Boeroer

I think. With some exceptions like enemy monks and this forest lurker bounty. In both cases they are running very fast so that +1 move speed is not sufficient.

Thanks! That was a really quick response. Solo? I don't know... maybe - if you have lots of summons. He goes down really fast if you try to use the "Neverending Wellspring".

Wow - thousands of typos... will correct that later... too tired... Sorry for that!

Mama Hurtstacker: "Son, get up, put on your robes, file your horns and start studying!" Zeblastian: "But mom! I am le tired! Too tired to file my horns and too tired to learn these stupid bonus spells. I. Need. To. Rest!" Mama: "You ugly, lazy green son of a stag! I will give you a beating for every rest you take from now on!" Zeblastian: "Now that's motivating! Thanks mom! You called yourself a stag by the way..." *gets slapped* Years later, after finishing studies and detonating his mom into clots, Zeblastian doffed and burned his robes and went out to finally get some rest - and find some friends, too. He had to flee the Living Lands though because the authorities didn't like detonating people (especially moms) too much. And they also didn't appreciate him beeing a nudist now. He went to the Dyrwood, reached Gilded Vale and entered a bar. While most of the guets looked at him with disgust, there where two adventurers who didn't. One was a wild orlan druid in heavy armor who was called Batsh!t Crazy and the other one an elven rogue that dressed up like a bee. Teehee! Zeblastian quickly decided that they were even more bonkers than him - so he further decided to team up with them. What a nice coincidence. Blasting Time! Excellent! =================================== Zeblastian Hurtstacker =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 2.03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Wizard -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Nature Godlike -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The Living Lands - Explorer -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 19 CON: 03 DEX: 19 PER: 15 INT: 19 RES: 03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 3, Athl. 3, Lore 10, Mech. 1, Surv. 9 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Blast (!) Penetrating Blast ® Weapon Focus: Noble ® Dangerous Implement (!) Marksman ® Penetrating Shot Interrupting Blows Abilities Arcane Assault (a) Wellspring of Life (a) Spells (I mainly used) Lvl 1: Minoletta's Missiles®, Slicken, Eldritch Aim, Chill Fog Lvl 2: Combusting Wounds(!), Infuse with Vital Essence(!), Curse of Blackened Sight, Concelhaut's Draining Missiles® Lvl 3: Deleterious Alacrity of Motion(!), Expose Vulnerabilities(!), Minoletta's Bounding Missiles® Lvl 4: Confusion, Essential Phantom®, Minoletta's Concussive Missiles®, Ninagauth's Shadowflame® Lvl 5: Malignant Cloud, Call to Slumber, Ryngrim's Enervating Terror Lvl 6: Arkemyr's Capricious Hex, Citzal's Martial Power(!), Gaze of the Adragan Lvl 7: Substantial Phantom®, Wall of Draining®, Tayn's Chaotic Orb®, Concelhaut's Crushing Doom --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Golden Gaze (*Exceptional, *Durgan Refined, *Burning Lash) Weapon set 2: Engwithan Sceptre (*Exceptional, *Durgan Refined, *Corrosive Lash, Slaying:Wilder) Boots: Boots of Speed® Head: nothing but manicured horns (and some moss) Armor: Monk's Outfit (*Exceptional, *Pierce-Proofed, *Durgan-Reinforced, *Dex +2) Neck: Mantle of the Dying Boar(!) Belt: Girdle of Maefolc Might Rings: Ring of Searing Flames®, Sigil of the Arcane® Hands: Gauntlets of Swift Action Quick slots: Scarab Figurine, Scrolls with damageing spells, Potion of Alacrity, Potion of Infuse with Vital Essence --------------------------------------------------------------- This build is a pure glasscannon. It so glassy that it's not even classy. Gwisk Glas would have been a good choice, but he doesn't like robes so we will never fully experience this joke... The min-maxed stats are not necessary though - you can also use more balanced stats or even let Aloth use this build (without the Wellspring aspect I used, see down below). I just enjoyed the thrill of being in constant danger while dishing out lots of damage without the need of too much micromanagement. One shot from a gun or a hit with a two hander may be enough to let this guy go KO - but he really packs a punch with very few spells. Few spells mean less resting - and I hate a lot of resting. You can say I'm on his mom's side when it comes to resting. A fellow party member with a reviving ability (or scrolls) might become his best friend. The gimmicks I combined to form this build are the following: Neverending Wellspring I chose a Nature Godlike because of his racial ability "Wellspring of Life" that grants +2 DEX/+2 CON/+3 MIG if your endurance drops below 50%. If I combine that with dangerous implement, fast attack speed (Alacrity) and really low CON (3, see above) then it takes not too long and my glasscannon will drop below 50% endurance. Then the Wellspring starts pouring. But then I would have to stop using Dangerous Implement so that I don't go down. Well - not if I use the Mantle of the Dying Boar. This nice thingy lets you regenerate endurance quickly (especially if you have very high MIG) if your endurance drops below 33%. That is a great synergy effect: my enduracne starts to drop below 50% because of Dangerous Implement - but before I go down the Mantle kicks in and regenerates the raw damage I receive. The effect is powerful enough to exceed the raw damage from Dang. Impl. but stops at 33%. This way I will never reach 50% again. It's like the perfect setup for this racial ability. You could also call it "Wellspring of Ouch". As long as you don't receive a heavy hit you will be up and firing with +3 MIG, +2 DEX and +25% (and +2 CON, pfff). The only things you have to watch out for is ranged attacks (hey maaan!), swarming critters (run away!) and low health (ah - right!). Infuse with vital Field Triage You health pool can be