Psion/troubadour thread?

[Gentorion]

I keep reading about the psion/troubadour, is there a thread that goes over the skills to take and equipment to go for?

[Gentorion]

To add to this I am fairly new to the game and am going to Veteren difficulty and then PoTD. I like summons and ranged. 

[Shai Hulud]

3 hours ago, Gentorion said:

I keep reading about the psion/troubadour, is there a thread that goes over the skills to take and equipment to go for?

@abot is the resident expert on this build, maybe he can chime in but this is what I had picked at L20 for Hauni O Whe fight. Exact summons you want may vary based on encounter, like if you respec for Dorudugan the wurms are useless.

I have 14/10/12/19/18/3 mig/con/dex/per/int/res, race probably go wood elf but not that important, white that wends

Char creation: The Thunder rolled like waves on black seas, Soul Shock (or valorous echoes, or whatever)
2 Iron Will
3 Lingering Echoes
4 Gernisc Slew the Beast / Psychovampiric Shield
5 Weapon and shield style
6 Recall Agony
7 Ancient Memory / Pain Link
8 My Son Do You See...
9 Hammering Thoughts
10 Oh But Knock Not.. / Pain Block
11 ...and their screams reached the heavens
12 Bear's Fortitude
13 The Lights Danced Across the Moors / Borrowed Instinct
14 Echoing Shield
15 Farcasting
16 Quick Summoning / Disintegration
17 The Empty Soul
18 Bull's Will
19 Called to His Bidding... / Rapid Casting
20 Many Lives Pass By..

Could have tailored this even more for the HOW fight by cutting summons I don't use but all you really need is the wurm summons, buff spells and disintegrate. And like you may want to upgrade the ogres when you get the chance but most of the time you'd prefer the animated weapon summons so you can drop the ogres.

Generally you want brisk recitation on and my chants look like

A: Ancient Memory
B: Many Lives Pass By
C" Many Lives Pass By, Ancient Memory

Use B most of the time, before you get that you'd use A, or if you need healing, can use C if you want a mix of healing and summons

Equipment: 
Head: Horns of the Bleak Mother
Neck: Charm of Bones
Chest: Miscreant's Leather (Magnera's Chain if you expect to get hit)
Rings: Voidward, Ring of the Solitary Wanderer (I was doing solo, in general you might want ring of minor protection + kuaru's ring or 2 ROMP, chameleon's ring is also decent)
Feet: Bounding Boots
Back: Cape of the Falling Star
Hands: Gauntlets of Accuracy
Waist: Upright Captain's Belt
Pet: Animancy Cat

Weapons: Don't much matter besides probably want Sasha's Singing Scimitar for refreshing finale, and a shield

You don't really directly attack things in most cases but when you do hammering thoughts is helpful and there are a number of good ranged weapons. War Bows are good for when you need high PEN if you take that weapon modal. The Red Hand is top tier alpha strike weapon

You can dump RES and CON to lesser extent because you shouldn't be getting hit much and iron will + bull's will gives you plenty of will defense

Edited February 7, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Gentorion]

Thank you so much, this helps a ton.

[Shai Hulud]

Should also note the ability order probably isn't ideal for what to pick AS you are leveling unless you avoid combat until at least L4 (very easy to do) or preferably higher, the build really comes into its own when you have stronger summons at L10 (ogres + pain block) and L13 is also significant for borrowed instinct which is an amazing buff/debuff, and the wisps are pretty decent with the upgrade which has a spammable dazzling lights (use shift+click several times if you want one to keep casting it). Then the build gets REALLY strong at L20 with the animated weapons and "many lives pass by". If you do want to be able to fight things immediately you'd want some L1 summons. The phantom (but reny daret..) is better in combat but the skeletons make better fodder especially if you get the upgrade. And the summon duration is pretty short even with high INT compared to summons you get later which typically have 25s default duration vs 12s, and you can about double that with maxed INT.

Could also take cipher spell tactical merge if you have room but most of the time I think it is better to use your focus on pain block and echoing shield. Pain Link is mostly useful vs enemies with very high AR like Dorudugan, but the ability is kinda bugged and only procs correctly on direct single target attacks, so to get maximum damage out of pain link you'd cast it on summons and then engage/disengage them so they are auto attacked. Recall Agony can add a lot of damage to bosses but otherwise isn't used much. Borrowed Instinct you definitely want up any time you're directly attacking things or trying to land something like disintegrate vs a tough enemy since you get +20 accuracy and +20 all defenses, but you don't need it up if your summons are handling things adequately. Psychovampiric shield is great because it is cheap at 20 focus and you can cast it on your own summons if needed for steadfast which offsets the low resolve some. Also a good primer for making borrowed instinct hit or crit vs grazing since it debuffs will.

