolongs shields - particularly amazing on the Rune of Reflection. Wave of Power is a viciously powerful attack at range, and with points invested and high strength can hit targets at range 10 twice with a 75% chance, which is really useful for dealing with ranged enemies given Sun Paladins' relative immobility. Weapon of Wrath doesn't scale well above two or three points but is nice for that. Second Life is just awesome, instead of dying you instead get healed for over 1000 life easy. As for the Sun tree, Sun's Vengeance is the important one there, but to make good use of the effect on it you really should max out Sun Ray (but I never do). Path of the Sun is also important, though - it's one of the few mobility skills you have! Good use of Path of the Sun can allow you to get out of bad situations or close the gap on nasty foes, so don't forget about it. Radiance is pure preference for the category point - the light is nice, the blind resist is great, and the constant dazing of enemies can be quite nice for some passive crowd control. I've heard people swear by Judgment but the damage on it looks underwhelming. I do like to unlock and max Rush just for the extra mobility, it is useful.

For generics, Sun Paladins don't have too many trees, but what trees they have are amazing, so with a good racial you probably won't unlock any new ones from escorts. You get Light, which is still one of the best generic trees in the game and makes Skeleton Sun Paladins surprisingly excellent. The new Chants are all incredibly good, but you either want to max the first or third - a choice of either a ton of extra hp and saves or a hefty chunk of allres. You really can't go wrong there! You'll also want the standard 20 points in Combat Training ASAP, so you're pretty well covered for generics. I ran a Skeleton and a Shalore and both performed excellently.

Your pattern of play is pretty simple: walk up to fools and crush them. You'll be pretty tanky thanks to your Chant alone regardless of your build, and you'll have heals and shields for days. You'll want to run probably a wild, a teleport, and a third rune of your choice early. Your level 10 category point should go to Crusader or Guardian, and your level 20 I like to unlock Rush with, as that's when mobility really starts being an issue. Whether you want Radiance or 5 inscriptions is up to you. Make good use of Path of the Sun for both gapclosing and escaping, it's quite versatile. Good Prodigies include Arcane Might, Irresistible Sun (on theme), Eternal Guard/Spectral Shield, Flexible Combat, Windblade, Steamroller.

The one major tip is that you should probably have Bathe in Light on autocast when no enemies are visible or the like - if you keep your positive energy maxed out going into fights you will be much more effective. The many sustains of Sun Paladins was one of the new balancing factors on them - especially early when your total pool is low, keeping a large number of (admittedly awesome) sustains up will give you a very small pool to actually use your abilities with. Later on this becomes less of an issue.

I think that covers it pretty well.

There's an old forum guide here: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=36847

Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-19T17:31:50Z

Ploots: /* Tips */

==Tips==
Ogre staff build:

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3604865&perpage=40&pagenumber=180#post455030006

Arcane Blade is one of my favorite classes! And has been since it was considered garbage, but still had the Greater Weapon Fighting tree (which was fucking sweet). That was back in like ... b30something.

You are a super insane single target damage burst character. You can flurry for thousands of damage. Tens, if you get very lucky. You have decent mobility and good surviveability, but your early game is pretty weak. It's not really until 20ish that you really start rolling.

At the moment, the best way to play it is Ogre with a 2H staff in your main hand with whatever the fuck good dagger you can find in your offhand (although you can go with Ogre 2H Staff + Shield or a non-Ogre class with 2 daggers or Sword and Board. Using just a 2H is pretty meeeeh). Ogre is a really fucking strong race at the moment, and being able to use a 2h staff and flurry means you aren't hoping a short staff drops for 20 levels. Cornac isn't bad either, I find, as this class has a lot of generic sinks and can use the extra cat point. You really want Celestial/Light if you go this route.

So, early game, you either want to meticulously dance points in and out of Lightning or just condemn yourself to being a really shitty melee class. It's tedious as hell, and I run an addon that makes it so you can change points anywhere, instead of just in town (as I just find it makes things tedious, and that's how it used to be, although I understand the change, as you were never meant to be able to do that). Or you can just accept wasting a few points and going like 3 points into lightning, although this makes your Arcane Combat weaker later, as you want it to only proc Earthen Missiles.

