thelee

note to any interested - i updated the build a tiny bit with some tweaks based on end-game play. basically this build is constrained by action economy a lot, because everything you want to cast is slow and you have so much you want to drop. so i recommend ditching ring of focused flame in late game for kauru's prize (you'll be using less and less fire-keyworded stuff due to action economy and cinder bombs will still be getting +10 from helm), and possibly ditching magnificent escape cape in exchange for shroud of the phantasm and a source of mind inspiration (party member buff - cipher, priest, paladin, another chanter would do it. empowered venombloom with least unstable coil is close to guaranteed to getting you one. communal carnage will get you one, with some ramp up time). also while i flagged nature's terror as an optional pick because of the skill-intensiveness of using it right, it really is a GOAT in this build. club modal, flail modal basically lets you repeatedly crit and interrupt all the time even on tough foes, and nature's terror lasts a super long time and doesn't run into targeting issues with poison-immune or ground-immune enemies. (as always, it works even better if it's overlapping with cinder bombs/venombloom/wicked briars/even tanglefoot) embrace the earth talon also remain immensely useful to increase crit rate to supercharge the skald side of things when needed. also should add as a synergy - blind/disorient afflictions. you already get some blind with cinder bombs, but you really should try to get some more from party support. the way interrupts work is that they add a +2s delay but is capped by the target's current recovery with a minimum of 2s, which could in fact be the main recovery if you've interrupted an action or you're against a particularly fast enemy. blinded lifts that minimum to 3s, which doesn't sound like a lot but in practice is a significant increased window of delay time for further interrupts. on foes with slower actions, blinded can lift the cap so much that they may never get an action again due how large a recovery window they have to get further interrupts (and you'll be dropping a lot on them, potentially).

do you have PL scaling? my quick math suggests you'd need a total of +7 PL to get pushed over the threshold with 20 intellect. if you can buff intellect anyway (infuse with vital essence?) you can get away with less +PL (a a reminder, for each ability tier that you've unlocked that is higher than the one the spell is on gives you +1 PL. so having access to tier 7 spells is +5 PL right there.)

hey while doing some AI scripting I noticed some issues in vanilla: the AI doesn't recognize kalakoth's minor blights or arkemyr's enchanted armory as "summoned weapons" which leads to some scripting troubles. is this something that can easily be fixed by a missing keyword or something?

the splintered reef one you might be thinking of a campsite on the black isles. i think you only get one from the kraken (all of the upgrade mat loot drops from bosses got nerfed). you also get one from FS - either from the mysterious dragon skeleton or somewhere else.

old city is unique like that. all other places just have slog zones or traps.

just... avoid the corpses? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

wow, good find. i guess it just shows how low on the totem pole this ability was that it went unnoticed at large until now. do you know if this applies to things that aren't abilities? like scrolls, poisons, or bombs? does it show up in the tooltip?

i was only selecting "persistent" effects, not stuff you have to actively cast and maintain. but yes, much higher should be possible with salvation of time + escape. +all defense effects will also improve your deflection and because it's not a "deflection bonus" it stacks with a deflection bonus. so escape + circle of protection/symbol of eothas/refreshing defense/moonwell/beast's claw will get you even higher

hoo boy i waste too much money on ship stuff

the odds are very very low for low amounts of money, and you don't really get a chance to get 50+ k until relatively late. also, IME people are terrible with evaluating random events in games

hm, you would need to make sure to exceed the terribly unfavorable rounding cutoff here. with some PL scaling and high intellect the damage dots just *barely* get over the cutoff to get to two rounds duration. you would have to somehow get 20-40 damage attacks in within two rounds, which seems challenging (though all the hazard and persistent effects would tick twice each round iirc). this is where the action economy issues of turn-based hurt alot. it only really works in RTwP because some actions are extremely fast (dual wielded full attacks - you could squeeze in two of those in the "time" it takes for turn-based to handle one dual-wielded full attack). but let's see, based on some back-of-the-envelope-math and my recollection of the rymrgand fight: over ~12s combusting wounds Dot (2 rounds): 12 triggers from 3x wicked briars 4 triggers of malignant cloud 4 triggers of wall of force (i think hazard walls trigger more often, but i'm low-balling it here) 6 each hit from three dual-wielded party members making two rounds of attacks 4 hits from two non-dual-wielded party members making two rounds of attacks that would get you to 30 stacks by the final attack, so it looks doable. with more effects (cinder bombs and such) you could get higher. in fact, given this, and the fact that in my RtWP fight i was using full attacks and fast weapons with a couple of my melee fighters (which basically doubles+ the hit count in the same duration) and had an essential phantom and an animal companion, i'm surprised my persistent stack count against rymrgand didn't get even higher. i guess he died too quickly HOWEVER, if you're just missing even a slight bit of intellect or PL scaling or the enemy's resolve is too high, you only get one round of combusting wounds DoT and it would get much harder to meaningfully stack up

