crdvis16

I'm getting ready for one last playthrough (gotta side with Rautai this time) and was wondering if there were any other interesting builds I'm missing. Here's what I've already done (usually by modding class/subclass options for companions): Transmuter/Tactician (gather up with Eora then chillfog/combustion wounds/etc) Unbroken/Illusionist (terrify+disengagement attacks) Woedica (mass debuffs, sort of like a Beguiler) Blackjacket/Streetfighter (blunder modal for flanked then quick switch to melee, didn't work quite as well with BPM and nerfed blunder modal ) Unbroken/Trickster (maximum deflection and riposte/offensive parry) Wael (priest tank!) Ancient (Thicket Green and all plant/beast spells) Shifter/Conjuror (conjuror self buffs then melee in shifted form) Evoker/Assassin (Assassinate with damage spells) Beckoner/Berserker (confuse+summoned skellies and then kill them with carnage/Amra to trip bloodthirst/lust) Helwalker/Ghostheart (pretty simple ranged DPS) Gunhawk/Assassin (idea was to smoke veil+attack and repeat but it turns out this is only really worthwhile if it gets you out of underpen) Stalker (melee ranger with high accuracy and on-crit items, didn't seem very strong tbh but maybe I needed some stronger item synergy with it) Gunhawk/Cipher (takedown+disintegrate) Forbidden Fist (no gimmick really, just a tank/dps hybrid) Shattered Pillar (scordeo weapons for blade cascade, speed boosts, and both hit during WotW into Resonent Touch) Nalpazca (wound generation keeps up with non-stop blade turning for a damage reflecting tank) Bleakwalker (DPS Paladin, no real gimmick beyond that and was kind of underwhelming. I don't love Paladin as a class) Beckoner/Goldpact (tank focusing on high armor to cause underpen) Enchanter/Bellower (started as a tank build with some spike damage from Bellower but probably would been better as SC Bellower tbh) Fury/Helwalker (high Int/Might for long range Elemental Druid spells) Berserker/Devoted (Voulge melee build) Soulblade/Furyshaper (two subclasses I had not played so combined then and it turned out well. Barbarian side helps generate focus fast and big hits with Soulblade get kills which synergize with Barbarian. The totems were a nice side bonus and were pretty strong IMO) Ascendent (weapons with per rest abilities/spells and extra weapon slots to fill focus fast) Psion (cipher support! Use some abilities I've overlooked in the past, like mindweb) Lifegiver/Troubadour (healer focus) Corpse Eater (food bonuses from kith meat or Forbidden pies were nice. Really just used this for the on-death item build with Vengeful Defeat) Rogue/Skald (melee crits beget offensive invocations) Gaun/Streetfighter (Frontliner that retreats to the backlines to shoot/cast once bloodied. Was hard to pull off most of the time) Helwalker/Streetfighter (mortification to self damage into bloodied and then Rogue abilities using ranged weapon, preferably one that has multiple projectiles or AoE to spread afflictions) Beguiler/Trickster (never really got this build, feel like SC beguiler would have been better) Psion/Berath (support build. Cast Priest buffs/debuffs then spam cipher support spells with the built up focus pool. Worked really well) Assassin (normal melee stealth attacker) Arcane Archer (straightforward Eora->Web->Fireball or Death nuke. Felt strong) I think I've also done most of the normal subclasses, too (like Vatnir's Rymrgand priest, Xoti's Gaun/Reaper, Tekehu's storm/water unique classes, etc etc). There are probably some item synergies I haven't explored yet or interesting subclasses or combos? Maybe even ones that include lesser used abilities or tactics? I try to stay away from things that seem too overpowered to the point that they might trivialize the game, though. Any ideas appreciated!

Shroud of the Phantasm does indeed work. The 4 living illusions die very quickly from having very little health and will proc the raw damage from Effigy's Husk, the shock damage from Least Unstable Coil, and the attacks from Effort's Valiant Demise (obviously not Vengeful Defeat or Carnage procs). Oddly, though, the attacks from Valiant Demise have just the base 7 penetration- no bonus penetration from the weapon quality. No idea why the copies get Effort's attack on death perk but not the bonus penetration. So the net effect right now is that the damage is pretty paltry other than Effigy's Husk's raw damage. If these items do get their scaling fixed it could be pretty potent, though.

Sweet! I'm glad those items are on your radar for getting some scaling. It's always sad to have an item with an interesting mechanic that ends up being underwhelming.

Ah, yes. I definitely assumed the power level buff extended to anything cast while the buff was active and not just invocations. That certainly hurts the multiclass applications That's a bummer that Eld Nary doesn't benefit from power level with its bounces. I assumed the power level would be set when you cast it and then it would go off and do the extra bounces even though the power level buff had since fallen off. If anything, it seems like extra computation and a pain for the spell to adapt to your changing power level. Weird.