Stat distribution: This class very much suffers from MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependency), as they have high stat requirements in abilities for Strength, Magic, and Dexterity (if you're going dual wield or shield offense) and really want cunning (for Arcane Cunning and crit chance) and Will (for max mana and stamina, as they have a ton of sustains). Tricky! Fortunately, they have ways to circumvent this in Inner Power and just by holding onto a metric fuckton of gear swaps with stats on them. If you weren't aware, if you're wearing +stat gear, you can level up a talent and then take the gear off, but you still retain the talent level. Focus on getting enough magic and str for your talent unlocks, then dex for that unlock. The weird thing about strength, if you're going staff is that ... staff doesn't scale with strength, so you'd actually rather put as few points into this as possible, and use Inner Focus and gear swaps to unlock things. In the end, you're going to want Magic and Cunning maxed out, with leftovers put into Will then Dex. But you can max out 3 stats with some leftover change, so you're not under too harsh of restrictions here.

Categories: So, you're going to want to unlock Spell/Stone (at 10) and one of Shield Offense or Dual Techniques (at 20). Two-handed Maiming is a fairly shitty tree, imo, so I wouldn't bother unlocking it. If you get the chance to get Celestial/Light, I would certainly take it (though just taking a level in the heal is fine, as it lets you put more generics elsewhere and allows you to get 6 infusion slots, if you're an ogre) - it's a very strong tree that works well with Spell/Aegis.

You're a class very strapped for both types of talent, your priority in Alch elixirs should be Generic points -> Class Points -> Stats (although phys crit is also good).

Class Skills:

Technique / Combat Techniques - I usually go 1/1/1/5 in this. Rush is good, but the cd reduction isn't that fantastic. Precise Strikes sucks, Perfect Attacks is a 1 point wonder, and Blinding Speed is Global speed, yesssss. I wouldn't put more than 1/0- or 1/1/1/1 into it until later into the game, though, as you want to get other things up and running.

Technique / Magical Combat - You eventually want to 5/5/5/5 this, although if you miss out on the class point elixir (which would suck, but generics are still more strapped) I'd leave points out of the last ability. You only want 5/1/1/1 in this early, though. Having 5 points into Arcane Combat is important pretty early.

Cunning / Dirty Fighting - 5/1/1/3. The titular talent here is somewhat underrated, I find - A lot of bosses/etc have stun immunity! The important thing to note about it is that if the target isn't stunned this does not take an action. So, you either stun a thing for a long time, where stun is incredibly strong, or you hit it for free. Fuck yes. Backstab isn't that great, switch places gives evasion, but whatever. Cripple is very strong, but there's a cap on how much you can slow enemies, which is 40% (iirc), so you want to stop putting points into it then, and 3 is usually about right, mileage may vary.

Spell / Fire and Spell / Lightning - ignore.

Spell / Earth - 1/2/1/4. Meh at stone skin, pulverizing augur is alright, and making it able to dig 3 can be neat, though the second point is droppable. Mudslide isn't worth more points, though it is worth using for awhile early-on. Stone Wall is a get out of jail free card and can make line of sight blocks (although you'll still get fucked by dreads, banshees, xorns, etc. I'm pretty sure the change to vorns burrowing instead of wall-walking was to weaken this).

Spell / Stone - 5/1/1/5. Earthen Missiles is your main damage source. Body of Stone isn't that great, you're not really hard-casting spells. Crystalline Focus is how you get around phys resistant things and gives you extra damage.

Spell / Enhancement - 1/1/1/5. Fire/lightning hands are alright, but nothing special, not worth points into, as we're not focusing on those elements. Inner Focus! This spell scales oddly, but in the end gives you +42 stats on a class that needs everything. Give it a look every now and again to see if another point will give you more stats, and then actually level it (though it does sometimes run into odd rounding issues with the display).