so there's a few things. 1. combusting wounds is an applyovertime effect IIRC. that means that what it does is actually wrong compared to the tooltip. basically it does 2 damage per tick, including an additional 2 damage upon initial application. (all applyovertime effects understate their damage because of this initial application being excluded from the tooltip) 2. combusting wounds stacks, so that you can get multiple ticks. the only limit is essentially the number of times you can manage to stack it within a given duration. 3. the way stacking DoTs appear to work is that it's essentially treated as one DoT, so all the damage is summed together and ticks as one. 3b. that includes the initial application. 4. unlike some other stacking buffs, I do not believe DoTs (or HoTs for that matter) track their expiration times separately. When you apply a new stack, it refreshes the duration and adds a new stack. tested just now, this is wrong, expiration times are tracked separately. fassina in this case had tier seven spells. that means +5 PL on combusting wounds. Had +1 PL from having the conjurer summon out, for +6 total. I believe combusting wounds damage gets +10% damage per PL. It also scales with might, but that's relatively irrelevant due to how buggily it is implemented with ApplyOverTime effects. So by default, each tick will do 3.2 damage per tick, including upon initial application. (edit: testing just now, the tooltip suggests it only gets +5% per PL, but it doesn't square with the actual per tick damage numbers i get in testing. so either the tooltip is somehow wrong, or there's something odd about how PL bonuses are determined for applyovertime effects.) normally what keeps combusting wounds from going out of control is that you're not constantly bombarding the enemy with damage effects, each tick has low duration, the master debuff that generates the stacking dots doesn't last very long, and it has relatively low PEN. However, with the shield cracks and passive flanking I was able to get the Beast of Winter (using them as an example because I remember it most clearly) down to ~7 fire AR iirc, which is more than enough for a +6 PL combusting wounds to do full pen. Fassina also had infuse with vital essence for 20 intellect plus a couple from items. In addition, the resolve penalty and overall defense lowering i accomplished meant the initial combusting wounds crit on rymrgand for something like 40s with each DoT at around ~12s, plenty of time to build up stacks under dedicated focus. the last time I examined the tooltips in detail, between wicked briars (three of them, two from the theurge, one from xoti), malignant cloud, wall of force, an animal companion, come come chant, single-minded focus fire from my entire party (i let the adds in that fight just get consumed by incidental hits from the aoe) i had 21 stacks of combusting wounds. And that literally meant everytime I saw a red number tick on top of rymrgand from any one of my many damage sources, right behind it was another number for 70+ damage (in fact I only examined the tooltip closely because rymrgand was dying much faster than expected, and that took a while because rymrgand had so many debuffs that it was hard to actually see the stackc ount), and that number kept climbing up with each tick until rymrgand basically disintegrated before combusting wounds could even run out. i don't remember the specific stack count and situation for neriscyrlas, but i was seeing 100+ damage number ticks rapidly near the end (and remember, these aren't the every 3 s ticks, these are the numbers you see every time any other damage effect happens on ner so it's happening very rapidly). based on the other numbers, i can infer that it got up to the 30+ stack count between everything that was happening . it was so shockingly fast neriscyrlas's AI script didn't even have time to ready its cast of llengrath's safeguard (which I had been preparing interrupts for) before she died. if you *really* want to exploit this, combine scordeo's edge and the best axe you can find. trigger blade cascade, salvation of time it a bit (don't even have to do brilliant tricks), switch to your axe, and just go to town. *each* time you swing your axe with no recovery, you will 10% of your weapon damage as raw, plus all the other stacks' worth of damage. I melted dorudugan in no time whatsoever, even with severe underpenetration. note however that the game really does not like this - when stacking gets this extreme weird stuff happens at end-of-combat cleanup. i will see characters getting healed for an overflowed amount of health (e.g. 2 billion or 2^32) at end of combat, or they might even take an overflowed amount of damage (-2 billion). in my blade cascade + bleeding axe situation, i actually crashed the game the first time I did this on dorudugan after it died. (the beast of winter situation didn't do anythign too weird so that was probably a safe stacking range, but definitely at neriscyrlas i saw my characters getting healed for 2 billion as i switched into the scripted encounter after her defeat and i was worried from prior experience that i might have jsut crashed my game) edit: this is also why unbending on a fighter can be extremely good, because the same applies to heals except in reverse. I first discovered this behavior a short while back (and I think Elric Galad helped explain/research it) actually when in an SSS arena fight an enemey fighter with unbending was healing for something like 100+ health *every time I hit it*. it went from near death to unharmed in a blink of an eye. be real careful around unbending and try to wait it out instead, or use something like arcane suppression or tranquilizer shot or street sweeper to get rid of it.

