thelee

i don't know much about consoles - does PS5 not support running PS4 games as-is?

goddang it!

I am actually working on a build that might partially be up you alley. I'm not posting it yet because I haven't finished a playthrough with it, so I don't quite know how it'll play out in the end-game, but you might consider a chanter to pick up the "their companion" invocation that grants energized. you can single-class it or combine with a party or multiclass that gives you further accuracy or crit bonuses. you also want ring of focused flame and helm of the white void. the trick here is that many of the bombs tick periodically as a persistent aoe (not a hazard or a DoT), which means every 3-6 seconds they get an attack roll (most bombs tick every 3s, immolator and maybe a couple others tick slower). That means every time you crit with one of these persistent ticks, you trigger an interrupt because of your energized inspiration, even if the tick was only for like 3 damage (normally only the initial explosion of a bomb can interrupt). In addition, energized gives you a +2 PEN bonus that can help your explosives do better damage. ring of focused flame gives you +10 stacking passive accuracy with cinder bombs, sparkcrackers, stun bomb, and immolator (all count as fire), and helm of the white void gives you +10 stacking passive accuracy with cinder bombs (for +20 total), blister bomb, frost bomb, essence of imp spray, implosion charge, lightning bomb, sparkcrackers (for +20 total), and stun bomb (for +20 total)... basically the vast majority of bombs [though for half the game you won't have helm of the white void whereas ring of focused flame can easily be stolen after port maje]. out of all these options, cinder bombs are your best bet, because not only do they get the full +20 accuracy, they also are easy to make, easy to buy, and their affliction helps further ticks crit (blinding provides an effective +10 additional accuracy). but in harder fights you can layer multiple bombs and make it challenging for enemies to get much done. note that even though i listed sparkcrackers and stun bombs, it was only for completeness's sake - for this setup they don't have follow up ticks for interacting with energized. you can also pick up additional supplemental gear to boost your explosives, e.g. firethrower's gloves gives you +2 explosives. lucero pet from FS might be worth it (-25% item recovery bonus). if you really want to be bomb-focused you should single-class the chanter and rely on party members to provide further buffs (mostly a priest for aware and/or devotions plus acute for +1 PL. a cipher providing tactical meld can help in a pinch). this is because the invocation for energized comes pretty late for a multiclass. if you're patient, you can multiclass it with a fighter, who might be the overall best choice because of their easy access to intuitive (25% hit to crit) and conqueror stance (up to +10 non-stacking active accuracy). like boeroer says, bombs won't really do that much damage - grenade and concussion bombs are the biggest damage dealers (maybe immolators too, but they have low PEN and it takes a while to scale up their damage competently) and they're not really going to win fights for you that much (in fact, because grenades and concussion bombs push enemies out of their explosion range, they are their own worst enemy for spamming damage bombs). but they can serve a fun utility and disruption role.

The sigils don't deactivate when she dies. They will happily rip you to shreds if you leave all five up and kill auranic first. Can't de-aggro them either, at least nothing I tried worked, they have infinite range (in that area). Auranic has a death prevention shield that only goes away after she uses Endless Assault, which reveals all five sigils (even if all five sigils are gone). She only uses this attack once at Near Death. not true. if you hit her with instakill before she has had a chance to use endless assault, it will do nothing (except trigger other instakill-contingent effects). I've seen this happen myself. i know this is just a list, but do not use petrification on auranic. if you time it poorly (read: before she uses endless assault) she will be permanently petrified and her scripting to let her use endless assault will never trigger. you will be soft-locked into the fight. detonate is also an instakill that targets near death and causes an explosion if an instakill succeeded/ blessed harvest is a pseudo-instakill that affects bloodied or lower. i say "pseudo" because for much of the early game it is functionally equivalent to an instakill because of the damage it does (100-150).

graze is enough. waski is right about the sigils. in fact, even if you land an instakill spell, you will get any effects from the instakill spell but auranic just will not die. this is very weird if you use chanter's boil the flesh invocation, because you will get healing and action speed buff as if you instakilled auranic, but she will still be standing.

i did this fairly recently with aloth. it worked pretty well. i gave aloth heavy armor, had an AI script that automatically cast spirit shield at start of fight, and cast deleterious alacrity of motion if he didn't have a dex inspiration already. i also would cast a reflection spell and bulwark depending on the fight. i would cast various illusion magic as necessary (repulsive visage and mirror image; in some fights a wizard's double). he was pretty tough to kill in most fights. remember that vigorous/refreshing defense stacks with pure +deflection active bonuses for extra hardiness. wall of draining will keep your buffs up and can make unbending extremely powerful. if you haven't tried a spellblade, it's also worth a shot. sneak attack + kalakoth's minor blights is absolutely brutal.

