Boeroer

Nobody knows if Boreal Dwarves are known for becoming paladins or not because the lore of this game is new an few, but why shouldn't there be a boreal dwarf who becomes a paladin. Can be totally plausible. For dialogue options you may want to raise RES a little bit. There are quite a bit dialogue options that can be chosen when RES is high (like 15 and even higher). I think I would go for 15 and take away 1 point from DEX and one from INT. With those stats and a shield you can easily use him as a frontliner, not only offtank. As the main character you will get nice bonuses on Faith and Conviction (raises your defenses) for your reputation. This will turn your paladin into a good tank with great support abilities. As you are a Shield Bearer you most likely want to wear a shield - and guys with shields should be in the front row. I strongly recommend the Outworn Buckler which you can buy at the first smithey in the game. It has a permanent defensive aura that supports your mates and you - it stacks with every other defensive buff and the size of that aura is influenced by your INT as well. It is also a paladin-only item and a strong one - especially so early in the game. Besides that it all sounds nice. If you want to support your team mates even further, look out for a one handed melee weapon with the "marking" enchantment (such a weapon, a sword, you can get from the Knights of the Crucible when you choose their side. I think for a diplomatic and honest character that's the only choice anyway). This sword and it's marking enchantment can be combined with the paladin's ability "Coordinated Attacks". Those two will stack and give a team member who attacks the same enemy as you +20 accuracy. That is really good. It does nothing for you but it's a nice and powerful support feature that costs you nothing except one ability but has a great effect. And it also stacks with other accuracy buffs.

Hm, why Borresaine? It has draining and stuns on crit (what stunning shots do on hit already).Those seem to be pretty useless enchantments for a ranger. The best bow dps wise should be Persistence - and it's especially good for a ranger's animal companion with Predator's Sense, too. The wounding enchantment not only triggers Predator's Sense, but also that raw damage lash gets calculated based on the damage you do before DR gets substracted. That's a huge thing. MIG also raises the wounding damage it does. And the best of it all: wounding stacks (you can only see that when you look at the red numbers popping out of a target's head). So I'd say there's nothing comparable to Persistence when it comes to single target damage with a bow. You can also enchant it a lot because the wounding and reliablity enchantments don't use up too many points. Stormcaller's best feature (besides triggering Returning Storm now and then) is it's -6 shock DR while dealing shock damage and the fact that Heart of the Storm works with it. Together with Penetrating Shot and Heart of the Storm you will hit with 11 DR bypass (while also helping your teammates who do shock damage) and +20% weapon damage and +20% Returning Storm damage. On top comes the fact that it has two damage types (shock/pierce) which makes it even more valuable. Heart of the Storm also raises the pierce damage by the way - don't ask me why. I don't know if this is better than a legendary Borresaine but you don't need any resources to get it up to superb and you can take those creature parts and enchant something else instead - which combined my be more powerful than enchanting another bow. The Unlabored Blade, when fully upgraded, is mythic (=even better than legendary), doesn't need any resources for that and is also speed enchanted. Even if Firebug doesn't proc at all it's still one of the best weapons in the game. Plus you get two spell bindings. You could argue that a fully enchanted Drawn in Spring is better - but if you like daggers anyway you can just dual wield them both with Flick of the Wrist and be very happy. Abydon's Hammer on a priest is truly great. Not only for melee, but also as a tool for raising the damage of Holy Radiance (as MC you can one-shot most vessels with it in a huge AoE and also severely damage Eyeless) and Shining Beacon. With Champion's Boon, Maegfolc Skull and Abydon's Hammer you will have +18 MIG. Add some food and resting bonus and you can have +24 MIG on top of your (hopefully maxed) MIG. So let's say dwarf or aumua priest with 21 MIG will be at 46. Then cast Shining Beacon plus Cleansing Flame and watch what happens.

No, I meant he has 2,5 casters (wizard=1, cipher=1 and chanter = 1/2 caster for me ). I had two paladins, a chanter, a cipher and two rangers back then.