just to add, even for non-casters helm of the white void can be very good and is worth a check for anyone's setup. rogue abilities should generously benefit from it, for example. mule kick (but not knockdown) and charge on fighter also benefit. while i haven't tested this one in particular, even barbarian should benefit once they have spirit frenzy. however OBS programmed the item, it's just generously in the player's favor and so long as the ability in question has a mind/body affliction at any point, the entire thing gets a +10 accuracy bonus.

what's your system? graphics settings? is there anything in particular happening that corresponds to those fps dips? some spell effects are generated so inefficiently (possibly requiring a disk I/O read or something) that they will always cause fps hits for me: mirror image is the biggest culprit here for me. there's also a subtle memory leak - if you reload the game in the middle of combat (e.g. if events take a wrong turn), some things don't get properly flushed out of memory in the game engine, so the more you do this, the lower your overall frame rate, ESPECIALLY in combat. you can solve this by periodically quitting to the game menu and loading a game that way, instead of reloading a game directly from within an existing game. (historical note: i believe this was also responsible for some terribly amusing bugs in the past, such as implosion charge playing its suction sound on loop over and over even through game reloads, or ship morale going up or down by ginormous amounts because the game forgot to reset your ship combat attempts if you reload in the middle of a ship fight)

check your steam settings and make sure it's configured, and you can double-check what it's bound to. like boeroer says, on windows you can just print-screen and then open paint or something and paste (ctrl-v) to dump a screenshot that way. this shouldn't require any settings tweaks.

this is a silly response but: it's there, but only if you actually go back to port maje. it's not there in the early game where the defiant is on the beach. it's possible there might be a bug, but IIRC i always see my boat there.

it's lower on my priority list of passives, but nothing is more annoying to me than my buffers trying to cast their initial round of buffs and having an important one get interrupted by an enemy rogue doing an unnoticed shot with one of their blinding attacks. it especially stinks earlier on where i am more likely to be using a buff spell that i only get once/encounter. though whiteleaf is an extremely easy source of start-of-combat concentration as well.

i forgot to mention in the original post (updated now) that as a watcher you need to get the "mien of death's herald" set of abilities, which grant you up to a tier 3 perception inspiration. while probably every min-maxer (including myself) would normally recommend getting brilliant, for general utility having intuitive for cases where enemies have just an unfair high defense against you really helps (mostly matters for end-game). it's in beast of winter DLC, off the frozen elf statue. It is absolutely a game-changer for the build (it was actually the starting point because after seeing it in some earlier experiments at how generous the +10 accuracy was I was trying to find a build-around that could take good advantage for it). Even before you are able to interrupt, it just gives basically the entire build a wonderful upgrade in effectiveness. even just using tier one sunbeam at +20 accuracy is very good.

do you have helm of the white void? it gets you a completely stackable, almost 100% effective +10 flat accuracy bonus. do you have ben fidel's invocation? that'll give you a flat -10 all defense debuff against foes. the hearth orlan really helps with its high max perception and hit to crit passive.

