An Exercise in Tankiness (an untested Class Build-ish topic)

[Jojobobo]

EDIT: I'm not going to keep this post updated with the entirety of suggested changes as I'm hoping to develop it fully into class build. Read the comments if you want to keep up to date with all the juicy details!

 

With the new Deadfire DLC pirate armor and the extremely high defensive boosts it offers, I wanted to see what was theoretically possible in terms of making a solo tank with crazy high defences. My top priorities for this little project were:

 

1) I don’t care about the Will defence. Being Charmed and Dominated in solo play really isn’t a big deal, and it’s easy to buff against Terrified.

2) I wanted a very high more-or-less permanent Deflection, and I would focus on buffing Reflex and Fortitude.

3) I wanted to use Drawn in Spring, because why not…

 

To best meet this criteria, here are the different factors I considered…

 

Class

 

 

 

What’s the best class choice given these priorities? Why it’s a Wizard of course! If you pump your Deflection high enough, then the +40 Deflection added by Wizard’s Double is more or less always on as you won’t receive a hit or a crit – and it’s one per encounter with a mastery.

 

Given I want high permanent Deflection, with Wizard’s Double you can now almost consider the Wizard to be a base 50 Deflection class – rather than a base 10. Citzal’s Martial Power also offers excellent Fortitude and Reflex buffs due to stat boosts, and Llengrath’s Displaced Image offers an excellent Reflex buff (remembering the Deflection buffs from both of these spells don’t stack with Wizard’s Double).

 

 

 

Getting massive semi-permanent Deflection

 

 

 

The basic bonuses we can consider here are:

 

+10 base Deflection

+45 level 16 bonus

+8 Cautious Attack

+5 Superior Deflection

+6 Weapon and Shield Style

 

Total = 74

 

For Resolve, discounting the +1 from Steadfast because it’s just not that good a weapon, we have:

 

+8 starting investment

+1 Aedyr background

+1 Wild Orlan

+1 Berath’s Boon

+4 Siegebreaker Gauntlets

+3 Chapel resting bonus

 

Total Resolve = 28

Deflection bonus = +18

 

In terms of a shield, a large shield offers the best deflection bonus, so I went for Old Gerun’s Wall for the hit-to-graze conversion. For these calculations, we’ll consider it Superb, as Legendary comes too late to really have much relevance. In terms of the defences we want, it’s also better than Little Saviour (Superb Old Gerun’s Wall = +28 Deflection + 28 Reflex = 56. Superb Little Saviour = +25 Deflection + 25 Reflex + 5 Fortitude = 55).

 

In terms of armour, one of the new pirate outfits gives +20.

 

Putting Old Gerun’s Wall and the Helmsman’s Uniform together with the basic bonuses, Resolve bonus and Wizard’s Double, we get:

 

+74 (basic bonuses)

+18 (Resolve bonus)

+28 (Old Gerun’s Wall)

+20 (Helmsman’s Uniform)

+40 (Wizard’s Double)

 

Total "permanent" Deflection = 180. Pretty. Sweet.

 

In order to have a 1% any chance of scoring a hit and breaking the Wizard's Double, that means the enemy needs 131 Accuracy, and with the later mentioned Hit-to-Graze conversion this actually becomes a 0.4% chance.

 

In terms of end game buffing, if we factor in the Golden Whale resting bonus over the Chapel resting bonus (-1 Deflection), a Legendary Old Gerun’s Wall (+3 Deflection) and a Dragon Meat Dish (+3 Resolve), this evens out at a nice 185 - boostable to 205 with a Scroll of Defence.

 

 

 

Attribute choice, Fortitude and Reflex bonuses

 

 

 

I decided to set an arbitrary benchmark for my buffed Fortitude and Reflex – I wanted to be able to hit 200 for each of them. With this in mind, how much Might plus Con and Dex plus Per is necessary? Let’s walk back each defence from 200 with all the possible bonuses:

 

Fortitude:

 

200

-20 (base)

-45 (level 16 bonus)

-10 (Bear’s Fortitude)

-8 (+4 Might Maegfolc Skull)

-8 (+4 Con Iron Circle)

-32 (+8 Might, +8 Con Citzal’s Martial Power).

