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[Oneir]

I'm having a hard time figuring out early posessors. Advice?

I tried for a bit, then decided to mindstar wyrmic while the bugs settled down. The most straightforward advice I've seen is Psychic Disruption (the one-handed + mindstar sustain) is supposed to be really, really good. Other than that, there're these two threads with minimal, scattered advice: "Basic Possessor Questions", "Possessor - thoughts and question I still have at lvl 50".

It sounds like cornac is really good, but there's some division over whether (and when) it's worth putting a cat point into possession to nab bosses. Also I suspect possessor is going to get conflicting advice more than most classes because of the normal/insane split in players. Not surprisingly, a difficulty that tosses tons of extra classes on everything you fight makes the body-snatched class way better.

EDIT: One thing I'm trying to work out for myself are which creature types it's worth learning. Humanoids are a no-brainer, but it seems like a really limited resource.

[Frumple]

Forget exactly how that interacts with typing, but obvious goals are dragons, horrors, or undead. On top of humanoid that covers most of the nastier stuff in the game.

[Oneir]

Forget exactly how that interacts with typing, but obvious goals are dragons, horrors, or undead. On top of humanoid that covers most of the nastier stuff in the game.

Yeah, that tracks. I decided to try possessor on nightmare, since winning with a mindstar wyrmic was painfully boring at the end. (by the time you get over early-/mid-game hurdles and get some decent mindstars you can bump attack almost everything, and literally swallow everything else whole.) (My main regret is not eating the final bosses, because Swallow is an A+ slapstick talent.) I've only cleared trollmire and a floor of Gloom (with some brief side-tracking to possess all three of the gladiators in Derth), and I think I need to back track.

Bodies feel really squishy, and I'm scared of getting caught in one when it pops. I grabbed the Body Snatcher tree with my cornac cat point, so at least I can throw puppets at things when they're nearly dead. So far roughly half of them have run away from whatever's menacing me, though. I think I need to spread out my weapon skills more because I feel like I have nothing to do with psi. Maybe things pick up once I get to Full Control...?

[Arcvasti]

The first thing you need to realize about Possessors is that they feel terrible to play.

The second thing, if you still feel the urge to play them, is that dying while in a form DOES NOT PUT ASSUME FORM ON CD. Never end assume form if you feel like you're in danger: Just let the form die and then hop into another one immediately afterwards. This is why it can pay to keep a couple forms around that are only good for tanking, so you can wait out the "Died in a form" debuff.

[Oneir]

The first thing you need to realize about Possessors is that they feel terrible to play.

Oh, good. Sort of like how Stone Wardens are stupidly tanky, but you're literally plodding around everywhere? Or worse/better than that?

The second thing, if you still feel the urge to play them, is that dying while in a form DOES NOT PUT ASSUME FORM ON CD. Never end assume form if you feel like you're in danger: Just let the form die and then hop into another one immediately afterwards. This is why it can pay to keep a couple forms around that are only good for tanking, so you can wait out the "Died in a form" debuff.

Oh! That's a really solid tip.

[Arcvasti]

The first thing you need to realize about Possessors is that they feel terrible to play.

Oh, good. Sort of like how Stone Wardens are stupidly tanky, but you're literally plodding around everywhere? Or worse/better than that?

The "Feeling terrible to play" part stems from a couple things:

1: They have Solipsism, but unlike actual Solipsists, their ability costs aren't designed around it[Some of them have 40-50 point costs] and no healing in forms has big antisynergy with regaining Psi via high regen[Since you'd only be getting ~50% effect from any healing].

2: They have six unique trees, one of which is all about Possession, two of which start out locked and three weapon trees which are all mutually exclusive. So Possessors are easily the most class talent limited class, even more so then Anorithils[Who have ~6 class trees and two of them are basically useless]. Whereas Possessors have a grand total of three usable class trees early on[Counting Solipsism, which I probably shouldn't], increasing to four later on[Since Possession NEEDS a cat point, their unlocks are pretty limited as well]. Maybe high-level form talents and/or being an Ogre to use the 2H and 1H+Mindstar trees would make them feel less bleh, but I've never gotten to that point.

[Oneir]

The "Feeling terrible to play" part stems from a couple things[...]

Ah, OK. So just bad design, then. It's kind of a amazing to me that the only talent it has for regaining psi is cannibalism, which is not only locked, but also soft-blocks you from regaining psi when you're in a high-tier form.

I dumped my nightmare possessor after dying in the crystal caves hoping for any kind of decent shield rune -- nightmare makes the caves without a reliable ranged attack, healing, or movement options that much less of a joke, I guess. I felt pretty cool for a bit since I had Framewrough and a TK-wielded Kor's Fall -- so I could pretend to have ranged talents and at least soften things up. Amazingly limited, poorly-scaling damage isn't even enough to reliable take out equal-leveled bears before they can get to you. Eventually I think it was a Sun Paladin mold that killed me, since its durability was kind of absurd.

[Frumple]

Iirc, for what it's worth, healing actually does work for solipsist psi regen while in forms. Pretty sure that was an explicit change in one of the post-introduction versions (or during the pre-release testing). Might have been just regen or somethin', I'unno.

