bigwillystyle

Well, you were right about the forge room. It was (in comparison) a breeze. Watching the Spirit Wizard cast Shadowflame repeatedly on his own crew was entertaining. This is my first deep into the game solo run, and I've learned to be a lot more tactical. Potions of Major Recovery and figurines got me through some insane battles in the Mines & Foundry. Hard to go back to six-man POTD after solo-ing some of the hardest fights in the game. My equipment for Durgan's battery was pretty diverse: Neck: Cloak of the Dying Boar or Rygrmand's Mantle Gloves: Blood Testament Armor: Wayfarer's Hide (the +25 vs. Paralysis was money!) Boots: Consecrated Ground or Long March or Speed (I kited one battle a bit while getting the hang of Battery Sirens solo) Rings: Deflection / Protection / Bartender's / Combusting Wounds depending on the battle Weapon Set 1: Whispers of Yenwood + Spirit Slaying Sabre Weapon Set 2: 2 Exceptional VEssel Slaying Axes I should be able to get TCS and FCS with this run. Not sure if I am up to tackling the Ultimate, we'll see.

Thank you again for putting this up - I got up to lvl 12 and I am getting ready to tackle the final room of Durgan's Battery, which should be ... challenging! I tweaked a couple of things: Stunning Blow at level 5 [Full Attack, helpful with certain enemies] and I swapped the order of Crucible of Suffering and Iron Wheel. Otherwise everything is spot-on. Great build. One thing I will note: Rooting Pain has an interesting bug that I never noticed before. If I have Stunning Blow queued up to attack and Rooting Pain triggers, it rolls a Stun attack on everyone that Rooting Pain hits. I've stunned 3-4 enemies at a time accidentally! This isn't of course optimal - we want people to hit us! - but it is fun at times.

Psychovampiric Shield is just lovely. I take it on ranged ciphers as well. It's great if only for the will defense debuff from -10 res.

I hear you re: writing off spells for not being fast case. I love Mental Binding and Silent Scream but .... glah they take forever. Regarding Defensive Mindweb - I don't recall range being much of an issue. It had a lot of coverage. The wiki says 5M radius, and while the wiki isn't always accurate, that feels right. Reaping Knives replaces the existing weapon being used by the target. It does 15-20 raw damage per hit, so ... its generally pretty good. you could always cast it on your Chanter, if you felt like it would impede the Monk. Brighter guys than me may need to opine on this one.

Not sure if it was a trick question but yes, spells can graze, hit and crit. Both for damage and status effects. Critting on a paralyze is super fun. I don't want to speak for MaxQuest, but my own thoughts on spells: - Body Attunement is a good spell, particularly for a melee cipher, but I would almost always cast Silent Scream first. In fact that's how most Cipher combats go [pew, pew, SILENT SCREAM, pew, SILENT SCREAM]. I don't use Silent Scream for the stun. I use it for the raw damage AoE. High might cipher + Silent Scream is great. - I personally like Antipathetic Field, but it does require some micro & positioning. I would probably take it over Tenuous Grasp, although the latter DOES have its uses. - Puppet Master has a super fast cast time and lasts for quite a while. I think most folks prefer Whispers of Treason, but the cast time for Puppet is no joke. - I love Mindweb. I think MaxQuest's point was that for 80 focus, I'd probably prefer Time Parasite + something else. Time Parasite is amazing. Against a hard bounties, yeah, Mindweb is one of the first spells out.

I'm embarrassed that I didn't know that. Good to know!

I just wanted to say ... solo-ing with this right now. I beat those #&^@*(# phantoms in Caed Nua and it was GLORIOUS. I've never felt so on edge in this game, but amazing.

Just ... take my money now.

Upscaled Ogres in Elmshore are awesome. A real challenge. I've had a lot of success with: - Open battle with one of a few spells: * Aloth: Confuse (!!!), Slicken, ShadowFlame. All three are money * Grieving Mother: Mind Wave. Followed by at least one Whispers of Treason. * Durance: Accuracy booster (either Devotions or Inspired Radiance) followed by Empowered Interdiction (Weakened is huge) * Hiravias: Returning/Relentless Storm, Tanglefoot, Calling the Worlds Maw, Plague of Insects If you have 2-3 of the above and get your spells off, the encounter is much easier. FWIW, Suppress Affliction temporarily suppresses the Plague of Insects, albeit very short time.

The random loot tables don't work about 1/3 of the time (rough estimate). I have missed the #$$&% rymrgand's mantle a couple of times, and on one of the saddest days of my playing time ... the gloves of swift action weren't in their usual spot in Durgan's Battery. That was a sad day.

