Pyromancer/? – Concentrate or Diversify?

[Praylak]

Hello everyone. I’m fairly new to the game, but I’ve read a great deal about it, and have played around with several character types in the lower levels. With that said I have a few questions that may or may not have been answered regarding the Pyromancer. If I missed it in the search, I apologize and would appreciate a link to the thread.

Ok, I’m building up my Pyro primarily as a pure caster using the Golem as my tank shield, Volcanic Orb for crowd control with intent on maxing them and their associated boosting skills (Earth Enchantment, Brimstone, etc). I feel quite confident with this guys crowd control abilities, and his personal defence that’s assisted by Ring of fire, and, as it’s humorously referred to, the panic button (Stone Form).

So for his second mastery I thought that it would be cool to complement this guy’s current ability with something that is good at taking down bosses a little faster. That seems to be my only issue. Sure I can kite some of the bosses, but it’s a long and drawn out fight. That’s what I feel this guy is missing, some boss crunching power. Then again maybe I just need to find a really good staff?

My initial thought was to add some melee ability, but I don’t want to nerf my stats. I mean I’m pushing to keep my elemental powers as high as possible, so I’ feel I have to keep pumping my INT to do this. This was a concern when I was considering the rogue or warfare masteries. I like to wack things once and while, and he’s surprising effective even without STR or much DEX. But that’s just against standard mobs, standing behind my Core Dweller.

So after playing around with the titan calculator for the last hour, this issue is still not resolved for me. All suggestions welcome, thanks.

[deception5]

My personal choice would be to stick with a caster secondary as this would pump your int/mana (from masteries alone) and allow you to continue to focus on int.

Storm would be a strong choice with lightning, squall (reduce elemental resistance/cause lightning damage/reduce enemy damage), storm nimbus synergies, and especially eye of the storm (which will significantly boost your fire damage as well).

Nature would be good for plague (reduce resistance)... well mostly for that although heart of oak is nice and there are some other nice things.

Spirit could be good as well for the outsider (particularly where you are looking for help in boss fights as he is the strongest summon), not to mention the lich king, enslave, dark covenant/unearthly power, or even ternion.

[Seven05]

I'm enjoying my Avenger (Hunting/Earth), the combo makes an excellent archer with Earth Enchantment and Marksmanship. The core dweller/archer combo is also very effective and the combination of pierce & fire damage works well since most mobs with high pierce resists don't have high fire resists (and the other way around).

I also have a conjurer that is proving to be a lot of fun. I originally took the spirit mastery just for the mastery bonuses and have since added in deathchill aura for the heck of it.

My wife has a juggernaught that she does very well with even though she doesn't use any of the shield skills. It's basically a pyromancer with rally, adrenaline and collossus form for her.

[frustaro]

i think it depends on your play style... with nature you have an almost invincible tank (with Heart of Oak and healing ability), you have plague which decreasing resistence and health of enemies makes you do more dmg, and you have the nymph which i never tried but seems to be usefull... oh and you have refresh... with spirit you have lich who can do nice dps and lowers enemies resistence, you have the outsider which is extremly usefull to kill bosses, you have dark covenant, and you have ternion which provides an amazing amount of dmg.... Well i would chose one of those, since i don't know much about elementalists....

[Shiver]

You need to pick a second tree, even if you only play with Earth talents. The reason for this is so you can get the extra HP, MP and intelligence from leveling up that other skill set. What I did with my Pyromancer is expand into Spirit so that I could have two badass summons instead of one. The Liche King is a really impressive nuke-spammer once you get him leveled to 16. So far I'm all Earth except for that Liche, but it works pretty well.

[whathappen]

I went pyro/spirit. I find the liche king very nice range damage pet. Perfect complement for the CD. Add to that dark covenant and summon outsider and you will get a strong character. Still your fire spells will be doing most of the damage but the spirit skills will bring nice complement.

Another possibility (I have not tried it but looks very good on paper) is nature. Just to get the refresh skill. This will reduce the timer for your volcanic orb and CD. That alone should make it worthwhile. The only reason I didn't wnet ot it is that I could not bare just putting points into incrweasing the skill so I could finally get refreh (t4).

[Aurican]

Other skills that could help you from the nature tree would be plague for the slowing and lowering resistances of mobs, Heart of the Oak line for extra speed (IIRC), a lot of extra health for you and your pets and extra resistances. Wolves with fire damage seem to be nice as well but I don't have experience with that. So nature would be pretty good 2nd mastery.

[Gandaug]

Hello, all. Just signed up and was going to start a thread like this myself, but saw this one. I'm considering Spirit or Nature to go with my Earth mastery. That has already been pretty well discussed though. What I'm curious about is stat distribution. Are STR or DEX worth it for a caster with pets? I've put a little bit into STR and DEX to wear an armor I found called Heart of the Mountain or something. Gives +2 to Volativity. Other than that though I haven't spent any of my attribute points. I'm hanging on to them till I can decide where to put them.

[Infares]

Originally Posted by Gandaug

Hello, all. Just signed up and was going to start a thread like this myself, but saw this one. I'm considering Spirit or Nature to go with my Earth mastery. That has already been pretty well discussed though. What I'm curious about is stat distribution. Are STR or DEX worth it for a caster with pets? I've put a little bit into STR and DEX to wear an armor I found called Heart of the Mountain or something. Gives +2 to Volativity. Other than that though I haven't spent any of my attribute points. I'm hanging on to them till I can decide where to put them.

There's multiple camps on this, my Summoner just took some dex early on to wear some of the mage gear before I went heavy into mastery to unlock new tiers of skills, and I believe that was a mistake, instead of starting nature and taking the smorgasbord approach, I should have taken earth instead and gimped my way with my staff to level 5 (not hard to do) and put all points into earth mastery and my last two into Core Dweller and the rest into it until 16, then tier up one more and max that skill, then tier up again and just put 1 point into Wildfire (will come back to that later) and max out his T4 skill before going back and increasing Wildfire to get a nigh-indestructible tanking pet as early as possible. If you do that, your dex will be more than sufficient to equip most gear as you level and by the time it isn't, you'll proly already be increasing your mastery into your secondary tree anyways and ALL mage tree masteries provide enough dex to use most mage gear without having to dedicate your stat points into dex. Had I done the above I would have put everything into Int.

[Hellacious]

You have absolutely zero use for strength as a pure caster, and you'll have enough dex for equipment from investing in your masteries. Your best bet is to pump int, with occasional points in health depending on how you find your surivability (though a point in health is never wasted). I prefer to run with a ratio of about 1:4 heath:int points.