marc5477

There are very few hard battles in the game once you hit level 10 on PotD. You would need to travel to the northern part of the map for some of the harder stuff. The difficulty is also very dependent on your characters. If you selected an OP cheese abilities (monk crit build, paladin AOE resurrect, etc) then nothing will make the game harder because those abilities are very powerful.

Are you complaining about cast speed or number of chants? Chanters gain more chants during battle allowing you to cast more as battles wear on. But unlike pure casters, they cannot just unload 5-6 spells consecutively because it takes times to generate chants. Its more like a cipher in that way. The good news however, is you never run out of spells during combat unlike pure casters who have a limited number of casts. If you are talking about cast speed, then all casters have the same issue with nukes, summons and debuffs. Paladin spells are no different. Buffs usually cast faster for everyone. To cast faster you need to increase dex, and control recovery speed by using lighter armors.

Most of that melee dps for the wizard/fighter comes from charge and cleave. After playing with various fighter multis I realized that even if fighter is one of the most effective base classes for multis, it's still kinda boring. Now I started a paladin/wizard and I enjoy it a lot more, even with the weaker melee dps or the non-existent melee pbaoe I enjoy the support parts of the class. (also now that I decided to bench both Aloth and Pallegina a paladin/wizard made more sense. :D) I mean... melee dps is mostly from auto attack regardless of class played even a paladin. The pally just replaces stances + barrage with devotion + mark as bread and butter (until late game AOE DPS + resurrect cheese which cant be achieved with multi anyway). Also, its sort of wasteful to use charge for DPS. That is not the best use of discipline. If you want dps, just use barrage. Charge is for movement to take down priests, wizards, druids and ciphers (in that order). For support, the fighter excels at speed and mobility. They can cross a battlefield to tackle casters or to rescue allies. They can pull baddies (and allies), knock down, charge, and engage lots of baddies. All the while putting out respectable DPS. They are lightening fast even with heavy armor thanks to armored grace. The fighter is significantly more active when it matters the most, at the start of combat where he dictates the flow of the battle. They are also effective all game long. The key active abilities are all taken by power level 4 instead of near end of the game when they dont even matter any more. Armored grace is tier 5. Paladins on the other hand are not meant to move. They have no mobility skills and they also lack any hard disables. They make up for this with better defensive passives and heals (at least early on, later the warrior has a better self heal). The few debuffs they have are long cast time/recovery and short duration but most importantly is they dont have a hard disable. Also, the big fancy AOE (sacred immo) does not come until very late in the game and is risky especially, if youre a multi without the resurrection cheese at tier 9. There is nothing wrong with pally. Its a great class and possibly broken OP if you go pure. I built Pelligina this way my 1st game. I especially like Pally because it can easily be handled by AI triggers. Good luck getting the AI to properly decide when to tank and when to charge at casters with a fighter. It cant do it.

You basically want a active multi-role unit. I recommend one of the following: Wizard/Fighter - Top tier tank, mid tier melee/caster dps, top tier debuff/disable, low tier heals Wizard/Paladin - Like fighter but gives up melee dps for more tanking and better heals... problem is, you dont need more tanking. Wizard/Monk - so OP that is practically broken. Makes the game trivial like any other crit monk build. Wizard/Fighter is my recommendation. Powerful at every level without feeling broken and can cover any role effectively (except healing) depending on who you bring with you. Good engagements, and can tank anything with a shield or can off tank and DPS with dual wield or 2H. Armored Grace means you can wear the heaviest of armors and still be useful on offense. With mid weight armor, can have zero recovery. Can fly around the field and target casters/ranged easily. Good range DPS, good AOE DPS, and tons of debuffs and disables. Self heal during the important early engagement when you need it the most (when ever ranged unit is targeting and every melee gets a hit on engagement). Pretty much a great all round class and can be very active if you want him to be. Can be lazy when you want too.

