Boeroer

My recommendation would be: when getting to level 9, pick "The Dragon Thrashed" and only use that phrase. When it overlaps the damage from it will stack on enemies. If you already have enough tanks then give him a single handed melee weapon for one weapon set. This will give his offensive chants (so, The Dragon Thrashed in this case) +12 accuracy. This bonus only applies to attacks with the one-handed weapon and offensive chants. The talent (one-handed style) does not work for the chants so you don't need it. The second weapon slot is for a melee weapon (for example a hatchet) and a shield. Use Ilfan Byrngar's Solace first (you might already have it, it's a drop from that Drake in lvl 6 of the Endless Paths), then later use Little Savior (difficult, hoard of the Adra Dragon). Weapon and Shield Style is optional. Use the armor Blaidh Golan. This one is also an early armor to get (Brackenbury Sanatorium in a crate for free). Give him a Ring of Overseeing and later the Voice of the Mountaintop (Dyrford Village, the arms vendor there) - they both stack for chant AoE size. Alternative amulet: St. Borragia's Tears. Give him Veteran's Recovery and Ancient Memory+Beloved Spirits at some point. Use +MIG and +INT gear to raise the damage of Dragon Thrashed, the AoE size and the Linger time. Third weapon slot is a an arquebus or arbalest or so. Use a Belt of Bountiful Healing and Shod-in-Faith boots. Now stand to the side of eder like your MC does, but on the other side and work like an offtank, catching bypassers who want to reach Aloth/Durance/Hiravias etc. while chanting Dragon Thrashed with +12 ACC and healing your party passively with your Ancient Memory aura. Should you get into trouble switch to the shield setup. Should you not be able to do much because it's all so crowded and your accuracy with the chant is sufficient, switch to the ranged weapon. You will be pretty sturdy even with no shield because Veteran's Recovery and Ancient Memory stack - and should you receive a crit you will trigger Consecrated Ground, too. The long goal with the shield setup and the armor is to combine it with Grieving Mother's Defensive Mindweb and Durance's Withdraw (as a spell mastery): See, chants also work when Kana is withdrawn by Durance. You you can use Withdraw on Kana but his Dragon Thrashed will still work. This is the only way how a character can do anything when withdrawn: chant (and have auras like that from Ancient Memory and Little Savior). At the same time Withdraw counts as a stun effect. If you look at your shield and armor, they both have an effect that gives you +50 to all defenses when stunned. Since a shield is counted as a weapon and all weapon enchantments stack with everything, both effects stack to +100 to all defenses when stunned. Now - if Kana is withdrawn he gets +100 to all defenses. Wow - but that's not really useful because he's withdrawn anyway. Here Grieving Mother comes into play. Cast Defensive Mindweb on the party and everybody in the party will have Kana's absolutely stellar +100 defenses with no drawbacks. Kana will be out of the fight, but he can still contribute with a chant, dealing damage. When WIthdraw ends he will have cumulated enough phrases for a nice invocation of your liking. Dragon Thrashed will do tremendous damage in the meantime. Even before getting to that little Mindweb/Withdraw trick it will be very impactful, especially with the +12 accuracy from one-handed usage. Invocations can be used for further damage, summons or support while Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits + the healing bonuses will work nicely for your party while you will be a versatile offtank, too. Later with Mindweb/Withdraw you will be the absolute superstar who grants unbelievable defenses and nice healing while still dealing great AoE damage. A variant can be to double down on the healing an use a combiation of short chants (e.g. the starting March of the Kamoa which does +10 Will, Fortitude and Reflex) with the Mercy and Kindness chant (increased healing done). This is also very useful for the party because the healing will be so strong all the time. You will do no chant damage then but do nice support and more healing. I have a build that uses this:

I forgot: always flank the enemy if possible. It's giving -10 deflection and -1 armor. It's easy to do, you just have to attack from opposite sides with melee characters or melee summons. There's no immunity to it nor do you actually have to hit to apply the "flanked" status.

