Shadowdancer/Votary Full Party build help!

[dbarbarian14]

I am looking to build a party with a Shadowdancer or Votary.  So far most builds I see are for solo play, so their synergy in the class combo is based on, well, solo play.  I am trying to do a classic party. 

 

Serafen - Witch (Bar/Cyp) - Striker/Debuffer *Using Sin Tee Witch King build as it makes him a fast and reliable striker https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1399216139

Pallegina - Crusader (Pld/Fgt)- Striker/Tank *Using modified version, also, from Sin Tee Valkyrie https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1400804034

Xoti - Priest - Healer/Buffer *As she is primarily healer buffer, only taking abilities that will work towards that goal, as I don't want to use resources on attacks on her.

 

1. Tekehu - Theurge (Drd/Cht) - Buffer/Debuffer/Healer (Modified Sin Tee Deep Sea King Build) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1394145549

or

2. Maia (for full martial party) - Scout (Rng/Rog)- Striker (Modified Sin Tee Reaper's Build) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1396597008

 

So this leaves me, either Shadowdancer (Mnk/Rog)(fast attacks with good defense, I feel that as a Watcher I am most often than not targeted) or a Votary (Pld/Mnk).

 

Role: This is going for an "Tanky" Striker, but I want to avoid if possible getting hit

 

Subclass:

Paladin (Wayfarer or Bleakwaker)

Monk (Helwalker or no subclass)

Rogue (Trickster)

 

Reasoning: 

Streetfighter I don't want streetfighter rogue as I am not going to position myself to try to get the hits and I am going to be low on health (see below on stats) so 50% bloodied will be very dangerous position to be in.

Nalpazca: I already had a really bad experience as nalpazca, with drug management, I ran out of drugs on PoTD Nemnok area and having that 100% healing debuff on each Arcane Dampener is not something I crave to experience again.

Shattered Pillar: You only gain wounds thru Auto-Attacks, and only a max of 5 wounds total, which are enough to do most abilities, but you will not be using them often.  And I feel that AI code for enemies target the Watcher a lot on different skills, unsure if its something I am doing wrong.  Hence I will be able to generate wounds but getting hit, since I will be getting hit it seems.

Assassin: This is a niche subclass with the mindset that you will be doing attacks from invisible and stealth; which I feel is more suitable for solo play. 

 

*Paladin's subclass all are good with little drawbacks, but as stated above, I feel I get targeted a lot by enemy attacks, so having this burst heal while doing damage is amazing.

 

 

Stats: (With Berath's Blessing)

 

MIG: 15 (17)

CON: 8 (10)

DEX: 15 (17)

PER: 16 (18)

INT: 12 (14)

RES: 12 (14)

 

Low CON, as you are trying to avoid getting hit, not soak the damage.  Both builds below will function in the same way, although the Paladin has Lay on Hands and if Kind Wayfarer is chosen as its subclass each Flames of Devotion will heal you.

 

I don't like min/max builds as I feel they have, well high strong points and also really weak ones; but you could dump CON more if you want to increase PER or DEX or even raise RES higher, but if you as choosing Rogue Trickster subclass you get so many Illusion spells that increase your Deflection that 1-3 extra points in Deflection will not make that much difference in the end.

 

Race:  Wood Elf (Dexterity Affliction resistance is nice to have, as that means my Quick from Swift Strikes or Swift Flurry will not get cancel)

 

Skills: Alchemy, Athletics (4)

       As I am going to simulate Nalpazca drug abuse, but without the drug crash negatives. At level 20 you should have over 300s Drug time use.

If: Going for Stalker's Patience you might want to put a better spread of points between Alchemy and Stealth (as weapon skill scale of stealth)

Passive: Survival and Streetwise  (they are used in many checks)

 

Background: Deadfire & Hunter

 

Equipment:

 

Head: Fair Favor

Chest: Miscreant's Leather or Devil of Caroc

Neck: Precognition

Hands: Ogre Gloves (+2 Might)

Ring1: Chameleon's Touch

Ring2: Entonia Signet Ring

Belt: Girdle of Mortal Protection or The Amazing and Truly Incredible Instant Potion Belt

Back: Cloak of Greater Deflection

Boots: Boots of the Stone

 

Weapons:

 

Low level (1-10) Unarmed + Tuotilo as it creates great synergy with unarmed strikes and most of your attacks from monk are Primary only attacks.

