Burning fate, sealed with suffering

[visage]

I was perusing Madness winners in the Vault the other day and I ran across this absolutely fascinating build. I admit that I stared at it a while before finally understanding how it worked.

The basic idea is to apply Seal Fate to burning damage... which turns out to ramp up damage really quickly if you're constantly re-applying burning effects.

The core combo for damage is Overheated Saws, applied many times thanks to three weapons and Flexible Combat doubled by Tempest of Metal, getting its damage stacked up by Seal Fate in the same way that Paradox Mages stack up Attenuate damage... just much faster. Clarity provides as much as +41% global speed. To top it off, Incinerating Blows adds a little more burn, and if a battle goes on long enough, Eternal Suffering can act like a little extra Seal Fate.

For defense, there's Solipsism (with 5/5 in Dismissal!) and Mitosis, Webs of Fate, along with the standard saw-adventurer trio of Tempest of Metal, Grinding Shield, and Molten Iron Blood. ...while Suffuse Life provides significant amounts of healing, thanks to the high damage output this build generally manages. (Incidentally, you probably want one of your weapons to be a saw with Time Shield on it. Those are really useful.)

Meta slots in to reduce&reset the cooldowns on Seal Fate and Webs of Fate while also offering Disperse.

Demonic Pact provides the aforementioned Suffuse Life, Flame Bolts for quite significant up-front damage, and a really cute, but key, benefit -- Corrosive Slashes turns your saws' damage from Physical/Bleed into straight Acid, so it's generally the case that all of your Seal Fate procs go straight to your burning effect.

I was curious to see how the build worked in practice, so I started an Insane run with it to get a feel. At this point, I've taken the run as far as going East. (The commander of the orc ambush post-Dreadfell died before I could ramp the burn damage up above 3500 per turn.) It turns out there is a not-all-that-uncommon class of enemy that completely shuts down the character's offense -- Gunslingers with burn immunity from Life in Flames and with flat damage reduction from Automated Cloak Tessellation. (Other Steamtech enemies with Life in Flames but without ACT are merely annoying.)

...which brings me to what is to me the big question mark for the build -- why take Cursed body in order to go 5/5/0/0 in Cursed Aura? That's the category point I haven't spent for the character yet, so I may be missing something, but it seems to me that Cursed Aura does nothing to help plug that hole, whereas Energy would give a mechanism by which you could strip the sustain.

...so I ask -- am I missing something? 5/5/0/0 in Cursed Aura with Adept is certainly nice, but is there something in there that provides a key benefit to this build? Is there something other than Energy that this build could use to take down the Life In Flames + Automated Cloak Tessellation combo?

The other thing I look at and feel like I'm missing something regarding this build is all of the points put into Strength over Will -- given that the Solipsism Threshold is at 50%, wouldn't getting more Psi+damage from Will be worth more than the damage from Strength? (...and there's nothing in this build that checks PhysPower, right?) I can see the value in being able to swap saws based on the situation, so there's a reason to want some points in Strength, but then Cursed Aura is providing quite a bit anyways.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

I checked the character sheet from the link.

For me, it very lacks mobility and escape abilities.
It's a melee character, how can he escape if he is in trouble?

Also lacks fast and continous detrimental effect clearing.

If you got pinned (or any can not move effect), slowed, get Wet (that halves stun/freeze resist) and Dazed/Freezed it can instantly ends the run.
According to the character sheet, the character was died 3 times (an orc pyromancer, a quasit & a venomblade killed it).

At end game it had 100% disarm immunity, but i guess if the character was disarmed, it completely negates it.

The build very focusing on dealing insane amount of damage, but not on mobility and utility tools.
I did not checked it very deeply, but can it remove effectively non-magical sustains and non-magical effects from enemies?

Also, taking Adept prodigy on a madness character is ...

I do not really understand Solipsism - Dismissal: 61% of his mental save can be used, what is 0.61 x 69 = 42 ...
That is nothing in madness.

Also it has Solipsism, but just lvl 2 ? Why?


Damage-wise it can be insane, but enemies could have many tools to disrupt or negate it.
I guess it would give you more relevant information about the build, if you would play it on madness.

