The Ancestor vs Gereon Alexius: Maybe strongest non smurf Low 7-C

[Wokistan]

Speed Equal

Both at Low 7-C

Takes place at a Hive City, both start 100 meters apart without LoS but know what the other looks like

The Ancestor:

Gereon Alexius:

Inconclusive:

 

[The_Archdemon]

As I said, I suppose Alexius beats Corypheus in 7-C.

 

[Wokistan]

Didn't see that when I sent the comment, can change it though.

 

[Schnee_One]

What stops the FLAY

 

[The_Archdemon]

Well, the full name would be Gereon Alexius, but that's alright.

That said... I suppose Alexius will go for erasing the Ancestor from time.

 

[Wokistan]

Ancestor either opens with stripping the opponent's flesh from their bones, or mind/madness hax. The madness type stuff is also essentially tacked on to everything he does.

 

[The_Archdemon]

What about mind resistance?

 

[Wokistan]

Alexius doesn't seem to have that listed.

 

[The_Archdemon]

Yes, my bad, but he has resistance to mind manip due to simply being a mage (all mages in Dragon Age can resist mindhax through sheer willpower, and a Magister like Alexius should have no problem with that).

 

[QrowBarr]

So it kinda depends on who uses their abilities first?

 

[Wokistan]

Ancestor is the second to last thing in the game and has among the best madness there is. Party members by now have been through the maddening effects of everything else, and yet the Ancestor can still affect them to a significant degree. One example:

The Blood of the Countess being mixed into a bunch of alcohol resulted in abject insanity, uncontrollable bloodlust, and even autocannibalism breaking out among those in attendance to the aristocratic party he poisoned the alcohol at. Party members who have the Crimson Curse can take viles of pure blood and suffer nothing but increased aggression (They actually get a bunch of stat bonuses and it is necessary for their survival at that point). Ancestor attacks still add a significant degree of stress (Game's secondary HP representative of the mental state of the character) on them.

 

[The_Archdemon]

That game seems to be interesting.

A Blood Mage in Kirkwall could control several Templars (and those guys are trained to resist any and all magic that gets thrown at them, and resist the power of Blood Mages that can control and mindfuck hordes of people and demons, spirits from other dimensions who can do the same and also resist it, with ease).

An extremely weaker mage resisted her effects and Alexius himself resisted the power of stronger mages.

We've got dozens of resistances here lol.

 

[QrowBarr]

I believe more notable templars can resist red lyrium (a more potent version which can induce psychological and physical harm just by being near it). Like Meredith and Samson

 

[The_Archdemon]

If I'm not mistaken, that Blood Mage claimed to be able to control Meredith.

Besides, these are Knight-Commanders and are still fairly inferior to Alexius

 

[QrowBarr]

Bump?

 

[Wokistan]

I'll get to this at some point in the near future.

 

[QrowBarr]

bamp

 

[Wokistan]

Sorry for taking a while.

Yeah I quite like the game. It's quite a bit of a time sink though, wouldn't expect to be speeding through it. I usually will go do like one or two forays a day after I finish my HW or something then write down in a journal what my plans for the next day are. You can learn more about it here, or just ask me stuff on my message wall as I'm available to talk about verses I like.

Firstly, everyone in the Courtyard is presumably a victim stemming from what the Ancestor did so long ago. Considering that the courtyard is massive, that's gonna be quite a high number of individuals. The Courtyard doesn't ever seem to run out of bodies either, as even after killing all the bosses you can keep foraying into it deeper and deeper, encountering more abominations overcome by the crimson curse each time. Unlike the Farmstead, there's no weird temporal shenanigans going on to pull infinite enemies out of pasts and futures, the implication here is that there's just a looooot of victims here. Remember that all this originated with the Ancestor poisoning the alcohol at that one party, and that party members can chug vials of the blood which he used to do this no problem.

Now, a counter to this sort of absurd potency would be "but the plague can spread further without his influence, and as such the one vial of blood doesn't need to drive all those people mad" which would be right in its own, which is why we shall turn to the exact history of that curious blood. When the Ancestor consumed the blood, all he got was a fleeting vision of the Heart of Darkness, which is spoiler bait so if you're interested in the game and care about spoilers I won't really explain more than what is needed right now. This indicates the blood has some sort of connection to the Heart itself. Seeing the form of the heart later drove even the Ancestor into madness, who can handle his own stuff. It seems likely then that this insanity induced onto so many is caused at its core by the blood awakening them to the existence of the Heart, and their minds being unable to sustain this. Now, why is this important? Because you fight the heart immediately after the Ancestor and the Heart's madness stuff is only about twice as good as the Ancestors. Hell, one of the Ancestor's nastier moves is on par with the heart's stuff. This more solidly backs the idea of the Ancestor having quite the penchant for the inducement of insanity.

Now, the resistances you posted are not unimpressive by any means, and I'm assuming the verse would scale with magical power judging by how you've described things. While your resistance scaling isn't the most quantifiable thing, my madness scaling isn't either, so there's that.

My assessment seems to be that the Ancestor's madness may not be a literal "one thought one win", but that it will still be an extremely important part of the battle and that he should be able to wear down even a resistant mind given the change. Almost everything he does has some form of this shit tacked on to it, even shifting into a weirder form. I do feel like singular usages should at least be enough to disorient, seeing as he has an attack that can shuffle party members even without hitting a stress check.

