MadDemiurg

Shh... :D "Rangers with Bow" crew doesnt even care if it works because if somebody is fine with hunting bow's damage on ranger he must not care much anyway Sidenote : Fire Arms are meant to be SWITCHED In battle , for fck sake does it even make sense to reload 17th century firearm in the heat of the battle ? NO But it is always a decent tactic to have 2-3 of them so you can fire them without reloading Do you even Black Flag ;/ Even Weapon Speciality Ruffian suggests you to try some Pirate builds :D Yeah, you can go with Island Aumaua and 4 weapons for initial burst, but 4 shots won't be enough for PoTD fights. That's when reload kicks in. Plus, it's pretty much impossible to find 4 equally good unique firearms of the same type and the setup ends up to be quite "costly" in terms of gear.

Swift aim is useless with a bow, because a bow doesn't have reload. It is quite decent for firearms.

Btw zealous charge is the only aura that provides a rather unique benefit and stacks with similar effects - with chanters speed chant at least. So zealous charge + speed chant = +3.2 speed for the whole party, effectively partywide passive fleet feet equivalent (a bit better even). This seems like a good option for run & gun type of party (would lose its main benefits in confined spaces though)

They are kinda limited by working only on mobs engaged by AC, which is made of wet paper at higher levels atm. Still useful, but would be much better if AC was decent.

Teleporting banshees are easily kiteable. Dominate is annoying, but priest can give good protection vs it (albeit with l6 spells only). CC everyting before it CCs you also works just fine.

Your build has awful deflection for solo and you really shouldn't melee with it. You can pull off stats like these if you pick fast runner as 1st talent and kite, but otherwise it's suicide. Likewise, going stiletto + dagger is asking for trouble, you should use shield + hatchet if you're forced to melee. As for 1st level spells, you're missing tenuous grasp which is the most crucial spell for earlygame cipher soloing - you should open any combat with it since it allows to easily eliminate enemies without fighting yourself. But really, if you're struggling with a party, imo you shouldn't try to solo.

DoT? Enhance the AC? Meh. Personally, I wish that having an AC was a choice for rangers rather than a requirement. Once I learned that having an AC go down in battle gave the Ranger a penalty, I got a LOT more cautious with my AC, which honestly was a pain. My first choice would be to make AC's optional. Second choice might be to do away with the ACC penalty if the AC goes down in battle. Third choice, buff it. Regardless, I still think that the Ranger should be better than a Rogue as a ranged combatant. Seems to me that that's the entire point of the Ranger class, to be the masters of ranged combat. And let's face it, Rogues aren't masters of ranged combat so much as they're opportunists who take advantage of the Sneak Attack ability to do more damage than Rangers. It's OK with me that Rogues do a lot of damage if handled well. It's not so OK with me that they're better at ranged combat than Rangers. Seems to me that Rangers get the short end of the stick in these games. The real short end. But if they're supposed to be masters of ranged combat, then it should be reflected in the game and in the damage they do, AC's be damned. But that's just my opinion. DoT = damage over time. AC offers a sizable advantage to the ranger at low levels atm, it just doesn't scale well. Ditching it seems like redefining the class completely. Leaving it in its current state is undesirable for me - I don't like gimmick features. But if ranger was better than rogue at ranged combat AND provided a decent free offtank rogue would become UP compared to the ranger...

For rangers to be #1 (at least #1 auto attack) ranged dps their talent that gives their AC +50% damage against targets under DoT should work on ranger himself. That would be ranger's SA equivalent. This way rogue has SA + melee modal (reckless assault) and ranger has his own SA equivalent + ranged modals. However, I'd prefer to see ranger's AC buffed first. If AC is decent throughout the whole game ranger doesn't necessarily need to be better than rogue at shooting.

There's no in game random gen though which makes it a bit more annoying, considering you have to roll stuff using 3rd party tools. Multiple chanters will be OP as hell, and also quite boring. Enemies would probably die by just approaching the party.

There, fixed it.

Attack speed bonuses are multiplicative with damage bonuses but additive with other attack speed bonuses. So it's worth considering what kind of attack speed bonuses your class can get (and any class gets quite a bit through potions)

I've played 0 tank setup on PotD just fine. Druid + Wiz + 2x Ciphers + Priest + Chanter (bit tanky, but not full tank, high might, high int, dragon thrashed). I've used a fighter in this party initially, but later replaced him with a 2nd Cipher. Tbh it was even easier this way. Offense is the best defense. I honestly don't see the issue with enemies avoiding engagements in terms of playability. It would render low dps high defense classes like paladin even more useless though.

Well, GoA itself/Earth Talon works just as well. Plus it is possible to lock down the dragon with other CC, though I'm not sure whether it would be enough to deal the damage required. Think priest with repulsing seals and a bunch of maelstrom scrolls can work. There's a bunch of melee and ranged mobs near Adra btw, but I'm pretty sure retal barb won't kill it fast enough even with OSA activated. The dragon hits for 200+ after all.

Great, thanks, good to know. Does Might bump the damage too? Might is a bit inconsistent between spells - for some it does, for some it does not.

