Cirein

For a time, I have been pondering the use and usefulness of these talents. While they all provide a substantial boost to accuracy, only one provides any additional benefit to using the deity specific weapons whilst the others provide very minor once/rest spells. Hope Eternal, in particular, is a real disappointment given that it does not scale whatsoever. This has set me on my opinion that the Skaen specific talent is the gold-standard among them. In addition to providing accuracy with thematically appropriate weapons, it also provides a thematically appropriate boost to utilizing them. I wonder why it is the other talents deviate so far from this formula? Wael, for example provides a dazing ability where it could well have been worked to provide a daze (acc vs. will, probably) on hit. Magran might well have provided a minor fire lash (the 10% lash used on torches could be copypasta'd to save coding time) instead of the diet flameburst thing which had to be modified from the original. My issue with the bonus spells is that they clutter the interface, and for a full vancian caster add little to utility. (exhausting all spells is a rare event) Criticism with love. Great game. Thoughts for PoE2.

With Pillars coming to the end of its development cycle, I want this to be my "canon" playthrough when I sit down to go through with it start to finish. I will not, however, do this until Obsidian fixes the bug with Ancient Memory. You can fix it yourself, as some people on the forums have, but I'd rather have an "official" fix and sincerely hope we get it in 3.04. I have tested this a fair bit with hired characters at various levels, however, and I think the concept is strong. I thought it was interesting and worth sharing. I'll come right out and say this isn't optimal. I don't play that way. I tend to make things that are "mechanically interesting" and "good fluff" and push the system until it works for me. I'll try to make notes of ways I know that the build can be improved when I've made a sub-optimal choice willfully. Such as the race, for example. So I have a concept, and a dream. Let's roll. ==THE FLUFF== Chronicle remembers. Born a scion of Ondra, the boy was 'blessed' with a mind like a sieve, holding only what he needed to get by and letting go of anything difficult or painful. He was raised comfortably, in one of the great cities of the Valian Republics. He does not remember his family, and only vaguely remembers his childhood, especially the later years of it. Resentful of Ondra for 'stealing' his memories of his parents, he chose a career path antithetical to his patron deity, the way of the Chanter. Through memory tricks and mnemonics and sheer willpower he has begun to master his mind, which he now turns to seeking information on his parents. Having uncovered records that they had business dealings in Defiance Bay, he sets out with a caravan at the first opportunity. ==STATS== --POTD--Only Story Companions Race: Moon Godlike (Though plenty of things would work well, Humans have good synergy, but I like the RP of the moon godlike for this) Class: Chanter Background: Old Vailia - Colonist Skills: Prioritize Survival and Lore. They are best for conversations and synergize best with the build. Carry scrolls with duration effects, particularly buffs. Attributes: I do not like to min-max, so instead I will list by priority, adjust to suit your preferred level of min-max. I personally don't think this works well with dump stats, particularly since dumping dex results in your chanter standing around like a derp for a thousand years after dropping a high level invocation. You don't need much, just don't dump it. Might seems like a good fit with all the healing effects, but you can make up for that with later invocations that will last most of the fight if you are doing things properly. Items go a long way too, and you get +healing bonuses from various sources. MIG: * CON: * * DEX: * PER: * * INT: * * * RES: * * Talents: Take them in whatever order suits you. Can't go too terribly wrong. I find extra accuracy is very good early in POTD, so grab it if you're struggling. -Ancient Memory -Beloved Spirits -Veteran's Recovery -Two Weapon Style -Weapon Focus: Noble -Interrupting Blows -Vulnerable Attack The basics are covered at this point, so do what you like. I find that he's a good candidate for Gallant Focus if you don't have it on someone already, due to the high INT. Improved Deflection isn't a bad pick. If you find that you are struggling to keep up your buffs, try outlanders frenzy, the extra attack speed helps out spelltongue a lot. Chants: Duration Buffs. Everywhere we can take them. 1. - Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe - Quick Buffs for building Phrases - At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold - Quick Buffs for building Phrases - Thick Grew Their Tongues, Stumbling O'er Words - Good Synergy with the build's secondary weapon set. 2 - Rime and Frost Followed the Footfalls of Karth: Helpful in a lot of scripted interactions in White March. - One Dozen Stood Against the Power of the Saint: Good Situational Buff 3 - Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr: Stupid powerful, good synergy. Takes a long time, though, so I don't often use it. We need lots of phrases hella quick. - Seven Men, Onto the Deck They Went: Wins certain fights basically on its own. Situational. Don't want to use Dragon Thrashed. It's OP. 4 - Old Siec Would Not Rest 'til His Hunger Was Sated: Great Synergy. Good to switch to once the buffs are running. 