(Class build) Beyond the Veil

[Constentin Lévine]

Phantoms are souls that did not properly separate from the body after death. This usually happens as a result of severe trauma, particularly in the case of a violent death. Unlike lost souls, which are incapable of interacting with or being detected by normal mortals, phantoms (like shadows and cean gŵla) maintain a connection to the physical world. They will attack other life forms without discrimination.

 

End-level class build to interract with the world from beyond the veil

— Blood mage / berserker —

human

• mig    high
• con    lowest
• dex    high
• per     high
• int      high
• res     lowest

Once the acces to benefecials effects durations,this build really dont need health (con) and is not affected by ennemies debuffs (res). In that sense he need the lowest resolve he can because he need a tiers3 affliction to exploit this potential.  He just have to be careful with other afflictions from friendly fire (like Blind from Chillfog for exemple). This build require a party with someone able to cast Supress affliction (priest or ring of unshackling or equivalent) and enfeebled (in my party I have a SC Woedica priest and a MC FF monk).

Before level 19, as a glass canon Warlock, defensives illusions and enchanting spells are a necessity to staying in life. After the possibility of wall of draining, as a transparent glass canon, spells have to be respec to the offensive direction, like that :

     0. Frenzy ; Chillfog

1. Blooded ; Arkemyr Dazzling Lights
2. Barbaric Blow ; Merciless Gaze ; Combusting Wounds ; two weapons style
3. Bloodlust ; Deleterious alacrity of Motion ; Bloody slaughter ; Ryngrim's repulsive Visage
4. Spirit Frenzy ; Pull of Eora ; Essential Phantom ; Secret of rime
5. Leap ; Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring ; Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment ; Dimentional shift
6. Brute Force ; Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar ; Minolettas's piercing Burst ; Death Ring
7. Blood Thirst ; Substancial phantom ; Spirit Tornado

(Necrotic Lance, Confusion, Malignant Clood, Gaze of the adragan, and Wall of draining are in Grimoire)

 

Items and theirs complementarities

• Horns of the Auroch (to ignore pull of Eora, lash for the phantom summon)
• Tears of saint Makawo (the most important item, see below)
• Cape of the Falling stars (large area phantom' explosion)
• Hylea's talons (bleeding foe only on melee)
• Kuaru's price or Ring of overseeing
• Whispers from the Depths (source of Acute, the loose of will doesn't matter)
• Sandals of the Water Lily (Ninagauth's bitter Mooring sometimes Immobilize yourself, -10 def for phantom summon)
• Unstable Coil or upgrades (Spirit siphon stack with actives and passives speed bonus, phantom summon beeing Volatile)
• Beza's Touthed Blade (Rending cuts work with all critical hit, so it is like a +2 pen for 10sec, Veil piercing because you are Beyond the Veil), Modwyr (to cast Spirit Frenzy again and again without the confuse part)
• Effort (Valiant Demise for phantom) (set 2, before casting phantom)
• Effigy's Husk (Armor of Flesh to resist to the Volatile phantom stunning reverence, add to that AoE 45-55 raw damages, -75% healing to ennemies around you)
• Grimoire of the vaporous Wizardry (3 spell casts, taking 0 damage dont interrupt, but phantom is Volatile again, this time in a bad way)

                                                        ————————————————       

 

In first place, when combat start, Blood sacrifice you upon you are below bloodied, and cast Martyr's Memories from Tears of Saint Makawo. Then Supress affliction from your priest supress the petrify effect, and you become Untargetable just for ennemies, with a -100% damage taken. in this order, cast Deleterious alacrity of Motion, Spirit Frenzy,  and Wall of draining on ennemies. Once Spirit Frenzy is active, with a FF monk, double hit your Warlock with Forbidden fist (1 to errase the Robust effect, 2 to enfeebled (no heal)). That must happen very quickly because with robust and the Blood mage constant healing, warlock is going to loose quickly every effect from bloodied (+25% damage from Blooded, +15% damage and +7 acc from Human, -75% healing to ennemies around you from Effigys Husk) because Martyr's Memories doesnt prevent you from healing. With your low resolve, meaning between 40 and 60sec of Enfeebled. That was the first step to the fight. Seems maybe fastidious but Martyr's memories is 1/rest ability, and the benefices are really good.

