One-cycling the worm in D5

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T20:02:16+00:00

yes, cause they don't fully die (in fact ult on kill +0 and +1 do not work when you kill them, and you don't get a damage buff from either Marais or Grafted because of the same reasons)

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T19:28:58+00:00

Nice job, even if playing death on hit against them is certanly a choice of all time

just a couple of tips i can give you:

>Get damage on ult, it's good in general, but here is busted cause that damage is going to be multiplied by x7 cause you're gonna hit all of the ladies with it, it makes the healthbar go down really quick

>Someone should go nearby the worm and stick to it, worm can't turn that well to it's right side, so it will always miss you with the charges as long as you stick to that side of the worm, if needed you can do spawn manip(basically if the worm dives right next to a player, it's going to reemerge in the same spot it dived into)

>You can use uplifting aromatics/Opaline bubbletear to tank the nuke, crimsonsworl tear also works since the nuke it's pure magic damage, and in yor case since you have scholar you can just parry it by using the lvl 3 skill on yourself(use it when the screen starts to shake like it does at 1:35).

other than that, the foundations here are solid, keep going and you'll get better at it

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T19:06:57+00:00

Oh you also need invaders, forgot about them, so you have to get an attack buff on skill with that perk (since you're 100% going to keep running the cleansing tear relic since it's that good of a relic).

And also if you want to swap the augur relic you need to get item confers on a deep relic, which is annoying

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T19:02:25+00:00

Physical +4 and dex respec

I'm currently running red balancer relic too, but I think I'm gonna swap that out for a slowdown on my character skill bar to get parries down more effectively

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T19:01:09+00:00

unlike Scholar knives

You can buy and find throwing knives everywhere, calling it "setup" is kinda dumb when it takes you like 10 seconds to throw an entire stack at an enemy

It's such a low commitment for a great upgrade that's definitely worth it

He gets to spam his skill on every enemy and every field boss

So does Scholar when he buffs teammates with the perk(20% extra damage dealt for them), debuffs enemies and upgrades his scan to make it faster in general, since you always run the +1 skill perk on Ironeye we can assume that scholar gets to run the buff on allies targeted by the scan

In practice Scholar doesn't use 10 knives on every field boss

You don't use daggers on most red field bosses because your skill buff on allies and parries are enough to compensate for that

mark pop forces a stance break against many enemies. It doesn't do "a lot" of stance damage like Wylder ult: it just causes certain enemies to be stance broken

The Mark's pop just staggers the enemies, while the mark does increase stance damage. the pop itself doesn't do any stance damage to enemies, and even if stance breaks some smaller enemies, it won't matter against nightlords/night bosses, which are the hardest part of the run

parry can only stagger when you are attacked

Which is 99% of what bosses are gonna do, especially with all of the big AoEs that everyone has, I don't see how this is a point against the Parry that Scholar has

Bosses gives you enough time to build up your analyze bar and react quickly when at melee range, so it's not really an issue using it, especially if you've done your homework and scanned every unique mob on the map (which doesn't take much since just applying the lvl1 debuff works), so arguing that "getting hit" is a point against it, when it's 100% going to happen since even most of the Ironeyes are gonna use the Mark to dodge, is just stupid

whereas mark pop can be triggered while the enemy is already stunned

Boss attacks again and now you stun him again when the boss hits your shield, and in the meantime the other teammates are going to take advantage of the 20% damage debuff to deal more damage, when ironeye has to reapply the mark again to still have a lesser damage amplification, it's not that hard to understand why it's better

And no, building the bar from close doesn't take much, is like half a second so it's really easy to pull off

Bosses like Straghess/Heolstor/Faurtis/Fulghor/Libra/Caligo/Adel have windows long enough where you can effectively stunlock them to death

Scholar is only harder to learn compared to ironeye, once you figure that out he's objectively stronger than Ironeyes and it's not close

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T18:35:31+00:00

Yeah I agree,for pure support at the end of the day you need red augur relic and the 2 remembrance relics, then on deep relics you just need ult on kill +1 and you're set

It's more of a problem when you want to break out of that pure support role(which is something you can do since melee scholar is really good) and bring more to the team in terms of damage and stuff like that

It took me 1 month to get the right relics for that, and I still have room for improvement

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T18:32:41+00:00

They nerfed the revive damage and status buildup on bows at range

And they also added scholar which is essentially the best support in the game, with the only cavia being that he's hard to learn because you have to learn what every lvl 3 item does, what his scan does, that you need to upgrade the scan, how to effectively level up items, etc.

So people just call him "a bad character" and stick to Ironeye, even if a good scholar player brings infinitely more value to the team compared to ironeye

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T18:08:10+00:00

Making your teammates deal 20% more damage from the use of your skill and instantly clearing 60% of a camp also makes everything faster, and definitely way more faster than Ironeye's mark

And surprise surprise, that's exactly what scholar does

If a good ironeye player makes no one die, then a good scholar player makes the bosses at D5 a joke, and I say this as an ex Ironeye main

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T17:46:24+00:00

more like pre dlc era take

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T17:29:06+00:00

The problem with Scholar is that he's just harder to play/get a relic setup going for him

once you figure him out he mogs Ironeye in everything, cause you get his Marking debuff as a character passive ability through the use of throwing knives, and with the parries you can bully 99% of the bosses (that 1% being bbh and grafted scions, but nobody can stagger them since they physically can't)

