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Character Build: The Dark Aegis

Tags: #Character Build Juggernaut  #Character Build Healer  #Character Build No Crafting  #Rank:Mythic  #Hall of Fame Build  #TwistedOrthrusBuild 
  • May 18, 2013

    The Dark Aegis

    An ancient Vampire of great knowledge and charisma, the Dark Aegis inspires unwavering loyalty in those who follow him. Even in Death.

    An Orc tribal chief in his former life, he believes strongly in fighting for those he calls friend, going as far as to risk his own life for anyone who would join his cause.

    This powerful vampire has made his way to Skyrim, to Usurp Harkon’s throne from beneath, and become ruler of the night in Skyrim…

    The Build

    Race: Orc Vampire

    Stone: Apprentice

    Stat Spread: 1 Magicka, 2 Health 0 Stamina every 3 levels

    Major Skills: Block, Illusion, Restoration

    Minor Skills: Conjuration, Heavy Armor

    Shouts: Marked for Death, Whirlwind Sprint

    The Dark Aegis fulfils the roles of tank and healer to his party. He protects his followers using his own body as a shield, while at the same time healing them along with stacking powerful buff and debuff effects on and allies and enemies.

    The Aegis is able to fulfil the role of the tank effectively, using their high health pool, heavy armor skill and shield to take high amounts of damage. The Orc racial stacked with the black book power “Secret of protection” gives 30 seconds of 75% damage reduction, making the Aegis almost impossible to take down. To keep enemies attention on you, use Whirlwind Sprint to ensure you are the first of your party they can reach, while paring a healing spell with the respite perk allows for infinite shield bashes to draw enemies’ attention and keep them staggered.

    The role of the Healer is carried out just as well, making use of courage and heal other spells. Courage spells can be stacked to give allies huge buffs during combat. The addition of necromantic healing spells means that any undead followers can also be healed during combat. Using the Apprentice stone and black book power “Seeker of sorcery”, the Aegis always has enough magicka to continuously heal their allies. The Aegis can also debuff enemies using the Marked for Death shout, making it easier for his allies to take them down.

    Followers

    Early in the play through it is best to use a mortal follower. I chose to take Sven with me because of how easy he is to get as a follower and also bought Meeko/Vigilance along too.  However with the necromage and master of the mind perks unlocked, it is best to upgrade to a purely undead party. Sven and Meeko were swapped for Serana and a deathhound to take full advantage of these perks. Healing spells will be 25% more effective and courage spells will be 50% more effective on undead including the champion of the night bonus. This makes your party practically unstoppable, even against fire magic. It is also advisable to get the Black book power “Companion’s insight” to ensure you deal minimal damage from friendly fire.

    Conjuration also becomes a bigger aspect of the build, allowing you to summon your deceased followers from the soul carin to fight by your side in the form of Bonemen, Mistmen and Wrathmen. The Twin souls perk gives you a party of four at your disposal to deal high dps, while you buff, heal and tank for them.

    Perk Spread

    Video

    Equipment

    Ahzidal’s armor set is perfect for this character, with each piece of armor improving the effectiveness of the build.

    Ahzidal's helm of Vision:

    The helm allows you to summon allies from 25% further away. Stacked with the two summoner perks in conjuration, you can pin point summon allies from great distances, perfect for organising a pincer attack.

    Ahzidal’s Armor of Retribution:

    This piece of gear is perfect for a tank character; the more often you get hit, the more likely a powerful paralysis effect will trigger on your enemies, leaving them at the mercy of your followers.

    Ahzidal’s Boots of Water Walking:

    Skyrim has water everywhere that can be taken advantage of. Drawing enemies in close and then staying just out of reach on the surface of the water gives your allies an easy target.

    Ahzidal’s Gauntlets of Warding:

    These gauntlets weaken wards by 25% but add a 50% absorb effect to them, which stacks with the effects of the ward absorb perk. This means 75% spell absorption when a ward is up which counters the magicka weakness from the apprentice stone. These wards can be made even stronger by stacking purchased fortify restoration potions. Potions of 30, 40 and 50% restoration can be stacked to make lesser wards more powerful than greater ones for a fraction of the spellcost.

