Not So Clever Hound

If you like cheese and lashes (what a weird combination ) I reached a pretty absurd apex in this Assassin thread.

This does not really warrant a full Build Guide but I still wanted to share some of my findings with the community, in case you had experience or thoughts about this class. I tried a Solo Crusader playthrough out of curiosity to answer for myself the following question: does Fighter/Paladin really suck as much as I like to think? Indeed, this is a combination that can look appealing to new players because it seems safe and straight-forward, but that doesn't seem to get any love from Deadfire experts and power-gamers mostly for the same reason: it's arguably great at surviving, but not so much at doing anything else. While there seems to be some relative degree of consensus on this, I'm not sure many players have actually tried it (I must say I just assumed it sucked before I tried it). Some time ago, a comment from @Boeroer in relative "defense" of this class made me consider that maybe indeed, it could have more potential than I'd think. So after some planning, I went on with a Bleakwalker/Devoted with WotEp. Very classic. After having played from lvl 4 to lvl 20 and dabbled into high level content, my short answer is: it doesn't suck as much as you'd think and it can hold its ground in many situations where classes that tend to get more love would struggle. It can also be actually quite fun to play (not always). But as soon as you reach serious foes on Upscaled PotD, you have to supplement your toon with Arcana to survive AND deal damage. There is just too much incoming damage and enemies have too much health for its core abilities to carry you through the day. If Sacred Immolation wasn't so self-punishing and/or maybe a bit more powerful than it is, this class could actually have a lot of potential. With that said I don't think anymore that it's a bottom-tier class. Defensively: of course it's quite good, and I went further ahead with Hylea's Bounty, Casità Samelia's Legacy + max intimidate, a general focus on defensive accessories and the strongest active/passive defensive abilities plus WotEP as a weapon (Offensive Parry transforms melee defense into offense). I will also rip the bandage here: I went with Conquerer Stance instead of Mob Stance, for the extra DEF and ACC and it actually works pretty well. Net, you can consistently get your defenses in the ~160-180 range and have an extra passive +20 against afflictions. Decent, for a defensive build (not stellar). Healing: is great too obviously, thanks to the Fighter's Rapid Recovery, occasional Unbending, and the Paladin's Exalted Endurance and Lay on Hands. With max MIG, the Dawnstar's Blessing, Practiced Healer and Footprints of Ahu Taka, you're very hard to kill. On the other hand... Sacred Immolation does so much self damage that it's hard to sustain in fights where enemies can actually hurt you. Sure you can use Voidward, but then you're not using another good ring. The fact that Sacred Immolation does MORE damage to self THAN to enemies will remain a mystery to me. If only things were reversed... it would be so much nicer to do 48+ Raw DMG per 3 sec to enemies and have to manage 30-45 Burn damage per 3 sec to self! Offensively: I went with Bleakwalker/Devoted + WotEp because I thought there was a nice synergy between Eternal Devotion applying Sicken, and Clear Out targeting FORT while being multiplied by WotEP AoE. It actually works well indeed as a DMG + CC tool... but enemies on Upscaled PotD have too much health for it to be a bread winner on its own. Offensive Parry with high DEF actually complements the damage very well and keeps your melee offense relevant until you get Sacred Immolation, or with Burn immunes. At high level, Sacred Immolation can melt a surprising amount of foes if you remember to apply Lay on Hands to not die. With 10 Zeal, you can apply 2 Lay on Hands and 2 Sacred Immolations per fight, which will destroy a lot of foes. You can then finish the stragglers with a couple of Clear Outs and the occasional Run Through, which I had forgotten was so strong as a single target-obliterating weapon ability. With a Mythic-grade WotEP, the base damage + raw DoT is close to a death sentence. Conclusion: As I mentioned earlier, all that stuff works well at crushing high level bounties, mopping the floor with all the witches, oozes, bats, etc. of Outcast's Respite in a single fight, the Fampyr Crypt too - and it's actually quite fun until you have to finish stragglers with autoattacks that take forever. However, as soon as you start hitting the real mean customers, those tools fall apart. In the Sea Lash Crypt, DLCs etc. you need Arcana to prevail. It's not a shame by any mean and the fact that you can get this far means to me that the class isn't bottom-tier, but of course it's also not top-tier. It's (drumroll) middle-tier. So all in all, my personal takeaway is that the next time someone asks about Crusader, I won't be so prompt to dismiss it - in a party or in a lower difficulty Solo playthrough, I think it's actually a pretty nice class. Anyway, let me know if you have any comments/questions (damn, I feel like at work now that I wrote this sentence thanks for reading my memo ). PS: My fun finding of this playthrough was that Run Through + Slippers of the Assassin can turn you into a mini Assassin! Begin fight, buff, go to a squishy, apply Run Through, it's dead, trigger Shadow Form, flee, reset, do it again.

