Raven Darkholme

Stats look good. If you want to drop some PER for MI do it on level 9 when you get dragon slashed. Don't drop IN. Coastal Aumaua is actually really good since there is not many items that help you vs stun, wild orlan is slightly better but not that much. I don't like Fire godlike for a tank at all and Moonlike only gives healing it's better on non tank classes.

You mean at the end of Act 1 or really 2? You can do Radric with level 5 if you have good equip and have been to Defiance Bay, but latest with level 7, at the end of Act 2 you are at least 9 and ofc the fight will be very easy.

Oh I didn't see you want to go 2 Might. A low Might tank is not good at all, go with at least 10 I would recommend 12 or 14. Con is much less valuable but should still at low level not be too far below 10. (can later be respecced lower if needed) You don't need 20 Resolve, 12-14 is easily enough.

You start with Wengrith, then Comrades, then Soft winds. Can't write more right now, gtg.

Yeah drinking potions is a bitch and I'm entirely positive it's a bug.

Yeah, they are great to use with speed, but that's more an offtank than a tank.

That's why I mentioned the importance of sending in your characters in the right order. I found out that when a melee is engaged to a tank - or even if the tank is surrounded by melees and remaining melees circle around trying to engage - while the squishy/-ies are not in sight, they will not go for your squishies if you send them in after (which often only takes a few seconds) Paladins do not have less deflection than a fighter when you max your Faith and conviction and they have much higher other defenses especially fortitude is much more important than deflection. A chanter is a better tank because you don't need to attack with the chanter to do damage you can drink potions and cast scrolls while your chant continues to damage, also if you cast the reflex and fort/will chant before your damage chant you get +10 to those defenses for free, those chants are super quick. Engagement slots do not matter at all your tank will always engage way more enemies than 1/3 if you position clever. Yes I do indeed upload youtube videos about Pillars as Victor Creed.

The paladin/chanter is a better tank than a fighter and the fighter is a better offtank than a paladin/chanter. Gathering aggro has much more to do with clever positioning, than high might. If you use a chokepoint with tank in front the enemies have no choice but to aggro your tank. If you send in your tank first then your offtank(s) and wait till all enemies are either engaged or visibly try to engage the tank/offtanks you will most likely be safe when you send in your squishies. There's also still way too many (in my opinion) enemy groups that will always blindly go for your tanks even tho sometimes the squishiy is right next to them.

I'd definitely use Bittercut. If you can duplicate it go for that, if not I'd go for a 3rd damage type on the other hand, maybe even warhammer for 4 damage types.

I do try to use chokepoints, but was still getting hammered pretty hard without a veil up. Since then I've hit L5 though, and Llengrath's Displaced Image seems to help a ton. I only get two casts of it, but it lasts a whole fight, or at least most of the fight for longer ones. That plus the veils gets me 2-3 "average" fights, or 1-2 tougher ones. One sure uses a different set of spells than when playing a wizard as part of a group. Yea Llengrath's is one of the best spells ingame.

It depends on your playstyle, if you work with pulling and chokepoints veil might be less important, but if you like to run into the middle of the enemies right away it's essential. As to resting, yes that's my main beef with wizards you rest a lot.

Ah ok, that's similar to what I do then.^^

Indeed. My first proper play through was on hard and I remember really struggling with the two Shamblers near the hunters shrine early on. That fight must have taken at least ten tries. When I did my first PotD playthrough I expected to struggle a lot with that fight, but I ended up beating it first time without a single unconscious character. Experience (human rather than in game) means a lot in this game. EDIT: my imperfect way of keeping the game challenging is to hold off levelling my characters till I absolutely need to. Anyone who's beelined to Caed Nua at low level knows that the courtyard can be quite challenging compared to doing it after clearing all the side quests in act I. It's imperfect because levelling is fun so it's a shame to have to wait on doing it, and if you're a bit compulsive like me you'll hate seeing those golden + marks on your character portraits all the time. I also try to be conservative with per rest abilities and not rest too often, but that doesn't really add that much challenge and I mainly do it for RP reasons (I always felt guilty for taking literally two in game months to go rescue Imoen in SoA). 2 weeks is nothing I always have SCS option enabled that it costs 120k (actually it will cost 90k after Bodhi tries to recruit you), so you first need to raise that gold before you can rescue her. :D

That's quite true, I have around 400 hours, but whenever I face an unknown factor I struggle . Even for WM1 which I did once before, I don't remember every detail, even though I don't struggle with the fights themeselves, but I don't have an ideal order to complete the quests sorted by difficulty. In the base game I did high level act 3 for the first time and was quite stunned by how good th sky dragon has become, no pun intended. I also waited for the ogre bounty till level 12, since I heard how tough it was outside the cave, in my solo playtr´hrough I regretted to have waited till 13 with paladin and SA since it was too easy, now with 3 chars 13 would have made it much easier with 12 I even used moonwell scrolls cheese.

