Pathfinder: WotR- "Candyman" Vivsectionist Swarm Build

[Music] greetings everyone hope all of you are having an absolutely fantastic day we're back again with more pathfinder wrath of the righteous this time i've heard several of you ask what is the build that i've been using for my swarm playthrough and i figured it'd be a great time to go ahead and do a candyman build one of my all-time favorite horror movies so let's go ahead and just dive right in so i ran it as a vivisectionist and i think that goes absolutely hand in hand with candyman he is absolutely vicious with that sickle and that is the or rather he's absolutely vicious with that hook and the closest we can get to it is the sickle so that's what we're going to use for this build race we're going to go with dan pierre the candyman is oftentimes referred to as a vampire attempting to hypnotize people and being undead and things of that nature so goes hand in hand with this we're going to choose vitalaborn really because of mechanics for background honestly i don't feel like any of these are really perfect so i went with mechanics this time we're going to choose shackles corsair getting um mobility and athletics really helps with this build and then for attribute points we're going to keep strength at 10 we're going to put in 20 in dexterity um the sickle is something that you can use with strength or dexterity it's a light weapon 14 in constitution 16 on intelligence because you are going to be the swarm you're going to be by yourself which means you can only depend upon the skills that you have so having more intelligence and access to more skills is actually really really going to help you we're going to put a couple of points into wisdom to make up for the uh penalty that we take you definitely don't want to leave wisdom low and then i actually chose to dumps charisma now from my standpoint even though you can make the case that candyman is charismatic just because hearing tony todd and the brother who played them in the most recent movie that they're very charismatic individuals and you love hearing them talk but honestly candyman is horrible at actually getting people to do what he wants to do most of the time he is charismatically telling them to give in to them and they're like nah that doesn't seem like a good idea so i feel very comfortable dumping this and then from a mechanic standpoint i just feel like as swarm you're not trying to convince anybody you're not trying to be particularly charismatic you're too busy eating everything in sight so this that is completely used to you is completely useless to you for a true swarm play through so dump that put the pointer to intelligence instead okay now for skill points you definitely want use magic device again you're going to be so low so what i would recommend that you do is from the very beginning of the game you should have certain characters making posters and scrolls that you know you're going to need when you lose all of your team and we will go through the ones that i really feel like are going to help you the most but you having used magic device will allow you to be able to use scrolls that don't fit in with your actual class while also being able to use posters as well very very useful in my opinion you also want perception because you just want to be able to see things that are in the environment with no team knowledge world is going to allow you to be able to craft your own potions and be able to cook for yourself while you're separated from the team both are very very useful for your survivability now you have access to both athletics and mobility i feel like you should choose one of them because it can be difficult getting around some areas if you just do not have any ranks in either ability so me personally for this build i would say you should put it into mobility because you're going to be building up dexterity anyway and i feel like mobility comes up more i could be wrong about that but i just feel like i had to deal with mobility more than i had to deal with athletics now you had one more point in that you could put it in trickery but honestly i didn't do that because i don't feel like trickery fits in with swarm you don't care about physical objects anymore it's all about the power of your swarm and giving into that and letting go of the mundane things that other people would actually need so i really wasn't bothering to loot or unlock anything so honestly you could go ahead and put this last point into athletics so that you had both athletics and mobility or you could put it in stealth stealth again is something i don't feel like really really fits in with the swarm but if you've seen some of my other videos you've probably seen that i ended up uh using stealth just because i had the cloak that would automatically put greater invisibility on me every time i killed someone which was very very useful to be able to get through the game so you can decide where you want to put that last point at all right for your level 1 feet definitely want to go ahead and take weapon finesse which is going to allow you to use your dexterity modifier instead of your strength modifier on rolls usually if i was playing as a damn pier i would have you get life dominant soul on either the first level or definitely by the third level i'm not going to do this in this play through because again everything in this build is all about leading up to when you become the swarm and you lose your entire party you're not going to be able to channel positive energy and therefore life dominant soul doesn't do that much for you however if you wanted to go ahead and take this feat to make things easier for you during those earlier levels when you do still have your party that would absolutely make sense and you could go ahead and take it here