Not So Clever Hound

That's fair but on the other hand, with an Assassin the toon could be called Nannassassin and be super cute. OK sorry, I will see myself out. BTW Cobra Strike being ranged, my point about Ring the Bell probably won't work... and Pierce the Bell isn't as good.

You should also aim for the Spider Silk Robe and its +2 Poison PL, I think it helps Nannasin's (?). Attacking with Poison attacks is annoying with several enemies but the ones that can be hit will be completely destroyed. A very strong back up weapon could be Monastic Unarmed Training. With the high base damage and the PEN, it's bonkers on a melee Rogue. All your DoTs are great, I would also recommend Ring the Bell which is very very strong and more frontloaded than Toxic Strike (useful for enemies with big health pool - and not immune to Poison ). In practice, all those DoTs will often be overkill, especially if you target squishies primarily. You are going to completely destroy them in a couple full attacks anyway. But the initial application of the DoT will still help. Actually you could also mix and match with Devastating Blow.

I may be wrong but I think that if your pet dies where the enemy sits, combat won't end even if you smoke veil, until you revive your pet and/or finish the enemy... only SC Ranger has a PL9 ability called Shadowed Hunter that cloaks both the Ranger and the pet. In this case you might be much better off with a Ghost Heart than a Stalker.

In French this is borderline indecent now I can't erase it from my mind! It's like calling a Bettina a Buttina. The glitch you experience sucks - my only advice would be to steal every spell in the Deadifre to become a powergod that just runs solo and makes every enemy pay dearly for this glitch. EDIT: @Elric Galad any thoughts on Fessina ?

Again, great job. I've done many attempts too with an Assassin with max Arcana, max Accuracy and loaded with Gaze of the Adragan scrolls and top tier Fire DMG scrolls with Fire-PL boost items etc. With the goal to Gouging Strike Phase One and hard CC/Nuke Phase 2, 3, 4 Ooze by Ooze. In that set up I've also found that phase 2 comes relatively close but crumbles between the high defenses, wandering of the oozes, limited resources (even with 6 pocket slots).

Well done! I salute your persistence. That must have taken some nerve and patience. I love this build, this is what inspired me to do a Cipher/Assassin variant specifically to tackle HoW .

Well if you're masochistic you can hire a FF to enfeeble you before getting confused. But that is a bit unsettling and still won't get you permaconfused.

Now I wish there was actually an ability called Blinding Smile

You start a fight with a grimoire that has GI or Greater GI in it. You shouldn't have learned it and should be able to switch to a grimoire that doesn't have it. You start a fight and cast it on any enemy caster and you will steal a random spell, then switch to the other grimoire to make it permanent if you like what you stole. On a hired toon, you just get confused (I use Sap from a hireling Assassin) then cast imprint on your hirelings using the same method as described above. It can be a bit time consuming to get exactly what you want but it's super easy. And it also works apparently to steal unique spells from specific grimoires.

But.... where is Boeroer a.k.a. "I don't use consumables, I don't like that scrolls copy class abilities, in particular all those cool class-defining spells of the poor poor Druid"? So easily perverted... very cool find about the belt .

Are you actually Veil-Touched in combat? EDIT: Ah too bad.

Well Serious Burn still comes with -2 DEX which isn't a big deal but comes in the way of your speed/DPS. In the spirit of optimization, I'm still in the camp of Wrenched Knee for my particular build.

Yes it's nice but not so helpful on a build with sky-high Reflex like my SC BM because most fire damage you can take (or inflict) targets REF. With REF in the 250 range, nothing is really going to hit you. Doru has a shot of course, but my religion forbids me to kill Doru with anything other than Lover's Embrace and/or Gouging Strike. Agreed, but on a build that capitalizes on high Defenses, the -5 FORT of Acute Rash can be the difference between being hit sometimes by annoying Fortitude targeting attacks, and never being hit. In which case, I'd want to have Wrenched Knee up which isn't that inconvenient for me but granted, I play no-rest runs.

