Boeroer

Well - just use the console and try it out.

That's a good point. You can also combine that power with items which do bonus damage when enemies are flanked (Glanfathan Stalking Boots, Vengiatta Rugia, Crossed Patch) and (Apprentice's) Sneak Attack. Phantom Foes is a really nice "Sneak Attack enabler" with good duration and enourmous AoE. Also great for enabling Deathblows for rogues with AoE spells (scrolls, spellbind items) in combination with Painful Interdiction from the priest (or any other affliction based AoE spell). There's also no immunity to the flanked affliction - so this always works. As a bonus foes are frightened as well.

You explained perfectly well the reasons why I developed that druid. It could use an 3.2-update, but it still works like a charm and is lots of fun. Besides that, you don't have all that shapeshifting fuzz. Also, you can use Sura's Supper Plate and any other retaliation item and also Potions of Flame Shield as well as Nature's Terror + Spark the Souls of the Righteous with that druid. Because Heart of the Storm + Avenging Storm + Retaliation works. That's 3 Avenging Storms through retaliation when you get hit while melting foes with your two shocking auras whichalso work with Heart of the Storm while shocking and siabling them with the two Storms (Returning and Relentless). Still one of my most favourite builds (for hirelings or Hiravias).

"Lash! A-ah Savior of the Universe Lash! A-ah He save everyone of us Lash! A-ah He's a miracle Lash! A-ah King of the impossible" - The Queen that was - <maybe I will insert backstory here... > =================================== Monksterlasher =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 3.02 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Monk -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Fire Godlike -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The Living Lands - Colonist -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 19 CON: 18 DEX: 04 PER: 12 INT: 17 (maybe lower when not taking Veteran's Recovery, put it into PER then) RES: 08 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 0, Athl. 6, Lore 2, Mech. 0, Surv. 14 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Spirit of Decay Scion of Flame Heart of the Storm Lightning Strikes Savage Attack Two Weapon Style Apprentice's Sneak Attack or Veteran's Recovery (when solo or without healer) Weapon Focus Ruffian Abilities Turning Wheel Swift Strikes Torment's Reach Long Stride Crucible of Suffering Duality of Mortal Presence Iron Wheel Enervating Blows (or Flagellant's Path when solo) Force of Anguish (see above) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Bittercut (!) (*durgan refined, *burning lash, *superb, *slaying(whatever non-kith)) + duplicated Bittercut (!) (*shocking lash, slaying(whatever else)) (you could also use Bittercut + any other sabre or Bittercut + Azureth's Stiletto or Bleak Fang if you don't want to duplicate Bittercut) Weapon Set 2: Azureith's Stiletto ® (=Jolting Touch on crit 1/enc) + Irfyn Brngar's Solace (r - switch to this when stun or prone occurs) Boots: Animancer's Boots ® (3*Jolting Touch/rest) or Shod-in-Faith (against hard hitting enemies) Head: nothing (Godlike) Armor: Blaidh Golan (r - after getting Iron Wheel) or heavy armor like He Carries Many Scars (great when health is low), even Vengiatta Rugia works ok, same with Wayfarer's Hide. Neck: Fulvano's Amulet ® Belt: Broad Belt of Power Rings: Ring of Protection, Iron Circle (r - lots on CON as well as increased DR when endurance is low) Hands: Blood Testament (!) Quick slots: Potions of Spirit Shield®, Potions of Major Regeneration, Potions of Flame Shield(!), Scrolls of Jolting Touch(!) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hey! The Monksterlasher completely evolves around amassing and exploiting lashes using weapon attacks with Bittercut as well as burning retaliations like Flame shield and Battle Forged. I took a monk to do this because of several good reasons: 1. Monks can have very high endurance and health. If you want do use Battle Forged, you want to have those high. If you don't, you will have to rest a lot. 2. Monks can have three lashes besides weapon enchantments: Turning Wheel, Lightning Strikes and also a raw lash from Blood Testment Gloves (monk-only gloves). And of course, they can enchant their weapons with a lash, too. 3. Monk's Turning Wheel and also Blood Testment (not Lightning Strikes) work with retaliation! Not only the normal one, but also Battle Forged as well as Flame Shield. That means that with 10 wounds your Battle Forged retaliation will have additional +50% burn damage and + 20% raw damage lashes. Since Battle Forged starts pretty whimpy but gets very powerful at higher levels (scaling) this leads to very high damage via burning retaliaion. Flame Shields retaliation (+50%/+20%) adds to this if you drink a potion 4. Battle Forged + Turning Wheel profit from Scion of Flame. So you will get initial 120% burn damage. This is used to calculate the lash damage of Turning Wheel and Blood Testament. So they get increased, too. ON top of that Turning Wheels' lash damage also gets pimped by 20%. So alltogether you will get this: 120% burn damage + 60% (72%) burning lash + 20% (24%) raw lash (if you calculate the lashes with a base damage of 120% it's 72/24 instead of 60/20 - how you look at it). 