[CLASS BUILD] Zeblastian Hurtstacker (autoattacking double trouble dps wizard)

[Boeroer]

Mama Hurtstacker: "Son, get up, put on your robes, file your horns and start studying!"

Zeblastian: "But mom! I am le tired! Too tired to file my horns and too tired to learn these stupid bonus spells. I. Need. To. Rest!"

Mama: "You ugly, lazy green son of a stag! I will give you a beating for every rest you take from now on!"

Zeblastian: "Now that's motivating! Thanks mom! You called yourself a stag by the way..." *gets slapped*

 

Years later, after finishing studies and detonating his mom into clots, Zeblastian doffed and burned his robes and went out to finally get some rest - and find some friends, too.

He had to flee the Living Lands though because the authorities didn't like detonating people (especially moms) too much. And they also didn't appreciate him beeing a nudist now.

He went to the Dyrwood, reached Gilded Vale and entered a bar. While most of the guets looked at him with disgust, there where two adventurers who didn't. One was a wild orlan druid in heavy armor who was called Batsh!t Crazy and the other one an elven rogue that dressed up like a bee. Teehee!

Zeblastian quickly decided that they were even more bonkers than him - so he further decided to team up with them. What a nice coincidence. Blasting Time! Excellent!

 

 

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Zeblastian Hurtstacker

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Difficulty: PotD v. 2.03

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Class: Wizard

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Race: Nature Godlike

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Background: The Living Lands - Explorer

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Stats:

 

MIG: 19

CON: 03

DEX: 19 

PER: 15 

INT: 19

RES: 03

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Skills: Stealth 3, Athl. 3, Lore 10, Mech. 1, Surv. 9 

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Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important)

Blast (!)

Penetrating Blast ®

Weapon Focus: Noble ®

Dangerous Implement (!)

Marksman ®

Penetrating Shot

Interrupting Blows

 

Abilities

Arcane Assault (a)

Wellspring of Life (a)

 

Spells (I mainly used)

Lvl 1: Minoletta's Missiles®, Slicken, Eldritch Aim, Chill Fog

Lvl 2: Combusting Wounds(!), Infuse with Vital Essence(!), Curse of Blackened Sight, Concelhaut's Draining Missiles® 

Lvl 3: Deleterious Alacrity of Motion(!), Expose Vulnerabilities(!), Minoletta's Bounding Missiles®

Lvl 4: Confusion, Essential Phantom®, Minoletta's Concussive Missiles®, Ninagauth's Shadowflame®

Lvl 5: Malignant Cloud, Call to Slumber, Ryngrim's Enervating Terror

Lvl 6: Arkemyr's Capricious Hex, Citzal's Martial Power(!), Gaze of the Adragan

Lvl 7: Substantial Phantom®, Wall of Draining®, Tayn's Chaotic Orb®, Concelhaut's Crushing Doom  

 

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Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended):

 

Weapon set 1: Golden Gaze (*Exceptional, *Durgan Refined, *Burning Lash)

Weapon set 2: Engwithan Sceptre (*Exceptional, *Durgan Refined, *Corrosive Lash, Slaying:Wilder)

 

Boots: Boots of Speed®

 

Head: nothing but manicured horns (and some moss)

 

Armor: Monk's Outfit (*Exceptional, *Pierce-Proofed, *Durgan-Reinforced, *Dex +2)

 

Neck: Mantle of the Dying Boar(!)

 

Belt: Girdle of Maefolc Might

 

Rings: Ring of Searing Flames®, Sigil of the Arcane®

 

Hands: Gauntlets of Swift Action

 

Quick slots: Scarab Figurine, Scrolls with damageing spells, Potion of Alacrity, Potion of Infuse with Vital Essence

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This build is a pure glasscannon. It so glassy that it's not even classy. Gwisk Glas would have been a good choice, but he doesn't like robes so we will never fully experience this joke...

 

The min-maxed stats are not necessary though - you can also use more balanced stats or even let Aloth use this build (without the Wellspring aspect I used, see down below).