This guy has very high armor. You don't have enough penetration (see the "No Pen." message in the combat log in the lower right of the screen). That's because you attack the Titan with slashing or piercing weapons (like the hunting bow, guns, sabres, swords and so on). As you can see it has 11 armor against most things and even 13 vs. pierce damage. In the combat log it is shown that you tried to deliver slash damage (your hunting bow does pierce or slash damage depending what armor is lower - in this case slash armor at 11). Given your low level I assume that you are far from reaching 11 penetration with your hunting bow. I assume your whole party is using either pierce or slash damage. Underpenetration means a severe damage malus. Making sure you penetrate enemies' armor is one of the most important things to do in Deadfire. THat's why switching weapons according to the enemy is important - and to pick some abilities that may raise penetration (for example Fighter's Penetrating Strike) or lower enemies' armor (for example Wizard's Expose Vulnerabilities). As you can see the Titan has only 7 armor vs. crush damage. So the easiest way to beat him is to attack with crushing weapons. Instead of pierce or slash weapons use weapons that do crush damage. It doesn't even matter if the crushing weapons have lower quality or whatever - underpenetration is so severe that it's much better to attack with a weak crushing weapon that can penetrate than with a good pierce weapons that cannot. Ohter alternatives are shock damage and corrode/acid damage. For example Serafen could have Antipathetic echo (corrode), Aloth could use some shocking spell like Crackling Bolt or something. Also there's a hunting bow in Port Maje (you can buy it) named Essence Interrupter which is very good and does shock damage. What always works: ablities/spells that do raw damage (see some Ciphers spells vor example) - raw damage just ignores all armor.

Prepare to have your ass whooped...

Some TB players here said that this is excactly what they do: make their casters go last.

Does Marux Amanth's +2 PEN bonus apply to everyhing or just the dagger attacks?

I do Beast of Winter a bit earlier, like around lvl 13 or 14 or so. Else it gets too easy for my taste. The otehr two can be done when everything else exept the last step on the critical path is done. SSS can be done earlier though, you don't have to be lvl 20. FS has some really tough fights where being 20 helps.

I don't play TB mode (only RTwP) so my expertise is somewhat theoretical only - but I see that you are comparing a "useful" CC effect (Knock Down) with some of the weaker damaging spells which feel "useless". You could try a a spell like Slicken instead (does the same as Knock Down - but in an area of effect) and check if that's more to your liking. I also think casting from stealth at least eliminates the long casting time for that first spell. If you open with a string hard CC/disabling spell from stealth and catch all enemies this can turn the fight so much in your favor that you'll win easily. Low level Wizard spells that are very good in RTwP mode are: Slicken, Chillfog, Miasma of Dull-Mindedness, Combusting Wounds, Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage, Expose Vulnerabilities... Maybe they are nice in TB mode, too...? All the self buffs are instant casts and should also be in TB mode. They are quite strong in RTwP so I assume they asre not too bad no TB Mode either. Damaging spells need enough Penetration to be worthwhile. If you cast some damaging spell like Fireball on enemies that have high(ish) burn armor then the damage will be puny. Besides that I think @Haplokplayed a lot of Wizard stuff in Turn Based Mode, maybe he has some insights and tipps.

The Champion's Helm also visually fits a Huana styled character so that's a plus in this case. But it comes pretty late (end of the Seeker, Slayer, Survivor DLC).

They are part of the original game. It's kind of an in-game achievement system. You can't have those points in your first playthrough though. You collect them while solving quests, exploring etc. for the first time. I was part of the team that made the Community Patch. It's kind of both. There are a lot of bug fixes, but also some minor tweaks of balance - including slight buffs and also nerfs to certain abilities. "How the devs intended" is a nice approach on paper, but the devs often didn't implement things how they intended them to work. Then the official patch cycle ended and devs couldn't work on the game anymore. So a small group of forum users here with significant playing time (I guess between 6 to 7K hours combined...) got together and discussed what changes would be reasonable and enchance the experience - without silly power creep. The patch also contains a rework of keywords (abilites get tagged with keywords so they work properly - for example fire spells get tagged with "fire" so they can be countered with spells that are tagged with "frost" and so on...) which were messed up a bit in the vanilla game. It also contains unique icons for every passive ability in the game. The vanilla game only had a few icons that were reused over an over for all passives - and it was quite confusing to see all the same icons for different passive abilities at level-up. Those new icons were my doing. The Patch is segmented into modules so you can decide which changes you would like and which not (for example only use basic bugfixes and the icons): https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/335 In addition to that it's very easy to deactivate every change manually since every change was done with a separate file. So deleting a mod file will remove that change you don't like. I personally think the game is better with the Community Patch and at the same time I also believe that the devs would agree. In addition to the Community Patch I would also recommend the mod Enhanced User Interface. It is a pure UI mod that only adds more auto-generated tooltips (hover over certains terms to show more info) that are unobtrusive but really helpful, especially for new players. It doesn't change the mechanics of the game.

