The Ultimate discussion thread Pt 2

[thelee]

7 hours ago, Decadency said:

Sounds awesome btw. I really hope you'll do it. Don't forget to buy rum to craft Captain's Banquet after SSS cause it took me ~6 days to get back to Neketaka and return xD 

dumb question - what's the captain's banquet for?

so far i've only needed to periodically use Svef (which gives resistance, not immunity). it's highly possible i've forgotten something.

[Waski]

4 hours ago, Decadency said:

I managed to beat everything EXCEPT SSS. All these arena fights are so impossible, no clue what to do.

Is there so many enemies that can't be stunt? Did you try how long will hand mortar last there?

edit @thelee you need cpt banquet if you use cloak for brilliant, simple confusion can strip you of it.

edit quoted wrong chap

Edited August 7, 2019 by Waski

[Tenray]

43 minutes ago, thelee said:

dumb question - what's the captain's banquet for?

so far i've only needed to periodically use Svef (which gives resistance, not immunity). it's highly possible i've forgotten something.

I did alot of testing and if you run into enemies that do mind afflictions like dominated you will lose your brilliant buff. Initially I thought resistances are enough to protect you since resistances degrade a tier3 afflication to a tier2 and Wiki also says that inspirations makes you immune to the corresponding affliction.

That is however only half-true. In fact it does make you immune against ONE cast, then your brilliant gets ripped off and on the second cast you will be dominated. Doesn't really matter at this point anyways because you already lost your brilliant.

The only way to protect yourself from losing brilliant is either reacting to every affliction cast from the enemies or to get immunity.

Captain's Banquet helps, but many of you forget Wael's Wind which I also used in my run. 

You can carry it for 14 days

Edit: Haven't noticed that Waski already answered your question. My bad.

27 minutes ago, Waski said:

Is there so many enemies that can't be stunt? Did you try how long will hand mortar last there?

edti @thelee you need cpt banquet if you use cloak for brilliant, simple confusion can strip you of it.

I haven't completely given up because I can actually beat anything else in this game with SC monk but the arena fights are really insane ...

It's not about the stunn immunity, you can stunn almost everything, but it does not really last long enough to cast withdraw and to cast WotW again ... That is the actual problem. I forgot about the mortar even tough I have it in my inventory, lol. I will try it out now. I used so far Ajamuut's + Grave Calling to make sure at least one of these stunns are applied to the enemies and Aldris to get a little HP back.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Tenray

[Waski]

@Tenray there are few pets with +20hp on kill if you can swap

[thelee]

48 minutes ago, Tenray said:

I did alot of testing and if you run into enemies that do mind afflictions like dominated you will lose your brilliant buff. Initially I thought resistances are enough to protect you since resistances degrade a tier3 afflication to a tier2 and Wiki also says that inspirations makes you immune to the corresponding affliction.

That is however only half-true. In fact it does make you immune against ONE cast, then your brilliant gets ripped off and on the second cast you will be dominated. Doesn't really matter at this point anyways because you already lost your brilliant.

The only way to protect yourself from losing brilliant is either reacting to every affliction cast from the enemies or to get immunity.

Captain's Banquet helps, but many of you forget Wael's Wind which I also used in my run. 

You can carry it for 14 days

So this is probably actually one great advantage of a tactician over being cloak-reliant. Most fights as tactician/skaen you don't need the cloak (so far I've penciled in a few times where it's really advantageous/required to do so <water dragon, fire dragon, and maybe to only have to do the big buffing once or twice for BoW>; I might pencil in a few more), so you don't need to worry about losing brilliant because you won't actually have it during most fights - you just have it while you buff.  If for some reason I need to buff again, all I have to do is Shadowing Beyond+Withdraw and that basically resets Brilliant (this is actually very important for the fights that I need the cloak, because I don't have a fire wall to self-trigger the cloak; I literally just buff a bit, stand there with a stopwatch while enemies attack me, and if I haven't triggered cloak brilliant when my timer goes off I invis, reset, buff again, rinse and repeat until I get the cloak to proc).

