crdvis16

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.

Thanks for the clarifications! I'm glad I have you guys to sanity check me before I get halfway through a playthrough only to realize that I made some bad assumptions on how things work. Bummer that the high PL Druid summons are garbage... Maybe I'll check the patch notes of the polish patch to see if they did anything with them in it. It's been a while since I went over the changes so its hard to remember what was done. Also a bummer that the res items all get consumed on death. I guess I could get around that by swapping them out after each fight. A small pain but probably not any worse than things like using drugs with Nalpazca, etc. We'll see how annoying the build up of injuries gets. I might end up only going kamikaze in fights where I think I can hit a bunch of enemies on death and otherwise just play the Barbarian normal. Despite being a pain in the butt I think it would just be fun to make use of a bunch of items/abilities that aren't typically very useful. And bummer about Cauldron Shard triggering from getting damaged rather than doing damage. That's... a bit harder to make use of. I imagine it's just a nice item in poison/acid specific fights then.

Ah, good call on Sacred Immolation being raw damage for the Paladin. I thought I had heard long ago that Revku+Sacred Immolation was a nice combo but maybe it was in a previous patch or something. And good call on spider silk as another poison PL booster. Thanks!

I'm preparing for my 4th playthrough and wanted to try some more new subclass/multiclass combinations. I was hoping people might have some feedback on these ideas in case people know that they either don't work at all or might be able to give me insight into how they play out. In case it matters, I would plan to play using the community and balance polish patches. 1) A Druid (Ancient subclass) with a few items that seem to be specifically targeted to them: -Lance of the Midwood Stag with the upgrade that gives +2 power levels when affected by Plant/Beast status affects (I assume that means things like Form of the Delemgen would give me the +2 power level?) -Vion-Ceth (Hatchet with bonus damage to enemies affected by Plant status) -Spine of the Thicket Green (staff with +3 all Plant/Beast ability levels upgrade) At first glance I would probably go Spine of the Thicket Green with Vion-Ceth as my backup. I'm also wondering if Cauldron Shard (chance to gain health when doing poison/acid damage) might also work into this build? Some of the plant based spells are also poison keyworded. Are there other items that feed into an Ancient Druid build? Also, how are Fire Stag and Aspect of Galawain as high level spells? I don't think I've used either summon at all. If those two summons aren't great then maybe I should consider multiclassing, perhaps with a martial class to make this a front line character, like an off-tank? 2) A Trickster/Devoted Riposte tank. I think this is a build a lot of people have played around with but I just never have. Trickster adds some high deflection spells to help Riposte trigger. Devoted adds some general tankiness and damage. Some items that play into it: -WotEP with its Offensive Parry upgrade -Champion's Helm (10% Riposte) -Nomad Brigandine with the immunity to disengagement attacks upgrade. I've heard the immunity manifests as misses which can trip Riposte attacks such that you can purposely run around disengaging and Riposting their missed attacks. First question- does anyone know if the above item Riposte effects stack with the Rogue ability Riposte effect? Does each one increase your chances to Riposte? Can they ALL cause a Riposte from a single miss such that you retaliate multiple times? Also, are there other multiclass combos that might work better? The Trickster side seems too perfect with its deflection wizard spells, persistent distraction, and Riposte of course. But maybe instead of fighter something like Paladin or Monk would be better? 3) Recklessly die and res build. I'm not sure yet if it would be better played with a Barbarian or a Paladin as they each have death mechanics. I wish their death mechanics were at power level 7 or below so I could multiclass them together but so it goes. For the Paladin it's Sacred Sacrifice and for the Barbarian it's Vengeful Defeat. Items that I was thinking of using: -One Dozen Stood armor (Echo of the Godhammer upgrade for an AoE fire attack on death) -Twin Eels weapon (self revive) -Unstable Coil belt (lightening attack on death) -Survivor's Tusks helm (self res AND injury removal) -Mantle of Seven Bolts cloak (lightening attack on death) -Rekvu Scorched Cloak (fire damage heals if injured, special synergy with Sacred Sacrifice) Does anyone know if the Sacred Sacrifice + Rekvu strategy still works (the immolation heals you if you have an injury)? Does anyone know how multiple self res effects resolve- do they all get wasted and just one triggers or do they each trigger in turn like you'd want? Does anyone know if these on death damage effects are impactful or pretty underwhelming? In my head I can see a Barbarian leaping into a pack of enemies and using Heart of Storm until he dies which triggers full attacks and multiple item on death attacks and just wrecks everyone. But maybe the item effects are all pretty meh? I imagine it can get annoying constantly having injuries and having to rest but on death stuff isn't something I've played around with in the past so I'm curious to try it.