Assassin/Bloodmage with Arkemy's Brilliant Departure and Helm of the White Void is pretty bonkers, yes. You can reduce the defenses of most enemies to dust and put all sorts of hard CC on them with stellar accuracy and without even being seen. You can even go into an encounter alone to "prepare" the enemies for when the cavalry (rest of the party) walzes in.

Interrupts only occur if you are using an ability (or weapon modal) that does interrupt. It's not automatic anymore - because it's too impactful. DoT ticks (Plague of Insects etc.) do not interrupt at all - like never. Some of them will remove Concentration though which is very good. But pulsing spells (Returning Storm, Wicked Briars, Chillfog and so on) can interrupt on crit if you become energized (tier 3 MIG inspiration). Then even offensive chants will interrupt on crit. You can become energized easily with the Chanter's invocation "Their Champion". So, an offensive Chanter/Caster with pulsing spells and offensive chants can be an AoE interrupt monster in the later game. DoTs in general do one hit roll and then the subsequent ticks are applied automatically (if the initial hit roll was successful). Pulsing spells are doing a new attack roll with every pulse. Again: Interrupts only occur on hit rolls, never DoT ticks. Party with Sorcerer and Druid will have a ton of DoTs (and pulsing spells, too), right. Since Armor/Penetration is so vital on PotD difficulty, especially the raw dmage DoTs (Plague if Insects, Insect Swarm, Infestation of Maggots) can be very useful once you face an enemy with a very hard shell (so to speak). The latter. Perception has no influence on this. It's all about abilities and items (also weapon choice of course - see Estoc vs Great Sword or so, but that won't matter for spells). Goldpact (especially with Sworn Enemy/Gilded Enmity) is also nice. But for a party I consider the early engagement more important than the added armor. Also Gilded Enmity (+4 AR for some hits) does not stack with Exalted Endurance (+1 AR aura) because both are active abilities. And you really want to use Exalted Endurace for your party. I personally would stick to Shieldbearer. Also the Shieldbearer's second ability (Barring Death's Door when using Lay on Hands) is very useful as support. Another thing: yoiur Herald will not be contributing much to offense - yet sometimes you wish he could. For example when he's th last man standing but can't do aything offensively. In those cases Brand Enemy (Sworn Enemy upgrade) can be superuseful: it sclaes with MIG (your MIG is high), it is an auto-hit (your ACC doesn't matter at all) and it is instant with no recovery (your lox DEX and fat armor don't matter at all). It will apply a burn DoT on the enemy that will never end. So it has the potential to kill every enemy that's not immune to fire - you just have to stay alive. And staying alive is rel. easy for a Herald. So I would either skip Sworn Enemy completely - or upgrade to Brand Enemy. 78, yes. Unless you use Berath Blessing points (basically achievement points you can collect during a playthrough) for enhanced attributes, then it would be 90 (+2 to all attributes). You should check that your INT is high enough for overlapping chants asap and the rest you can adjust with items as you see fit. By the way: you can balance back low CON (at least when it's about health and not the fortitude defense) with the passive ability "Tough" quite easily.

