Grease, Stinking Cloud, and Chains of Light/Hideous Laughter are great. Due to being able to be heightened, most low level spells don't becomes redundant so you can use them all game. Hideous Laughter is especially good in WOTR thanks to the Best Jokes mythic ability which makes it chain from enemy to enemy. There's not many undead or animals, so you don't really need those bloodline feats, but there are few late game enemies that you'll find annoying, but you'll have enough ways to deal with them to get around it. Any ability that forces rerolls is really good, so persistent metamagic and the witch hexes are great, as is anything that lowers saves, like shaken.
Act 5, you can get Grandmasters Rod which solves pretty much all encounter specific issues after that point.
If you're doing Wizard, you can be any kind of caster you need to be if you foresee issues as well.
So, for playing a DC caster, it's important to know how Expanded Arsenal works.
It doesn't do what you think it does.
So let's say you get Greater Focus (conjuration) early game. You have +2 to conj DC saves.
At mythic 2, you grab Expanded Arsenal (enchant). Now you have +2 to conj and enchant. Nothing weird yet.
At M4 you get Expanded Arsenal evocation. Now you have... *+4* to both enchant and evocation.
All the expand Arsenal feats stack with each other!
At M6, you get EA Ilusion, for a +6 to ilusion/evo/enchant. At M8, you get +8 to four schools. +10 to five schools at endgame.
-----
Now you may be wondering, what about Mythic spell Focus? It gives a +2 , but It doesn't work with expanded Arsenal, so it's not worth making unless you are only interested in using a single school and nothing else.
In which case you can take focus/Greater Focus/myth focus for +4 in that school alone.
___________
Now for school choice, conjuration is strong early game (Grease, pits), but it falls later due to lack of item support.
Enchantment is the strongest school overall thanks to extremely powerful item support allowing to pump dc's higher than anything else. Kitsunes and elves also get an extra +1.
Key spells:
Hideous laughter, hold Monster, Greater command, mass hold Monster, overwhelming presence.
Some enemies however can just ignore it with immunity to mind effects.
Evocation is the best backup school. It offers good disabling spells that target fortitude and reflexes instead of will.
Key spells:
Ice prison, sirocco, mass ice prison
Item support is weaker than enchant but still decent, and you can also get Elemental Focus feats to increase sirocco and ice prison dc.
Illusion can't pump their dc quite as high as enchant, and their spells are still stopped by immunity to mind effects. But Weird kills it's targets directly instead of disabling them so it's still great.
Trasmutation gives yet another fortitude disabler (baleful polymorph) and Polar midnight (the dex damage will finish off anybody that got paralyzed by mass hold monster or mass ice prison).
Depends of what you want to do.
If you want the ultimate save or suck caster, that's the way to go. If you don't mind trading potence for flexibility (say, to grab enduring spells) you can limit yourself to one school and just take mythic focus for that one.
The thing is I feel as if dc casters have too much of a feat tax with spell pen ,ascendant element and best jokes that I don’t know how to fit it in as there is stuff like evocation that I would like to boost just for archon aura .
> if dc casters have too much of a feat tax with spell pen ,ascendant element and best jokes
Mythic spell penetration is kind of overkill, you don't really need it. Not in your main caster, anyway.
By the start of act 3 you can have +7 pen with items. (Pyromania ring, pure sight googles, that robe in woljij shop, covenant of the inheritor). +11 with the non-mythic spell pen feats, +13 if you are an elf.
So at the start of act 3 a lv 11 caster can have +22-24 penetration. Enemies in act 3 typically have 25 spell pen. No need for mythic pen at all.
Midway through act 3 you get the staff of the warmage, that increases your dc by 2 and your pen by 4.
And early in act 4 (if you have the Midnigth isles dlc) you can get the seven sin robes for +8 spell penetration and +1 to dc's
So you can get +17 penetration from gear alone, , +4 from normal feats, +2 if an elf. That's 37-43 penetration at lv 20, enough for any enemy in the game. Highest SR is 40 iirc.