    Targe of the Blooded:

    With how often this build relies on bashing enemies to stun them, this shield is perfect. It adds a small amount of dot damage to bashes which can add up to make enemies go down even faster.

    Staves

    Staves make another welcome addition to the build, with projectile ice and fire staves combined with Marked for death making short work of dragons.

    The real power of staves however can be realised when using wall ones such as Hevoraak’s. Casting a small patch of elemental power at enemies feet, combined with using a shield bash with meditation on Fus, allows for you to stagger lock an enemy inside the wall spell, dealing large amounts of damage over time.

    Tactics

    This build doesn’t really have any special moves, but I’ll share some of the tactics I discovered that helped me in combat

    Respite: This perk is amazing in conjunction with shield bashing. Just a half second of healing provides enough stamina to bash enemies, forcing them to stagger. Because you can’t always ensure enemies focus their attacks on you, repeatedly staggering them with bash attacks ensures your followers take minimal damage.

    Summoning: Summoning allies from the soul carin so you can buff them before a battle isn’t always the best idea. Take advantage of the large summoning distance you have and spawn them behind enemies after their attention is focused on you. This has the benefit of making enemies more likely to make you their target, and allowing your party to quickly surround and overwhelm enemies.

    Marked for Death: For especially tough enemies and prolonged battles, marked for death can be stacked, making enemies nice and squishy for your followers to take care of. I would advise against using this tactic often as it can make the game incredibly easy.

    Shield charge and quick reflexes: These two perks work amazingly together. Instead of using the slow down as a signal to bash and disrupt a power attack, use shield charge instead. This will take an enemy out of the fight easily, allowing you more time to focus on protecting your allies.

    Follower commands: Telling followers to wait just out of sight of enemies means that when you rush forward, they will be more likely to target you. You can then back up towards your allies, bringing them into the fight without having to worry about someone attacking them.

    Thanks for taking the time to read this build. I had loads of fun play testing and recording the video for this build and hope to hear about your experiences with it in the future. I’d like to thank Ben C, for encouraging me to take his original idea and turn it into a build, and also Vazgen for sharing his knowledge of wards, and helping me out with screenshots when my capture card refused to take any.

    Art credit: http://demitrybelmont.deviantart.com/ for Inferno card game.

     

     

  • May 18, 2013
    Again... Another build I have to switch out ugly ancient nord armor for something better... Still great though. I'll try either ebony or Nordic carved
  • Member
    May 18, 2013

    Really awesome how it turned out! I'm glad I could help! +1

    I'm curious why not put points in stamina? I mean, using Respite is fine and takes all the need of stamina, but won't larger stamina pool result in less menu switching (Healing Hands/Healing and vice versa)? 

  • Member
    May 18, 2013

    You'll sacrifice enchantments and armor rating just for the look?

  • May 18, 2013
    Yup! If I don't like the look of it, I don't care how powerful it is, I won't use it. It's the main reason I don't use daerdic or dragon armor...
  • Member
    May 18, 2013

    Same here on the cosmetics thing. I'll never wear Elven or Glass armour, for instance, no matter how powerful the Enchantment. I think they look awful.

  • May 18, 2013

    Wouldn't the AR from both of those armor sets be higher than Ahzidal's? And yeah, most of us see look as much more important. Though I like how Ancient Nord looks (especially on an Orc).

  • May 18, 2013
    I don't want armor to look pretty, I just don't want it to look terrible.
  • Member
    May 18, 2013

    Bryn, you can play it as a female character  I think you won't argue that Ancient Nord looks awesome on females 

  • Member
    May 18, 2013

    I too dig the ancient nord look. It's fantastic. The only thing I don't like about it is the way the helmet changes for female characters, to the extent that I won't equip it when using them.