Sariel: Invincible Flying Tankmage Thong Princess!

[Kaballah 0]

This is a fun approach to playing Sacred 2's Seraphim that I have enjoyed a great deal, and I thought I would share some info on how she played out. Most builds tend to weight skill picks and combat art use to one or two aspects. I decided to play around with using all three heavily, mainly to experiment, but I was surprised how powerful she ended up. I took this build through the single player campaign and defeated Platinum difficulty at level 88 - too early really, since the drops in early Niobium are leveled much too high to equip. Note that this character may not perform the same way depending on equipment, or in a multiplayer game with many players - however the same is true for pretty much any other character. For a colorful, flashy, and different way to play the Seraphim, read on!

 

Things I already know:

"zomg, no constitution!!1!" Yes, I know.

"char X with skills Y and combat arts Z is more efficient." Yes, I know. I've defeated the game on Niobium with the most efficient character and build in the game, so it's okay to not be über efficient.

"not a good build for hardcore d00d" Maybe. I don't play hardcore - although this is a surprisingly tough character, certainly the most powerful defensively I've ever come up with.

"you can just drink health potions" Yes, but I like to run around smashing stuff with an overpowered character, and health potions don't feel very overpowered to me. After all, any Shadow Warrior can chug a brew and keep going. Why play like the gimps of the game? I like to feel confident and without concern, as Okku the God of Bears would say.

 

Skills:

Concentration - To allow two buffs. I chose this to allow Battle Stance and Warding Energy together; see below for some discussion of Warding Energy though, this skill is not absolutely required. If you take it, you may keep it at 1 point for a long time (I still haven't raised it at 90). If you choose not to, then I strongly recommend Tactics Lore in its place.

Exalted Warrior Focus - Firstly to unlock modifications for Battle Stance, and to increase the maximum CA level for the same. Also to improve Assailing Somersault, hence the "Flying" bit. Eventually to improve the other attack CAs in this aspect. This skill deserves lots of points, to keep the max CA level of Battle Stance very high and keep the recharge of Assailing Somersault very low.

Revered Technology Focus - To improve the CAs in this aspect and increase their max level, primarily Warding Energy (optional, see below), Divine Protection (too good to skip) and Flaring Nova. Lots of points here too, to keep CA levels high and recharges low.

Warding Energy Lore - GREATLY improves Warding Energy and Divine Protection. Too good to skip. Lots of points here.

Armor Lore - You'd have to have a head full of rocks to skip Armor Lore! Take to a high enough level at least to equip your armor drops without a speed penalty, or higher depending on how you like to play.

Celestial Magic Focus - To improve the CAs in this aspect and increase their level, mostly Radiant Pillar and Hallowed Restoration.

Combat Discipline - To allow three moves in a combo, and to improve all CA damage. If you've never taken this skill before, three moves in a combo is a lot of fun as well as simply being very powerful. The free damage bonus is nice too. There is no reason to start putting points here until it will give more damage increase than Revered Tech Lore and Celestial Magic Lore, which is quite a long time.

Revered Technology Lore - To start improving damage from Flaring Nova.

Celestial Magic Lore - To start improving damage from Radiant Pillar, as well as improve healing from Hallowed Restoration.

Toughness - Another optional choice, although in the late game with a lot of + All Skills equipment, it can shave off tons of damage. Not very necessary for this build though. A weapon skill is a good alternative, possibly in a different order, see below for an example.

 

Combat Arts and Suggested Modifications:

Battle Stance

- Aggression, scaling melee/ranged damage bonus. Attack score is largely unimportant after level 15 or so. Weapon damage is a big chunk, and there's simply no reason not to take advantage of it. The damage bonus actually compares pretty well vs. Tactics Lore, although you don't get the increased crit chance. Of course, it also stacks with Tactics Lore, so if you opt to take that skill, so much the better!

- Flexibility, scaling evade chance. Either option is pretty good though.

- Retaliation, scaling reflect melee chance. Reflect melee is one of those things that imvho you're nuts if you don't take it. With this build, the main value is reflect anyway, in the late game.

 

Assailing Somersault

- Spurt, a large increase of jump range. SacredWiki says 2.5 feet, but in play it seems more like several yards. Reducing recharge is not too valuable, in my experience, since you're going to be running it in a combo with several other powers, and in this way it will recharge before it's needed again without the recharge mod.

- Impetus, inflict area damage. Area damage is good!

- Neither gold modification option is very useful with this build. You will be using Somersault to charge into battle and give the butts of evil a liberal kicking; and stunned enemies do not attack you, and thus do not eat their own reflected melee, which is a terrible waste of damage. Better to spend the last mod point in improving Soul Hammer or Pelting Strikes.

