[CLASS BUILD] UPDATED - The Bleeding Arcanist 2.0

[Kaylon]

28 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Yeah, it's a pain or straight-up undoable unless you have very specific abilities. I think @Kaylon had an epiphany with the Mechanical Marvel Arbalest and scrolls of Tornado..?

Yes, but his devoted/street fighter will have some harsh penalties when using an arbalest and without Heating Up he might be also too slow to perma interrupt the oozes.

[mjo2138]

@Not So Clever Hound, and others, do like Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst ?  I fancy this spell, but I am sure others are better. I like it as an opener for fights. I am a really big nerd for disable and CC spells, however, so I carry some bias! 

[Boeroer]

I think it's pretty cool. Also because there aren't that many CC/debuff alternatives on PL6 (besides Arkemyr's Capricious Hex). 

[Not So Clever Hound]

It’s great indeed. My opener is very often chill fog even late game because I’m boring and because it scales and combines so well with everything (apart from gaze of the adragan!)

[Constentin Lévine]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I think it's pretty cool. Also because there aren't that many CC/debuff alternatives on PL6 (besides Arkemyr's Capricious Hex). 

And because Arkemyr's Capricious Hex is Enchantment and Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst is transmutation, the spell alternative is useful for some wizard subclass (a transmuter cant cast Arkemyr's Capricious Hex). The other "difference" between these spell is the AoE size, really big for Arkemyr's spell, regular for Jernaugh's one, but this last apply some affliction per target (sometimes, 3) when Arkemyr's spell only apply one.

[mjo2138]

I really enjoy this build. I just got to level 20, and I can melt everything! I never really appreciated meteor shower before, but with all the self buffs, as well as the ring of focused flame, it is a force to be reckoned with! I just had some questions:

 

1. In a thread somewhere, you mentioned Duskfall is a good late game weapon, too. What enchantments would you use? Does the +10 action speed apply to casting times and recovery times, or just melee? How about Magrans Chain - Which enchantments would you favor? 

2. For Power Level 2. Would you consider leaving out Arcane Veil, and using Merciless Gaze? I know late game favors survivability, esp., the DLC, but I wonder if the axiom "a great defense is a good offense" might favor it.  I always run out of PL 2 spells quickly, as there are so many good ones here. 

3. Would you add Pull of Eora or Arcane Dampener, or is it not really needed?

4.  Are there any other late game pets or items you like which you did not mention?

 

Thank you! 

[Not So Clever Hound]

I'm glad you have fun with it! Indeed, Meteor Shower on this build is essentially a devastatingly sustained orbital strike because of how all your stats/PL help every part of the spell... It's just a festival of scaling. Ask Hauani o Whe if it remembers it  

1) Duskfall is great for the +15 deflection "drawing parry" at encounter start IF you are willing to prolong it's effect with wall of draining. Same goes for Furrante's Breastplate "First to the Fight".

2) I'm a sucker for Arcane Veil, I find Merciless Gaze a bit meh personally. But PL2 has quite a few good choices. AV is great but Miasma, Binding Web, Ray of Fire... they all scale really well and are very good.

3) Dampener is an asymmetric spell... it's a lot more annoying to YOU than to the enemy. So no. Pull of Eora is great, but you can also situationally use it from a Grimoire. Enemies have high fortitude, and you're soloing so you can't afford many misses. Pull of Eora can leave you exposed if you rely on it a lot.

4) Yes! Kapana Taga = probably the best solo defensive weapon/stat stick. Lover's Embrace = guaranteed frenzy if you switch to it and fire a pulsing AoE spell. I already mentioned Duskfall and Furrante's Breastplate as nice alternatives for max defense. If you manage interrupts or switch to another grimoire, Helm of the White Void can boost the ACC of many, many amazing spells (both the Affliction roll AND the Damage roll).

Edited April 29, 2022 by Not So Clever Hound

[mjo2138]

5 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

I'm glad you have fun with it! Indeed, Meteor Shower on this build is essentially a devastatingly sustained orbital strike because of how all your stats/PL help every part of the spell... It's just a festival of scaling. Ask Hauani o Whe if it remembers it  

1) Duskfall is great for the +15 deflection "drawing parry" at encounter start IF you are willing to prolong it's effect with wall of draining. Same goes for Furrante's Breastplate "First to the Fight".

