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=================================== The Hound of Yezuha, Ultimate Edition =================================== Difficulty: PotD v5.0.0.0040 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Brawler (Fighter + Monk) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Storm Human -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Yezuha (Missionary) -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (char creation, no Berath's Blessings): MIG: 11 CON: 10 DEX: 15 PER: 14 INT: 14 RES: 11 -------------------------------------------------------------- Active Skill: Athletics ® Passive Skill: Any -------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon Proficiencies: Sword (a) Greatsword (a) Small Shield ® Sabre (!) Battle Axe (!) Flail Hatchet -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) PL1 Fighter Knock Down (a) Disciplined Barrage (!) Monk Swift Strikes (a) Force of Anguish PL2 Fighter Fighter Stances Confident Aim Monk Clarity of Agony Common Two Weapon Style (!) PL3 Fighter Disciplined Strike (!) Mule Kick ® Monk Swift Flurry (!) Efficient Anguish ® PL4 Fighter Charge ® Weapon Specialization ® Monk Thunderous Blows (!) Duality of Mortal Presence ® PL5 Fighter Armored Grace (!) Conqueror Stance Monk Enervating Blows ® Common Uncanny Luck ® PL6 Fighter Clear Out Monk Turning Wheel ® Flagellant’s Path ® Common Improved Critical ® PL7 Fighter Unbreakable Weapon Mastery ® Monk Heartbeat Drumming (!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional enchantments; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Scordeo’s Edge (Blade Cascade*!, Adaptive*!) (!), Slayer’s Claw (!) Weapon set 2: Unarmed, Tuotilo’s Palm (Balanced Shield*, Pugilist*) ® Chest: Contender’s Armor (Heavy Mobility*) ® Helmet: Fair Favor (!) Amulet: Cauldron Shard (!) Cloak: Cape of the Falling Star Gloves: Burglar’s Gloves ® Ring: Finality’s Claim (!) Ring: Ring of Prosperity’s Fortune ® Belt: Ngati’s Girdle ® Boots: Rakhan Field Boots (!) ----------------------------------------------------------------- As Companions and Sidekicks go, Rekke is one of the most vanilla as they come. Which is not a bad thing in itself; his stats lends itself to a DPS build, and his vanilla class choices make him very adaptable, which is more than can be said for several of his peers (looking at you, Fassina). Since pretty much any DPS build would be viable for Rekke, I decided instead to design a build that won’t be realized until near the end-game, but sets him up to take on one of the Megabosses in particular. Using some fairly simple interactions between his class abilities and specific weapon enchantments, this build makes Rekke an interrupt-lock machine that can, with the proper support, take on his intended target mano-a-mano. Thus the name of his build, the Hound of Yezuha; it is not only a testament of Rekke’s ferocity in battle, but it’s also a tribute to the man who killed the Mountain. (Note on “Ultimate Edition” builds: With the release of the Ultimate Edition on PS4 and XBox, there will be many first-time players of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire who will be searching for builds online, only to find that most available builds were created for earlier versions of the game. While many of those are still viable even in the final version of Deadfire, this would not be apparent to new players; thus, builds such as this will be tagged as “Ultimate Edition” to indicate that they’ve been tested for version 5.0.0 of Deadfire, including all DLCs.) Cutting the Voracious Mountain Down to Size Apart from its own set of nasty tricks, Hauani o Whe also hits like a mack truck. However, it has the lowest Deflection of the four Megabosses, and is also vulnerable to interrupts. Therefore, the trick to defeating the Voracious Mountain is to exploit these two weak points mercilessly. And the Hound of Yezuha can achieve this through a couple of fairly simple interactions. Firstly, the Slayer’s Claw increases any Might Inspirations applied to its wield by one tier. In the hands of a Monk, that means Thunderous Blows doesn’t give Tenacious, but Energized instead; that’s why I made Rekke a Fighter/Monk, and it guarantees that he’ll interrupt with every crit. Pair that with Scordeo’s Edge with the Adaptive enchantment, and Rekke will work his way up to +20 Accuracy with both weapons in time. Add the hit-to-crit bonuses from Disciplined Strikes (Intuitive) and Fair Favor (which applies to Scordeo’s Edge), and you get a Rekke who can crit and interrupt the giant ooze with practically every other strike. (This also makes Rekke ideal as a mage-hunter, which is why I gave him both Charge and Flagellant's Path; so he can dive into the backline and immediately start dismantling enemy spellcasters.) Double down on that with the Blade Cascade