[CLASS BUILD] The Stress-free Master (Loremaster aka Wiz/Chant)

[ppscurry]

[CLASS BUILD] The Stress-free Master

Evoker/Beckoner

 

Description:

 

This build is intended for people who want to have the most stress-free PotD solo run without being overly cheesy with their strats. This might not have the best DPS or the best survivability but what it does have is sustainability, great survivability and great dps without being too dependent on end-game gear. This build works smoothly from start to finish. Yes, even at level 1.

 

Race: Whatever you fancy but here's a ranking anyway. Honestly, it makes no difference. Remember, 'Stress-free'

 

No.1: Nature Godlike for the power levels

No.2: Meh, Moon Godlike just for an easier time early on. Wood Elf is pretty nice for the resistance to affliction.

No.3: Meh.

 

Difficulty: POTD

Solo: Yes
Stats :

 

          18 Might

          10 Con

          10 Dex

          18 Per

          18 Intelligence

          3 Resolve

 

Maxing might is obvious. 10 Con is honestly all you will ever need, most of your survivability will come from your shield/nemnok staff once you get it, plus your wizard spells. 10 Dex because with all that tankiness, casting super fast isn't that much of an issue compared to accuracy and duration+aoe. Max Perception because you can never have enough accuracy. Max Intelligence because of duration and aoes for your chants. Resolve is just junk. Period. Everything hits you on PotD anyway and even with 3 resolve, I have 100+ deflection without my chant buffs. That's more than enough to prevent permanent crits on you. As for status effects, just outtank them and chanter has a ton of resistance to afflictions so stuns/para/charms aren't even an issue.

 

Skills:

 

Go for hunter for the mechanics.

 

Boost mechanics till you reach 4 minimum/6 if you don't have hylea's blessing or if you don't want to use it.

Boost Survival till 2 or 4 for convenience sake.

 

Everything into metaphysics after that. 

As for the other skills, I suggest mechanics up to 8 some athletics. You can retrain anyway so don't worry too much other than the initial two steps I managed. I will elaborate more on that later. 

 

Proficiency:

 

Large Shield, Sabre.

As you level up, flail, battle axe, quarterstaff. Whatever you have leftover doesn't matter. Flail modal is important since it gives a reflex debuff. I don't really use it much but without modal, there's really no reason to use a flail. Quarterstaff modal is useful but only once you get Nemnok's staff.

 

Blessing of Berath:

 

Highly Recommended: Unique Vendor

Recommended: Double Skill bonus and bonus attributes.

Great if you have it: 50k gold

Whatever: The rest.

 

Gear:

 

I will split it up into early/mid/late game for those who are newer.

 

Early:

 

Firethrower's Glove: Unique Vendor in Port Majo(?). You need the Blessing of Berath for this. Otherwise, go for some generic +2 Might gauntlets (There's one sold in the vendor in Queen's Landing.)

 

Burglar's Gloves: Just for the mechanics boost. Optional but quality of life item. Vendor Item (Nekataka? or Crookspur? I forgot.)

 

Belt: Some generic +2 con belt or just nothing if you want to be fancy.

 

Boots: Boots of the Stone for the affliction resistance

 

Cloak: Cloak of protection/greater protection. Once again, doesn't matter too much.

 

Armor: Depending on your gold, either the best breastplate you got or Devil of Caroc(Nekataka Vendor, Periki's Overlook) (useful throughout). Alternative is Miscreant Leather from Fort Deadlight (Benweth). Essentially you want the most armor rating for the least recovery penalty. These two options give bonus to recovery as well. Ultimately, you want to switch to Devil of Caroc for the armor rating (IMPORTANT)

 

Weapon Mainhand: Sasha Singing Scimitar (Nekataka Vendor, Periki's Overlook). If you don't have the gold, go for the best option you have but gold shouldn't be an issue, I'll explain why later.

 

Offhand: Best large shield you can get. Cadhu Scalth is your shield of choice (Old City, Gullet from the two cornett quest. It is possible to sneak past the boss and avoid fights if you are experienced with the area. I suggest picking up the cornett of the depths from the initial half of the old city before re-entering using the Undercroft's entrance. Complete the Delver's Row(Gullet) questline (Dereo). His questline will lead you the rest of the way.) Cadhu Scalth boosts your survivability by a LOT so it is important to get it by the late mid-game.

 

Necklace: Stone of Power. You don't really have to buy this, I just happen on a ton of these. Great for fireball alpha strikes. Alternative is the +perception necklace in (Port Maje? or Majo)

 

Rings: Ring of Focused Flame (Nekataka vendor, Periki's Overlook ), Kuara's Prize (Ori o Koiki , you can bribe the doorlady, at least I was able to (2000g)) Otherwise, it doesn't really matter much, only the Ring of Focused Flame is useful for this early stage.

