Nobear

What he said. I'm also playing with all companions besides my main on PoTD, and I'm also finding most fights to be easy after Act 1. My cipher is a companion, I'm pretty sure her stats are worse than what you proposed, and she is still kicking butt (with a Blunderbuss) because ciphers are just such a strong class. To the must-have talents listed above, I'd add Biting Whip and Draining Whip, but those are obvious picks for any cipher. From what I've read, min-maxing only becomes crucial if you are playing with a restricted party size or soloing. This game is very flexible that way. Have fun!

I'll just be another voice stressing that I agree that shields are (currently) a bad idea for a rogue, even small shields. That said, I read in one of the articles covering the early expansion content at E3 that they saw the companion rogue with a ranged weapon + shield, implying there might be some surprise change(s) making current rogue discussion obsolete by the time the expansion comes out. There was another post a while back asking a similar question, and I gave a similar answer. What we do know is that the expansion will bring individual stealth, meaning what Andrea says about how things should ideally work for a rogue, should work more reliably in the expansion. Presumably, you'll be able to have your rogue remain stealthed while the rest of your party is detected, enabling you to send your rogue in a moment later and actually catch the enemy off guard. Even currently, the best defense is usually offense. It is almost always better, when your rogue (or any other non-tank) is attacked, to CC and focus fire the offender so he dies before he has a chance to actually kill anyone. In other words, just when you might think you'd need a shield most on non-tanks, is the most important time to maximize your DPS instead.

I don't know off the top of my head if you could avoid fights on your way to Dyrwood Village, or how hard they'd be at lower level, but I have heard of people rushing it before the game got the option to disable auto-leveling of companions. I just hired a placeholder and took my time, but try whatever you like. If you're going to hire adventurers either to be permanent or placeholders, it's best to do it ASAP when you hit Gilded Vale and are still level 2, and can hire cheap level 1 adventurers who won't be too far behind the rest of your party's level in the long run. You definitely don't need more than two tanks in this game, even on PoTD. Some players even argue that you only need one, but I prefer two because I find it much easier to keep battles consistently smooth and controlled that way. There will be exceptions (like fights with Shadows that love to teleport to your back row), but more tanks definitely won't help with these exceptions. The key to dealing with them I've found is to CC and focus fire the offender. Moving your tanks around to chase one guy will just make more of a mess than it cleans. So I've been golden on PoTD with my main character as a paladin tank and Eder as the other tank. You could take Pallegina if you want a different class for your main, but making your main a paladin gives you a huge edge over what you'd have with Pallegina (Faith and Conviction bonuses based on reputation mean up to +6/12/12/12 to your defenses over what they could be with Pallegina). Plus her order doesn't have any unique talents, where if your main is a paladin tank, choosing either Darkozzi or Shieldbearer would give you even more of an edge. Up to you, though, I'm just letting you know what's optimal. So in my party I have a custom formation with the two tanks up front spaced two spaces apart, and four ranged clustered up across two rows with two spaces between them and the tanks. You can also hold down the right mouse button on the ground where you want your party to go, and move it around to rotate it when you want fine tune your positioning. Ambushes are rare in this game, and even with these you can reload if you trigger one and have started in a bad position. Having some Stealth on all your party members, especially your front row, can also help allow you to reliably place your party in the most safe/effective position at the start of combat. I was really liking this on Sagani until I discovered how much more OP my party was with a cipher in place of a ranger lol. I still run with a gunner chanter though. He is probably my most expendable member, but the fact he speeds up himself and my three other ranged is nice. My other members are a gunner priest and a CC + Minor Blights wizard. Also, sorry to break it to you, but the speed enchant on weapons currently doesn't work. It's a known bug. All other speed sources work, AFAIK. You'll need a lot more then that Gunner talent (20% reload speed). Rangers get Swift Aim Modal (20% recovery speed bonus, 50% reload speed bonus). Chanters get a phrase that gives another (20% recovery speed bonus, 20% reload speed bonus). It'll also help if you keep them unarmored, though that's just with the recovery speed. My cipher is using the Lead Splitter Blunderbuss and is built for it. Her talents are Biting Whip, Draining Whip, Gunner, Penetrating Shot, WF Ruffian, and Marskman. I do run with a ranged chanter with that chant, as I mentioned. I personally find the huge bursts of damage and focus I deal to be very satisfying. Others prefer more steady focus gains in smaller increments. One way isn't necessarily superior to the other. I just love the feeling of when my focus suddenly goes through the roof and I can use, say, three potent mental powers in a row. To each his own. In practice, more or less Con will rarely make a significant difference in the survivability of a backrow character, compared to the benefit of other stats. As you've noted, for instance, after the essential stats for DPS, focus gain, area, and duration, Resolve is good so you can avoid interrupts when you do get targeted, plus a bit of deflection so you won't be crit as often. Also, there are other ways to protect your backrow characters in the minority of cases where they actually need it. The cipher herself can usually just paralyze whoever is giving her (or anyone else) trouble. On top of that, you will gain access to various powers that drain enemy stats to boost your own. These include boosts to your DR or defenses, among other things. Also, if you're running with a healer/buffer like a priest or druid in your party, there's more protection for you.

