Rune Mastery

[Crowcreek]

How effecrive would Rune be against Typhon ? single mastery only

[Hrethgir]

Personally I have not tried a single Runemaster build against Typhon, but played a Berserker build. With that said, Rune has a lot of great abilities than can be very effective. Make sure you keep up on your resists in order to have some defenses agianst his attacks. Also, how do you want to play: melee or throwing weapon? Just things to keep in mind.

[Crowcreek]

Originally posted by Hrethgir:

Personally I have not tried a single Runemaster build against Typhon, but played a Berserker build. With that said, Rune has a lot of great abilities than can be very effective. Make sure you keep up on your resists in order to have some defenses agianst his attacks. Also, how do you want to play: melee or throwing weapon? Just things to keep in mind.

I'm using throwing, still debating on dual wield or shield

[Hrethgir]

Throwing would probably be a more suitable build; better than melee in my opinion. Single masteries are always a little harder, but with the right combination of gear and resists I think you will be able to do this! Best of luck:)

[Crowcreek]

Question- When I get to act 2 I'm gonna start ditching my recovery gear and replace it with gear more suited for my build. What exactly am I looking for to increase my damage % ?

[Hrethgir]

It really depends on your build and how the the progression is going. Usually recovery gear will carry you through Act 2 and likely the beginning of Act 3. With that said, be on the lookout for better gear that enhances your resists, DA, OA, etc.
A great resource for this on Youtube is a channel called "Clex plays". it is by far the most comprehensive analysis of the game I have found. Also, be on the lookout for better weapons. A lot of times a rare item can be better than an Epic item since you can enhance it with a charm or relic! Hope this all helps!

[Crowcreek]

Yes, I have watched some of his videos over the years. he's the man. As far as my question, for acts 1 and 2, I'm just gonna burn everything down. I'll start vendor shopping for resist sets as soon as I hit act 3. It's just I'm not sure what kind of damage I'm doing, is it lightning, elemental ? If I know what it is than I know what to shop for in the first half of the game. Thanks for taking time to help me. I'm going full blown INT and Dex with this build with a touch of health. When I hit epic, I'll add dream mastery.

[Hrethgir]

Elemental damage with throwing weapons is the way to go. I'm playing a Dragonhunter (Rune and Hunting) right now with Dex and Int, not so much strength. The build is a tank!
And anytime:)

[chris.ferrantegerard]

Originally posted by Crowcreek:

It's just I'm not sure what kind of damage I'm doing, is it lightning, elemental?

Throwing weapons do physical / pierce damage by default. Normally that would require a mix of Str / Dex but Rune builds can use Rune Weapon's Transmutation synergy to convert weapon damage to elemental instead so can go Int (too boost elemental damage) and Dex (to equip throwing weapons) instead.

From Rune you'll want Rune weapon for your spammable weapon attack for its buffs, Menhrir Wall for CC, Thunderstrike for shotgun AOE (it's best with dual wielding as you get 10x projectiles but still good for single wield). You can mix in Mines for some more elemental damage sources.

[Alexandre de Moraes]

Another good Titan Quest content creator I would recommend is Mr. Fae, from "The Line of Epic Heroes".

https://youtu.be/PnBo6iRhKW4

[Psixi]

I advise you to watch Clex's full playthroughs, some people might not like the idea of sitting down for hours watching someone else play. But once you learn and memorise his concepts, they will apply to all SSF playthroughs.

Since you are pinched for gear with RNG and time, the best rings you should get are Resistance ones, aka Resistant prefix. People like split resists, meaning one and one element, but unless you specifically need them to round out the last few resists of your build, go with the single resist variant it will make adding up numbers easier for you.

Look for rings with 30% res in Normal, and 60% in Epic. It's fine to take them without suffixes early game, but later on I recommend vendor farming for one's with both affixes. Since throwing weapons don't use OA, the best failsafe suffix would be Defensive Ability, and if you can't get that, Dexterity is a good second choice, since it gives 1:1 DA.

For ring components, Essence of Dinoysus Wineskin is great early, health and physical resist. You can use it late as well. But you might want to swap it for Demon's blood that gives Vitality resist, on both rings if you can't get it anywhere else on your gear.

I can't really give advice for items aside from that, it will be up to RNG. There are monster infrequent armors with base resist/affixes you can farm of course, though I would only really farm them if you care about the base stats since it's a low chance of getting the prefix/suffix you need, even with mods installed.

[Crowcreek]

So much for a zero death run. I died twice, one from a Hero boss in a crypt with a construct next to him ( I wasn't paying attention ) and one from Shadowmaw. I'm now at the end of act 1. I will continue to move on and get that achievement for a single mastery. Once I complete the game throughout legendary, I will start a new toon for a zero death run. Thank you for all the advice guys, much appreciated.

[Swanky]

Zero Death runs require a lot of knowledge about the game. Several bosses and monsters have oneshot mechanics if you're not paying attention. Resistances are important. That goes double if you're playing selffound.

For runes, either shield or dual wield is fine. I recommend a shield while focusing on the rune weapon skill tree. For normal play, str based build is fine but if you're planning to take it all the way through to legendary then at some point you will need to look into elemental conversion and thus speccing into intelligence instead of strength.

[Crowcreek]

Originally posted by Swanky:

Zero Death runs require a lot of knowledge about the game. Several bosses and monsters have oneshot mechanics if you're not paying attention. Resistances are important. That goes double if you're playing selffound.

For runes, either shield or dual wield is fine. I recommend a shield while focusing on the rune weapon skill tree. For normal play, str based build is fine but if you're planning to take it all the way through to legendary then at some point you will need to look into elemental conversion and thus speccing into intelligence instead of strength.

I'm moving along very smoothly still only 2 deaths and half way in act 2. The aoe dps with rune is insane I gotta say. What I'm gonna do now is finish all of normal to get the single mastery achievement. Then I'm gonna make a guardian for a zero death run, I have saved quite a few pieces of gear and relics to get him off to a very nice start and I will continue to save gear. I'm confident I can pull it off with a guardian and I will research each boss and zones to get capped resists on that run.