[SIDEKICK BUILD] The Hound of Yezuha, Ultimate Edition

[Ascaloth]

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The Hound of Yezuha, Ultimate Edition

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Difficulty: PotD v5.0.0.0040

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Class: Brawler (Fighter + Monk)

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Race: Storm Human

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Background: Yezuha (Missionary)

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Stats (char creation, no Berath's Blessings):

MIG: 11

CON: 10

DEX: 15

PER: 14

INT: 14

RES: 11

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Active Skill: Athletics ® 

Passive Skill: Any

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Weapon Proficiencies:

Sword (a)

Greatsword (a)

Small Shield ®

Sabre (!)

Battle Axe (!)

Flail

Hatchet

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Abilities (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important)

 

PL1

Fighter

Knock Down (a)

Disciplined Barrage (!)

Monk

Swift Strikes (a) 

Force of Anguish

 

PL2

Fighter

Fighter Stances

Confident Aim

Monk

Clarity of Agony 

Common

Two Weapon Style (!)
 

PL3

Fighter

Disciplined Strike (!)

Mule Kick ® 

Monk

Swift Flurry (!)

Efficient Anguish ® 

 

PL4

Fighter

Charge ® 

Weapon Specialization ® 

Monk

Thunderous Blows (!)

Duality of Mortal Presence ® 

 

PL5

Fighter

Armored Grace (!)

Conqueror Stance 

Monk

Enervating Blows ® 

Common

Uncanny Luck ® 

 

PL6

Fighter

Clear Out

Monk

Turning Wheel ® 

Flagellant’s Path ®

Common

Improved Critical ® 

 

PL7

Fighter

Unbreakable

Weapon Mastery ® 

Monk

Heartbeat Drumming (!)

 

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Items (*=additional enchantments; !=important, r=recommended):
 

Weapon set 1: Scordeo’s Edge (Blade Cascade*!, Adaptive*!) (!), Slayer’s Claw (!)

Weapon set 2: Unarmed, Tuotilo’s Palm (Balanced Shield*, Pugilist*) ®
 

Chest: Contender’s Armor (Heavy Mobility*) ® 

Helmet: Fair Favor (!)

Amulet: Cauldron Shard (!)

Cloak: Cape of the Falling Star 

Gloves: Burglar’s Gloves ® 

Ring: Finality’s Claim (!)

Ring: Ring of Prosperity’s Fortune ®

Belt: Ngati’s Girdle ® 

Boots: Rakhan Field Boots (!)

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As Companions and Sidekicks go, Rekke is one of the most vanilla as they come. Which is not a bad thing in itself; his stats lends itself to a DPS build, and his vanilla class choices make him very adaptable, which is more than can be said for several of his peers (looking at you, Fassina).
 

Since pretty much any DPS build would be viable for Rekke, I decided instead to design a build that won’t be realized until near the end-game, but sets him up to take on one of the Megabosses in particular. Using some fairly simple interactions between his class abilities and specific weapon enchantments, this build makes Rekke an interrupt-lock machine that can, with the proper support, take on his intended target mano-a-mano.
 

Thus the name of his build, the Hound of Yezuha; it is not only a testament of Rekke’s ferocity in battle, but it’s also a tribute to the man who killed the Mountain.
 

(Note on “Ultimate Edition” builds: With the release of the Ultimate Edition on PS4 and XBox, there will be many first-time players of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire who will be searching for builds online, only to find that most available builds were created for earlier versions of the game. While many of those are still viable even in the final version of Deadfire, this would not be apparent to new players; thus, builds such as this will be tagged as “Ultimate Edition” to indicate that they’ve been tested for version 5.0.0 of Deadfire, including all DLCs.)
 

Cutting the Voracious Mountain Down to Size
 

 

Apart from its own set of nasty tricks, Hauani o Whe also hits like a mack truck. However, it has the lowest Deflection of the four Megabosses, and is also vulnerable to interrupts. Therefore, the trick to defeating the Voracious Mountain is to exploit these two weak points mercilessly.
 

And the Hound of Yezuha can achieve this through a couple of fairly simple interactions.
 

Firstly, the Slayer’s Claw increases any Might Inspirations applied to its wield by one tier. In the hands of a Monk, that means Thunderous Blows doesn’t give Tenacious, but Energized instead; that’s why I made Rekke a Fighter/Monk, and it guarantees that he’ll interrupt with every crit.

 

 

Pair that with Scordeo’s Edge with the Adaptive enchantment, and Rekke will work his way up to +20 Accuracy with both weapons in time. Add the hit-to-crit bonuses from Disciplined Strikes (Intuitive) and Fair Favor (which applies to Scordeo’s Edge), and you get a Rekke who can crit and interrupt the giant ooze with practically every other strike.
 

(This also makes Rekke ideal as a mage-hunter, which is why I gave him both Charge and Flagellant's Path; so he can dive into the backline and immediately start dismantling enemy spellcasters.)
 

Double down on that with the Blade Cascade enchantment, and now whenever it activates, Rekke can ignore Recovery and interrupt-lock Hauani for around 5-6 seconds each time.
 

Pretty sweet, isn’t it?
 

Now imagine what happens when Rekke has a Priest and Cipher to provide the Ancestor’s Memory-Salvation of Time combo.

 

 

That’s right; Rekke can now wail away at the giant ooze throughtout the whole fight, keeping it pancaked and unable to do much of anything whatsoever, all the way until it ****ing dies.
 

(On a side note, Valkyrie Xoti is ideal as the Priest for the Hauani o Whe fight, because she singlehandedly turns the Symbiote debuff from an annoyance into an asset for your party. The little oozes are OHKs with The Twin Eels, and each one heals the whole party every time.)
 

Sure, you’d still have to watch out and make sure that the smaller oozes don’t merge back into the big one. But properly supported, the Hound of Yezuha is all the DPS you’re going to need for this Megaboss fight, including the clean-up after the hard part.
 

Enduring the Crushing Weight
 

But to get the Blade Cascade started in the first place, Rekke has to begin the encounter with attacks on Hauani o Whe at normal recovery. Therefore he’s still going to take some hits in the first few seconds, and needs sufficient protection to help him survive for at least that long.
 

The one thing to keep in mind about Hauani’s attacks is that it does Crush/Corrode damage. This means that the most useful type of armor against the giant ooze are Breastplates, since it is the armor type with the highest AR that doesn’t have a penalty against either Crush or Corrode.
 

And when you think about Breastplates, the obvious choice is the Devil of Caroc Breastplate, which remains one of if not the best Unique Armor in Deadfire even in the Ultimate Edition. And while you can certainly give it to Rekke, I would actually not recommend it… precisely because it’s so good, I’m assuming it’s likely going to someone who needs it more (like your Watcher) and therefore not available for Rekke.
 

With that context in mind, I’ll suggest the next best thing instead. And in Rekke’s case, that’s the Contender’s Armor from the SSS DLC, with the Heavy Mobility enchantment. With high Athletics and Armored Grace, it’s one of only 3 armors in the entire game that can potentially let the wearer attack even faster than if wearing no armor at all (the others being DoC Breastplate and Miscreant’s Leather); so even without Blade Cascade, Rekke can still attack at a brisk pace with this setup.
 

To further boost Rekke’s AR against Hauani’s attacks, I also gave him the Cauldron Shard amulet and Rakhan Field Boots for additional Corrode AR, as well as Ngati’s Girdle for more Crush AR. Cauldron Shard also comes with a 20% chance to turn Hauani’s Corrode attacks into healing for Rekke instead, helping his survivability against the ooze that much further.
 

On top of that, Rekke gets the Finality’s Claim Ring, which gives him a 25% chance to ignore its attacks altogether (it actually reflects the attack back to Hauani, but the giant ooze doesn’t take any damage from its own reflected attacks, so).
 

Final Thoughts

 

 

Pros:

- Is set up to be your MVP during the Hauani o Whe Megaboss fight.

- Also makes him useful as a mage-hunter, so you can use him in that capacity in normal fights.

- Is perfectly viable even with a vanilla Brawler like Rekke.

 

Cons:

- Can only be fully realized as a build near endgame, because Scordeo's Edge is key to this build.

- Going for this build locks you into the Slayer path in the SSS DLC, as Slayer's Claw is key to this build.

- Foregoes all defensive abilities available to Fighters/Monks in favour of more DPS, so Rekke will need party support to survive in more difficult encounters.

- Requires Priest and Cipher support to reach it's full potential, which can limit your choices of party composition.

 

Last but not least, see the attached file for the AI script I created for Rekke as the Hound of Yezuha

Rekke Custom (Brawler) (Fighter Monk) (08e33d71-36e8-46eb-9c8d-b3af9b6cdbac).customai

Edited February 8, 2020 by Ascaloth

[Elric Galad]

Hauani o Whe being arguably the hardest fight in the game (provided you have half a priest to trivialize Belranga and Dorudugan), any team member that can be the MVP for this fight is a good asset.

[Madscientist]

What would you chose as race and stats if you use it as player character?

[Ascaloth]

On 2/8/2020 at 9:59 PM, Madscientist said:

What would you chose as race and stats if you use it as player character?

For race; Hearth Orlan for the +2 PER and the Minor Threat racial talent, which gives another Hit-to-Crit conversion if another ally is attacking the same target. This actually means that Mirke - since she can also go Fighter/Monk - can do just as well with this build, if not better. That said, I prefer to make the much more interesting choice of Monk/Streetfighter for her, so that leaves Rekke with this build.

For stats, max PER for accuracy; high DEX (doesn't matter with Blade Cascade, but your PC should still be useful as a DPS until you can get Scordeo's Edge in late-game), dump RES.

[Manveru123]

This is fantastic and I hope you make more :P

[Ascaloth]

On 2/17/2020 at 9:52 PM, Manveru123 said:

This is fantastic and I hope you make more

That's the plan. I hope to eventually post Ultimate Edition builds (including updated versions of previous Companion Builds I posted in the past) for every Companion and Sidekick. 

May take some time though, since some theorycraft builds still need testing, and I'm running low on time these days. I'll need one more play through at least to fully test some builds I have in mind.

[TheMetaphysician]

On 2/8/2020 at 5:49 AM, Elric Galad said:

Hauani o Whe being arguably the hardest fight in the game (provided you have half a priest to trivialize Belranga and Dorudugan), any team member that can be the MVP for this fight is a good asset.

How can a priest trivialize those two fights? (I haven't done any research on megaboss fights; haven't gotten to them yet, somehow.)

 

Is it using Salvation of Time/Ancestor's Memory to keep Barring Death's Door up forever?

Edited December 31, 2020 by TheMetaphysician

[Boeroer]

It's Salvation of Time + Brilliant (from whatever source).

Salvation of Time prolongs all beneficial effects, including Brilliant - Brilliant will give you your spell uses back, including Salvation of Time. You can use that cycle to build up minutes or hours of durations for all beneficial effects like Barring Death's Door, Blade Cascade (Scordeo's Edge) and so on.

Edited December 31, 2020 by Boeroer

[Campber7741]

I know I'm a bit late to this discussion by a few years, but just out of curiosity how did you build Fassina and Ydwin for this fight?