Post by kaezar on May 26, 2010 20:56:52 GMT
This build was made to be the end-all in physical damage. It has proven itself on all runs, up to and including nessus, and done well on abyss too, although it hasn't got made any final boss fights yet.
Human Genie
Scores Base/Subby
Str 8/8, Dex 8/10, Con 12/14, wis 16/16, Int 18/24, Cha 8/8
2 initial increases go into wis, all other into Int.
Bonus from subby: Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration
1 Spell Focus: Necromancy; Greater Spell Focus: Necromancy
2 W
3 W Extend Spell
4 W:
5 W: Empower Spell
6 W: Spell Focus: Illusion
7 W:
8 W:
9 W: Greater Spell Focus: Illusion
10 Cl: Domain Plant; Free Domain
11 Cl:
12 Cl: Spell Focus: Transmutation
13 Cl:
14 Cl:
15 Cl: Greater Spell Focus: Transmutation
16 Cl:
17 Cl:
18 Cl: Maximize Spell
19 Cl:
20 Cl:
21 W: Great Intelligence; Great Intelligence
22 W:
23 W:
24 W Great Intelligence
25 W:
26 W: Great Intelligence
27 W: Great Intelligence
28 W:
29 W:
30 W: Great Intelligence
31 W: Great Intelligence
32 W:
33 W: Great Intelligence
34 W: Great Intelligence
35 W:
36 Cl: Great Intelligence
37 W:
38 Cl:
39 W: Epic Spell Penetration; Epic Spell Focus: Necromancy
40 Cl:
41: Read Tome Anc Lore: Conjuration
42: Epic Spell Focus: Transmutation
45: Epic Spell Focus: Illusion
48: LSP
51: LSF: Conjuration
54: LSF: Illusion
55: use Spell Penetration Artifact (sygil of mystra)
57: LSF: Necromancy
60: LSF: Transmutation
Comments
This evolution leaves you with 4 schools at legendary, one less than the regular wizard can manage. Notice that you have in effect one free feat at pre-epic levels, that I choose to put in maximize spells. If I were doing this build today I would think about going elf and using the copious points this build provides to get the persuade skill (it is a cleric class skill so able learner would allow you go to up to max on it).
Advantages
Since a theurge can't, no matter what, reach the same DC as a regular wizard, I decided to go the other way and reach for spell penetration. This guy has a spell penetration of 71 in fist wraps. It can hit 72 with the pom sp ring, and 73 with the raja augment. Also, the touch of mystra can give up to +3 spell penetration (and dc) for 10 rounds, once/rest.
I noticed this works specially well on places like elysium, where critters have very high spell resistence, and lower hells, where they have just enough spell resistence to make regular wizards miss spells once a while (like, 71-74).
In general, in hells I didn't notice any final difference in efficienty over regular wizards. It seems that whatever the loss it has for those 2 on DC are compensated by the gain on spell penetration.
Another advantage is the ability to lay some wicked clouds. It can lay Creeping Doom with Legendary Illusiona and conjuration, and inflict up to 20% physical immunity reduction that way. Couple this with wrack and enervation and you can screw critters' defenses pretty badly.
His Evards have, at 60, an AB of 85. Blade barrier AB is lower, only 76. Still, maximized they can do a very considerable damage.
Last, It can lay fire, cold and acid clouds with a DC of 56, 54 and 53, respectively, at double demi.
It is also very flexible. it can cast every cure that can be needed, from blindness to paralysis, and buff weapons with both fire buffs, and shock buff too. It also has the biggie, you have cleric 7th level spells, which is to say, greater restoration. Using a piece of gear that gives 8th level slots (tia gear!) you can cast extended greater restoration on yourself. You won't have a lot of them, but enough to buff yourself every spawn. In hells that goes a *long* way toward compensating the DC loss, in special past phleg.
And finally the advantage few people pay attention to: prayer and battletide. With its high penetration, this character can drop enemies' saves by up to -7 (-8 if you bother recasting battletide after an energy drain). Even the -3 from prayer (if you don't want to get close enough to put critters inside battletide) can compensate handily for the loss of DC you have.
Most clerics only bother to prayer as a prelude to imploding, and they in general have low penetration. So most non-implode-ables are not prayed in combat. If you throw a breach ball before hand, this character has a 70% chance of scoring even on a pit fiend.
Disadvantages
First the obvious on, -2 to DC. It means that if a critter has a low chance to fail a save, like, say, 1-6 on a 1d20, it fails only on a 1-4 for you. That's a 1/3 drop on chance to scoring a spell. Solution I found is to avoid critters that are not debuffed. Use your non-save spells on them. Clouds, prayer, grabbies. etc are all alternatives till curse hits.
Second one is bioware epic spells. Because of divided levels, greater ruin has a DC of 51, far too low to take care of critters that pop up sometimes. Since greater ruin is very common on clerics and druids nowadays, I could live with the absence.
Third is a side effect of your clouds: you cause a damn lot of kickback. As for yourself, keep a damn sharp eye for things like hamatulas. exo kickback is your bane. That goes double for the party. if you lay all your clouds and something like a infernal machine walks into it, you stand up to wipe your party in one round. Voicebind the !cancel aoe command and be damn ready to use it.
fourth is spell slots. Since you have to divide your gear between cleric and wizard slots, you don't have even close to the alotment a regular wizad has, in special since you can't use the thid/abo bracers. I go around this using the tia cleric belt and all the rest of the tia gear for wizzies. Which agravates to problem caused by the kickback, since you don't have any exo resists.
Fifth and a minor one imo, it is the buffing. If you insist on putting every buff you can, you end up with a 20-spell-long buffing queue. That's anoying as hell, in special to your party mates. Keep it to a minimum, knowing that even then you'll be taking too long. Or make like me and trade your soul for a temporal autocaster.
