Titan Quest Anniversary Edition – Haruspex Build Guide

Introduction

Helen
Mastery: Haruspex (Hunting / Dream)
Build: Physical / Pierce Archer (easily swapped to Throwing Weapon + Shield)

Haruspex provides a good mix of passives, debuffs, DPS and can be built in different ways. Ranged / Spear are popular options and you probably make a good caster out of it too if you know what you’re doing.

This is one of my earlier characters, got into mid-Legendary and I used her for farming relics, infrequents and the like and never got around to actually finishing Legendary. Finally decided to finish clearing and swapped out her current set of gear as my resistances were pretty bad overall.

I went with a bow to play a ranged option as I already was playing other characters for other playstyles and wanted to try out a ranged build. Throwing weapon can be used instead of bow and has certain advantages and disadvantages (shorter range but faster attack and you can use shield for blocking and stats). My character was made pre-Ragnarok so throwing weapons did not exist at the time and I decided to finish the run with my existing bow.

Atlantis is not required for this build. None of the level 40 skills have any real impact and is only really useful if you want the extra stats from the additional mastery levels. If you want to go throwing weapon over bow you’ll need Ragnarok through. If you want to go spear, you’ll need to dump all points in Markmanship and swap into Phantom Strike and Psionic Touch.

• Lots of Defensive Ability and projectile avoidance
• Excellent debuff in Study Prey
• Excellent passives in general
• Good spammable LMB

• Can’t crit with bows
• Mediocre AOE

Required Skills

Wood Lore

A fantastic passive that boosts your defensive ability and attack speed. Max it early.

Markmanship

Pretty much the reason that Hunting is considered the ‘bow’ mastery. Greatly increases projectile avoidance and adds piercing damage. The Puncture Shot Arrows synergy increases piercing and bleeding damage and adds a chance for arrows to pierce. The Scattershot synergy causes your attacks to fire fragments on impact that inflict bleeding damage with some pierce. Long term everything should be maxxed. Puncture Shot may be more useful to max early for chance to pierce through enemies, good for mowing down enemies coming at you.

Art of the Hunt

Increases pierce damage and bleeding damage in general and adds a bit of extra damage to beasts and beastmen. The Find Cover synergy adds a large amount of projectile avoidance and only adds a little bit extra to the skill’s energy reservation. The Trail Blazing synergy adds 100% Reduced Entrapment Duration and more movement speed with each extra point spent.

The base skill and Find Cover should both be maxxed. Trail Blazing only requires one point for entrapment reduction, however, you can add more points if you want to reach movement speed cap and have spare points late. It’s important to note that using the skill with all it’s synergy skills reserves a rather large chunk of energy.

Trances

Dream’s trances are all very good. There’s zero reason you shouldn’t have one maxxed out and active at all times. You can only have one through so you need to make a decision.

Trance of Empathy grants attack damage converted to health and damage reflection. Trance of Convalescence grants you health / energy regeneration and damage absorption. Trance of Wrath grants a short range electric burn dot, skill disruption and resistance debuff.

Personally I went with Trance of Convalescence for the extra tankiness and recovery but you could go Empathy for the adch. Wrath debuff is pretty short range so only useful for enemies that are pretty much on top of you.

Lucid Dream

Lucid Dream is an excellent passive. The base skill boosts physical, electrical burn and vitality damage. Premonition boosts your Offensive and Defensive Ability by 111 at 6/6. Temporal Flux grants you extra speed, slow resistance and projectile avoidance.

The base skill can be left at one point until you’ve maxxed other important skills. You’ll want to max Premonition and Temporal Flux quickly through. The extra OA is useless for bows / throwing weapons but the extra DA, speed and projectile avoidance are too good to pass up.

Call of the Hunt

The base skill provides an useful short term buff to damage, attack speed and big boost against beasts and beastmen. The Exploit Weakness synergy skill increases pierce and bleeding damage while you the buff is active. Both are worth maxxing long term but I’d suggest waiting until late game; better to invest your points in abilities which are always active. If you get heavy CDR through you should be able to keep up the buff up 100%.

Atlantis adds another synergy skill, Finesse, which adds a massive buff to your Offensive Ability. As bows / throwing weapons cannot crit or miss, OA is completely useless for them. If you want to use a spear then the skill would be useful, otherwise zero points.

Study Prey

The best debuff in the game? Debuffs enemies in a small circle with large physical and pierce resistance letting your spear blows do more damage. The Flush Out synergy skill also reduces defensive ability, bleeding resistance and elemental resistances letting your bleeds and any elemental damage you might have on your weapon do more damage to the target. Absolutely max out and cast as often as you can.

Volley

Gives you a chance to do a triple attack. Absolutely max it out when you have free points

Optional Skills

Ensnare

Ensnare provides a CC to lock opponents in place. It’s an okay option for kiting through doesn’t last too long and can be difficult to aim at times. The DA reduction provides no benefit to bows / throwing weapons. The Barbed Netting synergy skill adds a bit of bleeding damage to trapped enemies, I’d suggest skipping or putting at most one point into it, more important skills to invest in and the damage buff is kind of negligible.

