[Stalker's Patience Procs Mercy Strike way more than 20% - what is true rate?]

4 hours ago, elbe said:

After an attack skill like efficient anguish ithe next normal attack should go to your primary weapon first, so you would strike twice with Stalkers Patience.  However my point was more you would push them out of range with efficient anguish so even if you skipped recovery you'd lose the benefit from having to chase down the target.  If you keep instruments of pain up all the time then I suppose that's less of an issue, but that comes late and will cost a lot of wounds to maintain while also spamming efficient anguish.

Proccing mercy strike on a normal weapon attack with SP will skip recovery to the next attack in the sequence, which if you are using an offhand weapon will mean that weapon.  So if you have stalkers patience and tuotilos palm, and proc mercy strike off a normal attack, you will skip recovery and go to the shield bash which is not ideal.

And as you say, reducing recovery with two weapon style is nice but given you can skip recovery entirely with mercy strike it doesn't seem that big of a benefit. Maybe nice to have as a secondary weapon slot against high deflection enemies where you can't rely on mercy strike triggering as often.

Does the Efficient Anguish expected behavior work the same for Soul Annihilation on Soulblade?, it's also a primary attack so following your previous example with Anguish it should be Soul Annihilation > Mercy Strike proc > second hit with Stalker's Patience immediately after. A Soulblade/Monk with the weapon then sounds superb if you can just fuel your focus generation with all the extra hits from this interaction plus Heartbeat Drumming and Swift Strikes.

[Stalker's Patience Procs Mercy Strike way more than 20% - what is true rate?]

Sorry to hijack this thread but was wondering what build you guys would recommend to maximize the effects of Stalker's Patience. I'd like to try a single class stalker because wordplay but not sure how they fare at higher levels and I'm always put off by resource limited classes. Monk/Soul Blade also sounds amazing because the extra hit spam should be off the charts and you get a significant accuracy boost through Borrowed Instincts.

Important to note Phantom Foes adds an easy way to proc flanked for ciphers.

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

14 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Good idea but...

It's a pollaxe and it's much worse than the lance for soul annihilation purposes. Does about half as much damage per hit, hits a max 4 targets, and can hit friend/foe, but the main problem is it just doesn't bring that much focus. I tested it surrounded by lagufaeth and got 110 focus, with the lance I went from 0 to 225 hitting 4 targets, and there's no maximum either, if you run up your focus max either through wall of draining or strand of favor you can collect ridiculous amounts of focus in crowds. AOE on lance is also larger (same base 1.5m but pollaxe is not modified by intelligence, my modified lance AOE is 2.6m radius making the area 2.25x as large), lance can interrupt, and worst of all wahai poraga doesn't properly distribute soul annihilation, it seems to do like 15% raw damage on secondary targets, maybe because it strikes in sequence rather than all at once like the lance. Like I just tested it and first guy hit got 211 raw damage and the other three only got 37.5 (exactly). A lance annihilation on four targets rolls for raw damage individually and the number is anywhere from 30 something to full amount, in addition to the larger crush damage AOE which still procs on soul annihilation. 

You should try testing in a battle with tons of enemies like SSS Lagufaeth Brood, I actually hit 11 guys with one lance annihilation it was pretty funny. Most of the time you can't hit that many people so the difference between the weapons isn't as large but it still does several times the DPS. 

Only thing that sucks about the lance is it does pierce rather than pierce/slash, but the AOE attacks do crush so it is still pretty badass. Also penetration isn't as high as a mythic pollaxe but with hammering thoughts and razor skewers it's high enough.

Another thing I hadn't really noticed about the lance but which is awesome is your primary target gets hit by both the pierce attack and the crush attack, so even 1v1 you do more damage than anything I'm aware of. So if you hit 4 enemies, the primary one is hit with pierce and then there is a crush AOE which hits all four of them. 

I think WoTEP might distribute soul annihlation correctly, but I haven't really used it because base damage is bad and it's a cone.