Testing a madness build on insane is not the best thing to gain information.

[visage]

I did not checked it very deeply, but can it remove effectively non-magical sustains and non-magical effects from enemies?

I didn't see anything in that space, either. In my adaptations of this idea, I've been using Energy to have an option for that.

The build very focusing on dealing insane amount of damage

...and it certainly does that. I had not previously been aware of the "do 1 million damage to a training dummy" achievement; scored that one accidentally.

I do not really understand Solipsism - Dismissal: 61% of his mental save can be used, what is 0.61 x 69 = 42 ...
That is nothing in madness.

My theory on that is that the player took Dismissal for dealing with retaliation damage... which can be significant given how many attacks per turn this build pumps out.

Also it has Solipsism, but just lvl 2 ? Why?

My theory on that is the player cared more about the global speed than about the survivability bonus in going up to 5 in Solipsism itself. More points in Solipsism means less average global speed. Personally, I've dropped the category from my adaptations of the idea, though that may well be a mistake.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey hi!

Yes, i would definately make some modifications if i would try this damage-monster build.

Taking Chrono - Energy is nice against sustains. You also have a small dmg reduction there,
Energy Decomp is definately better than Solipsism - Dismissal.
Redux can be also good because you have Quicken spells, so more options for Redux.


Another idea against temporary effects is taking Chrono - Matter.
You deal also physical damage in melee, then Disintegration can strip a phys/magical temp effect from the enemy.
That is automatic and very useful.

Dust to Dust is also very nice due to digging.

Matter Weaving gives you more armour and stun resist. Also welcome.
And M. Barrier is a good defensive tool too.


Also, generic-wise i would take a mobility tree. (For me, Spacetime Weaving is far far the best)

[visage]

Having played some more on Madness with derivatives of this build, it really does feel like it needs more escape and/or damage mitigation. I'm finding the T1/T2 transition to be awfully rocky.

In terms of mobility, Saw Wheels having a cooldown of only 7 turns means it can be used pretty often, but I find I still want more. You could wear Rocket Boots, but not until the midgame and losing that 25% pinning immunity is likely to hurt, since getting pinned is a good way to get dead. If taking Spacetime Weaving, would you be using it for more than Dimensional Step? How effective is Wormhole without much spellpower?

Adding Doomshield would be an obvious boost to survivability, but it would necessitate investing more in Demon Seed and Bind Demon. Of course, going up to 5 in Bind Demon would be awfully useful in the cleanse department.... Finding a saw with Time Shield on it really does seem to be a huge boost to survivability; it may be the case that doing so early would obviate adding another defensive category.

The categories in the original build that I consider disposable are Cursed Body, Torture, and Solipsism. ...and the extreme pressure on class points suggests dropping a class category in favor of taking an additional inscription -- going up to two steam engines early really helps with being able to turn on all of the sustains; otherwise, you can't run them all until you can get 14+ steam/turn from a single engine, and that takes quite a while.

In terms of prodigies, I'm unsold on both used in the original build. Flexible Combat is doubling down on maximizing the number of hits per turn, which seems excessive; taking it does mean you can get some useful procs... but you don't want some of the usual ones like Disarm or Cripple. As for Adept, I'm really not seeing any important breakpoints that it enables. Instead, I think Windtouched Speed is a really good option here, since cooldown reduction and global speed are both key parts to the build. Beyond that, I could see running Arcane Might in a bid to be able to get some actual damage out of the saws against enemies who're immune/resistant to the Flame Bolts and Burning that are the primary sources of damage here. It seems likely, however, that one of the defensive prodigies would make the most sense.

You deal also physical damage in melee

Actually, by default you don't do physical damage -- you're running Corrosive Slashes so your saws don't inflict bleed damage and split your Seal Fate procs. The damage from this build is primarily fire with a little acid, plus anything you're getting from melee procs.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

If you have problems in T2 areas, then the build needs serious modifications, yes.

For Spacetime Weaving, you should also pump a bit in Dimensional Shift.
It reduces the duration of any detrimental effect on you after each teleport, so it's very very useful.

