Boeroer

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.

Absolutely. I play PotD exclusively and I feel no difference between hireling and official companion of the same class. Except that official companions are more fun to bring along if you care about banter, special dialogues, personal quests and such. Attributes are not that impactful for the majority of the game (they really aren't). And where they have the biggest impact - that is in the early game at very low levels - the official companions have the advantage of +1 level compared to hirelings. If PotD is your choice for a first playthrough it's most likely going to be a very rough ride anyways... Don't blame it on hirelings or companions then. The most impactful stat on game difficulty is meta knowledge and understanding the (often obscured) mechanics. What can happen is that official companions don't have the "perfect class" for your party synergies. But a Herald is so universally useful that this shouldn't be a problem you will run into imo.

I don't remember. I just checked several of the dmg hit rolls while playing Rotghast tennis and always there was the +10 ACC from R's Influence.

How do you survive all the self damage from Voidwheel (except with BDD)?

There are several weapons that are really good with a Phantom. Everything that stacks on hit is great (e.g. Willbreaker, Saru Sichr) because it allows to stack twice the amount of debuffs or dots. And also all weapons that do something on X% hit or crit because the phantom makes it more likely that it really happens (see Sungrazer for example or Endre's Flog or Stalker's Patience etc.). Blackbow is very good, too. I think I like Draining Touch best.

The Phantom will use the natural armor and the natural weapons of the Spiritshift form - but it will look like the unshifted you, with bare fists though. The reason is that both the armor and the weapons of the Spiritshift form are invisible items (they have no 3D model). The Spiritshift form has a complete 3D model - it's one piece so weapons/armor are not modeled seperately. It's best to use the cat or bear form when wanting to use the phantom while shifted. The cat's claw weapons are faster while the bear armor is higher. The boar tusks don't carry the wounding damage (it is governed by the spiritshift ability of the boar not the weapons themselves) and also the goodies of the other forms are tied to the spiritshpift ability itself and not the weapons/armor.

I think he has some Druid spells/abilities withput actually being a Druid. There are some enemies that are implemented like this (some of the later Xaurip enemies and Lagufaeth for example). Maybe Naga shamans are done the same way. If that is so they would have 0 PL for the Wizard/Druid spells they use. Like you would have if you stole a Priest or Druid spell as a Wizard with a Grimoire Imprint spell.

Blunderbusses have another disadvantage: Pierce dmg only - and the base PEN is also not good (like swords, but without alternative dmg type).

Don't know what you did, but with 10+ Guile you should have 100% crit conversion when using Gambit. So actually it's quite hard not to get a crit with 8 rolls if you set yourself up properly. In order to not get a full refund you have to miss or graze 7 out of 8 rolls. This might happen against certain megabosses - but against everything else this seems very unlikely? As I said above: Gambit can have 100% crit conversion. I didn't write it down but I have the suspicion that it's more likely to miss or graze with 1 out of 2 melee weapon rolls (sun & moon would add a 3rd roll making it 2 out of 3) than it is with 7 out of 8 blunderbuss rolls - even if the melee weapons should have a lot more acc. Cap of the Laughingstock can be used with blunderbusses, too. The rest (better cc, dmg) still stands though. And I think that's even more impactful than accuracy (because of the crit conversion). It is a lot easier to spam Gambit on an enemy without getting disturbed if that enemy constantly suffers from hard CC - imo.

He also said "non-violent" on Twitter some time ago. And that the artists whom he works with are doing an amazing job so far...

Why shouldn't it?

Hm, I think at least with BoW and FS there's quite some history of he Deadfire getting revealed. But overall I agree that the historic events in PoE felt a lot more substancial to me. Dang... it might be that I need to install and play PoE again. Off to 5k+ hours!

I think it's fine. There are lots of ways to escape engagement and I didn't intentionally use Spirit Frenzy as anti-engagement tool so far. More as fortitude debuffing tool. There are many other ways to escape engagement (first of all hard CC) so I never saw the appeal to use Spirit Frenzy for that specifically. Spirit Frenzy is one reason why I think Barb/Chanters are awesome & fun debuffers (Barb/Druids, too). And it also kind of makes sense that a brutish bard burps out phrases so horrible that enemies get staggered. I mean we have Dazing Shout, invocations that stun and paralyze and so on. Why shouldn't AoE effects that don't deal physical damage stagger foes with "Spirit" Frenzy? I mean it's about the spirit, not crush/pierce/slash/raw.