The answer at skeldnar

The answer at skeldnar
Scenery 15 of 31 · Skeldnar, the Skeld Throat anchorage. Alone · Nightmare · Pyromancer.

Keep the fire on it and keep your distance. In 60 test runs, none of the boss's warned attacks ever caught the Pyromancer. The only big health loss came from standing close.

What you hold

You hold exactly 8 spells: the Pyromancer's two starting spells, plus one from each of the six boss drafts so far (after sceneries 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13).

• Tap: touch paper, a fire Bolt that burns, with 3 charges.
• Hold: stokehold, a fire Beam. You cannot move while channelling it. It was the most-cast spell in the runs.

Each boss draft deals four cards. The first card is always one of the Pyromancer's own spells; from the third draft on, one card upgrades a spell you already hold. The rest are random. The rule: At each boss draft take, in this order: a new damage, control or summon spell; if none is offered, an upgrade of a damage, control or summon spell you hold; if neither, any new spell. Between two equal cards, take the Pyromancer's own.

In practice, every one of the ten builds took flashpoint and emberlash from card one. After that, card one only ever offered one of those two again, as an upgrade. So the other four spells were random cards, different every time.

The build we used:

1. flashpoint (fire Halt that stuns). Card one.
2. emberlash (fire Bolt that burns). Card one.
3. sinkhole (void Halt that weakens and pulls). A random card.
4. the weight (heavy Drop that applies vulnerability). A random card.
5. grace note (pure Drop that moves what it hits). A random card.
6. carrier (helping Summon that empowers). A random card.

Control does nothing to this boss on Nightmare. It ignores all control statuses, including flashpoint's stun and sinkhole's weaken. Their damage still lands. Vulnerability and burns are not control, so the weight and your burns work at full strength. If the deal differs: all ten draft orders cleared, and none took an upgrade. Their random picks were all different (the dose, umbralmire, undertow, the grain, a summon and more).

Talents

You have 14 talent points. The runs put all of them into one tree, Bellows (Pyromancer talents). Rows in a tree open at 5, 10 and 15 points spent in it, and the ultimate at 20. Each point went into the deepest open row, with a new talent bought before a second rank. In the order bought:

1. Struck Again Sooner ×2: Bolt spells recharge 3% faster per point.
2. Small and Often ×2: Light spells recharge 3% faster per point.
3. Covered While He Holds ×1: take 2% less damage while channelling.
4. More in the Same Breath ×2: your channels deal 3% more damage per point.
5. Shaken Off ×2: statuses from enemy attacks and ground effects wear off 2% sooner per point.
6. On the Back of the Last One ×1: 4% more damage with casts made within 1.5 s of your previous one.
7. Never His Last Charge ×2: 4% more damage per point with casts that still leave you a charge.
8. While the Beam Is on ×1: 4% more fire damage while channelling.
9. It Keeps Drawing ×1: hits while channelling have a 5% chance to give back 0.3 s of channel.

Talents are your choice; this is what was tested.

The fight

1. Step into the court to start the fight. There is no pause on Nightmare.
2. Burn it from range. Cast is Left mouse / South; hold it to channel stokehold. Switch spells with next (E / R1) and previous (Q / L1).
3. Release the channel whenever a warning appears, because stokehold roots you.
4. Lesser signal (bolt, answer: strafe) comes as unwarned shots. Step sideways between casts.
5. Shadow of the braces (beam, answer: strafe): step out of the line.
6. Slot (bolt, answer: blink) gives the shortest warning. Blink with Shift / East.
7. Stair foot (self, answer: kite) hurts anyone standing against the boss.
8. Signal (self, answer: walk out) gives about four seconds of warning. Walk out of the ring.
9. Below 60% health the boss adds Closing the lee (beam, answer: strafe).
10. One of the Stilled shares the court. The room clears only when nothing hostile is left standing.

What goes wrong

• Standing close. The close-range style was usually fastest (median 105 s). In one draft order (emberlash, undertow, signed and countersigned, flashpoint, brief one, the grain), though, it fell to 52% health; every other style on that build stayed above 81%.
• Relying on control. A build heavy in stuns, slows and weakens is weaker here than it looks.
• Nightmare. Going down alone is a defeat, and the scenery restarts.

Tested

We ran 60 automated runs on the shipped rules: 10 draft orders, each played in 3 styles at 2 skill levels, with legal talent purchases. All 60 cleared and none went down. The fastest took 33 s and the slowest 912 s. The lowest health in any run was 52%. These were automated test runs, not human play.

Screenshots

One complete fight in the current build, played by an automated test player with the game's normal controls: the Pyromancer alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 3 min 25 s of game time.