⚔️🛡️ How To Play Stun Pathfinder – Tainted Grail: Conquest

As we continue our series of how to play, today we will be talking about the pathfinder, and a Stun Build. The Pathfinder is a character that gets stronger the longer he doesn’t get hit in combat, so to be able to do that you can focus on either blocking all attacks, or you can take control of the battle by stunning all your enemies, and this is the build we will be doing this time.

The Pathfinder – Basics

As we said earlier, the Pathfinder focuses mainly on avoiding receiving damage, so that his passive can be activated. Battle Focus gives the Pathfinder an extra 50% damage for every turn that he doesn’t receive any damage. Since your focus is to avoid taking damage, most of the pathfinder’s cards are going to be stance cards, that when used will also charge his ultimate ability. His ultimate when activated draws one card for every three charges consumed and grants one energy for every six charges consumed.

There are usually two paths that you can take when playing Pathfinder, you can either focus on stances and blocking incoming attacks so that you can stack your passive, or you can focus on maintaining your enemies stunned.

The Deck

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For a Stun Build its pretty similiar on how you play a Stun Wyrdhunter as shown here. Your main focus is damage and control through stunning:

• Shield Slam is great as an AOE and Stun
• Crippling Attack is good so that you can Stun enemies that are going to attack you
• A Stun Cracker for Damage is always nice to have and an Executioners Strike is a nice addition to deal extra damage on stunned enemies
• If you cannot kill fast enough, a Trap Stance Card is nice to stun by being attacked
• Reposition is a really good Utility Card so that you can fish for the Stun and Damage Cards you need
• Tactical Mastery from the Man at Arms is always one of the best Utility Cards if you want to draw and play for less

Our focus is to always draw the cards that are the most useful to us, so having a thinner deck can help with that. If you’re not sure how to create a deck like that, be sure to check out my tutorial on how to do that here.

Passives

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Passives do rely a little bit on Luck, but if we can choose we would take the following:

High Priority

• Battle Focus is a Passive you get from the beginning. Each turn you do not get hit you get 50% more damage
• Agility gives you a free Stance card each combat
• Slayer gives you 3 extra card draw at the start of combat. More draw helps you get the cards you need
• Annihilator grants +6 damage
• Sharp Focus gives you 1 Instance of Focus, so if you can keep that, its flat 50% more damage
• With Precision you gain 200% more damage if your Energy is higher than 3 and THAT makes your Alpha Strike so much harder. Imagine a Shield Slam or Skullcracker with 200% more damage.
• Willpower with +5% damage for each card in hand is really nice, because drawing is really easy on the Pathfinder
• Elusive gets High Priority to block all hits at the start of combat, but only on endless runs beside that its bad.
• Footwork is the same as Elusive. Great to have a second powerful turn, but otherwise pretty bad.

Totally fine

• Knowledge grants 2 extra card draw on using your Ultimate. That does mean any amount of Ultimate, so you can start spamming it for more draws
• If your fights take longer Natural Block gives you a free block if you end your turn with at least 3 cards in hand. This helps keeping your focus.
• Delayed Punishment gives you +400% damage on the next turn if you played more than 4 cards. Playing cards is easy, but mostly we want to kill in 1 turn. But nice if it takes longer.
• Rhythm is a nice Utility to draw an additional card after playing 4
• Tactics grants you 10 armor and 20% damage for each Stance played. Not useful if you have Precision but, before that it gives you free damage
• If you have Knowledge then Unending Stamina is nice. It lets you start with 4 ultimate charges which can be used to start with more card draws. Before that its kinda bad
• If you have Sharp Focus then Residuum will grant you a -1 energy for your first stance card if you Focused. But it gets negated with Agility on turn 1 so be careful.
• As a utility Combat Sequencing is nice, if you are able to play 6 cards. After playing 6 cards you get an energy.
• If you have Sharp Focus then Focused Mind is also good to get an additional 25% damage on each Focused Charge. Otherwise we are not increasing the amount of charges.
• Compensation is okish to draw 1 more card for each enemy alive

Bad ones

• Duel grants an energy each turn if you fight a single enemy. But most of the fights are more than one enemy.
• Catalyst grants an ultimate charge each turn. Way to slow to power up.
• With Vigor we get +2 Energy if we are starting our turn with 12 ultimate charges. Uff hard to reach.
• Keenness lets you draw an additional card if you are Focused. There are easier ways to draw
• Interception gives you 5 Block if you have only 1 Focus. Ehm not useful.
• Rebirth grand you an additional card draw at the start of the turn with -1 energy cost, if you are below 50% health. There are better passives.
• Accumulated Power grants you a free to play card and 1 card draw if you manage to play 8 cards. Playing 6 is ok, 8 is edge.
• Dance of Blades deals 1 hit for each unused block. Sounds like a meme build.
• Additional to Dance of Blades you can get Overprotection which grants you an additional card draw for each unused block
• Unexpected Help grants an energy if you have an extinguished wyrdcandle. Ehm no? The bad cards you get are so much worse to pay for than an additional energy.
• Defensive Maneuvers grants you an energy after playing 12 stances. Way to slow to ramp up.

At the time of writing some new Passives have been added to the game. I still need to unlock them, but as soon as done, I’m going to update the list.

