Difference between revisions of "Anorithil 1.0.4"

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Guide

Introduction

This is a guide written for the Anorithil class in ToME4, v1.0.0. Anorithils are a spellcasting class with a unique style of damage dealing found nowhere else, while also sporting solid defense and crowd control. Although they can do damage from afar, unlike other spellcasters they can only realize their full potential at medium range.

Positive and Negative Energy

Anorithils use two types of resources, positive and negative energy. For Anorithils, positive energy is essentially unlimited. Your core defensive talents generate positive energy when used, and usually what little positive energy you do expend will quickly be repleted. Negative energy is a completely different matter; you will burn through it quickly and there are only two talents that generate it. Your maximum positive/negative energy is determined solely by your level, so resource management will be difficult early on and gradually improve over the course of the game. Fatigue affects costs normally, as with stamina. Both types of energy gradually fall over time to a low default value, but they are easily replenished using certain talents. Because of this, if you want to keep a full tank while autoexploring, you will either have to constantly manually replenish your energies, or use the autocast feature. Manual replenishment is incredibly tedious, but autocast will have you start each fight with one or more talents on cooldown. It is up to you whether you want to manually replenish energies, use autocast, or just go around with the low default value. I recommend using autocast, or more specifically, autocasting Twilight Surge.

Race Selection

With no glaring weaknesses, Anorithils work reasonably well with all races, but here are a few that work somewhat better than others:

• Shalore: Shaloren are decent for any class without a life penalty, and Anorithil is one such class. Their standout talent is Timeless, and Anorithils have the ever-useful Providence and Totality to extend with it, in addition to the usual wild infusions, regeneration infusions, and heroism infusions. The passive crit boost is also particularly nice for Anorithils. Usually, Shaloren struggle until level 24 when they can start getting Timeless, but Anorithils can coast through the early game with their spells, so that won't be an issue.
• Thalore: Thaloren are always good. Even though you won't be pumping Willpower, Thaloren are still good.
• Halfling: The crit buff is useful early on before you get 100% crit rate without it, and passive Evasion is also nice since you may find yourself taking melee hits early on. Saves stack with your best Chant. Indomitable is a nice emergency button for when stun puts Providence on cooldown. Anorithils are probably the best class for fighting multiple enemies, and Militant Mind, while not necessary in the slightest, amps up your one v. many power to downright goofy levels.
• Dwarf: Like Halfling, you get a lot of saves, and some help against melee in the form of armor. Armor is not nearly as good as Evasion though, and you don't get Indomitable, but you do get more saves against single enemies and you also get added mobility in the form of Stonewalking. Also don't forget that halflings are racist jerks and yeeks hate them, so there's that too.
• Ghoul: Anorithils can do a lot of damage by just sitting around and doing nothing, so the Ghoul speed penalty is actually not as bad. And while this may sound like a bad idea for a spellcaster, often as an Anorithil you will actually want to get closer to your enemies, for which Leap is well-suited. However, do note that as undead, Bathe in Light will damage you and you'll be locked out of the Harmony tree, which does limit your build options more than it would for other classes.

Talent Overview

Class Talents

Sun

Sun Flare at 5/5 is a no brainer because of the extremely large and long-lasting blind as well as the radius 10 illumination effect, but the rest of the Sun talents are mostly just filler for when your darkness talents are on cooldown. They do generate positive energy, but you will rarely ever need to do that anyway. Searing Light's damage is actually fairly decent if you can get them to take all of the DoT ticks, and the Rod of Spydric Poison will let you do just that once you get it, so if you do decide to max out one of the Sun spells that aren't Sun Flare, Searing Light would be my recommendation.

Twilight

Twilight: This is mainly what you use to generate negative energy. Note that the amount of negative energy you generate scales with Cunning, and although you may be tempted to put a lot of points into Twilight early on, later even just 3/5 will generate more negative energy than you can even store. So don't go above 3/5. It does affect your default positive/negative energy value, but why settle for 40% of max when you can get 100% of max for free by using autocast?

Jumpgate: In theory, this will allow you to teleport to safety. In practice, autoexplore will just take you out of range of your jumpgate and it'll suck up 20 of your precious negative energy for nothing. 1/5 is enough to lay down a jumpgate before diving into a vault, but I would recommend against getting more levels unless you're really going to recast your jumpgate every 10 seconds while you're autoexploring.