You can take a more direct role and attack enemies with soul shock, soul ignition, mind blades, and disintegrate, or control spells like mental binding, puppet master etc, but most of the time it is better to spend focus on buffing summons, so I usually skip most of the cipher attack/control spells (have disintegrate here because it can kill hauni o whe and you don't have to fight his split forms).

Also I forgot to mention starting chant, I'd go with come come soft winds of death since you can do some damage passively that way and heal a bit from it. And finally you should almost always use brisk recitation because accumulating phrases for invocations is generally more important than whatever the phrases do.

This is just my take on the build. I don't have nearly as much experience with it as abot but it should be plenty good to get you through veteran and regular POTD (even solo). If you start doing something crazy like solo upscaled POTD with trials, this build can still handle it but some fights can get very grindy and optimizing tactics, knowing which summons to use for various situations etc becomes more significant. 

---

One final note, this build works very well with the Balance Polishing Mod if you use that (maybe better even), but is great in vanilla also. Lot of the good builds are much weaker in BPM but troubadour/psion is still very strong. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Boeroer]

Hi! Given that you're new to the game I will assume you're playing with a full party and most likely with the official companions? I would recommend that since they add a lot of flavor to the game. 

One upside of the Psion/Troubadour is its great versatility. It can do support, debuffing, CC (I count summons as CC mostly) and deal damage - even healing and reviving. Whatever you need. And then its resources never run out - which is its best selling point imo. What you find fun to play might depend on your preferences and also your party composition. If you're playing solo your build needs to look differently than the one that is supposed to go with a party.I'm not a super big fan of summons in general (because of the usually very long casting time and the added micromanagement and the additional bodies crowding my space). So in my first run with a Psion/Troubadour with a party of official companions I went with a combo of CC+damage and used Killers Frozen Stiff + Soul Shock most of the time. Both are cheap so you can cast non-stop almost and still have enough resources for the occasional big spell - but in another run I tried to combine summoning with massive mind control and build the party around that. For example I had a Swashbuckler tank with Riposte and a club+modal as well as an Assassin/Wizard who would prep. the enemies with Miasma of Dull Mindedness for my Whisper of Treason, Puppet Master or Ringleader.

 Combining summons with mind control is very impactful and almost too effective. You basically create a small army for you while reducing the number of enemies. Beware enemies that are immune to intellect afflictions though - mind control is not working with them. But summons always do work. I don't know a situation where they won't help. That's why I avoid them sometimes...

I can also totally see a build that completely focuses on summons, support and healing that wouldn't need any accuracy at all. 

That's just some examples of different approaches for a Psion/Troubadour.

For a party run I personally like to go with a small shield and some defensive abilities. This takes heat away from you because enemy AI is looking for weaknesses such as low deflection, low health, low armor and so on. If your party can present something more squishy then you are rel. safe from getting attacked so much that it hurts your focus generation (Psions stop generating focus if they get damaged). At the same time a small shield doesn't hurt your offensive casting at all.

Main weapon doesn't matter much but I liked the Gladiator Sword because it gives you extra +5 deflection with a shield - and since it doesn't get used much in melee it's offensive limitations don't matter. Later stuff like Sasha's Singing Scimitar might be what you are looking for. A lot later it might be the Weyc's Wand and so on...

What all my Psion/Troubadours had so far is a ton of INT and lots of PER. Especially the cone-shaped invocations profit from high INT enormously because their AoE will grow on a way that you don't have to get too close in oder to make them impactful. Killers Froze Stiff for example has a great base AoE already which grows a lot with lots of INT. If you then combine Lingerig Echoes with the longer durations bc. of high INT you get quite long CC effects, too. And of course your summons will last longer etc. 

I like high PER in a party with official companions because none of them has very high PER - but you need that to discover difficult traps and secrets. In addition it helps with hitting stuff (accuracy) which is always good for somebody who does CC or deals damage. For a pure summons/support build you wouldn't need PER though. Here high MIG (healing) and DEX (casting time) would be better. High DEX is always good by the way. Makes everything feel more smooth, especially casting. 

Cheers and good fun hopefully!

 

[abot]

