Shai Hulud

Yeah Essence Interrupter with the modal is probably close to Frostseeker in DPS, also with soul diplomacy you get friends on death so Is like the bow. Most of the time I use summoned weapons because it's easier to script (and there are really good wizard summon weapons). Give Tekehu the least unstable coil and Effort with Hemoraging upgrade when you get the items, he ascends to god tier damage output by empowering avenging storm with effort equipped and then casting pulsing spells like venombloom and relentless storm. It's pretty easy to share scripts actually just put the scripts here C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\CustomAIBehaviors The second script (Hierophant Improved Mirror) is the one I used most of my Ultimate run. It doesn't use wall of draining but relies on having stolen lots of spells and procced stuff like opening barrage or blade cascade. Still, the bottom part may be instructive of how to use Escape at least, I got pretty good at scripting Escape to close distances rapidly. The first script is better but more complicated and for it to really work correctly you need the shroud of the phantasm equipped, plus a potion of final stand or at least healing hands, and the outworn buckler with the courageous enchant if desired. And for the brilliant proc you need Minoletta's Minor Missiles memorized. Ideally you'd also have Scordeo's Edge equipped in Slot 1 with Outworn buckler. I think I negated those blocks though because soul blades have enough concentration stacks they don't really need courageous. Basically the script tries to proc brilliant and courageous (I negated the courageous blocks because usually not necessary), then once that happens attacks things with scordeo's edge until you proc blade cascade. Meanwhile it uses potion of final stand and healing hands so you don't die and throws up a wall of draining often enough to keep up buffs. There is no script conditional for blade cascade so what I do is when that procs I just summon a weapon, and once a weapon is summoned that block is skipped. After summoning a weapon (which you can do manually to skip the deification part if you want), the script proceeds to cast a bunch of fast wizard buffs, then slower wizard buffs, then borrowed instinct, then wizard debuffs, then cipher debuffs, then uses soul annihilation every now and then and attacks things in groups. I labeled the blocks but still may be confusing. Also the cooldown times are designed around having zero recovery, so if you don't have scordeo's trophy or scordeo's edge just increase the cooldown times a lot on the various buffs/debuffs, and you may need to negate some of them (just check the always true box to negate a block). I don't have a script specifically for ascendant hierophants, but this one would work, it just doesn't recognize an "ascended" state because.... There is no conditional for the ascended state unfortunately so once ascended you would just toggle off the script, cast a wall of draining every now and then and use disintegrations or whatever. One could get around the "no ascended conditional" problem by using conditional of equipping a certain weapon set and then manually swapping weapon sets when ascended but it would be kind of janky. Maybe I'll see if that's doable at some point...another alternative is you make a second script where you machinegun cipher spells and cast wall of draining, then switch to that script when you reach ascended. https://www.mediafire.com/file/5uwvkj80bvy3jnj/Hierophant+Deification+(Cipher+Wizard+Monk)+(439e2d6b-a0e3-4bbc-8049-235cb9344c4c).customai/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/uqp0lwmb5jxlxbe/Hierophant+Improved+Mirror+(Wizard+Cipher+Priest+Druid)+(2dc5cb58-e0f2-4e78-8030-e5f95a264145).customai/file By the way you can only stack focus with soul blades, with ascendants it maxes at 275 (but becomes effectively infinite once ascended, you just can't release thousands of focus in soul annihilations). I'm unclear if you're doing a blood mage / soul blade or blood mage / ascendant. I think the latter, but you made reference to stacking focus so...unsure.

Yeah the draining touch trick is good. Draining touch hand is probably the most damaging single target attack, besides maybe forbidden fist (unsure would have to check). It is better than the quarterstaff but I still prefer the lance for situations with more than two enemies. Also draining touch isn't scriptable with grimoire switches which for me is annoying. Spirit of decay should apply and I'm pretty sure it does with the community patch but I need to recheck that. I recall there being at least a couple wizard spells where the PEN talents didn't apply. You don't have to stack focus with strand of favor and personally I probably wouldn't have if I weren't doing an ultimate run. Although it is pretty satisfying to rip through groups of high level enemies in like 5 seconds. Also wall of draining will stack focus during encounters and if you do encounters close to each other and keep up the wall focus can get pretty high in some situations like SSS arena. Unless I need specific DLC items I usually do something like hasongo -> crookspur -> sayuka -> Fampyrs -> nemnok -> belranga -> concelhaut -> ashen maw -> remaining neketaka quests -> dunnage + deadlight (scordeos edge) -> SSS -> HOW -> Doru -> FS -> BW -> auranic -> endgame This is planned mostly for efficient pathing which may not be relevant. Blood mage hierophant doesn't need any specific items really. I mean the shroud can make things easier but isn't needed since you have wizard and cipher resource regen already. So really whenever you feel like it. I usually hit l20 before ashen maw but I believe SSS was meant for like level 16+ so you can rush ashen maw and do the DLCs after. The only relevant late spell you get is wall of draining so I guess I'd try to do the DLCs L19+, but you can do them whenever. Forgotten Sanctum is probably the hardest although you can sneak past a lot of the nastier fights if you want though a true soul devourer murders everything in sight EDIT: There actually is one DLC item that (can) be relevant, if you're stacking good procs with SOF anyway, and that is the slayer's claw from SSS. I don't know if you're soloing or not, if not you likely have easy sources of might which slayer's claw can boost to energized and that plus the lance means you interrupt the hell out of everything not outright immune. If solo the easiest source of might is probably the dagger lover's embrace, which can give you frenzy, and you can proc stabbing a crew member or companion on the ship, though I prefer using Amra because there's no deflection penalty. Just kill a crew member or companion to proc it. Ideally kill a pet because they respawn and it's like 25% on kill I think. Ishiza or Pig Sticker Rukowa has a pet I think. Then you switch weapons a couple times and you have frenzy + energized, which can be extended, although you'll lose the energized inspiration sometimes unless you're immune from food or wearing effigy's husk. Also grab the healing hands, I didn't do this in my ultimate run, didn't think to, but once you have wall of draining the wall + healing hands can give you a ton of health regen.

