[Class Build] Savage Hunter (Wildrhymer)

[masterty66]

Race: I went with Pale Elf for extra defensive capabilities, but Hearth Orlan would also be a good choice.

Stats: 15 might, 10 con, 15 dex, 20 + 1(white that wends), 14 intellect, 3 resolve

Class: Stalker and Skald (I went with wolf pet for dps/style. If you want less fussiness with the pet, pick bear)

Skills: Whatever you want really, but I'd recommend putting at least some points into athletics for an emergency heal as you can be a little squishy at times. I did basically an even split of alchemy/athletics, but arcane and/or explosives would also be pretty nice on this build.

Build

1. Marked Prey, Thrice Was She Wronged, And Thrice Justly Avenged, Come Come Soft Winds of Death
2. Resilient Companion
3. Vicious Companion
4. Two Weapon Fighting, At The Sound Of His Voice, The Killers Froze Stiff
5. Protective Companion
6. Takedown
7. Revive Companion, Her Revenge Swept Across The Land
8. Ancient Memory
9. Marked For The Hunt
10. Stalker's Link, The Long Night's Drink
11. Hunter's Claw
12. Takedown Combo
13. Faithful Companion, Seven Nights She Waited While The White Winds Wept
14. Reny Garet's Ghost
15. Ben Fidel's Neck Was Exposed
16. They Shielded Their Gaze (optional if you dont mind swapping to Modwyr for fights with intellect afflictions), Hunter's Fang
17. Tough
18. Improved Critical
19. Her Tears, Potent Empower 
20. Accurate Empower

Weapon proficiencies: sabre, large shield

Important Items: Obsidian Wurm (pet), Sasha's Singing Scimitar (with refreshing finale), Grave Calling (or Sun & Moon). Magnera's Chain. Backup slot = tower shield + Modwyr.

Party support: You'll want a tank and healer support as this character is more of a striker/dps. 

How this build plays

I like Chanters in Deadfire. They've got fun and powerful abilities, and with Sasha's Singing Scimitar they can hit pretty hard with invocations. So this character is essentially built to hit as hard and accurately as possible with invocations. Thrice Was She Wronged will be your bread and butter for much of the early game and it hits extremely hard (especially when empowered). You'll also find that many enemies aren't very resistant to lightning damage. It's an awesome damage type.

For CC, you have The Killers Froze Stiff. This is a great invocation that paralyzes enemies and (importantly imo) targets a different defense from your other invocations. While her revenge and seven nights target reflex, this one targets will. It's handy for enemies that may have high reflex defenses or just enemies you need to CC.

So what this character does is once it gets Sasha's Scimitar it opens a fight with an empowered invocation (one of the DPS ones if you don't need CC, otherwise you can use Killers Froze Stiff to buy your party time to position/get buffs up) and then it contributes melee dps until it has enough phrases to cast again. It's a fairly straightforward playing style. Use your pet plus hunter's mark and hunter's claw to get massive accuracy bonuses for your spells and melee attacks. You will crit quite often.

Takedown combo plus an empowered Her Tears can do disgusting damage.

I mainhanded Grave Calling which I think is a fine weapon for a crit based character. You could also choose to use Sun and Moon. I didn't use that one because I wanted to have another party member use it. (in my game, I had a Stalker/Fury Merc using Thelee's "Big Game Hunter" build, and so I let that build use Helm of White Void + Sun & Moon). There are other nice crit based mainhand weapons as well. The important thing is off handing Sasha's Singing Scimitar.

Modwyr is a nice backup weapon to have for fights where enemies like to use intellect afflictions. Because this build dumps resolve those can be annoying to deal with. The dumped resolve doesn't matter that much in terms of your deflection because Stalker gives an inherent +5 deflection bonus as well as an AR bonus. Those make up somewhat for dumping resolve. I also took the chant "They Shielded" in case I wanted to approach those fights without weapon swapping. A tower shield is also recommended to have on hand as a backup slot for ship boarding fights or any fights where lots of range might hit you at once. You will need that survivability to not instantly go down from gunfire. Once they fire their volley you can swap back to main slot weapons.

I didn't pump my int super high as I felt dex/per/might were a little more important. A Skald imo doesn't need super high int if you're using the invocations I did as most of these are just dps invocations. Higher int would help a bit for Killers Froze Stiff but what I had I felt like was enough.

Overall, I enjoyed this build. There's nothing special about it in terms of new synergies or item discoveries. But I think it's a solid, effective, build that uses offensive invocations as well as melee attacks to dish out lots of damage. The fact that it can cc well and also lower enemy defenses (I rarely used Ben Fidels but in tough fights it can be handy if you need an accuracy boost) is just a bonus. 

For Chants I typically ran with The Long Nights Drink plus Ancient Memory. Long Nights Drink doesn't actually help land any of our spells, but it does help our party land attacks that debuff fort, and debuffing enemy might helps our survivability somewhat. I found that passively debuffing enemy fort defenses all the time was fantastic for my other party members who wanted to use abilities that target fort. Debuffing fort does also help us land takedown combo more reliably, so there is that too.

 

Edited May 19, 2023 by masterty66