Has anyone tried this - Trance of Wrath + Regrowth?

[BelgarathMTH]

Hi, I'm playing TQ and experimenting with builds I've never tried before. I just discovered an interesting new way to play:

I have Trance of Wrath maxed, and I've got Temporal Rift and Distortion Wave built to a few points each for emergencies. I also have Lucid Dream built on the top tier for extra speed.

Then, in Nature, I have one point in Heart of Oak for yet another 10% speed. And a lot of points in Regrowth, with the Regrowth on my right mouse button for super fast instant healing of at least half my health, and I can click my programmable second right mouse button to drink a health potion as well.

And what I'm finding new and rather hilarious, is that I can just run around enemies in circles, at least as of Normal Asia, and let ToW do all the killing. If I start to take damage, I just cast Regrowth.

I have great equipment that has given me 80% to both poison and piercing resistances. I shop for armor that has high values in these two areas, plus rings that have high elemental resist, ignoring the "green is better than gold" dogma in favor of high defense items. I should admit here that I use the TQVault to allow myself as many Demon Blood and Pristine Plumage as I need. I've played this game for years and years on Normal, so I feel like I've earned it.

So far I'm having a blast just dashing around my enemies like the Flash and watching them fall with very little effort on my part. Has anyone else ever thought of the connection between superspeed and temporal control like I have? It's not that heroes with superspeed are actually moving incredibly fast - it's that they can alter the flow of time such that everybody and everything else is barely moving relatively. Time control.

In Epic and Legendary, I plan to build wolves and nightmare to increase my passive damage-dealing.

Has anyone else tried this? If you don't think it works through Legendary, why not?

[Violos]

That's more or less standard procedure for Dream toons between Delphi and Typhon... just ToW and run.
You can basically skip to Act 4 with one, if you add Temporal Rift, even with low intelligence.

Later the damage of ToW will not be quite as good, so it will be rather risky.
Though DW / TR works well all game if you build for it. Check the "DOT" link below.

As a petmaster Ritualist, if you gear your wolves towards physical, the armor reduction of DW could be interesting on top of that.

[Cleglaw]

Do a search on "auramancer".

[Jacksparrow20111]

Indeed. Evokers and Diviners can melt everyone with their auras and high intelligence.

[Irma2]

I've never found any of the auras - ToW, RoF, Deathchill - to be efficient killers. Sure, they're fine in Act I Normal if you max them. But my auramancers are the slowest killers of all my toons by late Normal. Running thirty circles around a group of trash Trogs just isn't very efficient.

The other downside of ToW is that it negates one of Dream's most powerful skills, Sands of Sleep. As such, I've never found a use for ToW, other than putting one point into it to nerf monster Onslaught. For me, Psionic Immolation is a far more efficient killer in all difficulties. In fact, PI is the most efficient killer of all in Normal imo.

I'm now playing a mage/Trapper Dreamkiller and, as with all Trappers, the early going is tough because Traps only become viable when you have both of the synergies maxed. That means getting to level 32 in Rogue asap and then still spending a bunch of points in the Trap synergies before you can switch to them full-time. So, with my Dreamkiller, I decided to take Dream first and then max the Traps at my leisure. And I'm very glad I did.

The toon is currently at level 24 just past Memphis in Act II. I have Rogue maxed and one point in each of the Trap skills. But, more importantly, I have Dream at level 24, with three points in Psionic Immo and one in Lucid Dream. With Stonebinder's Cuffs, that gives me PI at level 4 and Lucid Dream at level 2. And, with this minimal investment, a single cast of DW/PI is dropping most mobs. I don't know of any other skill that can kill Act II mobs outright with one click and just three points investment.

Sure, Squall wipes out entire mobs with one cast early on. But then you need it maxed or at least to level 10 or so. PI is doing it with just four points. Maybe VO or Eruption would have the same effect at this level. But Eruption has quite a long cooldown and VO's stun isn't as effective in terms of crowd control as DW/PI's slowing imo.

For Ritualist, I would go with Plague & DW/PI rather than ToW & Regrowth. A Plague/PI Ritualist is one of the fastest toons through Normal. Even in Act IV, you need only two clicks to drop all but the toughest mobs. Trogs and tree-trunks might survive a PI while Plagued, nothing else will. Bosses and Heroes take longer, of course.

The further benefit of this combo is that you get dual slowing if you invest substantially in Fatigue as well. So even those pesky Formicid Captains and Mellinoe Blade Dancers can't catch you. It's one of the safest caster builds to take through Act IV.

Edit: Here is a video to illustrate what I'm talking about with PI on my Dreamkiller. It's kinda reminiscent of a Lightning Javazon herding Cows in DII.

Note as well that this is a primarily Str-based toon. Even though I've been investing in Int, you get none from the Rogue mastery. So a Ritualist with Int from Nature would be doing even more damage with DW/PI.

[BelgarathMTH]

@Irma, I agree about Psionic Immolation being great. Everything in Dream is great. I wasn't suggesting an either/or proposition here. I will have Trance of Wrath, Psionic Immolation, and Temporal Rift all maxed. The thing I really like about ToW is that it keeps damaging bosses when I have to start kiting. Normal Hades (the god, not the place) becomes a pushover, especially with Cursed jewelry to drain all his energy.

What I'm playing with here that is new to me is synergy between Dream and Nature. I just find it kind of fun and convenient to have the extra healing available. By late Epic and Legendary, I want to be playing with pets - wolves, dryad, and nightmare. I think most petmancers advise Trance of Convalescence for pets because it helps protect them - however, I just respecced my wolves away (temporarily) into the Regrowth, and before I did that, I was finding that they survived better with me killing everything quickly with the ToW and Psionic Immolation than if I kept a ToC on them.

I know that the ToW will become less effective in later difficulties, so I guess I could respec those points in Regrowth back to something else eventually, but for now at least, it's kind of fun. I'm experimenting to see just how much I can get away with letting passive skills like ToW and pets kill for me.

(I was inspired to try it after playing with a Druid summoner in Diablo II - which seemed very effective with five wolves and five ravens and a poison vine and a hired archer pretty much killing everything for me while I just stood there. I thought, "hey, I wonder if this can be done in Titan Quest.)

[BelgarathMTH]

Well, if anyone is interested, I've left this idea behind in Normal Hades. It's not that it stopped working, it's more that I got bored with the playstyle. I didn't feel very heroic running around in circles and waiting for the ToW to kill stuff. Also, with the constant casting of Regrowth, Psionic Immolation, and Temporal Rift, I was a blue and red potion junkie. I mean, we all need red potions from time to time, and being a red junkie is one thing, but, come on, I was having to be a red AND blue junkie.

I still want to play a Ritualist, though. I've wound up being mostly a Seer through Normal, so I will start trying to see what wolves, nightmare, and nymph can do for me through Epic and beyond. The roleplaying idea of being a powerful, magical leader of a small army of woodland creatures appeals to me. I just don't want to be a weak, needy, coward of a toon absolutely dependent on my pack to protect me.

[KargaN]

Nice one Irma2 I was just thinking of making a Dreamkiller, but couldn`t decide between a melee or caster build. I will definitely try this one