The Ultimate discussion thread

[Yougottawanna]

4 minutes ago, thelee said:

rekvu's helm and walking over a trap to get an injury?

Can't believe I forgot about that...

Does anyone know what a good trap is? You'd want an injury that doesn't hurt too much, and I know there are a lot of traps in Oathbinder's Sanctum, though there might be ones that are easier to get to early.

[thelee]

54 minutes ago, Yougottawanna said:

Can't believe I forgot about that...

Does anyone know what a good trap is? You'd want an injury that doesn't hurt too much, and I know there are a lot of traps in Oathbinder's Sanctum, though there might be ones that are easier to get to early.

probably could just walk over one in arkemyr's manor - the important thing about that is you're not going out of your way for it (i haven't mapped out the quests yet, but you might not want to have ot make two trips to oathbinder's sanctum, or the timing between doing oswald's quest and then getting a trap there might not line up)

Edited May 11, 2019 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Didn't @Raven Darkholme/Victor Creed do megabosses with Tactician/Bloodmage (using the Unbending/Wall of Draining cheese)?

 

[Kaylon]

People should instead focus on finding ways to solo the mandatory fights with Vela. Once you found a class that can do it, then it's just about finding the critical path to lvl up to 20 and getting your gear in the most peaceful way (which is the simplest part by the way). Killing mega bosses with summons won't work (lack of penetration) and using weapons might be also impossible because of Abydon's challenge.

[Boeroer]

Sounds more and more like Monk to me. 

Funny: I never read about Cantor in these forums. It seems to be a very unpolular multiclass. But it has two renewable resource pools (out of three), can call summons with both, has self buffs, passive healing, AR debuff, PEN buff, AR buff, hard CC, needs no weapons, could empower an invocation per encounter (Singing Scimitar) - maybe that's helpful in some cases?

What it lacks is Resonant Touch and WotW. But is has good passive heals and resistances and whatnot...?

Another point:

Do you also think that Turn Based mode might be easier than RtwP? Think about dumping DEX and being able to "cheese" a bit more in general due to less playtesting (and thus less patched out OP-ness). For example a Black Jacket is very nice in TB as I read: You can switch to an offensive setup before attacking (like dual fists) and switch right back to full tank mode (Large Shield + Dagger or Hatchet). This is great even without any use of Discipline. You could use Monk/Black Jacket and use Monk's wounds as resource mainly and Discipline in emergencies? Like pulling Vela back with Out of Fire or so...

Just an example - the per-rest Discipline might be too harsh. But I guess there are more of those gaps in TB mode now than there are in RtwP mode -  where most of those things got patched out (remember Soul Blade + Whispers of the Endless Paths and such).

 

Edited May 11, 2019 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

Didn't @Raven Darkholme/Victor Creed do megabosses with Tactician/Bloodmage (using the Unbending/Wall of Draining cheese)?

 

Tactician/Bloodmage is the safest class for ToI but I don't feel it is to amazing for Vela.

It's not just relying on Withdraw scrolls, but the fact it also needs Potions of Death's Door, which might not be ideal in a no pause run (and it also takes up another consumable slot) since you need to be near death to drink it.

Good thing about having heals on top of Death immunity is when you get Arcane cleansed, you're most likely full hp.

(and at least back when I played Tactician draining wall + made the heals from unbending stack so it ended up healing for thousands of hp after a while)

I'm playing Tactician/Woedica atm but I see it having trouble with Spooderboss.

Since I never played with Magran's fires before this is just a test run and I don't even have TOI, Magran challenge and Wael's challenge enabled.

