Armor Supreme: the rise of Pala-Vra

[samopop]

May 2, 2017 10:32:03 GMT -5 jhakir said:

Having just completed all available content with a party very similar to this one, I can safely say this style of play does not get nearly enough attention.

If people are curious, I will happily provide a detailed write up.

 I'm interested. I always thought that the CoD would be particularly difficult for an armor-based group due to the very large number of ranged 1 AP enemies (meaning -AP won't help) doing 400+ damage per shot.  I'd love to hear how  you handled the group during this section (as well as all of the others).

[tran]

I ran that build before losing the saved file, and it was safe! TOO safe, even.
After getting Vraes and Fyona's legendary gears (armor for V and 2-h hammer for Fy), the game becomes ridiciously easy: Fyona had really high crit chance (gears, hammer, burning blade, immolation) and could spam strickening non stop and still get full sp in a crit. Vraes only needed to wait until strickening is applied and he could get back the lost sp used for his buffs. As for damage, it is even more insane: Tamilin slaughter hordes of monster, low and high armor alike with torrent of steel, as strickening and choking ash made fighting high level foes a joke, and the blood stone- imbued throwing dagger which gave crit damage, that was just the cherry on top
However, it was TOO SAFE, as in, the Weaver barfed at Vraes 3 times and he still got roughly 300 hp left (I was careless that turn and forgot to strip her ap, each hit took him 800hp if I remember correctly). Even before getting the juggernault plate, Cortias fight was also too easy, and that, in my opinion, was not a very encouraging thing! When running an iron game, you would expect to get killed any moment if not being careful, having a run that-while could secure a bright future in the hall of fame-is TOO safe, is just not fun at all! (I hope this makes sense)
In conclusion, is this build safe and powerful? HECK YEAH (just be careful with the Ember Tower fight) Could this be "the one build"? Heck if I know, maybe. But is it exhilarating, as you have to constantly looking over your shoulder and be fearful of death? No, not so much!

[jhakir]

The end maps of CoD were indeed the one spot where the group struggled, but the vast majority of that struggle was poor playing on my behalf. They were my first group to take through there (on any difficulty, let alone Nightmare), so there were far too many times than I care to admit where I was fighting 3 groups at once because I kept charging the necromancer in back.

[tran]

Also, it is the first build that I managed to had 0 death, nightmare difficulty (that is my achivement here, a bit sad that I didn't take a screenshot for bragging right)

[tran]

For Ember Tower, a trick is to re-spec Fyona so that she has -2ap reckonning and enough Fervour+Strickening. You lose 1 free re-spec, but it is far better than losing the iron run. Also, focus on killing the minions first, leave the Seer last! Make sure that all 3 heroes could take at least 1 hit from the bosses (you could station 2 heroes, each in front of a boss and 1 hero to kill the skeletons, also switch Fyona to 1 hand hammer for maximize attacks) and keep chucking those potions like crazy. It is really simple if you know what to do (I fought in that tower with at least 3 dozen groups now, good god)

Also, those skeleton archers could barely scratch Vraes's suppreme armor: Stone skin, Phalanx Shield, Fervour and Flame Shield give you INSANE amount of armor. I loved seeing those 0 while rampaging through the city so much! 

[jhakir]

May 2, 2017 11:23:43 GMT -5 tran said:

I ran that build before losing the saved file, and it was safe! TOO safe, even.
After getting Vraes and Fyona's legendary gears (armor for V and 2-h hammer for Fy), the game becomes ridiciously easy: Fyona had really high crit chance (gears, hammer, burning blade, immolation) and could spam reckonning non stop and still get full sp in a crit. Vraes only needed to wait until reckonning is applied and he could get back the lost sp used for his buffs. As for damage, it is even more insane: Tamilin slaughter hordes of monster, low and high armor alike with torrent of steel, as reckonning and choking ash made fighting high level foes a joke, and the blood stone- imbued throwing dagger which gave crit damage, that was just the cherry on top
However, it was TOO SAFE, as in, the Weaver barfed at Vraes 3 times and he still got roughly 300 hp left (I was careless that turn and forgot to strip her ap, each hit took him 800hp if I remember correctly). Even before getting the juggernault plate, Cortias fight was also too easy, and that, in my opinion, was not a very encouraging thing! When running an iron game, you would expect to get killed any moment if not being careful, having a run that-while could secure a bright future in the hall of fame-is TOO safe, is just not fun at all! (I hope this makes sense)
In conclusion, is this build safe and powerful? HECK YEAH (just be careful with the Ember Tower fight) Could this be "the one build"? Heck if I know, maybe. But is it exhilarating, as you have to constantly looking over your shoulder and be fearful of death? No, not so much!

I found I needed to run Selene for the additional -parry of pinning shot, but otherwise I whole heartedly agree. 

I also picked her shield instead of a weapon, since it had a whopping 49% auto block on it.

I kept hearing about how hard bosses like the Weaver would hit, but a Vraes with 300+ armor, 2.2K HP, and a near maxed berserker rage just walked up to her and took her down in a couple rounds with mostly 4 digit hits.

[jhakir]

May 2, 2017 11:32:02 GMT -5 tran said:

For Ember Tower, a trick is to re-spec Fyona so that she has -2ap reckonning and enough Fervour+Strickening. You lose 1 free re-spec, but it is far better than losing the iron run. Also, focus on killing the minions first, leave the Seer last! Make sure that all 3 heroes could take at least 1 hit from the bosses (you could station 2 heroes, each in front of a boss and 1 hero to kill the skeletons, also switch Fyona to 1 hand hammer for maximize attacks) and keep chucking those potions like crazy. It is really simple if you know what to do (I fought in that tower with at least 3 dozen groups now, good god)

Also, those skeleton archers could barely scratch Vraes's suppreme armor: Stone skin, Phalanx Shield, Fervour and Flame Shield give you INSANE amount of armor. I loved seeing those 0 while rampaging through the city so much! 