a problem. Either you will have to rest quite often (d'oh!) or you use Field Triage and... nooo! You don't have to use this awful talents since you are a wizard. Infuse with Vital Essence raises your health by 50 points - temporarily. It will drop again after some time - but not if you use this spell (or the potion) right before combat ends. In this case the +50 health will be permanent (big thanks to Vorad for pointing this out!). Hooray I say! It does the same as the +health talents but you don't have to waste one single talent point for this. So every time your health bar gets red you just sip a potion or cast that spell before combat ends and you're good for the next encounter. Double Trouble First I used a normal implement, then the Engwithan Sceptre that you can get quite early from that quest in Ondra's Gift. It's speed enchanted and that's a big plus. But the best weapon for this build is the Golden Gaze. It has 2 low dmg projectiles instead of one. It's the blunderbuss of implements... kind of. The really good thing though is the fact that the two projectiles fly in fancy curves and then hit your target. These curves are randomly generated and besides looking good, most of the time they don't hit at the same time, but slightly shifted. This will cause two blasts instead of one. And it will also cause a lot more interrupts - not only on the initial target (two hits = 2 possible interrupts) but also on all the other enemies that get blasted. It's great that the projectiles don't hit at the same time. THis way the two interrupts don't happen at the same time but after another. THere's a greater chance of stunlocking the enemy this way. Golden Gaze has an interrupt value of 0.5 - so two hits from it may cause a lot of fairly long lasting interuption in an AoE. That's why I chose Interrupting Blows - and it works like a charm. Especially with Alacrity and Durgan Steel you 're firing so fast that you will have the impression tthat there's a constant stream of projectiles coming out of your rod (well, that does sound kind of awkward), interrupting like crazy. The two projectiles combined do more damage than a single one from a normal implement - but we are facing a lot of foes with high DR and that's where the "blunderbuss effect" comes in: your DPS will drop below that of a normal implement if you can't lower the DR of enemies. Fortunately we have two talents that help a lot: Penerating Shot and Penetrating Blast. Blast itself has an inherent 5 DR bypass. With the Pen. Blast talent, it will overcome 10 DR which is totally awesome for an AoE attack. Penetrating Shot will give us 5 DR bypass for the two projectiles. That's not too much but better than nothing. It's very convenient that Golden Gaze can lower DR by itself: it has a 5% chance to apply Expose Vulnerabilities on hit/crit. Since you have two projectiles, the chance climps up from 5% to nearly 10% per attack. Combined with Alacrity you will experience that this spell triggers very quickly, applying -5DR in a big AoE. It' best to target an enemy in the center at first so that as many foes as possible get afflicted. There is a thing though: nearly 10% spell chance doesn't explain why I saw it trigger after two to four shots - all the time. I played with this setup a lot and I have the impression that the blast also counts as hit/crit for the spellchance (like carnage and Driving Flight do for other spellchance items, namely Grey Sleeper and Stormcaller). That would mean that if you fire into a group of 5 people, your spellchance will rise from the "official" 5% per shot to ~40%! This would match with my experience. I have no prove and did no excessive testing but the spell triggers A LOT - way more often than every 10th shot I take. So I don't know what's going on exactly but it's hilarious. Another thing with this spellchance: If it hits multiple times the durations stack. What I mean is that if you hit an enemy with Exp. Vuln. who still suffers from it, it doesn't get suppressed but the duration goes up. After 10 shots or so most mobs will have Expose Vuln. on them for more than 45 secs - often more than a minute. While the effect doesn't stack (this would be too good), the durations do. That's so good. You can totally afford to switch the weapon and chose the damage type that is best without loosing the advantage of the 5 DR bypass. Not so fun fact: If you cast Exp. Vuln. by yourself, it will get suppressed. Now the double blasts overcome 15 DR (nasty!) and the two projectiles will have 10 DR peneration. This will outdamage other implements most of the time (not against beetles though). Ryona's Vambraces could add 3 more - but they don't work with the blast so I didn't use them on this char. I kept the Engwithan Sceptre because it has different damage types than the rod. That's good if you meet foes that have high DR against your rod's damage but is weak against your sceptre's damage. I first try to trigger Expose Vuln. and then switch to the sceptre in those cases. If I'm impatient I switch before battle and cast Expose Vuln. myself. The Eng. Sceptre will attack even faster than the rod, but you will have less interrupts. This setup is great in terms of DPS and it also contributes to the rest of the party. Constant interrupts and -5DR without using spells (or just one - Alacrity) is very good resource management I'd say. Another good thing: like the Engineer build I presented the other day you can make good use of all the missile spells - or other spells that hit foes more than once. If you get into a tough fight you always can go and cast all the missile spells you have after Expose Vuln. was applied. They also work with Penetrating Shot (yeah!) and some of them even have their own DR bypass. Against foes with 10-15 DR these spells are just brutal. For the other bugger in thick armor you can always choose one of your other spells of course. A really good spell for me was Thayn's Chaotic Orb. I never thought much of it, but if you have two enemies standing side