But it has strong competitors like the soulbound sceptre (which you get early) which dominates with blast and does raw damage as well as Kalakoth's Minor Blights. But I like the GOlden Gaze, too. To be honest you can easily outfit two or three blast wizards with very good implements and still don't run out of great options for a fourth one. As I said in another thread about ciphers a day ago, I would take an island aumaua plus Arms Bearer + Quick Switch (and/or Coil of Resourcefulness) and 4 guns or 3 guns & a bow for a pure ranged cipher (and 3 guns and weapon + shield for a melee one). In the early game you can quickly get a free fine arbalest in Anslög's Compass and can buy one at the Blacksmith. Those will do the job fine until you get your guns. This will give you so much focus when you need it that you will hardly run out of it in a party playthrough until late game, where the cipher powers become very expensive. Another not too bad weapon as alternative to switching guns and/or using war bows is using a crossbow with high DEX and Gunner, yes! That's because Good Friend, an early unique crossbow from the Endless Paths which has the Coordinating enchantment. It gives you +4 ACC and +25% damage when you attack the same enemy as a team member. Also, crossbows have normal crit damage compared to guns and arbalests. Combine this weapon and Tactical Meld (cipher power) with your paladin who uses a marking weapon and Coordinated Attacks plus your Phantom Foes which I talked about in a former post and you will have the following: +54 ACC (+10 Marking and +10 Coordinated Attacks from paladin, +20 Tactical Meld, +4 Coordinating enchantment, -10 deflection from flanked) +160% damage per shot with Good Friend (+50% crit - nearly guaranteed with +54 ACC, +25% Coordinating, +30% from bous damage against flanked, +15% Apprentice's Sneak,+40% Soul Whip) Of course, the only difference between Good Friend and a war bow here is the +4 ACC and the +25% damage, but still. The +25% damage with the relatively high base damage of crossbows leads to a noticable increase in focus gain per hit. And it gives you the spell Holy Power, which is not too bad. Also, reloading crossbows doesn't take nearly as long as reloading guns. It's maybe not as good as War Bows in the late game, but in the mid game it is surely fun, it works and it's something different than the usual (and somewhat boring) war bow or gun cipher. And it fits the whole "mark the target/coorinated attacks" them and also adds to the whole flanking bonus stuff I talked about before.

In my first PoTD run I didn't have priest and it was fine. OP has Lay on Hands + support, chanter aura + support and 2,5 casters. should be fine as it is. A priest would most likely make it easier, that might be true, but I don't think it's mandatory. Well... you said recommended, I can agree to that. But you can totally play like this if you like this party better or don't want to have priests.

