Kaylon

The fire shield stays if you switch from Magran's Favor?

Bloodmage/assassin is very strong because at high level you can have unlimited invisibility. Losing health to restore your invisibility spell isn't a big problem because you can use infinite vampiric touch to backstab and heal back (on top of regen/heal on kill items you can have). But until then you can play like a regular assassin/mage.

Even if it's 15% dmg every 3s, it's not a 30% lash because it doesn't stack - it will just add 15% more dmg every 3s, no matter your attack speed. Voidwheel (without the proc) will add 20% dmg with every attack which even with an average 3s delay will outdps Effort easily.

Maiming does 15% total damage, not 15% more dmg every 3s... In fact it does 5% raw dmg every 3s (3 times with 10INT) and it doesn't stack, which means adding more INT won't increase the total bleed damage (if you hit always the same target). If you attack every 3s it's like having a sword with 5% lash, if you attack faster it's even less - not even close to the dps Voidwheel can produce (20% lash and 25% chance to proc Necrotic Lance)...

Keeper of the Flame

The reason to play the pale elf are mostly the elemental resistances which will help at higher difficulties. But you can pick any race you want, the most important are the items and the abilities.

There are two good builds around Voidwheel if you don't mind playing a steel garrote. One is the steel garrote/assassin (or trickster if you want more survivability) which has huge backstab damage potential (with modal activated) and has also good single target dps, coupled with decent survivability. The other one is the steel garrote/helwalker spamming Raised Torment. The constant self draining from the sword coupled with Hylea's Talons ensure plenty of wounds and you can keep most enemies stunned while also dealing good AoE damage.

Sapphires and rubies can't be found in shops either, but they're less scarce than adra ban.

He said compared to PoE1 (like most classes) which I also agree. In Deadfire priests/wizards are considered OP only because the SoT/Wall of Draining cheese... Without those spells they would be on par with druids, ie just an average class...

The monk is the strongest and you don't have to buff yourself for 10 min before each fight...

All abilities/spells/itemss are overall weaker in Deadfire. A way to compensate this is to find another class having good synergy with the one you want to play. For a ranged wizard a great combo is with a helwalker which adds might, intellect, penetration and speed... The monk can also use Citzal's spear as a ranged weapon (with Instruments of Pain) as a way to deal ranged AOE damage, which is even better than the PoE1 rod. If you want to make a melee wizard, then you can combine a bloodmage with a paladin and tank any monster in the game.

You can use drugs before the fight.

Shieldbearer isn't required anymore for this build, you can pick any paladin subclass... To avoid the extreme self damage from Sacred Immolation you need Voidward, Ring of the Solitary Wanderer, high resolve and use Clarity of Agony to reduce the number of raw dmg tics to 2-3.

You talk about solo? Having access to brilliant is just nice, I'm not even sure there's a tactician combo who can solo every megaboss (without wall of draining/salvation of time cheese).

Actually Brilliant itself is pretty weak. The problem comes from Wall of Draining/Salvation of Time and the fix was always pretty simple, don't let Brilliant/Blood Sacrifice restore them.

The Red Hand is perfect for Maia Rua, you don't need to make a special build for it... For Frostseeker the ranger is mandatory (accuracy+bounce). I don't recommend SC because Twinned Shots is expensive and you can't use it many times (unless you're using the mod from Nexus which changed Twinned Shots to restore Bond on crits). If you want to have a pet I recommend Ascendant/Arcane Archer which has great buffs/CCs and can keep the pet alive. If you don't want to bother with a pet then Ghost Heart/Helwalker - adds accuracy, dmg, speed, 2 strong pets and also can stun at will. The rogue/ranger can also deal great damage (sneak attack/deathblows apply to the AoE) but requires buffs/CCs from the party in order to be effective.

Can you change the color of the models? I always wanted to make the armor/weapons set of the Deathdealer (berserker/streetfighter) using existing items: Rekvu's Helm (black) - maybe something like Deltro's Cage (but for melee damage) gives a raw dmg lash The Bloody Links (black) - add some mods from Reckless Brigandine/Guardian's Plate Magran's Favor (2h axe black) - like Lord Darryn's Voulge but with raw dmg instead Sasha's Sniging Scimitar (black) - with mods similar to Kapana Taga Cadhu Scalth (black) - retaliate with main attack on miss

Priest and wizard combos are very strong, but they require lots of buffing (which becomes very tedious in the long run) and are vulnerable to dispelling. Tactician's trick (become brilliant while invisible) is good for solo, but not if you have a party. For party game play the strongest classes are the Darcozzi paladin/troubadour (the swiss knife of the game) or the Darcozzi paladin/bloodmage (requires minor buffing, but has access to powerful nukes) both being solid from the start to the end. (you can replace the Darcozzi with Steel Garrote if you want to be evil).

If the rogue can't maintain the enemies afflicted reliably he will do poor damage. And if you have to cast CCs often, your dps will go down also (the Gaze of Adragan is good on paper, but it comes very late, has very short duration and targets the highest defense of the enemies). A good solution is to use the Ring of Clenched Muscle to afflict enemies, however it comes late too. But if you have a cipher or a blood mage you want to micro manage to maintain the enemies afflicted all the time, then it will work.

Like Boeroer said, the answer is the Frostseeker build. If you like to always have a pet then I recommend ascendant/arcane archer with bear companion because the cipher has great buffs for the pet. If you want the feel of the PoE1 archer with stunning shots, then you should try helwalker/ghost heart (the pet is harder to keep alive and it's better to not bother about Bonded Grief) can spam later Stunning Surge. The rogue/ranger works great with other weapons (Red Hand, mortars), but doesn't have good synergy with Frostseeker. The devoted/ranger is pretty good too if you want to trade versatility for survivability.

Big shields should do more damage or else small shields will be strictly better for bashing because no accuracy loss.

The most useful mod on Vion-ceth is the 25% chance to destroy primordials on crits. The +25 defenses vs plant attacks makes it also the ideal weapon against lurkers.

The soul blade/rogue has a specific synergy with the Sun and Moon flail and Toutilo's Palm shield (which I recommend using at least until you get Barring Death's Door) because it will increase your survivability without sacrificing your dps. The flail hits twice which allows you to gain focus during Soul Annihilation and you can spam it over and over again (besides the raw dmg you gain the PL dmg bonus, concentration with every hit and you can interrupt on crits). Because Soul Annihilation is a primary attack you will use only your flail, while the Toutilo's Palm will cut your recovery like if you were using two weapons (besides adding more defense and a chance to riposte). With Salvation of Time you can still use the same combo and benefit also from 50 deflection bonus from Escape for a higher chance to trigger ripostes (from the rogue/shield) which translate in more focus and damage. Using two weapons is of course possible, but then you will have to alternate between Soul Annihilation and other abilities/normal hits in order to gain focus. Using 2h weapons works also very well and with the Whispers of the Endless Paths you can hit with Soul Annihilation multiple targets for great AoE damage. For the stats you should keep in mind that once you have Barring Death's Door con/res become useless (thus you should lower them as much as you're comfortable with). The important stats to max are in that order : per>mig>dex and the rest in int. Ideal race is human (accuracy/dmg bonuses while bloodied).

If you bind the robes of the Weyc to your chanter then you get this ability at lvl2 (it triggers when you empower an invocation - which can be done every fight with Sasha's scimitar)