Boeroer

I wouldn't downgrade Monk because it's the overall best class for multiclassing imo because it can contribute and synergize in so many different ways - AND it's great as single class, too. But Wizard (especially Blood Mage) can be extremely potent, too. Especially with Wall of Draining which lets you keep any sort of beneficial effect for a long, long time (even really short ones like Escape's super short +50 deflection).

It is certainly not Unbending. Summons prevent your whole party from taking damage, Unbending only protects the fighter. In order for it to be very strong so that you can outheal most things the fighter needs high INT and decent MIG. It's also not a very early ability - I think those things have to be taken into consideration when compiling a list, too. Unbending also doesn't protect the Fighter from disabling or debuffing effects at all. If you get hit by an Arcane Dampener your healing is gone, if you become enfeebled or suffer a similar effect it's not as useful. And as you said it's gone if the Fighter runs out of Discipline. Since we are looking at the classes seperately I don't think it's viable to make the argument that one could uphold Unbending with the help of a Cipher. That would be a point for the Cipher but not the Fighter imo. With the same line of argument we could put the Druid in a higher tier - because with the help of a Cipher the Druid could heal the whole party forever... or cast unlimited amounts of Great Maelstrom which ends almost all fights. Chanters do not run out of phrases, so in theory their summons can absorb infinite amounts of damage - and also disables and debuffs which would hurt the party otherwise. A Chanter with infinite summons (and his party) are indeed under near zero threat of dying. That's how you can easily kill the Crystal Empress or win over Dorudugan: you don't even need to come out of hiding (boring of course, but effective). About micromanagement: We are back to the argument I made: that a list based on "what's enjoyable to play" might make more sense. Enjoyable to play doesn't mean "just have fun and do whatever". It means the class is potent enough to be successful (else it would be frustrating and where's he fun in that?) but at the same time not tedious to play. And it would have some very entertaining, "cool" abilities. They might not win you boss fights but they can make you hoot and holler. Chanter summons are absolutely tedious to maneuver and imo not much fun at all. Most players even consider a Ranger's Animal Companion an incarnation of tedium. But since we are not judging fun and convenience I think the point about added micromanagement isn't valid: But even then: in case of Dorudugan the Chanter can switch to the Many Lives Pass By phrase and send one skeleton after the other to the enemy - every 3 secs (as Troubadour with Brisk Recitation). It's zero micromanagement (they are run by AI like a Wizard's Phantom or the Monk's Dichotomous Soul summons), enough to distract any single enemy from your party - and they don't count towards the summoning limit so you could add aome Ancient Weapons and order those to attack with their special attack abilities, too. this helps the whole party, not just a singular character. Here's a Psion/Troubadour Ultimate run vs. Dorudugan (by @abot) using summons:

PPS: The Herald tank (Paladin/Chanter) is considered by many (at least here in the forum) to be one of the best (if not the best) party character there is. I don't like it particularly (again the "fun-to-play" side vs. effectiveness) but it's undeniable that it is very good to have it in your party in general. Now for me it would be tricky to sort this piece of info into a tier list of classes somehow.

Summons do not require hit rolls to be impactful. They work in every encounter no matter how high the defenses and armor of the enemy are. Simply by being an additional body and a distraction that enemies do not ignore. As I said: they are a walking CC effect. Three Animated Weapons for example are hard to kill, deal a great amount of damage and last for a reasonably long time. A Troubadour with Brisk recitation can keep them up. At the same time the Chanter isn't a stone pillar. He can still act and do all sorts of things: shooting fanstastically fast with a reloading weapon for example while giving the whole party more shooting speed with Sure Handed Ila (which affects reloading weapons twice by the way for 2* -20% reloading time). I like to use an Arbalest + modal to prone all sorts of enemies while still reloading reasonably fast. Even against pierce immune enemies this takes them almost out of the game and is great for disrupting the most damgerous foes - just with reloading speed and a modal. This has good impact on the fight, too - even without the summons which come on top. A Fighter, while decent, cannot compete with that sort of impact. Also a Fighter's coolest tools like Unbeding might get nullified when he gets hit by an Arcane Dampener - which happens a lot at higher level content. It doesn't matter when summons get hit by it - or turned into a piglet. Also dead summons count towards "allies defeated" triggers. That's a good reason to have a single class paladin with Divine Retribution in the party because their Zeal becomes infinite, too. One can do a lot of impactful stuff for the party with infinite Zeal. For example a Kind Wayfarer can use White Flames for an infinite amount of times, healing the party and dealing damage non stop. Granted, that's late game stuff... And this is why it's so hard to make a reasonable comprehensive tier list of classes in Deadfire. You can always pick out stuff that is great about a class and ignore - or better circumvent - the shortcomings. And the performance depends so much on the way you play and on your party composition, on the experience of the players and how they utilize those classes and their abilities or even items. I would say it would be easier and also useful to make a tier list for beginners maybe - and favor classes that are impactful without too much knowledge about the game. Like Fighters are. A Barb is harder to build well than a Fighter for sure. Monks might be more difficult to grasp at first because of their wound mechanic - and so on. Such a list I could more easily get behind I think. PS: I'm not really upset about the entries in your initial tier list of course.

