Raven Darkholme

The disorienting cone just passively triggers on crit. I wasn't even aware of mule Kick disorienting haha.

Hand mortar disorient is also quite great for Tactician.

The main way to get brilliant with Tactician is to flank the enemies, the end of combat thing is not 100% reliable but really useful with Woedica's challenge. The Shadowing Beyond thing is not intentional and might not count but I might end up using it myself. Let's not forget in this game all perception afflictions flank, the priest has an Aoe blind, blind = flank. There's also a bomb with blind and ofc priest has a summon to flank.

Tested Writ of War and since it only disables abilites and not normal attacks it might not be as good as it looks on paper. (might have limited use against some megabosses but they have high res) Also Vela's fear is not an affliction so there might be no way to remove it. (can't remove it with supress affliction)

Tactician/Bloodmage is the safest class for ToI but I don't feel it is to amazing for Vela. It's not just relying on Withdraw scrolls, but the fact it also needs Potions of Death's Door, which might not be ideal in a no pause run (and it also takes up another consumable slot) since you need to be near death to drink it. Good thing about having heals on top of Death immunity is when you get Arcane cleansed, you're most likely full hp. (and at least back when I played Tactician draining wall + made the heals from unbending stack so it ended up healing for thousands of hp after a while) I'm playing Tactician/Woedica atm but I see it having trouble with Spooderboss. Since I never played with Magran's fires before this is just a test run and I don't even have TOI, Magran challenge and Wael's challenge enabled. Most likely I will go with Woedica(maybe even another deity)/bloodmage in the end, which is technically the safest class but it's lack of burst heal makes fights with cleanse kinda risky (but totally doable) edit:I'm also trying TB + 3 Dex rn but since my reaction's are ****ty I might not end up doing this for the actual Ultimate challenge since one only has 10 secs time per turn and casting free actions takes quite long with low dex.

It might have been patched, but as far as I can tell when it disappeared it wasn't in the patch notes, but there was changes to turn based mode which just was introduced back then and one of them had something to do with pausing. Unless it was a stealth patch, what actually happened they tried doing something to pause for turn based mode, but by doing so they accidentally removed the ability to reload a paused game, which accidentally removed this glitch.

As I said I didn't like the interrupt time from the chant it seemed useless against anything but casters, but if there is items to buff interrupt duration this might be different. Ofc you could also compliment it with a weapon with actual long interrupt time and ofc a barbarian/chanter mc as you said.

Yes, only the damaging chants can interrupt. uh.... in PoE1 the longest interrupt was like 1s (morningstars maybe longer) and you could not interrupt someone already interrupted. In Deadfire the standard interrupt is +2s (prone is +2s recovery with a simultaneous 3s animation to stand up), and you can repeatedly interrupt the same target and push them back to the longer of their current recovery or 2s. in Deadfire it's not too hard to interrupt-lock a boss until they die. Such a thing was virtually impossible in PoE1. interrupts in PoE1 were pure murk. edit: it's not unreasonable for mountaintiger to speculate that chants don't count as attacks. chants literally function like nothing else in the game. they don't even PL scale, they use a very chanter-specific level-based scaling that occurs nowhere else in the game. even in PoE1 chants occupied a really weird zone (they benefited from single-weapon style accuracy bonus, but not other weapon accuracy bonuses). i don't think it would be too hard to verify with a come, come or dragon thrashed which of you is correct (but i'm at work now) I never tried an actual interrupt based build in deadfire but I did have an interrupt barb in Poe1 so maybe it seemed much more powerful because I equipped and leveled it purely for interrupt. I never said it's unreasonable for him to assume they were not attacks, just wondering why he would think they don't interrupt because they are not attacks, but he already posted he didn't use the damaging chants so obviously thats why they didn't interrupt.

What makes you say chants are not considered attacks? In Deadfire(might have been different in PoE1, don't remember) chants can interrupt last time I tested it (not too long ago) and interrupts with chants are pretty easy to get if you switch between soft winds and dragon chants depending on lower enemy defense vs fort or reflex, having some hit to crit conversion also helps. Thing is interrupts are much weaker (shorter) in this game compared to Poe1, so unless you are up against dangerous spellcasters they are almost useless.

I'm not sure if I understand your question, but the spells have their own accuracy calculation which is based on PL and they don't get enchantment bonus added from weapons, but they will get a penalty from medium or large shields, while they won't get accuracy bonus from one handing. However some of the accuracy buffs you can get from items will apply to spells. Adaptive from Scordeo explicitly says weapons, so unless it's bugged it doesn't apply to spells, but honestly this is super easy to find out, just stack it up, use a spell, mouse over and shift in the combat log.

Some are instacast but the ciphers don't have free actions, so they all consume his action, you only get one action per round and movement.