all right for your level 1 spells cure light wounds is obviously useful to be able to heal yourself expeditious retreat is haste without the increase um to your to the amount of attacks you can do in a turn reduced person is going to give you a size bonus to your dexterity so it's going to make it easier for you to hit other people shield is going to give you a shield bonus to ac a plus 4 very useful as well and then finally true strike is going to give you a plus 20 inside bonus on a single attack roll what you do with the last spell slot is up to you and then for deity i would go with zan couthan he is the god of darkness envy loss and pain obviously candyman in all iterations is someone who was unjustly murdered and is still feeling a lot of pain and grief over what happened when he was a human so i feel like this fits right in he's in a tremendous amount of pain and he is making other people feel a tremendous amount of pain as well neutral evil that's about as close as we can get him i don't feel like any of the voices really really fit um candyman so you can choose whatever you like here as well so for your first medical discovery i would go with weakening wound whenever you hit a creature with a sneak attack you're going to reduce their damage reduction by the amount of your character's level very very useful most creatures in this game have damage reduction and being able to cut into that is going to allow everybody on your team to do much more damage and of course allow you to do much more damage once you're the swarm for your level three feet go into weapon focus sickle at level four increase dexterity and continue increasing dexterity during your level ups at level four for your medical discovery go ahead and pick up enhanced potion so any potion that you drink functions at a caster level equal to your class level and of course because you're a vivisectionist which is an alchemist you're automatically going to get the ability to brew potions so this is going to significantly help you with the posters that you should be brewing at level 4 for your spell get bark skin at level 5 get slashing grace sickle so it's going to allow you to take your dexterity modifier and use that for your weapons damage instead of your strength modifier this doesn't require you to use it as a one-handed weapon but that is how we're going to use the sickle of course candyman has the hook on one hand and then absolutely nothing in his other hand so this fits in perfectly for your level 5 spell pick up blur for your level 6 medical discovery go ahead and pick up extend potion now every time you drink a potion it's going to react as if you use the extend spell metamagic feet on it allowing your buffs to last significantly longer and then for your level 6 spell pick up false life for your level 7 feet pick up piranha strike and then for your spell get displacement and then at level 8 for your discovery pick up fast out this is going to allow you to move around at regular speed while you're stealth and then for your level 8 spell pick up haste at level 9 for your feet go ahead and pick up dodge it's going to give you a plus one dodge bonus to your ac and remember dodge bonuses do stack and then for your spell get protection from arrows for your level 10 discovery get preserved organs so preserve organs when a critical hit or sneak attack is scored against you there is going to be a 25 chance that it's negated and the damage is rolled normally instead you can take this three times and it'll increase the chance that this happens up to 75 percent at level 10 pick up greater invisibility so this functions just like invisibility except it does not end if you attack so you can keep on attacking while you have this on at level 11 take it prove critical sickle and then for the spell get stoned skin at level 12 for your medical discovery get greater mutagen this is going to put an alchemical bonus on one of your physical liability scores so you have the enhancement bonus that you should be getting from probably your belt but then this alchemical bonus will stack on top of that you get a plus six on one stat and then a plus four to another stat while taking a negative two penalty to a particular stat based upon what you've chosen so more than likely you should be using dexterity and constitution on this which is going to cause you to take a negative two penalty to both charisma and wisdom for your level 12 spell pick up death ward for your level 13 feet grab critical focus and then for your level 13 spell get spell resistance for your level 14 medical discovery go ahead and pick up the second version of preserve organs and for your level 14 spell get false life greater for your level 15 feet grab sickening critical and then for your spell grab restoration for your level 16 medical discovery get grand mutagen still should be using dexterity and constitution and then grab heal for your spell at level 17 just a quick note if you've been doing most of the things in the game then this is where you're going to hit swarm so you better by now have put yourself in a position where you can go ahead and do things solo again we'll talk later about all the things that i feel like you're going to need from a scroll and potion standpoint but make sure by now that you're ready for what's about to come because it takes a while for swarm to really get more powerful at level 17 for the feet i go ahead and take iron will and then for the spell i take legendary proportions at level 18 for your medical discovery i take the last version of preserve organs and for your level 18 spell i get true seeing and then at level 19 honestly you could pick whatever you wanted i personally go ahead and get alertness because you do not have access to a full team that means that there's only one person