Hmm. Could an air/water/metal kineticist rising hurricane a group of enemies through hell of 1m needles? Forcing them upwards and then back down as they fall. Would absolutely shred.
Whoah.
I've had/am having a hard time deciding on level 18/20 feat choices for sure. Two of the impulses are hell of a million needles and shattered mountain weeps. Some general observations;
Hell of 1 million needles (henceforth Ho1MN) has a much longer range and bigger area. Damage is higher initially and if hazardous terrain ticks a couple times it can do a ton of damage (especially if you can hit a precious metal weakness). Immobilize is a great condition to inflict, potentially disabling weaker enemies and for bosses you at least waste an action (assuming they don't just sit there and attack/cast at range). Combos well with other elements that could push or pull through the hazardous terrain. I also like the combo of being in your own Ho1MN (taking metal resistance junction), sustaining it to do electrical damage, allowing the electric damage to affect you but use consume power to empower your next metal impulse, and retch rusting/etc. Reflex is a little easier in general to target as a save compared to fortitude, or so I've seen people say.
On the other hand the hazardous terrain could really be a pain for your allies. Enemies with resistance are going to ignore the hazardous terrain (at level 18 that could be a good amount of enemies?). I personally am unsure about placing a cube also; I feel like you don't need a 30x30 area or it won't work, but it also seems silly to just place a small corner of the cube in a smaller room? I dunno exactly how that works.
The shattered mountain weeps (tSMW) does a lot of damage if enemies end up taking the 4d10 area damage (more than even all shall end in flames). Prone and difficult terrain in a 20ft aoe is useful, hopefully you can ground enemies which is good for a lot of earth impulses (though if they fly they could just use the arrest a fall reaction). The aoe dot doesn't need any actions to keep up.
On the other hand, other than recasting tSMW you can't get rid of the area which could definitely be a pain for allies. The extra damage in the area is only at...
IMO Ho1MN is better if your enemies cannot fly while tSMW is better if your enemy can fly. Yet in general I still prefer the Ho1MN due the immobilization.
Hmm. Could an air/water/metal kineticist rising hurricane a group of enemies through hell of 1m needles? Forcing them upwards and then back down as they fall. Would absolutely shred.
Yes hell of 1m needles works pretty well with force moving impulses. The problem is the interpretation that you can only force move a creature to a hazarous terrain if it's bing pushed or pulled and some consider that many force movement impulses aren't push or pull because it doesn't use these words.
Rebirth in Living Stone: It's a strange impulse thats a stance and a sustainable impulse at same time. Considering that as a stance it competes with Assume Earth's Mantle only to get temp HP this doesn't worth at all.
You might want to read the stance again. Aside from some minor buffs, this stance makes you immune to critical hits. This ability alone makes you the tankiest character in the game against bosses, since they crit you all the time.
Sure you give up your grapple supremacy, if you choose this stance. But if your job in your party is to be the sturdy frontline tank, then there is no better feat in the whole game for it.
Look at what other tanks get to mitigate crits: Fortification (Greater). A lousy 35% to negate a crit, so anything but reliable. A crit immunity was unheard of before.
Yet you still loose other stance benefits like the Str "apex", large size and Armor in Earth action compression of Assume Earth's Mantle.
If it wasn't a lvl 18 impulse or if the designers would just remove the Stance trait in an errata so my optinion about it changes.
Yet you still loose other stance benefits like the Str "apex", large size and Armor in Earth action compression of Assume Earth's Mantle.
If it wasn't a lvl 18 impulse or if the designers would just remove the Stance trait in an errata so my optinion about it changes.
To be clear, you don't lose the other stance, since those stances do not compete with each other. They do different things for different builds.
Assume Earths Mantle is an offensive stance to make you a top tier grappler. The +Str is worthless outside of Athletics builds, since you will never use a weapon to deal damage. So this stance is ideal for pure Earth builds or Dual Element Earth builds that rely on battle field control in form of Grappling/Shove/Reposition/Whirling Throw.
