I had a lot of fun making these, and you might too. So, you know, consider for a bit if you really want to read these or dive in blind and try making your own.

...But also, check your Options -> Battle Text. Disabling some of those can speed up gameplay a lot. Do you really need notifications when buffs, debuffs and minions happen, or your stat gains?

Also also, the game only uses 7 keys and you might think it cool to play with one hand. Don't do that - there's too much rapidly tapping all the keys to interact with random garbage. Use the arrow keys with one hand and the other three functions with the other - your wrists will thank you.

The 2.0 version of the game has capped damage reduction from most traits at 80%. Necromancer is no longer immortal.

The rules I'm using to make these builds are:
1. nothing that requires a depth greater than 120 or so (not sure where common creature unlocks stop, I think it's here?)
2. builds tested on instability 2 against enemies twice the level of my creatures, around 10 runs per class or until I'm satisfied
3. nothing particularly hard/RNG to acquire like exotic creatures
4. artifact level 40 and no artifact traits (I also don't use trick slots unless I need to squeeze in a couple more spells)
5. no relics
6. nothing from god shops (arena and gambling dwarves are allowed)
7. one exception allowed to either artifact trait or god shop restrictions if I judge it extremely valuable (Wormhole!)

(For the newbies out there, remember that artifact spell gems care a lot about what kind of artifact you use - this guide isn't using them, but don't sink a rare material into a helm for a build that never provokes)

War Priest+Raving Storm initiator
Pit Guard+Lip Animation
Ebony Ent+Efflorescent Ent defender
Aaxer Apocalypse+Nature Shapeshifter
Death Guard+Chaos Guard
Phase Knight+Leper Plaguespreader
Spells: two Curse of the Swarm, two Summon Horde, one shared Recharge, one shared Astral Dimension, one River Against the Current, one shared Requiem, one shared Panic Attack

Spinning a lot of plates here. Your highest-health guy gets kicked to the top of the timeline, so there's our initiation. Raving Storm means he can't be silenced, War Priest clears the rest of the team (except against Mana Vortex). Pit Guard makes sure our other two casters have the stats they need, Lip Animation echoes their spellcasting.
Both the Raving Priest and the Efflorescent Ebony have both Curse of the Swarm and Summon Horde, one set to manual cast and the other to end-of-turn cast; this helps against spell gem sealing and charge reduction.
Because we auto-kill enemies in 'normal' fights (apparently meaning anything that isn't a boss, mimics included) and have high attack ramp built-in, we can focus everything on reducing the damage we take (and it still gets hairy quickly on higher difficulties; no built-in damage reduction). Death Guard, Chaos Guard, Ebony Ent, Efflorescent Ent and Phase Knight all help us survive with damage reduction. Leper Plaguespreader does too, if you get your debuffs off.
The Ent gets the highest defense and speed, so he's constantly provoking and striking back, and as the second to act he can cast your two big spells.
You can and will insta-kill your allies with Confusion and the like; Nature Shapeshifter prevents that.
Aaxer Apocalypse is a very noteworthy creature. There's an all-too-common nemesis (the name of which escapes me right now) that shuts down stat-gain. But stat-gain is not stat-have, and Aaxer is stat-have. Even in those fights you're still ramping.
Our casters aren't supposed to lose spell charges, but somehow it still happens sometimes, so a shared Recharge to get things back on track.
Our mix of classes is carefully balanced to get good use out of both Curse of the Swarm and Summon Horde.
Astral Dimension clears gem sealing, River Against the Current if enemy buffs get obnoxious, Requiem if one of your guys dies, Panic Attack to clear enemies quick as possible once you have your minions. Your third caster can cast whatever - Transcendance is a possibility; all your races have nice traits on other creatures. Stampede is probably better than Panic Attack, but only a bit and it's a god shop spell.

And as you can see here, Discount Drazhya's Bargain Bin Builds doesn't always include a Nix Informer (this is generally a bad idea; start-of-battle casts are scary)

The one thing that really shut me down with this is some bad luck with an Ahnkol Tremor, and a Consuming Vortex would be worse. Nothing I can think of to do about that though.

For more expensive things, Nether Boss Andrick's first trait drop, (Andrick's Royal Decree), will give you an abundance of buffs as you gain minions, and Dryad Proliferator will translate that into more stats. A Crystal Smith on your defender can be nice too.

