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Joined: Jul 05, 2011 Posts: 609 Location: Behind you
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:31 pm Post subject: Corruptor options
OK I'm looking at a Corruptor and need some input, because setting him up as a caster might be an option but I've never had a caster before.
He'll possibly be feral but may be factioned, I'm not bothered either way. Things I'd like to get in are:
- Draining Field (no brainer)
- Cut Cord and Corrupted Loyalty (seems to be a strength/uniqueness of the class so why not use it)
- Decent damage
My decision is really between dealing damage with weapons and wings or going down the spell line.
- Prot vs Good used for Manabiting.
- By my calculations this would be hitting with Tainted Wings for 65% accuracy and 13 unholy (+ ward bonus) + 11-13 supplemental damage for about 7 MP (depending on which spell they're tainted with).
- Could replace the smattering of mortal skills in T2 with Mastersmithing
- Hitting with Glacierblast with 80% to-hit for 19 damage (by my calcs)
- Need a lot of grinding for things like ES, Taint Spell and a Protection vs Good
- Has a backup damage source in melee
As I say I've never played a caster so I'm not sure how to do the 2nd option best. _________________ DS Vengence (10321)|Exar Kun (9839)|Odysseus (6385)|Sac II (3599)|Secundus Nulli (3900)|Spécïâl Chàrăcŧẽr (6153)|Darth Bane (5067)|The occasional shadow (4078)|Ventis Secundus (3858)
I've never played a Corruptor, but I might still be able to offer some general advice.
You might want to seriously consider having Guided Blade on the Wings build. A boost up to 85% to hit is no joke.
Why Planar Protection and Alchemy in the same build? Theoretically, unless you are taking AK or frequently visiting Elysium, you should be fine with just chugging Planar Protection, which isn't the hardest of recipes.
Depending on whether you are factioned or feral (and the number of members in the faction with the appropriate skill), you will probably never get much use out of Mastersmithing, much more so when you reach T3 and never need to repair anything ever again.
---------------
On the second build, Melee is not really the best backup damage source since it will get hit by auras, can't be used for target-shooting, can't hit flying targets, will always require you to maintain stuff, has pretty awful accuracy and degrades to top that off etc. etc. It will really only help out when you want to use the Touch tree, which makes sense.
<del>I might be missing something, but Pro vs Good isn't even in the build.</del>
EDIT: I _so_ misread that last point. _________________ For the Kin!
Last edited by Aidan on Mon Oct 26, 2015 2:40 am; edited 1 time in total
I have been playing a Corruptor extensively last breath, essentially a spell Corruptor, and based on that experience and what I've learned, this is my current draft for this breath: http://i.imgur.com/mQl5XX0.png
Note that I am still considering other options to spend CP instead of Poison, but in essence this is my idea.
Spell Combat and Battle Magic are mostly useful for ward bashing. Other than that, you just spam your autohit all the time. As I am going for a "mixed" build (melee skills are useful to capture pets as Touch of Corrupted Loyalty is a melee attack) I prefer spending 60cp on the melee tree (useful for both bashing and pets) rather than spending the same amount for spell accuracy (I have autohits for that).
Your build seems like it could use the spare cp for a Prot v Good gem (much more useful on a spell build than on a melee one). GGE is also cool usually but as you are going for feral, it is something you can pass on. I personally like Mystic Shield too, helps a bit (on top of potions sometimes) when capturing enemy pets (allows you to pseudo-tank too).
Dark Heart is also entirely useless. Being feral, maybe having access to disposable spellgems is a bit harder but if you do some reading in Stygian libraries, you'll have a few at hand at all times, besides grabbing your renewable GoP v Good batteries (try to get your hands on 2-3 that you can recharge when you have extra MP).
Last, Hex of Agony may be a fun-looking skill, it is rewarding when it triggers (was fun sniping down actives through forts with it last breath) but it remains highly unreliable, despite that nifty 20% chance. I'd get it as last skill and even maybe something to grind badges for if you find something better to spend your cp on.
