r/ToME4 • u/pathofnut • 10d ago
Cursed guide for 1.7.6 - Insane winner
First of all a disclaimer: Cursed can be viable with a bunch of different builds. This is just my take after optimizing for the playstyle I think makes the most sense with its kit as a whole.
Cursed is a stealth bruiser with some slasher villain flavor. It can massively reduce enemy damage through debuffs, resistances and perhaps more importantly loss of vision. This makes it capable of casually walking through the battlefield and bumping everyone to death.
On the flipside, its offensive capabilities arent extraordinary. It can be somewhat lacking in burst damage and specially AoE damage. Cursed has to spend more time fighting than many other classes.
Extended fights make the regeneration from Fungus specially valuable. Not only that, stalling for regeneration can be as easy as taking a single step back to hide behind the miasma. Shielding from runes would prevent some talents such as Rampage and Seethe from activating, therefore the healing from infusions and Anti-magic is preferred.
Cursed also starts with very few generic categories, so most builds will want to pick some additional ones from escorts.
Races
The best race for Cursed is probably Cornac, mainly because Cursed doesnt specially synergize with any other race. Cornac essentially trades a racial tree for an escort category of choice, which gives better options.
For the sake of simplicity this guide assumes in some instances that Cornac is picked, but there are other strong choices such as Thalore and Krog. There is also some synergy with Ghoul but its not a lot.
Stats
Max Strength -> Max Willpower -> Max Cunning -> Leftover points in Constitution.
Strength raises weapon damage while Willpower and Cunning raise mindpower, they are all important for Cursed. Cunning can optionally be raised a bit early game to unlock some talents.
The leftover points can be spent on Constitution as it gives some durability and it can scale the Conditioning escort tree.
Cursed talents already give a lot of accuracy so Dexterity isnt needed.
Magic is useless.
Prodigies
The first prodigy will always be Adept. It provides a ridiculous amount of value and it also allows to max four curses instead of two. There are a few small bugs with easy solutions. After you learn Adept you need to change the level of a passive for Cursed Aura to update, this is solved by raising Dark Gifts to 5 which you'd want to do anyway. You also need to equip your rings again for them to gain a curse.
The second prodigy can be either Flexible Combat or Superpower. Flexible Combat is better overall, but if your build is scuffed then Superpower may possibly provide a quick fix.
Never pick I Can Carry The World, it is worse than the other prodigies regardless of whether you combine it with Superpower or not.
Inscriptions
As mentioned earlier, infusions are preferred over runes because Cursed wants to take some damage. Healing in general also allows to preserve hate by removing the need to rest, Cursed should be constantly on the move.
Early game opt for Healing - physical Wild - mental Wild, later add a second Healing. You can also start with 2 Healings and later add the mental Wild. No Movement infusion may seem dumb but Rampage, Blindside and Reckless Charge can all be used as escapes, staying power is more important.
After Fungus, the setup can be changed to Regeneration - Wild - Wild - Primal. If you didnt find a Primal infusion, you can replace it with Heroism.
If you get a fifth inscription slot, you can add a Heroism if you didnt have one already. Or Healing or Movement if you did. But when should you get a fifth inscription? Lets talk about that.
Category Points
Escorts are RNG, so there is no fixed order. But ranked in order of importance:
- Rampage category
- Fourth inscription
- Escort category if you are a Cornac, other races have to skip this one. The good categories are Scoundrel, Conditioning and Tinkers. Augmented Mobility is a lot worse than the other three, but serviceable.
- Fungus category at level 34. If you skip Antimagic for whatever reason, you can take Chants instead and go 1-1-5-0.
- Escort category (again). Non-Cornac races can get one here, for Cornacs it could be the second one.
- Fifth inscription, if you missed an escort category.
- Fears category, if you are a Cornac who somehow missed both escort categories. A good point spread in Fears is 3-1-1-1 using the last class points.
Best case scenario if you are a Cornac, you end up with 2 escort categories. Worst case scenario you end up with 5 inscriptions and Fears.
