Eos

Tbh if you're taking two ranged rogues, ciphers are almost strictly better. Some case can be made for melee rogue because of reckless assault, but at range rogue single target benefits are minimal and require additional preconditions while lacking all the cc and aoe. You also severely lack aoe with this setup. From what I've experienced so far: one Cypher is plenty of Cypher. One alone can already cover all my disable needs. No need to overdo it with a second. nd I have to disagree with you on Rogues only being 'minimally better' than Cypher in terms of raw damage output. Sneak Attack, Graze-to-Hit, talent points to spend on ranged/damage talents, base accuracy, time in the fight to actually attack isntead of casting.. all those things contribute to the Rogue coming out ahead in terms of physical damage. If I had to build a party of three solely for the purpose of dealing ranged damage while having a maximum uptime of disable on groups of 4-5, I'd prefer 2x Rogue 1x Cypher over any other combination of the two classes. But yeah, I lack AoE. But then again, who needs AoE when you can deal twice as much damage than you could deal with AoE but to single targets instead. Just takes a bit longer to give everyone his share of pain but on the upside you're well off in those hard boss encounters. Feels cheesy to me, so I don't really want to do that. Also not much into having four weapons on a single char who then only uses them for 1s of the fight. The fights on PotD tend to be longer, so imo Rogue might come out ahead.

Started my PotD playthrough today so I was in exactly the same spot as you. Here's what I cam up with Tank Fighter In my oppinion the only choice here. Fighter have the highest damage avoidance (you wan't avoidance, not reduction; reduction just leaves you dead on the ground when you get unlucky with a few too many hits in a row), can tank the most mobs (and there are many mobs on PotD) and have the incredibly usefull infight endurance regeneration (start tanking with anything but a fighter and you'll see how much this increases your overall survivability in comparison to a class which' HP only know one direction to go). Off-Tank Chanter Because of the increased mob density (and because sometimes mobs make smart choices about their targets) you need two tanks. Your fighter can't tank 5+ mobs alone and not always is there a door around. Chanter suit my playstyle the best. They have high deflection and average hp (or low?), which makes them a natural fit for an off-tank, their chants are perfect for supporting the group and - most importantly to me - they can switch between off-tank and support on the fly. My chanter either off-tanks some mobs wielding sword and shield chanting +saving throw/-damage songs, or he has his ranged weapon equiped standing in the middle of my DDs chanting the +attack speed/+fire damage song. All the while he summons minions to take some stress off of the main tank, create flanking for my DDs, add to the groups damage or whatever. Chanter is also one of the few hybrid classes that can play well on both offense and defense without having to put stat points into every single attribute. Granted, he doesn't deal any damage himself (2 Might, 3 Dex), but he tanks like a boss (14 Con, 19 Per, 19 Res) and increases my group's overall performance with his songs/summons which totally do not care about his stats :D DPS Rogue Rogue From my experience rogue DPS is best dps. It's ranged, it's bursty, it's highly sustainable and it's way too high. With all the sneak attack damage and the +accuracy stuff, they fell the enemies pretty quickly. Granted, they don't do well against groups of enemies, but then again the most difficult enemies are usually the ones that are big and beefy (or casters) and not the ones that are many and puny. They make sure that the most threatening targets go down quickly and to me that seems more important than to be able to breeze through big groups of trash mobs. Support Priest Cypher The priest because priests do it all: they buff, they heal, they disable, they damage (if only they could also slice and dice). And cypher because cyphers are op :D they do everyting a wizard does, except better and more often. They are also able to dish out way too much physical damage for a class that's supposedly a caster-hybrid. Their focus generation with a blunderbuss allows you to spam their spells which have too much range, too short of a casttime, hit to well and have too strong effects. Feels a bit cheesy when you can trivialize many fights by keeping whole groups of enemies perma-prone with your cypher's level 1 spell or a single enemy perma-stunned with his level 2 spell. All the while he packs quite a punch with the +damage from whip and the chanters +attack speed/damage song. So far I'm advancing quite well. The first few levels had some tougher fights, but ever since I've reached level 4 and gotten some equipment, it's been a cruise. Will be interesting to see how my relative lack of burst AoE damage will play out in the higher levels, but so far everything either dies very quickly or can be disabled/tanked long enough to be taken out one after the other. Any thoughts? To your party, I'd be careful with the amount of hybrids you take (because they are almost always weaker in their specific ares than a specialist) and with your reliance on buffs/debuffs. Sometimes those fail and this might make for a very tedious playthrough when you're reliable on all your spells hitting their target in order to have a solid tank.