 

Helmet: Recruit Aloth and take his helmet. (I made him leaden key in my history) Once you unlock delver's row (Nekataka, Gullet) pay the assassin to kill the vithrack to get Whitewitch Mask.

 

Pet: You want something that boosts your spells, perception, might or aoe. Honestly, it doesn't matter much but I settled on Nalvi in the end. I don't remember where I got him. Nalvi reduces recovery penalties.

 

Grimoire: Ninagauth's Teachings (Arkemyr's mansion, Nekataka, Periki's Overlook). ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL and easy to get too.

 

Walkthrough on how to grab the grimoire:

 

Grab a thief's putty, Burglar's gloves, and rest with Hylea's Blessing to boost your mechanics to 10 artificially. Alternatively, do the quest for the vendor in the dark cauldron (in the same area) to gain entry, but you still require a degree of mechanics to pass this area easily. I forgot if there was a lock on the chest with Ninagauth's Teachings so just get your mechanics up to 4/6 as a precaution.

 

Unlock the front door, pop your thief's putty if your stealth sucks and avoid the patrols as you head straight down the corridor. Open the main doors and head to the upper floor. On the upper floor, you will come upon an exit on your southwest. Take it and you will enter a rampart of sorts. Walk northwards to another door and enter it. Once you do, follow the path to Arkemyr's bedroom. Loot the entire room and read any notes you find. One of them give you a password to use. Equip Arkemyr's robes.

 

Proceed back to the upper floor and this time, open the first door on the right to find an imp inside. He has a gem you can grab off him by pretending you are Arkemyr and using the password you found in his bedroom. From this point on, all the patrols won't be alerted by presence. Head downstairs to the first floor and search Arkemyr's study for another piece of note with the vault combination (middle room on the right). Once you do so, head down to the lab using the stairs.

 

From here, head straight and take a right, you should a wheel like object you can interact with. That's the vault mechanism. If you did everything right, you can open it. Once you open it, watch out for traps etc. There's a 10 mechanics locked chest in there. Grab the quest  item, the grimoire, and the figurine. 

 

Mid-game:

 

Gloves: Firethrower's Gloves

 

Belt: Maker's Own Power (A belt that petrifies you and heals you but I cannot recall where I got it. It's an easy bounty with a construct)

 

Boots: Boots of the Stone or whatever you fancy, assuming your affliction resistance is taken care of.

 

Cloak: Cloak of Greater Protection, easily found and bought from vendors

 

Armor: Devil of Caroc

 

Weapon Mainhand: Magran's Favor (Kohopa's Fang mini-dungeon) Right at the northern edge of the map. Slightly left of the middle line.)

 

Shield: Cadhu Scalth. Absolutely critical, if your game is bugged, rip you. In that case, equip the best large shield or shield you can find.

 

Alternative Weapon: Sasha (Enchanted to give empower points. Either works fine honestly.)

 

Necklace: Orishia, gives a minor dmg shield, action speed, recovery speed, penetration, blah blah. A whole ton of stuff really. Grab it from a bounty (Flamewalker Vessali) Somewhere mid-east. Not entirely sure.

 

Rings: Ring of Focused Flame, Kuara's Prize.

 

Helmet: Whitewitch Mask

 

Pet: Nalvi or whatever you fancy

 

Grimoire: Concelhaut's grimoire (Berkana Observatory) You need to kill concelhaut for this and it will probably be a boring fight (really long). I did it around level 12 or 13? Save your raw damage spells for the right moment. Ensure you have resistance to resolve afflictions. Use ogre summons to bash him, very very slowly. When he tries to use his finger spell (that's the icon) run away from him since that spell heals him. Another key strategy is carefully pull mobs. Engage from as far as possible and run backwards, making use of the fog of war to kite the melee mobs away to the stairs. You will get it after a few tries.

 

After grabbing the grimoire, it's not necessary to swap to it since power level 7 is the main reason to get it.

 

 

End-game:

 

Cloak: Giftbearer's Cloth. Gives defenses, additional quick item slots and weapon slots. Mini-dungeon (Fampyr's Crypt, south and slightly east of Nemnok) I suggest grabbing the resistance chant for this fight but it's doable without it. Once again, careful pulling is required since they are really a pain to deal with together.

 

Mainhand: Magran's Favor with Cadhu Scalth

                  Sasha (or a flail) with Cadhu Scalth

                  Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff. (From Nemnok's questline, Drowned Barrows/Junvik Village. Northwest corner on the edge of the line) Grab the defensive and +power level enchantments. 

 

Everything else is the same. This section is optional tbh.

