Raven Darkholme

Yes, but in a party this is even more insane, since the chant empowers your party permanently, imagine you have a monk. Also as mentioned in a party you don't need to mc and it is slightly earlier than lvl 19. (asnd by slightly I mean level 15 )

So... Take rogue Build INT for duration Be nonstop notargetable? Kind of, but if you use resources for both invis and attacks you might burn out too early, with the fighter I pretty much only use resources on Charge.

Any chanter PL VII multiclassed with a resources hungry class like Fighter. At PL VII you get an invocation that recovers 1 resource per 3 secs AND empowers all your abilities (including the invocation itself which duration doubles from 30 secs to 60 secs because of that.)

Getting to level 19 is gg for any chanter multiclass because of "Set to their purpose, they all knew their part". I have Troubadour/Devoted, dwing sabres and while cleave stance was very op for a long time, now I finally can say all fights are a joke, due to getting empowerded attacks while the invocation is active (the invocation's duration goes to 60 thru using the invocation....) and most importantly regaining resources every 3 seconds. I just spam charge all fight which seems to not only full attack the target but everything in it's path... (mob stance still working when charge kills somebody)

You can pick it with the other class, but pretty sure it wouldn't stack, haven't tried yet tho, may do later.

I personally would use the wizard for selfbuffs, since they have 0 recovery time you can spam several selfbuffs at combat start, finish this with casting Concelhaut's staff and then got to work and build focus.

We all know and dread it, the screen saying "You have died". For the chanter this screen doesn't exist, since in PoE a knockdown doesn't mean death and summons trick the game into thinking your party is still alive. This already worked in Poe1, but in Poe2 there are 2 additional cheeses possible with this, which are most likely unintended and might get fixed at some point:

In Poe1 Long Pain had massive base damage, due to Long Pain getting Transcendent Suffering bonus added to the base, unlike normal fists where iit was a flat addition. (mousing over normal fists would give you the base damage first and then the TS bonus, while with Long Pain you'd just get the massive base damage, which ofc improved a lot with levels)

And here I was worried max int on my fighter/chanter would not pay off, because off the low level chants not stacking. :D

I haven't made a build yet, since my char is only level 10, but a detailed build will follow as soon as it feels round. I've had a lot of fun and also pretty easy leveling with a Devoted/Troubadour. Since there are no Endurance/Health pools in this game anymore, but only health, healing over time is really strong (any healing really but passive is better ofc) and these classes both get a heal at level 1, which can be upgraded at level 7. The chanter skeletons are quite nice and much better than their PoE 1 counterpart and they have two maybe less intentional interactions that make the game a breeze even if you overestimate your ability to fight. I usually do not fight mobs at their point of origin, since dieing while summons out doesn't end the game, so if the summons disappear and the enemies return to their point of origin you will revive as long as the enemies are out of sight. Today I realized that should for some reason your char not revive, you can rest and revive your char, but if you are in a city, where only waiting is allowed, you can wait with the enemies in plain sight and will revive (doesn't work twice in a row) Also if you die in a ship battle on your side of the fight and had summons out, the enemies will return to their side but the fight will strangely end in a win for you.

No it's not bad for soloing, speciall when u stun all enemies, as a normal monk u cannot get wounds. In Poe1 I got max wounds at combat start immediately a lot, also remember we're talking about a cipher MC here, so if the enemies are stunned and all your wounds are spent, you can use powers. Then there's stunning blow and it's upgrade to refund on crit.

Shattered Pill Shattered Pillar is bad for solo. A solo monk will walways get hit enough to build wounds, but shattered has a max wound threshold of 5 instead of 9(10?). I'm personally torn between Soul Blade and Ascendant for cipher/monk, seems like Soul Blade is much stronger early game and the late game shouldn't be a problem either way, but still Ascendant sounds so nteresting in theory.

I'll start with a monk/cipher as well, but not sure on subclasses yet. I'll play solo, so shattered pillar with 5 max wounds would be bad for me, since Ill always gain wounds from damage. The other monk subclasses don't seem appealing at all, Helwalker only has 3 max wounds and the drug monk seems totally unviable solo. For cipher I'm torn between Ascendant and Soul Blade, Soul Blade seems much better early game but Ascendant seems like something you'd only be able to fully appreciate if you actually played it...

@Boeroer But there is no reason to not use Long Pain fists, so the arguments against normal fists don't really count. And before you get Long Pain (level 7) normal fists still do way more than early game weapons. My solo monk has dual bittercut in 2nd slot for crush immune blights and it is always a lot less damage then long pain, but i'm not even max level (14 I think) so the fists will get a lil more damage while bittercut will remain the same. edit: Bittercut 19-27, long Pain 21-31 base at level 14

Finally got to LLengrath and beat her pretty comfortably without using Withdraw from Black Sanctuary. I used Ryona's instead of Blackwarden's and had 190 Fort with Vigorous Defense up (which was up long enough for the mages to die and no danger of me turning piggie), but because of the lower accuracy the fight took sligthly longer (around 9 mins), since the fire immune dragon took a lil longer to kill. (I also had Godansthunyr instead of Drawn in Spring, which is better overall, but ofc worse against the fire immune dragon.) All over this approach felt safer because my race is the useless Moon Godlike instead of something amazing like Coastal Aumaua/Wild Orlan. I left magran's and the remaining bounties for after the dragons, but I feel pretty comfortable with finishing the achievement, since Withdraw is pretty amazing against pure human groups, except maybe Brynlodd.