Well, that's it.
Take care
Kaezar
Human Genie
Scores Base/Subby
Str 8/8, Dex 8/10, Con 12/14, wis 16/16, Int 18/24, Cha 8/8
2 initial increases go into wis, all other into Int.
Bonus from subby: Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration
1 Spell Focus: Necromancy; Greater Spell Focus: Necromancy
2 W
3 W Extend Spell
4 W:
5 W: Empower Spell
6 W: Spell Focus: Illusion
7 W:
8 W:
9 W: Greater Spell Focus: Illusion
10 Cl: Domain Plant; Free Domain
11 Cl:
12 Cl: Spell Focus: Transmutation
13 Cl:
14 Cl:
15 Cl: Greater Spell Focus: Transmutation
16 Cl:
17 Cl:
18 Cl: Maximize Spell
19 Cl:
20 Cl:
21 W: Great Intelligence; Great Intelligence
22 W:
23 W:
24 W Great Intelligence
25 W:
26 W: Great Intelligence
27 W: Great Intelligence
28 W:
29 W:
30 W: Great Intelligence
31 W: Great Intelligence
32 W:
33 W: Great Intelligence
34 W: Great Intelligence
35 W:
36 Cl: Great Intelligence
37 W:
38 Cl:
39 W: Epic Spell Penetration; Epic Spell Focus: Necromancy
40 Cl:
41: Read Tome Anc Lore: Conjuration
42: Epic Spell Focus: Transmutation
45: Epic Spell Focus: Illusion
48: LSP
51: LSF: Conjuration
54: LSF: Illusion
55: use Spell Penetration Artifact (sygil of mystra)
57: LSF: Necromancy
60: LSF: Transmutation
Comments
This evolution leaves you with 4 schools at legendary, one less than the regular wizard can manage. Notice that you have in effect one free feat at pre-epic levels, that I choose to put in maximize spells. If I were doing this build today I would think about going elf and using the copious points this build provides to get the persuade skill (it is a cleric class skill so able learner would allow you go to up to max on it).
Advantages
Since a theurge can't, no matter what, reach the same DC as a regular wizard, I decided to go the other way and reach for spell penetration. This guy has a spell penetration of 71 in fist wraps. It can hit 72 with the pom sp ring, and 73 with the raja augment. Also, the touch of mystra can give up to +3 spell penetration (and dc) for 10 rounds, once/rest.
I noticed this works specially well on places like elysium, where critters have very high spell resistence, and lower hells, where they have just enough spell resistence to make regular wizards miss spells once a while (like, 71-74).
In general, in hells I didn't notice any final difference in efficienty over regular wizards. It seems that whatever the loss it has for those 2 on DC are compensated by the gain on spell penetration.
Another advantage is the ability to lay some wicked clouds. It can lay Creeping Doom with Legendary Illusiona and conjuration, and inflict up to 20% physical immunity reduction that way. Couple this with wrack and enervation and you can screw critters' defenses pretty badly.
His Evards have, at 60, an AB of 85. Blade barrier AB is lower, only 76. Still, maximized they can do a very considerable damage.
Last, It can lay fire, cold and acid clouds with a DC of 56, 54 and 53, respectively, at double demi.
It is also very flexible. it can cast every cure that can be needed, from blindness to paralysis, and buff weapons with both fire buffs, and shock buff too. It also has the biggie, you have cleric 7th level spells, which is to say, greater restoration. Using a piece of gear that gives 8th level slots (tia gear!) you can cast extended greater restoration on yourself. You won't have a lot of them, but enough to buff yourself every spawn. In hells that goes a *long* way toward compensating the DC loss, in special past phleg.
And finally the advantage few people pay attention to: prayer and battletide. With its high penetration, this character can drop enemies' saves by up to -7 (-8 if you bother recasting battletide after an energy drain). Even the -3 from prayer (if you don't want to get close enough to put critters inside battletide) can compensate handily for the loss of DC you have.
Most clerics only bother to prayer as a prelude to imploding, and they in general have low penetration. So most non-implode-ables are not prayed in combat. If you throw a breach ball before hand, this character has a 70% chance of scoring even on a pit fiend.
Disadvantages
First the obvious on, -2 to DC. It means that if a critter has a low chance to fail a save, like, say, 1-6 on a 1d20, it fails only on a 1-4 for you. That's a 1/3 drop on chance to scoring a spell. Solution I found is to avoid critters that are not debuffed. Use your non-save spells on them. Clouds, prayer, grabbies. etc are all alternatives till curse hits.
Second one is bioware epic spells. Because of divided levels, greater ruin has a DC of 51, far too low to take care of critters that pop up sometimes. Since greater ruin is very common on clerics and druids nowadays, I could live with the absence.
Third is a side effect of your clouds: you cause a damn lot of kickback. As for yourself, keep a damn sharp eye for things like hamatulas. exo kickback is your bane. That goes double for the party. if you lay all your clouds and something like a infernal machine walks into it, you stand up to wipe your party in one round. Voicebind the !cancel aoe command and be damn ready to use it.
fourth is spell slots. Since you have to divide your gear between cleric and wizard slots, you don't have even close to the alotment a regular wizad has, in special since you can't use the thid/abo bracers. I go around this using the tia cleric belt and all the rest of the tia gear for wizzies. Which agravates to problem caused by the kickback, since you don't have any exo resists.
Fifth and a minor one imo, it is the buffing. If you insist on putting every buff you can, you end up with a 20-spell-long buffing queue. That's anoying as hell, in special to your party mates. Keep it to a minimum, knowing that even then you'll be taking too long. Or make like me and trade your soul for a temporal autocaster.
Well, that's it.
Take care
Kaezar
