Greybeard, apostle, pilgrim, water merchant? esper start

[amimai002]

ive been considering these classes as my general purpose esper start and want to hear what your opinions on them are

imo:
greybeard:
+3 will (shave 15% off your cooldown, major advantage)
+1 av, great to make you less squishy (esp low endurance builds)
berate, epic skill, lower enemy mental save (muahahahahaha)
clugel proficiency (sad skill, usless for most espers)
- i have found this to be the best choice for that in your face kind mele esper using fast CD to spam continuous ego projection and throwing in the ocasinal temporal fuge and time dialation to really show the enemy who is boss (4 armed short blade master :D)

apostle:
intimidate (usefull in some situations)
prosetlyze (meatshield manufacturing plant!)
-in sumary a verry good build for a support type esper, but not something i have had much sucssess with (mainly cause i tend to reduce my supports to blody giblets)

pilgrim:
fasting way (free food)
meditate (free healing)
iron mind (not really needed for an esper with their crazy mental save)
mind compas
- this is realy more of an explorer then a combat build

water merchant:
free stuff (can be used to rush level 1 before you leave town)
entry into all towns (usefull)
good trading rewards (usefull early game)
- this is the build i mainly used while learning the game, its not great but it avoids the rocky start all the other start builds have because they are dirt poor

[Aquillion]

Apostles are by far the best option in the long term. Intimidate and Proselytize are very powerful skills, and in the long run Ego is far more valuable than Willpower.

(Remember, the cooldown reduction for Willpower is 5% per point of bonus, not per point of Willpower. Like in 3e D&D, two points of Willpower shift your willpower bonus by one. So Greybeards give you ~7.5% faster cooldowns, not 15%. That's not much.)

If you're having trouble surviving as an Apostle, I suggest taking an escape mutation like Force Wall or Teleportation; or a more powerful nuking mutation like Sunder Mind. If your buddy dies, use those to retreat (using Intimidate if necessary to protect yourself.) You can look over my Esper guide for more details (in the Steam guides section.)

[amimai002]

:P its not that i have trouble with apostate, its that my allies have trouble with me lobing face melting fireballs, ice blasts and asorted high explosive ordenance about the general area

and in all honesty both of the apostate abilities you get for 400 skill points so its not really worth it in my eyes, from an "easy start" prespective i see water merchant as a far superior choice (+1 level from quest, and good gear on the cheap goes a long way at start)

[Ashex [Fenris]]

If you're building an Esper I'd go Apostle all the way, the maxed out ego into the trade bonus at first level up will net you all the low prices you could want. But by the time you're buying gear I'd say you're playing a losing game. I always ruin dive to jump straight past needing steel or any varient of armor/weapon that I can't find in abundence in the wilds of Qud. So I really only use my ego boost to garner higher sell prices if I really desperately need water.

The early game also isn't particularly hard if you've picked your mutations well and know what you're about - which I assume if you're playing Esper you are.

[Laughing Fool]

Apostle is best, but water merchant can sometimes start with things like geomagnetic disc or helping hands, if you are willing to startscum a bit.

[amimai002]

Originally posted by Aquillion:

(Remember, the cooldown reduction for Willpower is 5% per point of bonus, not per point of Willpower. Like in 3e D&D, two points of Willpower shift your willpower bonus by one. So Greybeards give you ~7.5% faster cooldowns, not 15%. That's not much.)

on a related note: above quote is uterly wrong, test it yourself ingame

on my tests using a greybeard:
on a 27 wisdom char
500cd skills took 225 (45%)
200cd skills took 90 (45%)


on a 26 wisdom char
500cd skills took 250 (50%)
200cd skills took 100 (50%)

yea... a wise magician casts more then twice as fast
when you hit 30 you become a wizzard :D
permenant time dialation and ego projection ^.^

[Minipancho]

Originally posted by amimai002:

:P its not that i have trouble with apostate, its that my allies have trouble with me lobing face melting fireballs, ice blasts and asorted high explosive ordenance about the general area

and in all honesty both of the apostate abilities you get for 400 skill points so its not really worth it in my eyes, from an "easy start" prespective i see water merchant as a far superior choice (+1 level from quest, and good gear on the cheap goes a long way at start)

apostle by far. dont worry about your meatshields either. fell free to take over another mid fight. once you get dominate and either get good enough to get something nice, or had something survive long enough to buy a few mutations on it, then you can worry about keeping them alive and gearing them up. by then they should be able to take your attacks all day long as well.