I don't think that anyone here made the argument that balance doesn't matter because it's a single player game, but I really appreciate your detailed point about meaningful choices. This is especially important for a game like Deadfire in which so much of the replay value is about mixing all those amazing classes/abilities/items, finding synergies etc. This is the very substance of the game. Considering the complexity of the different classes and game mechanics, I think the designers have done an amazing job overall through several rounds of extensive patching. Kudos to them (again). But it's also true that certain classes/subclasses drew the short straw, and every time a certain class/subclass is just strictly worse than others, either because of a deliberate choice or because of an oversight, we lose some of that rich potential that the game has to offer. Then I guess that's where the amazing community-led patches/mods come in, if you're so inclined . Now I think it was @Elric Galad who mentioned in another thread that Deadfire is a party-based RPG first and foremost and as such, its job is to propose a balanced Party-based experience (which it does). But the whole idea of balance changes completely if you start thinking in terms of Solo vs. Party viability. At the same time the game challenges or "taunts" players into Solo gameplay (Solo challenge, obviously The Ultimate). Anyway, to me these are the conversations that keep making the game so interesting to play and think about on top of, well, actually playing it. (Which is what I'm going to do now because Belranga is not going to kill itself ).

@Boeroer if I recall correctly you can also (ab)use the Disengagement attack mechanic with e.g. Nomad Brigandine to trigger Disengagement Attacks that will auto-miss and trigger Offensive Parry, Riposte etc. Right?

You started your argument about the idea of balance in general, I just followed that tangent. Indeed, I don't disagree with the fact that it's perfectly ok if item/skill ABC is strictly better than item/skill XYZ. To stay on the obvious example of Bloodmage, my point is that if Bloodmage is overwhelmingly better than any other Wizard subclasses in the overwhelming majority of situations you can think of, it means that the other subclasses will hardly ever be played, although devs put some efforts in building them. Then it objectively isn't very balanced for the Wizard parent class overall. But again, whether one is happy with that result or not is subjective.

I disagree with the first part of your statement here. I think that balance on the contrary is about avoiding certain class/skill/item combos to be objectively so much more powerful than anything else that people are compelled to always select them instead of other options. Now the other part of this question is whether a fundamental imbalance is fun or not and whether you want to keep it that way, which is indeed very much subjective. Bloodmage vs. other Wizards isn't balanced objectively. But I personally love this class and I'm happy the way it is. Troubadour isn't balanced vs. other Chanters but it is beloved the way it is. In BG Sorcerer or Berserker weren't balanced. But I loved those classes and the way they were implemented with their many flaws. I definitely agree though that in Deadfire Summons not getting scaling weapons is probably more a bug/oversight than anything else.

Ah... a Planetar with Improved Haste, Globe of Blades and Improved Invisibility. Improved Haste gave it something like 8 attacks per round (with the 25% vorpal chance per hit) and doubled the hit rate of Globe of Blades as well. Unleash that invisible meat grinder from Hel on a bunch of unsuspecting Illithids. Good times those were . Just one of many ways for a Mage/Sorcerer to reach absolute godhood in the BG saga .

Be advised that it's not how the build plays at higher levels and with the right equipment when you can one or two-shot many enemies, or even whole groups at once with Thunderous Report. Anyway if you'd like something not stealthy and more in-your-face for close combat (melee?) that is viable for Solo Upscaled PotD: on top of what Reent mentioned, virtually any combination of BloodMage and Martial Class works. It doesn't get more in-your-face than a fully buffed Battlemage or Sage using Spirit Lance + Clear Out / Stunning Surge on a group of enemies.

My personal opinion is that unless you are planning a very specific strategy to handle certain encounters (not even talking megabosses), maybe with consumables, permabrilliant etc, you are going to run out of resources too quickly in a solo playthrough with such a build. For sure on PotD and potentially on lower difficulties as well. But maybe there's a magic synergy that I am not seeing in which case I'd love to know about it.

