Valerie Builds

[Orion Pax]

Curious to hear how people like to build Valerie these days? She can go several directions, which is fun.

For me, I find:
1) Don't care to focus on Tower Shield Specialist much until late game due to lack of good Tower Shields. So maybe level 2 or 4 early for feats? Save level 5 til late.
2) I have mostly tended to give mostly Bard levels so she can take over Inspire late.
3) Early game I find myself trying to scratch out anything that will help her tank better and hit at least some of the time. That has usually meant 1-2 levels of Vivi just for the shot in the arm. Is that weird?
4) In theory would like to rely on her to Dazzle, but early on, on harder difficulties, she can't seem to Dazzle much for me. Her stats have potential, but take some levels to round off (DEX, CON, CHA all odd numbers, STR even but low for melee).

Do folks go Stalwart much? She's obviously setup for that. I just found I rarely used Stalwart's main feature since I do want to be able to move w/ out penalty most battles.

Thoughts?

[ptirodaktill]

lvl 2 vivi for mutagen lvl 3 monk for crane line lvl 4 bard lvl 5-9 DD for extra armor and STR , then bard till she end. As long as her stats, i put all point in STR.

[Frostfeather]

I don't use her often, but 19 levels into Kineticist would probably be my first choice. Kinetic Knight isn't bad either, especially with CotW as it adds more to the archetype.

Either way, I'd probably go Fire/Fire, maybe Earth if relying on DR.

[asame_akio]

My planned build for her is TSS 9, Thug 4, Vivisectionist 3, Trad Monk 1, and I haven’t really decided for the last three levels. I gave her two Vivisectionist levels early for feral mutagen and sneak attack—mutagen gives her flexibility to boost her damage or AC, and sneak attack gives her some extra damage early on. Give her an Int-boosting item and she can use enlarge or reduce person as well as shield; she also gets the ability to use most of the best personal defensive spells in the game through wands and scrolls without bothering with investing her limited skill points into UMD. After that was the traditional monk level for the usual reasons, but having access to flurry and the flaming nunchaku from Tranquil River Bend early on meant she wasn’t fighting anyone else for a decent magical weapon early on, and she had extra attacks even when she didn’t have the mutagen on. Level 5 was her 2nd level of TSS for the bonus feat (I went with weapon focus and dazzling display). Level 6 as Thug gets her a second SA die, and she doesn’t have enough intimidate at this point to really worry about Frightening.

I then took her back to TSS all the way to 13 (for TSS 9), which gives her access to armor and shield training, three extra combat feats, and most critically, Tower Shield Defense, which shores up her pitiful touch AC. After that, it’s the remaining three levels of Thug—this gives her another two bonus combat feats, another SA die, and more intriguingly, brutal beating (to sicken any opponent I SA for a couple rounds) and debilitating injury for further, more customizable penalties to SA targets. The third Vivi level is mostly just for the SA die, plus another ten minutes of mutagen and another extract per day. All of this gets her to +15 to hit, and +12/+12/+7 saves at level 17, with a ton of feats to burn.

And I use those feats to complement her class features. She’s not my primary dazzling display user, but having it with frightening as a sort of emergency button if anything gets past her to target my squishies is a nice back up; and taking some skill feats to boost Persuasion give her a higher chance of succeeding. The crane wing feat line shores up her AC. Shatter defenses enables her to SA more foes more often, giving a bit of extra damage, but also spreading penalties. And the cleave line of feats, plus being enlarged, gives her the ability to turn those sneak attack penalties into AoEs. She already has higher than usual saves compare to single/dual classed builds, but to complement her role as tank, I’m also giving her Iron Will and Improved Iron Will to give her another +4 on Will saves. Outflank and Improved Critical, aside from the usual benefits, help her enable more AoOs from the rest of the party.

While this probably looks pretty munchkiny and late-game-focused, it’s actually pretty solid throughout. In the early levels thanks to feral mutagen and SA, she’s a decent frontline damager, and the accelerated Crane Wing line enables her to keep up as a tank. In the mid-levels she grows into a respectable tank, with slightly higher than typical damage potential thanks to SA and flurry—and CCB to some extent, but that’s going to fall off pretty quickly once iteratives and magic weapons start getting good. Around level 15, when she has cleave, brutal beating, and good enough AC to spend time enlarged, her damage will take another uptick—not as much as dedicated DPR builds, but not bad for a dedicated tank—, and she’ll turn into a debuffing machine. I’m considering retraining her once CCB falls off, getting rid of Feral Mutagen to accelerate the cleave feat line.

