Another Torchlight Update

I just got out of the game after playing for I think four hours.  The new build seems to be going well.  At level 16, I seem to have roughly 25% crit when Charged, with a theoretical max base crit damage of around 460.

My initial theory that it isn't necessary to stack Strength for the Outlander was apparently correct; it's a shame I didn't listen to my instincts before trashing two previous characters, but oh well.  Sometimes I have to learn the hard way.  You will need *some* strength, however, as occasionally you'll find the odd piece which you'll want to put on, which has Strength requirements.  I haven't needed more than 20 base Str so far, though; and I get a few more points from gear.

Torchlight's mechanics are deeply strange, compared to what some of us might be used to.  Dex doesn't give any base damage to Outlanders at all, even though it's one of our two main stats, with the other being Vitality.  (Stamina in WoWspeak, although apparently Vitality here adds armor as well)

The way we get base damage in TL2, seems to be primarily from the base our weapon does, and from the Charge bar.  The Charge bar seems to work something like the Rage meter from WoW, except it charges depending on when we hit something, rather than when we are hit.  As it goes up, my damage and crit rate start going up with it.  I only have around 10-12% base crit, but when I'm fully charged, I'm at around 25% or so.

The major downside with this game, as mentioned previously, is the targetting system.  The main reason why I've had to stop playing today, is because I started getting symptoms vaguely reminiscent of repetitive strain injury in my mouse hand and arm.  I don't know whether Runic could manage it in a future patch, but if they could, a targetting system similar to that of WoW would be greatly appreciated.

By flickering Torchlight

So it seems that I now have the opportunity for a rebirth, of sorts.  Two days ago I purchased Torchlight 2 via Steam, and perhaps four days before that, the original Torchlight.

I will admit that these games certainly do not have anything like the depth of WoW.  The lack of targetting in particular makes them somewhat tricky to play, as well; but that can be overcome.

It seems that the same people who developed WoWHead, have put together an Armory type site for Torchlight 2, complete with the usual talent calculator.  After discovering it, I put together an experimental level 100 spec to use, and I'm going to be slowly implementing it.  I've become a fan of the shotgonne, primarily because of the amount of utility it offers.

You might think that that build looks terribly hamstrung, but when I first got the game, the class I initially tried was an Engineer.  I was horrified to spend the next five levels running around mindlessly one-shotting everything that moved, even on Normal difficulty, before I finally deleted the character due to boredom.  The worst thing about it was, that at level five I was still one shotting mobs, and taking no real damage whatsoever, with the same wrench I'd started the game with.

So my intent has been to create something which is not overpowered, but is actually rewarding and challenging to play.  The shotgonne can still be powerful enough as an offensive weapon, but I find what makes it really enjoyable, is the added knockback, and the stuns and blinding which is available from the specialisation.  I was always a fan of offtanking and slows/stuns/control oriented mechanics within WoW, so I think this build is going to be a lot of fun to play.