Well maybe not frustrating but it's kind of hilarious. Running a 3 man party atm and at level 14 they just roflstomp most encounters. Considered my party gets really strong at 15 because I'm running paladin, chanter and cipher, so I get Mindweb at 15 this is slightly sad. Also I'm using GM and Kana which are less ideal than selfmade mercenaries. Just a paladin and chanter would have the same effect till 15, since GM is very squishy and with bad luck dies at combat start. I think basically anything beyond solo is not hard at all and only AI changes beyond "aggro the squishy" could fix that to a satisfactory degree.

Oh don't worry everybody finds paladins and chanters easier. :D Cleaning out the whole temple is a tough job, well done.

Interesting how different conceptions can be. I found wizard cheesily easy compared to the cipher. (Who is not a bad class to solo by any means, just inferior in my opinion) Very tedious because of many rests, but not hard at all. In the temple you just need to know which fights to avoid you don't need to fight any shades and if you aggro the phantom the right way you can kill it safely with the shadow blocking it's path (an ooze will do to) so you don't get stunned. With a figurine you probably even can kill it before the figurine dies, but it's not necessary at all to have the figurine.

Six chanters are best, cause you can just build all tanky and stack chants like crazy. You don't even need scrolls for charm just use the mace from the white march with spell bind Prayer against Treachery.

6? I'd say 5 - 1 priest so no pesky charmes to kill your own chanters xD You don't need that just charm immunity scrolls.

Disagree, if you don't want to respec max INT is mandatory. If you respec at 13 I would be fine with 10 INT, 3 seems a bit extreme FoD is only 2 shots per encounter, while aura range is pretty important. Disclaimer - This is all based on group play at PotD, solo might be a very different animal - Why is max Intellect necessary? How big does your aura need to be? - Just big enough to cover the team members that you need it to, anything bigger is wasted. If you have a group at the frontlines and some dress wearers hiding 4+ meters away in the back then maybe you need a bigger aura. I keep my teams close together and for me a 10 Intellect (14 with easy items and food which can be up 100% of the time) is plenty of aura range. How big of an area and how long duration does Sacred Immolation need? - Again enemies tend to clump around the melee scrum and a 10 Intellect gets a big enough area to get them all or at least enough of them. Plus the duration at 14 Intellect is like 36 seconds which is plenty, most everything is dead by then and if not its pretty close to it. As long as the points not placed in Intellect are placed somewhere that furthers your build and playstyle then I'd say that you are fine. I like to make a Paladin with everything at ten and then distribute the remaining 18 points among whatever I want to focus on. It's not really a question of solo or party play, but: The aura size is obviously only interesting for party play, not solo. My point about the aura was only if you don't respec, otherwise 10 might be enough with smart positioning, but if you don't get max for SA you might as well get max from the start, bigger aura makes fights less micro intensive. As to SA, only melees clump around you. The times I had to disengage or engage smartly to affect all enemies with my max Int SA were plenty. Also longer duration equals more damage, you might not always need it, but theres plenty of fight like Adra Animats where you'll be happy to have it.

Disagree, if you don't want to respec max INT is mandatory. If you respec at 13 I would be fine with 10 INT, 3 seems a bit extreme FoD is only 2 shots per encounter, while aura range is pretty important.

My party is lvl 9. I just finished Act II and started Act III. Go to twin elms and ignore the adragans for now. There is a lot of xp for free there.

I agree with you I never found the chanter lacking in defense. I have Kana right now and even he is at a certain level of tankiness with pretty trashy stats, a custom chanter is super tanky in Act 1 you don't even feel thze difference to paladin and due to summons you kill faster anyway. Once you get to dragon slashed the chant is great not only vs trash but almost always when a paladin would need ages to finish a fight.

What level are you? If you're 13 you should give Pallegina Sacred Immolation, boost your IN and MI and attack the adragans in melee with her. Get close, activate immolation, use FoD to kill the first one quick. Get in with your team after she's engaged, let Eder tank the blights and focus on remaining adagans with Aloth and Durance.

Yea I guess I just never looked at the stats of it.