Mind Blast: Confusion is really really good. Blind and stun are commonly resisted, but confusion immunity is extremely rare, and at high Cunning this thing will confuse for 12 turns or so, which is plenty of time to kill whatever you just confused. Even if it isn't, with Totality you can get 24 straight turns of consecutive confusion which should definitely be more than enough. However, it only has a radius of 3, which is one of the reasons why you'll want to get into close range even though you're a spellcaster.

Shadow Simulacrum: Doesn't work on bosses, but it's still great for elites, rares, and uniques. Sort of obsoleted later on when said elites, rares, and uniques are getting one-shotted anyway, but fun to use until you reach that point. Note that the simulacrum will inherit the original's current effects, so if you stun/blind/confuse the original before casting the simulacrum, your simulacrum will also come out stunned/blinded/confused, which is no good. Anywhere from 0/5 to 5/5, depending on your preference and how much help you feel you need in the early- to mid- game.

Star Fury

Moonlight Ray: Every caster has their signature low cooldown spell. Some have multiple, but Anorithils have one, and this is it. Does way more damage than any of your other spells, especially your puny light damage spells. It should already be apparent that darkness, not light, is going to be your main damage element. This is also your only range 10 spell, so if you're trying to snipe something from a distance like, say, a Fearscape user, this is all you have to work with. Usually you'll fire off a Moonlight Ray and then try to close in to unleash the rest of your arsenal.

Shadow Blast: Your go-to spell for damaging crowds. Later in the game, crowds will melt like butter without you even having to lift a finger, but even then Shadow Blast's single target damage isn't too shabby either. As with all ball spells, you can use Shadow Blast to snipe stuff hidden around corners and such.

Twilight Surge: Does good damage, but has such short range that you won't be able to use it all that often, especially if you go for the Circles tree. However, get 1/5 early on and put this on autocast when no enemies are visible. Bam, you now have full positive/negative energy while autoexploring. Just remember to disable autocast when walking into Angolwen or the Gates of Morning, because it will autocast next to a villager and neither Linaliil nor Aeryn will appreciate that very much. Also disable it for escorts. Even if you don't level it past 1/5, however, it has the benefit of being the only other spell besides Twilight to generate negative energy, and it also rolls to crit twice. Why this is important will become evident later.

Starfall: A short stun with decent AoE damage. Its radius increases to 2 at 3/5, and while that will help hit bigger crowds, it also makes it harder to not hit yourself with it.

Eclipse

Blood Red Moon: 5/5 because Corona. Start working on this after you've finished Sun Flare and Mind Blast.

Totality: Serves two independent functions but not really at the same time. You obviously want to use the cooldown reduction when most of your spells are on cooldown, especially Providence and Mind Blast. However, this also gives you resistance penetration, and sometimes you'll run into things with a lot of darkness resistance. Sometimes you'll run into things that are completely immune to darkness. In these cases, you don't want to fruitlessly throw out darkness spells first and then use Totality; you just want to use Totality straight away even if nothing is on cooldown. This will first come in handy in Lake Nur against umbral horrors.

Corona: This is the talent that really defines the Anorithil. The damage doesn't look like much at the beginning, but start stacking spell crit and you'll see those little Corona bolts really start to add up. The bolts are quite slow, but the AI doesn't really dodge them and by the end you'll be spewing out so many that it wouldn't really be feasible anyway. Because it only fires at range 6, you'll do a lot more damage at that range than you would by staying at range 10 and trying to snipe with only Moonlight Ray. Needless to say, you should get 5/5 immediately after Blood Red Moon. Sometime in your 30s, you may come across some artifacts that have a chance to cast a spell every time you hit with a spell. Because you'll be hitting so often with all of your little Coronas, these on-spell procs become devastating in the hands of a properly-built Anorithil.

Darkest Light: I couldn't really make this work in either of my Anorithil playthroughs. You need low positive energy and high negative energy, and most of the time it'll be the complete opposite: you'll have high positive energy and low negative energy. What negative energy you do have you need for your Star Fury spells. If you don't spend negative energy and you don't generate positive energy, you're left with nothing and then what's the point of being invisible? You could just forget about the invisibility and use it for the explosion damage, but the damage is really low and you'd even be better off with Sunburst. And the damage penalty is the final nail in the coffin for this interesting but ultimately impractical spell. 0/5.