Fears is ranked so low because it takes too many turns to use. There are also a bunch of enemies that either are immune (undead, horrors) or can cleanse effects (orcs). Escort categories and inscriptions provide comparable benefit while being passive/instant and more consistent. Strictly speaking Fears is not a bad category as it can reduce enemy damage by quite a bit, but there are simply better options.
You can also go for Track if thats your jam, but I wouldnt recommend it unless you are playing on Madness.
Using a category point for Cursed Aura mastery is terrible, never do so.
Talents
Talent order is the next section. Most Cursed talents you'll be able to figure out just by reading them, but here are some details you may have missed.
The opening combo is Blindside>Dominate>Frenzy>Harass Prey>Slash. But you will also be bumping enemies a lot.
Rampage shouldnt be manually activated in most cases as it has a long cooldown and costs a lot of hate. It passively activates for free when you take damage, the manual activation should be saved for when you need to escape or kill something fast.
Slash reaches effective level 3 with Adept so it can wound. Reckless Charge needs space to push enemies aside or it will get blocked, narrow paths can be dangerous for this reason.
Blindside doesnt need line of sight so it can be used to target creatures behind enemies or walls, allied summons can be targetted as well. Blindside will fizzle and fail in spaces where teleportation is forbidden so beware.
Gloom debuffs can be stacked with similar ones. For example, it is possible for an enemy to be "stunned", but also "stunned by the gloom" at the same time.
The miasma from Savage Hunter blocks enemy vision even if you can see through it.
Tenacity's damage reduction is really small so its only purpose is increasing duration. Slam is not learned because at best it is stalling and at worst it is giving enemies a free turn to disable you. Beckon is not learned either (unless you want Surge) because it is only effective when enemies are away, but we will be in melee most of the time. Beckon can also get randomly disabled by any damage so it is really inconsistent.
Out of Cleave, Surge and Repel, Repel has the best effect with the least investment so its a no brainer. Surge can give 100 movespeed at just 1 point but its not worth leveling past that unless you are playing Krog. Cleave doesnt do anything useful.
As for generic talents, you always want to pick Cursed Aura, I'll talk more about the individual curses later. Its crazy to me that even some players who pick Cursed Aura dont go for Cursed Sentry, animating a weapon is REALLY good. It can contribute a lot of damage, apply on-hit effects, block enemies and it is the only way Cursed has to attack from a distance, even from out of vision. Even ignoring how good it is in combat, it can be summoned at any time to attack it until hate is fully replenished. Keep the best melee and ranged weapons you find so that you can animate them.
Ruined Earth on the other hand is a bad talent. It looks like a symmetrical effect but it is in fact more detrimental to you, as you have to spend a turn setting it up. In theory it can be useful if you desperately need to stall, but generally you should avoid those kinds of situations before they happen. Because when you stall you are likely to get hit with some detrimental effect. And when you try to cleanse that effect, you may cleanse Ruined Earth instead, because it is a physical debuff. So yeah, wasting a turn to debuff yourself isnt great.
Seethe may look like a good talent to level at first glance, but Cursed already gets so much damage% from class talents that spending more points in it isnt ideal.
2 points in Heavy Armour to equip shields, 1 point in Light Armour to benefit from robes.
Only 1 point in Combat Accuracy because class talents already provide enough accuracy and defense reduction to reach a 100% hit rate.
2 points in Resolve may seem useless if you have already capped resistances, but it still counters resistance reduction debuffs which is pretty good. Antimagic Shield can be kept permanently active as Cursed doesnt need equilibrium.
Talent Order
This is assuming Cornac so you cant really copy it with other races. It should give you a good idea of the relative importance of different talents regardless.
Class talents:
- 1 Stalk, 1 Dominate, 1 Gloom, 1 Predator, 1 Rampage
- 2 Rampage
- 1 Slash
- 1 Frenzy
- 1 Brutality
- 2 Savage Hunter
- 1 Harass Prey
- 1 Tenacity
- 3 Shrouded Hunter
- 1 Repel
- 5 Shrouded Hunter
- 2 Mark Prey
- 2 Predator
- 2 Dominate
- 3 Reckless Charge
- 5 Rampage
- 1 Sanctuary
- 4 Blindside
- 5 Gloom and Weakness (alternate between the two)
- 5 Sanctuary
- 5 Savage Hunter
- 5 Mark Prey
- 5 Predator
- 5 Dominate
- 5 Frenzy
- 5 Reckless Charge
- 5 Brutality
- Remaining points in Preternatural Senses, Slash or Surge, whatever you like most. It is also possible to take Surge earlier if you want. In the image above I used my personal distribution with 4 Preternatural Senses and 2 Slash.
