Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?

[yorname]

Let's just assume accuracy, duration and brilliant isn't a problem, can Writ of War disable its Brutal Cleave or Magnetic Overdrive? These 2 are the only things that makes the fight tricky. I don't have a save near the boss to test on my own.

[Boeroer]

Sorry, I never tried. But for testing you can use any savegame and just spawn Dorudugan with the console using:
 

spawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Construct_Helfire_Ironclad

after activating cheats with

iRoll20s

Edited January 22 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

You can apply it, but due to its rel. short base duration and Dorudugan's very high Resolve (and pretty high Will which makes crits unlikely) it won't last very long unfortunately.

I just applied it to him and he still used Helfire Barrage against my party. So I guess it doesn't work properly against him. Not 100% sure though since I only tried it for a minute or so.   

[Constentin Lévine]

Do you think if you deal a crit with Last Word (quieting) when he is preparing his abilities that can interrupt him?

[thelee]

i do not trust writ of war or last word on how they are implemented. even if you could precisely time a last word crit and it worked as intended, dorudugan's AI script would almost certainly use it at the next possible opportunity, which would be very soon due to their 35 resolve.

central to chaining anything on dorudugan would be dumping their resolve. arkemyr's wondrous torment is good because you can double-cast it and it has a long base duration - cast once to get the initial debuff, cast again to get a much longer debuff because now dorudugan has significantly reduced resolve. psychovampiric shield also drops resolve by -10 but because i believe it's a transfer effect you can't do this double-casting, the second one doesn't do much (also much shorter base duration; base duration matters a lot against 35 resolve).

Edited January 23 by thelee

[yorname]

Tested this for a while. At least with Unity Console refreshing spells constantly, Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment + Writ of War can keep Dorudugan doing only auto attacks for a few minutes. I didn't get its hp down so can't say this works for all its abilities, but even disabling Brutal Cleave only is a vast improvement.

This makes Priest of Woedica a very interesing MC choice, their spells aren't that great outside writs but they don't get symbols anyway, so I don't feel I'm losing as much as with other priests.

[thelee]

i'm actually surprised that it even stopped brutal cleave as well. hard to square with what boeroer said though about still getting hellfire barrage. one thing i wonder is that the AI can be weird on how it queues up abilities and it might have queued up an ability even though technically it wasn't allowed to and then was able to execute it because the writ wore off.

if anyone really wants to advance science they should take down dorudugan completely and report back

[yorname]

31 minutes ago, thelee said:

i'm actually surprised that it even stopped brutal cleave as well. hard to square with what boeroer said though about still getting hellfire barrage. one thing i wonder is that the AI can be weird on how it queues up abilities and it might have queued up an ability even though technically it wasn't allowed to and then was able to execute it because the writ wore off.

if anyone really wants to advance science they should take down dorudugan completely and report back

Yeah this happened once, it queued Hellfire Barrage before I could apply the writ and used it anyway.

I'm doing a Berath run, maybe I'll just add the spell to the spellbook and see what happens then. My party composition won't be able to fight it comfortably anyway.

[thelee]

40 minutes ago, yorname said:

Yeah this happened once, it queued Hellfire Barrage before I could apply the writ and used it anyway.

ah, i wonder if writ of war only functions for blocking ability selection, the game doesn't check again when the ability actually is going to be used? this is characteristic of how player AI scripts work (the script is checked after an action is completed, not after recovery when an ability needs to be selected), which leads to some lag in scripts incorporating changing conditions/triggers because an ability will be queued well in advance of when it actually gets used.

i wonder if frightened works like this for the AI? or frightened works better and writ of war is just implemented differently in this way.

[yorname]

13 minutes ago, thelee said:

ah, i wonder if writ of war only functions for blocking ability selection, the game doesn't check again when the ability actually is going to be used? this is characteristic of how player AI scripts work (the script is checked after an action is completed, not after recovery when an ability needs to be selected), which leads to some lag in scripts incorporating changing conditions/triggers because an ability will be queued well in advance of when it actually gets used.

i wonder if frightened works like this for the AI? or frightened works better and writ of war is just implemented differently in this way.

I think frightened is different, it's very common to stop queued abilities with cipher's secret horror.

[Elric Galad]

Maybe hitting oneself with Berzeker/Priest of Woedica could provide some hints? 

[Constentin Lévine]

From the gamedata files, abilities (from classes) are listed under the usagetype Classpowerpool (in opposition to Spell). In other hand, some abilities are not named (none) and maybe frightened and Writ of War take in account only the Classpowerpool name. 

For information, in LAXG abilities gamedata, Helfire_barrage at usagetype is listed as None.

[Elric Galad]

And which is Brutal Cleave? 

