Raven Darkholme

True, what I was trying to say is: IF the damage stacks (too lazy to test it, most enemies just instantly explode, but I will, a little bit later :P) then it would be a lot better. Tbf if you have perma ascended on you from a priest, you could also spam cuts (at least if you also have blade cascade, you can cast it in roughly the same intervals as beam ticks, but tbh its honly worth if the damage stacked)

If you can overcome Fort recasting Thousand Cuts doubles duration, no idea if the damage stacks tho.

Deadfire's AR/Pen system is badly implemented and the gap between having bad/decent/good pen is way too high. If you crit or overpen or even both (most crits will likely also overpen) then monk fists will be way better than reaping knives, since raw damage does not benefit from overpen. That being said the base damage of the knives is VERY high for a raw damage weapon compared to something like Animancer's Energy Blade . So against (mega)bosses the knives aree very good, but most of the time a weapon will be better, ofc a weapon is always better on a rogue and something like battle axes with bleeding cut will always be hgihest total dps.

Played this out of nostalgia again and had one level 10 (almost 11) barbarian lying around, Spelltongue still works even on enemies without buffs the duration extend is quite short, but even before level 11 i was able to sustain buffs thru fights. Then I leveled to 11, got HoF and it just doubles all durations right at the start of a fight, so the build works and is really fun.

Aoe Spells don't get reflected.

I went there twice to buy food, I feel like I might have gotten over it!!11

Alright, I made it to Ashen Maw on my Ultimate run, but to nervous for the fight rn, so I stopped. I had a couple mishaps, most importantly I forgot to buy a blunderbuss in maje and didn't notice till after Dunnage. This led to me not being "able" to steal from Thaenic (sure I could have used Sparkcrackers, but I only had 2 + whatever I could maybe craft and compared to shadow form its so risky lol), and since I needed that blunderbuss for shadow form after fire dragon anyway, I decided to not loot thanic yet (nothing crucial there anyway, I bought slippers and fire blight belt). I first traveled all the way back to Hasongo (Thaenic always first spawns near Sayuka, if you take a somewhat direct route via deadlight and dunnage) to "kill" a barrel and gain my shadow form that way (original plan was to spawn a blight on thaenics ship), I made sure to consume drug, thief's putty and oil of allure before barrel, cuz consuming breaks shadow form, then after shadow form was up 100x necklace spam for duration (prolly could get away with less before fire dragon, but not that much less cuz its multiplicative, so might as well). After that I tried to go towards Thaenic who I last saw heading towards Crookspur, but he was lost in the fog and I had no idea where exactly he was and made the mistake of going to Crookspur first, which in the end made theanic go all the way towards Dunnage and out of my immediate reach, so now I'm a lot poorer than I wanted to be, but it doesn't really matter. Crookspur with shadow form is even easier than regular crookspur, stealth is only needed for stealing and detection goes down immediately, otherwise you can just run around unstealthed and even bump into enemies as long as you don't actively do a hostile action enemies will be blind. (Luckily there is a blunderbuss in Crookspur main slavers office next to large shield) Before Ashen maw I was so nervous that I unintentionally ran into a storm, luckily I had LLengreth AND a water spell (I think Wael priests get it for free, don't remember picking it up) so it was not dangerous, however it wasted a couple of days on timer. (On my testchar I had 63 days left after fire dragon, so I'd say there is A LOT of breathing room for little mishaps)

Hm, interesting, maybe I'm too used to monastic, which I guess scales past legendary, thats why my summoned weapons always have less pen.

Maybe they scale to legendary on a single class? Never seen a summoned weapon scale to legendary on multi.

As long as you can kill the bosses any class can run the ultimate now. Assassin slippers make you perma invis, no need to even sneak around enemies. (it gets stopped by fighting or even out of combat casting/consumable use and you can't steal unless you're stealthed, but that is all extremely minor) You always have brilliant and as @Waski pointed out, even classes without bdd can get giant damage mitigations from darkest dawn and reforge flesh. (I actually didn't test the belt myself cuz bdd on my priest, but apparently you need scordeos to get recovery). The single class Mage slayer might be a tougher order than other classes (:P) but if you are VERY patient you could use lover's embrace at the start of a fight, then switch tobattle axe with bleeding cut and ONLY use abilites so your weapon doesn't break, should still be faster than using your fists with scordeo, idk.

