Boeroer

Yeah that's also fun and uses the same principle: skill for offense and balance things out with self heals. I did a complete barb solo run that way and it's good. But it's quite unspectacular to play. Mainly auto-attacks until you get HoF. Then it's HoF + Combusting Wounds all the time: trying to get as many enemies as possible into range and *pouf* - encounter is over.

Melee Tidefall priest in fatty fat armor (I like He Carries Many Scars) with max MIG, INT & PER who focuses on self heal (Veteran's Recovery, Consecrated Ground, Triumph of the Crusaders and also Wound Binding and potions of IwVE* - combined with max healing received bonuses) in order to stay alive rather than deflection (which he can buff by 50 points easily, too). I tried a shortened solo run with this and obviously it's a bit difficult at the beginning but really fun once you have gained some levels and thereby some sturdyness. I did all the bounties with this and it works nicely. With things like Champion's Boon or Minor Avatar the damage of the sword is awesome - especially the wounding part. Also Envenomed Stike with 40+ MIG and >20 INT is devastating. Why Tidefall? I wanted to try if the wounding gets doubled by Cleansing Flame (doubling the tick rate). I'm not sure if it does - because I also used Envenomed Strike with Tidefall and then cast Cleansing Flame a lot when I wanted to kill single strong enemies. I can only say that this combination is so powerful that I can't really say if wounding + Cleansing Flame does work properly but Envenomed Strike surely works, killing most foes in seconds. The draining and wounding of Tidefall just work very nicely together with pumped MIG. Of course a shining beacon with +40 MIG + Cleansing Flame also obliterates everything. Survivability is great because of self heals. Triumph of the Crusaders is great for an offensive preist who kills things a lot because it will heal you to full endurance every time you kill a foe. In the meantime Consecr. Ground and Veteran's Recovery will do their stuff. With St. Borragia'S Tears, a Belt of Bountiful Healing, 40+ MIg and +60% from camping bonuses your self healing power is so high that you can't be killed in normal ways besides getting one-shotted or if health runs out. To prevent this, use Wound Binding (also profits from MIG and healing bonuses, will heal your health completely - so don't use it too early) and potions of IwVE*. Those also profit from MIG and healing bonuses. If you get too many crits, buff your deflection - but most of the time there was no need. I didn't use Iconic Projection too much because I was solo - but i can imagine how aweseome this spell is in a full party with all that MIG. Spark the Souls of the Righteous? Awesome! Kills foes whil you hack at them with Tidefall while the Shining Beacon DoT also does it's job. Lots "drive by" kills which all trigger Triumph of the Crusaders = immediate full heal. Symbol of Berath (Magran.. and so on): same thing. Great for this priest. How do I reach 40+ MIG in nearly every fight without too much fuzz? + Aumaua or dwarf with max MIG from the Living Lands: 21 MIG base + Aggrandizing Radiance: +2 to MIG (and the other stats +2 move speed), stacks with everything (does only lower the healing for yourself, not the party despite the description - at least in my run) + Champion's Boon: +10 MIG (or Minor Avatar +8; together with Aggr. Radiance you'll have +10 to every stat) or more early Holy Power (+3) or Devotions (+4) or even Frenzy from Sanguine Plate (+4). Desperate Souls can use Outlander's Frenzy (+3) but I don't recommend wasting a talent point for this since it gets suppressed by all those spells. + Maegfolc Skull: +4 MIG (or Garodh's Chorus +3 - Retaliation with 40+ MIG is also not too bad) + Abydon's Hammer: +4 MIG (I use it only when I cast offensive stuff, not for melee. There I still use Tidefall) = 41 MIG = big success! Special campain talants like Gift from the Machine and Effigy's Resentment not even included! Until you get those high end items you can reach 40+ MIG easily with food, prostitutes and resting bonuses plus normal +MIG items, too. That also means that you can nearly reach 50 MIG when you combine all available buffs and talents. That's a BIG plus when engaging bounty heads or dragons. Envenomed Strike + Cleansing Flame + Shining Beacon + Spark the Souls + Triumph otC should do the job. Every job... A high level MC priest with 40 MIG and perfect disposition also one shots nearly all vessels (but the strongest) with his Holy Radiance. Fights against vessels become jokes with this priest. Even the berathian priest's Concelhaut's Siphon is good with healing bonuses and high MIG. That's the reason I chose Berath. And because it fits the Maegfolc Skull thematically (Death's Usher and whatnot). Very nice experience overall. Great melee/caster hybrid - totally offensive while sturdy via self healing. Difficult at the beginning - ridicilously easy at higher levels. )*Infuse with Vital Essence

