b0rsuk

I second this post. You don't necessarily need to swap Kana for the paladin. Chanters are comfortable in heavy armor. Just keep in mind bigger shields decrease your accuracy with invocations. Chanters have okay deflection, I had Kana tank really nasty endgame monsters with heavy armor and a shield. In general, characters with many activated abilities are good in light armor because they can use them quicker. Chanters have few, that's why they can wear plates. I like small shield + plate for stronger opponents, plate + two-handed weapon for weaker ones or when enemy is not targeting me. Also, press 's' as soon as combat starts. Slow mode combined with pause makes combat much more managable.

Zwiebelchen: Removing collision would be a severe blow to positioning and formations. Blizzard games are infamous for not having these. In Blizzard's strategy game, Starcraft 2, an army is often called a ball. I like the idea about Prone characters not blocking movement. Logical, would help. While we're at it, I think prone characters should be able to drink potions. How about monsters breaking engagement ? I think that would help. Yes, they would suffer disengagement attacks. Shouldn't monsters be smart enough to ignore disengagement attacks from a min-maxed tank with 2 Might ? I would love to see an encounter where the monsters are smart enough to hold a choke point and have a lot of ranged attacks past it. A lot of the time encounters simply don't have ranged attacks, or very weak ones. Staying out of doorways, being smarter wouldn't help them. In cases where they DO have high firepower, they should target stuff past line holders. That's really nasty to people with tank/DPS mentality.

Not really. Turning Wheel encourages having as many wounds as possible, and maybe if you're spamming Torment's Reach you want lots of wounds. But you can do very well just disabling enemies with Force of Anguish and kicking them before they get up. My current party has monk on the front line accompanied by Kana and Pellegrina in plates. He doesn't feel squishy unless targeted by range attacks, in which case I send tin cans first. A build like this only needs enough wounds.

It would be too easy to get a ton of traps from there.

(It looks like I can't delete posts)

You want fast attacks and high Interrupt rating. High perception for starters. You can interrupt enemy spellcasters very well. I have a monk with 16 base Perception, he's a great interruptor. People say Interrupting Blows talent, which I also took, is currently bugged and does nothing. IB bonus is likely additive and benefits from fast attacks. Sagani is good at interrupting.

Sagani has the misfortune of being specialized in Hunting Bows, which suffer greatly from enemy Damage Reduction. If you take Penetrating Shots, you'll be trading 20% firing speed for +5 damage. Actually most enemies have at least 5 DR. Enemies with 0 DR are hard to find, and become even less common in later stages. There is a bow you can find late in the game which has built-in 5 DR penetration. Also, use Kana's invocation which reduces enemy DR. Speaking of Kana, you may want to use the phrase with faster reload. Either way, make her focus on soft targets like non-skeletal mages and priests. She has +15 accuracy against beasts and wilders (Ogres etc), keep that in mind too. You can keep a pair of bows: one for wilders, one for beasts. 2nd level Wizard spell "Combusting Wounds" makes enemies take 5 fire damage on each hit. This is great with fast attacks, like Sagani's. Games started after patch 1.03 have Itumaak with 15 Dexterity instead of 10. He attacks faster, and benefits more from Combusting Wounds. Another approach is to forget about bow damage altogether. Don't use Marked Prey, a waste of time. There's a high-level passive ability Stunning Shots. If you hit an enemy engaged by your companion, he's stunned ! A regular hit is enough, no need for critical. You would probably still want Vicious Aim for +10 accuracy, but you may not want to bother with penetration if you go that route. Sagani already starts with Wounding Shot. The slowing effect depends on accuracy, but not damage. Binding Roots don't rely on bow. People say the talent is currently bugged and does nothing, but Interrupting Blows works with ranged attacks and cares about accuracy, not damage. Sagani already has great Perception, so once a patch fixes that it should be a good fit. You can focus on talents which buff the fox instead of the bow. Merciless Companion gives +30% fox damage against flanked, prone, stunned etc enemies. Predator's Sense gives +50% against targets which are taking damage over time (Wounding Arrow, and a bow you can find early). Takedown is a great ability, it gives you two knockdowns per encounter (initially 1).

