HIgh Elf Build with Riding.

[idbeholdME 394]

After thinking hard about which class to roll with mastering Riding by level 75, I think I've landed on a High Elf. Feels like she might be the character to benefit the most from a very fast mounted speed in order to avoid getting hit. The idea is to combine the Ice attacks from Mystic Stormite to slow enemies and further increasing this movement speed gap by doing it from the back of the Wind Serpent with Riding Mastery. The Wind Serpent has a decent speed (only 5% slower than the fastest mounts, Hellhound and Mobiculum). Inquisitor's and Seraphim's mounts are painfully slow and I feel like they wouldn't squeeze full value out of the Riding Mastery.

The outline of the build so far:

Mystic Stormite Lore

Mystic Stormite Focus

Concentration

Delphic Arcania Lore

Armor Lore

Riding

Constitution

Delphic Arcania Focus

Enhanced Perception

Combat Discipline

 

Spell Resistance instead of Enhanced Perception would be objectively better, but I really wanted to squeeze EP in. Hoping that modding Grand Invigoration with Resilience will be enough in that department, basically serving as a weaker substitute for Spell Resistance Mastery.

Not taking Ancient Magic as I hope any needs for an alternate damage source for Ice resistant/immune enemies will be covered by Cobalt Strike.

 

Attributes would be spent  mostly in Intelligence, maybe with some Vitality sprinkled in.

As for CAs, the plan would be:

Frost Flare

Freeze - Frost - Icy Circle

Glacial Thorns

Frost - Pierce - Fussilade

Raging Nimbus

Hurricane - Momentum - Extended Nimbus

Cascading Shroud

Mist - Intangible - Steam

Crystal Skin

Glacial Mirror - Focalize - Frosty Breeze

 

Cobalt Strike

Heavy Damage - Chain Reaction - Explosion

Magic Coup

NOT MODDED

Shadow Step

Phase Shift - Sanctuary - Mend

Expulse Magic

Expansion - Pentagram - Protection

Grand Invigoration

Mystic Stormite Expertise - Life Energy - Resilience.

 

The mod choices mostly reflect the planned playstyle - slowing enemies with Ice and basically never getting hit by manoeuvring around any and all enemies on the mount with mastered Riding. Could be a bit rough in caves on foot though...

Also don't really want to dabble in Arrant Pyromancer at all, as I already played that over 10 years ago

 

Anyone any suggestions/changes to the build? Will this be able to live through Niobium with only 2 defensive skills? Will probably get this character rolling in like a month, once I wrap up the Inquisitor I'm currently playing.

[Lindor 438]

11 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Anyone any suggestions/changes to the build?

Ancient Magic is a missing must have imho.

11 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Will this be able to live through Niobium with only 2 defensive skills?

Depends on your gear. Theoretically you could gather gear with high amount of gold slots and stack lots of Dawargons Circlets and enjoy your 100% Damage immunity.

Also Expulse Magic is good enouth to replace spell resistance. Just that the latter is less.. stressfull.

But good news is you don't need to worry about damage. Your Glacias Thorns, if modded correctly, is so OP it will melt everything even without %LL. And you did mod it correctly.

 

It's not gonna be perfect, but it's gonna work. I'd still swap Riding and Enhanced Perception for Ancient Magic and Spell Resistance. Shield Lore falls into the category of overated skills for me.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Lindor

[idbeholdME 394]

2 hours ago, Lindor said:

Ancient Magic is a missing must have imho.

Depends on your gear. Theoretically you could gather gear with high amount of gold slots and stack lots of Dawargons Circlets and enjoy your 100% Damage immunity.

Also Expulse Magic is good enouth to replace spell resistance. Just that the latter is less.. stressfull.

But good news is you don't need to worry about damage. Your Glacias Thorns, if modded correctly, is so OP it will melt everything even without %LL. And you did mod it correctly.

 

It's not gonna be perfect, but it's gonna work. I'd still swap Riding and Enhanced Perception for Ancient Magic and Spell Resistance. Shield Lore falls into the category of overated skills for me.

