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Topics - stormyboy

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Items / Leveling speed - %bonus to experience helmet VS no bonus
« on: 24 December 2021, 21:07:23 »
So, let's answer a question: is the helmet with bonus to experience + crystal of erebus 8% bonus experience a good choice? You are sacrificing some stats, % damage, health, skillpoints etc. But, aren't levels powerful than stats?

Answer: No, the difference is insignificant. (short answer)

The characters used to do the comparison are both hardcore, xmax, no potions characters. They explored every dark area of the map, completed all side quests, killed the same approximate of monsters (this one is hard to prove as the kills of pets will not count as your kills)

First character: Ranger at the end of the hades (epic). He used +12% experience since the days of sparta (level 8 or so) and added a crystal on the helmet with bonus experience at the end of hades normal.

Second character: Summoner, never used a bonus experience item. He only used +% stats helmets and hollowed helmets.

Ranger:
Total experience: 108530613, Level 72 (almost 73 with a bar missing).
https://imgur.com/GtTQu1n - hades kill character screenshot - epic, bonus exp 20%
https://imgur.com/TSuae5w - total experience - epic,  bonus exp 20%

Summoner
99382116 experience, level 71 (and a bar)
https://imgur.com/2i5xXeZ - hades kill character screenshot - no bonus exp
https://imgur.com/X4cYAPh - total experience - no bonus exp

Between the characters, the difference is of 9.000.000 experience or, at the rate i got experience on this character, about half of immortal throne act on epic. As for time played, the difference between the 2 characters is of 7.190 seconds (about 2 hours), the no bonus exp character having more time played. The time difference is irrelevant because every time i am taking dinner or go out i let my characters logged in so who knows how much of the time is actual time played. Also, the summoner spent more time on farming vendors for his items while the other got some gear by monster farming.

Let's take a look at another point in time, a point where my character used only the 12% helmet exp

https://imgur.com/TuA4hlx - character screenshot hades kill, no bonus exp -normal (Summoner)
https://imgur.com/7tHehJ2 - character screenshot hades kill, bonus exp 12% - normal (Ranger)

At low levels, the luck our character has with hero monsters spawning weights in more than the bonus experience we use on the items. We can see that best on my 2 characters, compared side by side, where the character with bonus exp has lower level than the character with no bonus

So, for my character, 20% bonus experience accounts for about 2 - 4 hours of play

Conclusion: using only the helmet for bonus experience could impact your leveling in a negative way. By choosing such a helmet (my most lucky find was 13% bonus to exp +8%crystal of erebus) you gain a maximum of 21% experience bonus but you miss on important stats and resistances. A character with a proper helmet would get the same experience or even better by increasing the killing speed and survivability which in the long run will affect the player's enjoyment of the game.
One more argument against using only the helmet for leveling is the chance to get one. I usually got those helmets from vendors, the moments between one helmet and the next one being far. The prime example for this is my ranger which used the gorgon helmet since act1 normal because it was the only helmet with a decent bonus to experience i found.

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Author info:

Very few of you know me. I rarely post on this forum and when i do, i stay in the challenge section. I started playing when the game launched (so around 2006-2007). Right now i don't have that many hours on steam as i just got the game there, having no need of the steam version until the devs started rolling new content.

As a player, i am an average guy who likes to have fun after a hard day of work; of course, sometimes all the fun comes from being challenged so i like to challenge myself in the games that i love. These days i mostly play titan quest with the xmax mod on, world of warcraft where i do heroic raids and 15-20 key dungeons (all of this means mid difficulty content).
Other games that i have experience with are gothic 1, 2, 3 (yea, the old series), skyrim, metro

I am not a pro player and i am not a guide writer. In this topic i just want to present to you a few of the things that worked for me.

About my Summoner.

My summoner was designed with hardcore, no potions, xmax in mind and all skills and play style are directed towards achieving this. There are a lot of possibilities to this class, spells that would improve it, but the risk/reward ratio isn't worth the hustle.

Pros:
-moderate, constant damage output
-you don't have to get close or touch a monster, ever in your life (that means that you can also get the steam achievement for finishing normal with less than 100 kills)
-extremely easy to gear up.
-good and safe boss killer

Cons
-moderate, constant damage output (both as pro as a con, i know). If you ever feel that the difficulty of an act is more than you can handle and you already have the best pet gear that the act can provide, tough luck. You will feel like that in act 4 and 5 normal and most of the time in act 5 all difficulties
-little to no aoe. Yes, you have a lot of good skills in earth, BUT, if you trigger one the entire population of monsters will murder you, with or without core
- slow boss killer
-playing with pets can sometimes feel like an RTS game. You have your troops which you control (for me this was a pro but i know it's...different)

Skill choice (always use gear with +1 to skills. having +2 skills will allow you summon 3 wolves)

https://www.tqcalc.com/TitanCalc44c344c344c3.html?mastery=Summoner&master1=4&master2=1&sa=30&m1=40-10-16-12-8-12-0-0-16-0-6-0-0-16-6-12-12-0-1-0-12-0-8-0-0&m2=40-1-0-1-12-0-0-0-16-0-1-8-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-8-0-0-0-0-0

-Call of the wild: the 3 puppies will be your main damage provider
-Core dweller: immortal tank
-Nymph: ranged support with AOE and a truly amazing shield
-Hearth of the oak: Amazing aura. Max it out in higher difficulties BUT max out the synergies as soon as possible.
-Regrowth: throw in a point in there every now and then.

