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Not So Clever Hound

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Posts posted by Not So Clever Hound

  1. 27 minutes ago, trias10 said:

    Thank you for the reply!

    If you used the Level 33 progression mod, such that any MC Bloodmage could eventually reach level 9 spells (although by then the game would be over anyway), would there be a clear winner in terms of assassin/BM vs tactician/BM? I mean at such high level anything will be god tier already, but I'm thinking the slight edge would go to the tactician maybe, just for pure survivability?

    My first POTD run will be with vanilla, but I'm already pondering a second run with the level 33 mod down the line.

    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.

  2. 13 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Did you figure out a different way or were you including Blade Cascade + Conduit + POFS etc.?

    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.

  3. On 3/9/2023 at 6:01 PM, trias10 said:

    Thank you so much for the great write-up and details! I have read everything in this thread and wanted to ask you for your opinion on playing the pure SC bloodmage vs playing a MC assassin/bloodmage? I saw that you tried out the assassin/bloodmage in a later playthrough, and were getting nuke crits of 500-800 which sounds pretty powerful. Did you end up enjoying the assassin/bloodmage more than the SC bloodmage? Would you say the MC spellblade is more powerful overall or still weaker than the SC bloodmage? Was the MC spellblade able to take on all the megabosses with equal ease?

    I'm currently looking to do my first solo PotD run, and am just stuck on which is the better choice between these two variants: assassin/bloodmage vs SC bloodmage. Would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

    I love the assassinate bonus and free, spammable invisibility which the assassin brings to the table, for absolutely insane crits, but am wondering if it stalls out in the end game and can't handle the megabosses and tougher end game fights on solo?

    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.

     

    • Like 1
  4. 3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Edit: was thinking about it, but is damage converted to health considered healing like any other? I'm assuming when he's weakened he only recovers 50% from helfire iron but I dont actually know that. I mean like when I have bloodfire that converts fire damage to 10% healing but it doesn't seem to be affected by things that normally affect healing like dawnstars blessing so it has me wondering. Will test when I get a chance

    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.

    • Like 1
  5. 3 hours ago, LonelyFatGuy said:

    Any starting tips for a fury/beguiler?
    stat wise? and starting skills?

    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.

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  6. 1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Anyway I wrecked my reputation with the Huana and was going to stop and do Archmage's Vault but found out just being nice to Netehe is enough to get you to -2, and the ship isn't there anymore. Your rep has to be -3 when you leave Neketaka. Luckily it doesn't have to *stay* at -3, the ship spawn appears persistent once it spawns, so I can board it later, but you do have to at least leave the city while your rep is -3.

    Ha, I was wondering about that :) thanks for clarifying!

     

    1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Interestingly even with Berath's Challenge you can apparently start combat by attacking and entering stealth, which queues up the battle music and prevents you from using offensive spells or leaving the area, but as long as you stay out of people's stealth detection you can send in summons and buff/heal them from off the screen.

    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).

    • Like 1
  7. 1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

    you need Huana 2 to turn in Muhai without rep loss (though I guess who cares

    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.

    1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

    How do you get to L12 without raising your rep with the Huana?

    I usually sail around to discover all the map spots that give XP but that is not Magran Fires-friendly.

     

    1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

    a number of generic Huana ship priests...I think they're all Berath, was it Dgray who said that?

    Yes indeed

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  8. 26 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Unfortunately Effort and Least Unstable Coil have 7 penetration regardless of level. Same with Cape of the Falling Star. Mantle of the Seven Bolts has 9 penetration which is still not great. One Dozen Stood has a decent 12 penetration

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

  9. On 1/22/2023 at 4:00 PM, Shai Hulud said:

    Edit: Good call on the xaurips! The xaurip priests have both withdraw and restore and don't do much damage so they're ideal for stealing these spells. There's one with Purakau you can kite away from him, and I think there are some in Cavern of Xaur Tuk Tuk.

    Awesome!

    On 1/22/2023 at 4:00 PM, Shai Hulud said:

    Do you know if Meryel (or anyone besides Yseyr) has Halt?

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

    • Like 1
  10. 3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Also I'm not finding it easy to murder everyone at Takano's. Tried kiting them but doesn't seem to work and I end up doing like 9 on 1. 

    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.

    • Like 1
  11. 3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

    What is the cutoff point in the plot for spawning these?

    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.

    3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Also holy crap that is a tough ship battle

    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.

     

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  12. 4 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

    While it's true early game DoTs can do ridiculous amounts of damage, they have severe penetration problems. There's really no way to use a spell with ~10 penetration at level 20, unless you have an incredible amount of setup (food/Tenacious for +2 pen, and -AR debuffs on the enemy) because on PotD you are going to see lots of enemies with 15+ AR.

    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.

  13. 1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Also blood mage doesn't really need to take (m)any spells so you often have too many abilities and not enough good choices. I'd take Great Soul. Don't think it is that confusing. Someone who made it to L20 with a blood mage probably understands they can't empower since it says so at character creation and they've made it to L20 without empowering, plus the description doesn't say it lets you empower, just increases max empower points. Similar to the adratic glow buff which is still worth getting as a blood mage IMO, even though no empower. 

    Display would be no more confusing than half the abilities in this game IMO, but I don't know how hard it is to implement and there are likely higher priorities for you

    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.

  14. 40 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    so I reloaded, consoled up, and this time memorized all the corrode ones. Suddenly they worked, not only in this save but in all saves, from grimoire or memorized. 

    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.

  15. 11 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

    For Walls, I suspect that is because they are coded as a hazard zone and not a direct attack.

    You're certainly right, but then why would Walls benefit from the Ring of Focused Flames... anyway. Walls are weird.

    11 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

    So I will add Corrode damage type to all the ability and attack that miss it.

    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.

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  16. 22 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    Sorry to keep bugging you, can you check if you get the bonus pen in vanilla on the concelhaut spells? Because I don't. If it is a mod issue it wouldn't make sense that you would get the bonus in vanilla also, so I'm hoping you have the same results I do in vanilla and my CP / BPM keywords aren't being loaded properly or something...

    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..

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  17. 35 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    The tooltip says the base pen is 0, +1.5 ability level, +1 scion of flame. But it actually has base pen 7 and does not apply scion of flame.

    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.

     

    35 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    And have you checked your other corrode spells?

    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...

    • Like 1
  18. 14 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    I get bonus on wall of flame but not corrosive siphon

    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.

    • Like 1
  19. 10 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    I'm using Steam.

    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.

    10 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

    I don't understand why I get +1.5 ability level to wall of flame but corrosive siphon says "7 base, +.5 ability level, +.5 wizard power level"

    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.

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  20. @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.

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