What benefits most from Brilliance?

[EpicMohsar]

I am starting a new playthrough and I was going to have my character mutliclass as Tactician/X. I'll have a Cipher/Barb to worry about providing flanking on the enemies. I thought perhaps Wizard (Evoker) or Paladin. Possibly Chanter? Generating Phrases seems strong. 

 

So which do you think?

[brasilgringo]

Tac/Wiz is super easy, barely an inconvenience to get Brilliant via Chill Fog ... you really only have to worry about (a) flank immune enemies (very few) and (b) spread-out mobs that you have to cast multiple fogs on or group up.  

 

Tac/Beguiler (cipher) is also pretty easy but in my testing I found it much harder to solo (not really possible on harder encounters) and I didn't find the Flanking as easy to create, even with Phantom Foes.

 

Tac/Rogue(Trick?) is pretty easy to get flanks with blind and the AOE smoke powers, but I didn't find it nearly as easy to solo despite vids of people doing the same -- fampyr's cave was really tough for me, for instance.  On the flip side, Fire Dragon dies basically in 20ish seconds as you just constantly interrupt and flank with Debilitating Strike to the point where it can't use any powers or summon any oozes, and you just keep regenerating guile from Brilliant.

Edited February 7, 2019 by brasilgringo

[Gniel]

IMO, the caster classes benefit most from brilliant. I've run an extremely successful Cleric (Tactician/Priest of Eothis) multiple times. Getting multiple heals of the same level as a battle goes on is very helpful. The only problem is brilliant from tactician isn't especially reliable, even running a cypher in your party; I'm not sure why.

 

The same idea should work for any class that has class level restricted abilities (Wizard, Priest, Druid). These classes have a limited number of uses of their skills per class level, thus there can be more benefit from getting those charges back. It randomly selects a class level of what you've used per recharge, but it can usually be manipulated easily enough.

 

I'm not sure how well Chanter works with brilliant, but their resource is considered very valuable even though it automatically recharges.

 

Just be careful about pairing Tactician with a melee class that doesn't have an solution for being flanked. It's a hefty penalty for the chess playing warrior.

[MaxQuest]

What benefits most from Brilliance?

I think multi-classers benefit the most, especially: martial/martial and caster/caster, since they will get +1/+1 resource.

 

Although have to note:

- casters, will get +1 random spell usage; so it's not as reliable as getting +1 to the resource pool.

- on the other hand... all spells cost just 1 usage. While some martial abilities can cost more points, let's say 4 discipline.

 

Also, monks get +1 mortification and +1 wound, no?

While the obvious loser here is cipher. Getting +10 focus once in 6s - is a joke.

Edited February 7, 2019 by MaxQuest

[MountainTiger]

I'm running Goldpact/Tactician right now, and she's a great tank and healer. I'm still at low level (have done a few quests in Neketaka), but I tested the build on endgame content and it was solid there, so I'm confident she will hold up for the full playthrough. I find the playstyle somewhat tedious, though-she doesn't contribute much in terms of DPS or CC, so fights go long. I'm not sure I'll stick with her all the way.

 

War Caller seems good-Brilliant gives you Brisk Recitation level phrase generation without giving up linger (and potentially without the +1 phrase penalty for being a Troubadour), or 50% faster generation for a Troubadour with Brisk Recitation on. Summons are good flankers, available from PL 1, and increasing phrase generation should let you achieve full uptime while also using other invocations.

 

What about Corpse Eater? Corpse Eater food provides +2 PL on Barbarian abilities, Brilliant provides another +1 and mitigates the class's resource problems. Not sure if it's more powerful than other options, but it seems cool to be able to spam boosted Barbaric Blows.

[thelee]

i'm not sure if it works with tactician brilliance (due to engagement-dropping issues with interrupts), but a wizard with brilliance is literally show-stoppingly good. you literally don't even need anything past AL1. just slicken all day long, until the cows come home, double and triple stacking them as the brilliance cooldown allows.  Enjoy mopping up a fight where enemies can't do anything other than fall down and stand back up.

 

beyond that, any kind of caster for sure. The way the game costs martial abilities, one high level spell cast from AL7-9 is roughly equivalent to 3 or 4 of a martial resource (very roughly). The fact that every 6 seconds you can get +1 AL7-9 spell cast while a martial class only gets 1 resource back is therefore, to put it charitably, insane. you won't be able to do this on a tactician/x multiclass, but brilliance on a wizard spamming just petrification can literally keep even megabosses locked down (not to mention any other AL9 you could spam every 6 seconds).

 

it probably sounds like i'm focusing in on the wizard, but really any one of {priest, druid, wizard} excels with brilliance.

Edited February 7, 2019 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

If you're spamming self-buffs (usually low level) in the beginning of combat like there's no tomorrow, Brillant is going to be less efficient.

Instead of restoring your Tier IX Spell slot, you'll only restore lower tiers.