enchantment, and now whenever it activates, Rekke can ignore Recovery and interrupt-lock Hauani for around 5-6 seconds each time. Pretty sweet, isn’t it? Now imagine what happens when Rekke has a Priest and Cipher to provide the Ancestor’s Memory-Salvation of Time combo. That’s right; Rekke can now wail away at the giant ooze throughtout the whole fight, keeping it pancaked and unable to do much of anything whatsoever, all the way until it ****ing dies. (On a side note, Valkyrie Xoti is ideal as the Priest for the Hauani o Whe fight, because she singlehandedly turns the Symbiote debuff from an annoyance into an asset for your party. The little oozes are OHKs with The Twin Eels, and each one heals the whole party every time.) Sure, you’d still have to watch out and make sure that the smaller oozes don’t merge back into the big one. But properly supported, the Hound of Yezuha is all the DPS you’re going to need for this Megaboss fight, including the clean-up after the hard part. Enduring the Crushing Weight But to get the Blade Cascade started in the first place, Rekke has to begin the encounter with attacks on Hauani o Whe at normal recovery. Therefore he’s still going to take some hits in the first few seconds, and needs sufficient protection to help him survive for at least that long. The one thing to keep in mind about Hauani’s attacks is that it does Crush/Corrode damage. This means that the most useful type of armor against the giant ooze are Breastplates, since it is the armor type with the highest AR that doesn’t have a penalty against either Crush or Corrode. And when you think about Breastplates, the obvious choice is the Devil of Caroc Breastplate, which remains one of if not the best Unique Armor in Deadfire even in the Ultimate Edition. And while you can certainly give it to Rekke, I would actually not recommend it… precisely because it’s so good, I’m assuming it’s likely going to someone who needs it more (like your Watcher) and therefore not available for Rekke. With that context in mind, I’ll suggest the next best thing instead. And in Rekke’s case, that’s the Contender’s Armor from the SSS DLC, with the Heavy Mobility enchantment. With high Athletics and Armored Grace, it’s one of only 3 armors in the entire game that can potentially let the wearer attack even faster than if wearing no armor at all (the others being DoC Breastplate and Miscreant’s Leather); so even without Blade Cascade, Rekke can still attack at a brisk pace with this setup. To further boost Rekke’s AR against Hauani’s attacks, I also gave him the Cauldron Shard amulet and Rakhan Field Boots for additional Corrode AR, as well as Ngati’s Girdle for more Crush AR. Cauldron Shard also comes with a 20% chance to turn Hauani’s Corrode attacks into healing for Rekke instead, helping his survivability against the ooze that much further. On top of that, Rekke gets the Finality’s Claim Ring, which gives him a 25% chance to ignore its attacks altogether (it actually reflects the attack back to Hauani, but the giant ooze doesn’t take any damage from its own reflected attacks, so). Final Thoughts Pros: - Is set up to be your MVP during the Hauani o Whe Megaboss fight. - Also makes him useful as a mage-hunter, so you can use him in that capacity in normal fights. - Is perfectly viable even with a vanilla Brawler like Rekke. Cons: - Can only be fully realized as a build near endgame, because Scordeo's Edge is key to this build. - Going for this build locks you into the Slayer path in the SSS DLC, as Slayer's Claw is key to this build. - Foregoes all defensive abilities available to Fighters/Monks in favour of more DPS, so Rekke will need party support to survive in more difficult encounters. - Requires Priest and Cipher support to reach it's full potential, which can limit your choices of party composition. Last but not least, see the attached file for the AI script I created for Rekke as the Hound of Yezuha Rekke Custom (Brawler) (Fighter Monk) (08e33d71-36e8-46eb-9c8d-b3af9b6cdbac).customai

A frigid soul in a cold barren land. She wanders around aimlessly, unknowingly guided by the Cosmo. Always alone but determined, she gazes towards the coal-black unflinching sky, her treasured flute by her side. At a distance spanning mountains wide, there is fire and warmth. A caravan can be seen, perched upon the snow capped mountains, the smell of barley and ale, the jovial atmosphere and the loud chattering of kith resting after a long day's travel. Unmistakably, the group of kith starts hearing a faint but sonorous melody. Not a second too long, a thunderous parade of jagged streaks can be seen painting blue the once austere sky. They jolt gently like falling Sakura leaves, chaotic but peaceful. The once loud chattering of the kith folk stops abruptly as if time itself has stopped. Even the previously biting gale lays still, replaced by the thunderous echoes of a forgotten past yearning for a distant future. As abrupt as it came, the spectacle ceases to exist. The void replaced by stars, slowly forming in the sky. And just like that, this band of weary travelers have bared witness to a famous bard's tale only thought to have been a legend. 