5. Turning Wheel and Blood Testment work with Jolting Touch! It's amazing: you hit three enemies with high shock damage and do +50% burning +20% raw lash on top. It makes Jolting Touch so good. Also works with Scion of Flame so that Turning Wheel's damage is 60%. Add Heart of the Storm and not only your Lightning Strikes will do 30% lashes instead of 25%, but also Jolting Touch's damage will be boosted. This has the same effect as with Scion of Flame + Battle Forged + Turning Wheel. Only now it's Heart of the Storm + Jolting Touch + Scion of Flame + Turning Wheel That's the reason why I chose Azureith's Stiletto for my second weapon slot: It procs Jolting Touch on a crit. I also wanted to have 2 Lore of the scrolls. It's a good way to do some AoE damage without using wounds and stay at 10 wounds for maximum lash damage. 6. Torment's Reach adds a 50% crushing lash to the initial target. It's another lash and just awesome. Besides that it's AoE is superbig with high INT and adds a lot of AoE damage. 7. Monks can have unlimited Full Attacks as long as they have wounds. So a dual wielding setup doesn't suffer from low DEX and armor very much because... Full Attacks, you know. This allowed my to dump DEX altogether. I could then maximize MIG, CON and INT. MIG for myed self healing and damage, CON because it has a great effect on monks because of their heigh base end and health. I need a lot of endurance an health if I want to make Battle Forge worthwhile and not rest all the time. And INT to maximize the durations of self heling, buffs and Torment's Reach's AoE cone. 8. Monks can reach crazy high DR which can balance out the lower deflection I have with two sabres and somewhat low RES. But since I want to have a high wound counter and want to receive damage, Iron Wheel is pretty nice to add a lot of DR while getting hit so that only MIN damage comes through. Those are the reason why I combine the concept of lashes with a monk and not a... paladin or whatever. So why Bittercut? Because it has two damage types and because Bittercut's base damage gets buffed by Spirit of Decay. That's because it has the damage type corrode/slash (the order is important). In this case Spirit of Decay works as an +20% addition to base damage, EVEN if slash damage and not corrode damage is applied. I don't know why (I think the explanation lies somewhere in the structure of the code) but it's like that. So on top of things like high MIG, Savage Attack and whatever boosts your weapon damage, Spirit of Decay also adds +20% to that. Besides Stormcaller and the summoned weapons Firebrand, Cadebald's Blackbow and Klakoth's Minor Blights it's the only weapon that does this and is suitable for a dual wielding monk at the same time. Weapons like Durance's Staff don't work like this because they have crush/burn (like I said: the order matters). This makes Spirit of Decay a much better option than Savage Attacks by the way. So that's the reason I took Scion of Flame, Spirit of Decay AND Heart of the Storm. It sounds like a waste of talent points, but after testing this build a lot I don't have the feeling it is. I will just quickly list those talents and what they can influence on this build: a) Scion of Flame: - Battle Forged: +20% burn damage (which also influences the damage of all attached lashes) - Flame Shield: +20% burn damage (see above) - Turning Wheel: +60% lash instead of +50% - Burning Lash (Bittercut, if chosen): +30% lash instead of +25% - Chanter's Burning Lash (if in party): +30% instead of +25% b) Heart of the Storm: - Jolting Touch: +20% shock damage (which also influences the damage of all attached lashes) - Lightning Strikes: +30% shock damage instead of +25% - Shocking Lash (Bittercut, if chosen): +30% lash damage instead of 25% c) Spirit of Decay: - Bittercut: +20% corrode/slash damage (which also... and so on) - Corrosive Lash (Bittercut, if chosen): 30% lash instead of 25% So - because of this it doesn't really matter which lash you put on Bittercut. Shocking, burning or corrosive work equally well. If you have a Stormcaller guy in the party you might want to choose shocking lashes maybe. If you like burning lashes more go for that. If you want to hurt every enemy no matter what immunities you probably go for one burning and one shocking lash (so you have corrosive/slash + burning lash + shocking lash damage with one weapon setup). Let's see what additional damage and lashes we have when we use Torment's Reach: Two times weapon attack (Full Attack)... + 20% from Spirit of Decay + 20% from Savage Attack + 33% from 21 MIG + 45% from the "Superb" enchantment + eventually +15% from Apprentice's Sneak Attack (Enervating Blows help) + eventually +50% from crit this combined damage gets used when calculated: + 60% burnig