Breakdown of Nature Magic Specialization and builds in Dungeon Siege 2

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[@NinjaSushi2]

Thank you for the video and the b-roll food. I'm going to clean my fish tank while listening to your good advice.

[@DeityDiz93]

Hey there, as an avid player of Dungeon Siege 2 since childhood, I can give a bit more insight into things mechanically that you didn't mention here and some super fun insights.
With powers, you said that the best power for damage is Icicle Blast, and while this is sort of true with the recharge rate, it's actually the power "Circle of Frost" that does the most damage. However, none of the Nature Magic's powers are all that good for the sake of dealing damage, and one trick you mention in your beginner's guide was using codes to summon items for use. I bring this up because in the interest of using exploits, Nature Mages (and by proxy, Rangers [and uselessly, Melee]) can use to gain access to Combat Magic skill with zero prior spell investment. This comes with using the Energy Orb power from the Combat Magic tree, which you can have at the start by being an elf, or investing one Skill level into. I prefer elf because the immediate access in Single Player gives you the chance to use it in the tutorial to set the stage for as many early gains as possible to give you access to the best of the Combat Mage's perks for a Nature Mage build. Later, it's entirely easy to recharge Energy Orb to full while it's still up, then use Provoke and Aether Blast.
This combine with what you already mentioned in Grasping Vines and Ripple, makes it so your Nature Mage doesn't have to focus on three combat perks that lead into useless Ice magic which, aside from one spell in Frost Beam as you said in the video, is not worth the investment given how many enemies either resist Ice Magic, or are outright immune to it. You lacked the term in the video at 6:42 as type GV and Ripple are, and if you look in your Inventory's "Combat Stats" part, there is Resistances (more) which outlines what those spells are, which is Non-elemental Damage (Resistance in this case, but the Bestiary for ANY "Forest Va'arth enemy type says "Weak to Non-elemental Magic" which is exactly what GV and Ripple do). The great thing about these spells is nothing in the game resists or is immune to their damage, and Grasping Vine's immobility is one of the best spell tools in the game, albeit glitchy in the expansion as some enemies move while 'immobilized'.
The point of the Energy Orb power trick to level Combat Magic with Nature Magic skill growth, much like you would with Fist of Stone and Blood Assassin, is that you get a really powerful mage with access to Corpse Transmutation AND Repulsion with it's insane +20% more armor (great with your Chant of Stone idea!), Curses, and Quickened Casting/Summon Alacrity. Ignoring any investment in Healing Skills, Ice Magic, and somewhat to Embrace and Wrath spell (more on that in a bit), you can focus on the most important perk a Nature Mage has, which coincidently, is the best for Combat Mages too, but that perk is Natural Bond. With just 16 points invested you get not only early access to colossal mana potion which you can use to Save/Reset grind for, but with skill bonus items, you can reach the true cap beyond the initial 20 point cap for -60% of ALL spells, which is 30 points for a total of -66% of ALL spells, and that fully includes Combat Magic; insanely good to get Natural Bond fully maxed for ANY mage. Oh, and with just 20% Mana Steal, you NEVER run out of Mana, and can ignore Aquatic Embrace for Wrath of Magic AND any reliance on Greater Chant of Casting, Ice Elemental pets, and any mana potions for other utility things such as chants like Scholar or Prosperity and emergency health potions.
The next part is of a build preference that you do not mention once in the video, and that is the summon focused build. I've used this build to solo the entire game from start to end as one Nature Mage, and that is a full-on investment into Summon Bond, then Summon Fortitude, then Summon Alacrity, the Summon Might. Saving gold, and room in your inventory over the course of the game for two spell books, one for your mains, the other for your buffs for you and your creature specifically, and to switch between them with boosts to Enveloping Embrace/Feral Wrath at it's 30 point cap, then to ones for summon skills, you get to have access to fully invested buffs AND summoned creatures! Combine this with the Greater Chant of Magic Skill for a +3 in every Magic Skill, you can reach the max level of buff for your character and save on skill somewhat. With that, you buff yourself, then summon a fully buffed 30 skilled up full max intelligence'd BEAST, then back it with it's own buffs with Earthen/Spirit Embrace (at 30 Skill, it's boost is 26% max Health/Use Spirit Embrace for Summon Scorpions for Magic Resistance) and Wrath of the Fallen/Ice (Fallen for Forest Golem/Bracken, Ice for all else since Life Steal doesn't work sadly), then back your good stuff. The best part? With Summon Bond at 30 skill, that's 73% of ALL DAMAGE transferred from you to your creature, and your creature combined with a maxed Earthen Embrace buff on your creature, it's 136% bonus Health for you as well as your creature.
I didn't even mention the last method I used to solo the game as a Nature Mage, it was using Legendary tier enchantable equipment. In your beginners guide you mention the fact that the game only factors in one character who has the highest bonus to Chance to find Magic Items, and using legendary tier silver (the earliest available in the stop) I buy 8 rings, and 2 amulets. On 4 rings and 1 amulet, nothing but eight Prismatic Bauble to get 120% chance to find Magic Items combine with 4 rings and the amulet to get 600% chance to find magic items. Now knowing your method that unique/set items do not drop more than twice per game session, I can use this six hundred normally while playing, and equip magic finding great beyond that + with the Great Chant of Prosperity (700%+ chance at this point) when opening any big chests for all the good items in the game. Oh, for the other 4 rings and amulet, I use 4 Spectral Dusts, and 4 Gral Eye's to make +56 Intelligent items, making for +280 Intel stats in total, which is more than enough to reach the "You have maximized this spell's power" cap. Combine THIS with the 30 Skill Cap above, and you get summons with typically 3 to 5k+ Health, which is now an Health bar you share as 73% at max of all damage you take goes to your creature, which means as long as your Summon Creature's alive, which is a while given 5k+ Health usually, you become the God of Destruction, and oh, it makes Aether Blast better because at Level 3 as a power, it's 730.6% multiplied damage of that 5k, which is **42,530 DAMAGE**.
I could go on more, like how the Forest Golem can reach "211% of Physical Damage Reflected to Enemy" with Wrath of the Fallen, AND that you can combine that with the Curse "Punishing Fire" for essentially "Returns 200% of Melee and Ranged Damaged Dealt" and how that stacks with the former , or how the Summon Paragon Scorpion reaches the near 80% cap of Magic Resistance with Spirit Embrace and is night totally Immune to most all forms of magic with the Curse "Steal Magic" in effect, but I hope that just further highlights my point that this game's got so much depth to it, even today.
I enjoy this game greatly, thank you very much for covering it. I hope what I gave you here can help others understand the deeper fun mechanics of this game to go absolutely ham with. This game is still wonderful to this day to play, especially with close friends in multiplayer; it's aged so well.

