thelee

hot dang i've never considered that idea before. there is a real lack of orlan art (and in other games, halfling art) and I've never before considered getting an artist to adapt something into something more orlan-y. i should give that a try the next time i have some spare cash.

Another question for the testing crowd: does Nemnok's Cloak's abilities activate once/encounter, once/rest? Once again, I feel like someone (maybe even me) played around with this a while ago, but googling for answers came up short. Anyway, enough taking, another contribution of my own: Venombloom (or other similar functional abilities) do not proc Least Unstable Coil if the target is immune to the effect somehow (in this case poison immuinty) - it actually needs a successful attempt, even if it's spell reflected or spell resisted or something.

Back to failed tests, anyone know if Stalking Cloak does anything for spells? Or is it just weapons. Surely someone tested this before, but my googlefu is failing me. I'd test it myself, but I'm hoping someone can save me a few minutes

this is pretty close. grimoires run the spectrum depending on how willing you are to use them: one end they are either extremely useless because you just pick whatever spells you need or they are extremely useful because you pick up a bunch of other skills and let grimoire-switching pick up the slack. the latter, however, requires a "heroic amount of metagame knowledge" (per JE Sawyer's own words) and a lot of micromanagement. that being said, grimoires are still useful because there are some truly unique spells that are only available via grimoires. some of the best spells are grimoire-only. two grimoires have truly unique effects (one grants you +1 spellcast per level but self-damage causes interrupts, another gives you a once/rest ability) it's still worth picking up a couple to switch between as a result. it is definitely the case that multiclass wizard is extremely "easy" or versatile because you could just pick up all your spells from wizard, this does require the aforementioned metagame knowledge and micromanagement. It doesn't diminish pure wizard, though. Tier 8 and 9 wizard spells are extremely powerful, and despite obsidian's best efforts at balancing away from this, wizard follows an exponential power curve. (My go-to example is that an empowered tier 9 missile barrage spell will one-shot most encounters--even bosses!--in the game.) It does mean, however, that wizard builds can start feeling samey since so much of the power comes from grimoires that you find versus character choices you make. Subclass restrictions can change things up, but some don't like how restrictve they are. edit: with non-blood mage subclasses, paying attention to grimoires can be useful, because due to the spell restrictions it might become harder to find grimoires that give you a good spread of spells, so you have to do a lot more in-combat swapping and out-of-combat adjustment.

i think it might have worked at some point in deadfire patch history - istr an ancient bug report by me where i tried to switch away from kalakoth's minor blights, but due to how that weapon works it would mess me up because i'd get a new weapon summoned in at a later point. either way, can't get rid of summoned weapons anymore now.

even in the cases where i've gotten cat's flurry suppressed (happens a lot more often than you'd think , enemy wizards open up with arcane dampener at the same time i'm trying to open up the flurry dump) there've been cases where i want to shift back (outside of grimoire bug workaround). In general, I actually wish more things functioned like the spiritshift, actually, cause sometimes I wish I could just get rid of some summoned weapons when I no longer want them. In PnP, those would just be spells you could dismiss at will. i'm planning on a full shifter run, but even with a partial (aborted early) shifter run I found myself switching a lot simply because of varying enemy defenses (e.g. different forms do pierce or slash, or sometimes i just want to abort and use a staff I have or create a summoned weapon).

off the top of my head: lord darryn's voulge (+3 storm PL) lance of midwood stag (+2 all PL) chromoprismatic staff (+1 various PL) any xbow (10% hit to crit) vatnir's armor (the one that gives you more action speed/damage)

yeah, there's a few nice reactive touches with items/gear that pop up like that. another example is: (minor-spoilers) if you have concelhaut as a pet equipped while doing Forgotten Sanctum DLC, you get some extra interactions between Concelhaut and the other archmages.

lol, i definitely do this like 99% of the time, because most of the druids i've played are custom or PCs that use cat form. shift->trigger cat flurry->shift out, start dumping spells. weapon and armor special effects can be extremely relevant. with my recent sorcerer, i had to pre-shift out early also just when i wanted to switch grimoires (as a workaround to a ruinous bug with grimoire spells while shifted). this is my one small small counterargument to shifter being just a superior druid, because the delay in being to disable the modal can mess up the shift->trigger cat flurry->shift out->dump spells flow, because ordinarily while waiting for the modal to clear i can cast a spell or two, but can't with shifter.