Other thing to remember with solipsism is you can always just... not put more points in it. If the healing et al issues are a concern. If you're having resource troubles avoiding investment is usually a good idea, even, just so the damage conversion doesn't leave you dried out mid fight. Stuff points in it later on, when you have access to better/any psi regen kit. Or not and just roll with no more than the one point.

[AlStar]

Well, that sucked.

I was playing a skeleton temporal warden, and doing just amazingly - hadn't died since very early in the game opening some vaults. Pretty much everything melted before me - I was never in any kind of real danger from the point where I went to the East. I even went and cleared out the room of death before heading to the final battle without any problems.

So I get all the way to the final battle... and just get my ass kicked repeatedly. I think my best run saw me take one of the two bosses down to ~50% HP.

I'm not even sure what I should've done differently, except perhaps grind all the way up to level 50 (I was level 46) - but I honestly don't see how that would've made that much of a difference - the main problems (that my hounds were instantly killed and my paradox level quickly soared to levels that made using any of my skills impossible) would've still been there.

I'm getting a Dungeons of Dredmor vibe - where anyone can get to the final boss, but that boss (or bosses, in this case) is balanced against the twink powergamers, so gods help you if you've got a suboptimal build.

[Frumple]

Eh... on >nightmare difficulties, sorta'. You can play pretty hilariously suboptimally on nightmare or lower and still take the final fight. Not incredibly incredibly so, but there's quite a bit of leeway to do relatively ineffective stuff. If you were looking for advice, build specifics might help. Kit, talent choices, playstyle, and etc. What exactly was killing you would help a ton. You don't exactly have to be perfect, but there are some things that help quite a bit (all praise for dispersion gloves). Though I will say I'm not sure how much I could offer, heh. Last warden win was a good few versions ago, and the first ones were during versions that had... issues. Indefinite amount of turns at will issues. So I'm probably a bit out of date.

Not sure how your hounds would have been instakilled, though. Iirc your hound tree gives you the tools to guarantee like 6-8 turns or something uptime on at least one hound even if they get 100 to 0'd in one turn (vigor is like half the reason the things are one of the best defensive summons in the game), and half-ish that for the other two, which is enough time for you to get a good chunk of breathing room, usually.

[Darkmere]

I haven't played much warden since the revamp. I remember my last version two-turn killed one of the endbosses though. 15 arrows to the face did the trick.

[AlStar]

I haven't played much warden since the revamp. I remember my last version two-turn killed one of the endbosses though. 15 arrows to the face did the trick.

Who knows - maybe that was my problem - I went with dual-wielding, not bows.

Not sure how your hounds would have been instakilled, though. Iirc your hound tree gives you the tools to guarantee like 6-8 turns or something uptime on at least one hound even if they get 100 to 0'd in one turn (vigor is like half the reason the things are one of the best defensive summons in the game), and half-ish that for the other two, which is enough time for you to get a good chunk of breathing room, usually.

I'll admit to some exaggeration, but the main problem was all the AoE of the final bosses - so I'd have all three hounds, warp them into battle (for the +stats and +regen that gives them), then they'd all die 5 or 6 turns later, and then I'd only survive long enough to resummon a couple of them, who would die pretty much without accomplishing anything.

Here's the character, although it looks like some of the stats got mangled upon death:
https://te4.org/characters/216852/tome/e088abfc-f499-48a0-b5fc-83e291854b8a

I don't even know if I'm looking for advise - I'm just bitter that my character seemed crazy overpowered right up until that last room, when suddenly I was getting the crap kicked out of me - it was a humbling experience.

[Frumple]

Yeah, the sudden death wall thing can be a bit jarring, especially if you were running something that was actually pretty weak but still able to steamroll most chaff etc. critters, and stuff like a raw melee (no bow, little to no other actives) skellie warden is definitely that. You get used to it if you're doing silly things, ehehe. Which... yeah, I guess you can caveat my previous statement. It's probably worth noting that it is a thing where the more suboptimal you're messing around with on one front (talent build, kit priority, actual playing) the less room you have to do it on others. You can totally win the game with naked archmagi or staffzerkers or whathaveyou, but you do have to play more carefully when you do it. Similarly, you can play doing incredibly stupid things (only bump attacks! No actives!), but you do have to build around it. You weren't exactly on either extreme on either front, mind you (though a melee warden that pure is admittedly approaching it), but it's worth mention T4 isn't entirely lenient. The game does have its limits, heh.

