Not So Clever Hound

Hi Elric, FYI the 1.5.4 buff component is still not available, it reads "This file is currently being uploaded to our CDN servers. If this is taking longer than expected, please contact a moderator or email us". The Nerf and Summon Rebalance are available alright. Thanks!

SC Wizard and Fury/Wizard Sorcerer are perfect for Freeze. A pure Transmuter locks you out of Enchanting and Evocation, and that truly sucks IMO. So if SC, I'd advise No Subclass or Bloodmage.

Right. Then again, I don't know if I would say "forgiving" but yeah it becomes manageable. It comforts me in the recent realization that PotD Upscaled (which I've been playing almost exclusively after this run) is really on a different level than normal PotD, especially when you hit DLCs. And this encounter was definitely not engineered so that Solo toons could prevail on PotD upscaled, unless deliberately planning for it. Seeker's path is a lot more "forgiving".

I don't have any mod there besides Community Patch - otherwise I would have mentioned it Kaylon. But I'm not sure you can reload the Arena without Upscaling after playing SSS Upscaled as it might count as the same area reload. I just checked the Cipher without Upscaling has 82 Deflection and 94 with Upscaling (I'm of course level 20). Are you getting different values? EDIT: I hadn't seen your screenshot. These are the values for Upscaled on the Fighter. So my point above is probably valid. EDIT 2: So the enemies are lvl 17 without Upscaling and lvl 20 with it. For example the Monk has Razor's Edge passive with and not without. Those three levels and access to PL9 is like the difference between going on a date with Keanu Reeves vs Harvey Weinstein.

Gotcha. Good thing Deadfire has a flavor for every taste .

Hey Constentin, don't worry: try to talk Boeroer into a Mage Slayer build using Willbreaker to kill Many Lives skeletons and you might have a fan.

@Kaylon I found an old save of this SC Bloodmage and managed to recreate my strategy (no exploit/abuse). I even uploaded a little video below for your reference. Caution: it might be a while before it has full HD given the length of it, and it's as painful to watch as it is to play the encounter . I did it on normal PotD but TBH I cut it so close that I don't know if you can replicate on Upscaled... Character: SC Bloodmage, Human with decent CON and RES, Hylea's Bounty, full No Rest goodies complement (I hover around major Char screen stuff at the end). This dude. Fun fact: I tried to wear Furrate's Breastplate with First to the Fight and it does indeed given you +10 All DEF buff for about 15-20s. I didn't know about it or used it in my original run. The +15 deflection from Drawing Parry on Duskfall doesn't work. Maybe other stuff can work. Strategy: Run to the little corner below to limit being ganged up, especially the Cipher ruining your day with Ectopsychic Echo among other things. Prioritize more or less Cipher > Monk (ouch) > pet > fighter > rogue > ranger. There might be a slightly better order. You can't bum-rush the ranged targets... too many disengagement attacks in between. Even if you start stealthed, doesn't work. The key is to have enough steam (HP, Defenses, Regen) and outgoing damage (ACC, STR, DEX, Fighting Spirit, Infamous Captain...) to kill squishies fast enough to pass the curve where your passive Bloodmage regen outheals incoming damage... before 0 HP. So literally every little bit helps. The video:

Hey, Definitely! Some of the best damage/CC wizard spells are freeze based. You just need backup damage for freeze immunes but that is no trouble with the grimoire mechanic. Single class and almost any multiclass can be great, but I would especially recommend Wizard/Chanter because: Animated Weapons are freeze immune so no risk of friendly fire with them Chanter has Her Tears and Eld Nary invocations which fit very very well thematically Freeze focused Loremaster is an absolute beast.

Also just on that particular point: I did the Changeling's Dance with a solo SC Bloodmage without any exploit on normal PotD (not Upscaled though) after 1 or 2 tries. The one class that locked me out of the Changeling Dance solo was an Assassin/Cipher with Guilty Conscience from the Red Hand... impossible.