1. Watch these Gameplay Videos first before you read on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSX6l2QgP2o 2. Required Mods Mod: Level Scaling Mod Why? We want the game to be harder so it will be more satisfying to beat. We want to DL the file called, "Level Scaling Mod" under the old files section. This is because the new mod file got tuned down as a response to the 1.1 patch which increased the game difficulty. We want the original file. https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/24?tab=files Mod: Afflictions and Inspirations Mod Why? This is just an optional mod but it really improves the UI of the game. It's much cleaner to look at and much more informative than the standard base UI the game comes with. https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/32 3. Character Creation Race: Pale Elf Why? I just like the way they look. Also, *whispers* Class Selection: Devoted Fighter + Nalpazca Monk Why Devoted? This build has a 46% chance to crit so having that +25% crit damage would prove useful. That's not even the best part. Why we pick Devoted is because of the +2 penetration we get. Since we will be playing on POTD and since we will be using a Blunderbuss (low base pen), we will need as much armor pen as we can get. Why Nalpazca? It's miles ahead in comparison to any other monk subclass. This is because Helwalker makes us too squishy, Shattered is a no go because we need max wounds to take advantage of Turning Wheel and No Subclass gives us no benefit. Nalpazca on the other hand offers us a substantial benefit (+10 pl to drugs) with an easily fixed penalty (we need to take drugs). Also, Drugs are ridiculously good! Attributes: Without/With Berath's Blessing Mig 8 -> 10 Con 8 -> 10 Dex 18 -> 20 Per 18 -> 20 Int 18 -> 20 Res 8 -> 10 Why we only need few of might, constitution or resolve? Our weapon (Blunderbuss) has a low base damage so +% damage from might is not that attractive, the +% healing we get is ok but we have enough ways to keep ourselves healthy. We will have enough defense rating (deflection, fortitude, reflex, will) to offset our non-investment in constitution. Resolve gives us an ok amount of deflection. We also have sufficient tools to lower hostile effect duration through Ring of Solitary Wanderer (-35% hostile effect duration) and Clarity of Agony (-5 sec Duration of hostile effects, -50% Hostile effect duration for 20.0 sec). Why we need a lot of dexterity, perception and intellect? We need dex to attack fast so we can keep procing Avenging Storm which is the reason for this build. Perception is the king of stats, especially in POTD. We want to hit enemies. As a side benefit, both dexterity and perception increases our reflex defense. With sky-high reflex, plenty of the heavy hitting enemy ranged aoe damage will miss us leaving enemies to rely on their puny basic attacks to do damage on us. Enemy spells shouldn't be an issue either as we have enough will to resist it. The reason why we max intellect is for the increased duration in our abilities, scrolls, and drugs. This is more valuable than it sounds! Culture: The White that Wends Mystic Why? Mainly for the Lore. Also, Mystic gives us +1 to Arcana (the active skill we are going to max). Weapon Proficiency: Blunderbuss Why? We will be using Kitchen Stove which is a Blunderbuss. Active Skill: Max Arcana Why? Arcana along with Alchemy are straight-up bonkers as of patch 1.1. +1 Arcana is equivalent to +1 to power level of scrolls. We will be taking advantage of all the scrolls we can find/craft to unleash hell towards our enemies. Avenging Storm is our bread and butter. Passive Skill: Max History Why? We will be using the The Giftbearer's Cloth (+5 all defenses except deflection, increases with the History skill). 4. Equipment and Consumables Equipment: Helmet- Pearlescent Helm or Death's Maw (you can use whatever for this) Necklace - Bonesetter's Torc (for the +5% crit, +10% healing done and injury removal) Armor - Devil of Caroc Breastplate (still the best armor in-game despite the nerf imho) Ring Slot 1 - Ring of Solitary Wanderer (for the -35% harmful duration) Boots - Footprints of Ahu Taka (for the +2 dex and +10% healing done) Cape - The Giftbearer's Cloth (still gives a lot of defenses despite the nerf, +15 at 20 History) Gloves - Firethrower's Gloves (has everything we need for this build, +2 dex and +1 Arcana) Ring Slot 2 - Entonia Signet Ring (you can use whatever for this) Belt - Upright Captain's Belt (for the immunity to push/pull effects) Pet - Abraham (reduces recovery speed by a lot, best pet in-game imho) Weapon: Kitchen Stove - We want to use a Blunderbuss for its multi-shot passive. Kitchen Stove just happens to be the best Blunderbuss. Note# We want the modal on as it does crazy AOE damage. Its negative effect is offset by Intuitive from Disciplined Strikes. Note# The optimal enchantments are Frantic Reload and Wild Barrage. Food: Hot Razor Skewers is really good as it gives us +2 might, +2 pen and +1 to power level. Any other food should be fine as well. Note# Captain's Banquet +20% action speed bonus overrides the action speed bonus of our abilities. They don't stack together. Note# Captain's Banquet +20% dmg with spells doesn't work with Avenging Storm for some reason. Note# Crusted Swordfish +2 pen with spells doesn't work with Avenging Storm for some reason. Drugs: Deadeye is excellent for this build as it gives us accuracy as well as the % interrupt that gets pretty crazy due to multi-shot (Blunderbuss passive). Note# Coral Snuff is not good because its action speed bonus overrides the action speed bonus of our abilities. They don't stack together. Note# For hard encounters, use Deadeye. For general encounters, use any other drugs or even no drugs at all. Scrolls: Scroll of Avenging Storm - Our bread and butter. This is the reason why this build exists. Nuff Said. Scroll of Circle of Protection - Increases our defenses by 15 until combat ends. This is pretty crazy huh? Scroll of Moonwell - Increases our defenses by 10 and gives us a huge amount of constant healing (26.2hp per 3 seconds) for a long duration (40.5s). Scroll of Withdraw - We will only use this as a last resort. It makes us untargetable while healing us but we are stunned for the duration. Note# I only use these set of scrolls for hard encounters. For general encounters, use any other scrolls or even no scrolls at all. Note# No matter how much fun it is to always use Avenging Storm, I only use it when I actually need it. Use it sparingly as it's hard to craft. Note# I'm not using Scroll of Meteor Shower and Scroll of Great Maelstrom because they just one shot everything with maxed out Arcana. 5. Abilities Abilities by level guide: 2. Lesser Wounds 3. Fast Runner 4. Fighter Stances + 1H Style (+20% critical chance is crazy good) 5. Determination (amazing tanking passive) 6. Confident Aim 7. Disciplined Strikes + Lightning Strikes (core abilities of this build) 8. Rapid Recovery 9. Clarity of Agony (really good against strong damage over time) 10. Vigorous Defense + Thunderous Blows (+2 pen applies to Avenging Storm) 11. Duality of Mortal Presence 12. Crucible of Suffering (amazing tanking passive) 13. Conqueror Stance (+10 to accuracy/deflection is nuts) + Enlightened Agony (we love intellect) 14. Armored Grace 15. Enervating Blows (super useful against enemies that heal) 16. Refreshing Defense + Turning Wheel (we love intellect) 17. Body Control (resistance to might affliction) 18. Unstoppable (resistance to dex affliction) 19. Snake's Reflex + Bear's Fortitude (more defenses) 20. Uncanny Luck AI Behavior Script:

[CLASS BUILD] The Way of the Formless Form (The concept of yielding to overcome) Core Concept This build is inspired by martial arts style known as Tai Chi in which self defence is realized by the ability to react to an opposing force and redirect it onto the attacker. Seemingly, the Monk's PL3 ability Blade Turning is imo one of the Obs's attempt at representating this martial arts form. And this is in line with my inclination to create builds that has a retaliation concept. I have to put in a disclaimer to state I am in no way qualified to state and discuss anything pertaining to Tai Chi. This build is only my personal intrepretation of what this martial arts form could be in the context of Deadfire. =================================== The Way of the Formless Form =================================== Difficulty: PotD v.1.2.0.0008 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Brawler (Unbroken / Helwalker) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Pale Elf -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Deadfire Archipelago (Hunter) -------------------------------------------------------------- Solo: Untested -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (char creation, no Berath's Blessings): Mig: 12 Con: 13 Dex: 20 Per: 16 Int: 13 Res: 3 Skills Alchemy (max 10*) / Athletics * Alchemy is set to 10 to avoid overly abusing consumables. Potion of Spirit Shield is quite decent on TWotFF at Alchemy 10. Also this is an attempt to future proof the build if Obs decide to nerf Alchemy and one increase the levels to hopefully gain the same effectiveness. * Note: Patch 1.2 nerfed consumables as expected. So it is possible to bump Alchemy to about 15 without feeling too OP. Potions of Spirit Shield is too good for tankiness