Mercbeast

Hey fellas. So, here is my conundrum. I hate, no, I loathe per rest abilities. They represent probably my single biggest gripe with the game, limited resting and the time sink that running back through an area to pickup more supplies represents. So I am asking any experienced people out there, what would be a well rounded, but almost entirely micro free party build for a POTD run. I don't mind using abilities, but I much prefer per encounter type classes as much as possible. Another bit of information. I much prefer very blunt, punch you in the mouth sort of conflict resolution in rpgs. I want to keep pre-fight fiddling around setting up to a minimum, and I want to kill, everything. Most of the melee classes are pretty much no-brainers. Fighters, paladins, monks and barbarians. My biggest issue seems to be on the support end of things. Most of the top end support use per rest type spells. Oh, and I hate summon cheese. So chanters are ideal, except that a lot of their power is back loaded with summon invocations. Basically, I feel like Priests, Wizards and Druids are top tier support classes, but I just hate using them due to their lack of staying power, but at the same time, their abilities can be game changing when actually expended. Oh, and bonus points for thematic type builds. Example, the terrible tree huggers, barbs, rangers and druids.

I feel the same way as the op. I don't have the time or inclination to theory craft or min/max to the maximum to break a game like I did when I was 18 or so back when Baldurs Gate 1 came out. Now, I just want solid workable builds that don't rely on insane item combinations to achieve some sort of gimmick item synergy that breaks the game. Yet, that's pretty much all I see in the builds on the forums here. In a way I feel like it almost trivializes the game. When you are playing to get items you know exist and you are planning your entire play through around said items. I think for many of us, the allure of the unknown is what attracts us to RPGs. In a way it is like getting to go back to being an awe-filled 5 year old, who looks at the world through totally virgin eyes, where literally anything is possible. Set artifact type items, imho, detract from that experience to a certain degree. The first time you run through the game, everything is new and awesome, the second time you kind of know what items there are, where to get them, and how to build your characters around them. That's cool, some people live for that, but sometimes I wish developers would go for the middle ground. A mixing of the diablo style totally random loot, with the more baldurs gate style set magical items. Or even the option to play with one or the other.

How very constructive... On topic, I'd like to know that too, especially since I can't access the patch yet with GoG. Weren't there people in other threads talking about enemies rushing besides your frontline to hit your guys in the back? Yes. My experience is that unless you can bottleneck the fight in a natural chokepoint, your tanks can only hold as much as they have engagement slots. The AI is also pretty proactive about funneling everyone through any little gap in your line it finds. In addition, archers won't attack your tanks, at all, they just tunnel down your soft targets. I believe the AI prioritizes based on DR but I may be mistaken on that.

There is always a way to trivialize any content in any game you can imagine. Doesn't mean you have to abuse it though. Personally, when I was younger I enjoyed min/maxing and abusing every loophole I could find. Now, I much prefer to stay within certain constraints. I don't use summons, I don't use obviously overpowered abilities. It makes it harder, and for me that makes it more enjoyable.

I feel like engagement might be more important now in 2.0. Running through POTD in the 2.0 beta build and basically if you are not engaged, the npc just runs right past you to your squishies. At release I feel like engagement really didn't matter much at all. NPC's would just pile onto the nearest for the most part. Now, anyone not locked down is going to target the weakest link.

Chanters are good enough just for the phrases. The invocations are the cherry on top and some of them are super crazy strong.

I wouldn't take a barb. I'd run double tank. Chanter/Priest Double ranged DPS (rogue+cipher). I'm currently running through POTD without trial of iron. My barb is about neck and neck with my cipher in terms of DPS. Problem is the barb can die, and it can die really easily and really quickly. For ultimate cheese you could probably run 3 ciphers + 2 tanks + 1 priest and that would be a relatively (if micro intensive) easy run and rather safe given how easy it is to abuse the paralyze spell with ciphers.

I'm playing on POTD and I am enjoying it from start to finish. At POTD you need to really put a group together with a little bit of thought but you don't need to go overboard. Eder for example is perfectly capable of main tanking all the way through and his tanking stats are terrible. It just means you need to compensate a little bit else where.

I disagree completely. I'm playing with 2 hired min/max adventurers + my PC and I regret going as min/max as I did. I have a tank chanter that has about 5 seconds between attacks and does 1 damage a hit. It's awful. On top of that Eder with his fighter endurance regen actually tanked better for most of act 1. My barbarian can get one shot. My cipher can get one shot and it occasionally happens and then that is all of my DPS gone. I've had fights that literally took 5 minutes to resolve because all I had left was Durance and my Chanter tank doing no damage. I'm of the opinion that on POTD, pick 2 of the 3 DPS stats for DPSing, take the remainder and put it where it will make the biggest difference in not getting insta gibbed by AOE, or one shot by this or that critter. I'd drop might on my barbarian and possibly go con. I'd drop might on my cipher and put it into perception or resolve or possibly split it. Yes I might take an extra couple seconds to kill stuff, but I'd rather take a little longer every fight, than have something disastrous happen, lose my DPS to something I couldn't prevent and have to reload or grind out a fight with my chanter. I think this is even more telling with tanks. Tanks do not need min/max'd perception and resolve in my experience. They can function perfectly fine and tanky as can be with a 15/15 split of perception/resolve. Meaning you don't need to dump con or might. I'd leave might and jack dex up tbh on any tank but a chanter.

