Zenzen

Concerning the trinket discussion, I see two different approaches to the issue. 1) The first approach is to build trinkets that directly buff Priests and Druids to give them Wizard-Like spell availability. I think what Boeroer and Phenomenum have suggested goes down this line of logic. I agree that Priests and Druids need some help to bring them up to par, and this approach combats the issue directly. 2) The second approach is to design trinkets that are a meaningful choice you can take to alter your build or strategy. Maxquest's earlier suggestion follows this direction, and I think its the direction I personally prefer. My main criticism with the first approach is that if you make the trinkets specialization-specific, why are they trinkets and not just baseline changes? If I'm a priest of Magran and I get a trinket that only works for me, I am going to seek that item out early and never change it out for the rest of the game. The second approach allows you to make interesting tradeoffs. I'm not a game dev by any means, but maybe a few trinkets might look like: Broken Shard of Skaen Your priest spells deal 20% extra damage to enemies who qualify for Sneak Attack (give back the PoE 1 benefit!), and maybe you have a 15% chance to regain a random spell when you kill an enemy. Hylea's Birdcall Gain 1 extra cast of PL 1, PL3, and PL 5 Priest Spells each encounter. Abydon's Cracked Hammer Regain 1 cast of your lowest power level spell every 15 seconds (Turns off when you are withdrawn or in stasis) Abydon's Amazing Armoire For each Weapon Specialization Talent you have taken, gain a cast of a new Spiritual Weapon once per encounter one hand: ??? Ondra's Rapier??? Two hand: Magran's Arquebus (fire lash), maybe a melee weapon as well? Gaun's Reaper (2h axe?) Dual Wield: ???? Shield Specialization: ??? These trinkets would be equip-able by priests of any denomination, and help you choose between a variety of playstyles or adapt to particular situations. Obviously these three trinkets are super imbalanced but hopefully the idea shines through. The downside is that each trinket would be harder to code, but it would make the game more interesting I feel and carve out a different niche for priest relics besides "a passive that I buy from a vendor somewhere."

Thank you both! Got it working last night and my Arcane Archer has never been better

I have not played this combination, but I have played both a berserker and a nalpazca separately. Both are very, very strong but you do need to put in work to mitigate their downsides. I would be careful with stacking might too high as it will also increase the raw DoT placed on you when you rage. You'll want to use Voidward to help mitigate the raw damage and buddy up with a healer. Fortunately, you can get rid of the confusion very easily with drugs or food. With nalpazca and your reduced deflection while raging you will be swimming in wounds. Blade turning is a busted ability and is absolutely worth the investment! I can't speak to dance of death as I have not used it much. With high enough Int/AoE size you might be able to use Stunning Strikes on the monk side and get the refund by striking multiple targets via Carnage.

Hey, fantastic job thus far! I'm excited to see these changes implemented by the community! I would love to help give feedback on the mod. I found the patch files earlier in the thread, but I'm not super experienced with modding my games. How can I install the mod? Are there any precautions I should take beforehand? I assume I will need to re-download the mod as updates go out, yeah?

Forum posts are great for discussion threads, but not so great for compiling a lot of information on a subject into readable chunks. Since beating The Ultimate is going to be a terribly difficult challenge, maybe we should create some sort of community-curated document to separate ideas into different categories? Something like: 1) Starting Optimization: What classes can possibly do this? What's the optimal background to import from PoE 1? (sacrificing a person is a given, as is getting Devil of Caroc armor, but what else? Are there any key quests you can resolve peacefully with a specific background or disposition?) 2) Routing: This section should be broken up into multiple segments of the game. How do you get through Port Maje with Vela in tow? As pmchem mentioned above, Hieronomymous' information is probably going to come in clutch here. It also might be worthwhile for somebody to test if you can reliably level up via ship combats despite Wael's challenge. Maybe if you do them in a specific order its fine? 3) Skills, key items, and consumables: Is doing a "no-rest" run optimal for the challenge? What item's do we think are going to be especially useful (Rekvu's, maybe the poverty cloak?) and where do we get them/what skills do you need in order to grab them peacefully? How do we sustain enough Withdraw scrolls to keep Vela alive? 5) Endgame Optimization: We can work the problem from the end of the game backwards towards the beginning. What characters can solo every megaboss with Vela in tow? How do they do it? I'm not the greatest Pillars player by any means, but I would love to see the challenge solved. I think a good starting spot is for players interested in completing the challenge (or helping to test stuff out) would be to turn on all god challenges/Ultimate rules EXCEPT Ironman and Wael's challenge, and document their progress either through written notes or streams.

