[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

in terms of heal companion buff, have you considered giving it an instant cast and no recovery? there's still an unpleasant action economy to heal companion, and Play Dead has instant cast. at least then "Heal Companion" has value in that it doesn't cost you action economy to use to use more pre-emptively. I haven't played aroudn with it in BPM mode, but when heal companion is available, enemies tend to be able to take a pet from healthy to dead pretty quickly, so you want to use it pre-emptively, but also not necessarily waste cast-time (even down to .5s BPM) and recovery time just to do that in case there's no real danger coming up on the pet.

 

adding resource recovery to bonded fury seems too good, imo. it would basically be an auto-pick in any build. i'm circling back to an earlier point - if bonded fury had a narrower set of tier 3 abilities, that would be extremely good for a pet-support. Swift in particular (whatever other T3 is an exercise to the reader). Maia has the best pet in the game because her bird can face tank megabosses because it's immune to engagement, a single-class ranger focusing on their pet should get a similar payoff and not need to rely on an exhortation.

[Lil' synergies with Chanter/something + Wahai Poraga]

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

This makes it possible for a Skald to gain more than 1 phrase per swing.

*sighs, takes Konstanten out of the storage closet* time for another run

[Lil' synergies with Chanter/something + Wahai Poraga]

18 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

• killing a skeleton triggers Cleaving Stance (attacking the enemy again because Cleaving Stance chooses the next enemy as initial target, not a skeleton)

if like, you get a couple skellies in one hit you get two free full attacks on the enemy? (or is it one cleave per attack. doesn't really come up often, so curious)

[[LIST] Sources of Immunities, Resistances, Stackable Effects]

On 2/11/2023 at 7:07 AM, darkling.lithely said:

Nice list. Thanks.

I didn't see immunity to pierce on the list. Anyone know how Vladimir Bl achieves this with the Holy Slayer against Dorudugan?

there's no immunity to pierce. probably what you're seeing is an immunity to disengagement attacks.

[Best History Options]

On 2/6/2023 at 11:42 AM, NotDumbEnough said:

Make sure to bury Wael's scroll in the first game or he will troll you in Deadfire in a very unpleasant way.

you can avoid this outcome with some carefully selected dialogue choices.

[Best History Options]

probably not what you're looking for, but "everything bad" i find to be really hilariously fun challenge. everyone's dead, you get cursed by basically every god, etc. 

more seriously, the non-"everything bad" pre-built legacies generally get you everything in the game, whereas if you import or do your own custom history you could easily choose to resolve quests and story points in ways where you deny yourself unique stuff. the one exception that i can think of is the Devil of Caroc plate, only some of the pre-built histories will get you that, and i'm only pretty certain of "everything good" option being one of them. (there may be another)

edit: you won't be able to get "everything" using a pre-built history, because the berath option (fair and balanced) is the only way to get the unique consumable "berath's bell", but also impossible to get devil of caroc breastplate. similarly i don't think there's any other way to get hylea's consumable without benefiting her in the legacy, which is mutually exclusive with berath's bell. can be important for e.g. a no-rest or low-rest run where the hylea's consumable is very very good.

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

13 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Hmm maybe I can cast it while stealthed, removing most of the recovery, but...if Vela is cocooned does she still get scared if I unstealth?

nope  she'll run over to you first before getting scared. important that she freaks out first

 

lordy you got a pickle of a challenge here. how far have you been able to get throughout all your iterations?

another thing possible consideration is cinder bombs. unless BPM changed it, the explosion itself will interrupt, without a roll, so it really doesn't matter how good your explosives skill is. it could act as an extra source of interrupt that you don't have to resource-gen for, for stopping merges.

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

15 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

But getting her scared without getting her near the big blob in the middle of the map is kinda hard. How do you do that? And if you trigger her near HOW you'd have to get him all the way into a corner.

if you skip to 20:30 in my video you can see what i do.

 

17 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

I mean old blood mage builds were mostly centered around extending potion of the final stand (plus scordeo's etc.) and if you watch videos people usually have very little health and would have died many times without it. I can barely extend moonwell.

sorry i don't recall the extent to which bpm nerfs various things but, what about that wand that has a barring death's door effect? could you use that in conjunction with your 4x ooze wall of draining to give you a lot more blood sacrifices?

