What other skill sets go well with Scoundrel?

[Valkurm Emperor]

I never used Scoundrel skills on my first playthrough.

Now im thinking.
Scoundrel / ?????
Warefare / Hydro
Geo / Pyro
Aero / ???

[Luxia]

Polymorph.
Especially Rupture Tendons and Chicken Claw, that's the ♥♥♥♥.

[Valkurm Emperor]

Thanks, im tempted to also try Tactician mode but i feel i may get trounced.

[Gregorovitch]

Having played a Lohse as twin dagger Scoundrel as my main on tactician, my observations are:

It depends on what kind of scoundrel you want to go for. There are three bascially in my book:

1. Max burst damage
2. Max survivability (dodge)
3. Jack of all trades

Common to all three are Warfare becasue it gives the best damage mutiplier and the two must-have CC skills of Battering Ram and Knockdown, and 5 points in Scoundrel for the full set of scoundrel skills.

Also common to all are one point in Polymorph for Chamelion Cloak and Chicken Claw. You need to sacrifice three stat points for this (which equates to 15% reduction in damage output) in Polymorph and two Memory slots but that's worth it even for a pure burst damage rogue since the Guerilla perk gives 40% damage bonus from stealth and Chamelion Cloak counts as Stealth. Chicken Claw is just.....good.

Next you have to decide whether you want to go for high dodge at the expense of raw burst damage and high initiative again at the expense of raw burst damage. Unless you are playing LW you do not have enough points to max out Warfare, Scoundrel and Dual Wielding. Nor do you have enough points to max out both Wits and Finesse.

Scounbdrel beats Dual Wield in terms of raw danmage becasue the crit bonus from Scoundrel is multiplicative on total damage whereas Dual Wield bonus is additive with the Finesse bonus. This doesn't amount to much early game but is significant later on when the numbers explode. This is dependant on taking The Pawn perk which gives you 1 AP worth of free mevement per turn and thus you can almost always move into backstab range and get an automatic crit.

Scounrel also gives additional movement per AP bonus whereas Dual Wield gives additional dodge bonus. One way to looik at this is that you are likely to take advantage of the movement bonus all the time whereas dodge will only proc every so often.

The problem with dodge is that they have taken almost all the mutiple rune slot items out of the game so it is much harder to stack dodge runes on you gear to get really meaningfful dodge chances now. This has devalued Dual Wield and Dodge based builds IMO.

Initiative is another problem. Each point in Wits is one less in Finesse (until you max Finesse late game) and so costs 5% base damage per point. However higher initaitve means you go first and a rogue is the unique position of being able to a) get to most targets immediately and b) take down their armour and knock them down or chicken-i-fy them if not outright kill them in one turn. Since many enemies on Tactician are extremely dangerous, some can one-shot you whole party, it makes sacrificing some raw damage for initiative very attractive. It is also very useful to have character with high wits in the party for finding things.

Looking at the Jack of All Trades idea, taking a a few points in various skills such as Aero for Teleport etc, Necro for varous skills gainst physical armour and self-healing abilities my view is fun to play maybe, but not optimal becasue a) most all of them scale with stats you won't have and therefore get progressively less useful late game, and b) when you can deal metric crap tons of focussed burst damage with your daggers, what are you doing wasting those valuable AP on casting spells? Someone eesle can be doing that who's got the stat multipliers to make them count.

The key is that since you cannot max out Warfare and Scoundrel and Dual Wield (unless LW) every point you put into Jack of all Trades skills costs about 5% less damage with your main attacks. Late game Mortal Blow can do 7, 8k damage in one hit. So that's 300-400 damage reduction on that per point

But it is fun to have a diverse skill set so if so I would argue that Polymorph is the obvious main skill to go for, there isn an arguement for going five points in it for Apeothis so you can spam you deadly Scoundrel source skkills each battle, and after that Necro becasue Necro skills tend to work against physical armour and that's usually what you will have just destroyed with your daggers.

I've gone pure burst damage scoundrel with Lohse to kkeep it simp;le first game. Doing it again I think I might go for 5 points instead of one in Polymorph and two or three in Necro to change it up. I will be wincing at all the memory slots I need to buy though, knowing they are costing me 5% base damage each.

[Anishar]

having played scoundrel in tactician i figured the least amount of "efficient spells" you have, the better.
i used this hero to go and oneshot all the high magic armor/low physical armor enemies, due to its mobility it can easily cross the entire battlefield for very low AP and totally disable/kill the said target on it's own.