I love me some Amplified Thrust + Crit. Nothing quite like ~80+ points of damage at level 3.

Brynlod any day of the week and twice on Sunday. That battle is sick, sick, sick.

I have been playing with a 22 MIG / 18 CON / 16 DEX / 10 PER / 10 INT / 3 RES, doing a St. Rumbault build. Dies rarely, great damage output. I was thinking of swapping the DEX to INT. Need to do some math on that though. The Rogue, at least in Act 1 & Act 2 seems fine to me. Post Durgan Steel & WM2 / Act 3, I think the Rogue will fall behind by more than a bit, but there's definitely something fun about consistent 80-90 damage sneak attack crits in Act 2.

If you like the idea of a melee rogue, one option could be using a reach weapon to attack over the front line (i.e., Tall Grass Pike) or something like that.

Echo the above. Twin Sting is made of win, but otherwise crossbows pretty much are bottom of the barrel.

Welp, there goes my solo characters that went full riposte with a two hander and four material force spells. Probably for the best from a balance perspective though Changing Riposte was necessary.

A few thoughts: - The Goldpacts do not have the accuracy buff with Liberating Exhortation - that's the Darcozzi. I played a Goldpact, and the main attraction was not having to worry about your dispositions much ... everyone either can't be Cruel or have to be Cruel. It's pretty easy to be Stoic and Rational. The Enduring Flames seemed meh on high intelligence but could be quite good on minimum intelligence. - Low intelligence can work, but low intelligence at level 13 with Sacred Immolation makes Paladins sad Pandas. - On team composition: I like having Kana around for the Dragon aura. I also like having Pallegina for a two Paladin party which works better than I thought it would. Maneha would work pretty well using the Golden Dragon build. I usually built her with pretty basic Barbarian stuff like the Consecrated Ground boots, Tidefall, etc ... Fire and forget! - I am currently finishing up my game with a Strange Mercy Paladin which has been good fun - big FOD crits to trigger Strange Mercy, fire and forget, etc ... he'll never be top DPS but low micro

Nothing's tankier than the pig, in my opinion. The big has a ton of HP.

hah! good question. I think I've developed some bad habits from having a Priest MC for my last full playthrough on POTD. I got used to "buff up / summon figurines to take the alpha / CHARGE" which frankly works on anything less than a Dragon, and even then often does. I don't remember any challenge in the Abbey at all, not even with my main man the High Abbott. And the Magran's Faithful was literally a breeze. So, I guess my style would be "Spoiled" if that helps I'll toss on some Scrolls of Valor (I've got plenty of ingredients) & Ryona's Vambraces, and do a slight respec back to your original build. I got a little cute and built with high CON instead of high DEX which is part of the problem I think. Getting cute wasn't warranted!

The Barbarian build is kind of rough in the Abbey. I am going to play around with it some more, but lots of misses.

Pedro, good to see you active again. You don't know me, but anything I learned about pre 2.0 POE mechanics or warfare on Deity in Civ5 likely came from you. Anywho, couple of modest points: - The Kind Wayfarer power "Strange Mercy" is much more powerful than it was when you last played - it now scales with level, whereas before it was kinda meh. Worth thinking about. - The stacking debuff bug was fixed ... much to the chagrin of users of Scon Mica's roar

I have a Barbarian MC sitting at level 11-12 range. It was my Firebrand Barbarian, but he kind of stalled out as I hit the Abbey of the Fallen Moon. [Mostly got bored with it] I'm a going to play this Pugilist build in the Abbey and see how it goes. Only weakness I can see is crush immune foes ... we'll see if Superb spears can help.

Well, in all seriousness, what else are you going to sink your points into? Might as well be CON. Might: Good to have, but eclipsed by damage bonii from Sneak Attack & Deathblows. I like it, but CON might be better. Dex: Unless you plan to swing a two hander, probably not needed. Per: Probably the best stat on a Rogue. Int: Honestly, I consider it dump-able all the way to 3. Grab Wounding enchanted weapon and profit! Res: Could be worth increasing to take the extra deflection. My last run was with a Death Godlike dual wielding Rogue with max'd Per, CON, Might, dumped INT. I used daggers and pretty much wrecked everything in Act 1 [which I know doesn't say much]. I played it to increase my difficulty and made it POTD, TOI & Expert mode. So, anyway it was an aborted run. I wasn't paying attention to my health score and I got whacked in Maerwald's room. Expert mode is quite unforgiving!

It's interesting, when I tested the Shieldbearer powers a month or so ago, I got the opposite results of what you describe above. Touch stacked with Reinforcing Exhortation while Flames did not. Did something change in 3.04?

Did you like Enduring Flames or find it useful?