 

Radiant Pillar

- Hypnosis, attract enemies to the center of the pillar. This makes Assailing Somersault hit many more targets than it tends to otherwise. The alternative, a to-hit debuff, is not very important with this build.

- Conserve, increase duration of the pillar. Both are good options, but you will get more damage ticks out of Pillar with Conserve, which comes in handy on bosses.

- Magnify, increase damage. Both options have advantages though.

 

Hallowed Restoration

Any combination of options is OK with this build, since you will very rarely be taking significant damage, although a very common choice is to take the Recuperation (hitpoint regeneration) modification. I can tell you that the Prevention (prevent DOT damage) silver mod does not appear to work, and Antidote (reduce impediment and wound effects) does not appear to work either. IMO you could skip modifying this CA completely, although there isn't all that much of great value in the Celestial Magic aspect to spend mod points on anyway besides this spell and Radiant Pillar.

 

Flaring Nova

- Expand (increase radius) and Impulse (send two pulses at smaller radius) are both good. Since the Attract modification on Radiant Pillar will tend to pull enemies to the center of the pillar, it can help gather more enemies to be hit by the smaller Nova radius with Impulse. I took Expand on my character and I think it is simpler to use.

- The Perplex modification does not appear to do anything useful and may be broken. On the other hand, stunned opponents do not attack you, which has the down side that they don't eat their own reflected melee while stunned. Since on Niobium difficulty, this is thousands of damage per hit, maybe Perplex is the more powerful option. I took Perplex and I'm rather glad.

- Flux, more damage. Making your enemies slow does not reward you with experience points, while making them dead does. They won't hurt you anyway, with this build.

 

Divine Protection

This is the Invincible part. When you first get this spell on a new character, it seems like junk - and mostly, it is. Combined with Warding Energy Lore skill, and with a couple of mod points, it becomes, well, invincible. No, really.

- Capacity, extends duration, and...

- Boost, reduces cooldown time. Since this spell has a hard cooldown of 60 seconds when you first get it, and a duration of 15 seconds, it is not all that useful except in truly dire emergency. With these two mods, and some CA levels, the duration becomes longer than the recharge time. This means it can be maintained all the time, if desired. While it is running, all incoming damage is dealt to shield hit points rather than character hit points. Since we took a lot of Warding Energy Lore, we have a very large amount of shield hit points. More than sufficient for the endgame bosses on on Platinum, e.g. At level 90, with the CA at 68, Sariel's shield has about 53k hit points, cools down in 28 seconds, and lasts 41 seconds.

Update: The Duration starts to exceed the Cooldown at about CA level 30.

 

In fact this is so powerful defensively, I can't think of anything else in the game that competes with it. Although, well, if you're worried, you still have Hallowed Restoration in the extremely unlikely event that you take a couple of points of health damage. Although, honestly, if something outran your Divine Protection, you're toast no matter how much effort you've put into Hallowed Restoration.

 

Oh, right, for the third mod - eh, Improved Mirror for >100% Block Combat Art, how's that? I find NPC ranged damage completely non-threatening with any character I build. The description for Improved Mirror says it reflects spells, but the bonus on the sigma report says it is Block. Not a big problem, it's still >100%, and Batman approves of >100%.

 

Finally, Warding Energy

- Field Force, scaling bonus to shield hit points. NPC ranged damage is just not a big deal.

- Magic Mirror, scaling chance to reflect combat arts. The other option, Field Force again, is very good also, but it's funny to make the little dragons in Seraphim Isle caverns kill themselves with their own fireballs. Field Force is probably the more powerful pick though, especially with some "Absorption Warding Energy" bonuses from items. Without any equipment bonuses, all incoming damage is split 50% between character health points and shield hit points. Adding items that have "Absorption Warding Energy" blue bonus on them will increase the proportion of damage that is diverted to shields. In a case where the character has smaller health points than the shield has hit points, it may be very useful to divert a much larger proportion of damage to the shield.

- Block, stops a certain amount of damage. The mechanics of exactly how Warding Energy mitigates damage are not exposed to the user, but it seems to me that this option makes the shield quite a bit better defensively, and due to the way we're going to be using CAs in combos, recharge is not super critical.

 

Do note that Warding Energy is the lazy player's option, and is very very good for mitigating damage from all the non-boss monsters in the game at all levels, even though it does not ever recharge in combat. In the later game, it's even good against some bosses. Versus many bosses, it will still be reduced to zero and stop mitigating damage; in that case, you can either kite the boss for a few seconds and let your shields recharge, or just cast Divine Protection. In fact, if you don't mind recasting Divine Protection every 30 seconds or so, it isn't necessary to run Warding Energy at all - which frees up a lot of recharge that can be used to play faster and more aggressively. Also frees up the skill slot dedicated to Concentration.

 

Combos

Assuming Combat Discipline for three moves in a combo:

Combo 1!