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

2 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

See my problem I'm having with vela is even if I temporal cocoon her in the top right corner (like in HOW map), then run to the bottom left, kite HOW way down, she still ends up wandering pretty close to the center of the map and HOW chucks a symbiote at her

Maybe dumb question: are you letting vela get scared before you kite? Her scared AI shouldn’t wander that much, whereas her normal AI will try to find you (and then getting scared when an enemy is in range). I dragged Vela with me to aggro HoW so I could trigger her fear, I withdrew her, and then kited. It was pretty foolproof in terms of safety 

 

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

31 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

How does dual wielding benefit accuracy?

not about accuracy, but about maximizing procs/second

 

31 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

You know I've never played a druid, does this spell stun or interrupt like returning storm? The description just says it attacks anyone you hit or who hits you with a bolt of lightning. Vs. reflex.

avenging storm procs count as "weapon" attacks (if you're not aware, there's some infinite damage cheese that you can do with this fact combined with the 2h sword Effort). so it can trigger interrupt off impediment. it's also a bonus source of damage.

so with potion of impediment, deadeye, and high speed (i had scordeo's edge buff, so ultimately dual wielding didn't even matter i guess, i was just dual wielding because that's skaen's spiritual weapon) you get the possibility to interrupt from the weapon, and an additional chacne to interrupt from the avenging storm hit. especially after the initial ooze form splits and defenses lower, it can be a massive aid.

i looked up my own run again just to verify that potion of impediment does in fact work with avenging storm and can be effective: 

 

 

36 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Oh how did you deal with Vela in your ultimate attempt? In mine I had infinite withdraw casts so it was easy. If you're summoning stuff offscreen it is also easy. Harder with a character that fights directly because she tends to wander into the field of fire.

it varied. i could have infinite withdraw casts because i was part tactician, but really i had to manage that pretty carefully since in my practice runs i could run into a situation where the wrong spell gets restored by brilliant, or i'm starting a fight without a sufficient withdraw cast because i didn't restore enough spells in the last fight. i think generally i tried to aggro enemies so that vela gets scared, withdraw her, and then lure enemies far far away from her so that i don't have to worry about re-withdrawing her and can just focus on getting back up to full withdraw and restoring my own resources.

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

But slicken is a hazard AOE so it might proc some

nit: slicken isn't a hazard AoE. it's an AoE with a repeating effect. want to make sure we're precise, because "hazard" has a specific meaning and interacts differently with items and buffs.

 

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Does potion of perfect aim stack with merciless gaze?

yes, but they're not additive. they're independent checks, so you'll have a 1-(.85 * .75) = 36% chance for hit->crit instead of of 15 + 25 = 40% chance.

 

what race are you? for my ultimate i run i chose a boreal dwarf expressly for the hauane o whe fight, which was by far the roughest of all the megabosses when i was planning things out. boreal dwarf gives you a massive 50% miss to graze chance against hauane. would be real useful for landing something like slicken.

 

have you considered scrolls of avenging storm and dual-wielding something? iirc my ultimate attempt was basically dual-wielding, lots of effects to boost accuracy, deadeye, impediment, scordeo's edge buff, avenging storm, and going to town on hauane o whe. basically my entire character was planned just to be able to take on hauane o whe.

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Do you mean the Scourge of Bezzelo? I haven't used crossbows much but there's only two uniques I think, that one says it shoots 3 projectiles.

sorry it was an arbalest. mechanical marvel

 

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

So it doesn't work on HOW but it works on the gigantic oozes?

sorry, when i say "won't prevent HoW splits" i mean it won't prevent *any* split. but you're right, if you're fast, you can dps one down and use it to kill it at near death before they have a chance to merge. but merging begins at 50% health and the instakill isn't active until 25% health so that's quite a window of merging to deal with (and you'd need a separate solution for the more basic oozes that merge immediately)

 

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Does potion of impediment work on spells? If so could use scrolls of storm of holy fire or similar spells that throw lots of projectiles over a decent duration, there's so many projectiles that it should be interrupting a lot.

i swear it used to work with spells early on, but on a more recent one i couldn't get it to proc, so i think it's only weapons now. deadeye definitely works with spells, but the proc rate is rather low on its own.