-20 (Scroll of Defence)

-20 (Helmsman’s Uniform)

-5 (Wit Dyr Jerky)

-8 (+2 Might, +2 Con Golden Whale resting bonus)

-8 (+2 Might, +2 Con Lyrinia’s Boon)

-2 (Gift from the Machine)

 

= 14 Fortitude needed = 7 points required investment in Con and Might. I’ll go for 14 Con and 13 Might (provides over 300 endurance at 18 Con with the Iron Circle).

 

Reflex:

 

200

-20 (base)

-45 (level 16 bonus)

-10 (Snake’s Reflexes)

-8 (+4 Dex Viettro’s Formal Footware)

-8 (+4 Per Mantle of the Excavator)

-28 (Old Gerun’s Wall)

-6 (Weapon and Shield Style)

-16 (+8 Dex Citzal’s Martial Power)

-20 (Scroll of Defence)

-20 (Llengrath’s Displaced Image)

-9 (Ring of Protection)

-4 (+2 Dex Gold Whale resting bonus)

-8 (+4 Per Mind Grub, with Whiteleaf to counteract Sickness)

-2 (Song of the Heavens)

 

= -4 Reflex, none needed = 2 points can be dumped out of a Reflex attribute and 200 Reflex still maintained. I’ll choose 8 Dex and 10 Per. You’ll also get another +3 from Legendary Old Gerun’s Wall right at the end.

 

What I now want is to invest as much as possible into Intellect for long Scroll of Defence and spell durations, there’s 3 Points left over this.

 

With a Wild Orlan Aedyr background, you can therefore use the following spread:

 

MIG 13

CON 14

DEX 8

PER 10

INT 13

RES 20

 

With equipment, talent resting bonus buffs, these are:

 

MIG 18 (Maegfolc Skull, Gift from the Machine)

CON 18 (Iron Circle)

DEX 12 (Viettro’s Formal Footware)

PER 15 (Song of the Heavens, Mantle of the Excavator)

INT 14 (+1 Helmsman’s Uniform custom enchantment)

RES 28 (Chapel Resting Bonus, Siegebreaker Gauntlets, Berath’s Boon)

 

Using the Golden Whale resting bonus, Citzal’s Martial Power, Lyrinia’s Boon and various food, keeping equipment the same, we get:

 

MIG 30 (Citzal’s Martial Power, Lyrinia’s Boon, Golden Whale resting bonus)

CON 30 (Citzal’s Martial Power, Lyrinia’s Boon, Golden Whale resting bonus)

DEX 22 (Citzal’s Martial Power, Golden Whale resting bonus)

PER 19 (Mind Grub)

INT 18 (Mind Grub)

RES 30 (Golden Whale resting bonus, Dragon Meat Dish)

 

 

 

Will save

 

 

 

For anyone curious, but who really cares?

 

Standard:

 

+20 (base)

+45 (level 16 bonus)

+36 (28 Resolve)

+8 (14 Intellect)

+9 (Ring of Protection)

 

= 118

 

Buffed:

 

+4 (+2 more Resolve, +3 Dragon Meat, -1 Golden Whale from Chapel)

+8 (+4 more Intellect, Mind Grub/Whiteleaf)

+20 (Scroll of Defence)

 

= 150

 

EDIT: Boeroer has mentioned that Will hits and crits can also disable Wizard's Double. As such taking Bull's Will and Mental Fortress is probably not a bad idea to ward against Dragon Fear effects. With Looped Rope this gives 200 Will defence against fear (+10 Bull's, +10 Mental Fortress, +20 Looped Rope, +10 Defiant Resolve) when doing the aforementioned buffing, preventing any chance of a hit or crit as it puts you 50 points of defence over their accuracy).

 

 

 

Important spells, talents and quest based talents

 

 

 

Spells:

 

Mastery of Wizard’s Double, Fleet Feet (always giving you positioning), Llengrath’s Displaced Image and Iron Skin

Apart from that Citzal’s Martial Power is a must, and the Elemental Bulwarks plus Llengrath's Safeguard is always good for defence too – the rest is up to you.

 

Talents:

 

You’ll need Snake’s Reflexes, Weapon and Shield Style, Bear’s Fortitude, Cautious Attack, Superior Deflection, Weapon Focus Noble, Gallant’s Focus. The remaining Talent is your choice.