5 - Mercy and Kindness: Really powerful Combined with Old Siec. Invocations: Duration Buffs, wherever we can take them! 1 - But Reny Daret's Ghost, He would not Rest: Powerful in the early game. Remember that it has sneak attack. - And Hel-Hyraf Crashed upon the Shield: Your weapons do **** damage. This helps. - Not Felled by Axe, Nor Broken by Storm: Build Synergy, seems fluffy too. 2 - Shatter their Shackles, Cast off their Chains!: Build Synergy, powerful when it's useful. - Rejoice, My Comrades! Two Fingers of Daylight!: Slight Synergy, fits the healing theme. 3 - The Bride Caught their Ruse and Set to Make them Pay: This is where we start to see it come together. Cast this one first, makes the others last longer. - The Brideman Slew Thirty 'Fore they Crossed Half the Hall: Good candidate to cast second. Powerful. 4 - Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone: Very powerful. Also fits the secondary weapon set very well, by enabling ludicrously high interrupt ratings. Takes a lot, though. Good to finish off a tough fight. 5 - Doesn't much matter. You'll never use them. Items: Weapon set 1: Spelltongue / Unlabored Blade (This is really what makes the build go-round. The duration extentions on spelltongue actually apply to both phrases and any invocations with duration effects. Get in there and start swinging. You can, with high intelligence, get your stuff to last a stupid-long time. You can actually extend the buffs from chants to forever overlap on you, despite there being a gap for the rest of the party. Pay attention to your current intelligence and your brisk recitation reductions and such. If you are not careful you can overdo it a lot. Go ahead and slot in another phrase if you need it. Durganize spelltongue. Unlabored blade makes good use of the Flick of the Wrist talent and the fact that it has +speed mitigates the disadvantage of using an off-weapon with spelltongue due to the way dual weapons with speed stack in Pillars. You could duplicate and dual spelltongue, but I am not certain that works as advertised, and I can't bring myself to dual rapiers...it looks really silly. Plus, if the main character is going to get +acc with daggers, I am damned well going to use a dagger. Weapon Set 2: Mosquito / dagger of your choice (I like drawn in spring, but it comes late. March steel is arguably better anyway to hit more with the main hand due to speed stacking): Mosquito fits really well here. It has absurd synergy with the interrupt chant and Champion Braved the Horde due to its high interrupt duration. (not advertised as a magic thing, but it's true if you read the base stats of the thing) and also synergizes well with old siec + mercy and kindness which enables a very solid option to switch when being attacked by a strong enemy. You will interrupt them and heal up pretty quickly. Durganize if you want, not super important. Not a damage loadout. Early Game Weapons: Sword of Dianysis is a good early option if you want damage. Not really this build's jam, but it still gets work done. You can get mosquito about as early if you want to head over to dyrford and grab it. With the interrupt chant it's quite strong, even early. March steel dagger is fantastic as an offhand option right up until unlabored blade. As for the other slots, it's open to taste. I personally like to stack up stats like crazy on my mains, so I end up with all of the +3/4 stuff slotted. This build makes good use of all stats, so you can't go terribly wrong that way. If you arn't as greedy as I am, you can sub in overseeing gear and voice of the mountaintop. If you are being all optimal and chose human over moon godlike, though, use the maegfolc skull. Adds another duration buff to extend with our int and spelltongue. Armor, though, really only one ideal choice: Armor: Ryona's Breastplate has crazy good synergy because it gives +3 int AND provides several duration buffs to extend via spelltongue. ==GAMEPLAY AND CORE CONCEPTS== I wanted a different chanter. I was somewhat inspired by the Chillfog build by Boeroer which got me onto the notion of using regeneration to offset some problems with tankiness. However, instead of going the whole-hog on that concept with high might, I got it in my head to include a modest regen "package" while creating a toolbox chanter using all of the weird situational stuff nobody ever bothers with. With the +5 might invocation and the survival healing bonus, you come off just fine on the regen, and the ability of spelltongue to extend veteran's recovery is pretty great. Note, again, that Ancient Memory is currently broken -ESPECIALLY FOR THIS BUILD- because we rely on fast invocations. If you are impatient and don't want to wait, you can fix it yourself, instructions are in the tech support thread. Set up the early game buff chants as your primary set. Once your brisk recitation starts to get to the point where they overlap, slot the interrupt chant between them. (and at the end) to prevent overlap on the other party members. Remember: We want stuff to overlap on you, but it's kinda a waste if its overlapping on everyone. The idea is for spelltongue to cause the overlap, not brisk recitation and intelligence stacking. Keep your other chants situational until the late game. Once you have old siec and mercy and kindess, set those as your defensive option when you or the party are badly hurt. This build embraced the idea that a chanter should get more powerful as the fight progresses. With spelltongue improving durations and the stupidly high intelligence you can achieve with Ryonas Breastplate + the int. invocation, you can actually get an ungodly suite of buffs hoarded up on yourself while simultaneously providing a lot of heavy supporting buffs and moderate heals to the party. You are meanwhile a competent, and in some ways impressive, combatant. Provided you target the enemies that target you, you can put them well off their footing with interrupts, which mitigates a lot more damage than you might think. I've been able to completely interrupt-lock enemies with champion braved the horde active.

