Brim Smith nether advice?

[Squid]

So, I'm using the following party:

2x Brim Smith
1x Dark Brim Smith (Frostfire Embodiment)
1x Topaz Paragon (Everything's Gone)
1x Cinder Devil (Sacrimony)
1x Stronghold, Nether (Impenetrable Carapace)

Once I get two combusting rocks, I'm planning on adding "Strength of the World" to both of my Brim Smiths. Right now, the extra attack provided from sacrimony and from frostfire embodiment has made this a fairly powerful party, and everything's gone has the additional benefit of making it easier to kill the enemy party in the first turn.

Currently the Stronghold is my only Nether creature. I'm planning on working on the Brim Smiths next and exchanging them with Nether versions.

So, if I'm creating a Brim Smith nether in a party with this configuration ... how should I go about that? Should I try to get Violet orbs that enhance emerald activations, and load them up with nothing but Emerald gems to maximize attack?

[Vagrant]

Anything that enhances Emeralds is good, yes. For Brims you want to commit, so load up all the way on Emeralds, and because of that you'll want to switch Frostfire Embodiment out for Emerald Attunement; FE boosts attack equal to missing health, which is naturally going to be low for you, which EA gives you an effective 50% attack boost. One is going to be a much higher number.

[Squid]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

Anything that enhances Emeralds is good, yes. For Brims you want to commit, so load up all the way on Emeralds, and because of that you'll want to switch Frostfire Embodiment out for Emerald Attunement; FE boosts attack equal to missing health, which is naturally going to be low for you, which EA gives you an effective 50% attack boost. One is going to be a much higher number.

If I get rid of Frostfire Embodiment, is it still worth keeping Everything's Gone? Part of what motivated me to use both of those was the synergy between them. The combination of those two abilities with Sacrimony means that even my support creatures like Topaz Paragon are actually hitting for reasonable damage, which helps them mop up anything the Brim Smiths can't take on their own in the first turn.

Since I'm using frostfire and everything's gone, on my Brim Smiths swords, I started throwing on maximum health upgrades after I ran out of flat whetstones for attack bonuses.

[Vagrant]

Everything's Gone is a flat 35% damage to all enemies for free - there's never going to be a time you'll not want it.

Look at it this way; when you load up on health enchants to proc Frostfire Embodiment, you're getting .35 attack for every one health point, because your Brims go first and will only be missing 35% of their max health. But if you put eight attack enchants and then an Inscription of Proficiency, you can get a 50% raise on artifact Attack - which, after your Brim Smith's Dissection bonus, is something like 150% its Attack total.

Proficiency, however, has no effect on Health enchants, and more importantly Dissection doesn't proc on it either.

[Squid]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

Everything's Gone is a flat 35% damage to all enemies for free - there's never going to be a time you'll not want it.

Look at it this way; when you load up on health enchants to proc Frostfire Embodiment, you're getting .35 attack for every one health point, because your Brims go first and will only be missing 35% of their max health. But if you put eight attack enchants and then an Inscription of Proficiency, you can get a 50% raise on artifact Attack - which, after your Brim Smith's Dissection bonus, is something like 150% its Attack total.

Proficiency, however, has no effect on Health enchants, and more importantly Dissection doesn't proc on it either.

Yeah, that all makes sense. The decision to throw health enchants on the swords was mainly a function of scarcity -- if I'd had more flat whetstones I'd probably have opted for attack.

So, I probably want EG regardless of whatever else is going on and max health enchants aren't as efficient as attack in this situation.

Now ... would it be worthwhile to consider the possibility of ditching the Dark Brim Smith in favor of a Frostfire Efreet with Emerald Attunement? Then I would get both of those abilities at once, and Frostfire Embodiment probably offers more damage than the DBS ability -- because I don't think that the BS ability procs on the DBS one.

[Vagrant]

It doesn't, but it's very easy to check whether Frostfire Efreet is better than DBS. Check how much health your Brim Smiths are missing when you go into battle. If it's less than the amount of attack on the DBS's sword, then the DBS is better.

[Squid]

Good point, thanks. I'll keep an eye out for an emerald attunement ... and think about dropping the max health buffs on my swords before enchanting them with legendary materials.

Other thinky thoughts ... if I found a Topaz Attunement enchantment, I could switch out the Topaz Paragon w/Everything's Gone for a Raven Acolyte with Topaz Attunement.

Would the Raven Acolyte have better stats? He certainly looks cooler.

Also, I'm thinking that I might replace the Stronghold's ability with something more interesting ... getting the Siren Oracle's Shell ability instead of Impenetrable Carapace might be more useful in the long term.

[Vagrant]

All of the paragons have ridiculous HP / Defenses but really sucky Attack / Speed. It depends on whether you want a third-string attacker, which Raven would be moderately better at, or whether you'll just slap status inflictions on his artifact and have him sneeze on people.

The ideal Stronghold enchant is Death Beckons, which reduces all damage taken while provoking to 1. It's also supposed to reduce Provoke chance, but Resilience cancels that out completely.

[Squid]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

The ideal Stronghold enchant is Death Beckons, which reduces all damage taken while provoking to 1. It's also supposed to reduce Provoke chance, but Resilience cancels that out completely.

That sounds patently ridiculous. What creature has that ability?

