Revered Technology focused build

[Callron 0]

Can anybody help me out? Im focusing on the Revered Technology aspect but im not sure what type of character I should make, ranged or melee? Which is recommended? thanks.

[Antitrust 32]

Which Combat Arts do you like using?

 

You could try the Sariel: Invincible Flying Tankmage Thong Princess!, A do-it-all Seraphim build, or maybe an Archangel's wrath build. Or BFG

[Dobri 55]

Basically, the revered tech build just begs for a ranged char, like the BFG Seraphim. Close combat oriented seraphims don't utilize the revered tech tree (with both lore and focus skills) to its full potential, because they would probably want dual wield (and archangel's wrath is based on the damage of only 1 weapon) and a lot of defensive skills, leaving revered tech lore somewhat useless.

[Spyrus 0]

Referring to post here

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9715

taken the Revered Tech as primary I could do this

3- buffed build with BFG,Warding Energy and Cleansing Brilliance:

 

Seraphim example with Revered Technology(Primary) & Celestial Magic Aspects:

Skills

1)Concentration

2)Revered Technology Lore

3)Revered Technology Focus

4)Constitution

5)Celestial Magic Focus

6)Ranged

7)Armor Lore

8)Combat Reflexes

9)Warding Energy Lore

10)Enhanced Perception

 

Combart Art 1: Archangel's Wrath (2 sec)

Combat Art 2 :Flaring Nova (2 sec)

Combat Art 3 / Combo 3: Instill Belief and/or Hallowed Restoration

Combat Art 4: Divine Protection

 

or as an alternative with Exalted Warrior

taken the Revered Tech as primary I could do this

3- buffed build with BFG,Warding Energy and Battle Stance:

 

Seraphim example with Revered Technology(Primary) & Battle Stance Aspects:

Skills

1)Concentration

2)Revered Technology Lore

3)Revered Technology Focus

4)Constitution

5)Exalted Warrior Focus

6)Ranged

7)Armor Lore

8)Combat Reflexes

9)Warding Energy Lore

10)Enhanced Perception

 

Combart Art 1: Archangel's Wrath (2 sec)

Combat Art 2 :Flaring Nova (2 sec)

Combat Art 3: Dashing Alacrity

Combat Art 4: Divine Protection

Edited March 17, 2009 by Spyrus

[Dobri 55]

Good all-round-build, Spyrus. I like it Just one thing to consider.

 

An interesting option here is Celestial lore. It will become a difficult to balance (skill point wise) 2-aspect build, but since this will be a caster build, both aspects will work for that cause, and it can be played like that. With only 2 buffs, the regen times will be good.

 

Combat discipline is another option. It will allow for 1-CA combos, which will improve their damage by a certain amount and their regeneration times by 10%, and 20% at mastery level, which is nice.

 

I'm having a hard time to think about other options... any ideas?

 

EDIT: Well done. You came up with the ranged idea. Great job. I'll remove the first part of the post

 

However, I don't think ranged + revered + exalted will do fine without Tactics. If you add tactics, you get a classic BFG build which is considered rather strong

 

You should also consider the problem with the regen times. The Seraphim is indeed the jack of all trades, doing everything, but excelling at nothing. Her buffs greatly overburden her regeneration times, which is a severe problem, and with limited means of reduction in the CA times, 3 buffs will be bad for her. The seraphim has a rather tough time balancing between regen time and damage. I've been there...

Edited March 17, 2009 by Dobri

[Spyrus 0]

1)However, I don't think ranged + revered + exalted will do fine without Tactics. If you add tactics, you get a classic BFG build which is considered rather strong

 

If we concentrate only in one Aspect then it is classic BFG

and the Exalted Warrior Focus can easily replaced by combat discipline (2-buffed build)

 

2)You should also consider the problem with the regen times. The Seraphim is indeed the jack of all trades, doing everything, but excelling at nothing. Her buffs greatly overburden her regeneration times, which is a severe problem, and with limited means of reduction in the CA times, 3 buffs will be bad for her. The seraphim has a rather tough time balancing between regen time and damage. I've been there...

 

Surely, concentration + stamina + blacksmith regen mode is helpful in 3-buffed version,

but are they not enough?

In 2-buffed aspects though I prefer not to have a supporting aspect (like pure Warding seraphim),

but if callron want to use 2 aspects then he should go to 3-buffed

 

Surely ranged here, but I wonder if Celestial build is taken as primary, ranged or close combat?