For Wormhole, why do you need spellpower?
You cast your Wormhole and then just step into it to teleport to the exit location.
You can use it for alpha strike or for escape, and you can teleport through walls with Wormhole.
Also with very high movement speed, you can teleport like 8-10 times per turn, so you can clear debuffs very fast.

The only skill that you do not need is maybe Phase Pulse. It is very strong on Paradox Mage, but for this build
it do not give that much.


In terms of prodigies, I would choose Cauterize. This is Madness and you are not making an infinite loop
Adventurer that has a reliable source of full invulnerability.


For damage:

I am not very familiar with Sawbutcher mechanism, I mostly play mage or mage style characters.
So, you are saying, normally you would deal bleed damage as/and physical?

Then why are you using Corrosive Slashes?

Bleed damage is stacking the same way like Burn and Attenuate.

Also, maybe Scoundrel would be good for this build for insane bleed damage and for debuffing enemies.
Basically it gives insane amount of extra bleed damage and you have Seal Fate to make
it into crazy numbers (same as burn damage what you already using).

Also if you know Scoundrel Tactics, then if an enemy attacks you and has a "Bleed" effect then
basically it can not crit against you in combat.
Other debuffs are also nice to have there.

The damage for Burn/Bleed/Attenuate becomes stronger and stronger on each merge.
The stronger factor there is to apply it more often.
The lesser factor is the durtion extension from Seal Fate.
It doesn't matter that much if it just 3 or 5 per turn.
So, having 2 effects with 3 Seal Fate procs per turn each gives better damage than having 1 effect with 6 SF procs.

Also, enemies in madness are using thier infusions/runes/skills very effectively, they
are clearing detrimental effects instantly when they can.
If they clear the burn, then you have to start building up your damage from 0.

Having not just 1 effect but 2 as a damage source could help you to deal damage more effectively.
Also, this way you could use Disintegration and auto dispel temporary effects from enemies.
Effective dispelling is very needed in madness in my oppinion.

[visage]

I am not very familiar with Sawbutcher mechanism, I mostly play mage or mage style characters.
So, you are saying, normally you would deal bleed damage as/and physical?

Then why are you using Corrosive Slashes?

Bleed damage is stacking the same way like Burn and Attenuate.

By default, this build's primary damage type is fire -- flamebolts and burn; everything else is close to trivial.

The point of using Corrosive Slashes is to avoid bleed damage. You generate much less of it per hit than you do of fire, landing it is affected by armor, undead are immune to it, and since it has a longer base duration it stacks up slower with Seal Fate procs. The only time I've found it worthwhile to turn off Corrosive Slashes is against Radiant/Luminous Horrors -- they tend to have sufficiently low armor that the bleed actually lands. Unless the enemy is immune to burn damage due to Life In Flames, landing bleeds dramatically reduces the damage output of the build.

...and so far in Madness that's held for me even with Arcane Might and more investment in Steamsaw Mastery and Resonant Focus than the character in the Vault has.

So, having 2 effects with 3 Seal Fate procs per turn each gives better damage than having 1 effect with 6 SF procs.

Are you claiming it adds up to more damage to spread out your Seal Fate procs between three different effects (say, Bleed, Burn, Burning Shock) than to stack all of the Seal Fate procs onto a single effect (Burn, in this case)? That seems completely wrong to me even before accounting for resistance penetration, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding your assertion here. Could you elaborate?

As an example, pulling up a character from Insane who has access to the training dummy, and who has invested in Torture: if I attack the training dummy for a while and then turn on Seal Fate, when SF wears off the remaining DoT damage is vastly higher if I had Corrosive Slashes on than if it was off: 130k damage per turn without bleed damage, versus a combined 21k damage per turn with bleed damage. I assume that the difference would be even greater without Torture bleeding Seal Fate procs into Burning Shock.

Also, enemies in madness are using thier infusions/runes/skills very effectively, they
are clearing detrimental effects instantly when they can.
If they clear the burn, then you have to start building up your damage from 0.

