dgray62

I am starting a new run as a Tactician/Bloodmage. As such, I am facing again a quandary I always face with wizard multiclasses. That is, to what degree, if any, should I select spells when I level up? It seems that the best strategy is to not take spells and rely entirely on grimoires, and take martial skills or passives on level up. But I am always tempted to take spells that I know I will cast again and again, like chillfog, spirit shield, etc. I was just wondering how others handle this. Any advice would be appreciated.

While ciphers are great in a party, a single class cipher can't serve as the primary healer for a party. With the right multiclass, however, you could make a cipher healbot. A psion/troubadour or psion/lifegiver would be great, and could alternate casting spells and cipher powers.

Pain Block is a great single target heal over time spell. However, a single class cipher doesn't get it until level 7, so you'll need an alternate source of healing for the lower levels. And it is single target; ideally you want healing that can affect multiple party members simultaneously. Chanters and druids are particularly good for this.

Thanks for the advice, Boeroer. I think I'll try this build out again.

Boeroer, I tried the Bloodmage/Steel Garotte with WotEP a few months ago but was a bit disappointed with the damage output. I realize, however, that I was focusing too much on using spells for buffs and doing damage via auto attacks with WotEP. I realize now that the beauty of this build is casting offensively while WotEP's offensive parry wounds and dazes attackers while healing you. This being the case, I was wondering what spells you use most with this build. I was thinking that spells such as chill fog and combusting wounds and the wall spells would be particularly useful. Which spells do you take on level up, and which grimoires do you use? I was thinking it might be a good idea to take a few buffs as well as bread and butter spells, while using grimores such as Iron-clasped.

Aside from Eder, the rest of your companions are casters or ranged, so I'd recommend that your MC be a melee oriented character. If you are thinking of wizard, you might consider an arcane knight, especially the Steel Garrote/Blood mage multi-class. It is very powerful, dealing great DPS while also being very sturdy with strong defenses and excellent healing. But of course there are many other possibilities as well, including Tempest, Witch, Sage, etc. And don't forget Herald; a paladin/bellower multi-class with sasha's singing scimitar is pretty OP!

I have been working on a SC monk build, and finally got all of the equipment I needed in SSS. It is definitely best as a solo build, as you indicated, Kaylon. I have also found that timing is extremely important. After completing a WoW round you are invisible briefly. It's essential that you immediately reactivate WoW in that brief window, so you can continue the mayhem without being hit. If not, and you're hit twice, you invariably damage yourself pretty seriously with all of the explosions, as well as lay on many stacks of resonant touch on yourself, making the ability impossible to use. So I see that Ooblit is essential for this build, as you suggested Kaylon. Hence I'm off to do Forgotten Sanctum next. Overall this is a great cap to a SC monk run; monks start of strong and slowly gain power, and then just explode when you get WoW. But this is well known, of course!

I just finished this quest, and when you first get the Least Unstable Coil, it is still a quest item, although it is fully usable. You have to fight a good number of additional fights in the Crucible, and then will get the message to return to Neale. He gives you then the Liquid Adra item and some XP and the quest ends. If you try to import prior to completing the quest you'll get the error message, I believe.

Vitalis, my understanding is Soul blade's soul annihilation attack was seriously nerfed. I only have played post nerf, and found it underwhelming. I love Beguiler; it is a very "witchy" class with the focus on deception/mind control powers, and is really OP, since casting these powers can restore focus for you, allowing you to cast them again and again. But personally I love ascendant the most. I just love spamming mind blades and other damaging powers while in the ascended state. And a multiclass with barbarian is great for the extra recovery and attack speed and penetration (if you go with berserker).

For a Ascendant Witch I'd recommend that you max INT (for long periods of ascension) and go for relatively high PER, so you can crit a lot. DEX should be relatively high as well for speed, fast recovery and overall DPS. Your STR doesn't need to be too high, since you'll get fury and cipher damage boosts. Personally I would keep CON at 10, although you can lower it if you like living dangerously. RES can be dumped if you're not going for a melee build.

It sounds like a fiery sage (helwalker/bloodmage) might be an interesting build with Magran's shield. You'd get the swift flurry/heartbeat drumming procs with the turning wheel flame lash, and would be pretty durable with the added deflection from the shield, You could use Magran's Favor or Keeper of the Flame in the MH, and, when fighting fire resistant or immune foes, go unarmed with the MH and the shield in the OH, and cast Concelhaut's draining touch.

Thanks! My SC monk just reached lvl 19 yesterday, and WoW is just so incredible. He can wipe out trash mobs with one WoW circuits with bare fists. For the tougher foes, I use dual mortars as you've often suggested, Boeroer. They have so many resonant stacks that this ability wipes out any who survive the WoW onslaught. I'm about to head to Kazuwari start SSS to get Keeper of the Flame, so that I can try the Keeper of the Flame/Scordeo's edge/saint's war armor combo as well.

Regarding your questions, (1) personally I'd say that Eder and Maia both really benefit from multiclassing as rogues. Theosupus earlier posted an Iron Hammer build that works great for Eder; I follow this build whenever I add him to my party. And Maia as a scout (rogue/ranger) multiclass is fantastic, and does great DPS. Aloth, on the other hand, is probably best as a SC Wizard. Personally, I usually dual class my priests. Unlike classes like wizard and monk, they do not have OP tier 8 & 9 abilities that you'll really miss. As for the other class, they're very tanky multiclassed as a Paladin. Or you could make a healbot by multiclassing as a lifegiver druid. I had fun with a Bleak walker/Priest of Magran build loaded up with all the +fire gear.

