Titan Quest: Ragnarok – Super Tanky Caster (Summoner) Build

Strength-based, super tanky caster (Summoner: Earth + Nature) build for Titan Quest AE: Ragnarok.

Introduction

All credit goes to letsrock!

This is a guide on a strength-based, tanky caster (summoner: Earth + Nature) build. My goal is to build a super tanky caster and I had a lot of fun playing this class.

Why Nature and Earth for a super tanky caster build:

• Nature provides Heart of Oak skill tree which provides 85% health increase and 31% elemental resistance.
• Nature has Plague, one the best debuffs in the game.
• Earth has strong spells that do physical damages (Eruption and Volcanic Orb) which can be boosted by Strength and +% Physical damage, which means we can use Hale gears (+% Health and +% Strength) and other Strength-based gears that makes the character more tanky.
• Earth has skills that boost physical damages, and Nature has Wolves which can boost physical damage that works well with the above Earth spells.

Pros:

• Super tanky: easily get 20k+ HP and good resistances while having a very good debuff.
• Very good AoE.

Cons:

• Not the fastest boss killer.

Attribute Distribution

Roughly 1:1 for Strength and Health. Also maybe some points for Dexterity: the goal is to be able to wear the Stonebinder’s Cuffs (you might even have enough additional Dex just from gears).

Skill Distribution

Earth:

• Earth Enchantment tree: Brimstone: full, Earth Enchantment: 1 point, Stone Skin: 1 point.
• Volatility: full. Good offense buff. High priority.
• Heat Shield: initial 1 point then more when you have spare. Good defense buff. 
• Stone Form: 1 point (basic skill only). Very good defense cooldown. High priority. 
• Volcanic Orb tree: full (except 1 point in Confragration only). High priority. 
• Eruption: full. High priority. 

Nature:

• Heart of Oak tree: full (except 1 point in Tranquility of Water only). High priority. 
• Refresh: 1 point.
• Call of the Wild tree: full. Basic skill and Strength of the Pack are high priority. 
• Plague tree: full. High priority. 

Late Game / End-Game Set-Up

For late game (late Legendary), this is what you should aim for (and you can achieve) in terms of set-up:

All skills: +4

Defense:

• Health: 20k or more.
• Elemental/Pierce/Vitality/Poison Resistance: around 40 – 50% or more.
• Stun Resistance: 50%+, ideally close to 80%
• Bleeding Resistance: 0%+ 

Offense:

• Strength: around 800+ 

Late Game Gears

Get a mix of legendaries and green gears (with relics/charms) to achieve the above offense/defense target (defense target is more important). The exact gears depend on what you can get, but some tips are:

• In general, get gears that increase Physical damage, Strength and/or Health. 
• Arms slot: Stonebinder’s Cuffs for the +3 skills and elemental resistances. This can be farmed from the Gorgon Queens/Heroes. 
• Head slot: a good one is a green one with Hallowed prefix which gives +1 to all skills and 50+% vitality resistance with +Health bonus (e.g. of Immortality). This can be farmed from the shops. 
• Ring: hale rings are very good 
• Artifact: Symbol of the Polymath is a good one, and should be quite easy to get. 

Farming Spots

Best farming spots are:

• Minoan Labyrinth, right before the last rebirth fountain (Act 1): for Stonebinder’s Cuffs.
• Hydra (Act 1): for Legendary items and relics.
• Telkin Act 2/3: for Egyptian relics.
• Fafnir (Act 5): for Legendary items and relics.

Tactics

• In general the cast sequence is:Plague -> Volcanic Orb -> Eruption -> Refresh -> Plague -> Volcanic Orb -> Eruption. Works well vs both single target (bosses) and AoE (mobs). Most mobs die within one cast sequence. 
• Use Stone Form if health is low or to avoid a big incoming damage.