idbeholdME

As this is one of the top results on Google when going for "Sacred 2 attributes", I'm going to share my experience with them: Strength and Dexterity - should be ignored completely on level ups. Getting it from gear is fine, but wasting points in them is basically meaningless. Miniscule attack/defense increases and +1 to weapon damage every couple of points is almost nothing. Not to mention that the effect on weapon damage gets reduced the higher the level of the weapon is. Vitality - the HP gain from Vitality is not that high, but more HP never hurts. The amount of HP per point increases as you level up (same as Constitution, so it can give you a couple thousand more HP at the later levels and some bonus regen (which increases the regen of Constitution Mastery). Stamina - very good for characters that depend on regeneration times and can't make use of Regen per Hit (pure spellcasters). It offers great benefits, especially if you're using multiple buffs, but don't overdo it. Stamina had basically infinite value and allowed you to pump CAs to even more astronomical heights, but that is no longer the case. As Ice & Blood capped the max number of consumed runes to 200, there is a possibility of overkilling regen times to the point of not mattering, especially on High Elf for example. Once you reach 200 consumed runes for a CA, the regen time will only ever go down as you gain more and more Stamina with level-ups, you may find towards the end of life of your character, that you actually overkilled it early on and now those points would be better spent elsewhere. Those extra 50 points you pumped in on level-ups might ultimately turn out to be a difference between 0.7 regen and 0.6 regen. Meaningless. However, if you are not planning on playing a character to the 150+ level range, you can safely put points here whenever you need to. Intelligence - the best stat for characters depending on spells. Unlike strength & dexterity, it still increases spell damage in a meaningful way, provides the very important Spell Intensity so that you spells always do full damage and as an additional bonus cherry on this already very generous cake, every 50 points increases your spell crit chance by 1%. Later on, you will get more crit chance from Intelligence than your lore skill. Useless for weapon characters, but if you're playing a caster, any point here is never wasted. Willpower - I would only ever put points here on characters that make use of shields, meaning Seraphim and Temple Guardian. The increase to shield strength is actually very decent. Every point increases it by a very small %. The higher your base shield, the more shield Willpower will add. A single point can mean 100+ shield power in the late game. Without shields, it only increases Spell Resistance (1 per point, very low) and slightly reduces duration of secondary damage effects (not worth spending points on). So to sum it up, there are only 3 relevant attributes, 4 for the Seraphim and Temple Guardian. I can't stress enough how not worth it Strength and Dexterity are since Ice & Blood.

Hard to tell. Depends on many factors. Most importantly, the Elite TGs have Ancient Magic Mastery from level 75 on, meaning they punch even through very high levels of damage mitigation easily. And with every level, their damage will increase noticeably. Before 75, their damage is high but not insane. I just checked and the trapper Elite Temple Guardian actually has 2 traps that look very similar. A Fire one and a Magic one. Both deal a very high amount of 50/50 split of Physical/respective damage type. High armor can help slightly lower the damage but that's about it. Mitigation helps too, but has greatly reduced effect. With low Physical armor and 0 Fire/Magic armor, it will hit extremely hard. That being said, I haven't noticed disproportionately high damage received with my SW. He might be physically larger than other characters so he hits them more easily, but no weirdness with damage. All characters get chunked equally hard My level 200 Seraphim with 61.4K HP, 81.4% mitigation to all sources and 5348 Fire Armor can survive 2 ticks (a single tick deals around 23K damage) from the trap of these guys. The 3rd tick would kill her. And that is a character that is basically immortal in most other scenarios. Pumping raw HP is probably the safest bet to avoid one-shots. But it will just move it to 2 or 3 shots, even on the tankiest characters. Don't lock yourself in long animations and keep moving. Traps are some of the deadliest spells the enemies have in this game (Poison Lord has a Poison trap too) and it is absolutely crucial to avoid them at all costs in high Niobium.

All of the creature bonuses scale with difficulty. But mitigation is very significant as it reaches 100% in Niob. That's why the elementals only become fully immune to their element in Niob. You can still hurt Ice Elementals with Ice in Plat, although you will only be doing 15% damage. As for dangerous enemies, a top 10 for late Niob would look something like this 1) Bosses, notably Gahanka Octagolamus, Dragons, Facetteleon, Narmul and Poison Lord. All have extremely hard hitting attacks. Octagolamus especially is a hidden powerhouse. And Gahanka? He might have the hardest hitting attack in the entire game. Try getting hit by his stone throw when he is level 200+ Will one shot you like no tomorrow. Good thing it's easily avoidable. 2) Enemies with Ancient Magic. Small Red Dragons have homing Fireballs, that deal high damage even through high fire mitigation. Same with Elite Temple Guardians that throw Fire Traps. Standing in one will melt you extremely fast. 3) Fen Fire. Unavoidable lightning attack dealing very high Magic damage. They also have a proclivity to spawn in groups. Thank the Creator they don't have an Elite version... 4) Blood Dryad Shamans. Simply because of the totem they have, which is inconspicuous and hits very hard, very fast. Combined with the root the Shamans also have, can be quite deadly. 5) Flaming Horse. A very hard hitting special attack with a high chance to ignite, dealing several ticks of damage. They seem to have Damage Lore, so the ticks deal damage almost equal to the base hit. They're currently hitting me for 10K damage and continue with ticks of 9K for several seconds most of the time. Even their regular attacks do double hits. 6) Spitting spiders. Their DoT (like most others) scales a lot with difficulty and levels. The spiders are notable, because they can spawn in very large numbers. Doesn't matter if it's the Human region or the Swamp. 7) Demonic Eyes. They are not the only enemy in the game with Life Leech lightning, but they have it the most powerful. The Elites can do 25%+ of your maximum life with a single attack and it also inflicts a hefty Magic DoT. They are mostly harmless when their main attack is on cooldown, which is why I put them this low, but make sure to never aggro more than 2 at once. 8) Bipedal Demons. The ones near the end of the game and Bog Demons. They all hit very fast and very hard. A pretty rare variant can randomly spawn in the Wasteland - an Elite Demon Lord. That guy alone ensures the demons' spot in this list. In this category, I'd also put Harbingers of Death from the Blood Forest. They can hit quite hard and notably, the one at the end of the Crypt quest is a secretly super-charged version. I recently added that info to the quest: https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Death_of_a_Demon 9) Scorpions. Tough, above average damage, but hit extremely quickly. One of the few enemies that has 2 Elite variations, one worse than the other. Getting surrounded by these little buggers can mean a very quick death. 10) Garema. Might not look like it, but they can be a major annoyance at high levels. Melee ones have double attacks, ranged ones have hitscan attacks, casters are budget Fen Fires. Also hit pretty hard with a lot of Poison damage. Always surprised with how dangerous the jungle becomes the later you go into Niobium. Special mention: Furies. Luckily only present in Northland, but they get this mention simply because the Elite ones have an attack that can cancel buffs. The only area in the game where you have to regularly keep a very close eye on your buff status.

