Boeroer

You do realize that you can control what all the characters in your party do, right? I think that he's just saying is that an NPC character won't be custom tailored (attribute wise) for your purposes, while, OTOH, being a main Priest isn't as appealing as other classes. I have to admit: while I like a single class Priests in my party it wouldn't be my fist pick as player character as well.

Concerning Priest/Caster multiclasses: I think a Priest/Druid can be a good support character. Lots of healing, lots of buffing, some good CC/debuffs and also some nice raw DoTs so he's not only supporting all the time but doesn't have to care about PEN. It's not sheer power he brings to the table but very high flexibility/variability. You could say the same about Priest/Wizard - but I always feel that Wizard multiclasses need some PEN bonus or something that lets them abuse Spirit Lance more. A single Priest + a single Druid would certainly perform better - but you only have 5 slots in the party so a Priest/Druid may be fitting.

They scale their stats: with char level. It wouldn't make that much of a difference if they scaled with PL instead. It would make more sense though. But I think the scaling has to be improved. It's not powerful enough so they keep falling behind. Exception seems to be the Essential Phantom: I find it very useful even at lvl 20, its stats are always good enough. Should be the case for all summons.

Power Level adds base damage and duration to DoTs which both works very well with the bonuses from MIG and INT. Works for both healing and damage obviously, but the increase in dmg is nice. I could argue that that heals from an Ancient are also very good and that he does more DoT damage while he could always throw in some distraction buoys. Of course it would be a better argument if he got +2 instead of +1 PL. I played both a single class Livegiver and a single class Animist and I can't say which one performed better. So I'd say a marginal difference in performance here or there between Livegiver and Ancient might be less important than the "vibe" you want from your character.

I think a Helwalker/Ancient will do a lot better DoTs with the high MIG and INT. He will also gain more ACC and PEN with Dance of Death and Thunderous Blows. Both is quite awesome. I think it's a great combo.

Just to be sure - are you playing a Priest or a Cleric (Fighter/Priest)? Ball and Chain puts a stacking 2% Action Speed debuff on the target. It makes the target slower with every hit (up to -20%). Edit: dammit MaxQuest!

The pillows in hell are sooo soft. But their size is microscopic. Hence the name...

He posted two tweets about it. Wouldn't insist that this means he played it a lot. But it can be a hint that he's doing some "research". If only the next pillars game would be classless. Archetypes (predefined set that you might alter) are ok though. Also: I liked Skyrim. It depends a lot how you play it. Josh plays it the stealthy assassin way as far as I could see. Exactly why I liked my Skyrim. It was like Thief + Oblivion.

Yes, but you'd have to open every build thread to see this. As far as I understood it would be nice to see if the builds use BBlessings directly in the build list. I would only mark the ones which use BBs and don't show normal stats though. Can't be too many...

Issue is : summoned creature (who are keyworded as Beast or Plant) are trash (in highter difficulty). Longer duration don't bring anything usefull to the table (i'm a bit hard, sporeling have good health, so they can serve quite well as meat shield early). Actual wildgrowth on trash invoc don't turn them in good invoc, so it's not an actual impacting bonus. If you compare lifegiver and ancien, the con of lifegiver are non-existent (trash invoc) and the bonus are non-negligeable (+2 to +7 Pl on rejuvenation spell Oo), while the con of ancien are a bit hard for the bonus. Plague spell (keyworded as beast) are... beastly, totally agree. You forgot that the Lifegiver suffers -5 Power Levels after Spiritshift wears off. This impacts all healing spells that are still active (still pulsing like Moonwell). On PotD fights are often longer than the duration of Spiritshift. So that's an additional disadvantage that shouldn't be swept under the carpet. Druids's summons are indeed not the best in the game - but still it's not correct that PL doesn't affect summoning. If you can summon a creature that can live for a long time because of PL you can for example withdraw it and block a chokepoint or block a boss from advancing. The +1 PL doesn't do a lot for the druid's beast/plant summons. But we should still be objective and not omit things just in order to make a point. The point is valid without doing that - maybe even more so. As I said: the good thing of "+1 PL for beast and plant" is not the summons but the other beast/plant spells like Plague of Insects, Venombloom, Pollen Patch and so on. Those get a lot better with additional power levels. I can't say if +1 PL is too low because I just started with the Ancient - but I would still like to discuss it with as much objectivity as possible. Since Obsidian already lowered Wellspring of Life from +2 to +1 PL I fear we will not see +2 PL for plant and beast for the Ancient - but we can hope. On paper the weakness against veil-piercing attacks seems to be bad - all gunshots are veil-piercing and those are the things a caster can be filled with pretty quickly at the start of a fight. Are there any veil-piercing vessels? I'll see...

