MasterCipher

Weapon Base Speed Speed Modified Dex MIG Dam Mod Dam Avg base Dam Avg modified DPS hasted Dam modified Sabre DW Rog 1.833333333 0.667742972 32 28 549% 32 208 311 Sabre DW Rng 1.833333333 0.651163599 31 29 527% 32 201 308 Sabre DW Bar 1.833333333 0.637076305 32 30 490% 32 189 296 Blunderbuss Rng 9 2.610641232 32 28 409% 45 229 88 Pet Stag 4.721 4.444549057 12 17 246% 13 43 10 Playing in Excel I added damage columns to MaxQuest's data with optimal damage/speed talents, abilities, gear (legendary annihilation sabre x2 via wax mold), and buffs. DR and accuracy is not considered, and every hit is assumed a crit. However, I'm not confident in the pet dps because I guessed at its base damage. In practice I think Rogue will have top raw DPS with highest accuracy (+8 above Ranger from Relentless Assault) and given conditions needed for Barb and Ranger damage modifers like vengeful grief, heart of fury (where priest casts extend duration for the +25% damage modifer), stalkers link, marked prey, bloodied, one stands alone etc. Barbs still have there place with survivability, passive sicken aura, and spellchance/crit weapon carnage. Rangers have an exploitable pet with endless health and I *think* binding roots still has a range of 20m, which makes it uniquely suited for simplifying difficult encounters. Grr, my table insert looked good up until clicking submit

Can you get 0% reload on a firearm with swiftaim (50%) + gunner (20%) + 20 DEX (30%) ? This seems like it would be kind of nuts.

grab story companions and rest, come back and do Maerwald with Kana and Eder present at least since their quests require it It's been so long, but I'm pretty sure I did Maerwald without them and was able to continue quests with alternate dialogues talk to the story companions individually(only PC and them in party) for max XP I like to power game and haven't done this. Thank you sell stuff I don't need and start upgrading keep, since we've done 0 quests so far we get more stronghold turns from rushing to get caed nua early Couldn't agree more.

I think a Darcozzi support duel wielding disorienting haste hammer and coordinating attacks spear with 18 mig 18 dex 18 int does fine front line.

Thank you for feedback. Reasoning behind pistol switches is primarily itemization. +50% damage on crit and +25% on sneak attack puts the raw damage ahead of what's available for aquabus and arbalest. Leadsplitter may be worthwhile for Rending. Paladin aura and Priest spell mastery buff I run give group +25% hit to crit conversion along with a lot of +accuracy. I didn't know that about the arcs. I am updating to swap PER and INT. 18 INT extends length of blunder burn 40% from 2m to 2.8m. Thrown on an overseer ring for another 10%. Food is another 5% or 10%.

=================================== Apex Predator =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 3.02 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Ranger -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Aumua -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The White Lands - Colonist -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 21 CON: 03 DEX: 18 PER: 15 INT: 18 RES: 03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 5, Athl. 1 (class +1, brothel or gear to reach minimum of 3), Lore 0, Mech. 0, Surv. 12 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Vicious Companion Merciless Companion Penetrating Shot ® Apprentice Sneak Attack Lesser Frenzy Scion of Flame (!) Bloody Slaughter Gunner Abilities Marked Prey Predator's Sense Stalker's Link ® Wounding Shot (!) Driving Flight Vicious Aim Powder Burns (!) Vengeful Grief Armed to the Teeth (a) Second Whind (a) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Silver Flash (!) , fire lash® Weapon Set 2: Pistol with annihilation, fire lash® Weapon Set 3: Pistol with sneak bonus, fire lash® Twinsting for Alacrity 1/rest Boots: 4 DEX Head: Eyepatch with 10% damage vs flanked and blind immunity, but -2 accuracy Armor: Leather with Alacrity 1/rest Neck: Stalker's Link Belt: Coil with 1 DEX (suppressed), but -1 second weapon switch Rings: 3 MIG, Bartender Ring with 20% damage vs spirit/vessel Hands: Ryona's Vembraces -3 DR Quick slots: Ruatai Sweet Pie, Farmer's Spread, PER food, INT food (haste potion for tough fights) --------------------------------------------------------------- Long Time Reader, First Time Build Poster Designed to optimize damage output and a party that synergizes with buffs/debuffs/crowd control (Fighter/Paladin/Chanter/Cipher/Priest). Powdered Burns converts your ranged damage into 100% fire and attacks Reflex ! The cone for blunderbuss is incredibly wide, 100+ damage and blindness for everyone. Triggered Immunity BP on your Paladin and ability on Fighter means you can bunch and blast. Throw your stag pet on the barbie too and the Paladin can ressurect after Vengeful buff. If that's not enough heat, Wounding Shot will hit your main target normally in addition to the flame of death cone. DR -5 penetrating shot, -1 sacrifice rogue NPC, -3 gloves, -8 Fighter, -3 base = total of -20 DR Survial 18 after class 2 background 2 quest reward 1 boon 1, 30% flank bonus. Boots 10%, neck 50%, bless 10%, recall agony 30%, MIG 34 (gear/rest/food/gift of machine/group buffs - can be higher with single targets) 42% end result: simple, conservative numbers 300 (100 fire + 100 lead + 100 wound) damage to wounding target and 100 to everyone else in cone. Divine Mark can proc for another 75 damage. All the pet talents/abilities are maximized too so that's 50-75 damage to his target and adjacent targets. 2 pistol shots with Vicious Aim toggled are handy for cleanly removing casters or archers from the board. FYI I don't think stunning shots worked with the flame cone, but did work with Wounding Shot. [update] Reason for Driving Flight: it doesn't work on powder burns, but does work on your wounding shot + power burns combo; the bullets bounce and should be able to trigger Divine Mark proc but won't inflict wounding. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to complete playthrough yet with this build.