So I only need to be concerned for the fights where I need the brilliant from the cloak, and I need to avoid getting the tactician shaken/confused debuff from being flanked which will ordinarily dispell Brilliant, which Svef is good enough to prevent (it's not even a factor for the fire dragon fight because none of the magma oozes can actually flank me because they're ranged). (edit - not having brilliant active during a fight may contribute to tactician/skaen being slower than a bloodmage/skaen since I can't spam most abilities during fights, i'm only left with auto attack. With good timing I can do some mule kick spamming but that's about it until there's just a couple of enemies left that I can manually trigger flanked on and trigger tactician brilliant. At level 19 with my practice char now should be less of a concern since I'm hoping I can Storm of Holy Fire -> escape, brilliant, wait -> Storm of Holy Fire -> etc spam for the non-boss fights)

Not directly related, but with solo tactician, the way it interacts with charm/dominate, is that as soon as you get charm/dominated, the tactician brilliant bonus kicks in and immediately dispels the charm/dominate (verified behavior from practicing FS which features lots of charm/dominate). I guess Vela doesn't count as an "enemy" for checking who's been flanked or not.

Edited August 7, 2019 by thelee

[Tenray]

59 minutes ago, Waski said:

@Tenray there are few pets with +20hp on kill if you can swap

Vela still dies so fast ... The mortar debuff is really nice and lasts alot longer than the Ajamuut's stunn but I need to increased the debuff duration probably by alot in order to cast Withdraw + WotW without getting "rapid fired" by 20 projectiles.

Does it scale well with INT ? As a Helwalker I do only have 10 Int + turning wheel => 10-20 INT so it kinda varies alot. 

I could get rid of Vela for the arena fights by some dirty tricks but that is not really the spirit of the challenge right.

 

38 minutes ago, thelee said:

So this is probably actually one great advantage of a tactician over being cloak-reliant. Most fights as tactician/skaen you don't need the cloak (so far I've penciled in a few times where it's really advantageous/required to do so <water dragon, nemnok, fire dragon, and maybe to only have to do the big buffing once or twice for BoW>; I might pencil in a few more), so you don't need to worry about losing brilliant because you won't actually have it during most fights - you just have it while you buff.  If for some reason I need to buff again, all I have to do is Shadowing Beyond+Withdraw and that basically resets Brilliant (this is actually very important for the fights that I need the cloak, because I don't have a fire wall to self-trigger; I literally just buff a bit, stand there with a sotpwatch while enemeis attack me, and if I haven't triggered cloak brilliant when my timer goes off I escape, reset, buff again, rinse and repeat).

So I only need to be concerned for the fights where I need the brilliant from the cloak, and I need to avoid getting the tactician shaken/confused debuff from being flanked which will ordinarily dispell Brilliant, which Svef is good enough to prevent (it's not even a factor for the fire dragon fight because none of the magma oozes can actually flank me because they're ranged). (edit - not having brilliant active during a fight may contribute to tactician/skaen being slower than a bloodmage/skaen since I can't spam most abilities during fights, i'm only left with auto attack. With good timing I can do some mule kick spamming but that's about it until there's just a couple of enemies left that I can manually trigger flanked on and trigger tactician brilliant.)

Not directly related, but with solo tactician, the way it interacts with charm/dominate, is that as soon as you get charm/dominated, the tactician brilliant bonus kicks in and immediately dispels the charm/dominate (verified behavior from practicing FS which features lots of charm/dominate). I guess Vela doesn't count as an "enemy" for checking who's been flanked or not.

1. Talking about the stopwatch made me smile because I did it the same way back then. Wael's challenge is just a pain. "Rinse and repeat" sounds really nice and alot better than the need of standing afk trying to trigger Brilliant from cloak sometimes for 15 minutes or even longer. But you really need a safe spot for Vela before the actual fight, don't you ? What are you doing for the arena fights in SSS, especially for the Battle Royal fights ?