[Ivanfyodorovich]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

And which is Brutal Cleave? 

It is also usagetype NONE

[Ivanfyodorovich]

Just dropping here for science some things I learned in my recent Dorudugan fights. 

• Dorudugan's Large Shield attack (off-hand shield bash) targets Fortitude. 
• Saint's War Armor with the Veteran's Maneuver upgrade does not provide immunity from Helfire Barrage (not quite sure what's up with this one, but maybe I'm just missing something here)

Edited January 25 by Ivanfyodorovich
spelling

[thelee]

9 hours ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:

It is also usagetype NONE

so sounds like writ of war blocks both NONE and Classpowerpool. that's encouragingly expansive

[thelee]

29 minutes ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:

Saint's War Armor with the Veteran's Maneuver upgrade does not provide immunity from Helfire Barrage (not quite sure what's up with this one, but maybe I'm just missing something here)

you're sure the person hasn't been hit by other attacks?

whenever something weird like this happens i assume it must be implemented like a hazard or something. those always break all sorts of rules

[Ivanfyodorovich]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

whenever something weird like this happens i assume it must be implemented like a hazard or something. those always break all sorts of rules

That’s my thinking, too. I can more rigorously test it, but it happened a few times for a ranged character. 

[yorname]

I've tested it, Writ of War can stop Dorudugan from using any ability, all the way down to 0hp. Also with 25 INT character it lasts ~15s on it, so keeping the effect on is very practical.

I think this is somewhere between perma-paralyzing and normal kiting strategy. After debuffing Dorudugan only has 90+ will, so keeping all the debuffs on is much easier. Tanking auto-attacks is also as not difficult as dodging barrage/dealing with the pull.

Edited January 25 by yorname

[thelee]

4 hours ago, yorname said:

Tanking auto-attacks is also as not difficult as dodging barrage/dealing with the pull.

Especially disabling Brutal Cleave is a nice plus and makes tanking easier

[Ivanfyodorovich]

6 hours ago, thelee said:

Especially disabling Brutal Cleave is a nice plus and makes tanking easier

/agree. It's pretty easy to get enough Deflection/Fortitude to avoid being Crit and to push him into constant underpenetration. Nice find! 

 

19 hours ago, thelee said:

you're sure the person hasn't been hit by other attacks?

So, I did some more focused testing. I disabled all addons, just in case. As it turns out, Veteran's Maneuver is pretty terribly coded. It is disabled on friendly spell "hits". All you need to clear it is cast 2 buff spells. **Whomp Whomp Sound** However, if for some reason you have a character who will use no buff spells, it does provide immunity to helfire barrage (and I'm assuming helstorm as well). Pretty handy, if a little awkward to use in current implementation. 

I'll poke around and see if that's easy enough to fix. Maybe @Elric Galad has looked at similar situations with BPM. If we are able to fix it to only count hostile spell hits, it would be a great piece of Dorudugan tech (and likely exploitable in other fun ways). 

Edit: Update - I was able to fix it pretty easily. It will be added to the next update for BPM. 

Edited January 25 by Ivanfyodorovich

[Constentin Lévine]

On 1/25/2024 at 12:21 PM, yorname said:

After debuffing Dorudugan only has 90+ will, so keeping all the debuffs on is much easier. Tanking auto-attacks is also as not difficult as dodging barrage/dealing with the pull.

Dispersed Suffering from Frostfall also target will, and against skellies it is the surest way to increase hostile effects on him (6 skellies + thunderous report with frostfall equipped mean potentially 6*20% of the effect on enemies, + many lives skellies sacrified for the cause during the fight with a frostfall set).

[yorname]

2 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Dispersed Suffering from Frostfall also target will, and against skellies it is the surest way to increase hostile effects on him (6 skellies + thunderous report with frostfall equipped mean potentially 6*20% of the effect on enemies, + many lives skellies sacrified for the cause during the fight with a frostfall set).

is this effect multiplicative like Enfeebled? seems like something can be abused. Also this doesn't have to be a kill from the weapon?

[Constentin Lévine]

1 hour ago, yorname said:

is this effect multiplicative like Enfeebled? seems like something can be abused. Also this doesn't have to be a kill from the weapon?

Dispersed Suffering proc on any weapon kill, not only frostfall attacks (so including abilities from weapons) when this weapon is equipped.  That work like for Enfeebled but whitout own duration (you have to wait the end of enfeebled effect to reaply it) so that take into account the whole duration of the effect when adjust the duration (so not only thhe current duration +20%). If you cast multiple Writ of War during the effect is lasting, you add a time to the total duration and that work for the multiplicative effect of Dispersed Suffering. This weapon is really good (there is only 2 ways to increase hostile effects).