Boo forum posting software.
Thanks for re-typing it what you lost to it.
Congrats on reaching Cycle 3.
On to the post!
Re: The Great Reaper Omen tragedy, did the game at least warn you it was going to hit allies?
Granted, sometimes even I skip right over that warning, so it's perfectly understandable if it did you and still used it.
I just want to make sure the error-catching stuff is working properly.
If you don't remember that's okay too, I can test it locally fairly easily. Poison doesn't trigger Pariah... but I'd be the first to say that if your entire party has Poison+/Poison++ and Pariah, you're probably having a really, really bad day.
Comparing the late game experiences of your two runs so far, I think I'm pretty happy with things in that department. Uniques are supposed to be a short to medium term boost that definitely help, but which aren't necessary to win, and it sounds like that's about where things have landed at least so far.
Yeah, there's no reason for the build you have here to invest in Strength or Agility at all really.
Low Vitality always makes me nervous, but then, many of the winners seem to make it work based on their feedback. Then again, I've also heard of significant success with "hit me!" builds: high, high Vitality + lots of reactives that deal damage in response to being hit. Just uh... don't be like a certain friend of mine and think it's going to fly against Akateko.
Re the pre-party comments: Geminimax already started on a complete re-do of Vishap's art since he wasn't happy with it himself for other reasons, so that should get addressed that way soon.
Cone breaths are allowed to "flow around" walls, so that is intended for the moment, though I'll re-check it to make sure it isn't acting extra-wonky.
As for the projectile lines for long-range attacks, they're definitely a bit forgiving, this was a side-effect of the math I did to get a solution that ensured any two targets could always either both hit each other or both not hit each other. Frowny that it feels weird/mysterious, but may not be much I can do on that without putting on my serious face about it, which I'm reluctant to do during a content push. I will note it for further investigation though.
Garfield! I haven't thought about that comic in a long time. For some reason seeing a Kasha named that was way too amusing to me... probably because I was barely awake yet when I started reading the post.
A Solid Zombie with Parry and Block Physical sounds like the RNG was in a good mood, but it was still on you to take proper advantage of it, which it sounds like you did here.
Kasha's... excuse me, Garfield's
... resistance package is probably part of why it can do well in the late game: Fire, Light, and Dark resistance in one critter is a fairly amazing combination, and it only suffers weakness to Ice in return.
Maj. is supposed to be a reference to the military rank of Major, which Headless held in life before he was turned into a zombie.
I didn't want to just type "Major" because I worried people would assume it just meant something like "Greater" does in "Greater Demon". File this one under "very obscure H.P. Lovecraft reference".
Blood Rot doesn't get the love it deserves sometimes.
The Debuff type status effects are unique in that they *don't* appear on passives that add them to all physical attacks or reactives that apply them in response to being hit. This makes them difficult to access for physical attackers except through the series of Impact attacks that include them. But, Blood Rot is one of the ways to overcome this, and it can work to great effect. Blood Rot also works nicely with Poison Veil, for that matter.
It will have a cousin, Flesh Rot, in the next build, btw.
Same idea, but DEF instead of OFF.
As for Freezerburn, Flesheater on her was definitely a lucky catch.
She probably could almost solo the Protect encounter with that kind of help, thanks to Arctic Veil.
Mending's limited nature definitely makes it ideal for cases where you want some healing help, but not full time dedication to the idea. Chill is unique in that even Ice resistance is zero help against it... but Ice resistance does massively nerf the damage of Ice attacks, so against Ice resistant enemies, you will often see demons treating their Ice magic like a Chill debuff instead of an Ice nuke. Given Chill is fairly effective, this tends to be pretty helpful in most cases.
Alas for the loss of that Bmola, he was definitely something special. Hinder Host + Expose Host is definitely a huge boon to anyone using ranged attacks heavily: they greatly increase the speed at which you can melt incoming enemies.
Another source of Ice + Headwind is also good stuff for such a strategy.
Vishaps.
I always feel a little guilty about these guys. They have a great ability for certain builds hiding on them (Dragon Soul), but curently they appear so close to the end of the game you don't really get a chance to use it even if you're one of those builds that can benefit.
Well, that's what I'm working on addressing at the moment, so maybe one day it will get a chance to shine.
Ehlose chases are deceptively difficult: they don't have fast movement, which makes it seem easy even with the long duration... but then they find other enemy groups and it gets ugly fast.
That said, the resistances they offer are ridiculously good as you noted, and you will probably be able to keep them for a very long time even after they start falling behind a bit in levels on the strength of those resistances. If there is an issue with them at all, it's that the weakness they do have is one of the more deadly ones.
It's strange Uguul didn't use Vile Dance more: it actually doesn't hit allies, so it shouldn't have hesitated on that score. Then again, Numbing Bite has a very high AI value since Paralyze is amazing, so that may have been part of it, once it was already in melee range.
I like giving debuffs and smites to my healers too, when I want them to branch out a little or have other things to do. Snuff Out is one of my favorites for this, but really any good smite will work.
It keeps them from needing Agility (which many good healer demons lack), and also tends to keep them from wanting to approach in search of clear lines of fire.
The description of your Tower:17 encounter involving Kuchisake is probably one of the happiest things I've read about my own game.
Mostly because it sounds like everything was working exactly how I would have wanted: the late game was throwing nasty challenges, one of negotiation's "increased risk" moves did exactly that, and a demon with a non-straightforward (i.e.: not healing) way of saving you managed to figure out and execute it.
I could ask for little more than that.
Kuchisake are actually really good these days, giving them Haunt was a major upgrade. Back when they had to walk to their targets, they were much less intimidating since they don't really have any significant defenses.
Poor Pele!
But.. yes, her Protect encounter is designed to be tough on ranged attackers (since she herself is one), and it sounded like your party towards the end was leaning heavier that way. Bandits (like any minion rank monster) die easy enough, but the SP costs on ranged attacks catch up with you in such a drawn out encounter, leaving a heavy ranged party unable to continue knocking them down fast enough to keep from drowning. Bandits also tend to make it difficult to use AEs by getting in your party's face right away w/ Bull Rush, which eliminates one of the usual good methods of handling Protect swarms.
Not surprised Dash is highly valued, given it basically acts like a limited form of controlled Blink.
I think the SP cost and clear line of fire keep it under control for now, but if it stays must have as more content is added I may have to address it. I'm trying to balance Demon in the manner of a collectible card game: I don't want any "must haves", and I don't want any "never haves", though I'm okay with most of the spectrum in between those points.
I'm glad you were able to have fun playing a similar build a second time on the same content and found it to be a different experience.
And yes, it will be awesome once you're able to post character dump files.
They're still very first pass since I didn't want to divert from content for long to add the feature, but even in their current form they're quite nice.
Thanks again for playing, and for the awesome reporting.
Good luck in your further adventures.
(P.S.: Scoreboard wipes will become much more frequent now that I'm in content mode! If you want to see your name in lights, you might want to suicide your character at some point.
Cycle 3 won't quite get you the top score, but it'd still be pretty high! Apologies that there isn't a cleaner way to do that for winners... everything about the end-game is pretty placeholder right now and likely to remain so for awhile.)