Thunderstruck! A control Thunder Knight build

Building around the thunder damage and reverberation items available mostly in Moonrise Towers provides an 11 Eldritch Knight / 1 Tempest Cleric build that can come online for damage and reverberation debuffs in early Act 2 and make a noticeable improvement by adding a strong control element early in Act 3. This build can fit nicely into most party compositions, and can even forego the band of the mystic scoundrel to serve as a secondary acuity control character if you already have another one using the Helmet of Arcane Acuity.
0:00 Introduction and Leveling Path
9:00 Items and Theory
14:14 Combat Demonstration

[@kurtcobane1762]

I much prefer the frost varient but this is a great build apart from one snag i've seen others mention which is that spellcaster modifier is taken from the last class selected so if you go 11 fighter 1 war cleric you get wisdom as your modifier
I personally would also drop strength use elixer and bump Int as high as possible, but that's getting meta gamey lol, i run frost EK 8/16/14/22/10/8 built around encrusted with frost you can always get spells from scrolls, which removes ek's weakness of their spell list being really lackluster

[@friederichh6543]

For those playing with strength elixirs and scrolls, that's a great idea :)
But yeah, no use of combat scrolls means doesn't matter which order you take classes in.

[@Megadiggydiggy]

I was going to ask why not use Helmet of Arcane Acuity instead of the thunder hat, but it seems the tooltip for the thunder hat is off. Your footage shows it in fact gives 2 turns of arcane acuity per attack, making it only worse than the helmet of arcane acuity by the lack of a +1 to dex saves, good to know! And then you get that cleric dip in there for more thunder and thus more arcane acuity than the helmet could give you, great build!

[@JohnnyTwoShirts]

With the weapon doing thunder damage - is this proccing 2 reverb from the gloves --> 2 reverb from the boots due to the condition reverb being inflicted = 4 reverb per sword strike? or do the boots not proc from the reverb and you only get 2 reverb per sword strike?

[@friederichh6543]

This is true for several other builds (e.g. eldritch blast spam builds) too, but boots seem to proc only once per turn. Good observation!

[@christinehede7578]

You said you were taking long strider but took enhanced leap which is redundant on lae'zel.

[@friederichh6543]

Woops oh well :) Go with what I said not what I did.

[@javiersuarezrivas8161]

Man, Arcane Knight its just so sad in BG3.

[@friederichh6543]

Compared to? Their features seem to have very little adjustment from tabletop 5e.

[@javiersuarezrivas8161]

@@friederichh6543 The could atleast twich it a little do it be more fun to play, like gain war caster earlier, be able to use a cantrip after a melee attack or unlock unique spells like flame sword or a like later on. Taking on count most of the tabletops 5e campaings and one shots let choose to start characters at lvl 3, 5 or 6 while bg3 starts at 1 and caps at 12. A little adjustment could have been grateful for the class.

[@friederichh6543]

@@javiersuarezrivas8161 I disagree with you that as currently implemented Eldritch Knight isn't very fun to play. Besides, most of the suggestions you just made can be simulated pretty easily with the items in game :) But we never get everything we want. I think missing the level 18 improved war casting particularly hurts when certain Githyanki NPCs already have a version of it.

[@javiersuarezrivas8161]

Its not boring at all, atleast for me its the miss potencial what hurts the most, comparing with the others full caster and semi caster clases always feels like youre "not gettin what you pay for", but only comparing. But throwing electric-returning hammers gives me vibes for days

[@moonman6359]

Probably better if you are throwing Nyrulia.

[@friederichh6543]

If you want a throw variant, yup, you can do that!

[@denderanmarajain6221]

There is just one small problem. The spellcasting modifier is taken from the class you last changed to using multiclassing. In this case it's Wisdom and with a value of 10 it's far worse than INT 16, so you should plan for respecc and start with Cleric.

[@friederichh6543]

Yeah, this is actually not at all a problem for the build. All spells you take with a class use the spell modifier of that class. So I mention thunderwave uses pur wisdom modifier, but our core control spells use intelligence. And you can stack acuity before using thunderwave, as I mention in the video. None of our items have DCs that depend on spell modifier. Our scroll spell modifier would be wisdom, but either (a) you can just use scrolls without spell save such as the incredibly powerful Globe of Invulnerability or (b) you can just not use scrolls in combat because it's kind of gamebreaking. And if it still really bothers you, respect after taking the cleric level so that your level 1 is cleric and then intelligence will be your spell modifier for everything. But this is just not a real problem for this build.

[@denderanmarajain6221]

@@friederichh6543 and unfortunately you're on the wrong track. ALL spells use the Wisdom modifier and NOT your Intelligence bonus. This is also the reason why the video shows 8 + 4 at DC, since Wisdom produces a +- 0 at 10.
In addition, it would probably be better to take a Level Wizard instead of Cleric so you don't have the problem at all

[@friederichh6543]

@@denderanmarajain6221 This is simply incorrect. Verified this in game. Spells learned by X class use the spell modifier of X regardless of multi-classing or multi-classing order. As already mentioned, the specific problem you're referring to applies to scrolls/items and spells learned via the most recently learned class.
There's proof of this in video. Look at hold person percentages around 15:34. Melee fist 80%, so the melee fist needs to roll 17 on the die or higher. Melee fist has 12 wisdom/+1 to wisdom saves, so that means spell save DC is 18. 18 = 3 arcane acuity + 3 intelligence + 4 proficiency + 8 base spell save DC. Likewise the ranged fist had 75% chance, so needed to roll 16 on the die or higher. But ranged fist has 14 wisdom/+2 wisdom save, so spell save DC again confirmed at 18.

[@denderanmarajain6221]

@@friederichh6543 Then you don't have the latest version because it is communicated by Larian itself and is also stated in the patch notes

[@friederichh6543]

@@denderanmarajain6221 This was recorded on hotfix 22. No such patch notes on hotfix 23.