Rotten Carnage+Terror Wight
Dragon Revenant+Dolor Sin
Nihilist Protector+Nadin Rift Dancer
Zarox Apocalypse+Aaxor Apocalypse
Pit Guard+Dragon Guardian
Royal Phoenix+Dusk Ossein
Spells: shared Wormhole, Recharge, Slaughter, Rapture

We can't rely on our opposition to kill our dudes in a reliable or convenient manner, so we'll have to do it ourselves. (We could, instead, make a generically-strong build and just suppose our auto-revives to be a safety net, but we're leaning into what makes these specializations unique)

Wormhole is our rules-exception. The strategy is to Wormhole to the Terror Carnage, who then Slaughters our team until someone runs out of revives, then Rapture to finish and Recharge as needed. We don't have an initiator and don't need one - a few deaths are acceptable while waiting for your turn - which should come quite quickly with Royal Phoenix.

Dragon Revenant and Dragon Guardian will pile on stat-downs, to which the Dolor Sin will add debuffs. Any of your deaths (of which we intend to be many) will Attack on revive for more stat-downs and debuffs with Nihilist Protector. Nadin Rift Dancer will increase our finisher's stat-gains (neither on-death or on-resurrect enhancers seem to affect this specialization's perks).

The Apocalypses are unlikely to matter, really, and the Pit Guard and Dusk Ossein just add a few more stats. The Dusk Ossein will also only work for creatures to the left of it when you Slaughter your team, so he should be on the far right.

The Terror Carnage will gain buckets of stats as your team dies, especially when he does the killing and can get very big. (Don't bother trying to use a Fallen Carnage in this strategy, it doesn't play nice with Royal Phoenix.)

However, Satyr Guardians will probably just end your run. Corrupted Phoenixes are concerning as well. No, I don't have a strategy for them here. Just about anything else should be easy.

Aaxer Apocalypse+Necro Grimoire
Watchful Inquisitor+Dragon Guardian
Inquisitor Weaver+Inquisitor Countess
Blood Hound+Horror Hound
Terror Hound+Panic Hound
Inox Apocalypse+Cold Cockatrice
Grimoire should have Summon Horde and Indiscriminate Summoning (he can start-of-battle cast them without charges, but needs charges to double-cast them if you add that property. You can arrange a shared Recharge to keep him topped off, but it's not necessary)
Stone Ward somewhere and that's all you really need. Ritual of Summoning, a shared Summon Horde, Mass Mutilation (trigger your Writhelings) and Requiem are all good as well.

This Necromancer is basically immortal. Your minions give you tons of damage reduction, plus a high resurrection chance immediately. You keep getting minions and they keep adding damage. Even if you lose a creature or two, they'll keep coming back until you get your turn, and you can use Requiem to patch up any holes that probably won't appear. There are spells that get rid of your minions, but I've never seen the enemy have or use them.
Downside is it's slow - there are no fast clears here. You ramp up until they're dead. Dragon Guardian helps a lot in speeding this up, and the Apocalypses will guarantee that, eventually, you get through.
Necro Grimoire is your initiation and gives you 7-14 rolls for new minions before anything happens. Inquisitors beef up your minions and give you buffs when your writhelings debuff - which you an trigger with Mass Mutilation. Hounds give you an extra starting minion - more damage reduction, more damage, more resurrection - and a bit more damage. The Cold Cocka gets your Summon Horde working good.

I was a bit surprised at available creatures for this specialization - there aren't all that many minion creatures, even fewer that are cheap, and then even fewer that are cheap and good. But then, this here minion specialization doesn't even need any more to clear rooms, if slowly.

Trading out the Cockatrice for Sphinxes later (Justicar and Elder) is recommended - a bit more flexibility in your party arrangement and a crazy-high stat boost. Bloodfang Gargoyle is something I randomly slapped on an item, but actually fits pretty well - you're always casting Apocalypses once you have your minions up. And then there's a variety of exotic creatures and backer traits to keep an eye out for, like Nox Sinon and (Synthesis). Leper Plaguebringer and Dryad Proliferator fit okay as well. You're not going to get turn 0 victories with anything I've dreamed up here though.

Siralim 2.0 note: as of 2.0, most sources of damage reduction, including that of Necromancer, are capped at 80%. Necromancer is no longer immortal, though it is still hard to kill.