 

Because you are sensitive to friendly fire, priest can buff you with aware (or yourself with Eldritch aim) and other good spells. A good way to deal with ennemies is to cast Pull of Eora to keep them far away of your team, and cast essential phantom (while you get in your hand Effort) in the other side of the AoE (he is immune to pull effect, Horns of Auroch). Ninagauth's bitter Mooring him, then cast 3 Ninagauth's Freezing Pillars -3,4s casting- (with the phantom inside the AoE). An ennemie with dumbed fortitude and less than 13 freeze armor rating hited by each pulse take on 22 sec env. 840 damages +env. 130 damages from phantom explosion. You take 0 damage. With 3 casts of minoletta's precisely piercing Burst, 129-177 pierce damages with 20 pen -2.6s casting- 3.4m around you, you are pretty offensive. I'm considering Whispers from the Dephts granted you Acute since you killed someones.

The 15% Action speed bonus from Delterious Alacrity of motion doesnt stack with the 20% one from Frenzy, but once you killed your phantom, you gain another 15% Action Speed , and a 20% another one from Bloodlust passive.

Martyr's Memories give you Untargetable so at the difference to Barring Death, you dont worry about ennemies spells like Arcane Dampener, that dont hit you. In the melee, it is like you are invisible, but if you was, allies couldnt target you with Supress affliction like for withdraw. Ennemies just ignore you like you was beyond the Veil.

Yours wizardly phantoms are considered as Team and not Party, so if you can target them with offensives spells, you cant affect them with friendly spells like Dimensional shift or Recall Agony from cipher. Contrarly to the Chanter' ghost who does, as considered as Party. Yours phantoms dont trigger carnarge on Effort' Valiant Demise full attack on unconscious. They only copy your items. In other hand Spirit from Shroud of phantasm are truly copy of you and maybe trigger carnage with Valiant demise. Nothing in the combat log about that. I just know that with a monk with swift flurry active and Effort, on unconscious the AoE m full attack can trigger another attack (just for each crit roll, no recast the Valiant Demise), and a Barbarian with frenzy active trigger as the same way Carnage with each attack from Valiant demise. Really nice combined with Survivor's Tusks.

 

Blood sacrifice will restore your spells in 0.6s per sacrifice, so with the Maj Key that mean 5 spells/3sec, you take again 0 damage.

If it is not a problem to keep the Martyrs memorie effect with WoD or SoT, for the bloodied effects you have to be careful : at level 20 , your health is env. 200, you cant see it anymore because frenzy, you have to go see your enfeebled source rapidely ( Leap).

 

Note : I'm using the Community Patch, the Balance Polished Mod, the /rest to /combat Abilities Mod, and another Mod that grant more health to ennemies (+50%) to profit to longest duration combats without break the balance of the game.

 

 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Constentin Lévine

[Not So Clever Hound]

Very interesting and creative, thanks!

Untargetability is great. Quite a bit of work to pull off but vastly superior to infinite healing or cannot die effect.

One question: I might have missed something but what do Hylea's Talons bring to the build?

[Constentin Lévine]

I forgot to look if phantom' Valiant demise create wounds from Hylea's Talon!  I will edit the post when it will be done !

This is a bit of work only to stay at bloodied in fact, but otherwise you just have to active Martyr's memories and target you with another character' supress affliction.

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Blood sacrifice will restore your spells in 0.6s per sacrifice, so with the Maj Key that mean 5 spells/3sec, you take again 0 damage.

 

Note : I'm using the Community Patch, the Balance Polished Mod, the /rest to /combat Abilities Mod, and another Mod that grant more health to ennemies (+50%) to profit to longest duration combats without break the balance of the game.

