Another Offering for the Cheese Plate-Beastly Death Touch

[dgray62]

I have been fooling around with ascetic builds lately, using two of my favorite subclasses, forbidden fist and shifter. In the past I have played helwalker ascetics that were ultimately more spell-focused, but I went with shifter this time for a more melee focus. After playing this build in the vanilla game I started over using the Shifter Evolution mod, which is a rather OP mod that makes SC melee shifter viable by taking the druid elemental spells, and replacing them with passives and other spells that are more melee oriented. I tried this out because of its first level spell, Crush, which basically a downsized version of the barbarian leap ability, allowing you to jump up and knock down enemies in a small AOE. It also debuffs their DEF by -10. It's a fun starting ability in IMO.

I just discovered the major cheese factor. This mod adds Monastic Unarmed Training as a selectable ability for the shifter druid. To make matters better or worse (depending on your perspective), the mod does NOT remove MUT as an option if you choose an ascetic MC. If you select MUT, it STACKS with transcendent suffering, which gives you an incredible bonus to damage, accuracy and penetration. However, it's not too overpowered since if you largely play while shifted, as I do, neither MUT or transcendent suffering apply while shifted. There is one exception however: the forbidden fist attack, which, while shifted, benefits from MUT, transcendent suffering, the Wildstrike elemental lash, and eventually the turning wheel fire lash, and lightning strikes, if you select that option. It's really OP, and turns the FF ability into a real death touch, accessible from very early in the game. This is of course very cheesy, but I am offering it up as I know that there are some turophiles out there (Not So Clever Hound, I am referring to you).

[Not So Clever Hound]

That's a nice one, thanks for sharing @dgray62! You must get ridiculously high damage numbers. Sounds like a similar issue to when MuT/Transcendant Suffering used to stack with Priest of Woedica's Spiritual Weapon fists and create an absolute puncher of destruction.

I should try this mod at some point, sounds really fun and well built (besides this exploit).

It also reminds me of great mods on BG2 that vastly improved the Shifter, sometimes to the point of absolute cheesy OPness when it unexpectedly interacted/stacked with other things. (e.g. natural haste + boots of speed so you could permanently move at Haste x2 speed).

This new installment in the Werewolf & Cheese series was brought to you by:

Edited August 27, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[dgray62]

Ha, great image! You do do ridiculously high damage with the FF attack, as you correctly surmise. Needless to say, you can avoid this simply by not selecting MUT in the first place. If you like playing shifters the mod is worth trying. One thing to be aware of is the fact that the mod penalizes you with a -20% xp penalty to compensate for its OP nature. However, the penalty applies to every game when the mod is active, even if you're not playing a shifter. But you can just deactivate it in the mod manager when you don't want to play a shifter to avoid this.

[Boeroer]

Huh, I always thought it's kind of a waste that Monk/Druids can't use Transcendent Suffering in any form for their spiritshift attacks (could have been a weakened version of TS or whatever) - but I never thought about the Forbidden Fist ability in combination with Spiritshift. Just slept on that combo. Does the ability get Wildstrike bonus in the vanilla game, too?

I reckon Shifter Boar's DoT with Enfeebled + Turning Wheel might be insane on its own...?

 

Edit: jeez, FF ability indeed gets the bonus of TS and all the Wildstrike goodies in the vanilla game, too - including Boar's wounding DoT. That's awesome! 
...Lol - the Boar DoT lasts for nearly a minute then.

What a beast...

I also love about the FF/Druid that you can walk in your own Tanglefoot and get <1 sec afflictions all the time (=plenty of wounds).

Edited August 27, 2021 by Boeroer

[dgray62]

Yes. While shifted, the FF ascetic can use the FF attack, which benefits from transcendent suffering and any and all lashes, including the wild strike lash. Autoattacks while shifted benefit from the lashes, but do not benefit from transcendent suffering. This makes FF the best option in my opinion for a shifter ascetic. Helwalker obviously is best for an ascetic build with a focus on spells, but for a melee build FF takes the cake I think. Tanglefoot is great with the FF ascetic as well. However, you need the vanilla game for that. The shifter evolution mod tweaked tanglefoot, making it foe only.

[Boeroer]

Haha - dat stoopid mod!  