Well I can't take credit for coming up with the Rekvu's + Vaporous synergy but yeah it's very powerful especially with a SC wizard since it gives you 3 PL8 and 2 PL9 casts which can obliterate many high level fights. Since then I've found out that the best injury to have isn't Acute Rash but Wrenched Knee (virtually no downside) which you can get with certain traps e.g. the Spike Traps in the Poko Kohara ruin.

Love it! Someone clearly had a fun afternoon now you can walk up to Auranic "so you think you're THE Arcane Lunatic? Lady I am the Arcane SPONGE!"

++ Everything that's been said, plus if you're willing to reconsider a solo SC Bloodmage run, here's one build that worked really well for me to solo everything on PotD. Now that we've discovered that a SC BM can with a touch of cheese literally steal every Wizard/Priest/Druid spell in the game with infinite uses, this would get even more ridiculously powerful.

OK I haven't stolen Watery Double specifically but I stole Lashing Vine. The summon indeed scales with Character level up to lvl20 and its abilities scale appropriately as well. So Watery Double will in all logic give uses of 3 offensive Watershaper spells with decent PL. (To friendly fire Major GI I've found the easy way is to hire a high level Assassin who hits you with Sap to create the Confused state and steal spells from your own toons). I've just realized that you could steal Brilliant Departure, WoD... Infinite Concelhaut's Crushing Doom would be so hilarious to spam on the battlefield and have plenty of enemies just pummeled to death by a mob of flying giant hammers .

I'm trying to think about how to circumvent the PL0 bummer with spells stolen from non Wizard classes. For example if you steal Watery Double from Tekehu specced as Watershaper, I would expect that the Duplicate scales appropriately with your character level regardless, and that it would be able to use its spells (Ondra's Whip, Boiling Spray, and Ocean Burst) at its full PL? Sorry I'm asking questions and not testing for myself, I can't fire up the game at the moment. I'll try and test later.

Just a nice thought and thanks for @thelee who opened this thread as « hey guys is there any way someone can mod this out I don’t want to mess with my HUD » and 2 days later everybody is like « yay this is the new SoF but cheesier let’s go nuts! ». I feel like a plea wasn’t heard there

Well it would be awesome indeed if it wasn't competing with MPPB on the same PL which will do more damage overall to everyone and kill Near Death foes too. Apart from the insane DMG and PEN of MPPB, in my opinion it is always better to target REF vs. FORT. Enemies that have more REF than FORT also have less health so you will still annihilate them with MPPB even without Critting like a maniac. On high FORT/low REF enemies, you will do huge damage from invisibility with the Crit % from Assassinate and Overpen bonus.

Between Minor GI + multiclassing and Major GI on SC wizard, also being able to steal unique/grimoire spells, many new possibilities are opening for Uber cheese. I can’t wait to try it out.

I can't remember if this spell has friendly fire? In which case you could hire toons, train them to have specific spells and steal their spells? Can't test right now. If no friendly fire, maybe being Confused could still work to force it?

I was 100% sure you were going to reply and mention this toon @Raven Darkholme should like it especially because at high level Blood Ward synergizes so well with the axe modal IIRC, which seems to be Raven's favorite modal .

Infinite Relentless Storm! Infestation of Maggots is also nuts when paired with Combusting Wounds and all the DoT/pulsing/ticking spells that such a toon could fire. The synergy with Missile Salvo and Meteor Shower The potential combos are jaw-dropping. At some point I'd like to introduce this Magical Batman to Shadow Camembert the permanently invisible Assassin, they could have a little Raclette-party.

That's fair, to be honest I prefer that too. e.g. Arkemyr Dazzling Light to lure & group enemies out of combat > Shadowflame from stealth > come close and MPPB/Second Shadow Flame/Second MPPB with the Ghost Blades procs of Engoliero = ouch. It doesn't get any more Arcane Assassin-ish than that . Actually Pernicious Cloud can be a nice fast complement to this strategy too for the huge AoE, long Reflex debuff and high DoT but in my experience things die too fast for it to really matter. When you time right a Delayed Fireball while stacking +5 extra fire PL + scion of flame + crusted swordfish & Assassinate though, the fire damage can get bonkers as well.