A couple of not really big notes about Moonwell, but might be useful to someone. Part of it may be obvious, but I only discovered the ramifications of some of it only recently. There's actually two separate effects, the defense boosting one, and the healing one. The healing one acts like consecrated ground, which glows up an area and periodically ticks for healing. The defense boost is a one-shot that only impacts the people who were in the area of moonwell at the moment it was cast. This means you can actually stack the healing! I thought it was like the other druid spells like the moon's light, where it's a one-shot DoT. But no, between scrolls and a couple of casts you can give yourself immense healing. The defense boost (not the healing) is tagged as counterable by fire. Getting hit by a fire effect (or if you have a fire buff somehow re-applied ot you) will cancel the effect, but you still can get healed since it's a separate. The last one turned out to be some minor tech for myself in my last run. All of dorudugan's big attacks (other than auto-attack) are fire tagged. If you have a source of resource regen for a druid, you can spare yourself a bunch of headaches by just repeatedly casting moonwell on yourself. It won't save you from multiple powerful fire attacks (e.g. multiple fireballs, multiple ground explosions), but gives you a huge amount of room for error, since countering a fire attack means sparing yourself hundreds of damage. Plus you get the healing while you're standing still.

I like the idea! Broader problem in the scientific community of not enough reporting on failed experiments or insignificant results. Things that don't work are good to know, too! A couple recent no-go experiments off the top of my head: using Seeker's Fang or those Jester shoes to make trap durations last longer -> nope, only affects damage. (Would've been nice to get some very long-lived disorient out of the chain traps) using Chain Lightning with only two foes for maximum per-target damage -> nope, chain lightning doesn't re-target a previously hit creature! (unlike, say, Firebug)

yeah i was thinking about it too much in isolation, but in consideration with the other changes this is a part of, it makes sense.

oh, speaking of similar builds this is kind of an anti-recommendation for a tempest[fury] IMO. the staggered will constantly be overidden by a short-duration stun from relentless or returning storm, instead of it being temporarily suppressed and outlasting the stun. i got extremely frustrated by this dynamic in a party wiht a fury+spirit frenzy and also (worst of all) a cipher with mind plague (the long daze effect would get erased by the stun). so frustrated i abandoned the party mid-way through. edit: it was also frustrating enough that in my current new party planning where i've been contemplating re-visiting tempest, i pick up blood frenzy instead.

for some reason i only ever understood you talking about this as the out-of-combat effect being free. having it spelled out (again?) is wow! even aside from the cheese option, leap (ability or boots) is a really strong ability just for the instant mobility and range, esp for a fury who has lots of spells they want to use that are centered on yourself instead of targeted (relentless, returning storm; nature's terror) or super close range (venombloom). i never really used leap much before, but after struggling with some range issues on a similar build, i equipped bounding boots at low-level and then never ever took it off ever again.

i think this is overkill - streetfighter is immensely powerful when triggered, and having a self-contained option to do it via smoke grenade is a bit too much imo.

yeah, clear out is special because it has an AoE effect that uses your weapon attack, not because it has a knocking around/physics effect (compared to mule kick's knockup). mule kick is just a single-target ability that uses your weapon attack. mule kick is still very good though.

my A2 Deutsch eyes upon loading that up:

holy thread necro, batman! i don't know if you noticed, but you necro-ed a three-year old thread to have a conversation with yourself. if a seller messes up and sells an item for too cheap, pretty sure that's not "unlawful" in most jurisdictions. the seller probably has some terms of service that can let them cancel the order on their end, but "unlawful" is quite the strong declaration.

not quite - it's a projectile that triggers an aoe. it'll hit one enemy (which triggers an aoe that hits 3 targets) and then bounce to another enemy (which triggers an aoe that hits whatever number of targets). my memory is a little fuzzy, but i feel this is what happened when i did this with maia and a scroll of minor blights. it's akin to what happens when you turn on the Rod modal (which adds aoe) with a ranger with driving flight - same thing happens. edit: there are definitely some weapons that do multiple projectiles, which benefits more crazily from driving flight, iirc. unless something changed, rotskulls is not a ground effect, but an aoe that adds a DoT to everyone affected. It definitely won't stack with itself.

i love this new tech. does belranga need to be present for little spiderlings to keep spawning? i'm wondering if this can also be used to safely sequester belranga when her defenses are high while working down the spiders. this would take so long you'd need some resource regen somehow, but just spitballing.

they shouldn't be controllable. that's working as intended. uh, but they definitely shouldn't be indefinite. i think they might last longer or have a distinct duration from the original skellies, but they shouldn't be indefinite.

i don't know what you mean by "normally" but I have defintely used dismissal to wipe out entire fights through the entire patch history of the game.

what about making the triggered aoe off spirits/vessels smaller (~1.5) while also making it foe-only? it acts as a limit on the mayhem you can induce. the sheer chaos of the foe/friend targeting just makes it doomed as a niche spell IMO. imagine if garden of life was foe/friend! edit: oops didn't see a second page of posts that the ability doesn't even work correctly in normal cases

i think if a balance mod simply just removed the friendly fire aoe it would open screaming souls (incl targeting your own stuff) up to a lot more fun stuff. at the very least it would function as a spirit/vessel hoser, which it does very poorly right now.

again the comparison is rough - antipathetic field does that way better if you have just one viable add.