The Ultimate discussion thread

[dunehunter]

There was a video of killing the ooze in 2 min as monk. Spamming WotW and use flame keeper flail to generate wounds.

There u go. Also that video is totally AI only, he only paused once to switch AI mode.

 

Edited May 12, 2019 by dunehunter

[Tommy1984]

Anyone trying this turn based? I'm currently experimenting with "The Ultimate" and did a short test run through Maje with Tactician/Beckoner in turn based mode and it felt a lot less stressful

[Phyriel]

On 5/9/2019 at 6:52 PM, JESUSSSAYSNO said:

Bloodmage's passive heals you out of combat, and the class has infinite spell slots. You have access to a plethora of HP sustain spells, defensive buffs, nukes, CC, etc as well. BM's out of combat regeneration makes it so incredible. it lets you wait out a bit of regen without Resting.

Gl playing caster without seeing numeric values and no pause, slow. I feel this challenge will be mostly tanky monks with nice scripts written. Oh yeah mby scripts will do it for casters but i doubt any1 will share anytime soon.

[Waski]

6 hours ago, dunehunter said:

There was a video of killing the ooze in 2 min as monk. Spamming WotW and use flame keeper flail to generate wounds.

There u go. Also that video is totally AI only, he only paused once to switch AI mode.

 

He stacked multiple food bonuses,  that's not valid for ultimate  run. 

[Tommy1984]

On 5/10/2019 at 7:38 AM, Waski said:

You can recruit anybody,  they will go and stay on ship.  No access to inventory unfortunately. 

In boarding battles party members get randomly selected to fight on deck. If they receive to many wounds they die and you can get their equipment in the loot window. This way you can get Xotis sickle/latern, Aloths armor, Serafens hand mortar and other stuff in a Solo game. But it doesn't work for conditional items - for example: you don't get Thaos' Headdress or Keybreaker Scepter if Aloth dies. I think you can also attack them yourself on the ship with normal attacks during a travel stop, but you need some heavy burst damage as they heal back fast. I haven't tested if Woedicas challenge can help you with this issue.

 

[Waski]

@ up I've killed them on ship many times (Xoti,  Serafen),  no problem with doing it out of combat (at least for a monk) . I got Thaos Headdress when I didn't recruit Aloth and found him dead on that Wahaki island. 

 

[baldurs_gate_2]

14 hours ago, dunehunter said:

There was a video of killing the ooze in 2 min as monk. Spamming WotW and use flame keeper flail to generate wounds.

There u go. Also that video is totally AI only, he only paused once to switch AI mode.

 

In quick mode with AI script and exploited food stacks. You can not do that on the ultimate, you even have to lower the combat speed, because you can not pause the game.

[Boeroer]

Thinking about Abydon's Challenge I remembered my solo run with a melee Geomancer who summoned Concelhaut's Draining Touch for his Essential and Substancial Phantoms.

It won't go away after a hit when on a Phantom and it can then attack pretty reliably with +12 ACC (one handed), high base damage - and targets Will by default.

Would it break with Abydon's Challenge? Do summoned weapons break?

[dunehunter]

1 hour ago, baldurs_gate_2 said:

In quick mode with AI script and exploited food stacks. You can not do that on the ultimate, you even have to lower the combat speed, because you can not pause the game.

Rest bonus is active bonus, which means +STR from rest 1 cannot stack +STR from rest 2. Yes not exploiting food stacks will definitely slow down with mega boss a bit, but I think monk can still make it before run out of withdrawal scrolls. Or can u find another class that solos the mega bosses faster than monks, if not how to prevent vela from killed in boss fights?

Edited May 12, 2019 by dunehunter

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Thinking about Abydon's Challenge I remembered my solo run with a melee Geomancer who summoned Concelhaut's Draining Touch for his Essential and Substancial Phantoms.

It won't go away after a hit when on a Phantom and it can then attack pretty reliably with +12 ACC (one handed), high base damage - and targets Will by default.

Would it break with Abydon's Challenge? Do summoned weapons break?

