Not So Clever Hound

Nice problem solving! Have you tried it with good effect against Doru? It’s great but at the same time if you have a Confused fighter or barb and skeletons… Grave Calling probably remains more effective no? And dual frostfalls you need to import a char right?

I agree, but there are many other fights where enemies get bumped from PL8 to PL9 with upscaling and I’ve had no trouble with those. Would that be specifically because librarians are monks and that the PL9 tier of monks is beyond OP? On the other hand, when they exploded me several times I didn’t notice them abusing PL9 abilities…

Exactly that’s what I’m struggling to understand as well. If I’m not mistaken, the standard enemies there should be at level 18 then upscaled at 22 (I’m lvl20 and they have 2 skulls). So the bump should have much less impact than when you encounter early on some low level boar upscaled to lvl 7 or 8… Or maybe that situation is very specific to my char and there’s just a fine line crossed there that’s specific to my build… curious to hear if anyone had this kind of experience.

Hi folks, Curious to hear what your thoughts and experience are with this. Upscaled PotD is noticeably more difficult than normal PotD - that's kind of the idea, right? In most of the game, it means that you have to be more careful about initial approach and positioning, maybe use a couple more abilities or consumables that you wouldn't have needed otherwise. Long story short, it requires to be a bit more hands-on, but it doesn't fundamentally change the balance. But then there is Forgotten Sanctum. I'm playing a Solo Troubadour/Forbidden Fist who's been cruising PotD Upscaled mostly running on AI frankly, having no trouble with upscaled Nemnok, all the big Fampyr/Lich/Deathguard encounters, the majority of SSS, couple megabosses... Then I entered the library in FS, got bum-rushed by half a dozen level 22 infested librarians, and died in 5s. I reloaded a couple times and tried a couple different non-cheese tactics to get basically the same outcome. Then out of curiosity I reloaded this fight without Upscaling and easily defeated the same enemies just running on AI. So my point is, you would think that upscaling has more impact at the beginning of the game when you're struggling to keep up with critical path enemies and where a 4 level gap is huge, but actually it seems to have a bigger impact for me at the end of the game, in the highest level area. Do you have a similar/different experience with this?

Good point about the BPM nerf to WoD. That said, you will be less reliant on WoD to keep you alive if playing with a party. You can still get the massive burst of speed at the beginning of the fight to toss as many AoEs as possible to swing the encounter in your favor. Also anyway, WoD will be available much later in a party (lvl 19). I would focus more on foe-only AoEs (mostly on the druid side) to cast on the front line, to avoid murdering my melee chars. I would toss powerful friend and foe spells like Freezing pillars, Chill Fog etc more towards the back line. If you rely less or not on WoD, I would maybe choose Shifter instead of Lifegiver. Start fight/Buff/Shift to cat form/Activate Flurry/Shift back to kith form out and start casting like a maching gun. Then if you want to melee a bit, shift to Boar and its insane DoT.

Blood Mage / Lifegiver is super strong IMO. Here's a detailed solo build for inspiration (I'd change a couple things for a party build but it would be the same fundamentals).

... Every time I show up to turn in a quest, the building is closed! Seriously I've seen this on so many playthroughs. I can't remember a time when I arrived in Queen's Berth and they were just readily opened for business. No matter the Republics are going to crap, they must be on a 25h work week + RTT. On the flip side, as long as you're not advancing too much in their quest line, you have a (tedious) infinite XP loop with the door of Lueva's office being lockpickable infinitely. But at +60XP a pop, arm yourself with patience...

Well, as long as you did not: abduct me, sedate me, invade my subconscious and manipulate my thoughts to arrive to this very moment... I'm cool with you showing off your ninja muscles. It's only fair.

For once in my life, I ninja'd Boeroer. YES!

I'd say Tactician/Druid is potentially a better fit because it will have more flex between triggering Confused and Brilliant to replenish his spells. Otherwise as Zerkers you won't go far with 2 beetle shells and it will be a pain to get rid of confuse / apply brilliant / get spells back / reapply frenzy (confused)... no? Tactician can get an easier setup to alternate between Brilliant Tactician and Tactical Dilemma.

Nice find. In case you hadn't seen it at the time, there's been some nice discussion about confused plus emergency friendly spells and megaboss application in the thread below. Mostly about Withdraw but Beetle shell is probably better overall, maybe not for HoW though.

Yeah if at this point you find it too easy, maybe increase to hard+upscaled or PotD no Upscaling (see below). Note that the DLCs have a difficulty spike, especially FS and SSS, so you should see a noticeable difference anyway. Have you done the Splintered Reef Sea Lashed Crypt encounter? I find it a good benchmark. If you find the game too easy, set it to upscaled PotD and go do this encounter . Basically if at the point where you are you can do the Sea Lashed Crypt encounter and find it quite challenging, you're probably at the right difficulty for DLC content. Upscaled has an incidence on enemy level but the most meaningful difficulty change is PotD IMO, which changes number/type of enemy and gives them a bump to key stats. Maybe you could also try a couple encounters on PotD no Upscale and see. That's how I did my first full playthrough which was Solo.

