dgray62

One more question...... am I right in assuming you used Abraham as your pet, for the build's main source of healing as well as recovery time reduction?

Thanks! I suppose that pernicious cloud is best for a solo run. I understand that it is not party friendly. MuT punches with backstab and VS sounds like fun. I'll have to try it! Did you ever use Tuotillo's Palm with it for any of the harder fights? I guess it's not necessary for a solo run when you can disappear with smoke cloud or VS. Also, did you mainly use Gambit with the Hand Mortar, to maximize your chance of getting back guile?

This looks really interesting, Not So Clever Hound. Thanks for sharing this. I think I might try this in a party, as it sounds like it would be a lot of fun. I had a few questions regarding the ability choices. First, I see you recommend backstab. Is this for backstabbing with MuT powered fists? Also, while Smoke Veil is a no brainer, I was wondering if you could say something about your reasoning for investing in the upgrades. Also, out of curiosity, how did this build fare against the megabosses?

For solo, you'd probably want to invest in several summon invocations, starting with skellies and ending with ancient weapons, which are great. For PL 1 you should also definitely get the Thrice invocation, upgrading it to Her Revenge, since it's arguably the most powerful invocation for dealing with the clusters of melee attackers who will surround you. The Paralyze invocation is great too, but I don't think you can rely on it solely for CC if you're doing a solo run. Since you'll be relying significantly on your AC and summons, you'll probably want to purchase the animancy cat to give them a nice boost to their damage output.

A monk with swift flurry and/or hearbeat drumming has a chance to proc another attack anytime you crit; it would certainly work, to fine effect, if you're wielding Citzal's or WotEP. As for Magistrate's Cudgel, you could certainly use it. But if you put it in your main hand, your swift flurry procs will be much less damaging. And if you put it in your offhand, you'll significantly lower your defenses. But you could experiment. A great alternate weapon set might be slayer's axe and the Cudgel. You could start battle with this, to upgrade tenacious to energized, and then switch over when you need more defense. Ball and chain with the irrepressible upgrade would also be great, since you'll constantly have hostile effects expiring, giving you the nice 15% damage boost almost constantly. You might explore these different options as you acquire them.

The different summons shine under different circumstances. Skeletons are great when fighting foes with lots of firearms, like pirates, since they are pierce immune. The pirates will target them since their deflection is low, but will not harm them . Wurms are great for foes with low AR, and can be also used to quickly eliminate caster squishies by focusing fire on them. And ogres are great meatshields. So there's an argument for having a wide range of summons, so that you can invoke the best one for the particular battle.

I've never tried this build solo so I'm not sure how well it would work. For solo, however, you might want to pick up the skeleton invocation for some additional meat shields. You'd also want to get the defensive boosts for the AC, since you really want to avoid bonded grief when playing solo.

Thanks, Elric Galad, for this change, It's a much needed tweak to the rogue package IMO.

Yes, I agree. But it seems that in the unmodded game one of the primary weaknesses of the rogue is the inability to renew any resources. But there's always the SoF cheese to make up for this! You might want to check out the Balancing Polishing mod, however. It tweaks Wall of Flashing Steel to give you a chance to restore guile, which seems like a nice boost for SC rogues.

If you play with Community Patch, such that FF attacks are classified as weapon attacks, you will trigger extra attacks with swift flurry and heartbeat drumming. However, these extra attacks are primary attacks using the main hand weapon only if you are dual wielding. This is the reason that Powerotti recommends wielding Magran's Favor in your main hand with the axe modal on. The idea is that you would rarely be auto-attacking, but would rather be mainly using the FF attack and also periodically using eternal devotion to renew the fire lash. When swift flurry/heartbeat drumming procs, you'll deal a powerful attack with Magran's Favor and bleeding cuts, without the recovery penalty that the axe modal would inflict if you were auto-attacking. This is one of my favorite builds, and I can tell you from experience that it works very well.

Thanks! I look forward to reading your build when you post it. Given that Gambit can't recover more than 4 guile, it probably is less useful than I initially thought.

I concur, Stalker/Skald is a great combo. While you could wield Sun & Moon as a single weapon for additional chances to crit, with a ranger this probably isn't necessary, so I'd recommend instead a dual wield build. For your other weapon, Sasha's Singing Scimitar is probably ideal, for the once per encounter empower and extra phrases, as well as the lightning lash and action speed boost. You could put weapons with on crit effects in your offhand, like Grave Calling, to use when needed. Later, when you have the ancient weapons invocation, you might want the animancy cat pet to give your animal companion (AC) and summons a power boost. You should also bring along a priest companion to cast Champion's Boon on your AC, to boost its engagement. This is because with Stalker's Link, both you and the AC will get an accuracy boost against any foe engaged by the pet, so you can easily sweep them away with invocations like Her Revenge, which will melt them due to all of the crits you land.

