Stone Warden build advice 1.6.3

[Aldius]

Hello, I unlocked Stone Warden and had some success with it, but I'm not sure I'm building it correctly. Is there a guide for how people are building the stone warden?

I've essentially been ignoring the magic side by putting points into willpower and developing my willpower talents at the expensive of magic, so that I put points in Earthen Power, Earthen Vines, and Dwarven Nature. as I was playing more, however, I believe that I actually should be putting my stat points in magic and willpower, and investing in some of the magic trees. what builds are viable for this class?

I think the 3 willpower ones are quite good, but I'm really not certain what gains I get for investing more points in some of them.

Also, what runes are useful? Mobility is lacking, so I use a blink rune, I also use 2 healing runes, what am I missing here?

And lastly, what type of shields should I be looking for? I know I need +resist gear, and then +my normal stats, but is there anything I should look for beyond that? I'm a bit of a n00b.

Thank you for your help!

[GrimSentinel]

I'm not really an expert on the Stone Warden, but I'll take a shot at answering.

I would really recommend putting points into the Eldritch Shield category. It will help your ability to block which is good for defense.

Assuming you're playing the main campaign, you can get four category points (three from leveling, one from the Wyrm Bile). You should probably use two of those on more inscription slots, which leaves you with two to spend on categories. There are several good options here, but I would lean towards Eldritch Stone being the best option for the debuffs it inflicts.

When deciding how many points to put into talents, I normally look for things like reduced cooldown, increased duration, increased range/radius, increased number of debuffs removed, added effects at higher talent levels ("At level 5..."), or just a large percentage increase in the damage/healing. Talents that only get a small percentage increase or that you don't use much aren't worth putting more points into.

You'll probably want to invest in a Shatter Afflictions Rune, or maybe a Wild Infusion. Mergeback does give you a debuff removal option, but given how important debuff removal is, you'll usually want to dedicate at least one inscription to it.

For shields, I think the most important stat is really just the Block value, followed by damage resistance (which also give an extra 50% block against those types of damage). Any other stats you can get are just an extra bonus.

[Aldius]

Is that the only build for shield warden? The advice makes sense but I 'm curious too if there are other builds for the class.

[MrCinos]

You can look for builds here: https://te4.org/characters-vault

Just check the "winner" tag (probably for higher difficulties like Nightmare and Insane too) and pick the class you want to get the rough idea of what people who cleared the game used in their builds. Of course it doesn't tell you in what order they leveled up the stats / skills, but you can experiment a bit.

[voronin_mike]

I think there was a guide for StoneWardens at ToME's main forums. Probably in bpat's collection. Wiki has links to there...