2. When I was playing around with tactician, I was using this here. You simply cannot be flanked and spamm AoE on yourself that could flank the enemies.

3. Didn't know that ... really nice but it makes sense. So brilliant from tactician is not really a buff, somehow a condition that you have if everyone else is flanked not matter what happens to you.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Tenray

[thelee]

11 minutes ago, Tenray said:

1. Talking about the stopwatch made me smile because I did it the same way back then. Wael's challenge is just a pain. "Rinse and repeat" sounds really nice and alot better than the need of standing afk trying to trigger Brilliant from cloak sometimes for 15 minutes or even longer. But you really need a safe spot for Vela before the actual fight, don't you ? What are you doing for the arena fights in SSS, especially for the Battle Royal fights ?

so I haven't verified SSS yet (it's next on my practice character before going back to my real run and plugging forward since it's basically my last unknown), but all the SSS fights start you off in a safe area that doesn't trigger combat. So long as that exists then I'm fine; I watched Decadency's SSS clears to make sure there was plenty of room to do buffing in peace. The water dragon on other hand was a problem because there was literally no spot in that fight that was not visible to the water dragon or its tentacles, so I had to pre-buff with the cloak while fighting the naga upstairs since I literally couldn't beyond+withdraw away to do tactician brilliant. (edit - but, you never know. which is why I feel like I need to practice it beforehand. Also to make sure I have an answer to all the annoying skill checks in SSS)

In previous similar fights, it might require a bit of Vela management to patiently wait to have her walk to the edge of the map, then I Halt her, run towards the fight, lure enemies back, then invis+withdraw. This way Vela starts cowering, and once she cowers she stays within a small-ish area that I can safely buff us or dance back and forth between the enemies and my safe spot without worrying about Vela messing things up. Might need a withdraw at times to fully de-aggro the enemies after I escape back, but I'm generally not using my level 2 spells anyway so I always have withdraw available.

Edited August 7, 2019 by thelee

[Raven Darkholme]

I wouldn't say "not needing" Captain's banquet is necessarily a strength of the tactician at all, since it is the best food by far for a solo run anyway.

(Being immune to all those afflictions is insanely good and the action speed and spell damage is also really nice, most other food shave very specific bonuses, Captain's banquet is always good, often a life saver.

There's no downside at all to having Captain's banquet either)

[Waski]

20 minutes ago, Tenray said:

Does it scale well with INT ? As a Helwalker I do only have 10 Int + turning wheel => 10-20 INT so it kinda varies alot. 

Healing? It's scales with might. But can you just ignore Vela and go fist+hand mortar+hylea talons to just chain WotW and stunt in AoE until everybody is dead?

Edited August 7, 2019 by Waski

[thelee]

6 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

I wouldn't say "not needing" Captain's banquet is necessarily a strength of the tactician at all, since it is the best food by far for a solo run anyway.

(Being immune to all those afflictions is insanely good and the action speed and spell damage is also really nice, most other food shave very specific bonuses, Captain's banquet is always good, often a life saver.

There's no downside at all to having Captain's banquet either)

possibly, but my run has been leaning heavily on hylea's bounty. helped to do a lot of non-violent options, which is faster than actually fighting. i wish i had a test case that makes for a stronger case for it but like i said i wasted a lot of time unnecessarily doing huana quest.

[_sputnik_]

6 hours ago, Tenray said:

I thought Hylea + Adra stacking is common knowledge. I am using it in my run aswell.

 

For everyone who is wondering how it's going for me with SC monk, I am thinking about throwing in the towel. I managed to beat everything EXCEPT SSS. All these arena fights are so impossible, no clue what to do.

You probably think: "There are so many enemies! Should be awesome with WotW spamm!" Yea well, that's what I thought initially aswell. Some of the fights on their own are already quite tough. Every second you are not in your WotW animation, you are getting so insanely much damage + you need to cast withdraw on Vela from time to time. The recovery time you need after casting a withdraw will almost always kill me.

