FleetFeet

Agree, these games are phenomenal on their own but no way would I have enjoyed them as much and for as long as I have if it weren't for the ideas and knowledge shared in these forums. I smile every time I leave the game for a spell only to return and see Boeroer and others still actively helping others or collaborating on the mods that have improved my experience. Many thanks Boeroer! Also, many thanks to the regulars here who have helped me and others enjoy these gems more richly. I won't mention names, but you know who you are!

I agree with you that Ciphers can be very powerful (and fun). My first play-thru was as a Mindstalker Assassin and it was a blast. I wouldn't use assassinate to land alpha damage strikes but instead to sneak in and land borrowed instinct with +35 acc(incl the passive bonus). Then I would smoke cloud back into stealth to land ring leader on 1/2 the enemy with a whopping +55 acc. Even very high will targets would get dominated. My crew could just hang back while the enemy whittled themselves down, picking off the strays until the time was right to join the fray. I could use that strategy from beginning till the end of the campaign and it was always fun getting that set up to work. More recent play-thrus with the class expansions and it is hard to pass-up the infinite resource regen of Tacticians and Bloodmages. Monks are so much fun as well. I can't pick a favorite but since you mentioned Monk and Brilliant, a fun build I often bring along for both damage and CC is a Brawler (Tactician/Helwalker) using the dual mortar set-up. Max Int along with DoMP(Int) gives a HUGE AOE for the mortars. Once enemies are clustered around my tank(s) and/or sucked up into a Pull of Eora, he will alternate between Stunning Blow(incapacitating and applying a tier 3 affliction across a huge AOE) and Penetrating Strike(stacks with Thunderous Blows for 15 pen with the Mortars) being very effective even against some of higher boss armors. Throw in avenging storm with the Heavens Cacophony helm and a wizards combusting wounds and mobs and bosses alike are obliterated - often without much of a chance to fight back. Stunning Blow lowers Fort working well a wizards Chill Fog and Staggered prevents enemies from engaging/flanking both working together to make it easy getting Brilliant fired up. Bonus, the Blinding Smoke upgrade to the Hand Mortar also applies disoriented/flanked (careful if you have another Tactician in the fray thou, unlike the mortar AOE that upgrade is friend or foe).

Forgot to mention regarding cipher, unfortunately I found them a bit underwhelming on TB. Love ciphers with RTwP but to me their fast(er) cast abilities are under-powered when translated to the action economy of TB. I do wish their buffs were free actions but since most are also debuffs I can see why they were not made so. With that in mind, I do think soul blade multi is a good way to go. Works great with Whispers of the Endless paths as you can apply soul annihilation in an aoe and hack through mobs that much faster. If you are considering playing with the community patch, you could go Mindstalker(soul blade/trickster) and take advantage of extra focus gen from riposte combined with mirror image/LDI. This only really works well with community patch thou since misses are far less frequent and CP changes riposte to trigger 25% on miss OR graze. Oh and regarding Troubadour, haven't played with on TB too much but don't think it's a terrible choice depending on how you play it. iirc, brisk recitation is a dead end as you still only chant one phrase per turn but if you don't use it and take advantage of the extra linger I believe you can hold 3 chants simultaneously in TB. Someone please correct me if I am wrong on how brisk recitation works in TB.