Shield Offense or Dual Techniques are both going to be 1/1/1/1. They're good, but you need the points elsewhere, and the nice thing about them is mostly that you hit a bunch of times with the skills, proccing earthen missiles and explosions.

GENERICS

You are super fucking strapped for these, holy shit.

Racial / Ogre - 1/5/1/5. The first skill is only alright, you want to be hitting everything so whatever, although it can be fun to use it with Bathe in Light. Grisly Constitution is insane, it makes your inscriptions much stronger and wielding a 2h with something else is also really good. Scar-Scripted Flesh is going to activate a bunch without raising the chance for it to activate and it only activates once per turn. Writ Large is a strong skill and a free inscription slot.

Technique / Combat Training - 0/1/5 and then 5 into whatever weapon talent is important for you (aka, is in your main hand). If that's a staff, get staff training from Angolwen (and weep that you have to get channel staff first). NO THICK SKIN? Spell / Aegis is better. NO MASSIVE ARMOR? Spell / Aegis is better. Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light are the best defensive trees in the game, you can get both.

Cunning / Survival - 0/0/0/0, get 1/0/1/0 from escorts if you can, though. Those skills are alright.

Spell / Conveyance - 5/1/0/0. Targeted Phase Door is a good GTFO, but I can't really justify the extra points into teleport.

At this point, you have like 15 generics left, and Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light left. Which hurts. It's actually worth considering only going like 2-3 into your weapon skill for these.

Spell / Aegis (IF YOU HAVE CELESTIAL / LIGHT) - 1/3/1/1 - while these are good, they're not as good as with Archmage, and can sorta be 1-point wonders. If you don't have Celestial / Light, obviously you put more points into these. More like 4/5/1/4

Celestial / Light - 1/1/1/5 - which also hurts to say, as Bathe in Light is super fantastic, but status effects are your primary concern, and providence is busted against status effects.

My generic distribution recommendation is what I'm least sure about, so muck around with those if you want. You really want to hope for anorithil escorts, to save you generic points.

Prodigies: I recommend going offense on these, with Arcane Might and Flexible Combat. Flexible Combat is sick, as you hit 6 times with Flurry, so you can proc it 6 times. And activate Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction off it. Fun! Add on really strong gloves with procs and you can cause a truly silly amount of particle effects and lines of damage. Arcane Might is just really good for wailing on things, but if you want to replace a prodigy for something defensive (Cauterize, Unbreakable Will), it's what you replace.

Inscriptions: You'll eventually end up with 5. Phys Wild, 2 Shields, Heroism, and Targeted Phase Door/Mobility or a strong regen or even a strong heal aren't bad here. Early game, you're going to want Phys Wild, Shield, Heal/Regen.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348463

This is mostly off the top of my head but since it took me several ''fucking'' days to finally win with one most of this should be right.

'''1-5''': (Trollmire through Prox, pretty much): Took out point from Dirty Fighting becuase I'd never remember to use it, class pts into Arcane Combat/Flame evenly, pick up Heal ASAP, then get Armor Training by level 2 and Weapon Mastery by 3. When you kill Prox assuming you're cornac you'll be able to max Flame which is a pretty important point. You can fight Bill right away but if you find no +defense gear it'll be RNG. On runs where I had a shield by this level I put my cat point into shield defense and picked up shield bash, otherwise I waited.

'''6-10''': (more starter dungeons): Max Arcane Combat. That pretty much goes without saying! A courtesy point in Rush helps because you never know when that'll come in handy. At 8 you can pick up Arcane Feed which is pretty important, not worth maxing immediately but a couple points in it right away is good because crit chance is always welcome. By 10 you should probably have Heal at rank 3 or so with everything else put into combat training, I tend to skip phase door for now because nothing should be dangerous enough to merit it. When you hit 10, spend the category point if you find any nice shield runes (or at worst, heal infusions I guess).