I'm grinding a bunch of major sigils right now, hoping to get good legendary materials.

[Squid]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

All of the paragons have ridiculous HP / Defenses but really sucky Attack / Speed. It depends on whether you want a third-string attacker, which Raven would be moderately better at, or whether you'll just slap status inflictions on his artifact and have him sneeze on people.

The ideal Stronghold enchant is Death Beckons, which reduces all damage taken while provoking to 1. It's also supposed to reduce Provoke chance, but Resilience cancels that out completely.

Oh, I got this material through transmuting. I realized that I have a ton of legendary materials from grinding major sigils, and if I transmute the ones I don't want I will randomly get different legendary materials.

I also got a Massive Topaz by doing this, so I'm replacing my Topaz Paragon with a Raven Acolyte. I also got the Nightmare Mummy ability material by transmuting, and I'm going to equip that to the Bone Reaper that I just added to my party.

So, if no enemy abilities that are triggered on death can be activated, and no enemy spells can be cast, and all attacks to my taunting stronghold deal 1 damage ... that's basically checkmate, right?

[Vagrant]

Additional damage effects and status will still kill you if they go off. For example, a Spider Occultist or Mutated Pulse Bat do additional damage equal to (150% difference in Luck / 50% Speed) and on lower floors that number is considerably likely to kill you outright. Punching an Alcazar, Dryad Proliferator, or Mutant Scourgewalker and not killing it outright also is likely to kill a member of your team. Learn target priority, though, and you should be pretty much safe.

[Squid]

Turns out that this isn't checkmate at all. Go high enough, and the Brim Smiths don't have enough damage output to take down the opposing force in a single turn. Then, if any enemy creature has the ability to lay a status effect on the Stronghold that knocks it out of provoking, they can start applying their damage and wipe my team pretty quickly.

In fact, having "Curse of the Silent" might be a net negative, because at least when the enemy can cast spells they are likely to end up wasting turns casting pointless buffs on each other instead of attacking and applying their offensive abilities or status effects.

Currently, the team looks like this:

1x Bone Reaper (curse of the silent)
2x Brim Smith (strength of the world)
1x Raven Acolyte (topaz attunement)
1x Cinder Devil (sacrimony)
1x Stronghold nether (death beckons)

This seems pretty solid, but there must be a way to make it even better.

[Vagrant]

Sacrimony is replaceable, as it doesn't help you score the first kill, and until you get the first kill it does nothing. There are a number of buffs that can replace it:

Lifebinder - +30% Atk/Def/Luck while all creatures are alive
Abnegation - 15% of Power Balance added to Atk/Def/Luck
Emerald Attunement - previously discussed
Dark Braze - add artifact's Atk/Luck to row
Stonebark Whetstone - prevents glancing blows, mortal blows +50% damage
Pit Worm Acid - after attacking, reduce all enemies' defenses by 15%

As cool as Bone Reaper can be, it locks off a slot that can be better used elsewhere. There's a fair amount of battles where its ability won't come into play at all, and that's something you'll be paying for down the line. CotS, on the other hand, gets steadily more valuable, as enemy Spell Power increases exponentialy and will gank you on deep floors. Much less what happens when an enemy pops Dispel.

[FDru]

Yeah spells are by far the biggest killer for all of my parties, even on the lower floors. I thought about running Ward + pumping points into spell defense (life mage) with the purple Carver that suffocates anything that casts a spell + equipped with the silence + bleed on attack artifact (here's me not remembering the names of anything), but it's seriously not enough.

[Squid]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

Sacrimony is replaceable, as it doesn't help you score the first kill, and until you get the first kill it does nothing. There are a number of buffs that can replace it:

Lifebinder - +30% Atk/Def/Luck while all creatures are alive
Abnegation - 15% of Power Balance added to Atk/Def/Luck
Emerald Attunement - previously discussed
Dark Braze - add artifact's Atk/Luck to row
Stonebark Whetstone - prevents glancing blows, mortal blows +50% damage
Pit Worm Acid - after attacking, reduce all enemies' defenses by 15%

As cool as Bone Reaper can be, it locks off a slot that can be better used elsewhere. There's a fair amount of battles where its ability won't come into play at all, and that's something you'll be paying for down the line. CotS, on the other hand, gets steadily more valuable, as enemy Spell Power increases exponentialy and will gank you on deep floors. Much less what happens when an enemy pops Dispel.

I did come across a Massive Emerald while transmuting and I made a sword out of it.

So ... maybe something like this?

1x Dark Brim Smith (Emerald Attunement)
2x Brim Smith (Strength of the World)
1x Raven Acolyte (Topaz Attunement)
1x Cinder Devil (Curse of the Silent)
1x Stronghold (Death Beckons)

So far I've enjoyed the Bone Reaper a lot ... shutting down some of those abilities is very helpful and I've made it through to about realm level 38. However maxing out the Brim Smith's attack values is probably more important.

At some point I should experiment with a more creative build, like something with the gravestorm ability or some other trickery.

[Vagrant]

That's very solid, and probably about as far as you can take the build.

Most people do come up with different builds, if for nothing else than curiousity. The game's your oyster now. My second-string squad is a Cloud team that uses Raving Clouds with Anomaly to deal ridiculous damage.