 

I just enjoyed the thrill of being in constant danger while dishing out lots of damage without the need of too much micromanagement. One shot from a gun or a hit with a two hander may be enough to let this guy go KO - but he really packs a punch with very few spells. Few spells mean less resting - and I hate a lot of resting. You can say I'm on his mom's side when it comes to resting.

 

A fellow party member with a reviving ability (or scrolls) might become his best friend.

 

The gimmicks I combined to form this build are the following:

 

Neverending Wellspring

I chose a Nature Godlike because of his racial ability "Wellspring of Life" that grants +2 DEX/+2 CON/+3 MIG if your endurance drops below 50%. If I combine that with dangerous implement, fast attack speed (Alacrity) and really low CON (3, see above) then it takes not too long and my glasscannon will drop below 50% endurance. Then the Wellspring starts pouring. But then I would have to stop using Dangerous Implement so that I don't go down. Well - not if I use the Mantle of the Dying Boar. This nice thingy lets you regenerate endurance quickly (especially if you have very high MIG) if your endurance drops below 33%. That is a great synergy effect: my enduracne starts to drop below 50% because of Dangerous Implement - but before I go down the Mantle kicks in and regenerates the raw damage I receive. The effect is powerful enough to exceed the raw damage from Dang. Impl. but stops at 33%. This way I will never reach 50% again. It's like the perfect setup for this racial ability. You could also call it "Wellspring of Ouch". As long as you don't receive a heavy hit you will be up and firing with +3 MIG, +2 DEX and +25% (and +2 CON, pfff).

The only things you have to watch out for is ranged attacks (hey maaan!), swarming critters (run away!) and low health (ah - right!).   

 

Infuse with vital Field Triage

You health pool can be a problem. Either you will have to rest quite often (d'oh!) or you use Field Triage and... nooo! You don't have to use this awful talents since you are a wizard. Infuse with Vital Essence raises your health by 50 points - temporarily. It will drop again after some time - but not if you use this spell (or the potion) right before combat ends. In this case the +50 health will be permanent (big thanks to Vorad for pointing this out!). Hooray I say! It does the same as the +health talents but you don't have to waste one single talent point for this. So every time your health bar gets red you just sip a potion or cast that spell before combat ends and you're good for the next encounter. 

 

Double Trouble

First I used a normal implement, then the Engwithan Sceptre that you can get quite early from that quest in Ondra's Gift. It's speed enchanted and that's a big plus. But the best weapon for this build is the Golden Gaze. It has 2 low dmg projectiles instead of one. It's the blunderbuss of implements... kind of.

The really good thing though is the fact that the two projectiles fly in fancy curves and then hit your target. These curves are randomly generated and besides looking good, most of the time they don't hit at the same time, but slightly shifted. This will cause two blasts instead of one. And it will also cause a lot more interrupts - not only on the initial target (two hits = 2 possible interrupts) but also on all the other enemies that get blasted. It's great that the projectiles don't hit at the same time. THis way the two interrupts don't happen at the same time but after another. THere's a greater chance of stunlocking the enemy this way. Golden Gaze has an interrupt value of 0.5 - so two hits from it may cause a lot of fairly long lasting interuption in an AoE. That's why I chose Interrupting Blows - and it works like a charm. Especially with Alacrity and Durgan Steel you 're firing so fast that you will have the impression tthat there's a constant stream of projectiles coming out of your rod (well, that does sound kind of awkward), interrupting like crazy.

The two projectiles combined do more damage than a single one from a normal implement - but we are facing a lot of foes with high DR and that's where the "blunderbuss effect" comes in: your DPS will drop below that of a normal implement if you can't lower the DR of enemies. Fortunately we have two talents that help a lot: Penerating Shot and Penetrating Blast. Blast itself has an inherent 5 DR bypass. With the Pen. Blast talent, it will overcome 10 DR which is totally awesome for an AoE attack. Penetrating Shot will give us 5 DR bypass for the two projectiles. That's not too much but better than nothing.

