Goon Reaver Guide 1.1.5
Reaver is pretty simple, but getting one going can be tough, mostly because of their stat requirements. Early game as most classes I like to put some points into Con at least but as a Reaver you can't really do that unless you find a ton of +Str/Mag items. My Reaver was a dwarf, which I felt was a good choice, but truthfully any race would work, I think. You might not have that much to spend the cat point on as a Cornac though.
Early game, like everyone says, you can usually just play a knockoff Corruptor. Have one point in Drain and Soul Rot and use them to nuke stuff from afar. Doing so in melee is way more damaging so if something's not dangerous to you, or you need it to die right now, you can fight it in melee in the same way. If any abilities are off cooldown, don't ever bump attack though, especially because even your melee special attacks trigger Corrupted Strength, which is why reavers do so much damage. The issue mainly is that your only defense is your spectacular offense -- you get pretty much no innate resistances (except one which I'll explain shortly), little mobility, and only one powerful if finicky defensive skill. So if you see a spellcaster you need to either have Bone Grab ready, use your movement infusion to get in its face, or teleport away.
Skillwise, it's best early game to pick up as many different abilities that you'll need later at 1 point, especially since each new attack ability is another turn you can get a Corrupted Strength proc on. You obviously want to max Corrupted Strength as soon as you can afford to because it's pretty much all of your damage. The Bone tree is good, but I'd only put one point in each of them, and try to max Bone Shield when you can. Bone Shield can be really powerful but it also has a special weakness for Reavers: each instance of retaliatory damage counts as a separate "hit", so if you use Rend with the Corrupted Strength hit on an enemy with damage on being hit, it'll chew up several charges. One point in Virulent Disease is nice, it does decent damage over time and can spellshock, which makes enemies take more magic damage. Vimsense and Leech are both good abilities to max eventually, the former reduces blight resist and the latter gives you health and vim when you get hit. Be careful that you don't use Vimsense in dangerous areas that you haven't explored nearby, sometimes you can overwhelm yourself by calling more enemies into the fight.
The Reaving Combat and Scourge trees are pretty much your main powerhouses and all the skills in them are probably worth maxing. However, if you intend to max your Scourge attacks, spread the points out rather than dump them all into one of the skills at a time. Each one gives you less and less per point, so that the second point in Dark Surprise is worth more than the last point in Rend, for example. In Reaving Combat, obviously Corrupted Strength is a no-brainer. Bloodlust will often be your main source of spellpower, which isn't nearly as important as it is for a Corruptor, but it still makes your spells hurt more, so it's still very good. Carrier doesn't seem like much since I'm not recommending you use diseases much, but the most threatening enemies to me midgame are the ghouls and corruptors, because their nukes add on a disease that lasts a long time, does a ton of damage, and reduces attributes. Maxing it will make you immune to that and make corruptors especially a lot less dangerous. (If you're a Thalore, you could skip maxing Carrier because your third racial will do it anyway.) Acid Blood I wasn't sure about at first, but it's definitely worth maxing. You're going to take hits, being melee, and it adds up to a lot of damage and is a decent debuff.
For generic points, you shouldn't be too hard up for them. Obviously get the good stuff from your racial tree if you have one. If you get an anorithil escort try desperately to save them and pick up the Light tree: it gives you some much needed defensive abilities, and all of them are still spells, so if anything is in melee with you when you heal or shield, they still take a whack from Corrupted Strength. Obviously, as a melee fighter you're going to want to pick up Armor Training 3, and max Weapon Mastery and probably Combat Accuracy. The Torment tree is okay, I mostly just put one point in everything for Blood Vengeance, which is really good. Note that if you have the Light tree, the cooldown reduction works on all spells, so just another reason to pray for that anorithil escort. Curses and Hexes are good I think, but I didn't bother with them. Vimsense was enough resist reduction for me and I'd rather spend time killing enemies than debuffing them.
Prodigies are sort of up in the air for me, but I took Draconic Body, to help with the Reaver's low defense. If you wanted more offense you could pick Arcane Might, which seems like it would add quite a bit of damage for a Reaver.
They're pretty fun to play if you like to just walk up to a boss and chunk off half of its health bar in one turn. I fought the Master by cornering him and just beating the shit out of him over 3-4 turns. Good luck with weapons helps a lot, though.
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