Glyphs

The first of your two unlockable trees. The selling point of Glyphs is undoubtedly Glyph of Fatigue, with its massive slow. The slow can crit, and with some additional crit multiplier you can get upwards of 130% slow for 6 turns, which will all but freeze the foe in place. And unlike blind/confuse/stun, there is no such thing as slow immunity whatsoever, so as long as you can overcome their saves, it will work on anything. The other nice thing about Glyphs is that it's not just Fatigue; all glyphs can crit. And they are instant cast. That means that, if you want, you can trigger Corona four times in one turn. The main problem with Glyphs is that something has to actually walk over it, and this can be more unreliable than you might think. Ranged enemies will often just stay in place and not walk over the glyph for several turns. Melee enemies can Rush you, passing over the glyphs entirely. Anything that's been confused or blinded may not approach you in a straight path, and actually walk around the glyph.

Circles

Your other unlockable tree, which doesn't have anything as powerful as Glyph of Fatigue but instead is much more reliable. Like glyphs, circles are instant and they can crit. In addition, with the exception of Circle of Sanctity which can crit only once, all circles roll to crit twice: once for duration and once for damage. First of all, that means you can trigger Corona seven times in one turn. Second, with some additional crit multiplier, the duration of circles match their cooldown. Also, all of the circles are worthwhile in their own right except for Circle of Blazing Light. Shifting Shadows is damage over time in the element which you'll be stacking while also granting something in the realm of 70 defense by the endgame, which is on par with classes that actually focus on defense as their main form of damage mitigation. Sanctity completely shuts down most spellcasters as long as you can get close enough, and with high enough spellpower it also inflicts Brainlock every turn, which is like a permanent mini-stun. Finally, Warding also does good damage, knocks back anything that would try to melee you, and slows down projectiles so much that even the fastest ones will be crawling along at one or two tiles per turn. Note that projectile slow caps out at 90%, so even though it'll say projectiles are slowed by something crazy like 200%, they will still move towards you... albeit very slowly. Also, you might not want Warding to knock things out of your other circles, so it may be a good idea to keep it at 3/5 so its radius is one lower than the others. The projectile slow feature will still cap at 90% so that won't be a problem. With all four circles up, in addition to doing solid damage over time, you are basically invulnerable to spells, melee, and projectiles. That's everything except for non-projectile mind powers which is mostly limited to drake breaths. All you need to do is to get within range 4 in order to make the magic happen.

Generic talents

Chants

Unlike Hymns, none of the Chants are all that critical. Of them, I would recommend Fortitude for shrugging off stuns which may otherwise put Providence on cooldown. Fortitude is especially effective as a Halfling or a Dwarf, as your combined saves will be high enough to even shrug off effects from bosses, not that you'll need to as long as you have Providence.

Light

About as straightforward of a defensive tree as they come. Healing Light can crit, making it another chance to trigger Corona. Bathe in Light can be used to heal escorts, boost your own heal, and damage undead. Kind of useful in Dreadfell. Also combos with Healing Nexus in the Harmony tree, should you choose to unlock it. Barrier can be nice to have on autocast when no enemies are visible, so that 2/3 of the time you'll enter a fight with a damage shield already up. The other 1/3 of the time there will only be a few turns before Barrier comes off of cooldown, and you can use a Shielding rune to fill in that gap. Barrier can't crit, so while its protective value is incredible in the early game, it doesn't scale all that well. However, by the time you can no longer coast on just Barrier, your Corona engine should be coming together and you will no longer have to rely on defense. Finally, Providence is your ultimate status effect removal talent that really just puts all other status effect removal to shame. 5/5 Providence as soon as possible and never look back.

Hymns

Hymn of Moonlight is the clear winner here, because Hymn of Moonlight crits. It crits a lot, all the time, and you know what that means. Corona. It does, however, have short range, and against large crowds it will drain your negative energy very quickly. No matter, it will also kill the large crowd equally quickly. Forget everything else and get 5/5 Hymn of Moonlight, right after 5/5 Providence.

Survival

Not as useless as it once was thanks to Charm Mastery, but still probably not worth spending a category point on.