For some reason I thought you had mentioned it for solo but I must have dreamed that up . That explains also a lot - I wasn't totally seeing the solo survivability in many high level fights Yes, I think more broadly any such kind of ranking will depend on: what one considers as fair game vs. exploits they don't want to use for themselves (e.g. prolonging BDD vs Temporal Cocoon vs permastealing spells vs. switching back and forth to Slayer's Claw for Energized vs abusing SoF left and right... 50 shades of grey cheese) whether it is good for each and every possible encounter or the vast majority (and what one considers "vast majority" e.g. Hauani o Whe viable or not, all SSS fights viable or not...) what one considers interesting and fun enough to play (you may have noted that I'm a sucker for Wizard archetypes so I definitely have a biased experience there. On the other hand, I absolutely acknowledge the power of a solo Herald, but I despise its gameplay ) So I appreciate you sharing your top-5. I think that we would come up with a very consistent list of, say, the top-20 solo classes without a precise ranking. It seems to be at least .

Yes! A No-Rest Loremaster can even cheese the BPM Empower Mechanics nicely: Take useful Empower passives e.g. +ACC and +PEN (you have a grand total of 3 ability points to spend at Tier 7, so tough choice) Empower an inocuous spell on yourself outside of combat e.g. Confusion (you now have the passive BPM +ACC/Pen buffs until next combat end) Go start a tough fight and use your Empower point to replenish your spells with Vaporous Grimoire when needed, while benefiting from those nice Empower passives Once done, pick an easy fight and Empower Her Revenge to refund all your Empower points Rince and repeat Sorry Elric

Hi Folks, I've only stumbled upon this now because to my great shame I only ever play Bloodmage as Wizards... maybe you did know this already? If you're playing a non-Bloodmage, when you have the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardy equipped, using an Empower point to replenish spell pool refunds not 1, but 2 spells per level (except your last one, Tier 7 for MC and Tier 9 for SC, which only gets 1 spell). Even better, you don't have to commit to using Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry at all! Just have it in your quick items, pause the game, switch to it, use the Empower point, switch back to your main Grimoire and you have simply doubled the normal amount of spells replenished. It's not game breaking but hey, a very basic SC Wizard has 17 Spells + 9 refunds = 26 Spells. The same SC Wizard with Vaporous Wizardy (even as secondary Grimoire) has 26 + 17 = 43 Spells. You can do a lot of things with 65% more spells to cast! So even without being a cheesy little monster and permastealing spells, you could cast e.g. 4 Shadowflames + 5 Freezing Pillars + 5 Wilting Winds + 3 Meteor Showers/Missile Salvos in a single fight. 5 Enervating Terror, 4 Death Rays... And if you just want to use the Vaporous Grimoire temporarily, having a couple layers of Concentration (e.g. Combat Focus + Spirit Shield + Arcane Veil + Upright Captain's Belt = 4 layers) is enough, no need to go down the Rekvu's Fractured Casque + Injury path. Or simply get a paladin to cast Hands of Light on you. Especially with BPM considering the Blood Sacrifice and Brilliant nerf, SC Wizard is growing on me! EDIT: cherry on the cake if you're playing a Loremaster that can refund more than 1 Empower Points to max easily with Sasha's Scimitar and Her Revenge/Her Tears, this makes Chanter/Wizard No Subclass strictly better than Chanter/Bloodmage, at least with BPM! If you factor in that it can get anyway all Tier 1-3 vancian caster spells for free, that could potentially be one of the very strongest Solo options for BPM.

Yes, that's why I wrote that Assassin is better with BPM than Vanilla if you exclude SoF from the equation, as SoF isn't cheesable in BPM but turns any SC Assassin into a god of murder if you abuse it in Vanilla. I haven't installed it yet, but it's a good point and I will. I need to practice it and see how it concretely affects resource management. 1 resource / 30s is nice, but a lot of things can happen in 30s when soloing... For casters, is the 1 resource a refund on all spell tiers or just one spell of one tier? Of course, thanks for your continued efforts to build this great mod!

Thanks! Added it to the list.