Yeah- her being Fessina was really confusing when trying to mod her. It took me a long time to find her in the gamedatabundle and when I finally saw why I nearly threw my laptop across the room haha.

In my most recent playthrough I modded Rekke into an Enchanter/Bellower (fun fact: in the code, Bellower is actually called Murmurer and more off-topic, Fassina is Fessina). I intended to make him a tank with chants catered to his own benefit (given the smaller chanting radius) who can dish out some occasionally big invocation casts. He ended up not being tanky enough for my tastes even with the Enchanter self buffs and I ended up wanting him to use Sasha's Singing Scimitar and Weyc's Wand together for the empowered cast synergies (no more room for a shield so even less tanky). However, I wasn't sure if I was really getting my money's worth from his high ability power. I know from experience and from reading @thelee 's ability power post that certain spells REALLY benefit from empowerment (minoletta's missiles, for instance). I was hoping that the chanter's Thrice Was She Wronged ability would similarly benefit but I think the number of projectiles for it is kept at 3 even when empowered. I think Eld Nary's is benefiting a lot from ability power with extra damage and jumps. I can't tell how much Her Tears Fell Like Rain benefits- it's kind of hard to test it out with how hard it is to see who will get hit (unlike minoletta's missiles which is really easy to test). My gut feeling is that Bellower might need to be multiclassed with another class to really use the ability power. Enchanter was a bad one I think- not very many spells within school to make good use of ability power. Evoker would work I'm sure. But maybe there are other classes/subclasses that would pair well? Arcane Archer comes to mind. Use a multi-hit weapon and driving flight for 3 empowered fireballs? I'm sure there must be some Druid spells that would benefit more from ability power? Also- does anyone know for sure that the Bellower's ability power from their chants will then stack with a followup empowered ability? I assume it stacks with any item ability power buffs. Would the following work: A Bellower/Arcane Archer invokes with, say, 6 phrases for +6 ability power and then follows up with an empowered (+5 ability power) Imbue:Fireball (maybe using a bouncing weapon like Tekehu's wand and Driving Flight for 3 hits of it). And maybe this character also has some +fire ability power items (I believe there's a ring and a pet at the very least). Arcane Archer would also have access to Imbue:Missiles to blow up a single target. I guess I'm wondering how high one can get their ability power and then what the best use of that ability power would be.

I didn't notice any of my items not performing their on death attacks during my (limited) testing. At least a few times I know they all occured. The only thing I was really confused about was the carnage attacks and how the combat log "group" description might list something like 10 hit/5 crit/5 miss and then when I opened up that group for more details it would only list, say, 12 attacks. I might try to test this with fewer enemies to see if I can make it make sense (I was using the SSS slayer fight with the lions/panthers/staelgars). I might have to respec a Barbarian without Vengeful defeat in order to really see if Valiant demise trips carnage or not.

Thanks! I will go back to get that Shroud and test it out. No idea how I missed it in Bekarna's observatory.

