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.

I'm under no delusion of being the ultimate nuker or a high tier DPS build. On the other hand I don't want to just be a self buffing damage sponge. Ideally I'd like to maybe cast a self buff or two use a CC spell to incapacitate some melee units and then charge across the battlefield to take down a caster. I think this build could do all that. Looking through the wizard passives most of them don't seem that useful other than maybe combat focus? You dont need any wizzy passives. But as a multi, you do need to take at least 7 wizzy abilities so for me, I picked up defensive spells. You could take more if you want or you could spend wizzy points on weapon styles instead of spells. For example, I am not sure if ironskin will be very useful. As a front line tank, you get hit so often that I think it will wear off too fast to be useful. I will need to try it to see how it goes. So you dont need to do everything I said, but it just goes with the theme. You can always respec out of useless spells. I plan to do so. Yes, this will let you do everything you asked for. You are definitely not just a sponge. The fact that he can tank, is actually just a happy coincidence and I figured I might as well use it. You could take all the damage abilities in fighter and you will put out very good damage. You can also swap int for dex if you want even more damage at the cost of buff (tank) duration. Your only issue will be melee accuracy which is a problem for every physical class, not just this one, and wizzy does have ways of lowering deflection. My 1st character was actually a monk/wizard. It works the same way as fighter but I think the fighter variant is a better all rounder. The monk has some key abilities that work on critical hits thus is better off multi with something that improves critical chance and wizard does not offer many ways to do that. A hellwalker wizard is actually interesting if you want to make a ranged bow/gun caster. Just sit in the back and generate wounds with dance and then nuke once at full wounds for a huge might boost. Should work well with any casting class but definitely not what you asked for in terms of mobility or being able to withstand punishment. Hellwalker is meant to be a high risk/reward play style.

The Wizzy/Fighter is definitely not a top tier melee dps character but it is 100% viable in PotD and its definitely better melee than a melee cipher/fighter. This is because the cipher variant will be dead long before the wizard variant lol. Or it will be running around wasting time or worse, wasting the teams time. Invariably, if the cipher ends up in melee, it will be a liability unless you build it as a tank. But that is problematic. To make a tanky cipher that can semi-safely engage in melee, you need to invest in resolve and you will likely need a shield on top of that as well as sword and shield style. Or you need to play at lower difficulty than PotD. The Wizard is awesome for that reason. The wizard has several near instant cast spells that literally replace 20 attribute points... this is huge. A single casting of level 2 mirror image (which lasts for 60 seconds with 15 int) is the equivalent of 6 points in resolve, a large shield, and you dont suffer accuracy penalties lol. And wait, it is near instant-cast, has 0 recovery, and the wizard has several spells that do even more at higher level. A wizard can lunge across the battlefield and survive which is one thing the author wanted (mobility). The cipher needs a lot of investment to make that happen and something else will have to give such as lower might (damage), perception (accuracy), or int (even less duration). Also, aside from cipher disintegrate (if like the old game, also destroys loot so cant use on bosses), there is no way that a Cipher will out damage a Wizard in casting unless the wizard runs out of spells. Wizards have too many nukes at every level and they are all good. The wizard also has non-resistible spells (missiles) and spells that can penetrate any armor (15 penetration blast). Of course if a battle goes on for long enough the Cipher has the advantage but if it does not, the wizard will own him, even a fully defensive one. Dont get me wrong, I love the Cipher class, but it is not suited for melee. They are much better off being in the back with a ranged weapon and to that end, they are great for dps and utility but the author of the post wanted something mobile and tough.

1. Because big sword (or a huge staff) looks more awesome than 2 small weapons... lol. Also the game is waaaaaay too easy even on PotD which is where I play. As mentioned, there are a lot of nice unique great swords. But dual wield is likely going to be more dps and there are tons of unique long swords too. I do believe that you can eek out slightly higher accuracy with 2H and 1H though. Dual wield does confer a accuracy penalty and I wanted as high of accuracy as I can muster. 2. You will have extra ability points to play with. I actually have knockdown on my guy and sprint from L1. I just listed the stuff that I feel is important but there is a bit of flexibility once you decide how you want to play him (defense or dps). Just dont expect to memorize every spell you want if you want to excel in physical combat. You will need books which is actually not a hindrance at all imho. 3. Probably not. Any subclass should work fine but I specifically wanted him to excel at tanking for those oh-crud moments when Eder cant handle it & face-plants. I also wanted to a definitive boss tank and I like having weapon variety since some enemies have high resistances to certain damage types. But again, any sub should be fine. Pick the one you like. 4. Honestly, the biggest ones for me are probably armored grace, confident aim (is really nice) and a weapon style passive. Dual wield should be perfectly fine. The rest is up to you but you will need to decide between defense and damage output. I just dont recommend going down the caster route because if you want to be a caster, you are much better off going pure wizard for those end game spells. I feel that the mutliclass wizard is more suited for utility to supplement melee but thats just me.

