Torchlight 2 Catch-All

I've been completely sucked in and haven't went back to Borderlands at all. Have already made one of each class here. Nearly done with Embermage, and already in Act 2 with Berserker. Can't express enough love for this one.

I'm bouncing between TL2 with my son and GW2 with my wife.
Life is good.

I feel like I can jump in, play the game from anywhere between 10 minutes and several hours and accomplish a lot. If there was a stash expansion mod I would play more. I'm at the stage where I just want to collect sets and uniques.

I don't particularly feel like I've screwed up my build, but I have been having a really rough time with my Embermage. The difficulty spiked for me in the Artificer's Dungeon in Act II, remained fairly high for Act II, fell at the start of Act III, and then started climbing again.

Don't quite think that it's too hard, as I'm still mostly dying when I make mistakes, but I no longer feel like the immortal badass I was at the start of the game.

Yonder wrote:

I don't particularly feel like I've screwed up my build, but I have been having a really rough time with my Embermage. The difficulty spiked for me in the Artificer's Dungeon in Act II, remained fairly high for Act II, fell at the start of Act III, and then started climbing again.

Don't quite think that it's too hard, as I'm still mostly dying when I make mistakes, but I no longer feel like the immortal badass I was at the start of the game.

I've taken a couple characters into Act II I have found the challenge ramps up enormously at that point on Veteran. I got killed so many times trying to finish the Luminous Arcana dungeon.

Having not beaten the game with my engy Tesla and his bulldog Coil, I can't speak to the endgame yet but between New Game Plus and the map room. I see some longevity in this. Moreso than Diablo at least. Will have to see when I get there... which shouldn't take too long with the Amazing Race and Bones back on the air. Steph watches those and I play Torchlight 2. Works out for both of us.

Yonder wrote:

I don't particularly feel like I've screwed up my build, but I have been having a really rough time with my Embermage. The difficulty spiked for me in the Artificer's Dungeon in Act II, remained fairly high for Act II, fell at the start of Act III, and then started climbing again.

Don't quite think that it's too hard, as I'm still mostly dying when I make mistakes, but I no longer feel like the immortal badass I was at the start of the game.

What difficulty level are you playing at?

I'm a sissy and am playing on Normal and haven't had any serious issues with Embermage. I do, however, feel I need to re-spec a bit in order to concentrate my Skill Points on the two skills I tend to actually use, rather than dabbling a little bit in some of the Ice skills that I haven't used as often...

I am in Veteran and am continuously mulling over a respec. I only have 5-6 wasted skill points though, which isn't a big deal at level 48 or whatever I am.

What's a good approach to leveling your stats? I don't think there is anything that can be ignored entirely, but what sorts of ratios between the main, say, two stats and the other two are working for people?

Depends on your class and build. With my Mage I did Focus only until mid Act II, then I played catch with Vitality a bit and now I do 3/2 Focus/Vitality.

With my Engineer I do 2/1/2 STR/DEX/VIT and have been ignoring Focus thus far.

With my engineer I have been mostly going strength and vitality, but not in any organized way and with some focus and dex sprinkled in (probably more focus than dex). I have put some points into focus when I had weapons with elemental damage, as that is governed by focus not strength. To my limited ability to judge, it seems like your gear matters much more than how you spend the stat points (although how you spend the stat points obviously affects what gear you can choose).

At the end of Act II and my robot/cannon engineer has been pretty reliable with regular helpings of 2/3 in STR/VIT. There's also the occasional 10 point dump into DEX or FOC if I find a cool item that I don't quite meet the requirement for.

When it comes to skills... I got some robits I guess.

ihavenoideawhatimdoing.jpg

Cannon engineer?

Sword and board all the way!

And that's what's great about this game, you can play the same class in totally different ways. Wand vs Staff Mages. Two-hand vs dual wield Berserkers. Shotgun/bow vs dual pistol Outlanders. Awesome stuff.

My Berserker focuses mainly on Strength + Vitality (was 2/2/1 in one of the others) but I have been putting more emphasis on Focus over the last 10 or so levels (currently Level 35). Somehow he has become a double claw wielder and my skills have gone into the Blood(?) tree so I need more crits.

I wanted a 2-handed brawler berserker but kept getting claw weapons early on that were way better. It is odd (and cool) when a game can successfully move you off your plan for your character kind of without you realizing it.

psoplayer wrote:

At the end of Act II and my robot/cannon engineer has been pretty reliable with regular helpings of 2/3 in STR/VIT. There's also the occasional 10 point dump into DEX or FOC if I find a cool item that I don't quite meet the requirement for.

When it comes to skills... I got some robits I guess.

ihavenoideawhatimdoing.jpg

Hail, fellow cannoneer!

I've felt like they were really pushing me towards claws with my berzerker but I have been resisting and loving a nice 2 handed sword I found. The wide swing mixed with "conveys X damage over 5 seconds" makes up for a lot =)

I hope they add a refresh map in SP too. I could do the pirate side quest over and over and over again.

fangblackbone wrote:

I hope they add a refresh map in SP too. I could do the pirate side quest over and over and over again.

Creating a multiplayer game to refresh the map will reset singleplayer progress, as well.

Yeah just start up a LAN game and check the box to referesh. Easy as pie. You can immediately quit and go back to single player if you want.

