Help with Shadow Warrior Tank/Summoner type build please!

[eXist 0]

Hi all, totally new to this game and I have read the manual cover to cover now and am about to begin my adventure in this game. Coming from Titan Quest I know how important it is to know what your char is going to be like before you even start so im looking for some advice please.....

 

My thought for my first playthrough is a Pure 1 handed weapon/Shield TANK with everything pretty much set up for defence and the summon skeletons abilty as my damage source (and some company as I only play an hour or so a day)

 

I should also say sry for all the questions that are about to follow but I dont wanna gimp my first playthrough in any way.

 

1 - I will be starting on Silver difficulty, but is this game like TQ in that I should rush this playthrough to get to platinum, then rush that for Niob and really concentrate from here?

2- What kind of weapon (and weapon skill if any) should I use to match this type of build?

3 - What sort of attribute point distrobution should I be looking for?

4 - Skill wise I was thinking about:

 

Shield Lore

Armour Lore

Constition

Combat Reflexes

Spell Resistance

Toughness

"a weapon type skill"

Concentration

Astral Lord Lore

Astral Lord Focus

 

Would this be a decent build, and what sort of order or max skill level should I be aiming for with each skill?

 

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Thank you very much in advance for any answers!

 

eXist

[Numerii 1]

You might enjoy the build I made here:

 

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=13069

 

I don't use Nether Allegiance very much with this build but you will have the modification points to use them all the time if you wish. You won't be able to eat very many runes for Spectral Hand due to the regen penalty of the NA buff but their damage will more than make up for it.

 

The gear I use with this build is as follows:

 

1h: Officer's Sabre(you might opt for Tinwora's Curse or Nlovae's Mystery for the reduction in regen times they both have)

Shield: Glacial Defender

Helm: Helmet of Infinite Torment

Armor: Plate of the Tomb

Shoulders: Armantin's Shoulder Plates

Wrists: No set piece here, I use a pair called Elder's Wristbands that came with +all skills, chance to evade % and +casting speed with a gold socket.

Hands: Armantin's Battle Gauntlets

Belt: Armantin's Belt

Legs: Legwraps of the Dead

Feet: Denderan's Plans

 

The 3 pieces of Armantin's are mostly for the 3-piece bonus which is a little over 1k armor. This bonus is modified by Armor Lore so it actually gives me 4k armor. You will also have two bronze sockets with this set and I socket one Whet and one Anneal into those sockets. At 75+ those two runes really add a lot to your defense and offense. The chest I plan to change out at some point with an uncommon chest that has all channel damage mitigation. I currently have one in my inventory that has +11.6% to all channels with a silver and gold socket. You can very rarely find one that has a native all channel mitigation and spawns with a bonus all channel mitigation. I would love to find one of those with at least a silver socket on it.

 

Damage mitigation is pretty huge for this build since I don't use Grim Resilience or Reflective Emanation. With all the defensive skills in this build along with damage mitigation I tank very well so the buffs are really not needed, it's just a bit of a challenging build til you get to about 50% mitigation. Any time you happen to find a Darwargon's Circlet or Tanit's Collar put them in a gold socket, these will help get your mitigation up faster. The rest of my socketing selections are explained in the build.

 

You will definitely want to devote your attributes to Vitality and Stamina to help with the regen penalty of NA. 1-49 all Vitality then from 50-149 put one point in each, 150-200 one point in Vitality and two into Stamina each level.