Not the BPM nerfs, though  (because it adds 3s recovery to Blood Sacrifice  )

[Constentin Lévine]

I forgot another important think : Sabres, swords and estocs modals penalties (-15 deflections) are without effect for you since you cant be hitted. This is for the martial part of the build.

[Constentin Lévine]

25 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Not the BPM nerfs, though  (because it adds 3s recovery to Blood Sacrifice  )

Yes , I got only the BPM buffs !

[Boeroer]

Hylea's Talons do work with Vaillant Demise (and also Vengeful Defeat of SC Barbs - both abilities stack by the way).

If you use stuff like Effort + Cape of the Falling Star and so on, sometimes not all the AoEs trigger on death (don't know the exact "rule" here, just noticed).

Too bad Ring of Reset doesn't work with Phantoms (they just disappear and have no real knockout animation so they can't be revived). Else it would be a very cool item for phantoms...

Edited November 23, 2021 by Boeroer

[Not So Clever Hound]

1 hour ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Yes , I got only the BPM buffs !

Smart man  I also like that you got a mod to increase enemy HP. So basically with stronger abilities and more resilient enemies, you can just beat the crap out of them for longer. Nice touch!

[dgray62]

This is a very clever build! I imagine that you play this with the mod you mentioned in another post, the one that turns per rest abilities into per encounter? That way you could proc Martyr's Memories every battle.

[Constentin Lévine]

14 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Smart man  I also like that you got a mod to increase enemy HP. So basically with stronger abilities and more resilient enemies, you can just beat the crap out of them for longer. Nice touch!

I'm using the 4th mod in the dl list, but I increase the 1.25 value https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/43?tab=files . By the way, you did a really nice job with your BPM

7 hours ago, dgray62 said:

This is a very clever build! I imagine that you play this with the mod you mentioned in another post, the one that turns per rest abilities into per encounter? That way you could proc Martyr's Memories every battle.

Yes, exactely, my first reason to use this mod was because otherwise I dont use, never, watcher's ability, I want to economise them ...

15 hours ago, Boeroer said:

If you use stuff like Effort + Cape of the Falling Star and so on, sometimes not all the AoEs trigger on death (don't know the exact "rule" here, just noticed).

Yes you are right, the Insighful effect may trigger but not the weapon AoE full attack, I'm going to look about Chillfog-on-death from the Acolyte Frostbite is working with the cape, or to switch off the Effort for the Phantom (Cape of the Falling Star do superior damages than Effort for him).

[Not So Clever Hound]

19 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Cape of the Falling stars (large area phantom' explosion)

Sorry if this is a stupid question as I never tried it but would Mantle of the Seven Bolts be a good alternative here?

[Elric Galad]

3 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

By the way, you did a really nice job with your BPM

Thanks ! Feedback is always appreciated !

3 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Yes, exactely, my first reason to use this mod was because otherwise I dont use, never, watcher's ability, I want to economise them ...

I think the only Per Rest ability that I remember using is Marux Amanth Worthy Sacrifice, obviously because of its -25% Megaboss headache trait.

[Constentin Lévine]

3 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Sorry if this is a stupid question as I never tried it but would Mantle of the Seven Bolts be a good alternative here?

The AoE shock deal less damages, and the Faling Star deal fire or crush damages, and both delete the Effort AoE. But the Seven bolts abilitie is really devastating.

For Acolyte Frostbite, that work in a weird way : on death two chillfog appears, dealing a env. 5-15 base damages (with a low pen of 5, -75%) , blinding as espected and ticking for the duration, but nothing happen on tick. Without other source of On-death-Aoe, the ticks deals the same amount of damage, and the duration is low.

 

I take a screenshot for the Ninagauth's freezing pillars :

So the duration is longer than I previously said, and the Precision is in reality 120 (20 base + 14 Per (9+5 from Aware)+ 57 level+ 10 capacity level+ 2 PL magician+ 7 Fighting Spirit (human bloodied)+ 10 devotion of the Faithful) .

That mean, with the Vaporous Grimoire, 68-78 * 5 * 3 before "reload" with Blood Sacrifice, with the condition to hit each time.