Blood Surfaces: Good Builds for Blood?

[megae777]

It seems like that while blood does still act like a secondary water surface, it has really become much more prominent since the last game. As of right now, I know the BloodKnight build is great, and that leveling Necromancy is better for them as opposed to casters due to the life leech. However, I'm wondering what sort of builds there are that make use of the necromancy skills and blood surfaces. I've been thinking Necro/Summoning would work well, so that you have a few blood totems and a slightly tankier blood incarnate, and then when the corpses start piling up, you can use the necro summon skills to make use of them. I havent seen what Totems of the Necromancer can do just yet, but I assume that they work like other totems, scale off summoning, and if you build up some corpses you can get alot of them up at once. Aside from those skills, I'm not sure what else works with a caster necro. I think Areo is good for the use of shocking the blood, but I dont know if that overides the other blood skills, like can bloodsucker and grasp of the starved still work if the blood is electrified?

I really like playing as casters who use alot of enviromental effects, so I wanted to see how well blood works. Any advice is appreciated.

[Captain Wild]

Been using a scoundrel/necro build. It's high risk but I use an undead and just coat the battlefield in blood and poison, makes it pretty hard to die unless multiple enemies focus him. With enough dual wield points it gets pretty nutty.

[Cold Stoned Steven]

Originally posted by Captain WIld, ♥♥♥♥ Of Destiny:

Been using a scoundrel/necro build. It's high risk but I use an undead and just coat the battlefield in blood and poison, makes it pretty hard to die unless multiple enemies focus him. With enough dual wield points it gets pretty nutty.

What's your build?

[Captain Wild]

Originally posted by Solomon Gumball:

Originally posted by Captain WIld, ♥♥♥♥ Of Destiny:

Been using a scoundrel/necro build. It's high risk but I use an undead and just coat the battlefield in blood and poison, makes it pretty hard to die unless multiple enemies focus him. With enough dual wield points it gets pretty nutty.

What's your build?

Depends, with the lone wolf playthrough it's easy to pump necro to at least 6 and the rest straight into dual wield (a few in scoundrel for the move speed). Get high hp from gear, pump finesse and enough wits that you're always first to move. When you get low and know you won't heal enough just use the necro skill that increases damage per hp lost. I rarely end a turn at less than full hp, and in both my lone wolf and 4 man runs there's always someone with an armor restore skill. With a 38% dodge chance it's really rare to be in danger of dying.

[Senenleigh]

I played through with my main as the cleric archetype. At end game I was about 85% crit with spells. Using decaying touch blood sucker combos is very effective, remember to get blood rain spell. Also Blood Storm, unbelievable physical damage with crit.

[[GAY] stoni mahoni]

I play with a evil elvish cleric character in my current co-op playtrough.

The character is a hybrid and spreads points between strength and intelligence while putting just enough into con to be able to keep a shield equipped during the use of Flesh Sacrifice. For damage, I use a mix of auto-attacks, Warfare Skills and Necromancy spells. Because I took the Elemental Affinity talent and because I always stand in blood while using necromancy due to Flesh Sacrifice, Necromancy spells cost one AP less each, which is awesome.

You also need only 3 points in Necromancy to use all Necromancy spells except a single one to their full effect. The damage scales only with intelligence and warfare.

As a physical damage dealer, one important thing to do in the beginning of a fight is chipping away the physical armour of your enemies as quickly as possible so you can cc them and/or hurt their vitality. To do that you have the following options on lower levels:

* Mosquito Swarm - It's only 1 AP if standing in blood with Elemental Affinity, it is ranged and it does roughly the same damage as a one-handed auto-attack.

* Raise Bloated Corpse - Mainly because of it's Vile Burst ability, as it is a very strong physical AOE and also take a bloated corpse with you all the time so you have a corpse available for this and other necromancy spells in every fight. It also adds the evil necromancy flavour.It also costs zero AP if cast while standing in blood.

* Decaying Touch - Make sure to use it when it deals enough damage to completely break the enemy's armour so it applies the decaying de-buff. Then you either use Blood Sucker on the enemy if he is standing in a huge pool of blood or Restauration for even more damage.

* Raining Blood - Mainly to spill blood everywhere so you can use Bloodsucker to damage decayed targets or to heal yourself and allies. You can also use it to get rid of fire surfaces. Additionally, it applies bleeding but this is just some nice side effect.

* Infect - It's a bit expensive AP-wise and also does the same damage as Mosquito Swarm while applying some situational de-buffs. Usually not worth it.

