The Fastest Hammer in the South - Hammer ninja glass cannon

[sheepherder]

I like BIG NUMBER and I like glass cannons. So I made a ninja hammer build with BIG MP and BIG AP, which allows it to attack up to 7 times a turn and deal the BIG DMG with its BIG HAMMER. No passive defenses whatsoever and barely any HP. Perfect.

Max Strength, Balor's Hammer build. A bit of a gimmick build.
Except for Newton and The Beast, no traps, damage dealing grenades or smoke bombs were used.
Played on Dominating. Did all of the content – Apogee, Faceless Commander, Black Crawler, native bosses, 4naga etc.
Fun as fuck to play. Can pop a locust hive in two hits. Enough MP to travel from Core City to SGS in one turn and have some to spare. Nice, nice, nice.
As far as glass cannons go, has a very smooth power progression. No crits because I didn’t want crits this time. Robots were an ass to deal with, tho.

BIG MP (over 200, 270 at endgame with all the bells and whistles) comes from:

• 10 (11) Agility.
• Sprint. With Infused Hopper Tabis, Sprint CD is 5 turns. With LTI, I will only spend ~1 turn not sprinting.
• Hit and Run and Fancy Footwork. Hit and Run is a lackluster feat for the most part, but it manages to work here and performs surprisingly well. One neat little detail, is that the bonus MP from Fancy Footwork gets added after the MP from Hit and Run. Meaning, that later in the game, once the hammer reaches one-hit territory, it is possible to pop out of stealth, kill an enemy in one hit and gain 33 MP from both Hit and run and Fancy Footwork. This allows me to move from enemy to enemy and kill them one by one without having to waste Sprint/Contraction MP. This also works to refresh my MP after I use Blitz.
• Contraction. Always on. Never off. Blessed be.
• Strider. End game. Good for screenshots and to dab on Faceless Commander.

BIG AP (110 or 115) comes from:

• Contraction. Always on. Never off. Blessed be. 150 effective Temporal Manipulation to minimize the chance for it to backfire. LTI spam and Future Orientation means it’s always off cooldown once duration runs out.
• Blitz. 5 spec points and LTI spam for greatly reduced cooldown. Decent MP generation does not leave me stranded after use. Not a very good feat, but works well enough here.
• Adrenaline or Vitality Powder.

The BIG AP is used efficiently:

• Tranquility and spec points into Future Orientated means that LTI costs 0 AP to cast and thus saves me 10 AP every second turn.
• Hammers need to wear lifting belt, so it costs 10 AP to use a psi booster. Therefore Muffled Psi headband cuts down on psi cost, which reduces psi booster usage.
• Premeditation ensures that I can spend 100% AP of my alpha strike turn attacking, without having to use any AP on Stasis.
• Pummel specialization reduces its cost to 0 AP.
• The “up to 7 attacks per turn” part comes with an asterisk. It’s only possible with Vitality powder and most of the time I prefer to use Adrenaline, as the damage from Vitality Powder after-effect will break Tranquility. 6 full AP attacks and one free pummel costs 114 AP. 115 AP with Vitality Powder - 7 attacks.

The BIG DMG comes from:

• MAX STRENGTH – BEST STRENGTH . +120% damage bonus additive with skill point bonus. 18 Base, +1 food, +1 Rathound Regalia.
• Balor’s Hammer. 100-200 base damage. 20 STR requirement. Usable from level ~20 with Adrenaline.
• Opportunist. Flasbangs apply Incapacitation. Dealing any damage to an incapacitated enemy removes Incapacitation status effect. But get this, the build excels at dealing single, BIG DMG hits. +25% damage.
• Taste for Blood. Forget Bleeding wounds. That’s not how this build uses TfB. It’s a kill streak feat now. The more shit I kill, the better I kill. +5% damage for each kill, up to +50%.
• Blindsiding. +15% damage after I exit stealth. Meh. I then cast Stasis with Premeditation to extend the damage bonus for another turn. Better. Stasis comes off CD in the middle of the fight and I have 10 AP to spare? Enter stealth, get the damage bonus, cast Stasis, still have the damage bonus after stasis ends. Good. Well, not really, but I’ll take it.

So, with the damage increase from skill and STR alone, Balor's Hammer deals 484-968 damage.
With 10 stacks of Taste for Blood it's 726-1452 damage.
And with the all the situational damage bonuses active it sits at a whopping 919-1839 damage per hit. And these aren't critical strikes, just regular attacks. BIG DMG.

