Addition to Mortar Monk

[Boeroer]

Henlo it is I the Mortar Monk maniac. 

Besides the fact™ that a Mortar Monk is just the greatest setup of all timestimestimestimestimestimestimes due to Resonant Touch getting applied by Blinding Smoke - and Blinding Smoke applying Avenging Storm and certain other awesome stuff with smoke I guess and so on...

...it only becomes better if you also use Belt of Magran's Chosen...

...because Blinding Smoke hits can also call forth a fire blight. Since you can trigger absurd amounts of hit rolls with Blinding Smoke on a crowd you will quickly summon a rel. big number of blights with Whispers of the Wind. Why is that good? Because they have abysmal defenses by the time you are at PL 9 and they get targeted by Whispers of the Wind as soon as they enter the battlefield - including all the blasts and bounces which produce yet even more Blinding Smoke procs which summon more blights (and Avenging Storm procs and so on). All those Blinding Smoke procs hit other enemies again which leads to a ridiculous amount of Resonant Touch stacks even against only few enemies (and more blights). Also they die very quickly in general. Lots of dying enemies can have some nice side effects:

E.g. If you want to use Xoti's Lantern + Hand Mortar you can fill up all your mortification quickly and get to max wounds, too (lantern: +1 wounds +1 mortification per kill). Funnily enough the +1 wound also triggers Rooting Pain which may kill yet something else. You can emerge from Whispers of the Wind with 10 wounds and full mortification. It even makes sense to learn Inner Death then because you can finish off some lonely enemies who weren't in range when you farte whispered in the wind.

Abraham will give you plenty of health because you turn into a blight serial killer (as a hobby).

Sungrazer's AoEs (main hand) can be triggered more often.

Or something like that. You know your on-kill-effects. 

Also putting Current's Rush in the offhand is cool because all the blights give it more chances to unleash a deadly chain reaction that kills everything (it's easier to achieve with lots of low defense enemies in the area). 

Also nothing prevents you from switching to another weapon to use other on-kill effects. 

Of course this can also be used with a Barb (Heart of Fury - hello Blood Thirst), Fighter (Clean Sweep), Ranger (Whirling Strikes) to produce many blights which will often get killed on the spot. I'm sure you can be creative with this.  But you know: Mortar Monk. 

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by Boeroer

[Not So Clever Hound]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Besides the fact™ that a Mortar Monk is just the greatest setup of all timestimestimestimestimestimestimes due to Resonant Touch getting applied by Blinding Smoke - and Blinding Smoke applying Avenging Storm and certain other awesome stuff with smoke I guess and so on...

But.... where is Boeroer a.k.a. "I don't use consumables, I don't like that scrolls copy class abilities, in particular all those cool class-defining spells of the poor poor Druid"?  So easily perverted... very cool find about the belt .

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Boeroer]

Yeah, it was just a mention for players who do like to use scrolls. I personally only use Heaven's Cacophony.

Tbh you don't even need that - Resonant Touch is always enough in my experience.

[Ranndar]

Is there any way to get Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole without recruit Serafen? I am trying go solo, and dismissed him already.

[Boeroer]

You can get Hand Mortar by killing him and looting. Fire in the Hole: nope. But Mortar Monk is also fine with Hand Mortar alone, Blinding Smile loool Smoke is enough. Note that Community Patch caps the number of Resonant Touches and removes Avenging Storm procs off of Blinding Smoke. You can manually remove those changes if you want and still keep the mod.

Equipping  some other weapon with Hand Mortar also works well. E.g. Keeper of the Flame (and wear Edér's armor with the Reflex immunity + Imagined Pain to evade all AoE hits from Keeper of the Flame and come out with full wounds after Whispers of the Wind. Don't forget Rooting Pain).

In general I wouldn't dismiss companions when going solo. In solo mode they will automatically go straight to the ship when recruited and they will help in boarding fights - and you can kill them later if you need their gear.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Boeroer

[Not So Clever Hound]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Blinding Smile

Now I wish there was actually an ability called Blinding Smile  

[Boeroer]

Class: Debonaire

Race: Bleached Elf

Profession: Dentist's Wife

Culture: The White that Grins

[boareder]

On 6/8/2021 at 1:23 PM, Boeroer said:

You can get Hand Mortar by killing him and looting. Fire in the Hole: nope. But Mortar Monk is also fine with Hand Mortar alone, Blinding Smile loool Smoke is enough. Note that Community Patch caps the number of Resonant Touches and removes Avenging Storm procs off of Blinding Smoke. You can manually remove those changes if you want and still keep the mod.

Equipping  some other weapon with Hand Mortar also works well. E.g. Keeper of the Flame (and wear Edér's armor with the Reflex immunity + Imagined Pain to evade all AoE hits from Keeper of the Flame and come out with full wounds after Whispers of the Wind. Don't forget Rooting Pain).

In general I wouldn't dismiss companions when going solo. In solo mode they will automatically go straight to the ship when recruited and they will help in boarding fights - and you can kill them later if you need their gear.

How do we manually remove the changes? Lol, I’ve been using Avenging Storm with the dual mortars and thinking it’s nowhere near as OP as described 

[Boeroer]

Have you enchanted it with Blinding Smoke?

Are you using the Community Patch?

Lol?

[boareder]

Ah, yes. I am using the community patch. Wondering how we can manually remove the changes as you said 

[Boeroer]

There are two files named accordingly (something with Avenging Storm and something with Resonant Touch) in the mod folder which you can delete or rename (you have to rename the file extension behind the dot, too). That will remove those changes from the mod. I prefer renaming because it's reversible. If you need more info just say so - I can give you spefifics when I'm home (which might be in 2 hours or so).

But even with the Community Patch's cap on Resonant Touch stacks: dual mortars are the best option for Resonant Touch imo. You then just have to trigger it in between Whispers of the Wind to set the stack back to 0. 

Key is to get enemies form tight groups. I do this by luring them with traps or a spell from stealth or unstealthing the tank first - also I like to combine a Mortar Monk with an Arcane Archer with Watershaper's Focus who can pull enemies together like crazy with Imbue:Eora and keep them there with Imbue:Web. 

With the Community Patch nerfs removed the stacks of Resonant Touch know no limit. So even if enemies are still standing after Whispers of the Wind usually you can just finish them off with Resonant Touch. 

It's not necessarily more devastating than let's say a Great Maelstrom - bit it's mostly foe-only, does enormous DMG right away, stuns all enemies and it's limitless as long as you can collect wounds.

With Blinding Smoke triggering Avenging Storm it's def. more devastating than the usual PL 9 powerhouse spell.

As I said: key is enemies standing near each other. If they are standing further apart then the mortars aren't that effective of course because each Blinding Smoke cone and each blast AoE will hit fewer enemies. 

Same is true if you want to use melee AoE weapons like Keeper of the Flame + St. Drogga's Skull or something: pull'em tight!

Edited June 10, 2021 by Boeroer