I've been playing TB and wholeheartedly agree that copious amounts AOE to quickly dispatch mobs is key to enjoying it. Fights can feel like they drag on forever without. Here are a few tips that I've picked up from the forums here: Wizard with absolute maxed out Int(Infuse with Vital Essence great here) and Pull of Eora to cover as big an area for as long as possible. Makes it super easy to get most enemies clumped together for nuking. I usually give my tank Upright Captains Belt for immunity to the pull effect to make it easy to keep them positioned just outside the friendly fire AOE zone. In my latest run I have Tekehu as SC druid and have found him indispensable. I have him wearing Deltros cage (+2 electricity PL) and armed with Hand Mortar(upgraded with blinding smoke) + Fire in the hole. As I learned from Boeroer, those hand mortars are a fantastic combined with Avenging Storm. as both the aoe (which is foe only) + blinding smoke trigger bolts from avenging storm this along with his unique foe only aoe spells makes him great for dealing with mobs. You can also get avenging storm from the helm heaven's cacophony(1 per rest) and scrolls(need 13 arcana). Whispers of the Endless Paths(with high Int) is also great for mobs. I have a SC Monk that uses it to great effect. Not hard to get Int north of 30 with DoMP/food/gear which makes the AOE very sizable. Stunning surge refunds the Mortification on crit, and with such a large aoe and with mobs bunched together very easy to get that refund. Skyward kick is a blast as it hits everyone in the aoe cone. Once you get it, Whispers of the Wind offers several ways to obliterate mobs esp when combined with resonant touch. For example the aoe of whispers of the endless paths will get applied for each jump giving you many stacks of resonant touch and since it is a melee weapon it can trigger heartbeat drumming and swift flurry. For fun, you can also use with the hand mortars and avenging storm as described above(thank you Boeroer). Careful, it may melt your video card along with those mobs. This may feel like cheese, but you can get infinite re-use out of Necklaces of Fireball once you get two of them. If you stack two partially used necklaces they refill back to 8 uses. Give 1 or two to non-spell casters to help clean up mobs as needed. Check the wiki, easy to get two of them early on (one from the unique item vendor in Port Maje with the particular Berath's blessing ). Again, thanks Boeroer! I 've found Bloodmage subclass especially fantastic in TB as blood sacrifice (along with many buffs) are free actions. You can hit blood sacrifice multiple times during a single turn if needed to get whatever particular spell level you need. I don't pump might(modifies blood sacrifice) and Voidward ring helps here. Just make sure you have adequate healing queued up(either as a multi or from companions). I usually multi as a Paladin and take Exulted Endurance and the upgrade Greater Lay on Hands. Given the action economy of TB, I find the robust inspiration worth the extra zeal(and having high Int to extend duration of robust helps make up for the lower might). Of course, SC bloodmage is perfectly fine but to get most out of BM make sure you are proactive with the healing so you can hit BS as much as needed making it easy to get those aoe spells back each round.

Hmm, when you put it that way perhaps it does require a Freudian interpretation.

I had a similar situation on my first play through and it turned out fine. Your situation a bit different(I didn’t have food for thought that time but I did have Aldeys request to help Mad Morena so was able to get past that way). However, what I can say from subsequent play throughs is that the option to say Ulug is dead comes up whether you found his body or not so I don’t think you are going to break anything there. And you will still have the option of solving food for thought other ways even if you agree to Mad Morena’s quest. Edit: I don't know about you but I felt like a fool for missing that lift and suitably punished having to claw my way out the hard way. So, I wouldn't give-up on that save, it's a good lesson for our Watcher! Let's see if anyone else has anything to add but I am pretty confident you haven't broken any quests.

Yeah, that's the problem. With chanter in party chanting silver knights (+10 deflection to trigger more riposte and +1 engagement) and maybe Reckless Brigandine (+1). That's 3 engagement slots. The disengagement attack with WotEP is AOE right? And as one terrified guy breaks engagement and get's wacked the newly free engagement slot get's filled up right away with another (potentially) terrified guy? I might give this a try just to see how it works out at least. I'm currently on a turn based play-thru and had hired this build to my crew as soon as I got WotEP. Only to realize that you get missed a lot less often in TB with 1-49 rolls being graze.So offensive parry not triggering as much as I had hoped. At least I am using the community patch which changed Riposte to 25% on graze/miss. Anyway, would still like to find a way to make this work b/c it is a fun build.

Is it also worthwhile to stack a little more engagement so that you can proc disengagement attacks using Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage with this set-up?

