Alchemist guide for dummy?

[Aglabac]

I have no idea about Alchemist class... I need a lvling guide, enchancement, spells, mechanic of an alchemist, weapons... I made an Alchemist Gnome with 20int, 16 cons, 14dex, 10str and 8 wis and cha... I have completionist cause I used a +20 heart and I’d like 3xCompletionist so I need 2 Alchemist PL
Ty

[JohnFlory]

Just finished an Alch life (1-30), here's the cliff notes:

Race: I did Gnome, generally Int is good but Dragonborn has a lot of stuff to compensate. Pretty much everything is fine, I think (maybe not WF).

Stats: Max Int, rest Con. Other stuff... who cares?

Skills: Got more than you need: Spellcraft, Heal, Conc, UMD - and you still got 3 to spare even before tomes and level-up increases kick in. Balance, Jump, Diplo, Haggle, Search, Spot, Swim,...

Feats: You're basically a Sorc.
Regular slots: Maximize, Empower, Quicken, Heighten, SF:Conj, GSF:Conj, maybe Spell Pen at 18 or Mental Toughness
Alchemist slots: Pyrite Studies, Orchidium Studies (I never checked whether they stack or not...^^), Liquid Luck (!), Adv Pyrite Studies, Adv Orchidium Studies

Enhancements:
Bombardier (41+): You want to focus on your element (Acid might just be the best) and once you hit level 12 you want to completely skill your T5s there. Especially Weakening Mixture (removes elemental immunity for your chosen element - a Sorc only gets that at level 20!).
Must haves: SLA: Vial of Acid (or whichever element you choose), the Spell Crit line, the Cores, INT, Burning Ambition. Yup, that's it. I invested heavily in the improved metamagics as well, just to help out with spell points.
Only the T1 and T5 SLAs are worth it, you can skip the others.
Apothecary (31+): Get 4 points early for a maxed SLA:CLW which will heal you for free. Once you can spare 11 points in the tree, you can reset it and instead go with the core SLA:CSW. Ignore all the other SLAs, go for spell crit, INT, Stone of the Scholar, Run for your life (if you aren't lazy).
The real fun starts with the 31st point at level 18. SLA:Heal is an AoE heal that can easily heal you even at r4. The CD is a bit long and the cost is annoying, but it's still very valuable. And you still have SLA:CSW to rotate the healing. Yesterday, I checked how much I could heal myself with that single SLA - a crit got me 5,199. And I didn't even gear towards hamp/positive spell power.
Rest of your AP: Racial... or Harper for INT-stuff. Personally, as a Gnome I chose to pump everything into Bombardier just for the metamagic thingies... Dragonborn has better choices.

Spells (in order of grabbing them):
1: Vial Smash: Acid (rotate it out after you got proper damage spells), CLW (only for the first 3 levels), Vial of Acid, Ele Skin, Stiffen Skin, Feathers Extract (Jump+FF)
2: Greater Venom Vial (rotate it out later), Augment Armor, Alluring Elixier. The rest is subpar, but whatever tickles your fancies.
3: Greater Liquid Courage (unless you use GH clickies), Greater Resto Draught, Invis Potion, Melt Lock, Displacement Draught (you should nuke enough that displacement isn't a priority)
4: Caustic Overload, Bottle Boost: Sprint, Flesh to Gold, Corrosive Dust
5: Multivial of Acid, Greater Evolution, the rest doesn't really matter
6: Goldskin Potion, Elemental Combination

Level ranges and power spikes:
1-7: You're pretty strong and will be able to solo a lot. You can heal, you can nuke and at this point hardly anything is immune to acid (hence acid as your chosen element). SLAs are enough to kill most things, you need your spell points only for groups of enemies (Vial Smash).
8-11: Bit of a downer. You won't be able to one-shot with your SLA and your mana pool sucks a bit. You should still be very much able to solo elite but your level 3 spells just don't give you anything snazzy.
12-19: You're a monster. At level 12 you get evasion (Liquid Luck), you get your primary spell (Multivial), you can remove enemy immunities (Multivial means the first vial removes immunty, the other 3 hit hard, you can damage enemies with evasion (Burning Ambition). From 12 to 15 I regularly one-shotted red-named bosses with a single Multivial - which, mind you, is an AoE spell.
20-23: Eventhough you now have 2 Multivials (1 SLA, 1 regular), the first few epic levels there will be many classes that out-kill you. You're still a huge asset, but not a god anymore.
24-30: Back in business. Level 24 gives you Master of Spellvials which pretty much doubles your damage output.

