draego

Josh is still destroying all hope

You can get all 3 the companions of them during WM 1 around level 7-8. Zahua and Maneha can both be gotten basically after the initial incident when you first go to WM

The pet that does the most damage is wolf and is good for flanking and has some better defense against disengagement. High defense pet is antelope. Boar pet get damage bonus below 50% health. Stag pet has a carnage attack. If you go ranger make sure to invest in animal talents that give it more defense and better attack/damage. Also make sure to take Predator's Sense and find ways to do dot damage to enemy the pet is attacking. So there are a couple of wounding weapons that cause dot damage( Persistance bow, and drawn in spring dagger, Tidefall greatsword) also there are abilities and spells that cause dot damage. so ranger has Wounding Shot works in both melee and ranged. there are other abilities like Envenomed Strike or just have spell caster or chanter to cause DOT damage.

LUL that is what happens so many builds to tinker with. Melee rangers are high on micro and low on tons of actives. So if you think you will like that go for it. I would describe it as playing with two rogues so twice the micro so you dont get killed. Melee ranger for me is all about positioning and getting that flanked status with animal on an enemy. The ranged ranger version is really good at what it does. I beat the game with both ranged and melee ranger versions. I hear lots of complaints though about rangers and animals because if you are not willing to micro and use the animal more like a blunt tank they may die on you quite often. You can also build a tank ranger. i mean you can build a tank pretty much out of anything.

looks like its downloading

I dont think it matters to much. MC will end up being one character in 6 so you have to learn to control each character you choose to some extent. I like to think of MC from RP first then fight mechanics second. tank Barbs can be tough early on due to low def but later become plenty tanky and with the right shield very good at dps with good debuffs. Barbs are great at dealing with crowds and you will face crowds most of the game. for straight tank dps the chanter with dragon thrashed is prob the best but its a little to passive for my tastes but really effective if you dont want active abilities. One thing that is also great about barb is the on hit weapon effects transfer to carnage AOE so if say you have a sword that stuns on crit then when you crit your carnage hits you have a chance to stun the entire crowds near your barb. So for this build i like to look for weapons that have on hit/crit effects on them. Ciphers can be very powerful they have some great CC especially the first level charm which is fast cast speed. My favorite MC is a melee ranger in that scout type role where i sneak behind enemies with animal/ranger when feasible and start the attack with main party. The enemy gets distracted then I rush the enemy squishies with my ranger animal to pick them off. positioning not always there due to layouts but i do this without positioning by just keeping them hidden while battle starts then run around all the enemy frontline. A cipher in that role is just fine because they have powerful cc. So you can scout and sneak with them open battle with main tank and other melee then kick off charms, paralyze, frightens - all kinds of stuff from cipher. Also another way i open battles is to start casting a CC spell while hidden and before i cast the spell and my caster is unhiden, i unhide several of my melee characters so they get targeted then a split second later the spell hits. I mean you have to get used to how long spells take.

Do It

You have all hidden then just select the main tank or a few frontliners and have them attack or just unhide them only. You dont have to unhide all characters at same time. Just select only the ones you want to attack and leave the others hidden. To me yes tank + some other functions like dps and debuffs/ccs is better than just meat shield. That is why that barb/chanter/paladin make good tanks. The perform other functions in the party than just tank stuff. In that first map you are alone you dont have to kill anything. Follow the road and go to town and start collecting your companions. The game does not have to be done linear. You can come back to areas.

sorry ye that is such a small sample size of the game. So they go for Calsica i dont see an issue. if its just two party members and you have no real skills ye its hard to manage mobs. Once you get full party or close to full party with skills and spells you can manage mobs better. There really is no hard agro in this game. The AI does often pick targets based on perceived threat or perceived weakness like when they go for backline caster or ranged dps but you have to figure out ways to use cc and skills to stop them. I find unhiding only the tanky characters first will at least get the initial enemies targeting your more tanky characters. But then you will need to apply skills and cc to lock down enemies or degrade them to the point they dont hurt your stuff that much. That is why i found that barbarian build fun because they had lots of debuffs and with right weapons some cc. But most of the game lots of enemies will be trying to bypass your frontline or stronger characters to get at weaker ones or even teleporting to your backline. its just the nature of the game.