Next: the reason I go with spell corruptor is Hex of Nullity + Hex of Sapping (on top of autohits). This is just too good to pass on. Along with Draining Field these make Corruptors the perfect troll class. I see in your melee build that you are buying Cosmic Affinity, I really never felt the need for that as you get hundreds of MP from spellgems anyway and don't need a high max-MP at all. If you are really considering that melee-focused build, I would still recommend trying to get Hex of Nullity along with Stone Dart or whatever cheap autohit, always useful to remove a Seraph's Stance of the Guardian or other annoying buffs (Tattoo of Adaptation is hilariously counter-productive against Hex of Sapping Corruptors).
Bottom line is, overall, I hardly see an appeal to playing a melee Corruptor with little to no spell/hexes compared to other melee classes, except for the whole pet stealing factor. I highly recommend going the spell route but still having at least up to Advanced Melee AND Guided Blade as rightly pointed by Aidan. Feel free to ask more questions, you know you can also find me (Sparky) on IRC regularly. _________________ With me, always.
Melee Corruptors do damage comparable to swordy-archons. At 31 damage a pop (admittedly at high MP costs, but you can always bite that gem), you will be looking at soloing most of the smaller wards with ease. Getting spells and Hex of Nullity is still a fantastic idea since a Corruptor that can't take down a juiced up Seraph is a bit of a letdown.
Also, with the imbued wings, if you are doing supplementary impact, won't that automatically murder NCs since they will always end up being adapted to impact at the end of the attack ALA Eye of Judgement? I can see the appeal of doing a millionty damage in one hit if you are patient, though
EDIT: Potentially, you can skip Protection vs Good if you get 1.5 times the number of Greater Glyph Erasures instead. Unless you have a dire need of that extra 50 MP. That's about 7 more attack, so I wouldn't discount the possibility.
Dark Heart is still theoretically useful for recharging spellgems off mana batteries, but if Sparky thinks it isn't a biggy, it probably isn't. _________________ For the Kin!
Joined: Jul 05, 2011 Posts: 609 Location: Behind you
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 3:29 am Post subject:
And THIS is why you ask for advice. Thanks very much for that, some really good points and options I hadn't thought of.
Re: Hex of Agony, I think I just misread that and assumed it was a prerequisite for Hex of Sapping. That's an easy 60 CP save.
Great point with the auto-hit spells.
Where is the 31 damage example coming from? Is it the wings damage plus the supplemental? And does the supplemental damage you taint wings with get the damage bonus from the Hexes and spell affinity?
Any particular reason you go for impact spells Sparky? _________________ DS Vengence (10321)|Exar Kun (9839)|Odysseus (6385)|Sac II (3599)|Secundus Nulli (3900)|Spécïâl Chàrăcŧẽr (6153)|Darth Bane (5067)|The occasional shadow (4078)|Ventis Secundus (3858)
Where is the 31 damage example coming from? Is it the wings damage plus the supplemental? And does the supplemental damage you taint wings with get the damage bonus from the Hexes and spell affinity?
13 Base damage + 13 Imbued Force Focus + 5 for Unholy against Good and Unaligned wards = 31 damage for 7 MP, 1 AP.
I'm pretty sure you don't get any damage bonuses from anywhere, since the skill description says that you deal supplemental damage equal to the _base_ damage of the spell.
Quote:
Any particular reason you go for impact spells Sparky?
I'm not Sparky, lol, but:
1) Cheapest spell tree except Fire at 55 CP
2) Non-immunizable and with no innate immunities (resistances almost always cost considerable CP)
3) Has the highest damage in the restricted spells.
4) Commonly available from the pattern weaver nearest to you
Downside being, of course, that you can be soaked by even lowly mortals, but as an imbued spell, you have that 13 Unholy going for you. Plus whatever pets are following you around at the time.
EDIT: And if you mean why you should imbue it, because it does the highest base damage of any spell in the game. _________________ For the Kin!
Re: Adaptation: as far as I know, supplemental damage does not trigger or change "Adapted to", so if it is different from your main damage type, indeed all supplemental damage will go through (but that takes a bit longer than Nullity+Sapping where every hit you do 100% damage AND apply an extra 'Drained' status giving the NC negative soak).
Dark Heart can definitely be useful to recharge your gems, especially as a feral. Depending on how easy spellgems are to come by for you, you may consider it. I just hardly ever had a need for it when factioned (plenty of useless gems in our safe) and preferred to leave DH'ing to our petmasters who needed it more.
