Wizard with Rekvu's Scorching Cloak + friendly Monk = more beams, more healing, more fun

[tackthumb]

This was a discovery I made while testing out friendly fire spells on a Forbidden Fist. The monk passive ability Soul Mirror will not only reflect back missed ranged weapon attacks, but also some spells, including beam spells. When a beam gets reflected by a monk this way, it creates an entirely new, separate beam that originates from the monk and bounces back at the caster without further harming the monk. This new beam also uses the stats of the original caster to calculate damage, accuracy, and penetration, though visually it looks like the monk is the one firing it back at the original caster. Additionally, the monk doesn't need to be the initial target of the beam for this to work. They can walk into the path of a beam, get missed and start reflecting it, then walk out of the path to safety. Here is a screenshot if this is not clear:

In this example, I used my wizard to cast Ray of Fire on the Rotghast. I then walked both of my monks into the path of the spell, waited until it missed and reflected new beams, and then walked the monks out of the way so they wouldn't get hurt any more. So the middle beam is the original hitting the Rotghast, while the two new branching beams are reflecting from the monks back at the wizard. Why is this noteworthy and how can it be exploited?

The obvious choice is for the wizard to use the Ray of Fire beam and wear Rekvu's Scorching Cloak while suffering from an injury (Serious Burn giving the most synergy here) so that they are immune to fire damage and can convert 10 percent of that damage into healing. With high might and a couple of spell damage modifying items, I was able to deal an average of 20-30 fire damage, translating to 2-3 health gained per tick. While this may not seem like a lot, compare that to Wall of Flame, another fire spell that I'm sure others have tried to use with Rekvu's Scorching Cloak for healing purposes. The problem with using Wall of Flame this way is its base damage is simply too low, so you'll often see it giving 0 health back when it ticks. Meanwhile, Ray of Fire does enough damage to consistently heal, and it ticks off at a decent rate and for a good amount of times during the spell's duration. Not to mention the fact that duplicating the beams with this Soul Mirror trick is a literal damage multiplier for no additional cost other than having to move your monks around and taking some initial damage for them to create more beams. The more monks with Soul Mirror you have in your party, the more beams you can create for additional amounts of healing and damage. If you also cast Combusting Wounds on your enemies, you can deal even more damage from the rapid-fire procs coming from multiple beams.

Another part of this interaction you can exploit is the fact that the reflected beams are making attack rolls against the wizard but not harming them due to their fire immunity. So you can use it to trigger items that have on-hit effects while safely not taking damage. For example, wielding the Lover's Embrace dagger, upgraded with the Lover's Quarrel enchantment to match your wizard's gender, can give you Frenzy when you crit yourself with Ray of Fire, and if you also have Slayer's Claw in your offhand, you can get +2 penetration from the upgraded might inspiration. Acolyte's Frostbite has an enchantment called Vengeful Cold which creates a frost blast upon getting crit, however it is tricky to utilize here because it requires you to be a minimum distance away from your allies before it will trigger and its attack will be directed towards the monk whose beam triggered it. The Effort with Hemorrhaging trick to turn your beam attacks into melee attacks also works here, but I haven't found a good way of leveraging this yet. I tried using it with Minoletta's Piercing Sigil and Okura's Kettle, thinking I could trigger their AoE effects, but they unfortunately didn't work. I think it's because they need the attacks to come from an enemy and not yourself.

If anyone is able to come up with ways of benefitting from nondamaging self attacks (which can be melee coded if you also use Effort), please share!

[Constentin Lévine]

1 hour ago, tackthumb said:

If anyone is able to come up with ways of benefitting from nondamaging self attacks (which can be melee coded if you also use Effort), please share!

Pearhaps you dont need a Monk to reflect the beam, any character with Mirrorback could work ; also maybe another wizard with Arcane Reflection (wich can also cast a beam) could work. But Monk reflection is concerning Ranged Attack, and these ones reflect spells, so maybe that reflect only some damage proc, not the beam itself. 

 

The Brooch of Inevitable Winter and the Belt of Magran's Chosen, in combinaison with the Rekvu mantle, should be nice ; also multiclassed with Assasin or Hellwalker, with the Furrante's Breastplate to take more damage so more healing from fire can be cool too.

Maybe, with Effort, the Okura's Kettle (10% chance to proc Boiling Spray on enemies on crit) ; the High Harbinger's Robes DoT on hit seems always target enemies , and if you cast Flame Shield the Effort's roll can give another fire damage on yourself, maybe. 

With Effort and Avenging Storm, wearing the Deltro's Cage (Shock Shield) and the Boltcatcher could give you more healing. 

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Constentin Lévine

[tackthumb]

26 minutes ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Pearhaps you dont need a Monk to reflect the beam, any character with Mirrorback could work ; also maybe another wizard with Arcane Reflection (wich can also cast a beam) could work. But Monk reflection is concerning Ranged Attack, and these ones reflect spells, so maybe that reflect only some damage proc, not the beam itself. 

 

The Brooch of Inevitable Winter and the Belt of Magran's Chosen, in combinaison with the Rekvu mantle, should be nice ; also multiclassed with Assasin or Hellwalker, with the Furrante's Breastplate to take more damage so more healing from fire can be cool too.