 

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

blood mage / berserker looked really interesting because berserker gets tenacious (and hardy) from frenzy

if you're able to get the axe from SSS you don't need to worry about getting berserker (with the hidden health) since you'd be able to instantly always ugprade your frenzy to energized with weapon switching.

 

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Can you explain what you meant about the jester's cap interaction? I was wearing this incidentally for the deflection debuff so the phantom hit more, but I didn't try wall of draining since it was nerfed pretty hard

jester's cap cap of the laughingstock has an aura that lowers everyone's deflection by 10. the way it's implemented though, it shows up as a positive buff on the enemy, and for wall of draining it counts as a buff you can drain duration from (except it has no duration, so it'll stay active and be a perpetual source of +time on your own buffs). again, i don't know if BPM changed how cap of the laughingstock does this aura, since it is a source of cheese.

i mention it because it would give you a lot more time on energized and you can spam a much lower-level (and easier to blood sacrifice spell) like chill fog, where crits would interrupt. you'd need to stack a bunch of +accuracy though (though the last couple times I ran Deadfire I basically did this strategy with a druid, just layering on so many ticking aoes with energized active and preventing HoW from doing much of anything).

what about slicken? has always been a tried-and-true boss interrupt, and it has an aoe (to get multiple oozes), and as a tier 1 spell it should be really easy to restore with blood sacrifice.

 

[Defeating Hauni O Whe AND Dorudugan in BPM (solo POTD upscaled etc.) ?]

a) if not solo, the most "legitimate" way is to equip everyone other than your tank with crossbows or arbalests with modals on and interrupt merges. you would have to deliberately hold off on shooting at times to make sure you have it up and available when you need it, since the merge can happen very fast. if you are willing to go this far, there's an xbow that shoots in a line. you could reload, cast spells (so you don't fire) and then when you see a merge, run into position and fire to hit both oozes. there's a chance you'd miss, but it might serve as a backup if below strategies don't work.

b) the oozes are also vulnerable to dex afflictions - if you use petrify. it'll get resisted down to paralyze, which is still hard CC. but if you're doing this to stop a merge, you have to hit both mergers, if one is hard-CCed but the other is still able to merge, it'll still succeed.

Quote

Death Ring *says* it can "potentially" destroy near death enemies whatever that means but I'm pretty sure doesn't work on HOW.

"potentially" was just game-dev future-proofing for adjustments of the percentage rate without needing to update text/translations. in reality, it's always been a 100% chance of success on a successful graze or better on a near-death enemy. however, this won't prevent HoW splits, and merges start happening at 50%.

Quote

Haven't seen anything that would really work with full recovery time.

what about Concelhaut's Crushing Doom? interrupts multiple times, and does damage. you'd need to be able to rapidly recover it, don't know if that's possible w/ BPM's nerfs. just have a couple casts active on both oozes and the likelihood that they'll be able to merge is real low.

 

does BPM nerf wall of draining? energized + wall of draining on HoW to keep it up. you can use jester's cap to act as a buff that you can drain from HoW (unless BPM fixed this interaction). use stuff like chill fog or something else (not hazards) that will do potentially lots of interrupts while being easy to spam/restore. This solves the problem too that lower-level oozes that start merging immediately and you might be caught flat-footed if you're in the middle of recovery.

[Does "+X% Beneficial Effect Duration" have any effect on chants' linger duration?]

i've used a lot of +beneficial effect items in the my last few runs (both percentage and also fixed), and sadly chants aren't impacted by them. they are just overridden in the game mechanics to always just be based on the default chant duration + the calculated linger.

that being said, salvation of time does work, but i suspect only because it happens at a different point in the game's computations than at chant-application time.