Psionic Touch

Psionic Touch could serve as an alternative spammable LMB attack to Marksmanship through I personally recommend Marksmanship over it. It boosts your total damage and adds vitality damage. Every hit of the skill builds builds a charge; the skill requires 3 charges to be ready. When you have enough charges, the next attack activates skill, gets the bonuses, and consumes all of the charges. The Psionic Burn synergy skill adds an electrical dot, a slowing effect and does bonus damage against demons. The Atlantis only synergy Psionic Beam is restricted to staffs so not applicable.

Sands of Sleep

Puts enemies to sleep, rendering them immobile for a duration or until awakened by an attack. Additional points into the skill increase the number of enemies that can be affected and sleep length. Can be useful for CC.

Herbal Remedy

A nice buff that gives a very sizable boost to your poison resistance and some additional health regeneration. While it’s not absolutely required, it frees you from having to worry about getting poison resistance from gear and allows you to concentrate on other needs instead. Lasts a decent amount of time and can be recast whenever you have mana.

Gouge

Gives you a chance to apply a bleed dot. It’s kind of meh and not a priority. Drop a single point into it at most and boost with +skill items if you want.

Monster Lure

Creates a dummy that is supposed to lure enemies to fight it. Personally don’t really care for it and feel like it’s a little wonky in practice. The Detonation skill makes it explode for damage when it dies and has full energy. If you like it as a distraction, you can invest in the base skill, Detonation is kind of meh even then through.

Summon Nightmare

Physical / Vitality pet with excellent dodge and projectile avoidance. The Hypnotic Gaze synergy gives him a chance to inflict confusion and reduce resistances and the Master Mind synergy buffs all pet damage.

Master Mind doesn’t provide any benefit unless you have some sort of item that can summon stuff for it to buff. Hypnotic Gaze on the other hand can be useful to the CC and resistance reduction. Nightmare is a pretty tanky pet overall so you should be able to get away without pumping too many points into the base skill if you just want to get Hypnotic Gaze.

Distortion Field

Gives you a chance to proc a short term (15s) buff that applies damage absorption and physical damage retaliation. Proc rate is only 5% through. If you want you can drop 1 point into the skill and buff with +skill items.

Distort Reality

360. AOE that inflicts physical and vitality damage and 1.5s stun. The synergy skill Temporal Rift adds an Electrical Burn dot, 15% Energy Drain (% of energy causes damage), petrification and bonus damage against demons. Makes for an excellent CC ability.

Dream Image

Summons a pet that looks like you for a short duration. Doesn’t benefit from pet bonus gear from my understanding. Pretty much the only Atlantis skill that has anything to offer for the build; it’s nothing outstanding but can provide an extra body for boss fights.

My Final Skill Trees

This is my final skill allocation. Maxxed Marksmanship to use as main attack, maxxed Study Prey to use on other mouse button to use as main debuff. Call of the Hunt for big fights and the like. Enough points in Herbal Remedy to get close to poison resist cap. Dropped lots of points for passives (Lucid Dream tree, Trance, Wood Lore, Art of the Hunt tree). One point into Distort Reality just for some extra CC.

Overall character is strongly built around a handful of active abilities and passives.

Stats

If you have Atlantis, the extra mastery points give you:

• Hunting mastery = +14 str, +20 dex, +280 health
• Dream mastery = +16 str, +14 int, +280 health, +64 energy

Health: You may want to pad your health pool a tad to make yourself a bit more tankier. You can toss some extra points here if you have enough Str / Dex for your gear requirements.

Energy: Passives will eat up your energy reserves through I still think it’s best to just spend gold on potions, boost energy supply from gear or use energy reserve reduction gear.

Strength: You need enough to equip your gear and any weapons you want at least. A mix of Str and Dex is better than going heavy on either of them instead imo. ~650 or so should be enough any end game Str oriented equipment you might want to use.

Intellect: Not applicable

Dexterity: You need enough to equip your gear and any weapons you want at least. It will boost your DA, bleeding and piercing damage. You’ll want 500+ probably.

Equipment

This is my final equipment loadout. I was using full Tracker’s set previously for farming and had pretty poor resistances overall so did a lot of gear swapping to fix holes in my resistances. Grabbed a Hale Ring of Immortality so I could get some more Strength and Health and socketed with Demon’s Blood to cap Vitality resistance. Crafted up Jade Emperor artifact to get my elemental resistances to good levels and more Strength.

Didn’t worry to much about getting +skill. None of my skills needed it to make the build work. Talisman provides a bit of CDR and I can cast Study Prey pretty often on packs. I get a lot of DA from skills so don’t need to worry about DA from gear much.

You don’t need anything particularly specific for the build. Just get a good bow, get decent resistances and boost your attacking speed and projectile speed.

Leveling

Been quite a while since I started this character, I started with Hunting and used for Specialist achievement and got the Hardcore Normal and Epic with it as well. One point in Ensnare for early CC, fill in Wood Lore for DA and attack speed. One point into Herbal Remedy, Art of The Hunt a couple of points into Marksmanship then pump up Mastery to unlock Call of the Hunt, Study Prey and pump up Find Cover and Puncture Shot Arrows. Max Volley when possible.

You can switch over to Dream in Epic. Drop a point into Trance of Empathy and Lucid Dream. You can drop Empathy for Convalescence later when you can unlock it. Max out Premonition and Temporal RIft and one point into Distort Reality for CC. Then you can max out Markmanship tree, Trance, etc.

Q&A

If you have any queries about the build leave a comment and I will respond when I have time.

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