by side this thing is just devastating (esp. if they also suffer from reduced DR): The orb does good damage and will inflict some kind of nasty status effect (petrify, paralyze and so on) so that the target gets debuffed - then it jumps to the next target and does the same. Now comes the good part: when there is no other enemy in 5m range the orb will jump back to the initial target (which is debuffed already), doing more damage and inflicting another status effect (if you're lucky it's not the same as before, getting suppressed) and so on. Each of the two foes will be hit three times. Most enemies will just be superdead - and if not (high level Ogres for example might survive) they will be severly injured and debuffed. This also works great with three foes (2 hits each). One enemy alone doesn't trigger the jump after the first hit - so don't waste this spell on single targets. However - for most enemies Alacrity and Golden Gaze are all you need. Did I mention that I love low micro and few rests? You can also use Minor Blights from time to time - nearly forgot that... The Blights (like all summoned weapons these days) will use any weapon focus you chose by the way - you don't have to skill towards it. They profit from Dangerous Implement. The icing on the autottacking cake is another thing that you will find under "Stack Attack" down below. Then we have the inevitable Combusting Wounds. As you might know by now: I love this spell. And it works really well with blast and two projectiles than one. This doubles the damage output of Combusting Wounds. A wizard also has the wall spells which are perfect for Comb. Wounds. Although their positioning is tedious, they provide a constant stream of fast mini-hits that all trigger Comb. Wounds while in the meantime you can do other stuff (thanks to Wolken3156 for reminding me). All the ray spells can do the same for you. This is one reason why I chose the Ring of Searing Flames. I have this spell in my grimoire but this ring is like having three bonus level 2 spells. And there is another reason why I chose the ring: Implement Bros Essential and Substantial Phantom! These two guys work really well with this setup. You are skilled toward implements and so are your two duplicates. They also cause a blast with their weapons and that's good for more interrupts and AoE damage as well as it's supergreat for... wait for it... Combusting Wounds! Yeah - again I know. But you alone can pump the damage output from Combusting Wounds from 100% to 300% with your rod and your wingman! Another thing is that you can use the duplicate as cannon fodder. Since you are very fragile you really don't want to be targeted. If this happens, it's a good idea to summon a duplicate in front of you. Since it's also a low armored caster with low defl. the enemies will turn towards the duplicate (which is nearer most of the time) - especially if it attacks them with nasty, icy blasts. In former times, in another patch, duplicates also could use spell bindings of all items you had (except weapons), including Forgemaster's Gloves. This was patched - I'm still sad. They do profit from items enchantments though - like +3 move speed from boots of speed or +15% attack speed of Gauntlets of Swift Action. That's very useful. It's a great advantage to have a very fast duplicate instead of a normal one. The only spell binding items they can use now are rings. So even if I used up all of my Combusting Wounds from the ring - my duplicate always has 3 uses left. This is like exchanging a level 4 (or a level 7) spell for 3 level 2 spells. That's a whole bag full of Combusting Wounds until you have to rest. It's also good to send your duplicate to cast the spell since the range is quite short (the spell from your grimoire has 10m range, the ring only 5m :shrug:). The other ring I used was the Sigil of the Arcane because it not only gives you +1 INT but also has Arcane Dampener which is superuseful against buffing enemies like druids and priests and Thaoses who can be superannoying. Take away Crowns or Shields for the Faithful and the enemy is much much easier to kill - true story! Besides that it also takes away immunities (yeah... shht! Don't tell anybody!). So your duplicate can also debuff now without you having to waste a precious spell. High Five! Stack Attack The Neverending Wellspring is more overfunny than overpowered - it's a risky thing and a bit of a hustle. Good that it stacks with further stat buffs - for example Citzals Martial Power! Since this spell and Wellspring of Life affect the same stats you get a overall bonus of +10 DEX, +10 CON (who cares?) and +11 MIG. This does not only boost your attack-animation and recovery speed further, but also lets you dish out +33% more damage with your rod. Might should be at 33 now. That's a total damage bonus of +69% from MIG alone. You can stack this further with main character's talents (like Gift From the Machine and so on), food and resting if you want. I think you can reach 42 MIG for a long duration (dragon meat) if you want to go all the way. 33 was enough for me though. I don't like food too much because I always forget it before tough fights. Conveniently this bonus applies to anything you do that heals or damages - spells also. But wait - what spells? Isn't spellcasting impossible as long as C's Martial Power is on? It is - but only your wizard spells are blocked. Scrolls and items with Spell Binding still work. A Fireball or a Maelstrom is much more fun if it has +69% damage. Your implement's damage: Together with Dangerous Implement and the Exceptional enchantment you're now doing ~ +130% base damage - with blinding speed and lots of blasts that cause interrupts. And you only needed two of your spells for this. Great! Man - I can't stand the text editor any more. One more build and I'm finished - for now. Next will be my druidic CC tank. Then I will not touch this game until WMII - promised! Edit: Typos and additional infos and honorable mentions. Thanks a lot!

