Undead cleric build

[zmanbuilder]

Been trying to optimize this build for days, so far the build is pretty simple, start with the cleric preset, but swap necro for terra get poison needle for a good self heal, take your basic heal too because what cleric cannot heal its team, and for the third one, either armor of frost or fortify is fine.

As for leveling, at level 2 pick up warfare and get battle stomp and bouncing shield and or battering ram (i chose not to start with warfare as you can get warfare skills for cheap at the start) at level 3 you can put a point in necro for decaying touch and blood sucker, blood rain is also nice (contaminate is also a option if you do not have others in melee range), do not forget to pick up the free rain skill book in the chest by the gators at the fort.

It is a strength build that uses a shield, skills are picked by how useful they are at the time, and starting with a way to put a poison puddle under you at the start is very nice.

This build will pair very nice with a witch build, i am still working on it though.

[dan.w]

It seems like you're splitting focus between STR and INT abilities. While this isn't a massive deal in the first bit of the game, you will start to quickly notice your damage start to lag behind the damage of others that are focusing on a single offensive stat.

If you still want to do the support role while being a STR build, I'd recommend focusing on spells that don't scale off of INT. That basically means don't bother with damage spells and focus on healing/buff spells as those strictly scale off of level and their respective spell schools. One final note here, healing spells cast on undead or decaying enemies scale both off Warfare AND Hydrosophist, making the damage especially spicy if you put points into both.

As for getting self healing on your undead, it would be best if you had a different character specialize in geomancer for poison attacks. If that isn't to your liking, putting a few points into necromancer should still be sufficient. The lifesteal from necromancer doesn't count as normal healing will still heal undead. I've done a few undead melee builds surviving mainly on 3-5 points on necromancy. You will want to put more points in if your damage output is lower.

Hope this helps!

[zmanbuilder]

the skill i want for the build.

Hydrosophist: Armor of Frost, Rain, Restoration, Cleanse Wounds, Global Cooling,Healing Ritual, Mass Cleanse Wounds, Ice Breaker.

Geomancer: Fortify, Poison Dart.

Necromancer: Blood Sucker, Decaying Touch, Raining Blood, Bone Cage.

Scoundrel: Adrenaline.

Warfare: Battle Stomp, Bouncing Shield, Deflective Barrier, Phoenix Dive.

[dan.w]

Originally posted by zmanbuilder:

the skill i want for the build.

Hydrosophist: Armor of Frost, Rain, Restoration, Cleanse Wounds, Global Cooling,Healing Ritual, Mass Cleanse Wounds, Ice Breaker.

Geomancer: Fortify, Poison Dart.

Necromancer: Blood Sucker, Decaying Touch, Raining Blood, Bone Cage.

Scoundrel: Adrenaline.

Warfare: Battle Stomp, Bouncing Shield, Deflective Barrier, Phoenix Dive.

Most of this seems fine, however you're a bit lacking in STR abilities so I'm curious as to why you want to do STR over say INT with shield. A couple other points for you:

1. Your mobility options seem a bit limited later on and you have a few low range abilities. You may want to think about taking up the scoundrel jump (I forgot the name currently), the talent "The Pawn" which gives you a bit of free movement every turn, or take 1 level in Polymorph to get Bull's rush. A combination of the above would go a long way for mobility.

2. As mentioned before, you have a couple INT scaling abilities. Poison dart will become less and less significant for you over time. In addition, Decaying touch will also do less damage over time and the Decaying status is blocked by armor, so you will likely have to strip the target's armor beforehand using other means.

3. For Blood sucker, undead characters do not bleed so you will likely not have a significant amount of blood to use on yourself. Other living allies should be fine, but even so you will likely have to use blood rain to get the maximum effect. Keep in mind that is a total of 3AP and 2 abilities for 1 heal.

4. Just as a warning, Mass Cure Wounds will deal significant damage to your undead. Make sure you have sufficient armor and/or health to be able to withstand the hit.

[Chaoslink]

If that’s the route you want to go, just don’t invest in strength at all, aside from the few points for equipping weapons. Go full INT otherwise. Your melee attacks won’t do much, you’ll only really use Battle Stomp and others for their CC effects, but primarily you’ll be a mage.

Bear in mind though, healing isn’t really something you should want to focus. This game favors highly aggressive teams that plow through the enemy in just a few turns, locking down what they can’t outright kill with CC. You’re not going to be trading blows as much and the amount of healing you get from spells typically costs more AP than it takes to deal that damage, meaning you’ll slowly lose the fight.

To give you an idea, as a player with 1000 hours, my teams typically only have access to armor restore spells through scrolls and never worry about HP healing at all. Aside from curing status effects, I rarely use these spells just for the healing anyway. You’re often far better off using AP to attack an enemy and CC them to stop incoming damage than you are healing damage already taken.

[MULTIPASS]

I think this build could use some fundamental revision if you're going that way.

As an undead, healing spells won't work on you so you're splitting your healing investment into 2 separate skills (hydro and geo) neither of which have anything to do with STR. You're being pulled 3 different ways here.

[zmanbuilder]

I suppose my cleric build is made to compliment a witch build, something with Corrupted Blade and Decaying Touch. Blood Rain on my cleric is also used to help set up the witch.