 

EDIT: You can drop the Weapon Focus take Bull's Will and Mental Fortress. This will enable you to ward off Dragon Fear aura's with Looped Rope in tow. Probably dropping Gallant's Focus and using Deep Pockets is best to cram your inventory with an absurd number of Defence scrolls.

 

Quest talents:

 

Berath’s Boon, Song of the Heavens, Gift from the Machine, Second Skin, Flick of the Wrist.

 

 

 

Legendary Drawn in Spring accuracy

 

 

 

+20 (Wizard base)

+45 (level 16 bonus)

+5 (Dagger Accuracy Bonus)

+15 (Legendary)

+6 (Weapon Focus Noble)

+4 (Gallant’s Focus)

+5 (Percpetion)

+20 (Citzal’s Martial Power)

+4 (Flick of the Wrist)

-8 Old Gerun’s Wall

 

Total = 116

 

 

 

The summary

 

Putting it all together, this cheeky Wizard can accomplish:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Unbuffed (or at least semi-permanent) defences:

 

Def/Ref/Fort/Will – 180/132/127/118

 

End-game buffed defences (add a further +10 to each for Defiant Resolve if you like):

 

Def/Ref/Fort/Will – 205/203/200/150

 

Enemies need an accuracy of 156 to have a 1% chance of scoring a hit and breaking your Wizard's Double (which is converted to a 0.4% chance with the hit-to-graze conversion detailed below). If you use Looped Rope, your chances of status are pretty much non-existent.

 

I've not factored Hardened Veil into the build, as I didn't want to rely on temporary bonuses, but if you did use it that would be a temporary 280 (!!!) Deflection.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Endurance: 300+

 

Hit-to-Graze conversion: 60% (Llengrath’s Displaced Image, Old Gerun’s Wall)

 

DR: 16 (Helmsman’s Uniform, Ironskin – practically always on with the defences, Second Skin. You can drop the Intellect enchanment of the uniform for a further +2 with a Superb enchantment instead).

--------------------------------------------------------------

Citzal buffed legendary Drawn in Spring accuracy: 116 (120 with Mind Grub/Whiteleaf, 106 if you drop the accuracy Talents for more Will defence)

--------------------------------------------------------------

And an end-game buffed spread of:

 

MIG 30

CON 30

DEX 22

PER 19

INT 18

RES 30

--------------------------------------------------------------

Hope you enjoyed… I’ll show myself out!

Edited December 7, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Boeroer]

Yeah nice.

 

One thing though: Wizard's Double will go away after any hit or crit. The attack doesn't have to target your deflection defense. For example a fear aura will nearly always pulverize Wizard's Double after a few pulses. Immunity doesn't help because a hit that has no effect because of imunitys is still considered a hit and removes Wizard's Double.

[Raven Darkholme]

Yeah nice.

 

One thing though: Wizard's Double will go away after any hit or crit. The attack doesn't have to target your deflection defense. For example a fear aura will nearly always pulverize Wizard's Double after a few pulses. Immunity doesn't help because a hit that has no effect because of imunitys is still considered a hit and removes Wizard's Double.

Yeah sadly Wizards Double isn't that good, but honestly Deflection is the least important defense anyway, so even with 180 Def you are really tanky as long as your fort is really high.

(200 only necessary in LLengrath fight in other fights less would suffice even for Fort)

Edited November 30, 2017 by Raven Darkholme

[Boeroer]

However, Wizard's Double + Arcane Veil is supergood in the early game, especially if you also have Weapon & Shield Style, large shield and high RES.

[Dr <3]

I think that a priest can have better resaults ( i tried an "immortal" build sometimes ago. Crowns for the faithful, minor avatar, champions boon , devotion for the faithful, symbol of eothsas + defensive talents + defensive items = absolutely untochable until the buffs last. The problem are the early lvls wich are so boring you will drop the game before finish the build

[Jojobobo]

However, Wizard's Double + Arcane Veil is supergood in the early game, especially if you also have Weapon & Shield Style, large shield and high RES.

Very true. There is one talent slot free, so Arcane Veil can easily be taken, just not Harden Veil with the current set. However, accuracy talents can always be dropped without too much harm to the setup. All depends on how you want to shake it up.