Oh, the seer lords at the end weren't an issue at all. It was only times where I would accidentally pull multiple groups in the city.

My game also had a bad habit of ending combat (so all my buffs would drop) and then immediately enter combat with a new group before even the auto-glom feature could kick in.

It frequently left me in compromising positions, too spread out to buff, with a flank exposed.

[matrim]

Weaver can still one round kill that Vraes, at least when you fight her at level 51 on nightmare. She did 1150 damage to a 130 armour Kincaid which means 950 x3 to Vraes, although the chances of her getting those shots all through are slim. This is an interesting looking build, however it plays too defensively imo. So many talents are devoted to making the tank ultra safe but I find that ironman games are lost because my caster gets hit by mega range Krete or I position Tamilin wrong and watch her get downed by a troll (happened on Christmas morning 2015! I was fuming all day!). The latest update has me trying to run a crit centered group, best defense is a good offense and all that stuff. I had Tamilin do a 900 damage crit with 1 AP throwing knives, pretty sure I can get Vraes to 1500-1800 juggernauts!

[jhakir]

May 2, 2017 11:55:32 GMT -5 matrim said:

Weaver can still one round kill that Vraes, at least when you fight her at level 51 on nightmare. She did 1150 damage to a 130 armour Kincaid which means 950 x3 to Vraes, although the chances of her getting those shots all through are slim. This is an interesting looking build, however it plays too defensively imo. So many talents are devoted to making the tank ultra safe but I find that ironman games are lost because my caster gets hit by mega range Krete or I position Tamilin wrong and watch her get downed by a troll (happened on Christmas morning 2015! I was fuming all day!). The latest update has me trying to run a crit centered group, best defense is a good offense and all that stuff. I had Tamilin do a 900 damage crit with 1 AP throwing knives, pretty sure I can get Vraes to 1500-1800 juggernauts!

Oh, sure, you still can't ignore core mechanics like -AP stripping on a boss, but as long as I kept even just a pinning shot on the Weaver (mine was also in the 50's), there wasn't any way she could kill Vraes in one round.

Also, with the introduction of some amazing 3AP 1H spears, I was getting real close to breaking 2K damage with Vraes on a good crit. He likely would have, if I was running more than ash and immolation for offensive boosts.

I whole heartedly agree that it is rarely the tank dying that causes an iron man group to fail. For me it is often that one stray archer I don't see or can't block with one of my 3 durable characters who can take the hits. I found that happened even more frequently with an avoidance based group, since they are so reliant on -accuracy.

I found it a much better safety net to take those points that would go towards stripping enemy offense and instead buffing party defense. That way I couldn't miss archers with curses and watch them take me out with ease.

[fallen]

jhakir - really interesting stuff, and sounds like a mighty build. Can I keep hope alive to see a run down of Talent levels?

[jhakir]

May 2, 2017 12:19:44 GMT -5 fallen said:

jhakir - really interesting stuff, and sounds like a mighty build. Can I keep hope alive to see a run down of Talent levels?

Absolutely. I'll post a write up when I get home. from workand have more than a cell phone.

[matrim]

Looking forward to the write up!

[tran]

matrim
In ep 4, juggernault plate gives 190 armor (I believe), Stone skin 42 armor, Fervor 26 armor, Flame Shield 28 and Phalanx 22 armor. That is over 300 armor in total, and we haven't even talked about the gears! It is completely possible for him to get over 400 armor in ep 4 (the shield from Elista heaven gives 26 armor). Also, Vraes has roughly 2500 hp in ep 4 (I may be wrong here, it has been a while) but still, there is no way Weaver could possibly kill him in a single turn!
P.S: why did you take Kincaid as a comparison in armor? It made no sense in my opinion

[matrim]

I used the armor value to illustrate what the weavers max damage was. 400 armor still only blocks 400 damage at most. Kincaid got hit for 1150 with at least 65 of that being blocked. Even with 400 getting blocked that is 800 damage. 2500 is possible but not with 400 armor. Vraes can definitely fall in a full turn of attacks (which should never happen, my Kincaid was also in no danger of dying to her because he had 1600 health and she only had 1 shot, he was also immune to all other damage in the fight). In any case, comparing Kincaid to Vraes in the fight is not really fair. Of course an armour Vraes is going to shine more against a heavy hitting, undodgable boss than Kincaid. Where Kincaid shines (and the situation that comes up far more) is I can run him into 6 Orcin or Ratkin and not take a single point of damage. I have just never been able to make an armour Vraes work. In episode 4 it does, but getting through episode 2 must have been painful. According to jhakir he went defensive with 3 out of 4 characters and the Orcin still gave him nail biting moments.

[tran]

Strange... I could remember being hit 3 times from the Weaver, yet still survived with Vraes (I was playing on nightmare and he had roughly 300-400 hp after that)
Actually, any groups would struggle a bit with the orcrin cave in ep 2. Sure, sure parry might be great, but if you let Kincaid got surrounded, there is still a chance of him being hit enough and lose the talent, thus losing all the bonus parry and dodge, which makes himfar more vulnerable than ever (it happens, especially if you don't kill enemies fast enough). And that is why this build is crafty: Kjartan's choking ash would allow the others to deal with the heavy hitting orcrins in 1 turn, and the bonus hp+armor is there to soak stray arrows (that much bonus armor prevent squishy characters from dying from archers). The orcrin warlord was the only real danger in my playthrough, until I get strickening to level 5 and onwards anyway (once again, 1ap throwing knife+choking ash+strickening+elemental damage= Steel Shattering damage!)