Also, I didn't get Slippers of the Assassin this playthrough. I vaguely remembered there being an item that would stealth on kill and wanted it for Maia but for some reason I remembered it being a cloak and couldn't figure out where to find it. I see the stealth is 5s after a kill- I imagine Maia's reload speed might be juuust fast enough to get a shot off stealthed using it. That alone could have made her Assassin multiclass more worth it in fights where her pen or accuracy were already sufficient.

Wow, Brilliant Departure combined with lots of debuff/CC with an Assass/Wiz multiclass could be pretty fun then. It's totally not what you'd expect to be the main use of the Assassin subclass but so it goes.

Yeah, which I think is sad because it would be fun if it was more viable for a ranged Assassin like this build or a melee Assassin. If Smoke Veil had a much smaller (or 0) recovery it would help a lot. You would still burn through your guile really fast but your damage would be high. If it also kept you stealthed for much longer (like 7s or so) then it could be queued up and not expire before a reload happened, too. I've heard Assassin can be really strong in caster multiclasses but I haven't tried it myself. Maybe a debuffer if casting the debuffs doesn't break stealth?

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities). I modded Maia's subclass options for this build. I had high hopes for how this would play out, especially because Assassin fits Maia in an RP sense. The idea was to use the Assassin attack from stealth bonuses with Maia's proficiency with guns, specifically Arquebuses with their high weapon damage. She could open the fight from stealth with a high damage Ranger or Rogue shot and then make use of Smoke Veil to re-stealth for the next big shot. The Assassin bonuses from stealth attacks are significant- 4 pen, 25 accuracy, and increased crit damage so I assumed this would be a big boost to damage. The first big problem I had was that queueing up Smoke Veil after a Rogue or Ranger ability (Crippling Strike, Wounding Shot, etc) would cause Smoke Veil to expire before Maia could finish reloading and shoot from stealth. So in order to use Smoke Veil I would have to watch Maia's reload animation like a hawk and then pause right as she raised her rifle in order to cast Smoke Veil and shoot from stealth. This can be kind of a pain and require a lot of attention that diverts you from controlling your other 4 party members. However, there's a bigger issue with this strategy. After doing some simulations via spreadsheet, it turns out that using Smoke Veil during combat to trigger Assassin's stealth bonuses will not always increase your damage output! There's an opportunity cost to casting Smoke Veil- you use up Rogue resources and it comes with a 3s recovery after the cast that slows you down. These costs often will outweigh the benefits of 4 pen, 25 accuracy, and bonus crit damage. Instead of bothering with Smoke Veil you can just attack with, say, Crippling Strike which has its own +2 penetration as well as 25% damage increase. You'll attack more frequently and oftentimes end up doing more damage overall not bothering with Smoke Veil. If my modeling/simulation is to be believed, the only times using Smoke Veil to get the Assassin buffs is worth it is: 1) when the +25 accuracy is the difference between hardly ever being able to hit a high deflection target and at least occasionally grazing. This would be if the target's deflection is like 50 points higher than your accuracy. In fact, I think that if the target's deflection is 70 points higher than your accuracy you will never hit, in which case the +25 accuracy from Assassinate would be an infinite percentage increase in damage! 2) when the +4 penetration from Assassinate is just enough to alleviate some under penetration whereas the +2 penetration from an ability like Crippling Strike would still have under penetration. Under penetration is such a strong debuff to your damage that alleviating it is really important. Overall, I'd probably not recommend this build. Using Smoke Veil with a long reload weapon is a pain in the butt when you can't queue it up and doing so is only in your favor if the target has really high deflection or armor. At least with a melee Assassin, Smoke Veil would be adding some survivability to help you not get targeted as you kill the enemy's backlines but with Maia my survivability is in being at long distance so Smoke Veil isn't really needed for that. You still get an opening volley from stealth for free most of the time but I'm not sure that one shot at the beginning is enough to justify the Assassin multiclass for Maia.

Need a screen shot of the biggest AoE possible... 35 int, 2x overseer ring, Aloth armor. For the spell, either a Fury with a big Elemental spells like Hail Storm or a Druid with Plague of Insects maybe? One of the Wizard confusion spells has a big AoE too I know.

Good to know! Aloth was a tank this playthrough so wasn't even using his armor but I have a goofy RP aversion to using someone's armor/weapon on another character (which is often at odds with making a better character). I could have gone with two overseeing rings, though, and really leaned into the big AoE sizes. It's hard to know when big is big enough I guess and when you'd be better off with a different ring.

Oh man, I assumed Thunderous Blows' might did not stack with the Helwalker bonus. The pen is always nice but I decided that my spells had enough different damage types that I could usually find a weakness in enemy armor without further pen beyond what I was already getting. If I knew the might stacked I definitely would have picked it up. For DoT spells I don't think there are very many Elemental keyworded ones? I did use Plague of Insects but felt kind of dirty every time I did because it wasn't Elemental . I really wanted to lean into the Fury/Elemental shtick but maybe that gave me tunnel vision. I did use an overseer ring with him. I agree that getting the range of Relentless/Returning to be large is paramount because you really want to be able to stay at range to protect yourself. Usually I could safely put the enemy front line into range of the Storm spells but maybe not the enemy ranged units.

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities). I modded Rekke's class/subclass choices for this build. These two subclasses play nicely with each other and have a good amount of synergy. The Helwalker side gives us some nice buffs in the form of Swift Strikes (for faster action speed), Clarity of Agony to reduce hostile effect duration, and most especially +10 Int and +10 Might from the Helwalker trait and Duality of Mortal Presence. Enduring Dance can quickly get you to 10 wounds for that +10 Int/Might. The main drawback of Helwalker is that you take a lot more damage. On the Fury side you get bonuses to Elemental keyword spells (penetration and range) and a special shifted form at the cost of not being able to cast Restoration spells. You're essentially encouraged to cast from afar (which plays into staying out of danger lest the Helwalker drawback get you killed) and cast damaging Elemental spells with increased pen, AoE size from the Helwalker Int, and damage from the Helwalker might. In most fights you get to stand in the back and just unleash on the enemies. You sometimes want to get a tad closer for Relentless or Returning Storm to be able to hit but even then the AoE size is pretty decently large. If an enemy happens to get close enough to attack you, your shifted form has a fast-cast teleport spell to bail you out and reposition yourself. The biggest drawback to this build is probably not getting access to the last two Druid power level spells for Great Maelstrom and Avenging Storm. However, both of these spells exist as scrolls so investing in Arcana can alleviate this issue. There's also the helm Heaven's Cacophony which gives you a per-rest cast of Avenging Storm. Avenging Storm is nice when combined with the Fury's shifted form which has a bounce to its attack, giving you multiple lightning strikes per attack when you don't want to cast any more big Elemental spells. I happen to not like using consumables very much, though, so I didn't often use Maelstrom/Avenging with Rekke. Absent those spells he felt somewhat less impactful. Relentless/Returning Storm have nice stuns but its random and therefore less reliable. Spells like Hail Storm or World's Maw were nice, especially with the humongous AoE size but their damage was often underwhelming compared to the AoE from my MC as an Arcane Archer. I think I expected this glass cannon to have a bit more cannon (he certainly had the glass part down when at 10 wounds ).

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities). I modded Vatnir's multiclass/subclass choices for this build. This was one of my favorite builds this playthrough which was good because normally I don't like Vatnir all that much. I normally play him as a priest/chanter but that build typically has a lot of cold/corrode damage and I'm often using him in the Beast of Winter areas where there's lots of enemies with specifically those resistances so he's always felt kinda useless. But not this time! Ok- so the idea for this build is to use the Rogue side to bring the crits and then use the Skald side (which gets phrases from melee crits) to benefit from those crits with lots of impactful offensive invocations. Dual wielding fast weapons is ideal for more frequent crits. There are TONS of weapons and items that either help you crit more or give you bonuses when you do crit which also makes this build fun. Depending on my target I might start the fight with "Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone" for the increased might/pen/interrupt on crit. I would then Shadow Beyond to my target and open up with some Rogue ability attacks (crippling, blinding, withering... whatever). Ideally he's going after an enemy with lower deflection for a higher crit rate. As I crit and regain phrases I would invoke "... It's Crash Could Not Be Denied" (small cone stun) or "... And Their Fear Followed Them Into The Foothills" (larger cone paralyze/frighten). Either effect can then make it easier to land more crits through either a deflection reduction or hit to crit conversion and the paralyze especially has a large enough cone to hit other enemies as well, even more so if you took Cast Shaping. I would then continue whacking and building up phrases in order to finish with "Her Tears Fell Like The Rain" (AoE cold damage), "Boil Their Flesh From Skin And Bone" (raw damage), or "... Eld Nary" (cold/crush damage with high pen). Vatnir played very smoothly with this build- he gets into a good rhythm with melee attacks and invocations. The invocations are especially impactful so if you're able to generate phrases quicker than normal through a high crit rate and invoke more frequently it can feel pretty strong. I imagine this might work even better with a Barbarian using Barbaric Smash for really high crit rates.

Sorry, I misread Elric's post and thought he said that he didn't think Wizard summoned weapons were good compared to normal equipable weapons. I see now that he was talking about the spritshift weapons.

Are there weapons that would work better on a phantom than, say, Caedebald's Blackbow? That Terrify felt really strong. Or maybe you meant in terms of damage?

Glad @Boeroerknew the answer because I did not. So that begs the question: is a shifted form stronger than the Wizard summoned weapons when it comes to copying them to a phantom? Sounds like maybe the shifted would make for a tankier phantom? Maybe it's comparing apples to oranges since it's hard to compare the AoE of Citzal's or the utility of the Blackbow to the tankiness of a Bear or single target DPS of a cat.

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities). I modded Fassina's subclass choices for this build. I've played Fassina in a similar role before as a pure Conjuror where I would buff her with instant cast spells, summon a weapon (Blackbow was especially strong), and then summon a phantom that would also benefit from that weapon. In this case, instead of summoning a weapon and a phantom I would cast Relentless Storm or Nature's Terror and then shift into an appropriate animal to wreck shop. My choice for which form to shift into was: Stag = AoE damage Wolf = single target CC Cat = DPS when able to penetrate Boar = DPS when unable to penetrate Bear = Off tank The main piece of gear that I liked for this build was Strand of Favor for the increase in buff duration. It was also a big help to use the AI for self buffing at the beginning because there were a lot of buffs to go through. After self buffing and getting into the action the different forms work pretty well- you get good bonus armor from the form itself and your damage is pretty respectable, especially with the cat form and the fast attack speed. The biggest problem, however, is that none of the forms do crush damage which can be a real problem for some fights. Also, not being able to cast while shifted does kind of suck. The Shifter subclass gets a bunch of auto-grant druid spells at each power level, some of which you don't tend to cast very often or at all. Like I said, I made good use of Nature's Terror and Relentless Storm and occasionally I'd throw out a Nature's Mark between shifts but that's about it. Overall, I'd guess that SC melee wizard is probably stronger. You have higher power level, access to most of the same buffs, phantom+summoned weapons is just as strong as being shifted I think, and you can also cast if you want at any time. But Shifter/Conjuror was still a fun build!

Maybe that's the issue. I played Ydwin ranged so things like Rymgrin and her deflection buffs were not often used. I do love both the Rymgrin spells, though. Aloth was a battlemage tank that used them to terrify and cause disengagement. Though even with a melee Trickster, any time spent casting Trickster spells is time not being a Beguiler. So that still begs the question for why Beguiler/Trickster works as a multiclass.

The background to the construction of the crucible is pretty dark, though. Keeping it going in its original purpose is a continuation of a pretty dark Engwithan experiment/proof of concept and it also allows Galawain to continue using the crucible as his own little wheel to empower himself. The contestants in the crucible buy into the whole struggle for survival motif but they also don't necessarily know the truth of how it was made and what its real purpose is. Just like kith in general aren't all aware of the true nature of the gods and their origins and so worship them (perhaps out of ignorance) as if they were natural/worthy gods.

Yeah- I guess my issue with it was that most of the time I didn't need those emergency spells. So on the rare occasion that I would need them I could have just used that escape cape or the boots that give leap or something. Access to the Ryngrim terrify spell is nice but most of the time no enemies were near enough to get hit by it and if they were I could charm/dominate which is probably better anyway. I do want to try a riposte tank in my next playthrough so Trickster might very well be useful for that.

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities) Ydwin's subclass options were modded to play this build. I think perhaps I was missing something to this combination. I've read before that it works well but I have a hard time understanding the synergy. The Beguiler side seems pretty straightforward to me- you just cast tons of Deception debuffs and get more and more focus from doing so. You can then dump your focus on some high cost spells as needed. You hardly have to use your physical weapons to generate focus because the return from Deception spells is often really good on packs of enemies. The Trickster side gets you some free spells and access to Rogue abilities in general. However, many of the Rogue abilities are physical attacks that you probably don't necessarily want to use in lieu of dishing out more Deception spells. Some of the Trickster auto-granted spells are nice defensive spells that can get you out of a jam if you catch aggro. However- if I was really interested in adding some defense from a multiclass I would probably go another route I would think? Also, there is counter synergy involved- the Trickster subclass does less Sneak Attack damage which is almost always going to be activated with all the Beguiler debuffs. In the end, I was often left thinking that I would have been better off as a SC Beguiler but maybe that's just because SC Beguiler seems really strong? I'd often go entire encounters never using active abilities from the Trickster/Rogue side of the build at all. Occasionally, Mirror Image or Escape would help me get out of a jam but I'm not sure it was worth missing out on higher level Cipher spells as a SC. Typically I'm at pretty far range casting Deception spells and out of danger. Maybe I needed to do some more research on this build to understand the trick to it?

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities) I modded Konstanten's subclass choices for this. I was especially excited to try this build. There's something about big physical attacks with a 2Her that are satisfying and the idea of stringing a bunch of them together sounded fun. The idea is this: Barbarians have some really strong benefits when they kill an enemy (instant recovery from Bloodthirst being the strongest) but killing enemies can be infrequent. Unless, of course, you use the Beckoner subclass to summon a bunch of little skeletons and then use the Berserk subclass to confuse yourself so that you can kill the skeletons collaterally while dishing damage to your true target. Carnage gives you the free AoE damage to hit the skellies and boom- you can put yourself into a chain where each whack kills another skeleton instantly refreshing your attack which again kills a skeleton refreshing your recovery, etc etc all the while hitting your target repeatedly with a big 2Her. The weapon arguably most suited to this build is Amra which gives you 25% weapon damage in an AoE whenever you crit as long as you have 25 might and can insta-kill low hp enemies. I had to further mod Konstanten to give him +2 base might to achieve this (and -2 constitution because otherwise it would feel like cheating to me) but it was worth it in order to play into this build as much as I could. Barbaric Smash helps with hit to crit to proc Amra and all this gives you a recipe to kill some skeletons along with whatever poor sap is in range of your 2Her. One could also try this with Wahai Poraga (attacks up to 3 targets around you, friend or foe) or WotEP (AoE cone) but I was dissuaded by the relatively low base weapon damage of these two weapons. I wanted my hits to HURT once they started chaining! However, I had some trouble getting this to play out consistently. First, it takes some time to ramp all this up. Summoning the skeletons takes a long time. And then once the skeletons are out and you've Frenzied yourself you can sometimes get blocked from reaching your target by those same skeletons. Leap helps here to ensure you land right next to your target. Then you can sometimes get bad runs of luck where something else kills off your skeletons before you get a chance to. Sometimes your Carnage/Amra gets them low but doesn't quite kill them and then you're waiting for the next thwack with your 2Her and it can feel like it's taking forever. But when you do get into a good groove of whack/skelly death/instant whack/skelly death it can be pretty awesome. One other issue with this build- I picked up the Ancient Weapons summon just as a backup to use when it wasn't a good situation for the Amra/Carnage/Frenzy/skeleton tactic and holy crap are they powerful. I had no idea they each have a special attack- the one with knockdown alone is crazy strong. Even though I built Konstanten around the Amra/Carnage/Frenzy/skeleton trick it still sometimes felt like I was better off just summoning Ancient Weapons. A single class Beckoner would probably be silly with those things. Last- I wasn't always great at keeping Konstanten alive with this build. Frenzy hides your health and I was often too focused on pulling off the combo to notice I was positioning him in spots that were a bit dangerous. He died a lot. There's a lot of friction in itemization between adding more damage and keeping his recovery low enough to start the chain reaction vs. adding defense and possibly heavier armor for survivability and apparently I was too far on the "more damage" side of the equation. All in all, this build probably wasn't super strong and could be frustrating when things didn't pan out but is really fun when they do.

I kinda think there are no good endings in SSS. You can fight Whehami and keep him trapped but that kinda sucks for Whehami. He's kind of an ass but that doesn't mean he deserves to be trapped running Galawain's little side wheel and never get a chance at life again. You can help Whehami get free but he'll terrorize deadfire as you pointed out. And that includes trapping someone else's soul there, denying them the chance at future lives. When you escape you can choose to keep the pillar severed or repair it. If you sever it you kind of mess up the island as souls get stuck and turn into blights. If you repair it you're perpetuating Galawain's little setup encouraging gladiator fights and his ability to siphon extra soul essence to strengthen himself. You're basically in the position of Eothas- do you break this miniature wheel or repair it? The ending I would want is to somehow demolish the crucible such that souls there re-enter the normal wheel, including Whehami, and so that Galawain doesn't get to run his personal gladiator arena anymore. But I also like the parallels to Eothas' dilemma in how it currently plays out.