lash from Turning Wheel + 50% crushing lash from Torment's Reach + 30% shocking lash from Lightning Strikes + 30% (shocking/burning/corrosive) lash from enchantment you put on the weapon + 20% raw lash from Blood Testament + eventually +30% burning lash from chanter this results in +118% weapon damage +220% lash damage against 0 DR. You could also use Vulnerable Attack to lower enemies' DR - it doesn't slow you down that much because of the Full Attacks (I did it first but later retrained - so it's not in the build now). Plus you hit a lot of enemies with Torment's Reach AoE. But you also lower your wound counter - so every hit will be weaker than the first if you don't get wounds while attacking. Luckily, whe have tons of endurance and health because of the Iron Cirlce and our base CON. So we can affort to get hit a bit. With Flame Shield we can do the following additional damage while getting hit: + 20% from Scion of Flame + 33% from MIG + 20% from Savage Attack + 15% from Apprentice Sneak Attack (eventually) + 50% from crit (eventually) this combine gets used when calculated: + 60% burnimg lash from Turning Wheel + 20% raw lash from Blood Testment + 30% burning lash from chanter's chant (eventually) Once we hit 50% endurance, Battle Forged kicks in which does the same as Flame Shield (they don't suppress each other) but with much higher base damage at higher levels. This is extremely powerful once you get pommeled so often that you might have to fear that you're getting knocked out. Suddenly you retaliate with more than 100 burn/raw damage with normal ret. hits and a lot more with crits. On top of that comes Flame Shield which is basically half that much damage. This melts foes who insist to hit you - while you use Torment's Reach or Jolting Touch to kill them even more quickly. As a side effect, your DR gets raised by 4, adds to the Iron Wheel (+10) and also to your armor. Your armor value might also be strengthened by Iron Circle. So, that's +14 to your armor, not bad. Enervating Blows also work with all of this - so a lot of foes will be weakened either by your weapon attacks or the retaliations which makes it easier for Apprentice's Sneak Attack to kick in and also makes it easier to send foes prone with Force of Anguish. I do this when I have the feeling that I get beaten too much. All this results in pretty insane damage while you can tank a lot of enemies because of high endurance, DR and great healing mods. I use Fulvano's Amulet with +25% and a +60% healing bonus from camping. This is great when you have any char in your party who heals. Down below I say something about self heals when you want to solo (or don't have healers). But a potion of Major Regeneration always works wonders with this healing mods. If you want to lob Fireballs or other elemental AoE spells onto your Monksterlasher you can do that, too: he has additional +4 DR against burn, shock and corrode damage because of the elemental talents. So it would be +14 or even +18 DR against such spells. Interrupts can be a problem if you send this guy first. So either you have a priest with you or you use potions of Spirit Shield. As i said: For healing I use my party members or potions. In a party that's totally cool. This build is also suitable for soloing. But you might want to get Veteran's Recovery instead of Apprentice's Sneak Attack and Flagellant's Path instead of Envenomed Strike or Force of Anguish (great for escaping when you're surrounded completely and your endurance drops too fast). Also, use an item which raises Concentration and also consider to use Shod-in-Faith. This way you will be near unkillable as long as your self heals work and you have health left. After that Battle Forged can help to clear up the rest of the mob. Also, more Lore is useful when you're solo. Skip Athletics and put more points into Lore when you're solo. He Carries Many Scars's regeneration has no time limit by the way and also adds a lot of DR when your health is low - ao maybe this is a good armor when you're solo. Another thing I discovered lately and which made me choose Force of Anguish: when you use Azureith's Stiletto and use it for Force of Anguish and it crits while doing that... all three enemies who get hit by Jolting Touch also go prone! Hilarious! I have no idea why and it's certainly a bug - but a nice one. OK, have fun. I liked this build a lot. It's tanky and does great dps at the same time, even when disabled (switch to shield setup then!). tl;dr: So the essence of this build is that Battle Forged, Flame Shield and Jolting Touch and of course Torment's Reach work with Turning Wheel and Blood Testament gloves, which makes it worthwhile to take three of the four elemental booster talents if you also use Bittercut as main weapon(s) Edit (24.06.2016): Corrected a thing about Vulnerable Attack - it was still in the text despite the fact that I retrained and skipped it. Thanks to sibakroum for pointing this out. Edit (18.09.2016): I wrote Envenomed Strike instead of Enervating Blows a few times - sorry for that, I corrected it.

