Tomucci

Thanks for the info, I'll give the quest a go and bring that dagger with me just in case. I'm guessing summoning weapons doesn't break ABD so I'll probably do some cc spells, summon an aoe weapon and end it with a toxic strike, i know the dots arent affected by assassinate but i like the accuracy buff for the initial hit, and the duration of the effect might be extended by a crit? If not that theres other good options like shadow fireball or something. Anything you'd change with my stats?

I want the build to be kinda poison centric thematically, so I'm planning on using the helm and robes that boost poison PL and nannasins cobra strike, and toxic strike with kalakoths or citzals, ideally from stealth, and prob fit in other poison spells here and there when I can, when I fight poison resistant enemies I'm sure I'll have other more generic spell blade options I've heard the best thing about this build is arkemyrs brilliant departure to gain the effect for a decent duration and fit in multiple cc spells with the assassin acc bonus, with this being said: How early can I get a grimoire with that spell? Usually I'm lvl13 by the time I start actually engaging in combat (apart from the beginning and a couple of other encounters), can I venture out to do the appropriate quest from there? With maximising the use of ABD, I'm assuming both INT and DEX are important but I don't want to leave myself in the lerch with other important stats for this build such as PER and CON, so I was thinking max INT and PER, then an even split between DEX and CON, with might and resolve sitting around 10 (I know res can be dumped but conceptually I'm not a fan of timid MCs), is 10 mig / 14 con / 14 dex / 21 per / 21 int / 10 res good ? I'm kinda iffy on splitting between con and dex if one is objectively more useful for this build, my reasoning for the split is they both end up getting buffed to 19 with spells anyway. Can I sustain the blood mage without fleshmender? Does DOC armors heal on crit effect work with spells and trigger multiple times on AOEs? Any other tips for this multiclass?

Found a bit of an issue with it actually, or at least using it as a hybrid tank/dps, every time you switch weapons for about a second or so you lose engagement and persistent distraction which is pretty detrimental to how the builds supposed to function.

I guess I didn't think about turn based because I only play rtwp but now that you mention it I have heard of people use it for turn based Funny thing is I'm getting the +2 pen anyway (on top of all the other one handed bonuses) because I've got the sword modal on, and using stalkers patience and a large shield in another slot, hoping that the 20% chance to reset recovery procs on riposte, then still have two slots for whatever else, rn I'm thinking aoe for afflictions and and maybe one handed stalkers patience for a pierce alternative I guess it's pretty micro managey, I kinda assumed most people micro their main much more than the rest of their squad anyway I think this is the main thing I was driving at, I get some builds make specific use of the mechanic function of certain things like tactician but for the rest it seems like black jacket should just be the standard

Seriously it seems so strong to me, multiclassing with a trickster atm so the synergy is amazing but I think itd fit well into a lot of builds, but almost every time i see a fighter multiclass it's one of the other subclasses being used. Am I mistaken about how often it gets used or missing something or..?

I think this fits nicely at least thematically, and is a very strong build

If youre trying to optimize then godlike is niche, only two worth looking at are nature and death imo Nature's PL buff can be useful for a couple of classes, most obvious is monk, and if you multiclass with fighter you get an option to scale up your fists without having to use items, so nature godlike brawler is pretty good imo Another application I liked was psion, the increased PL makes them generate focus faster, I'm sure there's a few others too Death is more niche, its for classes that get bonuses from being kept at low health, streetfighter and barbarian are two that come to mind, ideally multiclassed (or supported by a party member) who can ensure they won't die at that lower health The PL bonus can be useful in the same sorts of ways as nature as well, could do multis like monk/priest or even fighter/priest (with monastic unarmed) to scale up fists

Thank you for clarifying, much appreciated. The main thing I want my pet for is for protection, like to stop my mc from getting ganked after I evasive roll into their back line to start dominating their priests/wizard's ect, or just in general from melee attackers, also for things like ectopsychic echo set ups, and to potentially lock down and apply my accuracy bonus to groups of enemies with tactical meld Pet needs to be tanky enough to do these things without dying too quickly, but if they do die it's not the end of the world because I can summon them again The survivability should be fine, especially with pain block, but I was more wondering from people with seer experience if this was a good strategy, if it wasn't and just using the pet as a dps dive bomb was more effective I probably would have swayed towards wolf Like masterty said, it depends on what you want, a single class cipher will usually be better at being a cipher than a multuclass but there's lots of other functional components you can add with multiclassing, ranger, wizard and fighter multiclasses can help out with accuracy, rogue adds dps ect Even still, I dont play single class characters because I personally find them boring compared to multiclass

