Solo viable ideas without paladin, chanter, assassin and forbidden fist?

[yorname]

I guess it's a math problem that you can't really get by when soloing: it's not possible to kill everything fast enough, so either increase sustainability with paladin/chanter or avoid being hit with something like assassin+tactician. Then there's forbidden fist that can run on script and beat everything except megabosses. After trying most of them I kinda ran out of ideas. I think most classes technically can solo, just require tons of consumables to the point it's not fun anymore. Do you have anything else interesting to try?

[masterty66]

Any kind of Blood Mage comes to mind. As long as you can keep your defenses up you can just spam forever and use corrosive siphon to get health back.

The best version of this would be with Steel Garrote but you said no Paladin. I think a Stalker/Blood Mage would very good solo. Survivable thanks to the pet + armor bonus + spells, and can spam, and can summon a phantom with CDT and beat up anything it targets.

Edited November 23, 2022 by masterty66

[Not So Clever Hound]

There are many builds/threads scattered around, I had started this one earlier this year looking at strong solo classes for vanilla game vs BPM if that's helpful. BPM or not will affect what's viable quite a bit. BPM = less cheese = less broken combos for soloing.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Not So Clever Hound

[Kaylon]

If you allow extending buffs between fights (using SoT, WoD or SoF) or just finish the game then any class can do it. If you want to be able to finish the entire content without buff abuse, then the Changeling's Dance quest is another limiting factor besides the megabosses.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Kaylon

[yorname]

@Not So Clever HoundHow viable are wizards on BPM without grimoire exploit? I tried a bloodmage(without tactician) and it was quite hard to make use of the sacrifice.

Edited November 30, 2022 by yorname

[Raven Darkholme]

49 minutes ago, yorname said:

@Not So Clever HoundHow viable are wizards on BPM without grimoire exploit? I tried a bloodmage(without tactician) and it was quite hard to make use of the sacrifice.

I haven't played BPM and you didn't  add me, but in the base game you only "need" grimoire abuse for the ultimate and vela (in fact you don't even need it but it makes it so much easier).

However the main thing you'd play off in the base game would be draining wall + bdd pots, so i supoose that got nerfed in BPM.

(using concelhaut's draining missiles on your own summoned tentacles is a good way to sustain sacrifice too, however you have to be ver< mindful of the way sacrifice replenishes levels)

[yorname]

@Raven Darkholmequote seemed to stopped working for me so sorry for using at. In BPM WoD got nerfed though I don't really know how much weaker it is. Also Blood Sacrifice has a recovery and gives a -100% healing received debuff for 6s so I coudn't think of a way to safely use it.

Edited November 30, 2022 by yorname

[Raven Darkholme]

21 minutes ago, yorname said:

@Raven Darkholmequote seemed to stopped working for me so sorry for using at. In BPM WoD got nerfed though I don't really know how much weaker it is. Also Blood Sacrifice has a recovery and gives a -100% healing received debuff for 6s so I coudn't think of a way to safely use it.

Sounds like Wizard is a lot weaker then and pretty hard to use without SoF cheese + brilliant.

(tbf I'm pretty sure BPM isn't balanced around solo)

[Not So Clever Hound]

Indeed, Blood Mage with nerfed WoD, nerfed Potion of Final Stand/BDD, nerfed Blood Sacrifice AND without blatant cheese like SoF AND deciding to not use the Grimoire Imprint trick (the last Wizard cheese left in BPM)... make for a very short solo run.

I think a Loremaster can still have some fun because they can Empower to regain spells + switch to grimoire of vaporous wizardry to gain double the amount of spells back. And empower certain Chanter invocations in the next fight to regain all their empower points, while using summons as distraction for survival. An Arcane Knight with high Arcana and focus on healing/defensive spells with uber powerful offensive scrolls could be pretty solid too. But I think they'll only be viable up to a certain point at max difficulty. They can't win certain encounters, like SSS or FS hard fights and of course non-cheesable megabosses.

For soloing everything with BPM, either you allow some modicum of cheese, or you only play the few combos with built-in self-regenerating resources (built-in cheese?).

[dgray62]

Of course, you can always disable the BPM nerfs if you want to play a build that was heavily impacted by them, like Blood Mage. @Elric Galadkindly separated BPM into the buffs and nerfs packages, enabling one to use one or both as you wish.

Edited December 1, 2022 by dgray62
Additional information

[Elric Galad]

20 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Sounds like Wizard is a lot weaker then and pretty hard to use without SoF cheese + brilliant.

(tbf I'm pretty sure BPM isn't balanced around solo)

WoD is still pretty usable (+0.5s self buff, -2s foe buff, per Hit) but there should be more situations where it is much trickier to use consistently.