It's great if you have a tank with high defense values so he doesn't get hit by the detonation. ) Oh the explosion does friendly fire? That brings me back to a question I asked in another thread, which is how to make effective use of Ringleader. The two times I've tried it, it was too effective, as it controlled literally everyone, and after a second or so they all broke control at the same time. Is it pretty much only going to work effectively if you cast it from stealth when the enemies aren't bunched up yet?

First, a paladin's Zealous Focus aura grants accuracy, and with enough Int you can cover your whole party, but if you don't like them that's fine. They are not my favorite ranged for other reasons, and because ciphers... Ciphers... I don't know where their awesome ends. Mine has Penetrating Shot to make great use of a Blunderbuss, but other big guns will work great without that talent. All ciphers start with an ability called Soul Whip, which gives a solid 20% boost to damage (40% with a talent), and allows you to gain Focus which you use for your mental powers. You have some Focus all the time, with which you start each encounter, and you gain more as a % of damage you deal by shooting stuff. As you level, your Focus pool and starting Focus grow, so that you can start off an encounter with any mental power except possibly the highest tier. These powers are amazing. One you can get starting at level 3 that paralyzes your target and makes enemies around him stuck. It's one of the best CC spells in the game, and Paralyze also serves as a huge DPS boost for your whole party by lowering the target's defenses by a large amount. You can also pick powers to charm or dominate a foe, and there's one you can pick starting at level 9 that lets you control the mind of everyone in a large area. I haven't had success with this, because its area is so large, and my cipher's accuracy is so high, that literally every enemy gets controlled, and then they all break control and we're back where we were before, but some people swear by it. (That's a side question of mine BTW: any tips on making effective use of Ringleader?) Ok in addition to that, starting at level 5, a cipher can choose a completely OP damaging power called Ectopsychic Echo. It's a Foe-only beam spell with tremendous DPS, that you target an ally with, and it melts everything in its path. I like to have one my my tanks use a figurine toward the start of the fight, to drop a summon right behind the enemy line, use Ectopsychic Echo on it, and make the summon walk around so the beam sprays all the enemies dead. If that doesn't sound ridiculous enough, you can continue to shoot (and gain Focus) while you have the beam going, so I like to have my party focus fire an enemy far from the beam's current path to really speed up clearing the room. On top of that, there are powers that steal very significant attributes from enemies to buff your cipher, increasing her survivability and/or accuracy while making the enemy an easy target. There's also one that stacks with these and gives you another 20 accuracy while attacking the same target as one of your teammates. You just pile awesome on top of awesome. I can't recommend the class enough. Keep in mind there's a cipher companion. What I did is made my main a (tank/support) paladin, because your main character only gets special bonuses if its a paladin or a priest based on your reputations, which doesn't apply to the same classes as companions or adventurers. In the first town's inn, I hired some placeholder adventurers which I replaced with companions as I went. You can make hired adventurers more optimal than companions, mind you, I just enjoy companions for their dialogue and banter. The cipher companion is the last companion you'll come across (mid Act 2), but there's nothing wrong with hiring a placeholder or just making a custom team if you prefer that.