That's a bit out of context. For a non-offensive Herald like OP wants there are no helmets that would make you weep if you picked a godlike imo. A headpiece that gives you +10 ACC for affliction based attacks doesn't do much for you if you are not using affliction based attack rolls. On the other hand I also don't see a godlike that's particularly useful for this Herald (mechanically I mean). Death Godlike: you won't be down near death very often - and since you're not offensively contributing much the added dmg vs. near death enemies is moot. Moon Godlike: I don't think you will get hurt badly enough that the healing waves come into play very often. But for early game and maybe in tough fights it would be useful - and it fits the overall theme. Fire Godlike: Nah, same as Death. Nature: only if there's a reliable way to give a fitting inspiration all the time. Of course a general statement like "PoE2 headgear is worse than PoE headgear" would be wrong for two reasons: a) there are some very impactful pieces of headgear for the right build and b) item bonuses do stack in PoE2 (and didn't in PoE) - so even a helmet with like +1 PER or whatever (just an example) is potentially more useful than a +2 PER helmet in PoE. Back to the Herald in question: I think there are helmets with effects that are cool for this particular Herald (keep in mind: nearly everything from items does stack): Blackened Plate Helmet: bonus engagement (nice) & +1 INT (later game though, very tough to beeline to) Death's Maw: damage reduction is very good, stacks with dmg reduction of Cadhu Scalth and underpenetration for example (super early purchase) Horns of the Bleak Mother: Resistance to Resolve Afflictions. This is nice because it's a rel. uncommon resistance on items, you wouldn't need to pick the passive ability then or pick Wild Orlan - and Resolve Afflictions are just superannoying and also quite common (very early and surprisingly cheap purchase) Heaven's Cacophony: +2 INT (also early) Horns of the Aurochs: immue to push and pull - awesome if you are using a Wizard with Pull of Eora to collect enemies around the tank (bit late and tough to make a beeline to) Thaos' Headdress: the aura is nice (instant and "free" with the right PoE story with Aloth) Mask of the Weyc: cool deflection bonus, but maybe not needed and better used on someone with Wall of Draining (hello Fassina, super late game) But then on the other hand: this Herald is going for the Huana Mataru look iiuc. There are not many helmets that stylisticly fit a set of Huana Brigandine, Huana Club and Cadhu Scalth imo. The ones that do (for example the White Witch Mask) aren't particularly useful for a non-offensive, very tanky Herald. Only exception is maybe Horns of the Bleak Mother. They look cool imo and the antler-look fits the whole sea-shell and tribal stuff that's on armor and weapon (and you also get glowing eyes, wow) - but I guess not everybody's a fan of antler helmets. So maybe matter of tase. So overall I think godlike would be fine in this case. If nothing else then Death Godlike is cool because of the whole "Herald of Berath theme" and Moon Godlike is cool because of the strong bonds between Hauna and Ngati (Ondra). I actually never tried a moon godlike in a party with Tekehu (Marine Godlike, also Ondra) - is there special interaction? Like a "we're kinda brothers" vibe or so? I would also be fine with Horns of the Bleak Mother though. PS: I made stuff I would be cool with bold so it catches the eye.

Offensive Parry generates focus.

I have tried this several times now when players reported this - but I cannot reproduce it. For me the ACC bonus of the Azure Blade only works for attacks with the stiletto itself. If we count shields as weapons then technically Tuotilo's Palm also works not only for itself but also for your bare main hand fist and Forbidden Fist ability (the dmg- or ACC bonus for unarmed attacks I mean).

