Raven Darkholme

Kana should be able to tank dragons fine, his stats are slightly less ideal than a pc, but in a party you have way more buffs. Also you could just take a cipher in party and passively permastun all dragons with backlash. :P

I wouldn't call it cheating to use SC, there are MANY other things that come very close to actual cheating as @Not So Clever Hound pointed out. Also as @Boeroer pointed out, at the end of the day it is all about finding a party composition you find strong and enjoyable at the same time, but personally I find this especially fun with single classes, but once again certain multiclasses will work very well throughout the entire game. At the end of the day this is the kind of game where, if you enjoy it in your first playthru, the likelihood for rerolling to try out an idea you may have gotten, is very high.

The good single classes are about 10x stronger than any multiclass you can make with that class in it (ok maybe slight overexaggeration on the 10x but not that far from the truth :P), those classes being wizard, monk and rogue. (this is for solo btw, these classes shine even MORE in a party) That being said there are some classes which perform exceptionally well as multiclass and not really that much better or even worse as single class, the most prominent one being probably priest. (once again this is for solo, in a party I'd NEVER multiclass a priest) As everyone else mentioned here before Multiclasses shine early, but especially in a party fall off very fast, I'd say at around level 13-15 when you get your pl 7-8 abilities on a SC. Big exceptions are the classes that don't get anything massive after PL 7, the priest gets their strongest tool even at pl 6. (In a party it's still super benificial to go SC, due to slower xp gain)

I didn't know that, however I didn't mean chanter for energized, but for the perma passive interrupt from chants with effort also proccing Avenging scroll. It is nice to know there is a pre SSS completion source of energised for everyone, but at the same time completing SSS doesn't take that long, getting there definitely takes longer Yes, I was thinking about resonance too, but it doesn't "tickle" me enough compared to what single class monk already does without it, druid seems way more interesting, since its not that great without effort.

Tactician/chanter sounds like fun. I was also trying to think of good ff multiclasses (with hylea's), but single class monk is so good and effort is a lot less good on them.

You're making me want to pick up deadfire again, every time I visit this forum.

Cocoon? No need for confuse, it is already a great spell for saving allies, because it can be cast outside of combat. (which also enables the strand cheese xd)

If you dominate it it's not cleared on hit, at least not with cipher spell. Maybe its a weird interaction with weakness to int, similar to how a resistance always shows you "losing" an affliction even tho you should not have gotten it in the first place.

That is actually a buff compared to Assassin's Untargetable. Yes you could theoretically hurt yourself, but since grimoire swapping gives you bdd and enemies can't even target you with AOE dispel you will never die. Assassin can't even target themselves with AoE buffs, but wizard can just normally target themselves with anything.

I just happened to look into this forum after a long time and thats a hilarious find. I already had a single class wizard testchar with Vela, because I think just the grimoire stealing makes it the best class by far. Loaded that save and tested it on vela (grimoire stealing makes you have permanent priest spells, including SoT) and you can even prolong it on her infinitely, making both wizard and vela untargetable.

It's good with any class, except monk ofc. It's very different than Poe1 version, it basically works like a summoned weapon , however PL affects it much more than it does summoned weapons (as Elric said the gamefaq has the proper numbers), so it easily outscales those in the later stages of the game and on top of that is much more powerful than most actual weapons you find early game. Personally I usually pick the talent on literally any class unless I'm super starved on passives, because then you can be quite flexible with your pen, especially if your main weapon are the oh so powerful bleeding cut battle axes. The only reason to ever use summoned weapons are if you either want to use an utility one like Spirit Lance (very amazing with ciphers) or you have a multiclass that simply can't pick monastic like chanter/wizard for example.

Whenever you lack damage, tick damage is always a great answer. Combusting Wounds was already mentioned, later you get both Malignant Cloud and more importantly Freezing Pillar, so you won't be locked into only fire damage anymore. Combining all your Aoes with a nice little Pull of Eoara makes them very effective and ofc also helps your party aoe as long as they stay in friendly fire zone.

I don't want to be rude, but you contradict yourselve here, as you kept starting these arguments even if I (and maybe others) gave a "-big-ass glitch/exploit disclaimer". I agree with @Boeroerthat it's weird to "police" how other people play their game. But I also have to add, and excuse me if this sounds rude again, it's not intended, I find it weird how you once mentioned you don't play solo Potd or Ultimate, but yet it seems like you feel the need to point out how in your opinion people should play their single player solo games. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to brate or belittle you, but I'm sick and tired of seeing this same pointless discussion again and again, I have to admit it kept me from posting on these forums more regular.