Ancient Magic is a must for builds that focus only on 1 damage type, to deal with highly resistant/immune enemies to that damage type. Cobalt Strike will be the go-to against stuff like Ice Elementals or enemies in the Seraphim Hunting grounds. And even then, most of the CAs in Mystic Stormite deal a split of Ice and Physical. Ancient Magic Mastery only reduces enemy damage mitigation values and the game doesn't really have that many enemies who have it in high amounts, besides elementals. The most frequent one the enemies have is Fire and Physical. And the damage bonus from Ancient Magic is the lowest of the bunch, compared to Lore skills or Combat Discipline, which also offer other bonuses on top of the damage.

Well, any character can theoretically reach 100% mitigation, but you of course have to find a sufficient amount of Darwagon's/Gruma's talismans and of course dedicate all your slots to it. I have like 3 or 4 Darwagons over hundreds of hours of play time and only one Gruma. Immortality is cool and all, but also kind of boring. And there is a grand total of 2 enemies in the game that can pierce 100% Damage Mitigation.

One thing I've been wondering about Expulse Magic - how important is the banishing power? Specifically, will the CA still be able to negate spells from stuff like bosses 20 levels above your character without taking the Bronze Strength mod? I have no idea how the banishing power of Expulse Magic is used in the calculation of whether or not it will work. From what I could tell when fighting stuff like the Dark Prince who uses Expulse Magic against you, it doesn't always negate everything. It usually disabled like 2 of my 3 buffs and any active buffs I had going at the time (like Dashing Alacrity). No idea whether the one buff that remained active was levelled enough so the Prince could not disable it or if it's just a random chance and the higher the banishing power, the more likely it will work.

 

And as for general skills, they can of course always be replaced with better skills and those two would 100% be the ones I'd pick if I wanted the most optimal build. But Riding is the main point of this build and the reason I dropped Spell Resistance for Enhanced Perception is that I'm hoping the Grand Invigoration gold mod will cover it not fully, but sufficiently. I can always supplement it with some Detrimental Effect Reduction or Damage over time -X% on gear but CtFV is really hard to get without gimping yourself pretty hard. And finding rarity tier 14 and 15 items without Enhanced Perception is extremely unlikely. Really need to expand my collection of things like Excalibrian or the Unique armor pieces for the various classes. I've found like 3 rarity tier 14 items with my Inquisitor at about 80 hours of playtime, 2 of which were The Wayfarer boots (which is lucky since those are the ones I'm using), but you won't really expand your rarity 14 collection without Enhanced Perception.

 

Lastly, as for Shield Lore, the main advantage of the skill is the Mastery bonus. Combined with other sources like from a buff or some from gear, it can allow you to reach 100% melee attack block chance. Not to mention that the best shield in the game, Kira's Wall, becomes ever more godly with the skill.

Edited June 26, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

On 6/26/2023 at 4:30 PM, idbeholdME said:

One thing I've been wondering about Expulse Magic - how important is the banishing power? Specifically, will the CA still be able to negate spells from stuff like bosses 20 levels above your character without taking the Bronze Strength mod? I have no idea how the banishing power of Expulse Magic is used in the calculation of whether or not it will work. From what I could tell when fighting stuff like the Dark Prince who uses Expulse Magic against you, it doesn't always negate everything. It usually disabled like 2 of my 3 buffs and any active buffs I had going at the time (like Dashing Alacrity). No idea whether the one buff that remained active was levelled enough so the Prince could not disable it or if it's just a random chance and the higher the banishing power, the more likely it will work.

It's a very powerful spell, but given that the alternative to the bronze mod, radius increase, I'd say that strength is definitely the better option. I've never tried it without the Strength mod, but with it will be able to debuff and protect from boss CAs. If it's a question about wether you want to spend a modification point at all, then the answer is yes, do it, not just the bronze but also the the silver and gold mods (Pentagram and Protection) are sooo worth it. They're the reason why this spell is so powerful.

[idbeholdME 394]

1 hour ago, Lindor said:

It's a very powerful spell, but given that the alternative to the bronze mod, radius increase, I'd say that strength is definitely the better option. I've never tried it without the Strength mod, but with it will be able to debuff and protect from boss CAs. If it's a question about wether you want to spend a modification point at all, then the answer is yes, do it, not just the bronze but also the the silver and gold mods (Pentagram and Protection) are sooo worth it. They're the reason why this spell is so powerful.

I definitely plan on modding it all the way. I have no need for Magic Coup, so mod points should be available.

