Need help with clowns

[tomoden87]

Any particular builds that would help against clowns?
So far I have painfully made it to "overlapping coincidence" but got stuck.
Send help pls!!

[Hemmingfish]

If you can get your damage high enough, Albus and White Knight Alisa have access to a really funny combo:
Sen no Sen (Acuity + Extreme Speed + Sharp Blade + Forestallment)
which makes Forestallment always crit
and
Overpower (Forestallment + Final Blow + Concentration + Alacrity)
which allows you to activate Forestallment infinite times as long as you don't have any enemies next to you, such as when you one-shot them with huge crits. Sword Manual + Muscle Training + Muscle Burst are gear-free damage increases that will help you do this if you don't quite have the numbers.

It's not a perfect silver bullet because you'll still take damage from all of the bosses and Black Clown Masks (and Wei will interrupt it with his Impulse Fields), but it'll eat White Clown Masks and White Skeleton Masks like candy.

[grayrest]

You're up to the point in the game where the devs want you to change your tactics/mess with your builds so each new wave of enemies will introduce new special defenses that your previous builds won't work against. Clowns are mostly testing your block shred. White Clowns are just annoying about block in general and black clowns go into heavy resist if you get them low which tends to happen by being under-geared or by having your hit blocked instead of one-shotting.

I don't want to give a lot of specific builds because I can't remember exactly how many points you have access to and the exact set of options you have available. The ones I'll provide are around 50 points and hopefully useable.

Solutions:

Spirit users get access to the Sharp Spirit mastery which shreds block based on SP total. Since spirit gives hit as well (counters high dodge) you'll frequently see end game builds focused on large SP pools (Extreme Will, Golden Mane, ...of Peak weapon affix) plus Awaken to get it filled.

The legendary drops off the skull squad in 46V significantly help with block shred. Alligator Blade off Skull Slasher and Rifle off Skull Eater are 30% block shred. I never bothered moving to a different rifle on Giselle and I swap into Alligator for clown maps on Albus.

Aside from the weapon, Sniper Giselle has a ton of block shred (Predicted Fire, Best Snipe, Breakthrough, confusion debuff from shadow snipe). The easiest way to use her is to set her up as fire support (Ruler of the Battlefield) but if she's shadow sniping and she hits the damage thresholds she can sweep the map. This is somewhat tedious due to the LoS requirements but to do it you type V to view LoS/range info then 1 to select normal attack. The tiles with the crossed swords are in LoS of all visible/known enemies so you're looking for an empty tile that's within range. It's fairly fast once you get used to it but I don't like doing full maps that way.

I feel Albus kind of does need the Alligator Blade to really do well against clowns. Great Swordsman can do it with a Bladestorm build but that won't reliably chain kill on offense so it kind of leans into forestall/counter and you'll want to keep Anne in the area. Clowns are kind of Magic Knight's chance to shine because cursed sword stacks shred block so the first few kills can be rough (use the two-hit attack on black clowns and reduce cooldown with skeletons) but once he's over the threshold number of stacks he can chain kill the entire map. Since AFAIK Albus only has one MK build, I'll put it here without One Strike One Head KSAACAJ6EEASQCAWGXW3NAN4AGQACE2EAWDSYDBAAIASNISIAEBAGBAFA2DSSKSDASESYVSEASCSWC2 if you're under 50 points stick in Honesty before pasting but if you have 55 points stick 1S1H back on for double Catharsis on one-shots. Copy the code, switch to game, open mastery board main screen and then the mastery board selector at the bottom right, pick an empty board slot, and use the buttons just above the board list to apply the code.

