Any tips for BC 2?

[Khaesho]

I'm not quite new at the game, but I'm really struggling with my BC 2 runs. My first win and BC 1 win were both obtained by leaning on purple turret traps for damage, but the Hand's ability to 1-shot them in BC 2 is killing me, and I have a hard time trying to damage him otherwise, since I'm too busy trying to dodge. Aside from getting really good at parrying, what other strats/builds work well against him?

[PixiCode]

I haven't done any playthrough with any turret traps, so maybe my suggestions can help. I've done my first win and very nearly my BC 1 win exclusively with Brutality. ((I lost with like 2% of HotK's hp left ;c))

1. A shield build can help you deflect his melee strikes, but IIRC the 'charge' attack he does that pushes you... still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pushes you into the spikes. No choice but to dodge it.

2. Hand of the King is immune to stun it seems. Buckler stun is absolutely useless vs. him.

3. My own Brutality-focused builds rely almost heavily on frost of some kind ((Ice Bow or Ice Grenade specifically) to crowd control the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to make it easier to deal damage to him very, very fast.

4. My Brutality-focused builds also rely a lot on grenades, stacking brutality and abusing the Firework Technician mutation. This lets me throw out cluster grenades and ice grenades and fire grenades, etc, every 2~ seconds by the end of the game. I usually get ~25 brutality by the end game. To be honest, the grenades are a lot better for dealing with the mobs.

4.5 (sometimes i swap out 1 grenade for a tonic. I got my first win and almost my second win with a tonic)

5. The other thing brutality ((And also survival)) builds rely on is damage reduction. Ice grenades, Fire grenades, Tonics, half of the shields (some give %damage instead), Hokuto's bow, Ice bow and some other things give % damage reduction. For example, in the run I currently have, I have a -30% damage reduction Hokuto's Bow, -20% amulet, -10% ice grenade, That's a lot of damage reduction! I believe the cap was 75%?

As for what weapons to build, well, that I'm still trying to figure out. I think my first win was with a meat skewer that poisoned on hit stacked with the sadism and combo mutations. Combo procs off of the trash HotK spawns in-between battles and sadism procs off of my fire grenade and poison. I also had an ice bow, which I liberally used to freeze his butt and slow him down.

The second, almost-win build that I probably lost because I made a few too many mistakes, was similar to the above. Except I had a legendary heavy crossbow. Though I was built for brutality, that heavy crossbow nearly killed HotK in like a little over a minute since it was colorless.

Other weapons I think would be good: Sadism blade if you can proc bleeding or poison reliably, assassin blade if you have a ton of ice CC or something, Infantry Bow, meat skewer (VERY good weapon, it puts you behind him while you're attacking. Like dodging while attacking, almost!), heavy crossbow, ice bow, etc. Stack damage reduction and get good damage dealing weapons. I bet if you wanted to stick to tactics, some sort of Knife Dance build might be really strong, too. Get Support, stack that cooldown reduction, use that Knife Dance, and whatever else you happen to get. Too bad that'd rely on getting one item...

EDIT: just beat HotK BC 1. I bet a build like this would work for BC2 as well? There's nothing for HotK to one-hit kill. I spent most of the fight using ice to slow him down and dodging, less about trying to hit him consistently. I think the hokuto's bow added damage to the toxin and the burning...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1480001531

[PixiCode]

Also, erm, this might help you. I just read this elsewhere on the steam forums.

Enemies actually scale with your scrolls. For every scroll you pick up they get like 7%/8% more HP and damage. Beyond the 8-7-13 (brutality, tactics, survival) scrolls will begin to give you less health than said increase, so actually you are weakening yourself with that +6%HP. You are probably very happy to hear this, but wait, there is more. The bosses, you know, the only actual hard part of this game, have their own scaling, and it is completely through the damn roof. We are talking going from killing you in 10 hits to killing you in 3, simply because you picked a few scrolls too many. It's a thing of beauty.

It's apparently meta to take 8-7-13 because it gives you the highest HP distribution while giving the enemies a minimal HP distribution, and just hope to get colorless items.

[kassandra]

'8-7-13' distribution is missing out an important factor: player damage scales exponentially while enemy stats scale more flat. it might be the best in terms of damage enemies apply to the player, but there is no damage to the player if you can dispatch enemies faster. having a main stat of around 30 means the next scroll into this stat ups the damage from 20k to 24k( rough numbers ) and the numbers explode after that. it hurts survivability but it was never the aim to be able to get hit more often but to get to a point where the player can kill things without being hit.

[Khaesho]

I'm pretty sure that enemy damage and health both upscale by 8% per scroll, that;s the value people seem to agree on, and it fits my play observations well enough. So, 8-7-13 gets you the absolute most defense, but consequently has painfully low attack. 8-7-16 nets you massively more damage with minimal cost to health. Of course, you can't take red or purple mutations if you do that, since they won't scale at all.

[PixiCode]

Meanwhile shortly after making my post I reached BC2 and got my ass kicked over and over and over and over and over and over because I'm too afraid to use ANY of my estus flasks >n<

[Fel]

That's kind of why vampirism and the health shot are far from useless after you start boss cell runs, they limit your other powers to a single slot instead of two, but having a reliable healing charge in each level really helps to lower the pressure quite a bit.

EDIT: Also, don't stress the 8-7-13 in 2+ boss cells, that build is great for 0 cell where you have many flasks you can burn, but as you go towards higher difficulties you need avoid taking damage at all, and the best way is still to crush the enemies before they can act.
Sure, they will do more damage to you when they manage to land a hit on you, but if your aim is to reach and complete 4 cells difficulty you want to take as few hits as possible because of the malaise anyway.

[PixiCode]

Originally posted by Fel:

That's kind of why vampirism and the health shot are far from useless after you start boss cell runs, they limit your other powers to a single slot instead of two, but having a reliable healing charge in each level really helps to lower the pressure quite a bit.

EDIT: Also, don't stress the 8-7-13 in 2+ boss cells, that build is great for 0 cell where you have many flasks you can burn, but as you go towards higher difficulties you need avoid taking damage at all, and the best way is still to crush the enemies before they can act.
Sure, they will do more damage to you when they manage to land a hit on you, but if your aim is to reach and complete 4 cells difficulty you want to take as few hits as possible because of the malaise anyway.

Yup. I learned about the meta build AFTER I had finished 0 cell and nearly finished 1 cell, so I was like "Huh..."

I never tried the meta build, but while doing BC2 for awhile I'm like "Wait a second, it's just a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ better to take absolutely no damage at all and do absurd damage, lol"

[Khaesho]

yeam as far as "meta" goes, it's not really useful. Still, its useful to know that enemies gain 16% buff per level, so you want every level up you take to give you at least 20% in stats to really be useful.