Hmm yes it doesn't appear tied to the weapon. Strange. I can't find much rhyme or reason in why some effects are weapon-specific and others aren't. I suppose you could proc the effect near the end of a fight, or have a companion hit you, then extend it with strand of favor. Probably the only way to get 3 stacks. Can also extend the energized effect, though it goes away if you take a might affliction (unless you're immune).

Seems to fit with my experience...so a wall on two enemies with no beneficial effects will provide the same +beneficial effects for you as a wall on two enemies with 10 each beneficial effects? Provided they have similar will defenses anyway? The only fights I've had trouble draining enough to keep up buffs is where I'm 1 on 1, Dorudugan being the hardest because you sometimes miss him due to his super high will. Neriscyrlas second fight is also 1 on 1 but she is substantially easier. For Dorudugan my glass cannon mage characters have to proc the fire blight and then drain both of them. Auranic is also potentially annoying because of the arcane cleansing obelisk that is apparently irresistible and has infinite range. Varies a lot from weapon to weapon. There are many weapons where certain enchants do not require the weapon be equipped, like Scordeo's Edge, Scordeo's Trophy, Amra, Bardatto's Luxury, etc. If the effect the weapon gives is a weapon effect like bonus penetration it just applies to that weapon (e.g., Rannig's Wrath Redoublement) [edit - not always true]. If it is more broad like -recovery time or +deflection (e.g. Rannig's Wrath retreat) or an inspiration it is normally universal. So with Slayer's Claw Stelgaer's Ferocity does not require the weapon be equipped, but I'm pretty sure Stelgaer's Rage does since it modifies the weapon penetration. [edit-it doesn't] You can try to proc these effects and then extend with strand of favor to find out, but the best way is to use the console to apply the status effect and see if it requires the weapon. Usually the name is the name of the enchant, which you can find with for example findgamedata blade_cascade then applystatuseffect

That could be the reason though my guess it's an oversight. There are some other hostile effects that are displayed as beneficial like "village fool". Yes you can drain it with wall of draining, though I'm still not exactly sure on the mechanics of that spell, like whether it matters if your target has 1 beneficial effect or 10. I seem to get pretty consistent results based on number of enemies, regardless whether they have beneficial effects. I mean the wall does drain their beneficial effects, I'm just unsure if you actually get more duration on your own effects against enemies with more beneficial effects.

Beina has escape. Some random other skaenites like a couple multiclassed priests in Temple of Tangaloa ruins. Lot of druids have nature's balm but a convenient spot to steal it is from biakara, who sails around hasongo. Biakara is a watershaper and has a party-friendly chill fog which is also very nice. She is nearby to beina, so right before/after hasongo is a good time to steal spells. Frostseeker isn't too bad single target, at least if you crit a lot. I'm getting about 120 focus a shot at L20. I was going to suggest Essence Interrupter but I am only getting like 70ish focus from it single target. I'm testing L20 char vs rotghasts though, Essence Interrupter does have the hunting bow modal and does pierce/shock so it can be really good DPS. With the modal it fires way faster than Frostseeker. Also leaves friendly allies (aka cannon fodder) so I like the bow even if it isn't the highest damage. With The Red Hand I get about 110 focus per shot (x2), but it has to reload. Really nothing comes close to Frostseeker or Blights for ranged...one cool thing about blights also is you can dual-wield them if you want (blight + wand/scepter/pistol), or one-hand for extra accuracy. If you aren't getting good focus from Frostseeker you may not have enough penetration. You have to crit for the frost/slash AOE, and its penetration isn't great so you want the weapon enchanted as highly as possible for maximum benefit. I am fond of stalker's patience but not for this build. It does very good single target damage and with high accuracy has good probability of hitting multiple times in a row with mercy strike. Ambushing gives some bonus damage but mercy strike is the main draw. Still, compared to citzal's spirit lance it just doesn't come close especially for a soul blade since the lance not only *collects* focus from everyone it hits, it also *distributes* soul annihilation to everyone it hits. And the base damage is quite high being a two-handed weapon, also same damage type as stalker's patience. For situations against pierce immune things concelhaut's parasitic quarterstaff is actually decent, but keep in mind I didn't try a ton of weapons because in an ultimate run abydon's challenge causes weapons to break pretty quickly and it's rarely worth worrying about them. The ambushing bonus just applies to stalker's patience as far as I know.