* Death Wish - A pretty crazy high risk/high reward spell. It increases your overall damage by the percentage of vitality you're missing. You can either go into a fight with low vitality, use Flesh Sacrifice and the cast it to then deal a huge amount of damage for 2 turns with your damage spells, warfare skills and auto attacks or you use it in a tough fight when your vitality was destroyed by enemies to turn the tide of battle. Works also really well with Living on the Edge. If you want to use this skill, you don't want more than 3 points in Necromancy as having a lot of life steal is actually bad with his.

* Shackles of Pain - Mainly makes enemies ignore you which you usually don't want. Very situational. Strong if combined with Last Rites.

* Last Rites - Can be used to deal damage in combination with Shackles of Pain, otherwise a solid Resurrection for dead party members. After it, following with Death Wish works really well. As you usually don't want your allies to die in the first place, it's situational, though.

Additionally, you can use Warfare skills to knockdown or cripple and battering ram for movement. Especially battle stomp is really good. Warfare also provides the Shield Throw Skill which you should have because the damage and range is very good. You want to max out Warfare as it increases your melee *and* Necromancy damage.

You should max out Hydrosophist for optimal heals (which you'll use for damage as well) and because you want Blood Rain and later on, Blood Storm. Armour of Frost is also very helpful. Don't use this school to deal damage as it is magical damage which doesn't mix well with the physical damage from melee and Necromancy.

Put one point in Geomancer for Fortify.

Consider puttin 1- 3 points into Polymorph for some additional ccs and movement skills.

[Gamebot]

Provided the player is experienced enough, high WIT Ranger was the best Glass Cannon character in my book because it can break physical armor of 1~2 enemies and CC them in 1st turn. GC Pyro with Elemental Affinity can deal ton of damage but lacks CC skills, GC Aero with EA can both deal ton of damage and use many CC skills but, duh, would get stunned by his own Aero skills. However, I changed my opinion after learning this information.

Originally posted by Ashera:

The reason for elf/jellyfish skin is that aero is the hardest to get a benefit from ele-affinity. jellyfish skin costs 1sp+1ap. so, use that at start, then sac-flesh to gain 1ap. this causes you to bleed causing lightning on your feet which reduces the cost of your aero spells by 1.

Jellyfish makes Elf GC Aero viable, so it would mean that you can play GC INT Necro Hydro Aero. However, mages need considerable amount of points on memory, so GC is actually viable at least after level 11~14, or you could exclude GC if you want safer build. It requires specific party setup and the player should know every surface and be able to manage them. This is a difficult build, but if you understand the mechanics of this game, it can be a pretty powerful build.

This is just an example, but it's what I'm planning for my 2nd play.
With GC, High WIT : Level 10 INT 20(poly+8) Memory 18 WIT22 Hydro3 Aero3 Necro3 Poly8
Without GC, Low WIT : Level 10 INT 30(poly+8) Memory 20 WIT10 Hydro3 Aero3 Necro3 Poly8
* Actual value of INT and WIT at level 10 will be much higher with gears and runes.

Also I would start to stack Warfare after level 10, and do both physical(Necro) and magic(Hydro Aero) damage.

[Senenleigh]

Stoni, I think I would get Savage Sortile if I were you and go wits.

Originally posted by stoni mahoni:

I play with a evil elvish cleric character in my current co-op playtrough.

The character is a hybrid and spreads points between strength and intelligence while putting just enough into con to be able to keep a shield equipped during the use of Flesh Sacrifice. For damage, I use a mix of auto-attacks, Warfare Skills and Necromancy spells. Because I took the Elemental Affinity talent and because I always stand in blood while using necromancy due to Flesh Sacrifice, Necromancy spells cost one AP less each, which is awesome.

You also need only 3 points in Necromancy to use all Necromancy spells except a single one to their full effect. The damage scales only with intelligence and warfare.

As a physical damage dealer, one important thing to do in the beginning of a fight is chipping away the physical armour of your enemies as quickly as possible so you can cc them and/or hurt their vitality. To do that you have the following options on lower levels:

* Mosquito Swarm - It's only 1 AP if standing in blood with Elemental Affinity, it is ranged and it does roughly the same damage as a one-handed auto-attack.

* Raise Bloated Corpse - Mainly because of it's Vile Burst ability, as it is a very strong physical AOE and also take a bloated corpse with you all the time so you have a corpse available for this and other necromancy spells in every fight. It also adds the evil necromancy flavour.It also costs zero AP if cast while standing in blood.

* Decaying Touch - Make sure to use it when it deals enough damage to completely break the enemy's armour so it applies the decaying de-buff. Then you either use Blood Sucker on the enemy if he is standing in a huge pool of blood or Restauration for even more damage.

* Raining Blood - Mainly to spill blood everywhere so you can use Bloodsucker to damage decayed targets or to heal yourself and allies. You can also use it to get rid of fire surfaces. Additionally, it applies bleeding but this is just some nice side effect.

