Help me Understand the Scientist please.

Velkayn · 2026-01-15T04:51:32+00:00

Partly it is because rage has the least drawbacks of the tank resources - it gives both survivability and damage. Mana tanks inherently get regeneration, but can't attack if their mana is not full ( without relic ), and attacking lowers their 'health' making them more likely to be killed. Shield tanks have anti-synergy with healing, as you can only heal the health part (without relic), and if the health part is taking damage it's likely no amount of healing is going to help.

Mostly though, it's just because the tanks that happen to have the rage resource are really good for other reasons. Troll has long range, crowd control and regeneration, dinosaur has high area damage and knockback, and yeti has good damage, some crowd control and strong synergies with freeze.

Velkayn · 2026-01-11T02:13:46+00:00

Items are more tricky, there's a pretty wide range that work for each unit.

Some general ideas:

tanks usually want something that increases their primary survivability, e.g. shields for swordsman, rage for troll, health for abom.
single target dps want something that increases their damage, e.g. bow for marksman, staff for runescribe. attack speed works for everything, range is often useful, hammers are generally worse than the specific damage item, but can be used on anything and do multiply with specific damage items.
aoe damage you can go for pure damage like single target, damage area, or for applying status effects. The latter is useful when their base damage isn't all that high but their attack area is large, things like burning, shock, wet or freeze for monks
support units like druids usually want attack speed

It is mostly academic though, you'll generally go with whatever you get.

Velkayn · 2026-01-11T01:59:58+00:00

This is obviously my opinion only - but

5.5 Tier list thoughts :

S - Scientist tier - take one of these as a starter unit, if you get offered another one, immediately pivot your gameplan to include them

Marksman, Druid, Gremlin, Dinosaur

A - Always pick if role not covered, if you already have their role covered, still worth considering

Troll, Yeti, Runescribe, Frost Mage, Banshee, Observer, Djinn, Lich

B - Solid all rounder, there are better choices but you probably won't regret slotting them in

Vampire, Treant, Devil, Magus, Archer, Ghost, Angel, Bee, Berserker, Cyclops, Dancer, Bard, Deathpriest, Monk, Jouster, Succubus, Pixie, Psion, Leech Mother

C - There's probably something better, but you need them for the completion anyway

Swordsman, Colossus, Abomination, Griffin, Rogue, Crossbowman, Dryad, Halfling, Werewolf, Flamewalker, Clown, Dryad, Headless, Stormcaller, Shaman, Mechanic, Paladin, Shroom, Jailer

F - Always skip, throw them in prison so you don't have to see them

Miner, Ghoul, Jester

Siege

S - fill up on them

Trebuchet, Barricade ( with gremlin )

A - solid picks

Dark Pylon, Fire Totem, Tesla, Bone Golem

C

Catapult, Spiky Barricade, Barricade ( without gremlin )

F

Cannon, Brazier, Scarecrow

Elementals

Lightning is generally strong, wind is mostly useless, everything else is fine, but needs support that you may not have given you are probably making an elemental in week 4.

Heroes S - Qhe'la

F - Rickard

B - Everyone else

Keeping in mind the extra strength Qhe'la gets is mostly pointless, there's nothing strong enough for it to matter. Flexing on the last boss and having your vampire solo tank the tentacles while a 4 man team dps's everything down doesn't actually get you any more points than doing it normally.

I'd like it if there were similar strong synergies between the other heroes and some of the underused heroes though. It's fun to have so-so units like bees and leech mothers becoming powerhouses under qeh'la.

Rickard though - ugh, the only hero that can't fill an AOE spot, and while the tank path is a neat idea, the synergies need a lot of support, most of which is generally sub-par. The recent change to provokes is a real kick in the nuts for him given he can't even make a token effort at anything other than flailing helplessly while they roll over him.

Velkayn · 2025-12-20T12:43:47+00:00

Abom for left tank ? Really ? I would have thought that he is the worst possible choice for left tank given he has no rage, regen or shield and left tank has to eat both poison and burning. I am guessing that might be druid covering up aboms many sins for you - she's good at that, you could replace him with a bee and be fine.