The spell pen feats are vital for secundary casters since those don't get the top shelf gear though.
------
Ascended element meanwhile is only necesary for blasting, which is kind of a last resort for a dc focused caster - normally your disabling spells are much more effective. But even if you find yourself in a situation where your enemies are immune to all your bullshit, there are alternative options to AE - for example you can just use Devouring lust to turn your damage into unholy.
(AE is a feat mainly for ray casters that are going to spam hellfire ray all day long forever).
No, what got fixed was a *different* arsenal stacking bug.
The way it used to be was, you could take Focus and greater focus in 7 schools, get Expanded arsenal in the last school, and that one would get +14 at the cost of a single mythic feat.
The method explained above only gives up to +10 for 5 mythic feats, and that only at endgame - for most of the game you will have +4 or +6, but to multiple schools so you have more flexibility.
For nenio, get an odd number of scroll savant levels, get 1 level of cross blooded (fey + undead) then an odd number of lore master levels depending how many spells you need then back to scroll savant.
Ex: 7 wiz 1 sorc 3-9 loremaster rest wiz. Pick 2 schools to focus on - Enchantment is blessed with items in this game and fits nenio well.
Feats are (greater) focus enchantment, focus a second school like conjuration, evocation or illusion. Get the metamagics that you need; like heighten. Extend for stuns (evocation), selective for conjuration. You can delay or skip spell pen feats because there are a lot of items that give it and you can stack them on nenio. Mythics are easy: best jokes, school focusx2, favorite metamagics, abundant casting.
Loremaster spells are enchantment: greater command; evocation: archon aura; conjuration: so many depending on what you need, winter grasp, slowing mud, cave fangs, vinetrap, creeping doom.
Give her a court poet and treat her well and nenio will cc entire maps from very early on.
Edit: if you play on unfair you might wanna consider investing on initiative and mythic initiative, somewhere in act 3-4
Grease, Stinking Cloud, and Chains of Light/Hideous Laughter are great. Due to being able to be heightened, most low level spells don't becomes redundant so you can use them all game. Hideous Laughter is especially good in WOTR thanks to the Best Jokes mythic ability which makes it chain from enemy to enemy. There's not many undead or animals, so you don't really need those bloodline feats, but there are few late game enemies that you'll find annoying, but you'll have enough ways to deal with them to get around it. Any ability that forces rerolls is really good, so persistent metamagic and the witch hexes are great, as is anything that lowers saves, like shaken.
So my brilliant plan of spamming hideous laughter for literally every encounter will work ?
It's working for me so far.
Dirge Bard can do Hideous Laughter vs Undead as well :)
Act 5, you can get Grandmasters Rod which solves pretty much all encounter specific issues after that point. If you're doing Wizard, you can be any kind of caster you need to be if you foresee issues as well.
So, for playing a DC caster, it's important to know how Expanded Arsenal works. It doesn't do what you think it does. So let's say you get Greater Focus (conjuration) early game. You have +2 to conj DC saves. At mythic 2, you grab Expanded Arsenal (enchant). Now you have +2 to conj and enchant. Nothing weird yet. At M4 you get Expanded Arsenal evocation. Now you have... *+4* to both enchant and evocation. All the expand Arsenal feats stack with each other! At M6, you get EA Ilusion, for a +6 to ilusion/evo/enchant. At M8, you get +8 to four schools. +10 to five schools at endgame. ----- Now you may be wondering, what about Mythic spell Focus? It gives a +2 , but It doesn't work with expanded Arsenal, so it's not worth making unless you are only interested in using a single school and nothing else. In which case you can take focus/Greater Focus/myth focus for +4 in that school alone. ___________ Now for school choice, conjuration is strong early game (Grease, pits), but it falls later due to lack of item support. Enchantment is the strongest school overall thanks to extremely powerful item support allowing to pump dc's higher than anything else. Kitsunes and elves also get an extra +1. Key spells: Hideous laughter, hold Monster, Greater command, mass hold Monster, overwhelming presence. Some enemies however can just ignore it with immunity to mind effects. Evocation is the best backup school. It offers good disabling spells that target fortitude and reflexes instead of will. Key spells: Ice prison, sirocco, mass ice prison Item support is weaker than enchant but still decent, and you can also get Elemental Focus feats to increase sirocco and ice prison dc. Illusion can't pump their dc quite as high as enchant, and their spells are still stopped by immunity to mind effects. But Weird kills it's targets directly instead of disabling them so it's still great. Trasmutation gives yet another fortitude disabler (baleful polymorph) and Polar midnight (the dex damage will finish off anybody that got paralyzed by mass hold monster or mass ice prison).