They should also introduce items (baggy pants?) that grant +1 quick slot.

I second that. It never occurs when the player uses this ability - only foes seem to have this "feature".

Am I stupid or are you guys just standing in front of the wrong door? THe door in the picture will only open from the other side - when you ascend from down below at some point. It's a shortcut so that you don't have to stroll through all the levels all the time if you want to leave/enter the Endless Paths later on. You have to search for another entrance to the lower levels - there is one in the southeast of that map. The wall of force that blocks that entry will go away after you kill Maerwald and THEN speak to the steward again. Hope this helps. I once had a bug though that one of my fellows spawned BEHIND the wall of force before I could speak to the steward. I couldn't leave the place because my party wasn't able to gather. But I thnink that's another problem.

Tehehe - after posting my question I searched the omniscient internet and quickly found this omnious Gutz. But nice try anyway.

I read somewhere that unarmed is even a little bit faster than daggers and the like. Is that true? I think monk's fists are awesome by the way. But only monk's. Novice Suffering is badly implemented and doesn't work well with +dmg mods.

Now that's really weird. I saw your other posts about this party and I can't imagine why the AI wants to do this. You also have Kana Rua and the paladin officer - if I were the AI I would try to attack one of those first. Or does he perhaps have an item with Spell Binding? That would make him a caster - for the AI I mean. Then it would at least make some sense.

Looks fantastic! Maybe Osric's Family Breastplate Would be fitting for the Captain as well. Maybe it's too much. And a Tricone Hat maybe? I remeber Captain Maurami or what his name is (bounty guy). http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/9/9d/Hat_tricorne_icon.png?version=2c8c6a42ebef13f5574727948111f57b Too bad you can't enchant headger.

Ouuu - that special talent with scrolls sounds really different, fitting and nice. Never thought of this but it makes kind of sense for a chanter (who knows lots of lore and so on). @PrimeJunta: Scatman John roflmao. Can you keep up?

Yes, if you build your druid around spiritshift it gets really powerful and is a lot of fun to play - also stylewise. Wearing a stag helmet and then turn into stag form is just awesome. It's just too short. I would love if the devs would turn it into a true modal that prevents casting. Maybe with a little cooldown to prevent shapeshift spamming.