Uralos Healer+Soulflayer Peacemaker
Uralos Trickster+Transient Spectre
Uralos Spellslinger+Chaos Salamander
Uralos Spearmaster+Phase Knight
Uralos Knight+Pit Guard
Uralos Savage+Mummy Lord
Spells: shared Duel

This build came together like a dream. I want all of my guys provoking immediately because most of my damage as well as defense is baked into that. Okay, looks like Soulflayer Peacemaker is the only reasonable way to make that happen, so I need to pick a race. Doom Fortress is the provocation race, but it's a god shop race, so not allowed. What else do we have? Uralos actually looks pretty good.
Okay, so now they provoke all at the same time, but how do I kick that off? The spell Duel will do that, and Chaos Salamander will fire it off. Neat. Now what?
Indirect damage doesn't trigger Retribution, which is what this class is all about, so prevent as much of that as possible. Phase Knight, done. I'm provoking constantly, so Transient Spectre to ruin enemy defenses quickly, nice. And what if I want to make them hit me? Mummy Lord, cool. And maybe if I'm making one of my guys get hit, I should beef him up a bit. Pit Guard, nice.

Your perks are adding defense to health and adding your highest stat to Retribution damage, so I recommend shields (you defend every time you provoke) with all health+defense gems. After a couple of the ol' instability 2 + double my level runs, I went to instability 3 and triple my level and it still sails smoothly. Spell initiation without silence immunity means vulnerable to Nix Informer, but oh well - I'm not seeing a cheap solution to that.

Banged my head on this one a while. Put something together a couple years before 2.0 that I wasn't satisfied with, then when I came back I've been running against enemies 3 times my level, which is quite a bit harder. I did eventually put something together I'm okay with.

The Reaver gains bonuses for winning fights in a Realm, and for taking turns in a fight. Neither of which help on turn 1 in fight 1. What you do get on turn 1 in fight 1 is immunity to frozen, snared, sleeping and getting kicked down the timeline, and a 25% repeating chance on attacks to attack again. And that's it.

Valkyrie Scout+Pegasus
Leech Devourer+Oculum Leech
Scheming Wisp+Apis Defender
Nix Informer+Slurping Bat
Dragon Scout+Storm Lord
Phase Knight+Dragon Revenant
shared Panic Attack, shared Recharge, shared Requiem, Astral Dimension, Greater Dispel

Nix Informer's turn 0 silence means you're mostly dealing with attacks, and you can mostly avoid resistant enemies until you've won a bunch of fights. Scheming Wisp+Apis Defender is a lot of defense against attacks - but not completely reliable, so you should have a backup plan. Phase Knight and Storm Lord can keep you from getting one-shot even on turn 1 fight 1 - though again, not reliably. If they do get a spell off, they lose intelligence and their next spells will be much worse - hopefully their first spell doesn't nuke your entire team. Effects that trigger when you get attacked, unfortunately, don't seem to work unless you take damage. Still, if your Scheming Wisp gets hit, Dragon Scout will reduce their attack, Valkyrie Scout will retaliate and with Pegasus will give you buffs, hopefully including Rebirth.

Once you're passed the first enemy turn, cast Panic Attack with everyone. The Leech gives you stat-ramp, Slurping Bat debuffs everyone, Pegasus is more buffs. After you Recharge, your turn 3 effect that removes charge usage should allow you to Panic Attack every turn after.

The Valkyrie Scout is the weakest part of the party, and Dragon Scout is a bit dubious as well against enemies 3x your level - you really don't want to be hit. An Ancient Yeti to remove a couple enemy turns, or a Bard Jongleur so you're not as reliant on your attack stat, or a Bard Trovatore to shuffle up the timeline a bit are all possibilities. Or Chaos Guard for just a bit more damage reduction. Chaos Salamander + shared Curse of the Swarm + shared Improvised Recitation is something I tried, and does help - usually. Sometimes it removes silence on the wrong enemy and you die. And it's a lot more expensive on your Jade. EF5 Twister or Quicksand instead of Curse of the Swarm might be better. Curse of the Swarm is a solid opener even without a Chaos Salamander though - once you have your turns, it'll keep enemies down.

A glass cannon, weather forecast is turn 0 victories, it's win or die in this sunset city!

I feel like I may have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this up somehow, but it still works.


Apis Defender+Nix Informer
Unicorn Vivifier+Lip Animation
Bhasa Cherub+Slurping Bat
Thunder Salamander+Imp Incarnate
Fire Salamander+Occultist Spellbinder
Chaos Salamander+Magnificus Sanctus
Spells: shared Recharge, shared Improvised Recitation. Can also throw in Requiem and/or Forbidden Unity.

