Leaderboard

I once used Aloth as SC Wizard as a tank with a large shield (Cadhu Scalth with maxed Athletics and Metaphysics), dropping lots of illusion self buffs and use the Essential Phantom with Concelhaut's Draining Touch as an additional tanky body). That worked pretty well - but later game enemies who throw around Arcane Dampener every chance they get can be annoying. Still, he can be a good frontliner. He even works well enough for me in the froint line with just a quarterstaff (+modal). The recovery malus only applies to attacks he's doing with the staff, so for casting without accuracy malus yet good (melee) deflection that's a nice setup. However, the Phantom cannot use the modal so it's a lot tankier if you use a shield. You could switch to a shueld, summon the phantom and switch back to a staff - but I find that to be a tedium after some fights. I also use Xoti as SC Priest in the front line frequently with her lantern and sickle. She can hold the line as well - as long as she's not the only one. I'm sure Konstanten could hold off some enemies in the front line, too. This might be the best place for him anyway because of his low INT and therefore short invocation ranges. As a Skald he could use a dagger setup with modal (bonus deflection) and become super fast. His melee damage would suffer a bit from the modal, but he would be study in melee and generate a lot of attack rolls and therefore a lot of crits for his already cheap offensive invocations. Something like Ben Fidel's stuff should work nicely for the Bloody Parry: no hard CC that prevents attacks completely, but frightened enemies cannot use offensive abilities and spells then which limites them to auto-attacks mostly - great for the Bloody Parry to only receive standard attacks. I think if you combine two of them with the Bloody Parry build (who can be in the middle and be the "main" tank without having to tank every melee enemy) it can work very well. What I mostly meant when I was saying that it doesn't work too well as a main tank was that it will struggle to be the main and only tank(ish) character out there. If you have some two decent offtank support characters it should be good. Those also prevent enemies from just running past the central tanky guy left and right. Anything that lowers enemies' accuracy is great for the Bloody Parry build: PER-afflictions (Wizard, Rogue - e.G. Blinding Strikes with AoE weapons such as mortars or rods with Blast, Smoke Bomb), Accuracy malus (Priest's Desponent Blows is great here) and such. And in additon to that_ anything that raises deflection and stacks with the Bloody Parry's own deflection buffs (RES Inspirations and Circle of Protection for example). So Wizard (or Wizard/Rogue), Rogue and Priest are great, Chanter is good, too. Cipher would also be great.

I am trying this build at the moment. What do you recommend as a party composition? On re-reading I see you say this cannot be the primary tank which makes sense since he cannot engage enemies until later levels. I am already level 7, but can mod things myself. Currently running Xoti as a SC Priest I modded Konstanten to be a Devoted/Skald, not sure if he could tank (Also not sure if he should go for for flail devoted for Sun and Moon instead of Sabre for Sasha's Singing Scimitar) I want to take Aloth with me, thinking of either SC Mage or Rogue/Wizard My last party member is Maia as Rogue/Ranger. I feel like Chanter and Priest is very good for this build. Thinking a Cipher might also help. Not sure you my Aloth and Maia Advice appreciated!