i think based on the video you shared in the other thread, the dexterity is irrelevant. i was worried that you wouldnt' be able to disrupt dorudugan because i had assumed the knock up ended at the current turn, not at the beginning of the party member's next turn. it might still be an issue for hauane, but if you are good about landing disintegrate then it might not matter either. edit - i briefly forgot that in turn-based mode the graze range is 0-50, so you have a much easier time of trying to land disintegrate than in rtwp.

interesting - so i assumed that mule kick would act a lot like a prone in turn-based mode, which is simply an initiative delay. the video shows that the "knock up" effect lasts the entire round, so dorudugan stays down. i have a hard time figuring out what else is going on, so i don't know if the monk skyward kick is critical to stunlocking dorudugan. the big thing is that you need a generous amount of accuracy to hit dorudugan with mule kick; even with turn-based mode's more generous graze range, dorudugan has sky high fortitude defense. i think what's happening is that both mule kick and skyward kick expire their 1 round "knock up" duration when the person who did the action gets a turn again. so if you have two characters A and B who can both knock up, you have both use it, and by the time it's A's turn, dorudugan would try to stand up, but it still has a remaining knock up duration from B. So A mule kicks again, refreshing the knock up duration, and by the time dorudugan would try to stand up on B's turn, they are still affected by A's knock up. you would definitely needs lots of accuracy and/or redundancy to ensure this works (~180 accuracy to have 100% chance of landing mule kick). I see they use morning star modal, which would help alot (-25). I think returning storm might be for the might affliction for another -10. a monk could land sickened for another -10. single-weapon style (doesn't look like the video poster used it) would give a free +12 accuracy. devotions would give another +10. you'd need brilliant to keep everything up. turn-based mode rounding ironically would make this strategy work a bit better because dorudugan's high resolve wouldn't matter, the durations of stuff would get rounded up to a minimum of 1 round. probably has downvotes because the audio is so poor quality it's almost impossible to tell what's happening

Aha, so this is where all that research energy has been going into! Fun theme (I was not active much on the forums for PoE 1 so did not see this before). As for megabosses, what I really did was just skim your build and see if you had a chanter and/or a cipher. You have both, so I think you are absolutely set. I've done megabosses a lot. Not on turn-based, but I believe the overall principle will be the same: you can handle any challenge so long as you're willing to get and use the following skills (either on your way up or respeccing just for megabosses): chanter - one dozen stood (chant). this is to persistently resist auranic's terrorizing sigil without relying on something that can be easily cleansed away chanter - blessed was wengrith (chant). you don't need this, but this (or having paladin's zealous charge aura) helps a lot with running around and avoiding dorudugan's fiery death. chanter - called to his bidding (invocation). the fabled animated weapons. they can run lots of interference for you, and when belranga/hauane gets lower defenses the sword can knockdown the megaboss perpetually cipher - ancestor's memory. a recurring source of brilliant will cure all ills cipher - disintegration. massively simplifies hauane o whe fight if you can land it. both the priest and paladin will also offer hugely helpful spells (salvation of time, barring death's door, lay on hands [optionally with a death shield]), but those five abilities up top are central to "easy" attempts at megabosses for myself. do note that turn-based dorudugan and hauane might run counter to some advice about de-prioritizing dex, because it becomes important to be able to have party members have their turns before critical abilities activate (dorudugan's various fiery death options, hauane's attempt at merging if you were unable to land disintegration in its first form). i do not hav ea lot of experience in this realm. edit - warning: i am extremely dubious that turn-based mode megabosses is going to be very enjoyable. even on rtwp they can take a long time. on turn-based they might be an utter slog. i know someone beat the ultimate in turn-based mode, but "possible" and "fun" seem very at odds here.

not exactly, though it does require more work than heavy armor. spell PEN doesn't get as high as weapon PEN. Some arbitrary buffing might be good enough. It's just that even with maxed out deflection, armor can still matter.

most damage spells don't hit deflection. high AR would basically let you shrug most of that off.

i don't have strong opinions on the different builds, but I just wanted to highlight a couple things - - one extra armor can seem insignificant, but it can also be the most important thing in the world. it all depends. you're not going to see much benefit on a cloth-y, but for a heavy armor tank especially on upscaling potd (where PEN/AR is an arms race with you behind), +1 can mean a full 50% damage reduction over not having that +1 (this is the case where you go from -50% PEN to -75% PEN); remember that negative effects aren't additive (edit: as boeroer says). these days when i'm building a character for the puproses of tanking damage, I zealously guard each +1 AR I can find, especially ones that stack. - the malus isn't that bad because a tank isn't moving around much. edit - BAH ninja'ed by boeroer!