Like already told by excellent veterans here, one of the best things from this classes combo is versatility as both classes have auto-refilling resources. So there is not perfect/standard build as it depends on the role you have/like to play. 
First important distinction is if you play with a party or solo. I'm mostly focused/experienced in solo/POTD upscaled/Magran fires build so maybe I can add something useful there.
When going solo essentially the build strength is to be able to easily keep your wall of summons always up. This should allow you to avoid being hit as possible, not being hit not only saves your life but most important keeps your focus replenishing at max speed. At higher difficulty it will not be possible to avoid being hit completely in every encounter though so I'm not a big fan of min RES if you are not going to use buff prolonging things like strand of favor, for a no cheat run I'd stay with at least 8 RES
so In short 
PER  - the higher, the better
INT - min. 15, ideal 17
I prefer to develop INT to be at least 15-16 (the more, the better)
15 is the minimum INT to be able to have summons last enough to be able to safely recall them before they disappear (brisk recitation on of course), 16 is better/easier and 17 INT or more is the sweet spot that should allow you to cast one Eld Nary (your main multi-target/long range  chanter damage invocation) in-between re-invoking summons.
Having hopefully summons always up, I prefer to invest psion spell slots on something else than Pain Block, as usually you will be able to invoke new summons before the old ones end or die (also the orcs summons  have already a robust spell available) and if you play with Hylea challenge Vela is not an available target for Pain Block anyway
Rest of stats I prefer a balanced approach of starting with about 10% little extra speed and strength so 13 STR and 13 DEX, but it depends on how much you sacrifice RES
As level 1 abilities are the ones you cannot respec, I'd suggest starting with come come soft winds of death + soul shock that will be always of use.
It's difficult to choose the perfect spells list as some of them may overlap between classes, but there are some always valid suggestions.
- respec your build abilities according to the challenges you are planning. e.g. keeping Vela alive during oratory of Wael battles is much harder without ancient memory chant
Tactics at solo/high difficulty level/magran challenges/no cheats should be to start fights from stealth if possible (basically placing a trap) and keep stealth at least until you can build your summon wall, ideally wait to build full focus too before going out of stealth and do direct damage. With very tough enemies/when you are underleveled painlinked summons micromanaging allow you to use summons kamikaze tactic, especially with enemies having disengaging attacks, you can win very difficult battles or at least lower enemy health a lot while still on stealth
- you should have CC spells available to both paralyze and stun enemies. Personally I prefer cipher mental binding for paralyze/immobilize and chanter it's crash could not be denied for stun/damage (the extra point for increased accuracy is really worth at high difficulty level)
- you should have at least one cipher dominate spell. I prefer puppet master over ring leader, mostly for the range but also for the reduced cost
- psychovampiric shield is not only useful to lower tough enemies resolve, you can use it at low level on your summons/Vela fight to get steadfast ASAP. And if you get the whale of a wand you can spam it on Vela, charm her and start the battle from an advantage point far from enemies
- tactical meld is essential at high difficulty/no cheat to improve both your and your main summon damager (e.g. animated sword summon) / controller (e.g. animated pike summon) accuracy for tough encounters
- secret horrors is essential not only to try and block enemies abilities, but to more easily land your spells targeting fortitude
- amplified wave is good, but  screaming souls + skeletons can be strong against heavily armored foes/can target will instead
- if your build has means to interrupt often (e.g. effort sword enchanted with hemorragic + a fast cast or big area spell e.g. mind blades/amplified wave), thick grew their tongues chant is fantastic

Edited February 8, 2023 by abot

[abot]

26 minutes ago, abot said:

sorry this was meant to be an edit, not a quote LOL
[EDIT] lastly, during a high difficulty/no cheat/no rest run, avoid drugs. They are not worth if you don't cheat prolonging their effect

 

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by abot

[Shai Hulud]

If you have a party plus summons, the troubadour/psion should almost never get damaged. Especially if you cast tactical meld on summons or tanks to get more engagement, though with 2 to 3 summons plus a tank it's rarely needed. Ranged enemies can still target you, but that's where farcasting helps. Can position yourself very far behind the front lines and nobody will target you because they can't reach you (except maybe in ambush situations).

Was going to break down the stats to show why you still want high perception but abot has already done that and I mostly agree. Also like his spells breakdown, what I posted is just what I had specced for Hauni O Whe. Mental Binding can certainly be very useful and is a cheap spell.

@abot do you really think we need resolve with psychovampiric shield and borrowed instinct? Can also throw in bracers of greater deflection or whatever. Resolve seems an expensive stat to invest for the payoff, though 8 is a pretty low investment. I prefer to have max INT and PER and rather have higher dex then might then con at the cost of resolve, because you get more action speed / healing and damage / health vs 5 points deflection. The affliction penalty can be offset with the ring of solitary wandering. I don't hate your stat spread though. Also I like Secret Horrors in a lot of builds but what spells do you have targeting fortitude? Like exactly Disintegrate? Amplified Wave?

Don't have much to add beyond his post other than that you can in fact script casting summons so it isn't that micromanagement heavy. Most people don't use scripts enough. The interface is a little clunky but once you've scripted a few behaviours it gets easier to modify and make new ones. It should be added you do not NEED scripts especially if you pause a lot but they can make the game more enjoyable by automating the more tedious behaviors.

Here is a very simple script to cast summons and buff them. I add an "always true" condition to most blocks so you can invert it with NOT if you don't want that block being used for the current encounter. The cooldown time you set for however long the spell lasts usually, except if you're trying to keep up an inspiration then you can set it at 0 and have it cast whenever you don't have the inspiration (see psychovampiric shield). For the summon section just move to the top the summon you want cast, and alter the cooldown time if it has a different duration. Can also lower the "at least X phrases" to match your level or the minimum cost of the invocation. And at the bottom is an attack block. I have it set to attack if you have a ranged weapon. This block only triggers if the conditions for the blocks above it aren't met. If you want it to just auto attack with whatever then remove the ranged weapon requirement and leave it as "always true" (or replace with some condition you prefer). I prefer to be casting invocations and summons most of the time so I usually turn off the auto-attack block by checking NOT for always true condition.