Just a bump. Tried fighting a very late Niob Poison Lord with a High Elf WITHOUT Ancient Magic Mastery. The result? Poison Lord is fully immune against spells dealing Fire, Ice or Physical damage. Decided to finally look up this guy in creatures.txt and holy hell. He has: crbonus_damping_ice crbonus_damping_poi crbonus_damping_fir crbonus_damping_phy These are bonuses which grant the creature in question mitigation against a specific type. He has 4 of them and they all have these values: difficultyvaluerange0 = {0,500,500}, difficultyvaluerange1 = {1,600,600}, difficultyvaluerange2 = {2,700,700}, difficultyvaluerange3 = {3,850,850}, difficultyvaluerange4 = {4,1000,1000}, Which means a 100% mitigation on Niobium. So the Poison Lord is officially immune to 4 out of the 5 damage types on Niobium. Only Magic damage can hurt him, unless a character has Ancient Magic Mastery. This probably makes him one of the toughest enemies in the entire game AND he hits extremely hard with Poison damage. Good thing High Elf has Cobalt Strike He is not immune to slows so keeping him away with Frost Flare and chipping him down with Cobalt Strike, I managed to defeat him.

I don't want to adjust the XP globally, but only reduce/tweak it for some specific outliers, like for example the Elite red panthers near the entrance of the Blood Forest. The Elite ones give nearly 4 times as much experience as the regular ones, making them way too rewarding for the threat they pose. I would like to reduce it to the usual double, as most Elites have. If anyone could show me how to do this with this specific creature, I'd be grateful. I think it's "panther_hellcat_elite" in creatures.txt? Couldn't find the spot in any of the script files where this could be adjusted.

Did some testing and it does indeed appear that completing the quest makes the "easy" version spawn. Abishai only ever uses 4 different traps instead of the full six. Also noticed, the stat sheet of Abishai on the wiki says "Abishai of Conflict". But if you fight him after weakening him, it's actually Abishai of Dissension. Could probably be the easiest way to tell which one spawns.

Checking Abishai out in the creatures.txt reveals that he has 2 definitions. "NPC_BF_mastereye_boss" and "NPC_BF_mastereye_boss_easy". The only difference between these 2 is that the easy variant is missing 2 spells: "boss_auge_traps_kk" "boss_auge_traps_lifeleech" Now, my question is, does completing the quest actually make the game spawn the "easy" version of Abishai when going to fight him, or is it just defined and never used. I never really took the time to try and spot a difference, if any. I could probably check in quests.txt if I knew my way around in that file but that's unfortunately not the case.... Because one could argue the "easy" variant is actually more difficult, because it loses 2 of the weakest spells at Abishai's disposal, leaving more room for him to cast his more deadly spells more often.

Came back to the coordinate calculator and bumping this because the Y coordinate is offset by 1 sector in the script. Seems to not be accounting for the very bottom half-quadrant row on the map (BF row). For example, putting in 39,48 returns AI-20 when it's AH-20 in reality. Attached an example screen with the actual coordinates so you can check. If I remember correctly, it was fine before you did the update on the script back when I was first trying it out. Stumbled upon this error when I was trying to make weather work in the Northland. But even when correcting for it, I still have zero luck with adding weather effects there. Any ideas as to why Northland refuses to apply weather effects? By default, there is no weather defined for Northland in weather.txt. Which I find weird, because I remember it snowing there when I played a long time ago. When I try adding weather to 59,60 for example, nothing happens. But when I change weather in any other part of the world, it works without issues. No idea about how to get around this behavior.

Thanks. True, adding them as a spawn with low probability to spawn.txt to the relevant sectors could probably work. One question about the sector spawns though - you say that NPCs in towns and such are also spawned this way (in the sector files). But those never fail to spawn. Any explanation why these Seraphim specifically only spawn on a re-visit to the given area and not the first time?

