[CLASS BUILD & MECHANICS 101] Let's learn with Umezawa! (Streetfighter/Wael)

[thelee]

4 hours ago, dgray62 said:

This was mainly because I keep trying to distract myself with sparkcrackers to heat up, but almost always miss myself. Should I try using sparkcrackers before the flanked/distracted state wears off, to make myself easier to hit?

this version of the guide is very slightly out of date (sorry). a more up to date version is on gamefaqs. a couple of differences:

- slightly lower resolve (and no longer using shorewalker sandals) to increase the chance of affecting yourself with sparkcrackers, and increasing the duration of both sparkcrackers and blunderbuss modal

- slightly higher constitution to be able to stay below bloodied more safely

post-5.0:

- using helm of the white void (instead of fair favor) for +10 accuracy with sparkcrackers (along with a few other abilities/explosives)

- using ring of focused flame (instead of entonia signet ring) for +10 accuracy with sparkcrackers (along with a few other fire-based abilities/explosives)

- use ooblit as a pet to increase the duration of arcane veil, escape, BDD, and a few other misc buffs.

 

i forget if i mentioned in this guide, but there was a stealth nerf to this build post 5.0. It used to be that sparkcrackers had a very slight aoe duration, which meant that with enough explosives skill you could get multiple attack rolls, all-but guaranteeing you a solid hit and upping the chance for a crit. This isn't the case anymore. So the build adapted a bit to maximize the chance that you get hit in the first place thanks to the +20 total accuracy you get with them (not counting a possible additional +10 from devotions for the faithful).

the other thing is that sparkcrackers requires both a deflection hit and a will check to succeed. if you have arcane veil or escape active, you will very likely miss because of having a super-high deflection.

 

the general approach i settle on these days is that i use sparkcrackers as an opener (sometimes before combat, so i can try multiple times to get a good hit if needed, plus the sparkcrackers noise can lure enemies to my party), and then when in fight rely on trying to get flanked or to bloodied (the extra constitution in the newer version of this build helps a bit). arcane veil/escape and such help me moderate how well i can stay at bloodied or less. i then use sparkcrackers or the blunderbuss modal opportunistically either if my health dips above bloodied or if i'm below bloodied and want to trigger on the edge. sometimes i don't need to worry about later sparkcrackers because i use some nukes (either my own or from a party member) to lower my health to bloodied and the initial sparkcrackers just helps me get set up and do some initial DPS.

 

hope that helps.

 

edit: there is a pair of gloves somewhere (i forget what it's called) that grants you two uses/day of "sparkcrackers." only they forgot to stealth nerf this sparkcrackers, so it still gets multiple attempts with enough explosives (and unlike actual explosives also benefits from stats). you can get these gloves as a failsafe.

Edited July 27, 2020 by thelee

[Scrapulous]

The gloves are Rokowa's Fingers. You can buy them at the Dark Cupboard after completing Fassina's quest.

[dgray62]

Thanks for the advice, Thelee. I did use your Gamefaqs guide, but posted my question here as I know that you still visit this forum. I hadn't thought to use helm of the white void and the ring of focused flame to boost sparkcrackers, but that makes a lot of sense. Using Ooblit also is a great idea, given how important it is to bolster positive effects with this build. And you did mention the sparkcrackers nerf in your gamefaqs guide. Once I got marux amanth, I typically would open up battles with thunderous report followed by the blunderbuss modal attack, to get heated up, and then would switch to the daggers. When the blunderbuss modal wore off I would try the sparkcrackers. I think I most likely attempted this with arcane veil up. Too bad spark crackers aren't veil piercing!

I purchased Rokowa's Fingers but hadn't tried using them. I forgot that the nerf didn't apply to it. I'll equip them ASAP.

[masterty66]

Sorry to necro an older one here but was thinking of playing your build soon @thelee but also wanted to try BPM. I noticed one of the BPM nerfs makes the Blunderbuss modal just do -10 accuracy instead of distracted. I know I could just not install that part of the component but I'm curious if you think that would much affect this build.

Would that change anything in terms of how you'd approach this build? I guess I can just rely on firecrackers and getting flanked/bloodied. Are the wisps (plus distract upgrade) worth thinking about as well? I know in the guide you mentioned mostly using Blunderbuss modal earlier and not relying so much on it late.