Yeah you're correct on all regards, was just testing it after getting annoyed at the lack of pet scripting on the Seer as I said on my previous post. Lance is incredibly strong and makes the build go from fairly versatile to an almost silly powerhouse, it's particularly funny to hit a crit on a paralyzed foe (mental binding) and watch it get chopped into gibs with everything around it. I also used Ectopsychic Echo for the first time and consider it a fairly strong spell if you aren't playing solo, kinda miffed I don't see it mentioned more since it's crush damage every second if I'm not mistaken. Imagine for a moment you could put it on Maia Rua's hawk and just roleplay as a bomber going behind enemy lines/or if you had the bird as a pet to begin with as a player. Not sure if it can work with the phantoms you can summon as wizard but it'll be a quick respec just to try it out.

Thank you again for all the very useful information you have given me, I have enjoyed this game much more this time around and I'm actually eager to play more of it or similar games after being able to metagame a bit with people here.

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

Waaaaaiiiiittttt, @Shai Hulud have you tested the unique pike, Wahai Poraga?, wondering if soul annihilation distributes damage between all targets (read in BPM notes that the the weapon was fixed), sounds like an amazing weapon for a witch (soul blade/barb) build for example.

Edit: set up my Seer and have been doing Maje island, kinda irks me I can't set my pet to just automatically attack apparently, it just stays put until I issue a command. Is there any scripting magic involved?

[[CLASS BUILD] The Thundercat is back! – Sorcerer (Lifegiver / Blood Mage) Solo Upscaled PotD]

Hey @Not So Clever Hound,

I have been playing your build with a slight flavour variation: Wildstrike corrode, nature godlike with BPM for more healing, but it's overall the same idea and I have been having a blast. Was wondering what grimoire/spells you would recommend for a heavier emphasis in acid/decay, without the ability to go for Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry because Rekvhu's can't be equipped.

Was also wondering what would be your general strategy for single tough bosses (thinking Dorudugan) without cheesing outside the typical WoD shenanigas that won't work that well on him or any other similar boss. I imagine you need strong workhorse single target spells, like necrotic lance but better.

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

Yeah huge power spike at L13, mostly due to the lance but also borrowed instinct gives +20 accuracy +20 all defenses, so you should be able to wreck crowds with the lance now and have better defenses. One hit is usually enough to fill focus, then soul annihilation, repeat. Next major power spike is L19 with wall of draining, at which point you become both a DPS monster and relatively invulnerable (or absolutely invulnerable if using potions of final stand, which can be scripted by the way to drink at any health level making them less risky). Though if you're playing with BPM the wall of draining spell won't be as useful. 

Arcane archer / ascendant is recommended a lot mostly since you get such huge accuracy bonuses especially with imbued ambition and high arcana. Imbue: Eora is particularly nice, but expensive at 3 bond. And ascendant keeps on the soul whip damage, which is stronger when ascended, so this build is mostly about ranged DPS vs hitting ascended and going into caster mode (though you can certainly do that too). Berserker / ascendant would be solid I guess because the downsides of being berserker frenzied aren't as bad ranged, and you could still trigger blooded a lot due to the health loss. And berserker frenzy gives +2 pen +2 AR and 30% hit to crit in addition to the +5 might +5 con and attack speed boosts, so yeah that looks pretty solid. A ranger is going to have much better accuracy but not attack quite as fast and have lower PEN. The PEN is actually not a big deal for the seer since a seer should crit nearly every shot which gives +50% PEN rounded up. Berserker/streetfighter is also interesting for super fast ranged attacks due to synergy with heating up. 

Personally I like seers, ghostheart / ascendant is also solid and requires less pet micro, but the imbued ammunition is really cool and imbue:eora will help your soul blade guy hit more people with the lance. Any of these would work in that party but I say...try ascendant / arcane archer. 

I will give it a try today, I am looking forward to a true ranged DPS/caster hybrid since most of my builds are purely melee, I find the typical dual mortar build somewhat annoying/overused for some reason, though I know it's quite strong.

Would you mind sharing any of the rules you got on your scripts for Citzal's Spirit Lance/Parasitic Staff?, I want to have them always on without microing the cast.

EDIT: It's in the scripts you shared, nevermind my dumbness

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

On 5/9/2023 at 11:27 PM, dgray62 said:

A cipher/druid gains focus from attacking while spirit shifted, since the claw attacks are considered weapon attacks. But a fury/soulblade wouldn't get concentration or increased max focus from attacks while shifted, since the storm blight's attacks are ranged.