Edited March 17, 2009 by Spyrus

[Dobri 55]

Sorry for the belated answer. I didn't see that there was a post here

 

If we concentrate only in one Aspect then it is classic BFG

and the Exalted Warrior Focus can easily replaced by combat discipline (2-buffed build)

 

Classic BFG requires battle stance at decent level. Sadly, that doesn't come without exalted focus. Exalted focus provides some nice bonuses to normal damage through its combat arts. I have created 2 Seraphims - 1 without exalted, 1 with exalted - this time both with constitution. The one with exalted does great and even at lower CA levels, the damage bonus is rather high. When surrounded, she could use assailing sommersault and leap away. The one without exalted makes some nice use of archangel's wrath and flaring nova, but she should be kept with lower armor level (I will explain why in the answer to your next question) - because the regeneration times will be high, and at higher levels the lower the damage, the more ineffective the CAs. I was considering revered because of the garema warrior bug (I couldn't target them with normal weapons, it's well known), but the next patch is supposed to fix this. IF it does, a BFG seraphim build utilizing only Exalted focus and revered focus should be very much playable - and this is what I'll start when I get the game

 

***

 

Surely, concentration + stamina + blacksmith regen mode is helpful in 3-buffed version,

but are they not enough?

 

They are enough for the early levels, when low-level CAs can still do decent damage. At later difficulties and higher levels, the damage is essential, and in order to inflict damage, you need to balance regen time and damage to the best of your ability. And its imperative to keep the CAs at high level in order to do damage, or otherwise the build's usefulness will decline progressively. For that reason, to continue from the previous question, if you use 3 buffs, especially if you didn't invest heavily in their respective skill focus, things can get really bad even with a lot of + all skills equipment.

 

I will have to go in-depth on this one. I proposed the following build for a Celestial-oriented seraphim (which I played through in HC, of course):

 

level 2 - Celestial Lore

level 3 - Concentration

level 5 - Celestial Focus

level 8 - Armor lore

level 12 - Riding (if you don't like it, substitute for something else, like spell resistance/combat reflexes/toughness/revered lore)

level 18 - Revered focus

level 25 - Combat Discipline

level 35 - Constitution

level 50 - Shield Lore (Stalworth safeguard with artamark's star in the socket can offset quite a bunch of levels in spell resist, although it will not reduce the chance of getting crits... But this is why we have Warding energy + lore)

level 65 - Warding Energy Lore

-> 1 or 2 buffs build - I activated cleansing brilliance only when necessary (only when I was facing t-mutants and undead), and kept Warding energy up all the time. A warning here - don't get overconfident with cleansing brilliance. It may have you run around and kill undeads in silver without even having to cast another spell, but in the later difficulties this changes... And how!

 

With this build it was still very hard to balance damage and regeneration times. You will notice that this build has everything in the Seraphim's arsenal in order to reduce regeneration times of the Celestial aspect - concentration, armor lore, combat discipline, only 1 buff when necessary - even riding (which if you keep at a decent level, provides like 10-15% regen time reduction with the proper 33.3% Celestial regen time reduction mount). Even with the distribution of attribute points at 50% intelligence, 30% vitality and 20% stamina (for every 10 points I put 5 in int, 3 in vit and 2 in stamina), it was really difficult to balance the regeneration time and damage even at 75% penalty by armor on the regen times. This is the celestial-based HC seraphim died at level 136, in a battle with the scorpion. Maybe I should've used instill belief or something, but there just wasn't enough time. I was dead before I knew it.

 

I still think I could've squeezed quite a few more levels from her, but we will never know, will we

***

 

Surely ranged here, but I wonder if Celestial build is taken as primary, ranged or close combat?

 

I think the Celestial tree is designed to be a caster-type tree. Its CAs just make it look like a caster tree. You have 1 direct-damage CA, 1 crowd control CA (pillar is just terrific), 1 healing CA and one utility CA - Instill belief, that works great when you're surrounded. This tree just begs for a caster oriented build. I did try to make it... And I think it's very much playable - and some proper equipment will ease the going even further. Now that I didn't had with my HC seraphim that died I was still using a level 80 holy protection (56 levels behind, sheesh) at that time, and I think this may have been a serious factor. The other factor was the fact that it was 2 AM and I was very sleepy

 

However, in this guide, LeftNut proposed an interesting utilization of the celestial aspect along the close-combat:

 

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9194

 

As you can see, he proposes to use it as a support tree for the main exalted warrior aspect. And he seems right. With only 9 points in celestial, it can be used to mod Radiant Pillar to act as a debuff on bosses and various enemies. However, he still keeps Exalted aspect as primary...

