Build discussions

[Trolleur_Durden]

I'm opening this thread to talk about the different builds we all use, and to share our experiences. I'll start with my build for Albus :

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/477175777213808658/514012528666214400/unknown.png?width=1202&height=677

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/477175777213808658/514012276693401610/unknown.png?width=1202&height=677


This build is designed to fight humans (I have another one for hunting) in end-game content, in Cruel/Challenge difficulty mode. The build is quite simple. In one word: Retaliation! I send Albus first in the fray, and watch enemies impale on him, waves afer waves. And once the most resilient ones are cluttered around him, they are easy to dispatch with a good aoe from Sion, Heixing or Ray.

My choice of abilities emphasize on that : I have litteraly no damage-dealing general abilities, relying only on normal attacks, counterattacks and sometimes overcharge ability to dispatch enemies. Turning over a new leaf is always used in conjunction with Wind curtain, allowing me to activate this buff for free right before going into action, and getting the most of its duration. 20% dodge chance on Wind curtain is too good to pass upon for a defensive build. Arguably, Wind walk could be replaced by something else, but empirically, I feel like it's more important to be able to reach a good defensive spot (with good cover, choke points and such) than being able to kill one enemy from time to time, and WW allows me to do just that. And if the situation gets dangerous (sometimes, you litteraly aggro the whole map and are overwhelmed by dozens of enemies), Wind Walk + Turn over a new leaf gives a lot of mobility to reposition far away from danger.

Regarding my mastery choices, some explanations :

-After a lot of testing, I've ditched the bleeding masteries entirely. There are mainly two reasons for that :
=>Usually, Albus one-shot everything on retaliation, especially if he blocked, so there's no point to inflict bleeding. The Retaliation mastery guarantee a critical hit after a blocked attack, and the Wind SP increase critical strike damage, so Albus does very strong critical strikes, and he does them quite often and reliably.
=>Tough enemies like Twinkle Jack that would arguably make bleeding relevant have often a high slashing resistance, allowing them to usually remove bleeding when it's their turn, making this strategy somewhat unreliable.

-I've hesitated a lot between Massiveness and Veteran to solve the stun problem. Most of the time, the stun is the result of a push from Clenched fist, so Massiveness acts like as a pseudo anti-stun in most situations. It's also much better with Counterattack, because you can't retaliate if you're pushed out of range, obviously. However, in the latest repeatable mission, some of the enemies can stun without Clenched fist (Darius, Twinkle jack and the hammer-wielding White tigers). Considering how dangerous being stunned is, I've settled on Veteran for now.

-Impulse fields is a fail-safe option, because in Challenge mode, enemies have random masteries. And sometimes, some of them will have either Breakthrough or Prior planning, if not both, making the "high block/dodge" strategy much less effective. I prefer Second heart, especially on tanks, but the point limitation forced me to settle on Impulse fields here.

-Mutant is my favourite mastery in the game. Converting debuffs into buffs is incredibly strong, and allows a lot of fun strategies. My standard initiating turn looks like that: movement, wind walk to reach a good defensive spot, turn over a new leaf and wind curtain, and conceal. Then Ray throws an ice mist grenade, giving smoke cover against ranged attacks. And each turn, the frostbite debuff from the grenade is transformed into a buff for Albus. Arguably, it's not a must-have for this build, but it's a personal preference.

-Clenched fist is a very useful mastery. Beyond the obvious stun by collision property, it allows to push back enemies when counterattacking, denying them the infamous "counterattack on counterattack".

-Catharsis is merely here for added flexibility. Because Albus tends to do big killing sprees between two turns, Cahtarsis allows all abilities on cooldown to be available almost every turn. Even with Weapon blocking, a counterattack build tends to be "buried" in the action phase by being delayed a lot, so Albus has much fewer active turns than other characters, making his cooldowns quite long without Catharsis.

-Breakthrough and Ali Baba aren't set in stone, and can be replaced by other masteries, depending of the situation.

[RexEviL]

If you upload it through steam. People can see it without needing to open browser.