I learned the hard way that cipher spells aren't available while in animal form as a Shifter (makes perfect sense, don't know what I was thinking). So not really synergistic at least as a Shifter/Soul Blade but could have a really strong party support and healer with Lifegiver/Psion.

@Shai Hulud been playing with Hierophant (soul blade/blood mage) more and felt a power spike once I unlocked Spirit Lance, it feels quite strong right now. Still interested to make a good ranged DPS Ascendant/X. Been reading different posts here that recommend ranger (maybe Arcane Archer) and even Barbarian, so haven't decided yet. It will be my third and final build for this PotD fiesta: shifter/forbidden fist Ascetic, soul blade/blood mage Hierophant and ascendant/X.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Doesn't your mod require the community patch?

I tested FF / Shifter some, it is actually really good because you can still use FF when spiritshifted, and you use the FF attack speed, so for instance as a bear in robes I have 17 armor with iron wheel and attack every 1.7s with FF at 10 dex (with swift flurry), and you use the FF damage with forbidden fist bonus, so you're doing like double bear damage, attacking faster, and healing yourself. LOL. I'm doing about 100 damage per attack, it's pretty good. Plus you can trigger Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming while spiritshifted. The stag is really good too since heartbeat drumming and swift flurry trigger carnage. 

I can see what he was saying though, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to being a shifter since the cooldown is the same as other classes. I mean yes you can take different spiritshifts which is sort of useful, but it's a questionable tradeoff for not being able to cast spells, particularly when the bear and stag are the only ones you'd want anyway with this particular build.

I have that character at level 14 and it's a one man's army basically. I had to lower my INT significantly to make room for Resolve (30 right now with all bonuses but I found out I have no easy access to steadfast, at least yet), ended up with 12 INT (8 base + 2 Berath's +2 Alchemic Wits) but once you factor in the INT duality of mortal presence (+10) and enlightened agony (+5, hostile effect duration reduction) it's completely fine, you can cast all the HoTs from druid once your first shapeshift is over and immediately start pummeling again with stag or cat if versus a boss, assuming you use the shifter mod discussed here somewhere.

My annoyance was not having access to every animal form at any time (if it has no cooldown), that was how I remember it worked in vanilla. But I understand it's not what the mod maker wants or thinks is balanced. Also having issues properly scripting auto shape shifting for some reason (always true > shape shift > character is stuck not doing anything else for some reason).

I ended up discovering a really strong build though, rarely see Ascetics being discussed here. I'll keep going until I unlock heartbeat drumming just to see what happens haha.

Sorry for derailing your post so much @Elric Galad and thanks for your awesome mod, please keep updating it.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

8 hours ago, Okkes said:

I mean FF is not a good pair with shifter anyways.

It works perfectly fine, the high resolve you need means you have to lower INT and make druid's spells a bit worse, that you regain back thanks to monk. You can spam FF thanks to all the HoTs druid gives and you can actually cast it while shifted while doing superb damage. 

Forbidden Fist/anything melee should work to be honest. I didn't drop it because it was not strong, I dropped it because shapeshifting felt terrible.

Edit: now that I think about it, using forbidden fist while shapeshifted still uses fists, @Elric Galad?, not really sure.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

One hit of what ? Arcane dampener ? 

Yeah, it takes you out of spirit shift and the cooldown goes regardless.

Also you can't just spam spells on druid MC like you can on a blood mage, for example. That's why I said on previous posts the shifter as a whole runs out of juice pretty quickly. Maybe single class is much better considering you have access to the stronger storm spells. Even then you don't enjoy the PL bonuses you could get with wild strike because you can't cast while in animal form.

Your mod as a whole is great, I just find the shifter changes anti synergistic.

 

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

On 5/13/2023 at 7:56 PM, Okkes said:

Shifter/Helwalker is very good caster melee combo. I would go nature godlike using https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Lance_of_the_Midwood_Stag, you get +2 power level when you get beast or plant buffs, start with dance of death for getting wounds and accuracy and thunderous blows for penetration and +5 might. Than use your devestating area damage spells. Kill the rest spiritshifted, you ll get %25 wildstrike, %15 lightning strike and up to %20 fire lash with fast weapons. Overall very fun and powerful build.

