Soothsayer Woes

[Setzer1]

Not too long ago, a friend and I created, and began to play our first characters together through the main quest. They wisely chose Warfare/Dream, while I thought spirit sounded cool, and without really knowing what to combo with it, I took nature for some healing support and ended up with a soothsayer. Admittedly in the beginning of the game, act 1 and act 2 normal, it was fairly fun, and I felt pretty useful running the pet build I thought I would try. By act 4 of normal I was having real trouble, but I just chalked this up to pets not becoming more survivable until the start of epic difficulty. In epic, my pets could survive, but I found that they struggled to kill anything effectively, even with maxed out wolves (3), lich, and a nymph with some points in it, they labored to kill anything in a reasonable amount of time. This is in contrast to my partner, who by this time was mowing through enemies almost effortlessly.

We're in legendary act 2 now, both level 57, and I became so discouraged with the uselessness of the efforts of my pets I respeced to this build: http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...0-0-8-12-8-0-0

I presently have +7 to all nature mastery skills (+2 additional to refresh), and +5 to all spirit mastery skills, so take that into account with the number of skill points I've spent, and assume all maxed out skills are at +4 over the normal max.

Enemies we're fighting are about 10 levels higher than us, at least, but due to the efforts of my purpled-out teammate with maxed dream and warfare skill trees, they still pretty much demolish everything (or entire groups of enemies at a time) in 1-2 hits. I'm presently rather disenchanted with how easy the game has become, even at legendary, because that means to an even greater extent I mostly just stand around while my friend breezes through everything. My actual questions, now that I'm done ranting, are these:

1) I still have new levels to get, but at this point, I've already maxed everything that seems to be slightly relevant to being effective. All that seems to be left is ternion (which wouldnt do anything for my abysmal staff plinking damage), life drain (which barely does any damage even at max rank), enslave spirit (no enemy is within 5 levels of us), the lich, outsider, and also seemingly useless circle of power. In nature, there's wolves again, the nymph, and increasing briar ward and stinging nettle which don't scale effectively at all. I frankly do not know what I should be putting future points into, if it matters if I invest in anything at all, does anyone have any advice on this front?

2) In a related question, am I just approaching the soothsayer totally wrong or something? Is there some drastically different build I should be attempting that would actually be fun? Mass pets seems ineffective and slow, and my full support character is boring, and half the time supporting heals and plague arent even necessary when my ally can just reap massive benefits of % damage to health conversion, and stunning swarms of enemies for 9 seconds with distort reality.

Thanks for any tips anyone can provide, because at this point, I really don't even want to play this character duo anymore, it's just not entertaining.

[CAP007]

Yep, well IMHO the real beuty of the Soothsayer is the pets. I would stay with the pet build and Ternion tree, maybe a little Plauge, I find soothsayer to be really tough, but that is with all the pets going.... Ternion and good base damage staff. Also at least half of your gear being pet related, really amps up thier power. So you have the army of pets before you and you are blasting away with strong staff attack. Will be killing things infront of your melee friend before he even gets to close with them.

[Setzer1]

Like I said, I had the army of pets before...a staff, rings, and amulet that all buffed pet abilities, and had three wolves, a nymph, and a lich running around, and they could not do the job as fast as that dual wielder with maxed out onslaught...she runs pretty darn fast like that too :P. Her listed damage before any attacks trigger or buffs stack up is something like 1400, with 199% increased attack speed (the max as far as I know). So with onslaught it's probably like...2450 non crit average damage at max speed, add +239% to that for phantom strikes *shudder*. I'm a little skeptical about staff attacks and my pets being able to get up to that level. Although I'd love to be proven wrong, for my own sake.

[Soranor]

First off, a Harbinger is one of the faster killers in TQ, while a Soothsayer is not. But in your case, your fellow Harbinger doesn't really have high amounts of DPS for his class, probably because of her equipment. I'd also go for the pet-heavy soothsayer and I wouldn't even use Ternion at all. I think my best advice is to start shopping for better pet-boosting rings, amulets and staves. For further advice to setting up your soothsayer, I will just link to my post here.

I hope that helps.

[Irma2]

Setzer1, so in essence:
1) The game is too easy, even on Legendary, and your team is just whirlwinding through everything, but
2) You're disenchanted because you're not contributing enough damage.

Yet most of your skill allocation is in defensive and healing skills like Briar Ward, along with maxed Regrowth, Death Ward, Refresh, and Vision of Death?
If your mate kills everything before you can even join the fun, why do you feel that any of these skills are even necessary?

I'd invest in Liche King, Outsider, Ternion, or Wolves instead. They won't make you the fastest killer in the game. But, collectively and individually, they do an awful lot more damage than Regrowth, Briar Ward, Death Ward, and Vision of Death will ever do. Wolves will also help your mate's physical damage through Strength of the Pack.