"Judged" actually puts a "judged" mark in enemies' tooltips, which is erroneously listed as a beneficial effect, it isn't so much a weapon buff as an irresistible debuff. Anyway it acts like marked prey, once an enemy is "judged" you have +10 accuracy vs them. Unsure if that bonus extends to other party members or it is just the one with the cudgel. Let's see...nope, just the one with the cudgel. So it's basically like a "marked prey" as a weapon debuff.

My knowledge is more specialized for blood mage / soul blade but I've played blood mage / ascendant some. Use kalakoth's minor blights if you're ranged, at least for fights that aren't 1 on 1. You can build a lot of focus fast. Not as fast as with the lance, but then nothing does. Can also use a morningstar if you need to land disintegrate on a boss or something. Frostseeker is okay also. Take wall of draining at L19. You can extend the ascended effect indefinitely. Basically you stack debuffs with wizard and cipher spells, while keeping your accuracy high with borrowed instinct, and disintegrate things once they're debuffed and you're ascended. Cipher spells you want - psychovampiric shield, secret horrors, phantom foes, mental binding, borrowed instinct, ringleader, soul ignition, disintegrate, if you're in a party also take pain block, echoing shield, ancestor's memory. Take draining whip, iron will, empty soul, echoing horror, lingering echoes. Jernaugh's Careful Calamities is probably the best grimoire for a caster hierophant. It has miasma of dull-mindedness, kalakoth's minor blights, wall of draining, and the unique spell jernaugh's equalizing burst which is an amazing huge AOE debuff. Also has combusting wounds. After casting a bunch of debuffs you can switch to whatever, e.g. ironclasped or ninagauth if you want some damage spells, though I'd be using wizard side mostly for blights, buffs and debuffs and using ascendant side for debuffs, CC, and damage. Just memorize Pull of Eora, it isn't in any good grimoires unfortunately but it is a very useful spell to group enemies so you hit as many as possible with blights (or lance), which helps you build focus really fast. When enemies are grouped you should be able to max focus in 1 to 2 attacks.

Yes it stacks with all "passive" accuracy bonuses such as marked prey, stalker's link, survival of the fittest, one-handed, and adaptive (scordeo's edge). It will stack with the largest "active" accuracy bonus (devotions for the faithful, hunter's claw, borrowed instinct). In this case borrowed instinct is suppressed by 20 stacks of hunter's claw. Also if you attack reasonably fast and have high intelligence your opponent will often be stunned, giving you another effective +10 accuracy, and with this much accuracy you're going to crit every hit versus everything but maybe dorudugan. The test rotghast normally has a deflection of 61. It's debuffed here by flanked and stunned to 41. A cast of psychovampiric shield gets deflection to 31. So a seer with this weapon and all buffs has effective accuracy of 242. With Blinky would be 247. Can stunlock things easily. Forgot to use Tactical Meld, also cap of the laughingstock debuffs enemy deflection another 10, so with a seer you could easily get effective accuracy around 262 Only thing that sucks about this weapon is the base damage is rather low and it caps out at superb. Penetration is still okay since it's a mace but could be better.

I tested some in turn based. You don't have to be "inside" them but they have to be within the aura's radius which is like 1.8m I think. You hear a gunshot if corrupting beauty pulses, then if it hits someone, it procs all the items. Have to hit multiple ones to proc multiple inspirations. Also, Eld Nary's Curse in turn-based is INSANE. I mean you get 16 bounces in RTWP but it takes like 15 seconds for that to happen. For all those bounces to happen in one round is crazy good.