[Xaxil Nightsun]

Ooo then let me show mines here then.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570103085

This is my Albus set up, I use him as skirmisher/shocktrooper, I didn't build him really tanky as Sion and Irene generaly do most of the tanking in my team, he does have good damage mitigation though as well is good block, (not as high as it could be but high enough for me.)
You'll see I use mutant often for my character simply because to me it's just so good for high focus targets, plus thanks to Ray, I can stack on soo many buffs on my character it's scary.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570103069

My Sion tank, I sacrificied alot of his damage potential in this set up, It's far from perfecr to me, at the moment i'm waiting for certain type of masteries OR a better tank character, I would love get Leon simply because the ice masteries would make him a goodly tank imo as a Battle mage, though surprisingly my sion takes very little damage with this build espically if Anne is hovering nearby. Due to moving castle and 100% block I rarely see enemies flat damage break 50 to him, only ever doing so due to fixed damage from bolt masteries. This is a temp build for him though if we get tanky character next i'm gonna turn him back into a back line caster.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570103047

My Irene and debatebly my strongest character at the moment. Due to how tanky, and powerfull she is, I have her as solo fighter with Lonely hero, I would ussaly go one way with the main team and send Irene off on her own some other way, and I haven't had her die once so far doing this, funny she actully get's taken out of action more when she with my team then when she running solo.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570102996

My Anne build so far. Man if you knew how many times I revised this kid's masteries...ugh...Basicly have her as full support, I ussaly have her sticking very close to the front character via clinging to Sion's moving castle, thanks to the passive effect of it and Anne holy wall, she ussaly never takes damage any higher then 100 via crits, if she blocks she virtually takes no damage, though certain bosses and attacks still screw her over and if she get's pushed away from Sion things get complicated. The most I ever had to worry about with my anne were melees with clenched fist, outside that i've had good fun with it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570102943

My buff boy Hexing build. Man the damage output with this set up is scary, with this build I actully pretty carefree about him getting hit, as this only makes his damage higher, I ussaly don't keep him in cover for two reasons, 1 being the damage increase from judgment and 2 being knockback attacks, many times i've lost hexing simply due to him being stunned over and over again because he was in cover etc etc, so i bulked him up and now i can solo most maps with him alone if I wanted, though on challegne mode that's very meh due to rng sometime screwing me over with tons of impulse fields and comradeship...So far the most part he ussally hangs a few sprints away from the team but not so far that he can't come and reinforce if I need him to.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570102972

My Ray build so far. My main goal with her is suppression and aoe damage, I use her to mostly soften up strong targets and kill groups of soft ones. Unstable compound is surpringly awsome and i plan to give her veteran to turn her into a potential mobile knockback explosive from having 10 stacks. Since I have her for suppression controling action time and moblity was key for me with her, as such she is the MOST mobile character on my team ussally able to get to high ground within one turn of us repostioning. I use her different mist skills to supress and lock down areas, creating choke points as well as creating hazardes mist that my team can exploit for buffs, as well as use to protect from range attacks and headshot. I plan to finish her build with containing attack and veteran once I finish leveling her, was mostly getting bored of trianing on damn beast all the time.

[Trolleur_Durden]

Sion as a tank is ... surprising, I must say. Your builds are quite interesting, the only thing that I would change is that I would provide much more stun resistance for all characters, with either Veteran or Massiveness (even if Massiveness doesn't prevent direct stun, only the stun resulting from a collision). Being stunned is extremely punishing and often leads to be taken out of action, and the survival rate of my characters greatly improved with stun immunity overall..

So my suggestions would be :

-Irene : swap Alacrity with Massiveness. And if you feel like you don't need it, you should consider taking Stretching instead of Alacrity anyway, because Block>Dodge with the Revenge mastery set IMO.

-Anne : replace Containing attack with Speak up, then replace Consideration with Massiveness. Also, considering how fragile Anne is, I think that replacing Abundance and Blind spot with either Impulse fields or Second heart would be more beneficial for her.

-Heixing : remove Piercing shot and then replace Tactical sense with Veteran. As you said, Heixing is often in cover, so he is really vulnerable to push and collision effects. Also, I don't have the Lone wolf mastery, so I can't use the Judgement set. Do you remember how you got it ? And is this mastery set worth it?