I went with Helwalker and I have 422Hp. I wish I went with Napalzca and maxing Alchemy, that's what I would recommend for everyone who wants to try 

Ive defeated all SSS for Survivor as Helwalker with Stealth+Dichotomous Soul + Enduring dance with dmg on unconcious items. 

It was without Vela however, but maybe it is worth testing? 

[Tenray]

11 minutes ago, Waski said:

Healing? It's scales with might. But can you just ignore Vela and go fist+hand mortar+hylea talons to just chain WotW and stunt in AoE until everybody is dead?

My English is sometimes not the best and I quoted badly probably, but I was actually talking about the debuff of the Hand Mortar. I want to increase it's debuff duration, heavily if possible.

[Tenray]

10 minutes ago, _sputnik_ said:

Ive defeated all SSS for Survivor as Helwalker with Stealth+Dichotomous Soul + Enduring dance with dmg on unconcious items. 

It was without Vela however, but maybe it is worth testing? 

That's how I initially tried it before going for yolo WotW spamm. The problem in SSS is that the enemy AI is super weird there. Some of the enemies for example the naga fight at the beginning just run straight towards me once I use Dichotomos Soul and if they come close Vela gets somehow Frightened. 

You can also not reset aggro from the Naga Warriors somehow neither when I try to withdraw Vela only and stealth away nor withdrawing both of us. The Naga just stand almost on top of me waiting for me to get out of my withdraw and instagib me or Vela. Weird AI.

[Waski]

16 minutes ago, Tenray said:

My English is sometimes not the best and I quoted badly probably, but I was actually talking about the debuff of the Hand Mortar. I want to increase it's debuff duration, heavily if possible.

You have to raise your INT and lower RES of enemies. But on monk I can only think of left Hand of Obscured and Endre's Flog of Obedience to do it (lower res). Or enfeebled, but that's hard to get if you're not a FF monk.

[ocelotter]

12 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

You have to save and reload your game for potion and boounty to stack, it's a bug.

Maybe this is common knowledge, but this extends to all resting buffs in the game as far as I can tell; they count as active bonuses until you save/load, then they count as passive bonuses. For example, Candied Nuts Dexterity bonus stacks with Alacrity after a save/load cycle.

Spaghetti code.

Edited August 7, 2019 by ocelotter

[thelee]

18 minutes ago, ocelotter said:

Maybe this is common knowledge, but this extends to all resting buffs in the game as far as I can tell; they count as active bonuses until you save/load, then they count as passive bonuses. For example, Candied Nuts Dexterity bonus stacks with Alacrity after a save/load cycle.

Spaghetti code.

wow that makes the +PL bonuses from food potentially much better then (mostly thinking about a brain-dead way to boost monk or monastic unarmed training fists)

[Waski]

41 minutes ago, ocelotter said:

Maybe this is common knowledge, but this extends to all resting buffs in the game as far as I can tell; they count as active bonuses until you save/load, then they count as passive bonuses. For example, Candied Nuts Dexterity bonus stacks with Alacrity after a save/load cycle.

Spaghetti code.

I've used hylea's bounty on 90% of my chars early and no matter how many save/loade cycles I did defences were always supressed by safeguard or borrowed instinct.

edit. quick test on monk and indeed after reload glazed chops stacked with might inspiration. It looks like some food can be exploited like that.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Waski

[ocelotter]

33 minutes ago, Waski said:

I've used hylea's bounty on 90% of my chars early and no matter how many save/loade cycles I did defences were always supressed by safeguard or borrowed instinct.

Testing this out you are correct, Hylea's bounty's defense bonus is suppressed by Moonwell's active effect both before and after a save-cycle. Which is odd to say the least, since all the other food buffs I tested seemed to become passive after save/load.