1. I mostly found myself extremely constrained in ability points, so compromises were made in places. Thick Thick was a victim of this, because you did miss that the Animist gets Plague of Insects for free :), which was a point in the Animist's favor. 2. Honestly I have no idea, I forgot about items like this. 2 (3?). grumble grumble! yes, on top of this, it's only one of two chants at tier one that actually targets enemies, and of the two, this one seemed like it had much more general utility because of its steady self-heal and the raw damage is very relevant help early on when PEN/AR mitigation is in shorter supply and enemy health lower. as a fun bonus, it interacts with any combusting wounds shenanigans. edit - unfortunately my assumption was wrong on this. it still has decent utility otherwise it "works" on non-interruptible bosses, just not with the interrupts against them this functions more just like a normal theurge. though all the debuffing of defenses and AR and +2 PEN has such great general utility that a "normal" theurge is still very effective.

I should've made that more clear, all those were 100% for like mega/boss encounters, where I don't want to necessarily be up close, but I want to disrupt the enemy doing something critically important. These days I *always* have every single person in my party take xbow or arbalest at level 16 or 20 so I have freedom to equip my characters with extra interrupts that can be done basically at will; for this character in particular since most of the proficiencies are taken care of early I picked up both just for maximum flexibility. The warbow is there because I though St Omaku's Mercy was a nice convenient synergy (scales with religion, can instant recover on crit and you already have a high accuracy from perception, gloves of accuracy, hearth orlan) for typical non-boss situations where you're in cramped indoor environment and can't get in melee range anyway. absolutely. in fact it might be close to being utter cheese. at least it's a bit "fairer" than using brilliant . edit - on the scale of all possible cheeses, this is probably pretty tame. this combo has been around for ever, it's just that this theurge package expressly uses a lot of damage ticking abilities and piles on the debuffing.