[Trolleur_Durden]

This is my Sion build. When Heixing came out, Sion used to be a much worse version of him, doing more or less what Heixing was doing, but with much less efficiency. This changed completely with the release of the upgraded classes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570175180
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570177015

Now, he's the epitome of a glass cannon, and by far the highest DPS in my team. With Magic acceleration and all the other masteries, he does truly insane damage, being the only one in my team able to one-shot everything that doesn't have Impulse field, even Twinkle Jack. Thunderbolt and Lightning storm being Fall type attacks, he has also a very good accuracy. Even with Magic acceleration always activated, his Vigor is always full thanks to Soul stealer mastery, so he never tires out. And with 1S1K+Catharsis, he can dispatch everything on screen with ease.

He's a little bit fragile, so I'm especially cautious when I position him, but I managed to squeeze Second heart in the build, so even if he gets taken out by a lucky shot, he comes back and can immediatly flee out of danger. When that happens, I simply chill and delay a little bit my advance and pass some turns to let the cooldown of Second heart be over.

[Xaxil Nightsun]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

Sion as a tank is ... surprising, I must say. Your builds are quite interesting, the only thing that I would change is that I would provide much more stun resistance for all characters, with either Veteran or Massiveness (even if Massiveness doesn't prevent direct stun, only the stun resulting from a collision). Being stunned is extremely punishing and often leads to be taken out of action, and the survival rate of my characters greatly improved with stun immunity overall..

So my suggestions would be :

-Irene : swap Alacrity with Massiveness. And if you feel like you don't need it, you should consider taking Stretching instead of Alacrity anyway, because Block>Dodge with the Revenge mastery set IMO.

-Anne : replace Containing attack with Speak up, then replace Consideration with Massiveness. Also, considering how fragile Anne is, I think that replacing Abundance and Blind spot with either Impulse fields or Second heart would be more beneficial for her.

-Heixing : remove Piercing shot and then replace Tactical sense with Veteran. As you said, Heixing is often in cover, so he is really vulnerable to push and collision effects. Also, I don't have the Lone wolf mastery, so I can't use the Judgement set. Do you remember how you got it ? And is this mastery set worth it?

Stun resistance I was waying my option at with each character about stuns, and gave them all stun resiet at one point but notice that while stun is bad if it happens it was generally very rare for certain characters on my team to get hit with it, the character i did give veterans were characters who would often find them self getting pushed back or targeted for stuns (looking at you damn spoonist wind mage) I personally rather stop or reduce damage if possible rather to avoid certain status debuffs, plus making tons veterans was a pain and it forced me to sacrifice certain masteries and sets in order to slap it in. But I do often revamp my builds as story progresses and have done the new mission a bit more, for the most part though all it did was make me want to give hexing more block.

-Irene with Alacrity I kinda don't remember why I took it I think it was due to at some point I was using shedding and I just never swap it I did switch it after I posted though lol.

-Anne I didn't take blind spot or impulse simply due to Sion drawing alot of aggro due to his moving castle, plus thanks to my gear on anne, she ussaly blocks most attacks and moving castles damage reduction and holy walls reduction made impulse field just not work for me as she would never take more then half her hp in damage so I would rather her have more hp, and containment attack is so Anne can help with boss lock down, some bosses like the Buff boy in the new case just had block for days, so her being able to increase his time by 20 as well as vamp his vigor gives my other members time to take him down while she has him pin, without me having to constrict him. It is true that second heart is lovely on her but I hate that it only can be used once. twice if using the set, and since rays is just so GOOD at CC and a containment and providing cover, I just stoped using it cus Anne wouldn't get hit anymore and for some reason melees stop focusing her over trying to kill Sion and the range that shot her would just miss cus of the smokescreen.

Heixing , I did have veteran at one point but he was taking too many hits, so i switched it for tacical and gave him more hp at first i just had the body trainning but after seeing his output due to macho man and judgement i gave him more hp, plus it let me remove second heart in favor some more auxilary abilities to help with the party when he's not running solo. As for lone wolf I got it from Marco, you have to replay the story mission where you can control either him or don, and beat him with Don, you could either hope for it to drop each win, or simply go for filling his page, I did the page filling myself. Though beating him is trickier now due to him being both an assasin and having head shot.

