Boeroer

The fight is usually a lot easier when you have a Priest, a Druid and a Wizard (fully rested). You don't need a real tank - if you can reliably disable tough foes. 3 relatively sturdy frontliners are enough. And I think a Monk is better compared to a Fighter in general, the only thing the Fighter is better at is gaining high accuracy quickly (Disciplined Barrage) and use it with several Knockdowns - which is very helpful to occupy the dragon very early in the encounter. Monk needs more time because of wounds. He can stun right away - but with less accuracy and a lot shorter duration. But his Force of Anguish can make up for that because its prone duration is very long compared to Knockdown. If you give the Monk Veteran's Recovery there shouldn't be such a big difference between him and a Fighter in terms of sturdyness. Relentless Storm, Chillfog, Confusion and Ninagauth's Shadowflame make short work of all mobs in a very short time. And Chillfog blinds/Relentless Storm stuns the Adra Dragon, too. Also Wizard and Druid both have petrifying spells, which - when applied to the dragon - makes the damage dealing part so much easier: besides the monstrous defense debuff they suffer, petrified enemies take double the damage. Druid's Charm Beast and Hold Beast Druid are excellent in this case, too. A Chanter with Dragon Thrashed is useful to just erase the mobs without having to do much. You can run him into the enemy crowd and when he's about to go down you can withdraw him with Durance: he then becomes untouchable but will still burn and slash everything around him. His accuracy will go down a bit, but oddly enough a single one handed weapon does increase the accuracy of offensive chants such as Dragon Thrashed by +12, so he should still be able to hit mobs reliably enough. My last fight against the Adra Dragon was with this party comp. (outfit, most used stuff): front line: Eder (Tidefall, Sanguine Plate, 4 Knockdowns, Charge) Kana Rua (Edge of Reason, Argwe's Adra, The Dragon Thrashed) Hiravias (Hearth Harvest+except. hatchet, Wayfarer's Hide, Relentless Storm, Overwhelming Wave, ) back line: Durance (except. Arquebus, Angio's Gambeson, prayers + acc buffs) MC Chanter (One-Eyed Molina's Spike Flinger, Sure Handed Ila + Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr) Aloth (Gyrd Háewanes Sténes, Rundl's Finery, Confusion, Chillfog, Ninagauth's Shadowflame) It was very easy and the fight was over quickly. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be able to buy a bit of time at the start of the encounter (if you don't have party members who can just facetank the dragon). I'm currently running another party: with MC Barb Firebrand, Eder dw war hammers, Devil of Caroc dw sabres, Zahua fists, Durance arquebus & Aloth rod. It's way(!) harder to beat tough encouters on PotD - especially the ones that are a bit overleveled compared to me. I like to go to certain places too early just to pick up a few items I want to habe early. My current setup lacks the additional oomph that a per-rest caster such as a Druid can unleash at will. A Rogue or Monk cannot make up for that at all (although I do enjoy playing them, esp. the Monk). What's also very helpful against dragons in general is Munacra Arret, Spirit Spiral and Ring of Changing Heart on a high accuracy character. All but one dragon can be charmed or dominated. And it's easy to hit with a charm spell that has +15 accuracy bonus and is on a character who's already giot good accuracy.