The most straightforward solution for clowns specifically is to just hit them so hard that block doesn't matter. Both black mages can do this. My Sion is built as the main tank (Brilliant Lightning Rush solves a LOT of encounters) and he can AoE clowns reasonably well as a tank but I forget how gear dependent that is. Here's a Bianca build/crash course that should do it with a crafted bangle and pot: KSAACCT6DAASNBS8KPW3NAN6AEJSEBIJFIFACASDASCSNCAJBSGUYCICANCAKBSHBAESWVSDAICT6 . The craftable "Master Gem Crafter's Gem Crafting Machine" is a good trinket option for power. This is using Witch of Small Room individual mastery for a 2 cooldown windwalk and Wirlwind, Windwalk, Illusion, Wind Explosion, Twister arrow for abilities. For illusion you need to pick the transformation option (it's not the default) to make it so the mob can't block/dodge. Wind Explosion is less dangerous than it looks because it has a forced +100 AT to all targets hit so your turn will come up before anything you hit but massive units with a counterattack are bad. Use magic stamp to work around impulse fields or on a 1S1K target to let you move afterwards.

Hints for other things you'll encounter:

In the combat preview after you've selected an ability but before you confirm it you can hover the values (e.g. chance to hit, chance to block, damage) to see the total stack of modifiers. This is important for figuring out why you can't kill them.

Webs are the hard counter to dodge unless it's Yashas (wind AoE clears their webs). Soft counter is going up to 160%+ hit rate which is more reasonable than it sounds since dodge subtracts from the calculation directly.

Needing to hit things a bunch favors bonding pincer/cover attacks (Sion, Ray, Giselle, Heixing pairings are important) and fire support setups (Ranger Heixing, Giselle, option for drones). This strat is strong enough that a lot of intentionally harder missions are run at night so they can give mobs Darkness Hunter for unlimited responsive fire avoidance.

High resist machines are countered by armor break, large attacks, and penetration (Battle Mage, Magic Penetration mastery set, Giant Thunder set). I'll also mention that Engineer Kylie (Improved Main Battery, Main Battery Fusillade, Improved Consecutive Attack) can *chain kill* bots but the class' complete lack of cast delay reduction means she'll be sitting around for a while afterwards. The workaround for this is using bots and the Master Machine 3p set but bot crafting is a larger complexity burden than most players want to get into. I mention it because you might find letting her sit around to be worth it.

Freeze counters everything and certain beast setups are OP (I don't use either)

[RejectedByAnthonyDavis]

Just contributing my two cents, while also trying to avoid going too much in-depth.

Kill priorities (not counting bosses):
- White skeletons. ALWAYS.
- Black Clowns
- White Clowns

Black clowns have Berserker and a leaping strike, but don't have impulse fields and can be 1-shotted quite easily. White clowns have high block and some have impulse fields, but don't do too much damage. White skeletons are glass cannon martial artists that will likely kill any non-tank character if they get within melee range. Can and should be easily dispatched by the usual cleaners (Ray, Heixing) from afar. Treat them like the plague and off them as soon as you can.

This particular stage is very fun but IMO designed to check your mastery + ability configurations, as well as your synergies. Every character pairing is likely to already have pre-existing synergies, save for Leton + Irene (Fire & Ice?!), and so-ronery Albus.

Stay away from Sanson and save him for last, unless you have a strong melee character deployed near his side of the map at the start.

If you still need help, spam Ice and Spiderweb Grenades. They're designed specifically to counter melee classes.

[Blake Millenium]

I use this case file to test out builds. It's also one of the best scenario's for practising the use of choke points. With the exception of Anne/Sion. Successive re-runs change locations for the other heroes. Albus always spawns on the bridge. You can use him to support the south of the map.

To hold choke points, use your hero's movement powers combined with pet/drones. try to block stairways. In some cases use a tank or if at the bottom of a stairwell use a squishy unit.
This is by far the best scenario to help with developing builds and strategies.

Enjoy.

[-]

Go all tanks. The game has no way to counter a tank team. You are immortal.

[tomoden87]

I had the alligator sword already but still getting all the masteries to update Albus, Irene, Bianca, and Giselle builds.

Regarding the MK build, would justice victory blade work for this scenario? I would have to give up on 1-2 other slots to make it work. I have 55 points.

Originally posted by grayrest:

You're up to the point in the game where the devs want you to change your tactics/mess with your builds so each new wave of enemies will introduce new special defenses that your previous builds won't work against. Clowns are mostly testing your block shred. White Clowns are just annoying about block in general and black clowns go into heavy resist if you get them low which tends to happen by being under-geared or by having your hit blocked instead of one-shotting.