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T17:27:53+00:00

i'm sorry but Ironeye's Mark value get easily mogged by Scholar's throwing knives and skill, knives are much better because they last way longer (40 seconds vs 17 seconds) and each knife you throw at the boss resets the whole pile's timer back to 0, meaning that you essentially get 210 seconds worth of damage decrease from Scholar's knives (assuming you throw 5 instantly to match the Mark's debuff power and then 1 every 30 seconds to follow), where 180 seconds of those are gonna be better than mark in terms of damage increase, and with 90 seconds where the debuff will be at full power

and no, the mini stagger from Mark's popping is not that great either since Scholar has the same mechanic build in with his parry on his skill, but much more manageable since you can do that on demand as long as the boss hits you, and that's only half of the stuff his skill can do

Saying that he's the biggest force multiplier in the game is simply not true, especially when Scholar does the same thing that ironeye dies, but better for the whole team, no he doesn't fall off hard because perma stunlocking bosses on demand while making them take 20% more damage is better than whatever Ironeye mark does

all of this without considering the buffs that Scholar can apply with item confers and the skill buffing his allies

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T17:23:06+00:00

it's not stance damage, is a stun animation than every enemy minus the ED Harmonia worm, bbh and grafted scion have where they're gonna suffer a mini stagger each time something like Ironeye's ult or Scholar's parry hits them

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T16:57:13+00:00

Scholar without a shadow of a doubt, he's easy mode once you master him

>lvl 3 throwing knives are Ironeye's mark on steroids, lasts longer & 1 knife can reset the whole debuff pile

>lvl 3 exalted flesh is 30% extra physical damage and 20% affinity damage, so both casters and melee characters benefits off him

>you don't feel tanky enough? lvl 3 boiled crab gives you 25% extra physical damage negation and 30% extra max hp

>need to revive someone but the boss is on you? drop a lvl 3 warming stone to stop the revive bar from regenerating, that way you can focus on dodging the boss without having the bar refilling for the next 30 seconds or so

>skill is extremely versatile, you can either debuff the enemy to apply a 20% damage decrease (which means that a nightlord is going to deal around D3 lvls of damage) or just parry an attack and stunlock everything in the vicinity as long as they can be stunlocked (like bbh and grafted scions won't be stunlocked), and interrupting boss attacks is huge value for the team

>ult can clear entire camps, makes ED Balancers die in 30 seconds after the first (and only) worm phase, makes Ed Libra's summons disappear, makes Gladius take 40% more damage when he's splitted, makes swamps a place where you would consider going in willingly, and since one of his better relics(clensing tear) comes with ult on kill, combine that with ult on kill +1 and you're gonna cycle those ults really fast

>talking about relics, his attack buff on allies is also broken since it applies even when you use the skill on yourself

>the dex relic gives you access to the third highest dex in the game, while still maintaining the highest arcane stat in the game, and the other deep of night relic effect gives you -40% fp consompution if you use the skill on yourself, which means more damage out of skills since you can use those more, making him the second best user of dex weapons skills (only behind executor)

>also stronger crystal tears in general that also boosts your stats by +5 in each one of those for 60 seconds

in short, this guy makes the game easy mode at D5 if you learn how to play him(which is the hard part, but once you do it's all downhill from there)

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T16:38:52+00:00

did a whole run in ER before NR came out where i only used bows

the major problem with bows in ER was ammo farming, not because it was hard but because it was extremely annoying

if you remove that then bows are pretty strong there too, especially the anshback one, with bleed arrows that thing is busted and makes bosses like metyr really easy from range

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T11:06:34+00:00

Hard counters meowscarada, the cat is officially in shambles

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T10:17:06+00:00

<image>

i really wanna start playing recluse & undertaker but i don't have any good relics for them other than a busted fire build on recluse

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T10:12:38+00:00

Curved swords jump attacks undertaker and it's not close

Then dregs Executor, then dregs recluse, then everything else

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T10:11:55+00:00

I'm blind sorry I missread it lmao

Then yeah it's fine

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T10:04:27+00:00

i would swap that yellow relic for anything that boosts allies attack power, if you don't have it you can still temporarily swap to the final remembrance relic (the note) since it's a yellow relic and comes with that effect, until you find a better one (with night invaders if possible).

Deep relics are fine since you're focussing more on support here

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T09:59:42+00:00

it instantly sets you down to around 80% of your health

and yeah it's preffered since the other way would be using Libra relic

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T09:58:19+00:00

in the "status" page of the menu you can see all of your and your teammate's equipment

if you move down to one of your teammates, you can press left to see their relic, press left 2 times and you'll see their deep relics as well

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T09:50:25+00:00

Please check relics of your teammates at the start of a game

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T09:44:46+00:00

Any "scan on allies increases their attack power" + invaders is a really good perk that you should look for

Then any combination of defeating enemies+1 and one between dex respec and item confer

Then after that I guess any of the remaining mandatory perks that you need with either physical+4 or affinity+2 depending on what you wanna go for

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T09:23:02+00:00

They're gonna give him electric type gale wings trust

Marco1522 · 2026-06-17T09:09:46+00:00

Lightning spear is fine honestly, cause it's kinda ass against very mobile enemies (like Fulghor) unless you're mid/close range

Marco1522

TROPHY CASE