After my keeper build, I was fascinated with the druid (a class that I have really underplayed) and tried to brainstorm some fun setups with it. It took some testing to make sure everything worked as I anticipated, but I'm happy with the results, which is a debuffing druid/chanter with some party utility that is so good at disrupting enemy plans in a zany way. How zany? Well, this build has yielded the first and only time I've ever been in a situation where it has been an optimal decision in a high-level fight to cast an empowered Tanglefoot (and yes, it wrecked the enemies!). Basic build outline: stats Hearth Orlan, 8 might/9 con/14 dex/20+1 (white that wends) perception/18 intellect/8 resolve. Classes: skald + animist[boar or cat] Skills: alchemy (try to get up to 10 with a combination of gear and buffs) and explosives (put the rest here); religion Level-by-level guide (with free spells in [] brackets, respec options in {}, respec points in <>, optional picks with an asterisk) Hel-Hyraf...; Come, Come | Tanglefoot [Sunbeam] Fast Runner Arms Bearer {White Wurms... => One Dozen...} | {Hold Beasts => Two Handed Style*} [The Moon's Light] Firebrand Two Weapon Style Reny Daret's... | Spreading Plague* [Returning Storm] <Respec "White Wurms..." to "One Dozen..."> The Shield Cracks The Fox... The Long Night's... | Wicked Briars [Conjure Blight] <Respec Hold Beasts => Two Handed Style, optional> Tumbling Form of the Delemgan Ben Fidel's... | Embrace the Earth Talon [Plague of Insects] Tough* or Uncanny Luck* Rapid Casting Their Companion... | Venombloom [Sunlance] Farcasting* Nature's Terror* Spellshaping* | Nature's Bounty* [Lashing Vine] Accurate Empower This build has you respec a couple times. The first is because White Wurms just gives you so much value early on, but as the build hits its theme it becomes less important compared to getting some chanter utility. The second is because beasts become significantly less dangerous later on in the game (with the late, small exception of SSS), so you respec out of Hold Beasts into a weapon style. I marked this respec as optional because you can hold onto Hold Beasts if you want, or you can pick up a different spell. Recommended chants: Song 1: One Dozen -> Come, Come... Song 2: The Fox... -> The Long Night's... -> Come, Come... edit: the justification for these recommended songs is that you start with the situationally valuable chants first, so if you switch your songs you get those going first (e.g. your party gets hit by terrified, switching to song 1 will quickly dispel it). beyond that, come come targets fortitude so having it come right after the long night's (-14 fort) helps it land/crit. Recommended weapon proficiency and order: flail|club, quarterstaff, greatsword, crossbow/arbalest, warbow, arbalest/crossbow edit: forgot to mention, I highly recommend getting the watcher ability that gives you a tier 3 perception inspiration. this build actually gets a lot more general utility out of being able to generate Intuitive vs Brilliant. Gear Weapon slot 1: Keeper of the Flame or Ondre's Flog of Obedience main hand, Kapana Taga offhand Weapon slot 2: Spine of Thicket Green with modal on Weapon slot 3: a crossbow, arbalest, or St Omaku's Mercy Armor: Changeling's Mantle Other items: Helm of the White Void, Ring of Focused Flame, Gloves of Accuracy, Boots of Speed, the Magnificent Escape Cape, Ring of Prosperity's Fortune Pet: Lucero for the -25% item recovery bonus and dex resistance, or Frau Nils or the Obsidian Worm for the bonus melee accuracy Misc: do the RDC quest to go into the underwater dungeon, and then do what Galawain asks of you to destroy the dungeon so that you get a +1 perception buff. Possible late-game alternates: replace of Ring of Focused Flame with Kuaru's Prize since action economy means you use less and less Fire-keyworded stuff. As another alternate, in end game if you have a consistent source of a mind inspiration, consider swapping Magnificent Escape Cape with Shroud of the Phantasm for the action speed buff - your defenses are extremely good against most threats at levels 19-20 and being able to interrupt easily makes it easier to disengage safely so the cape itself with its only +10 disengagement bonus becomes less useful. How the build plays Early on, you are just a general theurge. You should take advantage of the ability to get an early Ring of Focused Flame by making good use of Sunbeam and Firebrand. Use Tanglefoot to help soften enemies' reflex defense up against your own Sunbeam and the rest of your party. At about level 10, you become a premium debuffer. The Long Night's... chant will give you repeating afflictions against the enemies totalling up to -14 fortitude, which will help land a couple of your spells (Wicked Briars, Spreading Plague, and Returning Storm) in addition to helping your party members. Wicked Briars becomes a great utility spell doing damage and also adding a further source for reducing reflex. Your chanter invocations help soften enemies up even more with -2 AR from The Shield Cracks, and the general utility from Reny Daret's and especially its upgrade (which bestows -10 all defenses even if the enemy is somehow not affeted by the main frightened effect). But if you really want a preview of where this build is going, go rest periodically in Tikawara, which can give you a resting bonus that lets your abilities interrupt when empowered (this resting option goes away if you destroy the adra in poko kahara). Try it with Wicked Briars and watch in amazement as enemies can get very little done. Whenever you get the Helm of the White Void (shoot for level 13-15, depending on skill and difficulty), your power as a general debuffer and aoe damage dealer gets kicked up a notch. At level 16, the build takes off. Energized from the chanter invocation will let you interrupt on a crit (on top of a nice +2 PEN and +5 might), but the real magic is that your druid and chanter arsenal is full of stuff that ticks multiple times. Combined with up to +20 accuracy (+10 from ring of focused flame and +10 from helm of the white void) a high perception, tons of enemy defense lowering effects, you'll be critting a lot. In a typical non-trivial fight you can layer these effects (including bonus from helm of the white void): Venombloom, every 3s at +10 acc (each component can crit interrupt) Wicked Briars, every 3s at +10 acc (both the damage and the hobbling can crit interrupt) Tanglefoot, every 3s at +10 acc Cinder Bombs, initial hit and every 3s at +20 acc The Fox..., The Long Night..., and Come Come... chants will hit every 6s; The Long Night will do so at +10 acc In harder fights, you can empower