And a couple of very powerful effects aren't extendable (Scordeo's Cascade, Prevent Death condition - Barring Death Door also works differently and is just a very big damage shield but for a longer duration).

BPM isn't balanced around solo indeed.

But the base game isn't balanced around solo to begin with.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Elric Galad

[Raven Darkholme]

52 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

WoD is still pretty usable (+0.5s self buff, -2s foe buff, per Hit) but there should be more situations where it is much trickier to use consistently.

And a couple of very powerful effects aren't extendable (Scordeo's Cascade, Prevent Death condition - Barring Death Door also works differently and is just a very big damage shield but for a longer duration).

BPM isn't balanced around solo indeed.

But the base game isn't balanced around solo to begin with.

Sounds like you could still use it with blights from magran's belt then?

Ofc if you can't use it with BDD pots it's a lot less useful on a sc wiz, but could use stuff like escape from the cape to buff deflection skyhigh.

(doesn't really help with maintaining sacrifice tho)

[Elric Galad]

47 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Sounds like you could still use it with blights from magran's belt then?

Sure, but then it should be pointed that Brillant itself is less powerful since it regenerates spells up to Tier 3, 6, 9 cyclically.

47 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Ofc if you can't use it with BDD pots it's a lot less useful on a sc wiz, but could use stuff like escape from the cape to buff deflection skyhigh.

(doesn't really help with maintaining sacrifice tho)

Yes, but another component of the mod is the potion of Enlightenment, which regenerates a ressource (no tier limit) every 30s. The potion is quite expensive (3000 base price) but helps for biggest fights. This reduces the gap between Blood Mage and others, but even for Blood Mage it helps by providing 2 sources of regen.

[Shai Hulud]

You can solo any class if you aren't doing a bunch of magran's fire challenges or trial of iron. Some are easier than others. Multiclass is usually better, some very strong builds I've messed around with (actually for ultimate runs, so they'd definitely work on normal)

black jacket / skald, you can stack ridiculous stat bonuses with chanter and black jacket helps a lot with abydon's challenge and the fact most long fights will break your weapons if you only have two. Also can cycle with no recovery penalty between weapons, which is very useful. I like it for Essence Interrupter and whatever (e.g. Grave Calling). Essence Interrupter can spawn tons of allied mooks so the summon penalty for skald is not as important. Also lots of ways to stack accuracy and crit all the time, by late game a skald should crit more often than not so your phrases fill up real fast, and the best offensive incantations cost 2 phrases (at the sound of his voice, hel hyraf, thunder rolled like waves) or 3 (the lover cried whatever). 

black jacket / soul blade, similar to above in some ways, haven't tested it as much, but borrowed instinct offers insane accuracy + defense bonuses, and cipher has lot of decent crowd control that costs .5 seconds to cast. Not as much as chanter, but still very good.

soul blade / skald, absolute crit machine, can basically permanently paralyze / stun / charm most mooks and then zerg the tough opponents with psychovampric shield, borrowed instinct, and weapons that stun on crit, and with energized you interrupt every crit (their champion faced the horde alone)

ranger / soul blade and ranger / skald are extremely strong, similar to above builds but with added benefit of a companion. Boar is good because regen, can cast pain block on it with cipher to make it pretty tanky

blood mage / anything is really good

Can go more in depth about specific builds if you want. In general you want high stealth and to avoid most encounters until you are high level enough for the build to come together and have the needed items. 

[yorname]

I played a skald a while ago and it was pretty solid until late content. I wonder what's the weapon choice for crits? Sun and Moon and Ring of Focused Flame? I felt it was a win-more build that don't work very well on harder enemies, especially those with 130+ DEF and crits are no longer reliable.

Edited December 2, 2022 by yorname

[yorname]

why is the forum always throwing away the second paragraph... how should soul blade be played? I feel I never had enough focus to be using SA with normal weapon sets. I often saw Sun and Moon or Whispers of the Endless Paths recommended for it, but when I tried the damage and focus generation was miserable, and WotEP build don't have nearly enough DEF for anything at lv20.

[dgray62]

One of my favorite combos is a FF/SB mindstalker. Once you buff out (with Borrowed Instinct, etc.) you can pretty much alternate the FF and SA attacks. By mid game you'll do so much damage with the former that the latter will land very hard as well. You just have to max RES to keep the FF curse short enough (under 3 seconds) so that you can just spam this combo. You'll one hit mobs, and tougher (non-boss) foes will often go down after the second SA hit. But TBH it's so good it gets a tad boring.

[Not So Clever Hound]

18 hours ago, yorname said:

WotEP build don't have nearly enough DEF for anything at lv20.

Pre-nerf WotEP was a lot stronger than what it is currently, especially for Soul Annihilation AoE. You may have seen builds referring to its older version awesomeness. It can still be very good on a riposte-abusing build with Offensive Parry, and has a few other good uses (Run Through is still absolutely brutal). But yeah.