Ohh - great find! Cool thing. Thinking about a new Blaster Build.

I meant for pala since the link for paladin build showed fire godlike. Ach sorry, I meant paladin and was somehow thinking about the MC cipher when writing that. But it's even more useless on a cipher, right? But it can be very useful on a tanky high CON monk (works with Turning Wheel and Blood Testament - as do Flame Shield and Retaliation) which leads to >100 dmg hits against 10 to 15 burn DR with Scion of Flame (and even higher crits) at higher levels. And Monks want to get hit a bit anyways. Also good with a high CON human barbarian who uses it with Blooded and One Stands Alone together with Barbaric Retaliation and maybe Ryona's Buckle. Those have enough endurance and health so that 50% of it is still more than 100% of most other classes. Paladin tanks don't want to get hit altogether and also don't have enough health to benefit a lot from Battle Forged. Many rests while doing meh damage with it OR no occurance of Battle Forged at all will be the result.

Fire Godlike is not crap per se. But it's quite useless on a cipher. With your party composition you should have tons of AoE damage already. Also CC should be fine. Just start encounters with buffs/debuffs first before you waste offensive spells. edit: sorry, I meant "useless on a paladin". But it's also useless on a cipher.

Ach OP... it would be awesome!

Ooooh - it would be so cool if this was intentional. Riposte rogue tank here I come. 50% grazes to misses would be supernice to outbalance the low health of the rogue. And it's also ok with Riposte - although you would actually do less Ripostes (but skip the damage altogeher). Might be especially good together with a durganized Old Gerun's Wall (25% hits converted to grazes) and Cape of the Cheat (10% graze to miss) for a total 60% graze to miss and 25% hit to graze - and maybe 15% crit to hit from durganizes armor. Of course a setup with Badgradr's Barricade woul be better for Riposte damage - or even dual wielding. But then you would have to rely heavily on potions or foreign buffs and that's not cool for a tank.

It's also better against targets that are resistent or immune to slash. By the way: did you take into account that Bittercut + Corrosive Lash + Spirit of Decay rises the base damage by 20% and therefore also raises the damage of the lash which again gets raised by 20%? It's not plain 20% base damage + 5% lash damage I guess. But sure: a sabre is a lot slower than a dagger and has less ACC - and the 25% wounding is strong. Also nice that Drawn in Speing comes superb. It's just annoying if you meet slash resistant foes. And don't forget the Vile Thorns. And to me: Don't forget the poison/disease debuff either. If the dps difference isn't so big (I can't exactly say, but it feels like it's not that big) I would still stick with Bittercut - but only if I wanted to take Spirit of Decay anyways. Just because you don't have to watch out for immunities/resistances that much. Without Spirit of Decay Bittercut is only half the fun obviously.