EDIT: I cropped the second pic poorly, the summon block has a cooldown of 45. And you don't need the "set to their purpose" invocation most of the time, I had it memorized for a specific encounter to prolong summons and afflictions.

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[abot]

Yeah, right resolve is a very subjective feel, it depends on difficulty/party or solo mode of course but also a lot on play style. I prefer to have it less minimized also to help with afflictions duration, and maybe spare one ability slot to increase will to instead choose some other extra spell (e.g. Ectopsychic Echo is always good but often sacrificed for something else)
[EDIT] oh one last not so well known psion trick: you can easily break engagement targeting one of your nearby skeletons with fast cast cheap telekinetic burst, that will hopefully push you away from danger with no disengagemnt attack and landing the spell on a cheap skeletons is much easier than targeting a tough enemy e.g. dorudugan

Edited February 8, 2023 by abot

[Shai Hulud]

7 hours ago, abot said:

Yeah, right resolve is a very subjective feel, it depends on difficulty/party or solo mode of course but also a lot on play style. I prefer to have it less minimized also to help with afflictions duration, and maybe spare one ability slot to increase will to instead choose some other extra spell (e.g. Ectopsychic Echo is always good but often sacrificed for something else)
[EDIT] oh one last not so well known psion trick: you can easily break engagement targeting one of your nearby skeletons with fast cast cheap telekinetic burst, that will hopefully push you away from danger with no disengagemnt attack and landing the spell on a cheap skeletons is much easier than targeting a tough enemy e.g. dorudugan

Cool trick, thanks. I've been breaking engagement by "switch to squid's grasp" method or use leap but this is better

Speaking of Dorudugan, have you been able to defeat him with all the trials without using SOF etc.? He heals himself so much I'm finding it extremely difficult. I did defeat him with a ranged devoted / troubadour, basically using the summons to keep him away from me and just shooting him really fast (sure handed ila + hunting bow modal) with essence interrupter but I had to turn off abydon's challenge because the weapon breaks when he has like 85% health. Tried a devoted / troubadour using unarmed attacks but after my shield and armor breaks I get killed. Abydon's challenge is really annoying in this encounter. Seems like only summoned ranged weapons would really work (or attacking with summons), but caedebald's blackbow for some stupid reason is a level 8 spell so I can't use it multiclassed... leaving ranged weapon choices as kalakoth's minor blights and rot skulls. 

Just as example of how much he heals himself, I checked the records before / after the devoted / troubadour ranged guy, and I did over 25k damage so he healed himself for like 18k. I'm finding it very difficult to keep up with that with just summons (even using pain link), and direct weapon attacks cause weapons to break...can use cipher spells I guess but penetration is pretty bad. Disintegrate is raw but targets fortitude. Could do like 1000 screaming soul attacks maybe lol...

EDIT: Tried some more builds v Dorudugan. Since weapons and armor inevitably break vs him I made a couple that didn't need weapons or armor. Devoted / barbarian and forbidden fist / barbarian. Idea is to stack tons of healing and out tank him. With the devoted/barbarian I can get him to Hurt but then the toons just punch each other forever. Doru can heal like 700 in a helfire barrage and starts throwing in helfires the more hurt he gets. I don't think I can damage him fast enough. So I thought, maybe I need to debuff his healing, hence the forbidden fist / barbarian, but the duration of the forbidden fist debuff is super short and it targets fortitude so it doesn't have much effect, and I have to dump dex somewhat so the curse doesn't build up before next FF attack so with that build I couldn't even get him down to hurt. Left the room and checked back like an hour later and no progress. The devoted / barbarian might have been able to do it eventually (but would still take minimum several hours on fast mode), I didn't wait as long with that one. Had to dump resolve in that build and kept ending up with like 12 stacks of brutal cleave, eventually killed myself with a disengagement attack... 

Seems impossible solo upscaled trials etc. Could do it if Pain Link worked correctly. There's probably a way but he heals so damn fast without cheese strategies IDK

Edit 2: Tried again psion / troubadour, decided to go for maximum effort. It is pretty easy to get Doru to about 2/3 health. It took forever to get him from 2.5 bars to 2 bars though. He kicks up the healing with charged helstorms making the helfire barrages do insane amounts of healing. Engaging/disengaging the summons for pain link is really tedious because they're frequently interrupted and can't be moved in that state... did eventually get him to half health where he starts using magnetic overdrive. May try to finish him later but it took over two hours to get this far. Also tried some direct cipher spell attacks but he has 50 resolve so anything you land with a duration lasts like 3 seconds, so can't keep up borrowed instinct or psychovampiric debuff, and I landed disintegrate once but again 3 second duration so did very little damage. Best tactic seems to be just casting pain link on the animated weapons and trying to proc that as much as possible. It also helps negate the helfire barrage heal, but I've figured out to proc helfire barrage pain link multiple times the weapons have to be hit by different fireballs so if you send them in different directions you can sometimes proc 2 or 3 hits. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Gentorion]

So much good information, thank you guys! I'll take all this into account, I'm going with a party for a while, probably not solo until I learn more of the game.  So thankful!