Impact for all the points Aidan mentioned indeed. The occasional soak provided by armours is usually minor and most buffs that soak Impact will be removed by Hex of Nullity anyway. Frost is still an excellent second choice, so can Acid be although much more expensive. Just don't pick Fire or Death. _________________ With me, always.
I would like to point out that Impact spell tree is good for another reason.
Taint spell.
Highest damage base spell tree for low CP and you can change it to unholy and gain damage.
Pretty brutal when combined with the HEX spell tree.
Personally I would take TLL over DH for recharging gems. Dark Heart I find because of Manner Bite is mainly used to shut down other casters in raids ect, rather than for draining MP to cast.
And learn protection v good Glyph, as that will = 200mp for the manner bite. Great for casting, protection and for gaining rejuv costs on high MP pets like Wrackworms, Fossil monstrossities ect. _________________ “I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.” ~Oscar Wilde
"Everyone loves to hate a good villain!" Dr. Cleaver
I would like to point out that Impact spell tree is good for another reason.
Taint spell.
Taint Spell is awful, don't buy it. I had it last breath for the reason you mentioned, mostly because I was still a clueless rookie when I started out that char ("Hmm I'm gonna grab Taint Spell so I have options if my target is good against Impact!"). It costs 1 extra AP per attack, and as MP is not a problem at all, you're always better off using your auto-hit spell twice rather than using Taint Spell, even against 50 MO angels.
For instance, IIRC Force Bolt as a Corruptor does 16 Impact for 8MP. So for 2AP 16MP you do 32 Impact, while with Taint Spell you'd do 23 Unholy to a 50MO Angel for 2AP 6MP. When MP is hardly an issue, you want to spare your APs.
The only good "feature" it had last breath was that it did not cost 1 extra AP against wards due to a bug, so it was a good way to do Unholy wardbashing at a lower MP cost than the regular spells alone. But this was not the expected behaviour (or so I've heard) and might have been fixed this breath.
Tap Ley Line, on the other hand, sounds like an interesting option. Good catch there. I have no experience with it personally but from what I've been told, it's a pretty great way to gather large amounts of mana, which can definitely prove useful to recharge your batteries as a Corruptor. _________________ With me, always.
Sparky, I was thinking the NC would get Adapted to Unholy, then immediately Adapt to Impact when the supplementary damage set in, so you could hit it with Tainted Bond again for full damage Of course, if Adaptation does not trigger on supplemental damage, that strategy's out of question and Sapping looks promising.
Death is an okay damage type, IMO, since you will almost never find a killable Lich out in the wild anyway. Then again, the playstyle of most of the people I know is "if it can be targeted, it must diiiie", so yeah.
Taint Spell is somewhat useful against high innately soaky targets such as Seraphs _without_ Guardian activated. With the Seraphic innate of 6 Unholy and 9 Impact, two ordinary Force Focuses do 14 damage, while a single tainted Force Focus, for less MP, does 17 damage. Tainted bond does very badly in this case as well, hovering around 9 damage in total.
And I am honestly not sure that bug with wards has been fixed yet. Don't recall it in the changelog.
TLL does seem handy for recharging spellgems, but I'd drop DH in that case, since you don't really need three different mana recovery options.
EDIT: Also, seriously consider a lot of GGE gems instead of Protection vs Good unless you have fun shenanigans planned with glyphs. GGE is easier to charge and provides you with about 20 uses of tainted bond for a whopping approx 500 damage output.
EDITx2: It might help you understand why Dr Cleaver wants you to take Taint Spell if you realize that his Corruptor build is almost specifically targeted at taking out Seraphs in all their forms, buffed or otherwise. _________________ For the Kin!
This thread interests me because I'm also making a Corruptor, and after reading it I've changed my build radically. I was at first planning to go for a full spellcaster, disregarding the cool melee skills without even running the numbers. So now I'm running a hybrid with autohit spells to strip buffs and the enchanted wings thing to actually deal damage, as follows
Got a few questions though. I'm going to be factioned, how much of a hassle is it to the pattern weavers to weave me a bunch of glyphs of protection against good, so I can always have a few laying around in my inventory when I need to chug some mana? And Quixotic says the Cosmic skills are somewhat irrelevant due to manabiter, are they really if I don't plan on doing much in the way of preparation aside from getting the gems from the weavers and keeping them charged during my downtime?