Sun & Moon on the other hand remains a weapon of choice for a lot of skald, soul blade, monk builds. S&M is cool on FF/SA (with community patch as @dgray62 pointed out) because FF attack uses the monk fist even if S&M is equipped > you generate a lot of focus > then you dump it via SA with S&M.

[yorname]

WotEP gives +4 DEF and cipher has +20 from Borrowed Instinct, that's pretty bad imo. Offensive Parry only works on misses, so I either choose another defensive class like paladin or wizard to aim for high DEF (but both SA and normal hits are pretty weak, and still can't reliably dodge stronger enemies) or a rogue who also has riposte, hits hard but even less DEF (trickster probably hits a middleground)? The only trick I can see working is with the disengagement immunity.

[Not So Clever Hound]

4 hours ago, yorname said:

The only trick I can see working is with the disengagement immunity

Yes that’s what I was talking about re. riposte abuse. With Steel Garrote/FF to get lots of heals, try and set the AI to run around and hit the furthest enemy, you might trigger lots of disengagement attacks while hitting with FF and healing through forbidden curse and heal-hitting foes under enfeebled or dazed (WotEP). And wreak havoc on enemy AI because you’re running around so much. 

[dgray62]

There's a mod that un-nerfs WotEP, if you're interested in trying it out with its original stats.

[Not So Clever Hound]

2 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Yes that’s what I was talking about re. riposte abuse. With Steel Garrote/FF to get lots of heals, try and set the AI to run around and hit the furthest enemy, you might trigger lots of disengagement attacks while hitting with FF and healing through forbidden curse and heal-hitting foes under enfeebled or dazed (WotEP). And wreak havoc on enemy AI because you’re running around so much. 

Probably nothing really new, but I just tried this in SSS vs. Trial of the Naga challenge. It's very funny to set the FF attack condition to Farthest Target/Allow Disengagement. With a fast-moving character and widespread targets, it's a festival of disengagement attacks and "missed: out of range" for the enemy.

The hostile AI doesn't know what to do with you as you run around picking the furthest targets 1 by 1. But, your own AI does get scrambled when you're surrounded and can't move, then it's stuck... HOWEVER, you can set-up 2 copies of the same behavior and pick "random order" but one behavior has FF set on "closest target" and the other one has it set on "farthest target/allow disengagement".

That way, the AI always finds a way to unf*ck itself, and it is very funny to watch as you never know what your immortal toon is going to do. Thanks for starting this thread, I'm enjoying myself because of it! I didn't use a proper SG/FF but my Autopilot Unbroken Fist little toon. SG/FF would be even stronger.

[dgray62]

On 12/3/2022 at 7:01 AM, Not So Clever Hound said:

Yes that’s what I was talking about re. riposte abuse. With Steel Garrote/FF to get lots of heals, try and set the AI to run around and hit the furthest enemy, you might trigger lots of disengagement attacks while hitting with FF and healing through forbidden curse and heal-hitting foes under enfeebled or dazed (WotEP). And wreak havoc on enemy AI because you’re running around so much. 

I presume the key to this strategy is to wear the Nomad's Brigandine with the immunity to disengagement attacks upgrade, so they always miss and proc offensive parry, right?

[Boeroer]

A multiclass Monk can also stack very high defense bonuses against disengagment attacks (Fast Runner + Tumbling and then items) so Nomad's Brigandine isn't strictly mandatory to make this work - however, it gives you 100% reliability while sparing several ability points and item slots. And it also gives good bonus deflection against melee attacks and has high AR - so the best armor for yuch an approach I would say. 

Btw: as a SC Monk it's also cool in combination with Imagined Pain. Gaining wounds from disengaging AND an Offensive Parry (which works with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming by the way) ist pretty neat.  

Edited December 4, 2022 by Boeroer

[Shai Hulud]

On 12/2/2022 at 6:38 AM, yorname said:

I played a skald a while ago and it was pretty solid until late content. I wonder what's the weapon choice for crits? Sun and Moon and Ring of Focused Flame? I felt it was a win-more build that don't work very well on harder enemies, especially those with 130+ DEF and crits are no longer reliable.

If you are just trying to generate focus Sun and Moon / Ring of FF is good, but I prefer weapons that stun or prone enemies like Sungrazer, Ball and Chain, or my personal favorite Grave Calling. Although with a skald you have access to "Their Champion Braved The Horde Alone" which gives you Energized for a decently long time if you have good INT, and with Energized you interrupt every crit so really any weapon can work. I actually prefer bare fists in a lot of situations so I don't have to worry about weapons breaking (but you need the monastic unarmed training ability to have good damage), though you lose the +12 accuracy from one-handing. Lot cheaper too. But if you aren't doing Abydon's challenge there's generally going to be better weapon choices than fists.

