Renaissance Woman's not the only option that provides mitigation! Baked into All-Defeating is a half-stage of mitigation against all Curses from its prerequisite; shaving even an additional 5% off the Apocryphal Curse a lot of long-term safety. It also paradoxically boosts our teamwork with Gisena. No need to mess around with Edeldross shields when our Blade-granted boons are totally immune to nullification! Bone thrown to the Gisena Gang aside, the best thing about ADS is also the simplest: it's synergistic.
It's really synergistic, Cut Through converts +5 Willpower to +5 Might and Agility on top of the +5 Might & Agility All-Defeating already gives. All stats also entails +5 intellect, absolutely dwarfing what we got from King of Thieves, making All-Defeating Stance the literal big-brain option. But the fun doesn't stop there: wisdom, charisma, manipulation, protection, luck? All boosted by five! Even Uttermost's debuff can't rain on that parade. As the cherry on top, our enormously improved Cha & Man are doubled against weaker adversaries, who are made innately aware that the odds are not in their favor. If we take Vigor Incarnate, Cha's added to Prot; Fierce Quickening's capstone'll likely do something similar. Also all of these stats are boosted 30% by Edeldross. Jesus wept, look at all these feedback loops. What are we even supposed to do with this much synergy?!
Strength's generally inferior to agility when it comes to combat, but since we took Zweihander the Power of Ruin scales based on it... and now it's multiplied by 5 and applied automatically against anything that targets us. To shamelessly steal Rihaku's argument, consider the implications for Stranglethorn, which doubles our strength! There's been interest in taking it as our second Defining Advancement since Stranglethorn's lone downside is a moot point now that doubling Willpower also buffs Might & Agi. We'd get a cumulative +50% increase to future Rank gains, letting us shore up the only weak spot in the All-Defeating build. Not that it's much of one, since the Power of Ruin (now multiplied five-fold and universally applicable, need I remind you) works in tandem with our Pressure to nerf everything.
Speaking of Rank, it's a straight shot from the All-Defeating Stance to Once and Future, which can be purchased at any spending point and is already slightly discounted. The DEEP LORE aside, taking that grants us a 3-EFB Special Advancement, which if Trinity's anything to go by will be absurd. Concerns about echoing the Forebear's brutality are overplayed, I think, given the traits Hunger's exhibited so far and his exceptional willpower. If we want to go non-lethal, to spare worthy enemies on the field of battle, that's easily within our grasp. What is Edeldross for, if not mercy and buffing? Power of this magnitude opens doors, it doesn't close them.
If Infiltration stole a march on you because you were busy with other affairs and you wanted to wreck the place, this is your moment. Don't let the Self-Defeating Stance rob us of a virtually assured victory. After scraping by so many fights as a wraith, we deserve a win. Vengeance + Scepter was compared to playing Odyssial during the Primordial War, that's what convinced me to ditch Dread but Dreaming. What more fitting way to fulfill the promise of that description than by tearing down the Temple of the False Moon with the Forebear's Blade in hand?
