Wolf or bear on my ghost heart / ascendant seer?

[Tomucci]

The idea atm is mostly to use the pet as a meat shield with tactical meld and pain block after I evasive roll into the enemy back line and cast puppet master on their priests/wizard's ect

Ghost heart first and foremost because I think its cool but since the idea for the pet is to be a meat shield being able to reflexively cast it in between me and an enemy is important 

For weapons using Griffin's Blade and scordeos trophy, Griffin's for either action speed or spell dmg, scordeos with driving flight to build up focus and recovery bonus simultaneously, them together with pistol modal for attacking very quickly specifically with scordeos so I'm always racking up that recovery bonus

All the other regular seer stuff is pretty straightforward I think, accuracy buffs to help land spells, pet with ectopsychic echo, takedown combo with disintegration ect

So, is this a good idea or is using the ghost heart pet as a meat shield a waste? Would it just be better to use a wolf and lean into the bonus dmg?

Any other pointers/ideas with the build?

Edit: another bonus of using the pet as a tank instead of dps is saving on 2 ability points which this multi is stretched thin with

Edited June 17, 2023 by Tomucci

[Boeroer]

Have a look at this table:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1384851536

As you can see the Bear is not far behind the wolf in terms of damage but way ahead in terms of tankyness due to the higher health and the +2AR - which is a big deal, especially if you also use Resilient Companion + Pain Block for additonal +4 AR so it makes it worthwhile to stack AR on him for being tanky.

The Wolf is better as a dps companion - but you are not looking for dps from your animal companion if I read that correctly.

The Boar is also pretty tanky because he has the biggest health pool and on top has a constant health recovery during combat. Compared to the bear (and wolf) his dps sucks though. But if that's not your focus anyway you could give him a try, too. With Pain Block his health regeneration will be nice.

3 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Any other pointers/ideas with the build?

 Seers can make use of the nice synergy of Takedown Combo + Disintegration (and Soul Ignition). Both spells don't count as actual damaging attacks but are considered status effects (which conveniently deal damage). Thus they don't remove the Takedown Combo effect on the enemy. Usually you will use Takedown Combo with your Animal Companion on an enemy, said enemy will get an effect on him so that the next attack roll against him gets +100% damage and then the Takedown Combo effect gets removed.

But if you aply Takedown Combo and then use Disintegration (or the other way round, doesn't matter) all the damaging ticks of Disintegration will get the +100% dmg bonus while the Takedown Combo effect will NOT get removed until it runs out, basically doubling the damage of Disintegration (or Soul Ignition, works the same - or even both). 

   

Edited June 17, 2023 by Boeroer

[Tomucci]

5 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Have a look at this table:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1384851536

As you can see the Bear is not far behing the wolf in terms of damage but way ahead in terms of tankyness due to the higher health and the +2AR - which is a big deal, especially if you also use Resilient Companion + Pain Block for additonal +4 AR so it makes it worthwhile to stack AR on him for being tanky.

The Wolf is better as a dps companion - but you are not looking for dps from your animal companion if I read that correctly.

The Boar is also pretty tanky because he has the biggest health pool and on top has a constant health recovery during combat. Compared to the bear (and wolf) his dps sucks though. But if that's not your focus anyway you could give him a try, too. With Pain Block his health regeneration will be nice.

 Seers can make use of the nice synergy of Takedown Combo + Disintegration (and Soul Ignition). Both spells don't count as actual damaging attacks but are considered status effects (which conveniently deal damage). Thus they don't remove the Takedown Combo effect on the enemy. Usually you will use Takedown Combo with your Animal Companion on an enemy, said enemy will get an effect on him so that the next attack roll against him gets +100% damage and then the Takedown Combo effect gets removed.

But if you aply Takedown Combo and then use Disintegration (or the other way round, doesn't matter) all the damaging ticks of Disintegration will get the +100% dmg bonus while the Takedown Combo effect will NOT get removed until it runs out, basically doubling the damage of Disintegration (or Soul Ignition, works the same - or even both). 

   

I'll go with bear, I like it thematically with a pale elf from the white that wends as well, the ghost version kinda looks like a polar bear

After taking more of a look at the ability tree I think those 2 extra points are crucial as well

And thanks, good to know with the takedown combo, I didn't actually know that they interacted that specific way, only that they synergized and produced solid dmg

[Shai Hulud]

19 hours ago, Tomucci said:

The idea atm is mostly to use the pet as a meat shield with tactical meld and pain block after I evasive roll into the enemy back line and cast puppet master on their priests/wizard's ect

Ghost heart first and foremost because I think its cool but since the idea for the pet is to be a meat shield being able to reflexively cast it in between me and an enemy is important 

For weapons using Griffin's Blade and scordeos trophy, Griffin's for either action speed or spell dmg, scordeos with driving flight to build up focus and recovery bonus simultaneously, them together with pistol modal for attacking very quickly specifically with scordeos so I'm always racking up that recovery bonus

All the other regular seer stuff is pretty straightforward I think, accuracy buffs to help land spells, pet with ectopsychic echo, takedown combo with disintegration ect

So, is this a good idea or is using the ghost heart pet as a meat shield a waste? Would it just be better to use a wolf and lean into the bonus dmg?