Literally 3-8 great spells at every tier. It just depends on what you do. I mean, level 1 alone has: Minor Missiles = no resists and more missiles as you level Chill Fog = great damage and free debuff Slicken = excellent disable, useful all game long Spirit Shield = near instant cast, long lasting 3 armor? yes thank you and double thank you if you are a melee wizard Nothing wrong with flame fan and jolting touch either. Tier 2 is worse... in a good way. As in it has even more great spells: Mirror Image - Awesome and is insanely good if youre a tank. Gaze - Another amazing spell and totally broken if you're a multiclass crit focused monk/rogue. Miasma - long lasting -10 deflection against will which fighters are weak to? Yes, thank you. Binding Web - Another awesome disable. Necrotic Lance - excellent damage vs Fort. caster killer. Arcane Veil - for those oh-spit moments. Ray of Fire - Fire laser that hurt the target and everything in between every second for 10-20 seconds? Awesome. Rolling Flame - very long range, great to open engagement and for blowing up explosives until you get flame wall

Wizard/Fighter. Starts slow but get strong by level 10. Excellent tank along with Wizard/Paladin. The warrior version has much better melee dps however. Wizard/Monk: Like other monk crit builds, is basically so OP that it might be considered broken. Spirit Lance + Gaze (15% crit) + monk crit abilities makes for silly results.

Its hard to help if we dont know your team makeup. Do you have any tanks? Did you try moving the squishies as soon as battle begins? Can you equip the squishies with heavier armor and/or shields? At your level, most enemies will be higher level so you need to play more defensively. You simply dont have the hit points to survive yet. At around level 8 or 9 it wont be a problem.

enemy target character with less deflection? Source? Someone told me aggro works around armor not deflection Its absolutely not true. I have played all my time in PotD and this is not the case. In ship battles, my 2 front liners are always the people targeted by ranged. The enemies that cross will go after the back line but only because I cannot possibly block everyone. Rogues especially seem to like go after softer characters but everyone else targets who ever is closer. Engaged rogues also stop running around with exception to those nasty xurip plaguebastards or whatever they are called. They go invis, can walk through anything, and go straight for the low defense folks.

Im just going to rank the casters based on what I have seen in game. #1 Wizard - By far, the best selection. Has a spell for anything and anyone and you are not dependent on ability points thanks to books. Only problem is limited number of casts. But you just cant beat the selection and they are all viable even the level 1 and 2 stuff. In fact, slicken is awesome pretty much all game long. #2 Cypher - Less variety than the wizzy and needs ability point invested in each one you want to use. But unlimited casts as long as you can generate focus. Charm is insanely good against low will opponents. Being able so spam it, is just silly. And it last a good long time and it does not break when you attack the charmed enemy. #3 Chanter - Some good stuff on both the active and passive sides with the only issue being short duration on the active side. The passives are nice but are not nearly as powerful as active spells from other classes. There are also no hard disables in the passive tree if memory serves me. #4 Druid - Like the wizard, has a bunch of disables and debuffs but like the Cypher, you have to select them using ability points. The good news is that you get at least 1 free spell per level plus your regular ability points so you end up with plenty of spells by the end. Also, their damage spells tend to have a debuff or disable as well namely the storm line of spells which offer freezing and stuns. And there is a early game weapon that improves storm spells by 3 power levels making them very formidable. I honestly dont use a priest because I hate Xoti's voice so I cant comment on them very much.

I think balance should be left to mods. Its not new content nor a bug fix thus its a waste of time for paid devs. Id rather they work on new content. Also, balance is never going to happen for power players for the simple reason that once you have played the game, you can no longer unplay it and forget. By playing it once, you already have so much meta knowledge that no balance can ever be achieved. Finally, I play with none of the OP stuff in my game and it is still trivially easy on PotD. Thus, nerfs will not help make it less trivial.