Happy New Year Deadfire Enthusiasts, Elric inspired me to finally do this exercise with his very interesting class tiers ranking. While there seems to be already a pretty good consensus regarding the top classes for Solo in the base (vanilla) game, I thought it would be interesting to look at how BPM might change certain dynamics, with the critical nerf brought to the cheesiest of abilities. So for full clarity I'll try to do first a recap of top Solo classes without BPM, then my interpretation of the changes brought by the full BPM complement (buffs, nerfs, summon rework). Additional notes before starting: This is assuming usage of the Community Patch. This is valid for Real Time With Pause, I don't know about Turn Based. This is for Soloing on PotD (Upscaled) Difficulty, the full game and DLCs and some (in some cases all) megabosses - but not considering The Ultimate which is its own animal. This is not excluding cheese (though BPM will de facto exclude some). I consider some level of cheese to be fair game in Solo HOWEVER, I'm not considering builds that require Strand of Favor to be viable. Because then it would be easier to list the few classes that cannot become Solo beasts with SoF abuse. I'm blending Single Classes and Multiclasses altogether because here there is no consideration about party synergy, saving a party slot etc. Just pure Solo effectiveness. Also, I'm not mentioning every single class combo, just focusing on the most salient. Most importantly, this is really not pretending to be a perfectly exhaustive, objective and accurate class ranking in such a complex game system... So please don't take this as me trying to impose my limited understanding of the game on you, but rather trying to engage in a good discussion with the below blurb as a starting point. ----- TOP SOLO CLASSES IN BASE GAME WITHOUT BPM ----- 1) SC WIZARD (BLOODMAGE) Unsurprisingly, it is the strongest of all by a huge margin, because it has so many mind-blowing tricks available from beginning to end. The true god of cheese in the Deadfire if there ever was one. Infinite spells potential from level 1 with Blood Sacrifice. Has a tool for every situation with Grimoire Switching, concentrating some of the best offensive and defensive spells in the game... ...even more so with Grimoire Imprint spells, giving the opportunity to permanently cheesy-steal any and all Tier 1-7 Wizard, Priest and Druid spell - each stolen spell becoming usable indefinitely. I realize using this simple and hugely powerful bug might be very controversial but its existence is undeniable - and Wizard remains hands down the best class even without it. Can prolong any positive effect indefinitely with Wall of Draining or stealing Salvation of Time from a Priest. Can become immortal with Barring Death Door and of course straight-up untargetable (invulnerable) forever with Constentin's Temporal Cocoon trick. 2) SC ROGUE (ASSASSIN) AND SC MONK (NALPAZCA, FORBIDDEN FIST, HELWALKER) I put them on an equal footing because Assassin is OP from the very beginning until very late but requires additional tricks (Arcana / Alchemy / Brilliant) towards the end-game in certain SSS, FS and a few BoW fights. On the other hand, Monk starts rough unless playing a max RES Forbidden Fist (for instance Helwalker will have to start with a lot of sneaking around). But as you gain Power Levels - especially the last few Tiers - and gather critical items, Monk will become a self-sufficient killing machine. Both SC Assassin and SC Monk also bring unique playstyles and game experiences. SC ASSASSIN: Invisibility lets you reset 99% of fights (without Berath's challenge activated), to pick enemies as you please and set your own pace. Vanishing Strike gives invisibility that doesn't break (OP on its own, insane with Brilliant and total godhood with SoF). Incredibly potent offensive abilities, with special mention to Gouging Strike that can trivialize the vast majority of encounters from level 5 on, including some of the hardest foes. SC MONK: Very powerful and synergistic abilities, creating even stronger synergies with specific weapons and items. Whispers of the Wind + Resonant Touch = "I Win" button. Infinite supply of resources (including infinite summons). 3) THE MANY FACES OF SOLO MULTICLASSING AWESOMENESS They are in no particular order, all being very strong. Not elaborating too much on each otherwise this post would be turning into a book. BLOODMAGE/TACTICIAN - On-demand Brilliant with Chillfog, unkillable Battlemage with Unbending + WoD, play bowling with enemies' faces with Spirit Lance + Clear Out. ASSASSIN/TACTICIAN - Kaylon's Glimmer Man Sniper Build. Never stop neverstopping & sniping. Invisibility + Brilliant Tactician interaction. BLOODMAGE/PRIEST - Unkillable with BDD, SoT, WoD, can self-buff to oblivion while still packing a serious punch. BLOODMAGE/PALADIN - The Lord of Defense, getting every defense past 220 and AR in the 20s. While having tons of heal and all the Bloodmage offense. ASSASSIN/BLOODMAGE - The most offensive Bloodmage out there, using invisibility to rinse & repeat, and the Assassin's stellar ACC to land critical spells. BLOODMAGE/HELWALKER - Helwalker gives big bonuses to everything a Bloodmage loves. And then there is Spirit Lance + Stunning Surge. BLOODMAGE/DRUID - Drown the battlefield in waves of overlapping pulsing AoEs, cast Combusting Wounds + Infestation of Maggots; watch reality melt around you. BLOODMAGE/TROUBADOUR - Use summons as distraction to cast in peace. Animated Weapons are immune to cold damage, and Wizard has the best AoE cold damage spells. BLOODMAGE/PSION - Beautiful action economy: cast some wizard stuff while generating focus, dump focus on an impactful cipher power, repeat until things are dead. PALADIN/TROUBADOUR - Loads of permanent healing, high defenses, summons, brand enemy... sit back and relax. It will take a