First of all: this is a good example for my take that Ciphers aren't as good as many players think they are. However, they can be good here if they can generate enough focus from ads and then use Borrowed Instincts + Tactical Meld and then disable the dragon with cheap Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master. But they need party members who distract and disable the dragon first - until the Ciphers have gone through their lengthy process of harvesting enough focus etc. In order to deal with the Adra Dragon reliably (who can potentially wipe whole parties with one lucky swipe AND has a lot of pesky Adragans) you need a few things: - summons: just to distract and buy some precious time (figurines) - immunity to terrify (Durance, Prayer) - immunity to paralyze - immunity to mind control is nice to have, too - but not as crucial since you won't usually die while mind controlled. - great accuracy on at least one party member. Use Devotions + Blessing/Zealous Focus + Inspiring Radiance. On top of that it's extremely helpful to have a Paladin with Coordinated Attacks + a marking weapon. Bonus points if you give the disabler (like Zahua) a coordinating single handed weapon (+4 acc when attacking the same enemy as an ally). The best option might be Cladhaliath with Coordinating because it is accurate (+5 acc), too and can be wielded one-handed for additional +12 accuracy. Paladin can then give +20 acc to Zahua with Coordinated Attacks + Marking while Zahua adds +21 from accurate, one handed and coordinating. Combined with Devotions etc. and exceptional quality this should almost guarantee hits with a disable from Zahua (stun + prone). - like I said above; good, immediate(!) disable (which the dragons isn't immune to) on that same party member. Can be prone +20 resistance!) or stun, can be charm/dominate etc. I like Knockdown + bonus Knockdown + Girdle of the Driving Wave on Eder and Force of Anguish an Zahua for example. But it can be many things. It's important that you can trigger some of them at will (and not after having to harvest a lot fo focus first for example). - not mandatory, but extremely(!) helpful: Confusion (Wizard). The dragon isn't even immune to it and you can mess up the whole bunch of enemies and make them fight each other. Instead of the Dragon wiping your party out it might wipe out its ads instead. You don't have a Wizard, so tough luck. A scroll of Confusion on a high accuracy, high INT party member would be awesome, too. Pop summons, let Durance pray and buff, cast the confusion if you can, start to disable the dragon. And then simply keep the dragon down as much as possible while you deal with the ads (lots of AoE preferably,here the Ciphers could do good) and at some point you might have enough focus to buff the ciphers acc up enough for then to also keep down the dragon. The most important parts are to get rid of terrify and buff up your accuracy enough in order to apply disables. You don't want the dragon to get up long enough to do a breath attack or tail swipe. Usually you can also trick her into attacking in melee if you place 1 single summon directly in front of her, in a direction where nobody else stands behind the summon.

What about shooting at enemies from stealth first? Then it shouldn't be too bad if the first reload doesn't profit from Heating Up - because stealth has it's own -85% recovery/reload bonus. Completely different approach: the most painless way for me to make my Streetfighter Swashbuckler work very reliably was to turn him into a tank with a large shield (like I did Edér many times before) and "escape" into the middle of an enemy mob in order to get flanked - for real. And then I just let him hack away, always heated up until only a few enemies are left and there was no flanking anymore. But at that point the fight is usually won anyway. That way I could make good use of: Escape and Charge (mobility is useful in order to get the best position for tanking and getting flanked - especially useful since you can move while the large shield modal is up) Coordinated Positioning (never used this before - but in this case it can be great to place yourself between crowded enemies perfectly so you actually get flanked properly - sometimes there's no free space to Escape to... and then Escape doesn't work reliably and your character might get ramdomly placed in some stupid spot) Mob Stance (even faster attacks and cleaves on kill - with the help of some engagement slots, see Hold the Line, shield and some other gear) Armored Grace (obviously) heal-on-kill pet (the damage output is good, that leads to kills which leads to cleaves which lead to more damage and kills which leads to a lot of healing procs for you) Entonia Signet Ring (getting engaged by enemies raises your defenses, perfect) Riposte (lots of missed melee attacks against you due to high deflection even when flanked - can trigger cleaves, too) Deep Wounds (nice in combo with Riposte and Cleave imo) Persistent Distraction (unlocking Deathblows on every engaged enemy automatically, also reducing their accuracy) Adept Evasion (in combo with a large shield modal AoE spells don't bother me anymore) Refreshing Defense (of course this works very well with such a setup) Unbending (if he punishment is too much you can still keep going easily) Fighting Spirit + On the Edge (increase dmg output even more before eventually getting healed) Slippery Mind (won't remove real flanking but will take away all PER/INT/RES afflictions once you are On the Edge - it's super useful imo) Pernicious Cloud (it's friendly fire so normally I wouldn't ever use it - but since you're surrounded by foes anyway...) Into the Fray (nice to pull some enemies near so they can flank you instead of bothering your allies) and so on. It worked out really well - while the tankyness was good enough to be the main tank of the party, the damage output was still very impressive. No comparison to the Edér Swashbuckling tankyness I'm more used to - in terms of the offense I mean. The increased Sneak Attack damage (+50%) combined with the short recovery, Ripostes and Cleaves leads to great dps while occupying a lot of enemies - even though it's "only" weapon & large shield and no dual wielding or two handed stuff. There wasn't even the need for the Rogue's strikes abilities. All in all I think this was much easier to play and less fuss than what is usually done with Streetfighters to make them unlock their passive "easily". I find all that blunderbuss firing and switching in order to milk that Heating Up passive turns into tedium quickly. But maybe that's just me. I used a Streetfighter/Devoted with the Galdiator Sword + Bronlar's Phalanx by the way for some Roman Gladiator vibes (also I wanted to stack the +1 PEN of the sword with the +2 from the Devoted and never bother to switch weapon sets - Iazy ;)). But I think the Fighter subclass doesn't matter that much. With a Black Jacket you can be more versatile (and even switch from weapon & shield to a more offensive setup if the situation is right or directly turn off the large shield modal), with an Unbroken you get more AR (but worse Reflex - but that's already very high due to the large shield) and better disengagment attacks, the Devoted grants more dmg with your one chosen weapon because of the PEN and slightly incrased crit dmg... but that's all not really crucial for this direct "getting flanked" approach I think.