[@DeityDiz93]

Oh, and as a small addendum to this, the Light Naiad pet is the best healing in the game. It's native heal is insane and it's power just busted, especially over the Dark Naiad. The problem is Mana running out, but when that happens, I switch from the attack selection to just the heal selection, and that's totally valid over its attack because by itself it's not that great. It's also worth mentioning that Combat Mages kinda suck in this game because investing in elemental attacks is a huge part of the Skill trees, and aside from investing full stop into Devastation, Arcane Fury is the only reason to have a Combat Mage because Corrosive Eruption is one of the best powers in the game for crowds, but Detonation and Gathered Bolt form insane damage cores.
I mention this because in the LATE late game Elite parts of the game, using my method above, my cross-grown Nature Mage with Combat Magic growth can access not only the Combat Mage summons, but the powers and spells once you hit Nature Magic Class 86 which is for Summon Greater Forest Golem, you can invest into Combat Magic since it's max spell is 90 Which is Master Impale.

[@SeperatePiece]

@@DeityDiz93 Wow so much great info. Any recommendations for a optimal party for a mercenary mode playthrough? Preferably one that will work on the later difficulties as well.

[@DeityDiz93]

~ Part 2 ~
Generally, how I play with a full party of characters is on G key’s Party Order: Rampage with Attack Automation: On (3) so as to free up your focus on Pausing and hotkey managing, and the game lets you pick the targets you want manually even with automation on which is useful for projectile/magic characters who can kite melee enemies. This lets you focus on the character you have selected only, and the rest of the party won’t just stand around brain-dead waiting for you to click the attack button for them. Defend Automation is always: Off, due to your character switching their priority to the things that just hit them; you don’t want this as when surrounded by a swarm of enemies, they might sit there not attacking at ALL due to the switched priorities which always resets attack animations(3); however, (4.6) will be the only thing you can this on for (even then it’s optional). Make use of the default Space key for Pause. It’ll help to feel out situations before running into a fight that leads to unconsciousness. Pausing helps make you aware of your surroundings, think things over, analysis the map, helps you understand what makes the game tick, manage potions, and learn what to focus down w/ Mirror mode and when. Pause can be seen as an anti-reckless tool, get used to using it. G key + Attack Automation/(4.6) open the path for X or R key canceling (2) as shown here ruclips.net/video/Hh5e9UPF-00/видео.html BUT keeping in mind IMBA = Imbalanced. This can be seen as a cheesy/cheap/cheaty exploitation of game mechanics, but for some this exploit can be used as a clever way to get around over-investing into Skills and makes the game more involved and engaging for a player, as there’s actually skill in timing the X key canceling, BUT DO NOTE, X-cancelling affects the entire party (4.6) it’s way less cheap. A small note, Party Order: Defend makes party members act as though a summon creature would and is only useful with Attack Automation: On and using team (4.4) to get pets to act with a Summoned Creature, but this is niche role(2). Lastly, setting the Spell Book tab to O just lines up better with Inventory (default key, I) and Specialties (default key, P), so make sure those keys are all on the same row.
Now, to finally answer the question, The best team comps of (4) are ones that make sense together, and there are 6 optimal party builds to consider. When building the most optimal team that will crush later difficulties by the time Mercenary ends, it’s important to understand the philosophy of role fulfillment, and min-maxing, and to see this, we will break the subsections of (4) into parts starting with:
(4.1): The 4 main classes w/ two pets. The appeal of this core is to cover pretty much all the variety of the game to see all of the build recommendations in action, while also being one of the very best showcase of abilities. This is not the best team composition to answer the question with, but it IS the best way to realize the best way to answer this question for you as a player. Here they are in order of recommended obtaining:
- The pet you pick WILL determine what your build will look like for the Nature Mage and what Melee build you use. The mage will use healing Skills or Fist of Stone Skills-- Light Naiad or Mythrilhorn, those are your picks. If you take the Light Naiad, it’s ability to be an adult is withheld in the early game to not reach absurd levels, but it’ll still be the best healer in the game despite this, so set aside enough colossal Mana potions and Mage Armor in Donkey Storage (17) for ‘em OR get the Mythrilhorn and set nothing but Fighter Armor aside from it. You’d choose the Mythrilhorn if you find you need to give a defensive partner to your fighter, and unlike the Naiad, can be gotten sooner and doesn’t struggle with Mana maintenance. Between the two take the Naiad, it's recommended because the Nature Magic will have a hard time being a good enough healer and if they are going to be the healer this forces the Ranged character to invest 16 into survival first to get Colossal health potions to make up for the lack of healing.