This seems like a reasonable (although boring) plan. I'm pretty sure you can't stack multiple instances of the same chant or paladin aura though, so would it make more sense to do like 3 Heralds and 2 Ciphers? This way, you get all 3 enhanced auras, still summons on a bunch of dudes, and some damage dealers with infinite resources to close fights out.

Level scaling only adjusts the level of mobs by a fixed amount, it won't take everything down to your level. If I recall correctly it scales + or - a maximum of three levels? For example, a level 20 creature could be brought down to level 17 stats, but your level 12 party would still see the creature as a tough encounter regardless.

Is it possible to use dialogue to get through the final fight at Ukaizo? I know you can handle the Guardian, but I don't remember being able to skip the battle against the opposing faction leader.

Hi Folks! Happy Holidays! I recently completed my fourth run of Deadfire, and I want to attempt to complete every god challenge at once to spice up the difficulty. I was hoping players more experienced than I could chime in and provide suggestions in this thread on strategies to make this challenge work. NOTE: A 12th challenge will be released at some point. I will likely update this thread whenever it gets announced. Magran's Fires, for reference: Obviously, this is going to be monumentally difficult. This post is also going to have a monumental amount of information in it. After thinking about the challenges over the past week, I’ve broken up my thoughts into three big questions I need help with in order to succeed. 1) What can I do to minimize the effects of the challenges? 2) How can I maximize quest xp and minimize battle difficulty and travel time? and 3) What kind of party handles these challenges the best? Are there essential items that we need along the way? Countering the Challenges: Quest Routing This section is entirely untested for now, but we want to get as much XP as possible while minimizing travel time incurred by Eothas’ challenge. I borrow heavily from Dorftek’s guide on getting early XP, which you can read here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103025-guide-grow-strong-before-fighting-anything/. Here’s my plan so far: Party Composition The good news is that we get to play with a full party, and I'm not so masochistic as to attempt this on Solo or Ironman Mode. The bad news is that, well, combat is HARD. Broadly speaking, these are things that I want my party to have, in rough order of importance: The Party Thus Far That’s where I’m at right now. Here are my questions: 1) Anybody have tricks or tips on handling specific God Challenges? Am I underestimating how annoying Abydon and Skaen are? Has anyone completed Eothas’ challenge yet? 2) Could I improve my route through the game to get more XP? What faction should I side with to make the challenge easier? 3) Give me your favorite character ideas. What builds on the forums handle Magran’s challenge well? What AI settings have you used that are effective? Looking forward to your ideas!

Also, did you check to make sure that you were within range with your cannons? All cannons have an ideal range. The Dyrwood Hog Nose, for example, will be accurate between 150mm-400mm range. The further you go outside that range the less accurate your cannoneers will be. You can find this info by going into the ship tab (H by default) and hovering over the cannon to see its stats.

Just going to warn that if you're looking at builds from the build list for inspiration that a tank built for solo play is sometimes actually worse in a party. In solo, tank stats are everything, because all enemies are going to hit the same guy. Playing with a party though there's very little difference between say a 160 deflection tank and a 210 deflection tank; either way, given the opportunity enemies are going to avoid you and go after the squishy members. Engagement slots and smart positioning matter more in a party. If you want to be a juggernaut pirate in heavy armor, you could play a tank with lots of stacking damage reduction/healing instead of high defenses. Fighter is really good because armored grace helps a lot with heavy armor. You could also dual wield with pukestabber to reduce the armor penalty even further, and stay in theme. Since you're probably going to spend most of your discipline on self buffs like unbending maybe the other part of the multiclass adds some consistent source of damage or utility. Barbarian, chanter, rogue, paladin, or monk are all great choices.

In Port Maje you can get blessed by the dawnstars only once for +2 religion and +50% healing received, if I remember right. I'm pretty sure it's a permanent bonus until rest, but might not stack with other prayer stuff?

mant2si I think had some success earlier in the thread killing skelletons while in melee range of nearby enemies. Mob stance triggers when you kill the skelleton, and then cleaves an attack onto a nearby enemy. That's what I was referring to.

If you wanted to replace the barbarian half of this build, is there anything else that would work? Sounds like fighter has done ok if you want to abuse mob stance. You just need action speed and damage to ensure you can kill the skellies. Would monk work? EDIT: did some testing with monk, and it didn't really work out. Blood Thirst is strictly better for action economy then Swift Strikes. At times, I even failed to one-hit my own skeletons. Oops!

Ghost heart/beckoner is a pretty bad one. You can only have 1 summon out at a time, so you either never get to use your ranger pet or never get to use the chanter's summons. That's the first terrible idea that comes to mind, I'm sure there are others.