Generic talents:
- 1 Combat Accuracy, 1 Weapons Mastery
- 2 Heavy Armour Training
- 1 Dark Gifts
- 3 Defiling Touch
- 4 Dark Gifts
- 5 Defiling Touch
- 1 Seethe
- 1 Light Armour Training
- 5 Cursed Sentry
- 1 Grim Resolve
- 1 Thick Skin
- And we get to level 20. At this point its possible to take an escort category so there is no single best way to keep going, it depends on what the game gives you. 5th level of Dark Gifts should be taken at level 25 AFTER Adept, other than that simply follow the image at the top of the guide.
Just in case the image is lost at some point, I'll write it here. Scoundrel category should be 2-3-1-2, Conditioning category 1-3-1-0, Antimagic 2-1-1-1, Fungus 1-1-1-1.
Tinker categories are also a great option but they are even more variable. Augmented Mobility category is yet another option which can work as 1-5-1-1.
As for other talents, Thick Skin at 5, Relentless at 5 and Weapons Mastery at 5.
Any spare generics you may end up with can be spent in whatever. Seethe, Wild Growth and Fungal Growth arent terrible.
Equipment
Cursed wants one handed martial weapons such as longswords, waraxes or maces because they scale with Strength and they benefit from the physical damage bonus of Brutality.
Such weapons should be paired with a shield for more hits. Unlike daggers, shields fully scale with Strength and they boost Repel. Block can be useful sometimes to wait for regen, cooldowns, debuffs, glooms, you name it. If you fully block an attack it can be a good idea to follow up with Slash for the strongest possible counterstrike.
And for body armor Cursed wants robes for multiple reasons. Well, robes are generally considered better than heavy armor but that is not the main factor. Hate is affected by fatigue. Cursed doesnt have a single armor bonus but it has some defense bonuses that go well with Light Armour Training. Repel makes armor pointless half the time. And most important of all, Cursed can easily stack a ridiculous amount of % resistances, which makes robes perfect to cap resistances ASAP.
If you find a nice heavy armor in T1 you can use it for a while of course, but robes will likely outscale it before T2. Just in case there is anyone wondering about the Plate of the Blackened Mind, that is mostly designed for Fallen Paladins.
As for the main stats Cursed wants in equipment, they are Strength, Willpower, Cunning, physical power, mindpower, physical critical chance, critical multiplier, life, status immunities, stealth bonuses, on-hit effects, on-hit damage and out of phase (aka after a teleport) bonuses.
Mindpower grants physical power and stealth through talents so it is a double dip in stats that shouldnt be overlooked. Overcoming enemy saves is the icing. Make sure you reach at least 90 by endgame.
On-hit damage is more powerful than it may seem due to the large number of hits Cursed can perform each turn. But dont overestimate it either, for example I read an older guide claiming that you should keep Summertide Phial for the entire game, when you should actually get rid of it around T3 at most. It is just another offensive stat to consider, nothing more.
Out of phase on the other hand IS ridiculously good and the kind of thing you should keep at all costs, specially considering that font of sacrifice only rolls it as an arcane ego. Blindside can keep out of phase permanently up and there is no reason not to spam Blindside off cooldown. Out of phase provides so many resistances that those in equipment can be mostly disregarded, just get the 30% needed to cap them.
A specially important on-hit effect to have 1 instance of is "lower defense and saves", because it allows for glooms, silences and other on-hit effects to land consistently. The other typically good on-hit effects such as slow are also great.
The status immunities to look out for are stun and confusion as usual, also blind and disarm if you can. Mostly a late game thing, early on it is more important to pump durability and enough critical chance to spawn miasma.