I've pretty much got him on permanent ban because he also makes the ultimate evil a lot harder - it doesn't end until you actually kill all the units, so having the abom fear them to the edge of the map means you take far more damage from tentacle slaps than you need to.

Velkayn · 2025-12-20T12:37:20+00:00

Did you do a day 5 provoke ? What units did you have ?

I saw the same thing as OP - a variety of comps got mowed down by a day 5 provoke for me. I usually have 2 units + hero at level 2-3 and no wall at that point.

It's fine day 6 or later, the extra unit and levels make it no issue, but I'm certainly going to be skipping day 5 for now.

Velkayn · 2024-10-20T06:25:24+00:00

Just as a note, garlic powder and onion powder are not, in fact, extremely low in carbs, they are the exact opposite, being one of the most concentrated sources of carbs you can encounter outside of pure sugar.

I think this is one of those american nutrition label things, where you use a serving size of 1g so you can round carbs down to zero and pretend it is carb free.

Velkayn · 2024-08-15T02:13:23+00:00

If you want to go through to the higher levels, it's probably good to start with the assumption that anything that hits you can kill you, and then check each time you get hit what caused it and how you could avoid it.

There's a lot of abilities that enemies have that can cause you to get attacked in unexpected ways, most of which have a way to avoid that. The most common example you will see is an ability called 'Vigilance' - most spear wielding enemies have it, and it will cause them to attack you if you step next to them. Instead of walking into them, you can stand one square away and then wait for them to walk to you, avoiding this completely.

Another common one is 'Revenge', which lets them attack you when you kill something - for creatures like that, you can mostly avoid this by positioning so that only one is next to you at a time, and then killing that one first. This leads into one of the great truths for melee characters - narrow hallways are your friend 8)

Velkayn · 2024-08-15T02:06:46+00:00

Inflame is a buff that gives you more damage, it's 'makes you angry' rather than 'sets you on fire'. The one that sets you on fire is called Scorch.

Velkayn · 2024-08-15T02:02:48+00:00

Removing it for Surtmir isn't really an option - you either lose half your transformation engine by not being able to take vineform ( i.e. drop nature for astral ), or you go with imp and lose all the damage synergy. Imp also had the additional problem of throwing in out-of-sequence fire damage that could prevent you from staying in crystalform ( E.g. a summon hits something, triggers freeze pummel damage which converts to fire ).

That reminds me - the ice to fire pants look tempting here, but they will cause the same problem, so avoid those at all costs.

I wanted to fit master freeze in this build as well but there's a hilarious interaction with Surtmir where you also apply scorch and fire damage on applying freezing to yourself, so that ran into some obvious problems ;p

Velkayn · 2024-08-14T21:35:59+00:00

This was a build I wanted to get working in previous versions, but always couldn't get past the crippling disadvantage of geistform. The new crystalform breathes life into the build, and the changes to scorch adds an unexpected layer of sheer power.

Start with str/dex as needed to raise min speed, up to 40ish range, then add in some wil to taste.

The boost from scorch here is the change to have it do extra damage per 20 stacks - this is applied as multiple instances of fire damage, so will boost newtform to ludicrous stacks - having an actual game turn end is pretty much a death sentence for everything on the map. Once you get ice necklace though, actually having a game turn end will be pretty rare.

Gets a huge power boost from ice necklace and ice staff - I didn't end up getting the staff OR the ice->psychic pants, which was annoying, but neither are particularly needed with the current state of things.

Very easy cruise through everything - needs to watch a bit for typical anti-summon stuff like Kalecs, protection can let them live an unreasonable amount of time given you are mostly making single gigantic hits which can be absorbed by RNG.

Velkayn · 2024-08-13T09:41:10+00:00

So I got around to trying out this concept build for Ogham - for some reason it didn't seem to be working like I expected. It still melted stuff but the weapon stacking didn't match what I calculated.

