MadDemiurg

Ok, so having done 1 PotD playthrough with a custom party and 1.5 solo PotD playthroughs I'm looking for some "for fun" playthrough ideas. One idea that I currently have is to create a barbarian tribe kind of party (all human, suboptimal stats), consisting of 2 barbs (no OSA ofc, and it might even get fixed when I start it anyway), 2 rangers with bears, a druid (bear form) and I'm not sure about #6. However that seems a bit dull in terms of micro. Please share your ideas for thematic/fun playthroughs if you have any.

Paladins are a tank/support hybrid technically, since if you compare them to a full support like priest their support skills are laughable. They do the tank part relatively well, support part leaves a lot to be desired imo even considering they are a hybrid.

Melee is a bad idea anyway, deflection is its highest save. Fort/Ref/Will spells are much better. Will is the lowest at 102, so landing mental bindings is not a problem at all.

Well, technically 2+ spells. Petrify + x. For wiz, the ice ray deals most single target damage i think. I'm sure you can find smth damaging enough in druid's arsenal as well.

Well, if figurines are cheese, I dunno. Wiz/Druid can oneshot him if they get reasonably lucky.

It's just a tooltip error. DoTs deal damage in fixed interval ticks, so more int = longer duration = more damage.

By level 12 you can easily get above 110 spell accuracy. 63 (base) + 12 (level) + 10 (modifier on most spells) + 20 (tactical meld on figurine summon) + 20 (borrowed instinct) + 15 (potion of eldrich aim) = 140 accuracy. All your spells will be either hits or crits on her. You can also debuff all saves by 20 with rotfinger gloves. That's 160 accuracy. And I haven't even listed all the possible bonuses. Tbh sky dragon is an easy fight, the only difficult ones for me solo were undead Raedric, Vamp lord in Od Nua and Adra dragon.

For level 5 I go BOTH Tactical meld and Borrowed instinct, they stack and +40 accuracy is hard to pass by (esp since you land borrowed instinct reliably after meld and it destroys enemy will save). I usually pass detonate since I don't find it all that great, but you can skip ring leader too I think as mind plague you get a bit later is overall more effective. It's not like blunderbuss is even the best weapon for building up focus, it just gives the best burst. Bow is very effective too. And I don't think env strike works at all. Yeah, exactly -- the "concept" of this build is just alpha strike with blunderbuss then cast a lot, repeat, the idea being to maximize casting time. I did take both tactical meld and borrowed instinct on one run and yeah it's a great combo but that left me having to choose between ringleader and detonate for the third power. Ringleader is so effective it almost feels like cheating / broken, so I don't use it, but in a guide, I didn't want to recommend against taking it I've also seen some graphs arguing that there are diminishing returns on damage for increasing accuracy much past +15 over target's deflection, but there are some bosses with very very high deflection, so perhaps situationally useful. The other counterargument would be the same one against self-buffs generally -- if you're spending your initial few combat moves casting self-buffs that's time you aren't being offensive and thus you're giving the enemy free attacks. You're right though that meld + instinct can be a really powerful combination. As I said, I usually skip Detonate - I find mind lance, ectopsychic echo and whatever level 1 damage powers you've picked sufficient in terms of damage, plus they get outclasses by amplified wave anyway in most situations. Tactical meld can be cast out of combat as of now, which probably will be fixed seeing how prebuffing is removed in any form, but anyway it has fast cast speed and borrowed instinct is not only a buff, but also a great debuff, so targeting some boss with it is not a bad idea at all.