Chokepoint is key. I've done it with a cipher (beam) and a ranger (both wolf and bear). Start fight by having Calesca attacking Heodon. I gave C a little gear, but if she lives too long she attacks you too. I think I almost pulled it off with a Druid too.

Does spelltongue increases the duration of your DoTs on the enemy? I'm wondering if duel-wielding that would be good for a barb using a the corrode over time proc stilletto.

Previous cipher retaliate builds never captured my interest. This one however, looks like a very good one.

Nothing new. There's always room for improvement, but I don't think it's as bad as others. You can buy unique items from a travelling merchant if your prestige is high enough, but the items are even less useful compared to expansion loot. The money you get from taxes can eventually pay for the costs of buying the upgrades IF you don't hire hirelings and you get the keep early and reload when gaining experience from quests and tasks until the random number generator advances the stronghold turn counter. Not all quests/tasks can advance the counter, but frankly this isn't worth because the game gives you more than enough cash. My current game is in act 2 with 45,000 and tens of thousands of unsold fine, exceptional, and unused named gear with nothing to spend on. I suppose I could buy dragon meat and eggs, but the extra +1 stat over cheap food for a couple minute buff doesn't seem worth 3,000 gold to me. Hirelings could end up boosting your security so high your patrols automatically stave off attacks. Attacks from kith bandit type mobs actually drop gear, so you lose out on money drops. Hiring Kograk the ogre is fun to have standing around the keep and he hits pretty hard and with decent hp.

Thanks, I didn't know that - frees up another talent for the druid.

