Leaderboard

Heya trolls, denizens, lurkers and y'all that are our community! Welcome the newest member to the Mod Squad from the midst of the OBS community: @Mamoulian War! Play nice and don't spill too much sand ... party may begin

Lactose Intolerant Armored Arcanist - Solo Upscaled Path of the Damned with Balance Polishing Mod Class: Goldpact Paladin Blood Mage Game Version: Real Time With Pause. Made to play with Balance Polishing Mod and the Community Patch, but will work basically the same without. POTD Solo Viable: Yes, all Upscaled. Megabosses: I farmed Belranga, Dorudugan and Auranic for their mythic stones, without honor. Didn't try Hauani. Companion: Nope. -----WHAT IS INTERESTING ABOUT THIS BUILD?----- For some time now, I've been trying different ways to build a Wizard that could solo at max difficulty, with all the Balance Polishing Mod components including nerfs, and without using anything that could be remotely considered as cheese. BPM already deactivates the funny business around Wall of Draining, Salvation of Time, Strand of Favor etc. On top, it changes Blood Sacrifice to prevent healing for 6 fixed seconds after using the ability. So I built around those parameters. I also didn't want to use Grimoire Imprint shenanigans at all. So I'd like to finally share this build because it does all that I intended in a deceptively simple and brutally effective way, although it's not the fastest at solving encounters... but it's all automated, which is nice. I will detail briefly the proposition and how it works below, and then I'll put the stat/equipment details etc. Please note that Balance Polishing Mod makes it slightly better (e.g. buffed Fire Godlike passive AR) but it can play just as well in vanilla. The core proposition is simple and stays the same from start to finish, it just gets better as we go and grab more gear and abilities: -Pile up an absolute truckload of Armor Rating through passive/active abilities and items, to push the vast majority of incoming attacks into severe under-penetration (-75% damage). You'll still find a few enemies that have Penetration 24-26 on a Graze/Hit (!) but that's rare and manageable. -Pile up high defenses that are easy to maintain through only a couple casts (basically only passive defenses plus Infuse with Vital Essence and Llengrath's Safeguard) to push the vast majority of incoming attacks to Misses (0% damage) and Grazes (-50% damage). You'll still find a few enemies that have autohits and miss-to-graze conversion but that's manageable. -Have max Resolve (35) and Ring of the Solitary Wanderer to cut all hostile effect durations short (approx. -80% duration). -Have a big health pool and some reasonable sustain healing (23hp per 6s, nothing to write home about) to stay bloodied almost all the time (to always trigger Fire Godlike passive +2 Armor Rating and Blood Rage +10 Accuracy from Akola's Apex Ward, more than negating the Large Shield malus). -Use the Large Shield Modal to further neuter any ranged/Reflex targeting attacks (-50% damage). -Offensively, use Concelhaut's Draining Missiles or early on, Corrosive Siphon, to transfer enemy health to our health. -Convert some of that health to replenish spells and repeat the whole process until there is no more enemy health to steal, which means there are no more enemies and the encounter is won. So here is the full breakdown of a high-level encounter: -Ideally, approach enemy from stealth, find a nice position to make a stand. This build likes being out in the open because it can't be flanked (Kapana Taga) and wants to be engaged by 5 enemies to get max defense bonus from Entonia's Signet Ring. Stay in that position for a few seconds to build the 3 stacks of Armor Rating (Stoic Steel). -Begin the encounter by casting Brand Enemy on a priority target (ideally a healer, or an annoying squishy). At this point, we start with defenses in the 170s-200s and Armor Ratings between 21 and 27 (Mythic Magnera's Chain, Stoic Steel, Kapana Taga, Akola's Apex Ward, Gilded Enmity). Not too bad. -My AI script will switch on The Wall modal, start casting Infuse with Vital Essence, Blood Sacrifice until under 50% health, then Llengrath Safeguard. At this point, we have the defenses as per the screenshot above, all in the 200s and minimum Armor Rating is 24 (!). Incoming damage is minimal and importantly, very predictable. Even Bloodied we still have around 250 health. -Then the AI script will chain cast Draining Missiles, prioritizing enemies by lowest Fortitude, and keep casting Blood Sacrifice in-between to keep us Bloodied and full of spells and maintain uptime on Vital Essence and Safeguard. Apart from Safeguard, we want to only ever cast Ability Tier 2 spells to maximize Blood Sacrifice's usefulness. Draining Missiles are very good because they always do the same damage