Masteries

For our mastery, we go for Perseverance and Ambush. Perseverance grants us -1 energy cost on all cards drawn while using our Ultimate Ability with 12 Charges. Not great but better than the rest. Ambush on the other hand is great. Whenever we draw an additional card the Armor of ALL enemies is reduced by 5. As you have seen on the passives, card draw is no problem at all

There are 2 Passives that could have been nice, but only if we got the Unending Stamina Passives, to get these bonuses on turn 1:

• Last but not least there is Energy Replenish which doubles your Energy gain on using your Ultimate Ability.
• Wisdom grants us on using our Ultimate ability an additional card draw for every 3 Charges.

The rest of the Masteries do not match with our goal, but still lets have a look:

• Opportunity Block grants us 3 Block if we use our Ultimate Ability with at least 9 Charges
• Prideful Stance lets you recharge your Charges faster if you have less than 9. For each Stance played you get an additional Charge

Runestones

With our Runestones we have many options, but there are also some Runestones that are better than others. So lets have a look at those:

High Priority

• Mythical Ger will grant us up to 25%/50%/75% extra damage for each weapon slot used
• Mythical Haegl will grant us up to 100%/200%/300% damage if fully charged
• Common Calc will help us to win normal battles on turn one through drawing 1/2/3 additional card which are cost reduced by 1. That will make sure that we can draw a Skullcracker or Shield Slam
• Mythical Ur will cost reduced every 5th/4th/3rd card played. Effectively this will grant us a free card each turn
• Mythical Yr lets our 5th/4th/3nd card being duplicated. A Skullcracker is a really good target for this
• Rare Wyn is better than an Mythical Ger or Mythical Haegl if you can apply multiple Stuns each turn. Every Stun will grant you 100%/175%/300% more damage

Totally fine

• Common Tir which would grant us up 50%/75%/100% damage for 1/2/3 turn(s)
• Rare Feoh are fine for damage increase 100%/175%/300% or card draw 1/2/3 with cost reduction by 1
• A rare Ken is a worse copy of an Mythical Yr. Rather take the Yr. But if its not available its okish to duplicate on every 15th/8th/5th card played
• Mystical Beorc grant us an extra energy after every 3rd/2nd/1st turn
• Rare Peorth can be switched for a Common Tir instead of having 50%/80%/150% more damage which is decreasing each turn by 5%. But still fine if the fight does not take long.

Bad ones

• Common Gar to get more base damage 2/4/6 are fine at the start but later they fall off
• Common Ethel are fine to get increased Armor 10/17/30 are only great at the start of the run.
• Common Stan for increased Health 10/17/30 or the Armor Reduction are not necessary
• An Common Eolh are only good on Level 3, but how on earth to get that far. On Level 1 they grant you every third turn maximum damage or minimum damage on enemies afterwards every 2nd or every turn on level 3. Since with Patch 1.2 these have been downgraded from Rare to Common its easier to reach lvl 3, but still hard
• Rare Gweorth with Armor reduction or gain are not necessary
• Rare Gyfu is an extra Hit or Barrier but only on not playing many cards
• Rare Lor with 10%/18%/30% Lifesteal is totally unnecessary
• Common Man are always bad
• In order to make use of a rare Nyd you would have to not use all your Energy. I would rather play any card from our thin deck
• Rare Os are a really bad healing stone for 1%/2%/3% after a battle
• Mystical Daeg grant or improves barrier. We don’t need that here.
• Mystical Ear will grant is energy on having many cards or keeping unused energy.
• Mystical Ing will give us a chance for Healing Mixtures or Candles
• Mystical Lagu decreased Barrier value for the enemy or grants us Barrier
• Mystical Thorn also a Barrier thing

Items

Lets have a look at good or bad items for this class to use. Everything that help us draw if necessary is good:

High Priority

• Talking Skull lets you draw 3/4/5 cards and after 1 upgrade also cost reduced by 1. Really good defensive option to draw a Stun card if none was drawn. As offensive option you can push out so much damage if you want through the extra cards.

• Tome of Knowledge also lets you just draw 1/2/3 more cards. Extra Draw = More Damage
• Wodden Flute with “A Stunning Song” is the best option in the game. 50% chance to Stun on each and every enemy. Can be used once per Battle and acquired from the Pied Piper. Getting this song might take a while.
• Gnawed Foot as an Escape Option is a lifesaver

Totally fine

• Acid Bomb reduce enemy Armor is great to kill on turn 1 if damage is lacking a bit
• Acid Flask same as the Bomb but single target
• Berserker Potion can be used to get more damage if you can Stun with a Shield Slam or are sure you can kill on this turn
• Consecrated Oil to get 100% extra damage is fine
• Healing Mixture of course is fine
• If you play a thin deck then Wayfarer Leaves are fine on the endless mode. You can trade Healing Mixtures against these to get free energy.

Bad Items

• Meat is a way worse way to heal than a Healing Mixture
• Oversaturated Runestone to fill your Ultimate sound ok, but I with all the mentioned Passives and Masteries we have enough charges.
• Sharpening Stone is mathematical good, but i a little bit to random for my taste
• Smoke Bomb to decrease damage is totally unnecessary, but still nice for endless runs
• Throwing Knives are not necessary to deal damage
• Warding Lore to get Barrier is not needed

Battle Rotation

So there are two ways to play the Pathfinder. Either you wait and block everything or like we did you go Stuns first. Then take that increased damage, then we murder them with Skullcrackers

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