dgray62

A tactician warcaller wielding squids grasp could get energetic, intuitive, brilliant and swift easily if you had a berserker witch party member cast dominate on his/herself while confused. Squids grasp is already great for tacticians due to it granting immunity to flanked. Regarding your second question, I'm 99% sure that you could still chant under CMP. But I'm not sure that you would be able to cast invocations.

Dominated is much better since you still can use all abilities. When charmed, you can only autoattack, as you note.

Do you mean abilities or powers that effect the whole party? There aren't too many as I'm sure you've realized. You might also take into consideration abilities that debuff defenses; flanked from the cipher's phantom foes, for example, is the equivalent to +10 accuracy for attacks that target deflection. It's a low level power with a huge radius; I usually like to have a cipher in my party cast this at the start of battle. If that cipher is a beguiler, they usually have more focus after doing this, and can immediately follow up with other debuffs or damage dealing powers.

I followed instructions I read online and placed the extended Community Patch folder inside of an override folder (which I created) within the Data folder inside of the app's package contents. However, when I run the game, the mod doesn't appear in the mod manager. I'm sure I did something wrong but I'm not exactly sure what. Thanks for the tips!

Thanks, Ivanfydorovich. I downloaded the Community Patch and tried to install it, but couldn't get it to activate when I restarted my game. It may be that I placed my override file in the wrong place. I'll do some Googling to see if I can get it to work.

I have started a forbidden fist/steel garrote build, following the Hand of Doom build with some modifications as I play on MAC OS and can't use mods, unfortunately. I was wondering if it would be worth getting sacred immolation at PL 7. Would hight RES and clarity of agony minimize the raw damage ticks, as they do with the FF curse?

I was considering hiring a warlock (berserker/blood mage) companion with Rekvu's scorched cloak as a companion to my MC, who would be built using thelee's Firedancer build. The idea is the warlock could run into the empowered storm of holy fires (with a serious burn to reduce fire AR ) and be healed while surrounded by foes. I like your build idea, Yosharian, but I wonder if the cloak is somewhat wasted on a ranged build. It seems like you instead want it on a melee caster who can jump into the midst of the fray and cast fireballs, walls of fire combusting wounds (if confused) oneself while surrounded by foes. But perhaps I'm missing something.

Since the build was designed for PotD it would work on Veteran too. And with forbidden fist, every time a hostile effect expires you gain a wound. With high resolve and clarity of agony, negative effects expire very quickly. In the early game FF builds tend to be starved for wounds, but this changes when you get Hylea's talons. They also shine in tough fights against foes with hard CC, which a well-designed FF can shrug off easily, gaining wounds in the process.

A paladin/chanter is very durable, and is a good candidate for a solo PotD run.

I had a lot of fun lobbing bombs playing thelee's Umezawa's build. It's a very fast and deadly priest of wael/streetfighter glass cannon build. It's dual wield, tho, so is not exactly what you are looking for. It's one of the few builds I've seen in which explosives play an integral role.

Thanks to both of you for your answers!

Mepp22, do you mean the Contender's Armor with maxed Athletics?

I tried it with a Berserker/witch. It works quite well, since you don't lose control when dominated. But only the confused character can cast Puppet Master on itself; another cipher cannot do so, since you are unable to target party members with Puppet Master unless you are confused, or the other party member is dominated by an enemy caster. I'm going to add a berserker witch to my next party so the MC, wielding squid's grasp, can benefit from the 2 tier 3 inspirations.

All you really need in the party is a Berserker and a cipher, with someone wielding squid's grasp. The possibilities are endless, really. You just wouldn't want the Berserker multiclassed with a caster, such as the witch combo I suggested above, since the -5 INT from being dominated would hurt if you're a caster.

Thanks for the quick reply! The witch or berserker/debonaire builds sound doable. I like the idea of a witch dominating itself to remove confusion, while gaining two tier 3 inspirations. Very nice idea!

That's interesting, Noqn. Do you think a fire blight summoned by the Belt of Magran's Chosen would be considered a "party member"? Since they are hostile when summoned, it would be pretty cool if charming or dominating them would trigger Certain Mutiny.

I'd say that human is particularly good for builds that are expected to take damage and end up below the 50% health mark, to proc fighting spirit, such as any berserker, blood mage or streetfighter build. A beguiler has so much CC and the fighter so much inherent healing, that you probably would rarely get bloodied if you are playing skillfully. I personally often play mountain dwarf for the resistance to CON afflictions, which can be devastating. And there are not any items (to my knowledge) giving you CON affliction resistance.

