Weird Builds: Hydro

[Repth]

I thought I'd share a bit about Hydro's build. It's the build I'm most proud of, mostly because I was actually able to put it together and it didn't fail completely. I reset Hydro earlier this year, maybe even last year, in an effort to get 3 max cloaks for a very specific purpose. It allowed me to do some pretty fun, albeit inefficient, things. This is going to be a walkthrough of what I did with him and how it turned out. I have absolutely no idea what he will look like in B5.

The Gear
I am not one for upkeep, so I didn't go crazy with enchanted clothes, but I did use the following;
Leather Cuirass with Defense
Police Suit of Riot Armor with Death Soak
Frozen Gauntlets with Accuracy

The Skills

My priorities here were to take First Aid, defense, Defensive Stance, and max the Air, Water, and Fire cloaks. I selected air mostly for the passive defense bump. I occasionally used it for movement when not near water. Water I took because of the transportation, flavor, search, hide, immunities, and the active status depending on who I was fighting. Fire I took for the fire immunity, the aura, and the AOE of all things, because it was to be my main source of damage, which is why I didn't take a combat tree. That... didn't really work out, as you're probably not surprised to hear. I took TLL later so I could pack on the MP before raids to actually fire off Cleansing Flames, but it was always pretty uneventful. Most of my one-on-one combat ended up being done with accuracy enchanted Frozen Gauntlets. Strength's Heavy Weapon accuracy helped a little, and I got a nice damage boost when I did that with the Flame cloak on. I like to think my Divine Resolve actually made a difference in raids or raid defense but I'm not so sure. Maybe some firefighters can speak to that.

Cloak of Water

This is the result of all of the above with Cloak of the Relentless Sea. Pretty fun stuff! Defensive stance helped out a lot, too. I definitely wasn't the tankiest but I had my niche. Totally immune to hellhounds, skeletons, very little trouble from nether hounds, zombies, wisps, and fossil monstrosities. I went with Death soak to get there. Imps still kinda sucked because they could sap my MP. That only happened a few times, but it was still hard for me to stomach because Hydro had Holy Bulwark before I reset him for this. MP was always an issue with this because, while I could tank a lot, I couldn't do much damage. I think I used a gauntlet in this situation to little effect.

Cloak of Flame

But that's just the Water cloak version, the soaks look great on paper but it wasn't how I actually did combat. The build and playstyle I was actually going for doesn't really come through in the screenshot above (or in-game much because I'm such an awful raider). This Hydro was actually built to activate the fire cloak along with Defensive Stance. The idea was to be in Knot of Keepers and get a 10% defense bonus with Healing Grace before a raid, bringing my defense and dodge up to 37%/42% and let the fire cloak aura do the talking. I would occasionally take damage, but I had pretty good search odds so I always had a lot of FAK's on hand. Once in a while, I'd trigger Cleansing Flame, as it was an attack I could use that wouldn't sap my MP through Defensive Stance, but it was pretty expensive to spam, so I was only able to really do so after tapping the crap out of a leyline or two before raiding. Still, it was a fun, goofy way to tank. Cloak of Flame's Aura along with Defensive Stance would eventually take care of most pets and auto-hits obviously crippled me but it was fun for a while. Some actives weren't sure how to react.

The whole reason I decided to reset and go down this path in the first place is pretty simple, actually, and has nothing to do with combat at all. With Water and Flame cloaks, I could cruise the "water" tiles of Stygia without being affected by planar damage without planar protection, since I would heal every move! I did all that to save a whopping 10 cp! I hid in Stygia for weeks on obscure tiles (Cloak of Water hide chance is super!) and hunted Hellhounds with the water cloak on, who I was totally 100% immune to in every way. There were some big packs I had some real fun with. Eventually, it got old and Hydro spent more and more time in the void. So it goes!

Thanks for reading.
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