You guys are such a tease ! I'm already in my second playthrough, I can't manage 3rd one now for DPS ranger. Think about it: Level1: Swift Aim Level2: Swift and Steady It might take 2 levels instead of one, but you're getting 50% rate of fire increase for the price of 2 accuracy. That's... good ? Now forget about Swift Aim. Does any other class has such an opportunity to stack accuracy talents and abilities ? I thought accuracy was KING in this game ? * regular weapon training: +6 accuracy (Available to everyone) * Stalker's Link: +15 accuracy. +15!!!!! * Vicious Aim: +10 accuracy. * Marksman: +5 accuracy (available to everyone) * Defensive Shooting: +20 accuracy. WAT. I really don't like this skill conceptually, but hey, +20 is +20. Is there a melee shooting penalty ? If this merely compensates for penalty, I could understand. So if you exclude Defensive Shooting I'm unsure about, you can easily have +36 accuracy bonus. +41 for elves with Distant Advantage. +51 accuracy for a Boreal Dwarf shooting a dragon, spider, ogre etc. Dead on! Now you can use spells, paladin Zealous Focus aura, potion of Eldritch Aim, scroll of Valor. There are ranged weapons which stun or knock down on crit. ----------------- I'm also going to research melee rangers. If stuff like Wounding Shot works with melee weapons, you could do something like this: 1. Engage an enemy with Ranger and his pet. The target is now flanked. 2. Takedown (from pet) 3. The pet is getting +30% damage from Merciless Companion 4. Wounding Shot 5. The pet is now getting +50% damage from Predator's Sense. And if you happen to have a weapon that deals extra damage to prone targets, +20% damage for ranger.

I would still appreciate some more variety in pets. They work for flanking and for tanking, but I would enjoy a glass cannon pet like a Wurm, with ranged attack. It would need a different build, where perhaps the ranger is doing the tanking and the pet is the damage dealer of the two. Managing ammo was a micromanagement chore for the most part, and camping supplies replace that. But a good point about special ammo. Very expensive special ammo for special occasions would be neat. Slowing arrows, dispel magic arrows, etc.

Galavain's Boon gives +1 Might or DR, something like that.

Seriously now, you don't even need cheese to beat the dragon with a suboptimal party. The dragon nukes several party members at once ? Don't put all eggs in the same basket !!! Send Eder downwards, along the edge of the cliff. The dragon will come and face away from your party. He will only breath at Eder, who can take it with some potions of Major Endurance and displaced image potions. Second Chance is good too. The rest of the party can circle around, and attack the dragon from behind. As long as Eder is not down, he will focus on him and area attacks will only affect one. This sounds like a basic tactic, doesn't it ? In face of area attacks, spread your party. You can even surround the dragon if you feel like it. This way you can kill the dragon through brute force. Sounds good to me! You drink a potion of Major Endurance between breaths. In my case I used about 3 during an entire fight, but they're cheap enough that you can craft 4x5 = 20 if you really want.

Quake or Command&Conquer. Which do you prefer ?

Rumor has it it's because they're going to be ridiculously min-maxed, and they can stand a little setback like that. Hire them at level1 and you won't be getting level0's ;-).

No, the pets don't suck. Merciless Companion alone gives you 30% more damage. They deal respectable damage, and Takedown ability gives your pet up to 2 knockdowns per battle. Then you can have roots, another active ability. Pets can deal surprising damage when used as a flanker. And have you seen Stunning Arrows ? Hit an enemy engaged by your pet and they're stunned ! You don't even need a critical, a regular hit will do. It's a passive. No, rangers don't have much micromanagement options. But that's an opportunity you can capitalize on. Give ranger gloves of healing or teach him/her Lore. You'll be able to cast emergency support spells and fire away for the remaining time.

What you're looking for is not companions, but thugs and mercenaries. You can hire those at any inn using "Hire adventurer" option. They are one level below, but that's only initially. That's a small price to pay for a fully min-maxed henchman, isn't it ? With Grieving Mother, try Ectopsychic Echo or Antipathetic Field. This thing can often kill an entire encounter by itself, on Hard.

It's a pity the choices you make don't have much impact on the game. On my second playthrough I play as the most vile and greedy person possible, and I've only been able to make Grieving Mother leave (then I reloaded because I wanted to try the remaining companions too). Other than that, companions will take anything you throw at them. Killing a person to get a drug discount, lying to people and luring them to their deaths, siding with a cruel tyrant. I do all this and more and still enjoy heroic reputation, and I'm a friend of Gilded Vale.

I kindly blame you for not putting "PotD" in the thread subject. Yes, the first post has the acronym, but it can be easily read as "Paladins are bad, by the way I play PotD".

I think it's randomly generated in one of shops. In my second playthrough I was surprised to see it in Gilded Vale shop, I haven't seen it before. Great stuff.

Also, stop acting like Path of the Damned is the correct way to play the game. I'd say it's the opposite - it's a rushed, least tested difficulty setting to keep min-maxers occupied. Difficulty levels like that are known for being exclusive. Rather than requiring more tactics and creativity, they just limit the number of abilities you can use effectively. The most common sin is very high monster resistances, which is a hard blow to any class that relies on debuffing, but a blessing to those who buff themselves. Path of the Damned is a limited subset of Pillars of Eternity. Blaming paladins for PotD quirks is intellectually dishonest.