while, but the outcome is inevitable. ASSASSIN/CIPHER - The Megaboss Killer. As an arquebus build, has an answer to almost every tough situation. A bit of Arcana is required later on. HELWALKER/TROUBADOUR - Start fight from stealth, summon stuff to keep the enemy busy then stun them all with Mortar Stunning Surge + Invocations. You can do that (and other things) forever. TROUBADOUR/PSION - Awesome action economy and interaction between infinite summons from stealth and Pain Link. Constantly regenerating resource pools. PRIEST/BELLOWER - Kaylon's suggested build, coming to full fruition pretty late (Least Unstable Coil + Her Revenge/Her Tears + SoT) but with amazing benefits. BERSERKER/BECKONER or TACTICIAN/BECKONER - Grave Calling's Chilling Grave + Grave Bound + Confusion abusing build. Can be done with other Chanter/xx combos... in any case if your GPU allows it. FORBIDDEN FIST/SOUL BLADE: As DGray62 pointed out below, FF subclass adds a lot to the survivability of the character, with its powerful enfeebling attack that can be infinitely spammed that also heals you and generates resources. OTHER NOTABLE BUILDS THAT I DON'T KNOW THE FULL SOLO POTENTIAL OF: Kaylon's Berserker/Devoted with Lord Darryn's Voulge, Powerotti's FF/Steel Garrote, Boeroer's Bloodmage/Ranger. Probably many others that I don't know about or have forgotten about. Happy to edit the list if you have other thoughts. 4) SC CHANTER (TROUBADOUR) I want to mention it here because I'll talk about it with BPM and because it's still a viable, if only a bit boring, way of Soloing the game. Requires Berath's challenge enabled - using traps or the double Alt key trick to start the encounter in stealth and keep it going is huge for a SC Chanter. Possibly supplement with high Arcana to go faster in tough fights. There is just no real reason in Vanilla to chose SC Chanter for soloing over all the awesome multiclassing opportunities available, as Chanter really peaks at Tier 7. 5) OTHER SINGLE CLASSES AND MULTICLASSES Many other classes can do fairly well at soloing most of the game, but they will need extensive save scumming, arcana, metagaming to have a chance at hard fights as you hit DLC content. Cruising solo through the "easy" parts of the game can give a false sense of power, and then you hit something like Trial of the Nagas in FFF or basically any big fight in FS and the seemingly strong solo build is... humbled. ----- SO WHAT CHANGES WITH BPM? ----- Among other things, the nerf component of Elric's BPM aims at preventing abuse of Blood Sacrifice, Brilliant, SoT, SoF, WoD, Unbending and BDD for a more balanced (less cheesy) game experience. So anything Priest is going to take a big hit, Tactician and Bloodmage are going to take a hit as well (Bloodmage/Priest = ouch). On the other hand, resource regen classes (and Chanters in particular) become more appealing. Here are the most notable points according to me: SC BLOODMAGE/WIZARD NO SUBCLASS: It was already so far up that it remains the absolute strongest class, notably because it can continue to cheesy-steal all kinds of spells for permanent use - so WoD/SoT/BDD nerf don't really matter with a bit of adjustment. It's easier in a semi-solo run (i.e. where you can temporarily hire companions in the tavern to steal their spells) but it is very viable in a full solo run too. Just requires more metagaming. You can have unlimited summons that are remarkably good at level 7 (Minor Grimoire Imprint on Ancient Druid for Summon Sporeling) in particular thanks to BPM's Summon revamp. You can still have unlimited buffs, Shadowflame, Freezing Pillar, Crushing Doom etc. and still some nice Priest and Druid stuff up to Tier 7 spells. You can still use the Temporal Cocoon trick to become untargetable, just not forever. Minor point, BPM also buffs Tier 9 Llengrath's Reflection which becomes very very useful in certain fights thanks to targeted spells reflection and AoE spell resistance (the Spell Resistance passive is also buffed). Finally a great defensive tool for mage fencing. The truly interesting thing is that No Subclass becomes much more competitive than before at high level, because of the Blood Sacrifice nerf and the rework of Empowerment passives. It might be even on equal footing with Bloodmage - unless you truly want to replenish often Tier 8 and 9 spells (which is now more risky to do). SC ASSASSIN/ROGUE: Is comparatively better than before (again, excluding SoF) because invisibility abilities are now less expensive, Great Soul gives +1 Guile and Wall of Flashing Steel can give partial resource regen. SC MONK: Stays basically as strong as in Vanilla. SC TROUBADOUR: I think it becomes comparatively a lot more appealing for Soloing because of: The change to Great Soul (giving a -15% phrase duration buff) while Brisk Recitation without Great Soul is put at 4s. The buffs to Empowerment passives (empower = staple of any chanter) making them really good investments. Also, the buffing of summons including the Dragon and to a lower extent the rework of Boil their Flesh give more arguments to go SC. STRONG SOLO MULTICLASSES: In general, multiclasses involving resource regen - Chanter, Monk or Cipher - become comparatively even more appealing than in Vanilla. Chanter gets a really good bump because certain "cheap" summons become really great (upgraded Wurms, Drake). Troubadour takes a little hit with Brisk Recitation at 4s now vs. 3s, but I think it's still the best Solo pick in most cases (if only for added flexibility). Multi with Bloodmage/No Subclass Wizard remains very good especially if you want to build around using mostly infinite Tier 1-3 spells and cheesy Minor Grimoire Imprint. As said before, Tactician (if relying on Unbending) and Priest builds take a hit; especially Priest. ---- That's all for now! Looking forward to hearing thoughts and reactions. I hope I won't get insulted too much.