It's very convenient that Golden Gaze can lower DR by itself: it has a 5% chance to apply Expose Vulnerabilities on hit/crit. Since you have two projectiles, the chance climps up from 5% to nearly 10% per attack. Combined with Alacrity you will experience that this spell triggers very quickly, applying -5DR in a big AoE. It' best to target an enemy in the center at first so that as many foes as possible get afflicted.

There is a thing though: nearly 10% spell chance doesn't explain why I saw it trigger after two to four shots - all the time. I played with this setup a lot and I have the impression that the blast also counts as hit/crit for the spellchance (like carnage and Driving Flight do for other spellchance items, namely Grey Sleeper and Stormcaller). That would mean that if you fire into a group of 5 people, your spellchance will rise from the "official" 5% per shot to ~40%! This would match with my experience. I have no prove and did no excessive testing but the spell triggers A LOT - way more often than every 10th shot I take. So I don't know what's going on exactly but it's hilarious.

Another thing with this spellchance: If it hits multiple times the durations stack. What I mean is that if you hit an enemy with Exp. Vuln. who still suffers from it, it doesn't get suppressed but the duration goes up. After 10 shots or so most mobs will have Expose Vuln. on them for more than 45 secs - often more than a minute. While the effect doesn't stack (this would be too good), the durations do. That's so good. You can totally afford to switch the weapon and chose the damage type that is best without loosing the advantage of the 5 DR bypass. Not so fun fact: If you cast Exp. Vuln. by yourself, it will get suppressed.    

Now the double blasts overcome 15 DR (nasty!) and the two projectiles will have 10 DR peneration. This will outdamage other implements most of the time (not against beetles though). Ryona's Vambraces could add 3 more - but they don't work with the blast so I didn't use them on this char.

I kept the Engwithan Sceptre because it has different damage types than the rod. That's good if you meet foes that have high DR against your rod's damage but is weak against your sceptre's damage.

I first try to trigger Expose Vuln. and then switch to the sceptre in those cases. If I'm impatient I switch before battle and cast Expose Vuln. myself. The Eng. Sceptre will attack even faster than the rod, but you will have less interrupts.

This setup is great in terms of DPS and it also contributes to the rest of the party. Constant interrupts and -5DR without using spells (or just one - Alacrity) is very good resource management I'd say. Another good thing: like the Engineer build I presented the other day you can make good use of all the missile spells - or other spells that hit foes more than once.

If you get into a tough fight you always can go and cast all the missile spells you have after Expose Vuln. was applied. They also work with Penetrating Shot (yeah!) and some of them even have their own DR bypass. Against foes with 10-15 DR these spells are just brutal. For the other bugger in thick armor you can always choose one of your other spells of course.

A really good spell for me was Thayn's Chaotic Orb. I never thought much of it, but if you have two enemies standing side by side this thing is just devastating (esp. if they also suffer from reduced DR): The orb does good damage and will inflict some kind of nasty status effect (petrify, paralyze and so on) so that the target gets debuffed - then it jumps to the next target and does the same. Now comes the good part: when there is no other enemy in 5m range the orb will jump back to the initial target (which is debuffed already), doing more damage and inflicting another status effect (if you're lucky it's not the same as before, getting suppressed) and so on. Each of the two foes will be hit three times. Most enemies will just be superdead - and if not (high level Ogres for example might survive) they will be severly injured and debuffed. This also works great with three foes (2 hits each). One enemy alone doesn't trigger the jump after the first hit - so don't waste this spell on single targets.

However - for most enemies Alacrity and Golden Gaze are all you need. Did I mention that I love low micro and few rests?

You can also use Minor Blights from time to time - nearly forgot that... The Blights (like all summoned weapons these days) will use any weapon focus you chose by the way - you don't have to skill towards it. They profit from Dangerous Implement.

The icing on the autottacking cake is another thing that you will find under "Stack Attack" down below.