[abot]

yeah, that battle without 0 recovery is really hard, I'm not sure it is feasible, no durable melee weapons apart monastic unarmed training (or use an axe with bleeding cuts until you break it, then keep punching). maybe something that could help a little is using Magran's belt, the blight(s) is not a real menace and it can contribute to reduce dorudugan mobility as it often attacks also doru, it is an excellent easy target for a first borrowed instinct, once you have borrowed instinct targeting Dourudugan should be more feasible. Maybe alternate punches with soul shock/ectopsychic echo, and chill fog from the grave calling sabre, hard to paralyze him but helps keeping him flanked

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by abot

[Waski]

@Shai Hulud try long pain fists

[Shai Hulud]

14 hours ago, Waski said:

@Shai Hulud try long pain fists

That's a good idea. Any specific build in mine? I just tried a cantor (ff monk / troubadour). Energized + skeletons are very handy to keep aggro off me. Wrote simple script to cast enlightened agony, lightning strikes, their champion braved the horde alone, instruments of pain, and spam forbidden fist. Was doing about 60 to 70 damage on a hit but still not damaging him fast enough to get even to hurt. 

The combo doesn't have great accuracy but constant energized is pretty nice, and it isn't too hard to keep up the shield cracks either (not that I need both in this case). My devoted / barbarian came closer to outdamaging doru's healing because of frenzy plus blooded, one stands alone etc. but couldn't get past 2/3 health. Only the ranged devoted / troubadour with hunting bow modal and sure-handed ila has worked so far...but that one wouldn't work with abydon. 

Maybe helwalker / troubadour will be fast enough if i max dex and chant sure-handed ila. Be a little less forgiving in keeping doru from aggroing me (sucks long pain only has range 5) but should outdamage the forbidden fist, i would think.

EDIT: Ha, I left the ff monk / troubadour fighting doru and went to bed, when I checked back 9 hours later they were still fighting and at exactly the same amount of doru's health knocked off (half a bar). There seem to be inflection points at 3.5/4 bars, 2.5/5 bars, and 2 bars. These are places at which he changes tactics. At 3.5 he starts using helfire barrage more and at 2.5 he is using charged helstorms as well as helstorms. I have gotten below 2 only twice and can't remember exactly what changes besides he starts doing the charged overdrive thing, but it could possibly get easier if he stops healing so fast. So clearly for this battle you need two things: survive whatever damage he throws at you for a long time, and damage doru faster than he heals. The second one is what's really difficult. 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Elric Galad]

BPM buffed Long Pain to recovery 3s. They are basically ranged fist with 5m range and +1 base damages. A bit like what you get for Instrument of Pain bar versatility (and plus Driving Flight).

It's a bit off topic but sometimes I wonder if the easiest BPM class against Dorudugan could be non-Ghostheart SC Ranger. With Heart Seeker, you can cut his regen in half for the rest of the encounter (and lower its HP pool a bit) and Vengeful Gried gives you permanent Nimble and Tenacious once pet is down (at the cost of a bit of some accuracy). With the cloak, you can be immune to fire and you can find a way to escape magnetic overdrive disengagement attacks, and from there you only have to run and shoot while spamming some Twin Arrows with Potion of Enlightenment. Not sure how it works in practice ^^, I'm not into solo, and SC Ranger is probably not the best solo class for the rest of the game.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Elric Galad

[Shai Hulud]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

BPM buffed Long Pain to recovery 3s. They are basically ranged fist with 5m range and +1 base damages. A bit like what you get for Instrument of Pain bar versatility (and plus Driving Flight).

It's a bit off topic but sometimes I wonder if the easiest BPM class against Dorudugan could be non-Ghostheart SC Ranger. With Heart Seeker, you can cut his regen in half for the rest of the encounter (and lower its HP pool a bit) and Vengeful Gried gives you permanent Nimble and Tenacious once pet is down (at the cost of a bit of some accuracy). With the cloak, you can be immune to fire and you can find a way to escape magnetic overdrive disengagement attacks, and from there you only have to run and shoot while spamming some Twin Arrows with Potion of Enlightenment. Not sure how it works in practice ^^, I'm not into solo, and SC Ranger is probably not the best solo class for the rest of the game.

With the hunting bow modal you could maybe do the "damage doru faster than he dies" part. Particularly with him weakened.. Except that your bow will break.

