Elementalist Questions

[krynn]

Well I have just started the game yesterday and I'm hooked, 16 hours of playtime already and I have achieved level 15. I have an Elementalist I am working on and as far as the skills go I have my plan of action already, but what concerns me is my Attributes. Should I pump them all into Intelligence/Energy with a side of Dexterity? Or is it ok to put a couple into Strength so I can use some of the nicer armour in the game?

[weregamer]

I have tried many of the possible character concepts in this game, and in fact have gotten into the Normal Orient with quite a few of them, but overall I am finding that my Elementalist is one of my favorites.

As an Elementalist your damage output is very strongly affected by your Intelligence. Regardless whether you are concentrating on fire, lightning, or cold, you really want to put as much as you can spare into it. (Also, even though you will be wearing lots of stuff with "+<x>% to <your element> damage" to maximize your output, INT adds to damage from all elements, so if you are forced to weapon-switch to your secondary element staff because of a highly-resistant monster, a high INT will keep you from being completely impotent.

Forget about warrior armor. You will want to be wearing caster armor for the energy regen bonuses and because you don't want to waste stat points on Strength.

Also note that you get a lot of stat points from mastery levels. For most characters, you do not want to skimp on buying Mastery levels because you want to be able to use the equipment you find. My general rule of thumb is that at least one of the skill points gained at every level should go into a Mastery, even if I'm in the process of maxing out a skill that I already have enough Mastery for.

A lot of caster armor does have dex requirements, so you will need to have some dex. Given that your Storm mastery levels give you both Int and Dex but your Earth levels give only Int, you will probably be putting many of your discretionary points into Dex - but only enough for the armor you want to wear. Between your Core Dweller and Squall, you shouldn't have to worry about getting criticalled in melee too often because of a low dex; even if stuff does close with you killing it faster is also a good defense.

While you are growing, and especially with your first few characters, you may want to save out a few (2 or 4) stat points in order to bump your dex or int to use any cool new item you might find.

[krynn]

Thank you for the nice and detailed reply, one last question should I bother putting any at all into Energy?

At the moment I am level 17 and have the following stats (with gear)

Health: 760
Energy: 765
Strength: 50
Intelligence: 220
Dexterity: 76

That being sad because I was waiting for this responce I also have 15 available points to spend =/

[weregamer]

For pretty much any class, if you are putting enough points into your Masteries themselves, you shouldn't need any extra Energy from stat points. More commonly I find the problem is with Energy regeneration rates for most characters, but caster-style armor with a Hecate or Golden Fleece charm can help a lot with that. (I do wonder if this changes when you are into Epic/Legendary and have already maxxed both masteries...)

This is especially true with a Summoner because both Earth and Storm give generous amounts of Energy. (Of course, you can chew through quite a bit in a long fight with either, too - especially if you use the most expensive energy-per-damage attacks like the ice darts.) And with a high INT you should have no trouble with Energy regeneration either.

[edyst37]

Hi, I am elementalist too. Which is better for a secondary attack. Flame surge, ice shard or thunderball? Think I will not use lightning since it use up a lot of energy cost.

Thank you.

[krynn]

I would say thats probably one of my main problems, I haven't been putting a *ton* of points into masteries. Anyway I am standing on the current character build now:

Level: 21
Elementalist

Health: 300(+460) = 760
Energy: 400(+304) = 704
Strength: 50(+4) = 54
Intelligence: 154(+130) = 284
Dexterity: 78(+10) = 88

+9% Elemental Damage
+29% Lightning Damage
6.93 Energy Regeneration

and a link to all my current skills found: here

look good so far? (as a side note im only @memphis in egypt on normal)

[MiNtY_FrEsH]

whats ur main attacking spell there?

[krynn]

staff + core dweller, with both weapon enhancements on at all times i usually one-shot everything that isnt a boss, and provided my cd tanks the bosses they usually all drop within 20-30 seconds

[weregamer]

Edyst, I don't understand your question because you don't say what your primary attack is. Most Elementalist builds will take a single spell (Volcanic Orb, Lightning, Flame Surge, or Ice Shards) as their primary attack and use their staff as their secondary. Krynn here has heavily pumped his CD and considers his staff his primary attack - and apparently needs no secondary. (Note that this build will die horribly to the Greek telkine, but is otherwise fine)

For a normal Elementalist build, you will want to pick one of the elemental attacks I mentioned as your primary, and pick your gear - especially your primary staff - to support it. Now, since you are an Elementalist, presumably you wanted the Storm stuff so I'll assume that you chose Lightning as your main attack. This means you have a lightning^3 staff (lighting-baed staff "of thunder" or better for +lightning+%lightning, with thunder relic) and as many +%lightning other things as you can manage. Your primary attack (used to take out a whole group before they see you) is Chain Lightning; your secondary (for cleaning up stragglers) is the staff. On your weapon switch you have either a cold or fire staff; I recommend fire because there is no cold charm. The purpose of the switch staff is to help with highly lightning-resistant enemies, when you don't yet have Obscured Vision maxxed out. An example late-normal skill build for this character, who has split priority between maxxing his chain lightning and his Core Dweller, would be http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-1-0-0-0-8-1-0.

The same character at level 50, with all his main skills maxed and well into maxxing Eruption for extra boss killing power, looks like http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-1-0-0-1-8-8-0.

[krynn]

Actually I almost died horribly to the first Telkine also but the thing that saves me is i have like +40% movement speed so when my CD would die I would run around the room in circles around the boss until I could summon a new one. In a sense I kited him lol