thelee

i think there's a significant overestimation of the availability and underestimation of the necessity of withdraw on the SC monk path. I could be wrong (i haven't actually tried act 2 or beyond yet, merely doing a lot of critical path mapping and testing/preplanning), but a) withdraw doesn't last nearly as long as you think, even in fights you are wrecking b) scrolls of withdraw aren't nearly as common as you think, especially since you can't just spam rest to refresh vendor supplies (recall your last run of pillars, how many scrolls of withdraw did you actually find? because you probably need tens of them unless you want to leave a lot of fights to the RNG gods. i don't remember finding that much) edit: i agree though that of the possible viable builds, monk is definitely a strong candidate. just personally i am erring on the side of low-risk, and to me infinite withdraw (or vela with infinite bdd+salvation) and low dps is much lower risk than finite withdraw with very fast dps. i think anyone attempting the ultimate should just go with what they feel is the best option, because we won't truly know what's possible until someone actually does it.

hm, i haven't tested it specifically, but Galawain's will sometimes add a durationless (e.g. tactician-style) tier-3 inspiration on beasts, and at least pre-5.0 the interaction was weird. if I remember correctly, it won't prevent you from applying an affliction, they'll just sort of co-exist, which is extremely weird. on occasion i actually managed to dispel the "permanent" tier 3 inspiration, but wasn't able to reproduce this consistently or have this happen more than a couple of times. edit: now that i think about it, post-5.0 i had a few early ultimate attempts with a forbidden fist monk, and enfeebled I could use to prevent robust boars from being immortal in the opening part of port maje island (probably the worst early game RNG you can get for an ultimate run is to have the boars have Robust on them). the enfeebled didn't dispel the robust, both effects just co-existed and the enfeebled just blocked the robust healing until the enfeebled wore off. my hypothesis is that something similar will happen: you'll still have brilliant, and a confuse/charm/dominate effect will also simultaneously affect your character. it will dispel any "normal" int inspiration.

wow, i didn't know that. good to know. worth pointing out though that specifically my level 4 tinny xix had 5 stealth and could sneak past the whisps and phantoms before Oderisi without filling up even half of the yellow circle, whereas my level 20 cheatyface had 6 stealth spent literally an hour trying to sneak past and could not. i eventually gave up and just did the brilliant trick to kill them all manually. level scaling is definitely a factor here for stealth.

I was testing with a cheaty tactician+skaen that i consoled to level 20 and came up with several findings: - Stealth success is based, in part, on enemy level. I was pulling my hair out wondering why my level 20 cheatyface couldn't sneak past the wisps and spirits in the engwithan digsite right before oderisi, but my level 4 Tinny XIX had no problem (I even consulted my own youtube video in case I forgot some critical pathing), and I eventually figured out that despite the fact that cheatyface had a slightly higher stealth (6 vs 5) the enemies had all level scaled up +4 levels, making it basically impossible to stealth past them. I'm not quite sure what to do with this information yet, but probably means that investing in stealth and leveling up needs to be very deliberate so you don't unintentionally make act 2 or 3 impossible due to upwards level scaling. - the de-aggro brilliant trigger doesn't seem to work 100% if done in the middle of combat. i need to do more tests (lest this happen during a a real run), but i don't have a functional theory as to what sometimes causes it to not work in the middle of combat versus the start (which has a 100% success rate). if there's some mechanic that doesn't let you reset in the middle of a fight, it could spell doom against arcane dampeners and auranic, because you basically need to do that to dodge having all you and vela's life-saving buffs suppressed/cleansed. - creating an AI script that just casts salvation of time with 0 cooldown and adjusting combat speed to fast makes buffing real easy. probably i'll get a stopwatch and set a specific time on my stopwatch to keep buffing based on cheatyface's tests, so i can replicate buffing perfectly when wael's challenge is back on. - with stealth you can start combat just at the edge of enemy detection, which means that you can stay just outside the enemy detection rate and buff yourself and vela. i mentioned this possibility before, but so long as you aren't surprised by enemies, it's easy to position yourself with vela to do this with 100% success. (you can even use halt to ensure vela stays well out of detection range so that you can start combat, and then run back to withdraw/sahdowing beyond and guarantee everyone stays out of range) - also, this is probably no surprise to people who played around a lot with tacticians before, but i seriously understimated just how friggin good a tactician is 1 v 1 (or even 1 v 2 with skaen spiritual ally) - mule kick basically guarantees 100% brilliant uptime due to disorient. it's making me feel a lot better about bosses and hauani o whe's early parts, because even if expert mode + magran challenge makes it really hard to actually interrupt an ability and get a resource refunded, the constant brilliant uptime plus time spent being knocked up and prone from mule kick is almost as good. With WotEP this could be fantastic. - brilliant trigger is great, but you have to be careful that you always have a spare level 2 and level 5 spell cast available. this might seem like a no-brainer, but with cheatyface i keep making errors (still not used to woedica's challenge) where I use level 2 or level 5 abilities in combat without letting htem get restored and in the next fight i'm missing a critical component of the combo. it's a shame because searing seal on AL5 is extremely useful, but if you're not careful (wael makes it harder to know how many AL5 casts you have) you can end combat before an in-combat brilliant has a chance to restore at least one AL5 cast. you can rest but you don't really want to rest unless you absolutely have to.