Your party looks good. Like Sfzrx said, 3 RES and 3 CON is the way to go for minmaxing. I personally would max MIG and PER and INT and put the rest into DEX, but that's neglectible. The higher the MIG, the easier it is to overcome DR later on. And that can be important to also get focus from high DR targets. But as I said it doesn't really matter. WIth more DEX you can cast a bit faster. Keep in mind that your cipher will go down very quickly if he gets attacked, so try to prevent that. Fast Runner can be a life saver if you can squeeze it in. In early game the chanter's speed chant can also help. The "0 recovery with weapon" thing is hard to achieve with a ranged weapon. With Time Parasite (lvl 6 cipher power), a speed enchanted bow and Durgan Steel you can get it, but that will come really late and you shouldn't focus your whole build around it. About skills: - Mechanics can be done by your chanter, he has a starting bonus. 10 max should be enough. With scrolls, resting bonuses and eventually gloves you can do every trap/lock in the game. - Survival: is useful for every party member nowadays. The ACC buff against certain monsters is a great help as well as the healing bonus for front liners and so on. The Lay on Hands or chanter's Ancient Memory will heal a lot more if the target has a healing bonus. Now what you can do with a cipher (and what pays off in terms of focus generation) is to pump survival to 12 (or 10 and put on an item with +2 survival before camping) and choose the bonus flanking damage. You will get +20% damage against flanked targets. Then put on an item with the same bonus, like Glanfathan Stalking Boots for example, that's another +10%. Also take Apprentice Sneak Attack, that's +15% and also works for flanked targets. So in total you can have +45% against flanked targets which is comparable to Sneak Attacks from rogues and stacks with the +40% damage from Soul Whip (+ Biting Whip). So, when it's all set up, you will do +85% damage against flanked targets. Flanking is supereasy for a cipher: cast Phantom Foes and a lot of enemies will suffer the flanked status in an AoE. It's also good for everyone else who has Apprentice's Sneak Attack and also for the animal companion if it has the Merciless Companion talent. THis allows to deal tremendous damage with your normal weapon attacks and also hurt high DR foes big time. For your wizard I can tell you that Envenomed Strike (offensive talent) works with Blast for implements. Don't remember the Skeletor and if he used Blast, but this combination, if taken early, is very powerful. See it as an additional spell with 3 uses per rest. With high MIG and INT you can deal nearly 100 raw damage to each in blast radius which is insane in the early game and will stay to be good throughout the whole game. Way better talent option than bonus spellsfor example. In fact, on of the best talents for a wizard who uses blast with high MIG and INT. With a tanky Dragon-Thrashed-chanter, a priest and a cipher you can have a very neat late game trick: Give the chanter the medium Solace Shield (early, lvl 5 Drake Endless Paths) or Little Saviour (late, from the Adra Dragon) and another item with the "preservation" enchantment (e.g. Blaidh Golan hide armor from the sanitarium, rel. early), then position him where he can reach all enemies with his chant and then cast Withdraw on him with a priest. The chanter will get stunned, untouchable and gain +100 to all defenses, but will not stop chanting (= still contributes to the party with chant). Then the cipher casts Defensive Mindweb. All party members will have the immense defensive values of the chanter now (like around 200 in every defense) which makes them invincible even if they were total glass cannons before. May be that this also works with Statis Shell (cipher) instead of Withdraw, but I didn't test. Then you don't need a priest (which you don't have atm, but it's ok). Don't use Bloody Slaughter - it triggers at 10% of the enemies' endurance and only helps with overkilling. The ony thing where it couldbe useful is against dragons and other enemies with a ton of hit points. It's quite useless as it is. 25% would be good, but it's 10%. Nobody knows why this hasn't been fixed yet.

Yes, sad - but you can still use it for your normal attacks and switch to your second weapon set for HoF.

Kaylon posted earlier (maybe in another thread) that with HoF those things only proc once per HoF - for whatever reason. So - no multiple Firebugs when using HoF

Yeah - I was thinking about pairing it with a more heavy hitter like a sabre or mace (or even Drawn in Spring - if you want to stay in the same weapon group). A lot of times (in not so hard encounters) my second swing of the full attack gets cancelled anyway because the initial target dies - with Spelltongue there's a bigger chance that most enemies survive the first attack and then get finished by the second. It surely isn't as powerful as dual sabres but maybe fun and good enough. For people who want to play that distinguished barb from Old Vailia.

That's right. It's a pity that some of those awesome buffs like Pain Block and Going Between can't be cast on the cipher himself. That would make him a better tank option and improve soloing with a cipher a lot. They are a bit like reversed wizards who have a lot of self buffs which you can't cast on others. But there are a lot of potions or scrolls which do the same thing as wizards's self buffs, so that's kind of a workaround. A class talent or ability for a cipher that lets him use those buffs on himself would have been great. Then you could decide if you want to play a ranged glasscannon and don't need it or if you want to stand in the front row.

I don't think so. The most limited are fighters in my opinion. Tanky ciphers can be good - also because they can make better use of some of those friendly fire powers like Antipathetic Field and Mind Lance and some other short ranged things like Detonation and so on. And Psychovampiric Shield is pretty good for the early game. But ciphers can also be played like rogues or rangers, melee or ranged. Their +40% damage boost without any prerequisite (other than spending a talent point) lets them be good enough in terms of weapon damage even when wearing a shield. A fighter for example has to invest 2 points for getting +35% and will be restricted to a certain weapon group.

Damn you are right. I totally mixed those two up. HoF only gives you 25% dmg for 1 sec - it doesn't even have hit to crit conversion, that's also Barbaric Blow. Sorry for that guys. Not the first time I don't remember correctly. Starting to build a bad reputation here... Maybe it was because I couldn't decide if I should drop Barbaric Blow after I got HoF or not and read the description too many times - so it burned itself into my head. So Vengeful defeat seems to be like HoF - only without the 25% bonus damage. But the description is totally different. Maybe someone with insight to the code could look up what exactly the difference is...? But wait a second... when HoF raises dmg for 1 second and you do HoF with Spelltongue - would this mean that Spelltongue prolongs this damage buff, too? Maybe so much that you would have +25% damage for the rest of the fight? I have to try that out... hopefully this damage bonus get's listed on the sheet, never looked that up while doing HoF. Now I regret that I'm on vacation and can't fire up PoE.