Harmony

Anorithils can get surprisingly good mileage from the Harmony tree, available once you kill the Sandworm Queen. Elemental Harmony is good for anybody, but the fire effect is much better than the others. Conspicuously enough, Anorithils have a weak fire damage spell on a class that does not stack fire damage. This means that shooting yourself with 1/5 Firebeam for 10 turns of +41% global speed is actually a pretty good deal, especially if you do it in safety and heal the damage away afterwards. And with Totality, you can ensure that that global speed doesn't go to waste because all your spells are on cooldown. One With Nature is universally useful because who doesn't like infusions, and Healing Nexus has interesting synergy with Bathe in Light. Bathe in Light heals everyone, even your enemies, which is usually a bad thing. Healing Nexus steals your enemies' heals, which is usually not all that useful because your enemies don't usually heal themselves. Also, a hidden property of Healing Nexus is that it doubles self-heals, which includes Healing Light and Bathe in Light. Anyway, the end result is that using Healing Nexus and Bathe in Light together results in 8 turns of powerful life and equilibrium regeneration with the bonus of preventing your enemies from healing. Not exactly a gamebreaking combo, but a fun one nonetheless.

Strategy

1-10: With Moonlight Ray for offense and the Light tree for defense, you should be unstoppable. Put Twilight Surge on autocast when no enemies are visible when you get it, making sure to turn it off in towns and when you get escorts. Use your first category point to unlock an inscription slot. Because you already have a large burst heal in the form of Healing Light, you may favor regeneration infusions rather than healing infusions. Stat points should go primarily to Magic, and then split as you like between Cunning and Constitution until they're both maxed.

11-20: Much the same as before, except now you're also maxing your main two disabling spells, Sun Flare and Mind Blast. Use your second category point to unlock your second inscription slot, or Glyphs/Circles. Circles in particular will make your fight with the Master hilariously easy. You might also want Totality before going into Lake of Nur.

21-30: By now you should begin the first steps of your Blood Red Moon/ Corona/ Hymn of Moonlight combo. It will not be very strong at first, and you may have to turn off Hymn of Moonlight against large crowds to conserve negative energy, but it will get better. Much better. Also be aware of getting silenced, as Providence will not help you with that. Either build your mental save as high as you can, or use a mental wild infusion.

31-40: Hopefully, somewhere around here you will find at least one of: Black Robe, Fiery Choker, Lunar Shield, or Life Drinker, all of which have on hit(spell) procs. Wear them and love them. If you were using a mental wild before, you may drop it once Aeryn teaches you Relentless Pursuit. Use your category point to unlock one of Glyphs, Circles, or Harmony, if you haven't already, and start working on that once your Corona combo is complete. If you go for Circles, I recommend using a Movement infusion to quickly get into range of spellcasters. There are other options, but Movement infusions are best because they are instant, plus you have the side benefit of however many turns of stun/pin immunity.

41-50: By now, you should have equipped yourself to maximize spell crit, crit multiplier, darkness damage, and on hit(spell) procs. Also, spellsurge equipment will allow you to hit the spellpower cap fairly easily. Just watch out for Gorbat and champions of Urh'Rok, as they have spell feedback. As long as you can use Providence before engaging them, you should be just fine.

Prodigies

I won't discuss the prodigies that are good for every class (Cauterize, Spine of the World, Lucky Day for Halflings, Cauterize, Corrupted Shell, Cauterize), but here are a few that can have special interactions with Anorithils.

• Armour of Shadows: More for dwarves than anything, the armor and armor hardiness will stack well with your armor-boosting racials and between Moonlight Ray, Twilight Surge, and Shadow Blast, everything will be covered in darkness.
• Temporal Form: Consolidates all of your damage types into one, allowing your light damage to benefit from all of your +darkness damage stacking, in addition to the +30% damage on top of that as well as the 20% resistance penetration. This dramatically improves your Sun spells, Black Robe/ Life Drinker procs, as well as half of Corona, while also giving you ten turns of stun and blind immunity. The only downside is that you won't benefit from Totality's dark/light resistance penetration, nor any of the dark/light resistance penetration you may have gotten through equipment. But this also means that you can afford to wait to cast Totality until you've gone through all of your spells first, at which point Temporal Form will likely have expired.
• Unbreakable Will: So you have huge physical and spell saves thanks to Chant of Fortitude. You also have Providence to clean up any status effects that get through. What are you still vulnerable to? Silence, confusion, and spell feedback, as they can stop you from casting Providence. Unbreakable Will neatly takes care of all of these without forcing you to use Relentless Pursuit.
• Elemental Surge: You will be critting basically all of the time, and you have both light and fire damage at your disposal. In effect, this turns Elemental Surge into a 200 point damage shield or mass physical/magical wild infusion available every 12 turns, which isn't bad at all considering you don't have to cast it separately and you can just use your spells as you normally would.