brainstorming ideas for getting mileage out of push effects

[thelee]

Revisiting deadfire after playing around with BG3 and anyone who's played much BG3 knows that an extremely effective tactic is simply to push enemies into chasms (via athletics or push effects).

Got me thinking if there's any creative way to use push effects in Deadfire. Always kind of a "meh" effect IMO but maybe there's something that can be done here (if not instantly-trivializing-encounters level of power like in BG3).

I just have a random build right now as universalist skaen/animist (despite swearing off skaen forever after doing the ultimate) - using Escape as mobility tool, and using Halt or Tanglefoot + Winter Wind to keep melee enemies away from the front line. Moderately effective, probably will get more effective at mid levels and Halt is less likely to graze or miss and I get more push effects from the druid side. (This is similar to a universalist built i posted here a while back where I argue Halt is extremely effective hard-CC for melee foes - adding in a push effect here means that Halt is effective even after the front line is already engaged.)

 

any ideas?

[Constentin Lévine]

I tried, when I would find a good strategy in combinason with Arterial Strike, a monk with Instrument of Pain using Efficient Anguish (IoP for the +500% melee range).

The red hand (Twin Slugs, 4m push on hit) is really an equivalent but with auto-attack. In other hand, Efficient Anguish can be used with AoE weapon to push many targets.

Also, Clean attacks from fighter, with in main hand Xefa's Empirical Explications (Matter Repulsion) or Eccea's Arcane Blaster (Force). Paired with Ranger (for Driving Flight) that was a pushing wave. Matter Repulsion bounce, on top of the Xefa's attack itself.

(with Avenging Storm, it is easy to see the incredible area of the Xefa's clear out wave)

It is great but expensive however. SC ranger with Whirling Strikes (with the same weapons) have the same problem, but also give some DoT. 

Driving Roar + Blood Storm is a really strong and cheap equivalent! 

It is like an Hard CC killing stuff, since enemies are constantly pushed and cant play with us.

 

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Constentin Lévine

[thelee]

42 minutes ago, Constentin Lévine said:

The red hand (Twin Slugs, 4m push on hit) is really an equivalent but with auto-attack. In other hand, Efficient Anguish can be used with AoE weapon to push many targets.

i completely forgot about red hand having a push enchant, lol i just never bothered with that enchant in the past.

the universalist build in my OP was previously going to use xefa + 1h style to get a persistent source of push mid-late game, but red hand's push on hit is going to be way way better. didn't think of arterial strike, but just tanglefooting enemies and knocking them around with each shot of red hand is going to pretty much be repeated hard cc on melee targets.

also lol fighter clear out with xefa is hilarious

[Boeroer]

Unfortunately one cannot really push enemies down something - because on the maps there are no real elevations.

The things I did with push effects:

1. Force of Anguish + Carnage (Monk/Barb) : push the victim into its own Carnage proc. It receives the normal weapon damage + Carnage dmg. 
2. Llengrath's Warding Staff + Carnage (Wiz/Barb) : same thing basically
3. Force of Anguish + Arterial Strike (Monk/Rogue) : obvious
4. Llengrath's Warding Staff + Essential Phantom (wiz/whatever) : playing tennis with an enemy (as the ball) - if you concentrate on one enemy it's hard for them to get up.
5. Spearcaster's Knockback (50%) + Arterial Strike (Arcane Archer/Rogue) : like with Red Hand - but less reliable

Force of Anguish + Warding Staff didn't seem to do anything special despite the double push it should create. I didn't try the Staff with Clear Out. 

[Konst]

Does "Gatecrashers + Sum&Moon (1-handed stile)  + monk/X" satisfies the request?

In 3.x version 1-handed-style + Sun&Moon counts character crits >= 0.5 * hits (I assume this is some kind of error on inaccuracy inside in-game statistic), and hit-chains happens very often. Nonetheless character damage wasn't good enough for considering this as "striker" build. Only some king of enemies control.

[Boeroer]

Gatecrashers only have a "passive" Knockdown effect. The push effect of them is only 1/rest.

28 minutes ago, Konst said:

In 3.x version 1-handed-style + Sun&Moon counts character crits >= 0.5 * hits (I assume this is some kind of error on inaccuracy inside in-game statistic), and hit-chains happens very often. Nonetheless character damage wasn't good enough for considering this as "striker" build. Only some king of enemies control.

I don't know what that means.

[Konst]

2 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Gatecrashers only have a "passive" Knockdown effect. The push effect of them is only 1/rest.

I don't know what that means.

It means if knockdown (not push) satisfies topic starter request -  it happens very often with "sun and moon" + "1-handed style".

It was MC brawler, and crits happens in 3.0 surprisingly often, up to the level "too often - is it game statistic mistake".

[Constentin Lévine]

6 minutes ago, Konst said:

It means if knockdown (not push) satisfies topic starter request -  it happens very often with "sun and moon" + "1-handed style".

It was MC brawler, and crits happens in 3.0 surprisingly often, up to the level "too often - is it game statistic mistake".

Each head of Sun and Moon can crit, with the one handed style for each. To melee knockdown effect, you can have better result with Ball and Chain (Subugation) in main hand and Mohora Tanga (Red Flag) (or Sun and moon eventually) in off hand, with Monk. 

I think the topic is more about to find some way to profit with push effects, but the game is not designed vertically.. 

With a wizard, ou can steal and spam Winter Wind, and as SC wizard, you can focus on that your character maybe : Winter Wind and Pull of Eora stealed, Llengrath's Wardind Staff, Minoletta's Piercing Sigil eventually.. 

To spam Pull of Eora is like spamming Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage, it is very funny and very efficient!  And you can push other enemies in the PoEora web with Winter Wind..  