The loot will stay (glittering symbol like a sack and stuff or something), but the body will disappear. So no worries about the loot. Edit: overlooked Kazuma's answer, sorry - so what Kazuma said. Soulbounds can't be enchanted, but they can be "leveled" by binding them to your soul and then doing certain tasks, like "Kill 10 beetles with this weapon (or 50 other enemies)". While you complete those tasks some new "enchantments" get unlocked. They also improve when it comes to "Fine", "Exceptional" and so on. Most go up to superb, but there are also some which go up to legendary or even mythic. Some cool stuff is even accessible from the start without soul binding. Like Stormcaller's shock DR reduction for example. Normally, with healing abilities which use durations, the healing gets better with MIG and also INT. Somebody here like Kaylon, MaxQuest, Loren Tyr (who can look into the code or like to do excessive number testing) can tell you how exactly this works. I can only say that Lay on Hands from my paladin with 3 INT sucks.

Funny, I always use the left door where you can enter the throne room via the hidden stairs. It's because I hate it when I can't see the enemies properly (when they are obscured by walls/doors and so on). Never had a problem. I didn't even have the idea to use any other door.

@Kaylon: Yeah you're most likely right that Bloody Slaughter is uselessfor 90% of all enemies because of the 10%. Why is it so low by the way? 25% would make much more sense. Or to make it like Predator's Sense so it triggers when the target suffers a DoT. That would be so cool... Fighting Spirit is best for a barb who also uses Blooded and HoF, right. It's also good for Vengeful Defeat of course. I really wonder now what happens if you buff yourself, jump into the mob and do HoF with Spelltongue? Most buffs on the enemies should be gone (if they are nor dead) while your own buffs should have very long durations, or not? Fighting spirit gets prolonged by Spelltongue - as well as all the other timed buffs, even healing and buffs from potions. So maybe this can be a great opener for encounters where the enemies are not all clumped together. Just buff, do an HoF with Spelltongue and then switch to your "real" weapon setup, maybe a 2h to finish the bystanders. Also gives you +15% attack speed which stacks with everything for a very long time by the way. Also works with Vengeful Defeat I presume. @Eric: HoF gives you +0.5 crit damage multiplier. Barbaric Blow does this, too. Vengeful Defeat doesn't. It's like HoF without the bigger area and without increased crit damage. It's a HoF "light". Or diet HoF.

When retaliation still gave you focus it was a great class for tanky soloing (see the Backlash Beldam build). Sice then I didn't try it out. But the mind control alone is great. Also, when soloing a lot of micro isn't a problem - so a 4-weapon-slot island aumaua with arquebus and quick switch could generate a lot of focus at the start of the fight (after initial CC) in no time and then go tank mode while casting. Maybe this would reduce kiting.

But if reach wm1 you can get one hat that gives -2 to int and reach 1 And isn't there a drug that gives you -4(?) INT? Blacsonn ? Or the new Carow Golan? I saw something...

If you use HoF with a 2hander against a group of 6 enemies each of them gets hit 6 times max: one time for the initial hit of HoF and another 5 times from the carnage of the other hits (that target the surrounding enemies). In total that's 6² (or six times six) hits = 36. With Purgatory (or any other one hander that is dual wielded) you'll get 6²*2 hits = 72 hits or 12 hits for each foe (which is way better for Combusting Wounds of course). So I guess with Tidefall you maybe can have up to 6 (or how many enemies were there) woundings each, but as Kaylon said it can't be displayed properly. But that is the optimum/maximum because during the execution of HoF enemies tend to die, thus taking away targets/hits and also carnage hits. So maybe your observed 3 parallel woundings is correct. It's a pity that you can't see that things in the combat log. Another reason why HoF is good is because it also gives a bonus to your crit damage multiplier. With purgatory or resolution or battle axes or any other annihilating weapon that means +150% damage from crit alone. As i said before: since most enemies tend to die or be at the brink of death after HoF I wonder how Bloody Slaughter and Death's Usher behave with HoF. It could make a difference between 6 foes with 5% health and 6 dead foes. Death's Usher will raise the damage of your last hits and Bloody Slaughter woul turn some hits into crits with +200% damage. I for myself chose Doemenel for the crits and not +2 DR. I wonder how dual Drawn in Spring performs despite the lower base damage. If you put on Ryona's and also switch on Vulnerable Attack it shouldn't be so bad. Firebrand with it's high damage per hit and it's Annihilation should also work well, shouldn't it? But as long as your initial target survives the first swipe dual weapons is the way to go for HoF