Miscast is probably the worst wild mind effect. That's the one that causes a shock explosion centered on Serafen. Couple ways you could deal with that. It has shock PEN 7, so you could use armor and/or spells to make sure this always underpens vs him or nearby chars, additionally it rolls vs will so you could prioritize will so it grazes and misses more. Also the damage is 1.5 * focus, so if you only have 50 focus it is survivable. If you have 200 maybe not. I would just not let him get more than 50 focus. As a witch he really doesn't need any spells that cost more than that anyway, besides maybe Ancestor's Memory in long fights. The miscast explosion has a radius of 2.5, which is the same as mental binding or secret horrors. I don't know if the size of the explosion is affected by intelligence like other abilities. So you can script him to cast his spells anytime he has more than X focus. Conditional: cipher resources, focus > 50, Action (list cipher spells in order of use preference) Can also make multiple blocks with the spells you want, just duplicate the first one. Spells you want are psychovampiric shield, phantom foes, secret horrors, recall agony, borrowed instinct. Mostly those. Pain Block, Echoing Shield, Tactical Meld are also quite good. Mental Binding is super good for how cheap it is. Maybe Body Attunement. The charm spells if you need more CC, though I feel it isn't the best use for a witch. Mostly witches want to buff their own accuracy, debuff enemy deflection, resolve or fortitude (fort for brute force), and attack things (morning stars work well with body blows and brute force, particularly willbreaker since it also debuffs will). Cipher passives take the empty soul, echoing horror, lingering echoes, iron will, hammering thoughts. Normally I'd take draining whip but possibly serafen would do better with biting whip if you're using mostly cheap abilities anyway. For barbarian side take all the damage and action speed passives, and brute force and interrupting blows. Use spirit frenzy since it applies staggered on hit which makes brute force work better. Also take stalwart defiance for emergency heals. Can take barbaric shout or roar if you have room, though the shaken debuff won't stack with frightened from secret horrors, so I'd skip it. Well as witch his role is mostly DPS, with some debuffs and CC. So you will need at least one proper tank, maybe two. You need at least one healer. And a second damage dealer. With multiclassing it is easy to cover lots of roles with a few characters, so there are many many ways you could go. Pallegina as herald is a solid tank + support char. Aloth can tank as battlemage or be a DPS caster. Eder is an okay tank, I prefer him as swashbuckler where he is more an offtank / bruiser. Tekehu is solid however you build him, can do a lot of damage as SC druid, or provide tons of support/damage as single-classed or multiclassed chanter. Maia is great ranged DPS particularly as a scout. Xoti is good DPS as a monk, contemplative is also nice for mixed damage and support. Too many sidekicks to go into all their uses but I feel like Rekke is probably the best tank, Mirke is very good DPS as shadowdancer, Vatnir is probably the best priest, also great as a celebrant. And Ydwin is the best offensive cipher, can also provide tons of support with higher level cipher spells. Can really build the party however you want...just keep in mind you need sufficient tanks + damage + support From a roleplaying perspective it makes little sense to me how the watcher could be a priest given what they know, but I guess a fanatical berathian would fit well since you're serving berath. I don't recall anything special narratively, besides some conversational choices for Wael during Forgotten Sanctum. Priest is strong enough you can multiclass with anything really, but a few combos come to mind Priest/bellower is extremely strong, you can extend the +PL from bellower with salvation of time, late game items like least unstable coil and weyc gear work particularly well Priest/blood mage has the greatest ability to buff and to extend buffs, as you have both salvation of time and wall of draining, and can repeatedly blood sacrifice while under the effects of barring death's door to get back wizard resources. Has so many spells can be played as a caster or as melee. Priest/ascendant can extend the ascended effect with salvation of time, priest/psion is also interesting since you passively build cipher phrases while casting priest stuff Priest/monk is quite good especially helwalker for +might or FF for a melee-oriented priest (need community patch for FF to work right). Priest/ranger is surprisingly good, you can stack tons of accuracy and buff your animal companion I don't know as much about the other priest multiclasses but I expect you could do any of them and it would work all right. For subclasses Wael has very good special spell selection, especially for fighters like a priest/monk (mirrored images, llengrath's displaced image), and Skaen has probably the best overall selection including uniques (to priests) like escape, shadowing beyond, and finishing blow. Woedica has some interesting spells with her writs but I haven't played this subclass much. Berath has some decay themed druid spells like Touch of Rot, Spreading Plague, and Rot Skulls, all of which are pretty good. Eothas' only unique is the druid spell Sunbeam. Magran has some fire themed wizard spells that are kind of disppointing. It really depends who else you want in your party but a priest/helwalker is very attractive as a caster for the +10 might and +10 INT you can get with helwalker and turning wheel, making your buffs last longer and your damage and healing much stronger. Does make you more fragile but its partially compensated by improved healing and it isn't too hard to keep the priest out of the fray. Priest/FF with iron wheel would be tanky enough to fight on the front lines. And priest/bellower is a great choice for focusing on damage. At high levels you have storm of holy fire and her tears fell like rain, with gives tremendous fire and frost damage respectively.

Dragon Thrashed and Thick Grew Their Tongues only proc The Ranga (or avenging storm scrolls / spell) if you have Effort equipped with Hemorrhaging enchant, which I didn't show in this video. Because if you have Effort equipped you don't get the weyc's wand or scimitar procs (refilling phrases and cancelling recovery). You can use Effort and switch weapons to refill phrases. But mostly you have to choose between Effort cheese or super fast phrase refills. Whenever you hear the gunshot and see that green glow, if there's an enemy nearby Corrupting Beauty rolls vs will, and if it hits it procs one or more avenging storm bolts. You can see this clearly at e.g. 2:16 where the guys behind me get hit by the corrupting beauty pulse, which procs storm bolts and refills my chanter phrases (also adds duration to LUC inspirations but you can't see this). ------- you said 600 turns? Are you playing turn-based? I have no idea if these items work the same in turn-based.

You don't have to have a mage. With a priest, cipher, and chanter you have sufficient debuffs and CC. Blood mages are nice though for the resource renewal and diversity of spells. You could include both a priest and a mage with multiclassing. Lots of combinations that can work e.g. ascendant/arcane archer, helwalker/priest, FF/steel garrote. Or ascendant, helwalker/priest, FF Or with both: psion/priest, helwalker/blood mage, FF/steel garrote or FF Another with both: blood mage / soul blade, priest, FF Helwalker/priest won't do as much damage as a helwalker/blood mage but helwalker helps, can cast as well as fight when needed. Ascendant/arcane archer does decent damage. Psion/priest is an amazing support build, while helwalker/blood mage does tremendous damage (either melee or with spells), and FF / SG can tank and do damage. Pure FF does even more damage but not as tanky. Psion/priest is more pure caster, while blood mage / soul blade is a high dps melee build with citzals spirit lance. Kaylon's suggestions are good too (though I'm less sold on the berserker/devoted than the others). You don't *need* any specific class and could get by without priest or mage, it is just about coverage of enough roles that your party is effective, and what builds you enjoy playing.