I think I know what went wrong for you. Tanking is an (almost) all or nothing skill on PotD. You are either all in, or it will not work so well and that is true of all classes except maybe Paladin with their nutty passives. If you build your toon to tank, then Mirror Image is awesome because it takes you from normal tank to very hard to hit for only a level 2 spell and for a very long time. It works great on my wizard/fighter when I want him to tank but I did build him for tanking. I usually open with mirror image rather than anything else. If it does not do the job, then I move up to L3 buff. Ironskin is actually not good for a tank vs multiple opponents but is awesome for a roaming DPS character who just wants to hit and run. Here are my guideline for tanking in PotD: How much deflection do I need to tank on PotD? L1 - L5 = Does not matter as long as you dont venture outside the early quest areas. L6 - L10 = 60-65 minimum (before buffs). That said, I did face several enemies with over 100 accuracy so obviously, more is better. L11 and up = 90-100 minimum before buffs. Enemy accuracy will climb as high as 130 (maybe even more, didnt check everything). Surprisingly, you dont need tons of armor protection to tank well if your deflection is very high. It obviously helps, but most of the time, you dont need it. So I just use light armor or 35% armor once I get the warrior armor passive. This is one of the reasons why my main tank is keeping up with a DPS pure Wizard Eloth in total damage. He hits pretty darn fast for a tank and along with cleave stance and other goodies, he is respectable DPS. Anyway, at around mid levels (L6-L10), most stuff will have accuracy of between 60 and 80. Which means that the deflection from mirror image would make you very hard to hit since you will have 90-95 deflection. I rarely see mirror image drop before its timer. Just watch your flanks and of course, none of this stops abilities that target other defenses but that is why you bring healers.

It actually had weapon summons but I focused on defensive stuff because I built it to main tank the gods ;-p The summoned weapons are really just for RPG flavor (same with the 2H) because they are not very good. If you are power gaming, then you obviously go with dual wield and you open each battle differently. You dont want summoned weapons if you want to min/max. They take a while to summon, dont last all battle long, and cost a spell. Anyway here is the DPS version. Pick up the obvious dual wield stuff and subtract 5 int and 5 resolve to max out dex for 30% faster attack. This will reduce deflection by 5 which is manageable. Human Unbroken/Wizard (DPS version) Might - 19 Constitution - 7 Dexterity - 18 Perception - 18 Intelligence - 10 Resolve - 5 Now select the spells that define your play. Instead of all the defensive stuff, pick up DPS related stuff. There are a lot of great spells for either pure DPS or support for melee DPS. The key to debuffing is to know your enemies. In general, you want a variety of debuffs that work against the various defenses; deflection, fortitude, reflex and will power. The general rule of thumb is to identify the enemy weaknesses by watching what they do or looking at what they wear: Casters or Robes = High Will, Low Fort and Med Reflex/Deflection. Target with fort spells. Ranged or Leather/Padded Armor = High Reflex, Med Fort/Deflection and Low Will. Target with will spells. Melee or Heavy Armor = High Fort/Deflection, Med Will, Low reflex. Target with reflex spells. L1 - Minor Missiles (no resists), Chill Fog (frost vs fort, very OP for level 1) L2 - Merciless Gaze (long lasting 15% crit) L3 - Expose Vulnerabilities (great AOE debuff vs Will... great against front line attackers) L4 - Phantom (more dps), Concussive Missiles (against deflection), Wall of Flame (fire vs reflex, great against stationary stuff) L5 - Piggy (vs Fort... because its fun), Spirit Lance (is actually not bad due to AOE effect), Arkemyrs Tormet (long lasting debuff vs Will) L6 - Piercing Burst (15 penetration... vs reflex), Arkemyrs Hex (vs Will) L7 - Martial Power, Substantial Phantom (more dps) Open with those spells and go to town. I would also invest in the Wizard penetration passives and I am not 100% but if the warrior tactical barrage works on wizard power level then that should be high priority. Do you know if your normal weapon stats persist when you summon a weapon? The summoned weapon replaces your current weapon for the duration of the spell. As others have stated, summoned stuff is not for power gamers. But the game is not hard enough for power gamers anyway even on PotD so I say, play how you want. My personal favorite is the spirit lance summon because it has innate 20% speed buff and is an AOE weapon which opens up some interesting combos like Lance + Merciless Gaze. It is a good weapon and can be power gamey... for example: If you want to be cheesy (and insanely OP) go with Wizard/Monk and take all the on-crit monk passives. Then use lance+gaze combo for all the monk crit goodies but I need to be honest, it is game breaking. Its not as bad as the blunderbuss nonsense, but its still pretty bad.