- The main character you create will be an Elf and focus on Nature Magic w/ Combat Magic leveled via the Power gained by being an Elf, Energy Orb, This will be their ONLY power used until the premiere attack spell, Grasping Vines, is obtained which lets Energy Orb reaches near instant recharge from attacks. This party member will use only Intelligence boosting items(16) from the first Legendary tier enchantable items list(15) to let each spell they will use be at their max (12.1) and when you have max Intelligence you can invest into the Skill "Chant of Stone". Summon Creatures who are used for the build is Forest Golem with max investment from Summoned Bond and Fortitude and Summon Scorpion for a summon capable of handling dangerous magic casters like Mimics (you can use the Ketral/Rhinock between those two). The Power that will be next used needs to have enough Skill points set aside for its Level 3 form, and that power is Aether Blast; and, when at Level 3 and is fully recharged before the end of Energy Orb’s duration, is useful because it lets your summons do an absurd level of damage due to the power scaling off the Summon Creature’s max health, so, Earthen Embrace is applied exclusively to any summon, and then Wrath of the Fallen for the Forest Golem and Spirit Embrace for the Scorpion. If you have no healer like the Light Naiad pet, this mage will have to fill that role and thus no Chant of Stone can be used, instead you'll likely want the skill of "Healing Hands".
- Melee role is filled by Eva or Yoren and included as a either a shield building tank or a dual-wielding DPS character. You will take a shield wielding Melee if you pick the Light Naiad, and thus you will invest fully into Barricade first and this build will ignore Rebuke completely in favor of your level 3 powers of choice, which will be Brutal Attack, Provoke, Stone Form, and Eruption. Provoke is taken to draw aggression, and Eruption is used with Provoke here to give you high damage and a long stun, and Stone Form is taken to help the team and Brutal Attack is always useful to slam a single dangerous foe and bosses. The tank will be using the enhancement Defender to boost armor to absurdly high levels along with the help of Reinforced Armor, so this character will always be Eva because extra control over the many skill points that are needed. Now, you will take dual-wielder as Yoren if you pick Mythrilhorn as your pet, thus you will apply the shield wielding idea and focus the skills on getting around biggest weakness the duel wielders have-- how much damage they take. Thus you will max Reinforced Armor and Chant of Stone because this will go amazingly with the Mythrilhorn's armor boosting Emanation. The power of choice will be primarily level 3 Stone Form as the sole power with as much Intelligence from enchanted accessories and a spell book as will allow (15)(16). This dual wield build only needs 44 skill points to be at what it needs, and even without any attacking powers, you will always have respectable attack damage and you'll have plenty of extra skills after the 44 to ensure you can damage even better.
- Next up, our Ranger, who is included to the party as Vix (earliest and best for Finding Magic Items), Amren (this elf can copy hybrid main character’s approach of using the Energy Orb method to level Combat Magic instead of with enhancements), or Ressa (best Blood Assassin). Any Ranger on this party is throwing weapon characters and THE “Find Magic Items” build for the party, so they are going to be way weaker than the rest of the party in terms of damage, so to offset this, we invest into passive DPS in the Skills Bleed/Shred Blood Skills and the skill "Improved Weapon Enhancements" with the enhancement Repulsion to help the armors improve a LOT. However, we will skip any Improved Weapon Enhancements in favor of Survival to get Colossal health potions in the absence of any Light Naiad.
-Lastly, the Combat Mage, who is played by Finala or Celab’hel. This character unfortunately is recommended for Elite difficulty or not at all and is brought on as a supplement with focus on being pure Curse support to free up the hybrid mage from doing it to give them more skills; and invests heavily into enhancement Armor bonus from Repulsion and Corpse Transmutation with as much armor as this character can slot on. This build features Corrosive Eruption as the power, used to erase blobs of enemy mobs; thus, the damaging spells are focused on being multi-element so as to use the best spells (12.2) and get around enemies that heal off some elements.
The hybrid Nature Mage to covers for a Combat Mage’s role of curse setter until the Combat Mage is obtained; so, getting a Light Naiad and Combat frees up the Nature Mage having to heal and curse, and thus a Skill reset person can allow you to focus on what makes this build amazing, creating a absurdly strong caster with an amazing summon creature. The Melee humanoid character is aided well by the either pet with both builds having good use of Stone Form to support the team, and the only thing that will matter is that there is some kind of provoke on the team, be it this Melee character, or the Mythrilhorn. The Ranged character is used to Find Magic Items often and uses the method recommended by you of keeping your saved game on and not quitting because no set or unique item drops again until you save and quit to main menu. And the cherry on top is the pet, the Light Naid who’s heal will keep this party very much alive with not much need for it to do damage, or the Mythrilhorn which makes damage not as big of a problem.

