Celestial Soul Guardian

[vastin]

I've been messing with a Celestial Wisdom Caster/Soul Guardian build.

It started out as a standard wis-caster with a heavy emphasis on channelling, and an even mix of Spellcrafting vs def/agl/Magic Resist. Stats are split into Wis/Con all the way up.

Using multi-casting for all the standard attack spells, this build comes out of the gate with a lot of offensive bang, but has pretty sad hp and has to be cautious for quite a while. Once I was high enough to jump over into Soul Guardian, I picked up about 4AP of Soul Bind - just high enough to bind rings, I think. I dropped a point into Soul Guardian as well to provide emergency defense, and a point into Simulacrum, which was pretty much a total waste given the miserable durations and low offense of summons.

Unfortunately, soul bind is completely useless for getting points in constitution and charisma, so until you can afford to start making leveling items, your survivability and any summons skills will remain very poor. Most of your natural points have to go into wis or con in order to support your standard spellcasting/hp. It is also very unclear whether soul-bind will be at all useful in the later game - whether the bonuses from high level monsters can keep up with standard item bonuses.

The fact that you can bind souls to Artifacts makes it potentially very powerful, but I'll never be able to invest the kind of AP necessary to bind souls to artifacts made out of late game materials (you'd need 60+ AP for blue steel armor), and otherwise all that AP is pretty much wasted because you can't bind souls to randomly generated magic items. Having no idea how many (if any) late artifacts there are or whether any of them are build appropriate, I can't possibly see dumping those points in.

By 25th level I can't complain about the offense and standard survivability of the build (4.5khp, around 6k armor with blessing up, 30 magic resist) - but Soul Guard really doesn't cut it as an emergency defense. On those rare cases when a big spell effect punches through the magic resist, the soul guard is unlikely to save me. I think I'd need quite a few more AP in that skill to make it work reliably, and I hate dropping that many points into an emergency use only skill.

At this point I've parked my class in High Monk just for the stat bonuses. From here on out it just looks like more statistical development and trying to find some way to make the build more survivable. The damage ratios in the game seem wierd. Most creatures either can't hit me, or hit for very light damage (>10% of hp), and then every now and again something will just slam through for about 15k and obliterate me (even from normals). Guess I'll need to dump a bunch of points into soul guard, because there is no way that my HP will ever be able to keep up with that kind of damage spike.

In fact, I've had that problem with every build I've tried so far now that I think about it... Is there some kind of critical hit code that causes attacks to occasionally multiply their damage severely?

[T10]

I have a celestial soul guardian too.
She is realy survivable.
Simulacrum works fine with spellcasting or summoning souls especialy with Zailab.
Se can survive with 1700 hp and soul guardian. A good soul can soak up to 2000 hp at lvl26.
(I think the 20%/ability point is too low compared to great guard. May 50 or 100% can be balanced.)
Soul bind works good with lamps and ammo. (With some crafting and enchanter class she can use low-level items with great base defense and good abilities, but never try the soul bind with crafted items before.) And you can read many scroll of magic item to the binded item!

[T10]

My celestial soul guardian Sheeniel (lvl26) defeated the fallen clan and captured the soul of Cedric.
Now she has an unlimited support of cloaks "Lightbane".
Every time she uses simulacrum on Cedric he gives her his cloak...

[Variaz]

Jul 21, 2008 17:01:08 GMT -5 T10 said:

My celestial soul guardian Sheeniel (lvl26) defeated the fallen clan and captured the soul of Cedric.
Now she has an unlimited support of cloaks "Lightbane".
Every time she uses simulacrum on Cedric he gives her his cloak...

Looks like a fun Unique Feature of the Soul Guardian!

....enjoy it while you can.

[vastin]

Jul 21, 2008 16:30:11 GMT -5 T10 said:

I have a celestial soul guardian too.
She is realy survivable.
Simulacrum works fine with spellcasting or summoning souls especialy with Zailab.
Se can survive with 1700 hp and soul guardian. A good soul can soak up to 2000 hp at lvl26.
(I think the 20%/ability point is too low compared to great guard. May 50 or 100% can be balanced.)
Soul bind works good with lamps and ammo. (With some crafting and enchanter class she can use low-level items with great base defense and good abilities, but never try the soul bind with crafted items before.) And you can read many scroll of magic item to the binded item!

So the base rate for soul guard is 20% of the creature's hp, rather than 100% as the ability help file states? That seems much closer to what I experienced.

I have to figure out why I'm occasionally taking these massive hits. at 4.5k and using a soul that (I'm estimating) probably blocked 3k damage, I still got blown down to -3.5k in a single hit last time I played, on around lvl25 - whatever it was hit me for 10-11k... ;0_o
Think I'm just going to have to sink several AP into soul guard.

As for it's balance against great guard, it is clearly much weaker early in the game, but I'd expect it to be far, far more powerful per point later in the game, where the soul you are using as a guard has 100k hp or more and you're blocking 20k per AP in the skill. I think even at lvl 25 we're probably already at the point where soul guard is more powerful than great guard - but you can't block a long series of hits with it, so it is much more limited in that way.

I'm not currently touching crafting or enchanting, as those are sorely imbalanced at low to mid level, and I don't want to distort my impressions of other classes/builds by mixing it in right now.

