Like any RPG, The Technomancer relies heavily on avbilities and skill trees. There are essentially four trees of Technomancer abilities. The first tree can be used to augment any combat style, while the other three are specific to a certain style. I’ll put together a guide on the different combat styles later, but for now let’s focus on the different abilities at your disposal.
Technomancer Abilities
Considering this tree can be used for all combat styles, it will never be a bad idea to invest here. Especially if you like the idea of switching weapons from time to time based on what enemies you’re fighting.
There are five main skills:
Electric Arcs - Shoots two bolts of electricity towards a target. If you’ve ever wanted to be Raiden from Mortal Kombat, this is your cup of tea.
Surprise Attack - If you’re going the stealth route, this lets you do a massive sneak attack. Essential for a stealth build. Electric Weapon - Add lightning damage to your weapon, increasing the damage you do with every hit. This is a no-brainer in my book, no matter what kind of build you’re doing. Besides the fact that you do more damage, it just looks awesum pawsum. Technomancer Training - Allows you to do some fun things with gloves. Like, in terms of beating people up. Fluid Reserve - Gives you two fluid charges and lets you regenerate 0. 8/second. Again, not a bad choice for just about any build you choose to do.
From there, you start getting into the upgraded skill Technomancer abilities.
The Upgraded Electric Arcs branch leads to skills that deal with immobilizing your enemies. For example, one is a passive skill that increases the chance your arcs will immobilize that baddy by 20%. Upgraded Electric Weapon branch gives your electric weapon a better chance to stun enemies, but also passive abilities to increase fluid charges by 1 and your fluid regeneration.
Electric Fist lets you use those nifty gloves to PUNCH PEOPLE IN THE FACE WITH LIGHTNING. This branch also gives access to increasing the disruptive abilities of your attacks and causing your electric fist to weaken an enemy’s defenses temporarily. Magnetic Armor creates a shield around you to protect you from damage. The passive skills increase damage resistance and make it so enemies get knocked backwards if they touch you. Electric Storm is just what it sounds like. You zap a bunch of bad guys with electricity. Makes for a sucky day for them! You can also use the passives to increase your fluid charges and avoid getting disrupted if hit while casting a spell.
My Recommendations
If you’re going to invest heavily in the Technomancer skill tree, you basically have two routes:
1. Battlemage - Relying equally on both technomancy and melee, you’ll start by investing in Upgraded Arc > Upgraded Electric Weapon, then the passives and Magnetic Armor to protect you while you’re in the thick of things.
Even though Electric Weapon uses an entire fluid charge, the constant damage output is great no matter what weapon you’re using.
2. Storm Mage - We could just call this a Technomancer. But the idea is that you still use melee some, but you’ll constantly be zapping bad guys with electricity. For this you’d go with the left two skill trees, as they are more focused on electricity damage.
Guardian Abilities
The next set of Technomancer abilities is for the Guardian combat style. Using a mace and shield, the idea is that you can block attacks and then respond with a vengeance.
Mace Blow is just a fast mace attack. Pretty exciting! Extended Shield Block lets you block attacks and shots, plus you can parry if you time it right. Enemies get knocked backwards when parried. Shield Bash lets you smash people in the face with your shield. Who wouldn’t want to do that? In Skyrim that was the only reason I ever carried a shield. Or you can feel like these guys from 300.
Dodge is there to help make up for your lack of mobility in this style. It lets you jump whichever direction you want. Not quite a substitute for a good roll, but you take what you can get. Soldiers Training is what lets you use the mace and shield.
Once you unlock one of these skills, you open up a branch into better versions.
The Upgraded Mace Blow has lots of neat tricks. Shell gives you better defenses, or you can just invest in the passives to help you attack harder and faster. Upgraded Shield Bash increases your chance to knock over enemies. The other passives let Electric Weapon benefits transfer to your shield and allows shield bash to hit multiple enemies at once. A nice trick considering you normally don’t have as much crowd control as (say) the Warrior stance. Counterattack makes me think of Dark Souls. It basically lets you follow up a parry with a quick mace attack. The other two abilities let you attack much faster after a parry and makes your parries more difficult to disrupt. Powerful Attack reduces your enemy’s armor by 30%. That’s no freaking joke! You can also invest in the passives to give you better disruption against enemies with weakened armor or the ability to always break shields. Instinctive Parry gives you a 15% chance to deflect enemy blows or shots even if you aren’t parrying. That may not seem like much, but it will add up to a lot of blocked damage throughout the game. The other passives here allow you to run while parrying (not sure why this is cool?) and gives more overall damage resistance while in Guardian style.
My Recommendations
The builds for a Guardian aren’t as cut-and-dry as the Technomancer skill tree. But here are two to consider:
1. Turtle - While your shield is a critical part for both builds, here you’ll largely be relying on the two more defensive branches. I’d recommend going straight for Shell, then into the line of parrying skills.
If you’re investing heavily in Constitution for a beefy Guardian build, this is a good way to go.
2. Shield Bash Extraordinaire - This is basically the more offensive route. Here you’ll go for Upgraded Shield Bash > Powerful Attack, along with the passives down the branch.