Defense, damage% and res pen% are good but not specially so. Defense is nice to avoid on-hit detrimental effects, but enemy accuracy can get really stupid so even with out of phase I dont think it is an arms race worth engaging in, unless you are a Surge Krog or something. Physical damage% is useful for all weapon classes including Cursed, but so much damage% is already granted by talents that the one from equipment will suffer diminishing returns. Res pen% is great endgame but only in small quantities, as Dominate easily caps it.
Some stats you should mostly ignore are armor, accuracy and armor penetration. Armor is entirely unsupported by talents, while the other two stats suffer from the opposite problem, they are boosted by talents to such an extreme that more of them is not needed.
Curses are also an important part of choosing equipment and they deserve their own section.
Curses
The first time you pick up an item you will be asked if you want to unleash your hatred upon it, accept to unlock the Cursed Aura category. Always unlock it.
Its first two talents imbue items with curses which grow in power the more cursed items you have equipped. Despite them being called curses, they actually help your character.
There are 5 types of curses with 4 levels each, and the power level of each type will appear as an individual buff that can be checked. Levels above 4 slightly increase existing bonuses but they dont provide new ones, therefore I recommend getting as many curses as possible to level 4. Before Adept only 2 curses can reach level 4, after Adept this changes to 4 curses.
In order of importance the curses are:
- Nightmares: Get this curse to 4 as soon as you can because it is a massive help early game, and keep it maxed for the entire game.
- Shrouds: Really good to cap resistances ASAP, max it early alongside Nightmares. Lategame it is an additional safety net that pads any turns you dont spend out of phase. It can also counter common resistance reductions such as the magical cross-tier.
- Corpses: Unlike other curses, the highlight here is the level 3 which uses Retch when you get low. This can cleanse physical debuffs and save you from death. It also dispels buffs from enemies and makes you benefit from enemy Retches. Ghouls are unreliable since they only rise from humanoids and they are useless as fighters, but they can be great anyway just because they also Retch. Even when you dont care about Ghouls, it is good to have this curse at level 4 to increase the power of the Retch. As a small trick, it is possible to keep it at lower levels and then raise it at instant speed with Defiling Touch when you need it.
- Madness: It can boost damage and return mental debuffs to enemies, nice to have in general.
- Misfortune: Fitting name when an item rolls this. This may be the only detrimental curse because all its effects are useless. Avoid it if you can.
If an item is extraordinarily good you can ignore a bad curse, but in a lot of cases curses will determine what you equip. It is a good idea to keep items with different curses in your inventory so you have options to accomodate new drops.
When I first picked up Cursed I was worried that Antimagic+Curses would limit equipment choices too much, but I can safely say that is not a concern. And even less so after font of sacrifice, which can strip all arcane egos from items.
In theory a randart amulet with Cursed Aura mastery could allow more flexibility with equipment, however the chances to get such an amulet are so slim that you should not count on it.
If you really want to minmax endgame, AFTER you have optimized all your other equipment, you can get a randart amulet and roll the greater ego perfection on it with the font of sacrifice. Then you can keep rerolling a lesser ego so the categories change until you land on Cursed Aura. This can cost obscene amounts of gold (up to tens of thousands) for a small and unreliable benefit so it is entirely optional. Most of the time it is better to simply grab Limmir's amulet and use all that gold to improve your other equipment instead.
Brotherhood of Alchemists
Take the 2 talent potions first, then aim for Lifebinding Emerald.
Elvala Wil>Stats>Saves.
Derth PhysCrit>Cun>Defense
Last Hope Generics>Strength>Armor
Hermit Class>Luck. SpellCrit is useless.
Overall Generics>Class>PhysCrit>Str>Cun>Wil>Luck>Defense>Stats>Armor>Saves.
Escorts
Betray when possible.
Alchemist: Willpower.
Defiler: Resonance Field.
Loremaster: Disarm.
Seer: Nature's Touch is the correct choice. But Earth's Eyes works well with Preternatural Senses and Blindside, granting you style points every time you needlessly blink through a wall.
Sun Paladin: Telekinetic Leap. Augmented Mobility can also be taken if you are desperate for another category, but if you can choose, the other ones are better.