I edited my post above to give an example whlie you were writing, sorry. I'll quote it here again: A hint - when it comes to pure mechanical prowess - is to look at the ultimate achievements. There's chanters there but as far as I remember no Devoted. Tactician is there (because potentially unlimited resources). Granted, that's a very special solo experience and some shortcomings of the fighter (for example limited resources) don't matter that much in a party. But it's a hint nevertheless. https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ultimate#The_Ultimate_Roll_of_Honor

It's fun to make a tier list I suppose. But for Deadfire it's (in my opinion) absolutely impossible to make a simple yet comprehensible tier list of classes and not give out false impressions/information. The game mechanics are way too complex for this, at least if that tier list is about the standard way to play: with a party of 5. For solo performance this would be a lot easier. So I would make clear in that video that the resulting list is mostly based on personal opinion/experience and that the (multi)class mechanic and the overall balanced approach(!) as well as the small but impactful changes that subclasses give as well as the different difficulty settings that do alter the composition of encounters(!) lead to so many potentially good build variants that it's impossible to do the game and the audience justice. One example: the Psion (Cipher subclass) is one of my favorite classes in the game because it plays so very differently than any other Cipher - because its focus mechanic is totally different. At the same time the more "regular" Cipher subclasses (except Beguiler) and the vanilla class are of little interest to me. So how does one include this into a simple class tier? Another example is that Rogues perform so much better in the lower difficulty settings than on the higher ones. And so on... Imo it's much(!) easier to make a tier list that is based on the base criterium "how enjoyable is the class to play?". Obviously that's a subjective assessment and a matter of taste - but people accept different opinions about taste a lot easier than than opinions about stuff they think are "facts". And since having fun is the most important thing while playing a game I think it's very relevant. While it's interesting to know which classes were more fun to play than others, such a tier will not trigger experienced players to object that much. Like [Chanter below Fighter] and [Wizard below Cipher] as a general statement as well as [Druid and Paladin below Rogue] def. upsets me just by looking at it. At least when it's about classes in a party. For solo it's rel. easy to sort the classes with unlimited resources above the ones with limited resources. That's not that important in a party though and especially not on the lower difficulty settings. One little example why I think Chanters are more impactful than Fighters in almost any party: they have unlimited access to summons. Summons are the most impactful thing to have in Deadfire (besides several cheesy effects of course). Nothing the fighter can do comes close to an unlimited supply of summons. Now, is it fun to summon lots of creatures and do a ton of micromanagement in order to win a fight? I guess not for most players. It is fun to withstand punishment with Unbending and deliver some cool crits and drop enemies with a cleave and so on? For most players it may be. Does that make the Fighter more impactful than the Chanter in general? I would say "not in the sligtest". But it might be totally valid to place the Fighter higher on a "fun to play" list.

But what about your party members (if there are any)? Btw.: one usually cannot stack affliction resistances (like with items and abilities). There's only one layer of resistance and the next wouidxbe complete immunity. However, if you sing the chant that gives you resistance to perception afflictions, you can clear a tier 3 affliction like Blindness phrase after phrase: first phrase lowers Blind to Disoriented, the next phrase lowers Disoriented to Distraced and so on. If you already have resistance to perception afflictions from items or abilities it starts with Disoriented->Distracted of course.

