Yet another "my party" thread: Time Killers

This party is great for racking up Flawless victories even against big enemy parties on Veteran/Expert. I wouldn’t use it in survival mode, though! Equipment is a little vague; I don’t afk-farm survival mode so I’m still working on collecting all the purple items. The key is order of action (Warrior first (!!), Mage last) followed by damage output.

Formation: Captain front middle, Marksman and Assassin on front flanks; Conjuror back middle.

Warrior – Captain
Equipment: Relentless, Annihilator set, anything with quickness/starting action/strength/crit (in roughly that order). A 5-point Annihilator set plus Fallen Legion Epaulets or one of the pieces with a starting action bonus would be ideal.

Stat build: All Strength

Style: Inspiration

The Captain’s job is to hit first and put Inspiration on the rest of the team. To that end, he needs to be the fastest member—not the easiest thing to achieve on a Warrior (without sacrificing damage output). Relentless (the two-handed sword with +5 quickness) is the key item here; you get the power of a two-handed weapon with what is effectively a mammoth 10-point Quickness bonus (comparing it to other two-handers which are all -5) The +4 Quickness from a 5-point Annihilator set is great too.

Ranger – Marksman
Rogue – Assassin
Equipment: meh

Stat build: All Dexterity

Style: the Marksman switches between Hunter’s Focus and Marksman as needed (i.e. switch to Marksman only when you actually need the extra damage or accuracy to make a kill, so you aren’t eating -5 quickness all the time) Likewise, the Assassin switches between Poisoncraft and Deadly on a situational basis.

These two characters are simple damage dealers. Equipment is whatever you have that maximizes damage output while preserving the desired Quickness order. The Marksman should be a bit faster than the Assassin so that you can use Pin + Coup de Grace on annoyances like Thralls (whose combination of high Quickness and high HP makes them one of the bigger obstacles to getting Flawless wins) For the Assassin the Prowler set is optimal for damage output, but the 50% starting action from a full 6-point Prowler set will almost certainly make him faster than the Captain, so go with 5-point Prowler plus something like Blackheart’s Mask.

You might try replacing one of these two characters with an all-Intellect Inquisitor, but making a Cleric fast is even harder than making a Warrior fast. Litany of Pain with a Magma Torch is something I’d like to try…

Mage – Conjurer
Equipment: Whatever maximizes his damage output (i.e. Intellect gear, mainly) while keeping him slower than his teammates but faster than the bad guys. The Omniscience set is better than the Aetherweave set for him—it gives more Intellect, and the Aetherweave set’s fat Starting Action and Quickness bonuses are something you don’t want with this party (unless you have a lot more Quickness gear on your other three men than I do)

Style: Channeling, unless that makes him faster than one of your other members, in which case make one of the other styles default and switch to Channeling on his first turn.

The Conjurer’s job is to cast Time Warp right after the first three characters have attacked, effectively giving you another full round of attacks (at +15% damage!) before the enemy can do anything. Then he starts blasting things.

If you plan your kill order carefully, you can get a Flawless on almost any enemy group in the game. Even if something slips through (you whiff an attack, or you just don’t have quite enough firepower to kill everything) the damage you should take is minimal.

This party has no defence or staying power to speak of (it’s pretty much screwed if someone gets stunned or gets quickness-debuffed, thus messing up your turn order), so chug Alertness elixirs before tackling ambush rooms, and watch out for terrain. If you have to change from a “T” to a square or “Z” formation in order to avoid bad terrain, the Conjuror is the character who should give up Inspiration, since he spends his first turn casting Time Warp instead of attacking.

This strategy is well conceived and uses natural strengths extremely well.

Especially at higher levels when character specialization points and advanced gear better flesh out the characters, it is very difficult to ignore the powerful 1-2 punch of pin and coup de grace. It takes out any enemy in one turn where any other formation without assassin and marksman will bog down.

Time Warp is a force all its own.

The weaknesses in the strategy are two. First, the marksman isn’t a great death dealer compared to a warrior or assassin; his weapons and gear are comparatively weak. Further and to your point regarding your team being in effect glass cannons, having two weak front row team members injects vulnerability into the team. The answer to both issues is to reconsider the central role of the Cleric and Radiance, which adds health and power to every adjacent team member.

The problem is that the Cleric is too often in the back row where the vulnerable Assassin can only be if we rob him of part of his damage.

The answer is to position the Cleric front middle, which keeps the whole team alive. That makes him a structural healer without using up precious power and turns to do so. The beauty of making him the tank is that it also makes him the primary death dealer. Equip the Cleric with all thorn and spiked gear, with a few high health regeneration items such as Martyr’s Signet, Doomswarden and Barbed Brutalizer. The Cleric is now dealing as much damage as the assassin 3 or 4 times in a single turn even while he heals all other team mates! The Cleric does not need to be fast, he needs to attract attention.

With the Cleric healing and tanking and dealing very high damage without even taking a turn, we are free to truly specialize.

First, we add a Warrior in the front row whose sole purpose is damage and quickness while retaining his ‘hold the line,’ cleave and other damage dealing skills. Here is where the Annihilator set shines. Stay away from any gear with attention getting properties since we want the Cleric to take all hits if possible.

Second, we place the Rogue on the other side. He is now buttressed by the Cleric’s radiance. His death dealing capacity is now freed up to become legendary, limited only by how quick we can make him. We break up the Prowler’s set not because it gives better starter’s action with the 6th element, but because we covet the Blackheart’s Mask quickness; Having increased critical damage past 30%, every crit damage instance increases quickness even further. We load the Rogue with any gear or shards that increase his crit damage chances, dexterity and quickness until he is taking 2 or 3 turns for every other player’s one and dealing terrible damage on every hit. Demon’s Tooth is his perfect weapon; everything else pales in comparison.

Now we can put either a Conjuror or a Marksman in the back row directly behind the Cleric to collect his Radiance. The Marksman has Pin, and the Conjuror has Time Warp. Neither really has anything else that is terribly attractive, and both are extremely vulnerable (the Rogue is less vulnerable since the gear that increases his quickness and crit damage chances also make him more evasive). One could arguably substitute a Warrior/Captain in the back row with a two handed weapon that allows melee attacks and very high damage, then work on gear that increases stun to approximate the Pin effect of the Marksman.

With this setup, the Rogue is naturally the fastest player by far. His first move is always to wipe out the back row with Sneak Assault. The Conjuror is there with Fireball to mop up, as is the Cleric with Smite. And the higher Stun effect one can develop with Warrior/Captain/Cleric, the better.

This alternative to your very excellent strategy may not obtain as many flawless victories. It does have a couple advantages though. First, it naturally plays to every character’s main strength. It therefore requires virtually no potions and many times only one or two special ‘hits’ (like Sneak Assault) to win a battle, and therefore game play is very fast, reducing a fight to a few clicks. The Rogue is the only vulnerable team member and he is evasive. The Cleric finds it much easier to heal one team member as opposed to two; in fact, it precludes dying almost altogether. (Special note: my Cleric ‘Resurrect’ buff is unusable, even though I have plenty of Intellect and Endurance. Never could figure out why)

Thank you again for sharing your excellent game approach. It is one of the top 5 gems on this forum. You may still favor your approach, but in reconciling my alternative with yours, perhaps my response might inspire your ideas further.

(Special note: my Cleric ‘Resurrect’ buff is unusable, even though I have plenty of Intellect and Endurance. Never could figure out why)
Check his cloak, the Shieldcloak has a 30 point power penalty which drops him below the 75 power threshold for resurrect.

@whiskeyjim:

“This alternative to your very excellent strategy may not obtain as many flawless victories.”

exactly.