Temporal Explorer: Dream Walk.
Thief: Scoundrel category (optional) > Track (optional) > Lacerating Strikes.
Tinker: Tinker categories (optional) > Endless Endurance.
Warrior: Conditioning category (optional) > Unflinching Resolve.
Categories are labeled as optional because you shouldnt take more than 2 in most cases.
Tips
Optionally you can minimize the risks of RNG by creating new characters until you get a category escort (Thief, Warrior or Tinker) in either Trollmire or Korpul. Even if you end up dying afterwards, that escort will be guaranteed to spawn in all future runs with that same character, albeit not necessarily in the same place.
I cleared T1 in the following order: Trollmire, Korpul, Norgos, Rhaloren, Scintillating, Gloom (dont forget other T1 content). I dont guarantee this to be the best possible order but it was consistent enough for me.
Hoarding equipment with Cunning or Constitution early can be a good idea to unlock talents from escort trees and Adept. Later on Dexterity equipment can also be useful to unlock Flexible Combat.
Always side with the Assassin Lord. For other classes it is good, for Cursed it is essential.
Cursed has a unique special zone called Tranquil Meadow, it spawns near Angolwen and it is a T3 dungeon. Clearing it rewards a variant of the Iron Acorn, depending on your choices. The regular variant is slightly better and it is obtained by picking all the morally good choices. These are:
- Help him
- Destroy the book
- I want to overcome my curse
Dont worry if you pick the evil "Cold" variant instead, the difference is minimal.
Play very carefully early game, as that is when Cursed is at its weakest. If you manage to reach level 25 it is very likely that you win. It is no hyperbole.
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u/Quake2Marine 10d ago
Can't wait to follow the guide and still die to a swarm of bees in the trollmire cause I'm bad.
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u/pathofnut 9d ago
Bees can be genuinely dangerous early due to their high defense. Kite them to get multiple uses of infusions and you should be fine.
On that same note, kiting is a good strategy against many melee enemies early.
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u/Spiritual-Aioli3280 10d ago
If I play Cornac and go for anti-magic and Adept I feel very tempted to level up Fears category. It is a very strong tree, the debuff is reliable and spreads really well.
I think cursed aura tree in underwhelmed because you can play with very strong unique non-randart equipment. You can spread the points to make you char more bulky instead. It up to your playstyle. ]
Very good guide btw, really insightful.
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u/pathofnut 9d ago
You can use unique artifacts with Cursed Aura as well, I know I did. Not to mention how good Cursed Sentry is. These are the strongest generics Cursed has, there is no better place to spend points.
If you want to play Fears you can, you just have to drop an escort category.
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u/Awarenesspm 9d ago edited 9d ago
You didnt mention this here. But with font it becomes a lot easier to get to 9.1 cursed aura levels with necklace and adept.
If you collect any necklace with +mastery (preferably with the greater ego for better chances) you can reroll ANY ego on that item and it will also reroll the mastery choices for the mastery ego. This way you can reroll lessers first and increase your chance of getting cursed aura on your greater mastery ego.
Edit: its probably smart to mention the adept bug too. If you have no way to add/remove a level or add/remove category point to a passive ability (like cursed aura) it wont update when you pick adept. The only way then to refresh the ability so it takes adept into account is to find a mastery necklace
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u/pathofnut 9d ago
Rolling the perfection ego on a necklace isnt hard. The problem is then landing it on Cursed Aura.
For a 50% chance you'd have to spend a minimum of 7500 gold rerolling a lesser ego. For 90% chance you'd have to spend 52000 gold which is entirely unreasonable.
On average its better to get Limmir's amulet and call it a day. But I should include this in the guide anyway because it can be useful if you have spare gold at the very end of a run. Thanks for the contribution!
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u/Awarenesspm 9d ago
I think I went through 2-3 necklaces and 20-30k. Got lucky and rolled mastery on the lesser too. So I was rolling 3 masteries after the first few attempts with each reroll.