I went with a forbidden fist/shifter build that was extremely resilient but was incredibly vulnerable to enemy casters, one hit and you are out of shift right after your spells, so no shift, no spells, in the middle of a fight. It may work much better in groups I think.

On 5/13/2023 at 7:56 PM, Elric Galad said:

Oh no, they are still full casters with no penalty to their casting. 

They are still much better at their martial part. 

What you trade is flexibility between spell/martial. You trade it for more martial power, more flexibility for your martial sphere and periodical self healing as icing on the cake.

So they are perfectly balanced as they are. 

But you're free to use another mod if you want them to be more fun. 

I still see no issue. 

 

Edit : in case I wasn't Clear, I do think that Shifter is technically overpowered as a subclass in vanilla, since it is basically strictly better than animist. It does not break the game, but one looking for a generalist druid should pick Shifter (I made a SC Shifter once which was great despite not using shifts very often). 

The reason why it doesn't break the game is also because shifts aren't THAT powerful and many forms have meh abilities. 

BPM buffed shifts (PL for duration, dual damages Type) AND buffed most forms. This relatively benefits more to Shifters, hence making a nerf more necessary. 

Part of vanilla shifter's versatility was being able to access any form at any point as long as you hadn't used it yet. With your implementation you only get one form per "cast and then shift" cycle, or maybe none if you get knocked out of it by an enemy caster, effectively leaving you enjoying that oh so nice universal cooldown with no spells and no spirit shift. Enemy casters really like saving their casts just to kill your form in PoTD seems like.

I ended up trying the mod that was mentioned in previous posts and like it more, the cooldown is much longer (180s) but it's also not universal, so losing an animal form hurts but doesn't break the flow of the class completely. 

Like you said, maybe that change should have been left in the nerfs package along blood mage's blood sacrifice, a much more egregious and possibly game breaking thing than having the ability to freely swap forms (and it exists still without that nerf balance file).

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

13 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Shifter isn't a martial class. 

It's a caster with a layer of versatility. 

If you need to cast spell, you can shift out and in. With 5 forms (most of them boosted by BPM), you will rarely run out of charges without a common cooldown. 

 

There are other nerfs in the mod. The only annoying part here is that it had to be included in the main package instead of the nerf one for technical reasons. 

What I should do is updating the mod notes with a link to the "separate cooldown mod". 

 

But consider that even the autor of said mod did agree with my reason about balance. (which doesn't prevent his mod to be useful for other reasons) 

I didn't say shifter was a martial class, I did say a proper martial class will do more damage than shifter will ever do. And considering you have no spells while shifted that's a valid point of comparison. The question that has to be asked is: why pick shifter?, other than roleplay/people like animal forms. 

Unless you have a brilliant source the subclass as a whole runs out of steam surprisingly fast, I abandoned shifter for PotD really quick.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

I've already discussed with the author of the said mod about this topic.

Basically I explained why I didn't agree with him for a pure balance point of view (in a nutshell because with this change, Shifter has basically only upsides and no real downsides).

And I also gave him some guidance about how to actually implement the change he wanted  because from a pure fun/subclass feeling it indeed made some sense as an independant mod.

You might find our discussion somemwhere on this thread.

Well, shifter will always have the downside of not being able to cast spells while shifted, isn't that enough?, also not benefitting from the PL levels granted by wild strike because of said inability to cast anything. I do think the current implementation of it will make people just not use it at all, specially considering longer fights where a proper martial class doesn't have to deal with such large downtimes in damage. I think it breaks the flow of doing damage > casting spells > doing damage again pretty hard.

I'll look for this discussion just to understand a bit better.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

Hey @Elric Galad, I am trying a Shifter/Monk build right now and I am having the issue of not being able to shapeshift more than once before entering universal cooldown for all spirit shifts. IE: turn into cat, cat form runs out, I can't shape shift into any other animal because of said cooldown. 