Playstyle, weaknesses, strengths:
Buff yourself up, don't zerg too much. You have to get a feel for your cooldowns because you're a robe-wearer after all, so very squishy. Also get a feel for your throwing arcs - this can be a detriment at first, but also a boon at times. Remember that you can heal a lot and cheap. Healing yourself is prone to bugging, you have to hard target yourself and try not to stand in shallow water. Because you sometimes don't get the heal you perform, you have to be extra careful and don't wait too long before you heal.
Your biggest weakness is your squishiness. Dungeons with annoying close quarter encounters can be really hard for you. Tight spaces with low ceilings can mess up your throwing arcs. Widely spaced enemies are annoying, huge clusters are fun. Raids suck a bit.
Your biggest strength is your raw AoE-DPS. You're very much like a Sorcerer just with your power spikes at different levels. And you use the better attribute (Int). And you get your attribute to reflex saves for free. One time I teamed up with a really good tank and together we tore everything apart. He took aggro and grouped everything up and I healed him when necessary and nuked everything away.

Gear: A lot of RL stuff is good, I got the set bonus without actually looking for it, just because I had 5 items that were the best for me. It's pretty self-explanatory what you want: spell power for your element, spell lore for your element, conjuration DC, intelligence, deathblock, HP, HP, HP, hamp, positive spell power.

Highlights: I solo'd Reaver's Fate at level 16 in just 12min (only elite, cause I didn't want to risk it^^). Basically whenever there wasn't a party up or I just didn't feel like playing with others, I just did stuff solo. Joined a R6 Coal Chamber and absolutely held my own amongst players that I know to be a lot better, better prepared and more optimized than me. Without snatching any lost souls as well.^^
Lowlights: Early epic levels felt really bad at times. At level 18 you can do whatever you want and then suddendly you have to concentrate and group up. Also, shortly before level 12 I whined a lot about not getting any +max CL stuff and therefore was ineffectual. Level 12 changed a lot there.



TL;DR: Pretend you're a Sorc with INT.

[Zarkarion]

It seems to be much easier to heal yourself with the non-SLA versions of the Healing admixtures, because for some reason the SLAs seem to be much more difficult to throw close enough to yourself to get the heal without hard targetting yourself.

With the non-SLA versions you certainly don't need to hard target yourself, you just have to make your character look down and throw. It is pretty reliable with a little practice.

The spell cost is pretty small, and you will have more AP to spend on other things as you don't really need any in Apothecary.

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For a pure Tiefling alchemist, take Bombardier 4 first (for the Vial SLA), then get Ash (Scorch) at level 5, and you will melt your way through most content, adding Cindersmoke at level 9, and Multivial: Fire at level 12. Eventually you want Tiefling 17 or more, and 41 Bombardier.

I am on my third Alchemist life. This one is Tiefling - alchemist 18, artificer 2. Will eventually be Bombardier 33, Harper 12, Tiefling 17 (I have 3 racial AP) and Vile Chemist 21. The repeating crossbow is great for quickly finishing off mobs that you fail to one-shot kill, especially with the extra Tiefling fire damage on hit on damaged enemies. It also makes the first few levels a doddle. Ash (Tiefling Scorch AP 13) is a monster. Get it at level 8 after Harper 12 and Bombardier 4.

[Discpsycho]

I've done one Alch life so far, but only 1-20.

I'd intended to do a Vile Chemist throwing build, but by level 8 the damage and playstyle were getting to me so I switched to Inquisitive. At level 12 I switched to Bombardier because I prefer casters to ranged.

- This was by far the strongest life I've ever done. I typically solo R1, often with a hireling, but I ran quite a few R3s from 15+. I blame it entirely on Multivial, as a single vial (of the four) could crit for 2k in late heroics

- If you've got Stygian Wrath and Thrummingspark Cord, Cold is the way to go. I ended up maximizing and empowering several non-SLAs because I was only down 200-400 spellpoints by the end of a quest, thanks to Stygian Wrath's temp SP.

- Bombardier really only needs a few feats. Thanks to starting out ranged, I had Maximize, Empower, Quicken, and Pyrite Studies by the time I hit 18. I've heard folks complaining about low-level Bombardier damage and would highly recommend at least starting out as Inquisitive

[Maelodic]

The spell cost is pretty small, and you will have more AP to spend on other things as you don't really need any in Apothecary.

6 AP for the second core gives immunity to magic missiles. Super worth it in my opinion. This also gives you a cheap SLA for reaction shifting. I take stiffen skin SLA for the same reason. Orange reaction is busted and using it is busted.



