I Have No Idea How To Distribute My Skill Points

[RandomTurtle]

I am making my way through the game and have just got through the P field (Swamp area) and have recently made my way to the L fields.

I feel like my wizard isn't as strong as it could be but i have no clue how to distribute my skills. I tried looking at a guide but the guide suggests dumping a bunch of my points into skills I don't have unlocked. So I'm very unsure what I should be doing here.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006478049

This is my skill grid, veterans of this game what would you recommend? (Of course unlocking more skills, but in it's current state I could probably use more points up.)

[SympliKrazi]

howdy, i'm not exactly an expert, but in my current play through i've just hit wizard level 182, and i've unlocked all but one skill(red gem). Because of the skills I've just unlocked yesterday. i was able to go back to one of the early levels and do and endurance run for 1.2million exp. This boosted me about twenty wizard levels with just one map.

if im not mistaken, judging by your skill point distribution and mana pool, it seems to me you are close to level 300? seems like you've been grinding exp for quite a bit now. yeah, this game does get a bit grindy. I'd also, like to know, how much mana you start your map with?

At this point, I would say, unlocking skills is your current bottle neck. Specifically Unlocking True Colors (J1) and the Yellow crit(B5) gem skill will do wonders for you monster killing power.

In fact, I would completely ignore earning more exp and lower battle traits to nil, to make the maps easier to win, so i could get to those two skills asap.

check out Evil Mathmatician's Map guide here in the steam guides section to find the best path to those skills.

Once you get those two skills, you'll be able to follow Bill Wilsons skill distribution guide much easier.

[Bill Wilson]

A low effort skills distribution before you have true colors is mana stream and resonance at the same level with fusion at half of that level and everything else at zero (except for amplifiers which should be a similar level to fusion if you use amplifiers).

Once you get tc, you can keep doing the same but with tc at at least the same level as mana stream and resonance. Also once you have tc, pure crit gems become the strongest damaging gems and tc should be your highest skill in that case (but in the case where you don't care about specials, tc isn't much better than resonance).

And you don't ever need more than around 2000 initial mana. You only need enough initial mana to handle the first few waves. Excess initial mana makes far less difference to your ability to handle later waves compared to spending more skill points and having higher skills.

[SlashBlack]

idk what level you are but there's hidden bonuses for talismans...if you match 3 with the same markings horizantlly or 3 different vertically you get a bonus for initial mana+extra mana each wave which can help speeding things alot.

[RandomTurtle]

Originally posted by PeterHoHK:

Component skills. If the field doesn't let you make purple gems and doesn't provide you with purple gems, take the skill points out of the purple skill. (not that you should spec into purple in the first place btw)

Why is Purple bad to spec into, is it just because it doesn't need the boost?

Originally posted by PeterHoHK:

Orb of Presence, to an extent. Ideally you should aim to not have to banish any monster at all. You wouldn't need this "safety net" if those skill points are put into making a better defence.

I assume that orblets don't give bonus mana like in Chasing Shadows?

[Bill Wilson]

You get enough armor tearing as it is just by using purple as part of a dual. But never combine crit with armor tearing unless you don't have tc and there's no better option. When crit gems are good, you never need to use armor tearing against monsters.

Orblets give a mere +1% mana when docked. It's not until around level 8000 that orb of presence becomes worth maxing and it's best to just ignore the skill entirely until you start following a skills distribution which includes it.

[SympliKrazi]

Originally posted by RandomTurtle01:

Why is Purple bad to spec into, is it just because it doesn't need the boost?

With your current skill set, it's not bad. when more skill are unlocked purple and green become secondary at best. After purple does it's job, the spec becomes useless, it doesnt increase any of the other stats of purple gem. Even with zero armor, mobs can have crazy high hp to deal with. So the reasoning is mana leach component is better than armor tearing and so are damage dealing components. imo, with the current skill set, investing in purple should be somewhere between 5 and 10. On the other hand, poison component is good to spec at this stage of the game.

it's good to look into how the armor tearing spec is doing personally, and feel how it fits with your play style.

For an extreme example, If the mobs get hit once or twice by purple and have zero armor, then survive all the way across to map to the orb of presence, then purple spec might be overpowered and therefore those extra skill points invested could be better used else where, even if they are just left as initial mana.

[pacivys]

Originally posted by Bill Wilson:

You get enough armor tearing as it is just by using purple as part of a dual. But never combine crit with armor tearing unless you don't have tc and there's no better option. When crit gems are good, you never need to use armor tearing against monsters.

what exactly are 'better options'?

crit/slow? crit/bleed? poison/mana leech seem like the worst gems in towers, or am i off?

[Bill Wilson]

Originally posted by pacivys:

Originally posted by Bill Wilson:

You get enough armor tearing as it is just by using purple as part of a dual. But never combine crit with armor tearing unless you don't have tc and there's no better option. When crit gems are good, you never need to use armor tearing against monsters.

what exactly are 'better options'?

crit/slow? crit/bleed? poison/mana leech seem like the worst gems in towers, or am i off?