After level 11+

 

Votary: Stalker's Patience orMagram's Favor + Sungracer or Sun and Moon  

Shadowdancer: Stalker's Patience + Pukestabber or Rust's Poignard or Marux Amath

 

Stalker's Patience was added because of @grasida: "Stalker’s patience works very well with the monk crit abilities, since it can be enchanted with a 20% chance to recover immediately on crit. That can proc itself and can proc off of or from swift flurry and heartbeat drumming. The 1/3, 1/4 and 1/5 attack to immediately attack again whenever you crit feed off of each other and lead to some really fearsome crit chains."

and @gkathellar: Persistent Distraction means every enemy you have engaged is Flanked all the time, on account of Distracted adding Flanked. This works wonders in combination with Stalker's Patience.

Shadowdancer

Level 1: Force of Anguish & Crippling Strike
Level 2: Swift Strikes
Level 3: Escape
Level 4: Dirty Fighting & Two Weapon Style
Level 5: Blinding Strike
Level 6: Lesser Wounds
Level 7: Debilitating Strike & Swift Flurry
Level 8: Confounding Blind
Level 9: Finishing Blow
Level 10: Snake Reflex & Thunderous Blows
Level 11: Duality of Mortal Pressence
Level 12: Rooting Pain
Level 13: Deep Wounds & Uncanny Luck
Level 14: Devastating Blow
Level 15: Tough
Level 16: Improved Critical & Flagellant's Path
Level 17: Turning Wheel
Level 18: Enervating Blows
Level 19: Deathblows & Heartbeat Drumming
Level 20: Slippery Mind

 

 

Votary

Level 1: Sworn Enemy & Flames of Devotion & Swift Strike

Level 2: Lesser Wounds
Level 3: Deep Faith
Level 4: Zealous Aura & Force of Anguish
Level 5: Two Weapon Style
Level 6: Retribution
Level 7: Sworn Rival, Swift Flurry
Level 8: Torment’s Reach
Level 9: Eternal Devotion or Shared Flames (if in party)
Level 10: Exalted Focus & Duality of Mortal Presence
Level 11: Thunderous Blows
Level 12: Rooting Pain
Level 13: Raised Torment & Uncanny Luck
Level 14: Enervating Blows
Level 15: Scion of Flame
Level 16: Virtuous Triumph & Flagellant’s Path
Level 17: Turning Wheel
Level 18: Improved Critical
Level 19: Stoic Steel & Heartbeat Drumming

 

Edited July 21, 2018 by dbarbarian14

[grayrest]

I think Votary is primarily a healer or part of a passive healing strategy. A lot of builds I see are for Bleak Walker but the damage buff from BW isn't THAT high and the sickened debuff overlaps with Enervating Blows. I run Kind Wayfarers when doing Votary for the 14 healing two times per FoD (up to 40 per FoD on a Helwalker due to the might boost and you have 10-12 FoD late game) if you also run with Exalted Endurance it's a LOT of healing for basically free. Also provides Inspiring Triumph and later on the deflection+armor buff. I guess you could tank with Goldpact or Shieldbearers but I think Kind Wayfarers Votary is particularly good.

 

I don't think you really need that for this group so I'd recommend Shadowdancer. It'd be mostly for Confounding Blind and Persistent Distraction since you don't have a reliable way to drop deflection otherwise. Trickster is strong in 1.2, so my inclination would be to try for a Stalker's Patience/Tuotilo's build with an Enduring Dance, Stunning Surge, Swift Flurry, Heartbeat Drumming setup. I'm not sure if that's enough deflection to keep up Enduring Dance and enough accuracy to loop Stunning Surge but it's what I'll be trying at some point in the near future. That provides 3 engagement (shield, persistent distraction, spear modal), which is generally enough to be useful but not enough to justify the Reckless Brigandine without Mob Stance and Armored Grace.