 

i haven't checked to see if offensive chants are negatively impacted by resolve or -hostile effect stuff, but i suspect they aren't either (ISTR being able to keep up some offensive chants on Dorudugan, who has maxed resolve)

[[CLASS BUILD] Lactose Intolerant Armored Arcanist - Solo Upscaled POTD with Balance Polishing Mod]

2 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Yes actually with Berath challenge, you can use a little trick which is to approach enemies from stealth (to be in visual range) and then quickly unstealth/restealth, then you'll be in combat but enemies don't notice you and you can buff, use summons etc. Works like the trap strategy, without using a trap. But, as I recall @thelee mentioned to me once, it's not as reliable as actual traps as you can get easily get the timing wrong on pressing the Alt key twice, and you can't split/pull enemies like with traps. So for The Ultimate this isn't as helpful, traps remain better (but in somewhat limited quantity).

yeah mostly the issue was that in The Ultimate Magran's challenge is turned on, which prevents you from pausing. So it doesn't become foolproof (and in The Ultimate you can't really afford a mistake).

also, with Berath's challenge on, you can pause the game when you're close unenough, unstealth and then re-stealth while the game is still paused, then unpause, and that'll be enough to trigger combat while still in stealth. don't even have to bother with traps or anything. traps are useful if you need to split up enemies though.

[Need help with cipher/fighter build]

i wouldn't say it's bad, but you do need to avoid those traps.

instead of the +acc stance you can do mob stance. meanwhile disciplined barrage line of buffs and confident aim make it a lot easier to generate focus on vanilla ciphers, especially on high difficulty.

open question: does a kill from soulblade's soul annihilation trigger mob stance full attacks? might be a neat interaction for a fighter/cipher.

[[CLASS BUILD] Lactose Intolerant Armored Arcanist - Solo Upscaled POTD with Balance Polishing Mod]

4 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Other than for Magran Fires/Vela shenanigans, I'm not sad about this one because it's so annoying when enemies withdraw their buddies forever.

yeah, I can't peer into @Elric Galad's head, but I seem to recall this was a factor, just the quality-of-life aspect.

[Party Composition help]

I actually precisely did a "Berath simp" style party/character, I used a Druid that invested in Decay effects and a few Poison effects (since Decay alone won't give you enough coverage). Heals would give you some versatility, and is in keeping with Berath's cyclical portfolio.

Are you against companions? Vatnir would be happy to join a Berath simp party, even if he's, strictly-speaking, Rymrgand. Lot of overlap.

 

What about corpse-eater barbarian? A barbarian from a society that has a ritual around eating the dead seems on brand.

[Black jacket tank full debuff modals build]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

If you want to apply all those modals in every fight and switch around all the time then it is indeed a grind at some point

i haven't done too much turn-based (mostly just using the S4 mod for some high-level play), but in turn-based mode I find this to be a much more practical strategy since you have the time to do this every round. If somehow Deadfire was a sweaty esports game, then I would totally anticipate some tryhards doing this in RTwP mode to optimize every tiny fraction out of this game.

[Fury Evoker (Druid/Wizard) vs Evoker (Wizard)]

2 hours ago, dgray62 said:

Unless you steal CW from a Priest of Magran, if you're using one of the mods like BPM that gives this subclass this amazing spell......

i don't think you can cast restricted spells even if you steal it with grimoire imprint... can you?

[Fury Evoker (Druid/Wizard) vs Evoker (Wizard)]

17 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

On the topic of stacking spell echo chances, @Kosai had posted something interesting that I haven't tested myself but amended slightly below for clarity:

Evoker/Priest of Magran: evocation keyword spells can stack with all three echo effects below:
-Evoker (wizard class), 5% chance on evocation spells evocation spells only (will work with those on Magran priest spell list)
-Marux Amanth (weapon - dagger), 10% chance with priest spells (including Magran's evocation spells)
-Vithrack Silk Slippers (shoes), 5% chance  (works with all spells)

yeah, it works. i think i posted a build sometime a while back that if you just care about doing some fire nukes, this is the way to go.

small correction: for evoker, it's a 15% chance for evoker to echo.

too bad that Magran spell list "wastes" a few slots on non-evocation or useless evocation (like Flame Shield). So you mostly get Fan of Flames early on (Ray of Fire is a little underpowered imo, better than nothing) and then eventually Torrent of Flame (only one cast normally). At least you can bathe in the bath house to boost your Fan of Flames output.

edit: IIRC for the build itself, it also stacks a ton of +fire and generic PL (i think i get up to +13 sustained), recommends champion's boon for the +2 PEN and might bonus, and salvation of time (which can also echo) to boost the bonus PL you get from using it with weyc's wand.

