Raven Darkholme

I never use large shields on chanters, only small. My stat distribution for solo is maxed MI, PE and IN, 10 CO, 8 RE (because of interrupt) dumped DE. If you don't solo or don't want to use the invocation exploit you can dump RE and put 5 more points in CO. Their HP is low early, but you can either keep them in the backline or just use the invocation exploit which makes high hp unnecessary because you will oneshot most enemies even with the low level invocations like the lightning one.

No chanter? If you just want an easy way thru the game take a chanter. If you want to make it even easier use the 2nd wind invocation exploit. It's not enough that the chanter gets Dragon chant at level 9 he also gets Seven Nights at 10. 5x Seven Nights with 30 MI does like 500 damage and oneshots anything but a dragon (If the dragon is injured while you get your phrases than it ptobably oneshots those too. If you don't want to use the exploit the chanter is still insane. Dragon chant on its own is so deadly and even one cast of Seven Nights hurts quite a bit.

I'd kinda like to see a high level beam power, counterpart to Ecto Echo, but that doesn't need an ally to cast it on (maybe even create a cipher clone as recipient of the cipher and you can choose where it spawns) that doesn't hurt allies just like Echo.

The reason I use charm sparingly is actually because it's too strong and takes the fun out of fights. My last party with cipher was a trio and the whole purpose of the party was to make my cipher a beast in melee so it could go around and murder people with crits. I used charm vs one of the 2 dragons in White March, because it was hilarious af to watch him murder his buddy and i charmed the priest in Magran's faithful bounty because I hate their guts but other than that I'm the kind of person to not kill an enemy group because my cipher hzhasn't got all self buffs refreshed and I want to watch my melee damage. :D I did use Amplified Wave quite a lot tho because it's just too op not to use, even after the nerf. The beam spells are not that hard to position, especially EE since it doesn't hurt your party.

"Waste time?" Making your own builds is half the fun of the game! Have to agree here I like making own builds, too but nothing is more entertaining than reading Boroers char stories.

Cipher with Carnage sounds quite badass. Idk what you would combine a chanter with, but I assume a solo class chanter with PoE 1 features is still stronger than any multiclass with PoE 1 features, so ofc multying it can only make it stronger, but who knows maybe chahnters get nerfed. (yeah right)

I can hardly argue here cuz I rarely go above 3 chars in a party, but: As long as a restriction/ cap holds for a whole game nobody is at a disadvantage over others, so if the game gets released like this people will adapt to it quickly. The main reason this could be bad if the party size was smaller than 5 would be the lack of ability to synergise, something that in my opinion sets Pillars 1 apart from other IE games. But since not many(no?) synergies I know of depend on 6 chars (most depend on around 3) 5 is totally fine. In Tyranny even 4 was fine, but that was mostly because the game meta was very centered on a single playstyle, you build one solochar as pc and jumped around him and watched him with your party while maybe attempting to keep up. (I oersonally didn't bother, but in my personal opinion that wasn't the best game design) I like how Pillars 1 animated people to come up with crazy builds not only for single chars but a whole party supporting this idea, but I don't see how a 5 char limit is gonna change it. As long as they keep party play interesting and not make you want to play with 5 very similar characters because it would be strongest, this should not affect the game negatively at all.

I think most people soloed the game without respeccing, since that feature came out way after release. I respecced on my 3rd solo it was not available before and the only reason I even went for a 3rd was because White March offered all these shiny new talents/abilities and items. But I have to agree with Torm51 the whole beauty of PoE lies in party synergies. I've been playing a lot of Baldur's gate lately and that game is the exact opposite. Soloing is a lot of fun, but parties do not really have synergy above being able to combine different class skills that a solo char might not have all at once. An ideal player created party in BG will always be made up of 6 solo chars, like for example 6x Thief/Mage with Mislead and Black Blade of Disaster BS cheese. In PoE you can do stuff like having a tank chanter who gets proned by a priest while wearing an item with +50 defense while prone (and still keeps chanting) and add a cipher who transfers this defense to the whole party with mindweb. Even the infamous 6 chanters have more synergy than a BG (or Tyranny for that matter ) party will ever have, because while they are all about defense and raw damage which is a pretty similar principle to power in other games, they can deliver that damage in a very unique way by stacking dragon chants with each other, something only this specific party composition achieves, while 6 paladins stacking SI do not even come close to the effect since SI does not even stack the same way chants do, the damage just adds up, since it's not a DoT.

