User:Ekko/Sandbox/Builds

So, some brainstorming/speculation about potential character builds to tide me over until release/more beta information. Since we know a lot about skills, attributes, and traits now, we can talk about builds a little better. Or something.

Anyways...

Necromancer: Minion Master

It's a minion master! One of the fairly standard necromancer roles returns, and is still useful apart from providing minions. Probably. This winds up being a very survivable necromancer, with lots of toughness, vitality, and self-healing (as well as a nice batch of meat shields to soak up blows).

Skills

Staff

Area condition support

• Necrotic Grasp - Send a phantasmal hand to grasp at your foe.
• Reaper's Mark - Inscribe a mark that inflicts bleeding and vulnerability when triggered by a foe.
• Reaper's Touch - Send out a scythe that cripples foes, while granting swiftness to allies.
• Chillblains - Chill and poison target area.
• Putrid Mark - Inscribe a mark that transfers conditions from allies to foes when triggered by a foe.

Dagger/Warhorn

Single-target damage

• Necrotic Bite - Steal life force from your foe with a slash.
• Life Siphon - Siphon health from your foe.
• Dark Pact - Sacrifice health to bleed and immobilize your foe.
• Wail of Doom - Screech a wail of doom in a cone pattern, confusing and dazing foes.
• Locust Swarm - Gain swiftness and summon a swarm of locusts that siphon health from nearby foes.

The staff is a good complement for minions, since it provides area-of-effect conditions to soften up foes for your minions (especially Reaper's Mark's area vulnerability). It also allows you to give your minions (and living allies) swiftness and strip off their conditions, which is nice.

The dagger/warhorn pair is more directly offensive--I envision this being used in boss fights and the like, situations where area conditions are of lesser value than greater survivability and direct damage. Locust Swarm and Life Siphon are both self-heals, and Wail of Doom lets you escape from a particularly bad situation every so often. Dark Pact provides a snare to prevent a foe from avoiding your wave of minions.

Utility Skills:

• Blood Fiend - Summon a blood fiend that transfers health to you on each attack.

• Taste of Death - Sacrifice your blood fiend to heal yourself.

• Bone Minions - Summon two Bone Minions.

• Putrid Explosion - Explode a bone minion.

• Shadow Fiend - Summon a shadow fiend to attack foes.

• Haunt - Command your shadow fiend to teleport to and blind a foe.

• Bone Fiend - Summon a bone fiend that attacks foes at range.

• Rigor Mortis - Fix your bone fiend in place and make its attacks immobilize enemies.

• Summon Flesh Golem - Summon a Flesh Golem to attack foes with crippling claws.

• Charge - Command your flesh golem to charge a foe.

All the utility skills are minions. No surprises there.

Traits

Death Magic: 30 points

+300 toughness, +30 concentration

• Reanimator - Chance to summon a Jagged Horror whenever you kill an enemy.
• Protection of the Horde - You gain 20 toughness for each minion summoned.
• Deadly Strength - 10% of your toughness is given as a bonus to power.
• Training of the Master - Minions deal 30% more damage.
• Staff Mastery - 15% reduced staff skill cooldown.
• Evasive Animation - Summon a Jagged Horror when you dodge roll.

Blood Magic: 30 points

+300 vitality, +300 compassion

• Vampiric Precision - You steal life whenever you critical.
• Deathly Invigoration - Area heal when you leave Death Shroud.
• Blood to Power] - +90 power while health is above 90%.
• Vampiric Master - Minions steal life and transfer it to you.
• Dagger Mastery - 15% reduced dagger cooldown.
• Bloodthirst - Life steals are more effective.

Curses: 10 points

+100 power, +10 expertise

• Barbed Precision - Critical hits cause bleeding.
• Deep Breath - 15% warhorn cooldown reduction.

The Death Magic traits are all fairly straightforward. You pick up a big damage boost to minions with Training of the Master, a cooldown reduction for the staff, and the ability to convert endurance directly into extra minions. The minor traits are also very nice.

Blood Magic gives us Vampiric Mastery and Bloodthirst, which makes our minions more durable and damaging (and covers for dropping Flesh of the Master in Death Magic). We pick up Dagger Mastery because Blood to Power is very nice, we don't have a secondary weapon set already decided, and daggers have some good life-steals.{{clear} We go into Curses with our last ten points, to pick up some extra damage on criticals (if it applies to minions' crits as well, then it's very good) and a cooldown-reduction for warhorn, which is the only offhand to offer a life-steal (since we have Bloodthirst).