The Devout Guardian

[essjayehm 58]

Hey y'all! Thought I would try to compose one of these build thingys on my take of a single-aspect Temple Guardian.

 

THIS IS BY NO MEANS A GUIDE FOR A NEW PLAYER. THERE ARE A FEW SUB-OPTIMAL SKILL CHOICES, SO IT IS QUITE EASY TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTER "FALL APART" WITH THE WRONG EQUIPMENT / SOCKETING CHOICES. But, for intermediate players, it is an exercise for those who want to learn some finer points on balancing a character (since just socketing +all skills will not "make everything better")

 

Well, on to the build! I have played this toon on console, in a "hardcore" style. So far, I'm up to level 50 and doing just fine through the Orc region in Gold difficulty. Deathly Spears used 80-90% with Dedicated Blow cleaning up leftovers.

 

UPDATE (Level 70) - Currently have a real tank on my hands. Between having 2 combat alerts active and shields at highest level without penalty I am not taking any signifigant damage from any enemies up to whisperwood in Platinum. My damage output is still low, but addition of deathblow ~ 50% has really helped drop everything quick when 2 or 3 spears are firing!

 

All attribute points so far (Level 50) are to Vitality. Evil campaign, with Forens as deity (one use, on 4th Guardian of Silver). Played levels 1-12 on Bonze, moving to Silver after I had a solid foundation built up.

After level 50, I have been splitting the attribute distribution between Vitality and Willpower (more shield energy, and better prot. vs. spells)

 

 

SKILLS - order chosen based on playing hardcore. Notes given for odd choices only. Others should be obvious. I will not give specific "instructions" on which skills to master first, etc. as I am still learning Temple Guardian's generally, and this is also meant to be my high-level shopper for future SP toons. For my guy, I am mastering Bargaining, Armour Lore first, and balancing the rest of the points as I feel they are needed.

 

2 Tactics Lore

 

3 Armour Lore

 

5 Devout Guardian Focus

 

8 Enhanced Perception - Riding may actually be the better choice, since you can actually get a good discount on your DG regen times when higher levels are reached. EP for me, 'cause ... y'know... hardcore. Had to choose one or the other to open Bargaining.

 

12 Warding Energy Lore

 

18 Bargaining

 

25 Constitution

 

35 Speed Lore - taken instead of weapon lore, because it never fails for me to find the awesome weapons of the type I did not choose. Biggest downside of no weapon lore is the item level without penalty aspect.

 

50 Toughness

 

65 Damage Lore - Will take this as last skill. My thinking here is that as I move up in difficulty, I will change from physical damage (Spears and blow) to elemental damage to ensure max amount of penetration of enemy armour. Will mostly be using magic or ice damage, as I prefer the weaken and freeze secondary effects for their defensive traits. Of course, will use Fire/Poison where needed.

65 Combat Reflexes - a fifth defensive skill! It adds evasion as well as reducing the chance that my toon will get one-shotted by a critical hit as he pushes toward Niob.

 

Eliminating the Source Warden aspect really left me with a couple of wide-open choices. I didn't want another defensive skill (fearing having trouble dealing damage at higher difficulty levels) or Riding. Concentration... well I do not like it so I never choose it with my builds. (Prefer to keep one buff up and maximized at all times.)

 

OKOK, I went with another defensive skill due to the awesomeness that is combat alert. I cannot say enough about this semi-buff, except DO NOT MAKE IT A PERMANENT BUFF. You can have more than one Combat Art running at one time, and the bonuses stack (on PS3, anyway)

 

MODS - in order of importance (imho)

 

Deathly Spears - Gore

Deathly Spears - Occult (magic damage - for the weaken effect)

Deathly Spears - Jab

T-energy Shroud - Power

T-energy Shroud - Recharge

Combat Alert - either bronze mod is fine, I chose the hit chance increaser, to keep hit chance good for RpH. Hindsight says this might've been wrong.

Combat Alert - Riposte - to reflect close-combat attacks

T-energy Shroud - magic reflection.

Dedicated Blow - stun, then hit chance increase, then deep wound.

I wasn't sure if I was going to be using Dedicated Blow or Battle Extension as my cleanup, eventually went with DB. Stunning bosses is just... fun!

 

 

These mods give good mix of offense and defense for my most-used combat arts. Personally, I dislike battle extension, so I do not use it atm.