Ah, so it's getting even better after the next patch ? Compared to my first playthrough, which was Eder, Kana, Durance, Druid, Hiravius, Sagani, monk fists really do well. I'm against ogres now (10 DR) and they're fine, the best part is I'm able to stay on front line for a long time against these hard hitters. And this time it's on Hard. And if ogres don't stop me...

On my second playthrough my party is: PC (tanky Perception monk), Kana, Pellegrina, Sagani, Grieving Mother, Aloth. It's a quite fun party. I have 3.5 melee fighters, and the fox doubles as a Ectopsychic Echo beacon. Fox of DooM ! The goal was to try all the remaining party members, and I decided against Eder because fighters are too passive. Knockdown is basically their only active ability. A priest is good at support, but squishy and needs to be protected very well. A paladin can fullfill a similar role and he can keep tying enemies on the front line. 4 melee characters make it very easy to set up a defensive line to tie up enemies, then you activate the beam of DooM (ectopsychic echo) and nuke them. With a priest, it would be harder to do, and a single enemy that sneaks past is big trouble. Paladins don't need to be protected. It is true that Paladins could use some work. They are fine for the most part, a solid foundation. But their abilities don't synergize as well. Libarating Exhortation would be much better if it worked on charmed characters. The flaming attack could use something, like high interrupt chance for example. Or get a +15 accuracy bonus. Too often it feels like it doesn't do anything. On-kill abilities are awkward on a class with low Accuracy. One ability which I think is underrated is Zealous Charge. It's an aura of speed ! Base radius is 5m, bigger than other auras. If you have just a few points of stealth on each char, and wear something like Lilith's Shawl (aura of stealth +1), you can CHAAARGE into battle very quickly and tie up enemy spellcasters before they know what's going on. The aura also has +15 disengage deflection, which makes it easy to reposition without consequences. I've been already thinking of taking Long Stride on my monk so he can go from one target to another quickly, and Zealous Charge would do that even better. Movement speed is more subtle and harder to measure than DPS, but it can be VERY useful. My monk is disabling baddies all over the place, pushing them away from Aloth, Sagani etc as the situation arises. But in 90% of battles they can only dream of getting past my paladin-backed line. Overall, I think Paladins are better for melee-oriented parties, and area attacks (from drakes, dragons) don't nuke them as much as priests. When there are strong area attacks, often a priest has nowhere to hide, and many priest spells have short range. Some shades or wurms can ruin a priest's day, instead of buffing the party he has to focus on saving his life. For people who like melee, I recommend paladins and chanters instead of priests. Additional body on the front line does make a difference, even if you'd otherwise have some healing.

Fists are faster than dual sabers, no ? There are advantages to attacking faster. Level2 wizard spell: Combusting Wounds, 5 fire damage each time the target is hit. My monk and Sagani love it. Also, my monk has 16 Perception, and Interrupting Blows. Sometimes I can stunlock enemies without really doing anything.

I don't understand what this fuss is about. I'm barely even using camping supplies or inns. This is on Hard. On my second plathrough I have a monk as a main, Pellegrina, Kana (melee with shields), Grieving Mother, Sagani, Aloth. This is 3 tanky characters + Itumaak, covered by aura of ... Endurance. I use Aloth's spells as support. Often stuff like Miasma of Dullmindness, and other weakening spells. Arcane Assault is used all the time, largely for the daze it provides. I like per-rest abilities. They make me think harder about using them. If all were per-encounter, all encounters would probably feel similar. You'd use them all as fast as possible. Also, figurines would be next to impossible to balance. I go as far as I can without resting, it's just more enjoyable than resting every encounter. I treat it as a challenge. Sometimes encounters start with Kana being badly wounded, so he probably will be in the back row. In others I'm out of level2 spells, because they were very handy in a particular battle. In others I need to be very careful about shielding Aloth from damage. All this creates variety and forces me to approach even similar encounters in different ways. This party kills most of monsters in melee. Three ogres and an ogre druid - sounds like fun! I fight them all at once, chokepoints limit me. Aloth is not "DPS", he's support. The concept of "DPS" is quite meaningless with per-rest abilities anyway, and that's good. In many cases, discussion about DPS indicates a shallow game. There is so much more to this game than how damaging a weapon is.

How do you use Torment's Reach ?? In theory, it has a 135 degree arc. In practice, I can't make it work on multiple enemies. I regret taking it. My monk has 10 INT. I like my monk with 10 Str, 16 Con, 16 Dex, 16 Perception. The extra perception combined with Interrupting Blows is nice to watch.

Okay, placing a sabre, then Resolution in the statue is one of the first things I tried. Back before patch 1.03 . It's a typical puzzle. But HOW do you do that ? I tried approaching it wielding the sabre, having HIGH lore, having high mechanics, wielding a torch etc. Maybe I need the sabre in my inventory, not wielded ? I'm only here because I eventually googled for it.