My experience matches yours -- they are very prompt in clearing detrimental effects; so if you wait until they've spent their cleanses before turning on Seal Fate things work out fine.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!


Damage mechanism - 1 effect vs 2 effects

Yes, of course, I will make a comparison of two cases.
In the first case, there is a DoT effect with 100 power and 4 turns duration.
6 Seal Fate procs will be used for duration extension each turn, and there is a merge at each turn,
after the + 6 turn duration extansion.

In the second case, there are two effects with same parameters (100 power and 4 turns duration).
In this case, 3 & 3 Seal Fate procs will be used each turn per effect and there will be also a merge at each turn.

So all parameter and condition is equal, just the number of effects are different and the applied Seal Fate procs
are therefore divided for the 1 or 2 effects.

bleedburn.png (25.11 KiB) Viewed 15744 times

In the DoT column, you can see the power of the effect at each turn (how much damage per turn it deals)
In the Total Dmg Taken column, you can see the sum of the former turns (so, the total damage that the enemy took from the effect).

As you can see the 2 effect case deals significantly higher damage at turns 1 - 11.
At turn 4, the total damage is twice. (2098 vs 1175)

The change comes at turn 12, but the total damage is almost the same here (68356 vs 65580 and now the 1 effect is better)

So, that means the 1 effect is better against monsters that has more than ~ 65 000 HP.
But the next turn in BOTH CASES they will die, becasue at the next turn the total damage will be 109 735 and 94 828.

NOTE: The final bosses in madness have now ~ 110 000 - 120 000 HP.

So in BOTH CASES, they will die at turn 14.

Against some enemies, you can be 1 turn faster with the 1 effect,
but most of the enemies have less than 70 000 HP in the game,
so the 2 effect kills them faster.

Also, as I mentioned before, having 2 physical effect as a damage source is better than having 1,
because if the enemy clears a physical effect, you still have a high damage effect on it.


So, if your goal is to reach infinite DoT on Training Dummies faster (so, kill the Dummy faster), then the 1 effect is better for you.
Go for it.

If your goal is to beat madness with less trouble, then taking Scoundrel is a good choice.
Other reasons are:


Different bleed effects: Saw Physical Bleed vs Scoundrel

Overheat Saws

At 100 steampower, the parameters of the Burn effect from Overheat Saws are:

Power = 48
Duration = 3 turns

(145 burn damage over 3 turns)


Steamsaws

I checked the code, steamsaws deal Physical Bleed damage type.
That means, they deal a full physical damage (this is very nice) and also they add a CUT effect (the bleed).

The parameters for the CUT effetc are:

Power = 0.1 x the damage
Duration = 5 turns.

And this Bleed effect is not strong, yes, you are correct.
If you have a 192 weapon damage, then the power is just 19.2.
That is just the 40% of the Burn from Overheat Saws.


Scoundrel

With talent level 5, you have 55% chance to apply a CUT effect on the enemy.
This can happen at every melee or archery attack.
NOTE: you will attack multiple times per self turns, so this is likely to trigger.

The parameters of the Scoundrel Bleed are:

Power = 0.25 x the damage
Duration = 4 turns

So, with a weapon damage of 192, that means a power of 48 !
That is exactly the same as the Burn from Overheat Saws at steam power 100 & tlvl 5.

So, Scoundrel applies a SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER CUT effect than the Steamsaw itself.

What you can do to test this is to go into dev-mode and just test it in a dummy.
NOTE: Do not use Seal Fate for testing, because it makes the damage from the 2 effect NON-COMPARABLE.
It is RNG which effect it extends, so do not use it for comparing the bleed & the burn.

Give your character good Steamsaws and a good physical power, becasue CUT is damage dependant, while
BURN has fixed power.

And just start hitting the dummy, without Seal Fate and with a Tlvl 5 Scoundrel.
For me the Bleed effect was 2-2.5 times stronger than the Burn, but it is damage dependant.


Also, Scoundrel gives NOT ONLY DAMAGE.
It gives you SURVIVAL and you mentioned that you felt you need more survival.