It’s not the strongest build out there, but I like oddball builds like this, especially when they evolve to fill different roles over time.

[ptirodaktill]

Use scale first. She will achieve 72 AC naked w/o shield in lategame =)

[valium]

My usual build for her is 9 TSS Fighter, 7 Stalwart Defender, 3 Thug. Get all the feats that improve dazzling display, save Thug for last so you dont have to put up with the enemy constantly running away if you are playing RTwP (I found that annoying personally, but essential for the last leg of the game to save a lot of headaches.)

Most fun was going 5 TSS, then the rest in Kinetic Knight. Was a bit more hands on. Prefer the mostly hands off approach of the first build so I can focus on everyone else.

Both are more than viable for Hard, I play on that difficulty.

[Immortal Reaver]

My build for not Unfair is TSS9/SclaedFist1/StalwartDefender10.
For Unfair I give her TSS1/ScaledFist1/DD4/Bard8/Vivi1/EK5.

[jsaving]

Originally posted by Orion Pax:

3) Early game I find myself trying to scratch out anything that will help her tank better and hit at least some of the time. That has usually meant 1-2 levels of Vivi just for the shot in the arm. Is that weird?

The main thing to decide with Valerie is whether you want her to tank, which means absorbing damage on the front-line while dishing out respectable DPS, or strike, which means glass-cannoning the front-line while using good gameplay to avoid being targeted very often. As a tank you nearly automatically splash for defensive spells like mirror image that give you the survivability you need to weather attacks that would otherwise kill party members. Whereas as a striker, you forget survivability and instead spend your feats/splashes on boosting DPS as much as you can. You can't easily do both except as a saint and Valerie doesn't have the stats to go saint.

If going for the tank role, you typically take TSS to 3 or 5 and then fill out the rest of your levels with bard/DD/EK. Whereas if going for the striker role you'd forget about bard/DD and would instead liberally sprinkle viv and thug levels into your build.

As an alternative tank build, you can partiy or fully replace bard/DD/EK levels with stalwart defender. I'd argue you lose some survivability going that route but there's much less pre-buffing required so can be a solid option depending on your playstyle. Good luck!

[Orion Pax]

Good stuff all. The range of responses shows how versatile Valerie can be.

Originally posted by Immortal Reaver:

My build for not Unfair is TSS9/SclaedFist1/StalwartDefender10.
For Unfair I give her TSS1/ScaledFist1/DD4/Bard8/Vivi1/EK5.

Originally posted by ptirodaktill:

lvl 2 vivi for mutagen lvl 3 monk for crane line lvl 4 bard lvl 5-9 DD for extra armor and STR , then bard till she end. As long as her stats, i put all point in STR.

Pretty close to what I'd sketched out for my next run, but with TSS to 5 to lose the Tower Shield penalty. So do you use a Heavy Shield instead or? Those builds get to Bard & DD much quicker it seems. So Mirror Image quicker. But is it painful until then?

Originally posted by jsaving:

The main thing to decide with Valerie is whether you want her to tank, which means absorbing damage on the front-line while dishing out respectable DPS, or strike, which means glass-cannoning the front-line while using good gameplay to avoid being targeted very often. As a tank you nearly automatically splash for defensive spells like mirror image that give you the survivability you need to weather attacks that would otherwise kill party members. Whereas as a striker, you forget survivability and instead spend your feats/splashes on boosting DPS as much as you can. You can't easily do both except as a saint and Valerie doesn't have the stats to go saint.

To this point let her tank mostly since she seems best at that until late. I usually feed her Crane Feats w/ a Monk dip, Mutagen for AC (and STR/Sneak bonus) as quick as possible but then pivot to building up her offense slowly.

In truth, I usually only use her early til like level 6 or so, and then pick her up again at the end to pick up bard duties. One thing I often struggle with is how slow she is, both in speed and initiative. So Improved Initiative is something I like giving her early, especially if I'm hoping to Dazzle. Starting battle w/ a surprise round of her charging can help, but there are still times where she is not in position to lead & tank, unless I want to waste a whole round for my quicker characters, which feels wasteful. Dunno.

[Orion Pax]

Also question re: Dazzling:

Do folks try to use her for this? In theory she seems like a good candidate since she can't hit much early and has some CHA and can tank herself in the middle of battle ideally. But I haven't found she succeeds much, and before anyone has Shatter it's not as impactful. And also the positioning has to be there, which can be hard given how slow she is.