 

 

I think that a priest can have better resaults ( i tried an "immortal" build sometimes ago. Crowns for the faithful, minor avatar, champions boon , devotion for the faithful, symbol of eothsas + defensive talents + defensive items = absolutely untochable until the buffs last. The problem are the early lvls wich are so boring you will drop the game before finish the build

Definitely I think a Priest can get higher defences, but particularly on solo that's an awful lot of spells to spam and they don't have incredible durations (though certainly the Minor Avatar Intellect boosts helps - though you can get halfway there with a Mind Grub at +4 Intellect). I think the real appeal of the tanky Wizard above is that 180 Deflection is constant, Llengrath's Displaced Image for the Reflex has a sizeable duration (45 secs modified by Intellect) and then all you realistically have to do is pop off Citzal's Martial Power and Scrolls of Defence is you feel the need - plenty of time to get lots of Drawn in Spring stabbing in!

 

I guess the Priest edges out in party play by a mile, due to many of the spells being friendly AoEs. Both would be very solid builds, and super high defences after a point do get a little silly and redundant, but I thought it would be fun to see how far it can be stretched.

[Dr <3]

But your build contains a mistake nontheless: drop the useless drawn in spring and pick an hatchet for +5 deflection more!

[Jojobobo]

I never even read Boeroer's first post in this thread last night, like some sort of madman!

 

With regards to the Wizard's Double vanishing all the time, the Deflection bonus of Llengrath's Displaced Image (+25) would still apply if it does fade (only 15 different, so a buffed score of 190 total or 200 with the Defiant Resolve I haven't factored in). Looped Rope and Bull's Will (which you can take if you like) plus Defiant Resolve would make the 150 Will defence 190. Checking against Llengrath's dragons, one of them has 150 accuracy for the effect. I think the 60% hit-to-graze probably applies to all attacks (maybe?), which would turn that 10% hit chance to 4%. That translates for a 1/25 chance to hit, which will definitely happen over the course of a long fight, but given you can have 5 castings of Wizard's Double per fight (the 1 per encounter, then the 4 level 1 spell castings) it shouldn't be too bad.

 

Possibly, you could drop an accuracy Talent and also take Mental Fortress with Bull's Will, in which case they can't hit you with the fear effect at all (200 vs 150).

 

But your build contains a mistake nontheless: drop the useless drawn in spring and pick an hatchet for +5 deflection more!

Very true, I have profoundly failed in my efforts 

Edited December 1, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Boeroer]

Well, with your defenses being all very high Wizard's Double will not fail in the normal fights I guess. But against dragons 150 will is not enough to prevent a hit.

[Jojobobo]

As mentioned though, if you take Bull's Will and Mental Fortress, and use Looped Rope, and have Defiant Resolve active (which happens on every pulse of the Fear Aura) then you have 200 Will against fear effects too. I'll make an edit to the OP and suggest dropping WF Noble for Mental Fortress, and taking Bull's Will in the spare slot.

 

From what I saw on my PotD Upscaled save, the accuracy of one of Llengrath's Dragons for the effect is 150. 150 accuracy vs. 200 save moves it into the 1-65 = miss, 66-100 = graze category - ensuring no hits possible. From what I remember, there aren't any other attacks that target Will from the dragons (I didn't see any in a brief test)? And even if Llengrath has a few Will targeting spells she won't be firing them off consistently (and if one of them hits you, you still have four more Wizard's Doubles you can cast...).

 

Given that you'll have 212/210/210 Deflection/Reflex/Fort for the Llengrath fight (with Defiant Resolve) and 200 Will defence specifically against fear I think the dragons will only be capable of grazing you, and even then they're going to be over 50% likely to miss. This is also remembering that you should be attacking fast (the new pirates' uniforms have zero recovery penalty when Durganized, so even with Cautious Attack you won't feel much of a pinch).

 

Besides, even if it does fail, your buffed Superb Old Gerun's Wall Deflection with Llengrath's Displaced Image and Defiant Resolve is still 197 - which suits me fine. When you get the Bog Dragon scales, Legendary will make this 200 for fighting Thaos and his Cleansing Flames, if not 215 if you keep Wizard's Double intact.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Boeroer]

That is correct

[Raven Darkholme]

Holy **** that armor is op.

Cipher will also be really tanky with it, since Borrowed Instinct is almost as good as Llengrath's for reflex and deflection and ofc better than scroll of defence for fort, since you only cast it once for all four defenses and it doesn't cost a consumable slot.