Universal and Durance only would be a good compromise. I was unaware that it was a property on its own that could be applied outside of soulbound. I don't think it needs to be more powerful, just more useful to Durance.

I did this too. Worse, I played a blade my first time through, which just made it that much more obvious how gimped he was with them. It's very good writing, though. Items and landscape and such give atmosphere to a scene. Durance wouldn't be half the character he is without the actions he takes during them, which mostly relate to manipulating flames (usually with the staff, btw). Without those contextual cues, he's just your average Trump supporter, angry and racist and keen to torture. Soulbound doesn't have to mean overpowered. The unlock conditions could make sure that you can't upgrade it too quickly. Either by tying unlocks to character levels or points in the main story line, or by using conditions like "Have 30 Might" - which is actually used by some of the White March 2 soulbound weapons and would be difficult to achieve on a non min-maxed Durance until late in the game when you have high-level buffs and Might-boosting equipment. I think tying the unlocks to his quest conversations would be ideal. I don't think it needs to be anything hilariously OP, I'm mostly interested in Inspired Flame working with it. I would use it with its current abilities if it just improved the base damage/accuracy with the conversation unlocks. A few minor fire-themed abilities would be welcome, but not needed. Or, even, as Gromnir said, just have it soulbound and not improve. (though we wouldn't be able to enchant it? which is why I prefer just having it improve the base stats and keep its crush/fire) Again, I just want it to work with Inspired Flame so I don't feel like a doofus having him use it all game. As it stands, it's actually quite a powerful weapon...provided Durance isn't the one using it. Which is silly.

Apologies if this has been suggested before, as it seems...right...for lack of a better way of putting it. It has consistently bothered me in my playthroughs that Durance's staff is simultaneously very integral to his character and also sort of...bad. It's just a normal staff. (albeit with burning lash) Staves do not benefit from the priest of Magran talent (swords, guns) which encourages one to stash the stick and use something else on him, which I find rather immersion breaking when he starts a conversation and his staff is involved. (and it is very heavily involved in the writing) My usual solution is to have him use an arquebus and just wear the staff on his back, but I've been wondering: If it were soulbound, even a sub-par one, then it would work with the magran talent, and I'd feel a bit less silly about having him lug it around all game. Just thoughts.

