Steel Garrote

[masterty66]

What do these guys have synergy with? Rogue seems like the obvious answer given all the ways it has to add afflictions. Was thinking of doing an evil run and Steel Garrotes sound cool but I'm uncertain what the best way to go with them is. 

Has anyone played around with the kit?

[QuiteGoneJin]

I'd imagine soul blade would also work as it goes well with paladin. As do all the martials. Thematically I'd love to see a drug addled Monk+ Evil Paladin play out. But these themes always work better in PnP and don't add the mechanical flavour needed to Deadfire. 

[thelee]

i haven't played around with the kit, but i imagine a barbarian (esp furyshaper) would work well - with spirit frenzy they can trivially add staggered with hits, and barbarians tend to get hit a lot so the sustain from steel garotte could be nice.

[Boeroer]

I did an Arcane Knight with Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff as main weapon. It was fun but in general I have to say that the draining is a bit underwhelming. Wizards have a lot of spells for applying afflictions. E.g. Chillfog. But their weapon dmg isn't too high even with FoD.

Maye a Steel Garrotte/Trickster would be one of the best combos. It has plenty of affliction causing stuff, high defenses, Riposte and high weapon dmg (and thus higher draining). And it has Persistent Distraction which means auto-drain basically.

[masterty66]

Think I'll roll with the Rogue idea since I never mained a Rogue pc. I'll probably do the Rogue as the scroll user in poe1 since Rogues are pretty fragile on that in Potd so better to have it as a backliner. 

Then Poe2 it's Garrote time baby. I'll have to think on what weapons will work best for this char in Deadfire. It's weapon damage not melee damage (unless the wiki is wrong) so technically this char could do ranged damage if it wanted. Or melee. Or both.

Edited June 26, 2019 by masterty66

[Boeroer]

If I'm not mistaken the Steel Garrotte passive only works with melee weapons.

[masterty66]

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

If I'm not mistaken the Steel Garrotte passive only works with melee weapons.

When I was looking in game it said "weapon damage" but I didn't test the ability out so no idea if it works with ranged weapons or not.

If it did, I suppose something like dual scepters could be funny. The Wael scepter can be upgraded to have 10% chance of affliction which would be funny on a Steel Garrote. Of course if you're doing damage to heal, I suppose you'd want to be in the thick of things taking damage to get value out of that ability. 

[Boeroer]

As I said - I'm not 100% sure but I think that the description is not entirely correct and the ability indeed only works with melee weapons.

Also I think that either in the class description or in the ability description it says melee but not in the other. So - a bit messy with the descriptions as usual. But also here I'm not 100% sure anymore. Has been some time since I tried Steel Garrotte.

[Ivanfyodorovich]

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

As I said - I'm not 100% sure but I think that the description is not entirely correct and the ability indeed only works with melee weapons.

Also I think that either in the class description or in the ability description it says melee but not in the other. So - a bit messy with the descriptions as usual. But also here I'm not 100% sure anymore. Has been some time since I tried Steel Garrotte.

Just tested (running the community patch and UI patch) and Garrote passive heals me with a scepter. Nice synergy there, if you aren't needing the heals to sustain in melee, you heal most of the DMG from the scepter modal (15% vs. 20%). Let the ranged paladin builds commence!

[thelee]

55 minutes ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:

Just tested (running the community patch and UI patch) and Garrote passive heals me with a scepter. Nice synergy there, if you aren't needing the heals to sustain in melee, you heal most of the DMG from the scepter modal (15% vs. 20%). Let the ranged paladin builds commence!

ah, this takes me back to the days of diablo 2 where paladin sacrifice builds were trying to get enough life leach to sustain through sacrifice's 9% health cost.

[Boeroer]

Interesting. Thanks for testing.

[elohinen]

So, have people cooked up any interesting Steel Garrote builds since this thread was originally made?

I'd really like to use cipher, but they're quite lackluster in turn-based mode. I guess Soul Blade could still work, but I don't wanna just spam one ability for dozens or hours. Also would like to avoid druids or monks this time around, since my current playthough has plenty of those. Reckon I'll go with blood mage, if nothing more interesting comes around.

Rest of the main party will be:

Aloth as SC wizard

Maia as MC scout

Xoti as SC priest

Konstanten as... I'd really like make him SC skald, but my party is missing a tank, so I'll probably have to make him a howler and put him on the front line.

[dgray62]

You might consider a steel garrote herald. Once you get the Long Night's Drink chant you can have your enemies virtually perma-weakened, allowing each melee strike to heal you.