Yeah, Tenuous Grasp is potentially useful but it's competing against so many other good powers; really just about everything at level 1 is useful. The reason I recommend the three I do is more for tactical versatility -- it's not that the other powers are bad choices, it's more that you can get versions of them at other levels where there's less competition for your slots. I agree that Borrowed Instinct is a good power but you have to *hit* with it, whereas you don't with Tactical Meld, so for late game fights and bosses (where you really need the accuracy bonus) Meld seems the better choice. For a melee cipher that needs the Deflection bonus Borrowed is probably the better choice. You can go with Draining Whip as an early game pick sure but I've personally found that I prefer Biting Whip. Partly because the damage boost makes a big difference early on (esp. since you do gain some additional focus from the extra damage), partly because if I take Draining Whip first, I tend to spend a lot of time attacking and not casting (whether with bow or melee) and I also tend to top out my focus meter (which is bad, because it's inefficient). If you were going to go the hunting bow route initially, I'd suggest taking biting whip at 2nd, draining whip at 4th, and *then* picking up Ruffian skill set at 6th level and switching to blunderbuss. But level six is actually a fair ways into the game and that's a lot of levels to spend not blowing things away with a gun. =( I guess from what you're saying you could just not use the blunderbuss at all and go hunting bow / hatchet with Peasant specialization, and that might be a good build but I haven't playtested it. Well, as for level 1 powers I agree that most are good, but you are suggesting Whisper of Treason as 1 of the picks, which is probably the worst level 1 power in my book and inferior to grasp. I do go blunderbuss at level 6-8, which I am usually able to find a decent blunderbuss like lead splitter on. If you use blunderbuss without draining whip your focus generation is very low anyway and you need both penetrating shot and draining to make it work (ruffian is less of an issue tbh since you ravage enemy deflection with binding anyway). As for draining vs biting whip, most of your damage comes from spells anyway and biting in no way competes with draining in terms of focus gain, esp with fast weapons (you need to deal like 8 more damage for 2 focus, which means that theoretically you need a 40 average base damage weapon for that 20% boost to make it even, which is too much even for slow weapons, let alone fast). For level 5 I go BOTH Tactical meld and Borrowed instinct, they stack and +40 accuracy is hard to pass by (esp since you land borrowed instinct reliably after meld and it destroys enemy will save). I usually pass detonate since I don't find it all that great, but you can skip ring leader too I think as mind plague you get a bit later is overall more effective. It's not like blunderbuss is even the best weapon for building up focus, it just gives the best burst. Bow is very effective too. And I don't think env strike works at all.

Tbh I don't see a natural synergy between monk and retaliation apart from the monk liking to get hit.

Tbh you can easily learn all spell aoe in standard scale (I did), so its more annoying than challenging really.

Whisper of treason is pretty terrible imo. Probably the only bad level 1 power. Main problem is huge casting time, but not being able to initiate with it and mediocre range do not help either. In contrast, Tenuous grasp can be used out of combat, is twice as fast to cast (has less duration, but you'll probably generate focus for the next spell in saved casting time) and has better range. The effect is pretty much the same - allies will chop up the confused/charmed victim. Antipathetic field is another great lvl 1 power, which is not redundant with Ectopsychic echo. To the contrary, it synergises with since it gives you +20% beam damage buff For a long time. Borrowed instinct is a great buff/debuff. I find that going for draining whip first and using a hunting bow is a better earlygame strategy since pistol is terrible for focus generation (and prone to misses which leaves you with no focus for its long reload time). For backup weapon I prefer small shield + hatchet, with body attunement it actually allows you to hold in melee for enough to deal with the issue even with glasscanon build.

I've actually finished the game solo with moonlike cipher that used retaliation in melee (not necessarily a tank). One of the key tactics is using confusion from range (tenuous grasp and mind plague later on) and let enemies kill each other. You'll want fast runner to disengage if things go wrong. I only tanked when I have no other choice, otherwise it's possible to defeat a lot of encounters without actually dealing any significant damage yourself. I won't suggest an optimal stat spread, since a lot of them can work depending on your preferences, but you definitely want decent INT. When you go "tank mode" you find a bottleneck, switch to W+S and spam mind lance mainly, although dominating half the enemies with ring leader and letting them do the dirty work is an option too.

You can use AW on figurine summons. They are per rest, but you'll have them out for harder fights.

Retaliation rogue doesn't strike me as a great build. Riposte is a pretty weak talent if you look at it closely. It gives you 20% chance to counterattack if the enemy MISSES. Rogue doesn't start with a great deflection, so miss chance would be very far form 100% tbh. Realistically it's 10% at best. Retaliation damage itself is not that great. Adept evasion and higher base endurance would make rogue a bit more durable, at least until cipher gets to his protective spells. Main selling point is shadowing beyond which allows to reposition and escape fights, but all rogues have it. In terms of offense if's not even comparable though, esp high levels. If you want the numbers: 1 amplified wave = 50 dmg to everything on screen + prone. You can open up with 2 and then cast a 3rd one after a single blunderbus shot. Bit broken I think. So if you want to actually kill stuff go cipher.