2) I'm a sucker for Arcane Veil, I find Merciless Gaze a bit meh personally. But PL2 has quite a few good choices. AV is great but Miasma, Binding Web, Ray of Fire... they all scale really well and are very good.

3) Dampener is an asymmetric spell... it's a lot more annoying to YOU than to the enemy. So no. Pull of Eora is great, but you can also situationally use it from a Grimoire. Enemies have high fortitude, and you're soloing so you can't afford many misses. Pull of Eora can leave you exposed if you rely on it a lot.

4) Yes! Kapana Taga = probably the best solo defensive weapon/stat stick. Lover's Embrace = guaranteed frenzy if you switch to it and fire a pulsing AoE spell. I already mentioned Duskfall and Furrante's Breastplate as nice alternatives for max defense. If you manage interrupts or switch to another grimoire, Helm of the White Void can boost the ACC of many, many amazing spells (both the Affliction roll AND the Damage roll).

Thank you. I see what you mean. I really like Ray of Fire, too. I also thought about switching away from using the immunity to interrupt helm, but I just love having not to worry about being interrupted whilst casting a spell. Also, Vaporous Weaponry is such a good grimore for having that extra spell, even if Ningraths (sp) has spells I love more, or Akemry's (sp)  for that matter. 

[Not So Clever Hound]

5 hours ago, mjo2138 said:

Thank you. I see what you mean. I really like Ray of Fire, too. I also thought about switching away from using the immunity to interrupt helm, but I just love having not to worry about being interrupted whilst casting a spell. Also, Vaporous Weaponry is such a good grimore for having that extra spell, even if Ningraths (sp) has spells I love more, or Akemry's (sp)  for that matter.

You're exactly right. That's the dilemma of the Bleeding (and Vaporous) Arcanist. Of note, if at some point you want to play with Arcane Knight or Battlemage, both would give you access to a great Heal + Courageous which, if prolonged, removes the need to have Rekvu's casque and an injury. Really cool - also gives you insane healing in particular on Battlemage. Then you can use Acina's Tricorn or the White Void Helm or something else you fancy.

PS: I like the idea of Ningrath, i.e. the secret child of Ninagauth and Llengrath. Surely an arcane force to be reckoned with .

[Campber7741]

Hi. I know I’m very late to this discussion, but I was just wanting to know what the final spread of Skills would be at Level 20? For example, you mentioned that you need high Religion to get the Shrine buff, but that you also need 12 Diplomacy to tell the bandits to go away so you can pray without needing to rest. On top of that, you also mentioned that you had 20 History at the end of the game for the Giftbearer’s Cloth defence bonuses. Combined with Athletics and Mechanics, I don’t see how there’s enough points to go around. I’m only asking as this is going to be my second Deadfire playthrough but my first time doing it on PotD.

[Kryst415987]

Okay so im a new ish player and Im trying to play with this build. Honestly Im stuggling with the opening part of the game. I understand there are some items (such as grims that you need to obtain to make this build better. Is it best to avoid the starting fights (the enemies in the sea cave)?

 

[Waski]

On 11/11/2022 at 7:27 AM, Campber7741 said:

Hi. I know I’m very late to this discussion, but I was just wanting to know what the final spread of Skills would be at Level 20? For example, you mentioned that you need high Religion to get the Shrine buff, but that you also need 12 Diplomacy to tell the bandits to go away so you can pray without needing to rest. On top of that, you also mentioned that you had 20 History at the end of the game for the Giftbearer’s Cloth defence bonuses. Combined with Athletics and Mechanics, I don’t see how there’s enough points to go around. I’m only asking as this is going to be my second Deadfire playthrough but my first time doing it on PotD.

just retrain

[jazzthing]

On 11/12/2022 at 6:27 PM, Kryst415987 said:

Okay so im a new ish player and Im trying to play with this build. Honestly Im stuggling with the opening part of the game. I understand there are some items (such as grims that you need to obtain to make this build better. Is it best to avoid the starting fights (the enemies in the sea cave)?

