Not So Clever Hound

I think it would be Assassin/BM >>>> Vanishing Strike cheese + full-scale Bloodmage cheese = more potent cheese than the Pont L'évêque that I keep maturing at the bottom of my fridge. And I tell you this thing is potent enough to make my wife nearly faint every time she opens the refrigerator.

The time I bothered doing HoW with SC BM I did it with True Lover's Kiss then some good old buffing, Hard CC and Nuking on the second form et al. BUT... it was on standard PotD. It's one of those fights where the difference between standard and upscaled shifts the probabilities SIGNIFICANTLY in my opinion. Also, I wasn't playing with BPM at the time.

Glad you find it helpful! They're both top tier and you can complete everything with either. So you can really go with your guts and what feels more fun. SC has a very special place in my little heart because I just love those Tier 8 & 9 spells so much and I like the super fast Tier progression. Assassin/Bloodmage is lots of fun if you like sneaking around and launch crazy alpha strikes - comes online very early. The stealthy alpha strike strategy can get old after some time, and high level DLC content gives you a bit more challenges with encounter resets. But every Solo char has an element of repetition anyway, and high level DLCs provides challenges for every kind of solo build - nothing unsolvable with anything Bloodmage anyway. So if I have to give my personal preference, it's SC BM but if you like your run, you should definitely try other builds. As @Shai Hulud mentioned, Tactician/BM is another POE2 solo staples.

Ahem, « somewhat » cheesy?

As far as I have experimented, damage conversion to health is not affected by healing done or healing received, but it is affected by Might / % damage increase modifiers (on the outgoing end) and % damage taken modifiers (on the receiving end). So for example Shattered Vengeance, Assassin/Helwalker passive or Sworn Enemy (all on the receiving end) will increase how much health you convert from the (increased) damage dealt.

Yes I can totally see that with Abydon’s challenge, that build doesn’t work. Against HoW once it splits, scrolls of tornado, especially with BPM, are really good with high arcana. I think it was Kaylon who had come up with that strategy.

In Ashen’s Maw, if you get the support of the rathun to go in the Lair of the Ancient, they’ll give you +2 burn AR.

Personally, I would leave MIG, CON and RES at 10 and either put DEX, PER and INT at 16, or if playing POTD maybe max PER, then INT, then whatever left in DEX. Frenzy is most probably your first pick on the barb side, then Whispers of Treason probably - Eyestrike is nice too but it rolls against FORT so it won't land as easily early game even with Body Blows. You can pick later if you wish. Then you can be the Survival and Athletics guy, maybe also invest a bit in a social skill since you're the face of the party - Intimidate or Diplo. You're part Cipher so you can also in Mechanics if you wish, or leave that to a Rogue. Before The Willbreaker, you can very early pick Saru Sichr in Arkemyr's Manor and it is a sweet sweet morningstar too.

Aaah Deadfire. Game V5.something, plus Community Patch V4.something, plus Balance Polishing Mod V2.something... yet still, broken. Just as I like it.

Ha, I was wondering about that thanks for clarifying! Yes actually with Berath challenge, you can use a little trick which is to approach enemies from stealth (to be in visual range) and then quickly unstealth/restealth, then you'll be in combat but enemies don't notice you and you can buff, use summons etc. Works like the trap strategy, without using a trap. But, as I recall @thelee mentioned to me once, it's not as reliable as actual traps as you can get easily get the timing wrong on pressing the Alt key twice, and you can't split/pull enemies like with traps. So for The Ultimate this isn't as helpful, traps remain better (but in somewhat limited quantity).

You can just approach the pyre from behind from stealth and interact with the pyre without talking to the priest and you turn in the quest without any issue/rep loss. I usually sail around to discover all the map spots that give XP but that is not Magran Fires-friendly. Yes indeed

That’s odd, Elric implemented scaling for those effects in BPM specifically to address that issue. Do you have BPM enabled?

Awesome! I am 99% positive Meryel used Halt on me before.

I don't know if you can kite there, but it's true I wiped them out with a few levels under my belt already, lvl 12-ish I think.

Well the thing is it's incredibly hard or straightup impossible to tank your rep to -3 if you started raising your rep with a given faction. So I did it as early as possible, basically before doing anything that could positively influence the Huana. After, I got the shield, I did a couple quests for them and was back at +2/3 disposition with the Huana in no time. Yeah the ship to ship battle is on the harder side. I certainly wouldn't do it on an Iron run. I think I save-scummed until I got a number of "ship afflictions" on them, at which point they're just useless.

Well, Insect Swarm deals Raw damage so no issues there, and you can easily stack Beasts +PL for huge damage. Regarding Touch of Rot, a SC Priest of Berath with Crusted Swordfish food is one Champion's Boon cast away from getting Touch of Rot at 14.3 Pen. Even against 15 AR, that's going to hurt a lot, especially if you can cast 4 of those in a row without even using resource replenishment. For really tough nuts, the same Priest has Rusted Armor. I wouldn't call that an incredible amount of setup, after all we are playing at max difficulty. I'm not arguing with you that Pen isn't an issue with spells due to +2AR from POTD and +2AR from Scaling among many enemies. I actually keep ranting about that, but it's a more general challenge. When enemies have 15+ AR, you will need to buff Pen and/or debuff AR for most of your spells to do decent damage, and when you do so effectively, even lower spells can remain effective. I mean against 15AR, your Freezing Pillar at 12 Pen is still severely under-penetrating. If you don't want to set-up against underpen and still use damage spells, you can prioritize Raw damage, high Pen Shock spells, or Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst.