Also forgot to metion but mutant man...it's just so amazing to me, lol espically when i get immortal, ALL sense of safety goes out the window and i just go in. XD

[Xaxil Nightsun]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

This is my Sion build. When Heixing came out, Sion used to be a much worse version of him, doing more or less what Heixing was doing, but with much less efficiency. This changed completely with the release of the upgraded classes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570175180
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570177015

Now, he's the epitome of a glass cannon, and by far the highest DPS in my team. With Magic acceleration and all the other masteries, he does truly insane damage, being the only one in my team able to one-shot everything that doesn't have Impulse field, even Twinkle Jack. Thunderbolt and Lightning storm being Fall type attacks, he has also a very good accuracy. Even with Magic acceleration always activated, his Vigor is always full thanks to Soul stealer mastery, so he never tires out. And with 1S1K+Catharsis, he can dispatch everything on screen with ease.

He's a little bit fragile, so I'm especially cautious when I position him, but I managed to squeeze Second heart in the build, so even if he gets taken out by a lucky shot, he comes back and can immediatly flee out of danger. When that happens, I simply chill and delay a little bit my advance and pass some turns to let the cooldown of Second heart be over.

Lol that's the same set up I had minus the second heart, and 1s1k, I would ussaly run low action time cost skills, like his shot type bolt skill and his chain lightning, I didn't run 1s1k cus after wiping the stage clean i was left with sion having like 200+ action wait time <_<. Man has some godly damage but some god awfull action time mangement. I also gave him social life and generator, now that there was glass cannon, dishing out like 6k - 8k damage, and 10k- 13k on ppl he electricuted, and he would break like the finest of china. was funny because back then my sion had the lowest hp out of the team. My Hp was something like this back then Albus > Hexing > Anne > Irene > Sion. Now it's Hexing > Irene > Sion > Albus > Ray > Anne.

Also I thought second heart only triggers once per mission unless you have third heart, I know phoenix can trigger multiple times, but it only heals hp based on Sp, and is exclusive to fire esp users. Plus you don't get the free action like second heart.

[Trolleur_Durden]

I don't share your experience regarding 1s1k and Catharsis, because when I use Sion to wipe everything, he doesn't have a high action time at the end of the turn. I may be mistaken, but the way I understand it is that when you take another action when 1s1k procs, it resets your position in the action queue, so when you're done, you only have the delay of the last action you did. So I don't understand how you manage to end up with 200+ delay time on Sion actually.

Second heart is like Phoenix, it has a 9 turns cooldown, and can trigger multiple times during a mission. But what makes it vastly superior to Phoenix is that it gives you back a full turn immediatly, allowing you to flee out of harm's way, heal (if you don't have Third heart), reposition, kill your attacker ... the flexibility is incredible. My experience with Phoenix was quite mediocre, usually it would restore very few HP, and on an Irene that would already be buried under 200+ delay time due to multiple Counterattacks, so she would end up out of action anyway. Also, playing a new turn immediatly "resets" your position in the action queue, meaning that you can sometimes avoid completely 300+ delay time on a character. It's like doing 10 counterattacks for free: the value is so high that it's a must-have mastery on basically everyone, especially counter-attackers.

I've followed RexEvil's and Botzu's advices, and recently replaced all resurrection masteries for Irene in order to take the ones that give her resilience. And what they said is true : she is really unkillable now, so Second heart is irrelevant on her. I'll post my build later.

[Xaxil Nightsun]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

I don't share your experience regarding 1s1k and Catharsis, because when I use Sion to wipe everything, he doesn't have a high action time at the end of the turn. I may be mistaken, but the way I understand it is that when you take another action when 1s1k procs, it resets your position in the action queue, so when you're done, you only have the delay of the last action you did. So I don't understand how you manage to end up with 200+ delay time on Sion actually.

Second heart is like Phoenix, it has a 9 turns cooldown, and can trigger multiple times during a mission. But what makes it vastly superior to Phoenix is that it gives you back a full turn immediatly, allowing you to flee out of harm's way, heal (if you don't have Third heart), reposition, kill your attacker ... the flexibility is incredible. My experience with Phoenix was quite mediocre, usually it would restore very few HP, and on an Irene that would already be buried under 200+ delay time due to multiple Counterattacks, so she would end up out of action anyway. Also, playing a new turn immediatly "resets" your position in the action queue, meaning that you can sometimes avoid completely 300+ delay time on a character. It's like doing 10 counterattacks for free: the value is so high that it's a must-have mastery on basically everyone, especially counter-attackers.

I've followed RexEvil's and Botzu's advices, and recently replaced all resurrection masteries for Irene in order to take the ones that give her resilience. And what they said is true : she is really unkillable now, so Second heart is irrelevant on her. I'll post my build later.

