dgray62

Yes, English lacked the necessary vocabulary here!

Playing a FF/shifter ascetic is very fun in my experience, and feels powerful right from the start of the game. In terms of ultimate power at the end game it falls short of SC monk IMO, lacking as it does wotw and resonant touch, but it is a nice alternative for those of us who have already played SC monks.

Probably best to play this in the vanilla game, or with more moderate mods like community patch and/or BPM. But Shifter Evolution enables the überkäse for those so inclined.

That is true, but keep in mind that eye gouge does relatively little damage, but forever. It's not that impactful in normal fights, in which you'll kill the foes much faster using normal means. But it can be strategically used to take out megabosses and other challenging foes.

That's a great point which didn't occur to me. Thanks for considering this!

Isn't withdrawal automatic, with no save?

Elric, I have a suggestion for a minor buff to ciphers. Among the spell casters, wizards are by far the most OP IMO, since they have such a great mix of damage, CC and offensive and defensive buff spells. But what really makes wizards beasts is their versatility via grimoires, since via them you can access any spell in the game. Druid, priests and ciphers, however, are somewhat hobbled by the fact that they can only cast the spells that they select when they level up. For druids and priests, however, this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the various subclasses get a free spell per PL. I propose that cipher subclasses should also get a free power per PL. The choices should be obvious, namely shred spells for soul blades, deception spells for beguilers, the damage spells that ascendants spam while ascended, maybe party buffs for psions, and a mix for vanilla ciphers. This would make playing ciphers a bit less painful, since leveling up would be a bit less constrained.

Yes. While shifted, the FF ascetic can use the FF attack, which benefits from transcendent suffering and any and all lashes, including the wild strike lash. Autoattacks while shifted benefit from the lashes, but do not benefit from transcendent suffering. This makes FF the best option in my opinion for a shifter ascetic. Helwalker obviously is best for an ascetic build with a focus on spells, but for a melee build FF takes the cake I think. Tanglefoot is great with the FF ascetic as well. However, you need the vanilla game for that. The shifter evolution mod tweaked tanglefoot, making it foe only.

Ha, great image! You do do ridiculously high damage with the FF attack, as you correctly surmise. Needless to say, you can avoid this simply by not selecting MUT in the first place. If you like playing shifters the mod is worth trying. One thing to be aware of is the fact that the mod penalizes you with a -20% xp penalty to compensate for its OP nature. However, the penalty applies to every game when the mod is active, even if you're not playing a shifter. But you can just deactivate it in the mod manager when you don't want to play a shifter to avoid this.

I recommend Clarity of Agony. It significantly shortens the duration of the forbidden fist curse and any other negative condition, allowing you to get wounds and healing and spam FF faster. However, I personally don't take DoD and its successor for melee builds. I think it's better for ranged builds. As for weapons, sabres and flails are particularly good. There are late game builds focusing on WotW wielding Keeper of the Flame that inflict absolute mayhem.

I have been fooling around with ascetic builds lately, using two of my favorite subclasses, forbidden fist and shifter. In the past I have played helwalker ascetics that were ultimately more spell-focused, but I went with shifter this time for a more melee focus. After playing this build in the vanilla game I started over using the Shifter Evolution mod, which is a rather OP mod that makes SC melee shifter viable by taking the druid elemental spells, and replacing them with passives and other spells that are more melee oriented. I tried this out because of its first level spell, Crush, which basically a downsized version of the barbarian leap ability, allowing you to jump up and knock down enemies in a small AOE. It also debuffs their DEF by -10. It's a fun starting ability in IMO. I just discovered the major cheese factor. This mod adds Monastic Unarmed Training as a selectable ability for the shifter druid. To make matters better or worse (depending on your perspective), the mod does NOT remove MUT as an option if you choose an ascetic MC. If you select MUT, it STACKS with transcendent suffering, which gives you an incredible bonus to damage, accuracy and penetration. However, it's not too overpowered since if you largely play while shifted, as I do, neither MUT or transcendent suffering apply while shifted. There is one exception however: the forbidden fist attack, which, while shifted, benefits from MUT, transcendent suffering, the Wildstrike elemental lash, and eventually the turning wheel fire lash, and lightning strikes, if you select that option. It's really OP, and turns the FF ability into a real death touch, accessible from very early in the game. This is of course very cheesy, but I am offering it up as I know that there are some turophiles out there (Not So Clever Hound, I am referring to you).