Most unique paladin talents are kinda meh imo. The one I like the most is +10 accuracy buff on liberating exhortation for Darcozzi that stacks with pretty much anything. It's a great buff to toss on your important damage dealer or crowd controller, which both boosts his efficiency nicely and prevents him from getting CC'd. Fire shield is nice against shades if you pick it early but goes out of fashion really fast, so overall I would advise against it. Kind Wayfarers and Shieldbearers have some more or less decent stuff as well.

Don't see the point in this poll, since you use a party anyway (unless you go solo, which I assume is not the focus of the poll), so your Watcher class matters very little. From optimization standpoint, for dialog choices full tank classes with high int/per/res seem to be the best. So Chanter or Paladin. Most likely Chanter, since Chanter >>> Paladin. From pure power standpoint Watcher should probably use one of the classes with better scaling (read: spellcasters) since hired mercs will be a level lower for the most part and most default companions have bad stats. From pure fun standpoint for me: Cipher > Wizard > Druid > Priest > Chanter > Monk > Rogue > Barbarian > Ranger > Paladin > Fighter

In my first run, my fighter had 170+ under vigorous defense and still got one shot by the dragon. Haven't checked the logs, but seems some of the dragon attacks (not only breath) attack smth other than deflection.

I think dominance of the deflection attacking enemies is a part of the problem. More offensive spellcasters in the game would make deflection less valuable and constitution more valuable. Still when your fighter gets petrified you kinda wish that you've taken that bull's fortitude (not that it would help much against POTD accuracy though)

1. Not very. 2. It works with blights though (and can hit single target multiple times since it procs on blight aoe, which is probably a bug). Still not super useful 3. Distant Advantage does. Haven't tested Mob Justice specifically, but all other abilities of this kind (tactical meld, marking weapon) do work with spells, so I don't see why it shouldn't.

and the game disables achievements when you use the console.... *sigh* Ok, what about having 200+ DT and 100 lvl1, lvl2, lvl3 & lvl4 spells? This doesn't disable achievements (which I couldn't care less about and which you can reenable anyway with smth like CE if you feel like it). "Using what game provides". This argument is getting silly. /whatever

You can buff your accuracy to a level high enough to land it consistently. But if you don't, yes it's a matter of luck.

I don't think an offensive fighter would pose any significant threat so that sentient enemies would fear running by him anyway. If AI was acting tactically tanking would be useless in this game except for blocking doorways.

No. Thats just using semantics to avoid responsibility. Exploit is something unintended. Everyone is free to enjoy the game in any way and thats fine. But lets call bugs bugs and exploit exploits. Or I'll RP that console is special divine power bestowed on me, and perfectly legit. The problem isnt that people use exploits and bugs. The problem is they do that and then in forum boast how they did trple crown and what not, or claim class X is great because bugged skill X does instakills. That doesnt help. No, sir. You are just saying your opinion, which is fine but you try to force your opinions on us, sying that your must be good, just and right. You see, I beat 2 times TC with retalitation barbarian. I find it totally legit achievement becasue I used what game provides me with. I did not use 3-rd party mod to do it, nor console. I did it with what games provide me with. If game provode me with OP skills/mechanics, bugs etc. that is game and devs fault, not mine. I won't wait months to do this achievement just to be sure "ok, there are no more bugs, not more exploits, no more, now I can do it". I respect your opinion and do not try to say to you that mine is correct. However please stop forcing it on me. You said yourself "Everyone is free to enjoy the game in any way and thats fine". And it should end here. If you do not enjoy beating TC with OP mechanics- fine, if that is good to you. I beat it with OP mechanic and I have satisfaction with it. Thats it. Monk is very good class in 1v1 fights or against small group of mobs. However he suck hard against bigger groups becasue he has to build wounds, which means to deal MAX dps he has to lost health, while barb already start doing max damage around with OSA and that is why I like him. I have yet to see PotD Endless Paths done with solo monk. With solo barb- it is totally doable, since 98% of fights there are against big groups of mobs. Game also provides you with the console. Also, one thing is if you accidentally picked a bugged ability, another if you consciously went for it. Anyway, whatever's fun for you. But this in no way should be a part of balance discussion, especially since it's confirmed to be fixed.

I can confirm that he is not. However he has very high fort and you also need to target properly since his hitbox is smaller than his actual size.