By static, I mean those not present in spawn.txt. Specifically, I've been trying to increase the amount of the wandering Seraphim in the Seraphim Hunting Grounds. Through experimentation, I've found that they're the creature ID 1839. I've made them hostile with the monsters encountered in the area, gave them some more Seraphim CAs to use and wanted to make the game spawn a bit more of them to make the area truly feel like the Seraphim hunt there regularly. However, I noticed that the default spawn behavior of these is very weird. They seem to be set to static locations, but they don't spawn upon your first visit of the location they should spawn in, but only after you go a certain distance from the area they should spawn in and then go back. Example: The arrows roughly mark a position where a Seraphim Guard spawns. But they are never there on your first visit. Steps: 1) Start the game at the monolith and walk to the outpost. The Seraphim that is supposed to be guarding the gate will not be there. 2) Teleport somewhere far (the start of this Seraphim Region is enough). 3) Teleport to the monolith and walk to the outpost again. Now the Seraphim Guard will be there. 4) Same for the other two arrow position. Any explanation for this behavior? Creature 1839 is not present in spawn.txt and in quests.txt, only the ones that use the same creature ID but only serve as quest givers are listed (I assume). Couldn't find any other place where creature 1839 would be used or how the random Seraphim you can stumble upon occasionally are spawned. Does anybody know how the spawning of the 2 example 1839s I marked on the map is handled? I'd like to populate the area slightly more with them but I'm starting to feel like it's not going to be possible.

Thanks. I would never play HC in an always online game. I don't trust the servers/my internet that much. Not to mention that it is pretty much pointless in D3. You can choose whatever difficulty you want for the campaign, and in the daily grind, it doesn't really matter. You can just keep farming safely without ever taking any risks. Pretty boring. That being said, I completed that 150 without a single death. As for D4, no plans for now. Although I am excited about the Titan Quest 2 announcement

I played the game intermittently since release. Played in 8 seasons out of the total 28 that have happened until this point. With Season 28, I decided I'd try finally pushing for the very top and beat Greater Rift 150 solo. Been grinding Paragon levels and as the season is nearing its end, finally decided to try going for the 150. And lo and behold, I cleared it on my first try Considering how much I struggled with 149, the boots upgrade I've found recently had to have been more impactful than I had thought. And here is the heroine that did my first ever GR 150 in Diablo 3. And most likely, the last: as this will mark the end of my Diablo 3 career. Beating GR 150 has been the last goal I wanted to achieve in this game and I finally managed to do it. I've experienced the game at release, with Reaper of Souls release and how it changed over time. Don't plan on coming back and as it is going into maintenance mode after the next season, I think it's about time too. If I had to guess, I'd say around 1500+ hours spent in the game at various stages of its life. Farewell Diablo 3. You were a good time waster.

Build is going pretty well. Currently level 131, recently Mastered Constitution. The 3 skills left to master are Combat Discipline, Armor Lore and Concentration. Currently taking a bit of a detour from mastering skills and pumping Mystic Stormite Focus so I can fully mod Cascading Shroud. After that, will continue Mastering the last 3 skills. Not sure if I'm going to master Concentration. Probably will not be necessary as High Elf already has access to massive regen time reductions. Also, the reason I included Enhanced Perception in the build, to find more very rare weapons like Excalibrian finally paid off Only had one Excalibrian in stock, a level 65 or so Silver one, during my hundreds upon hundreds of hours of playtime. It's a rarity tier 14 weapon, so finding it is very, very rare. So adding a level 155 Niob one to my collection is a big deal. One of the best caster weapons, next to Nlovae's Mystery. Funnily enough, both Excalibrians dropped from skeletons in the Swamp.

LL would work. And yes, CAs using weapons do have an attack bonus. Magic Coup for example: entry0 = {"et_mult_weapondamage", 1200, 2, 0, 9 }, entry1 = {"et_AW_rel", 500, 20, 0, 5 }, entry2 = {"et_baseAW", 200, 350, 0, 5 }, entry3 = {"et_damage_any_rel", 400, 100, 0, 5 }, So Magic Coup gives you a 50+2*CA Level % bonus to attack value and also 20+35*CA Level flat attack value. So at level CA Level 100, you'd be at 3520 flat attack value and an extra 250% attack value bonus. Meaning that by itself, it'd have 12320 attack value by itself before any other bonuses. That is a pretty good value. Add 1 or 2 rings with opponent's evade chance reduction and you're set. There is also the Silver mod, which would add flat life leech. However, unless the enemy is also immune to Magic damage (haven't encountered an Ice/Magic immune combo), Cobalt Strike is sufficient. Against the Banshee though, %LL would definitely win. But then there is also the fact that I generally try to avoid using any %LL bonuses . The numbers are just too high for how powerful it is, especially on thrown weapons. The only weapon which I'd consider having a "balanced" amount of %LL is https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Tom_Felde's_Thunderous_Voice But I could probably run a ranged weapon on switch to use with Magic Coup against highly Ice/Physical resistant enemies. The mods on Shadow Step besides the Bronze one are not really that important so I could divert the mod points into Coup and max that instead of Shadow Step. Death's Chirr could be a good sidearm

Just additional info about enemy immunities on Niobium: Ice Elementals are now indeed completely immune to Ice. Expected it to happen way sooner, but even in Plat, they can still be damaged by Ice. Ancestral Spirits summoned by Elite Ogre Shamans have about 90-95% mitigation to both Ice and Physical damage. Not completely immune like Banshee, but very annoying. Various Ghosts, like those in the cursed forest in the human region have similar Ice mitigation as Moldered Skeletons. About 40-ish percent. I think that should be all enemies with notably high levels of Ice mitigation. Unless some other enemy in later acts received a massive amount. Will report it here later if that's the case.