1. i believe it does 2. no, enemies still attack. 3. afaict, confusion doesn't change targeting limitations, it only changes the foe/friendly-friendliness of aoe or bounce. 4. sure, any hard CC could help protect vela. but for context, even at level 20 some low level wisps can kill vela pretty quickly. also, IME when i was doing my hylea run, the bulk of vela deaths were due to two cases: a) incidental AoE (this was exacerbated by the no-level-scaling bug at the time) which a lot of hard CC is not going to help you with and b) the AI script of many rogues and rogue-likes who, when reduced to bloodied, will Escape or Shadowing Beyond or Shadow Step behind the front line (you) to go after the weakest character (Vela) - and unlike for you the player, Shadowing Beyond's untargetability doesn't go away when they make an attack - so hard CC won't help here unless you have 100% uptime from right before bloodied to death on any and all rogue-likes (including skeletons, risen, xaurip plaguestrikers, kith rogue-types, etc.) this is just to say that "enemies lumbering over to attack vela with lots of warning" was an extreme minority of cases - running forth at the start of combat to be the front line was generally good enough to keep enemies uninterested in vela. it was the out-of-nowhere stuff (there were some BoW enemy aoes that I was surprised to learn actually did damage in addition to afflictions, for example; the damage was so minor it was irrelevant to my party but extremely lethal to vela after a couple casts) that would kill vela. (Escape/Shadowing Beyond/Shadow Step is extremely hard to disrupt even when you don't have expert mode on... and their AI will keep making them attempt it until they run out of rogue resources.)

it sometimes works with melee abilities that do full attack so long as you have a melee weapon combined. i think that's the magic with WotW and various weapon interactions. i thought that's what you were talking about with mule kick back when i didn't realize you were talking about the weapon proc (but mule kick is a primary attack so many levels of my mistake). still would work with the shroud of phantasm and using those skeletons to attack yourself first (before using them to trigger a bajillion chill fogs, but like i said boy is it tedious to get that brilliant trigger in the first place.

what i was going to try (when i have an evening free to experiment) was for hauani o whe to pre-buff a lot (a lot a lot, because of the small cleansing effect on each hit), and then use grouping/searing seal (because the ooze only resists perception afflictions) to try to trigger brilliant during combat, so i can spam mule kicks as needed (which will also flank), clear out if i need to interrupt two oozes at the same time. having storm of holy fire active via brilliant spamming (or scrolls of tornado) to help dps down greater/lesser oozes since they spam merge when they appear. since the tactician auto-restore resource upon successful interrupt works less well with Expert mode on because it's much, much harder to correctly time ability interrupts, actively having brilliant on somehow would help a lot.

well, lol i wasn't even thinking of the disorienting cone upgrade because i always do the other upgrade

how do you this? dual wield with mule kick? i'm assuming the knock up/interrupt only works on the target, but the disorient spreads?