* Infect - It's a bit expensive AP-wise and also does the same damage as Mosquito Swarm while applying some situational de-buffs. Usually not worth it.

* Death Wish - A pretty crazy high risk/high reward spell. It increases your overall damage by the percentage of vitality you're missing. You can either go into a fight with low vitality, use Flesh Sacrifice and the cast it to then deal a huge amount of damage for 2 turns with your damage spells, warfare skills and auto attacks or you use it in a tough fight when your vitality was destroyed by enemies to turn the tide of battle. Works also really well with Living on the Edge. If you want to use this skill, you don't want more than 3 points in Necromancy as having a lot of life steal is actually bad with his.

* Shackles of Pain - Mainly makes enemies ignore you which you usually don't want. Very situational. Strong if combined with Last Rites.

* Last Rites - Can be used to deal damage in combination with Shackles of Pain, otherwise a solid Resurrection for dead party members. After it, following with Death Wish works really well. As you usually don't want your allies to die in the first place, it's situational, though.

Additionally, you can use Warfare skills to knockdown or cripple and battering ram for movement. Especially battle stomp is really good. Warfare also provides the Shield Throw Skill which you should have because the damage and range is very good. You want to max out Warfare as it increases your melee *and* Necromancy damage.

You should max out Hydrosophist for optimal heals (which you'll use for damage as well) and because you want Blood Rain and later on, Blood Storm. Armour of Frost is also very helpful. Don't use this school to deal damage as it is magical damage which doesn't mix well with the physical damage from melee and Necromancy.

Put one point in Geomancer for Fortify.

Consider puttin 1- 3 points into Polymorph for some additional ccs and movement skills.

I think I would just get Savage Sortille if I were you and put points into wits. Splitting points in str and int is a terrible idea. I didnt know that Last rites could be targeted on an enemy. Good to know.

[[GAY] stoni mahoni]

@Senneleigh: Maybe it's just because I play with a mod that buffs enemy armour and vitality but in my experience I need the ability to auto-attack for physical damage because I do not have enough damaging skills to kill all enemies with it. As it must be physical damage to work with Necromancy, only strength- or finesse-based weapons are an option. If there were wands or staves with physical damage this would be different but they do not exist.

I also do not experience that damage is that bad as the main buff to damage comes from Warfare which I max anyway. It's maybe 10% less damage compared to a full intelligence build with spells or compared to a full strength build with melee atm (level 5).

I don't see any point to take Savage Sortilege in early game as my crit chance is below 10%. Later on it might be interesting to respec to get crit chance higher but as long as I have no significant bonusses from items, it seems pointless.

[Gamebot]

I wouldn't say that Hybrid can inflict better damage than pure STR or INT, but Hybrid is not as weak as you think. Hybrid at early level has little difference with pure STR/INT because they both don't have much points. At level 15~20, Hybrid can get significant amount of attribute points from gears, and pure STR/INT characters suffer from diminishing returns. As I said, Hybrid can't be stronger than pure STR/INT, but 'diminishing returns' decreases the differences between Hybrid and Pure, making Hybrid quite viable.

[mypony89]

Blood rain for Bleed effect + freezing skill (don't remember the name) then ice breaker.

[Gamebot]

Originally posted by mypony89:

Blood rain for Bleed effect + freezing skill (don't remember the name) then ice breaker.

global cooling? but doesn’t ice breaker also hurt allies?

[wendigo211]

I'm not a huge fan of blood on melee characters, because, by mid game, if you're a melee character standing in blood, odds are it's cursed blood. But it's pretty good for archers.

[mypony89]

Yeah, global cooling. I play with two lone wolf characters so I don't really have to worry about a bunch of my people being in it.

I normally use this for the ranged mobs that my melee can't get to.

Another time I used it was when I was during the fight in the black pits temple with the undead woman At that point I really didn't care how many of my people were hit by it and killed as long as the enemy was too lol.

Plus, if I'm not mistaken, it only destroys those who are frozen and below 20%. My toons normally aren't that bad and can handle a little tickle.

[Division by Zero]

Originally posted by Gamebot:

Originally posted by mypony89:

Blood rain for Bleed effect + freezing skill (don't remember the name) then ice breaker.

global cooling? but doesn’t ice breaker also hurt allies?

I'm in it for me. If my allies are standing on ice, acceptable losses. One less competitor for Divinity.

[mypony89]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

I'm not a huge fan of blood on melee characters, because, by mid game, if you're a melee character standing in blood, odds are it's cursed blood. But it's pretty good for archers.

Yeah, curse is a bit overused.