10 replies to this topic

[chattius]

Chapter 0 - Why an elementalist?

Dragon mages came last and are not really played a lot by people. The main reason is probably that it is very hard to aim a dragon strike and the dragon is obvious easy to disturb and so it is is aiming for everything but the target. Is it playing fetch the ball with fireballs?



So when deciding to create a level 100 dragon mage shopper for our family bargaining chain we decided to stay away from using dragon strikes as a main attack. The sohei is already being a sort of a mentalist build. So we did an elementalist instead with the possibility to test some stuff: chance to halve regeneration times, damage mitigation defense, gust of wind as offense and defense, defending with magic wall ....

To do the testing bargaining was taken last in a way that at level 100 the shopper would have 100 fix points in bargaining.


Chapter 1 - The Attributes

Stamina : Intelligence and Willpower will be from a buff. If the idea of a damage mitigation build in combination with killing enemies from a long distance will work - there is no need to put points into vitality. The main attack, destroyers, have a cooldown which gets lower with a higher CA level. But a higher CA-level is higher regeneration time. So we put all attribute points into stamina to counter high regeneration times.


Chapter 2 - The Skills

The skills were choosen with becoming a level 100 shopper in mind. So if you want to play an elementalist without shopping or planed to reach max bargaining at another level: modify the skill point distribution a bit.
Elemental Magic Lore : Casting speed, modifying points and damage for destroyers early
Armor Lore : Better regeneration times, some protection, unlocking modifiers at armours as long sets aren't found
Toughness : Get some overall resistances which will be boosted by armour lore kept at level
Shield Lore : Mainly to use a shield with chance to block melee unlocked by shield lore. Block chance will start around 25% but single point suzpported by +all skills will be later give block chances of more than 60%. So quite useful for a single point. As a shopper every skill point will be needed.
Dragon Magic Focus : 9 points for a long long time. Just the buff which will give around a third of our damage starting mid game.
Elemental Magic Focus : Higher level in destroyers will reduce the cooldown. So this is a must have.
Ancient Magic : Only one damage type, so lowering damage mitigations is good to have once ancient magic is mastered. Early on it adds to damage.
Concentration : Will allow a second buff if wanted. Normally 1 buff is enough to keep regeneration times low and 1 point in concentration helps in this.
Combat Discipline : A single point will add damage and lowers total regeneration time by 10%.
Bargaining : The ultimate skill for a shopper obviously. It is taken last for my character because we had a bargaining chain already. So focusing on damage and defense skill first is possible. This approach also allows to terst an elementalist build if bargaining is not wanted.


Chapter 3 - The Combat Arts

Doing 'only' elementalist spells we were chosing the new master regeneration system. We will not have a lot of spells and all do physical damage. So socketing some leftover rings with +all_Skills/physical_damage from a fighter-type character proved as not too bad. The numbers in brakets give the order the combat arts were modified.

Destroyer : explosive(1), swarm(2), explosive(6) - The lifetime of destroyers will raise with higher level and there will be more than enough of them once they can be spammed. So set their hunting radius to maximum and push the damage.
Familiar : firebug(3), quick mind(4), energy flux(5) - Experience mod is bugged, so firebug will at least give a bit extra damage if we will use dragon strikes. We will try to get all around damage mitigation and there is not much life gained without dragon magic lore. So quick mind helps us to counter the casting speed malus from having level of destroyers above malus. Energy flux reduces regeneration times a bit and destroyers will hopefully be spammed non-stop.
Gust of Wind : stun(7), radius(8), impact(9) - Stun was mainly for a bit of savety. Radius adds more hits at boss fights. Impact was because I hoped for quick fights where the damage over time wouldn't add much because the target would be dead before most of the DoT would work.
Magic Barrier : vengeance(10), barricade(11), runes(12) - Shines if you fight in tunnels, hallways, ... . Block a tunnel, and shoot gust of wind through the block.


Chapter 4 - Spending skill points

      2   3   5   8  12  18  25  35  50  65 
    EML ARM TOU SHI DMF EMF AnM Cct CoD BAR   
005   5   2   1 
010   7  10   1   1
015   8  15   1   1   9
020  18  20   1   1   9   1
025  25  25   5   1   9   1   1
030  30  30  15   1   9   1   1
035  35  35  25   1   9   1   1   1
040  40  40  35   1   9   1   1   1
045  45  45  45   1   9   1   1   1
050  50  50  50   1   9   1   7   1   1
055  55  55  55   1   9   1  17   1   1
060  60  60  60   1   9   1  27   1   1
065  65  65  65   1   9   1  37   1   1   1
070  70  70  70   1   9   1  47   1   1   1
075  75  75  75   1   9   1  57   1   1   1
080  75  75  75   1   9   1  75   1   1   8
085  75  75  75   1   9   1  75   1   1  33
090  75  75  75   1   9   1  75   1   1  58
095  75  75  75   1   9   1  75   1   1  83

Chapter 6 - Screenshot after finishing silver, gold, platinum

Silver



Finished silver at level 44. Only 1 rune read into each combat art. Chance to halve regeneration time was 70.4% so combination of destroyer/gust_of_wind was nearly spammable most of the time.

Gold



Finished gold at level 57. Chance to halve regeneration tine was 104.6%. Read runes into familiar till it reached around 35% regeration time malus. Combination of Destroyer/Gust of Wind spammable. Only 1 shield point did more than 50% block melee with a nice rare shield.

Platinum



Did big machine at level 75 when toughness and armour lore were mastered. Chance to halve regeneration time at 102.3%. Nearly possible to spam destroyers.