When you hover over the sticks on the machines, they quote/refer to something. Here is a picture of all 6. Does anybody know all the references? What I could gather: 1 - Obviously Mario. 2 - Most likely Duke Nukem 3D? One of his idle voice lines is "What're you waiting for, Christmas?" 3 - Apparently from a 1984 game called Impossible Mission. 4 - No idea. Probably some racing game? Could see an announcer saying that when someone overtakes you. But too generic to find on the internet. 5 - Apparently an album from Prodigy, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used in some game. But no idea which. 6 - Apparently from a game called Jet Set Willy, also from 1984. "We Must Perform a Quirkafleeg" is name of one of the levels. Seeing as most of these are references to games, does anybody have any game ideas about number 4 and 5?

Probably as a cleanup and to save up some resources to drop down the file size of some script files. I remember there being an extra Abishai in the southern unpathable part of the jungle (south of Kral). And probably more, but I never explored the off-map stuff much. Hugging the edges of the map with extreme Visibility Range gear also reveals some quite interestingly textured terrain in several places. EDIT: Here is an example: If you actually walked there, the ground would actually have that texture on it.

Additional note about the monster mitigation values - they slightly scale with difficulty. Facetelleon is completely Ice immune in Niobium. Just fought the Banshee and it's completely immune to both Ice and Physical damage. Had to chip it down with Cobalt Strike. Skeletons were are mitigating a noticeable chunk of Ice damage, so much so that I modded Expulse Magic for damage against Undead. The damage is surprisingly high and takes care of any issues with them. Too bad it doesn't work against Ghosts too. Overall, Ancient Magic Mastery should probably be included in any caster build around entering Niobium. The enemies who mitigate your elements significantly are not numerous, but can be quite annoying. Banshee has been the worst so far, being immune to the build's 2 main damage types and still having a large chunk of Magic armor.

One important find about mounts: The mount basically counts as an extra life. Should it die in combat (your health while riding it gets extremely low), you first get dismounted, stunned for a couple seconds and the enemies ignore you for the duration of the stun, allowing you to heal and retreat after the stun is over. Just had this happen on my Hardcore High Elf. Due to my poor piloting, Bloodclaw shredded my health pool incredibly quickly with extremely hard hits + massive bleed, even through Crystal Skin with 12.6K Physical Armor. My heart skipped several beats, thought I was dead dead before I realized what happened, but managed to get out of that situation alive thanks to the mount giving its life for me. An extremely valuable thing for a Hardcore character. Rest in peace, level 126 Wind Serpent/Fay Drake, your sacrifice will not be forgotten. May your successor not meet a similar fate

The only thing I can suggest would be to try windowed mode. The game behaves very weirdly in fullscreen on modern systems. Other than that, no idea.

I'm not saying it's not good. I'm saying there is no room left for Tactics in my build. There are more important things for the build to take. It would definitely help, no argument there. As I said, I have a melee TG that went all in on the shield and he's basically immortal. But again, overkill is usually pointless. Even then, I will 100% stand by that ~55% Spell Reflection will be better 99% of the time than a ~28% stronger shield value. 30K/38K Shield is not that much of a difference. You are seriously sleeping on Reflect/Block. It is found with low values on gear, but on buffs, it's is worth it pretty much every single time over any alternative. Ranged attacks can be questioned, but melee and spells every single time. And I will again mention the Life Leech attacks, that can't be mitigated in any way other than Spell Block/Reflect. Shield power can be easily found elsewhere. But such a massive chunk of Spell Reflect is absolutely irreplacable. The scenario I meant was after loading the game, before you even turn the shield on. If you happened to save in a densely populated enemy area, you might end up dead before you even manage to turn on the shield. If we are talking about regular play, it's up to how you pilot your character to ensure the shield does not drop. And Power won't help with enemies that can disable buffs but, again - Spell Reflection will. If you reflect the lightning of the Griffin/Furies, your buffs stay intact. I personally can't stand the small delay Expert Touch introduces on all CAs. I still mostly use CAs out of combos or just put a single CA into a combo to benefit from the regen time reduction, even when playing multiple aspect builds. I want to be able to cast one spell and instantly the next from another aspect. I basically never put attack CAs in a combo. Mostly because I like to move a little after every single cast. Casting a CA while holding W or S and then casting again. Combos require you to stand still or you interrupt it. I mostly reserve them for long cooldown CAs to save slots on the skill bar. You also can't choose the targets of the CAs in a combo. When separate, you can direct every CA to a different target. Not to mention that movement spells that require a target, like Assailing Somersault or Belligerent Vault have to be out of combos because you can't CTRL-target the ground with them anymore if in a combo. Unless I'm playing strictly a single aspect build, I always turn Expert Touch off. As for the first point, I am talking about the situation after all the calculations are done and you reach the final split of 60/40. And no, Shield Absorption is not dependent in any way shape or form on your current shield left. It's either on or not. Assuming both in-combat health and shield regen are 0, the optimal health/shield value would be for example 15K Shield and 10K Health, regardless of any other factors. But of course, it is far easier to sustain health than the shield. So you can do with less HP (like foregoing Constitution) and increase your shield value more so you can go longer without having to pause for 5-10 seconds for it to recharge if you are doing constant intense fighting. All I'm saying is that your goal should not be for the shield to eat everything all the time but split it efficiently between health and Shield. Health is a resource which can be used. And you can somewhat manipulate the ratio with gear bonuses. If your health is dropping too fast, some extra HP is your goal. If shield is taking too much of a beating or if you can easily sustain your health in combat, remove some of your gear with extra absorption or add Willpower/Warding Energy Lore/Max Shield Energy gear. Of course, hitting that point 100% precisely is not possible. But seeing how it performs in the field and making adjustments to get as close as possible is what should be done. Again, I am 100% sure that is not the case, at least in vanilla. Doesn't matter if my TG has 30K/30K Shield or 5K/30K shield, the split remains the same. I even made you a vid where you can see that the ratio remains the same, no matter how the shield goes down. If your statement were true, the health drop towards the end should be noticeably higher than it was at the start, but it is not. If there is a difference, it's so minor as to be considered irrelevant. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bjw04jboafwu76nzv8s7i/Sacred-2-Ice-Blood-2023-07-23-20-01-05.mp4?rlkey=jyk1eqx2yae814yktuz3riyh6&dl=0 And seeing this video, I can now clearly see that I should remove that one Shield Absorption jewelry piece I have in my gear because the Shield goes down too fast and it would have dropped noticeably sooner than health. And that was just me standing there, in normal combat, I also heal a lot with this build (potions, Charged Grid, Jolting Touch), so I can afford the health damage. I currently have a 13.5% bonus to absorption, which (assuming it is indeed additive) makes it 73.5% damage to shield and 26.5% to Health. But that'd mean removing that piece will increase the damage to my health by about 50% which could be a bit too much. But there is an even better solution. Simply move the amulet that is giving me the bonus to a silver socket instead of a gold one. That would reduce the bonus to 12.4%, resulting in 72.4% damage to shield and 27.6% to health and then simply find a gear piece with Max Shield Energy or pump Warding Energy Lore or Willpower. As Toughness and Warding Energy Lore are the last 2 skills I don't have Mastered, the problem will take care of itself in time, if I do play past level 138. This is what I mean by optimizing the gear for a Shield with efficient damage split.

