trias10

I have built my character according to the OP of this thread on page 1. Have been using that as an exact blueprint and picking the spells and abilities listed there, although I did deviate slightly to pick up the core necessary Tactician skills too: disciplined strikes, unbending, and refreshing defence. However, if you have a better list of abilities and spells I should take instead, please let me know and I will retrain my character. Grimoire switching is something I am playing around with during combat, although it is a drag because there is a cooldown of a single round/turn in turn based which sucks, and can lose you a lot of momentum by doing so, so I try to avoid grimoire switching. When Brilliant Tactician does proc though, the results are pretty epic, because it refreshes ALL of your spells each round in turn based, so you can just keep casting your highest level spells over and over again, and don't need to risk killing yourself with blood sacrifice. But getting it to proc is difficult, basically only overlapping Chill Fog works for me. I now have Wall of Draining and I have to say, it's kind of a let down. For you see, it only boosts your own beneficial effects IF the enemies it is draining have their own beneficial effects. If they don't have beneficial effects active, then the wall does nothing. I assumed it always increased your own beneficial effects just by having enemies stand in the wall, but no, it's only if they have buffs of their own, which is somewhat situational, although once you get to the higher level encounters it's less of an issue. Jury is still out on whether Tactician/BM beats SC, but I will say that having now been in some difficult fights, when you get Brilliant to proc, you really feel powerful as hell, it's pretty great. Just wish it was easier to proc.

Wow, thank you for all of that, that is a huge amount of info to take in! I started my POTD run with a Tactician/BM and so far it's going well, am level 16, but I haven't taken Mule Kick at all, as I want to focus on spells, but you seem to praise it so highly. I just don't have the ability points to spare for it though, maybe I can take it later. One thing I'm a bit hazy on is how you're getting so much healing going per round, in Turn Based, using Unbending. I've been in several fights now, and I haven't noticed that I'm getting any meaningful healing like the kind you are describing. I have Unbending which I activate at the beginning of the combat, but I am not seeing the numbers you are describing. I am buffing myself with loads of spells though, so I usually don't even get hit by the enemy, unless they cast spells. However, I did go fight Dorudugan (the giant steel megaboss), and I figured I could win given all this Unbending stuff, but nope, I died pretty quickly after he smashed me with his main attack several times. Should I be activating Unbending multiple times per fight or something? (For a stack effect?) Brilliant Tactician remains difficult to proc, usually only from Chill Fog reliably, I don't have ABD yet so can't comment on the invisibility. Overall, am not really getting a sense that the Tactician/BM is any better than a SC Bloodmage. I'm more jealous of Aloth and his ability to cast level 8 spells which seem much harder hitting than anything I can put out.

So I tried again with potion of invisibility, but still no dice, it doesn't get Brilliant Tactician to process. Maybe Community Patch or BMP (just the buffs) fixed it? Because to be honest, it's a bug and shouldn't be happening anyway. Brilliant Tactician states that it only applies if all enemies are flanked, and invisibility does not make that happen, so what I'm seeing should be the default and correct behaviour. I am playing in turn based. However, Chill Fog makes everyone flanked, so it's a cheap and easy way to get Brilliant to proc, although in a huge fight it may be a problem. I'm actually happy that invisibility doesn't proc Brilliant as otherwise it's too cheesy and trivial to abuse. However, it also cuts down on the utility of Tactician and makes SC blood mage more alluring.

Interesting, very odd that invisibility wasn't firing Brilliant for me, even though I was solo. I didn't have Berath's challenge on though, so perhaps that was why, or it may have been that the enemies were confused from the ABD. I will check again later today using a potion of invis instead. You mention you can use grimoire imprint to steal Shadowing Beyond, but SB is an ability, not a spell, so how can you steal it? Also, why would you need Salvation of Time when Wall of Draining seems just as good if not even better? Barring Deaths Door I totally understand. Finally, last question, but for Tactician is Disciplined Strikes better than Tactical Barrage? Disciplined Strikes gives you Intuitive, which converts 25% of hits to crits, but Tactical Barrage gives you Acute, which seems far more powerful with +5 Intellect and +1 Power Levels.

Thank you most kindly for all of that, it was super helpful. Also didn't know about that Ultimate build in turn-based, that was very cool to watch in action. I went ahead and did a few test battles in solo turn based using the Tactician/BM, and was able to replicate much of what you mentioned. However, one key thing I'm not seeing on my side is the ease of getting Brilliant to proc from Brilliant Tactician. You wrote that you can get it to proc simply by going invisible using Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure, however I am not seeing that. Going invis alone isn't causing the Brilliant to proc, which makes sense, because all enemies must be flanked for it to proc. The only way I can get all enemies to be flanked is with Chill Fog. So unlike you, I found myself starved of Discipline in most fights. I'll add that I wasn't using any special gear, just some non-magical crap. How are you getting Brilliant from Brilliant Tactician to proc so reliably? I do believe you now that Tactician/BM is much more survivable for solo than Assassin/BM. For my POTD playthrough, it's now a choice between battlemage vs SC Bloodmage. You reckon those extra +3 PL are worth giving up Tactician for?