It is def. safer with Confusion off. But it's quicker to start the avalance of Chillfogs with Confusion on. Best approach imo is to start with Confusion - and when enough Chillfogs got created quickly switch to a weapon setup with a fully leveled Modwyr in order to get rid of the Confusion. That way all the active Chillfogs immediately become foe-only. Of course any other way to remove confusion also works (for example let a Priest cast Prayer for the Spirit or something like that). But switching is the easiest way because it always works (also during recovery or hard disables, even when the game is paused).

But once you killed one of them (which isn't that hard) the resulting Chillfog, in combo with Confusion, will kill another one, resulting in another Chillfog and so on. Also, the Skeletons from Ancient Brittle Bones are stronger with the Troubadour, that's right - but the skeletons from Many Lives Pass By are similar for Beckoner and Troubadour. And those are the ones that make the build a lot more playable at the higher levels because you don't have to manually summon them and "waste" a good amount of action and recovery time. In the earlier game Beckoner's skeletons are easier to exploit though, that's correct.

Indeed. I sometimes use the class combination (Berserker/Beckoner) with very high INT and Amra (and a backup Morning Star to cover all types of physical dmg) instead of Grave Calling. Just because using Grave Calling makes the game stutter and sometimes even crash - bc. of too many stacked VFX effects.

Imo Berserker because Blood Thirst and a heal-on-kill pet in combination with killing your vessels is great.

It was a mishmash of crowdfunding, crowdinvesting and publishing afaik. The most advertised feature (at last with Deadfire) was the possibility to invest in shares for possible profit.

I guess you mean fig.co instead of GoG? Because what would be the problem with GoG as a selling platform? PoE was also on GoG. I think going with fig.co as a brand new quasi-pusblisher (because Feargus had stakes in it) didn't help either. It's dead by now by the way...

Ah, good point! You know I really like to play monks because they are a lot of fun. What I like about Mike is that her Rogue subclass is Streetfighter. This makes for an awesome Monk/Streetfighter blunderbuss/mortar build.

You are right. Brain fart on my part. So the deterrence only works for melee opponents. Yes, that's also my preferred approach. It's just that the Spine of Thicket Green is a nice "stat stick" for a Druid and the downside of the modal (+50% recovery with quarterstaff attacks) doesn't hurt the spellcasting at all - while +20 is a pretty substancial defensive buff (even if only vs. melee attacks ). I do not agree this time. Thekehu (bc. of his subclass) is one of the best companions - at least for me - because first of all Druids are so versatile and have enormous impact at higher levels and secondly the Watershaper's bonus spells are all foe-only and thus very convenient to use, especially for a beginner. The foe-only Chillfog alone is a reason for me to bring him along... I love to use it in combination with Aloth's Combusting Wounds (which - surprisingly - works even though they are opposing elements). I also like that he has Watery Double (which is basically a Substancial Phantom with different spells) which frequently summons an additional Ondra's Whip or some of the foe-only Watershaper spells. Aloth can replace a martial companion after some few levels. Self buffs can make him sturdy and an Essential Phantom (+ Draining Touch for example) brings an additional martial ally if you need more bodies. However: in the early game somebody like Mirke would make things a little easier because the casters will only have a few spell slots and will burn through them rather quickly. On the other hand the fights on Veteran don't last as long as on PotD...