The inability to heal health doesn't undermine the resting mechanic at all. The resting mechanic is fundamentally about making a decision on when to camp or to retreat and re-supply. Health is part of this decision. The problem with health is, it is often that you are forced to re-supply before you are actually tapped out on per rest abilities. In a round about way, not being able to heal health accelerates the process of rest cheesing. I go back to town when my characters start dipping below 50% health. This means I usually have far more of my abilities remaining than I otherwise should. Basically, I feel like having to rest/go buy supplies to heal breaks up the flow of dungeons even more. I'm playing on POTD and I have to go heal health more than I need to rest for abilities. In fact I often need to go rest with my wizard nearly full on abilities, because on POTD I need to carefully decide when I use them. Wizard abilities are your ace in the hole on really difficult fights.

Chanters are great. I don't know what difficulty you're playing on but yea, people dropping stats that low, I'm not sure I'd recommend that on POTD. Lot of AOE flying around and in some fights anyone with less than 70ish endurance will instantly die. Barbarians and Monks might be the only class you could really get away with dumping con low because they get such a high modifier to begin with. The more I play POTD difficulty, the more I change how I would have built my 3 hirelings. For DPS I've started to adopt an old addage from Mountain Biking regarding wheels. Pick 2 from; Light, strong or cheap. Now substitute that for might, dex, int. You don't need all 3 on your DPS at POTD unless you are making a very glass cannony blow everything up instantly group build. For example my PC barbarian I went 16 might, 18 dex and 18 int. If I could go back I would drop the might down and boost my constitution and or resolve/perception a bit. Why? The difference in might isn't going to make or break the barbarian, I'd rather be able to stick her in the fight and have a little more leeway in protecting/healing her. For my cipher, I'd pick dex and int again. For a priest I'd pick might and int. For a CC wizard I'd pick dex and int. For a DPS wizard might and dex. Basically I'd rather have reliability over a little extra damage. Giving myself a little more staying power is what counts for me on POTD, mainly because I am not running a cheese 6 cipher group that opens with 12 mind blades ;p

Ciphers, Barbs and Chanters are IMHO the best damage dealers at higher difficulty levels. The issue with Rogue is not that they don't plow people/things, it's that they do it one at a time. Whereas the other 3 can plow stuff one at a time almost as well, but they can blow up groups. Wiz/Druid can do this as well, but they are not per encounter type abilities. Those guys are your artillery. They have range to reach out and wreck someone, but they have limited shells so you need to conserve them. Aloth is one of my most important companions on a POTD run, primarily because when the battle is super crazy, he pulls out all the stops and its a big game changer for me. On the other hand, 90% of all fights he just shoots with an Arbalest and does pitiful damage ;p

I think even POTD will be soloable likely with several classes. I've hit a point with my tank chanter where she pretty much can't be killed unless I do something extraordinarily silly.

I'm running POTD with the following build. Human Tank Chanter. 8 11 8 18 15 19 She was squishy for quite awhile and Eder typically out tanked her. However once I got ancient memory and a troll hide belt, shes basically unkillable now to physical damage. Just absurdly tanky. I'm only level 5 at the moment so I haven't really gotten to go very deep into the talents to finish tanking her out. My PC is a Elf Barbarian. 16 10 16 8 18 10 Soldier proficiency using a Great Sword when she can flank and a pike whenever she has to poke from the back. I bugged my PC out very early on and lost her racial via the double click auto equip bug. Luckily nobody else has been bugged nor have I lost anything else since then! My last custom character is an Elf Cipher. 14 10 16 10 18 10 Just plain useful. Always good to go, always putting out the DPS. The Barbarian is my top DPS by a good margin followed by the Cipher, however the Cipher probably could be top. I just am lazy with her and only really throw out the nukes when I absolutely need to. On small clean up type fights her nukes are not needed. I used Eder for most of the run so far but atm he is benched for the Paladin girl. I didn't spec him out for a tank build, but I have used him as a tank. His endurance recovery talent is just so good, for most of the run he has outlasted the chanter in fights where I had tanks die based entirely on that talent and not his horrific tanking stats ;p He's been workman like and reliable + his knock downs are pretty useful. The three I plan to use the remainder are; Pallegina spec'd out to tank. Aloth, as a CC/debuffer. Durance, because priests are without a doubt the most important class in POTD. To give you an example of how important priests are, my first ever game was on POTD difficulty. I had zero knowledge I just jumped into the deep end. I recruited Eder and Aloth and then made 2 adventurer companions, a DPS chanter and a tank chanter. My PC was a barbarian. I spent over 5 hours just in the temple in the gilded vale. At least 2 of those hours were spent trying to do the last big fight with the multiple shades. I eventually gave up, threw in the towel and restarted on hard. I got to the same point and felt disgusted with myself and went back to a new POTD run! This time I went in with Durance and the fights due to his healing and buffs were not even difficult. I think my only wipe was on the last fight and it was totally user error. I screwed up my initiation. I'd say the corner stone of any POTD run is a priest, and as priests go Durance is pretty terrible. A PC or hireling priest is going to be way better. After that I would say a cipher is next. Any tank will do and tbh I think if you go fighter, you don't even need to min/max. In fact a warrior with say a bunch of 12-14's in the pertinent stats would not only tank more than adequately, but put out some DPS. By comparison my chanter hits for typically 1 damage a hit when she hits ;p I'm pretty sure I've seen her hit for decimals as well. If I were to restart and run a full hireling group I'd probably go. 1) Balanced stat fighter tank. 2) Balanced stat barbarian offtank. 3) Ranged DPS chanter. 4) Ranged DPS cipher. 5) Priest. 6) Whatever catches my fancy at the moment. Maybe a second DPS chanter to cut down on the micro.