I don't want to give a lot of specific builds because I can't remember exactly how many points you have access to and the exact set of options you have available. The ones I'll provide are around 50 points and hopefully useable.

Solutions:

Spirit users get access to the Sharp Spirit mastery which shreds block based on SP total. Since spirit gives hit as well (counters high dodge) you'll frequently see end game builds focused on large SP pools (Extreme Will, Golden Mane, ...of Peak weapon affix) plus Awaken to get it filled.

The legendary drops off the skull squad in 46V significantly help with block shred. Alligator Blade off Skull Slasher and Rifle off Skull Eater are 30% block shred. I never bothered moving to a different rifle on Giselle and I swap into Alligator for clown maps on Albus.

Aside from the weapon, Sniper Giselle has a ton of block shred (Predicted Fire, Best Snipe, Breakthrough, confusion debuff from shadow snipe). The easiest way to use her is to set her up as fire support (Ruler of the Battlefield) but if she's shadow sniping and she hits the damage thresholds she can sweep the map. This is somewhat tedious due to the LoS requirements but to do it you type V to view LoS/range info then 1 to select normal attack. The tiles with the crossed swords are in LoS of all visible/known enemies so you're looking for an empty tile that's within range. It's fairly fast once you get used to it but I don't like doing full maps that way.

I feel Albus kind of does need the Alligator Blade to really do well against clowns. Great Swordsman can do it with a Bladestorm build but that won't reliably chain kill on offense so it kind of leans into forestall/counter and you'll want to keep Anne in the area. Clowns are kind of Magic Knight's chance to shine because cursed sword stacks shred block so the first few kills can be rough (use the two-hit attack on black clowns and reduce cooldown with skeletons) but once he's over the threshold number of stacks he can chain kill the entire map. Since AFAIK Albus only has one MK build, I'll put it here without One Strike One Head KSAACAJ6EEASQCAWGXW3NAN4AGQACE2EAWDSYDBAAIASNISIAEBAGBAFA2DSSKSDASESYVSEASCSWC2 if you're under 50 points stick in Honesty before pasting but if you have 55 points stick 1S1H back on for double Catharsis on one-shots. Copy the code, switch to game, open mastery board main screen and then the mastery board selector at the bottom right, pick an empty board slot, and use the buttons just above the board list to apply the code.

The most straightforward solution for clowns specifically is to just hit them so hard that block doesn't matter. Both black mages can do this. My Sion is built as the main tank (Brilliant Lightning Rush solves a LOT of encounters) and he can AoE clowns reasonably well as a tank but I forget how gear dependent that is. Here's a Bianca build/crash course that should do it with a crafted bangle and pot: KSAACCT6DAASNBS8KPW3NAN6AEJSEBIJFIFACASDASCSNCAJBSGUYCICANCAKBSHBAESWVSDAICT6 . The craftable "Master Gem Crafter's Gem Crafting Machine" is a good trinket option for power. This is using Witch of Small Room individual mastery for a 2 cooldown windwalk and Wirlwind, Windwalk, Illusion, Wind Explosion, Twister arrow for abilities. For illusion you need to pick the transformation option (it's not the default) to make it so the mob can't block/dodge. Wind Explosion is less dangerous than it looks because it has a forced +100 AT to all targets hit so your turn will come up before anything you hit but massive units with a counterattack are bad. Use magic stamp to work around impulse fields or on a 1S1K target to let you move afterwards.

Hints for other things you'll encounter:

In the combat preview after you've selected an ability but before you confirm it you can hover the values (e.g. chance to hit, chance to block, damage) to see the total stack of modifiers. This is important for figuring out why you can't kill them.

Webs are the hard counter to dodge unless it's Yashas (wind AoE clears their webs). Soft counter is going up to 160%+ hit rate which is more reasonable than it sounds since dodge subtracts from the calculation directly.

Needing to hit things a bunch favors bonding pincer/cover attacks (Sion, Ray, Giselle, Heixing pairings are important) and fire support setups (Ranger Heixing, Giselle, option for drones). This strat is strong enough that a lot of intentionally harder missions are run at night so they can give mobs Darkness Hunter for unlimited responsive fire avoidance.

