Welcome! In this guide I will show you an easy way to get your Thaumaturge through the highest difficulty in no time.

As the name suggests, I will be using Lightning skills. The choice was obvious, because there is a decent single-target, strong AoE and decent fire-and-forget one, and the only socketable in the game that boots elemental damage by a percentage is a Lightning based one. VH2 has different types, but VH1 highly favors the Lightning element.

Some damage screenshot to hook you up ;-)

So your Lightning skills that you will be using all the time:

• Energy Bolts
  
• Thunderbolt
  
• Elyctric Discharge

USE:
- OOM skill (costs 20 mana only)
- single-target & high HP boss finisher
After you deal with the pack, sometimes single enemies remain, pick them off with this.

Add Surge Blast mastery.
- The bolts do half the amount of damage in a 1 meter radius. Requires Rank 5.
- This game is swarming with monsters, you want AoE, even if it's just a 1 meter wide
- This supposedly increases damage dealt (unconfirmed)

No powerups.
- They sux.


USE:
- Your AoE and main damage skill
- Paralyzing tough enemies
- Dealing huge amounts of damage with Charge-up
Spam it.

No mastery.
- It will knock enemies down, but it will knock them away from your bolt, creating space in between them and then your Thunderbolt won't hit them all together.

Add Shock Blast powerup.

- Works on nearly everything!
- Up to 6 seconds stun on multiple enemies with a single cast
- Enables you to charge-up another Thunderbolt, run away, regen mana, etc.
No other powerups. When enemies are stunned you don't need extra 30% damage, because you can shoot them freely. And your other skill will instakill them.

SETUP 1: Set powerups on manual, add paralyze only when required.
SETUP 2: Set powerups on automatic use, paralyze on most hits.
Your choice :)
I have powerups on automatic use.



- The lightning shoots every 0.5 sec and automatically targets enemies
- You can have multiple balls up, because cooldown cap is 4s, but every ball has 15% mana upkeep. You will notice with 2 balls, your mana pool suddenly stops at like 70% of your max mana, this is the "mana upkeep" for the Elyctric Discharge. It only lasts for the duration of the spell, so when the ball disappears, you can regenerate back to full mana.

No mastery.
- The extra 3 meters are not worth 3 skillpoints

Add Charge Spike powerup.

- Does not kill bosses and champions.
- Added for Scenario and Neverending Story modes, where enemies have too high HP.
You can get extra 13 second duration powerup and use it like 0-1-2 powerup setting. Increases duration from 10 to 23 seconds and you still have 16% instakill chance. Your choice.




- You want at least 60% total to gain the second -5% cooldown bonus
- Max Mana, obviously you need as much mana as you can get, and it's a 1-cost skill.
- Max Rage, add both masteries. You will be spending Rage in Neverending Story, this helps a lot. And again 1-cost skill.
- 5 points in Elemental Mastery, add the mastery for Singleplayer. Reducing the manacost helps, but if you play multiplayer you won't need it (Mana Fortress).
- 1 point in Ink Jump. Your 3rd panic button, also your way to escape from summoned Bone Walls and the Bone Entrapment. Bind it on your 4th trick slot.
- points in Ice Shards are leftovers, select any 1-point skill you want.


- 1+ points in Telekinetic Aura

Survivability, basically required for Scenario & Neverending Story. Get mana per hit or extra damage if you play multiplayer.

- 5+ points in Storm Adept.

More damage, that's it. Add mastery - manacost reduction if you don't have enough mana.

Tricks

Sluggish Time

- Your tool against ranged enemies, cannonballs and bosses.
Makes your life and your friends life easier. I spent enough points to make it last 5 seconds (easy to count).

Painlessness

- Your first panic button. Makes you completely immune to ANY damage.
I spent enough points to make it last 5 seconds (easy to count).

Arcane Healing

- Your second panic button. Instant heal.
With your spellpower amounts, it's instant heal to full HP. It will heal Katarina and your friends in multiplayer too.