There is also the part of surviving while he tries to murder you though and Ranger doesn't have the passive healing needed to face tank him, so once the boar dies you're dead pretty fast. Could run away but...

With a boar companion and drinking potion of enlightenment, with resilient companion and other passive buffs, you can cast hardy companion once every 30s. Since you buffed that to 1 bond and 15s duration with max INT you could have the boar constantly robust. 

That might be enough to keep him alive. If it is then this build could work except...your bows will break. Regular hunting bows would also have penetration problems and Ranger can't boost pen I dont think. Maybe if you had 4 superb+ war bows with the modal on...but my one victory so far required 25k damage and you can fire 240 shots so that requires averaging 104 damage or being able to finish him off with fists. Well he wouldn't heal as much once weakened so wouldn't require 25k damage in that case, so maybe it is possible.

I'm thinking my devoted/barbarian might be able to do it also if I took axes as my proficiency and had four axes. They'd probably all break but with bleeding cuts might get him to near death, then bloody slaughter kicks in and hopefully turns the tide. And that build is probably better overall with the interrupting blows and carnage.

Interesting thought though might try it later

Edit: was thinking about it, but is damage converted to health considered healing like any other? I'm assuming when he's weakened he only recovers 50% from helfire iron but I dont actually know that. I mean like when I have bloodfire that converts fire damage to 10% healing but it doesn't seem to be affected by things that normally affect healing like dawnstars blessing so it has me wondering. Will test when I get a chance

Edited February 9, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Not So Clever Hound]

3 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Edit: was thinking about it, but is damage converted to health considered healing like any other? I'm assuming when he's weakened he only recovers 50% from helfire iron but I dont actually know that. I mean like when I have bloodfire that converts fire damage to 10% healing but it doesn't seem to be affected by things that normally affect healing like dawnstars blessing so it has me wondering. Will test when I get a chance

As far as I have experimented, damage conversion to health is not affected by healing done or healing received, but it is affected by Might / % damage increase modifiers (on the outgoing end) and % damage taken modifiers (on the receiving end). So for example Shattered Vengeance, Assassin/Helwalker passive or Sworn Enemy (all on the receiving end) will increase how much health you convert from the (increased) damage dealt.

[Shai Hulud]

5 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

As far as I have experimented, damage conversion to health is not affected by healing done or healing received, but it is affected by Might / % damage increase modifiers (on the outgoing end) and % damage taken modifiers (on the receiving end). So for example Shattered Vengeance, Assassin/Helwalker passive or Sworn Enemy (all on the receiving end) will increase how much health you convert from the (increased) damage dealt.

Yep, I tried out the ranger build, doesn't work at all. I misread the "hardy companion" description, thought the healing lasted the duration, if that were true you could keep up healing and use the boar as a tank, but the healing only lasts less than half, which with max INT is about 16 seconds, not nearly long enough for the potions of enlightenment to replenish. IDK why the duration is so short, savage defiance lasts like 60 seconds (granted costs 2 rage, but still lasts 2x longer per resource).  

I'd written a nice script to keep up shadowed hunters (the intuitive part) which you CAN keep up, and thought hardy companion healed for 39 seconds with max INT leaving a bit extra, hoping distraction training would replenish enough resources I could use an occasional hunter's fang (turns out melee only) or twinned shot, but...none of it works because you can't keep the pet alive. Shadowed Hunters it turns out doesn't even work when the pet is dead. You do gain perma-nimble and tenacious from vengeful grief which is okay but not worth the huge loss in accuracy and hit to crit on my hearth orlan (bonded grief, hearth orlan, distraction training, stalker's link) for a net -30 accuracy and -10 hit to crit (and -2 might -2 resolve). Nimble is unfortunately not good enough for running past dorudugan, he will brutal cleave you. Swift might work, for this part of the theory anyway. But there is no way in hell you can damage him fast enough, even if your bows didn't break, and I had to console in 4 legendary war bows to have a chance of them not breaking and having enough penetration (requires hot razor skewers overdraw and a dead pet to get 18 pen)

You are indeed correct about the damage to health being unaffected by health-modifying stuff and as I suspected helfire iron is not even affected by dorudugan being weakened, he still heals 100% of his damage, making heart seeker a one-shot max health debuff for 4 bond (which *can* miss btw).

I give this build an F for solo. Pretty funny how one little thing can make or break a build. If Hardy Companion had a longer duration on the healing I think this might actually have worked. You can't keep up hardy companion, the boar dies in tough encounters. He dies, your accuracy goes to **** and you get aggroed. And now you can't cast your nifty invisible / heal / intuitive ability shadowed hunters, so you die. Could revive him but that costs 2 bond, and you'll still run out of resources before you've even touched doru. 

To be fair it may not have worked anyway for this encounter because brutal cleave would eventually stack so high the boar could be one-shot in helfire barrages, but in general hardy companion is the lynchpin allowing the boar to tank while you DPS ranged. 