That depends on what your Herald is supposed to do. If it's mostly tanking, doing healing and calling summons then that's a good attribute allocation. You don't need to max MIG - higher is better when it comes to healing, but it isn't crucial to really max it out since the Herald has at least two sources of "passive" endless healing (chant and aura) so highest efficiency for limited healing abilities is not a concern. If you combine with stuff like "Mercy and Kindness" later the MIG score won't be that impactful anymore. At the same time Fortitude is an important defense, so don't go too low on (MIG + CON)/2 either. Reflex can be substituted with a shield (especially a large shield + modal, Cadhu Scalth with maxed Athletics/Metaphysics is very good for tanking) and Weapon & Shield Style and your Will will be stellar anyways. But low PER will make any offensive rolls difficult while low DEX will have a rel. big impact on summoning because those summons have really long base casting times. Still doable, just takes pretty long to complete the summoning process. Some summons are very good (e.g. Animated Weapons). If you prefer to use fast, non-offensive invocations (reviving, two fingers of daylight etc.) then DEX doesn't matter at all though. If I remember correctly, Shieldbearer + shield has 2 engagement slots. That's good for the start. For later tanking and keeping enemies in check a few more slots would be good. Spears have a modal that gives +1 engagement. An early club named Shattered Vengeance has bonus engagement if you are near allies, another club named Kapana Taga has +2 engagement. There's also a "Reckless" Brigandine and a Godhammer Plate that give bonus engagement. Even accessories... those come a bit later though. As for race: getting to 20 INT is easy because in Deadfire all bonus attributes from items do stack (unlike PoE!). So a Ring here and a helmet there and you're over 29 soon enough. The club with +2 engagement I mentioned (Kapana Taga) has that strong Huana/Polynesian vibe. The shield Cadhu Scalth also fits that style. And the Reckless Brigandine (+1 engagement) is also a Huana Brigandine made of shells and all. Together they look like the "item set" of a Huana Mataru Warrior. So just for style and nice roleplaying I personally would play said Mataru and go with Aumaua or Godlike (Aumaua-sized) from the Deadfire. The bonus DEX from the culture is not needed but it also doesn't really hurt. And as I said you can stack some attribute bonuses with items rather easily. But that's only my preference and I know that some players won't find that style very appealing but want a more "medieval" looking character. In that case tehre's some very cool armor later in the game that fits a tanking herald very nicely (look up Blackened Plate and Blackened Plate Helmet ). One last thing: Engagement is more important in this game than in PoE. Disengagement Attacks can really hurt and enemies tend to stick to engaging characters way better than in PoE. So engagement is very useful for tanking (if your goal is not to only soak damage but also keep enemies away from the rest of the party). What's also way more important is interrupts. In PoE you only lose time when getting interrupted. On Deadfire you also lose the resource (spell, ability). This is super useful to shut down anything that wants to use special abilities (a Priest casting a buff, a Wizard casting a dangerous spell etc.) At the same time only special attacks can interrupt. Concentration (can be stacked in layers) prevents an interrupt. Every interrupt removes a layer. You don't have Concentration naturally. You need to pick abilities or items that give it. Then there is Armor vs. Penetration. It's completely different than PoE. On PotD the enemies armor is thicker. At the same time the malus from not having enough penetration is very severe, especially if you underpenetrate by several points because you can take those numbers as multiplicative dmg malus (some wild math is going on in the background). So they are not equal to your general dmg bonus which are usually only additive. Therefore, thick armor is THE most important defensive stat you can have. Even more impactful than high defenses if you stack it high enough. That's also because Deafire only knows health and it works like endurance in PoE (there's no health bar that only refills with resting). So if you can outheal small amounts of damage forever while making sure enemies only do small amounts of damage (high armor, good defenses) you become virtually unkillable (except if some nasty hard disable hits you). Damage reduction items and abilities ("x% damage reduction") work the same way as damage reduction from underpenetration. That's why I recommended Cadhu Scalth and the large shield modal. Luckily the Paladin has several armor abilities. Penetration is not a concern for your Herald maybe, but make sure your damage dealers have enough penetration to Punch through the enemies' armor. Else your damage output will be laughable. Penetration bonuses are very valuable on PoTD difficulty.

I know for sure that Binding Roots will trigger Vion-Ceth's bonus damage.

Oh, that's something I didn't know. Cool!

Twin Eels: any kill will trigger the healing

Instead of an Ascendant it should be a Soulblade with Shared Nightmare and several kills under his belt (because +10 max focus per kill). With Strand of Favor or Salvation of Time + Brilliant etc. you can even prolong the max-focus-bonus and stack them until infinity, giving you "World-Wide-AoE" in theory. I'm sure there's an internal cap of some sort lest the game crashes.

Yes, it's a tradeoff. I like those items on a Monk/Caster because you can reach the INT cap of 35 with a Monk rel. easily (not with Rekke I guess though) - but those items will still add AoE size on top. That's why Loki is one of my favorite pets.