If it helps you, right now on my PotD playthrough my tank usually hits for 0.6 to 0.8 damage (if he even lands a hit) and my off-tank for 0.4 to 0.6 :D If you want to see the big numbers, you just need to crank Might all the way up to 18/19/20, equip an arbaleste/arquebes/pistol and maybe add some +damage talents. And there you go, body-exploding hits wherever you look. Highest single target hit on my last playthrough was 180 on my rogue, doesn't mean you can't go the slow-and-steady route and constantly dwindle away your enemie's hp, just isn't as much splatter

But then you'd need your caster to crit a lot, i.e. to have high accuracy/high hit-to-crit AND to attack a lot. Seems a bit strange for a caster to do that, when he could just as well be casting his spells at the same time. Nevertheless, the wand is useful just for the occasional knockdown, but I wouldn't build my caster around it. The result doesn't seem to be worth the investment 1. your math is wrong, the base damage difference is 8 not 7 (you rounded down for PpC and up for HW ) 2. ... that's only base damage, which will get heavily modified by Might and other modifiers like Soul Whip/Biting Whip (144%) and Sneak Attack, so the actual damage difference is much bigger than 8 3. -6 DR is amazing and much better than 5 accuracy, obviously 4. combat in this game favors slower, harder hitting weapons because of the flat DR effect; this is no exception 5. PpC has additional beneficial effects like +10 acc for ally and -5 def, -5 fortitude, -5 reflex, -5 will 6. firearms go through arcane veil, arbalest doesn't All of this assumes that Hold Wall has endgame enchants of course, in the vanilla state it cannot compete at all 1. true, just did it in my head and adding something to 29 is so tough D: 2. yes, but the base damage on both weapons is equally affected by might and everything else (which is %-based) so we can just ignore those factors 3. yeah, guess so 4. true as well 5. the -5defense actually counterfeits the -5 accuracy quite nicely, but the ally-buff.. nah, don't see it as useful 6. who cares about puny arcane veil, caster die during the first second of they fight anway :D But I guess the discussion is moot by now. What could've been said, had been said, rest is up to personal taste. I use both weapons anyway, together with Leadsplitter and Dulcane. Slow firing, hard hitting ranged weapons is where it's at when it comes to reliable, sustainable 'this does way too much damage'-damage, so might as well just take all of them ) Interesting discussion though

It's there to grow Pilgrim's Crown for you. And I guess bounties and Endless Path. But mostly Pilgrim's Crown

You can get Eder to level 12, which gives him a talent that should automatically revive him once per day. Or you give him the armor from the Endless Path Dungeon which also has the Second Chance mod (I assume it does the same, though I never had Eder hit the ground with it equipped). Alternatively you give him lots of DR/max endurance/consti food, activate his +20 defense skill/chugg a potion with +defense/endurance/etc. right at the start of the fight. It's doable to tank the initial attack. At least it was on hard, dunno about PotD

Aedrin's Wrecker is better, don't know how to get it though, sorry. Also, Pliambo per Casitàs does way more than just 5 damage more than Hold Wall, plus it has 5 DR reduce It is way beyond Hold Wall in terms of raw damage potential. Lead Spitter with Penetrating Shot should be the highest average damage per shot up until ~15 DR targets, second and third will be Pliambo per Casitàs and Dulcanale (the latter obvously has higher potential crit damage because of the Destructive modifier) Mh. But where to get Aedrin's Wrecker? Finished the whole game without seeing it. Pliambo per Casitàs does 35-52 base damage, Hold-Wall does 29-42. On average that is 43 damage for the rifle, 36 for the arbaleste. So yeah, the rifle does 7 more damage per attack, but also has very slow attack speed instead of slow. Though I don't know what the exact difference between the two ist. Now the gun also has built-in DR bypassing of 6, but also -5 accuracy (which means less crits, less hits, less grazes, more misses). The impact of -5 accuracy on damage is rather hard to gauge, and the +6 flat damage isn't as much as one might think because the attack speed is so low.. what makes Hold Wall still good is the x1.2 attack speed. The rifle comes with +10 accuracy for an ally, which can be great if it works on another ranged DD, but which can also completely go to waste if noone else attacks the target or only your supporters/tanks. Taking all of that into consideration and just by looking at the numbers in combat (though a rather unprecise way of measuring) the rifle does more per-hit damage, but less frequent. Less frequent than it should to justify the increase in damage. So long story short: pretty sure Hold-Wall is still up there :D But where do your numbers on Lead Splitter come from? As far as I can tell, almost all the targets in the later portions of the game (all the difficult ones anyway) have high DR, making any Blunderbluss rather ineffective, no? Aaaanyways.. to the OP: just take any sort of named Pistol, Arbaleste or Arbeques and stack all the talents and damage items you can. And you're good to go. Most likely you'll have more than one dedicated ranged attacker anyway, forcing you to spread out