You are basically begging for a warrior/wizard... why not just make a warrior/wizard? Warning, this is an insanely active character and does not do very well in the hands of the AI. It can do everything you ask for and be a top tier tank & disabler. Things to note: Wizard = Top Tier Defense and all are near instant cast, 0 recovery, long duration. I tried them. They are great! Wizard + Fighter = probably best tank in the game against any situation (melee, ranged or casters). Wizard = Disables out the wazoo. Wizard = Nukes out the wazoo. Wizard + Melee Class = Great synergy with summoned weapons. Note, most are 2H. Fighter = Some much needed self healing Fighter = Stances for every occasion. Fighter = 2 mobility attacks It does not matter which warrior sub you pick but for me, I went with unbroken for extra tankiness without giving up dps or healing. The trick is to remember that wizard will buff your deflection to insane amounts so you don't need to invest into resolve. Do not dump resolve, but dont pump it either and use those points elsewhere. I personally went with Int to extend the duration of spells. Might and Perception should be maxed to insure that your wizard size remains powerful. Human Unbroken/Wizard Might - 19 Constitution - 7 Dexterity - 8 Perception - 18 Intelligence - 15 Resolve - 10 This is actually a tricky character to build because you will be ability starved and cant pick up a lot of spells. You can pick up a few spells (about 1 per level) but on non-power levels you need to work on warrior abilities. I simply keep all the books I find in case I need a spell. On Power levels where you are forced to take Wizard abilities, I strongly recommend you take the instant cast tanking spells to have them available at all times: Recommended Wizard Spells: (via selected abilities) L1 - Spirit Shield L2 - Mirrored Image (awesome) L3 - Llengraths Displaced Image (awesome) L4 - Ironskin (probably) L5 - Llengraths Safeguard L6 - Arcane Reflection L7 - Catzals Martial Power As you can see, this will make you extremely defensive and with 15 int, almost all the spells last for 1 minute or more with buffs and gear. With max perception/might and good int, you can also cast for good damage if needed. On the melee side you should remember a few things. #1 in terms of defensive abilities, Wizard spells are far superior to warrior abilities like Vigorous defense so dont waste your time on the warrior variants unless you want to be untouchable. Also, remember, as a wizard you can summon some weapons so you may want to pick up proficiencies and abilities if you want them. Based on my game right now, I strongly recommend you keep a shield on one weapon slot and DPS options on the other even if it costs you 2 abilities to maximize them. I went with large shields, spears, and great swords so far. Great Swords because there are a lot of great unique ones in the game. Spears for the extra accuracy and engagement. Later I will pick up Pike for Citzals Spirit Lance or possibly something with crushing damage (perhaps staff since I can summon those too). The summon weapons are nice because you can call them without needing more weapon slots for even more weapon variety. Since Wizard gives you tons of defense, your only big weakness will be melee accuracy so you need to pick up anything that will help your accuracy from the warrior tree. You also cant heal past the 1st minute so unbending sounds like a very nice ability to pick up. Recommended Warrior Abilities L1 - Disciplined Barrage (awesome with high int) L2 - Warrior Stances (one of the best abilities in the game), Into the Fray (mobility), Confident Aim L3 - Pick an upgrade for Disciplined Barrage (both are nice) L4 - Charge (mobility) L5 - All are great... very hard to choose. I will probably go with Armored Grace, Conqueror and Unbending L6 - The active stuff seem to suck (though 'pull of eora' + 'clear out' might be funny). The passive abilities sound ok. L7 - Upgrade Unbending Unbuffed at level 7 (conqueror stance) TANK - Fine Spear + plain Large Shield - Accuracy 53 - Defense 73 DPS - Fine 2 Handed Sword - Accuracy 57 - Defense 55 With full buffs: TANK - With wizard buffs and defender stance, deflection climbs to near or above 100 (other defenses are 43/64+/58), you get damage reduction based on engagements, and with Llengraths 50% hits become grazes. DPS - My accuracy with a 2h fine sword + perception + warrior stance = 62. Obviously I am using a early game weapon so it will get higher. Though this has not been an issue yet, I imagine that against a very high deflection enemy, I will need to switch to wizard mode and cast. Not a problem since we have max perception/might, high int, and wizard has plenty of debuffs. Just keep a debuff spell book on quick switch. Recommended Books: Slavers Grimoire (disables) Blood Soaked Grimoire (summoned weapons + utility) Weathered Grimoire (nukes)

I agree with the author on most of his points. The problem with the misplaced accents is that they are immersion breaking. This is an RPG right? Breaking immersion is a bad thing with RPG's. I have the southern accents too. Ship combat is pretty bad. The best way to fight is to simply board and duke it out. All you need to do is have more bodies (1/2 ratio seems to be enough) and you will likely win without lifting a finger even on PotD. So just create some custom NPC. Not ship workers, but rather actual usable NPC's. They spawn on deck during battle and help you out and I believe NPC's dont eat or get paid either (not sure about this). The problem with fighting ship to ship is it does not seem efficient. Every shot costs money, healing takes forever and costs tons of medical supplies. You have to repair your boat, etc etc. Its just not worth it when you can just steamroll them by boarding with no penalties except maybe a rest injury which is instantly healed.