any one of those abilities for an additional accuracy (and duration/pen/damage) from +5 PL bonus. (In end-game you get a further +10 from accurate empower). You can quaff a potion of merciless gaze for additional hit-to-crit, and don't forget to stockpile money to supercharge your ring of prosperity's fortune. All the while, try to mix in a Ben Fidel or Shield Cracks; Ben Fidel is especially great because the -10 all defenses will make ALL your effects more likely to crit. As a general debuffing effect, persistent frightened will make your enemies more harmless while also making your own debuffs last longer on them (on top of the other usual benefits to reducing their resolve). I recommend keeping the spine of thicket green equipped at the start of every fight so that your initial round of buffing and casting gets boosted (i chose the +3 PL upgrade for beast/plant effects since that covers the effects I actually want to cast). I recommend keeping the +20 deflection modal on as protection. After your initial surge of buffing/debuffing, I recommend switching weapons - the loss in PL will weaken your ongoing effects, but using the -25 defense modal on either your flail or club will more than make up for it. Club is generally the better choice (helps Venombloom, Ben Fidel..., The Fox...), but if you plan on dropping more cinder bombs or--better yet--have someone else in your party using a club, switch on the reflex penalty one instead. (In general I don't want to use both modals if I can help it, just as a matter of personal taste. Except for...) As an optional pick later on, Nature's Terror comes along. It, too, will tick every 3s with multiple components, and beneficially targets will and reflex, both of which you can lower quite easily with one of your weapon slots. Because it's not plant or beast-based, you don't have to worry too much about losing out on the +3 PL bonus from switching away from Spine. With Energized active, you are going to make it very hard for any enemy you're nearby to get anything done. However, the reason why Nature's Terror is an optional pick is because with poor positioning, you'll also make it hard for anyone in your party to get anything done. In fact, this is a general theme of the build - you have to be very careful with targeting and positioning of everyone, especially after you unlock Energized shenanigans. In the build guide I suggest picking up Tough at level 14, and this is mostly an artifact of me playing on PotD and loving the resiliency Tough adds. If you're having problems with positioning, pick up Farcasting or Spell Shaping earlier instead. Farcasting especially - both Venombloom and Wicked Briars have very small ranges (5m) and getting an additional 1m can mean a world of difference, especially when you're fighting in awkward or cramped indoor locations. You might be wondering just how effective all of this constant interrupting is. Well, here are two ways I can put it: Originally this build picked up the animated weapon summon (as is a pretty safe bet for chanters) at level 19. However, after actually playing with this build I dropped it in favor of some passives because I'd much rather be using the phrases on refreshing Energized and any Brilliant shenanigans on creating more interrupt effects rather than rapidly summoning new allies.* Normally I feel compelled to play a build all the way to the end to ensure its utility/viability, but levels 16-17 were so utterly convincing that I felt it was unnecessary to wait to see the build to its end. When you have an entire big boss fight shut down and there's very little the enemies can do about it except melt away, it's quite astounding to see. *That being said, your biggest weakness here is The Oracle, Memory Hoarder, and Dorudugan -- all of whom can't be interrupted. In such a case, however, I feel like as a general debuffing, aoe damage theurge this build is fine, since that's what it is for half the game. Though that being said, if you're more comfortable having all your bases covered, you can pick up the animated weapon summon and drop one of the later optional picks. There's a random sub-theme here: lots of disengagement bonuses. Between form of the delemgan, boots of speed, the magnificent escape cape, tumbling, the fox chant, you can give yourself a +70 swing in your favor against enemy accuracy against disengagement attacks (it's actually a +90 swing, but disengagement attacks get a +20 bonus); this is probably one of the most efficient ways to persistently stack on deflection. Switch over or keep your quarterstaff active for an additional +20 generic deflection and you'll find that this build is actually safer actively disengaging from attacks, which is good because Venombloom, Wicked Briars, and Nature's Terror frequently require you to get very close to the front lines. I don't recommend actively disengaging for your other party members, even with The Fox chant active, unless they also have tumbling and form of the delemgan at the very least, or if you have no other choice. Random notes Ring of Focused Flame boosts the following things this build might use +10 acc: sparkcrackers, cinder bomb, immolator, firebrand attacks, sunbeam, sunlance Helm of the White Void generously boosts this build at +10 acc: pretty much every bomb except {immolator, grenade, concussion bomb, the healing bomb}, tanglefoot, sunbeam, hold beasts, spreading plague, returning storm, wicked briars, embrace the earth talon, plague of insects, nature's terror, venombloom, reny daret/ben fidel... invocation, the long night's... chant. Note that even when there is a part of the ability that is on a separate attack roll from the actual mind/body affliction, helm of the white void still generously grants a +10 accuracy bonus. Venombloom is secretly keyworded as poison and won't affect poison-immune creatures. Wicked Briars is not poison-based despite appearing similar. Wicked Briars and Tanglefoot are ground-based effects, though Venombloom curiously isn't. So keep that weird rock-paper-scissors set up in mind against poison-immune and/or flying foes. Wall of Thorns does not work with this build. Hazard effects do not correspond their effects to you very well, so e.g. the crit interrupt doesn't work at all. The build recommends a boar or cat. Cat because they have a killer buff that boosts action speed. Boar because of the utility of having a self-heal, and the raw damage DoT can help you early on in cases where you have terrible PEN or AR mitigation. The main reason why this build doesn't go all-in on explosives is because you can get great utility out of supplementing your explosives with a few select