in a vacuum that is actually probably ideal instead of a hatchet in my quick and dirty math. in practice, a hatchet can also debuff enemy accuracy -10 with its modal, and all you need to do is at least graze with it. so a hatchet gives you a 13-pt swing in relative defense against an enemy versus the 5 you get from a gladiator sword. i believe the only other effects that can emulate this is a wand modal (-10), devotions for the faithful (-10), or despondent blows (-15). so... it depends on other factors. gladiator sword is not a great end-game weapon, but hatchets aren't exactly world-beaters themselves IMO (except for xoti's weapon).

not +15 ?

i think whatever a dragon summon can do, an animated weapon summon can do almost as well, and there are some places where the animated weapons will out-perform a dragon summon. it is mostly a nice capstone for a single-class chanter, and frankly an ability i think is underappreciated because many people multiclass chanters or just sit around with animated weapons. if you are interested in doing something different with a chanter, then i cast a vote for a single-class chanter with a dragon summon as either a bellower or a troubadour, because either of those will be able to have 100% uptime on it. (A single-class beckoner is better off getting 8 animated weapons and a modern GPU instead). edit - where a dragon really excels is in large fights or against bosses. animated weapons (especially beckoned ones) can be destroyed relatively easily, especially where AoE is concerned. Dragons have tons of health and immunities so won't go down very easily. Dragons also have two pwoerful aoe abilities that have generous scaling (dragons have liek +20 PL), a tail lash and a fire breath. In SSS I've literally wiped out most of an arena fight with just a few tail lashes... i'm talking hundred+ damage per target per attack with extremely high PEN. edit 2 - the base dragon weapon stats are so crappy but the ability PL scaling is so generous you have to pretty make sure that the dragon is *always* using an ability.

the low level skeleton/phantom summons are a poor representation of the quality of summons chanters get later. they are good cannon fodder, but that's it. it's not until you get ogres that you get your first taste of tanky summons. and while animated weapons get all the love, a single-class chanter can summon a dragon which as i've mentioned in other threads in the past can literally facetank megabosses without dying (it doesn't hurt that what helps it against dorudugan is that it has fire immunity). the only time i've ever come close to losing a dragon was against a belranga that had almost 120-ish stacks of her damage/action speed buff.

like i said, engagement is not terribly hard to come by, and that's the main mechanism (otherwise there's no "aggro" in the sense of generating and managing threat like in a MMORPG). a fighter can get 2-3 engagement extremely easily (defensive stance, or any other stance plus a shield and hold the line), but other characters can get 2-3 engagement as well with a shield and other items (or a chanter chant, if we're counting only persistent effects). if an enemy breaks engagement to do something else, a chanter has summons to body-block or re-engage them without having to do an attack roll. i've personally found into the fray extremely underwhelming for "maintaining" engagement because of its need for an attack roll and because enemies rarely are positioned either in range or in a way such that i actually pull them into engage range (they get body-blocked by another enemy). it also costs a whopping two discipline. i think re: "on-demand" it's hard to overstate just how powerful brisk recitation is and animated weapons are. you start off basically being able to summon them at the start of the fight, which gives you a bunch of "on-demand" effects, and brisk recitation will mean that you have 100% uptime on it, while also rapidly generating other CC effects with invocations. At 3s per chant, the lag time is hardly there. because animated weapons can keep getting re-summoned, i even went so far as to setup a keyboard-mouse macro that spams "F, shift-click" as long as i hold down the macro button. every time i summon an animated weapon, i select the sword, hotkey knockdown to F, and then spam that macro on an enemy i want to disable for the rest of the fight. when that enemy dies (because the sword also does a boatload of damage and has tons of accuracy), i re-spam that macro on a different. rinse and repeat with each resummon. this even works on megabosses (except dorudugan who is immune to knockdown). even on a much dumber level, i've literally held big enemies in place with animated weapons and plunked at it form a distance, simply because the enemy has a big footprint and can't squeeze past my properly spaced animated weapons. put a whole different way, these days i make deliberate abstentions to try to maintain challenge in the game. in terms of builds, a herald is the main one i refuse to roll (even as a pallegina option) simply because of how easily it can trivialize the game without even doing anything exploitive (e.g. brilliant-based combos). i'm all a fan of exploring different options and finding strengths in other builds, and toying around with contrarian ideas to explore new creative avenues. there are plenty of good fighter builds and multiclasses, and you shouldn't feel pressured to not play one because you think you must play the "best" option. but by the nature of the thread and how well-established the metagame is on this particular point, i think you will find it an extremely uphill fight to convince people that a herald is not just an all-around superstar for carrying a party to victory against all the big challenges of the game. you can literally just outlast your opponents in some setups (e.g. brand enemy). (the only exception i can make is if vela is involved, because a herald by itself has no effective protection mechanism for vela.)