I'm looking forward to this, Not So Clever Hound. I've never played a SC rogue and will be interested to hear how it goes. Have you taken gambit? I'll be interested in learning how well it helps with end-game guile regeneration. It seems that if you use dual mortars you might restore more guile than you use if you crit a lot. Also, if I recall correctly wall of flashing steel has a chance to restore guile on crits if you use either Community or Balance Polishing mods (I use both, and can't recall which one adds this nice and much needed feature).

For an assassin spellblade, you'll mainly want the spells that can be cast from stealth, like fireball, Shadowflame, the precisely piercing burst spell, etc. and also some CC to add afflictions for sneak attack deathblows, etc. You probably will not need many the buff spells, and can rely on grimoires when you need them. For starter spells, I'd recommend chillfog which is always great, as well as Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights, since dazed is a really powerful debuff. You probably won't need Eldritch Aim much, but it might be good to have access to it in a grimoire at least. Keep in mind that the duration will get better as your PLs increase.

Given the strategy you outline, of sneaking behind enemy lines and striking thence, I'd say assassin would be the natural rogue subclass to select with this build. Debonaire, with its cowardice penalty, is really meant for team play. Nanasin Cobra Strike also seems well suited for an assassin, since it hits hard. The slow recovery won't matter as much since you'll likely use smoke veil after attacking out of stealth. Assassin spellblades are really great overall, since many spells get the assassinate bonus when cast from stealth.

I agree that a cipher MC is probably the way to go with such a weapon set. Seer might be ideal, as you indicate. Another possibility that comes to mind is a forbidden fist/soul blade transcendent, which is currently one of my favorite MC builds. You could start with a volley or two with the pistol, with strategic blitz upgrade to boost your melee recovery time. When you close in melee, you could alternate FF attacks, SA attacks, and autoattacks with the sabre to boost accuracy. And any procs of blade cascade would be icing on the cake! Of course, by the time you get the sabre you'll most likely get the Seeker's Fang as well, which would compete with this setup.

Hopefully not, since they're technically not in your party at that point. Sounds like that's worth a try.

This being the case, it might be a good idea to do this only with custom hirelings, who you can remove from the party permanently after stealing the spells you want.

Thanks for the list, abot. But poor Vela! Saved as an infant, only to be used as target practice

The best bet for keeping a non-GH pet alive is going with stalker and the bear pet. The higher AR really works wonders keeping the pet alive. Then you can try to keep your foes dazed, which lowers their PEN by -4, so they'll always under-penetrate you and do little damage. One way to do this is with Griffin's Blade, which dazes foes in an AOE on crit. A seer, with high accuracy & INT and lingering echoes, can keep foes perma-dazed. Or you could build a geomancer bloodmage/stalker, as Boeroer has discussed in many other threads, and daze them with Arkemyer's Dazzling Lights. But if you go with seer you could have Aloth or a hireling mage do this for you.

Too bad one of the injuries doesn't cause confusion. That would be a natural result of a concussion, I think.

I'd say that GH is best if you really don't want to bother with a an animal companion (AC) much. Due to the bother I often wouldn't summon one when playing GH. But it's great to summon one behind enemies as Boeroer explained, and then cast ectoplasmic echo on them. However, when playing a SB I prefer stalker for the extra defenses.

Thanks for the clear explanations of how this works. I can't wait to try it.

I was just wondering, how do you steal spells that are party only buffs (like the Moon's Light or Salvation of Time)? Do you have to confuse the enemy caster, so that you are affected with the buff too when he casts it, so that Grimoire Imprint can steal it? In other words, I don't understand exactly how the Grimoire Imprint spells work. How exactly do you steal a spell from a hireling?

A seer is a great combination; this multiclass can get what I believe is the highest possible accuracy in the game (or close to it at least), which is particularly useful when you are playing at higher difficulty levels. Most tend to play this as a ranged build, using combos such as ghostheart/ascendant, although I am partial to the melee build, namely stalker/soul blade. This is a personal preference, and also due to the fact that there are some great weapons for ciphers in this game; dual wielding Grave Calling and the Seeker's Fang is my favorite combo.