Might increases the raw damage reapplied since the 30% damage calculation depends on how much damage you did in the first place. All sources of +damage like inspired Beacon stack on each hit which affects the raw damage amount. Damage is always 30%, so it will be affected by power level if and only if power level increases the damage of your attacks, like power level increases transcendent suffering (monk fist) damage, and most spell damage, but typically not weapon damage.

It's called POE2 Deadfire Tweaks, a mod with a lot of stuff but I only downloaded the "subclass unlocked" part linked below. Should work for all companion subclasses but I only confirmed stormspeaker https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/72?tab=files&file_id=1731

Seers are very powerful for what it's worth. It's less about ranger abilities than that you can stack accuracy higher than any other multiclass and crit most attacks. They do require some micromanagement to get the most out of them, like using marked prey, flanking targets with your pet and attacking targets threatened by the pet (for stalkers link). You also want to keep up borrowed instinct most of the time. Some weapons fill focus faster than others. The ones that fill the most hit multiple opponents. Some people are fond of whispers of the endless paths for this, as it hits in a cone. What weapons did you use? Dual mortars can also build a lot of focus, or dual blunderbusses. The red hand is very high DPS. Also the bows Frostseeker and Essence Interrupter. Some multiclass combinations can make it easier to fill focus. For example, wizards have citzals spirit lance that can strike several enemies at once. Kalakoths minor blights also can hit several enemies. You can collect 200+ focus in at most two attacks at higher levels. Often one. So blood mage / cipher can be very powerful. You may consider psions as well since they generate focus passively. Psions go particularly well multiclassed with other caster classes since you can simply cast spells from the other class while generating focus. Psion / troubadour is a great combination. So is blood mage / psion. Forbidden fist / cipher has a very powerful base attack, forbidden fist, which can fill 200+ focus in 2 to 3 attacks. These forbidden fist strikes also heal you and enfeeble the enemy making it a powerful combination (especially with soul blade since it is a melee attack anyway). For forbidden fist to work properly with focus you need the community patch https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/335

You have a druid and ciphers can also heal some, plus your herald can chant ancient memory and/or mercy and kindness so you have enough healing. I'd probably go pure cipher because their late game party support spells are fantastic. Shared Nightmare gives gigantic AOE to spells and defensive mindweb shares defenses across your whole party. So if your tank has 200 deflection, now everyone has 200 deflection. Reaping Knives are really good to hand to a DPS char so the cipher can spam more spells. And Ancestor's Memory is on-demand brilliant. The last one is Tier 7 and you could get it multiclass but not until level 19. Ciphers are also extremely good in various multiclasses but for a full party you can't really beat a pure cipher. If you did go multiclass IDK about rogue, it isn't terrible but these choices are better IMO: Blood mage / soul blade is insanely good DPS, blood mage / psion would be an excellent caster. Cipher/Ranger is also really good and has top tier accuracy and the ability to buff your animal companion with cipher spells. Soul blade for melee, psion or ascendant otherwise. Psion/troubadour is also very interesting for a caster/summoner. It really depends what you want to do with that character as ciphers can fulfill a lot of roles. In general you just want to fulfill enough roles. You need 2 tanks (or a tank and an offtank), at least one support class, at least one healing class, at least one DPS, and some CC spellcasting. One character can fulfill multiple roles, especially if multiclassed. Like FF / steel garrote is tank + DPS, FF / soul blade is DPS + support + offtank + CC, battlemage is CC + tank + DPS, sage can be tank or DPS + CC, shadowdancers are DPS + offtank (if you take FF). Swashbuckler would be DPS + offtank. You already have good healing, solid support, one tank, and good CC between chanter and cipher. Like thelee said you could use more damage. Also another tank, and maybe some wizardry. Besides blood mage / soul blade, other high DPS builds include battlemages, sages, shadowdancers and single class monk. Swashbucklers have decent DPS but not as much as the ones I mentioned. If you install the community patch which I'd recommend, soul blade / forbidden fist is good DPS, pretty tanky, and can cast when needed. FF / steel garrote paladin is perfect for a tank that can do some damage. I think it would outdamage swashbucklers but I haven't directly compared. Arcane knights are also excellent tanks. So IMO these parties would work very well with herald + druid ascendant, blood mage/helwalker, FF/steel garrote blood mage / psion, monk, FF/steel garrote psion/troubadour, blood mage/helwalker, FF/steel garrote ascendant, FF / streetfighter, blood mage / goldpact knight Also I think a priest does more for parties in general than a druid. Priests have overall really top tier buffs. Their healing isn't as good as druids but a cipher can cast pain block and chanters can chant ancient memory so you'd be fine. Either would work though. Herald is a solid choice for main character assuming you're fulfilling a tank + support role. They don't do much damage. For subclasses I'd suggest troubadour on chanter side, the +1 phrase cost downside is very minor given their versatility of longer lingers or quicker phrase generation. And on paladin side it's mostly what you want to roleplay, but goldpact knights make good tanks early game because of their "blessing of gold" from gilded enmity which givess +4 armor until you're hit like 5 times. This stacks with exalted endurance but not with stoic steel (which you'd take at level 19 probably).