Intimidate has saved my life more times than i can count as well.

seriously my best character right now is a duel wielding esper in steel plate with an armored eyeless crab packmule. the only things that have come near killing me, are other espers simply because i didnt take mental mirror this time and sunder mind hits like a truck.

also i recomend always taking ego projection. being able to get 30+ extra hitpoints off the bat really helps keep you alive. seriously being able to go from 5< hp back up to 30 or more is amazing when your on fire or bleeding.

[funkel]

I can only reiterate that Apostle is the best choice.

The Greybeard bonus to willpower is not as great, as Aquillion mentioned. It's a very negligible boost, and the other bonuses are not that useful. Berate is fantastic, though, but as an apostle it's relatively inexpensive (and almost a must) to pick up.

Pilgrim sounds nice, but so far I haven't had a food or healing problem yet. At the beginning of the game, you can stock up on so many vinewafers from Mehmet, Argyve, and Ualraig to be sufficient for a return trip to the Six Day Stilt. If you still feel like your map traveling is too harsh on your food, just hunt down some glowfish for their corpses. During your dungeon delving, just eat every corpse you come across as there are apparently no penalties to doing so.

Water Merchant is very nice, but your Ego is already so high that you don't really need the starting kit and ego boost for trade.

With Apostle, you get a set of skills that are perfect for an esper. Proselytize, while regularly requiring a retry, can be helpful in a pinch to convince something that is killing you to help you instead. In other circumstances you can get yourself a tank to hide behind. Intimidate is just a cherry on top. Apostle furthermore allows you to easily continue and get Berate, Menacing Stare, and Inspiring Presence. Combine it with Beguile and Dominate to get more minions and the ability to outfit them.

[amimai002]

the only thing that edges greybeard over apostle for me is the +1 to AV, calused is a 23endurance skill! there is no way a normal esper will ever get it any other way. On the other hand all the apostle skills are easily accesible to any decent esper build after lvl3, they dont really hold any advantage over other builds at that point.

Also you are seriously understating the power of berate, its powerfull enough to make it posible to take on warlords fresh out of camp (for psi ofence build espers)

and in all honesty i prefer my 50 turn cooldown temperal fuge, the company of me, mself, and I is plenty good enough to kill almost anything with copious firepower...

tl:dr - greybeard gets +1 AV from callused, a 23 endurance skill, that argument is hard to beat
(its also something you guys are suspiciously avoiding discussing)

[Ashex [Fenris]]

If you want high Endurance, play a melee class - the point of the Esper is the prevent damage with their potent mental abilities and not face-tank damage. Plus Temporal Fuge gets to be dangerous when you're decked out in end-game gear and equipment, not only cloned but flying all over the place, so I'd gladly take any other mental mutation over that. I've had no problem beating the game with just myself.

[Laughing Fool]

Espers can start with 24 ego, 20 toughness and 20 agility, and get calloused at level 18 which can be achieved very quickly. That's my preferred esper build actually.

[amimai002]

Originally posted by Ashex Fenris:

Plus Temporal Fuge gets to be dangerous when you're decked out in end-game gear and equipment, not only cloned but flying all over the place, so I'd gladly take any other mental mutation over that. I've had no problem beating the game with just myself.

ahh you dont know nutin bout my teleport and clarvoiance
nothing causes death quite like dogpiling your enemy with 20 coppies of you

[Ashex [Fenris]]

Originally posted by amimai002:

Originally posted by Ashex Fenris:

Plus Temporal Fuge gets to be dangerous when you're decked out in end-game gear and equipment, not only cloned but flying all over the place, so I'd gladly take any other mental mutation over that. I've had no problem beating the game with just myself.

ahh you dont know nutin bout my teleport and clarvoiance
nothing causes death quite like dogpiling your enemy with 20 coppies of you

Fair enough, I did not consider that option. Do all of your copies also start zipping around all over the place or do they gang up on some suckers?

[Aquillion]

Generally speaking, when you have Teleportation + Clairvoyance, your duplicates will teleport to the nearest enemy, gang up on them, and gank them. I've sometimes seen them split up after that, though, especially when there's a lot of them or when you have Teleportation down to a 5-round cooldown.

Of course, the other advantage to Teleportation + Temporal Fugue is that you can bamf out to a safe spot yourself while your doubles killmurder the entire level for you.