Heroes,
Welcome to another Build Example!
Before we get into it: We know you are all eagerly waiting for news regarding Titan Quest II’s release. We will have exactly that for you during the THQ Nordic Digital Showcase event on August 1st.
So tune in, we’re sure you’ll be happy to hear about what we have in store for you! Now, on to the build.
Like last month, we want to give you a more detailed look at our individual mastery combinations.
This time we will take a look at a combination of Earth and Storm, which form the Elementalist.
Overall Build Concept
Crash into your enemies like lightning blinking from the skies, freeze them in place and then obliterate them by unleashing a powerful Earthquake.
Does that sound like it’s up your alley? Let’s have a look on one way to achieve this fantasy in Titan Quest II.
Youtube Link to Overwhelm Earthquake Elementalist Video
The build will make use of one main damaging combo with a high investment of resources. Perfect for clearing out larger packs and stronger enemies.
In addition, we use two cheaper abilities that synergize with the rest to clear out small groups or any surviving creatures.
The Main Combo
This combo is built around the power of Earthquake, an ability that offers some nice risk and reward gameplay. The longer you channel your cast, the higher the damage and effects of the Earthquake you unleash.
Our plan to use it has four steps:
Get In: Since Earthquake’s effect takes place directly around us, we first need to find a way to get into the thick of it. Preferably in style, while already dealing some nice damage.
Survive: As previously mentioned, we will need to be able to survive for a little while in order to fully charge up our Earthquake.
Boom: Unleash our fully charged up Earthquake to decimate anyone around us.
Clean-up: We will use our other abilities to take out any creatures that survived the main combo.
Step 1: Get In
For this we will use Blink. Usually an ability that helps us zoom around the battlefield quickly. Modifier system lets us tailor the ability to our needs and turn it into a juicy engage ability. We will use the following Modifiers:
Thundercrash: Instead of teleporting around, this makes us surge into the sky and then crash down from the heavens, hitting anything in our impact-radius with decent damage.
Cold Explosion: Spawns an explosion at our start and end position, helping us to soften enemies up even further from the get-go.
Step 2: Survive
While we could focus on more traditional defenses to make us more tanky, we will choose a more fitting route for an Elementalist. Freeze all nearby enemies around us, which should give us enough time to channel up our Earthquake without getting hit too much. We will use Ice Nova with the Flash Freeze Modifier. This makes sure we always freeze, increases the duration of our freeze, but adds a hefty cooldown in return.
Step 3: Boom
Now it's time to look at our main damaging ability, the Earthquake. As we said previously it charges up, which happens in stages. With every stage we reach it deals more damage and can even stun enemies (should any of them survive at least). Here we want to mainly choose Modifiers that allow us to get the biggest bang out of our cast:
Extended Charge: This allows us to channel Earthquake for an additional stage, which results in even more damage. It also grants us Overwhelm stacks while charging up, which we can then use to boost the Earthquake itself and also synergize with other abilities.
Heavy Impact: This modifier greatly increases Earthquake’s damage for each stack of Overwhelm we currently have. Perfect for what we are going for.
Step 4: Clean-up
Now let’s talk about the other two abilities we make use of. Either to kill what’s left after the Earthquake, or if we engage smaller packs where we might not want to go through our full cycle of abilities.
First let’s take a look at Fissure. An earth ability that splits the ground in front of us to deal damage in a line. This is where we can see the flexibility of the Modifier system, allowing us to create a whole bunch of synergies with some clever choices. We go for the following Modifiers:
Additional Fissures: This spawns an additional Fissure, which is great. But more importantly it serves as a requirement for our next Modifier…
Overwhelm: Remember the Overwhelm stacks we built up while channelling Earthquake? This is where we can spend them. We consume a full set of them (which we conveniently have after fully charging up 3 stages of Earthquake) to spawn 2 more Fissures for a total of 4.
Shockwave: This Modifier allows us to trigger a shockwave whenever our Fissures hit a stunned enemy. Since Earthquake stuns for a short duration, this works together beautifully.
Our final ability is Ice Shards, which allows us to shoot multiple small icicles. The main use here is to generate Overwhelm stacks outside of our main combo, so we can fully utilize Fissure when fighting smaller packs as well. While we could slot in any ability that generates these stacks, Ice Shards offer some nice other synergy potential we can make use of. We choose the following Modifiers:
Torrent: An overall great Modifier that adds extra projectiles to the ability.
Projectile Penetration: Allows our projectiles to penetrate their target and hit others behind them. Great to increase damage and reliability.
Frost Explosion: A little extra for synergy. Whenever we hit a frozen enemy, we spawn a frost explosion. Since we already have guaranteed freeze from our Ice Nova, this is a good option for us.
Passives, Attributes and Gear
Now that we have covered the active side of things, let’s take a look at what we want from our passives and gear.
This will just be a very quick overview. You could certainly customize all of this to your liking much more, but we don’t want this article to go on forever, do we?
On the Passive side, we go for the following:
Energy: Since the main combo can be quite Energy intensive, we will invest into the following passives:
Earth’s Arcane Abundance increase Maximum Energy. We pick the Regen Feat to also increase Energy regeneration.
Storm has Arcane Influx, which increases Energy and Energy Regeneration. By choosing the Energy Feat, we also unlock the “Ether Shield” effect, which allows us to redirect some damage taken towards our Energy. Helpful for staying alive when charging up the Earthquake.
Damage: Of course we want to scale our damage substantially. This is where most of our passive points will go
Earth’s Grand Magic is perfect for us. It increases our Spell Damage and even gives us extra Energy. The Feat Spell Damage and Cost gives us another hefty bonus of 30% Spell Damage, but increases their cost. Since we invested enough into Energy, we can make use of it.
Storm gives us Raging Mind, which increases Cast Speed and Spell Damage. It also unlocks the Rage mechanic, which increases our damage on every spell we cast for a short time. This synergizes perfectly with the more spammy Fissure/Ice Shards combo we have for clearing smaller packs.
Defense: Lastly we want some more defense to not turn into a glass-cannon.
Storm Protection greatly boosts our Barrier core ability, which gives us a reliable extra layer of defense we can activate when crashing into our enemies.
For our Attributes we go for a split of Might, Knowledge and Vigor. This will indirectly scale our main damage types: Strike and Cold. It also allows us to go down a “Battlemage” fantasy for our gear for decent protection.
For our gear we will look at the following effects:
Increased Spell Damage helps us scale all of our damage. Alternatively Strike helps us increase the bulk of our abilities' impact as well.
Increases to our main Attributes are always good to have.
A decent spread of defenses in the form of Resistances and Health.
Where to take it
Since Titan Quest II offers huge levels of customization, this is only one example on how to make this build. It provides a very strong baseline, but can be taken into many different directions.
While our character progresses we can invest deeper into all of our existing abilities to add more Modifiers and synergies to them.
For example Earthquake has the Modifier Fast Channel which decreases channel-time. Or Stone Protection, which makes us more tanky while channelling.
We could also add new supporting abilities into the mix. Cyclone would offer more utility and damage in an area. The auras Storm Nimbus and Earth Attunement could further boost us in different ways.
These are just a few examples, though. The choice will be yours!
We hope to see all of you during the THQ Nordic Digital Showcase on August 1st.