even on Grazes, and having 6 projectiles means they'll always do something. We love consistency and predictability. It is also important to not have too much dexterity in BPM, to have Draining Missiles fired just when the -100% Healing debuff clears out - projectile travel time and target distance play a role there too, so I went conservative with my dexterity, doesn't matter. -Draining Missiles benefit from Brand Enemy +damage so we want to selectively put this on high-priority enemies, but keep some zeal for occasionally casting Lay on Hands if needed on long fights, to reset our primary resource pool i.e. Health. -The encounter will slowly solve itself as enemies fall. There is actually some upside to taking enemies one by one: we limit the level of extra threat generated by the Blood Mage passive when enemies are below 50% Health. So we keep everybody nice and healthy to keep incoming damage under control while we remove threats one after the other. To my surprise, I never had to reload a fight once with this build doing everything on Upscale, even doing tons of mistake (forgetting to pick Stoic Steel on a respec in Splintered Reef, forgetting about The Wall modal in Trial of the Naga, having the script break causing my toon to dumbly autoattack in melee the Ancient Liche Battlemage for 10mn...). It also punches quickly above its level, .e.g I went to facetank Torkar at level 14 without any trouble. With all the little synergies, the math is in its favor to somehow always comes out on top, never being really in trouble. You might wonder if it also works well when enemies can do a lot of Raw DMG. Well, Frightened Child didn't pose any problem, same for all the Vithrak luminaries, the Oracle of Wael... Just a no-cheese, no-nonsense, slow and steady achiever. -----STATS & BUFFS----- Race: Fire Godlike Background: Ixamitl Plains – Hunter FINAL STATS WITH ALL PERMABUFFS AND NO-REST BUFFS AS OF 5.0 (without combat buffs): Might 14 (8 Base +2 Berath +1 Gift from Machine +1 Rabyuna’s Boon +2 Alchemic Brawn) Constitution 23 (15 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Brawn +3 Girdle of Eoten Constitution +1 Hemp Pet) +5 Infuse with Vital Essence Dexterity 15 (7 Base +1 Godlike +1 Rabyuna +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +2 Amira’s Blessing) Perception 19 (14 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +1 Savage Cunning) Intelligence 18 (13 Base +1 Godlike +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits) +5 Infuse with Vital Essence Resolve 35 (18 Base +1 Ixamitl +2 Berath +1 Effigy Resentment Pallegina (sorry, bird lady) +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Nature’s Resolve +2 Rikuhu’s Blessing +2 Rabyuna +1 Cauldron’s Brew +2 Token of Faith +1 Solitary Wanderer Ring +1 Boots of the White) ADDITIONAL PERMABUFFS: Food: Hylea's Bounty Adratic Glow All Trainings Dawnstar Blessing Luminous Adra Potion Nature’s Resolve (Accuracy) Savage Cunning (Survival) Galawain’s Gift Magran’s Blessing Immunity to all Sigils Infamous Captain, Bonus Skills, Champion Stats, Port Maje vendor, Fully discovered Map, Bonus Money… invested all 105 Berath’s Blessing Points SKILLS Mechanics 13-ish then max Athletics, Diplomacy 12-ish then max Survival. -----ABILITIES----- ACTIVE Paladin: Gilded Enmity, Brand Enemy. Lay on Hands. Zealous Aura, Exalted Endurance Wizard: Mirrored Image (for early game). Infuse with Vital Essence. Llengrath's Safeguard. PASSIVE Common: Weapon & Shield. Tough. Improved Critical. Spell Resistance. Bear's Fortitude. Bull's Will. Snake's Reflexes. Paladin: Deep Faith. Retribution (optional). Divine Purpose. Iron Gut (optional). Inspired Path. Righteous Soul. Virtuous Triumph. Stoic Steel. Wizard: Spirit of Decay (for Corrosive Siphon in the beginning). Farcasting. -----GEAR----- Weapon Set 1: Kapana Taga (Mythic , All Comers, Lone Champion), Akola's Apex Ward (Mythic, Hunter's Vigor, Hide and Tooth). Weapon Set 2: doesn't matter. Head: Nothing. Neck: Token of Faith. Chest: Magnera's Chain (Mythic, Padded Underlayer, Magnera's Commitment). Cape: Cape of the Falling Star. Grimoires: Iron Clasped (primary), Ninagauth Teaching (for Death Ray - early on or when we need more burst damage), Arkemyr's illuminating discoveries (not needed). Gloves: Bracers of Greater Deflection. Rings: Solitary Wanderer + Entonia's or Ring of Protection for fights with few engaging enemies. Boots: Boots of the White (to mitigate our only AR weakness, Freeze). Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution. Pet: Hemp (+Constitution and +Fortitude is good). That's it. I'm also happy to give the AI scripting details if needed, or pointers on the early game. I haven't posted a video to spare you the lengthy fights but let me know if you'd like to see it in action. Let me know if you have any comments or questions!