 

Highest overall defense would ofc be paladin, since it's F+C actually stacks with potion of Llengrath's/Wizard's double (WD might even be decent on a paladin due to Righteous Soul + F+C = 35 defense vs Terrified, I've never seen auras do more than graze.

[Jojobobo]

Yeah the armor is pretty crazy, quite possibly if they do another patch (which they probably should do, given there's several little bugs with the new content) they'll give it a nerf, but hopefully not. I'm not too sure of the point of a nerf anyway, while +20 Deflection and +20 another defence certainly is high I guess the trade off it the DR on the armor is low (though I guess as mentioned if you are using it to pimp Wizard's Double and Ironskin potions, that won't concern most characters).

 

Going the potions route on a different class would definitely top out at higher defences, I guess I'm always more of a fan of abilities being more or less innate for to the largest possible extent. I'd certainly be interested in hearing what the best spell-free (as in, only relying on a Wizard's Double potion and food/resting buffs/prostitute buffs) would be. It'd definitely be cool if someone could have defences approaching the 200 mark and not really have to cast to get there.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Jojobobo]

I managed to figure out a work around for hitting 200 Will against fear after all, without dropping any of the original Talents suggested (just making sure to take Bull's Will as the final talent that was free).

 

If you rest in the Noble's Stay Room at the Brackenbury Inn this gives +2 Int and, more importantly, +10 Will. It also lasts for two rests, which is very useful at you can pair it with a +20 Accuracy against Beast Survival resting bonus (take the Colonist background, and then with a +2 temp equipment bonus you can boost this up 16 so long as you invest up to level 12. Then you can add three to Mechanics, and three to Stealth for the Caed Nua Throne room boosted to 5 with Boots of Stealth from Raedric's Keep - Lore is taken care of with Viettro's Formal Footware and the Wizard's innate bonus for the purposes of Scrolls of Defense).

 

With Bull's Will (+10), Looped Rope (+20 Against Fear) and Defiant Resolve (+10), you can now get back to 200 against fear with the standard Defence Scroll/Dragon Meat/Mind Grub-Whiteleaf buff.

 

If you enchant Drawn-in-Spring against Beast, and use Little Saviour over Old Gerun's Wall, then each of Def/Ref/Fort will still be 200+ with Defiant Resolve going via this route, and your accuracy with the Survival Bonus (and without the Old Gerun's Wall accuracy drop) would be 152 against Beast under Citzal's Martial Power. Definitely sounds like the way to go for the Llengrath fight at least.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Jojobobo]

So I started playing the build, and I thought I'd share my level 3 Deflection...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This means that the guard up the vines at Raedric's Keep has zero chance of hitting my character - only grazes and misses - and unlike Arcane Veil there's no duration associated with your increased Deflection.

 

 

Keeping in my a lot of early enemies only target Deflection, this means your character more or less can't be killed when you have Wizard's Double on.

 

Something I did notice was that unfortunately the Helmsman's Uniform can't be attribute enchanted (the +Def and +Fort already count as attribute enchantments giving it weirdly 2/1 enchantments for that category). This is quite easily rectified by shifting a point from Dex/Per into Int (to maintain a 160 Will for 200 against fear vs. Llengrath's dragons), but my strict policy of no-respecing looks like it's going to be restart for me, that'll teach me not to do thorough research beforehand!

 

I guess of the plus side, it means even more DR for the build, as that's pretty much the only enchantment you can stick on the armor apart from proofing.

 

If I do end up playing the build all the way through, I'll do a full Class Build for it, but I thought some of you would be interested in the WIP.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Dr <3]

Oh come on os just lvl 3, do you really prefer spend 2 hours instead of respect? Nobody will see you...

[Jojobobo]

I have standards, damnit!

[Boeroer]

If you can't get hit anyways: why not less CON and more MIG?

[Jojobobo]

If you can't get hit anyways: why not less CON and more MIG?

Quite possibly, however I'm dithering as always do with builds!

 

For one thing, I like my builds to be geared towards solo play, and even with only being able to be grazed by that Raedric's Hold guard I still only just survived at level 3 after a few tries (on the restarted character, naturally) - so less CON would make that scenario pretty grim. I think it's pretty important for the build to be able to handle the stealth route of Raedric's Keep on day 4 on the month (something like 6 days in I think), because it nets you both Gloves of Manipulation and Boots and Stealth. Boots of Stealth as I'm sure you know let you tackle Caed Nua at 3 Stealth investment, which is the only way this build can hit the third stage Survival accuracy bonuses. I guess you could level up even higher and then just wait until the fourth day of the following month - but no one wants to meta-game to that extent! I will say that, given that guard has constant recovery and I had no healing, it's pretty great to out-tank him without use of the Bronze Horn Figurine.

