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[Arcvasti]

Re: Temporal Wardens:

The key to being good with Temporal Wardens is realizing how good Phase Door runes are. Uncontrolled Phase Door is an absolutely TERRIBLE escape mechanism, even on a Skeleton who lacks movement infusions. But, especially as they become higher level, they grant you a very large out of phase buff that increases resist all and probably some other things. This is good on anyone, but ESPECIALLY on Temporal Wardens. This is because out of phase buffs are refreshed whenever a new one is added, instead of being overwritten. And Temporal Wardens have the Threaded Combat tree, which lets them get a small out of phase buff each time they teleport. So if you play your cards right, its quite possible to have 60-70% resist all up pretty much constantly.

As for prodigies... The first thing to keep in mind is that its never a bad idea to stockpile +stat gear to get abilities that are useful, but have stat requirements that don't match your class. Its harder without Heroism Infusions, but it should still be quite possible to qualify for Dex or Cun prodigies.

Prodigies that I'd recommend for skelewarden:

Windblade is good: It does good damage in a nice aoe and disarms to boot.

There's also Precise Shot or something long those lines, which does good damage and also probably stuns?

Cauterize keeps you from dying, which makes it the best prodigy.

Arcane Might is very good on magic/melee classes like TW, take it to get more damage


Below this point are prodigies that I know less about, but are still good:

Draconic Body is OK, but worse then Cauterize.

Temporal Form is quite good... on Paradox Mage. For TW, its only so-so. The biggest draw is being able to lower resists in an aoe with a cooldown of zero, although the respen and stun immunity are non-trivial.

Draconic Will let's you stop caring about status effects... for five whole turns. Its probably stupid overpowered if you have cooldown mitigating stuff like Stone Wall, but I dunno how good it'd be on TW.

Superpower might be worth considering, since Willpower and Paradox get along nicely, but I think Arcane Might is better for TW since they care a bit more about spellpower then mindpower.

[Thexor]

Just giving a quick once-over of that TW file, comparing to one of my old ones. Note that everything in here is my opinion; some of it may be invalid advice, some of it might be downright harmful! My file is from 1.4, located here for reference. (It was also my first win!)

First: you did much better at immunities than I did, for sure. That said, especially for a Skeleton, I'm a little worried about your lack of silence immunity. On any other race, I strongly recommend a wild infusion with mental cure to get rid of pesky silence effects, since you can't use (magical) teleports as condition removal when silenced. As a skeleton, wild infusions aren't an option, and since runes count as spells as well you have no reliable way to remove silence. I don't think this mattered in the final fight, and reviewing my character I'd failed to follow my own advice (no silence immunity and the wrong kind of wild infusion!), but still.

I disagree with not taking Threaded Combat, though that's somewhat your choice. I really disagree with ignoring bow combat entirely, though. Temporal Wardens are at their best when combining both bow and melee combat; you don't need a lot of points invested, and it makes a world of difference when you can drop back and plaster an enemy from range. Also helps a ton with survivability, since you're able to back off and deal damage from range if pressured.

I personally think Time Dilation is the most broken skill in Tome4 right now, especially since at 4 or 5 points it gets an extra turn of duration, making it trivial to keep up +54% global speed at all times. Then again, I've heard a lot of other people who hate the skill, so maybe I'm an oddity here.

I also really recommend unlocking Stasis if you have a spare category point. Time Shield is a huge survivability boost, and a point or two in Spacetime Stability can help keep paradox under control a little. This goes double since you aren't using arrows at all and thus don't have Arrow Threading for paradox management!

No comment on Hounds; I didn't unlock them in my playthrough. I've heard good things about them, though, so it certainly seems viable!

You've almost completely ignored Spacetime Weaving, which is crazy IMO. Dimension Shift is probably the best part of playing TW; it removes conditions whenever you teleport. Having at least one point here is mandatory, and with the recent nerfs I recommend a few more. Having an extra couple of points in Dimension Step for the added range is a nice luxury as well.

I personally didn't take Fate Weaving on my TW, but I've used it and loved it on a Paradox Mage, so no other feedback there (though I would suggest investing a bit more into Spin Fate and Fateweaver to increase the benefits of each spin).

Arcane Might is a great prodigy for TW. Elemental Surge confused me at first until I noticed the Spellblade; assuming you were hitting for enough damage to trigger Surge with only a 30% conversion, it looks like a good prodigy. I might suggest taking only one of those two, and getting Cauterize as well, which I consider an absolute god-send for survivability; having two prodigies for damage and none for defense seems counter-intuitive to me.

No comments on gear, mostly because I'm too lazy to dig through your inventory and evaluate items! I will say that you look to have better equipment than I did; your resists and HP are very similar (minus your Spellshock debuff), and your melee damage at the very least is considerably better. 