 

So I would think Priests and Druids might get a bit more benefits from Brillant, since it has bad synergy with one of the wizard core mechanics.

 

But that's only a small bias. Wizards still benefit a lot from it.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Mathematically,a priest who can cast Salvation of Time.

[thelee]

Mathematically,a priest who can cast Salvation of Time.

 

doesn't work too well with a tactician since their brilliance is not durational

 

edit - guess you could be talking about restoring salvation of time to extend other effects

Edited February 7, 2019 by thelee

[brasilgringo]

 

Mathematically,a priest who can cast Salvation of Time.

 

doesn't work too well with a tactician since their brilliance is not durational

 

edit - guess you could be talking about restoring salvation of time to extend other effects

 

One reason a Thaumaturge (esp. BDD) remains good is that you can use the Shroud of Phantasm to get Brilliant and then use Wall of Draining and Salvation of Time to extend the duration of Brilliant (from the Shroud) up to 10+ minutes (600+ seconds), just by being patient enough to let some mobs whale on you for a while.  Then you just run from fight to fight enjoying Brilliant. 

Edited February 8, 2019 by brasilgringo

[djinnxy]

I may have missed it in reading the posts here if it was mentioned, but a rogue assassin can regain uses of invisibility from being invisible. It's a nice advantage to just continuously vanish then strike and repeat. A simple cinder bomb here and there blinds and gives flanked in aoe for the rest of the cases.

Edited February 8, 2019 by djinnxy

[Alhoon]

I may have missed it in reading the posts here if it was mentioned, but a rogue assassin can regain uses of invisibility from being invisible. It's a nice advantage to just continuously vanish then strike and repeat. A simple cinder bomb here and there blinds and gives flanked in aoe for the rest of the cases.

I also noticed that while testing a new character for solo playthrough, but wasn't this supposed to be a bug and be fixed in 4.1 ("Brilliant Tactician will no longer activate if there isn't an enemy present"). Maybe not, but seems fishy...

 

Still, I've tested this quite a lot (especially with Magran's Fires: Berath challenge active, because otherwise in solo play invisibility tends to drop you from combat) and there's certainly something very finicky with this. When I turn invisible, the Brilliant won't activate until the fight state has reset, so the enemies have to cycle through their ongoing animations and sometimes even return to their place before the Brilliant activates.

 

My original idea was to have Tactician/Assassin that uses Arquebus (or any weapon that has zero recovery), and increase Smoke Veil duration to 6+ seconds. This would mean that using Smoke Veil initiates Brilliant, giving one resource, and waiting while invisible for 6 seconds gives second resource, meaning this could be used to cheese everything the game throws at you. While at least part of me is happy this can't really be used (at least until Smoke Veil has some serious duration increase from items), it's quite sad to see that a reason it's unusable is due to a glitch.

 

And then there's a bug that I can just turn invisible, run away and even though Berath challenge won't let the combat end, I gain Brilliant (without being invisible) and the enemies won't chase, letting me to soft reset the fight by gaining all lost resources back. Wasn't THIS at least supposed to be fixed in 4.1?

[djinnxy]

 

I may have missed it in reading the posts here if it was mentioned, but a rogue assassin can regain uses of invisibility from being invisible. It's a nice advantage to just continuously vanish then strike and repeat. A simple cinder bomb here and there blinds and gives flanked in aoe for the rest of the cases.

I also noticed that while testing a new character for solo playthrough, but wasn't this supposed to be a bug and be fixed in 4.1 ("Brilliant Tactician will no longer activate if there isn't an enemy present"). Maybe not, but seems fishy...

 

Still, I've tested this quite a lot (especially with Magran's Fires: Berath challenge active, because otherwise in solo play invisibility tends to drop you from combat) and there's certainly something very finicky with this. When I turn invisible, the Brilliant won't activate until the fight state has reset, so the enemies have to cycle through their ongoing animations and sometimes even return to their place before the Brilliant activates.

 

My original idea was to have Tactician/Assassin that uses Arquebus (or any weapon that has zero recovery), and increase Smoke Veil duration to 6+ seconds. This would mean that using Smoke Veil initiates Brilliant, giving one resource, and waiting while invisible for 6 seconds gives second resource, meaning this could be used to cheese everything the game throws at you. While at least part of me is happy this can't really be used (at least until Smoke Veil has some serious duration increase from items), it's quite sad to see that a reason it's unusable is due to a glitch.

 

And then there's a bug that I can just turn invisible, run away and even though Berath challenge won't let the combat end, I gain Brilliant (without being invisible) and the enemies won't chase, letting me to soft reset the fight by gaining all lost resources back. Wasn't THIS at least supposed to be fixed in 4.1?

 

For what it's worth I hope they don't "fix" it. It makes a solo rogue/tactician somewhat viable in mega-boss fights. Why should monk,chanter, and blood mage be the only ones that are broken op?

Edited February 8, 2019 by djinnxy