Even better, just spam divine immolation (or sacred sacrifice) and use lay on hands or other heals as needed. If you can kill enough skellies you may be able to keep up inspired beacon also. I made a mini party with 2 paladins and a troubadour and the paladins just spammed divine immolation and inspired beacon while the troubadour sang many lives passed by and buffed the paladins. Got one skelly killed per 3s for +12 zeal per 6s , could have had the paladins doing even more but this was plenty sufficient to burn through everything not immune to burn.

Wait what? So I could keep casting avenging storm every 40s or whatever and it would stay empowered indefinitely? This is because new casts add duration on the old cast and keep the empowered effect I suppose? Would this work on other sources of empowered like zandethus' draconic fury? I think SC druid can easily do solo at least if you're willing to use strand of favor. If not, then it's slightly harder, but you'd still just have to avoid combat until you get LUC and Effort and hit L16. You can get effort and L16 without combat, but LUC requires some arena fights. Still, not that many, and you can pick the easier fights and do those repeatedly so I think it is doable. Weyc items (robe and wand) can also be gained without fighting, if one wanted to grab those before getting LUC. Yes a max level fury/cipher, fury/wizard, or fury/chanter would be insane. Fury/bloodmage can't empower unfortunately, but you could extend the avenging storm so it would still be good, and would be better before getting those items. Fury/cipher would probably be the most damaging since you get the high accuracy avenging storm spell plus borrowed instinct plus .5s huge AOE casts. I have. The Effort stuff doesn't build focus/concentration, not sure why. Beguiler seems like the best cipher for this because they get back (at L20) 14 to 18 focus (depending on whether you have + power level stuff) per deception cast. First you max your focus so AOEs benefit from shared nightmare for like +200% AOE (on top of INT), then you can just spam mental binding and phantom foes, losing only 2 to 6 focus per cast, every 20th cast or so attack something to top off focus, repeat. Psion is really good too because there's no spell restriction, you start stealthed and build up focus, then alternate antipathetic field with mind blades. Antipathetic field pulses per second and mind blades hits 9+ enemies. These spells are all .5 second casts, and it doesn't really matter if the spell base damage is low because as long as you keep up borrowed instinct your avenging storm scrolls will crit a ton transforming all these low level spells into an endless stream of lightning bolts. And even if mind blade base damage is low you can cast so many of them in such a small amount of time it adds up. Not an infinite amount of avenging storm scrolls, but palm slats are plentiful, velune pretty common, and primal wind pretty common, so you can probably craft/buy/find enough for all the major fights at least. Fighting spirit also +7 accuracy applies, so builds that can fight low like a death godlike wizard with a potion of final stand add a lot of damage to the avenging storm scrolls, +15% from fighting spirit, +25% from potion of final stand, and whatever damage bonus you get from the bonus power levels, the avenging storm bolts can do 30 to 40 damage and often chain. Can also proc all the LUC stuff with meteor shower or minoletta's missile salvo, or even minoletta's concussive missiles, though the last one requires you hit 6 enemies which is kind of tough. Zandethus' Draconic Fury also works and is extendable but I think the renewing effect goes away on changing grimoires. Also works with flame shield but flame shield requires to be hit AND take damage, doesn't seem to work if your health is low and you have a prevent death effect. Takes too long to get all the inspirations, so casting shower/salvo, extending, and being immune to intellect seems the best route. Ciphers and wizards though can't get the +10 accurate empower, and the scroll has less accuracy than the spell to begin with. You can get pretty close to druid accuracy though with a cipher, probably surpass it with a seer. Main problem with druid is the good casts tend to be long. I can cast like 10 phantom foes in the time it takes for one great maelstrom. The maelstrom does damage over time so maybe it's worth it, IDK. When using effort the weyc's wand empowers don't refresh, but the robe does. Mirrored Empower being up permanently makes you basically immune to spells targeting you, so that's fairly valuable, although it isn't hard for wizards to keep up arcane reflection either. wizard/ bellower is also pretty really good though I haven't tried it with effort. But even without, you can easily proc LUC all 6 inspirations in every fight but dorudugan and neriscyrlas maybe, maintain the +6 power level from bellower, and spam her tears for like 800 damage. I wonder if each "ray" of her tears and the cluster explosions would proc avenging storm. I'm guessing...yes. skaen/bellower is probably better since you don't have problems when it's just one enemy, but skaen offensive spells aren't as good so you wouldn't proc avenging storm quite as much. Wall of draining doesn't seem to proc avenging storm ------- Just had a thought, do crits from effort / avenging storm gain phrases for skald? EDIT: It does not Still I cleared the tactical ogres encounter in about five seconds. Troubadour/psion would be quite powerful as a caster with Effort. You start empowering her revenge with wand/scimitar/robe, which triggers muse of mystery and hopefully all 6 LUC inspirations. So you generate 1 phrase per 2 seconds from brisk recitation + muse of mystery, and brilliant gives a phrase per 6s, so combined you have 4 phrases every 3 seconds, cast avenging storm then alternate her revenge, antipathetic field and ghost blades. Or just use bellower so you don't get the +1 cost on inspirations and start with Her Tears, you'd still get 1 phrase per second. The chants thick grew their tongues and dragon thrashed become ridiculously good since their crits can proc avenging storm which often chains, which with energized + intuitive gives you a lot of passive interrupts, meanwhile you're generating both focus and phrases and both sides have cheap, powerful .5s casts. For skald they are extremely cheap, her revenge / the thunder / at the sound of his voice all cost 2 phrases Too bad you can't play stormspeaker. I mean I know you can with mods / console, I think this stormspeaker build is just crazy broken. Don't even need to rest unlike the druid, and have lots of .5s casts for chanter. Loss of summons isn't that bad because I think you'd clear most fights in about 5 to 10 seconds. EDIT 2: Installed a mod and tested stormspeaker. It would be crazy good in parties but you can either use effort or you can get phrases back quickly with sasha's singing scimitar. Using Effort you spend a lot of time waiting for phrases, at least if you've procced scordeo's edge. Can't spam spells like psion/skald. Her Revenge is god tier with The Ranga + Effort though. I get how the corrupting beauty thing works now also Killing an enemy with Blightheart gives Corrupting Beauty passive, which pulses every 3s to try to disorient nearby enemies. If you kill an enemy towards end of a combat you can extend it with strand of favor. Otherwise you can extend with Salvation of Time or Wall of Draining. With Corrupting Beauty procced, cast empowered The Ranga while wearing weyc items and coil and sasha's singing scimitar with encore Corrupting Beauty pulse rolls vs will at nearby enemies ever 3s. IF IT HITS, The Ranga procs a bolt Every time The Ranga is procced, the scimitar + weyc items + coil reapply their "on empower" effects, if you have the wand equipped So your phrase count is refilled, muse of mystery is reapplied, omnipotence is reapplied, Follower of the Obscured clears your recovery, and attuned channel is reapplied. Least Unstable Coil is also reapplied, the number depending how many enemies are nearby and hit. Constentin already stated all this but I wasn't quite following because Corrupted Beauty seems bugged, like it doesn't actually apply disoriented to things as far as I can tell, though I only tested for like 20 minutes, and it doesn't really make sense for it to proc avenging storm bolts, not being a melee attack, but it does. It also makes a gunshot sound whenever it pulses, which also seems buggy.

