Not So Clever Hound

Yes you might as well focus on Will debuff and keep chanting thick grew. Your Cipher/Rogue also has a lot of good interrupts. Wizard: expose vulnerabilities will interrupt, Slicken too and the oh-so-amazing Concelhaut Crushing Doom can be an absolute godsend here if you have dealt with Concie before BoW. You don’t have it in your roster but for future ref. : a Forbidden Fist is incredibly powerful at turning this fight into auto win. Good luck!

Yes me too, I just checked.

Unless you want to trick the game by killing enemies from orbit without ever triggering aggro, which is feasible with 15+ range spells.

Thanks Victor! The build is made slightly better on the healing side by BPM because Nature Godlike get Evergreen Vigor passive (+15% healing received at >50% health) and because of Eric's rework of Constant Recovery which now ticks every 6s but doesn't have a finite duration. Given health is never an issue I think it would be as good on vanilla/CP. You would actually gain back the uber powerful vanilla Unbending if needed, which is still very strong on BPM but not as broken.

I agree with you deeply and I know what you mean. But I would like to point out that this sentence at face value makes very little sense Seriously though Dampener + Drug Crash is a long-known, very annoying quirk. Besides very high Will, your best tools to avoid it are invisibility and mobility.

I think that sounds fun. The Sage archetype is often about using Helwalker bonuses to enhance spellcasting and/or Stunning Surge/ Raised Torment with Spirit Lance. FF/BM sounds fun and you can greatly benefit from a high RES build. You can petrify/stun/enfeeble/terrify/blind the same target - that's something! ...Well that actually sounds like my mother in law.

Actually, the skills bonuses stack if you save/reload, at least in my game. But the +All Defenses don't for some reason.

Ah ok that makes sense It would be great for Votary I believe, but the +10 All Defenses doesn't stack with the Fighter's Refreshing Defenses unfortunately (just as it doesn't stack with e.g. Llengrath Safeguard).

Thanks for bringing this up @dgray62 I stand corrected. Weapon spec/mastery doesn't apply to FF attack indeed, but what is crazy is that it also doesn't apply to Heartbeat Drumming attacks for example which use your normal weapon attack. Pretty sh*tty but hey, silver lining is that I now have two more ability points to invest somewhere else . And Monk abilities have more than enough scaling anyway... But good catch, I didn't know that. Is that really a thing you verified in game? I thought it was only for NPCs based on wiki description... if so I will have learned two things today!

Yes it would be a nice synergy. FYI the max I managed to reduce the Curse across different FF builds gave a duration of around 1.3s. FF typically has low to avg INT which isn't great for Bloodmage BUT you could take advantage of Beam spells since their duration is fixed!

Even with the lower starting Reflex, it is still my strongest defense by endgame, at 190+. Exactly. FF/Fighter/Nature Godlike can consistently get to PL10 without per rest items or consumables. Which is really nice for the FF attack which benefits from scaling left and right. It would be short but remember that because of inversions, adding multiple hostile effect reduction modifiers isn't going to do much past a certain point. If you have 35 RES, it gives -75% reduction, and everything is going to be pretty much marginal after that. Enlightened Agony will get you to -85% or Lone Wolf would get you to -82%, but the 2 together + Mohora Wrap + Strand of Favor + Cabalist Gambeson would maybe bring you to -88%... Basically combining just 35 RES + Enlightened Agony or Lone Wolf gives you best return on investment.

At 180+ Will and 80%+ negative effect % reduction, Arcane Dampener is never a problem anyway. They're very very close. FF/SG has a defensive edge, FF/Unbroken has an offensive edge. EDIT: FF/Unbroken has the perk of not having to roleplay an a**hole for full defensive bonus

BPM Fighter Constant Recovery gives me about 30HP/6s at max level + FF curse/negative status effect end gives about 39HP + the option of Unbending Trunk which I didn't use. Defense-wise, Fighter is competitive thanks to the mix of passives and actives, especially deflection which you have a couple points more from the start of the game, conqueror stance, superior deflection, refreshing defenses of course... Here indeed the big selling point of Steel Garrote is that they have purely passive goodies. But on top, this Fighter has about +15 Accuracy and +15% damage always on, the awesome Aware and Acute inspirations... Basically it has less but enough survivability while being more offensive.