[@DeityDiz93]

~ Part 3 ~
(4.2): One Buffing focused hybrid Nature Mage with a team of Melees/Rangers offers a unique, but uniform style of play centered around one Skill: Dodge. This build avoids the (12.1) recommendation for Wind Embrace and Wrath of the Bear; and, provided you remove Wrath of the Bear on your mage for Spirit Embrace for themselves and build them as a hybrid Nature Mage getting Combat Magic levels to max out the two curses you will want, Blind and Steal Magic, this allows the team to shine as THE team that can and will ignore all physical damage sources and use Steal Magic to shut down magic damage. The draw of this team is Dodge for everyone and Critical Hits for all but the Nature Mage. Now how do you build the Melee characters? Generally you want to stick with only Overbear Melee characters and Crossbows using characters. Now, I know you’re thinking about (14) where I made you think to say “But didn’t you say overbear sucks?” Yes, it does normally, but this time I recommend it for access to a power you will want: War Cry. The benefit of this power a much needed boon for one reason: it guarantees critical hits. War Cry not only reduces Armor, but guarantees crits for the next few hits which Rangers capitalize on very well; totally worth it for this style of play which is supported by Wrath of the Bear, and Ranged characters can hit those guaranteed critical hits amazingly efficiently.
- The main character is an Elf/Dryad Nature Mage who's main mission is to get the curse "Blind" says "You have maximized this spell's power". Blind as a curse is necessary for this team as it allows the party extra chance to dodge attacks! You can use Lothar instead of your main character, but the downside of using Lothar on two extra skill points and the chance at getting one Ranged level for dodge is slower. However, this hybrid cannot invest into summoning and will need Encase to be used over Grasping Vines as the primary attacking spell (though you can still use Grasping to hold War Cried foes in place), as skill points are demanded to be taken by Dodge, Natural Bond first. The power of choice needs to be Invulnerability at Lv. 3, and then having to focus on buffing, healing, and cursing? Yeah, this hybrid will be overall less effective, powerful, and useful as a sole party member compared to the ideal build. Would I still recommend a hybrid? Yes, because the pay off in the late game is vast and amazing, not having some of what the hybrid style known for being great is fine because this takes the hybrid in an angle that supports the team in a very necessary way. The temptation to get a Light Naiad is there, but sadly not as viable to this team because healing is not as needed, health potions are, so for some that can be a huge downside due to a limited amount of those potions at bushes. That said, your Find Magic Items Ranged character needs you to have 16 in Survival for Colossal health potions ASAP, so make this Vix because Deru's going to lose two skill points due to being a Dryad, and the hybrid needs Colossal health potions to pick up the slack of not being a great healer until later and to survive better until Dodge is maxed after Natural Bond.
- The weapons of choice will have to be two-handed ones in total contrast to (14). Skill investment is a full 20 into Dodge and then fully into Critical Strike, then enough to power War Cry to Level 3 ASAP, then Deadly Strike is invested into fully. This makes the Nature Mage’s buffs of choice, Wind Embrace and Wrath of the Bear, downright ridiculous in terms of damage, and finally justifies having a two-handed character. Keep in mind you can use www.cheatsguru.com/pc/dungeon_siege_ii/cheats/2138714.htm as a method of equipping a two-handed weapon AND a shield, but doing this keep in mind to make sure to unequip after quitting the game because if you use this glitch the items CAN disappear upon loading the game, so please be careful not to delete the items in your hand by mistake. The Melee characters will not really matter as any recitable character works, and you can even make main character a Melee user if you (if so, play a dwarf or dryad) if you choose Lothar to be the hybrid. You can focus Mana Stike enhancement with any Melee.