a shield and some deliberately selected gear (and the silver knight chant if you want) will give you plenty of engagement. you don't typically need more than three. a herald can also summon animated weapons, who can also tank for you (especially with the silver knight chant). the ability to close distance doesn't matter after the first moments of combat. a fighter's constant recovery eventually ends (and can be cleansed/suppressed away). i don't know what "on-demand CC" is (isn't all CC on-demand?), but whatever the fighter gets is no match for infinite CC. remember that a chanter can keep summoning animated weapons, one of which has up to 11 uses of knockdown: whatever fighter support you're thinking of a chanter can essentially keep re-summoning a version of said fighter support. this is on top of other invocations the chanter can use. remember that that the 10-pt dmg shield chant only refreshes every time it starts up again and any linger is irrelevant if depleted, so the "downside" of the troubadour's brisk recitation isn't even a downside - you can absorb 10pts of damage every three seconds, on top of any passive regen from exalted endurance or e.g. lethandria's devotion shield. E.G. against hauane o whe, you don't have to worry about symbiote at all. (and hauane and sigilmaster's cleansing are irrelevant because exalted endurance doesn't have a duration and you just refresh your damage shield in a second or two) all while getting invocations at almost 2x typical speed. the first couple runs i did that included megabosses i had a herald with me, not even in a tank format (one was pallegina, one was a custom troubadour/paladin). it was so utterly convincing of how powerful a carry it was for the rest of my party (the experience also single-handedly upgraded my estimation of the chanter in general, and i tried hard to underline a chanter's value when i wrote up the megabosses in my gamefaqs guide). i didn't even try to metagame the build/equipment that hard, especially the first time with pallegina, it was pretty ad-hoc. with more thought and some proper itemization, a herald will absolutely tank for you and carry your party. there's plenty of fun tanks to be made that include a fighter, but you are going to find it extremely hard to argue that a herald is not somehow the king of survivability and sustain.

yes. i think it'd be harder to time the mule kick properly (i don't quite know how delaying your turn works especially when it come to cast times), but you would halt any currently active action. unfortunately, in turn-based, the enemy might just rev up their action on the immediate next turn, so you'd have to keep it up.

mule kick doesn't interrupt per se. however, it will knock up dorudugan and cause it to require to stand back up again, even though normally prone (which is an interrupt) is prevented by concentration or interrupt immunity. the same thing is true for monk's knock up ability. this also works on the oracle and the memory hoarder in FS (who are interrupt immune). edit - unlike a true interrupt, knock up alone won't waste the enemy's resource when properly done during their action. however, you can mess up AI scripting a bit to buy yourself more time because enemies don't always try the same action again--they might do some other stuff for a while. more importantly, for a tactician, the brief window when an enemy is knocked up in the air, they are treated by the game as not being in combat. this can be bad if you have attacks or spells in mid-flight, because they'll whiff against the enemy. for a tactician, though, that brief window is enough that--if that was the only enemy around--you temporarily gain briliant. you lose brilliant as soon as the enemy lands back on the ground and re-enters combat, but a second or so of brilliant is all you need to restore a resource. in my ultimate run i would mule kick enemies if they were the only ones around, to help restore resources for the priest half of my character.

whatever you do, i highly recommend supplementing your build with hel-hyraf/the shield breaks invocation and geting animancy cat. the combined benefits of the two will have it so that even the summons that you have that don't scale will still be relevant as enemies get tougher armor. (magran spells will also love having enemies subjected to the shield breaks for its own damage purposes)

yeah - i agree with as you mentioned upthread, they spent alot of the "budget" on the instakill effect, but in practice it's so slow to build up phrases and the cast time is so slow that it's much harder to use opportunistically as an instakill spell than any other instakill spell, and the aoe is janky enough that unlike death ring it is surprisingly hard to get more than one instakill (and even on potd when i can have more than one instakill by the time cast time completes i might have already killed one of the other targets). so making it more reactive and worthwhile to use an instakill spell for just an expected value of 1 target will help a lot i think.

is boil their flesh an instakill spell with an ok failure mode, or a damage spell that can also instakill? right now it's mediocre at both. i think i would prefer it to be an instakill spell with an ok failure mode, which means i would prefer to have a fast cast time like that, but not really worry about buffing the raw damage (maybe the corrode damage).

hey, as someone who used the corpse explosion invocation alot, i think you're understating how good the ability is. just give it an auto-hit on the corpse and the rest will take care of itself. it has huge aoe (way better than thrice), better overall damage than thrice (so long as you're targeting a corpse you have a decent chance to hit), and can be upgraded to provide a very long debuff. on potd, in which i used the corpse invocation to good effect, having to roll to hit the corpse acted like a damage nerf, e.g. a 75% chance to hit is effectively the same as a -25% multiplicative damage debuff. making it autohit essentially automatically buffs the damage (e.g. in this case +33%).

i think the main downside is that you will always have the forbidden fist curse on yourself for a full round regardless of how good your resolve or low your intellect. on the plus side, i think the +50% hostile debuff bonus on enfeebled will make it really easy to hit critical rounding thresholds.