Boeroer

Shieldbearers are great if you need deflection for your party - and which party doesn't need that? If you manage to kill things with him and also take Inspiring Triumph you can boost deflection of you party by +19 when you kill an enemy with FoD - and Lay on Hands + Reinforcing Exhortation will give a single friend +35 deflection ON TOP. So, one guy could have +54 deflection and the rest of the gang +19. I like shieldbearers. Most abilites of the paladin work in melee as well as ranged. I even think all of them. There's no melee-only ability for paladins. Two handers also work. The only thing is that you can't use that awesome buckler then which you can buy very early in Gilded Vale.

Cladhaliath with marking and coordinating + Coordinated Attacks + Outworn Buckler is nice for a Shieldbearer. And both weapons are green - looks good on a nature godlike.

You can do that with a spear, too: Cladhaliath can be created with the marking enchanment. That would be buffing + spear. And it's green, too.

Then you should use The Long Pain: works with Force of Anguish AND from afar! Punch them to the end of the screen and keep hitting them. Poor enemies. And if they get up again - push them a little further.

Yeah, the phantoms are very strong in the early game. But until lvl 4 you need 12 seconds of chanting before you can call one.

Nope, not for sure. As I said once I had 56 MIG because all leechings went to MIG at that time. Guess I was lucky. I think there's no hard limit. It's hard to keep up a lot of them at the same time. You need a lot of speed, ACC for crits , a lot of INT for duration and also tons of focus. I tried to use Time Parasite plus Reaping Knives on a team mate and it worked quite well - but even then I wasn't able to stack more than two leechings on one stat because the damn thing would always choose a different stat. I guess it doesn't work if you cast it all onto one foe. You have to cast it on different foes. At least that was my impression. Maybe that is the "stacking rule". But to be honest I didn't even try that. I always chose a different target.

Yes - you will have a button for spiritshift all the time that you won't use. But the combinataion of those spells with good tankyness and equipment make up for that. But Spiritshift is also very potent. You just can't use any equipment while shifted.

It's great if you get pummeled too hard or if you need a short break for rebuffing. I like it.

Ach, no - apparently I'm not too lazy

I'm too lazy to do a screenhot.

That's right. Esp. when going solo. It's also a very nice tactic for solo barbs by the way. Eh... what did I write above? I meant Llengrath's Warding Staff and not Blunt Wisdom, sorry. Corrected that.

You can have both. Firebrand in your wizard's hand AND the burning lash from a chanter both get buffed by 20%. So it's a double effect. Bigger lash numbers from higher weapon damage and again higher lash numbers from +20% lash damage. And Scion of Flame is also good for all your fire spells of course. But as I said: the lance is better. Firebrand and Concelhaut's Staff are on par. Firebrand has a bit more damage because of damaging III, the staff has better ACC because of being exceptional. Reach and draining help to survive with the staff while the annihilation of Firebrand can lead to very high crits. With SCion of Flame and the burning lash chant Firebrand does better damage. Thing is you need to "sacrifice" an item slot for the gloves and the button for summoning Firebrand is not where your other spells are - this can be inconvenient.

No, the chanter adds invocations, too - which you will be able to put out faster and faster while you gain levels. For example: at lvl 16 a tier-1 phrase will take only 2 seconds. That means that you can use a tier-1-invocation every 6 seconds (recovery aside). A tier-2-invocation can be put out every 8 seconds. The tier-2-invocation "At the Sound of her Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff" has a base duration of 8 seconds. I guess you can see where this is going: Even before lvl 16 you could perma-paralyze whole groups of enemies. Just pump your DEX, PER, INT and reduce recovery and you will have a very active chanter who will run around to find the best position to place his paralyzing cone but needs no resources at all to CC whole groups. Of course: if you use wizards or druids to nuke every enemy in 6 seconds (and then rest) this will not happen.

