My Level 40 Andriel Build - Tank Healer (+dps)

[Falath]

I'm on my second playthough on Legendary. Not completed the Mithril quest yet :-( and getting groups for Nordinbad seems tricky, the match finder on the PC version doesn't show much activity these days - maybe the XBOX Live is better.

Anyway, here's the build :

Strength 40
Dexterity 24
Stamina 112
Will 43
Melee 1093-1170
Ranged 1366-1453
Armour 1937
Health 1372
Power 257

Defensive Skills -

Sanctuary (1/1) - Conjures the protective orb that blocks ranged attack
Healing Light (3/3) - Unlocks and increases healing done by Sanctuary
Preservation (2/2) - Skills used by any party member cost less Power
Focused Mind (2/2) - Upgrade the Elf's passive power regeneration
Shielding Light (3/3) - Press LB + B for a temporary armour bonus
Sanctuary Mastery (3/3) - Increases the Duration of Sanctuary

Quick Minded (2/2) - Reduces the cooldowns of active skills
Strength of Will (3/3) - Grants a bonus of armour based on current Will (seems to be 1 will = 1 armour)

Offense Skills

Staff and Steel (3/3) - Unlocks dual wielding
Word of Command (1/1) - Press RT + X to unleash a magical shockwave in all directions
Lore Master's reach (3/3) - Upgrades the range of Word of Command
Sundering Command (3/3) - Hold RT + X to follow Word of Command with an overwhelming area of effect attack
Empower Staff (1/1) - Fire multliple charges at once (unlocks the ranged tree)
Staff Mastery (2/3) - Increase the damage done with staves
Magnify Staff (2/2) - increae the rate at which ranged attacks charge
Wrath of the Eldar (2/3)- dispell sanctuary with a powerful explosion
Burst of Light (3/3) - fires a slow but highly lethal bolt of explosive energy

You can load a lot of Stamina onto Andriel because of there are passive skills that boost her power regen and lower skill power cost. Even with the minimum level of Will that enables you to equip on level gear (and the jewellry swapping exploit helps here) you can spam skills more than any of the other chars, who've invested heavily in the stat.

The only way to really drain power is spam ranged autoattack, which is so weak anyway i only use it against the detonating goblins.

I levelled up the defensive skills first, so for the first twenty five levels or so, she was a tank healer with very little offense. Her melee attacks do far less damage than Farin's, and she lacked any good spell attacks. However, with shielding light and a healing bubble with shorter cooldown than it's duration, she was very hard to kill, and thanks to the power regen/power cost passive, could fight forever without running out of power.

Here is a level 21 Andriel tanking/soloing the Orc Champion and his two Carn Dum swordsmen in Nordinbad. As it's a special occasion i swig all the potions in my inventory, and gain a noticeable increase in melee damage. Without them the fight takes longer. The Orc Captain's best shot (the whirling attack) does 71 points of damage without shielding light active. With it, it's more like 15 damage. She has 500 health normally and over 1000 in this fight due to all the potions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBEfbHRLL6g

Once i had these abilities maxed out i could finally turn to offense, and soon discovered that in terms of offense skills , she's got two amazing abilities, one okay one, and the rest are junk.

Word Of Command (updraded with Sundering Command) does great AOE damage to a large number of targets, at low power cost and short cooldown, with a knockback/knockdown/stagger effect. Burst of Light aka. Orb of death, is a ridiculously powerful ranged AOE nuke, with low power cost and short cooldown. It is her version of Farin's explosive bolt. It does a little less damage (but still enough to oneshot the big 2H weapon orcs) and the projectile is slow moving, occasionally making if difficult to score a hit. Both of these skills also look really cool and are fun to use.

Lastly, you got Sanctuary Detonation. It does a lot of damage, but you can only summon the sanctuary once a minute or so, so the cooldown is long, it also deprives the group of healing until sanctuary can be re-summoned. As a result, i don't actually use it that often.

Her other two offence skills, Tempest and Smite, seem weak by comparison. Single target attacks that do less damage than her AOE. I soon ended up using a respec token so i could redeploy the points more productively.

[phenixforce]

Nice looking build, I tried Andriel as a tank a few times too, a few things I did differently:

I dont think you need 3/3 Sanctuary Mastery with 2/2 Quick Minded, it should cooldown and be ready to use again with only 1/3 in Sanc Mastery, however I agree its not great since no one stands in it, which is why I put 2/3 into the bubble and 1/3 into her heal. And since Quick Minded applies to all your skills you could spend those extra points to finish Wrath of the Eldar and something else. If you use roll a bit more, you end up looking like a rollie pollie but you could probably get rid of Shielding Light. I dont think it prevents knockdown, so its not great if you need it to help rez your allies or tank a troll, and Strength of Will should cover whatever attacks you dont dodge. You could keep your stam high or move some points to strength to make your weapons skills more powerful. I picked up tempest last because unless it one shots enemies, its kind of annoying that it throws far away with 1/3, or really really far away 3/3, but it its usefull against trolls and bigger orcs coupled with effects like frost or stun. Smite doesnt do great damage and even 3/3 its hard to line up enemies to hit more than one, so I dont use it either.

I tried making Andriel the tank/healer build like yours, but the pawns are so hard to control that Farin usually ends up aggroing everyone with war cry, so she ended up more a dps build. Just my two cents on the game

[Falath]

I go with Sanctuary Mastery 3/3 because it's such a good skill, and frankly, by level 40 there ain't much else to spend the points on. Maxing this with quick minded means an overlap between sanctuary running out and being available to re-cast, but it's nice to have really because

a) reduces stress
b) if you're tanking something big, popping shielding light, dodge rolling and trying to dps you can get a little busy to cast sanctuary exactly on time, it's nice to have a little wiggle room to juggle your skill rotation
c) if the skill to cast a new Sanctuary is off cooldown but the old one still has 10 seconds or so to run, you can go boom then immediately re-cast, negligible interruption in the healing service.

Shielding light is just so awesome i can't possibly turn it down, even if i don't really NEED it. In the video I linked, i was rolling to avoid knockdown because this would mean loosing agro (i manage to keep agro, and my bots alive , for the first half) , not because the damage is a concern. I've found that if she's in the middle of a spell casting animation she can't be knocked over, and i do exploit that in the vid.

I did re-spec to drop points from Strength of Will and Magnify staff. Strength of will is a bit of a waste of 3 skill points. She now has 2000 armour, this skill only gives 1 point of armour for 1 will, so she gets an extra 43 armour from it :-/

Magnify staff does not seem to improve the reload rate of her staff's auto attack, so it doesnt seem to help in the siege of nordinbad sapper attack. It seems to improve the rate at which charged shot loads, but that's an awful skill anyway that i just dont use.

I spent the extra points on the skill that gives a chance that after using one of your skills, it becomes available again immediately with no cooldown. Can't say i've noticed this happenning much. I also maxed staff mastery ("increases the damage done with staves") though to be honest, she oneshots the orc sappers anyway and that's the only time i use a ranged skill other than Burst of Light (orb of death).

I think this build works pretty well with a human controlled Eradan in ranged mode, it also works really well in normal difficulty with 2 other player controlled toons provided they realise you're not the same creature as the AI Andriel.

In legendary, Farin just makes everyone else seem a little pointless. I can't even compete with Burst of Light since his projectile is faster than mine and arrives first, so i've got nothing to oneshot. In the Barrow Downs i ran into a different room to the one he was fighting in. There was just enough time for the mob spawn to get close to me so i could fire off Word of Command, before the inevitable exploding bolt went off at my feet.