 

You don't need to fight anything in the cave. Invest your points into stealth and stealth through everything in Port Maje. After that you can do a lot of quests without fighting (there is a thread "growing strong without fighting" for solo players somewhere here). You are Level 15 pretty fast and everything will be a lot easier.

[Not So Clever Hound]

On 11/11/2022 at 7:27 AM, Campber7741 said:

Hi. I know I’m very late to this discussion, but I was just wanting to know what the final spread of Skills would be at Level 20? For example, you mentioned that you need high Religion to get the Shrine buff, but that you also need 12 Diplomacy to tell the bandits to go away so you can pray without needing to rest. On top of that, you also mentioned that you had 20 History at the end of the game for the Giftbearer’s Cloth defence bonuses. Combined with Athletics and Mechanics, I don’t see how there’s enough points to go around. I’m only asking as this is going to be my second Deadfire playthrough but my first time doing it on PotD.

Waski is right, but in practice you don't need to retrain much. The end game skill spread is about maximizing the Giftbearer's Cloth bonus, at this point this build is more than prepared to handle a failed Diplomacy check. You won't miss out on anything important. The only important thing is Mechanics 13 + gloves + thief's putty that will unlock the hardest important lock in the game which is in Splinter's Reef. And up to late game (i.e. before hitting SSS and FS, possibly late BoW) Survival, Diplomacy, Athletics in the 10-12 range keeping items around that can buff it further will allow to pass other important checks. Many checks in SSS and FS are real high anyway for a solo char unless you retrain a lot and they're not worth it IMHO so you can just go onwards like the arcane mobile artillery platform you were meant to be.

[Not So Clever Hound]

20 hours ago, jazzthing said:

You don't need to fight anything in the cave. Invest your points into stealth and stealth through everything in Port Maje. After that you can do a lot of quests without fighting (there is a thread "growing strong without fighting" for solo players somewhere here). You are Level 15 pretty fast and everything will be a lot easier.

@Kryst415987 this is true but your first focus in Maje should be to level up with minimal fighting then get in the cave etc. If you're new to the game that can be hard to figure out without a bit of metagaming especially if on top you're not super familiar with the mechanics. The difficulty in the game is very frontloaded on PotD and Maje can feel like a big challenge but this is well documented. Search the forum and you'll find many very useful threads on that topic. Let me know if you need some pointers specifically on some the fights there. This build can handle everything Maje throws at it on PotD probably with the exception of Gorecci Street which you don't have to fight.

[Campber7741]

On 11/16/2022 at 5:08 AM, Not So Clever Hound said:

Waski is right, but in practice you don't need to retrain much. The end game skill spread is about maximizing the Giftbearer's Cloth bonus, at this point this build is more than prepared to handle a failed Diplomacy check. You won't miss out on anything important. The only important thing is Mechanics 13 + gloves + thief's putty that will unlock the hardest important lock in the game which is in Splinter's Reef. And up to late game (i.e. before hitting SSS and FS, possibly late BoW) Survival, Diplomacy, Athletics in the 10-12 range keeping items around that can buff it further will allow to pass other important checks. Many checks in SSS and FS are real high anyway for a solo char unless you retrain a lot and they're not worth it IMHO so you can just go onwards like the arcane mobile artillery platform you were meant to be.

Awesome. Thanks for the advice!

[trias10]

@Not So Clever Hound

Thank you so much for the great write-up and details! I have read everything in this thread and wanted to ask you for your opinion on playing the pure SC bloodmage vs playing a MC assassin/bloodmage? I saw that you tried out the assassin/bloodmage in a later playthrough, and were getting nuke crits of 500-800 which sounds pretty powerful. Did you end up enjoying the assassin/bloodmage more than the SC bloodmage? Would you say the MC spellblade is more powerful overall or still weaker than the SC bloodmage? Was the MC spellblade able to take on all the megabosses with equal ease?