Yes there are many upsides to doing it that early, you also save a lot of travel time (not that it matters too much) since you get ported back to Neketaka and you can get Scordeo's relatively soon after, and ofc brilliant from thre gods. Yesterday before I stopped playing the testguy I was level 16 and killed the grub, by only doing the non combat neketaka quests and not even all of them, only ever did the first part of families, haha.

Yes, true, but getting to the dragon on the ultimate at that level is much harder than killing it with gouging. (Or it was until strand cheese :P)

Lol, with my testchar I just killed Jadaferlas with level 10 and never even went to Neketaka, Assassin slippers + strand is very op in getting to him (and ofc gouging)

Already made my alt char and gonna start my ultimate char later, today too. There is many things to discover, sounds interesting what u found, I only found minor stuff like thiefs putty, drugs etc, but still very helpful early game.

Sadly not, I tested it and lowered myself (with spells however) and it did not trigger.

It has to be castable out of combat. For example Nemnok's cloak, technically is an item buff, but because the spells it casts are combat only it won't proc out of combat if you lower your hp. On the other hand buffs that are unique to an item usually persist after ombat ends even if you proc them in combat like Scordeo's and mind over matter. As far as i remember this is also true for least unstable coil, it does not have to be procced out of combat, but ofc has to be kept alive till combat ends, if you want to prolong it with strand.

Alright, since getting brilliant is less of an issue with Strand now, since you only ever have to get it once, I tried out priest/streetfighter. I think damagewise (singletarget) nothing comes close to that combo on the ultimate (except the vanishing cheese ofc), since you only use can fists effectively with scordeos no recovery. Deep wounds stacks like bleeding cut, the duration is somewhat short but with Scordeo's still acccumualte very big numbers quickly. Streetfighter + low hp from bdd + death godlike for monastic + slippery mind (!!!) which also allows for shark soupis A LOT of damage. Just had a quick testrun vs nery with almost no equip and she died faster than I could cast all my buffs (SoT on Ai and I only ever cast further buffs then bdd when I felt like enough resources had regened). The main reason I never tried that combo before was because the only brilliant source would be from wit, but now you can just get mind over matter via cloak + fire blight and then strand cheese.

Yes true, but Strand works very well with brilliant too and at least that way I would feel like I would do some work myself haha. Maybe record two runs in case Vanishing strike method gets rejected cuz it smells too much like cheese.

Something weird is up with injuries now and I really don't understand how it made it into the game, since it wasn't there at 5.0 release. Whenever you have 1 injury minimum there seems to be a really high chance to die while under the influence of bdd. It's almost impossible to figure out whats happening because of stupid instant you died screen and no way to pause in time or read log after. If this persists I guess I'll record me play to see whats happening...

Sorry late to answer. I haven't completely given up on it, but wasn't to keen on retrying it. Seeing @Waski's cheese I'm wondering if I should just use strand with a different class, so I don't blatantly copy his run

Granted I never played with a party, but if you play the tank as a true tank it shouldn't be too hard. Keep in mind you can make at least 4(??) party members completely immune to flanking. You could engage with the tank first (shouldn't be necessary most of the time) and keep party stealthed till all enemies are on him. (Shouldn't take longer than 10 seconds) Whoever somehow gets through can be disengaged by all kinds of debuffs, charm, terror, succy suc etc.

Why would a herald be a better tank then BM/Tactician? It's immortal with wall of drain cheese and has better ways besides engagement to keep enemies of the party (for some reason I can't think of the name of the spell, but all I can think of is the word "succ")

Well op said heisn't looking for the best power creep but something fun and different that's still viable, at least that's how I understood it.

Well I used it for a lack of better word since it is really inconsistent when it works and doesn't. The easiest way to test it is to equip acinas and check your spell tooltips in the ability bar, some examples are: It does not work on: Concelhaut's crushing doom, also i was wrong in my earlier post it does not work on the hazard walls (flame etc), barbs of condemnation (priest) It however works on quite a lot of Aoes AND single target skills some examples: Deleayed Fireball, Freezing pillar, Adragan, bitter morring, divine mark (priest), draining missiles, jolting touch (lol). Let's just say it's very inconsistent but unless you ahve Wael's on it is also very easy to check if you hover over the accuracy in your tooltip. (on 2nd thought it prolly still shows up on waels just with ???)