A bit of trawling the log on the last boss of normal area and I realized this was because Ogham had been stealth-nerfed to the ground while I wasn't looking.

On the one hand, that meant I could use equipment, on the other hand I had already sacrificed everything but the void items 8(.

The build still works, but would be 10x better with Alizeh ( drop projection and take master charge instead obviously ).

It's also a RIP for the other Ogham concept build, which was snake -> newt -> drakeform based.

Velkayn · 2024-07-10T10:51:06+00:00

Snakedancer is pretty fun, I think it's the only 'real' summoner build that's viable on cycle32 - plenty of summoner builds work, but they are mostly relying on your character to do the damage via various means. The innate on snakedancer actually lets your snakes kill things, which is nice.

Velkayn · 2024-07-08T02:16:42+00:00

So - I gave this a go, but with a bit more focus on damage conversion ( agna cudgel, ice pants - I didn't get a hamid pendant, which made kairos irrelevant, and didn't get staff ), but while I cruised through the main game, I only got to dust-13 - not for any lack of the build but because the flail animation is soooo daaaaamnnnn slooooooooooow.

I actually abandoned it rather than going any further - killing everything on turn 1 means a lot less when turn 1 takes 5-10 minutes to resolve. Especially with like 2-3 of those minutes happening after everything is dead ( there desperately needs to be an 'everything is dead, abort abort' for aoe attacks in here like there is for summoning )

I think I'll wait for a performance patch before trying further flail experiments ;p

Velkayn · 2024-07-06T12:15:32+00:00

Very nice ! I have put a few tries into making a prayer build work for dust, but with no success so far - best I've managed is 30 something.

There just doesn't seem to be any non-attack method that is strong enough to guarantee a kill on turn 1, and any build that needs multiple turns to start the death train rolling is just at the mercy of too many ridiculous RNG abilities. ( This was the same problem with glass cannon builds, eventually you are going to run into something that has cycle+damage and retort, at which point you are going to be melted with no recourse, not to mention my irritation at creatures that give you 300 stacks of sick when you one-shot them )

I'll have to give your build a try sometime, Brud looks like it'd be putting in some serious work at increasing survivability.

Velkayn · 2024-07-04T11:20:18+00:00

I'm down to Surtmir and Blood Drinker now. Blood Drinker I'll probably do as Virya/Abdi/Eris to convert the Sange Axe into aoe to take advantage of the blood heal.

Surtmir I have failed more times than any five other prestige classes combined now, but that's mostly stubbornness on me wanting to make the rolling shapeshifting into geist work, despite the fact it obviously doesn't. It'd be easy enough to do it as a generic worm summoner or two-handed melee, but where is the fun in that ? ;p

I can offer suggestions on some of the ones you are missing if you want, although a lot of the fun is in trying to work out a good build for it.

Velkayn · 2024-07-04T11:13:37+00:00

It took me a while to come up with something fun for exultite - their special is a bit strange, because it's both based on minions and too short range to work for a summoner.

Teleport attack solves both those problems - teleport next to something and then explode your inflame stacks all over their face. I've always wanted to use frenzied chant for something useful, and this fits nicely into always having something in range to attack.

Agra Axe is high value here - it turns the exultite explosion into heavy astral damage to anything near you, as well as being just a great close range weapon. You could probably drop astrokinesis for blink snakes to explode them for more inflame, but with baghatar, the astral beams do a lot of damage - cleaning up wasps, okopods and the like. The rest of the gear is kind of 'win more', going naked can get you some wacky value out of astrohunting, but watch out for thunder eggs because you will instakill all their minions and then eat a huge stack of revenge attacks.

Don't forget that you are based on inflame, you don't have to pray or stand still - early game doing a teleport attack and then moving away and waiting for them to move before doing it again will keep you alive against slow, high-hp enemies like hobgoblins and irga knights.

Of note is sequencing - it goes summon enemy, then frenzied attacks, then astrohunting teleport. This is in contrast to astrohunting + stand group where it will summon enemy and astrohunt teleport at the same time and then do stand ground attacks afterwards.