[Boeroer]

I guess it's the oomphteen's time I come up with this (and forum members might want to crucify this orlan), but Steel Garrote/Bloodmage with Whispers of the Endless Paths and maxed out deflection (bracers, cloak, armor etc. all with deflection buffs) is a lot of fun. Key trick is that Offensive Parry causes dazed on enemies and that automatically unlocks the Steel Garrote's draining with further Offensive Parries. While Offensive Parry is triggering, dazing enemies, doing a bit of dmg and healing you at the same time, you can cast your spells and use Blood Sacrifice. Arcane Knights are tanky as heck anyways, but this one can tank, heal the damage from Blood Sacrifice and deal melee dmg at the same time. 

Besides that the usual Paladin/Caster synergies apply: Eternal Devotion works with spells, Paladin's AR passive bonuses stack with Wizard's active ones, passive defense buffs stack with Wizard's active ones and so on.   

[Boeroer]

found some pictures of it:


Animated gif (50MB!):

Edited October 16, 2020 by Boeroer

[elohinen]

17 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

You might consider a steel garrote herald. Once you get the Long Night's Drink chant you can have your enemies virtually perma-weakened, allowing each melee strike to heal you.

I'll keep that in mind, but I'd rather avoid having another chanter besides Konstanten in the party. Then again, in my current playthrough I sometimes have three druids in the party hahah and if I go with blood mage this time around, then I'll have two wizards, sooooo never say never I guess.

17 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I guess it's the oomphteen's time I come up with this (and forum members might want to crucify this orlan), but Steel Garrote/Bloodmage with Whispers of the Endless Paths and maxed out deflection (bracers, cloak, armor etc. all with deflection buffs) is a lot of fun. Key trick is that Offensive Parry causes dazed on enemies and that automatically unlocks the Steel Garrote's draining with further Offensive Parries. While Offensive Parry is triggering, dazing enemies, doing a bit of dmg and healing you at the same time, you can cast your spells and use Blood Sacrifice. Arcane Knights are tanky as heck anyways, but this one can tank, heal the damage from Blood Sacrifice and deal melee dmg at the same time. 

Besides that the usual Paladin/Caster synergies apply: Eternal Devotion works with spells, Paladin's AR passive bonuses stack with Wizard's active ones, passive defense buffs stack with Wizard's active ones and so on.   

Ahh so the AK could be sturdy enough to be the tank even without a shield? Maxing resolve is a must? Gotta say, this is starting to seem like the way to go

Also, can you tell me about the paladin's disposition system? SG disfavours benevolent/diplomatic actions (fun bunch, huh), but would it be ok to take say, aggressive or clever actions without penalties?

[Boeroer]

Yes, as long as you are not picking the benevolent/diplomatic stuff you're safe. You want to pick cruel or rational from time to time to get Faith & Devotion/Deep Faith to the max. Rational is easy enough. Cruel sometimes hurts - but there are enough situations where you can be cruel to some douchebags like Benweth and such - so that's ok I guess. 

Maxing RES is a good idea. Every additonal point of deflection has increasing returns, so the more the better.

He can be the tank most of times (i played him solo long enough) - but I would not let him tank all alone all the time. He's great against most melee enemies, especially the numerous but weaker ones - but obviously he's nothing special against ranged enemies or spellcasters. Additional frontliners might be helpful.  

[Mudcrabjedi]

So, I have beaten the game once already and have just started my second play through. After much research, i decided to go with a Steel Garrote/Soulblade. Now, I know this question has surely been asked, but i have been unable to find a concrete answer. Is anyone aware if any of the AOE Weapons such as WotEP translates soul annihilation in to an AOE attack?

[elohinen]

On 10/17/2020 at 12:10 AM, Boeroer said:

Yes, as long as you are not picking the benevolent/diplomatic stuff you're safe. You want to pick cruel or rational from time to time to get Faith & Devotion/Deep Faith to the max. Rational is easy enough. Cruel sometimes hurts - but there are enough situations where you can be cruel to some douchebags like Benweth and such - so that's ok I guess. 

Maxing RES is a good idea. Every additonal point of deflection has increasing returns, so the more the better.

He can be the tank most of times (i played him solo long enough) - but I would not let him tank all alone all the time. He's great against most melee enemies, especially the numerous but weaker ones - but obviously he's nothing special against ranged enemies or spellcasters. Additional frontliners might be helpful.  

