Newish Build: The Elementalist

Full disclosure: I discovered this idea in this thread from 2014: http://uorforum.com/threads/the-artificer.6446/
I took the time to flesh out the idea, and "Artificer" didn't make sense as a name. So, please let me introduce a new build:
The Elementalist aka Elemental Summoner

The goal of this build is to bend minerals to your will. You summon your earthen minions to battle for you. As an Elementalist, you will traverse the lands and dungeons where ore deposits are nearby. You will use your trusty gargoyle pickaxe to summon help when needed.

Elementals will be your best friend, but not all elementals are created equal. As an Elementalist, you'll want to focus on summoning:

Shadow Iron Elemental.
Immune to magic
Immune to all poisons but deadly
90% Physical damage reduction from provoked targets*
Dispels Summons
Barding Difficulty 61

Copper Elemental
Reflect Magic
Dispels Summons
Barding Difficulty 62

Marble and Valorite Elementals
Reflect Magic
90% Physical damage reduction from provoked targets*
Dispels Summons
Barding Difficulty 63
Strong Melee Attack ~ 25 points of damage

Marble and Valorite Elementals are what you should aim for. The others can be handy in a pinch.

The damage reduction and magic reflect are key. You will laugh with glee as you watch a Balron fight a marble elemental and repeatedly paralyze itself. The world is your oyster as an Elementalist!

Pros:

• Provocation by itself is great, but only if you have at least 2 targets. Otherwise, your enemy attacks you! An Elementalist can go places where singular tough mobs spawn!
• Need to make a quick getaway? No need to worry about healing or gating your elementals! Just leave them behind!
• When you're done farming, you can always kill your elementals for an added 200-600 gold & gems!
• Much easier to provo an elemental onto a big baddie. I was able to provo them onto a Grand Visor and many Balrons with only 1 or 2 failures WITHOUT a slayer instrument.

Cons:

• This build is about as squishy against PKs as your normal provo build.
• Need to carry gargoyle pickaxes.
• Your pets will attack you!!!!
• You will need to heal yourself a lot

Tips:

• This build excels against spell casters! Feel free to sit back and watch them flamestrike themselves!
• If you don't have peacemaking on your build, try to dig up two elementals at a time. When there are no more monsters to kill, have them fight each other until your true enemy respawns.
• An ethy ride is very helpful with this build. I tried numerous time with a non-ethy, and it kept getting killed by other monsters while I was digging.
• Avoid enemies with high-level poisons (poison spells are okay), they will eat your elementals. I tried an ancient wyrm and my marble elemental died way too fast.
• EDIT: shadow eles can handle up to level 5 poison.. so when fighting something like a shadow/ancient wyrm, dig them up and have them tank for you!
• Provoing an elemental onto a tougher target is very easy. You can usually provo an elemental onto a POD with 3-4 fails, only using a GM instrument.
• Always provo elemental onto boss... never the other way around!

Suggested Build

Stats:

Whatever your prefer for a provo mage, but I'd suggest something like 100/25/100 or 100/35/90.​

Skills:

Music
Provo
Mining
Magery
​

Optional Build Versions:
With only 4 required skills, the rest is up to you.
I prefer:

Meditation - you always need mana for heals, poison fields to kill elementals, and quick getaways.
Hiding - great for figuring out and writing down good ore locations or hiding while your elementals kill
Eval Int - with meditation, you'll be able to throw some good offensive spells at your enemies
​

Peacer:

Peacemaking (duh) - great way to put your elementals on pause
Meditation
Eval int
​

Healer:

Anatomy
Healing - You'll be able to save your mana for offensive spells and gates!
Wrestling - Elementals will hit you less
​

Dexxer (the downside is that this build has no real way to self heal once mana runs out):

Anatomy
Weapon Skill
Tactics
​

And now for some boastful images:

Brilliant

Oh is you that left that marble elemental at balrons? Great, farm there was a walk in the park.

This is a wonderful idea

Do you look for ore nodes in the dungeons themselves or do you have to gate these elementals into the ares?

You can't gate the Elementals, since they're not technically pets. So, yeah, I look for the nodes in the dungeons.

I discovered an interesting fact today.

You can heal your dug-up elementals, and you won't be flagged as a criminal. I healed mine via Greater Heal spell, so I'm not sure if bandies would be the same. I assume it's intended!

In most cases, the damage reduction means the elementals will take virtually no damage. However, the previous post mentioned provo and taking damage. If you provo your elemental onto a target, then provo another monster onto that target .. when the other monster dies and the elemental re-aggros the target, THEN the elemental will take normal damage. The way to stop this is to just re-provo the elemental.