Any other pointers/ideas with the build?

Edit: another bonus of using the pet as a tank instead of dps is saving on 2 ability points which this multi is stretched thin with

Definitely bear. Does almost as much damage as wolf but has much better armor. Ghost heart summon has a long duration and you can't heal companion so you want your meat shield to last longer to conserve resources.

I'd probably use a bow or just go melee but it really depends on your party, you can make that work I'm sure. But you'd build focus faster with frostseeker or essence interrupter. For melee I like stalker's patience.

And check out this post for some ghost heart scripting. I haven't made a complete seer script but this tries to keep your companion active and that you're attacking the same enemy, also a block for targeting the pet with ectopsychic echo (can duplicate it and adjust to target with pain block or whatever). Can also script to cast psychovampiric shield on whatever your animal companion is attacking.

 

[Tomucci]

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

Definitely bear. Does almost as much damage as wolf but has much better armor. Ghost heart summon has a long duration and you can't heal companion so you want your meat shield to last longer to conserve resources

Theres not much room in my ability allocations to add the passives to get any real damage out of the pet I think but it's good I have the viable option to respec that way if I choose

1 hour ago, Shai Hulud said:

I'd probably use a bow or just go melee but it really depends on your party, you can make that work I'm sure. But you'd build focus faster with frostseeker or essence interrupter. For melee I like stalker's patience

The thing about scordeos trophy is that while I build up focus with it I'm also building up recovery speed, with each attack I get +10% recovery speed (with driving flight) so if it takes an extra attack or two to build up focus that'll help me spam spells more quickly while I'm ascended. Griffin blade in the off hand for +10% recovery, +45% dual wield bonus, +20% from gunner, +50% pistol modal front loads the weapon recovery speed so I can get shots out quickly and build up a nice amount of universal recovery speed.

If I want to swap to doing straight dps/focus gain I'll probably keep the red hand or frost seeker or something in my other weapon slot.

And thanks for the script, I dont use them because I don't really understand them but I've been meaning to learn so I'll take a look.

[Boeroer]

I know it's a bit nitpicky, but it's -x% recovery/reload time instead of +x% recovery/reload speed. Mechanically that's quite a difference and -50% reload time is much better than a +50% reload speed buff would be.

But yes, the shortened recovery time from Scordeo's Trophy is very nice to have when reaching the ascended state.  It is benefical to then pick spells with short casting time but longer recovery time - because Scordeo's recovery time buff only applies to the latter. Stuff like Mind Lance or so... lances go pew pew pew!

Griffin's Blade only applies its recovery buff to the attacks made with the Blade itself - so it's not really helpful for shooting. I don't think you need that anyway because you most likely will hit the reload animation floor (can't speed up reloading anymore beyond that) with all the reduced reload time buffs you already have. Still works for +10% spell damage though, so not a bad pick.

You could also think about Tuotilo's Palm in order to keep the shooting speed high while having better defenses.

Or use Lover's Embrace + dagger modal for +10 melee deflection without any drawback - and the Frenzy effect is universal, meaning it also procs off of your pistol shots. It would stack with Scordeo's Trophy's recovery buff so you could cast even faster while ascended. And since Frenzy is an action speed bonus it also speeds up the casting animations (unlike recovery buffs). 

Xoti's Sickle with maxed Religion and Urgent Harvest is also a great speed buff for casting if you stand near a slain enemy. And it also provides melee deflection. The Soul Reaper dmg bonus only applies to the sickle itself - but it doesn't matter how you kill enemies to get the stacks for it. It is possible to gain up to 30 Religion for a max bonus of +80% dmg with the sickle (killed 4 enemies while ascended for example) - and that can come in handy once you get attacked in melee. Pretty nasty dmg from the sickle then and pretty good focus gain then, too. 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Boeroer

[Tomucci]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

I know it's a bit nitpicky, but it's -x% recovery/reload time instead of +x% recovery/reload speed. Mechanically that's quite a difference and -50% reload time is much better than a +50% reload speed buff would be.