- For any Ranged character, the only necessary recommendation for a needed character choice is Vix or a human main character this time to build this Ranged character as a Find Magic Items character as seen in (4.1) (16). The big difference is you will focus this ranged build as a throwing weapon character with investment into Critical Shot + Ricochet but NEVER Mortal Wound, since that only works on bows and not throwing weapons. This means not only is Wrath of the Bear the only way to get extra crit damage, but it means the only skill you need to invest in after those are Quick Draw and/or Survival afterwards, so this build skips out on Passive Damage AND Blood Assassin Skills entirely with Dodge instead. There is a huge choice however you have to make early on and that’s whether or not to nurture Blood Assassin Skill growth passively or not. The issue is this, if you WANT the passive damage method later into the game, you should probably level Vix to get Blood Assassin skills for use later. The issue is there will be NO skill investment into Blood Assassin until way late into maybe Veteran. This would make the issues of being the weakest link way worse because of already being the Find Magic Items character. I would make any of your other Ranged focused on their main skill sets after Vix and also make them use Crossbows because those characters CAN use Mortal Wound which you will want. Try also to avoid making your Elite character pick Ressa because by the time you get her in Elite, the game is literally almost over, and so she becomes not worth getting by that point in the game.
- For the next pet, always add a Scorpion Queen as the fourth wheel to the Mercenary mode core of one Mage, one Melee, and one Ranger. This can mean having a full party by the time you leave the first hub town for Act 2 or three if you're waiting to get Ressa because you have the Scorpion as your Ranger at the moment. Technically, you can replace the Scorpion for Ressa the expansion and that is done to prevent Ressa from coming to late in Veteran or Elite. However, no matter what you do, it's inclusion is a necessary one in the end due to its Emanation, which when got, boosts Dodge’s chances back up to nearly what it once was before its nerf from the original game, so the adult Scorpion Queen is a must have to make the most out of the Dodge, Wind Embrace, and Blind strategy because the more % you have to Dodge the better. Since every humanoid character is going to focus on Dodge, first, having an Adult of this is important, but hilariously enough, the Scopion's bad at making use out of its own Emanation for itself, so the recommended build is to feed it nothing but Ranger Armor because it's going to need defense over damage to provide it's boost for as long as possible.
- In the expansion in Mercenary, nab a Kohl Beast as this pet will be included as soon as your party begins to invest in critical hits, which is usually done by the start of the next difficulty of Veteran. Thus, you will feed this pet nothing but Fighter Weapons to focus on what it's good at on it's own, raw damage output. Once in Veteran and getting the Inn’s party expansion, you will have access to it's amazing Emanation boost which gives the party a critical hit rate and damage bonus! Critical hits no longer are a coin flip under this Emanation and almost 100% guaranteed if you boost the critical hit chance skills to 30 with skill boosting items. With Wrath of the Bear and a full 30 in the critical hit damage boosting skills, you will hit any major scuffle in the game with amazing damage. This is all made totally insane by the Kohl Beast’s Emanation with the only downside being its difficulties in giving its Emanation to the Rangers on the team since they may be outside of its range, so keep the party together as much as you can, but Melee fighters will always have access to this Emanation.
This play-through is one with many approaches that are opened up vastly by (18) to just straight up ignoring damage from any Melee or Ranged sources. I did not mention this in the build because it might be overkill, but you can achieve total immunity from attack using a Melee wielder holding a shield with max in Barricade for this build; and, you can make this build a Survival build too. I didn't bring it up in the notes because the best way to do that would be on Multiplayer, where the game hands you five levels and disciplines at the start, meaning just by playing a Elf/Dwarf Melee main character, you pick Ranged and then make a Melee/Fist of Stone build that takes the burden off Lothar being the hybrid while using Barricade to achieve total physical damage immunity via blocking attack. If you go with an Elf with this build, you can spec into the four skill trees completely by using Energy Orb to level C. Magic to do curses & and amazingly use Corpse Shield w/ Repulsion enhancement combo. Do not forget to tag any mages you fight with Steal Magic because this curse is kind of your only answer to magic attacks as this team composition lacks a lot of Magic Resistance w/o items. The best way around this I find is to take any tablets from the expansion and use it to get the spell book from the guy because the Traveler's Handbook provides some very useful magic resistance for your Melee and Ranged characters. Of note, your hybrid Nature Mage likely won't have much time to invest into Summon Creatures as you need 16 Natural Bond, max Dodge, max Debilitation, and then lots of buffing and healing investment after all that. You can have summons and they will help, but they will never be as good as in other builds, not to mention you should be using Encase over Grasping Vines.