This won’t take many talent points, so it may be something you can combine with the Battlemage build I mentioned earlier by investing in the Electric Weapon line.
Now let’s move onto my personal favorite…
Warrior Abilities
The Technomancer abilities for the Warrior stance is all about augmenting staff combat. The staff is the traditional weapon for Technomancers, and excels at fighting groups of enemies.
…and it lets you be Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so you gotta at least give it a shot.
Fast Attack is. . . well, a fast attack with your staff. Look, I didn’t come up with these names. Practice Using a Staff is what actually lets you use this stance to begin with. Area Attack lets you hit every nearby enemy. Even more fun if you have it charged with Electric Weapon! Disrupting Attack has one purpose – to jack up the enemy’s concentration. Dodge gives you the extra mobility you need to stay outta harm’s way. It lets you jump around to avoid getting hit or shot.
Now let’s talk upgrades:
Upgrades Fast Attack adds an AOE effect to your Fast Attack ability. The passives give you some extra damage and stuff, but Berserk is the fun one. It basically lets you attack faster and do 50% more damage for 15 seconds! Upgraded Disrupting Attack increases the chance you’ll knock the bad guy over. The other passives help increase your chance of disruption and dodging shots while performing the attack.
Upgraded Area Attack adds a bit of a defensive feature. Even if an enemy parries it, the attack isn’t disrupted. The passives increase your resistance to disruption and increase the disruption chances of all staff attacks. Tornado is a fun one- you basically get to smack around every enemy around you while moving around the battlefield. (Diablo 2 Whirlwind Barb, anyone?) The passives increase your critical hit chance and chance to knock enemies on their butts. Upgraded Dodge gives you a 20% chance to knock the enemy down on your next attack if you dodged an attack yourself. The passives give you more time to land a critical hit and makes your Dodge move you a bit further.
My Recommendations
This is fairly straightforward, and you can go one of two ways here.
1. AoE - My preferred route, this gives you the ability to take out multiple enemies quickly. I think the default kick that the warrior has is sufficient for disrupting attacks as it is, so investing in the Upgraded Area Attack > Tornado is a good start. Then start down the line to get Berserk, and you’ll be a powerhouse.
2. Disruptor - If you really want to piss off enemies, go down this route. Go straight for Upgraded Disrupting Attack to help knock your enemies off balance regularly. Then going for Upgraded Dodge will help you knock them over more often, allowing you or your companions to mop them up easily.
Rogue Abilities
Last but no least, this tree of Technomancer abilities is all about mobility. Armed with a nail gun and dagger, you can plan on combat looking like this:
Dodge. Shoot a guy in the face. Slice him a few times. Repeat.
If that’s how you wanna roll, here are your abilities.
Slash is not talking about the movie that apparently came out a few months ago. It’s just using your dagger to slice a bad guy. Thrust lets you stab forward with your knife, giving you a 35% chance to poison the enemy. Why it’s not called something like “Poison Thrust,” I have no idea. Veteran Thief lets you use knives and guns. Shoot is a quick shot with your gun, which is largely used to help control combat – not deal tons of damage.
Roll gives you the best get-outta-there move of the three combat styles. If you’ve played Dark Souls, you know that a roll can allow you to dodge any single kind of attack imaginable.
When you go to upgrade your skills,
Upgraded Slash gives you a 35% chance to dodge attacks while doing the slash. The passives increase your damage and critical hits with daggers, while Focus gives you dodge and slows time for 10 seconds. Upgraded Shoot will let you attack more quickly after a shot. The passives improve overheating and increase damage done by guns. Upgraded Thrust improves the duration of your poison by 5 seconds. The other passives increase your chance to poison the enemy by 25% and increase poison damage. Explosive Shot basically lets you shoot a grenade in a guy’s face. It disrupts and knocks bad guys back, but quickly overheats your gun. The passives give your guns a chance to poison enemies (don’t ask me how) and increase the chance of guns to disrupt bad guys. Upgraded Roll gives your dagger an automatic critical hit right after you dodge an attack at the last second. It also increases your chances to land a critical hit right after rolling or getting another critical hit.
My Recommendations
The available Rogue builds are… kinda weird. The tree is just laid out a bit differently, so while (I would think) the obvious builds would be either focused on guns or the knife, that’s just not the case.
1. Poison - If you go straight for Upgraded Thrust and the next few passive skills, you can quickly max out the poison build. Since you’ll be relying on damage over time, you may want to invest in the middle branch to get Focus. That way you can use Focus, poison a few enemies, then get away as the poison does its work.
2. Crit Master - The more traditional route is to focus on critical hits. Take the Upgraded Shoot and Upgraded Roll branch. Obviously not all of the passives here really apply to critical hits, but they kinda go together. For example, combining a higher chance to crit with Upgraded Shoot’s faster attacking after a gun shot lets damage build very quickly.
Conclusion
You may already know this, but in general your best bet in RPGs is to specialize in 1-2 trees, since the strongest abilities/passives are normally at the very top. I’d recommend putting a few points into the Technomancer abilities and your favorite combat style, and maybe a few extra points into a 2nd preferred style.