It's both. Source Warden is there for crowds of normal enemies and Lost Fusion to add more damage to Elites and Bosses. You could go around Jolting Touching everything to death one by one, but it would be vastly inferior to using your AoEs. You could also just run around madly and wait for your AoEs to melt bosses and Elites, but it would be similarly inferior. I find the shield combined with mitigation from Toughness, Reduction and Demiurge legs quite enough. Again, all Tactics would do is increase survivability, which the build already has enough of and it needs all the damage it can get. If I had a slot for it, I would definitely squeeze in Tactics, but I do no and it was the first on the chopping block. The flat reduction helps the most against small hits. The problem here is that the base value scales very slowly. 1.5+0.5*CA Level. At CA level 100, you get 51.5 flat absorption. Even if you multiply that by 5, you still land on just over 250 flat absorption. The big hits will still easily go through, especially the most dangerous stuff like homing Dragon fireballs or enemies that throw Fire Traps. Cutting 250 instead of 50 from a 10K damage nuke won't really help much. It will definitely be good near the beginning of the game, but in late Niob? It won't do as much as you'd think. I have a different TG, focused on Devout Guardian and yes, he has reached a stage where normal enemies hit him for double digits, Elites and bosses for triple. Basically immortal. But there is a point where you have enough defense. You can do with "very durable" instead of "immortal". One of the most effective defensive measures in this game is how you pilot your character. It's nice seeing yourself get hit for 50 damage. But you have to ask yourself, "Can I really not afford to get hit for 300 damage against my 30K Shield and 15K life? If your shield drops regularly so that you'd need the Recharge mod for it to stay active, you are seriously lacking in defense. And Mitigation is the best defensive stat in the game. Forgoing such an amount of it for what will be a measly in-combat shield regen in late Niob is simply not worth it. But if you plan on not pushing past Silver or Gold with your Guardian, it is very viable. There are many nuances to this yes. Power would indeed be better against ground effects that can't be reflected like Dragon Breath, Fire Traps, DoTs - things that are not actual direct attacks. However, this is also exactly the thing that Shields by their definition are the best against. The split of damage between Health and Shield ensures you can manage that damage quite well in a fight, compared to other characters that can melt in a mob of Spitting Spiders for example. Not to mention that you should be able to reach sufficient shield power with one Power mod. But then there are also things like Life Leech spells, where Reflection will be simply superior. Reflection/Block is the only way to mitigate Life Leech damage (by stopping the thing that would have inflicted it). As for actual reflection, your statement is wrong. Reflection/Block is always first in the layers of defense. The game first checks for whether you Blocked/Reflected the attack. If have not not, only then it proceeds to the actual damage calculations. So you always reflect back the full damage of the enemy spell. No anti-synergy there, even though using Reflection to actually deal damage is a futile endeavour as the damage is way too low for late Niob. Spell Reflection is one of the most powerful defense mechanics in the game. My Shadow Warrior can run through the Blood Forest and the Eyes will actually heal him more often than not because they hit themselves with the Life Leech, which then proceeds to heal him. It might seem less powerful against bosses, but that's simply because they don't cast that many direct damage spells and have many attacks which can't be reflected (anything Area of Effect). I assure you the chance is still the same. It can easily Reflect the Dragon Fireballs, Kral's projectiles, Facetelleon's zap etc. In the end, Reflection helps the most against the most dangerous things - instant damage spells. Fen Fire lightning, Dragon fireballs, life leech spells. Any ground based unreflectable attack can be easily avoided altogether - by simply moving out of the way. You can't do that for the other spells. The build I posted also has the "holy trifecta". A chance to Block/Reflect all the vectors of attacks (Spells, melee, ranged). With Combat Alert going, a very large chunk of attacks actually don't reach me at all. Not really relevant if we're talking about a scenario where the shield is not on. Well, if you pump Willpower and the skill hard enough, you might reach a stage where you can win it against bosses. But this build needs all the Intelligence it can get, especially without Ancient Magic. I already have 200 runes eaten for Fiery Ember/Icy Evanscence, so Intelligence and levels are the only vectors left to increase the damage (other than gear of course). Shield absorption is highly questionable. You might end up with the strain on the shield being too big. Health is a resource, why not use it. The optimal split would be so that both the Shield and Health reach 0 at exactly the same moment. One question here though. I have a +13.5% Energy Shield Absorption bonus. Does that make it 68.1% or is it additive and it becomes 73.5%? Otherwise, the stats look good, but again, using 1-2 of your ~20 sockets for DME is well worth it, IF you don't have the Spell Resistance skill. With the skill, it is pointless. Yes, the build uses both the Aspects to its full extent (except Propelled Levitaion). Even Archimedes Beam can have a situational use for locking down enemies with buffs in place (as mentioned previously). I also find Primal Mutation somewhat clumsy. But I will eventually mod it (if I ever play to like level 175 on the character) and try for the rare mutations The build I posted is quite demanding with regen times. Amplifying Discharge has to be kept at spammable levels. Concentration also lowers the buff penalty, which is otherwise unaffected by generic -% Regen Time bonuses and requires the very rare, orange text -X% Regen Penalty from buffs. I also prefer Defense, but not overkill. I used to go 4 Defensive skills with every single one of my characters, but eventually reduced it to 3 and I even have ranged chars with only 2. It opened up so much variety with how you can play other than always just spamming one button from one aspect from level 1 to 200. One last important note, the build is to be played WITHOUT Expert Touch.

