Character Builds, Ability Points, & How to Kick Ass Thread

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Character Builds, Ability Points, & How to Kick Ass Thread

  • Primarily Combat Build. Blood and Fear!

    Votes: 193 34.9%
  • Mostly Signs. Your Mind Is Mine.

    Votes: 74 13.4%
  • Alchemy. Mutant and Proud of It.

    Votes: 82 14.8%
  • Hybrid, some of each. Polymath!

    Votes: 215 38.9%
  • I also love the General set! Lots of use.

    Votes: 27 4.9%
  • Can't decide. Many Respecs lie ahead!

    Votes: 37 6.7%

  • Total voters
    553
For my second run, I will avoids signs in general. I currently have a sign build and I feel like cheating (I also play in Death march). Alternative Aard is the most OP sign, IMO.
I plan to do an epeeist, to rely only on my swords =)
 
@ottffsse Firestream is a great crowd controller and proxer for rend and whirlwind. It's purpose isn't DPS, that's just an afterthought.

@Jarchris I would add yrden alternative mode to the mix. It's a good cc, especially if you plan on using Igni as your DPS.
 
Combat Skills:
Arrow Deflection
Whirl
Rend

Razor Focus
Sunder Armor

Sign Skills:
Melt Armor
Delusion

Alchemy Skills:
Poisoned Blades
Acquired Tolerance

General Skills:
Griffin School Techniques
Focus

Battle Frenzy


(This build is only attainable in Hearts of Stone)
This is my 59 point Viper School Hybrid build. It is a true "all around" build that forces you to use all the tools at your disposal and it's by far my favorite way to play the game. The gear set is obviously full viper school set. I use retribution glyphword and bleed runestones. Then igni/aard glyphstones on the rest to make sure I hit my best % burn and stagger. Match mutagens to the skills and use whatever potions to suit your playstyle/skill level. Besides the fact this build hella fun build to play, I also love it because of how beautifully it falls down the skill tree and makes me strongly believe it's the build the developers really wanted you to play with the gear. (If you're planning on doing a NG+ run you can aim for synergy 5/5 at 75 points and replace Focus with it to help make back the power difference after taking battle frenzy)


FAIR WARNING: This build is not OP, does not use cheese, and requires you to be a badass at all times. Do not mistake this build for easy mode!
 
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I manage finally to level up enough to equip the Viper venomous gear from HoS.
I'm still wondering what kind of build better synergize with it, this time I was using the Cat school build with huge amount of bleeding, insta-death and adrenaline. I used exclusively fast attack. However if I plan to use this armor I need to change my build completely as the Viper armor is medium armor......I was thinking about an hybrid build but I'm not quite sure.

Someone has any suggestion? How you properly synergize your Viper armor with your skills?
 
Anyone doing critical hit builds? I'm looking for items and skills to further improve my critical hit chance and damage. The default crit chance is 5%, add to that:

Assassin gloves (10% crit chance)
Katakan decotion (5%)
Precise/Crushing blows skills (10% once at 5/5 points)
Battle Frenzy skill (8% for each adrenaline point)

Each of my swords have 10% chance increase. I use light gear and the 'School of the cat' skill to increase crit damage. What can I improve on this? At 3 adrenaline points, I get 64% crit chance.

I must say it is quite beautiful to see all those yellow numbers popping out 8)
 
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Anyone doing critical hit builds? I'm looking for items and skills to further improve my critical hit chance and damage. The default crit chance is 5%, add to that:

Assassin gloves (10% crit chance)
Katakan decotion (5%)
Precise/Crushing blows skills (10% once at 5/5 points)
Battle Frenzy skill (8% for each adrenaline point)

Each of my swords have 10% chance increase. I use light gear and the 'School of the cat' skill to increase crit damage. What can I improve on this? At 3 adrenaline points, I get 64% crit chance.

I must say it is quite beautiful to see all those yellow numbers popping out 8)

Full New Moon Gear (except gloves) will increase it by another 12%.
 
Full New Moon Gear (except gloves) will increase it by another 12%.
Nice! One problem though... since it is medium armor, I'll get reduced crit damage since 'School of the Cat' only works on light armor. And the assassin gloves would hardly match with the set (fashion is important!!). Hmm...
 