If you don't mind micro CC/debuffs and a min/max party. Darcozzi Paladin might still work instead of Druid, but the other classes seem mandatory. Try to kill any enemy outside the CC zone (most likely a melee that penetrated your party formation), wizards, priests, then archers first. General fight strat. Pre-fight: dex and int are your best friends when it comes to CC 3 dex Training Ground Rest bonus 2 mig/2 dex/2 int/2 per food for everyone ondra's gift brothel boon for protagonist "Round" 1 Cipher - stealth and cast lvl 1 confusion at max range (most mobs will fight this guy first couple rounds) Druid - cast tangled (-20 ref) Wolf - move in front of Cipher Wizard - deleterious alacrity Chanter - chant +25% fire lash, optional throw an item summon in front of Cipher, or hold shots till after buff/debuff Ranger - pew pew Priest - devotion of the faithful (+20acc +4 mig) Round 2 Cipher - shoot closest soft target for focus Druid - sunbeam (-25 def/ref) Wolf - hold position in front of Cipher or engage dragon leaping beserker Wizard - slicken but don't move up too close; if engaged by dragon leaping beserker, dimensional shift with summon or druid (druids have 15m range spells so honey druid don't care) Chanter - shoot zerker or closest soft target Ranger - pew pew Priest - bless Round 3 Cipher - mental binding beserker, pain block wolf or character(s) that have taken most damage, or ectoplasmic crush wolf Druid - sunbeam enemies that aren't blind yet Wolf - beam before bite (swing out wide to avoid disengagement attacks and setup ectoplasmic crush) Wizard - renew slicken as needed or cast noxious burst (sicken -10 fort/will) Chanter - shoot closest soft target, move up if needed to continue chant buffing wizard Ranger - pew pew Priest - holy radiance (+5 acc) Round 4 Cipher - repeat Druid - repeat Wolf - repeat Wizard - renew slicken as needed or cast AoE damage; optionally cast combusting wounds or expose vulnerabilities before starting AoE damage Chanter - repeat Ranger - pew pew Priest - champion's boon druid Round 5 Cipher - repeat Druid - repeat Wolf - repeat Wizard - repeat Chanter - repeat Ranger - pew pew Priest - painful interdiction (weaken -20 fort/will) Round 6 plus Priest - shining beacon (-10 all defense and strong dot); priest can start using halt or lvl 2 knockdown trap to keep def/ref debuffed as wiz runs low on slicken Druid - Send the druid in for some shape-shifted melee cleanup Cipher - antipathic beam or mind lance; recall agony targets at barely injured or above; optional wild leech or borrowed intellect the strongest target (last to die) Chanter - white worms to explode corpses All party member base stats: mig 18 dex 18 con 3 per 15 int 18 res 3 Was able to do the named fight with 10 or so mercenaries in nw part of map with 0 knockouts. Don't have Durgan yet, so druid is full plate (don't have sanguine yet, but the idea is frenzy proc before shapeshift) and everyone else in cloth. Damage dealt according to personal character sheet and eyeballing chat window for wolf (single fight): wizard 845 cipher 660 druid 520 ranger 490 chanter 350 wolf 51 priest 35 total 2,916 Thoughts: Yes, no tank class and everyone has 3 con and 3 res. No returning storm procs on the ranger, so output was on the low side. I forgot about my chanters invocations and runners wounding shot. Only started recently playing druid. When I command consoled a lvl 14 one, I got a claw crit for 180 (not fully buffed and no bloody slaughter). The tiger claws build suggests cat for 20% encounter haste and is missing the white march monk multi-class talent. I prefer stag for 1/rest carnage. I've gotten 80 crit carnage at lvl 9 which outperforms the wiz gish build because your duel wielding. You can make up for the haste with potions. You don't need the carnage every fight. I have 1 of each godlike for maxing the dex and int mainly. Moon (priest) & Fire (druid) are theoretically useful, but Death (wizard) and Nature (ranger - party beatdown before combat to trigger) are the racials I benefit from since hardly anyone is taking damage. Wildstrike belt is only gear that works for Druid's when spirit-shifted. So losing helm-slot doesn't hurt them here but gaining a racial helps. Seems unlikely with how short fights are, but if you need to stay shifted longer than the 21s duration priest can cast salvation of time to extend.

The monk multiclass talent that boosts unarmed damage is amazing for shapeshifted druids.

The game was designed with tactical fights in mind, but this should let you nuke big with minimal pausing. Switch to Arbalests for 12m range and knockdown on crit. Ranger, Rogue, Pally, and Chanter can still perform well passively played - lean toward encounter use abilities over per rest. Since you don't like CC and Rogue need 2 for optimal dps, skip the Rogue. You'll want a Chanter anyway for +25% party damage boost so your DPSer can blast things into the dirt. Pally, Ranger, Chanter, Wiz, Cipher, Druid. Retrain your companions to min-max MIG and DEX - INT if they have AoEs. You won't have or need a lot of CON or RES. Wear gear to boost the above stats, overseer rings to increase AoE range and +10% melee or spell damage gloves. Enchant weapons to at least exceptional with +25% lash effects. Add +25% vs a specific bestiary if room. Wear the lightest armor possible (or none). You can't prebuff, but you can pre-cast environmental death hazards like chill fog, malignant cloud, ningauth's ice pillar, the lvl 7 priest firerain AoE, ectoplasmic echo, tactical meld, and set traps. Skip +accuracy talents for +damage and +reload. Play on easiest difficulty.

Apprentice Sneak is so good it's optimal in a lot of builds and wounding shot has its place. The others are more for flavor rather than mechanics. Wounding Shot DOT does not generate focus, but it works with blunderbuss now >). 80% of a 150 damage shot re-applied over 6 seconds is an additional 120 for 270 damage in 6 seconds. Recall Agony from Cipher first adds another 90 damage. My chanter carries 3 blunderbusses. I wish I had room to squeeze in a second ranger for a blunderbuss build (first uses Stormcaller naturally).

Write-In: Resolution, highest damage endurance drain My party bias uses a lot of CC from Wiz and Cipher and a low deflection crit-me tank so gear procs

Combat isn't hard enough where optimal parties are needed, but 2.0 Rangers are high on the power spectrum. Stormcaller is class defining because they're the only class that procs Returning Storm. Min-max Dex-Mig-Int in that order (dex = more attacks = more procs). 10% proc chance per arrow when you usually shoot 4 arrows every 2 seconds. (15% haste gloves - stalker torc - +10% damage vs flanked boots - +10% aoe overseer ring). AOE proc can crit for 100 damage (125 with bard buff) with 6+ second stun. Other classes only get 1 proc chance very 2 seconds. Ranger usually gets to dps entire duration of fight where other high dpsers have to spend time positioning or split time casting CC. Protaganist nature godlike ranger with +1 Dex effigy, 3 Dex gear, 2 dex food, 3 dex rest bonus, 2 dex racial (beat down pre-fight) can walk around with 31 DEX = 60% action speed (33 dex with brothel boon, but that's not always available). There are plenty of spells that buff MIG, but not a lot of options for DEX.