Most likely I will go with Woedica(maybe even another deity)/bloodmage in the end, which is technically the safest class but it's lack of burst heal makes fights with cleanse kinda risky (but totally doable)

 

edit:I'm also trying TB + 3 Dex rn but since my reaction's are ****ty I might not end up doing this for the actual Ultimate challenge since one only has 10 secs time per turn and casting free actions takes quite long with low dex.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[Raven Darkholme]

Tested Writ of War and since it only disables abilites and not normal attacks it might not be as good as it looks on paper. (might have limited use against some megabosses but they have high res)

Also Vela's fear is not an affliction so there might be no way to remove it. (can't remove it with supress affliction)

Edited May 11, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[Reent]

I looked a little bit into FF... and the ability doesn't even stack resonant touch... so a SC FF looks like a bad Megaboss killer...

i have no clue how to kill Huani O Whe with FF - was thinking about FF+Paladin, unkillable...

but after looking into Abydons Challenge shields don't look like fun and i lost all motivation to even think about killing huani with him.

 

Herald it is for me i think, summons for life - summons POE 1, summons POE 2! Summons everywhere!

[Kaylon]

I see bloodmage/troubadour being another good candidate - use the summons to tank and the spells for damage. You have infinite healing and resources and for tough fights you can use last stand potions + wall of draining and even trigger brillance on yourself with the cloak.

[baldurs_gate_2]

Hylea's Challenge ist he only one, that really makes it nearly impossible. They have to change it that way, that you can control the girl. Otherwise, they will never find 12 ppl to win that challenge.

[JESUSSSAYSNO]

9 hours ago, Kaylon said:

People should instead focus on finding ways to solo the mandatory fights with Vela

Scroll of Withdrawl is always the answer. The big fights aren't the problem, pathing for every kill target within the time limit is the problem.

[pmchem]

dude I laughed at your twitch boat vid, thanks for that

 

[JESUSSSAYSNO]

10 minutes ago, pmchem said:

dude I laughed at your twitch boat vid, thanks for that

Glad you thought it was funny

[Kaylon]

14 minutes ago, JESUSSSAYSNO said:

Scroll of Withdrawl is always the answer. The big fights aren't the problem, pathing for every kill target within the time limit is the problem.

Not true, because you won't have enough scrolls of withdrawal for mega bosses... Also you can't cast it again before the previous one expires which means there will be always a small window of vulnerability for Vela even with scrolls.

[JESUSSSAYSNO]

4 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

Not true, because you won't have enough scrolls of withdrawal for mega bosses... Also you can't cast it again before the previous one expires which means there will be always a small window of vulnerability for Vela even with scrolls.

I guarantee there's enough if we path for it, and not all encounters need them. Last I remember they're craftable, so we just need to have enough gold to buy the materials we cant harvest on our own. The small window might matter, but as has been said before this is a RNG heavy marathon run, the run can randomly end even on the best pathing. I genuinely don't believe withdrawl count will cause us problems.

You might think its impossible until one of us goes out of our way to get as many as we can get our hands on. We should only need about 20 over the course of the run. We dont even need them all at once, which gives time for vendors to reset between activities.

Edited May 11, 2019 by JESUSSSAYSNO

[dunehunter]

3 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

Not true, because you won't have enough scrolls of withdrawal for mega bosses... Also you can't cast it again before the previous one expires which means there will be always a small window of vulnerability for Vela even with scrolls.

An optimized sc helwalker with no rest bonus can finish most of mega bosses in around 5 min I think.

[Kaylon]

16 minutes ago, JESUSSSAYSNO said:

I guarantee there's enough if we path for it, and not all encounters need them. Last I remember they're craftable, so we just need to have enough gold to buy the materials we cant harvest on our own. The small window might matter, but as has been said before this is a RNG heavy marathon run, the run can randomly end even on the best pathing. I genuinely don't believe withdrawl count will cause us problems.

You might think its impossible until one of us goes out of our way to get as many as we can get our hands on. We should only need about 20 over the course of the run. We dont even need them all at once, which gives time for vendors to reset between activities.

I think you don't understand the problem here. The issue isn't about not being able to craft of them, but about not having enough of them for an encounter. You can have at most 30 scrolls per encounter which means you can cover about 20min of a fight. All mega bosses fights last easily twice as long...

[Kaylon]

25 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

An optimized sc helwalker with no rest bonus can finish most of mega bosses in around 5 min I think.