On 12/2/2022 at 6:46 AM, yorname said:

why is the forum always throwing away the second paragraph... how should soul blade be played? I feel I never had enough focus to be using SA with normal weapon sets. I often saw Sun and Moon or Whispers of the Endless Paths recommended for it, but when I tried the damage and focus generation was miserable, and WotEP build don't have nearly enough DEF for anything at lv20.

Soul blade you basically just punch things until you can zerg enemies with soul annihilation. The cipher abilities you want are combat enhancing like Psychovampiric Shield, Borrowed Instinct. Mainly those two. Combined they net you effective +40 accuracy and +20 all defenses for 70 focus which is insane. Mental Binding is okay but skald covers paralyze better with "At the sound of their voice the killers froze stiff", but sometimes the cone can't reach an enemy wizard or someone you really want paralyzed so it is situationally good. Borrowed Instinct is good if you don't have enough other sources of penetration, but Energized gives you +2 pen, Hammering Thoughts +1, so it is usually not needed with superb+ weapons unless the enemy has a really really high AR. Recall Agony is good for bosses. For the forced level 1 pick none are great for this build. Whispers of Treason is OK but you get a better charm later with "The Lover Cried Out to the Beloved". Eyestrike is sometimes useful as a fight opener since it can be cast pre-combat but normally I'd open with Psychovampiric Shield.

Skald/Soul Blade works well together because your melee attacks build both focus and phrases, and you get -1 to invocation cost so basically you debuff enemies, buff your accuracy, then melee them to build phrases and focus, using invocations to CC with charm, paralyze, and stun cone AOEs, then zerg higher threat enemies with soul annihilation. You'll want at least one high cost invocation so you start battles with more phrases. I like the Tier 7 weapon summon "Called to his bidding, the ancient instruments of death". You'll start with 7 phrases if you pick this and it is actually useful to start a lot of fights with as these summons are very tough and do good damage, and it won't take long for you to have enough focus to cast the offensive invocations. You may also want a spell-type invocation like "Seven nights she waited while the white winds wept / her tears fell like rain" or "so singt thy biting winds of eld nary" but neither is necessary.

For god mode fun, use strand of favor to stack focus after fights and one-shot megabosses with soul annihilation

Stats I'd do something like this (any race works, though I prefer amaua or wood elf for the might / dex resistance and +2 might and +1 dex/per are useful)

might 12

con 8

dex 16

per 18

int 18

res 3

Can dump dex a bit if you don't like resolve 3 / con 8 but enemies will be paralyzed, stunned, or charmed most of the time so I don't mind dumping resolve completely and having low CON. Perception is most important, max that, and you want INT high enough to hit lots of enemies with CC invocations so max or close to max. 

Here's a screenshot showing my go-to gear late game (but pre-dlc). I like the blackened plate set because it keeps enemies from engaging Vela as much and has enchantments for healing and penetration, but if I were playing without Magran's Fires I'd probably do something like Miscreant's Leathers and helm depends on weapon, Blackblade's Hood if using a weapon it effects, otherwise Horns of the Bleak Mother or Death's Maw. Gatecrashers are nice for extra prones, it procs pretty often. Giftbearer's Cloth is great but Cape of the Falling Star is also great. Ring of Prosperity's Fortune gives 20% hit to crit which is amazing, and Entonia Signet ring gives up to +10 all defenses. By far the best rings IMO. I like Rakhan Field boots because this class doesn't have a fast way to zip across the battlefield. Sometimes you need to zerg a wizard and can't get to him fast enough. Boots of the Stone also great if you aren't an amaua. Lot of good belt choices, I like Undying Burden for a lot of reasons but Upright Captains Belt also good, Gwyn's bridle garter if you aren't an elf. Probably best other necklace is Precognition. For pets Pes is great (+10% melee dmg, 5% hit to crit), Animancy Cat is also valid if you're using the summons a lot. I really like Trixie in some battles since she is like Boots of Haste with 5% hit to crit. 

This build is best as a no-rest. You can stack a lot of effects. Hylea's Bounty is overall the best food, rest immediately then never again. Most important status effect by far is Nature's Resolve on Tikawara (+10 acc, +2 res) so don't be aggressive/cruel. Then Dawnstar's Blessing (+50% heal) which you get on Port Maje. Then Alchemic Wits, Brawn, and Guile give +2 all stats. I think you can do some of the shrines to get +2 res and +2 con but for me sometimes it forces a rest. Amira's boon in Neketaka scripted fire event gives +2 dex. Savage Cunning gives +1 Perception, +2 survival. Cauldron Brew +1 to any stat. There's guides on no-rest runs, so I'll stop.  

Hope this helps. More detailed than I initially intended but probably not enough for a full build description