I'm currently looking to do my first solo PotD run, and am just stuck on which is the better choice between these two variants: assassin/bloodmage vs SC bloodmage. Would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

I love the assassinate bonus and free, spammable invisibility which the assassin brings to the table, for absolutely insane crits, but am wondering if it stalls out in the end game and can't handle the megabosses and tougher end game fights on solo?

[Shai Hulud]

On 3/9/2023 at 11:01 AM, trias10 said:

@Not So Clever Hound

Thank you so much for the great write-up and details! I have read everything in this thread and wanted to ask you for your opinion on playing the pure SC bloodmage vs playing a MC assassin/bloodmage? I saw that you tried out the assassin/bloodmage in a later playthrough, and were getting nuke crits of 500-800 which sounds pretty powerful. Did you end up enjoying the assassin/bloodmage more than the SC bloodmage? Would you say the MC spellblade is more powerful overall or still weaker than the SC bloodmage? Was the MC spellblade able to take on all the megabosses with equal ease?

I'm currently looking to do my first solo PotD run, and am just stuck on which is the better choice between these two variants: assassin/bloodmage vs SC bloodmage. Would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

I love the assassinate bonus and free, spammable invisibility which the assassin brings to the table, for absolutely insane crits, but am wondering if it stalls out in the end game and can't handle the megabosses and tougher end game fights on solo?

I'm not @Not So Clever Hound, hopefully he'll chime in, but I have played lots of blood mages and blood mage / x solo potd upscaled etc., and it really depends what you're trying to do (nuke things vs hit things) and what kind of tactics you're willing to employ. And the difficulty. LIke if you're willing to attack from stealth and then go invisible with Arkemyr's Brilliant departure and repeat this over and over, blood mage / assassin is pretty powerful and indestructible but I find this incredibly tedious and a bit cheesy.

Spellblade (EDIT-I meant BATTLEMAGE) is probably the strongest solo contender you mentioned especially if you're playing vanilla and take tactician. All you need do to proc brilliant is cast chill fog or arkemyr's brilliant departure. And Unbending is extremely strong any time you're getting hit from a lot of sources, as the unbendings stack until you're being healed faster than you can take damage. This build (all of them really) might have trouble with Dorudugan and Hauni O Whe, unless you use wall of draining to extend blade cascade, conduit, and energized for HOW (use slayer's claw). Wall of Draining is insanely powerful in vanilla and can make you invulnerable extending potions of final stand and give you no recovery extending blade cascade and ridiculous lightning damage (up to +200ish %) extending conduit. Of course, you can also extend these effects with strand of favor in vanilla, though this is generally seen as overly cheesy...

Pure blood mage with high resolve can cast temporal cocoon on self, the paralyzed part is considered hostile while the untargetable is not, so you get out of temporal cocoon with time left on untargetable and can extend that with wall of draining and you're pretty invulnerable. You can also use major grimoire imprint to steal spells permanently, which while fun is pretty tedious, and there are lots of good spells you can steal with a blood mage / x with minor grimoire imprint if you want. 

All that said, I find these tactics kind of overpowered and cheesy. My personal opinion is soloing is generally easier by hitting things than casting damage spells due to penetration scaling on POTD upscaled, so blood mage / martial hybrids tend to be preferable to straight blood mage.

Hierophant is also a fun combination and can bring you a lot of +accuracy and +defenses with borrowed instinct, plus citzal's spirit lance procs focus gain on everyone it hits AND soul annihlation hits everyone the lance hits, so blood mage goes really well with soul blade for a fighter / mage type build. The thing with rogues is for the really good damage bonuses (deathblows) you need two debuffs and sometimes that is difficult to land solo. And rogues have bad accuracy without assassinate passive, not having a single ability that improves it and just dirty fighting for 10% hit to crit. Blood mages also have bad accuracy, their only way to improve it is eldritch aim (aware) and citzal's martial power, the second of which disables spellcasting and is not usually desirable. So I like pairing a blood mage with a class that can easily buff accuracy and/or healing. *Battlemages* are a good choice, particularly tactician for reasons states but also devoteds, take specialty pike and beat things up with citzal's spirit lance. You can get about +20 accuracy from the conqueror stance, disciplined barrage (+intuitive), and weapon mastery, and unbending adds a ton of survivability. Hierophants can get you effectively +30 accuracy with borrowed instinct + psychovampiric shield but you may not always be able to land both, and they don't have any passive healing besides blood mage passive. Loremasters are also a lot of fun because of energized + citzal's spirit lance, and with troubadour you can have summons tank for you for so the meh healing is not as big a deal.