[@DeityDiz93]

~ Part 4 ~
(4.3): A Provoke power focused team of 1 Melee tank, 1 Mythrilhorn pet, and 1 Nature Mage (preferably a healer) with a Summon Creature tank and Summon Provoke. The Nature Mage absolutely can be a hybrid type in the absence of a Combat Mage you decide to do this because this three-party idea is based on one allowing the fourth, fifth, and sixth party member shine because due to the three here being used to keep enemy attention always away from those other members. Three other party slots who are allowed to be a little bit squishy and glass-canon like because of all the aggression drawn by the Melee, Myhrilhorn, and Nature Mage’s Summon.
- The Nature Mage build this time will be from Lothar, a big twist, because a Nature Mage play-through will purely focus on healing, a tanky over damaging summon, and full Arcane Fury investment + Aether Blast. You can substitute the strategy for Lv. 3 Stone Form + Summon Provoke power combo which is supplemented very well by Soul of Protection which can instantly recharge those powers; doing this choice over Aether Blast will replace the usual Blood Assassin’s Repulsion enhancement from the hybrid build for Defender. Unlike the other builds, this build does not use Summon Bond because you want your creature to not take any additional sources of damage from the character, and luckily the summon stays even when knocked unconscious so that is a great boon for an extended damage dealer.
- Now we have the Melee Provoke build of the team, which this time will be your main character, which will be a dwarf Melee build premieres Brilliance + Rebuke user with Survival from Ranged to supplement elemental survivability. Rebuke will demand you stay a pure Melee build so Rebuke can be the primary way to deal damage other than regular hits and powers(14). Don't use Dodge as it will actually interfere with Rebuke, so don’t get it. Unlike (4.1), the difference in skill will be vast as you will take Toughness for raw Physical Damage Resistance and Health from Fortitude over the pure armor boosting skills, making a high armor shield all you need, since this makes them good at stuff the Mythrilhorn itself can’t do. That all aside you will actually want to skip out on ANY Fist of Stone investment, so no Chant of Stone or Eruption. You will take pure Strength boosting to avoid being in the Intelligence accessories/spell book position. This is where Survival(6) will instead come in; you will have to make the dwarf's natural Survival point come into play and get to Ranged level 5 for it, because later into Mercenary is when magic starts being more dangerous(6), and to be truly a tank focused on covering for what the Mythrilhorn can't, you will need Survival, and while this can get in the way of Rebuke and new weapons, it's only by 5 levels, and that is much more forgiving than investing totally into Fist of Stone. This said, you can pick a dryad as your main character solely for their native 10% Death Resistance, which means you can hilariously take Deru as the Melee if you want because of their quicker access to Survival and completely the subversion with Lothar, but this isn’t too recommended due to the nature of Rebuke; just keep in mind Rebuke is DEPENDENT on Melee levels to deal its multiplier’s best damage, making it entirely worth your while to keep off any other skill trees and just stick to a pure Melee when going for Rebuke for as long as possible, so consider investing into survival later into the game when you need better health potions to support Fortitude.
- You can slot on a fourth character as the same Find Magic Items Ranger character as seen in (4.1) played again by Vix; and this character is the one you can make the 16 points in Survival character for those vital early Colossal Health potions, and then make your Melee character take over as the survival user later. However! This is one of few times a passive damage build is not taken, but instead a crossbow character with Mark enhancements and Execute powers can work as another alternative way around the lack of power from being a Find Magic Item character. This Mark build sports the Shockwave skill so as to mark as many enemies as possible in as short amount of time as possible. Provided you play on Rampage + Attack Automation: On, this will give incentive to play as the crossbow user to make Mark and Execute powers work at their best. The one decent thing about those powers is the ability to switch enhancements of Marks for different enhancements on the fly, so you do have a very dynamic series of powers in your reserve spell slots. The benefit of keeping the Ranger selected is that you can kite enemies who are most likely to target the Ranger who sports the least defensive armor profile, but with three eventual sources of Provoke on the team, suddenly you realize the boon of this play-style, opening up your other character like a Blood Assassin to reign in DPS in each battle at very little cost to themselves. Even if they are relegated to Find Magic Items, you are able to make effective Mark/Execute powers to get around the lack of damage, though I admit they aren't that powerful of powers overall, it's still a very effective glass cannon character saved very much by all the provokes flying around.
- A Mythrilhorn comes in as your fourth party member and is necessary for the Veteran party character getting added, it plays no different to the (4.1) build details, still just feed it nothing but Fighter Armor. Notability you are making the Mythrilhorn entirely focused on Armor% based tanking, while the regular Melee character is focusing on what the Mythrilhorn can't do. This means that in any encounter, having the Mythrilhorn stall meleeing foes is the core of it's provoke, and the strategy of the humanoid melee tank is stopping magic and ranged based foes, making your Provokes have some strategic use to them. The summon creature is going to be the raw health tank focused on being a backup to these two tanks as it's a tank that can afford to draw aggression that will kill it more than these two can!
- When beating Mercenary mode, obtain a dual-wielding Melee party member build for pure DPS with no tank supplements is the best you can do. You can actually drop the Mythrilhorn and pick up Yoren in the Mercenary mode for his chance at supplementing the lack of bulk with the ever useful Eruption power’s stun, and you can do this because otherwise you have to get Sartan in Veteran mode. The trade is of course that you can reintroduce the Mythrilhorn back in the team as soon as Veteran starts, but this is fine if you can deal with the provokes you have to keep Yoren alive and focused on as many sources of DPS as possible.
- Your Elite party member will be a Combat Mage as a mainly fire DPS Magic user with Punishing Fire curse support to free up skills for your hybrid Nature Mage. I recommend Lothar and (18) for this team because if you held off as him, you get access to Lothar as a Combat Mage by Elite who has two perks in health regeneration which really do help him stay alive better as a Combat Mage, which is highly useful. You CAN still get Finala early enough into Act 2 that it isn’t a huge deal to wait to get her. This is one of the only combat magic builds that with feature Detonation as the Level 3, don't use Death Magic skills because they, while having some great spells, were made even worse by the Expansion’s nerf of their already bad utility and power(12.2) from the base game. Punishing Fire is actually affected by Searing Flame and thus it's taken over any Ignite because while Ignite is very good, you want to focus on Devastation so as to use the other elements good spells to immune/absorbing element targets.
This temp composition is unsurprising the best crowd control of the game, and while not perfect against some bosses of the game, can be custom-built to allow viable AoE powers from the other three party slots who can shred an area with powers. I’ll be frank in saying I’m not a huge fan of Mark/Execute powers and find investing into them is kind of a hogwash use of Skills, but I will never deny the benefit of making a Ranger that can Mark more enemies than most of the base powers in the game can as being able to hit an entire group of enemies surrounding multiple spaces is great. It can be made viable here, where as going with the passive damage is just my preferred style because it takes really good advantage of Provoke’s build style by making targets bleed over time, time which Provoke makes use of well.