Hi Folks, A SC Wizard using the permanent spell steal trick from Major Grimoire Imprint can permasteal Finishing Blow from a Priest of Skaen, and permanently have Champion's Boon, Minor Avatar, Citzal Martial Power and Zandethu Draconic Fury available as well. Now cast all those spells with Citzal Enchanted Armory, and you can indefinitely spam Finishing Blow with Tenacious, a ton of bonus Accuracy, bonus melee damage, a huge damage lash, and a Mythic 2-hander in each hand and a zero recovery Mythic armor (with BPM). Fun and visually beautiful! Edèr: You know Aloth, I think you're a talented caster and all, but you are really s**tty at close-quarter combat. Aloth: Hold my beer, blondie.

IT IS ALIVE!!!! AND TEMPORAL COCOON CAN BE CHEESED TO IMMORTALITY!!! YESSSS. BTW I think you should trademark this new technique, like "Cocooning" or something. That would be cute. "Now, just nicely cocoon your Wizard to infinity, before you go murder everyone in the game with impunity".

Yes, I think the only enemy in the game that won't outright die if given enough time under Gouging Strike is Auranic if you haven't taken her Sigils out before (because of her death shield before she can trigger Last Trick, which she can only do if you're in her visual range - then die). As I discovered on a solo run when I was just patiently waiting for her to die under GG, she didn't, I went up there to check it out, she cast last trick and died >>>> all the sigils went ballistic on my character no matter where I possibly was in the cave and I died in seconds.