 

However, you can easily take Bewildering Spectacle to deal with this guard (if you lure him round the corner, Confuse him and when he's in the "wander" stage you can quite easily sneak in). It's just that I think Curse of the Blacked Sight is such a natural fit for the high Deflection that I really wanted to take it, and then the rest fitted quite well (Combusting Wounds was also taken at level 3 for the natural Eldritch Aim + Combusting Wounds + Chill Fog combo, Infuse With Vital Essence to be learnt at level 4 to increase time between rests as it effectively heals health like Wound Binding, and Bulwark will be learnt from Maerwald). So, it's a bit of an awkward fit, possibly it could replace Infuse, but it's literally for a few very early encounters whereas Infuse stays useful all game.

 

However however, personally I kind of like builds which lean away from min-maxing and yet still manage to achieve something interesting. I know you're not suggesting minimising Con, but polarising the attributes to a greater extent certainly leans a little into that. It's nice when you can make a character with middle ground stats, and I think one of the real charms of Pillars is you can do that without feeling too punished for it a lot of the time - you don't have to make some sort of character who has the muscles of He-Man yet he would die if he so much as caught a cold.

 

However however however, Citzal's Martial Power makes CON slightly irrelevant anyway - particularly on the time scale of a normal encounter with kith. This build is going to have borderline 3 minutes of increased CON from Citzal's Martial Power, and for the tough encounters with dragons all the defences are going to be through the roof anyway, so it likely isn't so important.

 

I think I'll leave it as it is currently, and make the recommendation that in party play you should use 17 MIG 10 CON - it will certainly help out with the Wounding on Drawn in Spring, and will pump up spells in general for when you don't want to go straight into Citzal's (probably the best way to play the build in boss level encounters would be to cast all your offensive spells off the bat, and then hunker down and go into full defensive mode with Citzal's Martial Power and Drawn in Spring). It's certainly always good to have a think about these things!

Edited December 7, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Kaylon]

Cautious Attack is suppressed by the other deflection buffs. Wizard's Double is nice but far from a permanent buff - enemies with graze to hit conversion will break it rather easily for example, the forge guardians have a retaliation which ignore defenses and debuffs are still possible (flanking), etc... Also keeping your buffs up while slowly killing with Drawn in Spring won't work in hard battles (Magran's Faithful comes to mind)

Edited December 7, 2017 by Kaylon

[Raven Darkholme]

Cautious Attack is suppressed by the other deflection buffs. Wizard's Double is nice but far from a permanent buff - enemies with graze to hit conversion will break it rather easily for example, the forge guardians have a retaliation which ignore defenses and debuffs are still possible (flanking), etc... Also keeping your buffs up while slowly killing with Drawn in Spring won't work in hard battles (Magran's Faithful comes to mind)

Wizard's dounble is completely useless vs. magran's, at least the upscaled version, since they attack both deflection and reflex at very high accuracy (there are even some will attacks I think, but no fortitude at all, fortitude being the easiest defense to push, since both Mi and Con are super beneficial), maybe with the new deadfire armor reflex variant...

Then again with 200 reflex i guess they might not do more than graze.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Raven Darkholme

[Kaylon]

 

Cautious Attack is suppressed by the other deflection buffs. Wizard's Double is nice but far from a permanent buff - enemies with graze to hit conversion will break it rather easily for example, the forge guardians have a retaliation which ignore defenses and debuffs are still possible (flanking), etc... Also keeping your buffs up while slowly killing with Drawn in Spring won't work in hard battles (Magran's Faithful comes to mind)

Wizard's dounble is completely useless vs. magran's, at least the upscaled version, since they attack both deflection and reflex at very high accuracy (there are even some will attacks I think, but no fortitude at all, fortitude being the easiest defense to push, since both Mi and Con are super beneficial), maybe with the new deadfire armor reflex variant...

Then again with 200 reflex i guess they might not do more than graze.

 

Graze is enough because the fighters have Confident Aim... 