I should note soloing POTD upscaled is extremely difficult, particularly the megabosses. It can be done with wall of draining shenanigans, but I haven't found a way to do it without, not with blood mage / x anyway. Dorudugan simply heals too fast and Hauni O Whe merges too fast after first split. There are some tanky high damage builds that can kill Dorudugan without cheese (difficult but it is possible) but Hauni O Whe seems to require a cipher (to disintegrate HOW form). SC monk is the only non-cipher I've been able to kill HOW with (or priest, rogue, paladin can theoretically do it with marux amanth dagger and a lot of luck), using whispers on the wind and Ajamuut's Stalking cloak to hard CC the oozes during merge attempts.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Shai Hulud
spellblade => battlemage correction

[trias10]

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I'm not @Not So Clever Hound, hopefully he'll chime in, but I have played lots of blood mages and blood mage / x solo potd upscaled etc., and it really depends what you're trying to do (nuke things vs hit things) and what kind of tactics you're willing to employ. And the difficulty. LIke if you're willing to attack from stealth and then go invisible with Arkemyr's Brilliant departure and repeat this over and over, blood mage / assassin is pretty powerful and indestructible but I find this incredibly tedious and a bit cheesy.

Spellblade is probably the strongest solo contender you mentioned especially if you're playing vanilla and take tactician. All you need do to proc brilliant is cast chill fog or arkemyr's brilliant departure. And Unbending is extremely strong any time you're getting hit from a lot of sources, as the unbendings stack until you're being healed faster than you can take damage. This build (all of them really) might have trouble with Dorudugan and Hauni O Whe, unless you use wall of draining to extend blade cascade, conduit, and energized for HOW (use slayer's claw). Wall of Draining is insanely powerful in vanilla and can make you invulnerable extending potions of final stand and give you no recovery extending blade cascade and ridiculous lightning damage (up to +200ish %) extending conduit. Of course, you can also extend these effects with strand of favor in vanilla, though this is generally seen as overly cheesy...

Pure blood mage with high resolve can cast temporal cocoon on self, the paralyzed part is considered hostile while the untargetable is not, so you get out of temporal cocoon with time left on untargetable and can extend that with wall of draining and you're pretty invulnerable. You can also use major grimoire imprint to steal spells permanently, which while fun is pretty tedious, and there are lots of good spells you can steal with a blood mage / x with minor grimoire imprint if you want. 

All that said, I find these tactics kind of overpowered and cheesy. My personal opinion is soloing is generally easier by hitting things than casting damage spells due to penetration scaling on POTD upscaled, so blood mage / martial hybrids tend to be preferable to straight blood mage.

Hierophant is also a fun combination and can bring you a lot of +accuracy and +defenses with borrowed instinct, plus citzal's spirit lance procs focus gain on everyone it hits AND soul annihlation hits everyone the lance hits, so blood mage goes really well with soul blade for a fighter / mage type build. The thing with rogues is for the really good damage bonuses (deathblows) you need two debuffs and sometimes that is difficult to land solo. And rogues have bad accuracy without assassinate passive, not having a single ability that improves it and just dirty fighting for 10% hit to crit. Blood mages also have bad accuracy, their only way to improve it is eldritch aim (aware) and citzal's martial power, the second of which disables spellcasting and is not usually desirable. So I like pairing a blood mage with a class that can easily buff accuracy and/or healing. Spellblades are a good choice, particularly tactician for reasons states but also devoteds, take specialty pike and beat things up with citzal's spirit lance. You can get about +20 accuracy from the conqueror stance, disciplined barrage (+intuitive), and weapon mastery, and unbending adds a ton of survivability. Hierophants can get you effectively +30 accuracy with borrowed instinct + psychovampiric shield but you may not always be able to land both, and they don't have any passive healing besides blood mage passive. Loremasters are also a lot of fun because of energized + citzal's spirit lance, and with troubadour you can have summons tank for you for so the meh healing is not as big a deal.

