MaxQuest

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With hirelings there could be a little room for optimization with stats and races. But for a party with mostly story companions it is as good as it gets

1. It is close to NerdCommando's control freak. Just go for 2/15/15/20/18/8 wild orlan or 3/15/15/19/18/8 pale elf with plate armor, small shield and fast 1h weapon (like hatchet, cudgel, starcaller, spelltongue). 2. Yeap, MT as main tank. Technically he can do some damage, but compared to dedicated damage dealers it's nothing. It's better to dump PER completely and focus on tankiness. healing and buffing. Your barb will need his support, especially Lay on Hands. Btw, at level 13 there is Sacred Immolation and it targets reflex. Let your wizard and cipher paralyze the enemies, and paladin will Immolate the trash without any problem. Chanter's Dragon Trashed also targets reflex, so you will be paralyzing a lot either way. 3. Not that I am aware of, but it is pretty straight-forward. If you want more info on ciphers, you can start with these two posts: one, two 4. No, these builds don't clash in terms of equipment. Except for Gauntlets of Swift Action which are great on barb, cipher, priest and wizard. Generally you would want: - barb: Shod-in-Faith(!)(it's better on barb than on Drake Ambassador), Swadling Sheet(!)(or give it to priest and take Hiro's Mantle instead), Plate armor - paladin: Outworn Buckler(!) and [hatchet or shame or marking cladhaliath], Plate armor - chanter: Little Saviour (!) or Redfield; weapon: either mentioned in the build, or something with marking enchant, Plate armor - wizard: Aila Bracia or Little Saviour; for weapons see p1.; Plate armor - priest: hide armor and good arquebus in the early game; Raiment of Wael's Eyes + Gyrd Háewanes Sténes + Abydon's Hammer later. Go for moon godlike; Silver Tide will be handy in such party, in midline. Also is worth mentioning Cape of the Master Mystic. Give it to the character that gets low faster than the others (except for chanter and paladin, because you don't want enemies disengaging from them). Bonus deflection also plays nicely with Aila Bracia for increased chance to get grazed and reflect. P.S. Also take into consideration who's your mech guy: cipher or wizard. Usually it's better to be cipher because he never runs out of things to do, and let the other one skill lore. But on the other hand your wizard gonna be on frontline, so he could be spotting traps earlier, plus you won't need to bring a backliner upfront for disarming every time.

I would opt for: - 3 damage dealers - 3-4 frontliners - 2-3 debilitators - and 1-2 healers/sup Your barb and Kana (as Drake Ambassador starting from lvl 9) gonna dish a nice amount of damage. The third damage-dealer could be a fire priest or a dps-cipher. Priest could also occasionally heal (via consecrated grounds) and cipher could occasionally cc. For crowd-control, I'd recommend using a control-freak wizard and cc-cipher (for example Grieving Mother). GM can either melee (in plate, with BotEP/Firebrand) or attack from range (with Persistence, Boressaine, Rain, Sabra Marie; note: you can also open the fight from Lead Spitter before switching to bow). And lastly I'd recommend taking a 1h+shield paladin, focused on healing, tanking and buffing. Perhaps something like that will be optimal: - frontline: cc-wizard, dd-barb, mt-paladin, dt-chanter - midline: fire-priest - backline: cc-cipher P.S. Personally I have used the following parties in my completed runs:

Good point! I've totally forgot about that weapon) I'll look that up.

This is Rooting_Pain_SE_EventOnWound during beta4 of backers beta: And here it is during beta of v4.0: Before it had: - "StatusEffectType": "AttackTargetOnEvent", - "BaseValue": 0, - and was calling the AoE attack directly: - "AttackValueID": "7a4723c9-8db5-4d78-9bad-56a155e843fe", Now it has: - "StatusEffectType": "ApplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance", - "BaseValue": 0.33, - and is calling a "proxy" status effect first: - "StatusEffectsValueIDs": ["3c9bd134-371d-4238-aa6d-b8faeb2a0d19"], - and this effect will call that AoE attack P.S. Keeping AttackTargetOnEventWithChance ApplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance and setting the value to 1, as Boeroer suggested, was my first thought as well. Since that doesn't work, try setting AttackTargetOnEvent with baseValue of 0. Remove the call to that proxy SE Rooting_Pain_SE_AttackOnApply, and call the attack directly (like before).