Aggrandizing Radiance only lowers the healing the priest receives. The party members still gain the full healing despite the description. At least that was the case when I played my last priest on version 2.something. It also stacks with everything else, and that is a huge plus. So it's not too bad. Could last longer though. Ancient Memory scales with level and is pretty good after the latest buff for all the regenerating self heals like Constant and Veteran's Recovery. However it is bugged ATM: it stops after the first invocation is cast. I agree that Brilliant Radiance is lackluster. But simply adding more burn damage doesn't work either: it would also increase the already high burn damage HR does to vessels. HR can already one-shot most vessels when MIG is high and the dispositions are right. Instead, Brilliant Radiance should make it so that also other enemies than vessels get damaged by it. Maybe 50% of the vessel-only damage also works on all other enemies or so... Or let it blind all foes in range. That would be a great tandem together with Painful Interdiction. Weaken + blind in a big AoE is good and can set up Deathblows very quickly 1/encounter.

You always could use any paladin aura with any other modal (except another aura) as far as I know.

Yeah - why "rather"?

The Disappointer pistol can be enchanted with any quality enchantment (like Accurate I/II, Damaging I/II, Fine, Exceptional and so on) and thus looses it's disappointing "terrible" enchantment - it gets overwritten with the new quality. After any quality enchantment it will be like a normal pistol which you enchanted - but with a unique name. I recommend the Fine or Accurate I enchantments because pistols - like all guns - already have an ACC malus which makes it hard to hit with them in the early game. It's a way to get a working pistol really early. With FoD you might hit reliably. But honestly I always sell it to Heodan.

What's "CA"?

There are four trolls north-west from the bandits camp. Usually that's enough.

Normal wolves are very strong compared to young ones. It's a common thing to die when you get attacked by more than one in the early game. That's no flaw of your character. Also, by any means - try to avoid wild boars in Magran's Fork - they will obliterate you.

It's only advantage is when you execute Full Attacks - especially if the bash can proc an effect like with Dragon's Maw and Badgradr's Barricade. For primary Attacke it doesn't matter and for auto attacks it normaly lowers your damage output compared to a normal shield. Bash is good for monks with shields: Torment's Reach is a Full Attack and the cone AoE damage is a seperate thing which is not determined by the somewhat whimpy bash damage.

But that's a good thing, right? One more argument for Maneha I guess. But I don't need many auto attacks once I got HoF, hehe...

Cool. My fighter with Take the Hit also uses Defender and Overbearing Guard. But he lurks in the back row with a pike instead and normally doesn't get hit by enemies lot - he only soaks up damage for his friedns. If you're using Defender with Edér: Take the Hit works together with Defender - they don't cancel each other.

Yepp, it's very sad. But since the self heal is good enough, you can take those two talent points and do something useful with them until OBS fixes this bug (and introduces some new ones of course).

Maneha 100%. That's because Taste of the Hunt works correctly with carnage and also Heart of Fury and Vengeful Defeat. When you do a HoF attack against 6 enemies you will generate 36 hits with Dragon's Maw, 25% of them will trigger Taste of the Hunt - that is 9 times Taste of the Hunt on avarage - healing you and also doing good raw damage. Also: Savage Defiance 1/encounter when endurance drops below 50% is great. If you took Savage Defiance as a talent you will have two very strong self heals 2/encounter. If you decide differently: Badgradr's Barricade also works with carnage and - more importantly - with HoF and Vengeful Defeat. If you have a priest you could think about giving Spelltongue to Maneha. Priest casts Shields & Crowns for the Faithful on her (+50 deflection, +6 INT and so on) and she does HoF with Spelltongue + Dragon's Maw then: results in great damage that will end most trahmob fights + unbelievable long durations for all the buffs on her, including Shields + Crowns. Another really nice late game weapon for her will be that hatchet that causes Fatigue on hit (also with carnage). Also give her Glittering Gauntlets for carnage-dazing. With yell, fatigue and dazing she will stack a -30 ACC debuff on all foes she hits. It's aweseome (tested it on bounties: awesome tank with good offensive potential). On a fighter bash is not so great because he only has Knockdown as Full Attack - besides that bash will most likely lower his dps - because that's what bash normally does with auto attacks. The fear aura is nice of course, but if you play Maneha as tank she should use Barbaric Yell anyway. And you can always put on the Executionier's Hood which is very nice and also has a fear aura - plus some other nice stuff. You can get it before Dragon's Maw I think. For me a fighter with not too low INT is better off with Little Savior. If you add a paladin with Outworn Buckler this would be an awesome tanking frontline: +10 to all defenses from the two small shields, -30 to enemies' ACC from frightened, fatigue and daze. Somebody also could wear the Redfield shield for another -3 ACC aura. I also did test a fighter with powerful self heal + Take the Hit. It's actually not as bad as I thought. Actually it's quite great. The self healing from Constant Recovery and stuff, combined with healing bonus from camping and very high deflection lowers overall party damage a lot while the fighter can balance things out with Unbending if he needs to. I will have to test how chanters' 30pt damage shield and Take the Hit work together...