whose perception skill is going to be checked to determine whether or not you can uncover things and even though as i mentioned before as a swarm i'm not really going for unlocking secret doors or chests and things of that nature you still want to try to avoid traps when you can and things of that nature so it's nice having a higher perception but honestly you could use this lot for whatever you like and then for your level 19 spell i go ahead and pick up resist energy i did not achieve level 20 as a swarm of course again you lose your entire team so you also lose access to a lot of the quest and the xp that you would get from having a full team plus i just want to get through swarm in general so for level 20 i would say for your medical discovery you should go ahead and get the dispelling attack which is going to allow you to dispel a bonus when you hit an enemy with sneak attack and then i would get protection from energy so that you can combine resist and protect your energy during those times when you know what type of energy damage a particular enemy does so now that we finished the character levels let's go ahead and look at the mythic ranks for mythic level 1 first ascension i would get bit of fun it's going to allow you to use mirror image three times per day and the advantage of that is you're going to be able to combine it with blur displacement some of the other things that we've already talked about to make you extremely tanky and since you are going to be solo for the vast majority of time in the game you play swarm this to me is more useful than anything else you can get access to and then for mythic level one for your mythic ability i'm going to go ahead and get unrelenting assault again this is all going to be an anticipation of you being alone so we're not going to pick up the things that really require you to be working in a team like ever ready you're not going to be getting a tax of opportunity because they're not going to run past you leading strike requires you to have somebody else who can actually activate the mark and it's going to be a long time before you're getting cloned so i really focus on the things that are useful for you all by yourself thundering blows is usually nice but in this situation we're going one-handed um using the sickle and we're not going to be getting anything that's going to lower our base attack bonus for quite some time so you really shouldn't be missing a ton especially starting with a dexterity of 20. so i would say unrelenting assault actually does more for you but if you wanted to choose thundering blows here i certainly don't feel like it's a bad choice at mythic level 2 get mythic sneak attacker at mythic level 3 go ahead and pick up archmage armor so because your dexterity is going to be so high it's not really going to make sense for you to wear armor because your dexterity bonus is going to do more than any armor you could put on so you can put mage armor on yourself from a scroll and i think there's a potion for it as well and this mythic ability will count even if you put on mage armor that way and it could be a very very large bonus so i would say this is well worth it at mythic level four get improved critical sickle at mythic level five pick up last stand at mythic level six i get mythic brew potions at mythic level seven i get enduring spells at mythic level eight i get greater enduring spells so mythic level eight is when you're officially becoming swarm and therefore losing your team so by doing things in this order by the time we're losing our team we have already picked up last stand mythic brew potions enduring spells and greater enduring spells which from a survivability standpoint should be all that you need from a mythic um perspective in order to survive everything that you're going to have to face in the game at mythic level 9 i take piranha strike mythic and then i can't show you mythic level 10 but i would probably go ahead and just take thunder and blows um at this point okay so now that we're finished with all the levels let's take a quick look at alchemy when you're sleeping so you're going to have a high knowledge world score which is going to allow you to both cook and use potions so if you click in the menu area it'll give you two menus that you can manage if you go into here i feel like the easiest one to be able to consistently make that's going to help you a lot is cursed pilaf don't worry about the fact that i don't have any rice all these ingredients are very very easy to get and easy to consistently make sure you have in your inventory and it's going to give you a plus one cooking bonus to attack rolls for the entire day every time you make this meal if you have the ingredients forward the ultimate recipe is probably demon slayer soup which is going to give you a plus three cooking bonus to attack and damage rolls skill checks and saving throws for the entire day and again it's a cooking bonus so it's almost certainly going to stack with any other bonuses that you already have for your character in addition to that you're also going to be able to make your own potions so you're of course going to have to purchase the alchemist kit in order to be able to make these but that's not a big deal by the time you get to the middle of the game long before you're going to be by yourself you should have the top-level alchemist kits and be able to make whatever you want and as you can see it's going to basically allow you to make a potion version of just about all the important spells that you have so you don't have to worry about having spell slots to be able to use all of them definitely definitely want to make sure you have those potions of heal you're not gonna have enough slots to be able to use um healing spells whenever you want to so it's definitely nice to