Iirc it reduces target's action speed by 2% for 30s. And it stacks 10 times.

Do agree that damage bonus is way to low. You get the FF cost doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and only +25%, +50%, +75% and so on, bonus instead. Plus it pushes the Forbidden Curse expiration time away. Also do agree with Kaylon, that the main selling point here is Enfeebled effect. P.S. Perhaps there could be some shenanigans made with standing under periodic afflictions like Chill Fog (while having Strand of Favor and Clarity of Mind) in order to get wounds and especially hp, every 3s. Or having some party member with Stalkers Patience pocking on the monk, in order to apply wounding DoT... but with 14hp restored it doesn't look good enough. It looks like there are 3 tiers of self damage: 5, 10 and 15. And these values are increased by +10% per your PL (including the bonus from Blood Sacrifice itself). The tier gets selected at random; and depending on it you receive respective damage and get restored 1 spellusage of respective rank (range). I don't know yet what the exact mapping is. But I guess that if you single-class and have access to all 9 ranks then: - tier 1: you receive 5 * (1 + 0.1 * PL) damage; and restore a random spellusage of rank 1-3 - tier 2: you receive 10 * (1 + 0.1 * PL) damage; and restore a random spellusage of rank 4-6 - tier 3: you receive 15 * (1 + 0.1 * PL) damage; and restore a random spellusage of rank 7-9 And if you are lower level, than the ranges are somehow more narrow. Although dunno how it works when base PL is not divisible by 3.

Yes, do agree with you. +2 PL with plant and beast spells sounds fine to me. P.S. If needed that -10 defenses vs veil-piercing attacks can be increased to -15, to compensate for the extra PL.

Oh indeed they are 195hp each, and can be summoned by a lvl 1 Ancient. Those sporelings are imo the best thing about this subclass. The bonus PL is only worthy if you cast plant or beast DoTs, and even then the damage increase is not that big. Btw, speaking of DoTs there is a temptation to multiclass ancient with a hellwalker for the bonus MIG/INT. But those penalties gonna sting. +50% damage taken from hellwaker and +15% damage from vessels from ancient, will make undead archers quite deadly. And then there is also -10 defense penalty vs veil-piercing attacks.

I don't mind As for 10 SE fractures,.. I somewhat see how it can work. But oh boy it's indeed a hulking approach. Hmm. Maybe I'll try a different strategy, and get rid of stacking altogether. Playstesting has shown that mind blades are often the best way to stack "Soul Fractures". So it would require either investigating how to make shred DoTs apply "Soul Fracture" on each tick, and not just when they are applied,.. or alter the concept. As alternative, I'm now thinking about: Gains "Soul Annihilation" ability: A soul enhanced melee strike that consumes the cipher's remaining focus and converts half of it into Raw damage on the target. Shred powers now also place a "Mark of the Beyond" on affected enemies for 15s. Soul Annihilation additionally deals 50% of it's raw damage in 2.5m AoE around the target, to enemies that are affected by "Mark of the Beyond", and consumes their marks. 3 upgrades: > u1: Focused Annihilation: Soul Annihilation gets +20acc bonus vs marked enemies. > u2: Mass Annihilation: adjacent, marked enemies now take 75% of Soul Annihilation raw damage. > u3: Horrifying Fate: hits with Soul Annihilation shaken primary and marked enemies. Kills with Soul Annihilation frighten them.