I haven't messed with Priest much besides using Xoti in my playthroughs, but Paladin and Chanter seem like good fits for a frontline Priest multiclass. With either multiclass, you double down on great supportive abilities and open up room in your party for more squishy damage dealers. A more aggressive ranged priest might look like Priest of Berath/Helwalker monk. Use Enduring Dance for accuracy, and Helwalker bonuses to buff up Rot Skulls and Storm of Holy Fire. It would come together a little late, though, and you'd have to be careful not to take buffs from both classes that overwrite each other. Generally, I feel like Priest is a weaker class in PoEII because many of the classes provide better buffs then the tier 1 buffs that Priests can hand out, and fights don't usually last long enough to make countering an affliction with an inspiration worthwhile.

Pallegina has the Heart-Chime Amulet equipped. Normally, she should get Winged Steps: 10% stride and +15 defense against disengagement. Instead, her character sheet shows her under the effect of Lunar Heart: +1 Power Level at night. What's up with that? I should mention that my character is trying to stack disengagement and stride. Pallegina has Fast Runner and Tumbling already. I assumed they stacked, but maybe it's giving her Lunar Heart because they don't? Is this intended? Thanks!

Updated the OP: -Added a "How to Use this Guide" blurb. -edited the Barbarian, Cipher, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Wizard sections. -corrected spelling errors and factual errors. Any and all feedback appreciated! I think we can make this guide even more useful.

So many great responses! Thanks everyone! I knew bits of this would be inaccurate and that I would need community input on classes that I haven't played too much, like the Barbarian. I'll edit the OP later tonight after work with everyone's suggestions, especially on inaccurate information. I knew that I would get stuff wrong on the first pass. completely forgot about Penetrating Strike, oops. Is it still fair to say that the Fighter tends to want more damage, though? In my experience, most of your Discipline goes to bumping accuracy and keeping yourself alive. And since charge is no longer an AoE damage option I feel like they still lack in the damage department. For a Cipher/Wizard multiclass, is it fairer to say that it works fine if you focus the Wizard half primarily on buffing up your focus gain with buffs and summoned weapons? @gkathellar I like your statement that the single class Ranger isn't bad per se, just boring until you get the neat tricks at level 18+. Gonna add that to the OP.

Multiclass Miscibility Guide This guide is intended to help people navigate the multiclass system in PoEII and give insight on what makes a strong multiclass character. If you’ve exhausted the builds created by other users stickied at the top of the forum, this guide should give you some fresh ideas on how to create the perfect character for your playstyle. This guide was last updated for patch 2.0. Why Multiclass? How to use this guide: There are two general approaches to creating a strong multiclass character. One approach is to focus on maximizing the strengths of one class with another. A good example would be the Arcane Knight (Paladin/Wizard). The Paladin class has sky-high defenses that can be boosted to astronomical levels by Wizard spells like Mirrored Image and Llengrath’s Displaced Image. The other approach is to try and round out a character by eliminating or minimizing its weaknesses. As an example, the Berserker subclass is a super powerful melee combatant, but is vulnerable due to the lower deflection during Frenzy, lack of healing and the Confusion debuff making her hit friend and foe alike. Make the Barbarian a Fanatic (Barb/Paladin), and Faith and Conviction, Lay on Hands, and Mental Fortress remove all the downsides of playing a Berserker. With that in mind, for each class I’m going to focus on four subjects: 1) Why would you want to multiclass into this class? What are the best things the class brings to a character? 2) What is this class missing? What weaknesses could the other half of your multiclass character shore up? 3) What do the subclasses add to a multiclass character? 4) Does this class have anti-synergy with anything? I have put each of the classes in spoiler tags below to make this post more manageable. Barbarian Chanter Cipher Druid Fighter Monk Paladin Priest Ranger Rogue Wizard I hope this guide can be a community resource that people can look at to find inspiration. What else should I add in here? I'm considering a brief section on build-defining items. Did I make any mistakes? Let me know!

Long time lurker, first time poster I recently got into pillars of exile (trudging through act 2 now) and it is a fantastic game. I especially like how obsidian has managed to make each stat valuable in some way or another to all characters. While browsing some forums the other day about pillars, I saw someone make an odd claim: they claimed that they had managed to make a min/maxed rogue with 3 might that was doing more damage and also had more hp then Eder. Is this really possible? The person didn't share the exact details of the build, but I know they were playing on PotD and had maxed dex and had an 18 in con and 3 int. This seemed like a unique way to build a rogue, so I'm curious what those of you who have thousands of hours in the game could tell me about how this would work.