Don't forget DEX. I like min-maxing.

Mid-late game when your lvl 1-3 spells are encounter based, fights are over before you run out of spells and wiz spells > wand/weapons if you don't mind micro. I.E. lvl 1 flame AoE cone hits for 50-60 non-crit, non-buffed.

Comparing ranger melee to ranged dps, you can and should load the same pet dps talents and abilities, so the pet contribution should be equal in both cases.

Duel wield is playable, but it's hard for me to see a Ranger wearing -50% base speed armor outperforming Stormcaller and it's proc with 0% armor penalty. Notice no penetrating shot and carry a chanter with +20% ranged attack speed chant. Not sure how bloody slaughter was changed, but I've seen it trigger once on a mob with 3 out of 5 dots of health . . . Talents: vicious companion merciless companion apprentice sneak attack bloody slaughter heart of the storm hunting bow weapon focus marksman Abilities: marked prey predators sense (swift aim here until lvl 13) stalker link driving flight wounding shot stunning shot twinned arrow MIG 19 DEX 19 CON 3 INT 16 (for Stormcaller proc aoe and stun duration) PER 18 RES 3 Suggested Nature Godlike, beat down to half endurance pre-fight for 22 MIG 21 DEX and 6 CON. With 12m range and CC micro, I'm not having death issues in white march on potd. Gear Stormcaller 2 DEX Durgan robe mirror image Head N/A Neck +10% ranged damage (equip Stalker Torc once then unequip) Hands 15% haste Waist 3 MIG Ring 1 overseer, +10% AoE Ring 2 arcane suppression 1 INT Feet +10% vs flank

-70 will -30 fort -20 reflex debuff combo: Priest: Painful Interdiction Wizard: Miasma + Noxious Burst Pretty much guarantees crits with your Will attacks (i.e. 13.5s stun with silent scream, 100 damage mind lance on a high MIG INT build)

To OP. You can play a high damage melee rogue with high deflection that doesn't take a lot of babysitting (100+ deflection). Talents: Sword and Shield Style Superior Deflection Savage Attacks Vulnerable Attacks Deflecting Assault Vicious Fighting (carry a paladin w/ reinforcing exhortation which overwrites cautious attack) Abilities: Blinding Strike Reckless Assault Dirty Fighting Riposte Deep Wounds Death Blows Stunning Blow Recommended Race Aumua that gets +20 defense vs stun/prone and +1 MIG background MIG 21 DEX 18 CON 15 INT 3 PER 3 RES 18 This character can abuse the engagement mechanic by running around and intentionally triggering attacks of opportunity to in turn trigger ripostes. Use this build as your main tank and have your cipher cast Ectoplasmic Crush for best results. As effective as this build was for my party, I dropped it for a 2.0 Stormcaller wolf ranger and let the crazy powerful burn aura Paladin take over tanking.

I don't have trouble with focus gain or dps on pistol. Talisman of the Unconquerable is another 25% focus gain. The focus gain food items also stack with each other (Carow plus the one that starts with B). 10% ranged damage gloves or crit bonus gloves (more damage = more focus gain). Chanters are worth carrying in a group for the +25% fire damage chant alone, which is another huge boost for your focus. If you have a priest, use the +20 accuracy AoE buff and the +10 MIG/PER (+30% damage and +10 ACC) single target buff on your cipher. Don't neglect inn resting stat bonuses and food. Food stacks, but doesn't overlap, so you can get +2 to all your stats very cheaply. A reliable way to start fights is by having your Cipher or Wiz sneak into range to cast Confusion. The rest of the mobs burn their first wave of attacks surrounding and beating the poor confused mob into the ground and it buys you a lot of time to set up your CC and buffs. Using 1 summon/rest items as cannon fodder can also help for the harder fights. I don't need to fire many shots in combat for focus because the focus gain per hit from firearms is so high and I want to start casting abilities that cost focus. One of which, actually lets you gain more focus than it cost: use Detonate to kill badly injured mob near other mobs. The crush AoE is considered a weapon attack, so apprentice sneak attack applies too >)

Yes. I smack my Nature Ranger around until she's under 50% endurance and health before combat to keep her motivated, so the buff is always on unless she gets 1 shotted.