Dulcanale is the best pistol in the game, but why would you compare it to an Arbaleste when Arbalestes are mediocre at best since the damage nerf? Also, Hold-Wall isn't even the best Arbaleste in the game... The real contenders for Dulcanale in terms of best ranged weapons are Pliambo per Casitàs and Lead Spitter. Which of these guns is best for you depends on your class, stats, talents etc. - but it will but one of those three. The most damage potential per shot is probably Lead Spitter with Penetrating Shot (-12DR per projectile...) Back to my former question: does anyone know whether Gunner and the Ila chant stack? Not sure if arbalestes are really only mediocre now. They still seem to be on par with pistols (slower rate of fire but higher damage, resulting in bigger burst damage while dealing the same DPS.. and burst is good to take out critical targets). Which arbaleste is better than Hold-Wall? Haven't found any that can keep up with the 1.2 speed mod, and I visited every area except the area with the vendor of the douche family of Defiance Bay (Dunamel or something like that..). Lead Splitter is a bunderbluss, right? So it's horrible imo. What it basically says is: Mod: The enemie's DR is multiplied by 6. Even if you take somethign like Penetrating Shot (which effect is also multiplied by 6), it's still horrible. Later on in the game, enemies have much more than just 12 DR, and every single point of DR above 12 is felt tenfold when using a blunderbluss. For the captain's weapon.. yeah, dunno. I guess it comes down to Prone vs. 5 more damage. Not more than that. But please correct me if I'm wrong :D (and tell me where to find an arbaleste that's better than Hold-Wall )

As far as damage is concerned, the most lethal weapon should be the Dulcanale Pistol that you can buy in the savage town's shop in Hearthsong. It has the Rend mod (+3 DR) AND the Crit mod (+0.5 Crit multiplier), putting it ahead of the best arbaleste Hold-Wall (which only has 1.2 reload timer in terms of offensive mods). In terms of utility I would still go with Hold-Wall because prone is such a good status effect and if you stack crit chance (i.e. +accuracy talents, +accuracy items, wood elf passive, rogue talents) you can basically perma disable one target with your rogue alone as well as allowing said rogue to almost always have sneak attack or double sneak attack. So in practice, for raw damage: Dulcanale Pistol from the shop in Hearthsong, for damage + utility: Hold-Wall. In general it should still be: Arbaleste, Pistol/Arquebues, Bow, each approriately enchanted and with the right talents. Blunderbluss is complete garbage damage-wise because you need to punch through the target's damage reduction multiple times, making it horribly on everything but naked targets. Only real application is with some sort of wonky game mechanic like the cipher's focus generation which triggers off all of the individual bullets, or applying some other effect which treats every bullet as a seperate attack.