The fights with Arcane Cleanse/Dampener are all easy enough to never even use Final Stand, especially in turn based you just use siphon for heals and if not possible cast conselhauts missiles on tentacles (siphon is enough for conselhaut, because ads are super weak and a lot of them). The fights were you need potion are FS and megabosses, maybe some of the SS, haven't done all of them so idk. I'm playing Thauma atm and it has the added benefit of being able to use Salvation of time, in case you get brilliant from cloak, so against Doru you don't necessarily need to wait for flame blight from magran's belt, if you get brilliant first you can just cast that each round.

All this talk about Ascendant made me think about how to actually make the Ascendant amazing (and it works both in TB and real time but ofc is more relevant in TB, since Ascendant is already ok in real time) and as for pretty much every class the answer is blood mage. Don't wanna derail the original topic too much which was single class, but the short version is wall of Draining + Ascended + Blood Sacrifice to get walls back. Your Ascended status will never end and ofc other effects like potion of final stand will never end, so even solo you will never die and can use stuff like Willbreaker or Magrans chosen belt/hostiles from killing tentacles with Essence interrupter, if you feel like enemy will is too high for your walls. Honestly just Willbreaker and psychovampiric shield should be enough even vs Doru's high ish will.

Disintegrate from ciphers is much better in TB than it was in real time, with Captain's banquet it does 160ish damage per round which is not to shabby compared to the damage most enemies can deal to you per round.

(highlight mine) Wow, you honestly didn't read my post and still responded to it. I legitimately don't know what to say, that's kind of amazing in its boldness. It's your highlight, that while I literally wrote I stopped reading there, I actually did it??? 5 rounds duration doesn't make the Ascendant better, same amount of disintegrate casts as SB, but thats not even the point, since using max focus on Soul Annihilation is much better than waiting 5 rounds for casting Disintegrates. (and it targets a better defense) Also you basically agree Ascendant is bad against the enemies where it actually matters whether it's efficient or not, who even cares about trash enemies, you aren't gonna cast high level powers there anyway, do you want to cast mind blades for 5 rounds and spend max focus on it?

I stopped reading there, if you max your focus in round 1, what stops you from using Soul Annihilation with a Soul Blade, which will do more damage as Disintegrate and go against deflection, which is the lowest defense in the game especially for dragons/megabosses/bosses, anyone thats not trash? Also if you max your focus and still wanna cast disintegrate a Soul Blade can cast 5 disintegrates with that amount of focus, why stop at 3 with the Ascendant?

Ascendant is plain bad in TB. You can't "spam" abilities while Ascended, you can use exactly 3, one per round. Atm Disintegrate is godlike on TB, it costs 60 focus base, 55 as Soul Blade, three times 60 = 180, max focus is something like 275 as Ascendant, which you have to reach to become Ascended, so you have to achieve almost 100 more focus for using the same ability, but since Soul Blade is the best cipher anyway, as a Soul Blade you only need 165 focus for 3 disintegrate. On top of that the Soul Blade has the added utility of Soul Annihilation, which does less damage than Disintegrate, but is much better against Dorudugan with 180 Fort and only 140ish deflection. (Tbf most higher fortitude enemies can be easily disintegrated tho, since you can weaken enemies with Fractured Volition = -10 fort, which wouldn't be enough against Doru but there is not many other enemies with even close to 180 fort in the game.)

While it might still not be good enough, dragon chant is a lot better in turn based than in real time. Like a lot of other Aoe tick spells it ticks 3 times per round, so if you stack 3+ chants with troubadour it will tick 9x + per round. Main problem is pen, but one could take a 2nd class with fire pen passive, like wizard, paladin or druid, use the energize invocation for another 2 pen and use the shield debuff invocation on top. Much more practical, at least for solo would be to combine the chanter with cipher and just use disintegrate, when dragon chant fails, cuz disintegrate is also op in turn based, like many other similar abilities it does its damage twice per round, which can be quite massive with maxed might and +20% damage from captain's banquet. (it goes against fort, but even grazes hurt a lot and at least the cipher gets +20 acc from borrowed instinct) edit: ofc these several ticks per rounds might all be unintentional and get fixed eventually.

Maybe, there is plenty of glitches still in the game. :D Also as long as they don't fix the food stacking exploit even the worst class in the game can solo the megabosses, something horrible like a rogue/cipher is suddenly godtier because having 200 in each defense and -70% dmg taken and +50% damage dealt suddenly means it is super tanky but its damage output is ... well the damage output of a rogue/cipher, by far the highest damage ingame + 50% damage from foods.

I only played turn based recently so idk what's happening in real time mode atm, but in turn based you get duration normally from any enemy, not only that, but if you push enemies away and they reaggro and walk over the wall you get additional rounds of buffs per enemy, if you're surrounded by multiple melees your bdd goes up from 1 to 10 rounds instantly.

