Class Advice

[Manson]

Hey guys, I'm an extremely new player and a friend of Kandarin's. I only joined yesterday, (or this morning I'm not sure if I created the account before 12) and I'm already hooked. I have a few questions though. I'd like to eventually take a Tier 2 class of "Great Defiler" and I'm wondering how I should build my character in question. I'm not sure of what I want to do for a Tier 3 class, yet. Any and all feedback is helpful, thanks!
_________________
<b>Known in-character as Miss, Byron Veilleux, and Health.</b>

[Saint_Jimmy]

So with Defiler you have a couple of different routes.

Damage, debuffing/support and pets to do your work for you.

For damage you'll want to go Corruptor and either take melee for the wing tree (which has more raw damage) and pet stealing, or both offensive spells (for the extremely useful status effect stripping) and melee combat tree for the pet stealing.

At T2 you'll want spellcraft and some utility spells like reveal. Guided blade is great and if you want to do offensive spells pick one tree (often impact) and grab all the spells in that tree for the damage affinity boosts - you get +1 damage for each other spell in your chosen damage type. Blood and Soul Ice (moreso blood Ice) are good pickups too since you'll be doing direct damage to people and essentially free healing. Alchemy+ transmutation is a good skill if you're factioned, less so on feral characters.

For debuffs/support you'll want to go Dark Oppressor which revolves around that. They have a lot of options - if you're more focused on downtime enchants are very good and grant a lot of flexibility in what weapon tree you take at T1 (as long as it's not h2h).

If you want to be more focused on the debuffs, agony curse + poison and blood curse are all very useful in shutting people down, and their intimidating aura skills can work well on larger raids. The Lord over Domain tree depends a lot on where you're typically hanging out. If you're not in Stygia it's not amazing. Recommended T2 skills would be Dark Heart (mana regen and screwing over people. You can also use this to land poison). Alchemy and transmutation(it's a great skill if you're factioned... If you're not it's not so fun. If you do this check out the add-ons on the forum for easier alchemy because the default interface sucks) and poison because hell yeah. Spells like reveal and sharp vision/guided blade/seeking hand (for whatever combat tree you pick up) are very useful, as are glyphs/glyph erasures if you're factioned. You should avoid any combat spells if you're not enchanting with the exception of one aura spell iff you feel like tanking sometimes and if you are enchanting grab the cheapest one of each damage type *other* than impact to unlock more damage types to enchant.

Wyrm Masters are the pet masters of the trio. While corruptors can steal pets from people they can't summon them themselves. Imps are a low damage pet that make you harder to kill, tentacles are a stationary pet that survive after you die (so you can put them down somewhere and run off) with lower stats than the hounds and hell/netherhounds are a high damage high cost pet that can also crit people and, like the imps, follow you around. Their innates aren't great and realistically if you're a wyrmmaster (like pretty much any true petmaster) you're not going to be great at direct damage and will rely on your pets to do the heavy lifting. Pets do require maintenance but thanks to Kandarin in a recent patch you can automate the bulk of it. T2 skills: dark heart, poison, Spellcraft+ utility spells are great. Alchemy if you don't want to focus so much on pets/aren't trying to get as many as possible.


Mortal skills:

Sense magic, tap leyline are great skills.

Search is good on everyone - you'll be doing a lot of it on pretty much every character.

Combat tree: pick one, if you're corruptor pick melee, be aware that throwing is a pain with the interface but is technically the highest damage. You can pick up the full spell combat tree as well if you're corruptor and the *first* skill in the spell combat tree only if you're a dark Oppressor doing enchanting.

Strength: I love it because I always need more inventory space

Stamina: more HP is nice

Dodge tree: depends on if you're trying to be tanky at higher levels. If you're not it's probably safe to skip.

Repair tree: Decent for xp/faction support. If you're using melee/guns/bows and not relying on innates you'll probably want this.

Engineering: good for grinding, can be used for levelling but not great at that. Also good for repairing the power to where you're trying to search.

First Aid tree: Base skill is good for checking people's HP when you're trying to kill them, as well as general miscellaneous healing. Surgery is pretty much the best levelling skill if you're organized with someone. As a demon you'll want to mostly heal inside your Stronghold as your morality won't increase like it would outside it.


Lockpicking/swim/psychic bloodhound: technically lockpicking is good for grinding but no.


Other stuff:

T3 innates can be iffy (primarily the WM ones) but are good if you want to be super low maintenance.

Alchemy is great in any faction.

Power/daytime boost search rates - take advantage of this wherever you can.


Offensive spells are a trap on DO/WM. The mana costs are just too high for what you get.

Enchanting: if you want to do this check out the wiki page to see what skills/spells unlock new options. Durability, dodge, unholy are really good things to grab.


Anyway welcome and have fun!

[Kandarin]

Combat trees are something where your early choices have a lot of implications later and what's best depends a lot on class.

To become a Corruptor: Definitely melee (for pet stealing); it's also useful for wing attacks if you go the wing-attack route. When you hit Tier 2 and become a Defiler proper you can also get Spell Combat and Battle Magic if you're going the spell-caster route, though these shouldn't be your first purchases at level 10; other Defiler skills will help you level better. This is one of the few classes where fighting with spells is actually a good idea.

To become a Dark Oppressor: You'll be relying on your enchants to power up your attacks, so pick a combat tree you can enchant: Melee/swords, bows, guns or thrown weapons. Melee and bows will probably make for the least stress at low levels. Whichever combat style you pick, get the crafting/repairing skill that goes with it (Smithing, Bowyer, or Gunsmithing) and this will be a nice extra source of XP at low levels. Don't buy spell combat past the first skill or hand to hand, though if you really want to do hand to hand this class has some good innate weapons for it.

To become a Wyrm Master: You're not going to deal a lot of direct damage as this class no matter what you do, so choose whatever feels right for your character's story. If you're in a faction with a good enchanter, swords or bows might be the best. This class gets some innate weapons for hand to hand and throwing, but they're not that strong - your pets will do most of the fighting for you.

Whatever you do, don't get more than one mortal combat tree on one character as it's usually a waste.

[Lychwood]

Jimmy and Kandy killed it on the advice, so instead I'll just say welcome aboard! Looking forward to seeing you around the game.

I will say this, though. Once you get comfortable with the game and classes, a good way to design your character builds is to decide where you want to be at T3 and work backwards to see what will help support those choices best. Start with a T3 class you like, then look at the skill trees. If one of them seems promising, read up on the technical details to see what those skills synergize with or require.

Like Kandarin said, a good example is the Corruptor, who even though they're a casting class, has a lot of usage from the melee combat tree for some of their abilities. If you decided to become a Corruptor when you got to T3 instead of at the beginning of your build, you might be stuck having to retrofit yourself with a T1 skill tree to make it work. (...something I may have done to myself even recently...)

It's still doable, especially with some extra curricular grinding, but it's not ideal. I highly recommend digging into the T3 stuff now rather than later. Good luck!