Assailing Somersault -> Flaring Nova -> Radiant Pillar.

Three area attacks in a row. Radiant Pillar starts to drag enemies to the center of where you landed (usually, anyway). If you keep Assailing Somersault's recharge around 4 seconds or less, then by the time this combo has finished executing, you are ready to run:

 

Combo 2!

Assailing Somersault -> Pelting Strikes -> Soul Hammer.

Ouch! Always the same spot!

Fourth area attack in a row, and Pelting Strikes mops up whatever survivors may be nearby. If one was a champion, Soul Hammer finishes him off.

 

If you like Baneful Smite and Archangel's Wrath, you might stick them in a combo together as well.

 

Suggestions on Equipment:

Some amount of "Enemy cannot evade" bonus is highly desirable, due to the large amount of melee damage we'd like to leverage.

"Death Blow" is another tremendously valuable effect, and it appears to apply to spell damage as well as melee damage.

"Absorption Warding Energy" blue bonus is of interest if you are using the Warding Energy buff. It has no useful effect on Divine Protection.

"Max Shield Energy" is extremely valuable for both Warding Energy Buff and Divine Protection, most particularly with the latter.

"+ All Skills" items are treasured and cherished.

What weapon should you use? Any one you want, whether you opt for weapon skill and tactics lore, or without a skill. I like the Blind Guardian guitar from the quest, very Eastman+Laird FAKK2.

Finally, a thong pant is almost mandatory for this style of play. If you are unable to find a quality thong, consider using a gimp one anyway.

 

"So you've finished your banal talking! Can I take my hands from my ears now?"

Yep, that's it. Have fun and keep it cheeky!

 

 

This is reposted from the Sacred 2 official forums by request from gogoblender, enjoy. Unfortunately the forum code here is too anally tight to accept a link to the images posted in the original thread.

 

An alternative build without the Warding Energy buff, and consequently without Concentration, is what I'm playing now:

Tactics Lore

Exalted Warrior Focus

Polearm

Armor Lore

Combat Discipline

Revered Tech Focus

Warding Energy Lore

Celestial Magic Focus

Revered Tech Lore

Celestial Magic Lore

 

It begins to get practical to keep Divine Protection 100% of the time at around character level 50, with the CA at level 30 or so, but higher is always better. A nice combo is to modify Dashing Alacrity for a similar goal (extend duration, shorten recharge) and run both together.

Edited January 1, 2009 by Kaballah

[Flooxim 50]

Very interesting guide! Very enjoyable to read! Good job!

 

I always liked to play a do-it-all character in the previous games I played (Diablo 2, Dungeon Siege 2, etc.)

 

 

Max

[Flooxim 50]

Do you mind if I create your guide with my program and submit it to my Guides Database?

 

 

Max

[gogoblender 3,304]

One of the best builds here ever created, and this is the link to the SIF where Kaballah originally published:

 

http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...ead.php?t=54650

 

We're not talking just about the ground breaking mechanics Kaballah uncovered while he was writing this, but also the style and elan the man contributed when writing this for us. Not only could he figure out the great things about this game, but he could tell us a story that only wanted us to see what would happen next.

 

Props Kaballah

 

I hope whichever community you're a part of now is having as much fun with your posts as we did.

 

Thanks for all this work, I appreciated your time here.

 

 

gogo

[Sacreblue 0]

Great guide, I am gonna give this a go. One question - maybe I missed it, but - what attributes did you invest in?

 

Thanks

[gogoblender 3,304]

Great guide, I am gonna give this a go. One question - maybe I missed it, but - what attributes did you invest in?

 

Thanks

 

 

lol, good question. I just quickly perused it, and don't seem to see what he put points into regarding Attributes. I'll see if I can track down his post on the SIF to see what he's mentioned there.

 

 

gogo

[Sacreblue 0]

Great guide, I am gonna give this a go. One question - maybe I missed it, but - what attributes did you invest in?

 

Thanks

 

 

lol, good question. I just quickly perused it, and don't seem to see what he put points into regarding Attributes. I'll see if I can track down his post on the SIF to see what he's mentioned there.

 

 

gogo

 

Cool thanks. While your at it, I am hearing now that the Divine Protection spell can no longer be run non stop until MUCH later (higher CA levels) - this may effect the viability of this build. I would love to hear what impact the author thinks this may have, and what changes if any he recommends.

[Viper007 1]

This was posted way before they nerfed divine protection. Its not the same as it used to be. DP takes a lot longer to recast now.

[ka243 3]

This was posted way before they nerfed divine protection. Its not the same as it used to be. DP takes a lot longer to recast now.

 

I wonder at what level dp can be chain casted now on console and/or PC with the correct mods. would be a good addition to wiki if known.

Edited October 19, 2009 by ka243