Group build feedback and advice thread

[shadowcatx]

Thank you both again. I was actually planning to ask about 1 ap vs. 2 ap weapons, and warder's shield is my next skill on the list for my cleric, once I get healing and debuffing situated (want ethereal anquish as aoe).

Where would I be better spending points on the mage, keeping increasing his ash debuff, or placing points into pureflame shield or burning blades? (Currently he has 5 points in on choking ash.)

[En1gma]

Hard to tell without your party plan. If you're wanting to use 1AP weapons, Ash is the way to go since it will help raise their damage. Pureflame isn't worth it until later in almost every case imaginable, and Burning Blades is good if you're planning on focusing on elemental damage and raising crit​s, if you aren't focusing on them then you're better off raising Ash or one of his attack spells.

[wascalwywabbit]

It's hard to go wrong with ash imo since it helps the damage of all attacks, has a quite good effective acc boost against targets ashed and it is a guaranteed curse of decent range that hits thru walls and the like.

You can absolutely build good talent layouts of all his other skills, warding words being the most situational, but getting very good acc and decent physical damage increases for your team is an A grade skill.

Since immolation has been changed to give crit vulnerability it gives some of the best damage increase party wide in the game, but it's hard to give up a strong acc boost if you need it - you can't crit anything if you can't hit it after all... There are other ways to gain acc though...

Pureflame shield starts being useful beyond a bit of armor and res vs shamans in act 2 of episode 1, but moreso in episode 2 where krete and spiders etc. become noticeably magic focused where magic res of pfs and piety ward become a bit more useful. That being said, I'd rather kill things faster than spread my valuable talents points too thin. Gears can be often enough to absorb danger if you gear up for each map. First couple battles often give an idea what you're facing on each map if you haven't played the area before.

Generally dodge+hp avoids physical and magic damage while giving resilience just in case you are hit. Building armor and res can soak most enemies attacks, but some do too much physical to ever soak enough, so in those cases you need to dodge it, sure parry it if melee, or have enough hp to take the hit and then heal with talent or potion. Don't forget to ap curse the baddies with more than 1ap who can pose a danger...

-acc curses and + team dodge/parry attributes/skills/talents/gears stack to give a good chance to avoid being hit. -damage curses and armor/res attributes/talents stack nicely as well, but there's no getting around needing enough hp to take a hit, enough acc to connect and enough phys/magical damage to overcome armor/res. The hardest part of my soak teams was, except the mystics' talents, all -damage curses were melee while all -acc were ranged and it's hard to beat the surety of simply killing or ap cursing to guarantee inaction by the enemies.

...

I feel like I digressed, anyway hope that's food for thought.

[crimsonking]

IMHO Choking Ash is Kjartan's Signature Talent. You can always discuss which attacks, buffs and other debuffs to use, but every Kjartan build should include Choking Ash 10 by midgame.

[En1gma]

Iron Curtain Update: The Dance of the Underforge

Vraes: The Unmovable. Level 22: 914 HP, 258 SP, 68 Armor, 14 Dodge, 27 Parry, 27 all Elemental Resists, 32 Unholy, and 55% Auto-Block vs. Ranged
Attributes: 8  Str, 14 Con, 5 Int
Skills: 15(19) Hammers, 6 Leadership
Talents: Crushing Blow 2, Phalanx Shield 10, Burst of Speed 1, Natural Mastery 3

With the advent of Bloodstones, Vraes is more than just a meat wall. He's still a meat wall-- don't get me wrong, but he hits like a truck and keeps on ticking. He is forced to re-position frequently in the UF, and while the motto of the Iron Curtain is to never retreat, there is nothing wrong with backing up at the start of an encounter to build your death-wall. By letting the enemy come to you, less investment in +MP is important for Vraes, allowing him to invest in Natural Mastery. Natural Mastery was an unexpected addition to the build, but one which will pay off in droves come late game. Big V doesn't need fancy combat tricks, as KJ is stripping armor and defense with Ash, and stripping even more armor and upping crit% with Immolation so minimal investment in attack talents is still giving him and the group major returns.

Goals: Max out Mastery, then think about what to do next... IDK if I go Juggernaut, Berserk...  I have some time to decide tho.

Kjartan: The Fire God.
Attributes: 8 Con,  9 Int, 8 Kno
Skills: 10 Sorcery, 9 Conj
Talents: Immolation 10, Ash 6

Kjartan is awesome. Major Damage from Immolation itself, or he can smack an entire crowd with Ash and Immo to force armors into the negative (sometimes) and give the entire group +16% chance to score a crit on any affected mob. 

Goals: Max out Ash, start and max out Firestorm. Become a literal deity of fiery retribution.

Fyona: Smasher of Evil. 798 HP, 262 SP, 88 Armor, 8/15 Dodge/Parry
Attributes: 6 Str, 15 Con, 5 Int
Skills: 12 Hammers, 6 Leadership
Talents: Reckoning 1, Devotion 3, Shield of Cortias 7, Righteous  Fervor 4

I wasn't expecting her to actually want to invest in Fervor, but here we are, 4 points into it. I actually expect to come close to maxing it out, surprisingly.  I may even look into Strickening at some point, unless something else catches my eye. She acts as my positional enforcer. She is a very capable off-tank even without a shield, and her return blows are amazingly lethal, esp when she stacks holy damage on mobs with negative armor. She provides a decent -AP attack to stack on top of PS, and cleans up mobs that Vraes either ignores or advances past.