 

For the monk subclass, I don't really like the wound spending abilities for dual wield other than Clarity of Agony, Long Pain/IoP, Skyward Kick, Dichotomous Soul, Resonant Touch, and Whispers (all very high level abilities) so the subclass for me is either Helwalker if I want to be squishy or none if I don't. I like Shattered Pillar and Raised Torment if I'm doing a Sage build.

 

If you're looking for a pure striker, melee wanderer (Helwalker/Ghostheart) is the highest single target damage of the builds I've tried. Flurry builds scale hard off accuracy.

[nostalchic]

I find Paladin multiclasses a bit bland personally as you mostly will just be using the defence boosts and Sworn Enemy / Flames of Devotion which you get from level 1 on the Paladin side.

 

Rogue multiclasses I find more dynamic as you get a diverse range of abilities (especially if you take Trickster) plus a great movement ability at level 1 (Escape).

 

Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible.

 

For either Shadowdancer I mostly use the Trickster buffs (Mirrored Image, Llengraths Displacement), Escape, Crippling Strike, passives (Deathblows etc) and Repulsive Visage on the rogue side.

 

Then:

 

- For a SP monk basically alternate between basic attacks and abilities like Swift Flurry / Force of Anguish / Raised Torment / Flagellent’s Path.

 

- For the Helwalker use Swift Flurry / Dance of Death, staked wounds with Duality and hack away.

[gkathellar]

Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible.

 

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds.

[nostalchic]

 

Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible.

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds.

Disagree.

 

Shattered Pillars work fine if you purely want to focus on dealing damage and neither take damage nor micro with Dance of Death / Drugs.

 

Since the nerf SP just works similar to ciphers with needing to build resources prior to using abilities. I don’t particularly see why they are trash when Ciphers have worked similar from day one. It’s a different, and arguably safer, play style. You won’t hit the highs of the other two subclasses but you won’t hit the lows either.

[arkane83]

 

 

Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible.

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds.

Disagree.

 

Shattered Pillars work fine if you purely want to focus on dealing damage and neither take damage nor micro with Dance of Death / Drugs.

 

Since the nerf SP just works similar to ciphers with needing to build resources prior to using abilities. I don’t particularly see why they are trash when Ciphers have worked similar from day one. It’s a different, and arguably safer, play style. You won’t hit the highs of the other two subclasses but you won’t hit the lows either.

Drugs are cheap and plentiful...

[nostalchic]

 

 

 

Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible.

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds.

Disagree.

 

Shattered Pillars work fine if you purely want to focus on dealing damage and neither take damage nor micro with Dance of Death / Drugs.

 

Since the nerf SP just works similar to ciphers with needing to build resources prior to using abilities. I don’t particularly see why they are trash when Ciphers have worked similar from day one. It’s a different, and arguably safer, play style. You won’t hit the highs of the other two subclasses but you won’t hit the lows either.

Drugs are cheap and plentiful...

Where did I imply they weren’t? It’s an additional layer of micromanagement on top of three class resources. I don’t personally find the benefit worth it when you’re combining the two strongest classes in the game, but evidently your mileage varies. Edited July 21, 2018 by nostalchic

[mosspit]

Shattered Pillar is the worst out of the three since the nerf to limit Wound Generation to Autoattacks. The switch from taking dmg to deal AA dmg should already be sufficiently balanced. But the nail to the coffin is the halving of max Wounds which restricts that gains from Duality and Turning Wheel (and maybe Iron Wheel in special builds).

 

Cipher is not the same as Focus can be generated by active skills as well.

[grasida]

I agree that shattered pillar looks pretty bad in general. Nalpazca with dance of death can generate 3 wounds per 6 seconds without getting hit, which, depending on your weapon, means a torment’s reach every 2 to 3 attacks. That’s pretty much the same as a shattered pillar. But a shattered pillar can also use dance of death.And if you go for a crit build, extra attacks from heartbeat drumming and swift flurry also build wounds. So a shattered pillar with a really high crit rate would handily beat a nalpazca (that’s not taking hits) in number of wound abilities used.