The cipher from PoE1 is gone indeed, but the soulblade/paladin is, just like the troubadour/paladin, one of the best soloers in the game - very reliable and can deal with anything you throw at him from the start until the end (megabosses included). And he's also a great addition for a party if you want a tank with good offense and versatility. That's not a good synergy at all tho, Soulblade has that with any melee class and Paladin has that with any class, and I definitely would not compare ciphers with chanters in this game, while they were similar in poe 1(the chanter was still stronger by quite a bit, except against dragons where cipher was god tier) they are not even in the same tier in this game. Yes you can solo the game easily with both, but are there really many classes that can't kill the megabosses? (I know only of a chosen few) Maybe there's no particular synergy, but they complement each other really well and is certainly more reliable than other combos. And yes, I think that only a few well rounded classes/combos can solo the entire content. PS. With the nerf of Wall of Draining I'm curious if your bloodmage/tactician still can solo Dorudugan... By draining wall nerf you mean the stacking walls is gone? I soloed ooze after that nerf it doesn't actually make a difference for any of the megabosses, against Doru I used enemies summoned via killing phantoms with essence interrupter and when it finally spawned the fire blight summoned by magran belt, these enemies have 50 will and get crit multiple times per second by one wall.

To be fair, just being able to solo a megaboss does not necessarily equate to general power. Solo-ing basically amounts to "is this class lucky enough to have the right inherent toolset to take advantage of some technical tricks." For example, my two solo runs (one Triple Crown, one The Ultimate) for PoE1 used a chanter and paladin, respectively, and it had less to do with any in-built power, but more just about their sheer ability to repeatedly use powers or high defenses themselves (e.g. infinite summons with chanter, bonus defense with paladin) and I would nowhere near put them on the top of the list of "most powerful PoE1 classes." That being said, I think lists like this are pretty useful if you acknowledge their shortcomings. They are essentially a crowd-sourced list of what casual Deadfire players think are powerful (because it'll basically be heavily weighted towards casual players), and if you contextualize it like that, it can be a good guide for other casual players to quickly figure out what are good classes to pick up and play. But if you start picking at it ever so slightly for more details, or expect some high-end guides on class/multiclass power, it's going to collapse really quickly. (Imagine determining Starcraft 2 meta or Super Smash Bros tier lists based largely just on what casual players like to play or worse think they like to play.) Chanters in PoE1 were absolute godtier because of their sheer power. This power did not lie in summons, once you reach level 9 using an invocation took away from the power of the dragon chant, interrupting the dragon chant stops stacking it, a double stacked dragon chant was already by far the highest dps ingame, tracking three times was easy, stacking 4 times was achievable at max level. Funnily enough using invocations is the only thing interrupting chanting, healing or buffing yourself via consumables is possible while maintaining massive dps, the chanter was by far the most superior bountykiller in all of poe1, regular mobs just melted without even aknowledging their presence. The only one thing chanters were not top dog was dragons, they were still very strong against them it's just that the cipher was better at it and this only after a buff to a cipher ability - psychic backlash - had an unexpected (and most likely unintended) sidewffwct of making it unlimited instead of 1x per encounter. Mind you killing a dragon with ads probably still took the cipher longer than the chanter due to the higher power of the dragon chant, but the cipher killed dragons more comfortably, a permastunned foe is a lot less intimadating.

I see a difference between cheating and exploiting, as long as something is in the game it is "legit". For this specific exploit I have to admit that I don't think more than one playthrough will be fun because the amount of buffs one acquires this way is absolutely massive. Maybe after one playthrough Obsidian will fix this anyway. For people trying to recreate this exploit I found out another thing during todays stream: While this didn't happen on my testcharacter, for my new char I made and played from level 4 I couldn't get this to work without quicksaving and reloading before actually pauseresting. This makes this impossible to use in Trial of Iron, since deadfires TOI save and load system is absolutely horrible, while the game doesn't even autosave which is an absolutte disgrace, every time one exits the game an exitsave is created, so unless you actually wanna go thru the trouble of saving the actual savefile manually the exitsave will destroy your buffs.

The cipher from PoE1 is gone indeed, but the soulblade/paladin is, just like the troubadour/paladin, one of the best soloers in the game - very reliable and can deal with anything you throw at him from the start until the end (megabosses included). And he's also a great addition for a party if you want a tank with good offense and versatility. That's not a good synergy at all tho, Soulblade has that with any melee class and Paladin has that with any class, and I definitely would not compare ciphers with chanters in this game, while they were similar in poe 1(the chanter was still stronger by quite a bit, except against dragons where cipher was god tier) they are not even in the same tier in this game. Yes you can solo the game easily with both, but are there really many classes that can't kill the megabosses? (I know only of a chosen few)

Cipher/Paladin Rank 1 is really troll, sadly not even a good class with any awesome synergy.(This is coming from somebody who absolutely loved these classes in Poe1 and was superhype for the multiclass) Not counting the subclasses makes this even worse, Bloodmage + anything is so meta and while wizard in itself is good enough to be rank 3 or maybe even 2 or 1 adding the subclasses would make this much more accurate.