Get it at level 8 after Harper 12 and Bombardier 4.

Shouldn't need to worry about harper with battalion brew as an option.

[Zarkarion]

Shouldn't need to worry about harper with battalion brew as an option.

Unless you are using repeater. Also gives you Know The Angles. Also frees up an Alchemist-only feat slot.

I did my first Alchemist life with throwing knife, and my second with Inq dual crossbows. I am doing my third Alchemist life with repeater. So far repeater is significantly better than throwing knives, and far less AP investment than Inquisitive. So definitely a viable alternative, but not without Harper.

Inquisitive isn't really much good without T5, which prevents you from getting Bombardier T5 Weakening Mixture, which is pretty much the key to universally effective use of Multi-Vials.

Inquisitive 41, Vile Chemist 31 is very good, but despite poison immunity bipasses, will often result in some poison-immune mobs not taking any damage from Multivial Poison, and the situation is even worse for elemental multivials.

The elemental tiefling or dragonborn build with T5 bombardier and repeating crossbow is more of a faceroll. ;) I currently favour Tiefling because Ash (Scorch) SLA is much better than Dragonbreath, if only because of the much shorter cooldown, and really supplements an alchemist Fire build, especially prior to level 12. OTOH the Dragonborn brings +2 Max Caster Level to the table, which is really good for elemental alchemist.

[Maelodic]

Unless you are using repeater. Also gives you Know The Angles. Also frees up an Alchemist-only feat slot.

I did my first Alchemist life with throwing knife, and my second with Inq dual crossbows. I am doing my third Alchemist life with repeater. So far repeater is significantly better than throwing knives, and far less AP investment than Inquisitive. So definitely a viable alternative, but not without Harper.

Inquisitive isn't really much good without T5, which prevents you from getting Bombardier T5 Weakening Mixture, which is pretty much the key to universally effective use of Multi-Vials.

Inquisitive 41, Vile Chemist 31 is very good, but despite poison immunity bipasses, will often result in some poison-immune mobs not taking any damage from Multivial Poison, and the situation is even worse for elemental multivials.

That all makes sense. I've been playing bomber since they came out, haven't played with anything chemist yet.




The elemental tiefling or dragonborn build with T5 bombardier and repeating crossbow is more of a faceroll. ;) I currently favour Tiefling because Ash (Scorch) SLA is much better than Dragonbreath, if only because of the much shorter cooldown, and really supplements an alchemist Fire build, especially prior to level 12. OTOH the Dragonborn brings +2 Max Caster Level to the table, which is really good for alchemist.

My current life is gnome but I did some testing on Lama and I enjoyed both tiefling and dragonborn. I don't really like using scorch after level 12 and I really like memory of flight and especially the +3 conj DC you can get in dragonborn so that was my favorite.

I didn't find much of a need for Scorch pre-12 as a pure alchemist but I can see why it would be really frustrating as a splashed one. Just have to make it through 1-5 on pure before you get the aoe bursts, then you just form shift and spam those and you're good to go. Getting it at 8 instead of 6 does feel like it'd suck though, that's when quests start really wanting more serious aoe power. I can't imagine doing the "other tales" from WPM without the aoe.

[myliftkk_v2]

That all makes sense. I've been playing bomber since they came out, haven't played with anything chemist yet.





My current life is gnome but I did some testing on Lama and I enjoyed both tiefling and dragonborn. I don't really like using scorch after level 12 and I really like memory of flight and especially the +3 conj DC you can get in dragonborn so that was my favorite.

I didn't find much of a need for Scorch pre-12 as a pure alchemist but I can see why it would be really frustrating as a splashed one. Just have to make it through 1-5 on pure before you get the aoe bursts, then you just form shift and spam those and you're good to go. Getting it at 8 instead of 6 does feel like it'd suck though, that's when quests start really wanting more serious aoe power. I can't imagine doing the "other tales" from WPM without the aoe.

Thrower splashes are slightly harder to level in the early going, but power kicks in at the higher levels, and especially 20-30. They tend to provide either much higher dps (12alc) or higher survivability (18alc) through a combination of VKF + VC + Rogue/Arti/Rgr.

[Maelodic]

Thrower splashes are slightly harder to level in the early going, but power kicks in at the higher levels, and especially 20-30. They tend to provide either much higher dps (12alc) or higher survivability (18alc) through a combination of VKF + VC + Rogue/Arti/Rgr.

Yeah they do really great in epics. I just find them boring so I don't tend to play em :)