With solo you mean single class or a solo game? In my opinion that's one of the worst combos you can do with a priest - unless you want to abuse scroll of Maelstrom + Deltro's Helm. But to each their own. I like single class priests. Getting Devotions a lot earlier in order to boost your whole party while shoving the enemy down has serious impact on its own. Very far from useless. You also get access to Spellshaping a lot earlier.

Just remember that the best beast/plant spells have nothing to do with summons and profit from PL a fair bit (Plagues for example - awesome beast spell). And even if you can get +3 PL to beast and plant early (with the Spine of Thicket Green): additional Power Levels are always good and do not have diminishing returns in any way. More is always better. Power Level increases dmg multiplicatively and also increased other important stats. Summonings do only partly scale with PL, but they do: only their duration increases. But here it's also the base duration which means that with high INT you can achieve very long summoning times. By the way: Ranger's Binding Roots has also plant as keyword and profits from the increased PL. +1 PL in exchange for weakness against veil piercing attacks and vessels doesn't seem to be too powerful, I agree. But doesn't the Ancient have additional pros? What about his sporelings and Wild Growth? I haven't tested him a lot, but isn't that an advantage as well?

Priest-specific trinkets would be so nice. Wizards have their grimoire which alter the mechanis of the class significantly and a a big boon. Why can't priests have a (or several) symbols of their faith that do something else than just adding one per rest-ability? Give them more spell uses per encounter, give them a few special priestly spells for encounter-use (not per rest - could be even unique ones), raise the Power Level of spells that fit their deity - you name it. That would be nice.

The one thing that I'm really sad about when looking at the Deadfire Priest is that there's no more "Inspiring Radiance". That was my favorite talent in whole PoE and it's a pity (for me) it didn't find its way into Deadfire as a passive ability. I also like Aggrandizing Radiance - but that never had such impact.

Jeez... Yes, 2 is the max use per encounter per spell level. For every former "vancian" caster class (priest/wizard/druid).

Maybe it wasn't the information itself but the form.

Not true. The level-1 harvest spell scales awesomely with Power Level.

It will even atone for people asking provocative questions and then say that they don't want to provoke.

They have a lot of damage potential. Especially the DoT and pulsing ones since MIG raises the damage per tick/pulse and INT raises the duration = number of ticks/pulses. The problem with PEN on spells is shared among all offensive casters. You have to debuff AR on the enemy and buff your PEN before nuking if you can't penetrate their armor. If that's your problem with priest it's also with wizards and druids. As I already said: the priest has some of those rare dmg spells that target will. That has awesome synergies with other abilites and items - for example Bewildering Blows (-25 Will) and Misama of Dull Mindedness (-40 Will). Crits are very common then and solve most PEN issues without any dedicated PEN/AR buffing/debuffing. That alone takes away bordedom and superfluousness. The summons are quite meh though. Although summons do get increased PEN (but with char level, not Power Level). Spark the Souls of the Righteous' damage is not based on the summons' PEN though (if you use it on summons). And this special spell is also best used in combo with a wizard who casts combusting wounds. Since this is a game with a party I'm always amazed how little people take party synergies into consideration when talking about the usefulness of classes and abilites - but rather discuss as if a class/build has to be doing everything on itself in order to be useful - or not boring...

Eh? I guess the point of forbidden fist is to have a monk who can get wounds without the need to get hit (Vanilla, Helwalker, Nalpasca) or to hit (Shattered Pillar). You can build the toughest turtle and still do damage and generate wounds although you are untouchable while shrugging off afflictions and getting even more tanky because of that.