I played with a party of 4, so you are limited to 4 AP/turn. I greatly recommand using Sebile for the extra dmg/AP trait, as well as Haste buff from an ally, gives extra move speed/ AP (2points over 2turns).

The kit i recommand consist of :

from scoundrel:
Adrenaline
Chloroform
Sawtooth Knife
Backlash
Cloak And Dagger
Sleeping Arms
Daggers Drawn
Rupture Tendons

from meta:
Chicken Claw
Chamelion Cloak
Spread your wings

talents:
Pawn is MUST HAVE
Opportunist
Parry Master

Bait talent not to take : Class Canon, i tried it and AI will just do everything it can to CC you down and you will never get any value from it.

To consider :
1 point in Hunter for the self heal/dispel utility and the Duck Duck Goose talent
Usually you will end up very far away from your support during fights so it can help being self-sufficient went it comes to survability

I figured all of the 3 AP Spells, even tho they're fun, are usually very unefficient, and most of the time it is better to use 2 AP spells/ auto attacks, even if you end your turn with 1 AP left, because you will get an extra AP next turn due to either Haste or Sebile's Trait

When it comes to stats, put everything in finesse/scoundrel first, then dual/warfare for the extra physical damage


This playstyle, though it is EFFICIENT, ends up being very redundant and boring really fast.
As you do the same thing litteraly every fight, same spell priority/rotation.
The only one thing that is fun is the use of your free movement AP enabling you to abuse Lign of Sight and reposition after every action.

[Valkurm Emperor]

Thats pretty helpful thanks. I'll definatly use poly.

My first party was a bit of a mess.
Poly/Necro (spear)
Warefare/Aero/Pyro (duel weilding sword/maces)
Summon/Hydro ( duel weilding wands)
Huntsman/Geo (crossbow)

Now maybe
Scoundrel / Poly ( daggers)
Warefare / Hydro (Sword and shield Paladin type thing)
Geo / Pyro (staff)
Aero / Warefare /Necro (2 handed sword dark night type thing)

Would i be ok on Tactician with that?

[Gregorovitch]

1. I would not bother with Aero and Necro on a 2H warrior. Basically 2H warriors do so much damage and have so many good Warfare abilities that there is little value in doing other than using every AP available to whack stuff over the head with a bloody great Axe IMO. I'd just pump Stength (then wits), Warfare and 2H then maybe passive defensive stuff. On tactician the priority is to kill stuff as quickkly as possible without buggering about.

2. I've played Fane as Pyro/Geo but I have been somewhat dissapointed with it. It should work on paper but.... In the first place practically eveything you face is immune or healed by poison. Secondly practically all the big Geo spells look great on paper but their additional effects (knock downs, crippled etc) are resisted by physical, not magical, armour. Therefore they almost never work. My 2H and Rogue dispatch enemiees almost instantrly after their physical armour is down so Fane bascially doean't have any real targets for Geo spells. Pyro doees a crap ton of damage, it is true, but doesn't have any CC unfortuately. The only real good thing Fane does with Geo is fortify. Becasue he's got the Intelligence his Fortifies really do Fortify.

3. I have found that using shields on my two mages is way better than staffs. The extra armour is fantastic and the Shields Up ability makes them almost invulnerable except against the heavy bosses' nukes. I hardly ever use wands and never staffs, although they both carry wands for the bonuses/runes.

4. I think the strongest combos for CC are in Hydro and Aero. Freeze 'em and stun 'em. Hailstorm and Thunderstorm are amazing. I think Aero and Hydro are better schools than Pyro and definitely better than Geo.

5. 1H builds are specialised - they can be inredible in certain combinationsd I berleive. They are inferior to 2H obviously in terms of damage output and the problem is "tanking" in the traditional sense just doesn't work. Enemies will just bypass your tank and head for a high value/low armour target to kill and to hell with the attack of opportunity. One advantage 1H has is late game there are a lot of good 1H weapons avaiable butr tnhey seem to have taken outr a lot of good 2H weapons. But that's only late game.

The thing you have to remember is that daggers (and spears I suppose) scale with Finesse, swords, axes etc scale with Strength and spells scale with Inteligence. A character that does 1H and Hydro is either going to very bad at 1H, very bad at Hydro or very mediocre on both. You can't put a competative number of points into both Strength and Intelligence on one character. Bad and mediocre are not what you need on Tactician.