 

[Jinsye]

>strongest non-smurf low 7-Cs are these two

Man we have some very shitty non-smurf Low 7-Cs

 

[Wokistan]

I don't think that EE across time or potent madness hax+instagib is shitty

Not every tier is tier 4/2

 

[Jinsye]

I dunno, I think I've been exposed to too much FC/OC for me to think that these are OP.

 

[Wokistan]

Ah yes, the site where 1/5th of the profiles have a tier 1 key

How do those even end up OP without being smurfs


ALso, got a vote?

 

[Jinsye]

heck I commented now I'm obligated to vote

Ancestor's madness manip is cognition based right? Resistance to Mind Manip doesn't exactly help that. How much weird shit has the Gereon dude seen

 

[QrowBarr]

Well, the Fade is a chaotic realm full of demons, dreams and volatile magic but I'm not so sure...

I'll ask Archdemon or if he responds here first.

 

[The_Archdemon]

You see, I've started the game, and I've already lost a hero lol. It was the Vestal.

Also my Plague Doctor was affected by madness and started "going against logic". But he neither died nor got incapacitated on the spot. As you said yourself Wokistan, it may not be "one thought one win".

Also, my Crusader resisted the effects of Stress through what one could describe as sheer will. That is, if one can resist the effects of this madness through sheer will, then it would most likely not be a thing against a magister like Alexius.

 

[Wokistan]

That will legit **** you over for so long. I have that issue rn where I have 2 healers total so half the time just can't use one.

As for the other two, remember that the party members have resistance to this stuff. They do straight up die at 200 stress. Virtue is a further showing of a resistance.

 

[The_Archdemon]

But I still cannot fully realize the nature of this hax. It seems like regular willpower is already a powerful thing against that. Type 2 madness manip is useless against someone who resist strong Mind Manip, and Type 3 is also most likely useless against someone who interacts with demons so often as a Tevinter Magister.

Also, even if he was affected, as you said, it may not instakill or instaincap him, which means Alexius can still erase the Ancestor and go on to some therapy.

 

[The_Archdemon]

bump

 

[Wokistan]

Stress is just an overall sanity meter. It can be drained by eldritch madness manipulation, being beaten near to death, or just, well, stress. The party can't stave off the degeneration of their minds forever, as even the toughest of shells can start to crack. While some can muster the willpower to carry on a little further, even a virtuous hero can still be driven to insanity.

I do feel like it would throw him off if he's trying to cast some sort of spell to do so, considering the shuffle and stun effect his stuff still has on party members.

 

[Wokistan]

Also like at least half of all resistances in fiction are based on "too strong" or willpower in some way, yet they still are counted as resistances generally as opposed to just a weakness of whatever ability. I disagree with this approach being applied to everything, but considering that randos seem to break pretty quickly under the blood and shit going on around the estate, resistance and not just weakness seems legitimate to me.

 

[The_Archdemon]

Alexius's magic has shown to turn rather wild and agressive once he's emotionally twisted. I mean, if he was attempting to erase you from time, the magic would most likely sent you to the future (which counts as BFR and would still mean victory for him nonetheless).

That's, like, exactly what happened in-game lol.

 

[QrowBarr]

Pretty sure it was because Dorian interrupted Alexius before he could erase Inq.

 

[The_Archdemon]

There's that too. I remember Dorian saying something about Alexius's emotional state, though.

 

[Wokistan]

Sorry for disappearing

That may happen with emotional state stuff, but Ancestor's attack just straight up has the "shuffle" effect applied to it. This represents it causing a hero to break formation/cower away, which isn't exactly a voluntary thing. There's also attacks that just stun party members.

Also, how does Green know the right one to BFR/Erase? Ancestor makes clones quite a lot, and he can make ones that look identical to the original.

 

[QrowBarr]

Alexius opens up a portal and any person that is near it gets sucked in.

 

[Wokistan]

Well if its a portal that gets stopped by Ancestor just spawning voids to stop that.

 

[QrowBarr]

For BFR yes, but not too sure about EE seeing as how it was countered by Dorian before he was able to finish casting it and instead opened up a portal to the future.

 

[Wokistan]

Remember the Ancestor is also attacking during this time. To destroy Gereon's body requires a raise of the hand, to use madness requires a thought, and he also duplicates. Duplicates can smack him around with tentacles, as can real ancestor, who can also spawn absolute nothingness to shield himself with.

 

[The_Archdemon]

Alexius can take hits from the combined power of Dorian Pavus, The Inquisitor, Madame de Fer and Solas and his automatic shields are superior to that.

Also, he would open a Fade Rift just at the beginning of the fight, and I don't believe you'll be able to close it. The rift will keep spamming demons while it is open, which means Ancestor's clones are pointless.

 

[Wokistan]

I can't find any sort of calc he scales to, indirectly or not. For the Ancestor, the base calc he scales to is this, but there's a bit of a chain with it. That cave bust isn't even a damaging attack, and was something that just happened via the Sleeper being born. Party took no damage whatsoever from that since it was a transition, and the Sleeper's actual attacks should be significantly stronger than what it did via being born. Ancestor can fight 4 party members at once and starts off totally immune to them. Also, even before all his tampering with eldritch horrors he killed the Countess, a boss who can fight a party of 4 on even ground and is generally considered harder than Sleeper, with just a dagger.

I don't see why that can't be stopped by blocking it off with voids, or him just unmaking the demons with the same magic he can use to tear apart Gereon. The flay move can target multiple people at once.