 

However, reading through all the stuff I wrote here on darkmatters, I can't help but get a very interesting feeling... Maybe I delve way too deep in the game mechanics and such. The game is supposed to be fun to play, regardless of a build, of the level your HC toon died, and similar trivial things. Maybe I should try to take a look at it from a different point of view

Edited March 17, 2009 by Dobri

[Spyrus 0]

Off topic : this topic should be moved under Seraphim Guide Forum

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showforum=362

Classic BFG requires battle stance at decent level. Sadly, that doesn't come without exalted focus. Exalted focus provides some nice bonuses to normal damage through its combat arts. I have created 2 Seraphims - 1 without exalted, 1 with exalted - this time both with constitution. The one with exalted does great and even at lower CA levels, the damage bonus is rather high. When surrounded, she could use assailing sommersault and leap away. The one without exalted makes some nice use of archangel's wrath and flaring nova, but she should be kept with lower armor level (I will explain why in the answer to your next question) - because the regeneration times will be high, and at higher levels the lower the damage, the more ineffective the CAs. I was considering revered because of the garema warrior bug (I couldn't target them with normal weapons, it's well known), but the next patch is supposed to fix this. IF it does, a BFG seraphim build utilizing only Exalted focus and revered focus should be very much playable - and this is what I'll start when I get the game

 

Well, I insist on this one. I could use combat discipline to increase CA damage and reduce regeneration time, and may socked +defense blacksmith arts or use armor skill a little bit more.

To have powerful CA (like Assaulting Somersault) here needs also TacticsLore.

So, instead of this the CA of Archangel's Wrath will have 3 factors to be better:

1)Combat Discipline 2)Warding Lore 3)Warding Focus

 

As for the build with Celestial (Primary) + Warding (Supporting) is like what I would think

by using the General Approach we talked about ( you could use Combat Reflexes instead of shield)

and you died not by bad build in my opinion but bad luck

Edited March 18, 2009 by Spyrus

[Dobri 55]

I see your point. In that case... How about dropping revered lore and do a 2-focused build? Like this:

 

2 -> Ranged lore

3 -> Tactics

5 -> Concentration

8 -> Revered Focus

12 -> Exalted focus

18 -> Armor lore

25 -> Combat discipline

35 -> Constitution

50 -> Combat Reflexes (boosted by mods on battle stance this is going to be uber)

65 -> Warding lore

 

What do you think about this one? She'll suck a bit at crowd control, but she will have a lot of other means to compensate.

[Spyrus 0]

xm... this is not a build for Warding Aspect though it is a Exalted Warrior build.

[Dobri 55]

The revered tech aspect is more of a caster aspect because of archangel's wrath and flaring nova. Another usefulness it has is the 2 protection CAs here - Warding energy and Divine Protection. We're talking about a BFG seraphim, which is ranged char. In that case we can utilize the focus only - in order to mod properly BFG and Warding energy buffs, and divine protection afterwards.

 

In that case Exalted warrior becomes more like a primary aspect, but since the BFG build is based on direct damage, it can't just be excluded from the build. For example, I'm planning my initial char online to be a BFG-seraphim, shopper type. The BFG seraphim is by far the cheapest char to start and play though, and she requires less money to support, since the already has a weapon and since she'll be 1-shotting the enemies most of the time, the armor rating isn't that big of a deal either. I know that she won't go very far in platinum or niobium, but I only need her to get to about 100-120 with maximum bargaining in order to act as a decent shopper for the upcoming chars.

 

Here's what I plan:

(I'll start in bronze, just to get a few levels and CAs, then play through silver on this one in order to ensure enough levels and decent skills, since she'll be HC)

 

2 -> Ranged lore (I'll get a few BFG runes at start, so this is first)

3 -> Tactics Lore (1 point here every level, it will help me mod battle stance from the start)

5 -> Concentration (at level 5 I should have both Battle stance and BFG buffs)

8 -> Revered focus (up to 9 points initially to mod the BFG buff, then more)

12 -> Enhanced perception

18 -> Armor lore - dexterity and battle stance should keep the enemies' chance to hit to a rather low level, so I can delay it.

25 -> Exalted warrior focus

35 -> Bargaining

50 -> Constitution

65 -> Combat reflexes or toughness (probably combat reflexes to boost the evasion battle stance provides and force the enemies to a lower chance to hit)

 

This should be a low-level CA, 3-buff build. This seraphim should have everything it needs to survive up to level 100-120 and become a utility char with all those bargaining points she'll have. Unless I die from lag, bugs, or something else by then, of course

Edited March 21, 2009 by Dobri