I only recorded full gameplay for Act 1, because the views steadily declined, after that I only recorded boss fights and the harder bounties. This should take you to the first video in the playlist:

Well, fights are definitely longer in this game than they were in POE1 unless you do some SOF cheesing ofc, hehe. Just the zeal cost isn't that big of a deal in itself for SI, because if you have priest and cipher you could just get perma brilliant on your pala. I think what @Elric Galadmeant is: Compared to the zeal cost SI isn't the most effective thing to do with a pala. My suggestion to go FF/pala was actually based on that type of thought, because it would just synergize very well both with SI and Tuotilo's, would definitely be a viable char, wouldn't be the most min amxed char ever, but quite good.

Imo this game is A LOT less about min maxing attributes than Poe1, since you can get so many stat bonuses (if we leave out poe1 priest buffs those were ridicolous ofc) you can get several attributes to 35 on one char and even if you don't min max a stat you can get it close to 20. (Res is probably the craziest, you can get completely dumped res close to 20 without even trying on almost any class). Just keep in mind RES is a lot less useful in deadfire, than it was in POE1, not saying it's bad or anything but you can tank the entire game with dumped res, if you min max your char for tanking itemwise. SC paladin is really not that useful, but getting better PL is actually quite nice. If you ever feel like the game might be too hard on potd, you could always just take a priest with you and trivialize the entire game.

I can only guess, I didn't invent the term. It's mostly used when you trick the game, either by abusing bad AI or bug exploits or in multiplayer games just by repeating the same broken strat over and over with the hope people don't find counterplay. Since people very often also like to say "stinky cheese" I would think thats where the term comes from, you keep repeating smth broken and "old/stinky" but theres nothing the game can do to counter it.

If you want to not respec and go low res early acts, you may wanna consider using this cheese:

Yeah idk if I would call SI amazing, lets just say it's 10x worse than poe1 version, but it didn't get hit as hard as dragon chant. I was just thinking that IF you dedicate an entire build to it it's probably wiser to go with a multiclass benefitting from high res in other ways than just the SI. If you use tuotilo's palm the monk would benefit even more from this. Getting engagement with non fighters is not that hard either, since there is a "softcap" on how many enemies you can actually engage by the sheer fact not that many enemies can even surround you and the bigger their "circles" the less of them you can engage. A fighter can definitely get way more engagement on paper than they will actually ever get in combat. Also keep in mind monks get summons which copy your items, thats way more engagement than a fighter can possibly have just because of game limits.

Resolve for deflection is only useful for Act 1 and super early in Act 2. Thankfully you can respec attributes unlike in deadfire. Later on you get so much deflection from items that wasting resolve on it is pointless. You might have seen in the vids I linked I had 127 deflection without potion and scroll and 149 with both up (and 139 if flanked). As long as you have little saviour or similar items with +50 defenses while stunned, have fenwalker for - duration on paralyze and always enough vital essence potions and moonlight scrolls, that is plenty of deflection. Lategame fortitude is much more important than deflection, especially in Llengrath fight with piggy spell, so I aim for 190 fort at least for that fight (as you saw I got that with maxed per) so con is definitely better than res.

Personally I maxed it, that being said your summons don't profit from your per and will be your main dmg vs brynlod. I guess you could respec just for that one fight, but neiter dex nor resolve will give you any edge whatsoever, so why even take points out of per, the fight will still be slow or even slower.

If you want to make a build around SI, why not go monk/pala? No need to even go max res, if you have ring of lone wanderer using clarity of agony will remove SI even with a starting res of 10 (as long as you have close to all the res boni you can get permanently in game). Also you could just go Forbidden Fist, that way you have a nice synergy even if you want to go max res.

LLengrath is incredibly easy with a chanter, because you can abuse the withdraw shield to kill off the mages and after that it's smooth sailing Brynlodd definitely is a very hard fight for chanters but u gotta remember that besides chanting you have billion other tools and ofc summons. Here's how I did those fights on my ultimate, been a long time so it probably wasn't even the best strategy, but it worked so I'll take it:

I wouldn't call resting less very efficient with a wizard. You can nuke most fights in a matter of seconds and you get to take 2 camping supplies with you, so you probably get close to as far, as with dragging rests out by simply resting after each fight, especially if you can pull several mobs together and nuke them with aoes. Besides that doing three very fast fight and then go get supplies will be much faster then dragging those fights out, even with the combined time of having to go get supplies and for most people efficiency is also related to time spent. With classes like chanter and paladin it's very different, chanter has almost no per rest abilities, paladins most important one is per encounter. To an extent the same is true for barbarians but the classic nuke barb will need to rest for hp soon, unless you spam potions.

You probably know this, but if you do the slippers cheese for conversation started fights, you can use a trap, then immediately go to your inventory and do slippers cheese again, this way you can put traps right in enemies faces without ever getting detected. (placing the trap breaks stealth but the monster triggering it doesn't, so as long as your game isn't on fast mode and you immediately press invent button the enemy will never detect you) This makes immobilizing vela much easier, and can to an extent also be used for fights that don't have a dialogue to start.