So after a bit more testing, it appears that this oddity might be about multi-projectile chanter abilities (her tears, her revenge...) refunding an Empower point with each projectile launched. It doesn't have to land on an enemy to count, it's really about the fact that Sasha's refund seems to treat each projectile/bolt as a duplicate for the purpose of refunding Empower points. It works very consistently and is very repeatable, however: you should avoid spending too many Empower points between combats before empowering a Chanter invocation to replenish the pool and you should refund your pool before area transitions This can be really nice for several builds. e.g. a Loremaster like Fessina empowering something nasty to start combat or during combat and refunding in the next one. An evoker/chanter with all the +PL evocation/fire and ring of focused flames etc. empowering a delayed fireball, starting combat, then empowering her revenge to refund in the same combat (since empower will be available again by the time the fireball explodes). Or an Assassin/Beckoner sneaking up the enemy, empowering Pernicious Cloud to get really nice damage and duration of the dmg and distracted debuff on all enemies, immediately going smoke veil, retreat and cast x6 Ancient Weapons on the enemy, knowing that it's like giving your summons a +10 ACC, +1 PEN, and +5 all Defenses because enemies are distracted....

Yes it's one of those things.... and yet another reason why grimoire of vaporous wizardry is great If you like this kind of stuff, did you know that Wall of Flame cast out of combat doesn't make neutral NPCs go hostile? That is, until one dies from the effect. You can kill a blue circle tough cookie without triggering hostility.

@Boeroer that is enough, I have now officially reported you to the International League for the Humane Preservation of Rotghast, Skeletons and other Endangered Vessels.

Shameless autopromotion if you'd like to play SC Wizard: This was a ton of fun too, shapeshifting Sorcerer:

Thanks! I do have Adratic Glow indeed, good call. The only other thing I can think of, maybe I should have led with that : It is after disposing of Auranic and getting hit a crap ton with Arcane Cleanse Sigil, that I noticed that Sashas's refund wasn't working properly so I removed my weapon and equipped it again. This is after this step that I noticed that Empowering an Invocation brought me from 2 to 4 points anyway - so that's when I tried to replicate with non-Invocation stuff and found it kept refunding everything back to max Empower. So maybe that's the thing - weird Arcane Cleanse interaction? I should try with an earlier save pre-Auranic and report. Maybe later, I'm on belated Thanksgiving lunch prep duty! Those French-style mac n' cheese are not gonna bake themselves.

Hi fellows, See the video below. I am wielding Sasha's Scimitar. I start an encounter and Empower an ability that is not an Invocation (in this case Forbidden Fist). I lose one Empower point, which is normal. I start another encounter and Empower an Invocation (in this case, Her Tears). I get back 2 Empower points, which isn't normal. I tested it several times. I can basically Empower everything including non-Invocation abilities for free... Have you seen this before? Is this something widely known that I somehow missed, or a quirk in my game? I am using CP, no BPM.

To show another example from a previous build: Disciplined Strikes and other Hit-To-Crit modifiers can get you to serious conversion rates, to complement your already high ACC. This is key to maximize because a lot of our crazy DMG bonuses are On-Crit. With Disciplined Strikes, Dirty Fighting, Uncanny Luck and Prosperity’s Fortune, you can get to almost 50% Hit-to-Crit conversion, and up to 61% with a potion of Perfect Aim on top. [1-(1-0.25)*(1-0.25)*(1-0.15)*(1-0.1)*(1-0.1) = 61%]

Ah you are right. Need to try a few times to get the scripted event. However, you lose Rikuhu's Blessing (+2 RES) so you have to choose one or the other. They seem to be mutually exclusive blessings.

Weird, I tested this and it doesn't work with me. I'm using CP but not BPM and @Noqn no forced rest mod.

Sorry if this is a stupid question as I never tried it but would Mantle of the Seven Bolts be a good alternative here?

Smart man I also like that you got a mod to increase enemy HP. So basically with stronger abilities and more resilient enemies, you can just beat the crap out of them for longer. Nice touch!

Very interesting and creative, thanks! Untargetability is great. Quite a bit of work to pull off but vastly superior to infinite healing or cannot die effect. One question: I might have missed something but what do Hylea's Talons bring to the build?

Yeah, between its innate abilities and the spells in the Brawler's Grimoire, it can come up with painful combos (no wonder they're the same go-to combos for many Battlemage builds out there!) while being quite durable, plus its minions can be a pain. Well after all, it's called an "Ancient Lich Battlemage" not a "Juvenile Lesser Wizard Slayer Xaurip" so I suppose it should offer a reasonable challenge! edit: one of few fights where Arcane Dampener can actually be useful if you can land vs. its high Will.