Hi, the composition is fine. Herald is a very good pick for the main character. It's neither difficult to build nor to play yet it is very impactful. Note that calling summons is generally one of the most effective moves in the game. However, it comes with the price of more (micro-) management. If one has no problem with that it's a great thing to do. A Priest would help with party support, most notably accuracy - and as a counter against most afflictions, too. No matter the severity of an affliction: an inspiration to the same attribute (no matter the tier) will remove that affliction. An Priests have plenty of spells with (AoE) inspirations. But a Herald can also take care of this. At later levels a Priest also gets good AoE damage, summons and CC. But it's not mandatory, especially not on sub-PotD difficulties. Also because you have good healing capabilities and support in the party already. Both SC Wizard and Druid get very powerful spells at their highest levels (and also progress to some impactful mid-tier spells faster than a multiclass would) so single class is a good pick for a first playthrough imo. Maia as a Scout is very effective against single, dangerous foes (like casters or rogues or so), especially with an arquebus (watch out for "the Red Hand" - perfect weapon for her). But she will need a backup weapon that does non-pierce damage (bows or implements or a unique pistol that deals raw damage or such) because there are quite a number of enemies who are resistant or even immune to pierce damage (mostly skeletal enemies and fire "elementals" and such). Meeting those without any backup weapon can be a very frustrating experience: in one encounter you snipe everything into bits and in the next you can't do anything. In general it's best to keep a backup weapon in the second weapon slot that does alternative damage (like... if you have a main sword that does pierce or slash damage you might want a backup mace with crush damage) and pick the damage setup that is beat against the enemies armor type. It's good practice: unterpenetration is one of the most severe disadvantages and most frustrating things you might experience in a fight. Since Tekehu might be casting most of the time I'd recommend to use a quarterstaff + the proficiency (+20 to [edit] melee [/edit] deflection for less damage with the staff). The bonus deflection is very nice to have because Druids have no ability besides Moonwell to boost their deflection much. Higher quarterstaff deflection deters a lot of (ranged) [edit] melee [/edit] enemies to target that squishy caster specifically. This can be so annoying because the encounter starts and before your caster can do anything he can get taken down. This can be a real nuisance in boarding fights for example. Higher deflection without any fuzz does help here ([edit] even if it's melee-only[/edit]). The modal doesn't stack with active deflection-only buffs (from spells and chants and so on) - but since you won't bring a Priest who would be dishing out those buffs mostly this shouldn't be a problem. There's a nice early unique quarterstaff (the Spine of Thicket Green) in the game that fits nicely with Druids in general and is also useful in some scripted scenes. And if the spells lots are empty you can turn the modal off and attack from the second ranks because of the reach. Taste of the Hunt is a surprisingly good melee "spell" btw. Aloth as a wizard has plenty of defensive self buffs so imo you are more free in the choice of equipment. Check out his phantom spells: phantoms get copies of your equipment. You cannot steer them (they are run by AI) so you cannot use items with abilities you have to trigger yourself, but everything that activates on its own will work with them. This can be fun to play with certain item combinations. Also phantoms will keep summoned weapons and those will not get replaced. So if you summon Concelhaut's Draining Touch (one of the best weapons in the game, but it's usually gone after one hit) and then calla phantom, the phantom will also have the Draining Touch but it will never go away as long as the phantom lives. That way you can have a very good damage dealing summon that can also do good off-tanking (imagine calling the phantom while having the Draining Tough + a good large shield, then switching to your proper weapon set after the phantom is there). Anyway, I don't expect any problems. If you encounter some you can of course ask around here. Somebody will react, even if the forum isn't as crowded anymore.

The Blood Ward is incredibly powerful because it heals from all sources of damage, DoT ticks included. So if you are a Furyshaper with a big health pool, decent defenses and AR and also resistances (=no hard disables) you can dish out Bleeding Cuts with Battle Axes (or other DoTs like from Saru Sichr) to a lot of enemies and get a constant flow of healing while dealing damage at the same time. Mostly auto-attacks bc. of the limited resources - but if you are in a pinch you can use Dazing Shout which is cheap, has a very big AoE and will daze and shake enemies, deal good dmg and heal you up nicely. And it can put Blood Storm's DoT on enemies in the area, too (more healing). If you have trouble with the ward getting attacked: a scroll of withdraw does help a lot. It will conceal the ward completely but it will still work perfectly well for you. I did all fights with this guy except Megabosses. He just wasn't equipped for those. I did the Crystal Empress - but the rest was so annoying that I skipped them. I guess Dorudugan would be possible (I mean technically I'd just have to poke him with Lover's Embrace) but I didn't try. I used some cheesy tactics, like cancelling Leap in mid air (= no attack roll at the landing site but also no cost: great mobility trick). But I didn't use endless prolonging effects like with Cabalist's Gambeson and so on. The fun part was that one could combine damage dealing with survivability which sped things up. If one concentrates on tankyness usually the fights take forever. That was also the experience with solo Streetfighter/Unbroken. Usually I'd say Trickster would be the better pick. But you are constantly flanked anyway and the damage output of the Streetfighter was very good for a tanky build which made the run less tedious. But also no Megabosses there. In hindsight I should have done Streetfighter/Black Jacket though. It's a lot of micro but the ability to switch between shield setup and offensive setup in an instant is very good when you are solo. You can switch to shield once you see something big incoming, shrug it off and immediately switch back to blender mode. Discipline mostly used for Refreshing Defense and Unbending. Guile mostly for Escape, Smoke Veil and sometimes Gouging Strike.