Nice! One problem though... since it is medium armor, I'll get reduced crit damage since 'School of the Cat' only works on light armor. And the assassin gloves would hardly match with the set (fashion is important!!). Hmm...

You can enchant your armor, so every piece of armor'll be as a light armor.
 
Nice! One problem though... since it is medium armor, I'll get reduced crit damage since 'School of the Cat' only works on light armor. And the assassin gloves would hardly match with the set (fashion is important!!). Hmm...
Use enchanting where all your armor turns into light one + school of the cat. Good luck!

Ups sorry didnt notice you had been advised.
 
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I was mostly signs but then I realized I had to respec for the final stretch of the game as the enemies were basically immune to me,and my sword hit like a wet noodle since I used all signs gear :(

A far cry from W1/W2, but oh well. I finished with a 8k DPS god mode sword/alch spec, but had a sour taste in my mouth. Not many rpgs have made me do that before.
 
Your preferred play style please?

Hello. I would like to know what some of you fellow Witchers favor in terms of talent build/armor type/runes and glyphs/rune wright enchants/ and alchemy/bombs... all that good stuff.

I am currently halfway to level 39 and finally switched up my build from some silly hybrid fast/strong attack build to a full strong attack build. I put 3 points into the alchemy ability that increases my toxicity by the amount of alchemy recipes I've learned. I have swords with crit chance and crit dmg on them and glove swith crit dmg as well. I use the superior potion that prevents the depletion of those 3 red points (can't remember what anything is called for some reason lol) as well as some other potions and decoctions. When I get in the game I'll get the names of what I use and post it.

So my attacks are slow but they hit very hard. I see crits upwards of 5k. I want to put points into the alchemy talent that increases mutagen potency by 50% but I don't have enough points to do that yet. Need to level up to 41 and find some more places of power. When I do this my strong attacks will hit obscenely hard.

As for my runes and glyphs and enchants. I'm not really using any glyphs right now as they all benefit signs and that doesn't benefit me all that much. Atleast I don't think it does. I put the level 3 runewright enchant on my chest armor. The one that has a 30% chance to reflect a portion of damage back at the attacker. The damage it does is minor but it seems to help with stopping enemies from performing combos on me as it looks like it pushes them back or staggers them a bit when it activates. On one of my swords I have the enchant that makes the grindstone/table buffs never expire. On the other weapon I have the range increase for whirl and Rend. Do you know which enchants are better than the ones I am using? If so please let me know.

I wear all heavy armor as I am using a strong attack build. I wanted to ask this though. If I use heavy armor but also use the enchant that makes all of my armor count as light armor will it retain all the protection of heavy armor? I wish CDPR would make these things known in game. I've heard when wearing light armor you can pretty much get one or two shot by strong enemies. This does not happen when wearing heavy armor.

I also tend to use the northern wind bomb I think it's called. It's like the only bomb that really does anything it seems lol. Anyone know of a good use for the other bombs besides destroying monster nests?

I'd like to try some different builds. I'm especially interested in a mostly magic build and also a fast attack build with whirl.

Anyway that's roughly my play style. What's yours? :) Thanks
 
I tried pretty much everything and now I'm fond of my adrenaline and decoctions junkie build :)

Abilities I use:

Strong Attack crit chance and damage boosted with Viper shool swords with their 75% buff to crit damage
Rend - the best skill in the game imo. Can't imagine myself without it anymore
One that adds 2% insta kill chance for each adrenaline points you have.
One that grants you one free adrenaline point whenever a fight starts. It also significantly boosts the rate you get your adrenaline points at.
"Flood of Anger" - uses all 3 adrenaline points if available when casting a sign but in turn significantly increase that sign damage and unlocks all upgrades to it at max capacity. Mostly used as a fun factor :) But I'm kind of fond of it. Adds more versatility to my character and makes you not spam signs but use them when the situtaion is most fitting.

NEVER use quen :)

One that gives you extra toxicity point for recipes learned. - Stuff up on delicious decoctions!
One that makes you immune to overdose on potions. - Don't die of them.
One that eliminates toxicity gained by consuming potions in mere seconds. - Still have to use all the other potions at will.
One that gives you 1000 HP for each decoction consumed - It's +3000 HP in my case (9560 with all buffs)Tank it up, baby.
One that gives you additional 25% protection if you have a right oil on your sword - More tanking!
One that boosts the bonus you get from mutagens.