Progression:
Level:
1-6 - +1 to nature mastery and max out Call of the wild
 7-15 - +10 in earth and max out Summon core dweller
16-28 - +23 in nature >+1 to hearth of oak (for now you only need it for the speed buff), +1 to maul, +1 to survival instinct +16 to strength of the pack

By now the content should have gotten more difficult. So, we need a bit more survivability
29+ - +22 earth mastery. Now, your aim is to get inner fire and metamorphosis to max, and do have +1 to nymph and max out overgrowth. Of course, you should have stoneform, regrowth and heat shield to +1, just for a bit of support. There is no order to get this, you just add points in either one as you feel. 


Attribute points:

-get 170 strength and 425 dex by legendary act 1 (stonebinder cuffs). So, with a small calculation, you will get to 170 dex from your mastery increase so you will need to invest 64 more points in dex to get there. For strength you need 30 points. Just go 1:1 dex:int with one to str every now and then and all quest attribute points into strength. You will be ok.

Gear:

Being a petmancer, your most important resource are pet spells. So, you will need a staff, rings and an amulet with pet bonus:
-rings and staff +physical damage and as an amulet i found an "of convocation" item that gave 20% damage and 20% attack damage conv to health. Other than your pet gear, get only items that add to your survivability  (armor, resist, reduce duration to sleep/entrapment etc).
-stonebinder cuffs (+1/+2/+3 to skills)
-Hallowed helmet
-try to stay way from blue/purple gear unless it is amazing. Usually you will be able to balance out your resistances better if you have green/MI gear and you enchant it with relics and charms.

Farming spots:

I have only farmed vendors because of the gear i wanted. I found that using the portals to teleport between regions (to reset the goods that the vendor has to offer) is more efficient than parking your character to a fountain and log in/log out:
-Chang'an <->the great wall: i recomand doing this only if you are in a bad position with your gear. Chang'an will start spawning items with immortal throne aff/suff so if you feel the need for it, farm it out (Chang'an will spawn more often hallowed helmet in my experience)
-Rhodes <->Gadir. Go on the beach and teleport to the atlantis act. Rhodes will give you a lot of good items with the portal being next to the vendor while Gadir will give you the chance to get some pet gear "of the Tinkerer " that will allow you to enchant 2 relics on that item
-Elysium <-> Plains of judgement. For me Elysium was very generous. It gave me an amulet of convocation WITH another +70pet damage and a robe with elemental and pierce resist and a hallowed helmet.
-Scandia <->Glauberg - got a staff with pet health/armor and pet damage so, yeah. Another generous route.

Relics and charms:

Demon blood with vitality resist
Crystal of erebus with +1 to all skills
For the rest, just try to balance out your resistances with relics.

Artifact:

Start with razor claw and work your way up to Summoner totem (as you advance to higher difficulties, 10% speed will be better than 18 damage and 5% phys damage)

Tips and tricks:

-WOW I FOUND A PURPLE ITEM THAT WILL GIVE ME 129384% TO ALL DAMAGE TYPE. Yeah.....don't. Put back on the yellow vendor item with +10% pierce. As a pet master you don't need damage. Your aim is gear with pet bonus and resistances.
-if you go into the key binding menu, you will find there buttons to control your pets. always use the button to select all pets, the one to control the nymph and the one to control core.
-ALWAYS use the button to control your nymph. Sylvan protection is an incredible AOE skills that deals good damage and de-buffs the enemies. But, for your pet to use it, you must position the pet in melee range (in the middle of the monster pack)
-as soon as you get to Megara, farm out the vendor until you get an amulet with +1 to nature and a staff with +1 to nature. I found that Megara is where they start spawning. You will want to equip those 2 items just enough to summon 3 wolves then you switch back to pet damage gear.
-don't heal your wolves before they get below 30% health and their survival instinct activates. That skill will reduce all damage they take and increase their damage. And if you have an amulet of convocation you will have the surprise of their health going back to 100% through damage converted to health.
-right click the pet portrait and set it to aggressive.

Disclaimer: this is my take on a summoner designed to complete hardcore, xmax, no potions. For me, it worked just fine and it got me to my goal. The character will work fine without xmax but it will be mind-numbing boring because it will be so powerful that you won't need to "play starcraft" with your pets.

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Hey guys!

Today when i went on steam to check my achievements, i saw that titan quest has joined a "Labor of love" contest thing. I have no idea what games have joined this contest but, lets show our love to good old TQ.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/475150/view/3118175248911219350

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General Discussion / Boosting the forum population
« on: 19 November 2019, 19:07:51 »
Hey! Titan quest is a game that is very very dear to me. I play it since it first came out and even tho i sometimes take long breaks i always get back to it. Now, for the topic's subject: how do we boost the population of this forum? The only idea i have is posting links to the forum on facebook (the only social platform that i use) gaming groups.

So, let's gather ideas on this topic and mby even apply those ideas. I would love to see the forum as active as it was a few years ago.

5
General Discussion / Throw weapons vs bows
« on: 23 November 2018, 18:04:38 »
So, i just got my first throw weapon and it gave me a lot of ideas. But, before i start building up on to those ideas i have a few curiosities.
-if paired with a shield and used in close range, with defense specialization and all the shield passives, will  the shield passives proc?
-can you dual wield throw weapons?
-what are the differences between bows and throw weapons? (on my first sight bows have higher damage and range. If this is the only thing, it seems that the only advantage a throw gives you is that of a shield on the offhand at the loss of damage. A lot of damage)
-i saw that throw weapons are affected by all hunter skills. Is there any other synergy with them to be aware of? Like, are the throw daggers considered daggers so you can use sharp weapons buff from rogue?

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