'''11-15''': (finishing t1s, Ben, Assassin Lord, SWL/Maze shenanigans): If you're a shield build which is what I'm mostly speaking in terms of, 12 is the best level in the world because it means you get Assault. Hopefully you've been prioritizing strength! Afterwards you want to immediately get Arcane Destruction because they kinda go hand in hand. Destruction doesn't need to be maxed ASAP even if it does give a good chunk of physical power, as the damage from it doesn't go up per leveling. Similarly, Assault only scales so-so so there's no rush there either but the second point into it isn't terrible or anything. An extra point or 2 into Shield Bash isn't a terrible idea, nor is working on Riposte since ABs need it at 5 to get the extra counterattack as opposed to Bulwarks who only need it at 4. Welcome to having too many goddamn things that need points. Pray for t4/t5 weapon drops from chests in SWL and Maze.

'''16-20''': (Old Forest, Ruined Dungeon, Slaver Compound if you decide to do it, Daikara): If you haven't picked up Teleport yet this is probably the time! Things are mostly in full swing at this point for you, and you can probably afford to run Shielding or Arcane Shield from the Aegis tree. On any rare that looks scary (mostly a ruined dungeon problem, or if you're doing something crazy like checking graves in old forest/daikara) don't hesitate to stand back and spam Flame because it's pretty decent damage! For Weirdling Beast, go in with Arcane Combat/Arcane Feed turned off and then turn them back on after he devours Fiery Hands because you can probably just gib him outright with those up due to Assault's overwhelming damage combined with Arcane Destruction.

'''21-26''': With your 20 cat point grab the Step Up tree and then proceed to max it out while ignoring everything else because if you don't do this I will become an angry ghost and haunt you because Step Up is amazing. At 24 if your Blight resist is shitty and you're not confident don't even go into dark crypt. I did it once with basically 0% blight resist but I had Wrap of Stone for emergency stone tombing that saved my life but I seriously would not recommend it even though it can drop amazing shit. Urkis won't be terribly scary for you but keep in mind a phys/magical wild is pretty handy because Hurricane sucks shit, as he's pretty prone to being stunned (if you want to be a bigger dick and took the starting point out of Dirty Fighting, put it back in for this.)

Past that the order of things doesn't really matter as much, but past 20 is a good point to start grabbing Inner Power as well as putting more points into Rush. I usually don't start dipping heavy into Cunning until level 30+ so I leave Arcane Cunning at 1/5 freeing up some class points. Generics are pretty self-explanatory, I was afraid of picking up escort trees (and also got fucked over on anorithils) so I opted to max most of Aegis and pick up controlled phase door/teleport, but for the longest time I only had 1 or 2 points at most in both shielding and arcane shielding, and only 1 in the Aegis talent itself.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348941

Yeah strength is really the big thing early on since Arcane Destruction is great and if you're shield build then Assault is a huge deal. After you've gotten those you can at least slow it down a bit to focus on your other stats. Lucking into equipment early on is really nice, too. With the change that lets you skip floors 1-2 of t1 dungeons after completing 3 of them, as an AB I tend to go back and do them anyway while hoping to thin the artifact pool or otherwise luck into some good rares. It's a little boring but it can be a big help! Also I kinda forgot to mention this but raise Combat Accuracy as needed, if you don't find gloves with amazing +acc you'll probably need 3 points in it in by your early-mid teens.

I still want to win with a dual-wielding AB but jesus christ throwing dexterty into their stat spread is awful.

==Other Links==
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38775 (version 1.0.5 guide)

Goon Arcane Blade Guide 1.3.3

2016-01-19T17:31:27Z

Ploots:

==Tips==
Ogre staff build:
Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3604865&perpage=40&pagenumber=180#post455030006
Arcane Blade is one of my favorite classes! And has been since it was considered garbage, but still had the Greater Weapon Fighting tree (which was fucking sweet). That was back in like ... b30something.

You are a super insane single target damage burst character. You can flurry for thousands of damage. Tens, if you get very lucky. You have decent mobility and good surviveability, but your early game is pretty weak. It's not really until 20ish that you really start rolling.