Axii - Dialouges and stunning humans stupid enough to go against me.

45 + 45 + 30 - Red mutagens
+900 HP from a green mutagen

Thuderbold, Tawny Oil, Blizzard, Maribot Forest - Potions I use most.

Northern Wind and Devil's puffball + Golden Oreol - Bombs I use most.

Mastercrafted Ursine Gear imported to NG+ (Not going to change it). Vitality runes to regenerate lost helth in fight and after. DM here, sick and tired of opening this clunky inventory just to eat another dumpling. Deflection enchantment - Damn archers! :)
Currently Viper Swords + the enchantment that buffs rend's range. Slice them up from safety.

Pretty much feels invincible. Even if going against enemies that are of a significatly higher level, provided I drink the right decoctions. My strong attack doesn't deal 5K crit damage, but it's at 4.2K. I think it's adequate.


To answer your questions:

Changing the armor type with enchantments doesn't nerf the armor stats. No worries there.

Well, devils's puffball + superior golden oreol - This heals you and damages your enemies, provided you stay in the poisonous cloud. Other bombs are mostly situational, like moon dust to make those damn wraiths flesh and blood for easy slicing.

As for the sign build, in my opinion - It's not worth it. The worst playstyle I tried so far. Low damage, mosly useless abilities, ugly armor, boring Igni that makes you resort to frying enemies that can be fried, a lot of them can't.
 
Thanks Riven I'll check that out. THanks for your reply iCake. So I see you went with only a few points in combat and the rest in alchemy. Have not seen a build like that before but sounds interesting. The 6% insta kill chance, I think I did take that but doesn't seem all that great since at best it's only 6% but still, instant kill. Flood of Anger? Not sure about that one. Doesn't seem like it would be very powerful for a melee build but I've never tried it so don't know. I like the talents you took from Alchemy though seems legit. The more I look into it the more I start to like the alchemy tree lol. The pots/bombs you use are mostly the ones I use except... I'm not sure about Thunderbolt anymore since it doesn't give you the crit always but only during storms but I think it still gives 35% attack power which is great. Tawny owl just heals some I think right? I do use Blizzard and maribor forest. For bombs like I said I've only been using Northern Wind mostly but the devils puffball + Golden oriol seems legit too I'll try that.

Don't remember what the Ursine gear does. As for deflection... I was thinking about taking it but went with the level 3 enchant that reflects damage instead. Just not enough archers for me to take it. I am also using a Viper Steel Sword and I'm probably going to take the Viper Silver Sword as my reward for completing HoS. I put the enchantment that buffs rends range on one of my swords but I think you have it on both? I thought that putting it on one sword makes it work for both of them doesn't it? I may be wrong. I have the grind stone and armorers table buff never expire enchant on my other sword...

So sign build isn't great huh? Hmm I really want to try a fast attack build. I saw some video where a guy kept using whirl non stop against like 15 guards and it kept refreshing quen on him or something like that basically making him invincible. I'll try to find the video again.
 
@MicroStutter
Well, the 6% insta kill is there because I like going up against tough enemies, those with red skulls over them. This is where this skill really shines. 6% might not seem like much, but when you need a lot of strikes to bring down someone on "steroids", that's what I call those red-skulled enemies, chances are the fight is going to be much shorter than it normally would, not to mention going up against a group of city guards... At least a few of them are going to succumb to the power of this skill.

It's useless againt green and grey enemies though, they usually die just from looking at Geralt and I'm too lazy to swap skills before every fight.

Flood of Anger... As I said, this is mostly for the fun factor. It's fun to watch enemies hurt or even kill themselves trying to break through my quen bubble. I can also instantly aard sweep a large group of enemies and knock the out for an easy kill. Not to mention Igni here. With Flood of Anger you get access to the tier 4 Pyromaniac ability, which ultimately costs too much to unlock normally. With that + that superior Petri's philter you can reliably set on fire pretty much any enemy or group of enemies for that matter. Even those steroid buffed sons of... That's usually what only a pure sign build can achieve.

Another edit benefit of this skill is that you don't have to waste so much points into the sign tree to get all of that. All in all it's good for versatility, just a few more lethal or useful tricks won't hurt.