Yes, DoT effects like Gouging Strike prevent combat from ending. For this reason, I always take Gouging Strike when playing an assassin.

Tacticians become brilliant when their opponents are all flanked and no one on your side is flanked. This is easiest achieved when you play solo or with small parties, of one or two companions. Psyblade or battlemage are probably the best MC, since both wizards and ciphers have powers (chill fog/curse of blackened sight and eyestrike/phantom foes) that will flank enemies. A tactician/soul blade MC would be a fine combination. Brilliant periodically restores class resources, including fighter discipline, wizard spells, and cipher focus. But it's much better for wizards, who get back a spell at a random level, while ciphers only get a measly +10 focus per tic. Invisibility works a bit buggy with brilliant tactician. If I recall correctly, turning invisible will trigger brilliant tactician, which sounds nice, but often battle ends as well, which is not so great, since you'll lose whatever buffs you had (including brilliant) without your resources being restored. Personally, I prefer playing tacticians either solo or with a small party. Playing a party, say, of three tacticians can be fun.

When I played this build, my favorite end game combo was Sasha's and Weyc's wand in the starting weapon slot, to empower an invocation at the start of combat. But then I'd switch to another weapon slot with Magran's Favor and Sungrazer. The third weapon slot would be unarmed, with Tuotilo's in the offhand, for fire immune foes. I've never been a huge fan of Sun and Moon, despite its obvious utility for a skald, due to its low base damage and dislike of the day and night linked powers.

I agree, an assassin MC with smoke veil would give you much more fun and dynamic gameplay. Casting DoT spells and withdrawing would become very boring quickly, for me at least. Not So Clever Hound's mindstalker build is great if this interests you.

I recommend that you start with 18 RES; that's the prime stat for a FF monk. You can get it above 30 with gear and inspirations from a companion. You'll probably want it a bit higher if you're going solo. You can keep STR, CON & INT flat, since monks have great damage modifiers from transcendent suffering, and you'll get up to +10 INT from Duality of Mortal Presence. You can distribute the rest between DEX and PER; they ultimately boost DPS more that STR, I think.

I agree. And a FF monk with high resolve and clarity of agony will be healed far more than harmed by the FF curse. With high resolve and tuotilo's shield you'll have very high deflection, and you needn't worry much about the other three defenses, as any afflictions that get through will last a very short time, and then will heal and give wounds to boot. Also, SC monks are great fun from beginning to end, and especially at the end, when you get the high level monk abilities like resonant touch and whisper of the winds.

You might consider Powerotti's Rumbling Boar helwalker/skald build. It's a lot of fun, and very powerful. But Boeroer's bellower suggestion is great too. You'd be trading more frequent somewhat weaker invocations for more powerful ones less frequently.

That Fireball image looks like a shifted sorcerer with wild strike burn!

Wow, so many great discoveries lately. I'm sure you both know this, but the barrel trick also works with cipher powers, like Borrowed Instinct.

Thanks for sharing this discovery with us, Boeroer!

I think you'll find that it is a very strong melee combo that deals excellent DPS and can take a great deal of damage too. Probably best used as a off-tank with another tank with good engagement, but it's also very viable solo, in which case engagement is no longer an issue.

It can be tanky enough I think. You can get lots of engagement from the barb side, healing from the druid side, and plenty of AR from both sides. Not the tankiest of builds, but it can hold its own.

I think that a barb shifter is a great combo; they fit together very well thematically. You'll have great attack speed and good healing and CC. Shifter gets good DoT spells automatically that you'll definitely want to use. Make sure that you pick up Infestation of Maggots and Bloody Slaughter at PL 3. It's nice when the damage ticks go up right when the foes' health gets low.

I also pause often, and I set the game to autopause frequently. I like to micromanage my MC, but when I play with parties, I generally let me companions and hirelings run on AI, interrupting only when they do something stupid, like charging into a chill fog.