At the moment, the best way to play it is Ogre with a 2H staff in your main hand with whatever the fuck good dagger you can find in your offhand (although you can go with Ogre 2H Staff + Shield or a non-Ogre class with 2 daggers or Sword and Board. Using just a 2H is pretty meeeeh). Ogre is a really fucking strong race at the moment, and being able to use a 2h staff and flurry means you aren't hoping a short staff drops for 20 levels. Cornac isn't bad either, I find, as this class has a lot of generic sinks and can use the extra cat point. You really want Celestial/Light if you go this route.

So, early game, you either want to meticulously dance points in and out of Lightning or just condemn yourself to being a really shitty melee class. It's tedious as hell, and I run an addon that makes it so you can change points anywhere, instead of just in town (as I just find it makes things tedious, and that's how it used to be, although I understand the change, as you were never meant to be able to do that). Or you can just accept wasting a few points and going like 3 points into lightning, although this makes your Arcane Combat weaker later, as you want it to only proc Earthen Missiles.

Stat distribution: This class very much suffers from MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependency), as they have high stat requirements in abilities for Strength, Magic, and Dexterity (if you're going dual wield or shield offense) and really want cunning (for Arcane Cunning and crit chance) and Will (for max mana and stamina, as they have a ton of sustains). Tricky! Fortunately, they have ways to circumvent this in Inner Power and just by holding onto a metric fuckton of gear swaps with stats on them. If you weren't aware, if you're wearing +stat gear, you can level up a talent and then take the gear off, but you still retain the talent level. Focus on getting enough magic and str for your talent unlocks, then dex for that unlock. The weird thing about strength, if you're going staff is that ... staff doesn't scale with strength, so you'd actually rather put as few points into this as possible, and use Inner Focus and gear swaps to unlock things. In the end, you're going to want Magic and Cunning maxed out, with leftovers put into Will then Dex. But you can max out 3 stats with some leftover change, so you're not under too harsh of restrictions here.

Categories: So, you're going to want to unlock Spell/Stone (at 10) and one of Shield Offense or Dual Techniques (at 20). Two-handed Maiming is a fairly shitty tree, imo, so I wouldn't bother unlocking it. If you get the chance to get Celestial/Light, I would certainly take it (though just taking a level in the heal is fine, as it lets you put more generics elsewhere and allows you to get 6 infusion slots, if you're an ogre) - it's a very strong tree that works well with Spell/Aegis.

You're a class very strapped for both types of talent, your priority in Alch elixirs should be Generic points -> Class Points -> Stats (although phys crit is also good).

Class Skills:

Technique / Combat Techniques - I usually go 1/1/1/5 in this. Rush is good, but the cd reduction isn't that fantastic. Precise Strikes sucks, Perfect Attacks is a 1 point wonder, and Blinding Speed is Global speed, yesssss. I wouldn't put more than 1/0- or 1/1/1/1 into it until later into the game, though, as you want to get other things up and running.

Technique / Magical Combat - You eventually want to 5/5/5/5 this, although if you miss out on the class point elixir (which would suck, but generics are still more strapped) I'd leave points out of the last ability. You only want 5/1/1/1 in this early, though. Having 5 points into Arcane Combat is important pretty early.

Cunning / Dirty Fighting - 5/1/1/3. The titular talent here is somewhat underrated, I find - A lot of bosses/etc have stun immunity! The important thing to note about it is that if the target isn't stunned this does not take an action. So, you either stun a thing for a long time, where stun is incredibly strong, or you hit it for free. Fuck yes. Backstab isn't that great, switch places gives evasion, but whatever. Cripple is very strong, but there's a cap on how much you can slow enemies, which is 40% (iirc), so you want to stop putting points into it then, and 3 is usually about right, mileage may vary.

Spell / Fire and Spell / Lightning - ignore.

Spell / Earth - 1/2/1/4. Meh at stone skin, pulverizing augur is alright, and making it able to dig 3 can be neat, though the second point is droppable. Mudslide isn't worth more points, though it is worth using for awhile early-on. Stone Wall is a get out of jail free card and can make line of sight blocks (although you'll still get fucked by dreads, banshees, xorns, etc. I'm pretty sure the change to vorns burrowing instead of wall-walking was to weaken this).