1. You will meleeing enemies and CUT enemies can not Crit against you in combat if you know Scoundrel.

2. You will put a random talent into cooldown for 4 turns at each turn (you have 35% chance, but you will attack multiple times per self turn)

3. You have a 35% chance to resist detrimental physical effects and also the enemy will apply it to another enemy next to you.

4. You gain extra defense

5. It gives enemies talent failure chance.

These effects are OTHER effects, therefore enemies can not clear them and also Seal Fate is not extending them.



Other things

I do not really know why did you wrote "before turning on Seal Fate...".
I checked againg the character and the character have just 30% spell cooldown reduction.
This is a waste.
You should use a "quickening" pickaxe and a "spellbinding" shoe.
This way you will have 50% spell cooldown reduction, therefore the cooldowns of Seal Fate & Webs of Fate will be 6.
Their duration is also 6 turns, so you can maintain them continously.

If you have Meta - Quicken spells, I would definately go for the 50% reduction.


Also, you took Meta and just taking Chronomancy - Fate Weaving ?
This is again a big waste of category & skill points.

You should use more spells, because you can reduce their cooldown to half.

There is also a big weakness in the build:

It is 1 vs 1 oriented.

Do you have a good AoE damage effect?
Most of the situations you will face more than 1 enemies or many enemies.


Taking these into consideration I would take something like:

Chronoancy - Blade Threading and/or Chronomancy - Threaded Combat.

These 2 categories give you AoE melee attacks and also more mobility, that you already lack.

Blink Blade -> you are teleporting 2 times (that is 2 clearing from Dimensional Shift and gain an Out of Phase effect)

Also, you hit 2 enemies, not just 1.
The cooldown can be 4 turns with the 50% reduction.

Blade Shear -> Attacks 3 adjacent enemies. Cooldown is 6. Instakills enemies with low life.

Blade Ward -> Another source of ignoring melee damage from enemies.


Thread Walk -> attack an enemy in melee, then teleport away from it. Cooldown 5.

Thread the Needle -> Attack all adjacent enemies for increased weapon damage. Cooldown 4.

The increased weapon damage from these talents has synergie with Scoundrel, because the CUT
effect there is damage dependant.
You can make your Scoundrel Cuts 1.5 - 2.2 times stronger.

You can tune down your Paradox, becasue the weapon damage multiplier is just tlvl dependant, not Paradox Modifier dependant.
You can tune down even to 0.
This way you won't have anomaly problems, and also the paradox cost of all of your chronomancy spells will be half.

When I ckecked the character I saw a 300 Paradox as a resource and I do not understand, why.
The build do not use spellpower.

[visage]

Then why are you using Corrosive Slashes?

The point of using Corrosive Slashes is to avoid bleed damage. You generate much less of it per hit than you do of fire, landing it is affected by armor, undead are immune to it, and since it has a longer base duration it stacks up slower with Seal Fate procs. The only time I've found it worthwhile to turn off Corrosive Slashes is against Radiant/Luminous Horrors -- they tend to have sufficiently low armor that the bleed actually lands. Unless the enemy is immune to burn damage due to Life In Flames, landing bleeds dramatically reduces the damage output of the build.

Yes, of course, I will make a comparison of two cases.
In the first case, there is a DoT effect with 100 power and 4 turns duration.
6 Seal Fate procs will be used for duration extension each turn, and there is a merge at each turn,
after the + 6 turn duration extansion.

In the second case, there are two effects with same parameters (100 power and 4 turns duration).
In this case, 3 & 3 Seal Fate procs will be used each turn per effect and there will be also a merge at each turn.

Thanks for running those numbers! It does look like if you double the DoT input then spreading the Seal Fate procs between two separate DoTs does not negatively impact total damage done.

As you point out, turning off Corrosive Slashes does not double the DoT input -- the bleed damage inherent to saws is much less than the burn damage from Overheated Saws. My experience in game is that unless the enemy is immune to burn damage, turning off Corrosive Slashes is a big reduction in my damage output for the reasons I mention above... and even against burn-immune enemies the impacts of armor have generally been enough that it's made more sense for me to leave it on.