I didn't realize this, Noqn, thanks. So there's no need to activate the ability initially, just later once stacks have been applied. I gather that the raw damage is determined by your STR at the moment you activate it, right? I ask because my MC is a Helwalker, and his STR thus varies considerably.

I am currently playing a SC monk, and just reached level 16. Needless to say I took Resonant Touch, as I have read how great it is. However, I can't really figure out how it works. The ability's description seems to indicate that you apply it to a target, and then, at a time of your choosing, activate it, triggering a raw damage AOE dependent on the number of stacks the foe has. However, when I activate the ability a large AOE is indicated. Is resonant touch applied to every foe in the AOE when I activate it? It doesn't seem that this is what actually happens. It usually seems to only apply to one foe, when engaged in single target unarmed combat at least. And I have no idea how to trigger it. If I press the ability icon again, it just seems to reapply the ability.

I agree. Crits aren't a problem with berserkers, but they come slowly for low level druids, in my experience.

For most lower level characters it will take quite a few battles to rack up 30 crits with the Voulge. But if you go to Fort Deadlight you can level it up really fast, since there are so many destructibles there. Just level it up to that stage first by racking up lightning damage against the plate armored guy on Deadfire merchant vessels, and then sailing into a storm. The easiest one to find is the perma-storm right by the island where you find the Voulge.

Weapon damage does count toward the 250 points of electrical damage you need to level up the Voulge, but only when you get lightning damage rather than slash damage; it uses the best of the two. The easiest way to level it up with a non-druid is head west to the Port Maje area after you get the Voulge, and attack deadfire merchant ships. There's always a guy in plate mail on these ships; have your Voulge guy attack him, and every hit will be electrical damage, since plate mail is vulnerable to that. After a few battles you'll level it up, and then can head to the nearest storm. The final leveling challenge is getting 30 crits. You can do this slowly but surely in battle, or you can head to Fort Deadlight and have the Voulge guy attack barrels, oil casks and gunpowder barrels. Crits on this these count, but watch out for the gunpowder barrels; they can easily knock you out if you have less than 100 HP.

Lord Darryn's Voulge is fantastic with barbarians, due to static thunder. Hits, via main attacks AND carnage, build up charges that are discharged when one crits in an AOE lightning storm that also disorients those affected. It's best with a berserker or berserker multiclass (esp. berserker/monk or berserker/devoted or tactician), so you'll get crits more often, but you can use it with Serafen. With druids, its basically a stat stick giving you additional +3 power levels with storm spells. This is somewhat underwhelming, however, as the storm spells don't scale very well with additional power levels.

That's funny, thanks!

Thanks for the explanation, thelee, that makes sense. Concentration is somewhat funny as well. On a number of occasions I have noticed that, when landing a killing blow on an enemy, the game informs me that the enemy's concentration prevented the interrupt. You would think that a killing blow would *always* interrupt whatever one was doing!

I agree with you completely, thelee. Ideally the game would be balanced in a way that doesn't sacrifice playability at any skill level. I find this discussion fascinating as it relates the metagame experience which I am only just beginning to understand. I also agree that fighter resource regen on interrupt is great for tactician. But this feature is also a bit mysterious. I try to interrupt with knockdown/mule kick when an opponent is beginning to activate an ability or spell. However, when the attack is successful and I knock them down, I do not always get discipline back. This may be due to timing, but it does not seem very reliable when attacking a single opponent. Needless to say, it clearly works better with AOE attacks, such as a mule kick with Citzal's. This points to what is probably an obvious point, that tactician is best in multiclass builds.

Balanced shield is great for monks. You get a big boost in tankiness at the expense of only a slight dip in DPS. It's definitely worth having for the more challenging battles.

As a noob myself, perhaps it's worth pointing out that this isn't really a problem except for those with in depth understanding of game mechanics, and who thus have the know-how to exploit opportunities such as those discussed in this thread. For example, tactician/bloodmage is one of my favorite combinations to play. And this is not because it is particularly OP for a noob such as myself. Indeed, for noobs builds such as arcane knights are much more OP, since they are so durable and yet dish out serious damage. I like tactician/bloodmage because it presents a challenge, at least for those of us with less depth of understanding. For one thing, it is a somewhat mysterious build. For example, why does my tactician/bloodmage begin ship battles with brilliant, only to have it cancelled out almost immediately? It is also somewhat of a challenge, at least for someone with middling experience like me, to trigger brilliant. There are many battles in which I have not gotten it to trigger until the last enemy is dead; it triggers and then is immediately cancelled out. There's also some risk in this build, since you have to be careful about being flanked. I understand how to trigger it, and often manage to do so, using chillfog, phantom foes, etc., but there are still some mysteries, for me at least. For example, I do not yet fully understand how summons affect my chances of triggering brilliant. Importantly, brilliant is easiest to trigger when it is most needed, when fighting a single boss. So while developing a mod to tone down brilliant might be a great idea, and those who are interested could download it, such changes are not necessary for many of us.

As Boeroer noted, monks should always select Balanced Shield. The only reason to take Outward Spikes if you are using it with a non-monk (fighter, barb, cipher, etc.) with Monastic Unarmed Training. And I agree that the ACC boost from Precision Sticker is better than the small boost to damage from Pugilist. You'll probably end up doing better DPS with the former, as you note.