Edited October 17, 2022 by masterty66

[dgray62]

In my experience you really need this blunderbuss modal to make this build work. I'd recommend that you deactivate the BPM nerfs mod while playing this or any other street fighter build. If you want to try it anyway, fire crackers don't work very well as @thelee explains in his guide. But you can use the gloves that you recover for Fassina instead, but at one/encounter it isn't sufficient, unfortunately. There are other ways to do this, such as having a friendly cipher summon wisps to disorient you, to blinding yourself with chill fogs, but none of these options are as convenient as dual wielding a blunderbuss and a melee weapon.

[masterty66]

1 hour ago, dgray62 said:

In my experience you really need this blunderbuss modal to make this build work. I'd recommend that you deactivate the BPM nerfs mod while playing this or any other street fighter build. If you want to try it anyway, fire crackers don't work very well as @thelee explains in his guide. But you can use the gloves that you recover for Fassina instead, but at one/encounter it isn't sufficient, unfortunately. There are other ways to do this, such as having a friendly cipher summon wisps to disorient you, to blinding yourself with chill fogs, but none of these options are as convenient as dual wielding a blunderbuss and a melee weapon.

Makes sense. I was thinking of not installing that component for that reason, but was curious if anyone had tried a streetfighter with that enabled. If it's doable and doesn't kill the build I'd consider it, but it sounds like I might be in for a rough time if I do. I know you can eventually get the White Void Helm and Focused Flame Ring to get +20 accuracy to bombs so I was wondering if that might be enough to do alright without the modal. Obviously the helm comes late though.

Edited October 18, 2022 by masterty66

[thelee]

yeah, i revised the build at some point (i forget if it's here or on gamefaqs) to drop resolve more, so that you can lean a bit more on sparkcrackers. unfortunately, everything outside the sparkcracker effect from the gloves got nerfed so that they only check once for the distracted effect, so you're going to burn more sparkcrackers to keep it up.

i haven't played the build in 5.0 through the entire game (just to make sure certain interactions still work), but when i played this earlier on, IME blunderbuss was mostly important for the early to early-mid game. later on, with lots of points in explosives i relied more heavily on sparkcrackers and/or getting pummeled to and managing sub-50% health. you could probably make do with the blunderbuss tweaks, but the early game is going to be rougher and the later game more inconsistent.

[masterty66]

48 minutes ago, thelee said:

yeah, i revised the build at some point (i forget if it's here or on gamefaqs) to drop resolve more, so that you can lean a bit more on sparkcrackers. unfortunately, everything outside the sparkcracker effect from the gloves got nerfed so that they only check once for the distracted effect, so you're going to burn more sparkcrackers to keep it up.

i haven't played the build in 5.0 through the entire game (just to make sure certain interactions still work), but when i played this earlier on, IME blunderbuss was mostly important for the early to early-mid game. later on, with lots of points in explosives i relied more heavily on sparkcrackers and/or getting pummeled to and managing sub-50% health. you could probably make do with the blunderbuss tweaks, but the early game is going to be rougher and the later game more inconsistent.

Half tempted to try the nerfs anyways because I'm a glutton for punishment lol. I suppose if I do end up trying it, I could just lean a little harder into getting flanked/bloodied and using sparkcrackers. I suppose that'd be risky early on like you said. Maybe early on just chill fog would be my best bet until I can more reliably survive getting flanked or bloodied.

I had thought about having a character use Squid's Grasp pre combat for the Sparkcrackers to make them hit more reliably but I think that just lowers vs intellect afflictions so not sure it actually would work on Sparkcrackers. If it did, minus 50 would be huge, but I dont think so.

[thelee]

14 minutes ago, masterty66 said:

Half tempted to try the nerfs anyways because I'm a glutton for punishment lol. I suppose if I do end up trying it, I could just lean a little harder into getting flanked/bloodied and using sparkcrackers. I suppose that'd be risky early on like you said. Maybe early on just chill fog would be my best bet until I can more reliably survive getting flanked or bloodied.

I had thought about having a character use Squid's Grasp pre combat for the Sparkcrackers to make them hit more reliably but I think that just lowers vs intellect afflictions so not sure it actually would work on Sparkcrackers. If it did, minus 50 would be huge, but I dont think so.

a possible tweak is to avoid using alchemy skill points at all, just go all in on explosives and dropping resolve. you can toss sparkcrackers on yourself in stealth before a fight and keep trying until you succeed (though if you're too close to enemies you will alert them to your presence :P). with sufficiently low resolve and good explosives (and the gloves also benefit from intellect IIRC), you can probably get like 40+ seconds of streetfighter mayhem by mid-game. 

i forgot to mention that losing out on blunderbuss does hurt in being able to randomly sustain distracted in dense fights. sometimes i'd stick with my 1h+blunderbuss setup if i'm surrounded because riposte full attacks would trigger more powder burns. i actually don't know if this really made a difference, but just something to put out there.

