Last Stand and related feats can make AC non issue?

[mudakonn]

If my MC Skald has gobbled together all the survival feats and abilities like Last Stand, she is halfOrc (free feat to stay alive 1 turn after reduced below 0), hard to kill with 20+ Con score, Azata Life Bond, take all DR rage powers (end up 10+ DR) Mythic Toughness (what gives another +10 if under 0 HP), celestial rage power (+level every heal) and companions further contributing (bard with hat that heals what also triggers celestial heal) + Daeran with Mythic Channeling and Sosiel with his channels then can MC just forgot AC altogether and face tank everything at point since there should be no way he is killed and Skald can revive with his song the others?

[Silyon]

I'm going to say nope. AC is still relevant because more or less every enemy in the late game has 4-9 attacks dealing 50+ damage each hit, plus sneak attack on some of them. God forbid crits with all those attack rolls. Multiply that by two or three enemies beating on your tank; no amount of HP is going to keep you alive through a full-attack that you don't have the AC, concealment, or mirror-images to partially evade.

As far as survival abilities go, remember the opportunity cost of what you're giving up to get all these overlapping feats and abilities: Hit chance, Spell dc and penetration, metamagics, damage boosting and control abilities, so on. Practically speaking the Last Stand mythic ability is the only survival thing you need. It gives you three rounds of saying "no" to all forms of damage once your HP hits 0, and there's not a thing any enemy in the game can do to bypass it. You're not even staggered, like with diehard and the like, and it's not limited in it's uses so as long as your healer's able to throw out a channel or cure spell every other round you literally can't die. Until they do, of course.

[Raikon]

You may be misunderstanding how the lifelong friendship actually works. Direhard doesnt work with lifelong friendship. Once a character drops to 0 hp or less, that character is a walking corpse. Once the fight is over, they die. Or if they have last stand, it will activate after the fight is over.

Also last stand stand can only be used once per rest. AC is less important with lifelong friendship though if you can utilize lifelong friendship correctly. But it requires horrible micro management, and rezzing your walking corpses RIGHT before your charisma rounds run out, or RIGHT before the fight ends.

[Dryad]

Remember, Last Stand has a once per day clause, so after the first use, you'll go down quick as enemies lay into your character really easily

[gmwaddington]

In my experience, Life-Bonding Friendship doesn't work properly, and conflicts with Last Stand. Maybe it's been fixed.

[Wither]

Last stand only active ONCE a day. Resurrect didn't rearm it.

[mudakonn]

Thanks for responses - DR does not help either? Skald can get 9 with her rage powers and natural progression.

I am using mirror image now and it helps a lot, Celestial totem 1-st tier seems very strong with Hat in mid game (lvl 9-10) - but yeah it is still about 25 per round in end game.

So i guess Last Stand is still useful.

I read Hard to Kill ability says - You cannot die until negative HP is not above 2*CON. Is this also not working with Life-Long Friendship?

Maybe it is then actually prudent NOT to take Life-Long Friendship and use Skald Song of the Fallen - during the song celestial totem triggers and heals everybody bringing them back over 0 HP.

I am planning to take Azata first time so sorry for my ignorance in this matter:)

[gmwaddington]

I was very disappointed with Life-Bonding Friendship, but maybe it's been fixed since.

At the time, without Life-Bonding Friendship, but with Last Stand, if you were hit for 1000 points of damage, you were alive at 0 hp, and could be brought up to 200 hp with Heal. But WITH Life-Bonding Friendship, you would be still at 0, and would die at the end of the combat.

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by mudakonn:

So i guess Last Stand is still useful.
)

it give you 3 rounds of taking unlimited amount of damage laughing to enemy face and deal with them.

i would say it is not only "useful" but mandatory, even though it trigger just once.

AC is still relevant as more htis you evade and postpone the Last stand the more rounds you have to complete the encounter which is again priceless.

I found healing bit undewrwhelming in the game as even 150 HP form mass heal is gone in less than round by enemies with multiple high attacks. For me, it is again for trying postpone Last stand a by round or two or healk up between encounters - trying outheal enemy damage or go back from 0 in fight is just wasted effort.

[mudakonn]

OK, but autoheal without any cost is still useful I think - During active song heal about 15 per round in middle game is good.

But Life-Long Friendship demands then different approach? I mean NotDeadDead status (you are at 0 and dead but can still function because of friendship) treats you still as dead and you need some spell to revive first (for example Skald Song of the Fallen can do it again?)

So it seems to me that since i have taken Last Stand it is totally useless with Friendship? So is Hard to Kill?

Then the verdict is NOT to take Friendship and if too many comrades bite the dust use the Song of the Fallen Skald song and heal them before ending the song.

[MORROGANDER]

Some Companions like greybor, regill, Sosiel's brother probably can't break through 50AC normally, i'd say Last Stand is a good feat

[MjKorz]

Last stand is a waste of a mythic ability. If you have a good tank, he can tank the world forever without being hit. This is especially true for Azata since it's a mythic path that allows mutagen stacking. Lann leveled as ZenArcher1/MutationWarrior19 effortlessly breaks 100 AC on the Azata path so you don't even need to play the tank yourself.

Life bonding friendship is only useful as a source of "free" teamwork feats, you should never plan on getting hit.

[Gregorovitch]

I would say there is no substitute for AC for any character likely to be directly tanking enemies. Obviously stuff like Displacement, Blur, Mirror Image and stuff like Last Stand, Second Life and so on is a great help and all but ultimately with these big monsters dishing out 40 and 50 points of damage on four, five, six, more attacks per round what you want to be looking at in the combat log for attacks against your tanks is miss, miss, miss, miss.......miss. A nice long virtually endless list of misses to be precise.

DR numbers from any source are so small that they are OK I suppose, whatever, every little helps, but they are not going to save you from three or four big demons whacking you seven times a round each with monstrous weapons. DR/100 would be worth looking at but good luck finding anything that gives you that.

You can't have enough AC on a tank in my book.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Last stand is a waste of a mythic ability.

I wouldn't say that. It deals with the lucky big crit scenario. Last stand followed by a quick Heal (you get two rounds to get the Heal in 'cos Last Stand makes you invulnerable for that period) is just the ticket in the big crit scenario which does happen fairly regularly.

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Last stand is a waste of a mythic ability.

I wouldn't say that. It deals with the lucky big crit scenario. Last stand followed by a quick Heal (you get two rounds to get the Heal in 'cos Last Stand makes you invulnerable for that period) is just the ticket in the big crit scenario which does happen fairly regularly.

Protective luck should be your main protection against lucky crits. If you have protective luck, you don't need last stand. If you don't have protective luck, last stand alone will not be enough since it's only once per day.

[Conquista]

isn't last stand once per rest or did they changed that, but ya if you can kill your opponents in three or less rounds, than last stand can cheese you through pretty much all difficult encounters while you can ignore all defensive mechanics on your side