Is this just in regards to the pistol modal? If so with it on, if i understand what you mean, the -50% cuts the total time in half and every other bonus is then applied to the remainder?

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

But yes, the shortened recovery time from Scordeo's Trophy is very nice to have when reaching the ascended state.  It is benefical to then pick spells with short casting time but longer recovery time - because Scordeo's recovery time buff only applies to the latter. Stuff like Mind Lance or so... lances go pew pew pew!

I took this into account, the cipher spells im choosing are eye strike, mental binding, puppet master, ectopsychic echo, pain block, borrowed instinct, tactical meld, disintegrate, ancestors memory

They dont all have the 0.5 cast / 4.0 recovery times, but the ones that dont are important i think, tbf the other ones are too, not much room to pick non essentials on this multi, missing out on secret horrors kinda stings but i figure between eye strike, mental binding and puppet master ill have enemies controlled enough

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

Griffin's Blade only applies its recovery buff to the attacks made with the Blade itself - so it's not really helpful for shooting. I don't think you need that anyway because you most likely will hit the reload animation floor (can't speed up reloading anymore beyond that) with all the reduced reload time buffs you already have. Still works for +10% spell damage though, so not a bad pick.

Thats a bummer, didnt think it worked that way, kinda weird considering its other option is a stat stick

 

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

You could also think about Tuotilo's Palm in order to keep the shooting speed high while having better defenses.

I was gonna give this to xoti but yeah maybe, the build is a bit squishy

 

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Or use Lover's Embrace + dagger modal for +10 melee deflection without any drawback - and the Frenzy effect is universal, meaning it also procs off of your pistol shots. It would stack with Scordeo's Trophy's recovery buff so you could cast even faster while ascended. And since Frenzy is an action speed bonus it also speeds up the casting animations (unlike recovery buffs). 

This actually sounds like it does what i wanted to do with griffins but better, kinda weird that it triggers universally instead of just off dagger attacks

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Xoti's Sickle with maxed Religion and Urgent Harvest is also a great speed buff for casting if you stand near a slain enemy. And it also provides melee deflection. The Soul Reaper dmg bonus only applies to the sickle itself - but it doesn't matter how you kill enemies to get the stacks for it. It is possible to gain up to 30 Religion for a max bonus of +80% dmg with the sickle (killed 4 enemies while ascended for example) - and that can come in handy once you get attacked in melee. Pretty nasty dmg from the sickle then and pretty good focus gain then, too. 

Religion kinda goes against my RP with this character but good to know for another one, ive been thinking about making a relgious character recently actually

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Is this just in regards to the pistol modal?

This is the case with all bonuses that say -x% recovery time instead of +x% action speed. The pistol modal, Gunner, Opening Barrage (Scordeo's Trophy) and so on. Action speed buffs is something like Frenzy. Action speed buffs apply both to casting/animation time and recovery time, but in order to calculate the effect on recovery, action speed buffs must be converted in a form where you can combine them with those recovery time buffs.

So in the end all action speed buffs also get converted into -x% time numbers. You can see that when you check the actual attack time and recovery time of the equipped weapons (see img below). The percentage which is shown there will be lower than the action speed ability says in its description.
For example: While Frenzy is a +25% action speed mobifier the tooltip will say that the recovery bonus is "only" -20%. That's just because of the mathematical conversion from "+speed" into "-time":

So when you see something like +25% action speed just keep in mind that it's less impactful for your recovery than -25% recovery time would be. -50% recovery time is a very big bonus. +50% speed would also be not bad (especially for spells that have a long casting time - because action speed buff apply to both casting/animation time and recovery time) - but on the tooltip above it would translate "only" to ~-33% recovery time.

 

3 hours ago, Tomucci said:

the -50% cuts the total time in half and every other bonus is then applied to the remainder?

That's not what I was aiming at to explain, but nevertheless that is correct.  It's the reason why speed buffs/recovery time buffs have linear returns in Deadfire (instead of increasing returns in PoE) and you can never reach 0 recovery by stacking all sorts of speed/time buffs. But the returns are not diminishing - they are linear. So it's worth it to stack those buffs. However: in case of reloading there is a hard "bottom cap" or floor value that you cannot break. The reloading animation cannot be sped up until a certain value (I don't remember the value in seconds) and you will reach that pretty soon with Gunner, pistol modal and Opening Barrage+Driving Flight. Once you hit that floor every additional speed buff/recovery time buff is a waste when it comes to reloading time for the pistol. For your casting however there is no floor so you can stack Opening Barrage for your ascension like there's no tomorrow and it would still speed up your recovery after casting a spell.