With no built-in damage reduction or initiation, I figured that trying to survive would be a wasted effort - so instead, we revive if needed, but mostly we alpha strike.

Apis Defender keeps enemy attacks in one place, mostly. With the Fire Salamander, when he goes down, he casts spells. Because he's next to the Lip Animation, when he goes down, Lippy also casts spells. Because Rune spells trigger on-attack effects and Lippy is in a Vivifier, when he casts spells, he raises the dead. Not as consistent as I would like, but oh well - we have other ways of bringing creatures back.

Nothing ends a Rune Knight as thoroughly as the spell Luck's Gambit, since all your Rune spells are ethereal (For this reason also, Vulpes aren't helpful). If you don't have Nix Informer... it's usually not too bad, really. But sometimes...

Bhasa Cherub and Magnificus Sanctus are a pretty strong duo. Not as much on this class as on Doombringer, but they'll keep you in the fight for a while.

Slurping Bat actually gives us a lot of staying power - not very reliably, but usually all your Rune spells that go off at the start of the fight will result in a lot of debuffs, and they'll stack up further if the fight drags on.

Chaos Salamander is how we initiate. The only way I can think of, really, without Mimic. He's how most fights end before you can even do anything.

Thunder Salamander and Imp Incarnate are about +1 cast per cast. Not as good as it might sound - we're already spamming out a ton and hitting some caps sometimes. But even if our spells fail to do damage, they're still ticking up all our numbers that scale with number of Rune casts.

Occultist Spellbinder is such a nice fit - you're trying to cast the same gem as many times as possible on each creature, and with the Spellbinder, your numbers get very big.

We could just run with no equipped spell gems, and that's what I did initially - however, along comes a Sapphire Paragon and 6 Rune casts total is not enough.

Shambler Rescuer+Pit Wraith Redeemer
Shambler Benefactor+Phase Knight
Shambler Recruiter+Cosmos Vulpes
Shambler Juggernaut+Efflorescent Ent
Lugubrious Shambler+Dragon Guardian
Innocent Shambler+War Priest+(Master of Sea Shamblers)
Spells: Fermented Hops on everyone, Stone Ward on someone, one Fermented Hops shared, shared Recharge, shared Improvised Incantation, shared Requiem, shared Curse of the Swarm

Maybe there's something peculiar you can do with some other race, but Discount Drazhya's Basic ♥♥♥♥♥ Builds ain't doing that. Shadowbringer is the Blighted specialization and Sea Shamblers (starts with Sea, not Sha! If you sort by race, you'll need to remember that) are the Blighted race and they fit together quite fine.
We're spending that rule exception on the Sigil of the Sea Shambler from the Master of Sea Shamblers. Without it, it'll play the same except you'll die way more often. 72% damage reduction when you need it most (when 6 enemies are alive) is extremely good.
Fermented Hops is the spell that makes this specialization's world go 'round. All enemies take 35% of their max health as indirect damage, multiplied by all the things you have to increase Blighted damage - and Cosmos Vulpes can cast it. This Shadowbringer is all in on killing his enemies with what a gaslighter might call kindness. All in... can't handle things that are immune to debuffs at all. Thankfully there are, like, three. One is the Laughing Wisp, which you can mostly avoid and if you do see it, you can technically spend a dog's age hitting it until it dies as fatigue stacks up. Another is the Raving Storm... which I don't think I've actually encountered with my Shadowbringer, but I think it's Immune will stop your Blighted? And the last is the Treasure Golem, which is kind of funny - one of the most cruel specializations in the game, can't kill the Treasure Golems.
You can squeeze in something like a Raven Bloodmage with a Finger of Death spell if you want an answer to these targets, though it'll usually be too slow to catch the Treasure Golems.