The thunderbolt is there because of that tendency of mine to slice and dice red-skulled foes. Tawny Owl gives you a good boost to stamina regen, which is quite benificiary to a heavy armor build, without it stamina replenishes in 10 seconds... Way too long. The superior version doesn't expire at night (well, from 6 p.m to 7 a.m) at that.

As for Devil's Puffball + Golden Oreol... Don't forget you need the superior version of the latter to get healed in poisonous clouds.

Don't know about archers, nearly every band of humans have them and dodging the arrows... Well, sometimes it can prove difficult as you can't always see all of the archers on your screen, to top it all off, they stun you, which can prove lethal in certain circumstances. But, truth be told, I chose this enchantent mainly because I didn't particulary like the other options.

As for the swords... I'll check if putting it just on one sword grants the enchantment on both... As far as I understand the game mechanics it shouldn't. But if it does... Well, that's gonna be a great waste on my part :D

Can't think of anything that could restore quen upon whirling... I can think of a way to restore your vitality while doing that. Ekhidna Decoction restores your HP anytime you perform actions that deplete stamina (even a little bit of it). So using whirl used to restore your vitality from scratch too full in nano-seconds. It is fixed now though :) You can still spam rend to get almost the same result. However. I stopped using this decoction because of this, I supplemented it for the Troll decoction , which just restores 20 HP a second in combat and 100 out of it. It's in no way overpowered.

Ursine gear gives you the best protection and significantly ups the rate you accumulate adrenaline points at.
 
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I see about the 6%. It would also be nice in a whirl build since you are attacking so fast so you have many chances to activate instant kill.

Have to look into flood of anger again not even sure what it does exactly. I think that in my previous comment I was thinking about that one enchant that makes your next sword attack cast the sign you just casted lol.

What exactly does thunderbolt do for you? Tawny owl yep more stamina I might start using it now, will certainly try it. Pretty sure I have the superior golden Oriol too so will try that as well.

You are right most of the human packs have archers in them, I just have not had much trouble avoiding them is all. I do get hit sometimes though and being immune to their arrows would be sweet at that point lol. Apparently my level 3 enchant isn't all that good so I'm going to change it. I may take the arrow reflect thing or I might try out that one Axii enchant. It has two of the other Axii enchants in one so you can basically mind control much more efficiently.

I think you are right about severance working only for the sword it is applied to. So will probably have to apply them to both and give up preservation.

As for that quen with whirl thing I made a mistake. It's actually much more interesting than that. You take the Prolongation enchant that refreshes your potion duration by half a second with every hit. Then you use the superior white raffards decoction to get the 5 seconds of immunity and god mode. You can keep that immunity up forever provided you are not being blocked.

I don't think I have the Ursine gear or maybe I do I can't remember now lol. I have to check. I do have some good gear right now though. My chest is a level 36 with some good stuff on it and my gloves have 50 crit damage. I'll let you know exactly what I have when I get in the game again.
 
@MicroStutter

Although the insta kill can be activated when whirling, but it actually works against it. You see whirling consumes your adrenaline points very rapidly. So you have a very short window for an insta kill to kick in when you're dancing around enemies.

What flood of anger does... Basically if you have accumalated 3 adrenaline points, then the next sign you cast will reset your adrenaline but make that sign to be 125% more powerful and will unlock all skills related to the sign at their max capacity. So basically, without having to put any points in the magic branch, you'll still have access to those talents.

Got 3 adrenaline points and still have a bunch of enemies to fight. Use an alternative axii and mind control two targets, or bring up a quen bubble to heal while enemies trying to break through your magic and getting hurt and repelled because of that. Instantly cast an alternative aard sweep that will not only have a 3 m prolonged range but will also strike in a circle instead of an arc, etc etc.

As for the thuderbolt, it just increases my damage output, which is especially nice when fighting enemies induced with steroids. It also might just be a right wheather for it to give me a 100% crit chance, but mostly damage :)

As for that whirl situation... Seems like an exploit. Should be fixed in my opinion if it hadn't already.
 
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questions regarding poision chance and poisioned blades

i've finally came up with what i think the most fun build in the game
using the new viper set and swords i got geralt to look badass like in "killing monsters" trailer

and also have high crit chance/damage
high damage
high health
very high defence


and i would like to know:
does the 15% chance to poision from the viper swords stacks with the poisioned blades skill?leading to an higher chance?


thanks
 
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