The good thing with Opening Barrage is that it's not doing like -5% recovery time, then again -5% recovery time and so on but indeed adds up the 5% before applying them to your recovery "for real". So stacking 2 Opening Barrages truly translates to -10%, 3 stacks = -15% and so on. Otherwise the enchantment would be a lot worse. 

3 hours ago, Tomucci said:

This actually sounds like it does what i wanted to do with griffins but better, kinda weird that it triggers universally instead of just off dagger attacks

  Yes, I guess it's a little mistake by the devs. Some weapons have effects that are not limited to the weapon usage itself. Lover's Embrace is one of them.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Boeroer

[masterty66]

For me it depends on what you want to do with the pet. I just finished a playthrough with a Seer (Stalker/Soulblade) and I had a Wolf pet.

I actually did not find the Wolf too difficult to keep up, but I didn't use it to tank. More like a flanker. At high levels I relied heavily on play dead to save it when it got mobbed, and that worked well enough. It would die if it got surrounded but if I managed to avoid that it would usually be ok.

If you want your pet more in the fray, Bear would be the answer, but do keep in mind that even then it's no substitute for a real tank and it will require some healing to keep up.

[Pharaoh]

Is multiclass ascendant really that better than single class?

I'm playing as SC ascendant, it finally cured my restartitis, and I'm lvl 20 about to do the DLCs

So far it has absolutely destroyed everything on PotD upscaled

Just open with kitchen stove and insta-ascend and then Xoti can prolong it forever with salvation of time

Can't imagine multiclass being any better

Don't you basically gimp yourself by being 3 lower PL?

Edited June 18, 2023 by Pharaoh

[masterty66]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh said:

Is multiclass ascendant really that better than single class?

I'm playing as SC ascendant, it finally cured my restartitis, and I'm lvl 20 about to do the DLCs

So far it has absolutely destroyed everything on PotD upscaled

Just open with kitchen stove and insta-ascend and then Xoti can prolong it forever with salvation of time

Can't imagine multiclass being any better

Don't you basically gimp yourself by being 3 lower PL?

Guess it depends on what flexibility you want. A Blood Mage/Ascendant for example could prolong its own abilities with Wall of Draining, and have more survivability with wizard spells. It could also help enable itself via using Miasma on enemies and then casting Cipher spells. But as you note in your example sometimes it can be more efficient to not roll all those things into one and just have a party member do it instead. For example having Aloth cast miasma and then having your Cipher do his thing instead of doing it all yourself. Or as you wrote, having Xoti prolong your buffs with SOT instead of needing to use WOD for that.

 

 

[Tomucci]

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

This is the case with all bonuses that say -x% recovery time instead of +x% action speed. The pistol modal, Gunner, Opening Barrage (Scordeo's Trophy) and so on. Action speed buffs is something like Frenzy. Action speed buffs apply both to casting/animation time and recovery time, but in order to calculate the effect on recovery, action speed buffs must be converted in a form where you can combine them with those recovery time buffs.

So in the end all action speed buffs also get converted into -x% time numbers. You can see that when you check the actual attack time and recovery time of the equipped weapons (see img below). The percentage which is shown there will be lower than the action speed ability says in its description.
For example: While Frenzy is a +25% action speed mobifier the tooltip will say that the recovery bonus is "only" -20%. That's just because of the mathematical conversion from "+speed" into "-time":

So when you see something like +25% action speed just keep in mind that it's less impactful for your recovery than -25% recovery time would be. -50% recovery time is a very big bonus. +50% speed would also be not bad (especially for spells that have a long casting time - because action speed buff apply to both casting/animation time and recovery time) - but on the tooltip above it would translate "only" to ~-33% recovery time.

 

That's not what I was aiming at to explain, but nevertheless that is correct.  It's the reason why speed buffs/recovery time buffs have linear returns in Deadfire (instead of increasing returns in PoE) and you can never reach 0 recovery by stacking all sorts of speed/time buffs. But the returns are not diminishing - they are linear. So it's worth it to stack those buffs. However: in case of reloading there is a hard "bottom cap" or floor value that you cannot break. The reloading animation cannot be sped up until a certain value (I don't remember the value in seconds) and you will reach that pretty soon with Gunner, pistol modal and Opening Barrage+Driving Flight. Once you hit that floor every additional speed buff/recovery time buff is a waste when it comes to reloading time for the pistol. For your casting however there is no floor so you can stack Opening Barrage for your ascension like there's no tomorrow and it would still speed up your recovery after casting a spell.

The good thing with Opening Barrage is that it's not doing like -5% recovery time, then again -5% recovery time and so on but indeed adds up the 5% before applying them to your recovery "for real". So stacking 2 Opening Barrages truly translates to -10%, 3 stacks = -15% and so on. Otherwise the enchantment would be a lot worse. 