1) Do these cipher abilities stack with each other, and with other accuracy buffs? 2) Does Tactical Meld keep applying for the duration as long as you and the ally are attacking the same target, even if you both switch to a different target than you all started attacking? 3) Say your ally throws in an AoE spell. Will the effect be interrupted, and will it continue when he starts attacking the same target again? I have taken Ring Leader (which I haven't even used yet; haven't had a really tough fight in a while) and Borrowed Instincts on Grieving Mother, and I'm liking Borrowed Instincts, but I'm debating between Tactical Meld and Detonate for my third ability. PoTD difficulty, full party. Edit: Holy crap, I think I've answered at least one of my questions. I took Tactical Meld, and not only does it appear to stack with Borrowed Instincts, but you can apply it just before combat starts and still start combat with full focus! Then open combat with Borrowed Instincts, and that focus gain is insane, and all the subsequent abilities that will land and very likely crit. I'm also especially glad that my party's Stealth is high so I can pull this off frequently with ease. I'm casting it on Kana, in case the ally casting spells that cancel his attack target would interrupt the effect.

Wow, Raedric's Hold is going to seem easy in comparison lol.

This game is very flexible, for example in making a lot of classes viable at ranged. Ones you haven't considered are paladin, chanter and cipher. If I had to pick one, I'd choose cipher out of the three. Very interesting (some overpowered) abilities that you have to choose from as you level, but you don't have the grimoire limitation. If you like the idea, I could give more specific advice.

Ooh nice! I hope they fix Herald while they're at it. It apparently stacks for some people, but not for me (after combat has started). But the chant fix should keep those level 1 chants useful as good fillers between a high level one.

Well I already vendored mine on this play through, but I've been stockpiling potions of Bulwark of the Elements in case I encounter another really tough spirit fight.

Yeah, the phantom, the Killers Froze Stiff, Sure-Handed Ila, those are examples of some great abilities, but chants counting as equipment needs to change. There's another thread about improving chanters. One of the simple suggestions I like is to make higher level chants as short as the low level ones, so you don't have to sacrifice chanting power for invocation power as you level, or vice versa.

Rymrgand's Mantle is a good suggestion. IIRC there is more than one of these you can get. Its easy to judge an item by its "value" and replace it quickly, never looking back. However, in this game, it seems some of the most useful items have some of the lowest prices or resell value, and/or are acquired early. Some of them are situational, granted, but very good in their niche.

Durance would strike me as the type to wear one, or Hiravias. They can both get kinda nasty. Durance grumbles or rants about almost everything, but Ondra's Gift makes his blood boil!

Yeah, let's keep saying "Why the hell does it work that way" and maybe, just maybe, a dev will read it and pass it on and it'll be changed .

Thank you for the info. If I had known about these boots, I probably would have taken Phantom Foes on Grieving Mother! It seemed like a lackluster ability not worth the casting time, especially without a rogue in my party. Eh oh well, now I know and might take advantage of them on a future play through.

Thank you. I was thinking Athletics so I sent Aloth with his +2 Athletics boots lol! Eh, I don't have any characters who'd make good use of it anyway, but now I know.

I keep forgetting to use my Shod-in-Faith boots! I have them on Eder currently. As for belts, I don't think I've filled all my belt slots yet by almost the end of Act 2, but I did buy some items from various Defiance Bay vendors that give +2 or +3 to a stat, including Belt of the Stelgaer for one of my tanks, and Don Paco's Codpiece of Vigor (lol). I mean none of my other characters "need" Con, but it's a slot filled, and you never know when it might save a character's life when in a pinch, so I'm using it until I get something better.

It's in Cliaban Rilag level 1 as you exit after clearing level 2. It's the gleaming object you see as you swim through the tunnel out. What is this object, and what's the check? I'm guessing it's an Athletics check greater than 5. And can I decide to level Athletics a bit and come back for it later?