Then we have the inevitable Combusting Wounds. As you might know by now: I love this spell. And it works really well with blast and two projectiles than one. This doubles the damage output of Combusting Wounds. A wizard also has the wall spells which are perfect for Comb. Wounds. Although their positioning is tedious, they provide a constant stream of fast mini-hits that all trigger Comb. Wounds while in the meantime you can do other stuff (thanks to Wolken3156 for reminding me). All the ray spells can do the same for you.

This is one reason why I chose the Ring of Searing Flames. I have this spell in my grimoire but this ring is like having three bonus level 2 spells. And there is another reason why I chose the ring:

 

Implement Bros

Essential and Substantial Phantom! These two guys work really well with this setup. You are skilled toward implements and so are your two duplicates. They also cause a blast with their weapons and that's good for more interrupts and AoE damage as well as it's supergreat for... wait for it... Combusting Wounds! Yeah - again I know. But you alone can pump the damage output from Combusting Wounds from 100% to 300% with your rod and your wingman!

Another thing is that you can use the duplicate as cannon fodder. Since you are very fragile you really don't want to be targeted. If this happens, it's a good idea to summon a duplicate in front of you. Since it's also a low armored caster with low defl. the enemies will turn towards the duplicate (which is nearer most of the time) - especially if it attacks them with nasty, icy blasts.

In former times, in another patch, duplicates also could use spell bindings of all items you had (except weapons), including Forgemaster's Gloves. This was patched - I'm still sad. They do profit from items enchantments though - like +3 move speed from boots of speed or +15% attack speed of Gauntlets of Swift Action. That's very useful. It's a great advantage to have a very fast duplicate instead of a normal one.

The only spell binding items they can use now are rings. So even if I used up all of my Combusting Wounds from the ring - my duplicate always has 3 uses left. This is like exchanging a level 4 (or a level 7) spell for 3 level 2 spells. That's a whole bag full of Combusting Wounds until you have to rest. It's also good to send your duplicate to cast the spell since the range is quite short (the spell from your grimoire has 10m range, the ring only 5m :shrug:).

The other ring I used was the Sigil of the Arcane because it not only gives you +1 INT but also has Arcane Dampener which is superuseful against buffing enemies like druids and priests and Thaoses who can be superannoying. Take away Crowns or Shields for the Faithful and the enemy is much much easier to kill - true story! Besides that it also takes away immunities (yeah... shht! Don't tell anybody!). So your duplicate can also debuff now without you having to waste a precious spell. High Five!     

 

Stack Attack

The Neverending Wellspring is more overfunny than overpowered - it's a risky thing and a bit of a hustle. Good that it stacks with further stat buffs - for example Citzals Martial Power! Since this spell and Wellspring of Life affect the same stats you get a overall bonus of +10 DEX, +10 CON (who cares?) and +11 MIG. This does not only boost your attack-animation and recovery speed further, but also lets you dish out +33% more damage with your rod.

Might should be at 33 now. That's a total damage bonus of +69% from MIG alone. You can stack this further with main character's talents (like Gift From the Machine and so on), food and resting if you want. I think you can reach 42 MIG for a long duration (dragon meat) if you want to go all the way. 33 was enough for me though. I don't like food too much because I always forget it before tough fights.

Conveniently this bonus applies to anything you do that heals or damages - spells also. But wait - what spells? Isn't spellcasting impossible as long as C's Martial Power is on? It is - but only your wizard spells are blocked. Scrolls and items with Spell Binding still work. A Fireball or a Maelstrom is much more fun if it has +69% damage.

Your implement's damage: Together with Dangerous Implement and the Exceptional enchantment you're now doing ~ +130% base damage - with blinding speed and lots of blasts that cause interrupts. And you only needed two of your spells for this. Great!

 

Man - I can't stand the text editor any more. One more build and I'm finished - for now.

Next will be my druidic CC tank. Then I will not touch this game until WMII - promised!

 

 

 

Edit: Typos and additional infos and honorable mentions. Thanks a lot!

Edited April 16, 2017 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Wow - thousands of typos... will correct that later... too tired... Sorry for that!