The radius increase would be a great QoL improvement, allowing for a larger area to fight in while still under the effects. If the banishing power can be pumped high enough with just Delphic Arcania Lore, it might be a wasted mod. The radius increase is a sure bet. But I never played with it, so have no idea what breakpoints/numbers are required for various things.

Edited June 30, 2023 by idbeholdME

[idbeholdME 394]

Decided to take the build through Silver, to feel it out. Also kind of liked the prospect of making a caster without Ancient Magic to really see if it's important.

 

There have been 2 major obstacles. Namely 2 boss fights, one side and one main:

Du'Rach Commander Harrad'Smit - he has 100% Ice damage mitigation. Had to chip him down with the physical portion of Glacial Thorns and Cobalt Strike.

Facetelleon - has around 85% Ice damage mitigation. But as it's a T-Energy Creature, Cobalt Strike brought him down relatively fast.

 

And minor annoyances:

Skeletons - those in the Swamp all have 30% Ice damage Mitigation, the Elites have 40%.

Ice Elementals - they have about 60% Ice damage Mitigation but are generally quite fragile (low HP). A combination of Frost Flare and Cobalt Strike still takes them down relatively fast. Elites can be shotgunned with Glacial Thorns. Raging Nimbus for groups is pretty good too as it does mostly Physical damage.

[idbeholdME 394]

Just mastered Riding and it's quite a difference. The bump from 148% movement sped to 169% (Riding at level 103, +21% MS) is pretty noticeable. The camera has to work overtime to keep up :D. And it will keep increasing as I find and equip more and better All Skill bonuses. Might very well end up somewhere in 175-180% territory. I've never zoomed around this fast in Sacred 2  And it could even be 5% more if it was a TG or SW (they have the fastest mounts in the game).

Also, the answer to the question of whether the mount speed bonus is additive or multiplicative - it's additive. So all mounts receive the same bonus, but slower mounts benefit from the Mastery bonus more noticeably (higher relative increase). Overall, it's a usable skill that provides a very nice QoL increase. Still a completely wasted skill in caves (I treat mounts by the vanilla rules) but definitely not on the same tier of bad like Divine Devotion or Speed Lore.

Edited July 13, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

9 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

And it could even be 5% more if it was a TG or SW (they have the fastest mounts in the game).

They have faster mounts because they have slower base movement speed. In the end, all characters move at roughly the same speed when mounted.

[idbeholdME 394]

4 hours ago, Lindor said:

They have faster mounts because they have slower base movement speed. In the end, all characters move at roughly the same speed when mounted.

I wouldn't say roughly. Inquisitor is painfully slow compared to others on his spider (equal to 130% of his unmounted speed). He can run up to 20% faster on foot and Riding Mastery would mostly just bring him up to par with other characters. Mobiculum on the other hand is equal to a TG on foot with 155% movement speed.

Only the Shadow Warrior and Seraphim move 4% slower on foot than the other characters. The numbers are here in the comparison section:

https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Mounts

And pardon me, the TG and SW mounts would be 7%, not 5% faster than the HE or DR mounts.

Unique mount speed equivalent to the character's on foot movement speed:

SW - 60%, but due to him being 4% slower on foot than others, equal to TG

TG - 55%

HE, DR - 48%

SE - 40%. Also quite slow because of the lower base movement speed. More like ~36% when compared to others

IN - 30%

The wiki does not list Dragon Mage though. Not sure where one would datamine these values.

 

Where the characters move roughly at the same speeds are normal horses, but who rides those anyway

Edited July 14, 2023 by idbeholdME

[claudius 104]

Riding might be good with the skill that unlocks increased vision.  You can see more champions on the map that way.  So speed around on your ride and find the champions very fast for loot/treasure hunt.

I can't remember which skill makes/unlocks more enhanced vision mods on gear?  Enhanced Perception?  Alchemy?

If you can manage a build with Riding that can safely (important!) farm enemies that drop legendaries would be good also.  Dragons drop legendaries but they take a long walk to reach them.  Riding would make that farming more efficient.  Legendaries are super rare.  I had a Shadow Warrior that farmed them and I think he found 2 hammers he couldn't use, and some junky jewelry.  I'd estimate I farmed dragons for at least 20 hours and found legendaries super rare.  That SW had a lot of play in Ancaria was hardcore and reached level 177 before retiring from the game.

