Rogue Mage Scientist?

[digitalmasterc]

I want to incorporate Rogue Scientist to a Mage build with Math or Promethean magic. I can't seem to work out the kinks though.

1. Rogue Scientist (Great skills - Long cooldown though)
2. Alchemy (
3. Tinker (for RS) or Burglary (I'm impatient w/ traps. This is the cause of most my early deaths)
4. Fleshsmithing (Heal, Buff and early DOT) or Perception (Range & Lucky Find)
5. Promethean Magic ( Rune + RS AOE) or Math Magic (Buff and Curse)
6. Blood Mage or Ley Walker (I wish I could have both but there's no room)

Any Thoughts?

[Haldurson]

How about this:
1. Rogue Scientist
2. Alchemy
3. Tinker
4. Perception
5. Promethean
6. Ley Walker or Blood Mage, as you prefer, but NOT BOTH (this really is not a build that requires both). Nowadays, I tend to favor Ley Walker, but Blood MAge has its virtues as well.
7. Mathemagics or Burglary, as you prefer (they have overlapping virtues, so I probably would not take both). I lean towards Burglary, myself, but you sound like you want a more mage-heavy build, so go with Mathemagics. The advantage of Mathemagics is that it has great single-target attacks, and it is a mage skill, which has a little bit extra synergy with other mage skills.

My prefered build out of this would be:
RS, Alchemy, Tinker, Perception, Promethean, Ley Walker, Burglary.

[digitalmasterc]

Thanks for the response.

I think ill try RS, Alchemy, Tinker, Perception, Promethean, Ley Walker and Math first

I hope with Tinker and Perception I'll have enough to manage traps. this'll be new territory. I almost always include burglary.

I'm still undecided between Blood Mage and Ley Walker, but I'm choosing the latter this time. Mostly because i haven't leveled it past Tap and I wanna see how well it handles later on. Also, Tap has saved so many of my mages in the past.

I'll let yah know how it goes

[Austellus]

Tinker alone will handle traps nicely. It's not hard to find enough +trap affinity items to outpace traps, and you can even use tinkering to just make the trappers toolbelt.

As for leywalker, don't bother taking the final skill. It's inferior to Mathemagic's Xeuclid's transformation in pretty much every way.

[digitalmasterc]

So far so good. Cleared level 4. Between Rune, Cannister and Brimstone pots I can clear zoos with my eyes closed. I use my dragon friend for single target while I throw pots and launch bolts. We'll see how long it lasts. There's a blue portal calling my name and I don't think I can resist

So far I bumped Ley Walker once.
1 point into RS.
Next ones went to rune and and pet.
Pushed alchemy up to brimstone.
I went straight to cannister after that.

[TheDeadDude]

Roguescientist is the best skill in the game imho.

1. Roguescientist (Core theme of build mentioned)
2. leylines (mana regen/teleport)
3. Lawmagic (instant refresh of those OP skills for mana cost/silence/reflect 50% skill)
4. Perception (loot/ingots)
5. Tinkering (traps and skill enhancer)
6. Alchemy (amazing potions and skill enhancer)
7. Mathmagic or promethian (imho crossbow would be a better choice)

promethian is good to but only for that fire wyvern summon. Spells suck after floors 7+ cept for the flame pillars you can spam all over the place. Take note im only considering this by mana efficiency. You can still clear all levels of dredmor with this skill but it takes far too much mana. Roguescientist skills can do this for free and only need 1 or 2 hits.

Why is crossbow a better choice? With the high alchemy/tinkering you can craft bolts of mass destruction and really highlevel base bolts. Alchemy gives access to the elemental bolts and encrusting for lifesteal or pushaway on hit skills. Crafting a bunch of brimstone potions makes for effective room clears levels 1-7 and softeners for 7+ ontop of your clear abilities.
Perception gives you endless amounts of iron and steel if you use "Craft 'n smelt" mod. Even with out that mod it still drops iron/steel/random ingot very often as well as other good items the real bonus is that +dodge and +reduced enemy dodge stats sight vision makes you more aware/ready and you can throw grenades/shoot at a silly distance because you see FAR. Crossbow can 1 shot elites that your base skills can't, so elites you need dead rightaway can be dealt with safely.
(Of course this is assuming you have bolt thrower or railgun bow and the strongest leveled steel bolts with some encrusts or kronged elemental buffs).

Leylines last skill has teleport so you don't need mathmagic.
Rogue skills with instant cooldown refresher replaces the need for constant AoE dps promethian provides because rogue skills already does that and has even stronger single target dps too.

When playing as any rogue/mage i suggest having a few concussion bombs to knock things away if you don't have a skill to do so already.

Mathmagic's only useful skill's imho is teleport, Zenzizenzizenzic and recursive curse. It doesn't scale very well into the end because of the common damage types it deals. Even with high spell power the spells really suck. Except for Recursive curse, that spell just amazing.

Here's the absolute kick to the chin though. If you come across galactic pan garblaster or w.e its called. That booze gives you Zenzizenzizenzic with out taking mathmagic skill. That buff alone and recursive curse is the only reason to use it. Burglary and artful dodger is better for movement altogether imho. Curse of golden ratio is only useful on difficulties that don't charge 1-70k gold for a crap item or "useful" item. With burglary you can just steal items with out getting caught and certain stores you can exploit stealing with out getting caught too. Of course if your level 15+ you can just kill everything/everyone and take what ever the hell you want lolz.

[Haldurson]

The Pan Galactic Gargleblaster's Lesser Syzygy stacks with Syzygy (which is from Astrology) which should also stack with Zenzizenzizenzenic. The fact that you have multiple abilities and items that do the same thing just means you can get greater effect by combining them.

[Austellus]

Leylines has a teleport, but it's an incredibly useless teleport compared to mathemagic. Mathemagic takes you anywhere you can see for 8 MP, leylines takes you to a spot in a cardinal direction for pretty much all of your MP. It's inferior in every regard.

[Haldurson]

You are also forgetting Burglary's "Ninja VAnish" -- while it doesn't teleport you, it guarantees that you are out of sight for 10 turns (or you attack or cast a spell). It gives you 10 turns guaranteed healing time even if you are surrounded. And that's besides Burglary's teleport "Move in Mysterious Ways". For pure utility, I don't think you can beat Burglary. The skills are not spammable, but mix them up with inky Hoglantern and potions of Invisibility, and you can pretty much stay invisible for as long as you need to. Teleports can't always guarantee you enough time to heal, or the ability to get out of the line of sight of ranged attacks and spells. But invisibility can.

[Austellus]

Only partly related to this, but I just had a thought about leyline vs. blood mage.

Leyline is probably better for a pure wizard build, since you can get the very useful 1 MP per turn regen with it, not to mention the wonderfulness of thaumaturgic tap.

Blood magic is probably better for a melee magic user, say people who go with viking magic, vampire or warlock. Since you're not using your MP regen stat to get the MP, you can afford to wear heavy armours, and you're not taking turns to cast tap in the middle of a fight.

[TheDeadDude]

Bloodmagic is good for promethian wizard builds and like you said melee mages. I didn't forget about burglary's ninja vanish teleport it's just i saw no reason to take it if i have leylines and tinkering for concussion bombs/traps. A teleport is a teleport regardless if it's cardinal or not, math magic has alot of skills i don't like and never use. I guess it's because im biased that mathmagic is useless even though i know it's not.