Edit: it even behaves as anticipated (passive after save cycle) with Hot Razor Skewers / Potion of Piercing Strikes, which is another buff I would expect to behave quite rigidly (weapon penetration). So I'm not sure what the deal is with Hylea's Bounty.

Edited August 7, 2019 by ocelotter

[thelee]

1 hour ago, ocelotter said:

Edit: it even behaves as anticipated (passive after save cycle) with Hot Razor Skewers / Potion of Piercing Strikes, which is another buff I would expect to behave quite rigidly (weapon penetration). So I'm not sure what the deal is with Hylea's Bounty.

more spaghetti code

specifically it sounds like it's just the +2 all skills deal.

 

also I didn't want to add more confusion at the time, but i didn't do a save/load cycle when I verified this on one of my test characters. I did do a zone transition - I started on worldmap, rested with Hylea, entered an area, quaffed the luminous adra potion. Blammo, got +4 all skills.  While there was an autosave and a zone load, there was no reloading of the game. Don't know if that affects anything.

[ocelotter]

45 minutes ago, thelee said:

more spaghetti code

specifically it sounds like it's just the +2 all skills deal.

 

also I didn't want to add more confusion at the time, but i didn't do a save/load cycle when I verified this on one of my test characters. I did do a zone transition - I started on worldmap, rested with Hylea, entered an area, quaffed the luminous adra potion. Blammo, got +4 all skills.  While there was an autosave and a zone load, there was no reloading of the game. Don't know if that affects anything.

I cannot reproduce this. Performing the same actions: resting with Hylea's on world map, zone load, then drinking Luminous Adra Potion results in the Luminous Adra Potion being suppressed for me. Furthermore, loading the autosave after the transition, but before drinking the potion, *still* results in suppression. If I save/load after drinking the potion, though, then they stack.

This would suggest that all of Hylea's Bounty is considered an active effect, but that is not so, as the +skill bonus stacks with other active skill buffs like Thief's Putty.

So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: note that I am testing this using iRoll20s to get Hylea's Bounty, and my transitions are to/from the Crucible in SSS and the world map around it.

Edited August 7, 2019 by ocelotter

[Raven Darkholme]

Played around a bit with sc blood mage and randomly tested Arkemyr's Mercurial Madness, which doesn't roll vs any defense, which is kinda interesting.

edit:I probably should have added you can cast it while being brilliant departure invis and it doesn't break stealth.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Raven Darkholme

[Raven Darkholme]

Damn, tested a bit more with sc bm and draining wall + magran belt fire blight is not enough to extend brilliant, which technically only matters against Dorudugan but its still sad.

[Tenray]

1 hour ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Damn, tested a bit more with sc bm and draining wall + magran belt fire blight is not enough to extend brilliant, which technically only matters against Dorudugan but its still sad.

You played alot around with draining wall in the past on your tactican+bm, but when I tried to prolong the buffs with draining wall I always failed so hard. Couldn't make it consistently work, but afaik you need at least two enemy targets in order to get more duration than you are actually losing, don't you ?

[Decadency]

38 minutes ago, Tenray said:

You played alot around with draining wall in the past on your tactican+bm, but when I tried to prolong the buffs with draining wall I always failed so hard. Couldn't make it consistently work, but afaik you need at least two enemy targets in order to get more duration than you are actually losing, don't you ?

Or more accuracy and hit to crit?

[Tenray]

8 hours ago, Decadency said:

Or more accuracy and hit to crit?

Does not matter. Wall of Draining ticks every second and gives you +1 second to all beneficial buffs regardless if it hits or crits.

----

11 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Damn, tested a bit more with sc bm and draining wall + magran belt fire blight is not enough to extend brilliant, which technically only matters against Dorudugan but its still sad.

I just found out a way to extend the buffs with only one enemy. It is hard to describe it in words sometimes, so I just made a showcase video.

 

It just seems that you have to drag the enemy along the wall until you find the right place/pixel on which it should stand to get multiple ticks off. I hope you just get my point xD

Enjoy.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Tenray