@Elric GaladBuff Heal Companion and Hardy Companion! 20 health per 3 seconds for 6 seconds is just pitiful. Needs to be at least 12 seconds to work with enlightenment potions at max INT. The pet buffs (resilient companion etc.) could also use a boost. Had most of them but he does 2 damage and gets crit every time with overpen. Just my 2 cents. This is the least effective solo build I've tried so far.

Some MC ranger builds could have potential, like I've played seer before and it is pretty decent because Pain Block + Borrowed Instinct etc., the L8+ ranger abilities are just bad compared to the ability to get 7 levels of cipher goodies (or chanter, or whatever). For ranger builds to be viable the pet needs to tank, and it can't tank without help from other classes. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[dgray62]

I beat Doru solo for the first time recently using a tried and true build, a FF contemplative, wielding Magran's Favor and Scordeo's, and using SoT to prolong Blade Cascade once it procs. He goes down very quickly with this build. I beat all the mega bosses with this build. Belaranga was the easiest and the Sigilmaster was the longest and most annoying of them. I've beaten them before with parties, but strangely it seemed much easier with a well-build and somewhat cheesy solo toon.

Edited February 10, 2023 by dgray62
more info.

[Elric Galad]

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

You are indeed correct about the damage to health being unaffected by health-modifying stuff and as I suspected helfire iron is not even affected by dorudugan being weakened,

Good to know.

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

he still heals 100% of his damage, making heart seeker a one-shot max health debuff for 4 bond (which *can* miss btw).

That is a little detail, but Heart Seeker is an auto-hit.

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I give this build an F for solo. Pretty funny how one little thing can make or break a build.

Yeah, I wasn't taking God challenges into consideration. BPM isn't balanced for this.

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

If Hardy Companion had a longer duration on the healing I think this might actually have worked. You can't keep up hardy companion, the boar dies in tough encounters. He dies, your accuracy goes to **** and you get aggroed. And now you can't cast your nifty invisible / heal / intuitive ability shadowed hunters, so you die. Could revive him but that costs 2 bond, and you'll still run out of resources before you've even touched doru. 

To be fair it may not have worked anyway for this encounter because brutal cleave would eventually stack so high the boar could be one-shot in helfire barrages, but in general hardy companion is the lynchpin allowing the boar to tank while you DPS ranged. 

@Elric GaladBuff Heal Companion and Hardy Companion! 20 health per 3 seconds for 6 seconds is just pitiful.

It is still strictly better than Lay on Hand as long as pet healing is concerned. And can be upgraded with a rather long duration Hardy, while Lay on Hand can't (I mean you can grab one of the 2 Zeal improved versions, but that is a different ability). I think it is fine, just indeed not strong enough for solo, since pet is an offtank at best.

Hardy is also mostly useless vs such High PEN foes as Dorudugan, and may anyway require Bear to start becoming relevant.

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

 

Needs to be at least 12 seconds to work with enlightenment potions at max INT. The pet buffs (resilient companion etc.) could also use a boost. Had most of them but he does 2 damage and gets crit every time with overpen. Just my 2 cents. This is the least effective solo build I've tried so far.

Some MC ranger builds could have potential, like I've played seer before and it is pretty decent because Pain Block + Borrowed Instinct etc., the L8+ ranger abilities are just bad compared to the ability to get 7 levels of cipher goodies (or chanter, or whatever). For ranger builds to be viable the pet needs to tank, and it can't tank without help from other classes. 

SC Ranger is probably not suited for solo then (which is not a surprise, I just had some hope for this particular battle). Never had pb as a party member, the Line auto-hit enfeebled is contributing enough.

I'm not sure there are many SC that can Solo as a general rule. Apart Wizards and maybe other casters. Monk maybe ? SC tends to give you more specilization in your class assets, but for Solo you need some degree of versatility. Need to heal (at least yourself), deals damages, tanks, etc... And I'm ot even speaking about God challenge which requires another level of specific skills (I'm not forgetting your request of Monastic Unarmed Training for everyone by the way).

[Not So Clever Hound]

13 hours ago, dgray62 said:

and somewhat cheesy solo toon.

Ahem, « somewhat » cheesy?

[Waski]

@Shai Huludno mods, Doru was "easy" on sc monk (naked) with long pain and resonant touch

[dgray62]

Yes, SC monk, especially a tanky FF, can solo the game on PotD upscaled with enough game experience.

[Shai Hulud]

14 hours ago, Waski said:

@Shai Huludno mods, Doru was "easy" on sc monk (naked) with long pain and resonant touch

solo? what subclass? guessing ff? 