 

Making Money early on: 

 

Stock up on the cheapest crew, food, water you can find. Grab four imperial long gun (dunnage and neketaka), aedryan hull treatment and cottonweave sails. Ensure your supplies are maxed and go ship hunting. Start with the easier foes first to build up crew experience. With this build you can tackle most of the ships you find in this game except for the rathun ships and Takabna. You might have to reload sometimes. Just remember to repair your ship mid fight.

 

By farming like this, you can level easily, earn easy superb, legendary, uniques and grab a ton of experience and money from bounty quests.

 

Ability Choices:

 

Initial Choice: Minoletta Minor Missiles(WIZ) and a chant (CHAN)

 

Next: Summon Skeleton. Then just grab spirit shield(PL1), mirror image(PL2), displacement(PL3). You need to rely on your grimoire for attack spells.

 

PL3: Minoletta's Bounding Missiles (not necessary but it's reliable compared to fireball)

 

PL4: Summon Ogre. As for chants, they don't really matter till you get to the resistance chants or the ancient memory chants. Grab Minoletta's Concussive Missiles and Ironskin. If you have Concelhaut's grimoire, feel free to retrain out of Minoletta's Concussive Missiles.

 

Feel free to respec and get rid of skeletons at this point.

 

PL5: Garbage. I rather passives. Ryngrim's Enervating Terror is a pretty nice pick but I didn't find much use in this build. Feel free to pick it.

 

PL6: So Singt Thy Biting Winds o'Eld Nary (CHAN) and Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst. 

 

PL7: Set to their purpose they all knew their part (CHAN, requires a previous pick at PL5 I believe). ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL. GRAB THIS FIRST. At level 20, grab Set to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death (CHAN). Wiz spells from your grimoire.

 

Passives:

 

Potent Empower, Quick Summoning, Rapid Casting, Scion of Flame (not necessary but I'm going for the delayed fireball theme). Weapon and Shield Style. Combat Focus

 

Chants:

 

One Dozen stood against the power of the saint, Blessed was Wengridh, Ancient Memory, Seven Men onto the deck they went, They shield their eyes against the fampyr's gaze. 

 

There were two other chants I picked but I didn't really like them, feel free to use those two talent points for something else. One was a PL1 chant and the other was a PL5 chant.

 

Strategy:

 

Rely on your skeletons and ogres to coast through the ****ty phase of being a wizard. Essentially, the start and whenever you are out of spells. Powerful combos include:

 

Empowered fireball: With your evoker power level and gloves and empower and nature godlike (if you used it, I didn't). You can severely cripple a whole mob right away. Use your ogres to bash the rest up. They hit really hard. Really.

 

Empowered Minoletta's Concussive Missiles: Once you have this, don't empower fireballs unless they have resistances to crushing. This combo murders entire mobs even at high levels.

 

Concelhaut's Crushing Doom: Works on every major boss except for the last one. Keeps them cced for a really really long time.

 

Set to their purpose they all knew their part: The meat of this build. Other than the summons, this is the other reason to pick a chanter. This gives you resource points(spells). With this, you can spam as many defensive spells as you want. Eg. Arcane Reflection, Iron skin, displaced, mirrored image, spirit shield. Also turbocharges your phrase generation. You will never run out of resources period so just spam whatever you like. 

 

Summons: Ogres will get you through most of the early levels. Once you pick up the PL7 weapons summon, use that instead. Summons are really really good. Without summons, you have to cheese a lot more. With them, you can just sit in the back line and quietly heal up and watch your ogres bash them up. Empowering summons kinda suck so don't do it. Just empower your minoletta.

 

Opening Rotation (non-PL7): Spam your defensive buffs, summon ogres, empowered minoletta. Most monsters won't be able to kill you fast with your shield and buffs so don't worry.

 

PL7 Opening: Spam your defensive buffs, cast Set to their Purpose, empowered minoletta or delayed fireball (depends if you need them dead earlier or later). Cast your swords. Keep up your buffs and spam whatever spells you like, they won't run out anyway lol. Use Concelhaut draining missiles to heal up.  You're even tankier now since you can spam arcane reflection without using up a spell point. You can basically face tank whatever you want.

 

Reminder: Remember to check the enemy's resistances and make your own judgement as necessary. This build gives you a lot of leeway to make decisions and mistakes but that doesn't mean you don't need to think either. (Fampyrs are still annoying and running into a giant mob for no reason is still a bad idea.)

 

Choices I Abandoned:

 

Drakes: Worthless at the initial stage and I didn't find them worthwhile to spend two ability points on.

AoE Frost Invocation: I forgot the name, it's the one with spikes and smaller spikes. I didn't want to spend two points on a purely frost spell that also relies on reflex for accuracy.

 

Heals: With a tanky shield, all you need are your phrases and draining missiles to sustain you. Chugging a potion might be necessary from time to time.

 

Fireball: Honestly, you can swap to the other grimoire if you like it that much. It's not a really reliable dps spell compared to the minoletta missiles series.