Glad you like this build! I had so much fun with it One additional thing is that WotEP + Clear Out creates a bit of an explosion that sends enemies quite far and which could potentially be fun to use after setting them up with Arterial Strike from ranged AoE of Mortars. So they take tons of damage to come to you after the ranged AoE, you use Smoke Veil and close in, Clear Out with WotEP, they're all pushed far, then they take tons of damage when they're trying to come back to you at sluggish speed. I haven't tested though but I think it has potential!

I've done that, it works but tedious as hell with Deep Pockets and max Arcana you can have over 10 minutes of withdraw per fight. If you can stack permanent DoTs and sometimes land additional ones (Toxic Strike, Disintegration...) in between Withdraw casts you can become the most annoying Rogue on the face of Eora. But if you want to exploit Arcana, you're better off using high end damage + cc scrolls.

I totally agree that Arcane Knight is one of the safest/easiest pick for a first time around soloing. It is more frontloaded and you can consistently outpace enemy ACC with your different defenses if you build appropriately. The Thundercat is more explosive and fun IMO and still pretty good defensively because it has "active" defenses (i.e. offense ) but it is definitely more exposed. I haven't played Arcane Knight in a while but I was thinking about giving it another go in some time with the simple goal of achieving the highest possible mix of defenses. If I end up doing it and if I get any interesting new news vs. older builds I'll write it up.

Nice! I don't think I even bothered with the digsite on this playthrough to be honest but indeed the Moon's Well is amazing throughout. The build has a consistent but steep power curve because every level/PL adds more healing/offense/defense that you can then add to your high speed casting routines. As you can imagine, Relentless Storm is a huge spike in power, followed by Freezing Pillar and of course WoD which brings you on a whole different level. The relative weakness of this build is enemy casters (Arcane Dampener and sometimes Form of Helpless Beast ). But you have so many tools to shut down casters and you can spam them super fast plus you have high defenses so it's not that bad actually. I occasionally love Venom Bloom for the Frighten effect for example, even if this particularly targets Will which Casters typically have a lot of. The good duration and pulsing helps. And of course Relentless Storm is the uber caster disabler. Chill Fog is helpful to reduce enemy range and group them in your Relentless Storm AoE. Just as an example, I did the upper and main levels of Drowned Barrows relatively recklessly and without having to reload once. I know it's not a crazy feat by any means but usually with a caster Character that is not an Arcane Knight, at least one fight will go south for me there because of one caster managing to breach my defenses on a good roll. Here it didn't matter, I completely destroyed every encounter. Same for the Fampyr Crypt, Concelhaut, etc. I wish you good fun and good fortune with the build .

As an alternative if you're not into Chanter summoning gameplay, I would say also potentially an Arcane Knight (Bleak Walker / Blood Mage) Sword and Medium Shield. With the right abilities, equipment and strategies you can be very tanky very early and still have decent offensive potential to win fights. But on upscaled, I'd find lvl 8-9 to be quite low for most encounters, resources will be an issue (health/spells).

Thanks @dgray62 ! The melee part of this build is 90% flavor honestly but it still has its uses, mostly to avoid using Blood Sacrifice at the end of certain fights. For example when you have a few remaining tough enemies like Steelclads, you can use Expose Vulnerabilities or Nature's Mark and go Melee for a fun and economical way to dispose of them. Key fight that comes to mind is Katrenn for instance, because it's also difficult to use overwhelming AoE in this fight without killing half of Neketaka. It's also just nice to know that you can go melee if you want, even though most fights can be wrapped up with 3 Freezing Pillars and a couple other spells. Now is it worth spending 3 ability points (Two Weapon Style + 2 x Wildstrike) on melee in this case is another matter. But flavor is important to me . I was really planning to use Zandethu's Draconic Fury more based on a suggestion from @Boeroer but it's annoying to set up since you can't switch grimoires while shifted. You have to do your setup in Kith form, cast Zandethu, switch back to Vaporous, cast WoD, spiritshift, when you're good to go you will be doing tremendous single target damage with the 3 lashes. But by this time usually everything is already dead anyway!