[vastin]

Jul 21, 2008 16:30:11 GMT -5 T10 said:

never try the soul bind with crafted items before.) And you can read many scroll of magic item to the binded item!

Well, once scrolls of magic are fixed.

As for the thought of soul binding adding to crafted items - that is a horrifying concept. Let us banish it into the nether realms from whence it came.

[vastin]

On a separate note: is there any way to keep souls from stacking? Regardless of their charging state, or if you label them or whatever, they always seem to collapse into a single stack, so if I capture a bunch of orcish champions to act as soul guards, it's no use, they all stack and charge/de-charge at the same time.

[Variaz]

Indeed, they shouldn't stack. I'll have to fix that.

[T10]

I am afraid I was ambigious.
"(I think the 20%/ability point is too low compared to great guard. May 50 or 100% can be balanced.)"
At the begining soul guard absorbs the tamage equal his base hp. I talked about additional points. Great guard increasing 100% / point, soul guard only 20% / point.
Base hp = max.hp / level. You can get the correct numbers from simulacrum.
I'm afraid base hp won't increasing so high in the later game... Monsterh have 100k hp at lvl30 - after my character binded their souls they have only 30k at lvl 29. Their base hp around 1030.
I think, at lvl26 my character don't exceed the strength of great guard yet...

[Variaz]

Both Soul Guard and Great Guard now have an additional bonus:

When guarding, damages are divided by the ability's level, then the reduction is applied.

So both abilities are much more powerful now!

[T10]

Great!
My character is getting to be invincible:)
This will be enough to soak the few hits coming throught magic resistance 28 and ac 12000.

[vastin]

Ahh, so Soul Guard uses the base HP of the creature as if it were level 1? That's much lower than I realized.

I assumed it was using the creature's HP as if it's level was = yours. Big difference there.

[vastin]

So, the soul guardian wis caster ran out of steam around lvl 25-27.

It ends up with a vast wisdom score, but far too much of it comes from items, which doesn't work with channeling, and you can't focus all your 'natural' points on wisdom because you'll end up with no constitution, which isn't buffed by souls. So before too long the build ends up unsurvivable. You're always one failed magic resist roll away from death, and your spell power goes up very slowly as you increase in level.

The build would have ultimately worked better as an Improved Wisdom Casting build, but still would have ended up fairly weak in direct attack power I think. I may try that at some point.

Another problem with this build is that it was very dependent on finding mirror balls for speed, which are quite rare, and pretty much never seen after lvl10. Once it died and lost those speed items, I couldn't really recover it. I spent two hours trying to find new ones and couldn't, and the character was no longer survivable against on-level enemies.

One fundamental problem with the soul guardian was that it did not play well with leveled items. I constantly needed to upgrade my items with new souls, but that means I'd have to start leveling them all over again, assuming I could even afford the scrolls or find the items. It could also never use anything much beyond low iron base material items, because the very large number of AP required to bind souls to anything higher would utterly cripple its spellcasting ability.

One common theme I'm starting to see is that leveled items are the end all and be all of many builds, and all the other item modifying powers (crafting, alchemy, soul bind, paladin armor, etc) either need to work WITH leveled items in a friendly fashion (which means working on leveled items, and NOT needing to be replaced every 5 levels), or they are garbage no matter how high you take them as they all ultimately represent completely wasted AP/SP.

Right now alchemy is the only skill set that seems to work in comfortable tandem with leveled items. Soul bind and Crafting most certainly do not.

[Variaz]

Well, I just tried a binding of a Mature Prismatic Dragon to a Blue Steel Full Plate. Here's what I get:

Fire/Cold/Electric/Acid/Poison/Light resist 10%.
It affects your Strength by 25.
It affects your Intelligence by 20.
It affects your Wisdom by 20.
It affects your Dexterity by 12.
It affects your Fighting skill by 2.
It affects your Spellcraft skill by 6.
It affects your Attacks by 2.
It does not hinder spellcasting.
It makes you completely fearless.
It provides resistance to confusion.

And the armor's stats are now this:

(+40, +40), [800, +1250].

800 base AC. This is difficult to get even on a rank 120 magic item, and the base bonus are very high stats wise. Oh, and that's BEFORE we start leveling the item! Nothing prevents you from using a scroll of item leveling. This will make a very powerful item later on.

...oh, and let me remind you that the Mature Prismatic Dragon is only a depth 40 enemy. I can assure you that it's quite weak compared to what you'll encounter in the upcoming chapters. ;D

In fact, Soul Bind may have the potential to create the most powerful items in the game. The drawback is that it's extremely difficult to capture later monsters soul, and requires efforts. But seeing the potential it has, don't go saying it doesn't work, that's simply not true. The only improvement it needs is, perhaps, a bit more damages enhancements on weapons.

Also, you don't actually need to constantly upgrade your items and make them levelables every 5 levels. One levelable item can last you for a long time! If you decide you want to upgrade all your items at once whenever you encounter a new enemy, go ahead, but know that it's not needed. And for the entire first chapter, it's very possible to beat it without using any levelables.

Again, know that later tonight, I will upload the new build, and Soul Guard(and Great Guard) have both been greatly improved with damages first being divided by the ability's level before soaking damages. And with the new hp change, you will have more chances to survive enemy attacks.

[Gando]

"Again, know that later tonight, I will upload the new build..."

Cant wait