 

But, nalpazcas can build up to 10 wounds, and use wound powers frequently while enjoying the impressive boosts from duality of mortal presence. And not taking any damage at all is the exception, rather than the rule. I’ve never had trouble playing monks as flankers that take the occasional hit. Then they’re never in much danger of dying, but always have a ready supply of wounds. So while shattered pillar might have a very narrow niche, that niche is truly very, very narrow.

[dbarbarian14]

 

Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible.

 

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds.

 

I have a problem with Nalpazca atm, I hate the fact that in late game if there are 3-5 mages in the enemy party, (which I am doing PoTD) you will get Arcane Dampened left and right. Which means drug crash, and Nalplazca gets 100% healing debuff on drug crash.  Which means if you want to stay alive, you need to take another drug when you have 3 enemies on your or more hitting you. I went thru 15 drugs on a Nemnok fight on PoTD and still died in the end 3 times.  

 

I think options are to try out a Helwaker/Trickster, since you can wound yourself for wounds and with the Illusions spells avoid getting hit.

 

I started late, last night, a Bleakwaker/Trickster (Bw/Tr), but I felt that it took forever to kill enemies in lower level areas, where when I was doing my initial votary kindwayfarer/nelpazca (drugless until leaving Maje) I was killing stuff a lot faster.  Even when I remade with no monk subclass I felt it was stronger than Bw/Tr.  Not sure if I am doing something wrong then.

 

Thank you all 3 for your inputs as it gives me a bit of insight.  

 

I undestand the concept of using Tuotilo... but why Stalker's Patience... because I am going to try to position myself to flank targets, and hence it means more raw damage?

[grasida]

Stalker’s patience works very well with the monk crit abilities, since it can be enchanted with a 20% chance to recover immediately on crit. That can proc itself and can proc off of or from swift flurry and heartbeat drumming. The 1/3, 1/4 and 1/5 attack to immediately attack again whenever you crit feed off of each other and lead to some really fearsome crit chains.

 

However, I’m not sure it’s better than fists. The flanking enchantment puts it over the edge for monks paired with classes that don’t have high damage boosts, but trickster does, so the higher base damage and faster attack speed of fists pushes ahead. The wounding enchantment on stalker’s patience doesn’t stack with itself, so it only adds a pretty small amount of damage.

 

There are very few weapons that work better than fists for a monk. But if you want to use tuotilo’s palm on a shadowdancer and don’t like the aesthetics of fists + shield or don’t like unarmed much at all, the clear choice is scordeo’s edge. The stacked accuracy bonus it can get pushes your damage through the roof once you have both swift flurry and heartbeat drumming even without considering blade cascade. However, it’s not available until the end of the game.

Edited July 21, 2018 by grasida

[gkathellar]

Re: Shattered Pillar, the single biggest problem at this point is the numbers. You need to do something like 30 damage (25 w/Lesser Wounds) to build a single wound. If it were more like 15/12, or even 20/15, it'd be manageable.

 

I undestand the concept of using Tuotilo... but why Stalker's Patience... because I am going to try to position myself to flank targets, and hence it means more raw damage?

 
Persistent Distraction means every enemy you have engaged is Flanked all the time, on account of Distracted adding Flanked. This works wonders in combination with Stalker's Patience.

Edited July 21, 2018 by gkathellar

[dbarbarian14]

Re: Shattered Pillar, the single biggest problem at this point is the numbers. You need to do something like 30 damage (25 w/Lesser Wounds) to build a single wound. If it were more like 15/12, or even 20/15, it'd be manageable.

 

I undestand the concept of using Tuotilo... but why Stalker's Patience... because I am going to try to position myself to flank targets, and hence it means more raw damage?

 

Persistent Distraction means every enemy you have engaged is Flanked all the time, on account of Distracted adding Flanked. This works wonders in combination with Stalker's Patience.

I have been editing my build based on your feedback, all of you guys. Thanks, I am thinking I will try Helwalker/Trickster and see how I fare. As my debuff from helwalker can be somewhat mitigated and I can still drink potions to restore health during an Arcane Dampener spell.

[Marigoldran]

Paladin/Rogue.  Rogue abilities for "fun".  Paladin abilities for "staying alive."  

 

But the strongest party character is Herald (Paladin/Chanter).  

Edited July 21, 2018 by Marigoldran