[masterty66]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

a possible tweak is to avoid using alchemy skill points at all, just go all in on explosives and dropping resolve. you can toss sparkcrackers on yourself in stealth before a fight and keep trying until you succeed (though if you're too close to enemies you will alert them to your presence :P). with sufficiently low resolve and good explosives (and the gloves also benefit from intellect IIRC), you can probably get like 40+ seconds of streetfighter mayhem by mid-game. 

i forgot to mention that losing out on blunderbuss does hurt in being able to randomly sustain distracted in dense fights. sometimes i'd stick with my 1h+blunderbuss setup if i'm surrounded because riposte full attacks would trigger more powder burns. i actually don't know if this really made a difference, but just something to put out there.

Do you think it's worth even dropping Resolve a little bit lower than 5? Especially if I use the Berath +2 stat blessing I suppose it might make sense to go all the way to 3 off char creation since the +2 would still put me at 5 base anyways. I know that tanks deflection a little bit but I'd assume it shouldn't be too noticeable with Wael buff + hatchet modal + devotions/debuffs etc. 

Good call on explosives. Probably does make sense to just all in that if I'm not able to use BB modal. 

[thelee]

7 hours ago, masterty66 said:

Do you think it's worth even dropping Resolve a little bit lower than 5? Especially if I use the Berath +2 stat blessing I suppose it might make sense to go all the way to 3 off char creation since the +2 would still put me at 5 base anyways. I know that tanks deflection a little bit but I'd assume it shouldn't be too noticeable with Wael buff + hatchet modal + devotions/debuffs etc. 

dropping resolve has a triple effect here - sparkcrackers targets deflection initially (i don't remember if i made it clear in the guide, but it makes no sense to drop sparkcrackers on yourself if you have a priest of wael deflection or escape buff up), and then targets will, and then has a duration that is modified by resolve's hostile duration effect. so even if it's just two more points to go down to a bare minimum of 3 with the blessing, it pays off 3x, -2 deflection, -4 will, and +6% duration (multiplied by explosives). without blunderbuss to fallback on, i'd say it's worth losing the extra resolve, even if it does make you all the easier to hit, even with your buffs (my suggestion: put it into constitution. you've already maxed intellect)

Edited October 19, 2022 by thelee

[masterty66]

Finally started this up. It's been fun so far. I've had some accuracy issues early at times. I guess better gear/levels/devotions will solve that later on. I ended up not going with BPM nerfs and just regular CP/BPM because I didn't want to stress too hard about managing Streetfighter bonuses given it's my first time actually trying the kit despite having a good chunk of hours in this game.

Is there an easy way to manage Sparkcrackers materials as the game progresses? It seems like you use a lot of them with this build potentially but I don't know how easy they are to mass produce/get more materials for them.

It is neat that I am surviving just fine even in a Robe. I will die if I get surrounded and I suspect I'll need more levels and abilities (and BDD) before I rely too much on diving in, but I do have very little trouble surviving against smaller groups of enemies right now, so as long as I don't run out of spells. And escape is nifty for repositioning as well as the deflection bonus and because my recovery is so insane I can usually back out of dangerous situations as needed (or use smoke grenade if I cannot).

It's definitely fun to play.

 

[thelee]

1 hour ago, masterty66 said:

Is there an easy way to manage Sparkcrackers materials as the game progresses? It seems like you use a lot of them with this build potentially but I don't know how easy they are to mass produce/get more materials for them.

fortunately it is extremely easy to produce sparkcrackers, especially because you make 3 at a time. whenever i'm in town i always make sure to buy rahi pods from an herbal merchant, and to a lesser extent make sure i have gunpowder and solution. i always err on the side of having more, especially with DLC you can be in long dungeons without easy access to stores.

deadeye drugs can be very useful early on, you attack fast and proc interrupts a lot, and the +5 accuracy can help with accuracy issues early on. it also lasts a while (though you'll need a lot to avoid withdrawal after every other fight due to low alchemy) so it'll definitely get you through a long fight.

Edited October 31, 2022 by thelee