Caster FAQ?

[arcallon]

Every time I have played a character in this game it is melee orientated. While I still have a lot of fun playing my characters I am interested in playing a caster. I am wondering if there is a some sort of guide to playing this way. Something which gives me a good idea where to place stat points and which skills in each mastery are useful for this type of play style.

P.S. Any suggestions which class is best to start out with for a beginner on this play style.

[Poinas]

You can check the guide in my sig..see if it help you to decide what you're looking for, what class you want to play. Are you looking to use stave as your main damage source, or concentrate on a pure caster etc.

[arcallon]

I have read your guide and it has been invaluable in selecting skills for my melee characters.

A pure caster? Can you give me some examples? Which route gives the character the most protection?

I was thinking about an Oracle (Storm/Spirit) but the low armor class of mages and lack of pets till late level does bother me.

[Munderbunny]

I think Oracle is a pretty good choice. With the large amount of staff damage you'll be able to do, it'll give you a nice easy one-button recourse as you settle into familiarizing yourself with new skills, and learning their combinations.

You'll also have access to the Liche at an extremely low level if you want (you can comfortably have a Liche and be kicking *** by level 8-10).

As a pure caster, foot speed is a huge advantage, and when it comes to footwear, I'd place footspeed above any other attribute. Attack speed early on is more important than casting speed, as 80-90% of your damage is going to come from your staff, and attack speed will let you get out of an attack animation sooner so you can haul *** when you need to.

Energy's going to be a problem early on, but I say plan to spend a lot on energy potions, and invest in skills ahead of mastery points. In my opinion, there's nothing past tier 16 in those masteries that you should care about for the first couple acts of the game. Deathchill aura, ravages of time, arcane lore, and squall should get to high levels (if not max) before you move past mastery level 16. If you want to invest more in the liche, then you can get a lot more bang for your buck on squall and obscured visibility, and wraith shell should get the first point when you do get to level 24.

If you start to really rock, you could enjoy the ridiculous power of lightning bolt and chain lightning in normal difficulty. But, that's more for fun. Max squall/visibility and 1 point in vision of death will keep you perfectly safe from ranged monsters while you blast the melee hordes with ternion.

Since a caster has the opportunity to deal large amounts of damage before monsters can get close enough to even land a hit, effects that slow monsters or slow their attack speed should carry a lot of weight when you make equipment decisions. Also, effects that have a chance to go off are particularly useful to you with ternion attack, as each shot carries the chance, and one monster can get hit with more than one shot through the radius damage at medium range, which means double the chance. In fact, I've recently found that a staff of terror is extremely effective with a 10% chance to stun. This goes for other effects as well, like the flat damage granted from items, etc.. And, as Poinas discovered, the %health reduction from the Harrowing suffix stacks! (You won't get to enjoy that particular pleasure for a while yet. ) This means (as you'll see from the recommendations of various guides) that you should max arcane lore before the ternion base.

I think you'll have a lot of fun with that particular class, but give yourself some time to get used to a very different play style. I think you'll find there's a much higher potential to kick *** AND have fun.

[Mr.Venom]

I'd go with Elementalist. (Earth - Storm)

Use a Coredweller to break teeth and smash stuff (Earth Skill)
Use lightning to fry anything in melee range, in case Coredweller loses interest. Very good DPS and skills.