Admittedly I haven't played shifter in years but I remember being able to use every form at least once in the same encounter, which leads me to believe it's a bug. If it isn't a bug then it's just a giant downside to shifter, already not being able to cast spells while shifted and relying on that weave in and out of animal forms to heal and cast things (75 second UNIVERSAL cooldown sounds awful for this particular subclass).

Edit: nevermind what I wrote, seems to be intended and someone already made a mod that alters this implementation here: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/613

The mod maker makes very good points that I think you should take into consideration for shifter in particular.

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

SC ranger is quite a bit better than in vanilla. Barbarians also. Carnage can crit which leads to energized being able to interrupt crowds. 

Most interesting builds I've played with BPM are Ranger / barbarian and barbarian / black jacket. Also a big fan of FF / soul blade though this only needs the community patch.

Rogues, chanters, and paladins are all improved as well (mainly single class). Priests nerfed. Monks slightly nerfed. Fighters overall about the same, unbending was nerfed but rapid recovery is better. Tacticians much harder to use. Ciphers are about the same. Druids about the same.

IMO wizards suck in BPM. Blood sacrifice was nerfed very hard and wall of draining nerfed as well so its only really useful if you can hit 4+ people which is not easy. I wouldn't recommend playing a hierophant with BPM. Or any wizard besides super tank wizards like arcane knights or sages, which while they still work from stacking tons if armor, are rather boring. You can remove individual nerfs (blood sacrifice and wall of draining mainly) from the override folder or just install the buffs and summon rebalancing. 

Blood mages are especially bad since they can't empower and empower is better with BPM. You can still imprint because that's hard-coded but stealing spells is incredibly tedious given blood sacrifice has a recovery and completely negates healing for 6s. In addition getting back minor grimoire imprint is 50% vs 100% in vanilla, and tier 7 spells are 33% vs 50% in vanilla.

One other thing, potions of enlightenment help make a lot of classes more playable particularly solo. Every 30s you can regain a resource for the duration of the fight. They're sort of expensive but not enough you wouldn't want to use them. 

I will give stalker a try (always liked Stalker's Patience bonuses and design), also deeply interested in how shape shift works with it since I feel like it does what it should have done since the very beginning, allow druids to shape shift more freely. I still think it should be akin to a modal but maybe that's too good. It makes a blood mage/lifegiver build significantly better I think and I wonder how it interacts with soulblade (do you gain focus while shifted?).

That'll come after Hierophant though, but I think cat form for example could be a very strong DPS contender to current top dogs.

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

That mod is exactly what I was looking for, it's amazing. I just set up BPM so gonna toy with that first for sure.

Are there any interesting combinations of classes you'd recommend besides this considering modding?, I'm not interested in cheating but the balance mods most people have been using do feel refreshing.

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

41 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

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. 

Just to get it out of the way, I am playing an ascendant/blood mage, I just happened to mention soulblade because I saw your build and really liked it, but that was after actually making my original post, whoops. I don't mind turning on a particular ascendant script once I ascend since I like to play my fights hands on, I have mostly issues with menial things like: buffing (there are a lot of buffs to cast and I am sure as hell not wanting to do it manually) and also getting my summoned weapon out, I also think it would be interesting to script blood sacrifice since I am mostly playing like a backliner with heavy debuffs and some DPS, avoiding most if not all damage (got escape handy too). Waiting on a few more levels to unlock Freezing Pillar and Desintegration to actually start ramping up self DPS.

So all in all I have a very barebones script that casts Infuse with Vital Essence and Deleterious Alacrity of Motion and that's about it!

Now that I think about it, I understand Kalakoth's Minor Blights are great DPS too from what you have written so far, and could be dual wielded with a pistol, for example, did you ever try them with Scordeo's Trophy?, with the stacking recovery bonus it sounds like it could be an amazing sustained damage combo.

For even more context, I am also playing with the Community Patch and I am thinking on downloading the Balance Polishing Mod just to smooth things out and maybe give an honest chance to Tenous Grasp (already have it but rarely use it) and Soul Ignition.

Just to reiterate, Hierophant is an incredibly versatile multiclass, my only grip is not knowing more about the game to automate certain behaviors and interactions that detract from actually playing the game and not playing buff simulator. I think I could toy with focus conditionals to do ascended state just fine now that I think about it, can't wait to get home.