I should note soloing POTD upscaled is extremely difficult, particularly the megabosses. It can be done with wall of draining shenanigans, but I haven't found a way to do it without, not with blood mage / x anyway. Dorudugan simply heals too fast and Hauni O Whe merges too fast after first split. There are some tanky high damage builds that can kill Dorudugan without cheese (difficult but it is possible) but Hauni O Whe seems to require a cipher (to disintegrate HOW form). SC monk is the only non-cipher I've been able to kill HOW with (or priest, rogue, paladin can theoretically do it with marux amanth dagger and a lot of luck), using whispers on the wind and Ajamuut's Stalking cloak to hard CC the oozes during merge attempts.

Thank you for the very detailed explanation, I really appreciate it!

It still sounds like SC Bloodmage is a top contender, but the low accuracy is definitely a concern.

Still, I really want the chance to try out all those cool level 8 and 9 spells, so I think for this first foray I'll try out the SC Bloodmage, and then maybe a spellblade or battlemage later.

You can also have the best of both worlds with the Level 33 mod, which allows you to keep levelling up to 33. This would give MC bloodmages the chance to use level 9 spells too, although not until level 25, and by then the game would be over anyway (the game + DLCs only gives you enough XP to reach lvl 27).

I saw in another post that assassin/bloodmage is the only MC which can have 7 grimoires available for switching, is this true? That post said this alone makes the class extremely powerful, but nobody here has mentioned it, so just wanted to ask if this is indeed true?

Also, what specifically about the assassin/bloodmage makes it so tedious and repetitive?

[Not So Clever Hound]

On 3/9/2023 at 6:01 PM, trias10 said:

Thank you so much for the great write-up and details! I have read everything in this thread and wanted to ask you for your opinion on playing the pure SC bloodmage vs playing a MC assassin/bloodmage? I saw that you tried out the assassin/bloodmage in a later playthrough, and were getting nuke crits of 500-800 which sounds pretty powerful. Did you end up enjoying the assassin/bloodmage more than the SC bloodmage? Would you say the MC spellblade is more powerful overall or still weaker than the SC bloodmage? Was the MC spellblade able to take on all the megabosses with equal ease?

I'm currently looking to do my first solo PotD run, and am just stuck on which is the better choice between these two variants: assassin/bloodmage vs SC bloodmage. Would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

I love the assassinate bonus and free, spammable invisibility which the assassin brings to the table, for absolutely insane crits, but am wondering if it stalls out in the end game and can't handle the megabosses and tougher end game fights on solo?

Glad you find it helpful! They're both top tier and you can complete everything with either. So you can really go with your guts and what feels more fun.

SC has a very special place in my little heart because I just love those Tier 8 & 9 spells so much and I like the super fast Tier progression. Assassin/Bloodmage is lots of fun if you like sneaking around and launch crazy alpha strikes - comes online very early. The stealthy alpha strike strategy can get old after some time, and high level DLC content gives you a bit more challenges with encounter resets. But every Solo char has an element of repetition anyway, and high level DLCs provides challenges for every kind of solo build - nothing unsolvable with anything Bloodmage anyway.

So if I have to give my personal preference, it's SC BM but if you like your run, you should definitely try other builds. As @Shai Hulud mentioned, Tactician/BM is another POE2 solo staples.

 

[trias10]

6 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Glad you find it helpful! They're both top tier and you can complete everything with either. So you can really go with your guts and what feels more fun.

SC has a very special place in my little heart because I just love those Tier 8 & 9 spells so much and I like the super fast Tier progression. Assassin/Bloodmage is lots of fun if you like sneaking around and launch crazy alpha strikes - comes online very early. The stealthy alpha strike strategy can get old after some time, and high level DLC content gives you a bit more challenges with encounter resets. But every Solo char has an element of repetition anyway, and high level DLCs provides challenges for every kind of solo build - nothing unsolvable with anything Bloodmage anyway.

