Evoker Guide

[ASYLUM101]

Caster Evoker

A little introduction here, Evoker is an extremely INT-sensitive caster class. A little bit of INT goes a long way here, and a lot of INT... well, lets just say damage isn't an issue.

Aura-mancer Route:

If you start off with Earth mastery, you wanna rush to Ring of Flame and Stoneform. In normal difficulty, this makes killing ridiculously easy. As soon as you max Ring of Flame, you're gonna want to max Earth Enchantment to push that damage further. An aura-mancer works well in Normal, so you might as well go with one for the time being.

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Aim for that asap, it will make things very easy for you in Normal.

After you max those two skills, (EE and Ring of Flame), start working on Dream. Just pump the mastery. By the time you are level 23, you should be able to get Trance of Wrath. Max it asap. By level 27, it should be maxed and you should now have beyond ridiculous AOE damage as you walk around. (~120 damage per second, minimum.) At this point, max out Lucid Dream and Premonition, should take about 5 levels(til level 32) and what this does is a) stretch out your electric burn damage, and b) make it much easier for you to take hits. By taking Lucid Dream, you're stretching that EBD damage from ToW to 66 damage per second, minimum, giving you a total of 142 damage per tic in your 3 meter AoE field. (ToW is 5 meters, RoF is 3.3 meters at max level.) At this point, most mobs should be laughable.

Here is a video of how easy it is even at level 32:



(note: my stats are about 2:1 INTEX, though I probably should've invested more in DEX. I have about 180 DEX and DA which makes this character very fragile, this is why I grabbed stoneform and heat shield in advance)

At this point, you've maxed out all your AoE skills, and your buffs to enhance those skills. So your skills are now dependent upon your stats and gear – which kinda prevents the amazing damage growth you were receiving before. Not to mention you're nearing the end of act 3 at this point, if not already in act 4. You have two choices now – either switch your build into the REAL evoker, or add some more spells to your auramancer's arsenal. Typhon might prove to be a little hard as a pure auramancer – and it only gets worse from there. This is why I suggest switching. A really useful skill in Act 3, is Trance of Empathy. Either switch out of Trance of Wrath or something, but ToE becomes very useful against guys like Typhon or Barmanu who can deal TONS of damage in a few seconds. With just ToE, and Stoneform, you can tank the meteor showers and reflect ridiculous amounts of damage. Anyway.

Here are some videos to show the effectiveness against bosses:




Now, this build isn't an auramancer build, so I'm not going to explain how to make one. I find that auramancers really become super gear dependant later on, and are generally very difficult to play as in legendary. I've tried, and it's either you kill tons of stuff, easily and then you get one shotted, or you just get one shotted. It's tricky, and has to be played with the right combos.

So instead – here's your basic “Freddy Kreuger” style build. Skip to section “II” to go right to after level 32.(name stolen from Violos' build, and actually uses most of the concepts discussed in his guide, so most of this is his findings)

[ASYLUM101]

Freddy Krueger Route:

For this build, you're gonna start with Dream instead of Earth. And, you're not gonna rely on ToW like the other. So lets get started.

Your two most important tools for this build are 1) Distortion Wave and 2) Sleep. As Violos found out here, dudes stay sleeping with DoT effects running on them. So, distortion wave → Sleep is your dream combo! (pun intended) Early on, you just want to focus on dream skills. Distortion wave only needs one point, but early on you may want to invest in it more for early damage. But what you really want, is to max Psionic Immolation. You also need to max sleep, so remember to max that too. While you're up there at tier 5 (24 mastery levels), you might as well grab 1 point in distortion field and max ToC when you get the chance. Early on, sleep is only a crowd control skill. Being rushed? Sleep them! No more troubles.