There are a lot of damaging Wizard spells that are no evocations. Also she has no limitations on the Druid side and could pick any damaging spells from there, too. Damaging Wizard spells that Fassina as Sorcerer could use: Jolting Touch [/] Kalakoth's Sunless Grasp (C) [-] Ghost Blades (C) [/] Chill Fog [++] Combusting Wounds [++] Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon [+] Necrotic Lance (C) [++] Noxious Burst [/] Wall of Flame (C) [++] Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring [++] Malignant Cloud (C) [/] Wall of Force (C) [+] Death Ring (C) [++] Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar [++] Tayn's Chaotic Orb [+] The (C) spells are actually Conjuration spells which means Fassina will be more powerful with them than other Wizards would be (Conjurers get +2 Power Level for Conjurations spells). This means more damage, duration, accuracy and penetration. The sign in the square brackets is my opinion on how good the spell is in general. Some - like Wall of Flame - are not great alone but really good in combination with other spells. In this case Wall of Flame + Combusting Wounds is very good. The latter. She will be a Conjurer/Animist As I showed above there is no real need to replace her. She can do plenty dmg as Conjurer and you can also use the Druid side for damaging spells and use the Wizard side for other spells (e.g. crowd control, debuffs, self buffs) if you wish. Sorcerers in general are very versatile. Instead of focusing on one single purpose (deal damage) they are much more suited for versatility and have some good tools for every situation: crowd control, healing, debuffing, (self)buffing: a Sorcerer can do it all. That's right.

Several Overseeing items will stack by the way, so wearing two Rings + Aloth's Armor gives +35% AoE size iirc.

Helwalker/Druid is more impactful when not using direct damage spells but damage over time or pulsing spells imo. The +10 MIG raises the tick/pulse damage while the +10 INT adds more ticks/pulses. That way you get +30% additive dmg per tick and 50% multiplicative dmg via duration over all. A bit surprised you don't mention Thunderous Blows because it has decent impact on elemental spells, also because it stacks with the Helwalker's MIG bonus but also the Fury's +1 PEN and Heart of the Storm etc. Did you notice that the Fury's range extension stacks nicely with Farcasting, giving you really long range? For stuff like Relentless Storm etc. I like to add Rings of Overseeing and Aloth's Armor as well as Charm of Bones and Heaven's Cacophony to the +10 INT because the AoE is so big then that it can be cast like a ranged spell almost. Imo it's not fair to compare a Fury's spell damage with that of a Arcane Archer who uses Driving Flight and a bouncing weapon. By the way: iirc you can stack two Tenacious effects if you use Resounding Call. If you destroy something with the hammer you can get Thunderou Blows, too - and if I'm not mistaken it stacks with the "natural" Thunderous Blows because it's from a weapon. Additional +2 PEN is pretty cool for elemental spells. But maybe this got fixed...?

Yes. There's no limitation for multiclass characters regarding subclass choice - except some Paladin/Priest combos where the favored/disfavored dispositions (cruel, benevolent, honest, clever and so on) would clash. So for example Kind Wayfarer/Priest of Skaen is not possible. Official companions come with fixed (sub)classes. You can't change those (except with mods or the use of the in-game console). Most of them use the vanilla classes (for example Eder, Aloth) but some use subclasses (Xoti as Monk for example has a special subclass, Serafen has a special Cipher subclass, Fassina is a Conjurer and so on). Sure. Herald is a strong combination. I personally would go Swashbuckler. I even use Eder Swashbuckler as main tank and it works well. At the same time it has more offensive capabilities than a pure Fighter. Fassina as Sorcerer is fine. She is a Conjurer Wizard and an Animist Druid. You can't change that if you're not using mods/console. Priests are good as single class. Their highest spells (that you can't get as multiclass Priest) are very good. Also you gain access to very impactful buffs sooner (single class chars gain access to higher level spells/abilities sooner than multiclass chars). Def. not a waste. Tekehu is fine either way. But the Druid spells he gets as bonus spells from his Watershaper subclass are very good because they are all foe-only. For example a foe-only Chillfog is a very convenient and effective spell. Druids are actually better healers than Priests, so you can use Tekehu for healing, too while Xoti focuses on buffing. Both can deal good damage with spells, too. One of the strongest offensive spells in the game is Great Maelstrom. If you want that Tekehu needs to be single class. But as I said: he works fine either way, even as single class Chanter (Stormspeaker). If I counted correctly you already have 5: Herald, Eder, Fassina, Xoti and Tekehu. In Deadfire your max party size is 5.