Awesome. I especially like the first part where you explain why and how you arrived at this unusual combination and style of play. Because your initial description of "problems" with priest multiclasses is what bothers me in most cases, too.

You're only lvl 4 and the early game is the hardest part, especially for defensively minded characters - because there isn't much im terms of items and abilities to help you stacking up enough deflection. It doesn't help that Rogues don't have high starting deflection of course. So it will get better! You will get better deflection gear, be able to pick Superior Deflection (I'd recommend it), have a Priest buff your deflection etc. In addition to deflection buffs you also want to lower enemies' accuracy. Check out Despondent Blows, Devotions for the Faithful, blinding or frightening spells and abilities and so on. A Rogue with a two hander won't be a real tank, but you can make a Riposte build work - if it's not the only thing you are focusing on but treat it more like a nice addon. Check out the great sword "Tidefall". It improves your survivability because it drains a percentage of the damage you cause as endurance for you. It also wounds enemies, which stacks with Deep Wounds (also on Riposte attacks) which is really nice, too - because this means that they take damage over time from your Ripostes even if you are not hitting them further. Another option is to use an overbearing two hander (the Temperacl or Hours of St. Rumbalt) which will cause prone on crit - which also improves your survivability because once an enemy is prone (from a direct crit or a crit from a Riposte) he/she cannot attack your for some time (and also unlock Sneak Attack at the same time). The third option is to use the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer (and maybe Forgemaster Gloves, too) and use the summoned great sword Firebrand. It has almost twice the base damage of a normal great sword and thus its attacks hit incredibly hard, especially with Rogues and their several damage bonuses. It's not the fastest weapon (compared to durganized stuff) but that's countered by the occasional instant Riposte attack. If the enemies already have an affliction that unlocks Sneak Attacks, a single Riposte might be enough to one-shot them (at lower levels - high level enemies have too big of an endurance pool to be one-shot by anything). Keep in mind that getting flanked is an automatic -10 deflection malus - so try to not get surrounded and flanked. Imstead take on one (or two) enemy in front of you and keep your back free of enemies if possible. Use Escape and other mobility abilities to get out of a flanked position.

Torment's Reach is a Full Attack - and since that is the overall best attack ability of the Monk I personally would go for a bashing shield such as Badgrad's Barricade (if you have picked Torment's Reach in the first place). But (if there's time and in-game money) I would also try out dual hatchets as a tanking setup (and dual fists as backup). Anitlei's speed buff (which stacks with everything) makes it easy to reach 0 recovery with dual wielding, Two Weapon Style and durganized hatchets + durganized breastplate (or simply lighter armor). 0 recovery in combination with Force of Anguish can be very useful for a Monk tank: he can then push back and prone single enemies in very quick succession (protecting his allies that way) and be extremely reactive in general. I found that the +10 deflection of dual hatchets is often enough (if you are not alone in the front line) to achieve sufficient tankyness.

It could be that you don't get these "aura" bonuses from allies because you are unargetable bc. invisible/stealthed.

