[5.0 class build] "Firedancer" - contemplative (helwalker + priest of magran)

[thelee]

Thought I'd try my hand at another one of these. I call this a 5.0 build because it incorporates a lot of metagaming-related stuff that as a community we only really figured out 5.0 or so.

Basic build outline: stats

Nature Godlike, 18 might/8 con/15 dex/10 perception/19 + 1 intellect (old vailia)/7 resolve. Hardcore min-maxers can tank con and resolve more to increase dex and perception.

Classes: helwalker + magran

Level-by-level guide (with free spells in brackets, optional picks with asterisk):

1. Swift Strikes | Restore [Fan of Flames]
2. Lesser Wounds*
3. Interdiction*
4. Dance with Death | Iconic Project [Spiritual Weapon]
5. Long Stride
6. Clarity of Agony*
7. Swift Flurry | Watchful Presence [Ray of Fire]
8. Two Weapon Style*
9. Blade Turning*
10. Duality of Mortality | Scion of Flame [Shining Beacon]
11. Enduring Dance
12. Spell Shaping
13. The Long Pain* | Revive the Fallen [Fire Shield]
14. Champion's Boon
15. Rapid Casting
16. Uncanny Luck | Salvation of Time [Pillar of Holy Fire]
17. Tough
18. Turning Wheel*
19. Accurate Empower | Rain of Holy Fire [Torrent of Flame]
20. Penetrating Empower

Gear

Weapon slot 1: Magran's Core | Weyc's Wand (soulbound to monk, not priest)

Weapon slot 2: Chromoprismatic Staff

Other items: Ring of Focused Flame, Sonorous Ring, Least Unstable Coil, Necklace of Power, Vithrack Slippers, Firethrower's Gloves, The Maker's Own Power

Pet: Otto Starcat! Possible alternatives - Flame Naga or Nemnok or Ooblit.

Misc

In the alchemy lab in the top-left corner of the map, boost your might permanently. 

How the build plays

For most of the game this is just a glass cannon nuker that uses Dance with Death's generous up to +15 accuracy, Helwalker's up to +10 might (passive stacking) and up to +10 intellect (active, not stacking), and Priest of Magran's nukes to destroy things. Swift strikes and Nature godlike gives you +1 passive PL, and you accumulate various things that make all your fire (and a few evocation-keyworded) abilities more powerful.

Where this build really comes into play is late game, and is why you're not a wizard. Rain of Holy Fire, empowered, plus Weyc's Wand plus Least Unstable Coil = +3 PL (that you extend with Salvation of Time) and almost certainly every single tier 3 inspiration in the game. As far as I can tell, multiclassed wizards can't do this - they need Missile Salvo or Meteor Swarm to pull off the same Least Unstable Coil interaction (there may be another spell that might be able to trigger this interaction that I haven't tested). Priests get salvation of time that they can spam forever if needed thanks to Brilliant, and wizards are limited to a Wall of Draining that has been somewhat nerfed (though there are items you can use to make it consistent, like Jester's Cap).

Between Magran's Core, Nature Godlike, Weyc's Wand (again, very important to not soul-bound it to a priest, despite priests getting a unique effect... it's not as good as the default effect), and possibly Otto Starcat and Stone of Power, you get +8 PL to your fire spells, up to +9 PL for Fan of Flames, Ray of Fire, and Torrent of Flame since they are evocation as well. That's an astounding +8 acc, +2 PEN, +40% damage (multiplicative!), +40% duration (multiplicative!). This is on top of any inherent PL scaling you already have, the +75% damage bonus from maxing out might at 35 (18 + 10 helwalker + 5 might inspiration + 1 maker's own power + 1 alchemy lab), +15 accuracy from dance with death, +10 accuracy from ring of focused flame, and a +100% duration bonus from having 30 intellect (20 base + 10 from duality of mortality). Not to mention that compared to a "normal" caster you have an additional +2 PEN on all your spells from either Champion's Boon or a Least Unstable Coil-triggered Energized inspiration.

Against fire immune or fire absorbing enemies, you can fall back to be more of a conventional monk using Long Pain to attack safely from a distance and keeping your allies alive with heals. Iconic Projection is a decent heal that happens to also hurt enemies using frost damage, and Watchful Presence effectively gives everyone a death prevention shield with an automatic huge heal (all that PL scaling and might makes for a huge heal instead of death). All the bonus PL you get that is not fire-keyword-limited (from weyc's wand, nature godlike, and necklace of power) will supercharge your monk fists to do tons of damage.

Because you have so much intellect, you can probably frequently use spellshaping to shrink your spell aoes for an additional +1 PL with minimal loss in coverage of enemies affected!

Possible party members

A chanter's old siec chanter will also work with spells cast, making the firedancer able to heal themselves for enormous amounts from spell casts. With shield cracks, a firedancer might be able to get even more damage out due to overpenetration.

A paladin with shared flames can buff the firedancer with a +15% fire damage lash on their spells (which means multiplicative, which can also be stretched with salvation of time!). Complement with exalted focus for more damage, though be warned that only the 5% hit to crit will be useful since the +5 will be suppressed by your superior dance with death buff.

Possible alternatives

If someone discovers a wizard spell at tier 7 or lower that also triggers least unstable coil multiple times, a wizard (especially an evoker or blood mage) could be a viable replacement for the priest half. The only spell I haven't thought to try that might do this is Concelhaut's Crushing Doom.

Druids can also do this with good aiming of Twin Stones, Venombloom, and I believe Returning Storm and Relentless Storm. Only problem is that in terms of pure fire damage output I find even a priest can do better than a druid, plus priests (and wizards) have an in-built way of stretching out the duration of Least Unstable Coil and the Weyc's Wand buff. But druids might have a better backup plan against fire immune or fire absorbing enemies compared to an all-in priest of magran.

this build is optimized for RTwP, for turn-based mode you'd probalby want to drop dex in favor of perception. Ooblit might be more important so that you hit critical rounding breakpoints to have enough time to wreck as much as you can.

 

edit: early on, when you have fewer spells, i recommend a) resting in the wild mare for +1 spell cast, or bathing in the bathhouse for a similar bonus and b) using quarterstaff, pike, or a ranged weapon so that your dance with death can accumulate you to high accuracy and might in relative safety.

Edited August 6, 2020 by thelee

[Haplok]

Really nice build.

For an offensive caster, its a pity he cannot use Deltro's Cage Helm. That'a another, potentially huge, multiplicative damage boost. Well, another party wizard could hit him with Jolting Touch / Chain Lightning maybe? But then he couldn't be a godlike...

Edited August 6, 2020 by Haplok

[thelee]

14 minutes ago, Haplok said:

For an offensive caster, its a pity he cannot use Deltro's Cage Helm. That'a another, potentially huge, multiplicative damage boost. Well, another party wizard could hit him with Jolting Touch / Chain Lightning maybe? But then he couldn't be a godlike...

that's an interesting idea. for a big shock damage bonus lash, it might be worth the extra micromanagement and no longer being a nature godlike to set that up with a helm and a friendly wizard.

if not nature godlike, probably human would be a good choice, for the +7 acc/+15% damage bonus when bloodied or less.

[dgray62]

This looks like a lot of fun, Thelee. I'm going to try this build out ASAP. How do you upgrade Magran's Favor? With Blazing Core and Burning Burst? I always wonder whether Blazing Core or Living Pyre is the better upgrade for this axe.

[dgray62]

By the way, what armor do you recommend for this build? DoC breastplate?

[thelee]

1 hour ago, dgray62 said:

This looks like a lot of fun, Thelee. I'm going to try this build out ASAP. How do you upgrade Magran's Favor? With Blazing Core and Burning Burst? I always wonder whether Blazing Core or Living Pyre is the better upgrade for this axe.

i think both are pretty irrelevant for this build because it'll only be used as a backup (and early on when you don't have as many spells you won't have access to this weapon), though in general i think living pyre is better. the healing is soooo small. one cast of restore or -- if you have old siec chant in your party -- one offensive spell cast will do way more healing.

 

56 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

By the way, what armor do you recommend for this build? DoC breastplate?

i definitely recommend cloth or light because most of the time you're at range so you want minimal recovery versus more protection. weyc's robe could be a degenerate one - you're always going to be empowering every fight or so with salvation of time follow-up, and this will grant 20+ seconds of brilliant to everyone in your party (more with regenerated casts). if you want something more "fair", I would recommend High Harbinger's Robe, Pale Hide (with nocturnal upgrade), Swift Hunter's Garb, Miscreant's Leathers, Cabalist's Gambeson (with the +10% beneficial effect buff), or for more survivability, Fleshmender.

 

DoC is pretty good, but the bonus to power pool is wasted on a partial caster.

Edited August 6, 2020 by thelee

[dgray62]

Thanks for the advice Thelee. Would you recommend Mari Crudia or Roe for the 15% beneficial effect duration as you did with your Umezawa build?

[thelee]

5 hours ago, dgray62 said:

Thanks for the advice Thelee. Would you recommend Mari Crudia or Roe for the 15% beneficial effect duration as you did with your Umezawa build?

not as much. early on there's not much durational effects that are super important you want to extend (maybe when you get blade turning). i might consider trying to rest in wild mare, or eating swordfish (+1 pen to spells) to help spellcasting, or maybe things that help early survivability since you have less tricks up your sleeve (fresh fruit, yolk bowl, mariner's porridge)

[L4wlight]

11 hours ago, thelee said:

As far as I can tell, multiclassed wizards can't do this - they need Missile Salvo or Meteor Swarm to pull off the same Least Unstable Coil interaction

They actually can by using Concelhaut's Crushing Doom.

Anyway, nice build. Multiclass Priest's are very potent with the Weyc's Stuff. I especially like to abuse the robe in combination with SoT to give the whole party permanent Brilliant. It a shame this stuff comes rather late.

[thelee]

5 minutes ago, L4wlight said:

They actually can by using Concelhaut's Crushing Doom.

Aha, I suspected that it might (mentioned it in build notes).

In that case, as a possible alternate option wizards would have better overall offensive spell coverage, but as an empowered spell it's hard to compare to Holy Fire imo, except when trying to interrupt bosses or a single hard enemy (Holy Fire also has synergy with the other fire stuff).

 

And yeah, priests with weyc's is nice. I tried to avoid calling out or encouraging weyc:s robe because with full party brilliant perpetually, pretty much any build becomes "nice"

Edited August 7, 2020 by thelee

[L4wlight]

True. 

As for Priests, Death Godlike is another viable alternative for even more PL stacking in combination with BDD. Priests of Breath have an easier time here though thanks to easy self same with Touch of Rot.

Of course everything fails to shine compared to Deltro's Cage Helm, but we're getting into godhood territory here. As for the more support oriented route, I think it's overall more beneficial to go for Nature or Death Godlike.

[Boeroer]

Nice one - but using a Nature Godlike for a fire nuker build def. gets you an unpleasant record with the Federal Bureau of Stylification.

Unless you name it "the Black Tree" of course...

[Scrapulous]

This looks like a fun build, and it's relevant to my interests. I'm tooling around with an evoker/priest of magran right now, trying to manage as a baby nuker on PotD.

I have a question: in a couple of places your OP mentions "Magran's Core." Is that meant to be Magran's Favor, the axe with +2 fire PL? If not, I've been missing out on something (this is not entirely unusual).

[dgray62]

1 hour ago, Scrapulous said:

I have a question: in a couple of places your OP mentions "Magran's Core." Is that meant to be Magran's Favor, the axe with +2 fire PL? If not, I've been missing out on something (this is not entirely unusual).

I believe this is the case; you may note that I asked about which upgrade to use on Magran's Favor above.

[dgray62]

22 hours ago, thelee said:

i think both are pretty irrelevant for this build because it'll only be used as a backup (and early on when you don't have as many spells you won't have access to this weapon), though in general i think living pyre is better. the healing is soooo small. one cast of restore or -- if you have old siec chant in your party -- one offensive spell cast will do way more healing.

Thanks for the advise, Thelee. Since Weyc's wand comes so late I was thinking that Magran's Favor and Marux Amanth would be the ideal weapon set until you get the wand.

[thelee]

26 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Thanks for the advise, Thelee. Since Weyc's wand comes so late I was thinking that Magran's Favor and Marux Amanth would be the ideal weapon set until you get the wand.

don't forget sun & moon flail, it has +2 fire spell PL. since it can be bought, you might be able to get it even earlier.

[dgray62]

That's true., thanks for the suggestion. It's easy to get it very early, as you note. +2 fire PL during the day is probably better than the 10% chance to repeat priest spells.