Summoned weapons don't lose durability afaict. at least within any time frame excluding draining/salvaiton of time shenanigans (and even then, my abydon's run with an ascendant+skaen who used lots of salvation of time and lots of spiritual weapon and i never once saw it lose durability)

 

I've been planning out an efficient act 2 to max out quests and minimize time, and I'm still puzzled about getting enough withdraw with sc helwalker in acts 2/3 (if people are used to solo-ing via split pulling i don't think people appreciate how much vela makes that impossible, necessitating lots of withdraw to handle what few fights you have to do early-mid with a mega stealth path). (Also, good thing I have a practice character now, or else Tinny the 19th would have failed on the way to nekataka due to a slaver ship that normally I don't worry about, but is pretty much lethal with Ondra + Wael, now I know how to sail to avoid it.)

 

I've been thinking about Troubadour + Skaen. Because you can stealth so much of the early mid game, the early lack of resource recovery compared to tactician is not much of a concern. Sneak and get the bekarna cloak (blowing a few rests if needed), and then you can abuse Berath's. Start a fight, immediately withdraw Vela and Shadowing Beyond away to deaggro. But Berath's will keep combat active so you accumulate phrases. Keep summoning skeletons and whacking yourself until you trigger brilliant, then Salvation of Time spam like hundred times to max out Brilliant and all your buffs (you'll probably actually have to count the casts since wael will make it impossible to know how much duration you have), then go in as an unstoppable monster or against some megabosses just keep sending in animated weapons while you have perpetual withdraw on Vela. Against Sigilmaster you just have to remember to withdraw+shadowing beyond reset every time the cleansing rune comes up until you can just face tank it because auranic is out of spells and the other runes are destroyed.

This would solve ever needing to worry about withdraw shortage and having no boss endgame but requires some act 2 pathing I haven't figured out yet. What do others think?

Edit - didn't think that you need to kill concelhaut before getting the brilliant cloak and I'm not sure that's feasible.

Edit 2 - never mind! i assumed i had gotten it from the orrery, but it appears to be "hidden object as a pile of books at the intersection, need 16 PER" which is totally stealthable. i think this might be a path worth pursuing. (especially because this will finally crack the nut of a celebrant, which is the only priest multiclass i have never found decent enough to run)

edit 3 - once you get the cloak it basically doesn't matter what armor you have, so you can stay naked while whacking yourself so you're not constantly breaking your own gear.

Edited May 12, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Waski said:

@ up I've killed them on ship many times (Xoti,  Serafen),  no problem with doing it out of combat (at least for a monk) . I got Thaos Headdress when I didn't recruit Aloth and found him dead on that Wahaki island. 

 

to confrirm, i've definitely done this on my practice and real solo SC helwalker already - recruiting xoti, solo mode sends her straight ot the ship, and then when i'm on the boat i can kill her (she doesn't even fight back) and loot her unique gear.

[knownastherat]

Watching theorycrafting and testing Raven Darkholme/Victor Creed on Twitch I wonder, not planning to go for the challenge, does Vela follow once combat starts or does she wander around the spot she was in when combat started? Seemed to me its the latter and if so it could probably be used to protect her, taking combat away from her, in certain cases. 

Edited May 12, 2019 by knownastherat

[thelee]

28 minutes ago, knownastherat said:

Watching theorycrafting and testing Raven Darkholme/Victor Creed on Twitch I wonder, not planning to go for the challenge, does Vela follow once combat starts or does she wander around the spot she was in when combat started? Seemed to me its the latter and if so it could probably be used to protect her, taking combat away from her, in certain cases. 

she wanders around the spot where she aggros.

this is improtant distinction from "when combat started" because i actually tried a run where i gave Halt to a priest+tactician, thinking I could Halt vela at the entrance of a dungeon and run around easily with brilliant, but if you're far away from vela when combat starts and she's not near combat, she will actually run towards combat, and once she "aggros" the enemies, she immediately goes into terrified mode where she starts wandering around randomly. (needless to say, i failed pretty quickly in that run because of vela beelining towards the fight once halt wore off. also i would have failed anyway because i could have sworn berath's could let you flee from fights but it would just de-aggro enemies instead of ending combat, but either i was remembering wrong or it's the sort of RNG that results in your death)

it also means there's no way to shepherd her away from combat once she's terrified, unless you ahve coordinated positioning, fighter's pull effect, or something similar.

