yorname

Just want to say my appreciation again, as I didn't realize it is possible to perma-CC Dorudugan at all before reading this post for the first time. My party didn't have a constant source of STR/CON affliction, so my Tactician/Illusionist was looking at 180-155. Conquerer Stance and an affliction are identical, so it's possible to do this with literally any druid or wizard watcher, SC or MC, with no rest bonuses and siding with Rymrgand. Even Maia has enough ACC, although because Gaze of Adragon has a shorter duration and she has only 10 INT I doubt it can work in practice. Psychovampiric Shield is almost good enough for Dorugudan. I was using SC Serafen, who lacks any optimization. With Miscreant's Leathers and Eccea's Arcane Blaster he could generate just enough focus for Borrowed Instinct and Psychovampiric Shield, nothing more. It would be a trouble if I needed Ancestor's Memory from him

I' ve turned on Berath's trial for quite some playthroughs and never lost any crew members in boarding fights. They got knocked out, sure, but never permanently died like companions (if I don't revive them). This run after a few fights though, almost all the crew died. What's the rules for this? Are they supposed to permanently die like this? Or there's something wrong with my past playthroughs?

I can only eliminate this by reducing duplicates to 0. I guess the process of creating those duplicates does wierd things that's more than causing serious stuttering/freeze.

I'm playing on a rather weak laptop, so don't want to turn on every graphic setting for a higher framerate. But I found that each time I cast Mirror Image, several setting like Lights will be turned on. Lights is the most obvious visually, there are probably other stuff got messed. The options in the menu are unchanged, just the actual effects are turned on. Edit: I realized that this is far more common than I expected. Even switching weapon sets to wielding a torch can turn the Lights on. That's really annoying. This is how it should look like when Lights is properly turned off: the 3 light sources don't cast shadows or illuminate the surroundings. This is how it should look like when Lights is turned on: When I turn off the setting and then switch - switch back to a torch, it becomes this: the torch on my hand is ignoring the setting. If I turn off the option again and re-enter the area, the firepit ignores the setting:

Last time I only have Better Pet Tooltips and No Final Boss Skip. I added more QoL things like Silent Corporate Logos this time, but I doubt those have anything to do with it since last time they weren't there. I guess I'll have to look closer to find out the exact moments when effects stick in the future

None that I know of. This time and a year ago I both newly downloaded from steam before the runs, then added some mods, outside of CP and BPM none of them should change rules and mechanics. The buffs and abilities can be removed by re-equipping then remove the gears, but how they stuck for the first place is a mystery.

Edit: duplicated

Just for the healing part, do you need another chanter or paladin for prolonged fights? I always wanted to try something other than the go-to herald Pallegina as support but the class has too much infinite healing that I can't justify giving it up for something else. Running both seems to be an overkill. Maybe a paladin OR chanter, plus a druid is the right balance?

Now my Serafen can also use Thunderous Report without equiping the weapon. I gave the weapon to another member and when using the ability from Serafen, the indicator and actual attack was from the other member.

Necroing my own post because I'm constantly running into this bug. Last playthrough Aloth had Fleshmender's Regrowing for the whole playthrough, even though he only wore it once pretty early that run.

That's a good point, I'll try some builds on mecs and perhaps a new watcher.

I only tested a lv19 SC mercenary for a while. He was generating 5 focus/s, probably slightly more if he got lv20 and some additional PL. In combat I just found his focus very limited compared to a normal cipher unless the enemies are somehow too powerful for weapons. Unless there's only one boss that the cipher can't reliably hit, I believe a normal cipher can always manage to generate more focus even factoring in downtime. The only thing that kind of worked for me is like you said, lower tier spamming. I guess The Complete Self is essential for this playstyle? What caster multiclasses do you suggest, besides chanters? I can't really think of great synergies off the top of my head

What are the possibilities for psion builds? My understanding is that they are meant to multiclass with caster class, but what are the advantages of a psion over fighter/ranger/monk in supporting the other half? They can sustain Borrowed Instinct, and perhaps 1 or 2 other debuff on an enemy, that's pretty much it. I don't think they can even comfortably offer Ancestor's Memory. Borrowed Instinct isn't much better than what other classes can offer, and prevents another cipher from working efficiently if I want a cipher with full debuffing potential. The only other idea I got is as SC, using Death of 1000 cuts and Mind Wave non-stop on a single enemy. but when fighting tougher enemies I would want at least Borrowed Instinct and Psychovampiric Shield, perhaps Ancestor's Memory on someone else. I feel psion would have problem getting enough focus for just these, and don't see an advantage over normal ciphers let alone SC ascendant.

But without summon or exploit? Templar needs Wall of Draining (maybe not strictly a exploit), how does FF tank it? Last time I tried I couldn't avoid Brutal Cleave with Blade Turning.

To be more specific, among 4 megabosses: Colossal: you can't tank it anyway Mage: you don't need to tank it Spider: it will eventually reliably crit you, anyone wearing heaviest armor and large shield is good enough. Also you can't tank it in melee. Slime: only thing you can tank in a normal way, and you really need the extra AR. Fighter is just not a great tank for extremely long fights. It's a supportive class for your other side of multiclass. As a swashbuckler the best role is tanking weaker enemies and deal damage.