What happens with hylea's talons? Whenever the bleed effect happens it summons a bolt? Or each tick of the bleed effect? The avenging storm isn't extendable though with a SC druid (assuming no party)...does it last long enough to kill megabosses? Assuming I can proc blade cascade and extend with SOF. So the benefit of empowering avenging storm vs casting it from a scroll is just to constantly proc LUC and weyc items right? LUC procs don't really matter if they happen more than once, for classes that extend them (besides resisting afflictions I guess). As for the weyc procs...let's see. Muse of Mystery and Mirrored Empower on Robes are pretty good but they can also be extended. For the wand, Wael's Sight would be extremely good to proc every 3 seconds since it has 100% miss to graze. But that's wizard. Attuned Channel +3 PL also good but also extendable. Only thing that isn't is the "Follower of the Obscured" that refreshes recovery. But if I've procced blade cascade it's already gone. So why is a Fury better than using scrolls? I assume anything that crits will proc the storm bolts with effort. And there are other builds that can cast much faster. Oh I guess brilliant on pulse gives slightly more resources because you get +1 whenever brilliant procs, but I assume it just extends the effect rather than refreshing it... Tried testing on Fury and Effort is pretty bonkers. The craziest thing about it and avenging storm is that crits from avenging storm also proc hemorhhaging which chains avenging storm so one proc often gets like 5 or 6 bolts. Also conduit is crazy with this, if you walk into a great maelstrom or crit yourself with a chain lightning scroll outside of combat you can triple your damage output. My druid had accuracy around 143 with the avenging storm bolts so he crit enough to cause big chains. Tried with a cipher because lots of .5s casts but you don't get as many chains. Even with 25 effective arcana the accuracy for scroll of avenging storm was just 103. With a potion of ascension + borrowed instinct I got the accuracy to 129 which isn't bad, especially since there are cheap spells that proc a lot like antipathetic field, and eyestrike has a large AOE blind debuff with shared nightmare. Most cipher debuffs reduce will though, or fortutude, but the hobbling effect from Effort also debuffs reflex for a total of 20 so you still crit quite a lot, almost as much as with the actual spell. Fighting 1v1 you could smack things with a flail and switch back to effort and get huge chains. Some more testing. Mental Binding is hugely effective since paralyze both reduces reflex by 10 and causes 25% hit to crit.