[Duder]

I had her working well with some Stalwart Defender yes!
It seemed like a no brainer you're right. So she made a great tank,
I think I gave her the 10 levels in that and half her fighter class
Its been a while but I think SD has either a skill or there's an item that makes it so she can move while using the defender skill, but I could be mistaken,

[valium]

Valerie has high base charisma, which helps with dazzling, all you need to do is get the feats that improve it's DC. Since the nerf, dazzling takes a full action, so you might as well use your tank to do it. If you go into the fighter levels, that nets you plenty of bonus feats.

[Duder]

Originally posted by valium:

Valerie has high base charisma, which helps with dazzling, all you need to do is get the feats that improve it's DC. Since the nerf, dazzling takes a full action, so you might as well use your tank to do it. If you go into the fighter levels, that nets you plenty of bonus feats.

A lot of people make her a bard for this reason, or so I've seen.
But you already have a bard so
Unless you hate Linsey. However shes adorable and you know it

[Orion Pax]

Originally posted by Duder:

Originally posted by valium:

Valerie has high base charisma, which helps with dazzling, all you need to do is get the feats that improve it's DC. Since the nerf, dazzling takes a full action, so you might as well use your tank to do it. If you go into the fighter levels, that nets you plenty of bonus feats.

A lot of people make her a bard for this reason, or so I've seen.
But you already have a bard so
Unless you hate Linsey. However shes adorable and you know it

Love Linzi, that scrapy lil buddy. "Hey wait for me!" But double barding is a thing: one to run an Inspire buff and another to run Dirge debuff. Their buff spells are really good too, so not bad to have 2 bards, especially if you are using some of those spell slots for enchantment spells, which I find useful early on.

Originally posted by valium:

Valerie has high base charisma, which helps with dazzling, all you need to do is get the feats that improve it's DC. Since the nerf, dazzling takes a full action, so you might as well use your tank to do it. If you go into the fighter levels, that nets you plenty of bonus feats.

Yeah, especially because it takes a whole full action I find it hard to pull off as effectively as I'd like early on: getting her into position, and others, not exposing folks, and then finally bam doing it. Meanwhile I could have been doing damage, crowd control. Fixes like getting Mitrhil armor for better speed, feats to buff Dazzling as you mention, and the like, take time (levels). I want Dazzling to be a tool I can rely on early, and it almost feels like it, but often it just doesn't deliver for me with her early on.

[mbradtke]

only good reason to go bard with valerie is dragon discipline and mirror images, you dont need any of the bard stuff on her at all and there is linzie...
i like to go 2 archeogolist bard early because that gives her uncunny dodge which makes her immune against flat-food, what is.... useful as a tank to not loose the dodge bonus on AC with low initiative, DD stat bonuses speak for itself and u still gain spellcasting progress....
beside that u want at last 1 monk level for crane style, 1 stalwart defender, she is actually a multiclass monster lol, having like 5 classes on valerie is not unusual
edit: dirge is nice of course but it comes too late, lv7? u'll get it very late and if u go lv7 bard sooner, she will be a weaker tank and that is her primary purpose

[Orion Pax]

Originally posted by mbradtke:

only good reason to go bard with valerie is dragon discipline and mirror images, you dont need any of the bard stuff on her at all and there is linzie...
i like to go 2 archeogolist bard early because that gives her uncunny dodge which makes her immune against flat-food, what is.... useful as a tank to not loose the dodge bonus on AC with low initiative, DD stat bonuses speak for itself and u still gain spellcasting progress....
beside that u want at last 1 monk level for crane style, 1 stalwart defender, she is actually a multiclass monster lol, having like 5 classes on valerie is not unusual
edit: dirge is nice of course but it comes too late, lv7? u'll get it very late and if u go lv7 bard sooner, she will be a weaker tank and that is her primary purpose

Archaeologist for Uncanny Dodge & DD is a great move with Valerie for sure.

I'd argue Dirge at Bard 8 is not bad. A lot of key steps in builds don't happen right away. Plus, Dirge is best paired with Shatter, and that can't be taken earlier than 6, often later. You'd Dirge with Linzi and Inspire with Valerie. And again, having more spells for buffs and enchantments would not be wasteful. Whatever weaknesses tanking Val gets from going Bard are mitigated greatly by Mirror Image alone I'd say.