Boeroer

I blame Sabre Rider!

Yes, I guess Forbidden Fist was supposed to fill that role since they neither have to receive nor to deal damage in order to gain wounds. Their wound mechanic motivates the player to raise RES and use stuff like Clarity oA and Crucible oS. Sadly in their current state they fulfill no role at all. I mean besides the comfy role of a shelf warmer...

I added the two latest builds.

Did I miss it or didn't you say which Priest subclass you used?

Isn't this version 4.1 (the actual version)?

Nice idea, but lots of tedium for faster resource gain - or not?

I thought about giving the Paladin Magran's Favor or Sun & Moon (depending if it's day/night) to boost the damage of SI while not increasing the self damage. I did a quick test with SI to see if it also works with the Steel Garrotte's passive draining (+ Inspired Beacon) but strangely it didn't work. Then I saw that no damage at all was converted to healing - so maybe just a hickup. WIll try again...

Best if it's a Beguiler because he also fills his focus from recasting it multiple times to make sure that really everybody got hit by Phantom Foes. Casting Phantom Foes out of stealth also fills focus.

Just for your info: Josh has stated that he prefers turn based combat (I'm indifferent) and a classless system (as I do). But since PoE wanted to be a spiritual successor to BG/Icewind Dale and had to be crowdfunded that wasn't an option. I don't think that Obsidian would switch from RtwP to turn based only for a PoE3 game - but maybe they are testing the waters for another Pillars game that could be turn based and classless - just like the Pen & Paper version of PoE is.

Steel Garrote + Ascended/Beckoner maybe? Both will get endless resources. Ascendant/Beckoner summons skeletons and kills them with Grave Calling. This will give Paladin +2 Zeal via Devine Retribution. The resulting Chillfogs will generate focus for Ascendant. Steel Garrote will use Sacred Immolation to do AoE damage which will heal him with 15% of damage dealt, probably countering the self damage sufficiently (?). Also uses Greater Laying Hands and Exalted Endurance to heal. Ascendant spams Amplified Wave etc. once ascended - or single target stuff against bosses while sending in summons to distract etc. Just an idea...

And give them trinkets! Like Eye of the Beholder's symbol of faith or anything that works a bit like grimoires. I really don't understand why wizards get that powerful tool that boosts their flexibility like crazy while priests and druids get... nuttin.

At lvl 19+ yes. Before that it's a bit of a tedium. Better take single class Streetfighter. He's equally good with Vanishing Strikes (and also Gambit) with mortars but a lot more effective with those weapons than an Assassin on the way to lvl 19+. Vanishing Strikes doesn't do as much damage as Whispers of the Wind, but the constant (long lasting) invisibility makes you untouchable while preparing your next devastating shot. Gambit can be used a lot of times because full refund is likely.

Oh. That might explain it. I also once turned all "over head" info off because it's a lot of clutter - but in the end I reactivated it because it's just too tedious to browse the combat log for every detail.

Pollen Patch creates an AoE (lowish) healing source with every step you make. They all stack. That itself is very good. Run around a bit and usually everybody is back at full health soon. Like an inverse Arterial Strike or so. It's also nice that it revives a party member immediately without you having to do take any further action. It's a good spell to cast right at the start of the encounter. And if you have the Spine of Thicket Green you can enchant it with Empowering Lifeblood which does +2 PL to Rejuvenation and +2 to Plant. Pollen Patch is both so it gets +4 PL. As Nature Godlike SC Livegiver with Prestige you'll have a Pollen Patch with +8 Power Level (no need to shift basically). Edit: removed brainfart with shifting...

You get all those messages that pop out of your chars' heads like Distracted once a PER inspiration hits you - also the other way round: Hardy once you get Sickened and so on.

If you have the means you can charm/dominate them back first.

A patch increased PotD and difficulty of Port Maje et al. significantly. Maybe he remembers the time before that. And scaling will influence the enemies as well. But there is no random dice roll on encounter design. Those skeletons in the optional (!) area are particularly tough now - compared to the rest of the digside. If you have level indicators active you can see that they are usually at least two levels above you (I believe) which is a big difference so early in the game. Also if you use hirelings wich at this point may be one level below your MC (and thus three+ levels below the skeletons). These skeletons (and Gorecci Street) are like the Bear Cave in PoE. If you are not willing to skip this fight but can't figure out how to do it then good luck with your very short game.

If you'd use Flagellant's Path it would be better than pretty good.

Did you read what I wrote?

Because they are better?

Dire Blessing *is* that spell. The low-level AL1 buffs (Holy Power and Blessing) are still relevant later on because enemies also get better about using might and perception afflictions. Am I like the only one who tries to counter or protect their party members from these effects? +50% recovery time in particular is extremely brutal for anyone and given how common blind and disorient is I will use Blessing (even after getting Dire Blessing) to cancel them out. I'm not following...doesn't Blessing just give you +5 Per? Are you saying it also removes or reduce Per afflictions? Even so, why not more strategic casts of Dire Blessing than taking up two slots for essentially the same spell, major and minor versions? For that reason I would not call Blessing "great". You are writing/reading in this forum for such a long time and didn't know that afflictions cancel out inspirations (not reduce: the cancel each other no matter the tier) and vice versa? Hilarious! If you didn't know lots of other players will have also missed that. No wonder everybody is complaining about weak priests... I make sure my priest has as many different party-inspirations as he can get because of this. So I can always remove them. In case of Blessing it's quite cheap to remove Blind from the whole party (after you step out of the Chillfog's area ).

Don't know how he's doing it, but with Dance of Death you get a wound every 3 secs, if you are a Nalpasca 2 every 3 seconds. Add any form of damage (including self through Hylea's Gloves or whatever) and you'll have plenty of wounds all the time. So while executing Whispers (which can last quite some time) you can already gain 2 wounds, maybe even 4 without receiving any damage.

That is in the engwithan digsite and it's supposed to be supertough. It's also completely optional so just turn around and do other stuff. Totally ok. Boarding fights are tough in the early levels as well. Most crews are above your level. Try to sink them in naval battle until you leveled a bit. In naval battle your char level doesn't matter at all.

You are confusing Blessing with Dire Blessing. Those two do different stuff.

I like it. For Spell Level 3 the damage is actually pretty good, too.