If survivability is no problem and DPS/fast killing is your main goal, you've chosen a very odd skillset to invest in. For example, if your mate regens his own life via life leech/ADctH and you don't have any pets, then what are you chain-healing with the 36 points you've invested in the Regrowth tree?

[Setzer1]

Irma2, as for point 1, yes, that's essentially correct. The only thing that lives for more than a few moments is the odd full blown boss.

As for point 2, I was so disenchanted with abysmal pet damage that I stopped trying to do damage for a time, so that I could at least have support skills that would be doing 'something' in the meantime (which of course is very dull).

I have so many points invested in the regrowth tree because, without any pets to soak up damage/aggro, 'I' take a lot of damage :P, especially with my lovely -100 poison resist right now (yeah yeah, I'm working on it :P), sometimes chain healing keeps me alive fairly soundly. With about 8K hp each on our characters, a large raw amount of healing is required when it's actually needed. Occasionally my ally needs healing against those odd full blown bosses you cant leech out of, like Talos, who we just took down the other day.

Anyways, to get to the point, I'm illustrating how I've tried two very different builds so far: full pet investment, which was pathetic damage-wise compared to a single harbinger, and full support skill investment to beef up said harbinger even more, which is of course very dull. That's why I'm stuck right now, as I dont know what to do to actually do something useful while I'm playing, and have fun at it, at the same time.

[Irma2]

It's about play-balancing. The Harbinger does a lot of damage because it has to kill everything on its own. It only gets NM, which is not good at killing, and Ancestors, which can't be up all the time. So it has to be good killer, particularly as it also becomes the target of every monster and must fight them in melee range where it can be hit with any and every type of attack.

If Soothsayer, a ranged character with an army of pets taking hits for it, could kill at the same rate as a Harbinger, it'd be the most overpowered build in the game. There has to be a check and balance for that meatshield in front of a Soothsayer. Lower DPS is the check and balance. You're killing slower, but you get increased safety as the payback.

It's not unusual for action RPGs. A Necro could never kill at the same pace as a Barbarian in D2. So, in party play, the Necro had to accept that he wasn't going to be the main killer, just ranged support for the Barb. So you had whole legions of Necros whose primary function was just to cast Amp Damage and Corpse Explosion to help out the tanks in front of them.

Either you have the gameplay mindset to accept that role or not. Clearly, you'd prefer to be out front, dishing out the damage rather than playing the support role. As such, I'd suggest that you ditch the Soothsayer and build a Spellbreaker, Conq or Spear Brigand instead. If something isn't working for you, I wouldn't persevere with it. Try something else that will make you happier.

[Soranor]

Originally Posted by Irma2

If Soothsayer, a ranged character with an army of pets taking hits for it, could kill at the same rate as a Harbinger, it'd be the most overpowered build in the game. There has to be a check and balance for that meatshield in front of a Soothsayer. Lower DPS is the check and balance. You're killing slower, but you get increased safety as the payback.

It's not unusual for action RPGs. A Necro could never kill at the same pace as a Barbarian in D2. So, in party play, the Necro had to accept that he wasn't going to be the main killer, just ranged support for the Barb. So you had whole legions of Necros whose primary function was just to cast Amp Damage and Corpse Explosion to help out the tanks in front of them.

Well, my full-blown pet soothsayer was killing at least as fast as my Harbinger. Especially bosses went down in around 5 seconds, no matter which one (speaking of legendary, in normal it was different).
My point is, for a lot of classes, there is no such balance in TQ that you speak of. Look at a Thane for example. He has a summon (Wisp), but still he has to do all the killing for himself and he surely isn't as good as a Harbinger at that. But I'm sure Soothsayers are easily at least as good as a Harbingers in killspeed.

The same goes for D2: The Barbarian (at least with Frenzy/Berserk, to a lesser degree with Whirlwind) kills one monster and then boom, the Necromancer comes in and kills the other 15 in less than 2 seconds with Corpse Explosion. Now who did more killing? And it's not like the skeletons couldn't have done the first kill themselves...

[Irma2]

Originally Posted by Soranor

First off, a Harbinger is one of the faster killers in TQ, while a Soothsayer is not.

Originally Posted by Soranor

But I'm sure Soothsayers are easily at least as good as a Harbingers in killspeed.

Which of the two is it?

[mamba]

Originally Posted by Irma2

Which of the two is it?

The latter, definitely. To me a Soothsayer is among the worst builds, no real offense, so the killing is slow (which is not at all my style). I don't recommend it to anyone (actually I recommend to pick something else...)

I stopped playing my Soothsayer eventually. I did when 1.20 / IT arrived, by then I had finished legendary, otherwise I certainly wouldn't have kept going that far, it took me 5 - 10 min to decide it was time to ditch him.