I see your point Elric, but it can already be. For example, I just tested a Sage with Instruments of Pain and Citzal's Spirit Lance. You can poke ennemies from as far as 10.5 range. Autoattack piercing damage will generate wounds... but not the blast effect (!). Because the blast is tagged as ranged (e.g. it benefits from Harley pet) but the main piercing attack isn't. So in this case you could think that Shattered Pillar would be pretty strong (dealing damage from afar while generating loads of wounds from it), but anyone else will be equal or better: Helwalker will ultimately bring +10MIG and spam Stunning Surge right from the start, building wounds via Enduring Dance and Mortification of the Soul if needed (as anyone else). Nalpazca will build wounds faster with Enduring Dance + Drugs and also just spam Stunning Surge. FF can alternate between FF ability and Stunning Surge on tough cookies. Shattered Pillar is basically like a No Subclass, but that could get wounds via autoattacks... except Stunning Surge will just be strictly better to use anyway and autoattack wound regen won't take advantage of the blast damage or of Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming procs, so it won't be very synergistic. That's my point: apart from the Offensive Parry build Boeroer mentioned which sounds very synergistic and fun, I struggle to not see Shattered Pillar as strictly subpar. That's why I threw the idea of expanding wound regen to Ranged. Maybe then putting down the wound cap lower than 10 or something like that to not make it too strong... Anyway, this is just my opinion, as I said I haven't really played with it precisely for that reason.

So that’s not about sigils since there is no sigil up to this point. Which bow are you using? Is the problem the same when you swap weapons around across chars? EDIT: there are issues with certain weapons with regards to keyword immunity and also apparently when there is no AR difference between damage types: But that doesn't seem to be what you're struggling with, right?

Yeah, inversions make negative modifiers much more impactful as @thelee brilliantly explained. Which is good when you're using e.g. Recovery reduction buffs and bad when negatively adjusting your damage or healing etc. This is also why the BPM version of Hand of Berath can be very powerful IMO: Hand of Berath : - minus 5PL -> minus 10PL - Now auto-hit. - <Version 1.5.2> Duration 30s -> 45s Go dig your offensive or healing abilities out of a -10PL pit.

That is crazy. Really sucks! Is it true for all weapons, and martial abilities vs autoattacks? What about spells? Do you get the right PEN, ACC etc. just the wrong DMG type? Maybe you could try respeccing your characters and see what happens. It has been known to fix weird bugs before (not always).

Thanks, that's interesting. If Offensive Parry works then I can see how this would be a nice setup with Soulblade. Even nicer if you use e.g. Nomad's Brigandine Tactical Withdraw to trigger enemy disengagement attacks automisses that will trigger Offensive Parry. You just generate Wounds and Focus by standing there and making small moves. That said, I hear your other points but outside of this particular build, I fail to see how this can be competitive vs a Nalpazca, Helwalker or FF in other setups. I probably need to stop whining, play one and see for myself. I mean after all it is the only class in any game that gets smarter by punching people in the face. I haven't tested but I don't think so: Whilting Wind is ranged, from a ranged weapon. Shattered Pillar only gets wounds from Melee attacks (so Offensive Parry works).

I haven't played with it because the threshold seems way too high to be competitive with other subclasses, on top of the autoattack melee limitation (!!!). I think lowering it would make sense and/or allowing ranged attacks to work as well (maybe at higher threshold then)? Or they could get a buffed Heartbeat Drumming/Swift Flurry? Ranged could allow cool combos with Ranger for example, on top of the obvious Rogue and Cipher. More repeat Crits would make the melee autoattack limitation less lame... As it is it looks like a sad class: incentivized to use autoattacks (not very interesting) and then doesn't get great resource regen and damage output because... autoattack. This got me thinking: I assume Shattered Pillar generates wounds from Riposte and Disengagement attacks? maybe there is something to do there?

Hey, just in case - you can also just press the W key which by default switches weapon sets. Much faster than clicking IMO. I'm guessing you know, but since we all keep discovering things that are obvious to others even now, especially myself....