dgray62

I believe that they do not scale in the vanilla game, and that this bug was never patched. But I am 99% certain that this was fixed in one of the mods you are using, which is why their power did not diminish notably in your play through.

Thanks for the report. I've never played a SC AA, so it is interesting to read about your experience. If I remember correctly, either CP or BPM fixed the problem with the imbue talents not scaling, right?

Since shifting comes with a big malus for shifters, it would be nice if shifting for them was more like a modal (with a cool down). You could go back and forth as much as you want, but would have to wait before re-shifting. Since you'd likely be casting a spell or two when you leave the spirit shifted state this wouldn't be a big problem.

Yes, the fury is a great combo here. So is shifter/trickster, since sickened from Plague, terrified from Nature's Terror and/or stunned from Storm set you up nicely for sneak attacks and (eventually) deathblows. Thematically, however, I really like the Corpse Eater/Shifter combo.

Or you could have your whole party eat Captain's Banquet for permanent aware for everyone, right?

The great thing about shifter is that the druid has a fair amount of spells that disable and weaken foes over time, like Plague of Insects, Relentless Storm and Nature's Terror. It's worth casting one or two of these spells before shifting and diving into melee. A number of tough encounters become much easier if you soften up the enemies first in this manner.

I have noticed this bug myself. I seem to recall that offensive abilities in the AI sometime default to "self" or "allies," and you have to manually switch it to enemies. But somehow knocking yourself out this way is ridiculously funny. Another strange quirk in this game!

So I guess that there's no need to take time parasite for a SC psion, right? I've only played psion MCed as a spiritualist. I think I might try a SC psion.

To follow up on question 4, shifter is a lot of fun IMO. Shifter gets some great damage over time (DoT) spells for free, which is great because they are among the druid's best offensive spells. You can cast a few of those, and then shift and wreak melee mayhem as your spells weaken your foes. Shifter is particularly good for multi classing with melee classes such as rogue (trickster or street fighter), barbarian, monk or paladin. If you want to go with SC you're probably best off with an ancient or fury.

Another odd feature of the spell is that if you cast it successfully on a foe and the foe is gibbed, you lose the imprinted spell. This can be avoided of course by turning off the gibs feature in the game. It thus seems to work like cipher powers such as borrowed instinct that are linked to the body of a particular enemy. Perhaps you could add a timer to the imprinted spell, like the cipher powers all have? The lack of a timer may be the root of the problem. Of course, if you added a timer, it could potentially be extended indefinitely with SoF..... I like the idea of making grimoire imprint a special ability of the enchanter subclass. Perhaps it could be a special ability useable once per encounter? On the other hand, this really should be IMO a cipher ability. The idea of psychic theft seems very cipher-like.

Great find! Sounds like a great reason to add a warlock and an SC wizard to a party.

That's right, bonafide solo MCs would need to steal from foes.

I see—with the grimoire imprint trick the extra spell casts are no longer necessary! BTW, did you steal Shadowing Beyond from a hireling while confused, or did you steal it from a pirate cleric?

But then you'd have the tough choice to make, between HotWV and Rekvu's Fractured Casque 😪

Thanks, Boeroer. I remember reading how the freeze effect works particularly well against some of the mega bosses; I guess this is only the case with those that are not DEX affliction immune, but only resistant. Thanks for the suggestion regarding the Harbinger build,@Constentin Lévine. I imagine that this would work well for a street fighter/skald if you had a priest companion to help keep you alive. As assassin build might be great for a solo run too. I just wish you could cast invocations from stealth/invisibility.

I thought that Grave Calling could also freeze dex immune foes, but I might be wrong about this. I playing the spiritualist now and have Grave Calling. I'll report on whether or not it affects DEX affliction immune foes.

I recently came across an interesting "wit of entropy" spiritualist interrupter build posted two years ago by Constentin Lévine, which didn't seem to get any attention at the time. It uses Thick Grew Their Tongues and Long Night's drink to continually interrupt foes, Her Revenge and Sasha's to get the Tier 3 inspirations, and food and gear to make one immune to afflictions (and hence keep up Energized without interruption). It has a lot of interesting symmetry in gear choice as well. I'm trying it out now, but instead of Beguiler/Bellower I am going with Soul Blade/Skald. Since the build is melee focused I think Soul Blade will work a bit better, and for the same reason skald has nice synergy as well. So far it is very powerful but not OP in an overly cheesy way. It's a great build for a party. Not sure how well it would work solo.

I look forward to reading your Arcane Roquefort the Cheesing Archmage build when you're ready to report on it. I'm planning on playing a solo BM again myself, but not until I finish my current game, as a Thrice nuking, heavily debilitating Spiritualist (Skald/Soul Blade) who will ultimately immune to all afflictions once I acquire all of the needed gear. It's fun but not quite as OP as a BM.

You might consider updating your Bleeding Arcanist build to have Lover's Embrace in the offhand rather than a shield, since the latter won't be necessary once you imprint Shadowing Beyond.

It only works when the foe has no allies nearby, right? If so, it would work best against bosses, when you'd really need the interrupts.....just have to clear out the minions first.

In that case, Berserker/skald makes the most sense! I didn't think of using the skellies as fodder. But as in the case of your confused Zerker/devoted wielding Amra, you'd have to keep your companions out of the cone of death!

I have done exactly what these recommends, tweaking the remade scripts, removing the abilities that I don't want to use, adding new ones, or adding additional abilities. For example, I have found that the remade "Barbarian Aggressive" script for some reason cause the barb to continually activate the ability, apparently because the timer doesn't work, in my game at least. So I set the additional condition that they should only use it when not having a STR inspiration. Due to the non-functional timer, my forbidden fist monks would kill themselves by stacking too many curses. So set the AI to have them use it only when their health was above 90%.

Yes, wizards with the grimoire imprint trick are beyond OP. You can also steal Escape from the Skaen priests in Fort Deadlight as soon as you hit level 7, which gives you the mobility, without the invisibility, plus a brief but major DEF boost.

I'd recommend Corpse Eater/Skald. As Boeroer mentioned you don't need Zerker since you'll get energized from the chanter side. The nice thing about Corpse Eater is if you eat Forbidden Flesh Pie you'll get a PL boost to your barb abilities. I presume that this would boost spirit frenzy's accuracy and make you more likely to crit/interrupt with it, right? Or is there no attack roll for spirit frenzy's staggered effect? I must admit I'm not sure how this is implemented in the game. At the very least, the frenzy effect would last longer.

Wow, this sounds like a lot of fun. I love chanters but I never really tried to maximize interrupts. The chanter/wizard would be fun, but I'm tempted to try chanter/cipher for another CC heavy build. But of course with SC chanter you'll get energized much more quickly! Decisions, decisions.....