Very funny that you post this right now: There are two more builds coming from me - one is a glasscannon wizard and the other one a wild orlan druid tank (all defenses over 100, deflection at 120 roughly) with bear spiritshift who just walks into a group and triggers Returning & Relentless Storm - then the rest of the party finishes off. It works really, really good. He's just a walking CC effect and is very hard to CC and to kill. My items and talents are a little bit different (took all of the +10 defense talents plus Body Control and put on the Blaidh Golan armor against prone because the only problem I had was being CC'd) after a lot of testing and playing so that they work out best together with my playstyle - but the concept itself is exactly the same.

It was a pleasure - hope you enjoyed your holiday.

I once did a playthrough with six rogues on PotD 2.01. At first it was ok, but it started to get really tedious in Galvino's Workshop and kept on being that in the Battery and so on. The Lagufaeths where a real pain in the a then. I got stunlocked all the time and had to use a lot of summons so that all the paralyzing and stunning was focused on them before I could even try to go into melee fight. The main problem is not that you are squishy - you can build some of your rogues sturdy enough so that they form a good front line. I even had a riposte build (low DEX, maxed RES, with shield, fat armor, retaliation and maxed deflection bonus against disengagement attacks and boots of speed) who ran around the mobs in circles and it worked. But this was the only kind of good and reliable CC that I had. It worked as CC because some of the enemies would chase the rogue forever while he would run past other enemies to force diseng. attacks. The Sap ability wasn't within reach and although I had focused on weapons with prone or stun capabilities they did not prove to be a reliable source of disabling against tough buggers. You just don't have enough AoE for all the foes on PoTD - there will always be two or three that you can't control and the will annoy you big time. I did work around that with scrolls of paralysis and so on. That works quite well as you can guess because a rogues with high ACC and good INT (to buff the prone/stun durations from weapons) is great for using scrolls - but its... I don't know... just scrolls. Feels weird that you are so dependent on them. I like them as a bonus - but if a build or even a party doesn't work without them it doesn't feel right for me. Maybe taking Enigma's Charm and getting some mind-control items like Munacra Arret would have been a good idea - or still is. So I think a paladin and a cipher frontliner would definitely improve such an alpha strike party. I know it ruins the idea of a pure rogue party though. But pallies and ciphers also can do lots of damage with alpha strikes (paladin: FoD, cipher: Soul Whip + Runner's Wounding Shot if you like) and while the paladin can do things like healing, revive, buffing and be really sturdy the cipher can greatly improve the CC capability. One mind controlled foe alone that you turn at the start of the fight can make things so much easier. The mob will attack (and probably CC) him first and you can pick your targets without stress. Mental Binding is great for a alpha strike party, too. As long as they are stuck they can't swarm you. I also like to use mind wave as an alpha strike when the mobs start to move towards your party because they automatically will run in a formation that's perfect for the cone AoE. A weapon that does prone or stun on crit together with Tactical Meld (can be cast before combat for zero focus loss) and Borrowed instinct is also great. +40 ACC is like a guarantee for crits. A paladin with Zealous Charge and Boots of Speed is also a great tractor for the cipher's Ectopsychic Echo by the way. Ok, that' my mustard*. )* = my two cents, german idiom

Oooh yeah! *intonates the yellow song*

Sure... ...what's a Gutz?

Oh... I don't know exactly. I don't even know if they are better at any point - just not bad anymore. But it's true that you lack means of DR bypass and +attack speed mods in the early game. Stilettos are an exception.

Sounds fun. Maybe you will encounter some problems when facing enemies that have ranged disables and damage and are tough - like Lagufaeth and Ogre Druids. These are the meanest enemies for a group that has no fast disables. Of course you can always use a scroll of paralysis then.

If you dump it, you will be critted to death - if you raise it, you will receive not enough wounds... walking a tightrope. Most of the time It's around 10 for my monks.

That's really nice. So first Call to Slumber and then Slicken.

Good that we've cleared that up.

So I tested a melee Spellsword wizard with Spelltongue to see if he can hit fast enough to steal sufficient durations for his buffs so that they never run out during combat. Thanks to Alacrity and maxed DEX he can! If you power up all your buffs (last one should be C's Martial Power) and then start to hit very quickly (durgan refined Spelltongue and durgan refined small shield) your buffs will be prolonged until the end of the fight - as long as you don't have to run around a lot or get disabled. Maybe this was the intention of the blade in the first place. This may also work with other classes if they can stack a bit of attack speed and are able to constantly hit or crit .

Only recently I encountered this bug. I am playing a wizard at the moment and doing the Nalrend bounty. Several times I had to reload because my wizard was just stuck and couldn't do anything. When all Ogres were dead combat wouldn't stop.