Ah yes, I only play Turn Based which maybe throws a spanner into the BM/Tactician approach. I notice on the forum here that all the big TB players (Haplok, etc) all recommend Assassin/BM and not Tactician/BM which leads me to believe that the Tactician stuff you have so kindly written about doesn't work as well in TB.

Interesting. That is one thing I have noticed about the Assassin/BM -- they're very squishy. If all your buffs go down at the wrong moment, or even if they don't, you can get hit pretty hard. Although I'm not sure I understand exactly why the Tactician/BM is that much different, other than Unbending? One thing I don't understand at all, how are you regenerating so many spell slots and Discipline every round? Can you please explain this in detail as I really don't understand when you say you're getting back 5 spell slots and 5 Discipline every round without even Blood Sacrifice.

So it seems to me that Assassin/BM is still better than Tactician/BM once you get Brilliant Departure, and even with Berath's Challenge active: You can use the Departure spell to essentially go invisible at will, and move to wherever you want on the battleground, and you're now invisible, which means your next spell will hit with the Assassinate bonus. I just tested this with Turn Based mode and it seems to work like this. You don't need to run away from the battle at all, you can stay stuck in, you fire off some mega powerful spell from invis with the Assassinate buff, then you may get swarmed by hostiles, but it's okay, you just Brilliant Depart somewhere else, now you're invis again, fire off another nuke with Assassinate buff, rinse repeat. It seems incredibly powerful, and you don't need the extra healing from Tactician to be able to stand your ground, because you can invis yourself in the middle of combat, which means you avoid getting hit in the first place. Am I missing something? It seems very powerful and you can keep Berath's Challenge active, and you don't have to run away.

Thank you for the great detail, appreciate it, am learning a lot! Quick question about Assassin/BM: wouldn't you run out of Guile in a fight by spamming the Rogue powers like Vanishing Strike and Shadowing Beyond? Assuming a long fight, eventually you wouldn't be able to go insta-invis anymore to get the Assassinate bonus? How do you keep the Guile flowing?

How does the Vanishing Strike cheese work? It only procs if you attack with a weapon, not a spell?

Thank you for the reply! If you used the Level 33 progression mod, such that any MC Bloodmage could eventually reach level 9 spells (although by then the game would be over anyway), would there be a clear winner in terms of assassin/BM vs tactician/BM? I mean at such high level anything will be god tier already, but I'm thinking the slight edge would go to the tactician maybe, just for pure survivability? My first POTD run will be with vanilla, but I'm already pondering a second run with the level 33 mod down the line.

Thank you for the very detailed explanation, I really appreciate it! It still sounds like SC Bloodmage is a top contender, but the low accuracy is definitely a concern. Still, I really want the chance to try out all those cool level 8 and 9 spells, so I think for this first foray I'll try out the SC Bloodmage, and then maybe a spellblade or battlemage later. You can also have the best of both worlds with the Level 33 mod, which allows you to keep levelling up to 33. This would give MC bloodmages the chance to use level 9 spells too, although not until level 25, and by then the game would be over anyway (the game + DLCs only gives you enough XP to reach lvl 27). I saw in another post that assassin/bloodmage is the only MC which can have 7 grimoires available for switching, is this true? That post said this alone makes the class extremely powerful, but nobody here has mentioned it, so just wanted to ask if this is indeed true? Also, what specifically about the assassin/bloodmage makes it so tedious and repetitive?

@Not So Clever Hound Thank you so much for the great write-up and details! I have read everything in this thread and wanted to ask you for your opinion on playing the pure SC bloodmage vs playing a MC assassin/bloodmage? I saw that you tried out the assassin/bloodmage in a later playthrough, and were getting nuke crits of 500-800 which sounds pretty powerful. Did you end up enjoying the assassin/bloodmage more than the SC bloodmage? Would you say the MC spellblade is more powerful overall or still weaker than the SC bloodmage? Was the MC spellblade able to take on all the megabosses with equal ease? I'm currently looking to do my first solo PotD run, and am just stuck on which is the better choice between these two variants: assassin/bloodmage vs SC bloodmage. Would greatly appreciate your thoughts. I love the assassinate bonus and free, spammable invisibility which the assassin brings to the table, for absolutely insane crits, but am wondering if it stalls out in the end game and can't handle the megabosses and tougher end game fights on solo?