Btw, if you are really disappointed and would consider playing with mods, there is one by paryllax on nexusmods that buffs the base damage WotEP to that of a regular greatsword (while keeping the aoe damage the same). This is close to what it was before one of the early patches toned it down. You might need to reload from before you picked it up if using but not sure. https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/75

I don't believe this is the case btw, at least not if we are talking about a SC Bloodmage. As SC, the only healing affected by your own might is from the healing items mentioned and the very nominal BM healing passive. These items don't scale with level so your base healing is roughly the same regardless of what level you are. However, the self-damage from blood sacrifice scales with character level which is then multiplied by might. I believe the implication is that the might bonus hurts you for far more than it helps you as you level up. There are others here FAR more knowledgeable than i am but will try to put pen to paper: Healing(normalized to healing per 6 seconds): Fleshmender: 2.5/6s 3 Trolls: 2.5/6s RoGR: 3/6s BM Passive: 1/6s (not 100% sure on this and I'm ignoring level scaling but it's really nominal) Total: 9 health per 6 seconds. With Physicers belt(+10%), bone setters torc (+10%) and Fruit resting bonus(+25%, multiplicative) that is 13.5 per 6 sec. Add 33% from boosting might to 21 and that goes up to 17.2 per 6 seconds. An increase of 3.7. Now using MaxQuest's formula, let's look at the blood sacrifice cost with base might vs 21. I'll assume you have voidward ring. To replenish a tier 3 spell at level 20 with base might and voidward it is (15 + 3 * 20) * ( 1 - 0.25) = 56.3 health. To replenish a tier 3 spell at level 20 with 21 might and voidward it is (15+3*20)*(1+0.33)*(1-0.25) = 74.8 health(*) So for the gain of 3 health every 6s (VERY roughly the time to cast a spell and use Blood sacrifice), it hurts you for 18.5 health more. This is why I think dex is the better investment. Increased damage b/c you can get those spells out faster w/o the increase in self damage. Plus it helps you get debuffs and self-buffs on faster as well. (*) I'm assming that voidward is multiplicitive on the total. If it is really additive with might then it is even a bigger differene: (15+3*20)*(1+0.33-0.25) = 81. EDIT: Minor fix to a cpl numbers. 2nd EDIT: Added bone setters torc, made fresh fruit multiplicative as per Boeroer.

You can do it, it's a question of whether it is better to invest those points elsewhere. A BM with sufficient healing/regen can cast an unlimited number of spells so personally I would choose dex as the better investment since you can fling more spells out there while Might has diminishing returns since it's bonus just added along with other bonus(and it still does hurt you). I think a better case can be made for Might with another subclass since you want to get the most out of each cast. but even then not sure it's such a clear cut decision. That said, you can self-buff Int, Con, Perception, and Dex with a Wizard but not Might.

Assuming that Intelligence will be 20 as well, that looks good to me. Are you going to use Bereths Blessings for +2 to each on top of this? If so, personally I might drop might to 8 (for a total of 10 with BB) and add that to Dex. Since you have virtually unlimited casting you want to be able to throw spells out as fast as your health allows. That's where the BM shines. For example, on my playthru with similar stat distribution (Pali/BM) I was able to keep enemies on perma lockdown with Shadowflame while still being able to get some debuffing and self-buffing done in there all while keeping health at 50%+. Of course, that 's far from the only way to play it.

Also use the Voidward ring you can buy in Dunnage, that will reduce the raw damage from Blood Sacrifice by 25%. Boeroer, perhaps I was doing something wrong, but I tried using all the regen/healing boost items mentioned and kept my might at 10 but I couldn't quite get to non-stop casting. Don't have the game available now but checking MaxQuest post on Blood Sacrifice, restoring a high lvl spell is (15 + 3 * CharLvl) * dmg modifiers. So at lvl 20, 10 might, thats 75 health (56 with Voidward ring). And you might have use BS more than once since the max spell level is random. I didn't add-up all the healing numbers in the combat log when testing but my wizard brought himself down trying to alternate 1-for-1 between cast and BS with this set-up. That said, with Xoti in your party you will be fine as a SC Bloodmage. Personally, I have enjoyed playing BM multi'd with either Paladin or Druid(Lifegiver). The paladin aura with a LoH in reserve allowed me to cast non-stop while being extra tanky. Lifegiver has awesome healing/defense spells that also benefit the whole party. What's nice is you don't need many abilities from either class so you don't feel starved for ability points. A battlemage(tactician) also works well but needs quite a bit more micro/planning.

FYI, I just encountered a situation where loot was destroyed using essence interrupter :