@NotDumbEnough since you're playing your SC Fighter, I'm curious if you know whether self damage e.g. Hylea's Talons or Voidwheel would trigger BPM Toughened Fury? I'd want to build such solo character very defensively for the hard fights, so in easier encounters that might not help generating enough Discipline to be fun, unless I can count on some self damage when needed.

I just tested again and I'm right, at least in my game. But there's a weird quirk when sometimes the ring of regen can suppress ring of greater regen when you put them on/off repeatedly. If that happens, just unequip > reequip both rings greater regen > regen and they will stack. But 2 x greater regen don't stack.

Ha, I thought it was you, but you were actually in the (old) thread. I found the old thread where actually @Raven Darkholme had mentioned this. But for the life of me I can't find the other thread that talked about Stacking Greater Regen with Normal Regen which does work. It's hard to test on a char with lots of Regen because obviously you get tons of it. But with a toon with no regen it's easier. I remember testing it and seeing that I would get more regen from Greater + Normal than Greater x2.

@NotDumbEnough funny you mention that because Glazed Chops was definitely on my list possible food for this build and I was toying with the idea of doing a Solo SC Fighter milking uber healing/regen and BPM's Toughened Fury afterwards. I had used Glazed Chops with a Fighter before thanks to @Elric Galad commenting that healing received affects Unbending in an OP way. I decided to stick with Hot Razor Skewers here because my Health is anyway always at or near max without using Unbending at all, which I keep as a "oh sh*t" button but never had to use it. So I think in this case it's more fun to get the extra PL to get uber powerful Forbidden Fist attacks as they benefit both from Transcendant Suffering scaling and normal PL scaling. PL also helps my "core" Healing of Rapid Recovery and Hostile Effect Ending, although of course not as much as Glazed Chops would. But that's already more than enough! Their regen won't stack if you put both Rings of Greater Regen on the same char. However if you have one Greater Regen and one Normal Regen, those will stack. I tested that recently, I think @Boeroer did too. Nice find! Yes but spending wounds is kind-of antisynergistic with the build (also why I worked around to ditch Clarity/Enlightened Agony). You want to be at max Deflection, max AR and max CON asap, and stay that way .

Thanks! Yes because it stacks with the 1 AR from Kapana Taga then all the goodies from Patinated Plate, then Iron Wheel. I wanted to get in the 18+ Range to get consistent underpen on Upscaled PotD.