[dgray62]

Probably best to play this in the vanilla game, or with more moderate mods like community patch and/or BPM. But Shifter Evolution enables the überkäse for those so inclined.

[Boeroer]

"Überkäse"... we should establish that as an official term.

[Kaylon]

18 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Edit: jeez, FF ability indeed gets the bonus of TS and all the Wildstrike goodies in the vanilla game, too - including Boar's wounding DoT. That's awesome! 
...Lol - the Boar DoT lasts for nearly a minute then.

Strange... I didn't see Wildstrike working with FF and dots last 15s at best in my game.

[Boeroer]

Right - I checked again yesterday because seem to have missed to uncheck one mod when I was doing the test. And I found out that FF works with Wildstrike in my game because of the Community Patch (which I somehow must have doubleclicked or misclicked when turning off mods).

CP turns the FF ability into a "proper" melee weapon attack so it is able to generate focus, trigger Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming and Enervating Blows etc. (and profits from other melee weapon passives in muliclass combos) which it didn't before and which was kind of a bummer, especially for FF/Ciphers.
Because of this "little" change Wildstrike lashes will get applied to the FF ability attack. Boar DoT also gets applied bc of that reason (I guess, it's not tied to the tusk weapons in the first place but to the spiritshift modal).

So indeed this interaction is NOT in the vanilla game (I suspect, didn't do an additional test yet) - but it works with the Community Patch. It's not gamebreakingly good - but def. very good. 

The very long Boar DoT I mentioned is not a product of the CP though but should also occur in the vanilla game:
Enfeebled + Shifter Boar DoT (in vanilla game you might need two attack rolls for that: fist FF and then another "real" melee attack) will naturally lead to a very long DoT time because the Shifter Boar DoT has a quirk (vanilla game, too): it seems to have the base duration of the Spiritshift iirc - not the intended one which the non-shifter Boar DoT has. That's why Enfeebled + high INT from Monk leads to very long DoT times with a FF/Shifter.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

I tried to apply the DoT after Enfeebled and it stays under 15s for me (with 30INT)...

[Boeroer]

Shifter or normal Druid? Of course enemies' RES will play a role, too. I achieved over a minute on dummies who don't have high RES.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Unmodded game with INT 28 (first FF and then Stunning Surge) :

[Kaylon]

14 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Shifter or normal Druid? Of course enemies' RES will play a role, too. I achieved over a minute on dummies who don't have high RES.

I tried it on a dummy with an animist.

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

The very long Boar DoT I mentioned is not a product of the CP though but should also occur in the vanilla game:
Enfeebled + Shifter Boar DoT (in vanilla game you might need two attack rolls for that: fist FF and then another "real" melee attack) will naturally lead to a very long DoT time because the Shifter Boar DoT has a quirk (vanilla game, too): it seems to have the base duration of the Spiritshift iirc - not the intended one which the non-shifter Boar DoT has. That's why Enfeebled + high INT from Monk leads to very long DoT times with a FF/Shifter.

The reason for your shorter DoT is in the post I wrote before (see bold part in the quote).  

Shifter gets unique Spiritshift forms (Spiritshift_Boar_Shifter instead of Spiritshift_Boar) - I guess because of the healing but I don't know for sure what lead to that decision. The Boar DoT is attached to the spiritshift ability, not the tusk weapons. Somehow Obsidian made an error (Copy & Paste Error? Forgot to give a duration in the first place so it inherits the partent ability's duration? I don't know) : instead of the original short duration it has the same as the whole Spiritshift.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Boeroer

[Waski]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Unmodded game with INT 28 (first FF and then Stunning Surge) :

that ff/druid looks kinda sus   (wotw, resonance)

[dgray62]

Playing a FF/shifter ascetic is very fun in my experience, and feels powerful right from the start of the game. In terms of ultimate power at the end game it falls short of SC monk IMO, lacking as it does wotw and resonant touch, but it is a nice alternative for those of us who have already played SC monks.

[dgray62]

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

"Überkäse"... we should establish that as an official term.

Yes, English lacked the necessary vocabulary here!

[Boeroer]

5 hours ago, Waski said:

that ff/druid looks kinda sus   (wotw, resonance)

It was a SC Monk in my current playthrough. I added the multiclass with the console for testing purposes. That lowers the Power Level autimatically but doesn't remove any abilites.