For that reason I'd recommend each character either does physical weapon damage or does magic. On physical damage dealers stuff in Polymoroph and Necro can work well, but stuff like heals and fortifies are meh becasue they don't have the Intelligence to make them that meanigfull.

[Anishar]

Ok i'll go onto more general tactician tips

Basically you will end up facing 3 types of enemies:

High physical armor/low magical armor
Hight magical armor/low physical armor
50% Physical/50% Magical

Then you will face few fights with enemies having either :
90% Dodge Aura
Very high magic resistance (Usually 1 or 2 spell school out of 5, fire water earth poison air)

I figured a very efficient way to approach fights is to have a comp who can do the following :
Burst low physical armor with 1 character (Scoundrel does this job)
Burst low magical armor with magic spells, and unlike Scoundrel a mage alone might struggle due to the sometimes Magic Resistance aspect.
Cleave the mixed physical/magical with whatever. Most ppl will say using 1 type is more efficient, but i will give you some tips to play around that

What does this means?
This means you need some of your characters to have the option to do BOTH magical and physical damage.

How can you do so?

Physical damage from INT Based characters can come from :

First off, consider taking a look at the Summoner class.
It's damage scales from your char level/summoner level, and the monster you can summon can then switch to ANY of the magic school or being physical dmg based.
This flexibility in the damage type makes it a MUST HAVE i think; it just gives you so many more options on how you can approach each encounter.

Consider pairing your Geo/Fire mage with WarFare, and the shield based abilities. Not only does it boost your survability and synergises very well with all these close range AOE playstyle, gives you mobility and a way to make your surfaces explose/get Elemental Affinity value with Phoenix dive, but you also get the SHIELD THROW ability, which scales ONLY from your Shield's amount of armor, and it deals physical damage, this way you can have a bit of a contribution.
Within the Geomancer spells, you can also mix 1 geo + 1 necro book to craft the Acid Spray and Corrosive Touch spells, both of those spells scales with INT, yet removes physical armor based on your INT. It is a very efficient way to also contribute to physical damage with your mage.

Short conclusion : You can tweak your summoner/mage to have some sort of physical dmg contribution

Now when it comes to doing Magical Dmg with physical dmg based heroes
You need to look at weapon BUFFS. like Firebrand or Venomous Aura

Basically what it does is : Every weapon based damage dealt also deals magical damage.
No matter what, your weapon based heroes are going to apply their damage, magical buff or not, physical armor will go down. But with those buffs, you also make them reduce magical armor basically "for free", as they wouldve used their physical abilities NO MATTER WHAT.

This allows your magic based characters to actually get value. Otherwise you will just remove the magic armor and then the target is already dead due to physical dmg.

That being said, the core idea is Flexibility, if your party is very One Dimentionnal you will have troubles for some fights, having a comp able to adapt when it comes to Damage Type is very important i think.

I ran :

Frontlaner WarFare/Poly/Necro using either 2H or dual, lots of damage CC and selfsustain
Rogue Scoundrel/Poly usually free agent doing its own thing during fights
Mage Geo/Fire/Warfare, having both Poison Earth Fire and Physical dmg contribution
Summoner/Warfare/Magic, (Couple of points in the 4 magic school to get every single utility from each one)

On paper id say the composition you want to run will have a major issue

Scoundrel Paladin Dark knight : Lots of physical damage
Then you have a mage who's kinda on it's own when it comes to doing magic damage

I'd recommand you either change your mage for a support type character, this way you have a full physical composition
OR
you change one of your physical character onto a more flexible one, this way it can help your mage when it comes to magic dmg type. I'd recommand summonner for this

[wendigo211]

The skills you want are:

• Warfare (max it). The physical damage multiplier is separate from the Finesse Dual Wield one. Most of the Warfare skills also can backtab and you'll want Battering Ram, Battle Stomp, Pheonix Dive and maybe Cripple.
  
• Scoundrel (as high as is possible). After the physical damage multiplier, the critical hit multiplier is other one you want to max. This is where you'll get the bulk of your skills. You'll want a couple of dips, so you might not max this one.
  
• Polymorph (2 or 3 points). You want Chameleon Skin, Chicken Claw and Spread your Wings. There are a couple more that are interesting, like the Medusa Head one.
  
• Hunstman (2 points, can use items). Basically Duck Duck Goose, Tactical Retreat and First Aid, you can get some use from Elemental Arrows as well (it works on daggers).
  