[@mace7077]

Hey man, glad to keep watching these! I noticed the same thing with the spells in nature magic, as the strongest ones aren't ice based, even when you dump points into arctic mastery after aquatic affinity is maxed for damage. The main purpose of ice I suppose is just like 2hand is for the melee line, to provide CC with your damage, and with decent points invested in freezing, you can lock down quite a few random mobs and even elites/mini bosses with spells like cold snap, and still deal fairly heavy damage with encase (plus a 50% slow on the affected enemy even when not frozen, which also stacks with combat magic static bolt to just have a target move in slow motion). The nature magic damage by grasping vine and ripple are just considered nature magic damage as you said, but I believe it might be referred to under Resistances because some monsters can still hit you with those abilities even though there is no resistance match for nature magic damage. I think it must be considered Non-Elemental Resistance, which you can defend against with items that add (+ magic damage resistance). I don't believe that its physical either because it isn't boosted by warcry debuff or decay armor curse. Only thing with regards to those spells is that grasping vines is the strongest spell in the game but also the slowest cast, it is about 30% slower than encase, so when you average out the damage its actually much closer than you think, that is if you've invested in arctic mastery, and when you consider that encase slows down basically all enemies, whereas grasping vines only works on trash mobs to my knowledge, not mini bosses or bosses, its not a bad source of damage overall. Also ice damage can be boosted with combat mages casting drown which also boosts their lightning damage, whereas the base magic damage cannot be boosted by any other means that I am aware of other than (+nature magic damage). Special mention also for Rune of Sacrifice which boosts ALL damage from every single source from all party members standing within the aura, only particularly useful on massive stationary boss fights like the dragon in DS2, its incredible if you time it with all other party members powers, but usually requires someone to cast invulnerability first. Thoroughly enjoyed this content, if you feel you've outlasted the life of Dungeon Siege 2 might I strongly, strongly recommend you pop into steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1165078098 and spend an evening working on integrating the community expansion project of Legendary Edition, which will unlock ALL of the maps from DS1, LOA, and some multiplayer community specific maps in the Dungeon Siege 2 Broken World engine. This way the game gains incredible replayability, and with Elys Succubus Modlet you can load into these maps with an existing party and play through each map with the same team if you don't want to continually reroll. I'd strongly recommend this for anyone playing through Dungeon Siege 2, because the maps from the first game are just so much more compelling and the story is just so good, even though the graphics are really dated. Its a much more modern experience to play these through in DS2, giving it a faster paced feel and some much needed build variety. Anyhow, a pleasure to enjoy such content, I'll be happy to check out other stuff as well for games I play, I wish you all the best in your success!

[@DaLiJeIOvoImeZauzeto]

Thanks for the breakdown of spell potency, very informative. I viewed nature magic as somewhat underwhelming, given the lack of spell source diversity and heavy reliance on summoning, which occupies half the skill tree.
I've been trying to solo DS2 campaign in legendary mod. Some enemies, mostly those using death magic and some archers, are extremely difficult, impossible even. I like that the mod keeps the mobs at my level, but some fights are just ridiculous, particularly the Vai'kesh section, some of the casters can kill me in two casts. Lack of quality loot doesn't help either... level 20 rings with 1-4 intellect *eyeroll*.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong playing a mage.

[@3phop960]

The best buff there was in original DS2 was an infused dragon scales. Having that and wrath of ancestors on a caster would be great. On top of that going back to a fast recharge power will fill up recharge quicker. Now i finally decided to try BW and found both of my characters nerfed. Every skill now has a lower value and sarcastically enough i see an overcapped 30 values barely beating my older 20 DS2 values. My investments in secondary schools look not so effective. The game used to scale with character count and i used to play solo. Now does summon blast scale enough on elite 90+ mobs? I see some hefty hp pools in this video. If they have 60k hp one would need a lot of pet hp to blast someone.

[@HuyGaming96]

Where is freeze part in this video? I dont see any enemies freezing in ice

[@joeybtheman1906]

ima fly out and LAN this with you for like a month straight. u will teach me errythang

[@blazingsword1294]

diablo II
blade and sword (best feature is combos which i miss)
dungeon siege
Fable The Lost Chapters
Eternium
dragonage origin
Spellforce
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem
Divine Divinity
torchlight II Titan Quest Anniversary
Hazen : The Dark Whispers
Shadows Heretic Kingdoms
Victor Vran - Overkill Edition
Van Helsing
silver gog game
darkstone
Warlords Battle Cry II
Heores of Annhiliated Empires