ok, so i did some experiments and the absolute best unrealized perk about the brilliant+skaen option is that you can target BDD and salvation of time on Vela. (with tactician vela would already have to be far back so that you could BDD/salvation of time her without getting into range of re-aggroing enemies) So basically once you unlock the brilliant inspiration, you can ramp up your buffs, and then when you move into aggro the enemies again, you can BDD and then salvation of time vela and basically keep spamming that until she also has an arbitrarily large buff. this will eat some more time, but means you don't need 100% withdraw uptime. (can be useful alternative since RNG+wael might mean you are caught out of position when vela pops back into the fight) also i did a very small test to see how viable this is, and i still have concerns - basically you need lots of room for this to work to keep enemies de-aggroed, which for most of the big bosses is not a concern, but the dragon fight under the watershapers, all the SSS fights (especially poroka), and possibly a couple others strike me as places where there's not a bunch of running around room and therefore a place to hide while having skeletons wail on you. (edit - might not be too big a deal; i think all the SSS fights the arena is large enough that initially you don't aggro the enemies, hopefully not even porokoa or the enemy parties; same with watershaper dragon) also, the being naked is super key, because when you have skeletons hitting you trying to trigger a 1% effect you will completely shatter any equipped armor. lastly, boy this is tedious and potentially prone to error. it is definitely something you have to do at the start of a fight where you need to do it at all, because you basically can't afford to have any spells other than withdraw and shadowing beyond consumed, or else you may not get back your salvations of time before brilliant wears off (it's RNG but the kind that is almost lethal), and each salvation of time basically only nets you a +4s on the effect (+10s for the salvation of time, -6 for the brilliant to refresh it). it's also extremely time consuming - i mean i assumed so, but just testing it out and playing with it, it easily took several in-game hours just to trigger it. it's not something you could do for random trash fights without running out of eothas time, i think. i mean you have a decent amount of time in act 4, but reserving half a day just for buffing for each boss fight eats into that budget pretty quickly. (marux amanth soulbound to priest would help because the 10% double cast on priest spell can give you massive returns on salvation of time when it manages to proc) it would be best if there were an easier way to proc the brilliant - skeletons are annoying because they actually hurt when you're naked, and you have to keep manually targeting them. but i'm not sure there's a better option here. but i probably spent half my time just waiting for ancient memory to heal me to full again. so troubadour + skaen might be viable, but it's not as clean of a picture as before (i haven't even begun to fathom micromanging animated weapons and their knockdown without being able to pause). i think it might be better just to try to crack the tactician + skaen endgame just because of how much easier it is to proc brilliant there (even if it's difficult to have during an actual fight). it's just that friggin hauani o whe... edit - i might just have to console a tactician + skaen straight to the hauani o whe fight and work on a strat there, because i'm pretty sure most other bosses can be harmlessly facetanked with just lots of pre-buffing and salvation + BDD. if i can crack that nut i'll just work backwards from there. best of luck to anyone trying alternate build ideas

i think they'll do what another poster suggested - if the first success is a cheese, they might be hmmm and accept it but then make a ruling on whether future runs can be that cheese. but having been thinking about this for days now, i'm pretty sure there are maybe like three at most viable builds, and i 'm not even sure the number is even that high (e.g. SC helwalker looks viable on paper but i'm still not sure about the withdraw supplies - remember with eothas you can't spam wait to get vendors to restock materials and scrolls). even the troubadour + skaen may run into real time constraints because of a lack of dps - when i did a long Grog-based takedown of dorudugan, that took half an in-game day (literally started at the beginning of night and ended near dawn, i could tell because i had pale hide and was specifically metagaming for its night-time bonus) and that was with an entire party. done solo, having to spend countless minutes at the start to stack an arbitrarily huge duration of buffs (translating to in-game hours), times multiple bosses that you have to travel for and you could still end up running out of time. basically i am saying it would be foolish for them to pre-exclude an option because for all anyone knows any given option could be the only viable ultimate build. so they'll probably wait and see what the community does.