High resist machines are countered by armor break, large attacks, and penetration (Battle Mage, Magic Penetration mastery set, Giant Thunder set). I'll also mention that Engineer Kylie (Improved Main Battery, Main Battery Fusillade, Improved Consecutive Attack) can *chain kill* bots but the class' complete lack of cast delay reduction means she'll be sitting around for a while afterwards. The workaround for this is using bots and the Master Machine 3p set but bot crafting is a larger complexity burden than most players want to get into. I mention it because you might find letting her sit around to be worth it.

Freeze counters everything and certain beast setups are OP (I don't use either)

[tomoden87]

Which pet/drone build would you recommend?
So far, drone building hasn't been useful to me and most (my) pets die to quickly.

Originally posted by Blake Millenium:

I use this case file to test out builds. It's also one of the best scenario's for practising the use of choke points. With the exception of Anne/Sion. Successive re-runs change locations for the other heroes. Albus always spawns on the bridge. You can use him to support the south of the map.

To hold choke points, use your hero's movement powers combined with pet/drones. try to block stairways. In some cases use a tank or if at the bottom of a stairwell use a squishy unit.
This is by far the best scenario to help with developing builds and strategies.

Enjoy.

[grayrest]

Originally posted by tomoden87:

Regarding the MK build, would justice victory blade work for this scenario? I would have to give up on 1-2 other slots to make it work. I have 55 points.

The whole point of the game is to try things out. You can confirm that the passive will apply using the tabs at the top of the troublemaker list but I'm pretty sure clowns count.

That said, I've messed with the build a fair amount because having 5 free points annoys me and I haven't been able to improve it. The 1S1H set is the least important part but being able to tornado -> 1S1H -> tornado or turning over a new leaf to get to a pack and then having turning over available for the last mob on the pack to get to the next one makes a significant difference in actually piloting the build.

[RejectedByAnthonyDavis]

Originally posted by tomoden87:

Which pet/drone build would you recommend?
So far, drone building hasn't been useful to me and most (my) pets die to quickly.

Originally posted by Blake Millenium:

I use this case file to test out builds. It's also one of the best scenario's for practising the use of choke points. With the exception of Anne/Sion. Successive re-runs change locations for the other heroes. Albus always spawns on the bridge. You can use him to support the south of the map.

To hold choke points, use your hero's movement powers combined with pet/drones. try to block stairways. In some cases use a tank or if at the bottom of a stairwell use a squishy unit.
This is by far the best scenario to help with developing builds and strategies.

Enjoy.

Just a warning - Drones and Pets are like 144Hz+ monitors. Once you dabble in their mastery configurations it becomes very addictive and also rewarding. For pets, if you want a fuss free + high return one, tame a Draki Egg and set it up as an auto buffer (triggered during hibernate). Do not evolve/hatch it.

There are tons of useful drone configurations but minimally, you'd want to max out a Fire Fighting Drone first for the Emergency Rescue System mastery (its basically second heart-on-delivery; extremely useful). Drones really become borderline OP once you finish DLC2 and unlock the legendary parts and unique masteries.

[-]

Leton's mastery that makes frostbite become freezing also works on nades.
Turn Leton into a grenade throwing bot, with extra grenade usage. For AOE freezes on demand. Get set that increases freeze duration, and give him tools that increase amount of frost grenades he can have.

Spam the nades.
A lot of people see him as trash tier, but the ice nades keep him relevant.

[cardsfish]

use spider web grenades, big hit box and pretty much makes them waste a turn. Anne as a witch is pretty effective too tbh, they don't have much resistance to earth attacks so starlight arrow can one shot effectively. She also has constricting root which is basically a smaller spiderweb grenade as an attack. I'd also start to build drones with the flamethrower attack and auto fire ability as it can do some nice damage as well as be a nice distraction for the clowns. Irene martial artist plus veteran can also soak up a lot of them as well. That reminds me for these missions put the veteran mastery on your characters, makes them immune to stun.

[tomoden87]

Thank you all! I took a little bit of everyone's advise and today I finally defeated this scenario!