Cool find. It should stack with Effigy's Resentment: Kana. That's +5 against Prone (and Hobbled). And with Coastal Aumaua's +20 against Stunned and Prone. That would mean +70... Bane of Ogres!

Psion/Troubadour is an example of being really good and lots of fun at the same time - at least for me. I think it's the versatility that motivates to apporach most encounters in different ways. You could go with one single set of actions every time - but it's much more rewarding to do the most efficient thing. So... summoning a bunch of X is always useful, but it takes a lot of time and steering the summons can be annoying - and it's totally not necessary if you can paralyze the enemies right away with a Killers Froze Stiff invocation - and so on. And you always have resources - but you cannot spell-spam high-level stuff right at the start of an encounter (which also makes stuff boring at some point). Mortar Monk is another example. It's gamebreakingly good - but somehow it still is fun to unleash the umphteenth Whispers of the Mortar Winds Mayhem. Can't even say why in this case. Maybe because one had to wait for it for a rel. long time and also maybe because it isn't optimal for single tough foes - so you have to interact differently in those cases at least. Maybe also because it's best if you assemble as many foes as possible in a rel. small area. So every encounter turns into some kind of minigame where I tried to lure, steer, force enemies into a certain spot before I started WotW. The Troubadour/Arcane Archer (see below) is a perfect party member for this (very high ACC and bazillion parallel pulses of Binding Web and Pull of Eora) Maybe yet another example could be a melee Bloodmage/Soulblade which is really good but also really versatile if must be. I'm not a big fan of Soulblades - but I read enough reports about this combo to know that several players did enjoy playing it. One-trick-ponies becoming boring to play is no secret. So maybe the takeaway is that versatile (and impactful) characters are more fun to play. Helwalker/Berserker with Saru-Sichr is very impactful in my game. Overabundance of wounds, very high chance for crit-chains, DoTs, great debuffing and CC and so on. Yet very difficult to manage due to the drastic self damage. It's a rewarding challenge imo. The good builds I had the most fun with (of course highly subjective): Helwalker/Berserker Mortar Monk Psion/Troubadour (solo & party) Steel Garrote/Bloodmage (solo & party) SC Furyshaper (solo) Stalker/Bloodmage (solo) Troubadour/Arcane Archer Furyshaper/Troubadour Streetfighter/Unbroken Assassin/Bloodmage Honorable mention: Assassin/Bleak Walker solo with Lover's Embrace. Absolute one-trick pony (or three-trick maybe... stack 3 everlasting DoTs on every enemy one by one, turn invisible, hide and wait) that I expected to become boring very quickly- but it carried the run for a sursprinsingly long time. Sometimes retreating and hiding was more difficult and risky as one might expect and sneaking past enemies failed often enough and things got a bit messy. Also sometimes it didn't work (Water Dragon, Huani O Whe...)

I think that's why I like to play Helwalker/Berserker so much. I am forced to micromanage this character all the time (and AI settings won't cut it) and at the same time it's powerful and impactful. Most runs I abandoned indeed were with characters that were really good but simply too boring/uninteractive to play at some point. Interestingly enough the Mortar Monk was not one of them. Mostly casters. Their actions in each encouter could be scritped rel. easily.

On the other hand Relentless Storm was MUCH better in PoE1 (faster pulses, longer stuns) and the Druid could lock down whole groups of enemies with just this spell. On the third hand (huh? ) the Deadfire Druid has a lot of healing capabilities - and healing is much more impactful in Deadfire than it is in PoE. Just because PoE1 had the endurance/health mechanic that made healing endurance only viable if your health (that was only regenerating properly via rest) wasn't running low. Then, when we look at the forth hand (which might as well be a tentacle...) the PoE1 Druid had amazing single target damage potential with Spiritshift, better than Rogues or Rangers (even if only for a limited time) which gave him versatility: some rusher broke through and started attacking your backline with that Druid? *pouf* *roar* *pummel-pummel* Done! In Deadfire it feels you have to either commit more to the shifting part of the Druid (by creating a fitting multiclass which robs you of Maelstrom and Avenging Storm etc.) or to the casting side.