On the other hand, Rebirth in Living Stone is a stance that makes you unkillable, especially if you build around it. A Wood/Earth build with both auras online and this stance active means at lvl 18 you not only get temp HP of 40 from this stance, but also 18 temp HP every single turn after. And if that is still not enough, you can poop trees for 90 damage absorption per turn. And you are still behind full plate AC. Being immune to crits, pushes and trips means you are an immortal immovable object for anyone wanting to play such a fantasy. No other class comes even close to this level of self supported survivability.
Edit: I forgot you also have 14 resist to all physical thanks to Spike Skin at that level.
Sure other capstone feats give you incredible aoe damage/control. But this feat is the defacto king of defense/survivability.
When I talk about "lose the stance" is that you cannot stay in 2 stances at same time you must choose what stance you will stay.
Rebirth in living stone being a stance doesn't seem too much of a cost since the earth stances are pretty meh- you get tremorsense at level 1, and the rock suit at level 12. So if you didn't want the rock suit, all you're really giving up is tremorsense.
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Yeah being both a stance and sustained is rough. Especially since when it ends you can't get the temp hp again for ten minutes.
Adjusted fire/earth blast endgame stuff:
Furnace form will stack with rebirth in living stone for the extra dice with a two element blast for a total of 7d10 on a 2 action blast.
Can't do both as they are both polymorph effects.
You gotta' pay attention to the traits.
U can do d10 elemental blasts up to 60ft with two element infusion if you use 2-actions due fire Impulse Junction and 1d8 from earth+fire blast. But usually doesn't worth. Instead you probably will want to use your Impulse Junction with a save impulse.
But two element infusion still useful to improve your earth/metal/water/wood+fire blasts to d8 with 60ft + fire aura weakness. It isn't bad its a good combination if we consider that you will get more defensive/healing impulses from this combination too.
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Ah. I need more two element infusion interactions lol
Sadly, you only get one impulse junction to play with, regardless of how hard you hybridize. Past that?
- You can get both crit junctions, if you buy them both. Wood+Earth is especially tasty.
- Air gets a couple of aura stances that boost their blasts (one hybrid with earth, one level 18). Additionally, if you can skewer the target with lightning rod, then that debuffs their AC against lightning attacks, and you can make the air side of your blast a lightning attack. Lightning rod looks pretty marginal overall, though.
- Fire gets the aura junction inflicted vulnerability, and also furnace form - a polymorph for one extra die. Additionally, Ignite the Sun adds an extra 1d6 fire damage (1d8 with impulse junction).
- Metal gets Alloy Flesh And Steel, a polymorph for one extra die. It also gets Plate in Treasure, which lets you apply any of a wide variety of special metals to your blast in the hopes of hitting a vulnerability. It also has the other side of lightning rod, and is capable of firing electric blasts to take advantage of it.
- Earth get Rebirth in Living Stone - yet another polymorph that comes with an extra die of damage for blasts.
- Wood gets Living Bonfire, which adds a die of fire damage to wood blasts under certain circumstances. It's pretty marginal unless you're able to prep the battlefield, but it does let you pull in a number of the various fire buffs.
So, for absolute maximum shenanigans...
- Fire element is a must. Given that, Ignite the Sun is a really obvious pick. If the thing we're doing is blast optimization, then Kinetic Pinnacle is another really obvious pick. That does lock out both Crowned in Tempest's Fury and Rebirth in Living Stone. That means that our polymorph options are down to Alloy Flesh and Steel or Furnace Form, and we already have Ignite the Sun eating our sustain slot... So Furnace Form it is. All that this *really* costs us is that we can't get any extra benefit out of Living Bonfire shenanigans. All that's really left is our stance slot... and for that, if we take both Earth and Air, we can get Desert Wind, which adds (almost) 1 damage per level. Ironically, with fire/air, we're stuck with the weaker die size, but it is what it is.
Fire/Air/Earth
Fire impulse junction
Fire aura junction
Total damage per blast at level 20 inside of kinetic aura:
- single action: base 5d6 + strmod if adjacent + 10 (aura junction) + 16 (Desert Wind) + 1d6 (furnace form) + 1d8 (ignite the sun): 33-70+strmod
- dual action: as above, but base is 5d8+conmod, and Furnace Form gives an additional d8 instead of d6: 33-83+strmod+conmod.
There are other ways to do it, of course... but as far as I can tell, none of them work quite as well for the one, very narrow goal of level 20 dual-element blast optimization within 20 feet.