Two ways: 1. At end of combat there is a brief window where you qualify for brilliance (when all enemies are dead) so long as you aren't actively flanked (e.g. perception affliction). It only lasts a split second but is good enough to restore 1 class resource each. 2. The big one: withdraw Vela, and then use skaen's Shadowing Beyond. You drop all enemy aggro and qualify for Brilliance similar to what happens in #1. Importabtly, so long as you are far away, when Vela pops out of withdraw she won't aggro enemies so long as you don't, so you can sit and wait while Brilliance let's you buff yourself to high heaven. Obviously you should always keep a spare level 2 and level 5 cast open to do this, possibly more if you don't have interrupt protection.

she wanders around the spot where she aggros. this is improtant distinction from "when combat started" because i actually tried a run where i gave Halt to a priest+tactician, thinking I could Halt vela at the entrance of a dungeon and run around easily with brilliant, but if you're far away from vela when combat starts and she's not near combat, she will actually run towards combat, and once she "aggros" the enemies, she immediately goes into terrified mode where she starts wandering around randomly. (needless to say, i failed pretty quickly in that run because of vela beelining towards the fight once halt wore off. also i would have failed anyway because i could have sworn berath's could let you flee from fights but it would just de-aggro enemies instead of ending combat, but either i was remembering wrong or it's the sort of RNG that results in your death) it also means there's no way to shepherd her away from combat once she's terrified, unless you ahve coordinated positioning, fighter's pull effect, or something similar.

to confrirm, i've definitely done this on my practice and real solo SC helwalker already - recruiting xoti, solo mode sends her straight ot the ship, and then when i'm on the boat i can kill her (she doesn't even fight back) and loot her unique gear.

Summoned weapons don't lose durability afaict. at least within any time frame excluding draining/salvaiton of time shenanigans (and even then, my abydon's run with an ascendant+skaen who used lots of salvation of time and lots of spiritual weapon and i never once saw it lose durability) I've been planning out an efficient act 2 to max out quests and minimize time, and I'm still puzzled about getting enough withdraw with sc helwalker in acts 2/3 (if people are used to solo-ing via split pulling i don't think people appreciate how much vela makes that impossible, necessitating lots of withdraw to handle what few fights you have to do early-mid with a mega stealth path). (Also, good thing I have a practice character now, or else Tinny the 19th would have failed on the way to nekataka due to a slaver ship that normally I don't worry about, but is pretty much lethal with Ondra + Wael, now I know how to sail to avoid it.) I've been thinking about Troubadour + Skaen. Because you can stealth so much of the early mid game, the early lack of resource recovery compared to tactician is not much of a concern. Sneak and get the bekarna cloak (blowing a few rests if needed), and then you can abuse Berath's. Start a fight, immediately withdraw Vela and Shadowing Beyond away to deaggro. But Berath's will keep combat active so you accumulate phrases. Keep summoning skeletons and whacking yourself until you trigger brilliant, then Salvation of Time spam like hundred times to max out Brilliant and all your buffs (you'll probably actually have to count the casts since wael will make it impossible to know how much duration you have), then go in as an unstoppable monster or against some megabosses just keep sending in animated weapons while you have perpetual withdraw on Vela. Against Sigilmaster you just have to remember to withdraw+shadowing beyond reset every time the cleansing rune comes up until you can just face tank it because auranic is out of spells and the other runes are destroyed. This would solve ever needing to worry about withdraw shortage and having no boss endgame but requires some act 2 pathing I haven't figured out yet. What do others think? Edit - didn't think that you need to kill concelhaut before getting the brilliant cloak and I'm not sure that's feasible. Edit 2 - never mind! i assumed i had gotten it from the orrery, but it appears to be "hidden object as a pile of books at the intersection, need 16 PER" which is totally stealthable. i think this might be a path worth pursuing. (especially because this will finally crack the nut of a celebrant, which is the only priest multiclass i have never found decent enough to run) edit 3 - once you get the cloak it basically doesn't matter what armor you have, so you can stay naked while whacking yourself so you're not constantly breaking your own gear.