Bashing shields results in slightly less damage, but you are looking at a much shorter recovery time, so if something goes wrong, you don't have to wait for a whole 4s to use Second Wind. You can use mods to make bashing shields scale with enchantment so their PEN is usable. The thing about megabosses is, a paladin has at least 3 more AR than fighter, and it matters a lot when tanking megabosses, which are literally, megabosses, you know, you're not supposed to tank them without a dedicated build.

Basically I got bored at constantly dodging its fireballs for 30mins with my potato laptop, so I took a closer look to see if it's possible to automate the fight without exploits or Lover's Embrace and such. The biggest problem is its pull effect from Magnetic Overdrive. It will knock the victims prone then send them to inifite interrupts from normal attacks. AFAIK there're only two items to get immunity to pull: Horns of the Aurochs and Upright Captain's Belt. BPM added this immunity to fighters' Hold the Line and Tekehu, so it's much more viable with the mod. Assuming we're done with Magnetic Overdrive, let's move to tanking its attacks. Both its main and off hand has an ACC of 151, 18 PEN piece/crush with main hand and 15 PEN crush with off hand. It also has this Brutal Cleave ability, with 152 ACC and 13.75 PEN slash. Now theoretically you need 153 DEF to not get a crit, which is rather easy. But Brutal Cleave applied a stacked debuff to -15% max health, which is practically a middle finger from the designers. I don't know if it works on Graze, even if it doesn't, we need 203 DEF to make it graze every time. I don't think it's a reasonable number to sustain for a long time without exploits. So, we need summons. Many Lives is the best choice here, single chanter is enough in theory, 2 is better if we want to reposition less. Dorudugan has two attacks to hit ranged characters now: Helfire Barrage and Helstorm. Both are fire attacks, has 152 ACC and 13.75 PEN. After going below 75%, it will use Charge Helstorm periodically. This adds +5PL to Helfire Barrage, so it reaches 162 ACC and 16.25 PEN at max. 3 stacks of the buff will trigger Helstorm immediately and clear itself, so there's no 3 stack situation, and Helstorm never get improved. With 163 REF and 19.25 buring AR, every hit will be 40ish, it's impossible to die to these abilities. REF is pretty easy to get from Weapon and Shield Style, buring AR is probably the easiest to get from gears. Chanter's Not Felled or Druid's Weather the Storm help greatly, and Tekehu's chanter version of Weather the Storm is easily the easiest to automate. Lastly, because the fire attacks will clear skeletons from Many Lives, we still need to reposition once for a while. Grog pet can make it easier to escape if the colossal gets too close by accident. If we don't die in the first place the pet has no downside. TLDR: we need immunity to pull, chanter with Many Lives, everyone with 163 REF and 19.25 buring AR to almost automate the fight.

SC ascendant is one of those classes that I avoid playing again because of how ridiculous it is. In 90% cases Thunderous Report - Time Parasite - spam Amplified Wave and the map is clear before the first ascension is over. Even without Thunderous Report, there are more AOE ranged weapons than melee ones so you'll have a harder time building focus with melee weapons

I've always been using melee+scordio to get the most out of the stacking -5% recovery buff, but never thought of one-handed style for I don't know why. Now that you mentioned it I realized it's better in almost every way. Two-weapon + modal is impractical anyway unless playing something like ranger/cipher

Like critical hits, improved critical, sneak attack, might, weapon quality... I vaguely remember all of them are additive? but sometimes the numbers are slightly off. Is the -15% critical damage on firearms also additive? And for a rogue, are two-handed style and improved critical even worse than they already are? By the way, how is damage calculated for spells? Since PL is multiplicative I get the impression that might and critical are more important compared to weapon damage.

It's a bit annoying that actually useful spells are so limited, often one can quickly run out of certain tier spells and have to sit on useless other ones. I guess for blast casters eventually have to find other jobs to do with those slots.

Taking about empower, one thing about blast casters is that empowerment usage seems inevitable, but no rest is also extremely good. Do you find the need to empower or refill spells often?

After completing so many runs I still haven't finished one with a "proper" caster. Especially one that mainly uses damage spells. With bloated enemy HP, limited casts and mediocre spell accuracy / penetration, I always found them hard to pull off compared to CC caster multiclasses. How do you play them, especially against high level enemies and bosses?

Ended up with devoted berserker & saber. It's pretty boring tbh but at least quite easy to play. I've never played a barbarian and wanted to begin with berserker since it's the more melee focused choice. On a second thought berserker simply trades 13hp/3s for effectively ~15ACC for melee only, considering I had to invest more CON and limited class choice, it's more about flavor than actual strength.

My concern is that the limited uses of FoD might be too little for endgame bosses, since multiclass paladin can't regain zeal on their own without kills they fall back to auto attacks with only +5 ACC really quickly. Also fire attacks meet immunity every now and then.