Also, buying all spells from the Impact tree: y/n? I reckon I could buy some glyph busting shit or another flavor of autohit with all that T2 CP. _________________ IF WE LOOK AT ROME AND SEE OUR HOME, THE END IS ON ITS WAY
Factions tend to have an unholy amount of redundant spellgems in their safe, you can use those in downtime to get the mana to charge up your GoP spells.
Getting your hand on GoP spellgems may take a bit of effort initially but once you have 3-4 you really do not need more and you're set for life. It's always possible to get some from the trading thread also, so I would not worry about it.
A few questions now: Planar Protection, I can understand to a (limited) extent, but Psychic Bloodhound? I fail to see the use for this skill this breath.
Likewise, Dark Heart and Life Vampire are things I have hardly used ever (arguably I only had Dark Heart last breath; but still never used it - leave your factionmates' MP for the petmasters to tap in), Life Vampire I guess can help alchemists a bit maybe, but my experience is that factions with demons are hardly wanting for Blood Ice, rather they swim in it.
Regarding Cosmic Affinity: manabiting a single fully-charged GoP spellgem will net you an instant 200MP, on top of your base maximum of 49 (at lvl 30), that's usually plenty, and you can always carry around a few disposable gems if you need an extra boost. Cosmic Affinity is a lot of cp for only 15 extra max MP, on a character who easily goes in the hundreds. I think it is wasteful as there are lots of things Corruptors can buy to be cool. Like GGE (as you mentioned, too).
Getting the full Impact tree is good for autohit damage and allows you to pseudotank with your aura a bit more efficiently as well. If you want to sacrifice something, Impact spells are not the answer. As per the flavour, nobody can immune Impact without buffs, and those who do with buffs will get screwed over twofold by Hex of Nullity + Hex of Sapping. It can be appealing against high innate soak targets, but whatever other flavour of autohit you would grab would not have the Impact affinity bonus, which is a net -5 damage, so even if your opponent's soak to the other flavour is lower, Impact may still be a better choice overall. _________________ With me, always.
Psychic Bloodhound was a mistake but I wanted to see exactly what it did (the answer is not much). So was planar protection considering I don't plan on ever going to other planes but, hey, you never know.
I needed to spend 40 CP on tier 2 skills and I'm really at loss as to what to get, hence DH + LV/SV. GGE and something else like Engineering for some eventual badge grinding, but that still leaves me with 10 dead CP that has to go. Conjure Sinews, maybe? It's really unfortunate that this thread was created a day late, since yesterday I was level 10 with just search and bought all these mortal skills to advance to T2, I could've just bought the melee tree with my mortal CP and everything would be easier. _________________ IF WE LOOK AT ROME AND SEE OUR HOME, THE END IS ON ITS WAY
Psychic Bloodhound was a mistake but I wanted to see exactly what it did (the answer is not much). So was planar protection considering I don't plan on ever going to other planes but, hey, you never know.
I needed to spend 40 CP on tier 2 skills and I'm really at loss as to what to get, hence DH + LV/SV. GGE and something else like Engineering for some eventual badge grinding, but that still leaves me with 10 dead CP that has to go. Conjure Sinews, maybe? It's really unfortunate that this thread was created a day late, since yesterday I was level 10 with just search and bought all these mortal skills to advance to T2, I could've just bought the melee tree with my mortal CP and everything would be easier.
Strength + Stamina is also cool overall, makes you harder to kill and turns inventory management into something extremely easy (especially as you don't need to carry around weapons). A safe bet overall when you don't know where to spend spare cp.
Also mortal cp and T2 cp are the same as far as spending enough for T3 goes. _________________ With me, always.
My corrupter quite likes life vampire. You have a ton of mana, so being able to turn some of that into healing items is pretty useful if you dont have first aid. Plus its easier to obtain then FAKs. Also you can drain 2 life per attack depending on the build. Soul vampire on the other hand.. I might get to help the faction, but it's not great.
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