I also realized that my RTX 3060 is obviously only connected with one 8 pin power cable. I'd have to fiddle out another 8-pin cable from the cable management tray for the RTX 4070 Ti, and now we're instantly no longer in the realm of "do I really want to pay X money for a GPU?" and in the realm of "how I do overcome that impossible to deal with revulsion at the thought of installing the card?" - a place I was in after I bought a GTX 970 back in, uhm, 2014 or so. I had that card for three months before I managed to conjure up the will to install it. I bought it to be able to better play Dragon Age: Inquisition, I game I had finished and no longer had any desire to play by the time.

Basically, he is right wing, conservative and claims to fight against the left's corruption. So these people flock to him. I don't like Lula and his corrupt friends (that are all back in power as his ministers) but that doesn't make me feel any sympathy to Bolsonaro and his despicable family. So perhaps these people are also stupid. At least now we have someone concerned with the environment as the Minister of the Environment.

Thanks @dgray62 I'm having exactly the same problems. So far I've been able to piece together via trial & error that some kind of new filter or bug doesn't like too much formatting and will break on some acronyms mixing upper and lower case letters. But it's not consistent. The build above... I had to start posting it line by line (!!!) until I figured out the stuff that was blocking the post (which I think was Path of the Damned written with "o" and "t" in lower case letters and "P" and "D" in upper case). We've entered the Path of the Damned difficulty level of forum posting

Thanks! Looks like another great solo build. For some reason the forum blocks about half of my posts, and I have no idea why. This is the main reason I've been posting less these days. Sometimes it doesn't even let me react to posts.

No, if the season has a good ending, I don't care. But most of those Netflix shows have cliff-hanger endings which make you want (or need) another season, which then never comes. It just sucks.

I like spreadsheets so I kept a spreadsheet of 2022 films I saw in 2022, so here is the list of 2022 films I saw in 2022 in the order in which I am ranking them. Everything Everywhere All at Once Prey The Valet Weird: the Al Yankovic Story Thor: Love and Thunder Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness Turning Red The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun See How They Run The Princess Bullet Train Rosaline Disenchanted Hocus Pocus 2 Better Nate Than Ever Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers Strange World Lightyear Sneakerella Hollywood Stargirl Eternals The King's Man The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild Pinocchio There is probs a bit of flexibility in the 'soggy middle', like IDK that The Princess is necessarily better than Bullet Train, everything from Weird: the Al Yankovic Story down to, IDK, Strange World, was kinda dumb and fun which is a good time imo. Top 3 and bottom 3 are pretty set in stone for me, though. Also I have, since making this list, seen Glass Onion, and kinda enjoyed it, but since I didn't see it in 2022 it doesn't make the list soz.

Re: The 1.1 Open Gaming License | DMDave on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/76837590

Just to report, I was just now unable to post a reply with quotation marks and italics in it - when I removed those, it posted. So that issue seems to still exist (if sporadically/not always) for me as well.

As a Swede I can confirm that it does sound like Swedish with an exaggerated Japanese accent, the joke is too good. The intro part sounds a bit weird, but after that it really does sound like Swedish, the refrain is especially good compared to the rest

One of the orange cats: "This is my singular walking pace and not even treats will make me go faster." Black and white cat: "I will use the high ground."

Reading the comments is painful. Swedish weebs are weak! Either that, or the joke is too good. It's a bunch of random Japanese strung together to sound like the original. Being able to speak Swedish apparently makes it so that the Japanese misheard lyrics can be misheard back to Swedish with an accent. What a glorious find this turned out to be.

Delightful Polish lager: I also got some Lithuanian porter that I haven't drank yet. Poland and Lithuania have a long history and were once one country, so I have a lot of love for all things Lithuanian. I'll report back when I drink it. As an aside, my mom did one of those ancestry tests and it came back that she's 2% viking, which means I'm at least 1% viking. Now I feel justified drinking out of a horn:

That appear the forum "bug" after some minutes : refreshing the page before Submit the reply seems to solve the problem. That can be a potent build in a party, to make some experiments with new ideas etc without some too hard risk!

@Keyrock it's not that it's bad... it just feels like he's a bit out of his league (after listening through it)... The original

You might want the Physicker's Belt for builds in which you want to maximize healing while minimizing self-harm. It would be good, for example, for a paladin build in which you are planning on using the sacred immolation ability.

I think both will affect equally Healing from active, passive and equipped item/pet abilities, except Unbending (see below). +Healing done will also affect healing from scrolls and potions which Might doesn't affect. Neither will affect Unbending (but +Healing received would, and would also apply to the stuff above). Only Might would affect health stolen from e.g. Corrosive Siphon or Draining Missiles because it's not exactly a healing effect (I think). Other damage modifiers e.g. Sworn Enemy would also increase that form of healing, through increased damage.

Bolsonaro supporters storming places, guess doing it on weekend is easier target. https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-bolsonaro-supporters-storm-national-congress/a-64320440

Continued failing dry January. Craving Lagavulin to boot. I kinda want several of those Amazon security drones so I can pretend I'm a Shadowrunner or something. Probably going to hit a few Yuropean markets later, need to restock ajika and get some pelmeni for my wife. Happy Christmas to those who don't like to update their calendars!