I wanted to report back after playing a die and res Barbarian. The idea was to stack a bunch of "on death" items in order to set a bomb off when you die. The items I used (there may be others I missed?) are: Vengeful Defeat (lv8 ability) - Full attack AoE on death Effort 2Her- Full attack AoE on death enchantment Effigy's Husk armor- Raw damage AoE on death enchantment Least Unstable Coil belt- Shock/Stun AoE on death Cape of the Falling Star - Burn/Crush AoE on death Mantle of the Seven Bolts - Shock AoE on death Obviously, Cape of the Falling Star and Mantle of the Seven Bolts are mutually exclusive. I also found The Twin Eels to be a nice addition with its auto-res enchantment. You can charge in with Twin Eels, die, res with low health from Twin Eels enchantment, and then switch to Effort for the 2nd death. Another useful item would have been Survivor's Tusk. One of the upgrades is to res and clear all injuries. However, I was using Vatnir (modded) for this build so couldn't wear a helm. But if I was able to use it, I would have switched to Survivor's Tusk anytime I had 2 injuries so that in the next battle I could die, res, and clear the injuries back to 0. Having injuries in general doesn't bother this build that much- injuries typically just make you die faster and that's kind of the goal. But not having to rest quite as often would be a nice QoL improvement for this build. There is the ring of reset that clears injuries as well but I didn't want to bother with its limited charges. In battle, my general strategy was to Panther's Leap into a group of enemies then follow up with Dazing Shout, Spirit Tornado, and Heart of Fury. This build allows you to play really recklessly because you don't care if you die and oftentimes want to die. It's also nice to drop a dexterity debuff on top of the mobs around the barbarian since many of the death effects target reflex. In reality, I found that some of the items involved in this build were rather underwhelming. From my combat log: -Vengeful Defeat (full attack on all in range on death): This ability seemed like the best part of this build. It procs carnage and benefits from all the normal things a weapon attack normally would from what I saw (2 handed style, one stands alone, weapon quality %bonus, etc etc etc the list can get long). What's more, the penetration gets a nice ability level bonus. My combat log shows penetration at 7 base for Effort, +weapon quality bonus, and an extra 3.5 for ability level. -Valiant Demise (Effort enchantment): Also decent but not as good as Vengeful Defeat. It didn't seem to proc carnage for some reason though I wonder if I'm misreading the combat log. It would often list a bunch of hit/crit/miss in a drop down but when you expand the list it would actually show far fewer hit resolutions. Not sure which display is actually accurate. In any case, its penetration is also lower than Vengeful Defeat- you only get the normal weapon penetration and bonus penetration from weapon quality but it does benefit from all the normal weapon attack damage modifiers like Vengeful Defeat. -Effigy's Husk: The best of the non-weapon attack on death effects. This armor does a raw damage AoE on death which means penetration doesn't matter. It also gets some odd +5 accuracy bonus but it doesn't list the source of it and it targets reflex. The damage only seemed to benefit from might and the +25% damage when bloodied ability. The base damage is ~50 which is nice. -Mantle of the Seven Bolts: AoE shock damage with a penetration of 9. 9 is Ok- often underpens but maybe at a -25% or -50% penalty rather than -75%. It targets reflex and its accuracy was 84 at level 20 (20 from barbarian, 7 from perception, and 57 from level) which isn't great when many enemies are ~100 reflex.. Base damage is just ~30. In reality you end up grazing or under penetrating and doing reduced damage, especially since there are many positive damage modifiers beyond might/bloodied. -Cape of the Falling Star: It just keeps getting worse- same accuracy as Mantle but now just 7 penetration (targeting crush or fire so maybe that helps a little) which more often than not means a -75% damage modifier. Base damage is 40 but it gets so reduced by miss/graze/underpen that it becomes barely noticeable. -Unstable Coil: You would think this might be better considering it's a fairly late game item but nope, it's probably the worst of the bunch in terms of damage. Same terrible 7 penetration and low accuracy targeting reflex but now just ~30 base damage. It does stun, though, which is nice. The net effect is that you can really blow up packs of weaker enemies but you often don't make a great dent in tougher enemies. It's especially weak in encounters with very few enemies where the multi hit/AoE nature of the death effects are sort of wasted and unfortunately that can often include boss fights. Boss fights also tend to drag on which hurts this build where you can really only die so many times. But it's FUN! I think it would be nice if the penetration on falling star and coil were maybe bumped up to at least match seven bolts at 9 to make them more useful. I also considered running this type of build with a Paladin using Sacred Sacrifice. Sacred Sacrifice resses you as long as it's active when you die. However, a Paladin would be missing Vengeful Defeat which does a lot of work for the Barbarian. Also, a Paladin is mostly just bringing a self res to the table which can be accomplished by party members ressing you anyway. I think a Paladin build would be useful if Sacred Sacrifice cleared injuries so that you could die way more than 3 times (might even make it viable in boss fights!). And then there's a Monk with Dichotomous Soul or a Wizard with Phantoms. In this case you don't worry about injuries because you're sending your minions to die. For the Monk, though, your clones would just have Unstable Coil, Effigy's Husk, and one of the capes (they use fists instead of Effort I assume) and those 3 items as they currently stand don't bring a ton of damage to the table. On the plus side, Dichotomous clones are spammable in long fights though I've often found that my clones tend to live long enough to expire due to their summon duration rather than die and presumably wouldn't proc the on death effects in that case. A Wizard's phantoms would at least copy Effort for Valiant Demise procs but it's maybe harder to spam phantoms with the Wizard's resource limits. I seem to remember from past playthroughs that there is a cape (I think) that can create a bunch of copies of you, like maybe 4 or 5? And I believe they are pretty fragile so likely to die quickly? I didn't find it this playthrough for whatever reason but I really wanted to try it. I can't remember the name, though, so can't even search for where to get it. That could work really well if they all proc the item death effects. If anyone remembers that cape please let me know so I can test it out! I also haven't tried comboing this with a scroll of Avenging Storm. I would think the weapon attacks from Vengeful Defeat and Valiant Demise would proc lightning bolts? Or I wonder if there are other scrolls/items that might combo well with these effects (either the weapon attacks on everyone in range or the shock/fire/crush/raw AoE spell damage effects).