Source Warden is there for Area of Effect, Lost fusion for single target, mostly Jolting Touch. And Lost Fusion does have synergy with Source Warden through the resistance reduction of Fiery Ember and Icy Evanescence. Properly modded Amplifying Discharge (Ice damage) and Furious Emblazer can benefit from it tremendously. AD on an enemy in Icy Evanescence can hit for 30K+. Having CAs that can make use of that resist reduction other than FE/IE itself is definitely good. Archimedes Beam can be used with it's Annul mod to lock down enemies who have some buff as it will keep disabling it and the enemy will keep recasting it in place. Going for a main damage source and just supporting it as much is possible is definitely the easiest to do, but by far not the only viable thing. But the build I posted is more focused on Lost Fusion build until level 75 and more on Source Warden build after level 75. True. Although I find that the Temple Guardian doesn't really need it. He has the most powerful resistance reduction in the game and I feel Ascaron didn't give him Ancient Magic for that exact reason. He would be obscenely powerful with it, being able to melt even things like Fire Elementals with Fiery Ember. It is missing, but I find that picking a skill just to boost one CAs mod is mostly not worth it. Jolting Touch along with Charged Grid and healing potions takes care of any in-combat healing needs. Shield strength is not a problem, it will hold, but in late Niobium you can run into scenarios where you'd run out of health while still having shield remaining. Going overboard on healing is not really needed I feel, and using up a skill slot for that? That's a nope from me. Depends, but in the vast majority of cases, Reduction will be superior. The further you go in Niobium, the more that will be true. Assume a level 100 Shroud and Tactics bonus of say... 400%. You will be looking at 15% all channel mitigation vs about 515 shield regen per second. That 515 is not going to mean much in late Niob. The only thing it's good for is that you will be under the effects of the shield all the time, even if the enemies do manage to take it down. But the priority here is for the shield to never go down completely. Shields benefit tremendously from mitigation. Reduction + Toughness alone will increase your survivability by an insane amount (as long as the shield holds). Power is unfortunately nothing stellar. It's nice, but 10+0.1*CA Level % is nothing to write home about. I still picked it at Bronze because I have no use for Derogate as this is not a melee build (for the most part) but picking it at Gold? Over Spell Reflect? It's no contest. A single reflected spell in late Niob is already more powerful that another Power mod. Power would give at most a couple more thousand of shield strength. Reflecting a single Life Leech Lightning or Dragon fireball is worth thousands upon thousands of damage every time it procs. At CA level 80, I have 49.5% chance to reflect spells. It I played/levelled it further, it would probably eventually reach somewhere in the 55%+ territory. It is incomparably superior to Power as enemy spells are the most dangerous thing in the game. One note about the build though - it is ABSOLUTE glass without the shield on. Don't save in densely populated enemy areas or you might find yourself dead shortly after the load. Also, any enemies that can cancel buffs (White Griffin, Sinister Prince or Furies in Northland) are probably the most dangerous thing you can encounter. Spell Resistance is extremely powerful, yes but It is mostly useful for negating enemy DoTs and reducing duration of negative effects. And that is also the thing which shields excel against. Especially TG's, as he has a natural 60/40 split of damage to shields/health. SR actually doesn't do that much against powerful hitting spells, other than preventing crits. Bosses will still win the Spell Intensity check as they have thousands of Spell Intensity. Shroud should be able to hold against everything. In the example video, you can see my health and shields still do drop. But Warding Energy Lore and Toughness are the last 2 skills I don't have Mastered. Now, any future points for the next 30 levels are going to be boosting survivability. And you can gear for Detrimental Effect Reduction. Dedicating 1-2 sockets to it is well worth it (I have 41.8% from gear). Optimally a jewelry piece with All Skills + DME reduction combo. Concentration provides an unbeatable regen time reduction. And the build needs all the regen it can get. Keeping regen times low for Amplifying Discharge/Furious Emblazer is pretty important and Untouchable force is just a nice bonus. I don't have it levelled much, but it helps. Some of the most dangerous enemies are rapidly hitting melee powerhouses. Scorpions, Demons, even some bosses like Dragons hit very fast in Niobium. Calm makes that a lot more manageable. The occasional stun is a prime opportunity to also apply Furious Emblazer to them while they're bathing in Fiery Ember. I only have UF at level 16 and it still slows down enemies nicely and provides an 18.2% chance to stun every 5 seconds and also gives 33% chance to block projectiles. Any damage relieved off the shields means that shield can deal with the more problematic stuff. If pumped, the stun would become semi-reliable and the block chance could easily reach ~60%. And the stun duration is always 5 seconds. Doesn't matter if a normal enemy or a boss. Concentration is definitely more worth it for this build than Tactics Lore. I use Jolting Touch for that. Spamming it repeatedly on bosses with the mods mentioned above melts them very fast. You should be able to kill them before they chew through your shield. If not, you can retreat as they are rooted in place, recharge shield and go back in. Also another reason why Untouchable Force is an incredible utility buff. Also, as a side note, the TG has some of the best set bonuses in the game. He gets +All Skills as the first 3-piece bonus on all 3 of his mainline sets. And this is probably the build that benefits the most from any skills bonuses. I have 2 partial sets, which gives me +20 All Skills for free, allowing me to sit at +91 All Skills at level 137. EDIT: Make that +95 I played for a couple of minutes before going back to my High Elf and randomly got a +7 All Skills ring by running in Grunwald Forest for 3 minutes He really wants me to come back to him I guess Here is what the build looks like: HP - 13172 Shield - 30363 Gear: Head - Demiurge Shoulders - Demiurge Arms - Combat Modules Battery - Combat Modules Chest - Gleaming Chestplate Waist - Combat Modules Legs - Demiurge Boots - Demiurge Jewelry - All Skills Socketables - a mix of Whets, Enhances and All Skills. No problem. I like discussing stuff like this