Watch out guys! Ancient Memory and Beloved Spirits is still bugged. It turns off once you cast your first invocation and won't turn back on. This is no problem for chanters who only chant The Dragon Thrashed - but for this build it's quite bad because it uses invocations and is dependend on the healing. It works in the first 10-15 secs of combat (when usually you suffer the most) and so it's not a complete waste, but it surely is not working as intended. So decide for yourself if it's worth taking. Most likely you will be better off with two other (defensive) talents atm. Just use postions (Regeneration) or scrolls (Moon Well) instead. I didn't realize it because the tremendous self healing of Veteran's Recovery + all the healing mods of >100% masked the fact that it turned off after some time.

It's the secret ORBUG* modifier! It's related to not so secret OUCHWHIP** I guess. )* Obsidian's random buff for unarmed damage glitch )** Obsidian unknowingly creating (an unbelievable buggy mess of stinking) horsecrap (every frickin' time) when introducing patches

It's really really sad that two nice guys in this forum manage to fix a bug so quickly which is in the game for more than a year - and OBS can't. Come on, OBS, seriously? I didn't realize that this bug is there because I mainly use tanky, passive chanters who only chant "The Dragon Thrashed" all the time and don't use invocations at all. Ok, cool, for those chanters this bug is no problem - but for any other chanter it's very bad. I don't get it why this isn't fixed.

That would have been... superawesome.

Deadfire Archipelago = pirates. The barb companion you can have is also from there - and guess what: she used to be a raider (aka pirates who pillage on land ). For a pirate you should use Deadfire Archipelago and raider. Since you don't want to minmax anyway, the bonus point from culture doesn't really matter. By the way - later on you can get headgear that looks like a pirate's headscarf. It gives you +2 survival which is not too bad there's better headgear, but +2 survival can be really handy to reach certain levels of camping bonuses (for example bonus healing or ACC bonus) earlier in the game and with less skill points. If you want how it looks like, take a peak into the build "The Immortal Martyr" in the list. He wears that headscarf thing.

Way too much kiting. Solo PotD runs are difficult enough - at least against bounty groups and such.

Right - also Carnage's ACC malus and the barb's low starting ACC may be reason why it works quite well.

Hm... How about a druidic brawler? Deflection is not too bad, ACC is not good, he can use Spiritshift but even after it runs out he can still pack a punch. Taste of the Hunt may be OK with fists.

Or Rhymrgand - because of Aurochs/Stag carnage. That would be so cool. Carnage on a priest - even a weaker one would be great.

Well - low ACC seems to be no problem because grazes/hits/crits don't make a big difference. Wizard or priest brawler anyone?

Concerning dwarves: boreal dwarf for an offensive approach, mountain dwarf for a defensive one. Some people say that the racial feat of mountain dwarves is weak, but I don't think so. Actually there are a lot of enemies who use attacks that are either disease or poison. Those attacks (like poison clouds of iron constructs, attacks of several other vessels, oozes' ranged attacks, wood beetle poison and so on, several corrode and raw damage spells) can be pretty nasty. It's a good thing to have higher defenses against them. Having +15 ACC against primordial and wilder foes is also nice. Some of the toughest mobs are wilder/primordial (ogres, lagufaeth, adragans, delemgans and so on). Lore wise I think that hammers belong to mountain dwarves.