Not much imo - unless you want to really mitigate direct damage on allies who receive a lot of grazes (your tank(s) mostly).

Monk is the overall strongest martial class in PoE imo. Def. works as tank, too.

"Whooha look mom! That's also me!"

Hey look mom: that's me! That's me!

It's not really similar to PoE/Deadfire (pixel graphics, turn-based), but it's a party CRPG: Skald: Against the Black Priory I did enjoy it a lot. It doesn't have the replay value like PoE/Deadfire have, but it was a great experience for me nonetheless.

@thelee with the classic loss aversion. 😉

Didn't know that. But I also didn't test it. I just searched with wiki with some keywords and wondered why such a good pet would come at such a rel. early point in the game. Now I know...

Weapon Focus and Gunner. Penetrating Shot and Marksman later. Penetrating Shot means +30 extra damage per shot (6*5) - it's worth the slower recovery. The reloading is not affected.

It's a great way to get a huge burst of focus right at the start of the encounter - if you can shoot at a "soft" target. Having a lot focus at you disposal very early in battle can be a big advantage. Blunderbusses (especially when lashes are involved) are not good against high DR foes, but in most battles there's a few weaklings. Leadspitter + Ryona's Vambraces + Penetrating Shot gives you a whole lot of DR bypass, which is good for the pierce damage, but DR bypass doesn't work for the lashes on the weapon (like a burning lash enchantment and/or Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr). And since those lashes are based on mutiple projectiles with individually low dmg numbers, they often do not get past enemies' DR in the first place. That's a shame for a Cipher because they would generate additional focus, too (if they can penetrate the enemies' DR). So it's best to target not too thick armor - even if you have a lot of DR bypass (if you can help it). Against high DR foes it's not a bad idea to bring a backup pistol (same weapon focus). Blunderbuss + Combusting Wounds is great by the way.

Level 8 is okay to start the White March. Crägholdt Bluffs is high level stuff. The mercenaries are already tough, but the vessels of Concelhaut are even tougher. I see no reason why 2 Ciphers wouldn't work. Her attributes aren't that bad. She's just not a min-maxed offensive glass cannon. I mean 10 RES and 12 CON is hardly on the high side. She's got nice DEX and INT. I personally think that CC (especially mind control such as Whisper of Treason and Puppet Master) is the best use of focus. To deal weapon damage in order to then deal spell damage seems kind of redundant - might as well continue to deal weapon damage with the help of Borrowed Instincts and Tactical Meld. Of course if it's a CC spell that also does damage (like Mind Wave or Amplified Wave): even better. But two Ciphers who dominate enemies impact every fight against non-immune foes significantly. You can make them both ranged (a blunderbuss specifically aimed at low DR targets - is a good way to gain big bursts of focus), but Grieving Mother can also be used in melee. Melee combat usually has a bit higher dps than ranged in theory, which should yield more focus. With Time Parasite, Llawran's Stick (quarterstaff with speed) and durgan steel she can reach 0 recovery. She can also stay behind the front line with such a reach weapon. Durance's staff is a nice backup weapon against crush-immune foes then.

Obsidian is not the Publisher, that's Paradox and Versus Evil. But maybe @Aarik D can help? Or @SChin or @Shyla?

No, I have a much weaker (and older) system and I had no issues with the game performance at any point. My CPU/GPU is Intel/Nvidia though - and I'm on Linux. I'll take a wild guess and say that this problem may originate in your hardware drivers. In Hasongo there's a lot of water surface animation stuff (outside). Maybe that's the part of the game which gives your system extra troubles.

That's correct and well explained.

I'm currently running a party with my MC chanter in the backline (with an Arbalest, albeit the Spike Flinger now that it's fixed bc. it reloads so much faster - but it doesn't have prone on crit) and Sure-Handed Ila + Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr AND Kana in the front line with fat armor, a single handed hatchet and the Dragon Thrashed exclusively. The single weapon gives the Dragon Thrashed +12 accuracy (offensive chants are the only thing - apart from the weapon accuracy itself - where single handed weapon usage does that). Both work fine, both are viable. Shooting requires a bit more micromanagement - which is fine for my MC. Kana in fat armor and without any meaningful way to deal weapon damage requires almost no micromanagement (which I find useful in a party of 6). Imo there is no "better" in this case. It depends on what your party needs. Both in one party has been very smooth sailing so far by the way (front line: Firebrand Edér, Dragon Thrashed Kana, dual hatchet Spiritshift Shocker Hiravias; back line: MC arbalest Chanter, Durance and CC Aloth).