Edited July 14, 2023 by claudius

[gogoblender 3,070]

1 hour ago, claudius said:

Riding might be good with the skill that unlocks increased vision.  You can see more champions on the map that way.  So speed around on your ride and find the champions very fast for loot/treasure hunt.

 

Terrific idea! I remember someone online who used to do the *scouting* for us like that when we were together as a party  with all kinds of enhanced mods to make the treasure finding effective

gogo

[idbeholdME 394]

22 hours ago, claudius said:

I can't remember which skill makes/unlocks more enhanced vision mods on gear?  Enhanced Perception?  Alchemy?

It was Enhanced Perception. And yes, it's pretty much mandatory, Mastered, to have a decent chance of finding Legendaries. Along with a very high Map Explored % is also very good. 150% gives another 37.5% CtFV. Hich survival bonus is also a given. Optimally, also some gear with CtFV. It is possible to find them without EP, but takes much, much longer.

I've had a decent success in vanilla conditions with my Seraphim with Enhanced Perception. You can see the log of my finds here.

https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72349-my-first-ever-legendary-in-sacred-2-d/

 

21 hours ago, gogoblender said:

Terrific idea! I remember someone online who used to do the *scouting* for us like that when we were together as a party  with all kinds of enhanced mods to make the treasure finding effective

I usually do a full Ancaria run in complete Visibility Range gear right before I start grinding bosses on a character. Getting to 1000-1200% of Visibility Range and running dilligently through the entire map allows you to get up to 150% map explored.

But other than that, I usually ignore it. Non-Legendary drops come often enough and bosses that can drop Legendaries have a set position.

Edited July 15, 2023 by idbeholdME

[idbeholdME 394]

One important find about mounts:

The mount basically counts as an extra life. Should it die in combat (your health while riding it gets extremely low), you first get dismounted, stunned for a couple seconds and the enemies ignore you for the duration of the stun, allowing you to heal and retreat after the stun is over. Just had this happen on my Hardcore High Elf. Due to my poor piloting, Bloodclaw shredded my health pool incredibly quickly with extremely hard hits + massive bleed, even through Crystal Skin with 12.6K Physical Armor. My heart skipped several beats, thought I was dead dead before I realized what happened, but managed to get out of that situation alive thanks to the mount giving its life for me. An extremely valuable thing for a Hardcore character.

Rest in peace, level 126 Wind Serpent/Fay Drake, your sacrifice will not be forgotten. May your successor not meet a similar fate 

Edited July 28, 2023 by idbeholdME

[idbeholdME 394]

Additional note about the monster mitigation values - they slightly scale with difficulty. Facetelleon is completely Ice immune in Niobium. Just fought the Banshee and it's completely immune to both Ice and Physical damage. Had to chip it down with Cobalt Strike.

Skeletons were are mitigating a noticeable chunk of Ice damage, so much so that I modded Expulse Magic for damage against Undead. The damage is surprisingly high and takes care of any issues with them. Too bad it doesn't work against Ghosts too.

Overall, Ancient Magic Mastery should probably be included in any caster build around entering Niobium. The enemies who mitigate your elements significantly are not numerous, but can be quite annoying. Banshee has been the worst so far, being immune to the build's 2 main damage types and still having a large chunk of Magic armor.

Edited July 28, 2023 by idbeholdME

[gogoblender 3,070]

On 7/27/2023 at 8:02 PM, idbeholdME said:

One important find about mounts:

The mount basically counts as an extra life. Should it die in combat (your health while riding it gets extremely low), you first get dismounted, stunned for a couple seconds and the enemies ignore you for the duration of the stun, allowing you to heal and retreat after the stun is over. Just had this happen on my Hardcore High Elf. Due to my poor piloting, Bloodclaw shredded my health pool incredibly quickly with extremely hard hits + massive bleed, even through Crystal Skin with 12.6K Physical Armor. My heart skipped several beats, thought I was dead dead before I realized what happened, but managed to get out of that situation alive thanks to the mount giving its life for me. An extremely valuable thing for a Hardcore character.