THE THUNDERCAT 2.0 Class: Lifegiver / Blood Mage Concept: Fast, sturdy and fun Caster/Melee hybrid that relies upon strong synergies between classes to keep spiritshift, buffs and healing up forever, unleashing devastating combos of CC/Damage spells before optionally finishing up foes with claws. Optimized for a No-Rest run. Game Version: RTwP. Works with latest updates and DLCs as of v5.0.00040. I recommend the Full Community Patch and the No Forced Rests mod (otherwise just metagame around them, it’s fully viable but just a bit annoying). Upscaled PotD Solo Viable: Yes. Companion: Nope (meant to play solo by definition, no companion can use this template). As always, this is going to be a somewhat long post so please bear with me. I’ll explain briefly why I think this toon is interesting and illustrate how it comes together with a short video, then go over the key stats, equipment and abilities. -----INTRO------ The Thundercat is a beloved PoE1 Druid build by @L4wlight (I definitely won’t take credit for the original idea!). The idea: a very fast-paced and explosive Druid that loves lightning, using the Cat form for extra speed, being able to dish out lots of damage via spells and melee, inflict a lot of debuffs/CC and even healing and moderate buffing. My goal was to adapt the core idea to Deadfire minus the Britney vibe and to make it viable for Solo PotD. Multiclassing with a Blood Mage became quite obvious because of certain synergies: Lifegiver in Cat form has amazing action speed, stellar healing over time and some really cool offensive spells, but it can’t keep those up forever, its defenses aren’t great and it runs out of resources fast. Blood Mage uses healing as a resource to replenish spells at will, it can prolong beneficial effects forever with Wall of Draining (including Cat form, Flurry, Healing over Time…) and it has some of the strongest buffing, defensive and offensive spells in the game. Yay, the sweet smell of synergy! So far I totally realize that I’m not saying anything fundamentally new, so I’ll go in a bit more detail on each of the cornerstones of the build to explain why this toon has a special place in my little . Speed: This is a key enabler of this build’s playstyle. Action Speed has linear returns (thanks @thelee and others for the patient demonstrations) but with enough investment and the right build, I find that it can also somewhat alter your action economy and enable new combos, which is what Thundercat 2.0 is all about. It will all become clearer in a few paragraphs but at this point I’ll just mention that at the top of his game, this build reduces total action cycle time (Action + Recovery) by -55%. So a spell that would take 7.5s with a neutral-speed toon (4.5s + 3s) takes 3.4s (2s + 1.4s). Claws attacks have a total cycle time of 1.3s (0.2 + 1.1s)... How do we reach this speed? Cat Form has zero armor recovery, Cat Flurry is a huge speed buff, Captain Banquet stacks if you save/reload, we have lots of DEX, Fleet Feet, plus rapid casting and 2 weapons-style. Healing: Another key enabler for survivability and fuel for Blood Sacrifice. In Cat Form, we have lots of PL boost to Rejuvenation and we can stack outstanding HoT: Moonwell, Nature’s Balm, The Moon’s Light, the occasional Garden of Life… Not all of those HoTs get prolonged by Wall of Draining but Nature’s Balm and The Moon’s Light do (for Moonwell, only the +All Def bonus is prolonged). You also get some bonus from Dawnstar’s Blessing, Practiced Healer, Footprints of Ahu Taka, a bit of MIG). Net net, you can stack a consistent healing of ~60 health/3 sec, and easily spike over 100 health/3sec. Defense: The Thundercat 2.0 is no Arcane Knight, but he can still hold his ground. We stack bonuses with passives, accessories and buffs, in particular there is something nice with Captain Furrante’s breastplate “First to the Fight” effect not being removed by Spiritshift and extendable via WoD. (Doesn’t work with weapon effects like Sheltering Light and Drawing Parry). We can get REF and WIL over 200, FOR and DEF over 170 (non-veil piercing attacks). We have immunities or resistance to most problematic hard CC effects. Our AR is routinely at 17. We’re immune to Interrupt. Nothing stellar overall and we will get hit by high level foes, but we can take it, especially because we have other layers of active protection… Crowd Control/Debuff I think that the Thundercat 2.0 may be one of the best debuffers in the game. We can drastically reduce every single enemy offensive and defensive stat. Every stat. And easily inflict soft and hard CC. We have Afflictions across all stats, several Tier 3+ as well as Tier 1 & 2 with decent duration that are mostly attached to damaging spells in large pulsing AoE. And we can chain-cast those nasty effects very fast, potentially reducing literally everything on one sorry group of enemies. This enables to play very strategically on enemies weaknesses, or