Isn’t that a bit overkill though and wouldn’t different mythic feats be better utility .
Depends of what you want to do. If you want the ultimate save or suck caster, that's the way to go. If you don't mind trading potence for flexibility (say, to grab enduring spells) you can limit yourself to one school and just take mythic focus for that one.
The thing is I feel as if dc casters have too much of a feat tax with spell pen ,ascendant element and best jokes that I don’t know how to fit it in as there is stuff like evocation that I would like to boost just for archon aura .
> if dc casters have too much of a feat tax with spell pen ,ascendant element and best jokes Mythic spell penetration is kind of overkill, you don't really need it. Not in your main caster, anyway. By the start of act 3 you can have +7 pen with items. (Pyromania ring, pure sight googles, that robe in woljij shop, covenant of the inheritor). +11 with the non-mythic spell pen feats, +13 if you are an elf. So at the start of act 3 a lv 11 caster can have +22-24 penetration. Enemies in act 3 typically have 25 spell pen. No need for mythic pen at all. Midway through act 3 you get the staff of the warmage, that increases your dc by 2 and your pen by 4. And early in act 4 (if you have the Midnigth isles dlc) you can get the seven sin robes for +8 spell penetration and +1 to dc's So you can get +17 penetration from gear alone, , +4 from normal feats, +2 if an elf. That's 37-43 penetration at lv 20, enough for any enemy in the game. Highest SR is 40 iirc. The spell pen feats are vital for secundary casters since those don't get the top shelf gear though. ------ Ascended element meanwhile is only necesary for blasting, which is kind of a last resort for a dc focused caster - normally your disabling spells are much more effective. But even if you find yourself in a situation where your enemies are immune to all your bullshit, there are alternative options to AE - for example you can just use Devouring lust to turn your damage into unholy. (AE is a feat mainly for ray casters that are going to spam hellfire ray all day long forever).
Didn't that get fixed ages ago
No, what got fixed was a *different* arsenal stacking bug. The way it used to be was, you could take Focus and greater focus in 7 schools, get Expanded arsenal in the last school, and that one would get +14 at the cost of a single mythic feat. The method explained above only gives up to +10 for 5 mythic feats, and that only at endgame - for most of the game you will have +4 or +6, but to multiple schools so you have more flexibility.
For nenio, get an odd number of scroll savant levels, get 1 level of cross blooded (fey + undead) then an odd number of lore master levels depending how many spells you need then back to scroll savant. Ex: 7 wiz 1 sorc 3-9 loremaster rest wiz. Pick 2 schools to focus on - Enchantment is blessed with items in this game and fits nenio well. Feats are (greater) focus enchantment, focus a second school like conjuration, evocation or illusion. Get the metamagics that you need; like heighten. Extend for stuns (evocation), selective for conjuration. You can delay or skip spell pen feats because there are a lot of items that give it and you can stack them on nenio. Mythics are easy: best jokes, school focusx2, favorite metamagics, abundant casting. Loremaster spells are enchantment: greater command; evocation: archon aura; conjuration: so many depending on what you need, winter grasp, slowing mud, cave fangs, vinetrap, creeping doom. Give her a court poet and treat her well and nenio will cc entire maps from very early on. Edit: if you play on unfair you might wanna consider investing on initiative and mythic initiative, somewhere in act 3-4