I've 35 resolve, dex 2 (dwarf), int 13, might 18, per 18, con whatever's left, ring of the solitary wanderer, ring of prosperity's fortune, strand of favor (doesn't extend already existing effects in bpm), rekvu's scorched cloak, rekvu's fractured casque, gauntlets of accuracy, no armor, unarmed two weapon fighting. Pets have tried eevie, grog, and ooblit. Think I like ooblit though that puts me at 34 resolve. Grog is nice because no disengagement attack. Eevie actually not that great in this encounter. 

script goes enlightened agony on not smart => lightning strikes on not quick => dichotomous soul every 25s => instruments of pain every 40s => forbidden fist if smart+quick

Manually trigger resonant touch on 25 resonance (don't think i can script that). Does 22 damage per resonance, so 550 on a resonance trigger, about 70 per ff hit every 2s (when not casting something else). 

This is a really good build and I think would handle most encounters, possibly all of them, but I am still having trouble getting doru below 2.5 bars of health. Might be doing something wrong, I haven't played monks much or SC at all. One thing of note, BPM nerfs dichotomous soul to require 6 wounds but potions of enlightenment give 1 wound per 30 seconds so it is a very slight nerf compared to vanilla if using the potion.  

@Elric Galad

I know BPM isn't centered around solo but I think SC ranger sucks in party too. In a party ranger is DPS ranged but give a bow to a devoted, a rogue, a cipher, a dozen MC chars and they'll out-DPS the ranger. The pet is the main difference of the ranger and it is kind of useless if you can't keep it alive, which SC can't and requires diverting resources from other characters to help the ranger keep his accuracy bonuses and level 9 intuitive buff.

I think a lot of SC classes can solo the game if you cut out trials and skip certain megabosses. Barbarian, chanter, cipher, fighter, monk, paladin, rogue, wizard, can probably all do it or come close with at least one subclass. I haven't played druids or priests much but without woedica/eothas challenge I think would do okay. I mean yeah lay on hands sucks but paladin doesn't have to keep a pet alive in order to use its l9 abilities does it? And it has much more armor and defenses. And a really, really good L8 ability that lets you die and revive full health upwards of 3 times. Paladin also does very well in its party role of support, as most classes do very well in some party role.

SC ranger is just bad, any role it can perform can be performed much better by another class IMO, but it could be made viable pretty easily by increasing duration of the heal on Hardy Companion (or change it to Robust Companion, or add a higher level tier to the same effect). The effects of the pet dying are too severe, you lose all the pet abilities (which mostly suck because the pet can't stay alive, but could otherwise be good), a number of ranger/pet abilities, and get some severe debuffs. Another way to make the SC ranger more viable would be to change the Bonded Fury ability to give some or all Tier 3 inspirations (particularly robust), the tier 2 inspirations aren't really enough to justify ever spending 3 bond on it. 

I do appreciate adding monastic unarmed to other classes, should help with abydon's challenge for some builds and just makes sense

@dgray62Yeah I'm sure that's a good build with blade cascade, fact is a great many builds can solo if you proc blade cascade and can extend it in some manor (SOT, Wall of Draining, SOF). BPM nerfed the hell out of all that. SOT adds 50% to an effect and can't more than double it even if you keep casting it, and blade cascade only applies to the weapon. I'm stuck with recovery. Maybe wielding four generic legendary axes could work with barbarian / devoted or similar class, haven't tried it yet. Don't think I can slashing pen high enough (21!) so I guess the bleed effect must do good damage even with underpens?

EDIT: I DID IT! Thanks Waski, SC FF monk did the trick but man what a grind. I checked before/after combat stats and I did over 62,000 damage, meaning he healed for like 54k. Yeesh. I've figured out the hardest part is getting Doru down to half health. Once bloodied he starts throwing in magnetic overdrive which is a waste of time if you're wearing upright captain's belt (or horns of the auroch or whatever), so it becomes slightly easier to outdamage his healing from that point on. At least half the fight was grinding him down from 2.5 bars to 2 bars. The resonant touches add just enough damage to change it from a neverending grind to actually beatable. FF monk / soul blade might also work vs Dorudugan doing similar strategy except triggering soul annihilation for burst damage, and that one could easily do HOW with disintegration, plus hammering thoughts gives +1 pen which is awesome, and gets a lot of accuracy buffs.

My barb/devoted I think can probably defeat him also. Got to 2.5 bars pretty easily with fists, if I use axes with bleeding cuts to get him bloodied I think fists can finish him. 

Both builds are pretty much invulnerable but I suspect the SC monk may have more problems with Hauni O Whe than barb/devoted. Maybe SC monk can do it... can tank HOW form, then stack 25 resonances on each gigantic ooze, detonate when they start the merge, and pray can finish one of them. Barb/devoted can just use high hit to crit and interrupting blows. Don't think Belranga will be much of an issue, just kill enough spiders and she's easy. Auranic probably not too bad if I don't get turned into a pig. Other bosses IDK, but probably not tougher than HOW or Dorudugan.

Got a few promising builds now, one of these will work.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Shai Hulud