Is this just in regards to the pistol modal? If so with it on, if i understand what you mean, the -50% cuts the total time in half and every other bonus is then applied to the remainder? I took this into account, the cipher spells im choosing are eye strike, mental binding, puppet master, ectopsychic echo, pain block, borrowed instinct, tactical meld, disintegrate, ancestors memory They dont all have the 0.5 cast / 4.0 recovery times, but the ones that dont are important i think, tbf the other ones are too, not much room to pick non essentials on this multi, missing out on secret horrors kinda stings but i figure between eye strike, mental binding and puppet master ill have enemies controlled enough Thats a bummer, didnt think it worked that way, kinda weird considering its other option is a stat stick I was gonna give this to xoti but yeah maybe, the build is a bit squishy This actually sounds like it does what i wanted to do with griffins but better, kinda weird that it triggers universally instead of just off dagger attacks Religion kinda goes against my RP with this character but good to know for another one, ive been thinking about making a relgious character recently actually

Theres not much room in my ability allocations to add the passives to get any real damage out of the pet I think but it's good I have the viable option to respec that way if I choose The thing about scordeos trophy is that while I build up focus with it I'm also building up recovery speed, with each attack I get +10% recovery speed (with driving flight) so if it takes an extra attack or two to build up focus that'll help me spam spells more quickly while I'm ascended. Griffin blade in the off hand for +10% recovery, +45% dual wield bonus, +20% from gunner, +50% pistol modal front loads the weapon recovery speed so I can get shots out quickly and build up a nice amount of universal recovery speed. If I want to swap to doing straight dps/focus gain I'll probably keep the red hand or frost seeker or something in my other weapon slot. And thanks for the script, I dont use them because I don't really understand them but I've been meaning to learn so I'll take a look.

Yes unarmed is still perfectly viable until you get lance, the other summoned weapons you get along the way are also pretty good, wizard has good buffs for a front line monk (mirror image, spirit shield ect), and monk abilities are great for the wizard as well (buffs to int/con, tenacious, action speed), its a very good multiclass with lots of synergy

I'll go with bear, I like it thematically with a pale elf from the white that wends as well, the ghost version kinda looks like a polar bear After taking more of a look at the ability tree I think those 2 extra points are crucial as well And thanks, good to know with the takedown combo, I didn't actually know that they interacted that specific way, only that they synergized and produced solid dmg

The idea atm is mostly to use the pet as a meat shield with tactical meld and pain block after I evasive roll into the enemy back line and cast puppet master on their priests/wizard's ect Ghost heart first and foremost because I think its cool but since the idea for the pet is to be a meat shield being able to reflexively cast it in between me and an enemy is important For weapons using Griffin's Blade and scordeos trophy, Griffin's for either action speed or spell dmg, scordeos with driving flight to build up focus and recovery bonus simultaneously, them together with pistol modal for attacking very quickly specifically with scordeos so I'm always racking up that recovery bonus All the other regular seer stuff is pretty straightforward I think, accuracy buffs to help land spells, pet with ectopsychic echo, takedown combo with disintegration ect So, is this a good idea or is using the ghost heart pet as a meat shield a waste? Would it just be better to use a wolf and lean into the bonus dmg? Any other pointers/ideas with the build? Edit: another bonus of using the pet as a tank instead of dps is saving on 2 ability points which this multi is stretched thin with