consumables, especially potion of merciless gaze. The potions from nature's bounty also benefit from alchemy. Do a lot of drugs. This build loves Coral Snuff (+15% action bonus) and Deadeye (+5 acc, 15% interrupt). Eventually Nature's Bounty (if you pick it) will obviate the need for Coral Snuff. Potion of Impediment seems to only work on weapon attacks, however (at least I didn't see it get proceed in the one fight I used it except on melee attacks), but as a skald you'll love that anyway. Possible party members and variants The ultimate synergy here is a wizard that has access to conjuration and transmutation magic. Between the AR debuffing and general defense lowering (especially resolve), it is very easy to land a long-lasting Combusting Wounds at full PEN against even tanky foes. Add on all the ticking damage effects from the druid, and add on random conjuration/transmutation magic (wall of force, malignant cloud, chill fog) and you can do an absolutely stunning amount of damage. If you weren't aware, DoT or HoT effects that stack will immediately tick for damage/healing when another stack lands. At even level 14-15 or so, I've seen damage numbers from Combusting Wounds tick for 100+ damage every single time one of {Wicked Briars, Wall of Force, Malignant Cloud, any party member attack) lands. I didn't exactly go out of my way to to do this like I have in the past (bleeding modal for axe), but it sure made absolute quick work of the Beast of Winter DLC when bullet-sponge enemy/boss health is ticking away so quickly you can literally see the bar empty before your eyes, and this was before I got Venombloom and Nature's Terror to add in to the mix. (in this case, Fassina quickly became the unparalleled damage leader of the party because all combusting wounds damage is credited towards the wizard who cast it.) A priest is also always a good choice, in particular Xoti. Prayer/Litany for the Spirit is great on this theurge for the extra AoE and duration (and PL). Devotions is a wonderful +10 accuracy. Xoti in particular has Wicked Briars and Wall of Thorns, which can help extend The Shield Cracks (and further synergizes with the combusting wounds mechanic above, if you want to trivialize many boss fights in the game). Instead of a priest a paladin also works for zealous focus (+5 acc, +5% hit to crit). A barbarian with spirit frenzy is also a subtly nice choice, because the one main affliction you haven't got covered that you would really benefit from is a might affliction, and spirit frenzy will spread staggered everywhere very cheaply. The build here uses Skald because it really helps the lower level invocations be extremely cheap to use, and later on you're likely to crit a lot with melee attacks so it's not terribly hard to get up to the six you need to re-use Their Companion. However, Troubadour is also a good choice - for a slightly worse low-end behavior (Brisk Recitation gets you the lower invocations as fast as a skald but without linger or possibiliy of getting invocations even faster with crits), you get arguably much better high-end behavior (easier to generate Their Companion when needed, your chants tick every 3s, which doubles the interrupts you can get from chants, at the cost of no linger). The build here also uses Animist because the free spells helped cover a lot of bases and provide general utility (Sunbeam is an excellent tier one spell that works great in this build, The Moon's Light is great healing utility, Returning Storm goes great with all the debuffing, Lashine Vine is a powerful summon that scales). However, because so many effects that you want to use are plant or beast based, choosing an Ancient is also an alternative choice - though your ability points are going to be a bit harder to spend because you don't get as useful free spells (though you do get Form of the Delemgan and Venombloom, and the free Hold Beasts opens up space in the early game). If you don't want to run a theurge in particular, you can also try to sub in a wizard instead of the druid. However, pay attention to the Wall of Thorns notes - the same applies to all the hazard effects the wizard has. That still leaves Chill Fog (tier one, though you should probably just use Slicken instead), Binding Web (tier two), Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage (tier three), and Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar (tier six) as options that give you at least +10 accuracy (i'm excluding the beams because i don't find them as useful for this setup due to their particular aiming needs; YMMV). That's not bad, and you also would free up a couple skill points because instead of relying on disengagement accuracy/deflection shifts, you can just use Deleterious Alacrity of Motion or Fleet Feet to grant you engagement immunity. All the other principles of the build will stay true, but you lose a bit of general utility in the process (Nature's Bounty, Form of the Delemgan, and The Moon's Light are great party support spells and Embrace the Earth Talon and Returning Storm are great druid particulars) and the wizard equivalents all have a much shorter duration than the druid effects (the wizard effects are typically 10s with a few not mentioned here [no +10 acc] that can go up to 15s, whereas the druid effects start at base 20s and can go up to 30s [Nature's Terror]), which may result in some action economy issues in shorter fights (spending more time recasting effects) and spell resource issues in larger fights (blowing all your spells too early). This build doesn't go out of its way to recommend Least Unstable Coil, but because Venombloom and Returning Storm are in your spell roster, this theurge would make very happy work of Least Unstable Coil's tier 3 inspiration shenanigans. As a possible build alteration, instead of respeccing out of White Wurms, you can upgrade it, at which point it benefits from the +10 acc of helm of the white void. You might find yourself extremely constrained on phrases though, so this might be a better choice for a troubadour with brisk recitation active. Note that because you have so many ground effects, items that summon flying help are great because they are effectively immune to all your shenanigans. It might even be worth considering a variant that picks up the Drake summon at some point. (Though do watch out for Venombloom, which should affect flying foes as well) This build has a particular vulnerability to might afflictions, because it's expensive for you to re-cast Their Companion early than anticipated. A source of might resistance might be useful (though not enough to switch away from the hearth orlan's 10% hit to crit).