Edited May 12, 2019 by thelee

[jazzthing]

Just a quick off-topic question regarding the Tactician/Skaen some are talking about: is there a way to reliably trigger Brilliance with it? 

Edited May 12, 2019 by jazzthing

[thelee]

52 minutes ago, jazzthing said:

Just a quick off-topic question regarding the Tactician/Skaen some are talking about: is there a way to reliably trigger Brilliance with it? 

Two ways:

1. At end of combat there is a brief window where you qualify for brilliance (when all enemies are dead) so long as you aren't actively flanked (e.g. perception affliction). It only lasts a split second but is good enough to restore 1 class resource each.

2. The big one: withdraw Vela, and then use skaen's Shadowing Beyond. You drop all enemy aggro and qualify for Brilliance similar to what happens in #1. Importabtly, so long as you are far away, when Vela pops out of withdraw she won't aggro enemies so long as you don't, so you can sit and wait while Brilliance let's you buff yourself to high heaven. Obviously you should always keep a spare level 2 and level 5 cast open to do this, possibly more if you don't have interrupt protection.

 

Edited May 12, 2019 by thelee

[Raven Darkholme]

The main way to get brilliant with Tactician is to flank the enemies, the end of combat thing is not 100% reliable but really useful with Woedica's challenge.

The Shadowing Beyond thing is not intentional and might not count but I might end up using it myself.

Let's not forget in this game all perception afflictions flank, the priest has an Aoe blind, blind = flank.

There's also a bomb with blind and ofc priest has a summon to flank.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[baldurs_gate_2]

11 hours ago, dunehunter said:

Rest bonus is active bonus, which means +STR from rest 1 cannot stack +STR from rest 2. Yes not exploiting food stacks will definitely slow down with mega boss a bit, but I think monk can still make it before run out of withdrawal scrolls. Or can u find another class that solos the mega bosses faster than monks, if not how to prevent vela from killed in boss fights?

It took me 17 Minutes with my not so optimized monk to beat him. Maybe, if you know the exact amount of stacks you need, it can be faster. But it was even in fast mode and i would not recommend to use that in the ultimate run.

[Boeroer]

I'm not sure if they disqualify you if you use this bug or cheese with Brilliant/Stealth. It's not intentional and this might not be "in the spirit of the challenge". Maybe one could ask first if this is viable before dumping hundreds of hours into it? Because it is tempting.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

I'm not sure if they disqualify you if you use this bug or cheese with Brilliant/Stealth. It's not intentional and this might not be "in the spirit of the challenge". Maybe one could ask first if this is viable before dumping hundreds of hours into it? Because it is tempting.

i think they'll do what another poster suggested - if the first success is a cheese, they might be hmmm and accept it but then make a ruling on whether future runs can be that cheese.

but having been thinking about this for days now, i'm pretty sure there are maybe like three at most viable builds, and i 'm not even sure the number is even that high (e.g. SC helwalker looks viable on paper but i'm still not sure about the withdraw supplies - remember with eothas you can't spam wait to get vendors to restock materials and scrolls). even the troubadour + skaen may run into real time constraints because of a lack of dps - when i did a long Grog-based takedown of dorudugan, that took half an in-game day (literally started at the beginning of night and ended near dawn, i could tell because i had pale hide and was specifically metagaming for its night-time bonus) and that was with an entire party. done solo, having to spend countless minutes at the start to stack an arbitrarily huge duration of buffs (translating to in-game hours), times multiple bosses that you have  to travel for and you could still end up running out of time.

basically i am saying it would be foolish for them to pre-exclude an option because for all anyone knows any given option could be the only viable ultimate build. so they'll probably wait and see what the community does.