Spell / Stone - 5/1/1/5. Earthen Missiles is your main damage source. Body of Stone isn't that great, you're not really hard-casting spells. Crystalline Focus is how you get around phys resistant things and gives you extra damage.

Spell / Enhancement - 1/1/1/5. Fire/lightning hands are alright, but nothing special, not worth points into, as we're not focusing on those elements. Inner Focus! This spell scales oddly, but in the end gives you +42 stats on a class that needs everything. Give it a look every now and again to see if another point will give you more stats, and then actually level it (though it does sometimes run into odd rounding issues with the display).

Shield Offense or Dual Techniques are both going to be 1/1/1/1. They're good, but you need the points elsewhere, and the nice thing about them is mostly that you hit a bunch of times with the skills, proccing earthen missiles and explosions.

GENERICS

You are super fucking strapped for these, holy shit.

Racial / Ogre - 1/5/1/5. The first skill is only alright, you want to be hitting everything so whatever, although it can be fun to use it with Bathe in Light. Grisly Constitution is insane, it makes your inscriptions much stronger and wielding a 2h with something else is also really good. Scar-Scripted Flesh is going to activate a bunch without raising the chance for it to activate and it only activates once per turn. Writ Large is a strong skill and a free inscription slot.

Technique / Combat Training - 0/1/5 and then 5 into whatever weapon talent is important for you (aka, is in your main hand). If that's a staff, get staff training from Angolwen (and weep that you have to get channel staff first). NO THICK SKIN? Spell / Aegis is better. NO MASSIVE ARMOR? Spell / Aegis is better. Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light are the best defensive trees in the game, you can get both.

Cunning / Survival - 0/0/0/0, get 1/0/1/0 from escorts if you can, though. Those skills are alright.

Spell / Conveyance - 5/1/0/0. Targeted Phase Door is a good GTFO, but I can't really justify the extra points into teleport.

At this point, you have like 15 generics left, and Spell / Aegis and Celestial / Light left. Which hurts. It's actually worth considering only going like 2-3 into your weapon skill for these.

Spell / Aegis (IF YOU HAVE CELESTIAL / LIGHT) - 1/3/1/1 - while these are good, they're not as good as with Archmage, and can sorta be 1-point wonders. If you don't have Celestial / Light, obviously you put more points into these. More like 4/5/1/4

Celestial / Light - 1/1/1/5 - which also hurts to say, as Bathe in Light is super fantastic, but status effects are your primary concern, and providence is busted against status effects.

My generic distribution recommendation is what I'm least sure about, so muck around with those if you want. You really want to hope for anorithil escorts, to save you generic points.

Prodigies: I recommend going offense on these, with Arcane Might and Flexible Combat. Flexible Combat is sick, as you hit 6 times with Flurry, so you can proc it 6 times. And activate Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction off it. Fun! Add on really strong gloves with procs and you can cause a truly silly amount of particle effects and lines of damage. Arcane Might is just really good for wailing on things, but if you want to replace a prodigy for something defensive (Cauterize, Unbreakable Will), it's what you replace.

Inscriptions: You'll eventually end up with 5. Phys Wild, 2 Shields, Heroism, and Targeted Phase Door/Mobility or a strong regen or even a strong heal aren't bad here. Early game, you're going to want Phys Wild, Shield, Heal/Regen.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348463

This is mostly off the top of my head but since it took me several ''fucking'' days to finally win with one most of this should be right.

'''1-5''': (Trollmire through Prox, pretty much): Took out point from Dirty Fighting becuase I'd never remember to use it, class pts into Arcane Combat/Flame evenly, pick up Heal ASAP, then get Armor Training by level 2 and Weapon Mastery by 3. When you kill Prox assuming you're cornac you'll be able to max Flame which is a pretty important point. You can fight Bill right away but if you find no +defense gear it'll be RNG. On runs where I had a shield by this level I put my cat point into shield defense and picked up shield bash, otherwise I waited.