i think it's doable, but you'd miss out on what i think the absolute best meta for an sc monk is ajumaat + whispers of the wind. i would not call that even "pseudo" tanking, though, because there is still a delay between each jump and uptime and stun duration can vary, which can be a massive opening for enemies to overrun your party if you don't have any other tanks. you can also end up in odd places depending on your final jump (and not enough wounds to start up again possibly), which can leave your party SoL if you don't have an actual tank. max res forbidden fist is indeed a likely better choice, but for mirke honestly a brawler adds so much utility for a tank role that i'd be hard pressed to go with sc monk for a tank.

scripting blade turning runs into an AI issue that someone else found a short while back - the AI decides on the next action as soon as the current action is completed, regardless of recovery, so even short cooldowns might in practice result in poor uptime because the AI script (at least by default) has no way to examine the current existence of blade turning and its duration, relative to recovery. in practice i found it really hard to find an AI script that got me decent uptime while still allowing me to do other actions, especially once reality (with interrupts and things like disorienting/blinding) comes into play. in fact, i had this AI script gated by mirke health AND being actively threatened by more than 1 enemy in melee range, simply because it was so annoying at higher health levels that it didn't feel justified until i knew mirke was in danger AND basically guaranteed to have streetfighter enabled. i'm sure there exists a more interesting build (ooblit would help a lot, basically a free +20 intellect on something like blade turning. being on a non-tank who can afford to be close to naked without being slaughtered by spells or arrows would also help). but mirke in particular was not a compelling or interesting one. that being said, like i said earlier, cheese still exists. mirke was king tank against dorudugan.

i tried this a while ago on mirke and was a little underwhelmed by it. maybe my setup wasn't great. but even with duality of mortal presence, blade turning wouldn't last very long, so you still don't get to do too much. spamming blade turning almost every other action while still taking further damage from range or non-melee melee-ranged attacks wasn't a very exciting way to play. as a brief emergency tanking tool (e.g. 3+ enemies and in danger), or as a cheese with salvation of time, it was pretty good though.