 

Ryngrim: Why debuff them when you can blow them up? Your helmet has this spell anyway.

 

Why Evoker/Beckoner:

 

Beckoner is for the cheaper and increased number of summons. It helps a lot earlier on to have more bodies and the reduced cost ensures that even if you make a mistake, you can recover faster.

 

Evoker is mostly for the increased power level. You can choose a normal wizard if you wish. If you do, you gain access to chill fog(instead of minoletta's minor missiles) and at PL6, you can pick up Ninagaulth Freezing Pillar instead of Minoletta. 

 

 

Conclusion: You still can't beat a pure wizard's empowered meteor shower but you have a lot more tankiness to afflictions and sustainability. Remember, the keyword is stress-free. With Minoletta and Delayed Fireball, you can blow everything up anyway, who needs wilting wind or meteor shower? 

Edited May 15, 2018 by ppscurry

[Dongom]

Nice build.  I've just started something similiar, been trying to Troubadour version to be casting heavy, a bit rougher but fun non the less.

Btw what specifically makes Grimoire: Ninagauth's Teachings critical?

[ppscurry]

Spells, pretty much. It gives you a cold and paralyzing fireball, raw damage ray of fire, a normal ray of fire and fireball. The idea is to skimp on spells as much as possible. Plus, the raw damage ray of fire is actually pretty good. It's a really reliable damage source compared to fireball and is a great alternative till you get minoletta. Even after you get minoletta, it's still pretty useful till you get your second slot in PL4. Besides, the mid-game plan is to grab concelhaut's grimoire which you can technically do with just your summons and a couple of minoletta, but that takes a really really long time to solo at 12/13...at least with the raw damage ray of fire you have two more spells to chuck at the guy. 

Edited May 15, 2018 by ppscurry

[Skazz]

Yes! A Loremaster build!

[Sheyde]

I was attempting a Troubador/Evoker build, but this one looks amazing. Great details as well. Nice job!

[Delekii]

How many hours a day do you play this game Prestidigitator?

 

You have like 5 or 6 build guides written up, have you actually played them all through PotD? I get that it's easier than it should be but it still takes a hell of a lot of time to get through a run? 

 

Good guide anyway.

[Vastus]

How many hours a day do you play this game Prestidigitator?

 

You have like 5 or 6 build guides written up, have you actually played them all through PotD? I get that it's easier than it should be but it still takes a hell of a lot of time to get through a run? 

 

Good guide anyway.

Prestidigitator is the forum rank, not his forum name. This is his only build as far as I can see

[Yosharian]

Aren't you one point short in your attribute distribution?

[Eneka]

can you make a screenshoot from your final build? for see skills,passives,etc

[Azalore]

I probably don't have the balls to try solo, but nice guide! Keep it up man  

[Kitoxes]

can you make a screenshoot from your final build? for see skills,passives,etc

please

[giftmefood]

can you show us a video of this build soloing the guardian of ukaizo? preferably at level 15 because the guardian doesnt really scale up after 15. 

[ppscurry]

Lul, level 15. Just doing bounties,gearing and rushing the main quest up to Ukaizo is enough to get me to 16. Either way, I don't have a video of the last fight but I did it at 20 to test out the last tier as well. I doubt any multi-class spell casting build can solo that multi stage fight at PL5/6 without abusing broken combos which isn't really the point of the build.

 

However, I think a pure beckoner at 16 can probably solo Ukaizo with just his PL7 summons. They are that strong. Honestly that doesn't sound too fun to me lol. I rather chuck fireballs than run a pure beckoner hiding behind summoners.

 

This build was my 2nd completed run after a pure wizard run. Having now tried out cipher and a number of other chanter/XXX combinations, I realized chanters are just too strong right now, their summons to be exact, so I'm working on another run without a chanter inside the build. Set to their purpose is only great for classes like wizards/priest/druid since their high level abilities only have 2 charges and are easily replenished by the invocation.

[giftmefood]

That's still impressive of your build to be able to solo the last boss at 20 so props to you. And yeah I agree, chanter is op atm. There is this guy called victor creed who ran fighter/chanter and he has unli charge + unbending from chanter so he super high damage + impossible to be killed. If you are looking for other builds that can solo, there is one here in the forum. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99412-my-potd-solo-monkpaladin-build/?do=findComment&comment=2022163. But then again, they are abusing the arcana level 15 meteor scroll

[Renholder]

Is this build still viable for solo POTD with the nerf to "Set to Their Purpose?"

[Manveru123]

It's playable but very boring.

[jazzthing]

Right now I play a similar build Bloodmage/Troubadour. I forgot about the "Set to their purpose" nerf and was quiet disappointed. Anyway, it's still a strong build and with Blood Sacrifice you can get random spells back, so it's worth it.