Seeking Harbinger advice (Dream + Warfare)

[Underlordling]

Hello everyone.

I very recently started playing TQ:Underlord, but since the last Diablo-like game I played was in fact Diablo 2 (also never played "vanilla" TQ), I'm somewhat lost and could really use some help and advice. The more detailed and less "jargon-y", the better.

Right now I'm running two characters, a Druid and a Harbinger, and I'll start a thread for each one.

This is the thread for Harbinger advice. If you'd like to give me some tips for the Druid as well, please do so here: http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/39246-Seeking-Druid-advice-(Storm-Nature)

Right now I'm level 13, and these are the skills I've picked so far, based on a few things I've read here and there, but mostly guesswork:

Warfare Mastery 1
Dual Wield 1
Onslaught 3
Weapon Training 1

Dream Mastery 16
Sands of Sleep 4 + Troubled Dreams 1
Distortion Wave 6
Psionic Touch 1 + Psionic Artery 1 (chosen before I decided on taking Warfare as well)
Trance of Empathy 1
Phantom Strike 1

and currently 3 unused skill points.

I've hit not Delphi with this character (just reached Megara), but I'd be willing to use TQ Defiler to change skills, should it be necessary.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. An explanation of all Dream/Warfare skills would be just grand, but of course not expected. Tips on what gear to look out for, which skills are must haves, which ones to max, which ones are one-point wonders, which ones to keep for the whole game, which ones to replace and when, that's the sort of thing I'd like to know. Also general tips on how to play, when to kite, when to wade in, and so on.

Thank you for your time.

[konfeta]

Honestly, when you ask that many fundamental questions, the best thing one coudl tell you is:
1. Read the stickied topic in this forum. The jist of it - don't worry about making the perfect build first time around. Just play and experiment, respecs are very very cheap in Underlord. If you hit something that completely stumps you, then you come in and ask for specific advice.

2. Read the "Primer" stick in the main Underlord forum. It gives you a ton of very useful basic mechanics information.

Now, some general melee advice:
1. The main thing is, if you find yourself getting killed too fast by regular enemies or taking more than 3 hits to kill most of them, you need to update your weapon and armor. Store bought stuff in this game is actually very useful, and you can find some of the most powerful weapons this way in form of a good combination of prefix/affix on a rare (green). You want also want to keep any exceptionally high amount of resist items you find because certain bosses are effectively a gear check (Cerberus, for example, will faceroll you if you don't have poison resist; the Yeti will stun-KO you if you don't have enough stun resist).

2. Unless you are exceptionally overgeared, some of the bosses you encounter will straight out murder you at first. while others you are going to stomp without even batting an eye. If you are having a ton of trouble with a specific boss, you can just go into the main TQ forum and check out the sticky on Difficult Bosses. The advice there is largely applicable to underlord.

3. If you want life leach, get attack to health conversion. All other leech is trash, too little, too slow.

4. Diligently pick up all charms/relics. A good Green Weapon/Charm combo can be tremendously more powerful/useful than a unique.

5. Look up "monster infrequents." These items are sort of uniques sort of rares (they have fixed attributes and can spawn with rare based affixes/suffixes), are relatively simple to farm, and can be very powerful.


Now, as for specific explanations of every skill ever.... Use google and forum search. While Underlord brought in a lot of balancing changes, many of the skill basic principles remain the same. And these questions have been asked hundreds of times by now.

[OmnipotentSnail]

I have a harbinger going (just currently lvl 49) and personally, I'd say the Warfare side is a lot better to invest in early on than Dream.
I would almost tell you to ABSOLUTELY use the defiler to respec to mostly warfare and little dream early on, but it's completely up to you, especially if you're doing just fine the way you have it.
Sticking skill points in the warfare mastery is really, really good. When it's maxed, you get +40% base physical damage, not to mention all the STR, DEX and health.
Also, you want to stick a lot of points in the Onslaught tree and 1 in each of the dual wield skills. More than one in the dual wield skills doesn't help much (Parry excluded) and isn't needed at all early on. War wind is a very powerful skill, killing most of the adjecent enemies right away and being able to hit a large mob around you.

Keep in mind that I started out with Warfare and never used distortion wave on my harbinger. In my opinion, Warfare should be the main master with Dream there to augment your abilities with area attacks and buffs. Trance of Wrath is incredibly good later on, lowering the base resistance to all forms of damage of nearby enemies.