Just a short write-up of important side-quests. Important how, you may ask? Because they reward a rare amulet. And with a modest amount of save/loading, an easily accessible source of All Skills amulets for all characters, no matter if they have Bargaining or Enhanced Perception. Regardless of what character you play, you can easily build up your All Skills jewelry collection with this easy farming trick. But first, the quests: Act 2 - Sickle Moon Wool (Wild Sheep): a quest in Black Oaks village, just north of the Dragonmaw Pass. Given by the Seamstress there. The end of the quest, turning it in to the Seamstress' daughter in Griffinborough rewards a rare amulet. Act 3 - The Fat Rat (The Rat's New Home): a quest in Karagh, the northernmost settlement of the Orcs near the shore, where it rains heavily all the time. One of the shamans there is looking for a new ritual rat. The last step of the quest, turning in the rat to the Shaman rewards a rare amulet. Act 7 - The Lost Caravan (The Scarabs' Lair): a quest in Khorum, the Desert capital. One of the merchants asks you to go look for a missing caravan. This is a pretty lengthy quest which ends in you having to clear out a den full of Scarabs. Once you do, turning in this last part rewards a rare amulet. Act 7 - Soldiers from the Past (The Du'Rach Camp): a quest started at the commander of the troops in Khorum, After you finish the last part, turning in the quest to the Archaeologist rewards you with a unique fire relic. This means a brown text relic that has higher than usual resistance. Very good as fire is probably the most dangerous element in the game. Also, starting from Gold difficulty, these relics spawn with a bonus to one of the defensive skills (Armor Lore, Constitution, Spell Resistance, Toughness) or bonuses to a defensive stat (Defense value %, Defense value +X, Willpower, Spell Resistance %). The best relics for any character that does not use any General Skills. Compared to the amulets, somewhat easy to get a relic you desire. Normally, unique relics drop very rarely, so having a guaranteed source is a very big deal. Make sure to claim these with every character on Gold, Platinum and Niobium difficulties. A relic with Armor Lore is probably the safest bet. Armor Lore is pretty much mandatory on every single character so it will be universally useful. Constitution, Spell Resistance and Toughness are also good, but not all characters will necessarily have those. Spell Resistance %, Willpower and Defense value bonuses are mediocre at best, I'd recommend rerolling those. Act 11 - Don't Trust Statistics: in the Seraphim Hunting Grounds, near the Old Camp, one of the Seraphim will send you on a timed hunting run to verify some results. Once you finish, she will send you to pick up a reward from a nearby cave. Going near the entrance to the cave finishes the quest and drops a rare amulet. And now for the important part. Once you reach the stage where all you have to do is turn in the quest to receive the reward, don't do it. First, go next to where you are supposed to turn it in and create a manual save using F7 (so that you spawn there every time on game load). Then, check your quest log. The reward you are going to receive is noted there and you can check exactly what you'll get. The trick here is that this quest reward gets re-rolled every single time you leave and enter the game. Meaning you can repeat doing that until you get a piece with All Skills bonus on it. You can get it nearly instantly or spend 10 minutes reloading for nothing. All depends on luck. Be warned though, that trying to go for a double good roll, like All Skills and Deathblow can be a very time consuming process. Usually, you will unfortunately end up with a disappointing 2nd roll, but All Skills is the important part. The level of the reward is always equal to your character level and is not affected by Survival Bonus. Depending on the difficulty and your character level, 1 or 2 more levels can mean the difference between getting a +2 All Skills and + 3 All Skills. I don't have the exact breakpoints per difficulty, but it can often be wise to save the turn-in of these quests for later. Depends on how long you want to wait and what level requirement you want the amulet to have. On Silver, you can get +2 All Skills around level 50 or so, But for +3, it can be level 90+, so probably not worth waiting beyond that. But depends on you. You can even save the quests and return to that difficulty later to pick up the reward. Some rough difficulty breakpoints I can remember: Bronze - ? Silver - +2 by level 50, +3 by level 90 Gold - ? Platinum - +3 by level 50, +4 by level 85 Niobium - ? If you want to jam those amulets in sockets, you can substract 1-2 levels for silver sockets and 3-4 levels for gold sockets. to reach the same amount of All Skills. Unfortunately, no quests reward rare rings, so you still need luck to find those (or just make a Bargainer ).