Chapter 6 - Equipment

The idea was to build around:
Draagen's_Legacy Set with exception of Torik shoulders. Officers sabre and Glacial defender shield as main weapon slot.

Chance to halve regeneration time, combat art range and damage mitigation would be the main modifiers we wanted to test in this build.


To Do:
Adding screen shots of modifiers/Combat Arts after finishing silver, gold, platinum
Find out why dragon magic icons doesn't seem to work. Probably it is an easy mistake.

[gogoblender]

Very nice! You're filling out a hole for builds, specially regarding Dragon Mage since there are so few published.

Chattius, that spreadsheet for when to put down points is genius.



gogo

[Legend Aadil]

This is interesting.
I'm playing a pure elementalist at the moment (not a shopper), and I'm the finding the Llama Mod quite useful. It gives elementalism a wider damage types range.
So destroyers do fire damage.
Tornadoes do ice and physical damage.
And Magical Wall (which I never used) is replaced by Armageddon, which is great for killing bosses I think. Because it's good for bosses and has such a long duration (about 17 seconds), I can keep the regeneration high, eating more runes, so it recharges about 40 seconds.

I liked the baby sit build you told me about, I have only eaten one rune in destroyers, and have let my Draagens set increase the Destroyer Level to about 9-10 (I'm only Level 20 on the character). The regeneration is about 4 seconds, but the damage is tremendous, with fire damage and fully modded!
I'm running through the blood forest, completing every quest. I find there's no need to waste a skill slot on Spell Block, although I might see when I get higher.

I'm playing a pure pure elementalist, so am trying to avoid buffs from any other aspect. It's difficult though. I don't use protector much, and haven't activated it much recently, it isn't all that great, and is a waste to my regeneration times!
However, if I don't use another buff, this'll free another slot up for an offensive skill or another defensive skill.

Elementalism is really powerful I think. I've taken out 2 bosses so far no problem, but it's only on silver. So we'll see how it goes.

Keep updating on how yours goes!

[chattius]

This was played mainly in CM 1.10 patch, no Llama mod. The used items should be vanilla.

Added screenshots (in german) after fighting big machine in silver, gold and platinum. The explosion radius of destroyers is enlarged by a third because of shield and set. Special staff could add some mpre,but will be tested in niobium.

[gogoblender]

You know, I've never really focused on making a true destroyer build. Looks fast and thoroughly explosive. Gore is good



gogo

[chattius]

The elementalist of our oldest is a bit different:

 

She calls it Full Power To The Destroyers.

 

It makes full use of the new items in C;-patch 1.40, mainly the Set Sigils.

Bargaining is replaced by Mentalism focus. So an extented range Mahlstrom can be casted to support the destroyers. The targets have reduced armour and stats, so even if the maximum damage is not raised, the relative damage is.

If a destroyer does 3000 damage and oponent has 7000hp you will need 3 to kill. If the target has only 5000hp because of reduced stats thanks to Mahlstrom you will need only 2 destroyers. Add the reduced physical armour.

Next in the list was to take away shield lore. The shield which adds CA-range will be used and it has nothing which scales with shield lore. Because of runes of protection (Mentalism focus) there will already be some x% defense. Shield lore will be replaced by spell resistance which will make great use of the will power the familiar buff will give.

 

So she uses a combination of Destroyer/Mahlstrom.

What you have to know about this combination: Destroyers are spawned next to you, but the Mahlstrom will be created at the place of the closest enemy, even if this results in running. Mahlstrom doesn't need an enemy as a target with the combination. But too late to do a bug report I think. The mahlstrom should be created at mouse pointer or centered on player, but not on closest target.

[chattius]

armour lore - early on to unlock modifiers on armours

concentration - 5 points first to unlock the aspect foci and boost every CA. Not knowing which ones to find first

elementalist focus - destroyer was first found and used

dragon magic focus - 9 for companion

mentalist focus - runes of protection and maelstrom

combat discipline - boost all spell damages

elementist lore - finally decided to go elementalist

ancient magic - elemetalist is damage wise mainly physical, damage mitigation has to be broken

alchemy - 1 point for all these trophies and permanent mentors (because lot of all skills equipment later)

spell resistance - maxed before niob

 

This were the actual skills my daughter was choosing and played to level 171 before leaving to france.

[chattius]

I wonder if there is any interest in the character my daughter played. She has savefiles when finishing silver, gold, plat, niob

Silver was mainly a three CA combination:

destroyer: fire and forget weapon

maelstrom: reduce stats and armour of nearby enemies so more damage and enemy has less hitpoints

gush of wind: modded for physical damage it wins from maelstrom and keeps enemies away from melee range but still in destroyer range

 

Gold the cooldown of the destroyers was lowered so that a 2-CA combination with destroyers and maelstrom was working.

Niob the order was reversed: Maelstrom first followed by destroyers so that the lower armour tactic was working for close range enemies too.

[Veracious]

you said this was built for CM 1.10   How is it in 1.40? Would you leave all the mods and skills the same? I'm building a DM now and was curious about the CA mod choices, if any of the bugs were fixed and would you choose different.

 

thanks

cheers!

[chattius]

I wrote cm-patch 1.10 because there was another patch for the dragon mage around the time thecharacter was played - the llama patch.

CM 140 added sigils which can boost ca range. So it is rather easier to play in 140 than 110. Using maelstom with big big range to weaken and reduce armour of enemies so the destroyers have much easier work.

[Veracious]

Cool because I'm making an elemental and though I don't like stealing builds I still wanted to know its viable