Max Willpower.

Every skill you use is based on Spellpower and uses mana. Luck may be tempting, but trust me, the extra crit dmg % bonus or magic find are not worth it. You don't ever need Dex and you can get HP from items.

After distributing skills and stats, your aim is to get items with spellpower, willpower, cooldown reduction %, critical hit %, critical damage %, lightning damage %, mana and HP. Resistances, defense, hp regen and mana regen are not really important.

My statscreen:


You want maximum spellpower, ~40% cooldown reduction, ~30% critical hit (more = better) and 450% critical damage bonus (this used to be capped at 600%, nowadays it's capped at 450%). The rest of your stats can be balanced as you see fit.

My order of priorities:
1) Spellpower
2) Critical Hit %
3) Cooldown Reduction %
4) Critical Damage %
5) Willpower
6) Lightning Damage %
7) Mana & HP
8) Everything else

Maximum is 50 Capacity Essence on every item, and the more, the merrier. But the main reason why you want 50 is because of this:


You put this essence everywhere you can't put spellpower sockets, then you just enjoy the damage.
In case your items don't have enough % Critical Damage, socketing Luck into "armor" type items becomes useful too.


- enchant with +35% Critical Damage
- socket with Spellpower
















- even without the other set bonuses, this ring simply rocks. Crit Hit % on a ring together with All Attributes and with +100 dodge value is huge.


- wear this mainly for the awesome +1 All Skills bonus


- With a single item you gain like +13% chance to avoid an attack due to Defense, that's why you socket and enchant +% Item Defense on the armor.

Choose your perks wisely, since you can never reset them!

My perks:


Bull's Eye (+10% ranged dmg & +10% Spellpower)
Focused (-10% cooldown, +20% Mana Regen)
Magical Hunter (+10% melee dmg & +10% Spellpower)
Master (+5 skill points)
Mentor (+3 skill points)
Perfect Aim (+5% Crit chance)
Slayer (+10% all dmg)
Thunderous (+10% Lightning Damage)
Teacher (+3 skill points)

As the last perk, get either
Veteran Hunter (+2 skill points, +3 attribute points, you can equip items +1 level higher than your current level)
OR
Inventive (-5% cooldown)

- I took the Veteran Hunter, because you can gain extra cooldown reduction with Glory points.
- You don't need Powerups for heroic game, but you will need them for Neverending Story.
- You should have the Alchemist perk on your second character to create maximized essences and trade them to your Thaumaturge via shared stash.

Our lovely companion will help us boost our damage aswell.

Stats

If you plan to use her as a support/meatshield, spec her points accordingly into Dex/Str, I just use her as a Ghost (+10% damage reduction) and all stat points go into Luck, that increases my Magic Find Chance %.

Skills


Empowering Presence (your damage)
Arcane Awakening (your damage)
Spiritual Guardian (your damage reduction)
Max it all!
Then you will have like 2 points left to choose whatever you wish, i put it into Defense because that gives the highest bonus of the choices.

Equipment

Katarina loves essences just like you, so equip her some nice weapons with 0/50 essence capacity and fill them with Magic Find Chance %. It doesn't really matter what she wears, she's just a Ghost that reduces your damage taken.

If you use her as ranged support, give her some big gun and use armor and accesories with DEX. Spending skill points into Ghostly Mirage Trick (summon copies of Katarina) can become somewhat useful this way.

If you use her as a meatshield, give her a nasty slow twohanded sword (again with 50/50 MF essences) and some decent armor with Defense and Resistances, preferably with extra the Body stat.
But be prepared that she will die quite often, thus the extra skill points should go into the Wail of Vengeance DLC skill (explosion on death).

On Scenarios and Neverending Story she will be useless, so I keep her in Ghost form permanently, and she just picks up gold and rares/epics/set items.

That's about it. Suggestions welcome!
But now go and kill Fulmigati and everything else with your Lightning ;-)