[CLASS BUILD] The Automated Evergreen Juggernaut a.k.a. Unbroken Fist - Solo Upscaled PotD with BPM Class: Unbroken/Forbidden Fist Concept: Undying single-target melee obliterator that pushes some critical game mechanics to dominate solo on BPM. Game Version: RTwP. I very much recommend playing with @Elric Galad's Balance Polishing Mod and the Community Patch. PotD Solo Viable: Yes, all Upscaled. Megabosses: I farmed Belranga and Dorudugan with Lover's Embrace, did Auranic properly. Didn't try Hauani. Companion: Nope. -----WHAT IS INTERESTING ABOUT THIS BUILD?----- The great thing about this build is its unique ability to win fights on full AI autopilot in almost any situation, and that it is optimized for the full BPM complement including nerfs. Very high Defenses (consistently in the 180-190 range) mean lots of incoming miss, some grazes, few hits and no crits. Very high AR (consistently in the 18-21 range) means the vast majority of damage rolls that go through are pushed in underpen or severe underpen which is awesome. Very high hostile effect reduction (-82%) means incoming CC or DoT that goes through is reduced to a couple seconds at best. Very high Healing (about 50hp/3s) and health pool (over 500hp) means damage is consistently outhealed and health is always near max. BPM is awesome here for the rework of Constant Recovery and Evergreen Vigor, and greater HP from CON. Then, Damage takes care of itself 100% through the FF ability. I carefully chose equipment, stats, permabuffs etc. to manage action speed/recovery so that Attack cycle time is 2.2s and FF curse duration is 2.1s. So the curse never builds up and we can keep spamming FF safely. Now the nice thing is that with Tactical Barrage and Swift Flurry + Nature Godlike and Hot Razor Skewers, we're almost always at PL10 which is VERY good offensively and defensively. Our Fists do an absolute truckload of damage, PEN is above 17 and Accuracy is in the 150s. Few enemies can take more than a few hits. Soul Mirror is great too for dealing damage passively. There are a few spots where we need to activate the small shield modal or retake manual control because we lost the Lone Wolf or are affected by an aura that affect RES... but that's in very few encounters (e.g. Boarding fights, fights with Ancient Fire Bat / Fire Drake) and doesn't affect the build's power - you just then have to actively play instead of relaxing and looking at things get pummeled to death. Putting everything together, I was surprised by how strong it becomes. There's a number of high-level encounters where I usually want to think about my strategy a bit, but here I just walk up to the enemy, begin the fight and grab a beer while I watch things unfold. Namely: all of Splintered Reef, the Ancient Liche Battlemage, the Ancient Fampyrs, the Witches, many SSS and FS fights, Dragons, Nemnok etc with no or very limited intervention from my part during the fight. -----STATS & BUFFS------ Race: Nature Godlike Background: Aedyr – Hunter FINAL STATS WITH ALL PERMABUFFS AND NO-REST BUFFS AS OF 5.0 (without combat buffs): MIG 27 (18 Base +2 Berath +1 Gift from Machine +1 Rabyuna’s Boon +2 Alchemic Brawn +2 Hot Razor Skewers +1 Effigy Resentment Eder (HAHAHAHAHA!)) CON 15 (8 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Brawn +3 Girdle of Eoten CON) DEX 16 (7 Base +1 Godlike +1 Rabyuna +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +2 Amira’s Blessing +1 Boots of the Stone) PER 23 (18 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +1 Savage Cunning) INT 12 (7 Base +1 Godlike +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits) RES 35 (17 Base +1 Aedyr +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Nature’s Resolve +2 Rikuhu’s Blessing +2 Rabyuna +1 Cauldron’s Brew +2 Eviee Pet +2 Token of Faith +1 Solitary Wanderer Ring +1 Boots of Stone) ADDITIONAL PERMABUFFS: Food: Hot Razor Skewers Adratic Glow All Trainings Dawnstar Blessing Luminous Adra Potion Nature’s Resolve (Accuracy) Savage Cunning (Survival) Galawain’s Gift Magran’s Blessing Immunity to all Sigils Infamous Captain, Bonus Skills, Champion Stats, Port Maje vendor, Fully discovered Map, Bonus Money… invested all 105 Berath’s Blessing Points SKILLS Mechanics 13 then max Athletics, Diplomacy 12 then max Survival. ----- ABILITIES ------ FINAL ACTIVES (ALL CRUCIAL UNLESS SPECIFIED) Fighter: Conquerer Stance (Yep! Best here). Tactical Barrage (key), Refreshing Defenses, Unbending Trunk (optional - I keep it as a panic button but never ever used it. Could pick some nice resistance passives instead). Monk: Swift Flurry. Iron Wheel. PASSIVES (ALL CRUCIAL UNLESS SPECIFIED) Common: Fast Runner (Optional). Arms Bearer (Optional). Weapon & Shield. Two Weapons. Tough (Optional). Improved Critical. Fighter: Determination (Optional). Rapid Recovery. Weapon Specialization. Superior Deflection. Armored Grace. Weapon Mastery. Monk: Soul Mirror; Crucible of Suffering; Heartbeat Drumming. -----GEAR------ Weapon Set 1: Kapana Taga (Mythic , All Comers, Lone Champion), Tuotilo’s Palm (Mythic, Precision Striker, Balanced Shield). Weapon Set 2: A scepter or whatever for destroying Sigils early on. Head: Nothing. Neck: Token of Faith. Chest: Patinated Plate (Mythic, Bronze Juggernaut, Constant Rebound). Cape: Cape of the Falling Star. Gloves: Bracers of Greater Deflection. Rings: Ring of Protection + Solitary Wanderer. Boots: Boots of the Stone. Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution. Pet: Eviee. That's it. Let me know if you have any comments or questions!