... though, yeah, now comes the unsolicited advise because it's approaching midnight and it's been a while since I babbled on the subject of a T4 build. Totally feel free to ignore it, I just got a bit caught up in mentioning a few things and ended up saying a lot more than I thought I was going to :V

Spoiler: Said advice, ignore as you please (click to show/hide)

You can do wardens raw melee, but it's probably notably weaker than mixed or bow primary. The class is very much intended to hybrid, or at least pick up stasis/invest more in mobility/defensive stuff to mitigate some of the missing bits. Thaaat said, you definitely missed a few key things, eyeballing it. Hound blink really needs 5/5 (going hounds without getting the summon on blink effect loses quite a lot of the tree's utility, kinda' like vigor really wants >1 point), if you're going melee you pretty badly need to leverage movement better (phase pulse+blink blade is mildy disgusting, dropping one of the weaker shields for controlled phase door, or getting another inscription slot or two), elemental surge was just odd (what were you even using to proc that? Spellblade effects and item activations?), stuff like that. Sitting on that 60% global slow on-melee is kinda' painful to look at, though, I won't lie, heh. Would have meant no spellblade, but spellblade's only so-so for wardens anyway. Good enough to be end-game kit, but not all that much synergy with the class, and meanwhile 60% slow is slightly ridiculous for anyone regularly using melee attacks.

Also looks like you were either sitting on a cat point or missed the last one, which definitely would have helped -- there's four total for everyone, with cornacs having an extra, and as near as I could count you only spent three (hound, combat boost, fate). Another inscription slot for cpd (or just PD, even) or unlocking threaded combat or stasis would have been pretty major, especially the latter if you were insistent on using no ranged attacks and was having paradox problems. Any of that instead of boosting combat would have made quite the difference, too, heh, but cat boosting talent trees are one of those things people like to argue about. It is almost always the worst thing you can do with a cat point besides not using it (or unlocking arcane trees on someone with antimagic or something odd like that), but you totally can roll with it and still win.

Going zero ranged does explain a lot about why you had trouble, though, heh. Even melee prime warden wants to dip into the ranged stuff for arrow threading + multishot junk (preferably with call, which lets even your melee stuff help on that front) to help with paradox management. You can go without, but it takes either a great deal of care or(/and) a pretty strong kit focus on paradox equivalent and/or willpower. Stasis helps, too, of course.

... tl;dr, what you were trying to do is totes possible, but it wasn't as strong as it felt and you missed a few fairly major things. Just looking over stuff, I don't think you were very far from managing, though. Don't need hyper optimization or anything, just a touch up or three.

Completely aside all that, I have to ask: Were you having much trouble hitting things? I usually have a pretty miserable time when I skimp on accuracy even if I'm doing a dex primary build, but I do occasionally hear someone saying they bullied through without talent or much kit investment. Think I'm usually a good 15-20 effective points over yours with late game accuracy reliant critters, so whether you managed well enough without would be nice to hear.

[AlStar]

First time I'd ever played as Warden or as a Skeleton, and first time to the end game, so I probably (definitely) did some things sub-optimally. 4th cat point went into the skeleton tree. I didn't see the need for new inscription slots, because I wasn't wowed by anything other than damage shields, and was relying on Blink Blade and/or Dimensional Step when I needed a teleport(which, of course, only worsened my paradox usage.)

I completely blanked on what to get for my second prestige point. It was triggering off the lightning damage I was getting from my gloves and/or the Spellsword, but that really wasn't optimal... I somehow thought I had more elemental damage coming in.

Sitting on that 60% global slow on-melee is kinda' painful to look at, though, I won't lie, heh.

What was sitting in my inventory that could've done that? That's a major 'whoops' - slowing them down could've made the difference.

As far as accuracy goes, I had absolutely no problems up till the last bosses, but their stats were high enough that I was noticeably missing against them.

[Frumple]

Re: slow, you had a voratun waraxe and some ring or another that were both 30%, and of the sort that stacks additively and caps at 60%, heh. On-melee global slow is the sexiest of beasts for melee classes. Even wardens that are going bow prime, if they pick up call. Would have lost the spellblade procs, which would have been kinda' unfortunate considering the prodigy choice, and one of the lesser on-melee effects (probably the blind, iirc -- the random gloom stuff is generally more likely to get something through, so if you have to prioritize, it's usually somewhat better), but it would probably have been worth it, ehehe.

And yeah, it's sometimes kinda' hard to wrap your head around the runes, especially for a skeleton warden that can roll with vigilance and resilient bones, heh. Movement is pretty much always highly desired, though, and free-ish versions (CPD, mostly) do indeed help with paradox. Usually nice to have other cooldowns to use, anyway. Plain PD's actually pretty nasty in the end game, too, particularly for wardens who have native kit to deal with a lot of the downsides to the things (plus the stuff in spacetime weaving that dings off teleports in general). Wardens are serious contenders for on-teleport stacking, really, if you can fit some in the kit.

Definitely could have made more use of some other prodigy, though, aye. Even the humble temporal form probably would have done you good -- iirc the anomalies it gets access to still drop your paradox like normal ones. Want to say it's even got a really nice synergy with speed control... pretty sure they're not on a shared cooldown, which means you can pop time stop and then shotgun an anomaly or three to bring your paradox back down a bit. And with stuff like that, it's pretty good to remember 100% damage mitigation doesn't necessarily mean you can't do stuff like continue to drop debuffs or whathaveyou, ehehe. Buncha' other ones work pretty well, too. Surge isn't the worst, exactly, particularly with the kit you had, but there certainly were betters ones, heh.