I tried a on-heal party composition, but you don't have the Cleric's perk for triggering on-heals when at max health, so in practice it's not great.
The Shamblers together will heal you when you deal Blighted damage, increase Blighted damage by 50% and then by 25% per debuff, cast Minor Healing on them when they take Blighted damage, add a 50% chance to deal Blighted damage twice, and increase Blighted enemy healing received by 50%. I'm not hot on all of these - you mostly want bigger hits here, not more of them - but it gets us our racial trait and it's all valuable.
Pit Wraith Redeemer is bigger Blighted hits and will slow down the enemy a bit if your alpha strike isn't so hot. Phase Knight will blunt the teeth of Mutated Pulse Bats and the like - the many things that hit your entire party when x or y happens. Cosmos Vulpes is your initiation, and will sometimes end fights before they begin - it can cast your Fermented Hops. Efflorescent Ent is a good chunk of damage reduction since you'll always have Mending. Dragon Guardian is mixed in after a miserable encounter with a Pumking - high defense will kill your damage when combined with very low health. If you can't quite get the numbers you're looking for, smack one of them with Stone Ward. And finally, War Priest - which should be your fastest guy - will give you an opening to recover from Nix Informers or if your enemy pulls off an opening salvo of bad debuffs.

With slightly more expensive things, I removed the Pit Wraith Redeemer and War Priest for a Nix Informer and Mimic, and slapped a (Stand Alone Complex) from the first Aspect of Meraxis Nether Boss on the Mimic guy. First couple turns, enemy can't Cast and every enemy Attack misses, plus heavy damage reduction for indirect damage. Works quite well, though Apis Defender is cheaper and better in this case than Mimic (harder to disrupt).

Looking at our perks, I see that we benefit greatly in attack and defense from loading the enemy up with debuffs, we have two that we can apply with spell damage, and we benefit greatly from staying on top of the timeline. To exploit this, I decide to go for a spell-heavy build, which immediately means 4 problems - silence, gem-sealing, charge-draining and enemy on-enemy-cast traits. We do not have a perk to counter any one of these.

For solving this, I use our rules-exception and take Master of Grimoires - it seems the most solid approach, providing immunity to silence and no spell charge usage. On-enemy-cast traits can do damage to your team in any form - spell, attack or indirect. I'll suppose for now that I can deal with this via our Ruin perk - if we can get an average of 11 debuffs on each of an enemy team of 6, we'll have 99% damage reduction. Bit of a dodgy solution, with enemies dying and all, but it could work. For gem-sealing, we'll pick up the Astral Dimension spell.

The Master of Grimoires trait doesn't strictly require that the entire team is Grimoires, but it's best if it is. There are only two really good Grimoires - Ancient and Hidden, with which the first 2 spells of each of our creatures is shared out to the rest of the team and each of our spells are cast twice. A Clawing Cockatrice turns 3 of our creatures into Grimoires, and for the last I decide on a Pyro Grimoire - it doesn't do much, but I suppose the others do less.

Now we have two more open slots before we need to think about fusions and we need to get to the top of the timeline. With our Slipstream perk kicking our team up 3 spots, Bard Trovatore nearly guarantees us the first turn. Finally, with my spell selection (more on that in a bit), We have a lot of sorcery spells and don't yet have a great way to overcome high defense, so I'll round out the team with Zealot Occultist.

For spells, my first thought is Improvised Recitation. Why cast one spell when you can cast four? The new Siralim Ultimate 2.0 version gives us some powerful new spells to play with, and I'll take EF5 Twister, Napalm and Shattered Rainbow. All of them deal damage to the entire enemy team and apply various debuffs, including random debuffs so we can potentially apply all of them, and more importantly, Snared, which keeps them at the bottom of the timeline. Ancient Grimoire shares all of them to the entire team without spending any precious jade.

But Improvised Recitation does mean that sharing more spells comes with some negatives. Still, I figure mixing in Greater Dispel and Requiem is more gain than loss. Recharge as well, because I'm still leery of randomly losing charges. After a test run, it seems this team can handle anything that isn't particularly dangerous, including at least some nether bosses. It sometimes doesn't kill quickly, but the enemy is stuck at the bottom of the timeline and eventually my intelligence ramps above their defense. And for the rare enemy that's immune to spell damage, our burning debuff is indirect damage that also scales with intelligence.

We have 6 more creature picks and mostly have to worry about edge cases now. Bloodfang Gargoyle gives us an alternate solution to enemies when our intelligence gets dumped, such as by Dragon Revenant or Siren Soothsayer. Spider Occultist gets us a generally faster kill speed. Phase Knight helps against all kinds of indirect damage and Nature Shapeshifter handles things like Confusion. Aaxer Apocalypse can be added so that, no matter what, you're scaling up... and I'm out of ideas for the sixth one. The team works though. Maybe not so much against Wyvern Skystalker though.