• Aero (2 or 3 points, can use items). Evasion and Teleport. If you hit an opponent with rupture tendons and teleport them they will take the same amount of damage as if they ran the whole distance.

[Valkurm Emperor]

Anishar i was only thinking of leaving out summoner becuase i relied on it so heavily on my first playthrough and wanted something different.

But it is extreamly powerful and versatile.

[Anishar]

Close to unbalanced/overpowered yes x)
But then again, you will more often face high magic resistances than dodge aura, as there is no physical resistance in this game for some reasons.

If you really want not to play summoner then playing around magic types will be a struggle, and as you seem to like physical heavy comps then id suggest you get rid of your mage for a more physical/support type character, a mage alone will struggle too much, i tried it and it was very unefficient

[Anishar]

Or what you could do is run 2 physical 2 mages and find a way to have both your mages have physical dmg contribution, this can also work, but im not sure if having 2 mages works too well due to some magic schools anti synergy

[Gregorovitch]

I've playeed with a summoner and I defintely think the flexibility of it (physical vs various magic dfamage types) makes it extremely useful. It's balanced somewhat by the the totems and to some extent the incarnate tailing off in terms of damage output as the game goes on. But that flexibility is going to give you a lot of build progression options across your whole party and that's hard to give up.

My summoner started off as a life saver but now it's just a untility I sometimes don't even bother with as he's also a Aero/Hydro now,

[Stabbey]

Aero works well with Scoundrel for Teleport, Netherswap, and Uncanny Evasion/Evasion Aura. Later, spells like Pressure Spike and Tornado (Aero 3) can be helpful for dealing with cursed surfaces.

[raubrey]

Originally posted by Anishar:

To consider :
1 point in Hunter for the self heal/dispel utility and the Duck Duck Goose talent
Usually you will end up very far away from your support during fights so it can help being self-sufficient went it comes to survability

I've liked this setup so much -- combined with cloak & dagger and even phoenix if I get carried away. It might work better on a utility rogue but more often than not I end up with two tactical move abilities on most my characters, even my mages. Nether Swap is too fickle for me, so I tend to skip it anymore.

I absolutely love Duck - Goose.

[Robin of Spiritwood]

The less Skills you use, the better your Scoundrel kills. It's a paradox.
I would focus on saving AP.

Use an Elf for the race, to get Flesh Sacrifice. This gives you an extra AP.
Take Adrenaline first skill. ( Eat the meat on the first corpse)

Take Executioner talent next. You will be swimming in kills.

I never used Duck Duck Goose because almost all movement was done by the teleports. Running wastes AP.

IF you like to run/maneuver tactically, just be sure to keep the Rogue's backpack completely empty.

You get Phoenix Dive from Warfare, Cloak&Dagger from Scoundrel, and Backlash. Take Spread-Your-Wings(Poly) or Tactical Retreat from Huntsman and you never have to run on the ground. Oh, forgot Blitz too.

Warfare already gives Whirlwind, Crippling Strike and Battle Stomp which ALL do backstabs.
You just really need autoattacks additionally. No real need to use the fancy special attacks in Scoundrel. Take whichever you like just for fun.

Teleport is very useful to stack 2 enemies so you can Backstab both with Warfare skills. That saves AP.

Defensively, you COULD use 3 Skills:
- Chamelion Cloak
- Smoke Cover
- Blessed Smoke Cover

( The Evasion ones dont protect from spells )

However, if you use Phoenix Dive to your backstabbing spot, and then Flesh Sacrifice, you get a free ring of Blood Cloud to hide in.

If you are going the hiding route, you don't really need to worry about Parry and Dodge much. If you prefer a more visible dodge-tank, take lots of Dual Wield and look for gear with Dodge, and put Leadership on somebody else. It works great too.

Occasionally you will get an enemy with just a sliver of life left, and would want a "Half-Attack" to finish off. In this situation you could use Necromancy with Elemental Affinity while standing in Blood- get killer moves that cost only One AP.

A Hybrid Warrior/Scoundrel with a Shield is a viable option too. USe OverPower to crack them to the ground, switch to dual daggers to finish off. Or, Sling the shield whenever it's off cooldown for a quick wipe of the Physical Armour.

If you skimp on WIts because you are always going to Backstab-Crit, you will get better hitting power. But you'll go LAST. That means all your Knockdowns will be neutralized immediately on next turn- they just get back up. So if that's the plan, take Chicken Claw, Sleeping Arms , and other Disables - instead of Knockdowns.