Thank you for sharing your scripts!

 

 

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

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. 

I will try and do things in the order you presented just to have a change of pace from my last run. I have been doing PotD so far but with a 3 person party (me as Hierophant, Tekehu as pure druid and Pallegina as chanter/paladin), they hate each other's guts but there is a lot of synergy with their kits and my own.

It is kinda annoying to be doing the grimoire swap I agree, not sure if it's possible since I have never seen someone doing it but would you mind sharing your hierophant script?, I wanna see what a proper setup can and can't do.

Also returning to one of your previous points, hunting bow modal Essence Interrupter is indeed quite fast and I suspect it's one of the highest DPS options for ranged at least in this setup, it's very satisfying to watch my character machine gun things and ascend the first few seconds of battle.

 

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

14 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

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.

Wanted to give you an update since you gave me tons of solid advice. I have been trying summoned weapons more and noticed a nice interaction with Concelhaut's Draining Touch and grimoire swapping that lets you keep it if you swap out of the grimoire you used to cast it. It was probably known already but I found it super useful, the creepy hand is pretty good.

The best thing about it is it targets will and I can absolutely nuke will with club modal, psychovampiric shield, borrowed instincts and miasma. It may be my favorite single target weapon in the game right now. Does it benefit from spirit of decay?, if it does then that's even nicer.

For encounters with a lot of enemies I use the spirit lance and I can easily fill my focus in a quick moment, not sure I want to cheese yet with strand of favor focus stacking but it's still early in the game for me I think.

What level do you recommend I tackle the SSS DLC with this build?

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

15 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

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. 

Would you recommend any other ranged weapons outside frostseeker?, It seems like an amazing bow for AoE but not sure it's that good versus single target. I am also looking at grimoire stealing escape and nature's balm to compliment the build as a whole though not interested in cheesing all the way with strand of favor (just saw your awesome soul blade/blood mage build)

Btw, did you ever try stalker's patience on it?, Phantom foes > flanked enemies > stalker's patience gets bonus damage (does it apply to everything or just the weapon?)

Thanks for the advice 

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

Haven't consideres going melee, if I were to go melee I'd probably want to go soul blade instead I think, which isn't exactly what I'm wanting to do for this particular build unless it's much more effective heh

[Advice on a Hierophant build]

Hey guys, 

 

Played this game a few years ago and liked it a ton, back then it was a forbidden fist single class monk that managed to do all content on veteran difficulty without much issue.

I'm looking to play a caster centered build and I'm toying with the idea of an ascendant/blood mage that does ranged weapons to reach ascended state and chain cast vampiric shield, secret horrors, mind minding and the better shred spells to massively debuff foes while being able to stack damage on bosses or high priority targets. Considering Pull of Eora, expose defenses and miasma as good wizard spells.

I'm not too sure on what weapons to use though, and also not certain on what grimoire would benefit me the most. I am wondering if St. Omaku's Mercy recovery on crit helps with spell casting and what other good sustained DPS options are there for range that would allow me to pummel things from a distance. Not really interested in dual mortars because honestly they get boring pretty fast and I mostly want to chain together a lot of casting with brief moments of gaining back focus to ascend again for the longer fights.

 

 

[Wall of Draining + Chants]

Sasha's Scimitar with coil too so you can have all those chanter buffs and all those tier 3 inspirations?

[[CLASS BUILD] Hand Of Doom - Forbidden Fist/Steel Garrote]

Whoops, I must have misread then. I don't think many weapons outside Chain and Ball synergize well with the build then. And I'm not keen to think 15% extra damage is game changing (besides what OP is already using).

 

Was initially messing with a monk/priest death godlike variation because it's really easy to control triggering near death with fist curses, but depending on Barring Death's Door always has me scared if Arcane Dampener is used by someone 

 

[[CLASS BUILD] Hand Of Doom - Forbidden Fist/Steel Garrote]

Gotta say I am loving this build, it's very self sufficient. With enough heal stacking and doing a solo run you can try Slayer's Claw offhand, upgrades Thunderous Blows and also gets a raw leash when bound to Paladin.