Goals: Max out Fervor, put some more into Reckoning, and look into Strickening in order to help KJ and the gang completely rip apart groups, esp when they are both maxed out. Lord, the damage...

Selen: Bow-woman of Doom
Attributes: 12 Dex, 9 Con, 6 Int
Skills: 12 Blades, 7 Bows, 4 Lore, 5(28) Stealth
Talents: Pinning Shot 5, Dance of Shadows 9, QsD 1

She sits back and snipes for days, cool and collected, dropping crits on the unsuspecting mobs before them. She will max out DoS, then go to PS 8 for the added Area of Effect template. Then she works on QsD and Punishing Blades.

[CdrPlatypus]

En1gma Hey buddy...I swear I'm not dead yet. My thought on Vraes is Juggernaut. and +2 to Bos. Improved mobility and multiple kills per turn becomes crucial later

[matrim]

Having lost 3 Vraes groups to the end of episode 2 recently, all I can say is focus defense hardcore. Depending on difficulty, the mobs at the end of episode 2 are BRUTAL for Vraes. They hit him all the time and do 350-500 damage a hit...3 or more land in a round and it’s game over. It was also at this point that I ran into accuracy concerns unless I ashed everything, which got expensive SPwise. Recommended path for finishing episode 2 unscathed...max Natural mastery for Vraes, consider berserk for episode 3 where the only melee accuracy you have to contend with is Rasp. Meteoric Shockwave, even 1-2 points can make a huge difference when you are fighting the really deadly stuff (Warboars, wolves, any shooters, Warlords, Wolf Lords, Krete) and also serve you well in episode 3 against the big bads. You might want to consider maxing SoC before maxing Fervor. 1 missed hit against any of those hard hitters is going to mitigate more damage than the armour from that move. Also, nothing in episode 2 does unholy damage, so that aspect of the talent does not factor in till episode 3. Selen is in a good spot and can go multiple ways. I REALLY like Farsight 4 for the full map reveal on the opening round. She can also tank stuff quite well if you max QsD. Episode 4 has some amazing drops for tank Selen (amulet with 8 parry, 8 dodge, 8 stealth and 6% crit and a guaranteed ring with 10 parry, 10 dodge, 10 stealth, and 10% crit). If you go this route then some pressure goes off Vraes and he can do EVEN more damage with BR. Good Luck!

Side note! If you still have Kjartan’s starting staff (walking staff), it crafts into a monster damage staff that is good till episode 4. +20 SP, +38 lightning damage, +2% sp drain (careful crafting this, you need a tuning item with exactly 2% sp drain and NO MP or HP, I used a warding cloak, 4 armour, 2 unholy resist and 2% sp drain, or any lightning damage item should do as well). The bonus from this staff is that the lightning damage is generally good on fire mobs and you can double dip damage when you level strickening (which I highly recommend)

[Gr8Scott]

Dec 15, 2017 3:04:54 GMT -5 matrim said:

Side note! If you still have Kjartan’s starting staff (walking staff), it crafts into a monster damage staff that is good till episode 4. +20 SP, +38 lightning damage, +2% sp drain (careful crafting this, you need a tuning item with exactly 2% sp drain and NO MP or HP, I used a warding cloak, 4 armour, 2 unholy resist and 2% sp drain, or any lightning damage item should do as well). The bonus from this staff is that the lightning damage is generally good on fire mobs and you can double dip damage when you level strickening (which I highly recommend)

Sweet! I have always wondered if there was an Easter Egg in crafting original items. Do you get anything decent crafting KJ's staff with +fire damage? That would be the obvious item.

[matrim]

Unfortunately, no fire damage variant. The other 2 versions are +1 MP, 20 SP and HP, 4% sp drain and +1 MP, + 40 SP and 6 resistance I think.

[havnor]

I'm trying serious Ironman run with

Vreas - tank build phalanx,stoneskin,mastery and occasionally ferocity
Vincent - frigid air 3(3x3 cruse), flash freeze 6 for 2-ap, charged speed, sundering, and thundering to help acc, dmg and offtank ability, dex,con maxed
Kyera - full support lore and hammers
Tears, sacrifice, and buffs, with int and con maxed
Tamilin - classical knives tos 8, Bc 2, stalker, intuition dex, con...

Do you think guys it can survive nightmare? I did storerooms boost in run a I could pull 3 rooms but I find storerooms somewhat unreliable to tell viability of group so I want more opinions

But I'm seriously thinking switching for sellen coz my main dmg is melee and I would probably use better -parry curse and another offtank

[crimsonking]

I'd rather go for Ethereal Anguish than Flash Freeze as EA is hands down the better power by any means.

If you go heavily on Frigid Air you can swap Vraes for Kincaid as Vraes' ability to suck ranged attacks is far less needed and Kincaid is the better Melee defender. I'd also switch from Tam to Melee Selen as secondary tank.

Also, Elemental Sundering doesn't seem worthwhile to me without Holy Strickening.

[havnor]

Vreas sticks there I dunno but for my playstyle he is much better tank. I would probably swicht Selen an maybe flash freeze 2 and ea should be better combo you are right. I would probably go sundering just for bonus parry and dodge and sp drain. I had many problems before to keep mage slot alive before. Anyway Thnx.

[CdrPlatypus]

En1gma I'm getting ready to come back thinking about which team to bring through all the updated content.

[En1gma]

You want to tool around with Strickening this time. Immolation, Strick, Iron Curtain? My current group is ready to go fight the final bosses of the CoD, IC all the way

[En1gma]

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