Pretty much anything with a chanter. Either troubadour if you want better synergy with 2ndary class or beckoner for more damage soaking (tanking) and dps+flanking. The chanter is the only class that can reach top tier in every roll (except maybe single target spell nukes) and depending on how you build it, can cover 3 rolls simultaneously (at mid tier) or 2 rolls (at near top tier).

Ranger is fine. It has several roles. Personally, I feel its the perfect NPC class because its so simple to use (easy to program), effective, and does not need to move around which the AI is terrible at. I personally prefer to play with a team of 4 simple classes and 1 highly active that I control myself. I dont want to micro everyone... its broring after a while. So to that end, ranger is great. I usually create a max int/per sharpshooter/troubadour at the tutorial island immediately when i have 250 coins. I customized the tactical AI so that its mostly like the aggressive ranger AI but I added an opening and recurring summon. It is an awesome team player. Wide area heals & buffs, great dps, tank support via summons and pet, does not spike damage too much to attract attention... It makes for a near perfect NPC companion. But yea I love easy to program companions. Pure fighter tank is nice for this reason. Very effective, great team player, and rarely needs micro which allows me to focus on my main character and move around the field without worrying about my minions.

This has been studied in many games in the past. Since everything is additive the math is actually pretty easy but it is highly dependent on the weapon or abilities/spells you want to use. The bottom line however, is none of it matters if you dont hit your target and with low perception, you may not be able to hit difficult enemies rendering you nearly impotent. Only perception has this dramatic negative side effect so in general, until we know exactly what the top deflection is in the game, you are better off pushing perception to make sure you can hit the toughest things in the game. Hitting also has a lot of secondary perks such as increase crit % and depending on the class you play, better consistency for ability use. For example, a pillar monk will want perception for consistent wounds. A rogue/barb will get more crits... etc. I believe that both dex and might are linear so ultimately its a wash and you should go with whichever offers a better secondary effect for the character. Another thing to consider, that a lot of players are too quick to ignore, is the value of resists. If you are weak at fort due to dumping con, then you might want to pick up might over dex. If you are a class that grants a lot of fort, then maybe you should take dex to improve reflex. In terms of builds, a crit hit build which generates special points based on number of crits (not how hard they hit) will benefit more dex than might. Casters with limited number of spells are obviously better off with harder hitting spells rather than faster casting.

The bigges There are two classes that offer big boosts to ranged specifically and they are sharpshooter and chanter (via ranged buff). Chanter is generally better at... everything. So I would take chanter for a base class, and then take any other class you want. One nutty combo would be a chanter/ranger if you go beckoner + sharpshooter. You will easily have anywhere from 3-7 pets out at once and they are pretty darn strong. Honestly, as long as you allocate your stats properly (really important if you are playing PotD difficulty otherwise not so much), you will not have any issues. As ranged, you obviously want to avoid getting hit. Since you are avoiding damage, you dont need resolve and you can leave your constitution fairly low as well. I would say perception is top priority (I dont like missing). Then its a toss up between dex and might. Finally dont let Int get too low especially if you get chanter as your base class. Its very handy for chanters. in fact if you go troubadour, I would say max int to try to get it to 20 so that you can have 2 passive buffs active 100% of the time. To increase auto-attack damage you can do cypher (damage), ranger (speed), & rogue/barbarian (crits), monks (accuracy buff) & paladins provide a little accuracy and damage. Just note that the weakness of ranged is their slow reload so in general, I think that speed buffs will provide the biggest improvement to dps. Really, the game is so easy, even on PotD that any combo will be fine plus chanter alone is so powerful that it really does not need help to begin with. If you want to be more active, try a ranged chanter/wizard. Wizard will give you a lot of other stuff to do and they have some quick cast buffs that dont interfere with your shooting. Same can be said of druids and priests but they dont have the instant spells like wizard but they are good too and will give you more stuff to do if you want that.

Chanter is insanely strong. Its so laughably strong that you need to pull out calculator and charts to find ways to deliberately make it weak. A double chanter multi-class it would be like combining Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris into one. If it existed, it would be called Bruchuck Leerris. Why? Well as a single class it can easily cover 3 rolls at once. Rolls being tank, dps, healer, and utility. At any time, they can be top dps and tanks and provide heals. They can also passive heal and nuke at the same time (literally) while still casting disables... I mean, its pretty nuts and they do all this even as a multi class. He turns a tank into a super tank thanks to passives and summons. Any tank class + beckoner can hold an army at bay and put out insane DPS. Easily the best support class with all the incredible group wide passives and excellent active abilities, and plenty of AOE nukes and disables. Turns a good DPS class into a DPS monster (except pure monk cheese). Need more heals? He has them.