 

Will be testing casting speed applications to the battle extension, since the speed of it doesn't seem to be affected by attack speed. Not that I have noticed, yet...

 

Socketing - again, in order of importance, but it is important not to put too many eggs into one basket (obv). I compare this builds' socketing to a Jenga puzzle. Remove the wrong piece, and it will all fall apart. Very quickly.

 

Aspect: Devout Guardian +X: most important to keep all your Combat Art's near to max level without penalty. I use a combo of having some runes read and socketing to keep the regen times reasonable. OF NOTE: All Combat Arts + X does not work for me.

Regeneration per Hit / Regeneration time -X%: To ensure that you can use Combat Art's effectively.

after these 2 factors are socketed, all leftover slots are used depending on if more offensive or defense is needed

OFFENSE.....................................DEFENSE

Damage + X%...........................+all skills

Attack speed + X%....................Willpower

opponents evade -X%................Shield bonuses (I don't suggest bumping the ABSORPTION to 100% [ie absorbtion warding energy +40%, since it starts at 60%] unless you have really, really pumped your shield strength. When the shield goes down, and it will go down at some point, you will be totally screwed if you cannot escape from the mob you have gathered. (Unless you have other ways of mitigation, wink, wink)

 

PLAYSTYLE:

One of the main reasons I like this Temple Guardian is that there is no "disco dancing". The Charged Grid/Firey Ember and CG/Icy combo attacks make the android do a little dance. Androids don't dance. Ok, I'm kidding!

The actual reason is that not a lot of attention needs to be paid to who you are attacking. Just gather up a nice crowd , and spam Deathly Spears. On console, if you hold DS, your weapon will swing (if target is in melee range) while the Combat Art is recharging, and if the target is not in melee range, the arm cannon will fire at it. No auto-running (when the computer moves your toon for you to get into melee range of the attacker), which usually ruins a great DS activation. (ie totally surrounded!)

 

UPDATED PLAYSTYLE: Combat Alert has reached the stage where disgusting things are happening for me. Currently, the duration is 24.6 seconds, and since I have enough RpH to ignore the regen. part of the cooldown+regen calculation. I usually have 2 Alerts running at the same time, and there is only a 5 second gap where only one is on at a time. Since reaching the Dryad region on Gold, I haven't "needed" DS at all, as I can just run around with 2 alerts going and normal weapon attacks are getting the job done. (Excepting Bosses, of course)

 

For the early levels, I actually learned to use the Furious Emblazer with great effect. This gets the job done until you can get DS modded, (and regenerating via RpH) so that you can have multiple spears firing at the same time. This can happen in the early levels, but not really a priority before you get the 3rd wave of DS rocking( when DS reaches level 16 - character level 25-ish).

Also, early on the Source Warden spells are really nice, since they are mainly cooldown-based, a couple of runes can be eaten to bump them up to kill large groups of Kobolds or undead found in the elf region. Source Warden really loses its appeal when the levels and damage are not bumped up, which my build did not leave room for.

 

Well, I have puked my thoughts out onto this page, please feel free to ask any/all questions, I will answer to the best of my ability!

 

Critisism also encouraged, just not if it's un-constructive. I really thought up this character to learn me some socketing "rules" - since I've mostly played with "+all skills maxed" type of builds.

Edited February 8, 2010 by essjayehm

[SolomonGrundy 1]

Give us a rough idea of how the skill points are spent @ level 70.

 

Also what + to all skills do you have? Are you only buying equiptment using your own bargaining? or do you have niob shopper?

[essjayehm 58]

Give us a rough idea of how the skill points are spent @ level 70.

 

Also what + to all skills do you have? Are you only buying equiptment using your own bargaining? or do you have niob shopper?

 

Gah! Feb 24th... sorry, Solomon I wasn't ignoring you!

 

hrm... iirc, I was pumping Bargaining, Armour Lore and Devout Focus to 75, so good bet those are at 70. Tactics had about 20 points, and was the next to go to mastery. All the rest were at 5 points (maybe Constitution at 10 - it was going to be 5th mastery.)

 

My personal style of "hardcore" meant that I couldn't use items from my chest. So all equip was found / bought by himself.

 

I think my +all skills was very low, probably about +10-15 when he died. That was user error, not the build (forgot to use Combat Alert and got whammy'ed by a couple of champion/elite Orcs)

This build does not have a set of skills you can "lean" on +all skills to do most of the work. Lots of thought and testing and re-forging along the way was the main reason for playing the build.