True, I'm tired of all my characters being green. I'll think of a good solution and add to the OP. Because the game has 0 replayability due to being trivial AF atm? And how do you plan to nerf yourself during the 2nd play through? The nerfs will do nothing if you already have meta knowledge of the game. Honestly if you do nerf, I would only do it for PotD. I think new players should be able to find these OP abilities in their 1st run on another difficulty.

It actually had weapon summons but I focused on defensive stuff because I built it to main tank the gods ;-p The summoned weapons are really just for RPG flavor (same with the 2H) because they are not very good. If you are power gaming, then you obviously go with dual wield and you open each battle differently. You dont want summoned weapons if you want to min/max. They take a while to summon, dont last all battle long, and cost a spell. Anyway here is the DPS version. Pick up the obvious dual wield stuff and subtract 5 int and 5 resolve to max out dex for 30% faster attack. This will reduce deflection by 5 which is manageable. Human Unbroken/Wizard (DPS version) Might - 19 Constitution - 7 Dexterity - 18 Perception - 18 Intelligence - 10 Resolve - 5 Now select the spells that define your play. Instead of all the defensive stuff, pick up DPS related stuff. There are a lot of great spells for either pure DPS or support for melee DPS. The key to debuffing is to know your enemies. In general, you want a variety of debuffs that work against the various defenses; deflection, fortitude, reflex and will power. The general rule of thumb is to identify the enemy weaknesses by watching what they do or looking at what they wear: Casters or Robes = High Will, Low Fort and Med Reflex/Deflection. Target with fort spells. Ranged or Leather/Padded Armor = High Reflex, Med Fort/Deflection and Low Will. Target with will spells. Melee or Heavy Armor = High Fort/Deflection, Med Will, Low reflex. Target with reflex spells. L1 - Minor Missiles (no resists), Chill Fog (frost vs fort, very OP for level 1) L2 - Merciless Gaze (long lasting 15% crit) L3 - Expose Vulnerabilities (great AOE debuff vs Will... great against front line attackers) L4 - Phantom (more dps), Concussive Missiles (against deflection), Wall of Flame (fire vs reflex, great against stationary stuff) L5 - Piggy (vs Fort... because its fun), Spirit Lance (is actually not bad due to AOE effect), Arkemyrs Tormet (long lasting debuff vs Will) L6 - Piercing Burst (15 penetration... vs reflex), Arkemyrs Hex (vs Will) L7 - Martial Power, Substantial Phantom (more dps) Open with those spells and go to town. I would also invest in the Wizard penetration passives and I am not 100% but if the warrior tactical barrage works on wizard power level then that should be high priority.

I mean... a blade spends a lot of time in auto attack too. That said, I play my guy a bit differently. 1st, I almost never run out of spells if I am tanking. I usually dont even cast anything until the field is under control. I pop a deflection buff (they do not stack), and wait about 10 seconds for pets and summons to get into action. Once the field is no longer chaotic, I go to town. I switch to a DPS weapon, and hunt down and disable casters/bosses. Once they are under control or dead, I disable and cleave groups. Sometimes I pull him back for support if the big bitters are under attack but in general, he is all over the place because he can be. In my game right now, at level 7, he is: Most enemies defeated (41) 12 damage less than top damage behind full wizzy Aloth (4924). This is misleading since the other 2 dps are summoning chanter and ranger with pet. 28 damage less than top damage tanked behind full fighter dual wield saber Eder (2858). 0.6 damage less than top single target damage behind Aloth (65). Only knocked out 2 times while main tanking the hardest parts of every fight (and both were early in the game). And mind you, he spends time disabling and tanking with a shield. I would say that in terms of roles, he is top tier tank, near top tier support/disable, mid tier melee dps and mid tier caster dps. If he was not tanking and disabling he would easily have 20% more damage. Also, the build is flexible. You can make a more DPS oriented version by removing 5 from int and resolve and maxing out dex for 30% more attack speed. I need to try your blade to see how it is.