mosspit

Tried Trial of Iron? I find it effective in keeping tension throughout the playthrough. Even after multiple times.

It would be a fantastic idea. Unlocking tiers based on his personal quest progression, with the final unlock changing his Symbol of Magran to something else.

It is interesting that Bittercut slipped through the cracks and didn't get a mention here.

Number of engagements is kinda overrated. It was more useful during the vanilla times, owing to changes to enemy targeting patterns. If the enemy targeting pattern is default, it doesn't matter if the frontline can engage the enemy as the enemy will still be targeting the said character. If the enemy specifically target your backline, the enemy will break and eat engagement attacks to reach your backline. Either case will stil happen with even if your frontline has increased number of engagement slots.

Ahhh that explains the unwarranted rant on Barbs, Monks and Chanters.

Yes. I believe the option will come up when you are about to jump into the hole (point of no return). You seem to have misunderstood my question. I was wondering that if I visited WM 1 at low levels for let's say Stormcaller and whatnot, then returned to vanilla game and leveled up to 13+, would the game give me the option to upscale the WM 1 content? Or would I need to continue against low level scaled enemies? No. The choice is one-time only. I believe you will get the option for upscale when you are level 9+ when entering WM1. Btw classes like Barb, Monks and Chanters are fine. Monks is actually my top 3 pick for the most fun classes I can play.

Yes. I believe the option will come up when you are about to jump into the hole (point of no return). Someone else can probably help you with that. I only use console for testing purpose. Currently my MC is alos siding with the Doemenel faction. There are some Benevolent choices to be made there too. You can still manage your disposition siding with them. Otherwise the Dozen Talent are also kinda offensive themed too. Coincidentally, I am currently doing a 5man PotD playthrough too (in the spirit of deadfire). But I have a ranger so Im controlling 6 characters. Note that this is done with no split pulling of enemies. It can definitely work. My current playthrough MC is a dual stilettos Skaen Priest which kinda resembles how a rogue handles melee combat. Although shes squishy on paper (no shield, 8 Res), her knockout count is still at zero and I have progressed into Galvino's lab. The thing about these fragile dps chars is attacking at the opportune time and recognizing attacks that are dangerous to your dps character. It might take a bit of knowledge of what to expect though, and in WM there are a few scripted ambush encounters that will expose your backline. It might catch you out of guard if it's your first time progressing through.

The auras by those enemy types are quite big. Don't know the exact diameter but it is comparable to a chanter's. Maybe slightly smaller. Not really an issue for a ranger character to be affected by it.

Soulbound Items are usually preferred for their utility abilities and desirable on-hit/on-crit effects. Non-soulbound weapons are preferred from a pure dmg standpoint.

It doesn't matter if its in a party or melee. Drakes and Banshees are greatly affected by this ability due to their fear auras. Basically any auras that target will. Debuff auras (if Im not mistaken) reapplies their effect every 3secs. So Psychic/Brutal Backlash applies at the same interval. It works for your Stronghold NPCs too. I just defended my stronghold against a Drake Attack and hired a Cipher type hireling. There was one drake that spent the entire encounter stun-locked due to it. I didn't take this ability on my own cipher though. A little too powerful....

If it is attack speed that is the objective, I find it easier to just use Potions of DAoM. After all, DAoM gives a higher bonus and suppresses the attack speed increase of Frenzy. Unless there is something else I am missing. Still the Mig and Con increase from Frenzy is nice. I dont normally keep track of Endurance level under Frenzy, but a way to sort of gauge the Endurance left is by some of the racial abilities. Eg Fire Godlike's battle-forged will still trigger under concealed Endurance. So it lets you know the Frenzied char has Endurance at 50% or lower.

I was deciding to use an interrupt barb using more or less the setup mentioned. But to me, it seems like it more or less will feel like a CC barb with stun/prone-on-crit weapons. There are no hard immunities against interrupts (as far as I know), but at the same time interrupt doesn't really give the stats reduction the way the hard CC does. So it kinda evens out.

@OP This is a link to the post made by MaxQuest that shows the possible qualifiers for aggro. MaxQuest along with Loren Tyr and Dr <3 are the veterans (whom I know) who would often view the game source codes to explain game mechanics. Look at your own risk as understanding the mechanics might make the game less fun as you would begin to "game" the system. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86852-im-a-tank-why-would-i-want-resolve/?p=1810130 The enum parameters shows the possible preference for enemies and he used shade as an example, ie the enemy ai uses different qualifiers for different attacks. How is this relevant? In my playthroughs, I notice that kith enemies, most noticeable are enemy barbarians and fighters, would make a beeline to my ranged character. Some playthroughs it was my backline support caster, others was my ranger. Which makes me suspect their aggro qualifier is set to LowestDefense or BehindAttacker. They will even eat engagements in order to attack thier targets. Bootomline is you will always have someone in your party that gets single out due the way the ai is coded. As for your crit question, a rogue is hands-down the class that will have the best crit potential. Not only the reasons that Boeroer mentioned, rogues also have access to dirty/vicious fighting. Which gives 20% hit-to-crit conversion. You can further push this by having the hearth orlan race (10%) and equipping weapons with hit-to-crit conversion (eg tall grass). Thats on top of a class that already has high accuracy. It is the only class I can say that at end game will have twice as many crits than hits without trying too hard.