Statwise... there's something weird here, and it might just be the Vault being screwy with stats, but my damage seems a lot higher. Our spellpowers are very similar, and yet I've got a lot more damage listed on several skills. Like, Weapon Folding; I've got 2/5 with a claimed +73 damage per hit, while you've got 5/5 yet only a claimed +27 damage per hit. Likewise, my Blade Shear at 1/5 deals a 227 damage cone, while yours at 3/5 only does 66. I do have slightly higher spellpower, but not that much (79 versus 71). Might just be a bunch of +temporal damage% gear I've got; the Vault lists my offensive damage boost as a simple 29% All, and yet I've got lots of gear with +temporal damage%, so maybe the vault just doesn't properly display damage modifiers for specific elements.

Can't really comment on the final fight, since I only have the last turn in your vault entry. It looks like you had a lot of trouble dealing with adds, though - I can see at least a Forge Giant (which killed you), a Daelach, and an Umber Hulk in the last turn's logs alone, plus both Elendar and Argoniel. Temporal Warden is a fun class, because depending on your mobility and damage, you're totally capable of either closing the portals, or killing the bosses before the portals become a problem. Remember to start with Elendar once the killing begins; the Archmage is far more fragile, and his main defensive tool is teleporting away, which you can easily thwart with your superior teleports. Argoniel is far more durable and also less damaging; I usually try to let Aeryn tank him while I handle the damage dealer!

All things considered: it's not the way I'd build a TW, skill-wise. I don't know if the build was responsible for your damage being lower, or if there's something else you could've done in the final fight to improve damage potential. TW can deal a ridiculous amount of damage per turn, and I'd normally recommend simply killing the bosses before the adds overwhelm you.

[AlStar]

All things considered: it's not the way I'd build a TW, skill-wise. I don't know if the build was responsible for your damage being lower, or if there's something else you could've done in the final fight to improve damage potential. TW can deal a ridiculous amount of damage per turn, and I'd normally recommend simply killing the bosses before the adds overwhelm you.

The big thing to remember there is that the final life there was after I'd already died 3 or 4 other times, which resets all enemies HP and doesn't remove the adds. So I'd initially planned on taking out the bosses before the adds became a problem, since I'd read that they spawn fairly slowly, and your ally usually takes care of them - which was true... till he died somewhere on life 3. 

Anyway, thanks for the input - next Warden will be much better prepared. Although for now I'm just trying out all the new classes that I unlocked with that character - currently trying out a Necromancer. (Side note - I love how the townsfolk go batshit if a single skeleton walks into town, trying to save the world, but that elf who's got the giant bone golem following him around? He's good people.)

[DeKaFu]

Just got my first win on my account! (second [third?] actual win, but still)
https://te4.org/characters/217958/tome/23d179d3-3cfd-43f0-88e5-b0bb40ef2ec8

Ogre Sunnypals are really strong, apparently! My first try at either. I died twice in the early game, but never really came close after that. The final battle dragged on a bit, but never even triggered Second Life.

I went for Legacy of the Naloren to try it out because I never have before, and I didn't have any regrets. Being able to one-hand the trident was nice.
Also, it probably wasn't entirely necessary but I decided to try to wipe out the penalty from Grisly Constitution by becoming as comically enormous as possible. It worked! Mighty Girdle+Giant Wraps + random boots of bigness + ICCTW! meant I was... very large*. The latter also meant I was able to use Tarrasca without penalty, which was a nice bonus.

Early game (and the rest of it) was definitely helped by finding the Rune of Reflection in one of the starting dungeons.

For now I'm going to keep her alive in case I want to dump some of her artifacts in the item vault, but after that, any thoughts on how I'd fare on some of the post-game challenges? I still need revenge on Atamathon for squishing my Skeleton Brawler winner in 2013.

* Come to think of it, I wonder what size the largest enemies in the game are? Curious if I was having Kaiju battles with the overpowered wyrms or if size category 8 is still just "watch your head in the dungeon" tier.

[Frumple]

Pretty sure it's like gargantuan or colossal or somethin'. Less sure if there's actually a cap in the numerical value -- can't say for certain if a mechanical limit exists, basically, though I do believe the text descriptor/title/whatever has one. It's just rather incredibly difficult/impossible in the base game to get more than a certain amount. You can always check with inspect creature or whatever it is, if you really feel like it.

Pretty sure if you were going to push the grisly negation to the fullest, you'd roll with a possessor and jack the body of some wyrm or another, then make sure the (few) kit slots that can hold size cat increases, does. Wouldn't actually help all too terribly much save for the racial, an artifact or two, and grapple checks, but it might be interesting anyway.

Though yeah, you were basically having kaiju battles. Ask not how you fit your head in places, just like you ask not how giant dragons do. Blame the halflings, maybe. They were doing some space-time dickery at some point or another. Between them and the elven planet cracking mistakes experiments something unfortunate and tile-y probably happened to maj'eyal physics.

[DeKaFu]

According to the wiki, gargantuan is anything size cat 6 and up, and I had four levels of increase up from cat 4 (big), so I was basically gargantuan+2.