Like others, I look to fill the main roles: tank, off-tank, heals, dps, cc, etc. Some builds can fill multiple roles. I don't typically have just 5 characters I stick to all game, though. I typically bring 1 or 2 companions for rp reasons determined by the zone I'm in or the quest I'm doing (going to Sayuka? Gotta bring Serafen, Maia, and maybe Tekehu. Going to BoW? Time to use Ydwin and Vatnir) and then fill in the last 2 or 3 slots with companions that fulfill needed roles. If there are multiple options I might pick the companion who is under leveled. I usually want to play all the companions/sidekicks to see a variety of diologues and abilities in action. Especially recently because I've been modding the classes/stats of every companion/sidekick to try new builds without having to use adventurers. IMO there's enough XP to level everyone up to 20 and get a good feel for how they each play.

At the risk of pushing monk when you don't want it, you could also use The Long Pain anytime an enemy is pierce immune. It's fists at range so crush damage.

I thought you don't lose rep attacking ships on the high seas? No witnesses and all...

I ended up loading a save from when I first got to Neketaka in order to avoid positive rep with at least VTC and RDC and be all around more piratey in my Principi playthrough. I'm not totally sure what I'll do in some quests where you almost have to get positive rep with someone (restoring or not restoring the adra vein on Poko, etc) but hopefully I can find ways to drop it down enough to spawn those headhunters and be a proper pirate

Though I would think that late game gives opportunities to drop your rep? Saying no to the Hazanui's plot to kill Onekaza has all of the Brass Citadel turn hostile- does that not automatically set your rep to -3?

This is making me want to start over this Principi run and explicitly make enemies of the other factions... I feel like I've already done too much positive stuff to ever get my reputation low enough. Then again, I don't know how much I'd enjoy the process of making them hate me, at least with the Huana. I like helping the people in the gullet, for instance. Maybe I can just purposely make VTC and RDC hate me...

I was looking through the list of unique items to see if there were many I didn't recognize and hadn't come across. Among those were a few items that seem to drop from headhunter ship captains who come after you only if you reach -2 or -3 reputation with a given faction: Akola's Apex Ward (shield) for negative reputation with Huana Gipon Prudenso (armor) for negative reputation with Principi First- does anyone know if there are similar items that drop from headhunter captains when you get negative enough reputation with RDC and VTC? Also- how do you go about getting negative enough reputation? I'm doing a Principi run but I still have positive reputation with the other factions just from doing quests with them along the way. Will my reputation drop precipitously down the road when I get towards end game and accessing Ondra's Mortar? I can't remember if that was the case in previous runs. Or do I have to go out of my way to avoid other faction's quests and try to resolve quests in a way to piss them off? As a side note- I find myself not fully committing to being a pro-Principi guy and still doing things like getting the Valera and Bardatto families to make peace when I should have probably been more pirate-ish and tried to loot the vault or something so maybe that has something to do with this...

Is the recovery from switching grimiores very punishing or not so bad? For the non-school subclasses I could see that being pretty useful.

I did it in my last playthrough and had a blast. It doesn't always work (sometimes they just cower in fear rather than running far enough away to break engagement) but it works often enough to be worthwhile. And even without getting disengagement attacks, a tank with a bunch of good debuff/CC spells is nice anyway.

If you want to continue with Tank wizard then Battlemage with Illusionist/Unbroken as the subclasses is fun. The idea is to use the 2 Illusion wizard spells that Terrify (Ryngrim) while engaging a bunch of enemies. The terrify causes them to break engagement and give you free disengagement attacks (Unbroken improves disengagement attacks).

I'll test it eventually in my playthrough but it'll be a while before I get those items...

I thought about fury shaper but I wasn't sure if the totems die if the Barb dies. If they do unsummon on Barb death then that could be kinda annoying in a build where I'm sort of dying on purpose at times. I would test these things out but I have very limited time to actually spend in game (but lots of time to post om forums ).

Hmm, then it seems I'd have to choose between Barbarian's Vengeful Defeat or phantom/dichotomous clones. Vengeful defeat is PL8 so can't get obtained when multi-classed. The phantom/dichotomous route is like sending out expendable suicide bombers which is a pretty cool idea too. Monk with Dichotomous is maybe the better way to go since you get two bombs and can potentially summon them more times than a phantom throughout a long fight. It depends on all those stacked on-death items being impactful when they go boom I guess and it depends on the clones dying before their duration ends. On the other hand, Vengeful Defeat is very enticing...

Does that work? I didn't know that on-death effects would work with copies. Do the item effects work AND the abilities (Vengeful Defeat, for instance)?

Maybe I'll go Unbroken instead of Devoted so that I can keep my options open on what weapons to use in the riposte build.

It looks like the balance polish mod (summon section) does make some changes to Fire Stag and Aspect of Galawain. So perhaps I'll go single class Ancient after all and see how they do.