 

the vithrack silk slippers also works with scrolls. i've only ever had it happen once, but i noticed it because i got a targeting indicator again with my cursor (!)

[Fury Evoker (Druid/Wizard) vs Evoker (Wizard)]

11 hours ago, Toby40 said:

Thanks for all answers, it really help! I decided to play as evoker, mostly because of that small chance to cast double spell, especially when i have all DLC so i should max lvl my character faster than in default edition i guess and get advantage of that tier 8/9 spells.

have fun!

in the final DLC there are some slippers that give you a 5% chance to echo. it's not a lot, but stacks multiplicatively with the evoker echo and gives you just a bit of extra oomph. It also does mean there is a very very very slight chance to echo a spell twice. Not terribly likely for any given spellcast, but there are enough fights left at that point that there's a reasonable chance it'll happen once (though because of how uncommon it is it might be relatively wasted on like a level 1 spell).

[Fury Evoker (Druid/Wizard) vs Evoker (Wizard)]

sorry to triple-post, but just to add, probably the stupid-craziest thing you can do for DPS is

wizard: combusting wounds (+ optionally arkemyr's wondrous torment to make it last longer on tough enemies)

druid: all the various tick and hazard spells (wicked briars, venombloom, nature's terror, relentless storm, returning storm against single targets, and especially wall of thorns)

you can easily end up doing 100s of damage per second, sustained. you'll literally see the health meter deplete in real time off of otherwise bullet-sponge-y bosses. you don't have to multiclass wizard/druid just to do this, but it does give it you to you in a nice easy package. (it also doesn't have to be druid, but druid has a lot of repetitive-strike spells)

[Fury Evoker (Druid/Wizard) vs Evoker (Wizard)]

1 hour ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

You have other ways to stack power levels if you wish, an endgame Evoker vs endgame Blood Mage/Vanilla will be very close in raw nuking power, but the latter two will have a lot more flexibility and utility.

blood mage is certainly very generally powerful, but over time I've gotten to really appreciate the alpha strike potential of an empowered spell. you don't need resource regeneration if the fight is already over.

[Fury Evoker (Druid/Wizard) vs Evoker (Wizard)]

my two cents:

druid

• is merely OK at dps early on and mid-game. their strength comes from versatility (healing) and the fact that a lot of their damage effects come with crowd control effects or debuffs.
  • edit: their DoTs will do a lot of total damage, but won't hit the charts for dps if that's specifically what you want, and also won't be as relevant if you end fights quickly enough that they don't have a time to let their efficiency shine (and fights will end rather quickly on lower difficulties or once you eventually power-up and are able to roflstomp potd fights)
• Fury misses out on a lot of the versatility and make up for it with better range and being able to do consistent (if not high) damage.
• late game, a single-class DPS can explode through the roof as @Fab3686 says. Even Tornado, which is more of an off-meta pick, still does a stupid amount of damage in a huge area.
• a multi-class druid misses out on that so if you multi-class it'd better be because you want something other than damage.

evoker

• is stupid-good at doing damage. it won't happen often, but echoing a tier 9 evocation spell is basically game-over for enemies in most fights. (i got lucky with an empowered minoletta's missile salvo that got echoed (non-empowered) against a boss in the final DLC and it single-handedly ended the fight right there)

druid/wizard (in general)

• you'd be doing this to give you a good leg-up in spell-casting for early to mid-game. single-class characters run out of juice real fast, multi-class caster/caster can run marathons. 
• if all you care about is spell damage, this falls off real hard at high levels due to missing out on tier 8 or tier 9 spells (from either class)
• can still be a powerful combination if your focus isn't just doing damage. (i did an animist/enchanter that would use wizard buff spells and druid firebrand and it was a lot of fun if not necessarily game-breakingly powerful)