Ok, cheers for the info! Last question: how would your stat spread look like? Keep in mind, it's turn-based, so I'll leave dex at 10 or even 8, because of Berath's blessing.

Looks like Konstanten really needs to become a howler after all. Partly because of what you just stated, the other reason being that I remembered chanters don't have any weapon abilities.

For the record, the biggest reason I wanted roll a SG was to be in cahoots with Woedica and that they favour dispositions I don't normally pick, so it might make the playthrough feel a bit more fresh. I reckon a devoted/blood mage for instance would be a much more efficient striker.

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by elohinen
missed some words

[Boeroer]

16 hours ago, Mudcrabjedi said:

Is anyone aware if any of the AOE Weapons such as WotEP translates soul annihilation in to an AOE attack?

Yes, it will apply raw damage in an AoE - but not equally- I mean not the the same raw dmg to all enemies. It seems like the first hit gets all the raw dmg, the next not so much (if any) and then it rises again with every enemy. It's erratic but it seems like you gain focus internally via the AoE which immediately gets dumped onto the next enemy again as raw dmg. It's kind of funky but it works. 

Best thing about WotEP though is Offensive Parry which loads you up with focus when enemies miss you (which is easy to do because Paladin's defensive passives stack with Borrowed Instincs and Psychovampiric Shield). That means that if you "parry" enough melee enemies you can spam Soul Annihilation because you get focus between you actions while you recover. Offensive Parry works best on sub-PotD difficulty settings because enemies' accuracy is lower. But it also works well enough on PotD - especially if you debuff enemies ACC (Blind etc.).

[Boeroer]

8 hours ago, elohinen said:

Ok, cheers for the info! Last question: how would your stat spread look like? Keep in mind, it's turn-based, so I'll leave dex at 10 or even 8, because of Berath's blessing.

Looks like Konstanten really needs to become a howler after all. Partly because of what you just stated, the other reason being that I remembered chanters don't have any weapon abilities.

For the record, the biggest reason I wanted roll a SG was to be in cahoots Woedica and that they favour dispositions I don't normally pick, so it might make the playthrough feel a bit more fresh. I reckon a devoted/blood mage for instance would be a much more efficient striker.

max RES, max INT, mediocre MIG (you don't want to hurt yourself too much with Blood Sacrifice), high PER (always good as MC because of traps, secrets etc.), mediocre CON, low DEX.  

[Mudcrabjedi]

Thanks boeroer!

[Vonnor]

On 10/17/2020 at 6:29 AM, elohinen said:

For the record, the biggest reason I wanted roll a SG was to be in cahoots Woedica and that they favour dispositions I don't normally pick, so it might make the playthrough feel a bit more fresh. I reckon a devoted/blood mage for instance would be a much more efficient striker.

:) I had caught the Boeroer's Garrote/Bloodmage Whispers build on a previous visit to the forums, tried it for exactly the reasons you describe, had one conversation with Woedica and was like "ohmygodIhateyousomuchcan'tdoit." 

But I was interested enough in the core concept of the build to adapt it to a Skald instead of a SG Paladin. Works pretty well - you can critfish on Whisper parries for more phrases, Ancient Memory/Old Siec will keep you in health with or without melee hits, and cheap At The Sound of His Voice means you are both great at CC and don't need to leave enemies un-CCed for said parries. 

 

 

 

[elohinen]

On 10/19/2020 at 8:47 PM, Vonnor said:

I had caught the Boeroer's Garrote/Bloodmage Whispers build on a previous visit to the forums, tried it for exactly the reasons you describe, had one conversation with Woedica and was like "ohmygodIhateyousomuchcan'tdoit." 

But I was interested enough in the core concept of the build to adapt it to a Skald instead of a SG Paladin. Works pretty well - you can critfish on Whisper parries for more phrases, Ancient Memory/Old Siec will keep you in health with or without melee hits, and cheap At The Sound of His Voice means you are both great at CC and don't need to leave enemies un-CCed for said parries. 

 

 

 

Heh, well I don't usually have an issue being a nasty piece of work in games, but what might get me is Woedica's voice, ugh. Ain't saying her voice actress is bad or anything; I reckon they wanted 'haughty' and oh boy, they got it. A haughty old hag to be precise. I can only listen to it in... moderation

[Boeroer]

I also tried a Skald with WotEP and it works well - but instead of a Skald/Bloodmage I chose Skald/Steel Garrote for critfishing via Offensive Parry and dual draining. That def. didn't solve the "Jeez Woedica sucks" problem though.