They will suppress each other. It doesn't matter if the same caster did it or two different ones. Also, in that regard there's no difference between the native spell and spellbind item (Ring of Searing Flames). Different casters: Same caster: Tested 5 minutes ago with 3.02.

Right. Also forgot that although I used it several times.

That sounds plausible. I just wanted to object the statement that PER is always the most important stat per se.

You're right: doesn't work.

Confirmed: Rot Skull's AoE, which does corrode DoT, also works with Envenomed Strike. They both stack to a ridicilous amount of AoE DoT. One attack with this combo is enough for most enemies (who are not immune to posion of course). Will test if the spiritshifted stag's carnage also works with it. Barb's carnage doesn't, as was pointed out, but I'm curious to see if stag's carnage uses the same mechanics.

I know it, but that amulet comes really late. For most of the game you will be interrupted to death when you solo with 3 RES - if you don't want to hit & run all the time. Celebrant's Gloves or Potion of Spirit Shield work ok until you get that amulet though. But actually I like taking St. Borragias Tears to absolutly maximize the constant self heals (via Athletics, Potion of Major Regeneration, Scroll of Moonwell, Veteran's Recovery and Shod-in-Faith) and don't drop RES. The performance feels better and more smooth this way. I think I did this bounty more than 15 times now with this char to test the crap out of him and that's my experience (that is influenced by playstyle of course - I don't like micromanagement and pausing every thrid second too much by the way). Like I said: at this stage 5 or 8 ACC don't make a big difference to me (I know it does mathematically, but I can't tell the difference while doing this bounty). But I feel a notable difference between 10 and 3 RES against that mob of hard hitting enemies with high ACC and interrupt values (not to forget the constant knockdowns) - not only because of the lower deflection, but the constant interrupts that I'm eating (even while using potions or items for concentration). That is really bad if you have 4 DEX and want to sip potions while getting hit by ogres' clubs, multiple Plague of Insects, Stag's Horn and whatnot. And of course it doesn't help that drinking a potion is bugged as hell - but it is like it is and we have to work with or around it. It works better with 10 RES and 10 PER than with 3 RES and 17 PER. At least for me in this situation and encounter. Against fewer but harder enemies (less hits/interrupts, higher defenses) this might be the wrong tactic though. And of course you can say: "You should use a figurine for distraction so that it eats those Plague of Insects, then you could do with lower RES and more PER" - true. But I want to know how tough this guy is and what he can achieve on his own. I need to balance defense and offense. To much of a tank and he will die because he can't kill the enemies quickly enough (actually a big problem of all my melee solo fighters I tried) - to much of a glasscannon and he will die because his endurance runs out too fast or he gets disabled all the time - so I don't use summons and also no mind control (unless it's an integral part of the build of course). So I wouldn't call it the universal optimum to dump RES - but it's true that in many situations it is (and of course if you're in a party). By the way: I really like discussing with you guys. It's enlightening, all civilized and also polite enough and proofs that an internet forum is not necessarily a place where the unpleasant fukkards meet.

Maybe - but inspired by that I made a fire godlike dual sabre regeneration monk like that fighter (10 PER, MIG, CON INT max - dumped DEX though) and soloed upscaled Nalrend a few days ago on PoTD without any problems (I have to admit I "abused" Battle Forged plus Flame Shield a bit - because those work with Turning Wheel and Scion of Flame as well as with Blood Testament Gloves(!), which is pretty nasty - will post a build later). Also tried it with more PER and less MIG and CON and it didn't work as well. I only used one potion of Spirit Shield, one potion of Major Regeneration and a potion of Flame Shield. No food, no scrolls, no special PC talents, no prostitutes, no resting bonus. Camping Bonus was +60% healing. It seemed to be quite good. Can't say if it's optimzed, but it required no special tactics (besides switching to the solace shield once I got knocked prone, but I always do that when it comes to those ogres). Just attacked and spammed Torment's Reach while clubs hit my face... But it's true that DEX in this case is quite worthless. But PER at 10 works best (in this encounter, with this build - at lvl 16). Whatever - I admit that in most cases PER has the most impact. But still isn#t worth anything if you're k.o.