[Jojobobo]

Cautious Attack is suppressed by the other deflection buffs.

Thanks for that spot, you've saved me a lot of misery if I had got to the stage of taking the Talent (given my no respec-ing rule). I'll definitely take Deep Pockets now over Cautious Attack.

 

While it's a bit of a shame I can't hit some of the nice round numbers that I was originally desiring (180 Deflection for example), as the Deflection is tending towards the extreme end of what is possible in the first place, in doesn't matter too much (apart from upsetting my adoration of nice round numbers). I'll make an edit at the top of the OP to read the discussion, as I'm not going to keep the OP updated if I'm going to make a class build (hopefully and eventually).

 

 

Wizard's Double is nice but far from a permanent buff - enemies with graze to hit conversion will break it rather easily for example, the forge guardians have a retaliation which ignore defenses and debuffs are still possible (flanking), etc... Also keeping your buffs up while slowly killing with Drawn in Spring won't work in hard battles (Magran's Faithful comes to mind).

I will say first of all the difference between Llengrath's Displaced Image and Wizard's Double is only 15 Deflection (both stipulated as per encounter). So, before addressing anything else, I thought I'd make specific mention that if Wizard's Double does go down it really isn't the end of the world. If Wizard's Double can be on around half of the time during play (which I really think it has a good chance to be, if not way more so, but I don't to give way to rampant conjecture) then that's good enough for me.

 

I'm fully aware of the graze to hit conversion and flanking. Graze to hit conversion is unavoidable, however the build has per encounter Fleet Feet - so I'm really not worried about Flanking when positioning to minimise this for the game's most notorious encounters is already well established and I doubt most mobs will easily get past the defences. Additionally, per encounter I'll have 4 or 5 separate opportunities to cast Wizard's Double if I use my per rest uses (and depending on whether I need my Fleet Feet - bearing in mind I can achieve similar through Survival rest bonuses based on the needs of a particular encounter), so even if it falters once or twice I can just cast it again (and it's extremely fast cast).

 

I wasn't aware of the Forge Guardian's having auto-hit retaliation (I would have thought enemy auto-hit retaliation would have been patched out of the game when player auto-retaliation was), but even so that's one encounter in a crap load. With regards to Magran's Faithful, I've solo-ed the game PotD Expert before so I think I'd be able to manage them again (even if Dragon Thrashed and Blinding people was immensely powerful and the reason for my success). Besides, beyond Drawn in Spring tanking Wizards do happen to have other offensive spells you know 

 

The whole point of making an unusual build is having a weird hypothesis and then testing it. I realise that Wizard's Double can fail quite easily if you don't prepare, but naturally the idea here is to assess when all other defences are very high to what extent can it be maintained and help a Wizard have naturally higher defences in excess of other classes. I think that's an interesting question to ask.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Raven Darkholme]

Just out of curiosity, did you fight upscaled Magran's Faithful?

But, yeah chanter is the best class against them either way, even with a small shield and fists (lol) you would eventually take them down as long as you keep healing.

The wizard definitely has a slightly harder time, but it being one of the strongest classes in the game, shouldn't prove too much of a problem, I think the main point was, wizard's double not holding up, but as you say it's only 15 def.

[Jojobobo]

Just out of curiosity, did you fight upscaled Magran's Faithful?

But, yeah chanter is the best class against them either way, even with a small shield and fists (lol) you would eventually take them down as long as you keep healing.

The wizard definitely has a slightly harder time, but it being one of the strongest classes in the game, shouldn't prove too much of a problem, I think the main point was, wizard's double not holding up, but as you say it's only 15 def.

With this build currently I've not taken on Magran's Faithful - I've only just started! I prefer with solo builds to play the entire game, as if the build can't progress at any point then it's a little meaningless whether or not they can do one of the high end encounters anyway. It's naturally a bit of a time waste to warp there through console and spawn all the items too when you know sooner or later you'll deal with it during a playthrough.

 

I did do it with the Chanter, all dragons and bounties solo PotD. It was problematic as the Chanter's starting Deflection was low (when you start Blinding people it's not so much of a problem, but that initial point was rough), but with the high Dex it wasn't hard to very fast cast defensive buffs and dropping a figurine let it take the aggro while I got better positioning. When I had the group down to a single melee guy, I just kited him and let Dragon Thrashed do its job.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Jojobobo