I'm not a meta gamer with this but I'll comment with some stuff I know. If youre set on using tuotilos palm then sage is always a good choice, helwalker makes it less tanky but deals more dmg, better suited for nuking imo, forbidden fist is good for extending cc effects and also providing some healing, requires more micro especially when buffing. I assume you'll be using the grimoire switch for draining touch to keep it up the whole fight, if not or you want an alternative then I think Sun and moon and stalkers patience work well with swift flurry/heart beat drumming. That being said if draining touch is your main weapon, it targets will, lower that with miasma and you'll be critting like crazy and ofc trigger swift flurry ect. Won't comment on tactician, never tried it, but if you want an alternative I enjoyed black jacket. I liked instantly switching between flail / morning star / club to lower defenses and set up spells. But obv it also works quite well in melee between wizard buffs and fighter passives/stances/abilities. I also tried a battlemage that used bare fists with monastic unarmed training, with fighter it's relatively easy to get the +3 PL to upgrade the fists to the next tier. You could either combine these to get a **** tonne of weapon options between summoned weapons, fists, and weapons to lower defences and set up spells, or go devoted with pike and get the bonuses to fist and citzals. Warlocks something I've been considering lately but I don't think it's at all tanky, it does have some sauce though. Brute force works with spells, so use a morning star and apply a fortitude affliction or two and any spell targeting deflection or fortitude gets a massive accuracy bonus. Self dmg from blood mage can help activate barb buffs too, can combine this with human or even death godlike. Berserker would be what I'd pick personally, it's easy to counter the confusion, hit to crit and penetration is nice, the self dmg obv isn't great on blood mage but voidward ring reduces the self dmg of both by 25% so that's something, id be stacking regen gear on top of that. I was interested in loremaster for a bit, they can passively heal which is nice for blood mage, get access to more summons, heals, charms, one of their chants lowers fortitude by 14 which is ok, the multi def gives you a decent amount of variety in what you can do. If you want to reconsider hierophant then maybe try psion or soul blade. I tried psion, the dmg wasn't great but tbf I dropped it before I got disintegrate. That being said it's amazing at cc, maybe the best multi in the game for it, the combination of miasma lowering will by 40 and so many of the cipher spells targeting will is an amazing synergy. A more dps friendly option could be soul blade, citzals building up focus by attacking in an aoe and then using soul annihilation in an aoe is also an amazing synergy. Hierophant is also pretty tanky. Rn I'm trying trickster blood mage spell blade with a focus on using summoned weapons, havent gotten too far in but seems like there could be some interesting synergy. Some ideas i have are: Concelhauts staff with riposte to heal passively and use my turns to cast spells, citzals and kalakoths to use rogue attacks in an aoe, citzals and nannasins cobra strike with deathblows for pretty significant dmg (easy to set up with wizard's cc abilities), spider web and/or pull with concelhauts staff, citzals and cobra strike at a range where they can't attack back. Not particularly tanky but the fact you can just smoke bomb makes up for it, escape is also good for zipping to the back line to kill their priests/wizard's ect. Another honorable mention is arcane knight, they're very tanky and sustain well as blood mage casters with all their healing. Their spells get lashes, can play them at range with blight heart for more lash dmg or close up with a flail or morning star to set up spells. Woetp parry with woedicas subclass is cool, passively heal to endlessly launch spells.

This is me lol, started with hoarding because I wanted to save them, but then eventually became conditioned to the point where it just feels wrong so now I never use them. Same goes for per rest abilities.

Does the PL boost from nature godlike increase psions focus regen rate? If so I think that's pretty strong, in addition to all the other bonuses you get from increased PL, plus very easy to trigger with this build

Thanks for all the info, geomancer seems good for this, wasn't really interested in it before for thematic reasons but a stalker could be cool, keeps the nature/animal theme going anyway I was actually thinking about trickster, normally doubling up on wizard spells wouldn't seem good but with a spell blade not having many options to heal the blood mages self dmg the extra resource pool would be useful. Streetfighter would be too squishy for my taste I think.

Apologies, asked something that I realised was already asked and now I can't figure out how to delete the message -.-

I reckon monk/ranger, combine heartbeat drumming/swift flurry and long pain from monk with high accuracy and driving flight from ranger I'm personally thinking of combining it with soul blade cipher because of borrowed instincts acc bonus and triggering multiple procs will build up focus quickly for the raw dmg attack Rogue is a possibility maybe if it triggers with riposte because that will give you extra opportunities, plus a little bit of hit to crit conversion Fighter and berserker are decent contenders too with their hit to crit conversions

So I've become interested in nannasins cobra strike, very thematically cool weapon, I've seen people talk about it being good but not much in the context of specific builds. Currently leaning towards bleak walker / blood mage arcane knight, but an assassin / blood mage with cobra arms is also pretty cool conceptually and from what I understand they're both strong multiclasses. Something I've seen about it is that it's actually a ranged weapon? This seems cool because that means it gets accuracy and penetration boosted by certain gear. With the arcane knight my idea is to stack accuracy and penetration on flames of devotion with ring of focused flame, ring of the marksman, possibly acinas tricorn, scion of flame, spirit of decay. Combined with expose vulnerabilities it should get +40 accuracy and +5 penetration on a full attack, and then subsequently apply sickened to the enemy and fire/corrosive lash to my follow up spells. Wondering about a couple of things: If I crit with flames of devotion, does it extend the amount of time I receive the dmg buff? While my spells have fire and corrosive lash do they also get the fire and corrosive penetration bonus? And is the lash any good with smaller dmg persistent effects like chill fog or malignant cloud? Also thinking of using mask of the grotto deep instead of acinas tricorn for the intellect bonus and PL bonus to poison, would this apply to nannasins cobra strikes poison effect? Any other bleak walker / blood mage synergies I should know about? With the spell blade I guess the idea is somewhat similar, instead of flame of devotion for cool full attacks and spell casting bonuses it'd be using stealth and the rogues full attacks. Between backstab, the assassin bonus, sneak attack, deathblows, deep wounds, rogue full attacks and the inherently high base damage of nannasins cobra strike I imagine I could be doing some serious assassinating with it My main concern here is that with assassins inherent dmg vulnerability and not much capacity to heal it can't sustain as well as the arcane knight, is there something in particular (that doesn't rely on gimmicks or exploits) that gives the spell blade a leg up?