A couple of videos of the build in action:

The 4naga fight under the Lighthouse. Against Nagas, Balors > any electro hammer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lik3zKsWtRA

Tchort OTK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uypLhRTDtxw

The Faceless Commander fight. One of the hardest fights in the game and my favorite part of DC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_NTeRwsiPI

Øyensørm and friends get clobbered
https://streamable.com/59ax6r

The build:
https://underrail.info/build/?HhADCgMDBQYAcADCoCgAwqAAAAAAU20PQ1MAACPCiABcTysZOS0mEsKHR8KIPxMqPMKFwoHCtsKmKOKjkwXip5YF4rGgBd-_
Brutality and Intimidation are unnecessary. Paranoia is for the Initiative bonus, to get closer to 35, for the Faceless Commander fight.

I'd post some screenshots too, but there's no spoiler tag or anything like that to colapse big images, so they take up a whole lot of space.

[cypherusuh]

this looks really damn fun
props for getting Intimidation. it really sounds like a good idea after the str/wil update thing.
but switching Brutality to Yell seems like a better idea overall
Fear is a double-edged sword. sometimes its so annoying when a light weapon sniper / crossbow enemy accidentally run away with full speed, and it took you few turn to finally catch up with them

[sheepherder]

Enemies running away isn't a problem. This build has enough MP to run down a racehorse 

[cypherusuh]

I forgot about the psi changes thing,
did you used Metathermics for cryostatis only?
and why do you points on MT all that much? I thought most of the buff/debuff doesn't really scale off it?

[sheepherder]

My dude, effective skill score  and its effects keep scaling past 160.

[sheepherder]

That's synergy between skills, like when psi schools are boosting each other, that kind of thing. Bonus to effective skill score from a stat is not synergy.

[Mocade]

That makes sense, after all that 190 points of Yours are from pure ability, not synergy.
That "overcap" info misleaded me, sry bout that.

[sheepherder]

I forgot about the psi changes thing,
did you used Metathermics for cryostatis only?
and why do you points on MT all that much? I thought most of the buff/debuff doesn't really scale off it?

Yeah, Cryostasis for exactly one fight - Magnar. But I forgot to grab it before going in and didin't feel like sailing all the way back to a Rift. So I just ran circles around him instead.

The chance for Contraction to backfire does scale off effective Temporal Manipulation. I think at 55 TM it's 60% and at 150 TM it's down to 30%, the lowest it will go.

That makes sense, after all that 190 points of Yours are from pure ability, not synergy.
That "overcap" info misleaded me, sry bout that.

no problemo

[cypherusuh]

The chance for Contraction to backfire does scale off effective Temporal Manipulation. I think at 55 TM it's 60% and at 150 TM it's down to 30%, the lowest it will go.

ah, I didn't know styg "adds new complexity" on that skill

[sheepherder]

It's quite well balanced now, imo. No longer just a 55 TM and 1 feat point investment. Needs constant LTI spam, Future Orientation, plus playing around the inevitable backfire. I really like the change.

[destroyor]

Research on PTC debuff chance already been done and available on the wiki:
https://stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Psycho-temporal_Contraction

Effective skill - Reversion Probability (%)
55 - 60
65 - 58
80 - 54
120 - 43
160 - 32
166 - 30

[sheepherder]

The wiki is incorrect on this one. It's ~150 effective TM to reach 30% chance to backfire: https://i.imgur.com/5cz9aRc.jpg

[Splody11]

Hello mate,

This build looks awesome i´ve tried it and have troubles fighting my way in depot A when implementing the bomb in the vents for black eels quest.

Any tips for this?

Should i try to stealth most of the content until I have the appropriate gear to be able to fight?

Thank you!

[sheepherder]

What level are you? And what difficulty?
Did you get a chance to craft a hammer or find a decent one?

I don't remember having much trouble in depA. I think I even did the mutants, or maybe not, don't remember.
In the mutie area, the one through which you go plant the explosive, use a crowbar to open up vents and get to the dogs roaming the corridors. Then kill the lone mutie in the SW room and then destroy the turret. Engage the muties in the Souther room first, and kite them towards the Western end of the map. But do not use Flashbangs until you lure them there, as the noise from flashbangs will attract the muties from the SE room.

Before engaging the muties, you can set off an explosion in the corridors. Once you do, enter stealth and wait in a corner somewhere. The muties and the dogs which are with them in the room will come check it out. The muties will go back to the room if they don't spot you, but the dogs will remain. Kill the dogs while they are out of sight of the muties.

Also, make sure you have a taser.

[Splody11]

This is on hard difficulty only, and im level 8

the room i have issues atm is the one where you have a mine in the corridor and through  a door theres like 8 enmies there in close quarters

I´ve got a lighting hammer which i´ve found, most of the issue is not being able to 1shot enemies and run away to safety

will try luring them out or something cheers