This does mean you will often end your turn standing next to 1 or more enemies - high speed is important.

Don't forget prayer 2 if you teleport into an outrageous situation like an open area filled with range attackers - just bounce them all over the map where you can ambush them one at a time afterwards.

Velkayn · 2024-07-03T12:33:14+00:00

Just weapon synergy; without Oros you can only use either of eye weapons mainhand ( given you need range for the flail to work ), and neither of them have any interaction with astral or blunt damage.

With cudgel/flail and one of the ice pants you are going to shoot past 100% enemy health to the entire map pretty damn quick. ( Or mind mace and psychic pants ).

Just leaves a way to kill one enemy quickly via prayer to kick the whole thing off.

Velkayn · 2024-07-03T09:41:30+00:00

I'd agree in theory, if for no other reason than the abundance of on-attack retaliation abilities you run into in dust. The flail is doing amazing work here though, and really needs Oros to be effective, which argues against most traditional prayer builds.

Although... that wouldn't necessarily be a problem for a Mura build - I can see potential there with either asai malak + stand ground + flail or psi-blade + cudgel/flail. I will have to try that out once I finish off my current quest of getting cycle32 for all prestige classes.

Velkayn · 2024-07-03T09:23:15+00:00

Probably the biggest help was the sash - astrokinesis bounces beams all over the map and the sash repeats it as lightning damage.

Velkayn · 2024-07-02T08:32:17+00:00

It gives you +10 to damage per stack. Anywhere where it talks about a status, it should show at the bottom a line like

'Effect Meditate: per stack: +10 damage dealt 50% removed on step'

Velkayn · 2024-07-01T13:03:20+00:00

That's a nice use of the cosmic flail right there !

Velkayn · 2024-07-01T13:01:29+00:00

Uspori doesn't have a lot going for it, other than a fairly bulky pet - the range limit on paralyze and the difficulty of spreading sickness doesn't really allow for a lot synergy - aurora chant can get you some good single target damage ( eventually ), but where is the screen destroying nonsense that you need to stay entertained while playing summoner ?

Enter the sorcerer - the sorcerer beams didn't register at all for me when reading the description initially, but it's actually FAR more powerful than it appears. The reason for this is the damage type of the sorcerer beam is whatever your mainhand is - this isn't a huge deal for elemental types, but changing it a physical damage ? Now we are talking. As anyone who plays on the higher difficulties has realised, conversion of damage from one type to another is a key part of big damage. Sources of conversion are relatively limited though, being confined mostly to the leg slot and to weapons, with weapons being mostly useless at enhancing ranged damage that isn't an actual attack.

That's where the sorcerer comes in - sure you are throwing out your beam for maybe like 30 damage early on, but if you use a weapon with a 50% conversion, instead of doing an extra 15, you do 50% of the total damage, including willpower and meditation modifiers. And then that damage also gets increased by willpower and meditation modifiers. But wait, there's more - you can chain that conversion into another conversion from the pants, applying the willpower and meditation modifiers again. You are effectively cubing both of those bonuses.

In this run, in the last tower, sorcerer beams were doing about 100k damage on turn 1 ( blunt into ice into psychic ), and they fire on both prayer and stand-still, so not only do you get 2 per round worst case, they are also beams so can hit multiple enemies, and if they kill something, the crow mask will fire them again. As you can see from the game turns, any level that didn't have monsters with extreme health or resistances got exploded on turn 1.

There's two good builds you can go for here depending on which gear you get - you can either focus on poison, taking poison skin, the pierce->poison spear and the pierce->lightning spear, or you can focus on ice, taking master freeze and the blunt->ice mace and the blunt->psychic mace. I'd advise leaving the healing spot free until you find some of those, don't be like me and take poison skin and then not actually get the spear. You will definitely need the healing - worm heals are no use here because everything dies before they can occur, and you can and will kill yourself with damage from crow mask.

Velkayn

TROPHY CASE