Edited May 13, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

ok, so i did some experiments and the absolute best unrealized perk about the brilliant+skaen option is that you can target BDD and salvation of time on Vela. (with tactician vela would already have to be far back so that you could BDD/salvation of time her without getting into range of re-aggroing enemies)

So basically once you unlock the brilliant inspiration, you can ramp up your buffs, and then when you move into aggro the enemies again, you can BDD and then salvation of time vela and basically keep spamming that until she also has an arbitrarily large buff. this will eat some more time, but means you don't need 100% withdraw uptime. (can be useful alternative since RNG+wael might mean you are caught out of position when vela pops back into the fight)

also i did a very small test to see how viable this is, and i still have concerns - basically you need lots of room for this to work to keep enemies de-aggroed, which for most of the big bosses is not a concern, but the dragon fight under the watershapers, all the SSS fights (especially poroka), and possibly a couple others strike me as places where there's not a bunch of running around room and therefore a place to hide while having skeletons wail on you. (edit - might not be too big a deal; i think all the SSS fights the arena is large enough that initially you don't aggro the enemies, hopefully not even porokoa or the enemy parties; same with watershaper dragon)

also, the being naked is super key, because when you have skeletons hitting you trying to trigger a 1% effect you will completely shatter any equipped armor.

lastly, boy this is tedious and potentially prone to error. it is definitely something you have to do at the start of a fight where you need to do it at all, because you basically can't afford to have any spells other than withdraw and shadowing beyond consumed, or else you may not get back your salvations of time before brilliant wears off (it's RNG but the kind that is almost lethal), and each salvation of time basically only nets you a +4s on the effect (+10s for the salvation of time, -6 for the brilliant to refresh it). it's also extremely time consuming - i mean i assumed so, but just testing it out and playing with it, it easily took several in-game hours just to trigger it. it's not something you could do for random trash fights without running out of eothas time, i think. i mean you have a decent amount of time in act 4, but reserving half a day just for buffing for each boss fight eats into that budget pretty quickly. (marux amanth soulbound to priest would help because the 10% double cast on priest spell can give you massive returns on salvation of time when it manages to proc)

it would be best if there were an easier way to proc the brilliant - skeletons are annoying because they actually hurt when you're naked, and you have to keep manually targeting them. but i'm not sure there's a better option here. but i probably spent half my time just waiting for ancient memory to heal me to full again.

 

so troubadour + skaen might be viable, but it's not as clean of a picture as before (i haven't even begun to fathom micromanging animated weapons and their knockdown without being able to pause). i think it might be better just to try to crack the tactician + skaen endgame just because of how much easier it is to proc brilliant there (even if it's difficult to have during an actual fight). it's just that friggin hauani o whe...

edit - i might just have to console a tactician + skaen straight to the hauani o whe fight and work on a strat there, because i'm pretty sure most other bosses can be harmlessly facetanked with just lots of pre-buffing and salvation + BDD. if i can crack that nut i'll just work backwards from there. best of luck to anyone trying alternate build ideas

Edited May 13, 2019 by thelee

[Raven Darkholme]

Hand mortar disorient is also quite great for Tactician.

[thelee]

3 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Hand mortar disorient is also quite great for Tactician.

how do you this? dual wield with mule kick? i'm assuming the knock up/interrupt only works on the target, but the disorient spreads?

[Raven Darkholme]

38 minutes ago, thelee said:

how do you this? dual wield with mule kick? i'm assuming the knock up/interrupt only works on the target, but the disorient spreads?

The disorienting cone just passively triggers on crit.

I wasn't even aware of mule Kick disorienting haha.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Raven Darkholme said:

The disorienting cone just passively triggers on crit.

I wasn't even aware of mule Kick disorienting haha.

well, lol i wasn't even thinking of the disorienting cone upgrade because i always do the other upgrade

[MaxQuest]

47 minutes ago, thelee said:

well, lol i wasn't even thinking of the disorienting cone upgrade because i always do the other upgrade

A, you probably missed Boeroer's gif related to Blinding Smoke (from Hand Mortar) + Avenging Storm interaction. That disorienting effect is not a weapon attack, but AS 'thinks' it is, because it is "originating" from a weapon. With WotW or Clear Out the effect is devastating. Although, dunno, it might cross the line related to "spirit of the challenge".

 

Btw, if tactician/scaen is under the effect of Brilliant Tactician, but does need to regenerate faith faster, he can flank himself and immediately remove it via Discipline Barrage or switching to Kapana Taga / Squid's Grasp. Once he unflanks himself he will get Brilliant Tactician back, and the first tick of it provides +1 discipline/faith immediately. This might be handy, provided that you can do it faster than once in 6s.

Tactician/priest might also find useful Searing Seal and Spiritual Ally, for flanking purpose.

Edited May 13, 2019 by MaxQuest