'''6-10''': (more starter dungeons): Max Arcane Combat. That pretty much goes without saying! A courtesy point in Rush helps because you never know when that'll come in handy. At 8 you can pick up Arcane Feed which is pretty important, not worth maxing immediately but a couple points in it right away is good because crit chance is always welcome. By 10 you should probably have Heal at rank 3 or so with everything else put into combat training, I tend to skip phase door for now because nothing should be dangerous enough to merit it. When you hit 10, spend the category point if you find any nice shield runes (or at worst, heal infusions I guess).

'''11-15''': (finishing t1s, Ben, Assassin Lord, SWL/Maze shenanigans): If you're a shield build which is what I'm mostly speaking in terms of, 12 is the best level in the world because it means you get Assault. Hopefully you've been prioritizing strength! Afterwards you want to immediately get Arcane Destruction because they kinda go hand in hand. Destruction doesn't need to be maxed ASAP even if it does give a good chunk of physical power, as the damage from it doesn't go up per leveling. Similarly, Assault only scales so-so so there's no rush there either but the second point into it isn't terrible or anything. An extra point or 2 into Shield Bash isn't a terrible idea, nor is working on Riposte since ABs need it at 5 to get the extra counterattack as opposed to Bulwarks who only need it at 4. Welcome to having too many goddamn things that need points. Pray for t4/t5 weapon drops from chests in SWL and Maze.

'''16-20''': (Old Forest, Ruined Dungeon, Slaver Compound if you decide to do it, Daikara): If you haven't picked up Teleport yet this is probably the time! Things are mostly in full swing at this point for you, and you can probably afford to run Shielding or Arcane Shield from the Aegis tree. On any rare that looks scary (mostly a ruined dungeon problem, or if you're doing something crazy like checking graves in old forest/daikara) don't hesitate to stand back and spam Flame because it's pretty decent damage! For Weirdling Beast, go in with Arcane Combat/Arcane Feed turned off and then turn them back on after he devours Fiery Hands because you can probably just gib him outright with those up due to Assault's overwhelming damage combined with Arcane Destruction.

'''21-26''': With your 20 cat point grab the Step Up tree and then proceed to max it out while ignoring everything else because if you don't do this I will become an angry ghost and haunt you because Step Up is amazing. At 24 if your Blight resist is shitty and you're not confident don't even go into dark crypt. I did it once with basically 0% blight resist but I had Wrap of Stone for emergency stone tombing that saved my life but I seriously would not recommend it even though it can drop amazing shit. Urkis won't be terribly scary for you but keep in mind a phys/magical wild is pretty handy because Hurricane sucks shit, as he's pretty prone to being stunned (if you want to be a bigger dick and took the starting point out of Dirty Fighting, put it back in for this.)

Past that the order of things doesn't really matter as much, but past 20 is a good point to start grabbing Inner Power as well as putting more points into Rush. I usually don't start dipping heavy into Cunning until level 30+ so I leave Arcane Cunning at 1/5 freeing up some class points. Generics are pretty self-explanatory, I was afraid of picking up escort trees (and also got fucked over on anorithils) so I opted to max most of Aegis and pick up controlled phase door/teleport, but for the longest time I only had 1 or 2 points at most in both shielding and arcane shielding, and only 1 in the Aegis talent itself.

Post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3457973&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post411348941

Yeah strength is really the big thing early on since Arcane Destruction is great and if you're shield build then Assault is a huge deal. After you've gotten those you can at least slow it down a bit to focus on your other stats. Lucking into equipment early on is really nice, too. With the change that lets you skip floors 1-2 of t1 dungeons after completing 3 of them, as an AB I tend to go back and do them anyway while hoping to thin the artifact pool or otherwise luck into some good rares. It's a little boring but it can be a big help! Also I kinda forgot to mention this but raise Combat Accuracy as needed, if you don't find gloves with amazing +acc you'll probably need 3 points in it in by your early-mid teens.

I still want to win with a dual-wielding AB but jesus christ throwing dexterty into their stat spread is awful.

==Other Links==
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38775 (version 1.0.5 guide)