You can also try things like have squishies stay hidden for a tick and just attack with frontlines then open up from back. Also there are early spells that help with mobs. Priest has halt and Wizard has Fetid Caress. Druid has paralyze beast spell early. Cipher get whispers of treason and mental binding early. Chanter has The Thunder Rolled like Waves on Black Seas and phantom summon which stuns enemies two first level invocations. There is also just straight early blind spells that a lot of casters have to make it harder to hit a squishy The early game can be tough but once you get mores skills/abilities you can deal with mobs going after squishies better. I also do things like early on i will give aloth a medium/large shield in off weapon set if you are going ranged with him in main weapon set and if enemies attack him i switch to that setup for better defense and i also have a defensive spell are 2 ready to use like wizard double (if we are talking early game +40 def) and maybe pick up arcane veil +50 def

You definitely want to be able to do some damage. a complete turtle is not that useful in POE1. Some enemies will just ignore you and go for better targets. Sometimes with general builds you see up from main tank use resolve which some consider a good conversation stat but that is not really necessary. The stats that stand out to me are perception, intellect, resolve for conversations. some mix of these will do just fine for conversation. I like odd tanks like this one a barbarian tank. I actually made this my main tank and i used more tanky armor than build says. I dont min max either so nothing below 8-9 in stats. I like something like this because you can tank, debuff, and do some damage especially later on. Paladin and chanters make good tanks because they both have nice aoe damage spells and buffs so you can tank while doing damage and other stuff. Chanter has dragon thrashed chant and Paladins have sacred immolation (although this is late) for damage. Paladins get one of the best shields early on in first town. I usually make pallegina my main tank if i am not.

Check this post. basically its story flavor. You can give it to one of the revenants

Here is the info in the pillars wiki

I always thought it was easy to miss because you have to talk with ambassador twice. You dont get the quest the first time you talk with him with pallegina. the first time you talk with pallegina you get palleginas main quest and that is it. Then you have to talk with him again to get the sanguine plate quest. So i can see how some can miss it.

Check out this build by Boeroer. I did a main tank barb like what you describe with this build but i didnt go below 9 on any stat. So my stat spread was more M : 15 C : 9 D : 9 P : 15 I : 15 R : 15 Barb gets plenty of health/endurance and there is plenty of healing with barb savage defiance and veterans recovery and items and gear and other companions. This build is kinda squishy in the first act but that is not because of constitution but because barb has low deflection to start but its fine later on. I stuck with medium shields and there are two medium later on Badgradr's Barricade and Dragon's Maw that boost your damage nicely. Like Jaheiras mentioned these stats arent set in stone because they are not as important as the abilities and gear you pick. So if you want more con vs per that is fine also. I just didnt like dumping stats to much from a role playing point of view. But you can dump way more and be fine

make sure you post this in the technical support forum instead of here. This forum is for posting bugs to get fixed

In POE1 i made a pale elf berath priest white that wends\mystic. i did the visions dialogue presuming that berath was directing me to some issue in the world in dyrewood. By the end though i lose my faith and betray Berath because you know... So in POE2 i am going with new class since i lose my faith in POE1. Its was pretty funny that i meet Berath at the beginning. It does not go well.

ye i regret not voting morning star now that hunting bow won.

Oh i regret my vote now that hunting bow is winning. oh well.

Josh seems to be enjoying leaving the Pillars project

Yes weapon styles still work for the style you fight with and they dont stack. So they work just like regular weapons.

I dont know, i am finding the ranger just fine. Playing veteran upscaled only. Still early. But i heard the same issues about POE1 that were untrue. Rangers could do tons of damage that went unrecorded since the game didnt record the animal damage as part of your damage. It made the ranger look weak but that was all it was, perception. Not sure ye if that is what is happening again in POE2 yet havent played enough to say. In poe1 my animal rarely if ever died. So far in pOE2 its the same, I mean my animal hasnt died once. I actually enjoy the animal. I do get its not for everyone since not everyone want to do micromanagement, but i enjoy that part. The animal is not a tank just to auto run into combat with. I am playing stalker dual wield flanker type build. I also get that some players just want the archer gunner and not the animal.

Its intended. All soulbound weapons get bonus from any weapon focus.

+1

I searched a bit with google and it seems they do count and compared with PoE1, range weapons should have a tag for 1 handed or 2 handed now, though I don't see it in the weapon description Wrong Forum this is the POE 1 forum