[CLASS BUILD] The Crippled Captain - SC Devoted Solo PotD upscaled with CP & BPM

[yorname]

@Elric Galad's Balance Polishing Mod buffed many meme abilities in the game, making more classes viable for solo. Fighter's Toughened Fury now trigger on most damage rolls instead of crits, suddenly SC fighters have near infinite resources. With the help of multiple defense buffs and Unbending Trunk, a fighter can protect themselves from most negative effects and regen any amount of damage thrown at them.

 

 

Class: Devoted (Fighter), Sabre proficiency

Race: anything except Godlike

Attributes: max MIG, PER & INT, dump RES and average DEX CON

PotD solo: only with CP & BPM. Skipping content is also needed because the build doesn't work before lv16.

 

Active abilities: Knock Down, Conquerer Stance, Refreshing Defense, Unbending Trunk, Inspired Discipline

Passive abilities: Arms Bearer, Monastic Unarmed Training, Determination, Two Weapon Style, Rapid Recovery, Bear's Fortitude, Bull's Will, Hold the Line, Weapon Mastery, Tough, Uncanny Luck, Armored Grace, Spell Resistance, Improved Critical, Reaping the Whirlwind, Toughened Fury, Critical Defense, Great Soul, Prestige

No Rest Buffs: Konstanten's Boon (+2 CON, +1 PER & INT), Shark Soup (+2 MIG, +1PL, Body Afflictions Immunity) & everything else

 

Gear:

Scordeo's Edge - the go-to sabre in most cases

Aldris Blade of Captain Crow (heal on crit) - when additional healing is needed, and the enemies' DEF is not super high

Animancer's Energy Blade (Raw damage) - when sabres and fists both can't penetrate

Grave Calling - anti-vessel

Any good scepter - for sigils, also very useful to attack with one sabre all the time but at dual-wielding speed.

 

 

Rekvu's Fractured Casque - combined with Wrenched Knee injury (-25% Stride, can be repeatedly acquired in Poko Kohara ruins), we can take every hit without being interrupted to death, a must for this build.

Charm of Bones (+2 INT)

Magnera's Chain (+10 Fortitude & Will, +2 Piece & Crushing AR)

Ring of Minor Protection * 2, keep Ring of Greater Regeneration

Boots of Stability (+5 Fortitude), Boots of Speed is useful in a certain situation

The Giftbearer's Cloth with max History

Woedica's Strangling Grasp (+2 MIG, +2 Burn AR), Gauntlet of Discipline (+2 max Discipline)

Girdle of Eoten Constitution (+3 CON), some belts that give AR to certain types of damge can be useful too

Pet: Hemp (+1 CON, +5 Fortitude), Kathrynn (+1 INT, +5 Will). Eviee (+2 RES, resistance to RES afflictions) when boss level enemies have Terrify

 

 

 

The general idea is to have reasonably low DEF so most damage rolls can hit us, triggering Toughened Fury, giving Discipline. Fortitude and Will should be around 200 thanks to gear, Refreshing Defense and Inspired Discipline (all tier 1 inspirations, equals +5 DEF and +20 other defenses). Unbending Trunk combined with Dawnstar's Blessing and MIG bonus (I'm not sure about this) will heal more than the original damage taken, so in 99% cases we are literally unkillable. There're exceptions though.

The first one is DoT. They don't trigger Toughened Fury (unsure) and don't count towards Unbending Trunk, so they're real damage for us. In most cases Rapid Recovery and the healing from Aldris Blade of Captain Crow is enough, but there're encounters where DoT can be a real threat:

•  Young Porokoa's in SSS. They have a DoT attack that target Fortitude. That doesn't sound like a problem but in that fight every enemy attacks really slowly, so there's not enough Discipline to sustain every buff, resulting in occasional hits. 1 stack is acceptable, 2 is a reload. luckily the big Porokoa is not super tanky, and with 16 + 8 Discipline (empowerment) I was able to beat it without the use of Potion of Enlightenment.

• Frightened Child. The encounter is very tricky for most martial classes, but for us it can almost be automated if only for the child's Disintegration. I don't know how she had so much focus, constantly dishing out high level spells without even attacking me. Even with all the attacks on me I still couldn't afford Knock Downs on every Disintegration, costing me several potions and an empowerment

• Some random polarbears in BoW. I forgot which defense they target, but they attack pretty slowly and has good accuracy. I guess it's not impossible but after a few attempts I skipped them.

• An SSS fight where you need to protect some research. I imagine with many potions it's doable, I just skipped it.

Another one is a single slow-hitting boss, namely Neriscyrlas. There's no other enemy, its attacks are extremely slow, and without interrupt on our side it's constantly at 21 AR, forcing me to use the Animancer's Energy Blade. It also has Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon targeting Fortitude, means we either take DoT that heals the dragon or we spend precious Discipline to defend against it. I think if I planned every buff more precisely, it can be killed with a lot of consumables and an empowerment. But in the end I just took a Potion of Enlightenment, the only use in the run.

And of course there're dispels.