As a side note: damage gets merged when applied, rather than at the end of the turn, right? (That has implications for growth rates in damage, as well as the effectiveness of three-turn DoTs vs four-turn DoTs.)

Scoundrel
[...]
These effects are OTHER effects, therefore enemies can not clear them and also Seal Fate is not extending them.

Ah, I had not been aware that scoundrel's non-bleed maluses were Other effects... and that is very relevant for considering it for inclusion in a Seal Fate build. That's very useful information; thanks!

Do you have a good AoE damage effect?

Flame Bolts are actually a pretty good pseudo-AoE.

Blink Blade -> you are teleporting 2 times (that is 2 clearing from Dimensional Shift and gain an Out of Phase effect)

Incidentally, I generally consider Blink Blade to be contraindicated when using Flame Bolts -- it's way too easy to kill yourself.

You can tune down your Paradox, becasue the weapon damage multiplier is just tlvl dependant, not Paradox Modifier dependant.
You can tune down even to 0.
This way you won't have anomaly problems, and also the paradox cost of all of your chronomancy spells will be half.

Well, tuning Paradox down to 0 would mean I've halved the duration of Seal Fate and Webs of Fate. It's worth tuning it down if I've gotten my spell cooldown below 50%, I agree, but I'm unlikely to hit that before pretty late in the game.

Incidentally, the difference between performance in endgame and getting to endgame seems to be at the heart of much of this discussion -- for example, with 5 in Saw Mastery and 5 in Resonant Focus and 100 Will and Voratun saws with all of the right egos and Arcane Might and 70% PhysPen it could be the case that turning off Corrosive Slashes is a net damage increase in some cases against living enemies without too much armor. ...but for most of the game I'm making tradeoffs in what I've invested in, and so far with builds exploring this concept it's been the case that optimizing for weapon damage has been pretty low on my priority queue -- I've cared more about improving my FirePen, and getting the right egos on the saws I'm wielding, getting my primary form of offense up to sufficient levels, boosting my defensive talents, etc. It may well be the case that I've been making the wrong decisions in prioritization, of course.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

Yes, the merging mechanism in this build is a bit complicated.

For the calculation that I made the question was only to see the effect of a new DoT in the enemy and divide
Seal Fate procs evenly amongst them.

Due to Tempest of Metal for example, you merging faster everything, because every time you hit something,
you hit it again for a 30% weapon damage (and that means an extra Overheat Saws proc and Cut proc again).

To precisely simulate & calculate how this interact exactly with Seal Fate would ........ take way more time.


You feel very right.
Creating a viable madness build takes a lot of planning and a lot of testing in dev-mode before the actual run.
Also it requires good knowledge about talents and mechanisms.

I use High Peak for testing for example.
Tier 2 enemies in madness are little children playing with toys.
If you are really curious how strong and effective your adventurer is, you can lvl it up to 50, give it good items in dev-mode,
then teleport it to High Peak and play a little bit there.
If you manage to clear 1-2 levels in High Peak, then your adventurer is okay.

I am playing in madness and what i can tell about build generation, it is very not about maximizing damage output.

Apart from a combo adventurer that uses an infinite-loop combo it's mostly about:


a, having multiple and very strong damage reductions (the most important is to stay alive)

damage.png (33.22 KiB) Viewed 15689 times

Guys in High Peak hit like this and can hit multiple times in 1 attack too.
I saw attacks that has ~ 30 relatively high damage instances in it.


b, having fast and effective detriemntal effect clearing (you have to act if you like to act)

Prepare for lagging and vibrating screen, because there will be situations when your character will have
more than 20-25 detrimental effect on him/herself. You can get these effects in 2-3 turns when
fighting with multiple high level enemies.
Currently the game can not handle that much effect that you will have sometimes in madness.


c, having very good mobility & escape abilities (enemies has many skills and you will meet with enemies that will ruin your build)

For example enemies can deactivate your sustains (Corrupted Negation lvl 40) or clear your effects.
You just hear a slimy noise and suddenly you just standing there totally defenseless.
Meanwhile you also got 8-10 diseases/poisons in your face...
Oh, and you are surrounded by enemies becasue you are a melee character...
What will you do?