These are all very sound arguments in my book. And also yes, there are probably other priorities. No big deal either way. For a non Blood Mage caster, BPM Great Soul is really good because you can use an Empower point to restore spells rounded up vs. your starting pool at the given ability tier: so if you have a base of 3 spells at a given ability tier, you get 2 spells back. That nets you 5 spells in total (3+2), as opposed to 3 spells (2+1) otherwise. If you are a Wizard with Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry, you can have 5+3=8 AT1 spells, and 4+2=6 AT2, AT3 through AT8 get 3+2=5, then AT9 gets 2+1=3 spells. That is 47 spells in total. Factoring in higher-level spells and lower chance to regain resources, a Blood Mage would have to spam A LOT of Blood Sacrifice to match the same result (and expend a lot of HP). On the other hand, a Druid or certain Priest kits can get Touch of Rot at PL1 which can scale up to hundreds of damage per target with proper power level, and don't even get me started on Insect Swarm. Having a few extra casts of those bad boys can mean thousands of combined extra AoE damage in one fight.

I kinda disagree with that, an extra (or a few extra) free AT 1&2 spells fully scaled at PL10+ can be really good. But fair enough.

That is so weird. Just another day in the Deadfire I guess . Glad you somehow fixed it. So all in all, to sum up @Elric Galad if you ever wanted to kindly consider in your next potential batch of improvement: Concelhaut Corrosive Skin to benefit from Spirit of Decay Opening up Great Soul to SC Blood Mage so they can get the bonus AT1&2 spells as any other SC Caster, even if they can't Empower The improvements you were talking about for Blood Sacrifice: fixed damage without the PL scaling Maybe you mentioned a slight buff to Wall of Fire above? Agree Wall of Many Colors probably doesn't need a buff... Dunno about Wall of Force, I never ever use it. EDIT: I wonder if Walls and maybe other Hazard spells wouldn't deserve a base PEN of 9 instead of 7. Just putting it out there. You would make some of us the happiest of men/women.

You're certainly right, but then why would Walls benefit from the Ring of Focused Flames... anyway. Walls are weird. Thanks Eric! Still doesn't explain why Shai Hulud is not getting the Spirit of Decay when I'm getting it but IDK... The one spell where neither of us were getting the bonus Pen is Corrosive Skin.

No worries, I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this as well. I have more or less the same mods loadout order as you have. I only have NoRest mod from Noqn on top, my own personal Screaming Soul Fix Mod from Elric and the most important mod in the game: Wahai Poraga Fix by Boeroer. Kidding aside, nothing that I have and that you don't have should interfere with keywords. But anyway I deactivated all mods and checked Minor Missiles and Corrosive Siphon - combat log correctly shows Spirit of Decay adding Pen for both..

That's actually consistent with what I get. As I said, the tooltip is garbage for Wall spells. 7 base pen + ability scaling + power level scaling is exactly what I get too in the combat log. BUT, scion of flame should in theory work since the spell has the Fire tag - and benefits from the Ring of Focused Flames for example. Except it doesn't, which is probably a persisting bug. I've checked Minor Missiles, Siphon and Draining Touch and I get the +PEN for those for sure. Will check a few others and edit this post. Death Ring, Noxious Burst and Necrotic Lance work as expected and add Spirit of Decay. Minor Blights doesn't show anything in the tooltip BUT when the blight cycle to the Corrode ones, the combat log does show that Sprit of Decay adds +1Pen. So it works. Caedebald Black Bow also get +Pen from Spirit of Decay. Concelhaut Corrosive Skin does NOT get Spirit of Decay +Pen however! @Elric Galad I also noticed one thing: Blood Mage is still locked out of the Passive Great Soul because it cannot Empower, however the BPM version of Great Soul with the additional AT 1 and AT 2 spells would be very relevant to BM...

Have you checked Wall of Flame by actually casting it on yourself or in combat and checking the value from the combat log? I bet you won't see Scion of Flame do anything to your PEN. Still doesn't explain all the other discrepancies.

Me too! This is so weird. I just tested Draining Touch again and I do benefit from Spirit of Decay - another discrepancy vs. your game. Base Pen = usually 7 or 9 depending on the spell, it is the same as the PEN you see if you look at the spell in your character ability sheet. Ability level = Ability level-dependent PEN scaling of 0.5pen per ability level above 1. so Siphon gets .5 as 1 level above level 1, Wall of flame gets 1.5 as 3 levels above. This is the scaling that makes higher-level abilities hit harder than low level ones. Wizard Power level = Wizard power level-dependent PEN scaling of .25 per wizard power level above the ability tier level. At level 8, you have a power level of 4 (IV), which is 2 power levels above the ability tier of Corrosive Siphon (II) so you get 2*0.25=0.5 extra PEN, that will increase as you gain more power levels. This scaling is meant to keep lower level abilities relevant in the late game, even if because of Ability-level scaling, higher level abilities will often hit harder.

@Shai Hulud @Elric Galad the plot thickens... after my own testing in combat just now (CP + latest BPM enabled): My Corrosive Siphon DOES get Spirit of Decay +Pen My Wall of Flame does NOT get Scion of Flame +Pen, nor does Wall of Many Colors I was wondering if funny business was about stolen spells, my spells above weren't stolen. So I stole Minoletta's Minor Missiles > it benefits from Spirit of Decay, so it's not about stolen spells. EDIT: to be clear on Wall of Flame, if you right click on the ability to read the description and hover on the PEN number, it will mention Scion of Flame +1pen, but the tooltip for Wall spells is garbage anyway. In the combat log, I only get base pen + ability level + wizard power level + crit modifier if applicable.