we got a priest o' berath character that we stopped playing immediate after we cleared raedric's keep. in the beta, we went with mace as our weapon o' choice for priests o' berath, but justice is available early and tidefall is found not much later, so we were considering greatswords. m 21 c 9 d 13 p 10 i 15 r 10 our divine marks were getting reliable crits even at low levels. chose island aumaua for the +2 might and the extra weapon set. the thing is, we like the dialogue options that go along with high per, int, and res. yeah, we can use food and items and the right inns to boost one or maybe even two attributes, but we like to have all three talky attributes high. for our all-priest party, we did indeed have a priest that were a 2-handed weapon specialist. we like quarterstaves with their reach, but tidefall and mabec's morningstar is potential available much earlier than special staffs... and the speed mod is broken so the one early available unique fine staff is actually handicapped. in the end we went with a hearth orlan priest o' eothas wielding the morningstar, and casting dire blessing every freaking combat encounter. more stun weapons in our party is good. HA! Good Fun! Wow, I missed both Tidefall and the unique quarterstaff you mentioned. I looked them up, but I'll avoid giving spoilers and won't say where they're found. Hmm, I've got another question here. There is a melee wizard build post that advocates for Tidefall and Tall Grass. Do you know why this might be? I remember reading that whatever weapon you had equipped when you conjure a weapon has no effect on the conjured weapon. Eh might be better to ask in the other thread, but I figure if you happen to know, might as well add to the knowledge in this thread. So, I'm a bit confused about things affecting speed. I always thought that none of the positive effects on speed were working so far, e.g. no speed bonus from dexterity and no speed bonus from the speed mod or the talent for dual wielding, but penalties from armor and dexterity. Does that mean that only the speed mod is broken now and that dexterity does indeed work? It's not like I was dumping dexterity because I never min/max in PoE, but I never considered making a character with high dex before because of this. People on these forums talk about Dex left and right, so I've always taken for granted that it works. The only thing speed-related thing I consistently read doesn't work is the mod on weapons.

What type of weapon do you use? I don't do that, but then I haven't run the math to calculate when that would be an advantage or a disadvantage. Against targets with no DR obviously Penetrating Shot would be a DPS loss, but those are usually easy enemies anyway. I don't know what the cutoff point would be, and it probably depends on weapon type too.

lol! That's kind of a cross between Eder's intentional humor and Durance's unintentional humor eh? Alright, something I always wanted to ask is about Holy Radiance. I find there are some important exceptions to ability descriptions working as advertised, and this is one. The tooltip lists the burn damage of Holy Radiance as having no enemy type restrictions, but Frightened being only Vessels. I have only seen it do either damage or Frightened to Vessels. I have not seen it even damage non-vessels. In an early play through I took Brilliant Radiance, and I still didn't see it damaging non-vessels. Is this in line with your experience? Because you don't mention Vessel-only burn damage restrictions. It would be awesome if it burned everything, and it is awesome against vessels even though my priest is not my main, but in my experience it only burns vessels.

That party composition is almost identical to mine on PoTD, except I'm using a ranged chanter in place of a rogue, my main (paladin tank) is optimized, and I'm using companions instead of hired adventurers. As Torm pointed out, companions also have balanced (non-optimal) stats, so in that respect our parties would seem to be of similar strength. With good strategy and spells/abilities/talents, I have found most fights pretty easy, with a few exceptions (e.g. Shades/Shadows can get messy with any party). I am level 9 and (I believe) most of the way through Act 2 now. It seems the place where heavily optimized builds would make the most difference is soloing, or in smaller party sizes to a lesser extent, but I have not yet tried soloing or restricting my party size. All I know is that even PoTD is pretty forgiving build-wise for a tactical player as long as you have a full, well balanced party, which you do. One of the major differences I notice is that I rely more on buffs/debuffs on PoTD because of enemy stats being higher, but as you adapt to this, it'll certainly be doable and enjoyable IMHO.

That's what they're here for. Well, and rogue questions. And cipher questions. And...

I don't know the answer, but I do recall a discussion that chants are considered items for the purposes of stacking, when thematically it would make more sense for them to be considered spells. I'd like to know the answer to your question too, though.

I'd say, in this game, with resistances being relatively forgiving, weapon sets are not essential for that, but certainly helpful to an extent (and fun). To be prepared for chokepoints, a ranged weapon on switch is a good suggestion, as is a weapon with the Reach property, like a quarterstaff or pike. But you only need to worry about this if you have more than two melee characters in your party. Edit: I meant to quote your last paragraph as well, but I wasn't successful in preserving the formatting while changing this. Eh, not a big deal.