Braven

Did you try any other weapon combinations? 2x wounding daggers or 2x bittercuts (+ spirit of decay) would also be very damaging (and less reliant on criticals). Wounding has the really high INT to benefit it and bittercuts have lower DR and decay synergy. Granted, those would need the wax.

I would drop CON and DEX and max out the rest with MIGHT and INT being the most important. Even if you don't use any damaging chants, might is great for passive healing. In my opinion, the best talent for a front-liner is veterans recovery, and it relies on MIGHT and INT to be at it's best. CON doesn't matter much as long as you regenerate and mitigate damage (heavy armor, resolve, veteran's, heal multiplier survival bonus or item). Something like this spread should work well: MIGHT: 18 CON: 7 DEX: 7 PER: 15 INT: 18 RES: 15 That should still get you all the conversation options, with equipment eventually boosting Perception and Resolve. Shields tend to work well for chanters since they don't have any specific class bonuses for melee. However, if you want to try a more melee-oriented build, I would use double +20% speed weapons and get the vulnerable attack talent. Stacking attack speed can mitigate most of the disadvantages of low dex. and results in much better damage than a 2-hander. One of the biggest changes in 3.0 is that there are more endurance regeneration options and the existing ones were buffed. All of them benefit from might and intelligence.

The patch notes mentioned that stunning weapons also trigger sneak attack in 3.02 (and I imagine contribute to death blows). Maybe a stun weapon could be considered in your build? Not sure how it compares to other options. Cladhaliath is probably the best one-handed stunner; good damage and accuracy.

If you want to stick with the large shield and focus on maximum defense (while still at least contributing something in regards to damage), here are my suggestions. Might: 19 - Helps constant recovery (and makes disengagement attacks more punishing). Some of your best abilities like Charge also greatly benefits from might. You also will want this for Fortitude, as getting stunned or knocked prone will break engagement and we don't need much CON. Con: 5 - You don't need that large of an endurance pool because you will auto-heal whatever pitiful amounts of damage your enemies actually manage to do to you since, at best, they graze and you have constant recovery the whole battle. It also hurts your "trump card" ability at level 15, Triggered Immunity. As a result, this is a pretty useless stat. If you find your self running out of health and want to rest less, the binding wounds talent is a very efficient way to raise health. As an added bonus, lower con also means your human racial, "Fighting Spirit" will trigger more often. Dex: 10 - Even though you are a tank, you still don't want to be slow as molasses. Besides, you will need to pump out some per-rest abilities/items in tough battles. Also, you have quite a few abilities you want to always get out pretty quickly (3 knockdowns, 2 charges, into the fray...). Per: 8 - You don't really need accuracy that much as a tank and fighters already start with high accuracy. The only reason you want a little is to make sure your knockdowns hit. However, if you use the "disciplined barrage" ability right before the knockdowns, this is not much of a problem since it provides +20 accuracy. Int: 18 - This is mainly for the following: Constant Recovery, triggered immunity, Vigorous Defense, disciplined barrage, and knockdown duration. These will help a great deal for tanking so I consider it a core stat for a fighter. As an added bonus, it also helps your watcher abilities and can make you a great scroll user if you so wish. Res: 20 - Since the goal of the ultra tank is maximum defense, might as well go all in on deflection. Not really needed, but it is nice seeing enemies miss all the time and helps open up some conversation options. Armor: Because you have such high deflection, and your fortitude is only average, I recommend primarily wearing the hide armor, Blaidh Golan, because it provides a massive +50 defense to stun and prone. It is found during the main quest line, so you can't miss it. Sure, it is only medium armor and has lower DR, but that doesn't actually matter because your deflection is so high that enemies only graze if they hit at all so more DR often provides no benefit and the lighter armor will speed your character up a bit. Another honorable mention is Angio's Gambeson (padded armor). It will make your fighter really fast, once-per-rest. After you use it, just switch to the other armor. Weapon: Because you are a super tank which enemies don't want to engage, you probably want a weapon with +1 guarding. Here are options available early in the game: - "Measured Restraint", available early in the game and has guarding. The damage will be terrible, but it has very good accuracy. - "Shatterstar", This war hammer is more damaging than measured restraint and available for purchase pretty early. Also has an often overlooked bonus of an increased interrupt rating of 1 second, but that won't matter much with low perception and dexterity. If you get this, you could consider the talent "interrupting blows" after the priority ones. - "Hearth Harvest Hatchet" - This doesn't have guarding for +1 engagement, but it has +5 deflection if you want to be even more un-hittable. Has DR-bypass for a little extra damage, but it will still be weak. Maybe good for your second weapon set when engagement is less important. Has "slash" damage type that the two guarding weapons lack. Shield: You want to go with a large shield since the whole point is max defenses. This not only helps deflection the most, but also helps reflex the most. Because knockdown is a "full attack", I recommend using a shield with Bash so you can get two hits off with each knockdown. Larder Door is available really early and is probably what you will use for quite a while. Later in The White March, there are a couple good bash shields you can switch to. Talents: You will want Sword/Shield style, Rapid Recovery, Bonus Knockdown (a prone enemy is even better than an engaged one), and the ones that increase deflection. In the late game, consider weapon focus, bear's fortitude, or binding wounds (if health is an issue). Another honorable mention is the druid multi-class talent. High intelligence will make the AOE and duration better and help out the whole party. However, someone else with less pressing talents might be able to take it sooner. Abilities: I don't recommend ever taking defender, even for a pure tank, because it is actually hard to get 5 people to surround your character. After 3 enemies run into you, the others will just run by off to the side (outside of your engagement zone) and never turn back. Also, that ability was nerfed really badly in version 2 such that it isn't worth the penalties. Knockdown should be your first ability and is really good with high intelligence and a bashing shield. Disciplined barrage is good for burst accuracy in order to land your knockdowns for maximum prone duration and lasts a decent amount of time with high INT. Even though it seems like an offensive ability, I think it is actually a tanking ability because you are using it to prolong enemy disables. Charge is really good for quickly getting to ranged attackers, or runners who disengage, and it does a TON of damage (sometimes hundreds of damage total with high might). Into the fray is great tanking tool and also does pretty good damage too.

I also agree that you want high might, regardless of the type of fighter because your core ability, constant recovery and the fighter specific talent/items also involve self healing. Perception is a good stat to drop. I did a play through with a 3 perception fighter with large shield and my accuracy was still reasonable by mid game so reducing it down to around 10 shouldn't have too much of an impact. Confident aim can help mitigate the lower accuracy and if you stick with a shield, reflex should still be good too. Personally, I feel like the high deflection, big shield traditional tank is best left to chanter or paladin. Fighters can be super tanks while also being a great damage dealer because all of their abilities benefit from aggressive stats. The level 15 ability is actually worthless if doing high con/resolve and much of their self-healing is wasted if they are not taking a lot of damage. It really doesn't matter if the enemy hits you if you immediately heal the damage with constant/rapid recovery. Also, by having a low deflection score, enemies will foolishly want to attack you anyways so you don't have to worry as much about forcing them to engage you with abilities. Into the fray, charge, and knockdown can be used to further protect your party. Because of this, I recommend high Might and INT. Everything else can be left around 10 and put the remaining in your favorite stat. I personally like DEX as third favorite since it seems to make the largest impact, but that doesn't really help tankiness unless using an endurance draining weapon(s). Perception can help land the knockdowns with a longer duration, but it only helps that slightly. My glass tsunami build soloed the game without an issue (effectively tanking every enemy) with 3/3 con and resolve and dual weapons by charging right into the middle of battle. This worked because I picked up all the items that help endurance regeneration, concentration, and have a beneficially effect when a crit is received. Having those stats at around 7-10 each is probably better though, and will work out just fine as long as you take rapid recovery talent and wear heavy armor.

Haha, this is a funny build and he looks kind of like a genie to me. I like it. He also dumps my least favorite stats, CON and RES (I guess I just like seeing big damage numbers). Dumping those two is also an easy way to increase the challenge of any build, even if you don't have a good reason (like this build has) for it. I have those dumped for my melee ranger just because it forces me to be more careful with positioning. If you use "Behold the Marytr" and then revive that character, does the spell still take effect?

I like the belt of chimes because it gives a huge concentration boost. Also, can be had pretty early if lucky or not above save-reloading. Often, the main reason I want resolve (unless going for max deflection) is concentration, as deflection is pretty easy to come by and it has anti synergy with some of the best items in the game. I recommend the belt for any single digit resolve builds. By lowering resolve, you can increase other stats that will have a higher impact on your build. In generally, I find Resolve and Con to have the least impact... they are just needed to avoid really bad things from happening (one-hit kills and constant interrupts). If you can compensate for those with items, they are ideal stats to lower. Con in particular seems less useful now that there are better healing options in version 3. It was bad in version 1, got better in version 2, and is now relatively worse again. Everyone gets a full heal with Athletics, Healing multipliers are better, healing abilities/talents have been buffed, items added with heal-on-kill, etc. More CON only gives a small amount of endurance that can be easily made up in other ways. The main benefit is mitigating high burst damage, like dragons are apt to do. I am not saying it should be completely dumped, but I would be perfectly happy with it in the 6-8 point range for most builds. Maybe use a rest bonus if going against an enemy with high burst damage.

Health drops Immediately when you take damage (just like endurance). It never drops outside of combat (unless you trigger a trap or something) It happens the same time you lose endurance. At least I -think- so... Usually I don't look at it until after battle. Whether it happens as you lose endurance, or after you restore endurance, the net result is the same amount of health loss so it doesn't really matter. The point of endurance "healing" is to prevent your character from getting knocked out in the middle of a battle. It is not for preventing actual death or health loss.

Spell accuracy increases, I think, +1 per level (above and beyond the +3 per level). That basically offsets weapon enchants. Most spells also have inherent accuracy bonuses listed in their description. This is meant to compensate for casters typically low base accuracy. Other ways to improve it is having high Perception. "General" accuracy increases, like the paladin aura (or multi class talent) will help as well as spells like Bless. Gauntlets of accuracy I believe will also apply to spells. Keep in mind that medium and large shields will hurt spell accuracy. Perhaps the best way to increase accuracy is to decrease your opponents defenses. Many afflictions give large defense penatlies. Some -20 or more to certain defenses (reflex/will/fort/deflection)

Endurance never comes from health. They are two separate things. If you run out of endurance, your character is knocked out. If you run out if health, you die (or become maimed). Whenever your character takes damage an equal amount is taken out of both health and endurance. If you take 10 damage, you lose 10 endurance and 10 health. Almost all abilities (including constant recovery) only restore endurance. The primary means of restoring health is resting. After battle, endurance quickly returns back to full. Note, endurance can never be higher than health. I have found that "binding wounds" talent can be pretty good for fighters with low CON, if health frequently drops into the red or you don't like to rest a lot. Most people skip it, though, since resting is cheap and a character is unlikely to use all of their health in a single battle.

With that formula, it is strictly better than weapon specialization for average damage in the late game (even not factoring in the Graze-to-hit bonus is). The key is that it is multicative instead of additive. Though I guess it might be hard getting the 100% bonus without specialization/mastery.

I'm not entirely sure that I can agree with this statement. The fact is that if you want to make your pet awesome, you need to take 3 (IIRC) of the pet related in-class talents, i.e. Resilient Companion, Vicious Companion, and Merciless Companion. That only leaves you 5 out of the max of 8 talent points to work with. And that sort of seems like "gimping" to me. Now, I'm not saying that you can't have a competent Ranger. But compared to other classes, it's going to be a little more difficult to make your ranger into a well rounded combatant when you're short 3 talent points. Maybe even more so if you're looking to build a good melee ranged, and particularly one who isn't wearing heavier armor. It seems to me that wearing heavy armor (like you do in your melee ranger build - not a criticism, BTW), aside from being against the stereotype, is a bit of a counter for not having been able to take talents like weapon+shield style or superior deflection. But if one wanted to play a leather wearing ranger, you're going to be at a bit of a disadvantage without those 3 extra talent points. OTOH, I think that ranged rangers aren't in quite as tough a situation. I think they'll be able to be entirely competent ranged combatants, but I think that their weakness will be that they'll be rather lacking when it comes to melee, due to the loss of those 3 talent points to their pet. I still wish longingly that animal companions were an optional thing, perhaps taken as a level 1 class ability, so that those who would like to play pet-less rangers could do so. You don't need quite that many talents because you don't need any of the defensive ones. You want to be crit in order to activate items like shod in faith boots and sanguine frenzy. Also, lower deflection encourages enemies to target you over your pet. That said, I would be ranged early on while getting pet talents and wait until the key melee equipment is obtained before giving up the bow/gun. The non-pet melee ones I would take are: veterans recovery, two-handed weapon style, appr. sneak attack, weapon focus, and savage attack. Another good one is the -8 deflection AOE one since it helps your pet's bad accuracy. However, since it takes an action that could be binding roots (-20 deflection or CC), I found it not really worth it. Optionally it could be taken instead of weapon focus if playing solo, if you have high INT.

Yeah, I have heard conflicting answers too. Sorry, I missed reading the second part of your post and didn't see that you also suggested the DR possibility. My gut feeling is that it is the DR-inflicted min damage. That makes more sense because it seems the purpose of the ability is to mitigate bad hits... not to make, say, a critical hit even better by increasing the damage range. I didn't notice much of any impact when trying it out, so I think it is easily skippable (at least if you have good perception and unlikely to graze). Fighters have lots of good alternatives, particularly if your fighter has high INT. My "glass tsunami" build doesn't take it for that reason. It would be nice to have a definitive answer, if someone wants to do the testing.

Maybe the "minimum damage" doesn't mean what you think it means. Instead of increasing the minimum damage range of all attacks, it increases the MIN damage that happens when 80%+ of your damage is eaten up by enemy DR. Pillars refers to that as "Minimum Damage" (you can see when it happens because it will display MIN in the combat log). I am not sure which of those two "minimum damages" confident aim is referring to, but that is one possibility of why you think it isn't doing anything. If it is that type of Minimum Damage, than Confident aim is only good if you are going against high DR enemies and using low base attack weapons (like daggers, hachets, etc), or if you have terrible accuracy and graze a lot (which also would trigger MIN damage). The toughest enemies have both high defense and high DR, so I imagine confident aim would be very good against those enemies. It would also be really good for low Perception fighters (like the infamous 3 PER fighter build)

Was the old wounding weapon + INT bug ever resolved (where higher INT actually hurt the overall damage from wounding and low INT resulted in higher damage)? I remember hearing it was a "high priority" bug back in 2.*, but I never recall seeing anything definitively saying it was fixed. If it is fixed, and INT actually increases the overall damage of wounding weapons, something like TideFall would be great for melee ranger. They benefit from INT quite a bit with their abilities. Not sure if all of the new pet new healing powers benefit from INT (is it heal over time?), but that would be another reason to invest in it. The other melee wounding weapon (dagger) could be used for a high attack speed, but you give up endurance draining and wounding shot ability is not "full attack", so it benefits a lot more from a two-handed weapon. Also, with rangers being tight on talents, vulnerable attack is hard to fit in and is basically needed to make daggers good. Even if your goal is to be a melee Ranger eventually, I think it is best to start out using ranged weapons. I would probably wait until around level 11 to really switch over to melee. Ranged is better early on when you can one-shot enemies with fire-lashed wounding crossbow bolts, and quick-reload with swift-aim's massive 50% reloading speed boost. Melee shines in the late game after all of the melee-focused items are acquired and you are able to invest in melee talents. Early on, rangers typically want the pet-enhancing talents so the melee ones end up getting delayed and a "ranged" attack style is less dependent on items or talents.

Since you are not using your other weapon slots or guns, you could also adopt the "fire paladin" style for additional AOE in tough fights. With the fireball quarterstaff and fireball saber filling your other two weapon slots, you will have 6 fireballs to add to your combat options. Works well since you are already getting Scion of Flame.

Nice build! Alpha striking enemies without tedious quick switching is very nice and double sabers look great. It should work well soloing too (with a healing ability added like lay-on-hands or veterans recovery). Though alpha strikes are not as impactful when soloing, it is still nice for quickly getting rid of the "troublesome" enemies that stun, cast spells, etc. Not sure if Deep Faith is ever needed since it is pretty lousy overall and increases deflection which is anti-synergy. Wonder if Cloak of the Master Mystic could be taken advantage of for the invisibility, just so you can escape, stealth, and get FOD (and invisibility) back by "ending the encounter". If using that strategy, resolve should be dropped more to lower deflection to make up for the cape and maybe a concentration item considered. Shame there is no way to get vulnerable attack without losing speed. That is always nice to have if dual-wielding with no/low recovery.

You could wait until level 11. Stunning shots only require a hit.

Would accuracy pose a problem with the shield? Doesn't enchanting just increase deflection, so it is basically like attacking with an non-enchanted weapon that doesn't even benefit from weapon focus talents. Seems like a critical hit would be hard to come by when it is actually needed. It seems like weapons with % chance would be best with barbarian. I imagine that the firebug dagger is insane since it does crazy AOE damage when it actually goes off. The problem with it is reliability, but that would be less of an issue with so many hits.

Maybe just leave the pet far away from battle? It would be a tougher battle without the pet, but better than being attacked by the pet. Or maybe you can use the thorns ability on the pet to prevent it from reaching you? If there is only one (common on easy difficulty), you could try stun-locking the charmer and focusing it down right at the start. This works best with high INT for longer stun duration. Rangers have stunning shots at level 11. If playing solo (non-ranger), enemy charm and domination are completely worthless afflictions. Nothing happens if you are charmed.. the monsters just wander around until it ends and are not smart enough to attack you. In fact, it can be good since it gives you a little time to regenerate endurance and sometimes it ends combat giving you your encounter powers back. Confusion can be fixed with an easily attainable Act 1 hat and Fear/Terrified is easy to gain immunity to by using a 2 lore scroll or item that grants permanent immunity. As a result, the only purpose of will is just to prevent paralyze (from spells or one of the ghosts), but usually a couple summons can soak those up nicely and it is pretty rare affliction. Fortitude and reflex are much more important for solo.

It also took me a while to figure out the floor runes. It is particularly counter-intuitive if soloing. I was able to do it soloing with ranger by using the animal companion. I think after the two runes are activated, you can step off them. I haven't tried getting the spear (outside of the dozen's quest) since 3.0. It worked before that, though.

It's begging to be turned into a soulbound item for this very reason. Have the unlocks tied to Durance's quest so there's no way to rush finish it and make it overpowered. Seems like an easy fix would be for the devs to give Durance a "special" version of the Magran's talent that includes an accuracy bonus for staffs and rods. The paladin NPC has a special talent, so why not the priest too? Could even give it a "dirty" sounding name, fitting of Durance's disposition. It seems odd that Durance starts with both of "Wael's" favored weapons when he is a devote of Magran.

I really like how Pillars of Eternity handled stats. It is a lot more interesting than DnD and it actually allows for a lot more build options and play styles. I have done low INT casters (who favor single target and non-duration spells) and HIGH INT casters (favor the opposite) and they both work. Similar can be done with other classes. You could have a character that focuses on buffs/debuffs with low might or ones that already have a lot of additive damage bonuses so they relatively benefit less. Even with all stats being equal, you can still optimize by choosing talents and abilities that benefit the most from your stat distribution since different items and abilities benefit more from some stats than others. Low might? Don't choose healing abilities. (opposite for high might) Low Int? Favor abilities without durations or AOE. (opposite for high int) Low Resolve? Favor items that benefit from being crit. (example: shod-in-faith), use ranged weapons or seek out concentration boosts. High Resolve? Benefits more from deflection stacking (shield) and better suited for light armor since DR is needed less. High Perception? Favor items with on-crit or hit effects, or weapons with a superior interrupt rating. Or abilties with great debuffs (increases duration) Low Perception? Use graze-to-hit or accuracy increasing items/abilities. Favor abilities without an accuracy roll (like buffs) and avoid debuff abilities which suffer the most from grazes. Low Con? Favor endurance regeneration and lower incoming damage, particularly burst damage (attack from range, increase DR (heavy armor), increase deflection). High Con? Best for characters likely to receive high burst damage (low deflection, low DR). High Dex? Increase DR-Bypass since you are hitting more often. Best for those with many activated abilities to dole out (high level casters), frequently use actions that other stats don't benefit (example: summoning figurines), or use weapons with on-hit effects (spell-striking % procs (like soul bounds often have), crit-to-stun, high interrupt, etc). Low Dex? Best for characters that don't need to attack often to be effective and have few activated abilities (chanter, pure tanks, retaliation). Can mitigate with zero attack recovery if stats needed elsewhere. In conclusion, all stats are viable, but to be optimal, you should build your character around your chosen stats to minimize the drawbacks and maximize the benefits.

I have also noticed that they don't make much of a difference, if any. The creatures that tend to use disables, just spam them over and over (or they automatically happen on every attack as a secondary). This means there is not much of a difference between being grazed, hit, or crit and you will never get the numbers high enough to consistently have them miss completely. It is better to just ignore the resistances and just stick with the immunity spells/scrolls (or items, if you can find them).

Brains can be had for around 100-200 copper from a vendor in Defiance Bay and the merchant automatically restock after a bit so there are no limits to how many you can buy. Actually, all the enchantment supplies can be bought in Defiance Bay (plants, animal parts, gems) if you know where to find the merchants. It is still nice getting all of the "free" plants and animal parts from the stronghold, but if you are tight for gold, you can wait on it a while since there are other easy ways to get exceptional enchantment parts. Also, merchants are the only easy way to get gems without venturing into higher level areas.