Right I agree about psion. You generate enough focus during cast/recovery you could spam mental binding and probably puppet master, at level 20 anyway. Would work well with wizards for people who just want to cast spells and not think about the more advanced interactions. Can spam higher level spells if you alternated wizard spells with cipher spells. However it is easy to max focus quickly even for an ascendant, even without WOD so an ascendant I suspect may do more damage. I'd have to test more to be sure, but I expect you could do kalakoth blast > kalakoth blast > (ascended) disintegrate x 4. Maybe even just one blast because ascendants get +150% focus from draining whip. But...the synergy isn't as good with wizards (w/o WOD) because while casting wizard spells you don't get focus, and while ascended youd just want to use cipher spells. So I agree that combo has a lot of potential and may be best hierophant choice for casting. Druid/psion and priest/psion would also be pretty good. I wonder if you generate focus while shapeshifted? I think there was an ultimate run where someone did skaen / ascendant. Didnt watch it but I assume he procs brilliant + ascended and SOTs while spamming disintegration. IMO SOT is worse than wall of draining for a lot of reasons, which I won't list because I'm sure you know already from your tactician/skaen run. Which is why SC blood mages still want to steal salvation of time. To me the wall of draining stuff (most of it) requires enough setup that like blade cascade is fine. Temporal Cocoon is probably the most abusive thing a blood mage has, maybe in the entire game, even before imprints (those require quite a bit of effort if you aren't already cocooned). Permanent invulnerability, which can't even be targeted by arcane dampener. I wonder...can you extend a cocooned vela with stolen SOT or does she reset on map change? If you could extend it you'd just have to script SOT self cast, cocoon vela, SOT, get the spell back, cocoon yourself, then SOT script. If it takes .4s to cast SOT with blade cascade you'd gain 10 minutes of effect extension per minute of running the script. 20 minutes per in fast mode. Leave that going a few hours and you'd be set.

I agree psion looks pretty good for casters. But you consider wall of draining cheesy? The entire purpose of the spell is to extend effects. It is quite powerful but you also don't get it until level 19 and typically have just one cast without blood sacrificing, which brings its own risks and rewards. It also takes some skill and knowledge to place correctly. IMO wall of draining works exactly as intended. It can become OP if you also proc brilliant and extend that, but it isn't easy to proc brilliant and takes a lot of setup, so even this I think is fair game. It isn't like using the SOF cycling where you eat a captain's banquet and proc brilliant once and now you have infinite spells. Only thing that probably should have been fixed regarding wall of draining is ending all the extended effects when combat ends. Without wall of draining, wizards are pretty...meh.

I see. Thanks for the detailed response. I always play on POTD upscaled where not hitting (or sometimes not critting) is very bad. Even if maxing PER provides less damage than maxing DEX, there are a lot of other things that can make PER superior, like a debuff or CC spell that lasts 30s and takes 5s to cast grazing vs hitting vs critting affects greatly how often you have to cast that spell, as well as how much damage your follow-up attacks get. And if you get energized, which I try to do if possible, by critting you *always* apply interrupt effects, so consider a character that does 30 DPS and always crits, vs a character that does 40 DPS and crits 80%. I would generally rather have the former, since not interrupting the enemy is worse than the loss of damage. And there are many effects besides energized that interrupts on crit or proc some other desirable effect (e.g. mercy strike on stalker's patience). Also the metric I use for enemy defenses is typically the hardest encounters, and I know of no build that will always crit Hauani O Whe for instance (unless you SOF and stack adaptive from scordeo's edge). If we always crit normal enemies, adding more accuracy doesn't help against them, but they are not the hardest encounters anyway, and adding accuracy always helps against the toughest enemies. I do think crits don't apply enough damage in this game, though so I can see why hitting vs critting doesn't make as much difference in damage versus increasing attack speed. In most cRPGs a crit does at minimum double damage, but with all the other sources of damage the +25% from a crit is very little, even with "improved critical" +35%, and even with +65% from both improved critical and overpenetration, this is still likely less than half of your +damage effects. But one thing that is very important that hasn't been mentioned yet is penetration. It is difficult to get enough penetration for the toughest enemies, so that a hit will often get -75% damage, whereas a crit gets 50% more pen, which is almost always enough to remove the -75% damage malus, so when considering underpenetration crits can contribute a huge amount of damage.

Yeah I can't get corrupting beauty to do anything. It shows up on my character sheet but I can't tell that it does anything at all, I don't even see the disoriented status on enemies. Generally things that proc Least Unstable Coil also proc Robes/Wand/Shield of the Weyc. Acina's Tricorn isn't strictly necessary it just gives a +5 accuracy bonus to ranged attacks which is coded to include spells. There aren't a lot of ways to get +accuracy with spells so that's why it's listed. Blinky also gives +5 accuracy to some spells even though he is listed as "melee". And Milx gives 5% hit to crit if you can't get your accuracy high enough. I tried empowering avenging storm scrolls which sadly doesn't work. I guess you have to be a SC druid or SC chanter. A lot of the spells listed here don't actually seem to be empowerable either. Like I can't empower flame shield or minoletta's concussive missiles, or iconic projection, while some others like Zandethus' Draconic Fury only work until you switch grimoires (I think). Had the most success with Storm of Holy Fire, Minoletta's Missile Salvo and Meteor Shower. I knew about the Effort thing but not that it was specifically better with druids. In the builds I've tried it doesn't seem to proc that much but I haven't tried it with high accuracy builds like ciphers or rangers. I usually play solo no rest runs so chanter/x is best for these items since you can get back empower points with sasha's singing scimitar.

I couldn't find your work email so I messaged you on the forums