Just another action shot. Provo was a bit of a challenge, though. First elemental provo'd no problem. The second took 8 attempts. Luckily, there was a regular blood nearby to focus its attention on. They took down the diseased without a problem.

Just wanted to share some City of the Dead actions shots with my Elementalist (okay .. the guy in red is my dexxer, but the Elementalist was close by).

Let me re post those images.

Saw some ore on the ground and thought you would be it. Haven't tried with mine yet, spending most with my disco macer. But given all of the strong casters around, the elementals should excel.

Haha .. yep, I'm always leaving a mess. It's definitely fun to watch the casters FS themselves.

This is fucking neat dude.

Awesome sauce! You found a val node!

Not the best action shot, but I converted my provo mage elementalist to a dexxer one. It's working great in CotD. I thought not having healing or med would be an issue, but with wands and potions (and 45 int) .. it's really not.

The only downside is that I had to make a hotkey that makes me say, "Please don't kill my elementals!"

Decided to take a break from CotD. That sultan had a shocking surprise.

Going to have to give this a shot...going full bard though with magery/med/mining

Hoping to supplement some damage with summons...see how much gets dispelled between provo and disco.

Marble, and I believe Valorite, eles can dispel..... So i hope summoning works. Full bard will be great, though!

This was a cakewalk.

Finally had time to give this build a shot and.....I think she's my new main.

Meet Scarlet!


This was a fresh new character so earned her Lady status as the elementalist/provo mage.

Initially I had started as a full bard, all 4 skills GM'd but once I started using her I realized that as long as I dug up at least 2 elementals I really didn't use Peacemaking at all. With further reading, I also found out that only discordance applies a bonus to Provo and Peacemaking, Peacemaking itself does not grant a bonus so, I dropped it for Eval.

Current setup:
GM Magery
GM Meditation
GM Eval Int
GM Mining
GM Music
GM Provo
GM Discord

100/25/100
This is actually the build FIsher of Men settled on in his initial Artificer post.

This is such a versatile character, I can play as a mostly fully capable mage(pvm), a provo mage, a miner, an elementalist, all depending on my mood and situation.
I can hop in with others and pretty much offer a full range of support from minor heals, to complete spawn control, depending on the need of those around.

I was running around last night with her hunting holiday spawn. Here are a few shots:
Pilgrims!

Didn't use summons here, took a little longer so added some summons to speed things up on the next encounter.


Indian!


The elementals are quite easy to keep the spawns attention and hold them in place while the summons cut through them. This allows me the time to cast EV's without using scrolls as well.

Additional thoughts:
- I have had some issues with being unable to provoke an elemental onto the Obsidian Gargoyle...basically states I have no chance and since they are opposing types a slayer really doesn't help much here (though I did try an exorcism drum). Still seemed unable to provoke which I found surprising given that according to the compendium the Obsidian Gargoyle has a much lower barding difficulty than the PoD that others have succeeded with. Fortunately with a little patience I could blade spirit/disco the gargoyle down.

- Finding good ore spots has been fairly easy given you can use both Verite and Valorite veins, and if you want to carry a prospectors tool you can even use the agapite nodes which I seem to find a lot of.

-So far I have used the elementals to farm gargoyles (unnecessary really, but I was getting my feet wet with the concept first and wanted to try on the obsidian), lich, lich lords, and daemons in Wind, ophidian lair in t2a desert (though be wary of the knight errants) poison but the matriarch is a breeze (no luck spawning the queen), balrons and succubi in Hythloth, and the Thanksgiving spawn. I did through in some straight provo mage trips to the Arctic Ogre Lords too in between gargoyle spawns...didn't see the need for an elemental here

-I can see the appeal of pairing this with a dexer build instead of a mage, as Blendax has tried, as there is a bit of time standing around waiting for mobs to kill themselves and the elementals to beat them down where adding a constant stream of slayer damage would really speed things up, however, I prefer mage play style so I won't be going down that route myself.

-Really shines in specific instances but much of the spawns can be managed by a straight provo mage using slayer instruments, things like White Wyrm farming or single balron situations are opened up here however. Also the ease of provoking with an elemental and a gm instrument instead of managing 10 different slayer types is a nice bonus.

One day I would like to team up with some other elementalists to complete the Undead, Abyss, and Lord Oaks spawns as I think they will shine in the high magic user/low poison champ varieties.

Thanks for sharing this build find, Blendax, as I would not have likely stumbled upon it myself from such an old post. And thanks to FIsher of Men for sharing this original concept use for the dug up elementals!