I'm playing on POTD and I basically came to the same conclusion. I'm running 3 customs. Min/Maxed Chanter Tank, Barb and Cipher. I went super heavy on the dex at the expense of some might on the barb/cipher because I knew that running around naked was just too risky/finicky. You can do it, and you also might end up reloading fights for an hour if one of your two real DPS'rs get one shot. Now I run all my DPS in enchanted breastplates. Ya they are a little slower to attack, but they also can stand in the mix. I'd rather do all the fights in 1 or 2 attempts a little slower, than have DPS get one hit by something I can't control. On the plus side dex impacts armor recovery time or so I've read, so going super high dex can offset pretty easily 40% of armor penalty.

I don't know about anything beyond Act 1, however playing on POTD, I am inclined to partially disagree. POTD seems to change character builds to a degree anyways. If you want to go full cheese and build a super front end heavy burst group you could totally get away with one tank and most encounters even on POTD would end in 1 or 2 rounds. If you don't go cheese ball however, I am coming to realize that you could probably get away quite nicely with 1 pure tank. I haven't gotten my hands on the paladin companion yet, but the endurance recovery of a fighter seems to put them on top of tanking. You could easily supplement 1 tank with 1 or 2 less DPSy, slightly tanky characters like a barbarian or a monk. Super high HP/Endurance with a more balanced stat approach than the typical all in might/dex/int builds that are popular. Barbarians are really quite effective as book ends and even my barbarian that is the aforementioned all in might/dex/int holds her own while holding a flank just wearing plate. Her damage is great and by cranking her dex way up her action time isn't horrible. My current group uses a chanter tank + eder and while the chanter is far more difficult to hit, she dies far more quickly than eder due to his end recovery. This is why I think you could get away with melee dps that are more balanced in terms of their stats. These off tanks will complement your overall damage decently. You just then need 1 or 2 really strong ranged DPSs to put in work while your 2 or 3 man front locks things down.

I don't believe so. However int allows them to linger long enough that you can overlap 2 phrases 100% of the time. I believe the breaking point is 35% or 17 int off the top of my head. Incredibly useful obviously ;p

Shadows and Shades nearly made me abandon playing POTD. I went into the temple without Durance (so I had 5 PC's) and 5 hours later I was at a fight with 2 shades that I had been wiping on for about 3 hours! I went and played hard for awhile, then decided to go back to POTD with a better couple of hired adventurers to augment and breezed through. They are still the worst encounters I've seen so far on POTD. It is a total crap shoot, almost 100% RNG if you can win or lose these fights. If too many teleport to your squishies you get wiped in a matter of seconds.

I think it will be very difficult to make an effective DPS/Offtank chanter. The reason I say this is that chanters are fundamentally not suited to tanking. They can tank, and they can do so really well, but due to their very low hp/end pool it is sort of an all in proposition. They need to go deep Resolve/Perception whereas a fighter can totally get away with subpar talents like Eder due to fighter endurance regen. If you want an off tank/dps I'd say you need to run a Barb/Monk/Pali/Fighter. Let the chanter be full DPS or full tank.

Has this been working for you in game? I haven't noticed an increase with 18 int so far. Definitely working. My tank chanter has like 15 or 16 int can't remember at the moment, and the linger is over half of the duration. So running the chant that gives will/fort saves I have almost a constant +20. I'm also not really noticing the problem with how fast chanters get their invocations. Granted I am playing on POTD, but I also wasn't having problems with on Hard either. I wonder if some of you got hit with that difficulty bug unknowingly. On POTD I have noticed however that a tank chanter just cannot soak the damage that even a super sub-optimal fighter tank can. I don't have Eder spec'd for tanking at all, but I am using him as a tank and he has soaked nearly 2x as much endurance damage as my super-duper min-maxed chanter tank. It's ok though! Thematically I love chanters and the utility they bring is insane.