The build details are below, and here are 2 videos to give a bit of flavor. 1) The Menzzago encounter in Splintered Reef and 2) the first encounter with Infested Librarians in Forgotten Sanctum. They're not the hardest fights in the game but they're good enough and you can see how the build carries itself all by itself when Menzzagouille la Fripouille and all his friends/tentacles go to town with Missile Salvos etc. to no avail. And when those pesky Lvl 22 Monks with Tier 3 Inspirations try something similar, without success.

Are you referring to Soul Power "Granted to those dedicated to Woedica if the souls were used to strengthen her in the quest Memories of the Ancients, during the events of Pillars of Eternity - Steel Garrote and Priest of Woedica NPCs only." It doesn't help you I think? Nice build! How did it play against for instance Trial of the Naga or other tough SSS encounters? Is Unbending enough to keep you alive vs. the onslaugh? What about certain fights in Nemnok's enclave or Splintered Reef with all the Arcane Dampeners?

Every application creates its own raw DoT stack, so you can very quickly absolutely doom an enemy. from a sheer devastation PoV, I think Streetfighter/Helwalker would be the best. Of note, a Wizard/Helwalker or Wizard/Streetfighter can permasteal Vatnir's spiritual weapons with Minor Grimoire Imprint, and that is something . Yes they got hit by the nerf bat really hard because they were enabling stupidly powerful multis...

So this is why it's so ridiculously good/reliable! Never got to check because the combat log is usually completely insane with this weapon. Thanks @NotDumbEnough!

Devoted/Monk with the Staff is pretty cool! You lack non Crush dmg since your backup are fists but it's ok except for some oozes IIRC. It is worth it if you have a specific weapon build in mind / can use fists/Monastic training as backup Crush DMG / Play on PotD where PEN matters a lot Battles axes are awesome because the Modal + multihitting with Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming with high INT/MIG builds insane DOTs. Besides Magran Favor, the two really cool axes are 2 Handers - very cool weapons, worth building around especially Amra - or Vatnir spiritual weapons are insane but that wont help you for main char except if you mod. That's a good one - I'm not sure, I think the Woedica summoned fists are universal proficiency so Devoted wouldn't synergize. Woedica's fists are great with that being said. Besides what Kaylon's proposed and what you already have in mind, a Forbidden Fist / Fighter might be a great idea for you... I'm soloing one right now and might write up a little something on the build if it ends up really where I want it to be. Also, know that a Devoted/Berserker Nature Godlike with a +PL Food can get Monastic Unarmed Training easily to post-Mythic all the time and that gets very, very nice melee craziness.

Yep it stacks Nope, you're getting 1 wound every 3s regardless. Overall it sucks to have only Pierce weapons because a decent amount of enemies are pierce immunes. In the case of Vessels: you might still kill them with Red Hand Double Tap and/or even if the main piercing component of damage doesn't work, the fire lash of Dragon's Dowry for example will still punch through for quite a bit of damage. But better to switch then to Scepter/Rod/Bow for example. So I think Blackjacket makes more sense and is more helpful. SC Assassin is one of the strongest classes in the game. But maybe not as Ranged damage dealer in a party - then one of the multiclass options may give you more value. This or Assassin/Bellower as @dgray62 mentioned can still give you high burst damage on top of much higher speed, nice lash, incantations etc.