Kinda sorted the step4 out... Instead of linking the AoE attack directly to SA ability (like for example Silent Scream does), it was needed to go down to status effects, and from an effect of AttackTargetOnEvent type, link the attack I wanted. I.e. instead of: I had to do: So, it looks like I'll be able to mod this myself, if I'll also find how to: > q1. make "Soul Splinters" deal bonus damage based on "Soul Fracture" count and optionally: > q2. aggregate "Soul Fracture" status effects > q3. make "Soul Splinter" aware of how much damage did "Soul Annihilation". I mean, if SA critted for 100 raw damage, I'd like AoE to use half of that as the baseline (and not make a roll of it's own). So if AoE at least grazes - it deals 50 raw damage. If it misses - it missed. > q4. how to make "Soul Annihilation" get bonus accuracy (e.g. +3 acc per Soul Fracture on target)

It wasn't (at least in 4.0.0.0018). My guess is that only damage that goes through attack resolution is pausing psion's focus generation. Wish there was some concentration related mechanic that would shield against this pausing. Cose an offtank psion would make a lot of sense, niche-wise.

So... I have managed to do steps 1, 2 and 3. Also have figured out how to clear/remove "Soul Fracture". If you are interested how: But I am stuck at step 4... I can't attach an AoE to Soul_Annihilation ability. I'm setting AttackID but nothing happens. Have tried with a newly created Game.GameData.AttackAOEGameData and with Silent_Scream_Target and with Silent_Scream_AoE... nothing. Also does someone know how to aggregate stacked effects like that?:

True that. But lets not forget that there is also upcoming Cyberpunk2077. For example after The Witcher 3, I had some sort of gaming hangover. Other games didn't spark me for at least 3 months. And I expect the same from Cyberpunk Btw, I have never played any of fallout games before (not my setting, plus off-putting UI and mascot for my taste). But this reveal trailer caught my interest. Will be waiting it's release. Plus it's Obsidian. Am expecting some interesting mechanics and deep character creation.

I thought it's just the name of status effect - so the player knew where it came from. If that bonus PL affects only chants and invocations... then what's the point of this subclass? (provided that its only +0.5 PL per phrase consumed)

Belower can get bonus PL. This shifts him towards stuff that benefits most from this, mostly damage-dealing stuff. He gets -50% chants aoe (or radius?) penalty. So it's not chants. And if single-classed he would get trumped by troubadour, who can use invocations twice as often. So it looks like belower is quite inclined towards multi-classing with spell damage dealers, like fire priest and especially evoker. You throw an invocation, gain PL bonus and proceed to casting evocation stuff. It's like mini-empower. The ugly thing though is that: - you get +0.5 PL by phrase count consumed, rounded down. Using a 3-phrase invocation... is meh. You want to use your highest-even-cost stuff for the bonus. - the PL bonus doesn't stack with itself. So no Sasha's Singing Scimitar shenanigans. - all your phrases will be consumed when you cast an invocation. So belower requires a higher level of supervision. P.S. I think that PL bonus should be rounded up, to be more worthwhile..

I had some.. experience with modding Assembly-CSharp.dll via IEFramework for PoE1. Made a mod with few bug fixes. But still I'd rate my experience as very limited with both C# and Pillars. I mean I can edit some existing stuff. But don't know how to add new stuff. So... if step by step it would be: - s1. Create "Soul Fracture" status effect. Which is stackable and has a duration. Probably use Forbidden Curse as starting point, copy and edit it. Also take a look at Modwyr or Gravecaller for how they implemented stack cap. - s2. Edit existing shred powers, to apply "Soul Fracture" onDamage. How? - s3. Create "Soul Splinters" AoE... ability? For starters it can deal fixed 10 raw damage. - s4. Somehow attach "Soul Splinters" to "Soul Annihilation" - s5. Edit "Soul Splinters" damage: > it should know how much damage was dealt by SA (or calculate it itself) > take into account existing "Soul Fracture" instances. And increase damage by +20% for each. Or if there is no instances - don't deal damage at all. > clear "Soul Fractures". (like Wave Walker clears fire effects?) Fingers crossed

I find current soulblade playstyle pretty dull. And I'd want a mod that does the following: - Instead of having -5 focus discount, shred powers now place a stackable mark on enemies when these powers deal damage. - This mark, let's call it "Soul Fracture" lasts for 15 seconds (unmodified by INT and PL) and can stack up to 5 instances. - When cipher deals damage with Soul Annihilation, all adjacent soul fractured enemies in 2.0m range from the primary target (but excluding primary target itself) take half of SA raw damage (that was just dealt to primary target). This damage consumes existing "Soul Fracture" instances and is increased by +20% per each. P.S. Tips and directions on how to do it myself are also greatly appreciated. P.P.S. I don't really expect it to be possible... but it also would be really cool if killing someone with SA, was visually kicking their soul out of the body and showing how it dissipates.