I wouldn't max out RES - but that's just me. For me it's ok to loose a few points of deflection and will and a little bit of concentration because those can be buffed more easily than fortitude. Raising fortitude is possible of course, but it's harder. And the other thing: if you get grazed instead of missed by a normal hit that targets deflection it's not that bad. You get damaged a bit and that's it. No after effects. But if you chatch a graze from a disable like stun, paralyze or petrify that's nearly as bad as a hit - because then your other defenses will drop immensely and that can mean game over for you because all the hits that follow do harm you a lot more. On hard this may make no big difference, no idea. Although: In a party with a chanter who uses The Dragon Thrashed it's not bad if he has a lot of will defense - so in this case it's also a good approach to use 18 INT and 18 RES. Getting burned by your own chant is not so cool.

Yes, 20% seems to be a little bit low. I think it's the good uniques that you can get in early, mid and late game that make sabres worthwhile - even now. But it's true that generic hammers and swords now seem to be better than a generic sabre because they have two damage types. It has been a good feat and now it's even better in comparison to 20% bonus damage. Don't forget Danulya.

High CON (and MIG) lead to high fortitude. You can't even sing a song if you're disabled (prone and Withdraw aside) - and most afflictions that completely disable you target fortitude. That's one reason. The other is that with high CON, high DR AND all the self healing things you listed you can eat a lot more grazes and that can be essential in tough fights. But I consider high fortitude to be the more important outcome. If you are Fire Godlike you also might want very high CON - because 50% of let's say 300 endurance is the same as 150 endurace if you have dumped CON. You can retaliate with fire and still have the same endurance as someone with low CON. But it's obviously a very special situation...

Not too bad. But against bounties, dragons and other tough encounters it's way easier to tank with a shield and let your spells do the damaging part. Like the Bilestomper build or the ice variant, it's very easy to play those tanks who can stand in their own hazard field without bothering. It doesn't need a lot of offensive spells, too. So, if I wanted to go full tank with a wizard I wouldn't summon any weapon on a regular basis - except in the early game of course, because the staff is so good then you just can't skip it. For a more hybrid and flexible approach with a lot of melee damage your strategy surely works very well. Normal enemies can't touch you a lot if you buff up - even if you're using the staff or the lance. And you can spare some spells because the lance only requires one spell use but deals damage like a fireball with every hit. I don't say one of those variants is better than the other - just different playstyles, that's all. One have to decide what he likes better. The later is more active though and maybe more fun if you like positioning and hitting things with weapons.

Wild Leech stacks, so in theory a cipher could have +10 to DEX mutiple times. As I said, I once had 56 CON on my cipher - 16 base + 40 from Wild Leech. "In theory" because you never know which stat gets boosted. So it's not of much use in the game itself unless you want to cast Wild Leech only all the time. It debuffs pretty nicely, too and the buff to all the other stats that will occour are also welcome. Maybe you can even prolong that with Spelltongue - but I doubt it because the effect seems to be attached to the enemy only, not to you. It doesn't even show up in the list of active effects. You can only observe it when you look at your current stats. But Spelltongue surely prolongs Time Parasite. A priest with Aggrandizing Radiance + Minor Avatar would be more reliable but only can get DAoM by potion and his buffs are per rest, whether a cipher could do it endlessly as long as there are enemies to hit.

