Won with my Flenser, HP Bucket the Ghoul!
http://te4.org/characters/6825/tome/87a ... 260add3796
Character Report time:
Early game I just grabbed a bunch of healing mod (including the passive!) and used fast metabolism. I had bad luck with dagger drops, but between the high base HP and the constant healing, everything was fairly trivial. I originally split most of my points between magic and dex, but it became apparent that I wasn't really casting much, so after I maxed bone armor (first cat point to open), I stopped putting any points in magic at all. I primarily focused on my defensive abilities up to Dreadfell, with only a single point in each of the offensive abilities in the flensing tree, the first two weapon fighting skill, and rush. I maxed Blood Grasp, but, looking back, I wouldn't have put a single point in the blood tree. The only spell I cast for 99% of the game was bone grab. Also, with bone shield running, I wanted to make sure I had enough vim in my pool so I could activate the generic tree healing skill. That just reinforced the complete avoidance of casting.
Dreadfell was, as I expected, by far the hardest part of the game. My damage had come into its own yet and my tankiness was no longer autowinning everything. Also, I was a ghoul so yeah. I took my time clearing Dreadfell and ran in to the master right at the stairs on the last floor. I realized I didn't have the damage output to kill him before I ran out of healing options, so I retreated and started far portaling until I was able to find Moon and Star. Upon returning, the combination of Twist the Knife and No Escape made him an absolute joke-- he was silenced and confused for practically the entire fight.
Beating the master bumped me up to level 30 and I grabbed Irresistable Sun. Bosses were hardly a threat with the amount of statuses I could reliably get on them and being able to keep their abilities on cool down w/ the flurry-esque ability, but I didn't have any crowd control. Sun seemed like it would basically clear the rest of the game for me, so I maxed strength as quickly as possible after grabbing it. At 36 + wyrm bile, I opened and extra cat pointed Celestial/Light and immediately maxed Providence, since I had absolutely no way of dealing with magical status effects. I wouldn't have spent the extra cat point, but I'd wasted the class points in the blood tree and didn't have enough to use in another category. I should have grabbed a rune, but I thought I already had 5 for some reason haha. At 42 I grabbed I Can Carry The World and got my strength to the 170 range. I also started gearing for +physical damage, +crit mult, and +phys pen. By the end of the game I had 260 crit mult, 100% phys bonus damage, 35% phys pen. Each of the flenser tree attacks was doing 3k-5k+ damage. In the late 40s I maxed blinding speed + momentum, which the lack of fatigue from Carry made possible, and other than a single stair boss, everything went down within 2-4 turns, including the final bosses.
Some thoughts on the Flenser:
I'd say it's a very powerful class, probably somewhere between marauder and reaver in terms of both strength and function. It doesn't share the reaver's major disadvantage (lack of mobility) since you have rush right out of the box. Of course, I don't think you'll ever be able to cast like a reaver and dual wielding knives is (maybe??) lower damage than two one handers. Play-wise, it ended up being marauder with huge HP pool, some extra tanky abilities, and bone shield for me. Of course, you don't get unstoppable, so that's probably a fair trade off?
The flensing style tree is super good. The free bleed from first blood actually gets to be fairly powerful (initial hit for 200 range for me by end game) and I love how it works with twist the knife. Just shoved it on autocast and never looked back. Rain of Agony may be too good. Not quite flurry level of damage, but putting 4 talents on a 7 turn cool down really shuts down a lot of bosses and you still do excellent damage with it. No Escape is insanely good too. Hitting an enemy with scholar of brutality followed by no escape gives me 13 turns of them attacking at half speed. Plus, there's a decent chance the enemy is silenced or confused for 10 turns thanks to twist the knife. Scholar of Brutality seems like almost a straight cripple clone, and flensers do have access to dirty fighting... seems a little odd to me. I don't know that any of the abilities are overpowered on their own, but the combo and synergy with twist the knife is really really good. Which it probably should be.
I think Blood Magic is a really well balanced tree. All of the abilities are appealing, but none seemed over powering. Twist the Knife is one of my favorite skills from anything I've played.
The combination of trees available is really good. Having Bone and combat techniques alone is all a character really needs
I'm really curious how a greater caster focus would turn out on a flenser. I may try to run that here before too long. It seems like there's definitely several viable ways to run them.
Overall, I really enjoyed playing the class. The game was a cakewalk, but normal is fairly easy for me by this point, so I'm not sure that means anything. Fast metabolism won the early game and Irresistable Sun won the rest (it was ticking for 700 by the end), so neither of those are issues with the flenser's balance imo. The Master was the only place where I thought the flenser may be a little too good, since he never got a chance to do anything with me keeping his abilities on cool down and keeping him silenced and confused. But a lot of classes can completely shut him down. Anyway, excellent job and thanks for the very fun play through! And sorry if I ramble too much haha.
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