LouZiffer wrote:
psoplayer wrote:

At the end of Act II and my robot/cannon engineer has been pretty reliable with regular helpings of 2/3 in STR/VIT. There's also the occasional 10 point dump into DEX or FOC if I find a cool item that I don't quite meet the requirement for.

When it comes to skills... I got some robits I guess.

ihavenoideawhatimdoing.jpg

Hail, fellow cannoneer!

Cannonz 4 Lyfe

carrotpanic wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:
psoplayer wrote:

At the end of Act II and my robot/cannon engineer has been pretty reliable with regular helpings of 2/3 in STR/VIT. There's also the occasional 10 point dump into DEX or FOC if I find a cool item that I don't quite meet the requirement for.

When it comes to skills... I got some robits I guess.

ihavenoideawhatimdoing.jpg

Hail, fellow cannoneer!

Cannonz 4 Lyfe

Ahoy mates! Fire at will!

TL2 Game Hub Discussion on Steam wrote:

Dex does not provide chance to block... That is vit. My 2 hand engineer is pure strength btw. For Embermage, pure focus. For summon engineers, pure focus. Berserker caster = pure focus. Berserker melee dps = 4 str 1 dex.

Vit is crap. Dex only if you are going to dual for the execute, dodge and crit. Vit ONLY IF YOU USE SHIELD.

1 vit = 3 life and that diminishing return on %block chance and %armor rate is not going to help. I have read somewhere that high level socketables can give you up to 1500 health per slot. That is equivalent to 500 vit points.

Is this guy full of crap or did I screw up by going heavy VIT on my engineer? If focus would drastically increase the healing from Healbot and the damage from Gunbot and Spiderbot then I might have to seek out a respec mod.

Dunno. I went mostly Focus on my mage, and a little Vit. Str and Dex just for when I wanted some equip. Not sure where those gems are. I did see some "steal 60 health per hit" and some "heal 35 health per sec" or so near the end of the main game, but that's about as high as I got at level 52 or so.

Anyway, finished the game on Vet on my Mage. Lots of fun. Apparently there are hidden achievements for beating the game on all 4 difficulty levels and also ones for each of the 4 classes for beating the game. Not sure why those are hidden, as beating the game isn't exactly a spoiler. And I'd like to plan my class paths a little. Oh well.

I wanted to have a 2-hand weilding berzerker, but carrying around huge hammers feels so much better as a blitz engineer. My 2 acolytes and I are playing a full co-op veteran playthrough as 3 engineers. We've got the sword and board aegis specced tank, the cannon firing robot making construction guy, and me the blitz specced massive hammer guy. We have yet to overlap at a single active skill.

Eventually the tank and I may end up overlapping on that stun stomp, but that's 20-30 levels away, and who cares if we have too much stun eh?

I'm having a blast.

psoplayer wrote:
TL2 Game Hub Discussion on Steam wrote:

Dex does not provide chance to block... That is vit. My 2 hand engineer is pure strength btw. For Embermage, pure focus. For summon engineers, pure focus. Berserker caster = pure focus. Berserker melee dps = 4 str 1 dex.

Vit is crap. Dex only if you are going to dual for the execute, dodge and crit. Vit ONLY IF YOU USE SHIELD.

1 vit = 3 life and that diminishing return on %block chance and %armor rate is not going to help. I have read somewhere that high level socketables can give you up to 1500 health per slot. That is equivalent to 500 vit points.

Is this guy full of crap or did I screw up by going heavy VIT on my engineer? If focus would drastically increase the healing from Healbot and the damage from Gunbot and Spiderbot then I might have to seek out a respec mod.

You did not. He is full of crap. Focus will increase your ability damage and healing but not enough to get overly concerned with it.

In Act II, which has an annoyingly large area. I've yet to enjoy a desert area in a game other than maybe Journey. Still, I got a sweet unique polearm that was augmented after killing 25 spiders, and a couple enchantments to boot:

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/1135162986168780474/6B51F44C4843E01DBF56F11972387E71DCE5969B/)

I think I need to replace that gem with another, but so far I'm doing quite well with it.

I think I need to replace that gem with another, but so far I'm doing quite well with it.

Well, if you have the Flame and Spark passive from the middle tree for engy, that gem will receive a boost from that as well. I've started socketing usually with like a health steal gem then either fire or electric depending on what i've got unless something else really crazy pops up (recently gotten a 6% attack speed gem that I'm thinking of putting in instead).

Demosthenes wrote:
I think I need to replace that gem with another, but so far I'm doing quite well with it.

Well, if you have the Flame and Spark passive from the middle tree for engy, that gem will receive a boost from that as well. I've started socketing usually with like a health steal gem then either fire or electric depending on what i've got unless something else really crazy pops up (recently gotten a 6% attack speed gem that I'm thinking of putting in instead).

I've got more powerful electric gems, as well as some health steal gems as well, so I've got a coupe things to pick from. I do have a couple points in Flame and Spark, which has proven to be a good investment.

Well... yeah, if you've got a more powerful version of your current gem, that's probably worth popping in there instead.

So I seem to have found a good balance between mana and heath re-charge on gems/items.

My Berserker has done very well since I added the permafrost skill. It helps a lot with crowd control.

I have a level 15ish server going right now called "gwj evil" pw is stan if anyone would like to join me. Also in vent.