I read the build, and I played something very similar when I did WM1. (fighter with tidefall and arquebus and apprentice sneak attack and wounding shot) I'd rather avoid doing fighter again, though it really does suit the flexible low-con approach fairly well due to its high base stats. I had a similarly conversation optimized stat spread on that one too, though more even on the physical stats. Yours is better, of course, but I handicap myself a bit for conversation options. (as we've established) Still handled PotD quite adequately even with story companions, though. It is my understanding that it is meant to only affect vessels with the crit effect, and will be patched. I'd rather not abuse it in any case. ---------- I did start up a chanter and rush through as far as Caed Nua, and the might impact on Ancient Memory and Come Come is actually very noticeable. What seems to be working nicely is going heavy armor and dual hatchets. The super low attack speed modifiers don't seem to make much of an impact on dual small weapons, and it gives some much needed deflection. While it's an interesting build, and surprisingly effective, I'm not sure I can make it work the way I'd like after the hammer comes into the picture. Ditching the idea of my absurd stat spread for a bit of theorycrafting--- What do we make of the notion of abusing the swift-aim on the ranger with the hammer to get the maximum possible attack speed? As I mentioned earlier, I'm fairly confident of lash type effects being applied last, (IE, after damage modifiers) so absurdly high weapon damage such as the hammer will naturally fit well. Wounding Shot is tied for the second strongest lash effect in the game (with Bleak walker's fully upgraded FoD, and behind the Goldpact, but with the benefit that they don't need to sink two talents to optimize it) so I'm intrigued by the possibility of a melee ranger with the hammer. A bear might be helpful for distractions and help us ditch some con.

So, I sort of want to build a character to best utilize Abydon's Hammer, for primarily RP reasons. This has led me towards a build maxing out might, to take advantage of its (hilariously powerful) +4 might that can be stacked with helmets and such. Because I'm the sort who min-maxes for roleplay as much as mechanics, I am being pushed into a rather specific statline. Mind that I play PotD with the story companions. I typically do just fine even with sub-optimal builds. 21 6 6 15 15 15 (Dwarf/living lands) What I'm really here to ask about is what sort of CLASS can I take to best utilize that spread. My first instinct is Chanter, especially with the recent buffs to Ancient/Beloved Spirits. This gives numerous continuous effects that scale on might. (damage auras AND the heal, which is way better than it used to be) The big draw of this is that there will always be two active effects making the most of the synergy at all time. While this would be underwhelming (but still quite good, honestly) in the early game with soft winds of death, it might get absolutely absurd when 'the dragon thrashed, the dragon wailed' becomes available. At least initially, that build would require either dual hatchets or sword/board to stay alive, relying on damage chants to do the work. I'm concerned about survival once I make the switch to the hammer, which is two handed. Can you recommend any other classes/builds that have good synergy with extremely high might? One consideration is that the game /seems/ to apply lash effects after all other damage modifiers are applied. I believe the strongest lash effect in the game, by some margin, is the Flames of Devotion with both upgrade talents when used by the Goldpact knights.

Considering a two handed rogue, and while the Hours of St. Whoever is very straightforward (and effective) I am wondering at the usefulness of Tidefall as an alternative. I am wondering how the wounding weapon property interacts with critical hits and other damage multipliers. A. Do critical hits extend the duration as normal with duration effects? B. Do critical hits multiply the damage the wounding property draws from? C. Do weapon damage modifiers such as reckless assault or two handed style amplify the wounding damage? Thank you for your time.

I can confirm the stalker's torc is super bugged. Tried testing to see if the lingering effect had any impact, but from a few minutes of beating on the guards outside Raedric's keep, it actually seems as though it's not applying even when it's equipped. It claims to be an extra 20% damage 'per 3 sec' which is utterly bizarre.

That's a shame. Looks like I'll just do a dwarf-godlike and pretend all the dwarf flavor. I wonder why they're so badly underrepresented?

Greetings, I have been wanting to play a dwarf for some time in Pillars, but have been unable to convince myself to do so due to the near complete lack of dialog options for them. (where many people minmax for combat, I gun for dialog and content) and have been wondering if WM has any dwarf (specifically mountain) triggered dialog. It seems as though it would be appropriate, but I wanted to be certain before I condemned myself to an otherwise bland character. Much appreciated.