Another alternative I've had incredible success with even in vanilla would be the Area of Effect Guardian. Main focus on Icy Evanescence and Fiery Ember, supported with Charged Grid. You just walk around, herd enemies into large groups and melt them with all your Area of Effect. Normal enemies don't stand a chance, and you can pepper elites either with Amplifying Discharge or just melt them with Jolting Touch if they're alone. Everything dies by itself in a couple of seconds so you can just focus on the tough ones. But this build takes a while to get going. Initially, all the relevant CAs require high levels to reach their full potential. My skills in order: Lost Fusion Lore Lost Fusion Focus Devout Guardian Focus Armor Lore Warding Energy Lore Toughness Combat Discipline Concentration Source Warden Lore Source Warden Focus If you are feeling brave, you could probably switch Toughness for Damage Lore to squeeze out a bit more damage out of Fiery Ember, but I wouldn't recommend it. Attributes go mostly to Intelligence. As TG does not have access to Ancient Magic in vanilla, the extra power is needed. But you can sprinkle some Willpower, Vitality or Stamina if you want. Mods Devout Guardian - only mod the shield and Combat Alert T-Energy Shroud: Power-Reduction-Reflection Combat Alert: Barricade-Riposte-NONE Nothing else in this tree matters. Lost Fusion: Amplifying Discharge: Ice Bullets-Ricochet-Ice Bullets Furious Emblazer: Accelerant-Incapacitate-Burnout Jolting Touch: Life Leech-Voltage-Flux Archimedes Beam: Bundle-Intent-Annul Propelled Levitation: Doesn't really matter. Mod last, I'd probably go for: Super Charger-Jet Stream-Flux. But you probably won't be using this CA anyway due to the prohibitively long cooldown. Source Warden: Primal Mutation: mod last. Doesn't really matter, you won't be using it but if I were to mod it, I'd probably go: Combust-Mutate-Helpless and use it just as a novelty to see some rare enemy mutations, like Hydras, Plants and such which you have almost no chance to see in the game otherwise. Fiery Ember: Incinerate-Churn-Sustain. Your main damaging CA. Will deal high damage at high levels due to the scaling resistance reduction, which increases its own damage. Everything about this CA gets better and better the higher level it is. Damage tic rate, radius, duration, resistance reduction - everything keeps increasing. Which is why this CA only really starts to shine past level 75. Icy Evanescence: Icy Needles-Deep Frost-Sustain. Same as Fiery Ember except Ice. Your go to for fire resistant enemies and vice versa. Charged Grid: Havoc-Unnatural Selection-Longevity. Another Area of Effect to support your Ember/Evanescence. Properly modded, adds a decent chunk of additional damage which will also periodically Weaken enemies with its magic damage. Also provides powerful supplementary healing. Put it in a combo with Combat Alert and use as often as possible. Untouchable Force: Mind Control-Calm-Crumble. An optional buff you can run. Depends on you if you want to take the increased regen times for some extra utility/defense. Might not be worth it initially, but once you start Mastering some stuff at level 75 and on, you can safely add it. The attack speed slow is quite noticeable and will help keep you safe and the occasional stun is good too. And some extra block for projectiles to seal the deal. CAs/Combos: 1 - Amplifying Discharge - sniping lone enemies/support damage for Elites. Synergy with Icy Evanescence. 2 - Furious Emblazer. Synergy with Fiery Ember. When something absolutely positively needs to melt. Cast Fiery Ember beforehand and watch this puppy simply nuke enemies with its Deathblow mod. 3 - Combat Alert/Charged Grid - You will eventually reach a stage where Combat Alert can be maintained indefinitely and I have about a 70% uptime on Charged Grid at character level 137. Use whenever off cooldown. 4 - Jolting Touch - your go to CA for melting bosses/Elites after you cast your Area of Effect spells. The Life Leech mod will also ensure that any damage that goes through the Shield will get instantly healed, removing any need of Constitution. 5 - Fiery Ember OR Icy Evanescence - the main CA. Which one depends on the region/enemies you face. Enemies with fire resistance/armor - Icy Evanescence and Fiery Ember if not. Both of them benefit INSANELY from and Combat Art Range bonuses. Nlovae's Mystery alone does wonders. They both eventually cover the entire screen. A short example of the build in action: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nx9bo708p08vg0mwxj7kb/Sacred-2-Ice-Blood-2023-07-20-17-44-51.mp4?rlkey=3u0kqbfqs3ldmw9q8n3eht2d9&dl=0