Nothing shortens attack animation except DEX. Unfortunately the wording with "attack speed" in PoE is often stupid. DEX shortens everything (attack animation, recovery and reload) while all other things that talk about attack speed mean recovery only. 🤷‍♂️ Sure-Handed Ila shortens recovery time and reloading time. It is equally effective for all ranged weapons! If you think about it like this: "how much time do I spend waiting between shooting?" - with recovery weapons that's only recovery time (which gets reduced by x%), with reloading weapons it's recovery time plus reloading time (which both get reduced by x%, so the total sum of recovery + reload also gets reduced by x%). So there's no difference in that regard between the ranged weapons. They all get their "pause" reduced by the same percentage. If you want to experiement with different ranged weapons and the effect of Sure-Handed Ila (and other speed bonuses) try this tool: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ I don't remember the base duration (I suspect it's base phrase time + linger originally?), it rolls once per phrase (every 4 secs if you chain it). With Brisk Recitation (auto ability of chanters which reduces the phrase times every 4 lvls by 10%, up to -50% at lvl 16) the phrase will become shorter (rolls every 2 secs at lvl 16). Yeah that's not really clear. Crits do prolong tick damage and duration, so in theory it should do more dmg if implemented correctly, but sometimes it's the overall damage that gets raised and not the tick damage. I don't remember how it works in this case. You have to watch the dmg numbers over the enemies' heads to be absolutely sure, because the combat log can give misguiding info on DoTs unfortunately. Important is that Come Soft Winds (and Dragon Thrashed) does stack its DoT instances (does not prolong them when it hits again) which is great. So if you have a long crit you can stack more DoT ticks on top of each other. If it would only prolong the duration a crit would be wasted - but that's not the case. With Brisk Recitation, good acc and INT you can stack a lot of those DoTs on enemies while building up phrase points very quickly (1.5 secs at lvl 16). Not as devastating as Dragon Thrashed by a mile, but not bad.

Instead of the console you can also use an exported character whom you use as a hired adventurer (with items).

Don't have much time atm, but often damage-over-time (Persistence's wounding, Kana's Comes Soft Winds etc.) is also not recorded. That makes it really hard to truly know who does good damage and who's not. Something like Come Soft Winds doesn't do much damage to individual enemies, but the huge AoE usually means he will hit a lot of foes simultaneously. Wounding with some Might bonus can also do around 30% more dmg - that would bring Sagani up to your Cipher - plus Animal Companion. Searing Falls is hard. You shouldn't go there until you have 10 mechanics. Because that's what you need to find Tidefall (in scouting modus) anyway.

Hi! Sounds like a Herald (Paladin/Chanter). Most popular Heralds use the Troubadour subclass because it can easily hold up two phrases without a gap. This is nice when you use Ancient Memory for passive healing and support it with Mercy and Kindness (+50% healing). You'll also want to use Exalted Endurance because it's another "passive" healing aura. Often Heralds also use the shield Lathandria's Devotion in order to add another passive healing aura. All that passive healing combined with the Paladin's defenses makes a very sturdy tank. Chanter invocations can be used to buff party members in many ways. The Paladin subclass usually isn't that important, but since you want to heal a lot: Kind Wayfarer. On the other hand you want more engagement - in that case a Shieldbearer would be better. You decide what's more important to you: healing or engagement. You can also gain bonus engagement from some items (Kapana Taga +2, Reckless Brigandine +1, Blackened Plate Helm +1 for example). The Blackened Plate and its helmet come rel. late but that armor also fits the theme very well because it can also emit a passive healing aura. If you want to use Lethandria's Devotion then I would pick Shieldbearer as subclass. Mountain Dwarf is no problem. Low Dex is always a problem for casting time. Luckily most Chanter invocations don't have long casting times. There should be several herald builds in this forum. Here is one: