Wyrmmaster - What to get on T2?

[Tomppa]

Okay, so here's my build:

--- These are what I have so far ---
1 10 Sense Magic
7 10 Repair Item
7 20 Smithing
7 30 Master Smith
10 0 Desecrate
10 20 Spellcraft

--- These are what I need help with ---
17 20 Dark Heart
17 20 Soul Vampire
17 20 Life Vampire
17 20 Poison
17 3 Rain of Stones
17 7 Stone Dart
17 10 Stonefury
17 20 Greater Glyph Erasure
17 8 Battering Ram
17 7 Reveal
17 10 Planar Protection
17 10 First Aid
17 5 Swim

DH obviously yes, but - Seriously, what the hell? Okay, I might grind ice out of mortals with auto-hit T3 impact spell. Poison? GGE? PP might be nice for hunting. First-aid for quality of life? Swim just to round up the points?

--- These are what I plan to take in T3, though order may vary----
20 -40 40 Exploration Badges
20 -10 Items Repaired
20 -10 Books Read
20 0 Acid Blood
20 60 Summon Wrackwyrm
20 30 Summon Hellhound
20 30 Summon Horrid Tentacle
21 0 -- Saved --
22 60 Favour of G'Nak
23 0 -- Saved --
24 60 Master of the Pack
25 0 -- Saved --
26 60 Nether Grafting
27 30 Twisted Leap
28 30 Summon Imp
29 0 -- Saved --
30 60 Interpose Thrall
30 -15 Items Repaired
30 12 Force Bolt
30 13 Force Focus
_________________
"I am your Slave
And you will Reward me
For I shall be Faithful."
(That's from Dracula, by Stoker.)

[Saint_Jimmy]

I'd drop the Soul/Life vampire, personally. You'd need to attack with the restricted auto-hit since you don't have spell combat, so you'll be doing 13 damage max for 8 mp. Not really worth it, and incidentally I'd probably not bother with combat spells at all aside from an autohit for poison.

Instead you could pick up something like dodge or stamina. Dropping both ices would give you 40 cp that you could spend on Strength/Stamina + engineering for that extra hp and badge grinding.

Another option would be dropping, say, swim, the impact spells other than stone dart and the Vampire skills. This would give you 76 CP, enough to buy the dodge tree and blur. You can stack this with translucency at T3. Stamina/dodge is kinda up to you, but I'd recommend taking at least one form of defence.


At T3 - Netherhounds... I wouldn't bother with it. The issue here is you replace a mundane damage type with an exotic one. Which is waaay easier to get immunity to thanks to pots. That said, they're better outside raid defense, so if you're planning on hunting that's pretty cool, and they require rejuvenating less often so it would make building a larger number of pets easier.

I'd probably not bother with force bolt/focus and spend that CP on more tanky skills if possible because dodge, hp, soak and pets combine well together.

[Tomppa]

Okay, so DH is given. That leaves me with 140 CP to be spent.

Having considered Planar Protection, I think I'll buy it too. 130 CP left.

I guess the big question is wether to take up Ice gathering, because that would cost 40 CP now (and 12-25 later). I'd... Be kinda tempted to take them, but then again, desecrate may grant me some anyway. And the character is called Bystander, so it's flavourful to drop out all combat skills. Not going to take 1 autohit just for poison.

The next question would be about poison, though. Do I take poison, and attempt to inflict it with DH? 20 CP, with just 70% to hit, costing 3 AP and 5 or 6 MP if I miss, I think... Doesn't really sound like it's worth it. Would be nice against an active defender, though...

I could take Str+Stamina. That's 30 CP spent, 100 CP left. Dodge tree, 60 CP spent, 40 CP left. I've... Already taken spellcraft, and while I could leave that as dead CP's, I suppose I could spend the rest to take some spells, no? GGE, I suppose that never hurts. Would leave 20 CP left?

I suppose I could take Poison for that 20 cp. Or... Reveal and something else? Maybe?
_________________
"I am your Slave
And you will Reward me
For I shall be Faithful."
(That's from Dracula, by Stoker.)

[Saint_Jimmy]

Trying to make spells add up to *exactly* 20 cp can be tricky. Say you take reveal, that's 13 CP left. That then rules out any more glyph spells. You could take mystic shield, but that leaves you with 5 cp left over (Enough for swim!). Mystic Mail is kinda crap since you've got master smith. Blur + reveal would give you 7 cp left, enough for an autohit, although that'd be pointless so heh.

Or take Protection vs good!

[MerlintheTuna]

I'm pretty happy with how Selke has turned out. (Char link) He's got some grinding under his belt, but he also basically maxed out at level 24 or so, because I plan on using HtH attacks + Metamorphic Unguis approximately never, and I only just picked up Alchemical Transmutation to help out with Nexmas presents.

My stance is that spells are generally a bad investment for petmasters. Pets are the most AP-efficient killing tools in the game, which devalues mundane attack trees, and spells are super MP-intensive, meaning you're usually better off just summoning pets. Having Spellcraft isn't bad, but I'd suggest sticking mostly with utility spells, and possibly leaning heavily/entirely on gems. That leaves a lot of T1 CP that can go into durability skills, which means more retaliation ticks for your pets.

I'm a big fan of nether hounds. Yes, they can be immunized against, but the folks that actually do immunize are dedicated tanks who aren't scared of hellhounds, either. Nethers are better on offense and hit harder on any squishy raiders who screw up and eat occasional pet attacks as a result.

[SocialJusticeWarrior]

As a petmaster, your main goals in life are to summon pets and be hard to kill. Dodge and Evasion will help you do the latter, as well as the Wyrm Master's Translucency. One of the Wyrm Master's innate weapons uses the H2H tree, too, so that helps synergize a bit with the dodging skills.

In general, I'd skip offensive spells. Your pets cost MP and are going to do most of the killing for you, and since you have no way of increasing your maximum MP (short of finding all 50 pieces of lore), having to split your MP between spellcasting and pets isn't such a good idea. Utility spells, particularly glyphs/glyph erasure, are still workable.