have this in potion form okay so now let's go over the spell book as you already know a lot of the spells that i picked are focused more so on survivability swarm is awesome from a damaged perspective damage will come the question is are you going to be standing up long enough for you to be able to deal out that damage so shield is going to provide us with a plus 4 shield bonus to ac reduce person is going to give us a plus 2 size bonus of dexterity which is going to increase our ac and also make it easier for us to be able to hit enemies and then expeditious retreat is going to give you a speed bonus so it's not like haste in that it does not increase your defense or give you an additional attack but it's great when you're just running around dresden trying to get somewhere at level two bark skin is going to give you a significant natural armor enhancement bonus and this means you do not need to use those natural armor bonuses as your necklace slot you can put something else as your necklace because bark skin is going to give you everything that you need blur is going to make you concealed which gives you a 20 miss chance again it's going to help with your tankiness false life gives you some additional hit points and it does stack with greater false light and then resist energy is great if you know what type of energy damage the particular enemy you're going up against does at level three displacement is going to give you a 50 percent mischance as if you had total concealment again great for you being tanky haste is going to give you a plus one dodge bonus to ac and reflexes as well as a plus one bonus on your attack roll and it allows you to make one additional attack anytime you make a full attack just great all the way around and then protection from arrows is going to give you some damage reduction against ranged weapons at level 4 death ward is going to make you immune to energy drain and any negative energy effects including channel negative energy absolutely fantastic and a must at this late level we've already talked about false life greater it will stack with false life greater invisibility just like invisibility except you can keep it on even when you're attacking and just in general in this game especially when you're solo the ai does not handle you going invisible well like combat basically will stop depending upon what type of enemy you're facing and what difficulty you're on stone skin is going to give you some damage reduction against physical attacks and then restoration is for those times when you get caught without death ward up and you need to cure ability damage or your um uh ability score things of that nature at level five spell resistance is going to give you spell resistance equal to 12 plus your caster level definitely useful for you and then at level six heal is the best single target heal spell in the game and it also allows you to alleviate a bunch of different statuses true seeing is going to allow you to see through all those displacement invisibility and concealment statuses that enemies love to use especially in act five and six and then finally legendary proportions even though you're not going to benefit from the size bonus to strength and the spies bonus to constitution is just okay it's going to allow your melee weapon to deal significantly more damage and it makes your reach significantly longer so usually when you're facing enemies you would have to run up directly to them but when you use legendary proportions your arms can go a significantly further distance to the point that even if an enemy is technically at range you don't even have to move for you to start swinging at them so this can be very very useful now from an inventory standpoint i got a plus three um sickle but but if you were using this build from the very beginning i assume you would be able to find a plus five somewhere i've got the necklace that is going to give me a plus two my highest ability score so my dexterity is sky high um plus six to dexterity from my belt as well this shirt helps me if my health is below 50 start reflecting some of the damage um this is from a different build this gives me a boost to my athletic skill check and my mobility the goggles give me an uh bonus to perception and trickery this plus six on intelligence i actually don't even need that that's still left over for my alchemist build um you can use a ring of protection or if you had another ring you wanted to add on instead you could use um the there's an armor spell that gives you a deflection bonus that would basically equate to this it's from a squirrel you would be able to use that to switch this out if you wanted to and then these braces are breaching anytime i could do a critical hit they've got to pass a dc or become vulnerable to piercing damage again this isn't useful for you but it was useful for me and a team to make them more vulnerable to arrows and things of that nature so you could definitely optimize this a lot more again using this build from the very beginning you would know the things that you would want to put on to it to ensure you could get the maximum out of swarm okay so let's take a look at the buffs that i feel like you'll need as the swarm so on my person right now i've already got the grand mutagen of course i've got bit of fun which is going to last for 24 hours because of the mythic options that we've taken so your mirror image is going to last for 24 hours shield which gives us that plus 4 shield bonus then we also have reduced person um bark skin this all comes from us blur false life the things that we've already mentioned death war and remember the vast majority of this you can make it to poachers as well so you don't just have to get it from your slots but then i also have spell resistance and then veil of heaven which