Overview
Quick-reference guide to available armors, sorted by slot and quality, for those of us who want easy and efficient planning of mixed-discipline builds for our Tech-Priests.
Introduction
This guide is as much for my own reference as it is for fellow Mechanicus players who want to have an easier time planning how they’re going to gear out their Tech-Priests. It’s organized by item slot to show the best available choices for the various benefits that each slot is able to provide.
Note that this is not a comprehensive guide on how you SHOULD level your Tech-Priests, simply a quick-reference of the best options available to you, whatever you intend your priest’s build to be.
Items which are objectively worse are marked in strikethrough, though they can still be viable options if you’re going to be putting enough levels into that discipline anyway.
Head
The head slot is fairly limited, and just provides a choice of which armor type you’d prefer.
Physical Resistance
Explorator, Xenarite: 2 Health, 1 Physical Armor
Enginseer: 1 Physical Armor
Energy Resistance
Secutor, Dominus: 2 Health, 1 Energy Armor
Tech-Auxilium: 2 Energy Armor
Both
Lexmechanic: 1 Physical Armor, 1 Energy Armor
Torso
Much like the head, body armor does not provide much choice besides armor type and HP.
Physical Resistance
Tech-Auxilium: 4 Health, 1 Physical Armor
Explorator: 3 Health, 1 Physical Armor
Energy Resistance
Enginseer, Dominus: 3 Health, 1 Energy Armor
Health
Xenarite: 5 Health
Secutor, Lexmechanic: 4 health
Arms
The arm slot offers a diverse selection of various offensive or defensive enhancements.
Physical Damage Bonus
Explorator: 1 Physical Damage
Energy Damage Bonus
Dominus: 1 Energy Damage
Health/Defense
Lexmechanic: 2 Health, 20% Dodge Chance
Xenarite: 3 Health
Enginseer: 2 Health
Critical Hit
Secutor: 2 Health, +20% Crit Chance (stackable)
*Tech-Auxilium: 1 Health, +20% Crit Chance (stackable)
*not crossed out because most priests are more likely to dip a level into Auxilium than Secutor for its first skill, so the slightly-worse arm piece is still potentially a large offense boost for lower investment.
Legs
Most legs increase movement and HP, despite being flat-out worse at this than the Dominus legs, though a couple of other specialized options are also available.
Movement + Health
Dominus: 3 Health, 3m Movement
Explorator: 2 Health, 3m Movement
Tech-Auxilium, Lexmechanic: 2 Health, 2m Movement
Secutor: 3 Health, 1m Movement
Critical Hit
Xenarite: 2m Movement, +20% Crit Chance (stackable)
Energy Resistance, No Movement Bonus
Enginseer: 2 Health, 1 Energy Armor
If you’re new to the game, or you just wanted some tips… first of all, please don’t take my word as the Omnissiah’s gospel for Optimization. You’ll find that the game is pretty unbalanced in favor of the Cult Mechanicus (in a fun way, fortunately!), though not as severely as it was on release, so whatever path you find yourself going down will probably still be viable through to the end. Still, I can try to give tips based on how I play.
In general, I prefer to lean more towards armor bonuses over plain HP on most tech-priests, since access to large amounts of healing is very easy to get after the early-game, and damage reduction will likely save you more health than you would have gained in the trade-off if your priest is targeted with that damage type more than once or twice. On the other hand, you still probably don’t want to dip below 15 hp or so, lest your Tech-Priests risk being two-shot by an unfortunate selection of harder enemies focusing fire on them.
I also prefer to lean towards selecting unique offense bonuses in the arm slot, since late-game Mechanicus swings significantly towards that old adage that “the best defense is a good offense” – you’ll be saving your HP and Awakening levels the more Necrons you can melt in a turn and the quicker you can melt them, and the same goes for the benefits of movement distance in the leg slot. If you have the DLC, stacking Xenarite’s crit-boosting legs together with crit arms will give you a huge bonus that can enable high-damage Tech-Priests to crit far more often than not.
For crafting specific builds, I would say to first look at the tree or trees that you are planning to go down for skills, then supplement the weakest pieces of that discipline’s armor set by dipping into other classes with skills that will also be useful to you. For example, if you already have a piece that gives +2 hp and a bonus you want, replacing it with something that gives the same bonus plus 1 additional hp should be very low on your gear priorities… or, you probably won’t want to dip into Dominus’s +4 range talent on a pure-melee Explorator just to get a piece of gear because that skill won’t be of use… but most of your Tech-Priests will probably be dipping into Tech-Auxilium to make use of its excellent first skill, and thus they’d have easy access to selecting their preferred armor piece from the Auxilium’s set.
Guide updated and accurate as of Mechanicus version 1.3.8