what's the fist + mortar method to ooze? i just see stunlocking via wotw, or is it basically that just with mortar for extra aoe damage?

another complication that i had in practice is that summons are incredibly tedious to micro when you can't pause. even with the game slowed down all the way, i just don't have the RTS esports reflexes to quickly click on moving targets (since they have no number key shortcut) and give them new instructions (this would probably be most apparent with the sword that has knockdown but never remembers any hotkey or AI assigned to it upon a fresh summon). many lives chant would be super annoying in this respect. I tried a little with turn based, which wasn't awful, but I'm doubtful that turn-based will work with some final fights where you need some of the "cheese" you can pull off with RtWP but not with turn-based in order to survive. (hell even just surviving a bad galawain's roll on some boars in vilaro's rest required some rtwp engagement cheese).

yeah, this is for this reason why the past few runs I'm going with SC helwalker, even if I'm not totally clear about how i'm going to handle the mid-late game pre-WotW (no experience solo-ing a monk, so i'm about to set up a practice monk run with all challenges minus wael and iron man enabled). anything + troubadour might be able to have incredible sustain and lots of disposable summons, but those fights are long and withdraw from a scroll caps out at like 30 seconds. with lots of incidental aoe attacks from hauani o whe (symbiote) or belranga or sigilmaster, you basically need 100% uptime, which gives you a pretty hard cap on how long the fight can go. (dorudugan you can go much, much longer because of a lack of incidental aoe, but you are still limited to up to withstanding 30 total barrage/magnetic overdrive/helstorm before the fight becomes lethal). The SC helwalker has the provably most idiot-proof and rapid way to take out megabosses. not to mention the extra perk that SC monk fists are like the best weapon in the game and you don't need to worry about repairing them. this was also the appeal of the tactician + skaen because they effectively have infinite withdrawal to use (you just hav eto de-aggro periodically by keeping up a spare cast for withdraw and shadowing beyond) and they also appear to have a much easier mid-late game, but i don't think there's any effective end game for them against some bosses (mostly hauani o whe, but bad RNG can doom a sigilmaster run if you keep getting a cleanse rune). if someone can crack that nut, i'd happily re-roll a tactician+skaen just because i think that build would eliminate alot of the potential RNG in the the early-mid game.

probably could just walk over one in arkemyr's manor - the important thing about that is you're not going out of your way for it (i haven't mapped out the quests yet, but you might not want to have ot make two trips to oathbinder's sanctum, or the timing between doing oswald's quest and then getting a trap there might not line up)

rekvu's helm and walking over a trap to get an injury?

boat club! (though youtube had better be processing the last 7 minutes of this video because as of this linking, it is missing minutes 40: to 47:, which contains the boat raising. i'm gonna be pissssed if i can't rely on youtube streaming to archive my run. well, better discovering this now rather than later when there's a gap for submission) i was too impatient to set up a practice party for this run, but i'm definitely going ot pause and set up a parallel run. there is certainly a lot of potentially stupid RNG here (almost dying to those skeletons) the least we can do is practice and remove skill from the equation. unfortunately i don't actually know how good this build is going to be because it's mostly just stealth for now.

curious, what does the tactician add to the troubadour?

is this the SC blood mage i saw you rolling?

vela doesn't break stealth so it's not a concern. since respeccing is essentially free, it might be worth doing that and respeccing out of stealth once out of port maje. that opens up a lot of options.

easier said then done. the enemy density in the digsite is pretty tight - my most recent run died because i thought i had enough clearance, got caught, thought i had vela far enough way to safely withdraw her out of the fight, and it wasn't until i was in the middle of face tanking some sporelings on the other side of the map that i had kited and i suddenly got a "you have failed" pop up that i realized vela hadn't been far enough away. truth be told, the first 7-9 or so failures were fail-fasts because i was just seeing how a certain build could handle the boars post-ship fight and boy a lot of them really sucked. Edit - also a big chunk of experience comes from finding all the NPCs in the first area, which involves some beetles and skellies to fight. I have not found that to be very trivial on any build other than tactician + skaen