So if I have to give my personal preference, it's SC BM but if you like your run, you should definitely try other builds. As @Shai Hulud mentioned, Tactician/BM is another POE2 solo staples.

 

Thank you for the reply!

If you used the Level 33 progression mod, such that any MC Bloodmage could eventually reach level 9 spells (although by then the game would be over anyway), would there be a clear winner in terms of assassin/BM vs tactician/BM? I mean at such high level anything will be god tier already, but I'm thinking the slight edge would go to the tactician maybe, just for pure survivability?

My first POTD run will be with vanilla, but I'm already pondering a second run with the level 33 mod down the line.

[Shai Hulud]

3 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Glad you find it helpful! They're both top tier and you can complete everything with either. So you can really go with your guts and what feels more fun.

SC has a very special place in my little heart because I just love those Tier 8 & 9 spells so much and I like the super fast Tier progression. Assassin/Bloodmage is lots of fun if you like sneaking around and launch crazy alpha strikes - comes online very early. The stealthy alpha strike strategy can get old after some time, and high level DLC content gives you a bit more challenges with encounter resets. But every Solo char has an element of repetition anyway, and high level DLCs provides challenges for every kind of solo build - nothing unsolvable with anything Bloodmage anyway.

So if I have to give my personal preference, it's SC BM but if you like your run, you should definitely try other builds. As @Shai Hulud mentioned, Tactician/BM is another POE2 solo staples.

 

You say "nothing unsolvable" but I couldn't figure out how to defeat Hauni O Whe with SC blood mage. Granted I had some self-imposed limitations, this was in BPM, but even in vanilla the only way one could do it is to proc blade cascade and extend it with wall of draining over the symbiotes. Also need some kind of defense like extending Potions of Final Stand. Otherwise you can't attack quickly enough to stop the merges and you get murdered. Probably need brilliant, potion of impediment, energized, then I guess just keep casting meteor shower when the merge icons appear.  

Did you figure out a different way or were you including Blade Cascade + Conduit + POFS etc.?

For me the main selling point of SC blood mage is Major Grimoire Imprint. I can do wall of draining and all that with multiclassed blood mages. But I don't really see the appeal of the other high level spells. The penetration is usually not enough to do a lot of damage and you run of spells much faster than my "sticks to whack things" strategy. Unless you're using SOTF and SOF / WOD for endless brilliant I guess, which is fun. 

I killed Dorudugan by hitting him with Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff over and over. That was my entire strategy outside of prep (blade cascade and conduit mainly).

[Not So Clever Hound]

13 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Did you figure out a different way or were you including Blade Cascade + Conduit + POFS etc.?

The time I bothered doing HoW with SC BM I did it with True Lover's Kiss then some good old buffing, Hard CC and Nuking on the second form et al. BUT... it was on standard PotD. It's one of those fights where the difference between standard and upscaled shifts the probabilities SIGNIFICANTLY in my opinion. Also, I wasn't playing with BPM at the time.

[dgray62]

4 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Spellblade is probably the strongest solo contender you mentioned especially if you're playing vanilla and take tactician.

You mean "Battlemage," right? Spellblade is rogue + wizard.

[Not So Clever Hound]

27 minutes ago, trias10 said:

Thank you for the reply!

If you used the Level 33 progression mod, such that any MC Bloodmage could eventually reach level 9 spells (although by then the game would be over anyway), would there be a clear winner in terms of assassin/BM vs tactician/BM? I mean at such high level anything will be god tier already, but I'm thinking the slight edge would go to the tactician maybe, just for pure survivability?

My first POTD run will be with vanilla, but I'm already pondering a second run with the level 33 mod down the line.

I think it would be Assassin/BM >>>> Vanishing Strike cheese + full-scale Bloodmage cheese = more potent cheese than the Pont L'évêque that I keep maturing at the bottom of my fridge. And I tell you this thing is potent enough to make my wife nearly faint every time she opens the refrigerator.