[jeanpaim]

@Boeroer

Superb! I ll gonna try for sure! This build can be play solo (yeah! i love playing solo). I suppose not, because there is no point in mechanics. In this case, i'll need to adapt.

[Boeroer]

Thanks! That was a really quick response. 

 

Solo? I don't know... maybe - if you have lots of summons.  

 

He goes down really fast if you try to use the "Neverending Wellspring". 

Edited January 6, 2016 by Boeroer

[PrimeJunta]

Haha awesome! :D

[Boeroer]

I have to say I was tempted to write [GLASS BUILD] instead of [CLASS BUILD]...

[Wolken3156]

Just throwing it out there, Wall of Fire and Wall of Force work extremely well with Combusting Wounds due to their rapid hitting nature. They're a nightmare to aim but its so well worth it. Both also have extremely high interrupt rates which compliments the build's interrupt heavy nature (Its funny because he's a nature godlike! I am a comedic genius).

[AndreaColombo]

Brilliant stuff!

[Boeroer]

Thanks again.

 

The wall spells are great together with Combusting Wounds, that's true. Best thing is it keeps on hitting while you can do other stuff - like shooting.

I totally forgot to mention that. All the ray spells are also great for that.

 

I had a druid in the party with lots of DoT spells and didn't feel the need to bite into the tabletop while trying to place the walls correctly - so I skipped them this time. Just for once.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

[...]which compliments the build's interrupt heavy nature (Its funny because he's a nature godlike! I am a comedic genius).

Thanks for the spilled coffee on my keyboard by the way... :D

[Raven Darkholme]

Muahaha

 

Thanks for another great read.

 

Purely from the stats soloing would work I think, btw.

My curent solo wizard has 6 CON, I don't think 3 makes much difference.

[Sharidin]

I've been using the basics of this build for Aloth since the vanilla game, and yes it works even on non min-maxed characters just fine!

 

You can rush level 10 Endless Paths (with a bit of cheese?) for the Rod of Pale Shades (-5 defences, stun on crits) and it's great, too!

 

So, I'm not really sure how Weapon Focus synergizes with the Wizard's summoned weapons, and if those weapons inherit abilities from the one currently equipped... But if they do, I guess you could have something like a Spelltongue rapier (Noble) on swap and summon a weapon for better single target damage? Although, Golden Gaze damage is really nice for single target, too. I wanna test some stuff but I've kinda forgotten where to find Spelltongue!

[Boeroer]

Spelltongue: chest (with a cart) in Russetwood, lower right of the map if I recall correctly. It's great for a wizard: you can use it to prolong all the buffs that are on you. Wiuth Alacrity you can hit fast enough to keep the buffs up for the whole fight. 

 

Summoned weapons use the Weapon Focus you have - like Soulbound Weapons do. It's very convinient.

 

Golden Gaze is just great for a wizard because it not only causes 2 blasts for each shot but also causes -5 DR for a long time in a huge area. What I also forgot to mention:

If Expose Vulnerabilites hits again while enemies still suffer from it, it's durations get added. It doesn't get suppressed! So most of the time, when I did like 10 shots, the enemies hat Exp. Vuln. for over a minute!

This is not the case if you cast it yourself (gets completely suppressed) - it only seems to work with the rod.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Purely from the stats soloing would work I think, btw.

My curent solo wizard has 6 CON, I don't think 3 makes much difference.

I also think that this is negligible.

I have not much experience with solo playthroughs - thanks for the info.

I'm actually quite happy that this build can also work solo.

[Raven Darkholme]

 

Purely from the stats soloing would work I think, btw.

My curent solo wizard has 6 CON, I don't think 3 makes much difference.

I also think that this is negligible.

I have not much experience with solo playthroughs - thanks for the info.

I'm actually quite happy that this build can also work solo.

 

Well Wizards have stuff like Infuse with vital Essence for HP and Arcane Veil + several spells for Deflection.

[PrimeJunta]

Anyone for a PotD solo trial of iron with one of these though? That would be tense...

[Raven Darkholme]

Anyone for a PotD solo trial of iron with one of these though? That would be tense...