Rest in peace, level 126 Wind Serpent/Fay Drake, your sacrifice will not be forgotten. May your successor not meet a similar fate 

I now that exact same sickened, *dazed* feeling.. a lot of it coming from the surprise that you just DIED...and that you somehow got away with it.. its kind of a queazy feeling because so much of it happens so fast, and its usually a surprise.. its not the kind of foreknowledge we purpose build into our builds

Very happy you made it away with a limp, and a good RIP to your faithful, trusty steed... may her spirit go forth and join you in future travels!

gogo

[idbeholdME 394]

Just additional info about enemy immunities on Niobium:

Ice Elementals are now indeed completely immune to Ice. Expected it to happen way sooner, but even in Plat, they can still be damaged by Ice.

Ancestral Spirits summoned by Elite Ogre Shamans have about 90-95% mitigation to both Ice and Physical damage. Not completely immune like Banshee, but very annoying.

Various Ghosts, like those in the cursed forest in the human region have similar Ice mitigation as Moldered Skeletons. About 40-ish percent.

 

I think that should be all enemies with notably high levels of Ice mitigation. Unless some other enemy in later acts received a massive amount. Will report it here later if that's the case.

Edited August 3, 2023 by idbeholdME

[claudius 104]

A way to kill those enemies with immunity to your damage would be to have a throwing weapon with%LL on it.  A riding elf has access to Magic Coup that even if it's not having modification points there's still a big bonus to hit hidden in the combat art.  I assume that's still true in the modded game:)

[idbeholdME 394]

20 hours ago, claudius said:

A way to kill those enemies with immunity to your damage would be to have a throwing weapon with%LL on it.  A riding elf has access to Magic Coup that even if it's not having modification points there's still a big bonus to hit hidden in the combat art.  I assume that's still true in the modded game:)

LL would work.

And yes, CAs using weapons do have an attack bonus. Magic Coup for example:

        entry0 = {"et_mult_weapondamage", 1200, 2, 0, 9 },
        entry1 = {"et_AW_rel", 500, 20, 0, 5 },
        entry2 = {"et_baseAW", 200, 350, 0, 5 },
        entry3 = {"et_damage_any_rel", 400, 100, 0, 5 },

So Magic Coup gives you a 50+2*CA Level % bonus to attack value and also 20+35*CA Level flat attack value.

So at level CA Level 100, you'd be at 3520 flat attack value and an extra 250% attack value bonus. Meaning that by itself, it'd have 12320 attack value by itself before any other bonuses. That is a pretty good value. Add 1 or 2 rings with opponent's evade chance reduction and you're set. There is also the Silver mod, which would add flat life leech.

However, unless the enemy is also immune to Magic damage (haven't encountered an Ice/Magic immune combo), Cobalt Strike is sufficient. Against the Banshee though, %LL would definitely win.

But then there is also the fact that I generally try to avoid using any %LL bonuses . The numbers are just too high for how powerful it is, especially on thrown weapons. The only weapon which I'd consider having a "balanced" amount of %LL is https://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Tom_Felde's_Thunderous_Voice

But I could probably run a ranged weapon on switch to use with Magic Coup against highly Ice/Physical resistant enemies. The mods on Shadow Step besides the Bronze one are not really that important so I could divert the mod points into Coup and max that instead of Shadow Step. Death's Chirr could be a good sidearm

Edited August 4, 2023 by idbeholdME

[idbeholdME 394]

Build is going pretty well. Currently level 131, recently Mastered Constitution. The 3 skills left to master are Combat Discipline, Armor Lore and Concentration. Currently taking a bit of a detour from mastering skills and pumping Mystic Stormite Focus so I can fully mod Cascading Shroud. After that, will continue Mastering the last 3 skills. Not sure if I'm going to master Concentration. Probably will not be necessary as High Elf already has access to massive regen time reductions.

Also, the reason I included Enhanced Perception in the build, to find more very rare weapons like Excalibrian finally paid off

Only had one Excalibrian in stock, a level 65 or so Silver one, during my hundreds upon hundreds of hours of playtime. It's a rarity tier 14 weapon, so finding it is very, very rare. So adding a level 155 Niob one to my collection is a big deal. One of the best caster weapons, next to Nlovae's Mystery.

Funnily enough, both Excalibrians dropped from skeletons in the Swamp.

Edited August 15, 2023 by idbeholdME