  Yes, I guess it's a little mistake by the devs. Some weapons have effects that are not limited to the weapon usage itself. Lover's Embrace is one of them.

 

 

Thank you for clarifying, much appreciated.

6 hours ago, masterty66 said:

For me it depends on what you want to do with the pet. I just finished a playthrough with a Seer (Stalker/Soulblade) and I had a Wolf pet.

I actually did not find the Wolf too difficult to keep up, but I didn't use it to tank. More like a flanker. At high levels I relied heavily on play dead to save it when it got mobbed, and that worked well enough. It would die if it got surrounded but if I managed to avoid that it would usually be ok.

If you want your pet more in the fray, Bear would be the answer, but do keep in mind that even then it's no substitute for a real tank and it will require some healing to keep up.

The main thing I want my pet for is for protection, like to stop my mc from getting ganked after I evasive roll into their back line to start dominating their priests/wizard's ect, or just in general from melee attackers, also for things like ectopsychic echo set ups, and to potentially lock down and apply my accuracy bonus to groups of enemies with tactical meld 

Pet needs to be tanky enough to do these things without dying too quickly, but if they do die it's not the end of the world because I can summon them again

The survivability should be fine, especially with pain block, but I was more wondering from people with seer experience if this was a good strategy, if it wasn't and just using the pet as a dps dive bomb was more effective I probably would have swayed towards wolf

3 hours ago, Pharaoh said:

Is multiclass ascendant really that better than single class?

I'm playing as SC ascendant, it finally cured my restartitis, and I'm lvl 20 about to do the DLCs

So far it has absolutely destroyed everything on PotD upscaled

Just open with kitchen stove and insta-ascend and then Xoti can prolong it forever with salvation of time

Can't imagine multiclass being any better

Don't you basically gimp yourself by being 3 lower PL?

Like masterty said, it depends on what you want, a single class cipher will usually be better at being a cipher than a multuclass but there's lots of other functional components you can add with multiclassing, ranger, wizard and fighter multiclasses can help out with accuracy, rogue adds dps ect

Even still, I dont play single class characters because I personally find them boring compared to multiclass

[Pharaoh]

15 hours ago, Tomucci said:

Like masterty said, it depends on what you want, a single class cipher will usually be better at being a cipher than a multuclass but there's lots of other functional components you can add with multiclassing, ranger, wizard and fighter multiclasses can help out with accuracy, rogue adds dps ect

Even still, I dont play single class characters because I personally find them boring compared to multiclass

 

18 hours ago, masterty66 said:

Guess it depends on what flexibility you want. A Blood Mage/Ascendant for example could prolong its own abilities with Wall of Draining, and have more survivability with wizard spells. It could also help enable itself via using Miasma on enemies and then casting Cipher spells. But as you note in your example sometimes it can be more efficient to not roll all those things into one and just have a party member do it instead. For example having Aloth cast miasma and then having your Cipher do his thing instead of doing it all yourself. Or as you wrote, having Xoti prolong your buffs with SOT instead of needing to use WOD for that.

 

 

You lose super OP stuff like time parasite, reaping knives, and shared nightmare

I just discovered an amazing synergy with ydwin as a pure rogue

I give her reaping knives, she has 100% hit to crit conversion with gambit max guile, so she always crits, so she can spam it forever

And you don't need survivability from lvl 13 on you just have perma barring death's door on with priest

I feel like SC is underepresented on this forum, at least from the stuff I've read so far

They are pretty OP in a party

I guess on a solo multiclass should be better though

[Shai Hulud]

On 6/18/2023 at 5:45 PM, Pharaoh said:

Is multiclass ascendant really that better than single class?

I'm playing as SC ascendant, it finally cured my restartitis, and I'm lvl 20 about to do the DLCs

So far it has absolutely destroyed everything on PotD upscaled

Just open with kitchen stove and insta-ascend and then Xoti can prolong it forever with salvation of time

Can't imagine multiclass being any better

Don't you basically gimp yourself by being 3 lower PL?

Multiclass ascendants are more "self-reliant" you might say. Also if you are going for specific things like sky high accuracy so you always crit then the accuracy bonuses from ranger are useful. Hierophant blood mage / ascendant become pretty powerful once they get wall of draining. You do miss good cipher spells but can extend the ascended state with wall of draining indefinitely. Though as you've discovered a priest can do this as well. Just depends what you want.

For party support SC ciphers are extremely good because of time parasite, reaping knives, defensive mindweb, and shared nightmare.

Multiclass is definitely better playing solo because SC ciphers are too squishy.