Time Warping. It's awesome. You get it at level 40+. Parental Leave also works. You can get that a lot earlier...

Whooha.

I still don't like fighters too much - but to each his own.

You can always sip a potion of Infuse with VItal Essence at the start of tougher fights. It helps a lot to counter the health loss between resting. But still this is not suitable as a main tank. You would have to come up with some neat trick to make a rogue the main tank I guess (which I didn't figure out yet). The combination of low deflection and low endurance/health is indeed a hinderance.

I wouldn't bother with firearms at all, so... I would never dump PER - but I have no problem with dumped DEX. But your examples only cover the clichée builds (and makes heavy use of retraining). The fighter solo run that somebody posted way back was all about regeneration and attack speed. No shield, not very high defenses, but maximum regeneration and attack speed. He used Spelltongue to prolong his buffs and healing (even used that trick for Wound Binding so it heals you up completely). He didn't need DEX too much because of his speedy dual wieldung setup, but he wanted maxed CON, MIG and INT. And he couldn't have maxed PER then I guess. He did a successful solo run (even said it was pretty easy) and had fun. So that's what I mean when I say that PER>any other stat is not the universal truth. However, it's true most of the time.

Is Shot on the Run worth it if you want to use that tactic more often?

Your phantom doesn't get Minor Blights just because you have it (at least this was the case some patches ago). It gets your other items with the passive buffs on it, but no spell binding whatsoever. Even rings don't work anymore. What they get is spell holding - so Sanguine Plate, Shod-in-Faith an so on will work. Also retaliation items work. You can put on Binding Rope and your duplicate will cause stuck when hit. Actually - the Essential and Substancial Phantom can make great spell holding decoys and heal the entire frontline with Consecrated Ground (can you cast withdraw on them? That would be so awesome). All the items that do something on x% endurance or unconciousness like Coloroed Coat or the Martyr amulet work with them. Essential Phantom as spell mastery plus Shod-in-Faith plus Belt of Bountiful Healing + St. Borragias Tears can withstand a lot of punishment. If you put on the Colored Coat, Band of Union and the martyr amulet you can just cast your phantom in the front line and let it die - you will cast Instill Doubt + Wicked Briars and get +30% attack speed in an AoE fpr 30 secs once per encounter + up to 6 times per rest if you want. But what doesn't translate to your duplicate are your weapons. It alsways spawns with it's own shocking wand. But I think that Heart of the Storm works with that weapon. But I'm not 100% sure. Hard to test that...

I wouldn't put him in the postion of a main tank or anything like that. But I played a Godansthunyr + Badgradr's Barricade Devil of Caroc and she was absolutely great. One of the best* rogues I played so far. She was in the front line but didn't engage first, so she didn't receive the main heat, but you didn't have to watch out all the time for her. She did great damage (also because of the shield's spell striking for sure which was kind of guarantieed once the target wa stunned by Godansthunyr or debuffed otherwise) because she seldomly went down and didn't have to position herself all the time but could just start hitting. I never had any health issues with her at all. Back then (3.0) Riposte was still crap, so I didn't take it, but now I would use it. Her deflection was high enough to receive a lot of grazes instead of hits, and her DR was high enough to make sure those grazes only did MIN damage most of the time. However, I also playtested this disenganging riposte build a was talking about - thas one might run into health problems because he receives a lot of grazes. But you can alsways stop running around the mob an retreat and play him as an offtank until nest rest. edit: *) by "best" I don't mean best dps or whatever, but the best overall experience, including micro, fun, style and so on.