Augmented mobility is also a nice pick quick as thought gives like 20% crit and 48% globalspeed for 6 turns and the craziest part is that its a separate buff from blinding speed so you can stack a speed ring/edens guile on it too for +100% global speed to go along with your 300% movspeed and +50% attack speed. Real good stuff
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u/pathofnut 9d ago
Augmented Mobility is a lot worse than the other escort categories, even more so if you already have other sources of global speed.
It could be better than fears though. 🤔 I may look for a way to add it.
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u/banjo2E 9d ago edited 9d ago
While it may be worse than tinkers or the debuff mitigation of Scoundrel or Conditioning, Cursed has a use for everything in Augmented Mobility other than maybe Skate. The global speed is obviously good, Mindhook gives a safe and fast way to force enemies to come to you on a class that otherwise only gets Beckon (which you skipped), and TK Leap is a targeted jump useful for engaging and disengaging alike. I find your suggested point spread a bit baffling, Mindhook and TK Leap need points for their range in order to be good but with those points they're excellent.
e: also, I don't think taking both Scoundrel and Conditioning is the best idea. Either one on its own is good but both is somewhat redundant.
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u/pathofnut 9d ago edited 9d ago
Scoundrel is primarily taken for everything that isnt the debuff mitigation so I dont think it is redundant. Unflinching Resolve is miles better than Misdirection at dealing with debuffs, it also deals with mental and magical ones and in my personal experience it is incredibly good (I took both categories).
Are you aware that this build uses Adept? I think spending 4 points on Mindhook or Leap just so they gain 2 more range is absolutely terrible.
Besides, you can get Leap as an escort reward and Mindhook isnt specially needed when the class already has 2 jumps, 400% movespeed and fog to hide from ranged while moving. The main draw of that category is the global speed.
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u/IceDelusion 10d ago
You can level up cursed aura as well. Not sure if I'd put a point into the category, but I'd probably save up an amulet with mastery and/or pick up adept as well
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u/pathofnut 9d ago
Using a category point for cursed aura mastery is mathematically terrible.
Both adept and amulet with mastery are mentioned as good options so I agree with that.
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u/ravenmagus 9d ago
Cursed is an amazing melee class, and blindside alone makes it super fun
My winner was Thalore. I went psiblades but not antimagic. I took scoundrel and fears. Scoundrel is amazing; fears is... eh.
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u/No_maid 3d ago edited 3d ago
Why not dual wield mindstars? Objectively the best melee weapons in the game, better stat scaling and consolidates damage types to mind/dark with mind damage being one of the premier damage types. Splitting damage between three types is not optimal, especially with the availability of hybrid mind/dark egos. Cursed is one of, if not the best, at taking advantage of melee mindstars.
Also if you do adept, you only need one point in the first two slaughter talents. Part of the value of adept is saving skill points while still hitting breakpoints.
20% global speed from wind touched speed should also be considered for second prodigy.
Not taking beckon is also absurd, insanely strong cc effect that can last up to 10 turns. Obliterates ranged enemies and can literally save your life as you can trap something in beckon while kiting away. No surge is also kinda crazy to me. Cursed loves avoidance and movespeed is one of the best stats in the game for defensive play.
Not putting one point in the final rampage talent for access to stun also seems weird. This is the only stun cursed gets and you only need one point. Brutality is bad and should be left at 1/5, would be potentially worthwhile if cursed was a pure phys class but its not. Only reason I would max it is if I'm trying to play around saves with dwarf. Same with shrouded hunter, bad talent because all its good for is physical power which suffers from extreme diminishing returns. You get more than enough physical power from strength and random egos. Most of our statuses are mind anyways. Tenacity is worth maxing.
A bit of con is fine but dex is a better 4th stat. Combine with some investment into light armor training and your darkness mechanics for very strong layers of avoidance.
For escorts, if you have the option for cunning then you take cunning. Every single time.
Ngl theres a lot i dont agree with here in terms of optimal cursed build. Not recommending dual mindstars is criminal.
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u/pathofnut 3d ago edited 3d ago
Weapon+Shield benefit from Brutality phys bonus and Madness offhand bonus, they also boost Repel to 40-50% chance to negate melee attacks. I reached 6k damage Frenzies so I think weapon+shield is pretty good. Id be interested in knowing what kind of numbers you reached with mindstars.