Yeah depends. For a front row tank you won't even use the summoned weapons but stick to the shield. Damage comes from spells only. You would also use thick armor then. Thick armor is working - esp. at the beginning of the game where the ratio of endurance:DR is much higher than later, when your endurace scaled a lot with level but the DR doesn't by the same amount. But it's still very useful if you get hit repeatedly. With high deflection, thick armor and Iron Skin you can shrug off most damage even if you get a lot of grazes. With a wizard who wants to use the lance and stuff you would'n focus on tanking of course. Then you don't need thick armor. Firebrand is on par with Concelhaut's Staff I'd say. Especially good when combined with a lot of crits like you get from Merciless Gaze + Eldritch Aim + Citzals Martial Power - because it is annihilating, doing double crit damage bonus. But it surely is not as good as the Spirit Lance. And it has no reach of course. Fire Godlike works ok if you have a lot of DR (Iron Skin + thick armor + Blunting Belt), a lot of CON, use a lot of Infuse with Vital Essence and also use Flame Shield and Scion of Flame + Citzal's Martial Power. Battle Forge and Flame Shield stack, so you retaliate with nice burn damage. You can add normal retaliation, too. If you combine that with Combusting Wounds all enemies who attack you will get hit by up to 4 retaliaion strikes which will cause 4 times combusting wounds on them. You can add things like Chillfog or other pulsing spells as well as Wall of Flames and other walls to amplify the effect with Combusting Wounds. It can melt attackers really quickly. This approach works best with a weapon & shield approach because you will die if you don't have enough defense. Wizard's Double doesn't work very good here because you want to get grazed a lot and not avoid hits at all. Also you need Sura's Supper Plate (small shield) if you want the max amount of retaliations. I would even take Veteran's Recovery. Infuse with Vital Essence can help a bit with the health loss. With Battle Forged and Scion of Flame active and with the additional use of Bulwark against the Elements, you can even drop Fireball onto your own head while retaliating. Your high reflection from buffs and shield and your very high DR against burn damage will prevent that you hurt yourself too much, but all the foes will suffer big time.

Druids have some ok party buffs, but nothing spectacular like priests do. Form of the Delemgan is one of the best. Garden of Life is a very good healing over time spell once there are dead enemies on the ground. Nature's Vigor is also not bad. But I wouldn't say a druid can be a superb buffer. The principle of the Batsh!t Crazy build - pairing high defenses with front line spellcasting (doesn't need to have the exact same stat distribution) - works perfectly fine with a spear and shield. If you use Relentless Storm + Nature's Terror + Returning Storm - and later Avenging Storm - there are few other build that can tank so well while dishing out lots of damage and CC at the same time. It's basically a paladin with Sacred Immolation (just that it's shock damage) plus hefty CC while you can hit with your weapon at the same time. Secret secret: you can cast Nature's Terror more than once to generate a lot of those static fields around you which hit all the time - making it superstrong in combination with Combusting Wounds. But this druid doesn't shift. But note that when you shift your weapon diappears. You will always have two claws/tusks/stag horn/whatever that are considered unarmed and have inherent DR penetration and a high base damage that scales with level. So, no spear then. The above approach with Nature's Terror/Storm spells of course also works when shifted.

For a wizard tank (don't know if you're aiming at that or want a melee wizard who doesn't have to be at the front row) Arcane Veil + Hardened Veil + Wizard's Double is a nice combination. The later doesn't disappear as long as you don't get hit, which won't happen with +115 deflection on top of weapon + shield and all the other usual deflection boosters. Citzal's Spirit Lance is a nice weapon and would be my no. 1 choice for a non-tank approach. But you might want to spare that spell for tougher encounters, so using Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff for trash encounters is still good. It's high base damage works well with all damage bonuses like Two Handed Style, Savage Attack and so on. You can even think about Firebrand from Forgemaster's Gloves. With Deleterious Alacrity of Motion + Citzal's Martial Power + Two Handed Style and so on it also should be pretty good and also works with Scion of Flame (if you like this for your fire spells it's a nice synergy effect). But it's hard to beat Citzal's Spirit Lance's carnage-like AoE attack. You can also look at Llengrath's Blunt Wisdom Warding Staff. It's way better than it looks! They all wprk with the same Weapon Focus and Two Handed Style anyways.

That also works. Go for the Blade of the Endless Paths and try to reach 0 recovery with it + Spelltongue.

Then you will shoot instead of swing? I don't see where the chanter is so much more passive than a fighter for example.

Why that? Nearly all his chants also affect the party, not only the chanter - and also Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits do. That's a big indicator that they are meant for party play. Same with the paladin. The thing that makes them both good for solo play is the combination of great defenses plus great dps at the same time.

You'll see epic when The Dragon thrashes... aaand wails.