ARe you 100% sure? I've never been able to confirm that, but I'd like to think you're right. I've seen a dev confirm it. This is also my experience with some DoT spells that are easier to measure, but I can't confirm for all spells.

call 'em laughable as support, but that is s'posed to be the role they fulfill. trying to redefine them 'cause you do not like how they currently perform in a support role is foolish. Your definition o' what paladins is and should be runs smack up against what the developers has said that paladins are. they is low-maintenance support characters with excellent defensive qualities that are particularly adept at providing single target heals, debuffs and cleanses. your redefining is pointless. make the paladin better at support sounds like a worthy goal, but make'em better at tanky and dps is misguided at best. btw, a couple per kill abilities, ones that get use perhaps once every 15 seconds is hardly transforming paladins into a dps class. you can use talents to make paladins perfect capable o' getting a couple successful hits per battle, particularly as you have potential 5 other party members that can render foes prone, paralyzed, petrified, blind, and a host o' other status effects that makes 'em easy pickings. not need to improve the Paladin to get a couple hits per battle. oh, and is not as if you need take those abilities as they is optional. weak. regardless, if you think paladins is a support/tank hybrid, then the improvements o' the paladin should obviously be focused on the support aspects o' the class, 'cause you already concede, and the beta backers know, that particular given that the paladin is a support character, it is very durable. nopt need to improve the tankyness o' the support character that is already at least arguable on par with a fighter. As I see it, paladins definitely need improvements, and these can go 2 ways: Capitalize on being tank/support hybrid Capitalize on being full support The 2nd option would require much more changes to the current game tbh. For option 1 I would do the following changes: Improve aura radius and let them stack with spells Add more uses or a way to regain them for LoH/FoD Turn on kill abilities to on crit as some suggested here or maybe to on lose x% endurance (would not synergize well with extreme tankiness though) For option 2 I would say: Drop FoD Drop on kill abilities Add global exhortation pool Allow paladin to pick up exhortations as spells (2 every odd level and 1 every even level) and add a lot of new ones with unique effects Decent non exhortation abilities like righteous soul and auras turned to class talents Since exhortations are single target and generally still less powerful than priest spells, but paladin is more tanky, I think this would be a balanced option This is how I see it anyway.

Unfortunately rapiers and arquebuses are in different weapon groups. What were they thinking, eh? I suppose pistols + sabers is the closest you can get without going for 2 focus talents, but it's more like highwayman style. Maybe just go without focus at all :/. I suppose that would be fighers/paladins with fairly balanced offense and defense. No one's disputing that the combat is designed with pausing in mind. However, with all tank comp no pausing seems like a good self restriction to artificially increase micromanagement (pretend you're playing an RTS). 3 is a good middle ground, I agree.

Even without the ads it chews up a full tank fighter pretty fast. Mine is quite optimized. I suppose I could squeeze in a few points here and there but it won't really help.

Even with Island Aumaua and 4 blunderbusses, assuming everything works out, it is 120 damage. This is not comparable to the amount of damage cipher can put out using focus from just 1 blunderbuss shot. Besides, if it's not solo, why not both? Although my wiz usually had better things to do than Combusting Wounds.

This was a Sky Dragon kill. Sky is a harmless kitten compared to Adra.

I've done solo already, and tbh a suboptimal full/semi full party can be reasonably challenging as well if you just charge into combat without preparing for it, using terrain/consumables and avoiding certain classes/abilities/spells.

Interrupt-based party can be interesting to try out, yes. 6 tank sounds cool conceptually, but will be bit boring in terms of micro. Maybe no pausing restriction would make it more fun? All elves would work pretty well, given how wood elves are the best ranged race and pale elves are one of the best tank races. I've been thinking about going "all ranged" elven party though. 1 Paladin with Zealous charge (or more like Zealous run away), 1 Chanter with frost steps, maybe a 2nd Chanter with speed chant (does it stacks with zealous?) and the rest - some mix of casters/ranged dps. Yeah, Fighter can work, but I also kinda want someone with non zero mechanics I think, otherwise can be too tedious to max. Rogue is the best in this regard, but doesn't fit well thematically. Wizard is even worse. I suppose i can pull of a chanter as some sort of tribal singer instead of one of the barbs or druids.

Any class can pull off petrify trap. I had a full tank fighter (150+ deflect, ~100 all resists unbuffed) and it still got oneshot by the dragon (it seems to be able to attack multiple resists), so I don't think fighter auto attack plan is gonna work. Edit: Just checked, and wing slam is a fort attack with secondary prone vs reflex @ 120 accuracy, so tanking it doesn't look realistic.

Ectopsychic echo on summon works well too, esp once reflex is neutered by mental binding. Key though is rotating borrowed instinct with mental binding for perma lockdown. But disintegrate + kiting can work too.

Priest can lock him down with with seals pretty well + finish off with DoT damage. Also, block passage with summon buffed with sparks of the righteous and shield it with withdraw = invulnerable wall dealing irresistable shock damage for 50 sec or so (adra has high shock resist though). All can be classified as cheese ofc.