Sorry, I typed an answer direktly after you posted the question but I must have failed to send it then. Fury fits Avenging Storm/Great Maelstrom perfectly from a thematic standpoint - but usually I shy away from it because imo the rel. minor upside doesn't outweigh the loss of healing powers. It's okay though if there's enough other sources of healing in the party. CP makes it so that Avenging Storm only procs off of weapon rolls that deal damage. That will remove the whole Effort trick. But you can simply delete or rename the according file in the mod folder. Just search for "avenging_storm" in the mod folder (see below) and delete or rename that file as I did below (I simply added ".deactivated" to the file name) - and Avenging Storm will work like in the vanilla game while the rest of the CP will be unchanged.

Yes, indeed. But one mustn'd follow it in detail to make an enjoyable ranged or melee/ranged hybrid Monk. With that build I just tried to maximize the power of the Long Pain at the expense of durability. But it was a lot of fun to play anyway. If you like casters then I think Druid is still a nice pick. I personally like single class Druid in Deadfire because especially Great Maelstrom are just bonkers and there's some crazy stuff to do with Avenging Storm and certain items (for example the Great Sword "Effort"). But maybe Great Maelstrom isn't superfitting for an Ancient - I mean thematically. By the way: Helwalker (Monk subclass) + Ancient Druid multiclass makes for a nasty combo with those beast/plant DoT and pulsing spells. Helwalker provides accuracy, penetration and up to +10 INT and +10 MIG which is great these spells. Conbined with some bonus Power Levels you will have good spell damage, AoE size (which also influences the foe-only area), duration and accuracy and you can also be great with Spiritshift because the Monk abilities synergize very well with Spiritshift & Wildstrike. One could play Druid in PoE and pretend he always had some monkish traits - and then do a Helwalker/Ancient in Deadfire.

Hi and welcome! My strong opinion is that Monk is the best pick here. It's a fantastic (single) class both in PoE as well as in Deadfire. My favorite Monk build in both games is the ranged Monk. With PoE it's with the Long Pain as main weapon (very strong) and in Deadfire it's with dual mortars (Serafen's blunderbusses) and the Long Pain. But the Monk class is very versatile and fun with a lot of build approaches imo. The Druid is very nice with Spiritshift in PoE (brutal scaling of the base damage of the Spiritshift weapons for example), but as single class in Deadfire he's way better as a pure caster than with Spiritshift. Multiclassing makes Spiritshift a lot more fun. Priest is stronger in PoE than in Deadfire, it's still good though, also when staying with a single class . It's just not that exciting to me as the main character. Wizard and Druid have more entertaining high level spells (Power Level 8 and 9) imo. Tl;dr: Monk!

DEX has linear returns, not diminishing. Even when recovery is zero the returns from DEX are linear. But it is debatable if the small changes in animation speed (counted in absolute frames) is worth the hassle to stack DEX into the sky while other attributes suffer. Remember Rakhan Field only applies to FoD. It is actually a copy of the original FoD attack that has an additional corrosive lash. Most abilities and their upgrades are hard-coded copies with adjustments. Upgrades or talents for abilities usually do no "latch" onto basic abilities or so. Instead when you pick an upgrade/talent the basic ability is removed and the new, improved ability is added to your character. An exception is Scion of Flame - that does work with FoD and also Sacred Immolation. Spirit of Decay also works with the corrosive lash of Remember Rakhan Field. What they do is to improve the lash by 20% (so 25% becomes 30%, 50% becomes 60% and so on). For a Bleak Walker I guess two Bittercut sabres (cloned with the Helwax Mold) could be the best FoD option. The sabre itself does corrode damage and profits from Spirit of Decay, the lash on the weapon (fire or corrode) profits from Scion of Flame or Spirit of Decay, the FoD lashes profit from Scion of Flame and Remember Rakhan Field profits from Spirit of Decay. It's a nice weapon anyway (bc. sabre with dual damage).