I'm also not 100% on Griffin blade but given the other upgrades you can spec into I think it makes sense for it to be universal action speed, should be easy enough to find out when I get it. I'm going to add pallegina to my party, pain in the ass that she is, for that chant, and her funny interactions with other party members I also thought about making a ranged harbinger at one stage, there were synergies I liked but ultimately felt like I was going to be spending too much time with set up spells to use it the way I wanted, but scordeos trophy universal recovery speed bonus sounds like it might actually make it work. I didnt realise reload speed bonuses were linear, that's a game changer, getting to that reload speed hard cap actually seems really easy. Also in my other weapon slot I was thinking about using the AOE shotguns for arterial / gouging / venom strike so less important to be able to use those on pistols. Ideally I'll have: Slot 1 - Scordeos trophy for main dps Slot 2 - Ecceas Arcane Blaster for high armor enemies Slot 3 - Dual AOE shottys to apply statuses For slots 1 and 2 I'll play around with whether I want something in the off hand, you make a good point about the tradeoff, and once I heat up with scordeos I can probably turn off the modal to get the best of both worlds. Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

Haha yes you're spot on with what I was trying to do, thanks for explaining how it works mechanically, makes sense now. Would have been a very nice synergy, even thematically the idea of trapping enemies in a spider web and maneuvering through it to finish them is cool but this gives me another idea, maybe i could just play ranged or even constant spell slinging depending how good the healing is from inside the spider web, or use that summoned snake melee weapon. I'm sure I'll cycle back to sage soon with how bad my restartitis is

Apologies in advance if this has been answered elsewhere, can see the topic of action speed is pinned but didn't really see a direct answer to how different sources interact, stack and are prioritised (hopefully i didnt just miss it), and I wanted to ask about how it relates to a particular build I'm planning. The class is a scout (trickster / ghost heart). Load out is scordeos trophy / Griffin blade. Wondering how low I can get recovery on my pistol, and more broadly I guess how well this would work. Reload time: - 20% from gunner - 10% from acinas tricorn - 50% from pistol modal (may or may not use depending on situation) Action speed: - 36%+ from dex - 30% from dual wield - 15% from two weapon style - 10% from Griffin blade - 5%+ stacking from scordeos trophy Recovery speed: - scaled reduction in armor penalty from cutthroat cosmo - 10% from miscreants leathers So firstly, are there limitations on stacking from the same or different sources? Is there a particular order these get prioritised in? My understanding is that there are diminishing returns, so that when one bonus reduces recovery by x amount, the next bonus will reduce the remaining amount in the same way. So it probably wouldn't take long for these bonuses to diminish significantly and it makes me wonder if the red hand isn't just always going to be better because it's two attacks are essentially almost a true 50% reduction (apart from the second shots animation time) that aren't subject to diminishing returns. On the other hand, I can keep the red hands damage bonuses by getting kills with it then switching out (I can actually get both tiers from waiting until I've maxed the dmg bonus before I upgrade and just not rest after that). At this point the only bonus from red hand would be the rate of fire, but this can be weighed up against the unique bonuses from scordeos trophy, which also allows for something in the off hand. Also if the diminishing returns are that bad stacking multiple effects would it be worth switching griffin's blade with something else in the offhand for a different bonus?

Thanks for the link, I dont like using community patches/overhaul mods until I beat the vanilla game and as of yet I've been constantly restarting and trying new builds and haven't actually finished the game yet I do plan to give it a go after my first complete run though I do really like sages, so far definitely one of my favorite builds I made a wood elf forbidden fist / blood mage with the idea to throw down web and stand in it to gain wounds but it didnt work so i got annoyed with it even though it had a bunch of other synergies haha, it's probably something that gets fixed in the community patch, I might go back to it after I complete a proper run

This is actually a really cool idea and sounds like it would do what I'm trying to do with my build but better, I'm assuming you'd need community patch though for forbidden fists to count as fist weapons to buff them? Or would it scale with power level regardless because its an ability and the effect be the same?