Killed him on Hard, with a party of six (PC + Eder, Aloth, Durance, Sagani, Kana) at level 12, pretty much at the end of the game. Setup Tank - Eder, stacked damage reduction and avoidance (all four defensive stats at around 120), 5 Major Potions of Endurance, 2 Potions of +25 Deflection Ranged Physical DD - PC (Rogue Wood Elf with all the offensive talents you can get, wielding the named arquebues from the Pirate bounty) Ranged Physical DD - Sagani (wielding a named Hunting Bow) Ranged Physical DD - Kana (chanting the fire damage phrase and the reduced reload timer phrase and wielding the named arbaleste Hold Wall) Support Buffer/Disabler/Healer - Durance Support Disabler - Aloth Strategy When the fight starts, Eder is positionied to the far north, the rest of the group to the south, so when the dragon spawns, Eder will be the only one who gets whacked by its attacks/breath/wing attack. Eder just suits up using all his defensive cooldowns and potions and then gets flailed at, staying alive by using potions and generally just not getting hit. At the same time the three physical DDs stay on the dragon throughout the whole fight and throw everything at him to kill him as quickly as possible. Aloth and Durance (and Kana's summons via invocation/figurines) manage the rest of the fight. They buff the group, they disable the adds, they support Eder, and if the time is there, they throw a spell or two at the dragon. With that tactic the dragon went down first try without much trouble. As long as your ranged DPS is high enough, Aloth and Durance (and your summons) should be able to ward of the spawning adds, while Eder sustains himself with his 20s defensive cooldown (the one which gives +20 all defenses), his self-heal (the one which heals 50% of incoming damage over time) and some potions.

Aren't Cypher spells redundant with Wiz/Priest, except that they have a longer reload timer? And why Barbarian? Do you rely on melee DPS?

This whole God/Trash tier stuff seems a bit vague, especially when given to classes as a whole and with disregard to the different roles they can fulfill. I'd rather categorize a class' usefullness by its abiltiy to fulfill a certain role the best. Based on a playthrough on hard difficulty. Best at something that is important Fighter - Tanking Rogue - Single Target DPS Priest - Healing Wizard - Spammable Disable Okay Druid - I guess he has easy-to-use AoE damage, but the tougher fights usually aren't tough because you lack AoE damage Chanter - worse Single Target DD than Rogue, worse AoE DD than any of the Casters, yet somewhat usefull (i.e. to buff your Rogues) Poor Man's Stand-In Paladin - worse Support than any of the casters/hybrids, worse DD than Rogue, worse Tank than Fighter Ranger - worse Single Target DD than Rogue, though handy pet for off-tank duty and the Stunning Shot talent is ridiculous Barbarian - worse Single Target DD than Rogue, reliant on being in melee range which is just a bad idea on harder difficulties Bad in Theory yet Amazing in Practice? Monk - Haven't played one and getting damaged to function (on top of being a melee DD) seems counterintuitive for harder difficulties, but maybe his abilities are worth the tradeoff Cypher - haven't played with these either, from what I've read they seem to trivialize trash mobs, but then who cares about trash mobs.. their spell list reads like a Wizard/Priest that has an internal cooldown, so I'd rather have a full-fledged caster who can chain-cast stuff than a hybrid who needs a breathing pause after two rounds Are Cyphers really viable on PotD during some of the harder/longer encounters?

For this specific encounter: as soon as the fight starts, retreat back to the stairwell while you position your tank(s) at the top of the stairs and your squishier party member at the bottom of it to take advantage of that chokepoint. Then turn said chokepoint into a field of death by using all the AoE damage/disable spells/abilities you have right in front of your tank while your squishies stand at the bottom of the stairs shooting away at everything from a safe distance. If everything works out, your tank is standing in the front getting flailed at by 3-4 dudes while the rest of the mobs blocks themselves and slowly dies to your spells/missiles. As for general tips, as was already mentioned: -use the surroundings to your advantage, mostly to creaty chokepoints in which to position your tank so the mobs can't get through to your casters/ranged DDs -minmax, i.e. stack damage reduction and avoidance on your tank and stack damage on everything else, your tank can hit like a limp noodle, as long as he doesn't die and your DD's can be made out of papermaché as long as they rain death and destruction on your enemies -disable is your friend: use your supporters to disable your targets, rather than dealing damage. Everything dies eventually to your bows/guns, but surviving the mass of enemies is the more difficult part, where your stuns/sleeps/blinds help you a lot -abuse the mob AI: mobs in PoE are dumb, so just use a single tank (or two for convenience) and make the rest of your group ranged. Makes everything easier, from positioning, to itemization, to combat itself -use slow firing hard hitting guns/arbalests: even though they were recently balanced, those things still hit like bazookas. So just give every puny rogue, chanter, cypher, priest, whatever you have one and watch them make your enemies explode (literally) Other than that.. not much comes to mind. Play smart :D