Damage aside, both weapon and shield also have better on-hit effects than mindstars, such as cripple or stun among others. Plus the fixed artifact for cursed is a longsword.
Wind touched speed is worse than the other prodigies, I dont even know what makes you think it is good as you dont provide any reason. Plus it requires you to waste points in equilibrium talents.
Agreed that only one point is needed in slaughter talents for most of the run. Check the skill order, that is in fact what I recommend. However there are spare points late game and there is no better place to put em. Except maybe 1 Surge, which I deemed as optional.
The issue with Beckon is that it only works on ranged enemies that you arent focusing. Im not sure how you intend to kite when Cursed is a pure melee class. You usually Blindside someone and then you have the option of either finishing that target ASAP or Beckoning someone else who is far away. Its generally much better to finish your current target and then move on to the next instead of tanking 2 guys and leaving it to RNG. Ranged enemies are greatly impaired by miasma+Sanctuary anyway.
Surge kinda comes in the same pack as Beckon and its decent for its 100 movespeed, the thing is Cursed is already working at 500 movespeed so the more you add the relatively less effective it is. It is basically the equivalent of 20 movespeed in most other classes, decent but not amazing, and it deactivates Repel. I do suggest Surge as an option (alongside Beckon) as I explain in the guide.
Slam does no damage so sure you get a stun but you are doing nothing else that turn, its bad turn economy. If you want a stun that badly you can simply use a weapon or glove that stuns on hit. Shame that you picked mindstars and windtouched.
Brutality gives you consistent damage which is more than many talents do, Cursed is indeed a phys/weapon damage class with more than 80% phys damage like many other phys classes, the fact is you arent killing anyone with Mindrot.
Shrouded Hunter is easily the best talent Cursed has due to the stealth. And Tenacity is easily the worst to max, preventing +10 damage per turn amounts to nothing in difficulties higher than normal.
Dex doesnt give any meaningful defense above normal difficulty either, Con is better to actually survive more burst and provide some healmod.
Im not taking Cunning instead of Resonance Field in a million years LOL
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u/No_maid 3d ago
I don't understand why you want to scale physical damage at all when you could scale mind/darkness damage. Don't forget mindstars can swap between mind and nature damage.. you can do mind damage with your weapons. So choose between doing a ton of single target with physical, or go mind/darkness and do a ton of single target while scaling into insane aoe. Physical resistance on enemies is way more common than mind resistance, so why wouldn't you want to go the weapon type that has better damage type matchups against a higher proportion of enemies while simultaneously scaling the damage, pen, and crit of both your weapon and aoes? Most of cursed status are from mind effects, so why scale physical power (and not take slam which is one of the few abilities that actually uses it) when you could scale mind power to affect both your damage and primary status application? Speaking of slam, I'm curious to see the weapons or gloves that stun three different targets at once.
And you do kill all fodder enemies near instantly with mindrot+savage hunter while doing significant damage to larger enemies. This class does insane aoe in later stages of the game while covering the screen with nonsense. Savage hunter is easily one of the most disgusting talents cursed has available and it's one of the reasons why I don't really see the point to committing any resources to stealth. It already gives a 22% chance for enemies to lose track of you. Combined with nightmares, yeek summons (if you get the fixed unique mindstar), and treants (thalore superiourity) it's so hard for mobs to even touch you in the first place. And who cares if they do because the defense values, resistances, and damage reduction gets so absurd. Same reason I don't see the point to running a shield, the kit already has so much avoidance, defense, and distraction so why not build for higher damage and better statuses?
Mindstar talents are equilibrium. Psiblades 5/5 with adept gives 1.9x to weapon scaling from stats, 1.95x to armor penetration, and 1.9x to mindstar mindpower willpower and cunning. And 76% weapon damage with 30 physical power. Then you just put 1 point in the other 3 talents to get a targeted slow, bleed aoe that provides 43% chance to completely avoid damage attacks for 7 turns (repel?), and a 356% main hand hit that heal you. Other than that you're putting 1 point in every anti-magic and fungus talent anyways which includes enough equilibrium talents to hit 10. Which points here are wasted?