It's actually not that hard.

You just need two saves one ToI and one not.

Find a 100% working startegy for a fight on the normal save, adapt it to the TOI save, done.

It's not really different from reloading on a normal save.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Raven Darkholme

[PrimeJunta]

That sounds like work not fun.

[Raven Darkholme]

That sounds like work not fun.

It actually is not that different from a normal playthrough with reloads, when you failed.

You play the part where you don't fail twice, that's true.

[PrimeJunta]

Hm, now that you describe it that way, yeah it probably isn't. Can you have two clients open on the same machine at the same time though?

 

Personally I only play ToI for the extra tension, and haven't even attempted a solo ToI run. I find ToI + Hard to be quite enjoyable actually -- on PotD I do get TPW's every once in a while, so I know I wouldn't get all that far. At least not without some serious planning about what to do in which order. On Hard, if I get TPW'ed I know it's out of carelessness or stupidity; with PotD it's that or just plain ol' lack of skill (or "bad luck" as I like to tell myself).

[Raven Darkholme]

Hm, now that you describe it that way, yeah it probably isn't. Can you have two clients open on the same machine at the same time though?

 

Personally I only play ToI for the extra tension, and haven't even attempted a solo ToI run. I find ToI + Hard to be quite enjoyable actually -- on PotD I do get TPW's every once in a while, so I know I wouldn't get all that far. At least not without some serious planning about what to do in which order. On Hard, if I get TPW'ed I know it's out of carelessness or stupidity; with PotD it's that or just plain ol' lack of skill (or "bad luck" as I like to tell myself).

You can have two games open, but I tend to just play 2 hours on no ToI and then replay that part on ToI.

[bigwillystyle]

This is fantastic setup for my main man, er, elf Aloth.

[Elric Galad]

Hey, I'm planning a less focused version of this build, and I'm specifocally wondering about talents appliczble to summoned cloned.

 

Do the following works (blast works for sure):

- penetrating blast

- penetrating shots

- weapon focus (it may depends on which one unless clones weapons are universal)

- dangerous implements

- interrupting blows

- corrode damage talents

- various defensive talents like superior deflection

 

Bonus question : is it the same for Monk clones ?

Edited April 18, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

I think all passives  work - but not the modal ones I guess. So Dangerous Implement may not work beause you would have to trigger it somehow and there's no button for that when you select your duplicate. At least I never saw a duplicate lose endurance while shooting. May also be the case for Penetrating Shot. But that's all easy to verify via combat log I think.

 

What corrode damage talents do you mean? Spirit of Decay? Because of the Necrotic Lance from the high level duplicate? Don't know it that's worth it. Since those duplicates do pure shock damage with their wands maybe Heart of the Storm would be great. Too bad there's only one decent ranged shock spell in the wizard's arsenal.

 

What also works (and is really great) are boots of speed. And rings with Spell Bindings (Ring of Searing Flames, Arcane Dampener, Ring of Unshackling) also still work. Combusting Wounds with two fast hitting blaster wizards (one original, one duplicate) ist still good. And the duplicate will always have a fully reloaded ring if you summon it.

 

The monks also profit from boots of speed and Long Stride. So I guess they also get the other passive abilities/talents. But I don't know for sure how it all works in 3.02 to be honest. I'm afraid you will have to test it and report.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

Sure, I'll try to do a bit of testing today. Yesterday I focused on testing salvation of time combos and it worked perfectly with arcane veil )

 

Yes spirit of decay was for the high level clone's necrotic lance. Of course, it isn't worth it but it may be a minor reason to think about a Ice/Corrode moor wizard main reason would be the lvl 8 black bow. This bow attacks WILL instead of deflection which can be very useful against some ennemies.

 

Thank you for the tip about electrical damages. I was indeed wondering about it too since I just remembered the clones did electrical damages. Unfortunately you're right about wizard missing electrical spells.

 

Maybe a 4 elements wizard could be fun ? Just to have the best possible wall of many colours

Edited April 18, 2016 by Elric Galad