If you can not escape somehow & reset your skills and start again your strategy, then you are doomed.
And the enemy will use that skill again, when it's off cooldown, so you have to do something in
a situation where there are multiple Corruptors attacking you.
And Corrupted Negation is just an exapmle.

Also, enemies are teleporting next to you (cheaty AI), enemies have 2500% movement speed (Wyrmics)
and enemies always know where you are becuse of Hunted!.
Also enemies with higher speeds will just teleport next to you and immediately cast a spell or attack you...
From nowhere... and from the other side of the map.

So really test the build against High Peak monsters and in real game (the fact that you are in dev-mode
if you test does not mean you have to cheat. You should play like in non-dev mode while fighting)

Going for a full max damage sounds very fun and strong on paper.
But in reality, late game madness enemies are strong and have many skills that can instantly ruin your character.

What will you do against a lvl 150 Nightmare Horror randboss?
It has stealth that high, you can not see it. No chance. (like stealth power 170)
It has ALL EFFECT IMMUNITY. -> You can not deal any damage to it.
It can be a psyshot/gunslinger too, then it will have a tlvl 45 Cloak with ~170 all flat damage reduction.
It can have other very insane damage reduction talents too (some are incredible at tlvl 45-50).
And it will follow you very effectively & fast.
And it will have 2 or 3 classes: like 40- 50 talents with talent level 40-45.

[visage]

Creating a viable madness build takes a lot of planning and a lot of testing in dev-mode before the actual run.

That's certainly a reasonable approach. Personally, I didn't do any dev-mode testing before getting this character to the 10th floor of High Peak. ...and I've got a 1.6-modified version of that build at around lvl 33 who may or may not make it; I'll find out the hard way.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

1.5 was easier than 1.6 as I feel from the few runs that I made so far.
I very like the new AI it just makes the game better I think.
In 1.5 enemies were dumb, you could easily confuse them (not with confusion effect) and they ued their skills not as good as they using now.

If you just throw in a lot of very good damage reduction talent on an adventurer, some mobility, effect clearing and damage, it is doable to beat madness, but it's very luck dependant.
What you experiened in High Peak 10 that I also experienced a tons of times.
Playing for like 14-24 days with 1 run, reaching close to the end and suddenly something just kills me ... DAMN!

That feeling I would like to avoid and also I want to make my runs as little luck dependant as just possible.

I am saying luck dependant, because if you are lucky and get "good" enemies/randbosses basically you can clear
everything in the game. But only 1 bad rng is enough and you can be in serious trouble and then you just angry
at yourself, because " Oh, I should know this and prepare for this!"
So, I prepare for everything that I just know...

I am currently on a Paradox Mage run so I switched from adventurers, but I am really interested in them.
Also, it would be nice to read if you would have any experience from your current madness run/runs.

[visage]

I've spent more time toying around with characters building on this idea, so I've some more observations:

Flexible Combat: I was completely wrong about this. I had been remembering how it applied with multi-hit attacks and was carrying that over to how this build works, and that's just incorrect. For this build, Flexible Combat really is 50% extra hits, and that's a huge damage boost.

Scoundrel: I really like the defensive benefits this provides, but for most of the game against any enemy not immune to burn or bleed damage then taking it means a big hit to the effectiveness of Seal Fate -- your sources of damage are just built on completely different investments. By lategame, when you have been able to invest in ways to boost both burning and your melee damage and you're critting all of the time, the offensive potential of this starts to show. If Lacerating Strikes were a sustain rather than a passive, this would be amazing in this build. (Incidentally, resistances have no effect on how much of a bleed you land with a melee attack; armor does reduce how much of a bleed you land.)

Blink Blade: This may no longer be suicide with Flame Bolts. I've noticed that you can now run into your own projectiles and take no damage, so I suspect that blinking in front of them also no longer means you eat the damage.

Goul + Solipsism? Tradewind_Rider, your recent post about Ghoul Paradox Mage has me really intrigued at the potential of trying out something in this space with Ghoul and Solipsism...