Oh ok gotcha. Priest just makes you immune to charmed and dominate and paladis just need to hit a charmed char to snap them out of it so no need to get too technical about it if you have either of those. I remember a solo paladin of mine fighting undead Raedric who had over 200 Will defense against the fampyr gaze, so even if you have a party without priest or pala there's ways to just buff your will thru the roof even if the party consists of just 6 chanters I don't think Fampyr's will be trouble. A newbie ofc will not know beforehand when he will actually need to defend against it so that is a different story. I actually revived my 1,5 year old 6 cdhanter party to which I still had the save and am having a lot of fun with them. It's not the most ideal party since for some strange reasons I made them all moon godlikes, "sadly" Beloved spirits x6 makes Silver Tide completely useless. At least I was able to reroll my stats and the whole party now has maxed MI, IN and PE, 10 CO, 8 RE and dumped DE. My main char just got level 6 and I will get a deflection talent now so I can completely dump RE but not for DE but more CO.

Well for me it's a psychological thing I guess, because I use one I forget about the other or smth. :D But tbf I very rarely use charm anyway Iprefer to mess up people with dual bittercuts. :D edit: And while that's not mutually exclusive either I'm just mostly busy spending my focus for stuff like Mindweb, BI and "Alacrity".

You say when the chanter gets dominated Dex helps him, but could you explain how? Your post is kind of contradictory for me but maybe I'm just slow. (Or are you trying to say because you don't use dragon chant like other people your char doesn't get dominated??) I usually just make sure to be either immune or have insane will or have a paladin to slap dominated chars back to their senses. (which is honestly one of the most ridiculous abilities in the game )

I used to use it a lot but ever since WoT got faster it is my go to. The out of combat is really cool tho.

While Dex does have it's benefits for the cooldown after invocations, it will never be worth putting points in it over other attributes. MI is always gonna be the best stat on a chanter, even a tank. INT is as good as MI but easier buffable at least early game, late game with MI helmets they are on the same level. PER while less necessary on a tank chanter than on other chars is still the next best attribute after MI and INT, especially once you get Seven Nights, but ofc very useful from the 1st level. CON is the kind of stat that is necessary but not great, you need it more than Dex tho. Res is debatable, especially if you want to use the invocation exploit you will need 10 Res for chaining 5 Invocations, if not you can do without it but it's not really worth dumping Res for Dex.

Yeah stunweapons on critbuilds all the way.

It's doable you have a priest. Just use stuff like protection from fear vs dragons and vampyres and protection from charm vs the latter. A solo char who uses consumables still has much less buffs than a party without consumables.

If you feel like you're steamrolling PotD is no problem. Scaling might be too much but a well played full party handles it pretty well and even solo chars can do it.

Wizards buffs are cast super quick btw it's not lik a priest buffing up in the slightest.

Summoned weapons too stronk.

I think Hours of Rumbaldt is the best choice for the fighter as you don't want to lose Knockdown and since Fighter already has high starting Acc, going for crit should not be a prob at all.

Baldur LoB is much more painful than PoE Potd. Any enemy is just hugely inflated, even xvarts are 13 levels higher than on Insane and have +80 hp +1 apr -5 saves and increased Thac0/AC. I came back to PoE after quite a break and I started several LoB solos just before (still doing one atm) and PoE is a very easy change compared to BG Lob. The liches aren't really that hard since you can doorcheese stuff like their planetars and on LoB you can't kill those anyway unless you use some cheesy mods.

@Boroer I meant 10 dex and 0 recovery. That's pretty close to max attack speed, my cipher in my trio party just shred whatever came close to her and built focus much faster than she could burn it. @Belfaldurnik My earlier comment was directed at Aerinqq who posted about having to put points into too many attributes and not wanting to drop Con too low because of it. Your attack speed without item bonuses at 10 and 18 is not that different it's nice to have 18 dex if you can spare the points or have a char who relies on high dex more than on other attributes but going with 10 is alright for most chars and my comment about maxing out attack speed with 10 dex was just to show that higher dex than 10 doesn't do too much for that unless you use a very slow weapon.

So what No. It's a long time before you can get items to enhance your action speed or reduce your recovery (such as via durgan steel). Too many build guides don't start at level 1 and work their way up, but present a retrained level 16 character using highly enchanted equipment. You do realize max attack speed means you attack without recovery? You can't achieve this without Durgans even if you had 30 DEX. You don't need to start with max attack speed at level 1....

If you use protection from fear you can do him at level 7 or even earlier.

So I need high might, int, per and dex:) now the question is, how much can I lower the con and rest, so I wont get completely stomped xD On characters that don't need to reload a gun you don't need dex higher than 10 and you will still get max attack speed. Livegood already linked the attack speed calculator.

Nah, maxing Perception is good on almost any char. Keep in mind that the base accuracy of a character is different from class to class, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Rogue have 30 and since Monk, Ranger Rogue live from affliction durations they neeed crits. Fighter is probably the only class in game that gets away with less PE, but it's only because the fighters offense is quite underwhelming to begin with which brings us to the point that a fighter probably would do best with on crit effect weapons which makes maxed perception valuable again. All classes that don't have 30 starting acc need at least 15 Per again, but then again many of those need crits to be viable so you might as well max it