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...0-0-0-12-0-0-0

Your build should be like that by level 20. Now, you're gonna wanna max Lucid Dream and Premonition, you need all the DA you can muster, and Lucid Dream will bost your Distortion Wave's damage. If you find your damage is sufficient and you can survive easily, you can start working on Earth. If you DON'T feel that way, work you way up to tier 6 (32 mastery levels) so you can get 1 point in Distort Reality and max Temporal Flux. This should REALLY help protect you and at the same time, deal a TON of damage. If you need a RIGHT NOW fix, get 1 point in Nightmare and 1 point in Hypno-Gaze. That little guy can tank really well, so you might as well get him.

Section II:

Once you've either gotten to the point where you feel safe, or the point where you've maxed all the skills I've mentioned, it's time to work on Earth. Work your way up the tree as you level, grabbing 1 point in heat shield, 1 point in stoneform, and grabbing a few points now and then in Earth Enchantment. Work your way ALL the way up; your distortion wave and distort reality + Sleep combo should still be immensely powerful, it will stay that way all throughout the game if you build the class properly. As soon as you can, max out Eruption. With the proper build, Eruption should be dealing ridiculous damage, it makes for a great boss killer.

At this stage, you're practically at the end game stage, you should be at most level 52, with a build like this :
http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-0-12-0-0-12-0

Pretty much, you're done, all that's left is gear and I can't really help with that but point in the right direction.

For gear, you want to maximize about... 5 things... you gotta choose what gear to bring cause you can't obviously max all 5 of these.

1)You want a ton of intelligence, this is the easiest thing because there's tons of + INT gear, and tons of +%INT modifiers everywhere. Helmets, rings, necklaces, artifacts, hell, even relics. So this is the easiest thing to reach. I've got about 1800, minimum on my pure-INT evoker (not the defiled one in the videos above who is bare minimum)
2)You want a ton of +elemental, +total, or +fire% damage. This helps your eruption immensely, and as well as VO if you went for it. ( I don't think VO is necessary, you have nice crowd control from dream already, it serves no purpose really).
3)You want to stack as much +%Electric Burn Damage as possible. EBD scales REALLY well with both INT and the modifiers. It's insane how well actually. It's hard to get both 2 and 3, so choose one and stick with it. IMO, the elemental/fire is better because EBD scales really well on INT alone.
4)You need huge resists. Evokers are very fragile glass cannons. While they can't really debuff, they don't need to because the damage output is ridiculous. Stoneform and Heatshield can only get you so far.
5)You need DA. This will help you take a few hits way better. Though it's not necessary, because you've got the great damage and crowd control (sleep, slow from distortion wave, petrify from Distort Reality) you may want to grab SOME because if you don't get any, legendary is going to be a world of hurt. (100 DA wil result in getting one shotted by pretty much everything)

There's the basics. By Legendary, around level 50-55, you should have stats like this:
(if you built your character right)









Just... take my advice – get a little more DEX than I did, get less INT and don't get any extra STR. (this build is ancient, I've learned my lesson lol) Also, get some pierce resistance! As you can see, I dropped sleep because I didn't find it necessary the last time I played (long ago). It's still decent in legendary, but when Distortion Wave kills as fast as that (watch the video), it really serves no purpose.

[ASYLUM101]

Reserved

[Violos]

Hey, you finally wrote it down. Congrats.

For combining points 2 and 3 they can get total damage mods like a tyrant's weapon with Thanatos. Every % is such a benefit with all the int multiplying it... and/or +skills gear of course, to boost all of the base skills.

About my Dream mage, she actually relied quite a bit on ToW. Waved her way to Delphi, moved everything to ToW and then (re)built her main skills while auramancing her way to act 3. That's the easiest route imo, and saves mana in comparison to RoF.

[Tyr]

Really good guide. IMO just needs a -little- bit more some polishing up, some good item setups people should aim for, a warning or two about some bosses, maybe a hint of how to kill (normal) Typhon off with a hastily respecc'ed Eruption (heh, it just seems like he's the one big reason why the build isn't literally breezing through normal) ...
The gist of the guide IS there, and people should feel this build coming together by Epic. A very versatile nuke specialist.

And excellent companion vids btw. How do you insert movies in like that? The companion vids help explain some of the most important stuff.