just to go bonkers throwing spells around that are randomly going to synergize with one another. Damage This is where I got really impressed. We have literally tons of casts of pulsing/ticking and DoT spells and we have 2 awesome force multipliers: Combusting Wounds and Infestation of Maggots. We also have a decent accuracy with most spells being around ~120 ACC and all those debuffs attached to help them land better. We also have a lot of INT so hazard areas and DoTs will last longer. If you combine all this with super-fast spell casting, you can very quickly get a snowballing, layering effect that overwhelms the enemy, creating an exponential stream of DMG that will leave all but the sturdiest of opponents standing. And when you’ve thinned the herd and supercharged your spiritshift duration, you can just go nuts in melee with one-second Greater Wildstrike Shock auto-attacks. Because you can’t swap grimoires when spiritshifted, unfortunately it is hard to use Zandethu’s Draconic Fury but hey, we can’t have everything all the time! Bringing everything together: Here is a small video that I recorded of the Sea-Lashed Crypt entrance fight where I am using all the mechanics described above. I know it is not a very hard fight by any means, the goal is just to show the different mechanics of the build easily, with a decent variety of enemies, some tanky enough to be able to show the snowballing damage effect. -----SPECS------ Race: Wood Elf (DEX Affliction resistance and +PER) Background: The White that Wends – Explorer FINAL STATS WITH ALL PERMABUFFS AND NO-REST BUFFS AS OF 5.0 (without combat buffs): MIG 13 (8 Base +2 Berath +1 Gift from Machine +2 Alchemic Brawn) CON 17 (8 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Brawn +2 Konstanten Boon +3 Girdle of Eoten CON) DEX 24 (15 Base +1 Elf +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +2 Amira’s Blessing +2 Footprints Ahu Taka) PER 28 (18 Base +1 Elf +1 White that Wends +2 Berath +1 Konstanten Boon +1 Effigy: Sagani +2 Alchemic Guile +1 Savage Cunning +1 Cauldron Brew) INT 25 (18 Base +2 Berath +1 Konstanten Boon +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Charm of Bones) RES 18 (8 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Nature’s Resolve +2 Rikuhu’s Blessing +2 Eviee Pet) ADDITIONAL PERMABUFFS: Food: Captain’s Banquet Adratic Glow All Trainings Dawnstar Blessing Luminous Adra Potion Nature’s Resolve (Accuracy) Savage Cunning (Survival) Galawain’s Gift Magran’s Blessing Infamous Captain, Bonus Skills, Champion Stats, Port Maje vendor, Fully discovered Map, Bonus Money… invested all 105 Berath’s Blessing Points SKILLS: History at 20, Mechanics at 13, rest in Athletics and Survival. Diplomacy early on for quests. ----- ABILITIES ------ LIFEGIVER SPELLS Nature’s Vigor, Nature’s Mark, The Moon’s Light, Insect Swarm, Nature’s Balm, Infestation of Maggots, Moonwell, Wicked Briars, Cleansing Wind, Relentless Storm, Garden of Life, Venombloom, Nature’s Bounty. BLOOD MAGE SPELLS (optimized for Using Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardy) Learned: Chill Fog, Fleet Feet, Eldritch Aim, Combusting Wounds, Infuse With VE, Llengrath’s Safeguard, Freezing Pillar. From Grimoire: Thrust of Tattered Veils, Minor Missiles, Necrotic Lance, Binding Web, Expose Vulnerabilities, Fireball, Concussive Missiles, Confusion, Malignant Cloud, Call to Slumber, Gaze of the Adragan, Chain Lightning, Delayed Fireball, Wall of Draining. PASSIVE ABILITIES Wildstrike Shock, Greater Wildstrike Shock, Two Weapon Style, Bull’s Will, Bear Fortitude, Far Casting, Rapid Casting, Tough, Practiced Healer, Secrets of Rime, Heart of the Storm, Uncanny Luck, Improved Critical. -----GEAR------ Weapon Set: Duskfall (Drawing Parry), Lethandria’s Devotion (Sheltering Light). Doesn’t really matter, just in case you get targeted before Spiritshifting. Keep handy Lover's Embrace to cut some cheese. Grimoire: Of Vaporous Wizardy. Keep handy Illuminating Discoveries. Head: Rekvu’s Fractured Casque. (the Wrenched Knee injury is best here, you can get tons easily in the Poko Kohara dungeon if you don't disarm the traps). Neck: Charm of Bones. Chest: Captain Furrante’s Breastplate (First to the Fight, Vigorous Protector) . Cape: Giftbearer’s Cloth. Gloves: Bracers of Greater Deflection. Keep Burglar’s Gloves, Firethrower’s gloves and Woedica’s Grasp handy. Rings: 2 X Rings of Minor Protection. Boots: Footprints of Ahu Taka. Keep handy Boots of the Stone, Sandals of the Water Lily. Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution Pet: Eviee. -----THE END------ That’s it. It’s not a ground breaking build but it is quite powerful, versatile and very fun. Another strong Blood Mage + X to solo the game, and one of few Druid options that can solo as far as I know. Always happy to read your thoughts and potential for improvement or tweaking. I'm sure it can be steered in other directions, in particular for party play.