It's also not working for me. Never has. I'm playing on Linux. Maybe that's a reason...? Not an issue for me though, because I just take it as it comes.

Are you sure that blast counts as ranged damage? Because Penetrating Shots and even Ryona's Vembraces don't work with blast, only with the initial shot on the targeted foe. Or let's say it didn't work when I last checked (pre 3.0 or so). So I assumed that the Archer's Gloves or the Cloak of the Frozen Hunt does the same (buffing the shot, but not the blast). In a post from BAdler somewhere (long time ago) I read that "spell" also means invocations and cipher powers. But maybe he was wrong and it was only intended, but not realised that way.

Hm OK. Good to know. News for me.

He? Doesn't it work like all the other DoT effects where both MIG and INT are beneficial? The first raising the damage per tick and the later raising the number of ticks? Deep Wounds for example works like that - as do The Dragon Thrashed and Envenomed Strike and all the other stuff. Why is wounding so different? I mean there was a time when every DoT was better with low INT - but they patched that and I thought this applied to all DoT effects. Seems stupid to leave that one out - it's also highly counterintuitive. In my opinion the wounding shouldn't be influenced by anything at all - just the 25% of weapon damage that was rolled. Like it says in the description. But maybe I never realised it because I mainly used those weapons for triggering Predator's Sense with ranger builds and here the longer duration was highly beneficial.

Wounding works with carnage and it stacks, yes. It's damage also gets bigger (DoT effect lasts longer) with high INT (like Deep Wounds, only that Deep Wounds don't stack). I see no reason why it shouldn't apply multiple times on every target of HoF - it's no on-crit effect or something and other lashes also get applied correctly. But I didn't check this yet. But the combat log should give info whether it was applied or not.

The White Worms screenshot is from Endless Paths lvl 6. There's a ton of skeletal enemies. I wasn't overleveled (as you can see there are more grazes than crits). In fact I was too weak for that level, but I had a whole party and therefore could buff ACC and debuff the enemies defenses before my phrase counter reached 3 points and I could cast White Worms. I used an animal companion to drag all foes of the level to the entrance (no health loss then). It is one of the best spells for the early game and also not bad later on. It is a bit circumstancial of course. You need a big map with lots of enemies in it and they have to leave corpses. But it's also very easy to do bounties in WM if you get the bounty quests as soon as possible, don't clear the map before but instead lure all enemies of the map to one spot, kill them there and leave their bodies. Don't reaload by all means (except you died of course, then you screw up). Finally lure the bounty group there and one-shot them. It's also possible to do it with the Adra Dragon if you can manage to lure all the xaurips to one place and then cast White Worms over and over while the dragon stands on their corpses. But it's a lot of a hassle. For all the other dragons it's no option though. Most important thing is to turn off the gib effects in the game options. When enemies explode with gib effects they leavo no bodies behind. Besides that drawback I find those effects ridiculous. Would be ok with certain spells like Detonate or so, but not just because you killed with a crit from a rapier or something....

Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff helps a lot in the early game. Who else can have an exceptional reach weapon which has very high base damage and drains endurance that early in the game? I would love to have that on a barb. Or take Chillfog: one of the nicest spells in the game - and it's lvl 1. Cipher's Whisper of Treason is also very nice at lvl 1. Enemies fighting against each other is very valuable. A good thing to do in the early game is to take Aspirant's Mark and Presidigitator's Missiles as soon as possible (if you want to play caster-style). You will have two baby Spell Masteries plus your usual spells. Later on you can retrain if you feel they're becoming too weak, you have better alternatives or want to take other talents more desperately.