Ancient Grimoire + Spider Occultist (+ Master of Grimoires)
Hidden Grimoire + Phase Knight
Eldritch Grimoire + Bard Trovatore
Bloodfang Gargoyle + ???
Zealot Occultist + Nature Shapeshifter
Clawing Cockatrice + Aaxer Apocalypse

Improvised Recitation, EF5 Twister, Napalm, Shattered Rainbow, Recharge, Astral Dimension, Greater Dispel, Requiem

Patientias Sanctus+Planetary Amaranth
Breathing Arbiter+Living Arbiter
Pit Guard+Transient Spectre
Spitting Arachnalisk+Apis Defender
Infernal Guard+Bard Trovatore
Dragon Scout+Nix Informer
Spells: shared Vaccination, shared Requiem

Not happy with this class. It's designed to ramp up and doesn't give you good tools to survive the process - and more, the Poisoned-related creatures aren't very useful. This setup can survive x3 level most of the time, so it's not horrible. Enemies are silenced and so pushed into Attacking, all Attacks are intercepted by the Arachnalisk Defender, and every such Attack buffs your Poisoned debuffs and reduces enemy attack. Patientias Sanctus rapidly ramps up damage if turns drag on, which they never have - if you die, you'll pretty much always die quickly. And when you win, it'll be after a round or three.
Bard Trovatore means you'll probably not sit through 6 consecutive enemy turns, Transient Spectre will tear down enemy defenses and everything else makes you harder to kill. Transient Guard defends, everyone else spams Vaccination to keep you alive.

For other things, Wormholing around can ramp up your poison and damage reduction. Virus can give you a chunk of damage. Sabotage on the Arachnalisk might be fun.

I tried Cockatrice tribal at first - "enemies always have Confused" does have synergy with this class. But it uses the rules-exception and more particularly, it wasn't good. Simply can't rely on Confusion to get the job done, and it uses 3 traits plus the rules-exception to do so little.
I wanted to avoid using the Wisp Defender, as it feels like something I'm going to start leaning on often - but with zero built-in damage reduction and the restrictions I've given myself, perhaps it's just gotta be. So I went with:

Scheming Wisp+Apis Defender
Chaos Salamander+Nightmare Mummy
Fire Salamander+Swarm Mummy
Phase Knight+Transient Spectre
Water Salamander+Storm Lord
Wind Salamander+Zealot Occultist
spells: extra-target Transcendance, Holy Protection, extra-target Mind Tricks*2, extra-target Eaten Alive*3, Putrescent Odor*3, shared Requiem, shared Recharge*2, Evolution, extra-target Stone Ward, Gift of the Wild, Astral Dimension, Greater Dispel, extra-target Mind Control*2

I'll state for clarity that these aren't supposed to be extremely-optimized builds, even within my restrictions - they're intended to get the job done most of the time, be a starting point to playing a class and figuring out how it works and what it needs, and be an easy solution if you want to use them for the Goblet of Trials. Once I'm more-or-less comfortable playing them, I put them in my guide. This build is dodgy on that whole surviving angle, but it does, usually, work.
It's a big pile of spells and could presumably use a lot of tweaking. The general idea is that you fire off enough enemies-attacking-enemies spells that at least some of them die and the rest fail to kill you before you get your turn, then you turn the heat up. By defending and watching them die.
Evolution is an "in case of Nature Shapeshifter emergency, break glass" button, and you'll want to avoid casting random spells with the one who has it as much as you can, lest they break your Water Salamander. Even if that does happen, your random Transcendance casts are likely to patch the hole. Mind Tricks is a god-shop item and thus the rules-exception, from Zonte. Could probably do without it, but makes enemies hit themselves.
(Should maybe have the Water Salamander be a fused, rather than innate trait)
Scheming Wisp+Apis Defender should sink a lot of enemy attacks. Nightmare Mummy, Storm Lord and Phase Knight should provide sufficient damage reduction against everything else most of the time. Transient Spectre should guarantee that your enemies can kill your enemies, while the Wind/Water/Chaos Salamanders get enough spells off and if your guys start dying, Fire Salamander gives you some chances to stabilize.
It has no silence immunity; Nix Informers will kill you

For upgrades, (Sarea's Command) and Dryad Sunbather are extremely strong for this class - but one is from a Nether Boss at some level or another, and the other requires depth 415, so they're outside the scope of this guide.