is going to give you a plus two sacred bonus to ac on saves uh to ac and saves and both of these bonuses apply only against attacks or effects created by outsiders with the evil subtype obviously you're going to be facing a ton of those type of creatures in act five and six so this is very useful to you i was able to put it on myself with a scroll i'm not sure if there's also a potion version of it shield of faith which i mentioned before you can use instead of the ring of protection mind blank which is going to give you a plus eight resistance bonus on saving throws against all mind affecting spells magical vestment armor is going to give you a significant boost to your um armor enhancement bonus holy aura which is going to significantly help your spell resistance but it's for a very small amount of time so as you can see it's only going to last for 1 minute 18 seconds so basically you pop this on when you know for sure you're about to be facing some enemies that are going to try to dominate you or do something crazy to you and then whatever version of heroism you can get of course there's heroism greater heroism and then um heroic invocation um i think i have a scroll for heroic invocation but basically you want to make sure you have some version of this that you can go ahead and pop on yourself and get that morale bonus and then foresight is going to help to give you a insight bonus to ac as well and it also ensures that you're never flat-footed i already talked about mage armor and that you can buff up that plus four armor bonus to ac significantly and then if we go into the inventory you're gonna see that i have a 78 on my armor class and the vast majority of it comes from things that are going to last for 24 hours so of course my dexterity bonus foresight my ring of protection you see major armor is giving me a plus 13 armor i'm only given a plus one from magical vestments because mage armor is doing so much for me but every little bit helps plus four from shield um unclean gift is actually something i got it from a quest that you could actually take that off let's reduce it down to 76. you get a plus four from swarm and i got a plus six from the amulet that i'm using plus one because we took the dodge feed plus one from haste and then plus six from legendary proportions so out of the 78 armor class that we have um you could say that three of it is from things that would not last 24 hours or that you might not have at all so let's say if you do this right and again my equipment is not optimized at all you're going to have an armor class of somewhere around 75 it's not literally invincible but it's pretty damn close and you're going to be able to do significant consistent damage with your sickle and on top of that you're going to have access to a swarm feast which ensures that every round all enemies in the area are dealt four plus your swarm size d6 physical damage and if they die while in the area they are automatically devoured so that's going to do significant damage and if you've cleared out all the trash and you're facing a boss enemy then you've got swarm infest it's going to make your target blind and deals 88 physical damage each round this damage increases by 2d8 for each point of your swarm size and so between these two effects no matter what the situation is you're going to be doing a significant amount of damage regardless of what you're doing physically like each round automatically your swarm is going to go out and cause major damage of course you see that the size of my swarm is zero right now that's because there's a bug in the game where anytime you respect as swarm it completely resets your swarm size but i assume at some point they're going to to fix that and that's the build unfortunately i can't show you a combat example because my stealth isn't high enough for me to be able to sneak up on the surprise battles that happen on the world map so i can't like put on all the buffs and then start a fight the way i normally would um but i think you can already tell from everything that we've put together that this is a very very strong fighter and someone who can take you through everything in act five and six the only weakness regarding this build and what i had trouble with that you should be aware of is that your will is not particularly high i've only got a 14 on will and there were definitely some times where enemies cast really really nasty spells on me and of course there's nobody around you who can throw a scroll on or things of that nature so if you keep on if you use holy aura and things of that nature diligently and try to make sure that you're protected during those really tough fights it shouldn't be too much of an issue but there are definitely a couple of times i got called my pants down but again my armor class was so high that even during those times even if i couldn't move for like two three rounds or something like that they still couldn't break through they couldn't do anything to me so it wasn't it was more of an annoyance than something that just prevented me from being able to complete some fights other than that this bill was absolutely fantastic for me definitely gave me everything that i needed to be able to get through the game and that's the build so let me know down in the comments what are your thoughts are there some things i could have done better any improvements that you feel like should be made to the build looking forward to seeing your feedback and as always if you enjoyed this video please leave me a like share this content and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already i will see you all in the next video take care

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Id: f5MxNuk4PvM

Length: 30min 16sec (1816 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021