at a Pinch. Recommended Items (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Head: Heaven's Cacophony (!) Body: Devil of Caroc Breastplate (!) Neck: Stone of Power (®) Gloves: Firethrower's Gloves Belt: Ngati's Girdle (®) Legs: Boots of Stone / Bounding Boots Rings: Ring of Greater Regeneration / Ring of Overseeing Cape: Three Trolls Stitched Weapons: Set 1: Squid's Grasp (®) / Tuotilo's Palm (!) Pet: Abraham Recommended Abilities Level 1: Force of Anguish / Discipline Barrage Level 2: Swift Strikes Level 3: Lesser Wounds (®) Level 4: Fighter Stances / Two weapon style Level 5: Clarity of Agony Level 6: Mortification of Soul Level 7: Rapid Recovery / Blade Turning Level 8: Soul Mirror Level 9: Determination Level 10: Hold the Line / Thunderous Blows Level 11: Rooting Pain Level 12: Duality of Mortal Presence Level 13: Mob Stance / Crucible of Suffering Level 14: Unbending Level 15: Unarmoured Grace Level 16: Tough / Enlightened Agony Level 17: Turning Wheel Level 18: Falgellant's Path Level 19: Unbreakable / Heartbeat Drumming Level 20: Swift Flurry Mechanics Blade Turning This ability is not very commonly found in builds but it is one of the abilities that define this build. BT will grant complete immunity to melee strikes during its buff period. In the combat logs, you will notice that attacks onto TWotFF will be treated as though the attacker directly strikes its peers. And CC effects the would be attack would trigger will also be retargeted to the victim Rooting Pain Another aspect of TWotFF is to trigger Rooting Pain via skill and belt. Rooting Pain benefits from the Fire Dmg of Turning Wheel, and can trigger Sungrazer's effects as well as Avenging Storm. * Note: Patch 1.2 nerfed Sungrazer so Squid's Grasp is used to aid the survivability of TWotFF. Avenging Storm is still used to provided added DPS. But inevidently there is significant DPS loss. Make sure to snapshot Avenging Storm at max Wounds. * Note: There is also significant DPS loss from Rooting Pain nerf. There is more reliance to use auto attacks once you dwindle down the enemies numbers. Recovery Speed and Int TWotFF will benefit greatly with high action / recovery and high int as one will want to overlap the effects of BT to achieve near 100% melee protection. Action / Recovery to reduce the time between BT activation, and Int to increase the buff duration of BT. This build is also incorporates many self buffs and so high Int provided by stats and Turning Wheel can help with sustain. High action / recovery speed is achieved by max dex, Devil of Caroc Breastplate, Mob Stance and Abraham's pet effect. Due to Mob Stance, it is ideal to use Unbroken as a subclass for the bonus to engagement and AR as the recovery bonus scales off number of engagements. And for that Tuotilo's Palm will also provide the best synergy for this build. Snapshot This build has no issues with hitting 10 wounds easily. For that reason, the bonus of +10 Mig from Helwalker and +10 Int from Turning Wheel is very achieveable. Therefore it is best to time the use of Unbending and Avenging Storm at max or near max Wounds as the duration can be snapshot. Wounds Manipulation Against a large number of enemies, TWotFF will hit the Wounds cap easily and one will want to dump the Wounds so as to enable Rooting Pain triggers. The key to this is Thunderous Blows which is instacast. A cycle of TB and BT can drop the Wound count by 5, which will mean 5 more possible triggers for RP. Against a single target, Mortification of Soul can be used to artificially generate the Wounds and trigger Rooting Pain. BT might not be triggered consistently due to the Recovery Speed drop but BT will now also solely return the melee attack back the same attacker Enlightened Agony and Crucible of Suffering These 2 abilities synergize to give respectable saves on all defences except deflection. Soul Mirror can utiize the high saves to cause ranged attacks to miss and likely to be reflected back to the attacker. Ranged Weapon Attacks The bane of TWotFF is most likely ranged weapon attacks so as a seconadary weapon set, one can go with a Large Shield together with the Large Shield to deal with ranged aggression in certain situations. Other Synergies TWotFF works well with a Cipher companion due to Pain Link and Pain Block. Pain Link will add on decent amount of dmg as TWotFF will potentially take in good amounts of incoming aggression. Pain Block gives AR and healing, which is what TWotFF needs. Cons This build is quite micro intensive as it involves the constant juggling of BT which is essentially a short term buff. I will maybe include some updates on AI micros that can ease this aspect of this build. Other Notes I am currently running a playthrough with this build and will most likely be updating things as I do along. Happy Sailing! Note: Using Patch 1.2 for new playthrough