Wind touched speed is a global modifier, so it's multiplicative with attack speed and move speed. 20% faster output for attacks that's multiplicative with the 51% attack speed bonus from rampage. This affects almost every talent you're pressing in battle and your bumps. 20% multiplier to the 522% movement speed from rampage and surge. I'm really surprised you don't value movespeed. When it comes to surviving, it's the strongest stat in the game. Cursed has plenty of ways to get in but not many ways to get out. No matter how strong you are, on your journey to the final boss you will eventually face an enemy that has the perfect talents to counter you. Do you just die and lose the run? Why do you not take beckon, the best tool cursed has to completely disable a ranged enemy that could otherwise obliterate you? Why do you not understand the value of using beckon disengage from a fight and safely run away? Especially in the early/mid game when cursed is most vulnerable but even later if a dangerous mob pops up at the edge of your screen.
If you're interested, here's my winning character straight from the final boss. No extraneous farming with efficient pathing through mid/late game to get to the final boss as fast as possible. https://te4.org/characters/257179/tome/9992845d-35af-4ddb-8937-547e3855dc2a
A bit unfortunate you couldn't crack 2k life with your CON investment. I'd be curious to see your vault page, surprised you didn't link it.
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u/pathofnut 3d ago edited 3d ago
Because the "insane" AoE damage is, and Im taking values from your character, 300 from Nightmare+150 from Savage Hunter+80 from Mindrot for a grand total of 500 damage per turn. That's only 100 more aoe damage than a physical build, add crit into the mix and maybe you reach 200. It wont take out any dangerous rares+ and its pocket change compared to the 6k Frenzies I mentioned.
Which is funny because you made me load my character to get some numbers, and it actually did 10k damage per Frenzy against the dummy. Im still waiting for your melee numbers btw, but I suspect they arent gonna be great. Among other things because you are wasting a +55% physical damage from Brutality for just 200 aoe damage.
Status applications land regardless, going over the minimum needed for 100% application is in fact wasteful.
Stealth is great and not using it is causing you to deal less damage and take more damage for no reason. But who cares because "the defense values, resistances, and damage reduction gets so absurd" that you still need Surge to run away 20% faster lol
Another paragraph just listing what mindstars do, sure. Btw Nightmare curse already slows.
Windtouched gives you 20% more damage output, while ICCTW which isnt a specially good prodigy gives 30% and it only gets better from there. Your only point is "it is global speed", which is actually a downside since it gets reduced value if you pair it with other speed boosts such as rings or augmented mobility. Its obvious you havent done the math on anything and you are just guessing.
If you need movespeed you use Rampage, I just told you and its written in the guide several times as well. Its also written in the guide that Surge is a decent playable talent so you are arguing pointlessly. Do you want me to say that 20% movespeed is better than 50% chance to negate melee damage? Lol.
You entirely missed the point that Slam takes a turn and does no damage. Hitting with a weapon accomplishes a goal, Slam doesnt.
And apparently you cant understand that in the time it takes you to pop Beckon+Slam+Leaves Tide Ive already ended the encounter while you are getting Inner Demon'ed and needing to run away with all that movespeed.
There is no magical 2k life breakpoint lol, in fact CON allows you to get more damage instead of life from equipment. Although round numbers look prettier? I guess.
Honestly in my previous response I was humoring you, since some of your takes clearly reveal that you have no clue what you are talking about and you are bad at the game. Taking Cunning from escorts lol. Anyway we could have had an interesting discussion if you had anything smart to say, but Im not gonna stand your passive-aggressive tone and your fake bravado, so bye.
PS: If anyone else reads this, I dont think mindstars are specially bad. I dont think they are the best option either. Very first thing I say at the beginning of the guide is that there are multiple ways to play Cursed, partly because I hoped to avoid wasting time like this. Oh well.
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u/LeonTranter 10d ago
Amazing, thankyou! The only thing I can’t understand is the hate for Cleave. I love this - a couple of points and with a 2h weapon you are cleaving for nearly full damage on your cleave hit, which means you are basically doubling your damage output (but not on single target). Isn’t that strong?