Do you use a "puller" to bring enemies to open spaces then? And if so, who pulls and how does the puller avoid getting focused down before he gets to safety? I understand the principle of stacking movement speed to avoid melees, but couldn't you still get nuked down? You can if you want to. Slap a pair of boots of speed on a character and he/she basically can do pulling easily. I personally prefer not to pull in a party playthrough as it's a hassle. What I mean by "move the battle" is more like positioning to have a good exposed frontline so that the melee characters can fight properly. As I said, this is not perfect and yes there will be occasions when some of the party will not be able to melee engage. With awarenesss, chances are the characters are body blocked are my casters who can still potentially do something in the meantime. I think Raven's footage on the 6 chanters playthrough can sort of demonstrate this. Before battle take food items to buff up. Each different ones can potentially raise each your stats by 2-3 with other minor effects, and they last for minutes. Then there is the order of buffing. Potions of DAOM is very common as they reduce recovery and taking them first will shorten your spell buff chain Some of the best spell buffs are available in scrolls. Which frees up the buffer to cast the more unique buffs when the other part members can just scroll up. Best example I can think of are scrolls of protection from fear. Remain in a tight group at the start even if engagements starts. Getting buffed by say Crowns of the Faithful might even be worth giving up a more advantageous engagement position to the enemy. You can also use summons to temporary slow down enemy advance. It will buy the party about 5-ish seconds. I frequently use summons for this purpose.

@OP: As the other posters have mentioned, casters if performing their caster roles should be either prepping their spells, executing their spells or be in recovery after. During which, ranged weapons have very little use, with the exception of stat gains. A weapon and shield setup (hatchet and small shield) on the other hand will still benefit by giving deflection. Coupled with the solid Weapon and Shield talent, you get even more deflection and also reflex bonus too. And you can always put W&S on swap while you use a ranged weapon in the event the caster is not casting spells for whatever reason. I have done multiple playthroughs with predominately melee classes. 6/6, 5/6 etc. Currently Im doing a 4/5 one with a melee Skaen priest (dual stilettos with Prey the Weak), melee Cipher (dual sabres), melee retaliation monk, melee Eder (2H offtank), gun ranger (with dps melee wolf). Yes corridors will be problematic, but I think there are more instances of open space encounters than narrow corridors. And I also try to move the battle to areas with more open space (not fighting directly at a doorway for example). It basically depends on the playstyle you prefer I guess. For me, I dislike depending on bottlenecks in a party playthrough so I naturally favour open spaces which is more suited for melee characters. Mid late game, classes also get mobility and positional skills that can help. But I will admit that it is not perfect and involves more micro. It also exposes pathing issues with the game. All which I can live with.

If you take a priest, check out Withdraw. It is a level 1 spell. There are already some powerful interactions involving it with other class/equipments.

Well you can sustain for a pretty long time. Moon godlike is very strong especially in vanilla when head equipments were meh. I have tried a moon godlike monk with shod-in-faith and after that I never went that combination again as it was just too strong. But it still will not be an immortal state. Silver tide is limited to 3 triggers per encounter per character. And there is the beauty of the health mechanics in which there are limited ways to recover (in combat, I think there is only one talent, and the infuse spell/potion can recover HP. Both which are limited. Might be wrong about the infuse effects though). Still the sustain is pretty good, and you would have time to deal enough dmg to kill.

Just wanna give a quick thanks to Dr <3 for this build. I have had about 7 playthroughs under my belt and never really liked the idea of extreme dumping of stats. But for the current playthrough, I decided to do things differently so I included a 3Res/7Dex monk. Playthrough was nothing special - 5man (in the spirit of deadfire) and ToI. Using builds I havent used before. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of the early game. Caed Nua spirits and elementals, Anslog Compass mushrooms, and The Black Meadow bandits were quite smooth. High Mig/Int makes veteran recovery very effective and High Per/Mig means enemies are killed faster and less likely to turn the encounter to an Attrition battle. I am not far in having reached Defiance Bay but the first act has always been the most inconsistent for me for my ToI playthroughs. It just changed my perspective that a highly-skewed build (min-max) can achieve consistency this way

So how do these Chanters survive being in the middle of the firing line so long? Do they have special defensive spells? Raven and Boeroer explained it better than I could. Also observe the combat log. You can see that Silver Tide got triggered twice(?) after a breath attack. Sliver Tide is a moon godlike racial ability that aoe heals if HP reaches 75%/50%/25% thresholds once per encounter. The spike healing happens pretty quick so it would appear that the party never took the spike dmg in the first place.

@Raven Darkholme Those are pretty entertaining footage. Makes me remember when I first encountered it in my first playthrough and he basically opened with a breath attack and 1 shot 2 of my guys. Seeing that is a bit of a role reversal lol

Yes I know that. I was more of referring to the fact that the ranger always come with a pet, and that fact kinda detracts from a Legolas-like character who afaik does not have a personal pet at least in the way a ranger does.

@OP: It is a pity that you are not taking a ranger as, to me, that class has some of the best thematically fitting skills that resembles an expert bowsman. Well, that's if you are willing to ignore the compulsory pet With skills like Driving Flight, Twinned Arrows and Stunning Shots, I find them more interesting than that of a rogue's which mainly revolves around debuffs and increased dmg. Tbh, the pet isn't that big of a deal. The pet has been fixed/buffed a bunch since launch. If you take the Antelope pet with the Resilient companion talent, it will be fairly tanky on its own - capable of 1-2 engagement on its own with normal enemies. Ofc don't expect to fare well tanking boss enemies.

Ah I see Well I am not too inclined to use a Wizard. I know that it is a very strong and effective class, I just find it boring to play. In any case, I already started my playthrough and heading to Anslog Compass at lvl3. Thanks to all!

But no powder burns then I am fine with the need with positioning. In all honesty, this playthough isn't very optimal. It is more trying out some of the builds and skills I havent used in my previous playthroughs At least 3 of the characters are using such builds.

Very true. It was more for the novelty of using a blunderbuss since my first playthrough. Maybe I can help the situation by using Leadspitter and Penetrating Shot. Oh maybe alternate the use with Arquebus.