As for Poison Needle, its so i can throw it at my feet for passive healing.

I do agree that it has a lack of movement skills, Battering Ram would help with that.

As for why str over int, healing does not scale with it, and the cleric will be spending its time in melee range (also gets to be the team pack mule).

Talents i had planned are Opportunist, Living Armor, The Pawn, and Hot Head.

[zmanbuilder]

Also forgot to mention that i picked Blood Rain as its another thing i can freeze with Global Cooling

[dan.w]

Originally posted by zmanbuilder:

I suppose my cleric build is made to compliment a witch build, something with Corrupted Blade and Decaying Touch. Blood Rain on my cleric is also used to help set up the witch.

As for Poison Needle, its so i can throw it at my feet for passive healing.

I do agree that it has a lack of movement skills, Battering Ram would help with that.

As for why str over int, healing does not scale with it, and the cleric will be spending its time in melee range (also gets to be the team pack mule).

Talents i had planned are Opportunist, Living Armor, The Pawn, and Hot Head.

Very few of your abilities are scaling with STR is the issue. The only benefit you're getting otherwise is carrying capacity and auto attack damage assuming you are using a STR scaling weapon. If you're going STR I'd also strongly recommend Tentacle Lash in the Polymorph Tree. It can do a massive amount of damage (especially if you get the savage sortilage talent and build some crit chance). In addition it can disarm.

[Chaoslink]

The problem with going Strength isn't just the lack of spells that scale off it, but also you're going with a shield meaning a strength based one hander, which does crap damage even if its your focus.

You're far better off being a spellcaster, going INT and ignoring melee. Focus more on Poison spells as you go and friendly fire yourself as you hit enemies with them. One handed melee with strength is very weak even if you're full focus on it. You're going to be split between melee and support, making it less relevant. It isn't worth the investment.

[Spawnling]

Have you considered using an elf for your witch? Elves carry their own blood supply ;)
Torturer can inflict bleeding through armor with rain of blood and can also apply other effects on enemies.

There are also the following spells to consider:
Geo: Mend Metal, Reactive Armor, Worm Tremor, Poison Wave
Hydro: Soothing Cold
Poly: Bull Horns (early game move without wasting a cc and inflcits bleed), Tentacle Lash, Medusa Head (both strength scaling)
Scoundrel: Cloak and Dagger

[zmanbuilder]

Looking over my selected skills, not many scale with int, the main damage move is Ice Breaker and it scales on level and hydro, all the heals also only scale on hydro and level. Decaying Touch is only really selected to set Decay, and i'm pretty sure Necromancer skills get a bonus from warfare.

Poison needle is just for placing a puddle, i cannot find any info if int effects the tick damage of poison or if puddles scale, and i have tried self poison bombing, it ends up on fire (i have been theory crafting a undead demon lizard build that is all about setting itself on fire)

with all my tanky moves i could likely get away with a 2 handed weapon... I can pick up Vampiric Hunger to offset the lack of a shield.

[Chaoslink]

If you go with a two hander, by all means stay strength. This game favors a very aggressive, damage-centric focus over the defensive, tanky one. So if you're going with a shield, the low damage of your one handed weapon basically makes attacking with it worthless to you. This is why you'd be better off with Intelligence simply because your spells would be the better option for combat. So if you go with a two hander instead, your damage will be respectable enough to go strength instead.

See, the problem with a tanky character is that there's no real way to get the enemy to focus you. While there is a hidden threat mechanic that exists, the way it seems to work is to pick a target based on the amount of damage potential they have as well as the ease of CC'ing them. So a high armor tank with low damage potential is the last target the enemy wants to attack.

[Brids17]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

If that’s the route you want to go, just don’t invest in strength at all, aside from the few points for equipping weapons. Go full INT otherwise. Your melee attacks won’t do much, you’ll only really use Battle Stomp and others for their CC effects, but primarily you’ll be a mage.

Bear in mind though, healing isn’t really something you should want to focus. This game favors highly aggressive teams that plow through the enemy in just a few turns, locking down what they can’t outright kill with CC. You’re not going to be trading blows as much and the amount of healing you get from spells typically costs more AP than it takes to deal that damage, meaning you’ll slowly lose the fight.

To give you an idea, as a player with 1000 hours, my teams typically only have access to armor restore spells through scrolls and never worry about HP healing at all. Aside from curing status effects, I rarely use these spells just for the healing anyway. You’re often far better off using AP to attack an enemy and CC them to stop incoming damage than you are healing damage already taken.

I think a lot of this comes down to difficulty and preference. You can do just fine on classic with a 2h build and support cleric spells. Sure, you can argue it's optimal to go full damage and CC but it's totally viable to play more defensive and rely on healers as well. Hell, even in tactician you should be fine to play less than optimal builds if you know what the expect with the encounters.

[zmanbuilder]

as much as i try to build the perfect undead cleric, its still a boring way to play, if i make a pure water mage, i can heal freeze and do damage, cleric build is one that gets better at level 16 when you get Ice Breaker and Guardian Angel, a really good tanking move.

when i try to use this build i just start thinking of other more fun ways to play,

[MULTIPASS]

Try Chaoslink's earlier suggestion - a summoner who picks up some points in all kinds of skills for utility and cc. It's kind of the only way to play a support role.