With 1s1k it adds up all the action you take durring your streak and does any action time reduction durring it as well, so with the case of say thunderbolt normally without the mastery it would give you penalty of 40, i think it's 20 with the perk combine with magic control you would only suffer a penalty of 10 you would of course use another skill durring this time which lets say cost 7 you would lose 3 on your action time build up now you would only get set back 7 when you end his turn, for me I could clear most groups and the next group over and then some but that lil 7 adds up, 200+ action time was mostly me not having the perk to half the cost of my esp skills, and to double check i just tested it with hexing without recoil control or reload, and his action time was building up, he could still keep going but once i ended he had an action time of around 120. you most likely won't notice action time build among all the turn orders, i know i didn't until i was wondering why it took my sion so long to go again. plus with new perks this become less of an issue for some characters. This is using this along side catharsis mind you so my skills cd would reset as i was getting kills allowing me to endless keep chaining my skills together so long as i kept killing targets.

on second heart the skill discription says activates only once per battle, if it can activate endlessly like pheonix it would make the mastery set third heart redundant, I plan to test this later when i have time but i'm pretty sure you can't activate second heart again once it activates once unless you have third heart in which case you get two auto revives, and i'm aware you won't revive while you have the debuff.

I have been considering removing phoenix on irene as well it's like i never actully had her die so far, I mostly have it for the cauterize healing. I'd have to play with some masteries on her to figure an alternate for her. mostly haven't done it cus i just like the idea of irene laughing at fire XD, i'm never getting rid of inner flame on her. mostly cus if i did i'd be screwing myself with my own aoes...

[Trolleur_Durden]

I'm positive that you can revive as much as you want with Second heart, you simply have a cooldown of 9 turns between two activations.

[Xaxil Nightsun]

just tested it and second heart isn't endless revives like phoenix, did it with anne and ray, I removed all masteries on Anne to make sure nothing interfered with the test, poisoned anne till she had 1 hp then selfdestructed ray with unstable, had her revive once, waitied for debuff to wear off and repeated it, anne didn't get back up, for sake of consitancy i did it again with third heart and she was able to revive twice but no more after that.

If anything Second heart still is the superior revival mastery, on account you don't need anything to trigger it other then not having revive debuff in the case of having third heart set and it gives you a free action, full heal with set as well as can be used by anyone where as Phoenix can only be used on irene. I also double checked with phoenix to make sure my memory wasn't playing tricks on me and yeah phoenix is endless revives so long as irene has atleast 1 fire sp, and doesn't have revive debuff.

I still like the third heart mastery set though basicly a free second hp, on some " that wasn't even my final form," shenanigans. XP

[ADpowah]

Thanks for all the info!

[Repajeeb]

Originally posted by RexEviL:

If you upload it through steam. People can see it without needing to open browser.

Could youo explain exactly how to put a screen shot here in discussions? I just havent been able to figure it out.

[Xaxil Nightsun]

Originally posted by Repajeeb:

Originally posted by RexEviL:

If you upload it through steam. People can see it without needing to open browser.

Could youo explain exactly how to put a screen shot here in discussions? I just havent been able to figure it out.

So when you take a screenshot you need to put it online (public/private etc) Then once it's uploaded choose to view it online, the link address that is at the top of your screen shot you want to copy that and paste it in your post.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570102943

It will be the white text at the top of your screenshot, by the way.

[Repajeeb]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609757880

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609757844


i seem to have it figured out.

Anyways here's a witch build for Annie. As you can see she hits like a truck and she isn't the most fragile. I don't use her to solo maps or anything, she's just a support and another solid damage dealer.

With witch's prank Annie can add positive buff's to your whole team anytime she heals or cleanses them. Just use her AOE cleanse to buff multipe characters at once.

I usually team her with Sion and send them off together. they both have huge damage and can support eachother well.

Fun Fact. if you put Killer's Mark on her(the item) she'll keep luck on her until she's attacked or attacked. In the newest Violent case, start at the west entrance and send her straight down the middle. As soon as you see sparkling Jack, throw anything at him and watch him die in one hit. This tactic also works on Sion.

[Sh1nes]

I see a lot of ppl using the second heart, is the iron forest resource management district the best mission to farm that? also none of the builds used legendary drop equipments. are the low level requirements on those making them that much inferior to custom items that were crafted?