Not really... The only video where a guy killed a mega boss fast was because he had something like 20+ resting bonuses stacked using an exploit (and he was playing also in fast mode). 

[Waski]

Just tried,  Big Ooze 10 minutes,  Belranga  6. SC helwalker,  well equipped (xefa, scordeo, magrans,  mortar).  But that is easier(faster)  half of megabosses for monk.  I had to use pots for ooze(3).

Edited May 11, 2019 by Waski

[thelee]

2 hours ago, dunehunter said:

An optimized sc helwalker with no rest bonus can finish most of mega bosses in around 5 min I think.

 

2 hours ago, Kaylon said:

I think you don't understand the problem here. The issue isn't about not being able to craft of them, but about not having enough of them for an encounter. You can have at most 30 scrolls per encounter which means you can cover about 20min of a fight. All mega bosses fights last easily twice as long...

 

yeah, this is for this reason why the past few runs I'm going with SC helwalker, even if I'm not totally clear about how i'm going to handle the mid-late game pre-WotW (no experience solo-ing a monk, so i'm about to set up a practice monk run with all challenges minus wael and iron man enabled). anything + troubadour might be able to have incredible sustain and lots of disposable summons, but those fights are long and withdraw from a scroll caps out at like 30 seconds. with lots of incidental aoe attacks from hauani o whe (symbiote) or belranga or sigilmaster, you basically need 100% uptime, which gives you a pretty hard cap on how long the fight can go. (dorudugan you can go much, much longer because of a lack of incidental aoe, but you are still limited to up to withstanding 30 total barrage/magnetic overdrive/helstorm before the fight becomes lethal). The SC helwalker has the provably most idiot-proof and rapid way to take out megabosses. not to mention the extra perk that SC monk fists are like the best weapon in the game and you don't need to worry about repairing them.

 

this was also the appeal of the tactician + skaen because they effectively have infinite withdrawal to use (you just hav eto de-aggro periodically by keeping up a spare cast for withdraw and shadowing beyond) and they also appear to have a much easier mid-late game, but i don't think there's any effective end game for them against some bosses (mostly hauani o whe, but bad RNG can doom a sigilmaster run if you keep getting a cleanse rune). if someone can crack that nut, i'd happily re-roll a tactician+skaen just because i think that build would eliminate alot of the potential RNG in the the early-mid game.

Edited May 11, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

another complication that i had in practice is that summons are incredibly tedious to micro when you can't pause. even with the game slowed down all the way, i just don't have the RTS esports reflexes to quickly click on moving targets (since they have no number key shortcut) and give them new instructions (this would probably be most apparent with the sword that has knockdown but never remembers any hotkey or AI assigned to it upon a fresh summon). many lives chant would be super annoying in this respect.

I tried a little with turn based, which wasn't awful, but I'm doubtful that turn-based will work with some final fights where you need some of the "cheese" you can pull off with RtWP but not with turn-based in order to survive. (hell even just surviving a bad galawain's roll on some boars in vilaro's rest required some rtwp engagement cheese).

Edited May 11, 2019 by thelee

[Kaylon]

49 minutes ago, Waski said:

Just tried,  Big Ooze 10 minutes,  Belranga  6. SC helwalker,  well equipped (xefa, scordeo, magrans,  mortar).  But that is easier(faster)  half of megabosses for monk.  I had to use pots for ooze(3).

With Abydon's challenge enabled?

[Waski]

Nope,  but I've tried Belranga with just fists and it's under 6 minutes.  Ooze first stage fists,  after split fist and mortar and I did it under 10 too. 

[thelee]

14 minutes ago, Waski said:

Nope,  but I've tried Belranga with just fists and it's under 6 minutes.  Ooze first stage fists,  after split fist and mortar and I did it under 10 too. 

what's the fist + mortar method to ooze? i just see stunlocking via wotw, or is it basically that just with mortar for extra aoe damage?

[Waski]

AoE from mortar stunts if you have the cloak,  that is how you can prevent smaller oozes from merging. 

Edited May 11, 2019 by Waski