• High Will performed better than I thought, the only Arcane Dampener I took in the entire run was from Auranic, only once. The obelisk cleanses all the buff on us, but IIRC the healing part of Unbending Trunk can't be dispelled, we only lose the buff that applies healing. I only needed to make sure every time the obelisk activated, I was at full health and had some additional healing on. After punching it down the rest was a free win.
• I didn't notice it in previous runs, but there's a "dispel" that target DEF in the game - Luminescent Sporelings in FS has a Noxious Injection that target DEF, dealing huge corrode damge and applies -1000s to all beneficial effects, a perfect counter to the very basic of this build. Those in the Quarantined Section can either be blocked by others or lured to a choke point then killed one by one, but there're 3 in the Upper Bowels that I couldn't find a place to fight comfortably. In the end -50 damage from poison on Blackened Plate Armor (I was not sure it worked), Knock Down and a bit of luck saved the day. They're the toughest possible fights imo.

The impossible fights are Hauani O Whe and Dorudugan. I couldn't outheal the DoT from the ooze and obviously don't have an answer for the splits. When trying Dorudugan I found that it's possible to sustain Unbending Trunk with Potion of Enlightenment, but it also has an attack that reduces max HP, so inevitably one-hitting me. I also coudn't deal enough damage to cover its self healing. And there's The Changling's Dance, since most defenses are active abilities.

 

Overall it was pretty fun. Dual wielding is often risky in solo, the melee+ranged trick is even harder to pull off. With the changes in BPM finally I could take some liberty in weapon choices. Slowly chopping everything down while surrounded by a dozen enemies without even blinking is hilarious, more so if you do it with a broken knee.

[Elric Galad]

I read this with a lot of enjoyment.

Somehow I didn't fail my design  

[yorname]

23 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I read this with a lot of enjoyment.

Somehow I didn't fail my design  

thanks for your work! so many stuff went from meh to actually worth trying

[Not So Clever Hound]

Sweet writeup! I thought about running a solo SC Fighter with BPM Toughened Fury too. I know @NotDumbEnough has had a lot of fun with one (not solo though I think).

Couple thoughts:

Dumping RES - maybe not, actually a high RES would help you drastically reduce the DoTs durations, also with something like Solitary Wanderer ring. Could make you a lot tankier, maybe could ditch Rekvu's Casque. Don't worry about having too much deflection to not reliably trigger toughened fury... on upscaled PotD without a shield, that won't happen .

Maximizing Unbending - +% Healing Done doesn't help, but +% Healing Received does. So Glazed Chops would be a GREAT choice of food for you. Also, you're relying upon Fractured Casque so it might not be a great option, but the Evergreen Vigor passive from BPM Nature Godlike would help Unbending too. With more deflection from max RES you'd be less interrupted anyway. You could also use Unbending Shield to avoid Interrupts and add RES.

For the Dracolich and other single enemies like that, I wonder if Bring Low from Rust's Poignard could help to get more free interrupt-like attacks on top of Knock Down/Mule Kick. That wouldn't work well with Devoted though.

[yorname]

44 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Sweet writeup! I thought about running a solo SC Fighter with BPM Toughened Fury too. I know @NotDumbEnough has had a lot of fun with one (not solo though I think).

Couple thoughts:

Dumping RES - maybe not, actually a high RES would help you drastically reduce the DoTs durations, also with something like Solitary Wanderer ring. Could make you a lot tankier, maybe could ditch Rekvu's Casque. Don't worry about having too much deflection to not reliably trigger toughened fury... on upscaled PotD without a shield, that won't happen .

Maximizing Unbending - +% Healing Done doesn't help, but +% Healing Received does. So Glazed Chops would be a GREAT choice of food for you. Also, you're relying upon Fractured Casque so it might not be a great option, but the Evergreen Vigor passive from BPM Nature Godlike would help Unbending too. With more deflection from max RES you'd be less interrupted anyway. You could also use Unbending Shield to avoid Interrupts and add RES.

For the Dracolich and other single enemies like that, I wonder if Bring Low from Rust's Poignard could help to get more free interrupt-like attacks on top of Knock Down/Mule Kick. That wouldn't work well with Devoted though.

I was worried about abilities that interrupt on graze, which pretty much work 100% on this one, while those won't neccessarily be lethal, trash fights can take forever without immunity. I thought about that clown hat if no using Fractured Casque.

Dumping RES was more about balancing fortitude and will, since high INT was a must, high RES would lead to average MIG and CON at best, even though I already had body affliction immunity I still found effects that target fortitude more deadly than will ones. I guess I was just determined to not take them rather than reducing the durations.

Edited June 14, 2022 by yorname

[Not So Clever Hound]

1 hour ago, yorname said:

Dumping RES was more about balancing fortitude and will, since high INT was a must, high RES would lead to average MIG and CON at best, even though I already had body affliction immunity I still found effects that target fortitude more deadly than will ones. I guess I was just determined to not take them rather than reducing the durations.

Yeah that makes total sense. I have found that for soloing, max RES can be a remarkable but somewhat undervalued stat allocation - unless you’re relying on invisibility or hoards of summons to avoid/divert incoming attacks.