My favorite cc spell in Deadfire so far is Repulsive Visage. Having enemies not hitting you is nice, and even if you missed or they have some sort of resolve inspiration, visage is periodic, so it gets applied again after 3s. Also if the enemies have resolve resistance, you at least frighten them. This feels stronger than when you get a downgraded stun or paralyze. I'm also eager to try the trickster/tactician in my next run instead, now that trickster also has also access to visage. Plus fighter gets a way to replenish resources and focus just on interrupting and messing with enemy actions. My only (and minor) gripe with tacticians are: - they get the -5acc penalty with aoe spells (on enemy targets that are not being hit in melee by their allies) - if the enemies are terrified (or stunned, or paralyzed for that matter) - tactician can't interrupt them, since they doesn't cast anything. - mushy interaction between flanked status and charmed/dominated enemies. Also, do really like a wayfarer/skald as a jack-of-all-trades character. With 15/10/15/19/16/3 stats and dual-wielding a rapier (with modal on) and dagger, he can spam FoD for really decent AoE heal, and built-up phrases quite quickly for low-level stun and paralyze invocations (or even charm if needed). All that while providing zealous aura, shared flames, chanting and offtanking. That said, in Deadfire, I find it hard to justify having a purely hard-cc-dedicated cipher in party, when you can focus on having high AR, heals, terrify and just do damage; given that hard-cc afflictions no longer lower enemy defenses as hard as in PoE1, and Confounding Blind is often just more effective at lowering enemy deflection.

just multi-class with rouge

I do agree with Takkik that it is more balanced across classes as it is now. At the same time, do think that 3s->6s tick nerf could be rolled back, since spellcasters are now in check. Edit: or it could be left at 6s, but restore 2 of class resources. So it would be +2 for single classes and +1/+1 for multi classes. Edit #2: I had a backup of v1.2 gamedatabundles somewhere. Will take a look on the weekend.

I didn't know of this change either. And I don't remember it being mentioned in patch notes. I was even thinking to write a post about it being unfair for spellcasters to get half of their resources from just 1 tick, while other classes get only 1 resource. Btw, the gain is 100% random. But it would be nice to check if the randomness is linear or not. For example, I have also tried 7 times the following scenario: use rank 1 spell, use last rank spell. Get afflicted by Brilliance. > 5 times I got the first rank spell first > 2 times I got the last rank spell first Not 100%) Today I have tested only wizard, priest, cipher, fighter and chanter. But during v1.0... iirc monk was gaining 1 mortification and 1 wound. It's bad even for psion. Use 70 focus and some time on cast and recovery, in order to get 20-30 focus back... And do agree - not being able to cast that brilliant power on himself is weird. I understand that this could be used as a limiting factor if self-brilliancing would be too strong, and also as incentive to bring a second cipher for cross-casting. But atm not only it's not OP, it's just not worth it at all.

So as a summary, one tick of Brilliant inspiration gives: - rogues, fighters, paladins, rangers, barbarians: +1 resource (guile, discipline, zeal, bond, rage) - monks: +1 mortification, +1 wound - ciphers: +10 focus - chanters: +1 phrase - wizard, druid, priest: +1 spell usage of random rank (just tested 5 minutes ago to be sure) P.S. Multi-class characters in a way benefit from this twice. P.P.S. It's weird that ciphers only get 10 focus, no matter how big their max focus is. By the time you get access to Brilliant inspiration, 10 focus is basically nothing.

You might want to check Part 6: Q1 of this post. I explain there why those 7% are displayed in the tooltip. Although if this is intended to work or be worded that way - I do not know either.