It is the king of ending fights before they begin, if you're into this kind of gameplay. Max MIG/PER/INT/DEX, dump CON/RES. Hoard +PL items for Fire/Freeze spells and items that boost ACC, DMG, Crit DMG. Start fight with a Delayed Fireball and maybe toss another one on top, continue with Shadowflames when combat start. Maybe Smoke Veil, get close to survivors and finish them with Precisely Piercing Burst from invisibility. Rince and repeat. It is extremely powerful. But depending on your beliefs regarding honor and combat, you might be bringing shame upon your dojo .

That is all fair, and truly my experience and love for Assassin gameplay mostly comes from Solo. Thanks for pointing this out. In a party, an Assassin multiclass can still be very helpful because it can momentarily reach very high ACC to land powerful abilities that target Fortitude. Maneuvering from invisibility to land a high accuracy Clear Out with an Assassin/Devoted wielding for instance WotEP on a group of enemy packed against your tank can be very fun . Same of course for Caster/Assassin combos. But indeed to cruise along with a balanced party and minimal micromanagement a Streefighter or Trickster are probably better choices.

An SC Assassin will not only have Gambit, but Vanishing Strike which is outstanding even if you don't abuse it with duration extension shenanigans. It will be best taken advantage of with a very fast attacking dual-wielder. Considering you're going to do a combination of full attacks and fast auto-attacks, it could be more optimal to have pukestabber or rust's poignard in your off-hand and something like a sabre (Scordeo's Edge as @Haplok mentioned in your mainhand). Combine with high stealth to close in on your enemy for alpha strike and all the rogue goodies and Assassin's Slippers for a free Smoke Veil and all the +ACC and +crit% DMG items you can find. You'll have a very rewarding Rogue/Assassin archteype that will be able to do so many nasty things on the battlefield. You don't want to turn into a one trick pony, but at max level with +Guile bonuses you can use Assassin Slippers once, Vanishing Strike 4 times and still have Guile left for 1 Smoke Veil per encounter... Non-stop guerilla from the shadows.

Yes ok that makes sense, thanks. Not typically how I play Chanter anyway . With a high INT character you can get 30+ sec of invisibility per cast of Brilliant Departure which can be further prolonged by WoD. So indeed if the Chanter's chanting and debuff/CC invocations don't break the invisibility you could get a meaningful usage of that combo for a more fun and dynamic summon-focused playstyle.

I don't want to assume anything anymore about what does/doesn't break Brilliant Departure but you are most likely right. You could maybe even go invisible, summon animated weapons to keep the enemy busy on one side of the map, run to the other side while invisible to avoid enemy line of sight/aggro and continue sending hordes of animated weapons to battle while not being bothered?

It is definitely viable but you can't alpha strike with your Invocations from Stealth right? Since you're out of combat you're not chanting? IMO this is what limits the potential of Chanter/Assassin and to a lower extent Monk/Assassin for solo, unless you want to start combat then use Smoke Veil to use your class resources and abilities. But you're missing out on the "free" Stealth strike and its lovely -85% recovery before re-attacking/using Smoke Veil.

Just tested - it doesn't break with DAoM. So it's not as much the damage part that comes into play as it might be the fact that you directly apply it (kind of attack yourself even if there is no attack roll or anything). Or maybe I'm totally mistaken which is extremely possible.

Well, technically it's applying direct damage... maybe that's it. But I'm also surprised that it's breaking Brilliant Departure specifically. As far as invisibility effects go and what they allow you to do without breaking, my understanding is: Shadowing Beyond < Smoke Veil / Potion < Brilliant Departure < Vanishing Strike (Withdraw doesn't really count here because it's absolute but you can't do anything. I don't know much about the Ranger ability Shadowed Hunter.) So I would understand that Blood Sacrifice breaks with Shadowing Beyond, but Brilliant Departure... <sad face>