[ASYLUM101]

For combining points 2 and 3 they can get total damage mods like a tyrant's weapon with Thanatos. Every % is such a benefit with all the int multiplying it... and/or +skills gear of course, to boost all of the base skills.

Yeah, I didn't mention total damage for EBD cause I wasn't sure if it stacked or not til after I was making the final video for the guide when I noticed I had a ridiculous staff, some Tyrant's staff of UNKNOWN(forgot) + thanatos blade, = 45% total damage, SWEET. I totally forgot how nuclear that character is lol, DW simply MELTS everything.

Really good guide. IMO just needs a -little- bit more some polishing up, some good item setups people should aim for, a warning or two about some bosses, maybe a hint of how to kill (normal) Typhon off with a hastily respecc'ed Eruption (heh, it just seems like he's the one big reason why the build isn't literally breezing through normal) ...
The gist of the guide IS there, and people should feel this build coming together by Epic. A very versatile nuke specialist.

Item setups, I'll see about it but I originally didn't want to because I still haven't found the perfect setup. I'm still switching items around for my 55 evoker, testing new things, etc. I did mention what TYPES of things you should be grabbing for your character though. Those things are listed in order of importance.

And, honestly, I don't think a warning for bosses is necessary. This build can easily handle most bosses before and after "freddy kreuger" route easily. Typhon, like you said, is one of the only bosses that should give troubles, and even then, it's only because of the downfall of the auras. I'll see about getting a respecc'd video of my 32 test guy to show how easy typhon CAN be. But I dunno, I just got home from a concert (GWAR), I'm a little drunk and tired, so I think I may save that for some time in the future.

And excellent companion vids btw. How do you insert movies in like that? The companion vids help explain some of the most important stuff.

Vids - it's a special BBCode Embed option XFire has when you upload the videos. (yes, I use the xfire ingame recorder, it works wonders and imo it's far superior to fraps which always sucked for me, when it worked)

[CrocMagnum]

Thanks for the double guide, mate!

Cripes! that's one heck of an all-out Intelligence build!

But I really miss the Nightmare & the Core Dweller though. I would've taken them just to avoid that "lonely feel". *cry baby*

Now what build to choose? Mmmh! I have a soft spot for the Freddy Krueger build...

[ArrowofThyme]

Thanks for the guide!

I would like to note that Distortion Wave has a 5 second cooldown, which makes it very hard to rely on as your main damage dealer without some -recharge. That was a difficulty I was having anyway.

I noticed that your items can mostly all be shopped for - do you remember the act/difficulty where you can buy such a staff?

[erik776]

thanks for the guide, now all i need is violas to translate his trap-assassin guide.

[ASYLUM101]

Now what build to choose? Mmmh! I have a soft spot for the Freddy Krueger build...

I didn't make a full aura-mancer guide because the auras become unreliable for me by Act 4. Without full dedicated gear, it's a very difficult class to play as because:
1) Sleep doesn't work like you want it to, everything wakes up as soon as you approach
2) EBD doesn't stack, so distortion wave would only be a slow mechanic
3) ToC REALLY helps you survive and fire off spells without worrying about the mana cost.

I would like to note that Distortion Wave has a 5 second cooldown, which makes it very hard to rely on as your main damage dealer without some -recharge. That was a difficulty I was having anyway.

I noticed that your items can mostly all be shopped for - do you remember the act/difficulty where you can buy such a staff?

The cooldowns, yeah. I have Jade Emperor's equipped for the massive elemental resist boost (50% ftw) and 25% recharge, as well as my Archmage's Clasp which provides another 30-40 something recharge, it drops the cooldown to like 2-3 seconds. But the cooldown is not important if you also have sleep, distort reality, eruption, and stone form. Basically, sleep the dudes that get too close. If they keep coming, cast eruption at your feet, cast distort reality, then stone form. Nothing should survive that lol

I think I actually got that staff from the hydra. Hydra drops a TON of Tyrant staffs, at least he did for me. But yeah, all that gear was obtained either from boss drops (hydra) or act 4 shop-farming.