How would you reliably trigger Wellspring of Life? Neither fighters nor ciphers have abilities that trigger bodily inspirations for themselves. Unless you plan on having a companion cast an inspiration at the start of each battle, maybe Nature Godlike isn't the best race for this build, as Mepp22 suggested. (edited for accuracy)

Keep in mind as well that the OP combo Mepp22 is writing about, the use of Keeper of the Flame + Eder's armor works with two PL 9 abilities, WotW and imagined pain. You can't do this until you reach level 18. So this is a very powerful strategy for dealing with end game mobs, and the two alternate weapons set ups he recommends are for dealing with bosses. For most of the game, a monk does extremely well dual wielding fists, with an alternate weapon set up for the occasional crush immune foes.

Thanks for the build suggestion, Mepp22. I started a SC forbidden fist monk and used the stats of 12 MIG, 12 CON, 16 DEX, 18 PER, 12 INT, 20 RES with berath's blessings. I understand why you suggest religion, for Keeper of the Flame, but why Arcana? Is this just so you can use scrolls? Also, why do you recommend enervating blows? I figured this would be unnecessary since you can already easily apply enervated.

Mepp22, I like you're idea of trying your OP Monk combo with a forbidden fist, and also the idea of using crimson panoply when not using WoW. I imagine this would be best against small numbers of very strong enemies. Enfeebled is such a powerful debuff, which I hadn't realized until I tried a forbidden fist build. Once you land it, otherwise strong foes fall very quickly.

My first complete run through in the game was as a SC Helwalker monk on veteran difficulty level using the OP Monk Combo that mepp22 brought to our attention earlier this year. It employs the Edér's armor + Keeper of the Flame + Imagined Pain combo that Boeroer mentioned. It was loads of fun, and is really OP once you hit level 16. But now I'm playing a Forbidden Fist/Trickster MC, and if I were to play again as a SC monk I'd probably go with forbidden fist, which is really a great subclass for the reasons Boeroer relates. It's much more tankier than Helwalker since you need to max RES to use the forbidden fist ability effectively, which makes the game much easier on PotD.

I second Boeroer's suggestion. A sage using Concelhaut's Draining Touch is a great deal of fun, and does tremendous damage, since I believe that Concelhaut's Draining Touch has the largest possible base damage of any weapon. It heals you as it damages and weakens your foes, and you can get it relatively early, by level 7 as a multiclass. Another plus of this spell is it can't be suppressed by arcane dampener (unlike Citzal's Spirit Lance) since it has no duration. Just make sure you go to the island south of Port Maje ASAP, where you can find the blood soaked grimoire, enabling you to cast the spell as soon as you hit PL 3.

Thanks for the advice, Haplok. I just started this forbidden fist/trickster character over the weekend, and have reached level 7. So far I am very impressed. This character, on PotD with Eder and three custom companions, was one of my easiest runs through Port Maje Island; Gorecci Street and the ruins did not pose a problem. The build is very tanky, especially once I reached level 4 and got Clarity of Agony and Mirrored Image. The former makes the FF curse last so little time that it heals for more than it harms, and the latter really helps converting incoming crits and hits to grazes and misses. But I do get hit regularly, although usually for not much damage, so I can see that even enduring dance would be a waste of ability points and mortifications. FF is a great free ability, particularly for a shadowdancer. Whenever I'm able to land the enfeebled afflication, the victim literally only has seconds to live before going down under a flurry of sneak attacks. As I play on a MAC I can't mod the game, unfortunately, so I think I'll go get Rännig's Wrath to wield offhand ASAP, with the best sabre or axe in the main hand. I do have a cipher beguiler companion, who will make good use of Seeker's Fang.

I like the idea of the forbidden fist variant of Shadowdrugon, Haplok. Thanks for sharing this. I was wondering however why you didn't take Dance of Death and Enduring Dance. Wouldn't the bonus accuracy and wounds be helpful, especially for a forbidden fist? Also, given the relatively low starting intelligence (before you get DoMP), my low level MC using this build burns through mortifications very quickly, and as for guile, there are many demands on this limited resource as well. How do you manage them in a typical non-boss fight? For longer boss fights, do you self-empower or rely on a cipher companion with ancestral memory?