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Konst said:

It was MC brawler, and crits happens in 3.0 surprisingly often, up to the level "too often - is it game statistic mistake".

If you used Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming with the Brawler then Sun & Moon will work better that expected - because every crit with an individual flail head has the chance to trigger a Swift Flurry and/or Heartbeat Drumming attack with both(!) flail heads again. This naturally leads to a lot higher chances for crit chains.

Same happens with all weapons which have multiple melee weapon attack rolls per strike (Saru Sichr, Wicked Beast, Mohora Tanga...)

Edited October 24, 2023 by Boeroer

[Konst]

4 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Each head of Sun and Moon can crit, with the one handed style for each. To melee knockdown effect, you can have better result with Ball and Chain (Subugation) in main hand and Mohora Tanga (Red Flag) (or Sun and moon eventually) in off hand, with Monk. 

I think the topic is more about to find some way to profit with push effects, but the game is not designed vertically.. 

With a wizard, ou can steal and spam Winter Wind, and as SC wizard, you can focus on that your character maybe : Winter Wind and Pull of Eora stealed, Llengrath's Wardind Staff, Minoletta's Piercing Sigil eventually.. 

To spam Pull of Eora is like spamming Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage, it is very funny and very efficient!  And you can push other enemies in the PoEora web with Winter Wind..  

@Boeroer

It is not just "good ratio of crits" it's too big ratio of crits (kind of 7000 crits from 6000 hits, yes more than 110%), so my proposition is:
 - In-game statistic counts "hits" as the amount of starting attack that ended successfully (without subsequent attacks from  Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming). No more than 1 hit for every attack.
 - But it counts "crits" as the total number of critical hits (including crits from subsequent attacks from Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming). So 1 starting attack with 3 subsequent crits will be counted as "crits" thrice.

It is proven by the screenshoot below.

BTW (it was 3.0 game version) 1-handed brawler works better than dual-weilding. 4 almost equal browlers fired at exactly the same timestamp:
 - single-handed spear "stalker's patience" - 162_000 dmg
 - single-handed son&moon - 176_000 dmg
 - dual-weilding flails (sungrazer + keeper of the flame) - 136_000 dmg
 - dual-weilding daggers (Pukestabber + Marux ... + drunkar's regreat) - 144_000 dmg.

I suggest, that it could be explained kind of:
 - for squashy targets 1-handed brawler have big amount of sub-sequent attacks,
 - for good-deflection targets 1-handed at least as good as DW because when you barely hit deflection - each attack point have enormous effect: "attack = deflection - 98" twice as good as "attack = deflecton - 99"
 - and only for medium-hard enemies (such as you often gaze, but rarly hit) dual-weilding is better than one-handed with subsequent attacks.
(unfortunately game-statistic is a very biased-thing. Because "squashy targets" - most populated category, so the most impactful in statistic and the least interesting in practice).
 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Konst

[tackthumb]

I notice on occasion when under pull or push effects, the target will sometimes get "stuck" on an object where they will be in the push/pull animation and sort of continually hover in place. When it happens to a party member, they end up being unresponsive and effectively stuck in place for the rest of the combat. It's obviously a bug, but I tried to see if I could exploit this by summoning a Furyshaper ward and knocking enemies into it but it doesn't work unfortunately. It only seems to work on map objects with collision, like a table for instance. I also tried using Withdraw on the Furyshaper ward to see if it would somehow turn it into a hard object but it still didn't work. I suspect it is because it's treated like a unit, albeit a stationary one, so it has that coding/behavior where units kind of clip through each other sometimes if trying to fill the same space. If there's a way to summon something that makes a space non-traversable it may work, but as far as I know there isn't.

As far as ways to make use of the push effect, there's always traps and seal spells that you can place ahead of time and knock enemies into. But it's not like push is really helpful for those since just placing them between yourself and the enemy is generally enough to have them trigger with proper placement. Another idea is the Hobble traps dropped from the Footsteps of the Beast that would allow you to push enemies away and use the created distance to drop the Hobble traps and kite enemies into. It is admittedly not too useful of a strategy and it would conflict with gun usage since you wouldn't be able to reload while moving, though.

[NotDumbEnough]

Pull of Eora spam with Arcane Archer can very easily lead to enemies being stuck in place for more or less the entire fight. The more you stack the more likely it is that the enemy will just get permanently stuck in the ragdoll animation and be entirely unable to act.

[thelee]

On 10/24/2023 at 1:09 PM, Konst said:

It means if knockdown (not push) satisfies topic starter request -  it happens very often with "sun and moon" + "1-handed style".

nah, i know knockdown/prone is effective. i was trying to figure out ways to make "push" specifically effective. though there are some pretty good ideas in general in this thread.

 

22 hours ago, tackthumb said:

I notice on occasion when under pull or push effects, the target will sometimes get "stuck" on an object where they will be in the push/pull animation and sort of continually hover in place.

yeah i was half-hoping for some push cheese like this, i've definitely seen this happen (very annoying when it happens to party member).

 

17 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

Pull of Eora spam with Arcane Archer can very easily lead to enemies being stuck in place for more or less the entire fight. The more you stack the more likely it is that the enemy will just get permanently stuck in the ragdoll animation and be entirely unable to act.

yeah i was originally going to roll a druid/arcane archer because between the two of them that's tons of push effects and arcane archer also gets web and binding roots (like halt on steroids), plus an animal companion with engagement to keep pushed foes away from squishy folk. not knowing about cheesier push options like what constentin suggested it sounded effective. but i've rolled two other beastmasters in the past so i wasn't keen on rolling a third.

Edited October 25, 2023 by thelee