Anything which isn't crit or leech combined with anything else which isn't crit or leech.

The crit component will be doing very little in a dual gem and other components which aren't leech tend to have either more damage or more fire rate so you might as well use a special which actually does something.

Crit is also especially terrible when used with pylons at low crit chances because the pylon damage depends on the highest damage taken so you'll end up with a pylon with more damage than normal but since your crit chance is really low, you'll need more shots on average to charge it.

[pacivys]

Originally posted by Bill Wilson:

Anything which isn't crit or leech combined with anything else which isn't crit or leech.

The crit component will be doing very little in a dual gem and other components which aren't leech tend to have either more damage or more fire rate so you might as well use a special which actually does something.

Crit is also especially terrible when used with pylons at low crit chances because the pylon damage depends on the highest damage taken so you'll end up with a pylon with more damage than normal but since your crit chance is really low, you'll need more shots on average to charge it.

hmm interesting, so you'd even take an armor shredding/poison dual gem over armor shredding/crit dual gem even if the latter 'synergizes' better than the former (poison doesn't care about armor at all)? i get that the crit may be doing very little, but i also feel like poison for example can be in a similar boat with overkill damage (towers shooting at targets that might otherwise die to poison)

[SympliKrazi]

By the time you have crit gem unlocked, you'll likely have Resonance and True Colors unlocked too, those skills synergize to give pure crit gem significant kill power over any other gem or combnation.

If you want to also use poison and/or armor tearing, that's cool too. Imo, they work pretty well in traps

[pacivys]

Originally posted by SympliKrazi:

By the time you have crit gem unlocked, you'll likely have Resonance and True Colors unlocked too, those skills synergize to give pure crit gem significant kill power over any other gem or combnation.

If you want to also use poison and/or armor tearing, that's cool too. Imo, they work pretty well in traps

i'm purely talking pre true colors and crit

i feel like the tier list might be purple > red > blue > green > yellow > orange in towers (so purple/red would be strongest dual pre yellow taking over later?) that's just my intuition though. and i could see yellow being higher than i'm rating it potentially

[SympliKrazi]

pre true colors and crit, most battles have two gems unlocked. In most cases, i found that a dual gem does the highest dps, although strategies changed depending on the battle layout and the unlocked gems.

Basically, play what's available.

The next serious boost up before crit and true colors, is unlocking beam. Beam does a superb job cleaning up swarms of monsters. Beam on purple makes armor tearing a cinch if necessary. Beam on Poison and set to random also has nice killing power vs swarms.

Imo, Beam is strongest with a pure orange gem for the mana leeching. Get that puppy going and you've got plenty of mana to work with. Even if you don't have orange skill unlocked, 20 points in beam mana leeching mobs is nice.

Other than as I explained it, i haven't compared gem strength in that way. dual purple red is a nice combo. But then purple + anything is pretty good imo.

[RandomTurtle]

I think a huge thing I missed for a long while is that having even a few low grade orange gems in traps that monsters are forced to walk over will allow you to make much stronger towers faster.

Looking back on what I had at the time, I probably would have kept everything the same but invested a lot more into mana leech and traps.

For context this screenshot was taken when I was part way through the game. At the time my approach to a level was:
- Complete it
- Complete it with battle traits such as overcrowded at max, haste at max, corrupt banishment at max, and I even did 1 level of swarmling parasites even though that's not recommended.
- Go into endurance with the same traits, open the stash no matter what, even replaying the level with no traits if I can't open it, at which point I am far more powerful than the monsters here and can focus on the stash
- Go into trail mode and look up a video for that field on youtube, the worst ones were the RNG ones with wizard hunters or that really annoying one with the watchtower that destroys your towers. But I made sure to do it no matter what.

Then only after doing that would I move on to the next level, I did this for all the levels in the game until I finished it, I also always took the paths that do not lead to the end first.

All this is to say that it's unlikely for you to have as many skill points as in this image at this point in the game, but in the event that you do have skill points in excess at this point, I think mana leech and traps is a good call for getting tower DPS as you can upgrade towers with more mana.

[SympliKrazi]

Yeah, looking at the screenshot looks like you got pretty far by just playing the game, nothing wrong with that.

I was the same way, sort of, but since i played previous iterations of GemCraft, my understanding of Chasing Shadows game mechanics kind of screwed me over, since it took me a while to understand Frostborn Wrath has subtle differences.

based on the screenshot
Pylons, Bolt, Freeze skill points could probably be more effective else where.

And the Mana Stream skill is only effective when Orange Mana Gem Skill and Beam are unavailable. With orange gem and beam handy, Mana Stream is kind of a waste of skill points.

A mana farm requires a serious skill point investment to be effective though. In the early game, pure orange mana gem + Beam is easier to setup, imo

Edit: btw when playing a map in story mode, the first game must be played with only the available gems, only subsequent plays allow playing unlocked gems. Hence I would alternate between Orange + Beam skills when available or null those out and use the skill points to boost Mana Stream.