I have a different opinion. First of all I don't think that Assassin, Trickster or Streetfighter are straight out better than a vanilla Rogue. Their advantages and disadvantages balance each other out - sort of. But there are several ways to circumvent the disadvantages and there are builds where certain subclasses are better than others - for example a Trickster is better for a tanky build than an Assassin. I also don't think that the Barb subclasses are worse than the vanilla class. More niche maybe, but there are niches where they are def. better. Berserker is praised - but only because people think the crit conversion and the better inspirations outweigh the self damage - which they don't in my opinion. If you play a high level Berserker it's a big disadvantage actually. And the fact that you can circumvent confusion... well as I said: you can circumvent the disadvantages with most subclasses as you would try to do with any build: build out your strengths, circumvent the weaknesses. Same with the Arcane Archer. I don't think he's worse than a Sharpshooter, Ghost Heart or a Stalker. Sharpshooters actually always suffer from a permanent speed malus that hampers their dps. Against enemies where AR is no problem they are straight out worse than other rangers. Stalkers are only good at melee range and require more micromanagement. With AI it's a pain to prevent Bonded Grief. Ghost Heart's animal companion can't do anything better than the normal AC but costs Bond AND counts towards the summoning limit. But you can find builds/cases where each of those makes sense and is a better pick than the others. The Arcane Archer can hit several enemies with multiple spells using only one shot. As I already said: Imbue: Death at high levels is one of the things that can currently wipe a whole group of dummies with two shots if you build the Arcane Archer correctly. Because of the Arcana-ACC bonus you'll generate tons of crits with your imbue spell, the dmg number of Death Ring can be over 100 for each hit roll, you can at least trigger two ones with Driving Flight and three with an additional jump AND it has the chance to destroy targets that have low health. You can maybe see the synergy with the multi-triggering... Three instances of Pull of Eora with one imbue shot with such high ACC will guarantee nothing leaves that area - especially when you combine it with Binding Roots(!). A very potent CC option - and you need no caster for that and not even a "dedicated" CC guy. The disadvantages can be circumvented easily as with other subclasses: low health isn't a big deal because you will be ranged and thus will plan to play with lowish health and defenses anyway. The ACC pen is non-existent with the right weapons (which are not hard to come by). I tested that class a lot now and I have not the impression that it's worse than the other subclasses. Same with the Furyshaper by the way. The others I have not really tried so I can't say. That there are subclasses that are indeed better than the vanilla class (see Troubadour) doesn't mean that this should be done with every new subclass. Because it's boring if you are forced to pick the same subclass over and over again when you're somebody who cares for power. At the moment I think it's just an assumed weakness than an actual one - like it was at the release of PoE where lots of people seriously found that Wizards are useless. Having to level up a pure ranger Arcane Archer (no multiclass) just to get Imbue: Death Ring seems like a long way to go. The impact at MC levels (stops at fireball/pull of eora) seems less impressive. Maybe I'm not using Pull of Eora right .... Hard to see how a pure ranger can feel satisfying as a solo POTD attempt, too, or maybe solo vet. I guess if you stack Arcana you just go scroll heavy on top of your imbues, and end up using Essence Interrupter or a similar weapon that doesn't suffer the acc penalty. Still, if you're going to stack Arcana and use scrolls, I get the sense that approach would better complement other classes, vs just using Arcane Archer to be able to three-cast or 4-cast death ring (I think if you use Kitchen Stove with the 2-jump ability and driving flight, you can probably 4-cast it). Open to see builds, though. As I said above: Imbue: Fireball works with Ring of Focused Flame and Scion of Flame. It should also work with Fire-PL-gear like Magran's Favor. Since the dmg of the Fireballs is not influenced by your weapon you can totally use a one handed ranged weapon in your main had and stuff like Sun and Moon or Magran's Favor in your offhand to gain additional PLs for the Fireballs (didn't test that). If you want to focus on that ability you can do that. You will generate a ton of crits with the double/triple Fireball. I think it will be a good use for 2 Bond points. But for multiclasses I think Imbue: Eora is a lot more interesting.

I suspect that the self damage will be even worse at higher levels - because it will scale with Power Level (all other sources of self damage like Berserker-Frenzy, Sacred Immolation and Alacrity do). And PL scaling is multiplicative. That means with high MIG and high PL you might kill yourself more quickly at high levels than at lower ones (if you don't take countermeasures).

Yeah, since you can use your normal saves in the beta branch I can't see why it wouldn't work the other way round.

PEN and dmg scale with Power Level. A single class priest has more Power Levels and reaches PLs and thus certain spells earlier - which also means he can usually use them against enemies with less AR. Priests are rel. untouched since release, yes.