Leisureforce (Day 158)

I think maybe I underestimated Titan Quest. After playing through the base game with a Summoner, I was left with somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth. I felt weak and the combat felt clunky. The difficulty was insanely unbalanced. Act 2 was a breeze while Act 3 was a nightmare. I'd allocated my stats in a way during Act 2 that left no room for defenses because of how easily I was progressing. In Act 3 I got crit repeatedly and died easily.

I'm playing through again a second time with a different class combo and although a lot of those problems still exist, I am better able to prepare for them. I'm taking the opportunity during the lull in Act 2 to beef up my defenses. I'm also specializing much more. I already have two or three skills completely maxed out at level 18, whereas I didn't have a single skill maxed on the Summoner at level 30. As a result, I feel much more powerful. I think part of that is just selecting a much better build.

In my first playthrough, I combined Nature and Earth to make a Summoner and I pumped points into Dire Wolves, Sylvan Nymph, Regrowth, and the tanky Core Dweller. Because I spread my points so thin, however, none of these summoned allies were very strong. The Core Dweller in particular (which I had about five points in) would die almost immediately. It would have gone much more smoothly if I had decided to concentrate on leveling up one pet at a time. Focusing on the Core Dweller would have made things a lot easier since it has the ability to attract the attention of enemies and keep them off of me.

This time I combined Spirit and Dream to make a Diviner. It sounds like a spellcaster, and I think it can be depending on your build path. In my case, however, I went with more of a melee fighter. I immediately maxed out Life Drain by level 5, giving me a powerful early nuke that restores a huge amount of my health. After acquiring the Dream mastery, I made a beeline for Phantom Strike and the upgrade Dream Stealer. This gives me a long cooldown gap closer that puts me into stealth and deals massive AoE damage upon arrival. It also stuns! By investing so many points into it early on, I'm doing massive amounts of damage. My highest crit was something like 730--at level 18! The highest damage I'd ever dealt on my Summoner was something like 300, and that was by level 30.

It seems as if the game very much rewards thoughtful planning of builds--but by the same token harshly punishes distributing points willy-nilly. It wouldn't be that much of an issue, but refunding points eventually becomes very expensive. On my Summoner, refunding a single point would cost 45,000 gold, and that adds up fast.

Still, I'm having a lot more fun this time around. Before I just wanted to get the game over with, but this time I'm actually looking forward to see how my build evolves. It's not a perfect game by any means but it's a lot better than I thought.