Maybe, with Effort, the Okura's Kettle (10% chance to proc Boiling Spray on enemies on crit) ; the High Harbinger's Robes DoT on hit seems always target enemies , and if you cast Flame Shield the Effort's roll can give another fire damage on yourself, maybe. 

With Effort and Avenging Storm, wearing the Deltro's Cage (Shock Shield) and the Boltcatcher could give you more healing. 

 

You are right, a Wizard with reflection spells or any other character with reflect items like Mirrorback and Collar of Eothas's Light does work the same way so you don't necessarily need a Monk with Soul Mirror to be your reflect source.

I should mention in my testing that my character had on Rekvu's Scorched Cloak, Rekvu's Fractured Casque, Brooch of Inevitable Winter, High Harbinger's Robes, Kuaru's Prize, Ring of Focused Flame, Firethrowers Gloves, Sash of Judgment, Magran's Favor, Griffins Blade, 23 Might, and and was using Crusted Swordfish food bonus to get the 20-30 damage numbers per tick. I think a lower might score would actually be better as a Blood Mage here so you would take less self damage from Blood Sacrifice and just depend on items for more spell damage/healing.

Okura's Kettle didn't seem to work when I used it with Effort. I think the problem is that it might need to be triggered from damage coming from an enemy specifically. Minoletta's Piercing Sigil wasn't working either with Effort for the same reason, I believe.

Your suggestion of Avenging Storm and the shock items sounds promising. I'll test it later tomorrow and see how it goes.

[Constentin Lévine]

2 hours ago, tackthumb said:

Wizard with reflection spells or any other character with reflect items like Mirrorback and Collar of Eothas's Light does work the same way so you don't necessarily need a Monk with Soul Mirror to be your reflect source.

With a priest (mirrorback) and a cipher (potion of improved arcane reflection), for the confirmation !

[Boeroer]

When I tested Okura's Kettle years ago it never worked as advertised. It simply did nothing. Maybe it got patched but I doubt it. 

[tackthumb]

12 hours ago, Boeroer said:

When I tested Okura's Kettle years ago it never worked as advertised. It simply did nothing. Maybe it got patched but I doubt it. 

Good to know. For what it's worth, I wasn't able to get it trigger at all in all of the testing that I did, though I am using it in weird circumstances.

Here are the results from further testing. The Avenging Storm + Boltcatchers + Deltro's Caged Helm + Effort + Ray of Fire suggestion from @Constentin Lévine does work and applies Avenging Storm attacks every time Ray of Fire procs. However, when you reflect it back to the caster, you will quickly melt yourself since you may be immune to the burn beam but not to the added shock damage. I don't think there's a way to get shock immunity, is there? Maybe Fury spiritshifting into a storm blight? This setup destroys everything in its path already so it might be good enough even without the reflect trick to make more beams.

The ability to create extra, separate beams only works if you reflect it off of the original beam. I was thinking since a new beam is created and starts with its own duration, you could maybe daisy chain Ray of Fire between multiple party members with reflect so that as soon as the beam starts to die, you juggle a new beam between another pair of party members. Alas, it doesn't work this way and you can't endless carry the torch of one Ray of Fire casting throughout the entire combat encounter.

I'm still obsessed with getting Minoletta's Piercing Sigil to work with the reflect trick while wielding Effort but I don't think it's possible. I tried making my wizard confused to see if that would work but still nothing. Based on the tooltip description (which I know isn't necessarily accurate a lot of the times), it seems like it needs to be triggered by an enemy. Maybe if you got charmed by an enemy after getting Ray of Fire to reflect on yourself, MSP would possibly proc on self-reflected beam hits, but then I'm not sure if it would target the caster, a random enemy, or who knows what. When you trigger the frost blast from Acolyte's Frostbite, for instance, it aims it in the direction of the monk who created the reflected beam, sometimes hitting empty air if there's no one there.

Just thinking of other ways to implement the self-reflected hit rolls, you could maybe make a Forbidden Fist/Wizard to get something out of the fact that Effort will Hobble and Sicken you and can provide Forbidden Fist wounds when those afflictions expire. The only problem is that the duration of these afflictions are fairly long and Ray of Fire procs pretty frequently so it will constantly restart the timer, making it so that they will only expire once Ray of Fire ends. Not sure if getting just two wounds is worth it considering the loss of healing you get from Sicken.

[tackthumb]

19 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

With Effort and Avenging Storm, wearing the Deltro's Cage (Shock Shield) and the Boltcatcher could give you more healing. 

Whoops, re-read your post and saw that you meant the Deltro armor which is where you're getting the shock healing from. In which case this could be a very cool setup for a blood mage who launches all their nukes, then casts reflected Ray of Fire/Avenging Storm combo for even more damage and healing to fuel blood sacrifice.

[Constentin Lévine]

50% healing from electricity is cool! 

A druid (brilliant needed) or a SC wizard who has stolen the spell can cast several Nature's Terror in the same time to dealing a lot of damages for enemies and healing the Deltro's Cage wearer if nearby (with a resolve resistance or immunity). Note the BPMod cancel the friendly fire. But it is out of subject!