Which was already enough to reduce the ogre penalties to zero, so I'm not sure there'd be much to be gained from possessor shenanigans. Not that I'd be opposed to having a character the size of a small hamlet, and using "You shall be my weapon" to throw dragons at dragons until they explode. Just, yeah, questionable practical benefit.

[Frumple]

Oh aye, it wouldn't exactly do much beyond a certain point besides make you functionally immune to grappling. Which'd also be about the one notable build that would really get anything particularly substantial out of it. Flip side to that is that anyone could manage to leverage the silliness in a grappling build, since grisly con does precisely sod all (so far as size category interaction goes) if you're not wearing a weapon.

Still... adven build, possessor (though I think that would take an addon to get running... can't remember if possessor is adventurer enabled, and stone wardens mostly weren't for a long while), grapple trees+some unarmed stuff, blacksmith from embers (the t1 talent gives you a size cat boost at 5/5 effective), probably something or another I'm forgetting. Load up on +size kit to the full extent you're able and then go forth and suplex the trains mountains, my child.

[DeKaFu]

Currently trying out EoR for the first time. Surprisingly fun! The tinker system is a lot more interesting than I was expecting.

Doing an Orc Sawbutcher for my first run, but I just unlocked Whitehooves and I'm looking forward to trying one of them out next. Just... really unsure which classes they'd have good synergy with, from their description, and can't find much discussion about them. Any suggestions?

[Frumple]

Eh... basically anything, really. Less move-y classes (casters, mostly, that move by teleportation or whathaveyou instead of actually moving) find their stuff less useful, but the only part of their racials that has explicit synergy with anything in particular is the tier 4's damage component, which has some mag scaling and probably isn't worth it for the part that scales regardless. Everyone likes movespeed, flat damage reduction's a'ight (particularly with lower difficulties) and has some minor synergy with stuff like the gunslinger or psyshot avoidance tree (flat damage reduction stacks additively), and the rest of it is mostly there just to extend the duration of the two (and add some % all damage, which everything likes).

Conceptually there's some further synergy with any class/build that's trying to work itself around fairly high CD talents, since the racial stacking gives you something fairly useful to do in the interim if attacking or whatever isn't more useful. Pretty sure wyrmics (which you'd need an addon to play as so :V) or anyone with step up (or wardens, slayers... everything that can boost move or global speed, more or less) also gets a benefit, since there doesn't seem to be a limit on stacks per turn and lightning speed or whatever would let you hit max stacks pretty easily.

They're just sorta' generically decent, and tinkers (i.e. particularly in the embers campaign) mitigates quite a lot off the problems undead have. Undead orcs so far as class selection goes, more or less, though orcs have a bit more of a stat lean to their racials.

[beorn080]

Has there been an increase in rare enemies? It's useful, since they're a good source of decent items, but its a bit surprising.

[martinuzz]

Are you playing on higher difficulty than before? Each difficulty level comes with a higher rare mob spawn chance.
It can vary somewhat between games of the same difficulty level as well though.

It's also why people argue that the Posessor class is best played on high difficulty levels, for it has more good bodies available.

[Tiruin]

All these posts makes me want to get back into this again and...finally try completing it after a good skirmisher build got killed by. . .her own attack, due to bashing a troll, somehow getting hooked, and then her follow-up attack as part of that bash-with-shield and sling-shot striking me for 500+ damage. -_-
It's bee quite a time, and now I'm wondering if there was ever a log I can read for posterity when that happened on my tome profile.
>_>
<.<
I just want to get that Sun Paladin class already, never having done the...top of the boss tower with dead people after finishing all the everyquests on the mainland. And then I forget the names of things and substitute them with feelings instead. :I

[beorn080]

Are you playing on higher difficulty than before? Each difficulty level comes with a higher rare mob spawn chance.
It can vary somewhat between games of the same difficulty level as well though.

It's also why people argue that the Posessor class is best played on high difficulty levels, for it has more good bodies available.

No, I'm playing on normal difficulty. So far, at level 19, I've killed 40 elites, 31 rares, and 13 bosses. I dont ever recall that many rares last time I played, but that was a few versions ago.

Edit: there seems to be a bug in the interaction of disruption shield, other shields, and sustains, as half the time when I use disruption shield, I lose all my sustains and the shield, despite not having gained any mana or gotten hit.

Edit2: Nope, seems its going to zero mana. My bad.

[martinuzz]

I do think sustains are a bit wonky in the current version. I've had sustains deactivate on me without rescource issues, or buff-killing mobs anywhere.
Also, demonologist sustains do not always properly de-activate on rest / run. Killed two of my chars so far, suddenly finding themselves at 0 vim.
For now, I'll just have get used to manually de-activatem them.

[martinuzz]

If you're worried about stuns, consider taking the prodigy that makes you immune to physical effects after being hit by one. I think it's called Spine of the World. Then again, PES is nice. I think I'd have gone with PES as a first prodigy instead of windblade. Windblade isn't a terrible choice though. You might still get stunned with SotW, but there won't be a follow up of many more physical debuffs, making it easier to get rid of.