Long Pain Fists do more damage than Firebrand, Firebrand does more damage than any non summoned weapon by far. (In Poe 1)

I didn't post mine since I'm quite certain his party composition slightly differs from mine, that's why I asked for current strategy, but here you go this was my solution :

Borrowed Instinct is level 5 tho, but I guess we'll have to see if there will be different level 8 powers.

Do allied target powers still not work on self in Deadfire? If high level powers are anything like Poe the solo cipher does not benefit from 8th level powers at all (Mindweb and Reaping Knives) unless you wanna bother with charming and using these on charmed creatures(which is a waste of time most of the time), so losing these is no problem at all, so mc cipher into another caster should be really good. I wouldn't consider chanter a caster, chanter works well with any class, especially priest and wizard should be really strong since you can self buff without stopping to chant. (Granted chants work similar to Poe)

Raven, did you by any chance forget a "don't"? Or "dump" should maybe turn into "pump"? Because what you said afterwards would make a lot more sense to me then. @OP: First of all: what class? Warrior = Fighter I presume? Party or solo? By the way: I almost never do it, but maxing RES can work if you want to get to the point where most enemies only graze you with attacks that target deflection. Every point counts then. But I wouldn't dump MIG either because of fortitude. If you want to be a pure tank and focus on defense with a shield then DEX (and also PER) can be lowish as well because you'll get a good reflex bonus from Weapon & Shield style. INT is good for prolonging buffs like Vigorous Defense, Constant Recovery and so on. If you wear the Binding Rope then being very tanky (without haveing good offense) can actually make a lot of sense. Stuck enemies can't run away and attack your backline. I literally referred to what he posted and wants to build. edit: Maybe it would have been clearer if I inserted a "but". As to maxing Res for deflection, I used to do this on paladins and I also did it on my last cipher for Magran's Faithful and that fight alone, since fortitude is unimportant in that fight. But most characters do much better with high fort and getting W+S style + superior deflection, fighter should be no exception.

First of all, there's more to a build than just stats. Second you wanna dump Might and Int, which are both more important to a tank than Dex and Res, maxing Res is only good in Act 1, but only neccessary if you play solo Potd, after Act 1 Res is a dumpstat. Might not only helps your most important defense after Act 1 which is fortitude, but also gives you bigger heals on Constant Recovery. Int gives you longer duration on the recovery and Vigorous Defense.

With my solo chanter who used the withdraw shield from Alpine Dragon it took me slightly over a minute to kill Concelhaut himself and a little longer to kill the Ancient Death guards (but these aren't really a danger, just relatively tanky) This was on PotD/TCS and I imagine the fight would be a lot easier with a party and easier again on normal. @ Newearth1 If you need help with certain fights I'm sure posting your current strategy/classes will animate one of the helpful folks here to give you tips on improving your strategy.

Paladins were also nerfed multiple times in PoE 1, if I remember correctly, they got deep faith nerf, FoD nerf, basic deflection nerf, and later on devs realize they nerf paladin too hard so they gives accuracy bonus to FoD as a compensate. So .... we will see Paladins did not get nerfed they got SI and never were the same again, the small nerfs never compensated for that juicy powerspike. Have u played the game from PoE 1 beta? I did and SI is added by WM 2 which is in the very late of their develop cycle. I also remember bleakwalker can do 300+ damage with FoD in beta and got nerfed immediately This might have been unclear but I never referred to when they got nerfed, my point was they ended up much stronger than they started. Also I don't think beta content counts at all, that's why I didn't get Deadfire beta even tho backing would have literally cost me the same as preordering/buying at release. (Yes beta testing is important thx to all people who do it, my point was more it doesn't count to how good a class ends up being) My point was just don't be sad if something op doesn't make it out of beta, play the toned down version and be twice happy if another buff comes after.

Stacking 4 on regular mobs is quite easy and you need less than 25 Int for it as I said above (as long as the chanter is max level). You can easily get 30 int with buffs and stacking 3 on tougher mobs should be pretty much guaranteed. (except those 160 ref rogues in Brynlod's bounty). In Deadfire the damage nerf alone wouldn't be the worst but the way Brisk Retaliation works now seems to make the nerf quite noticeable, which is good, since there is no reason for the most passive ability in the game having the highest dps by far. As Boeroer said the 50% linger bonus outside BR will still make it viable, jsut not the champion of lazy dps anymore.

Paladins were also nerfed multiple times in PoE 1, if I remember correctly, they got deep faith nerf, FoD nerf, basic deflection nerf, and later on devs realize they nerf paladin too hard so they gives accuracy bonus to FoD as a compensate. So .... we will see Paladins did not get nerfed they got SI and never were the same again, the small nerfs never compensated for that juicy powerspike.