Braven

It is unfair to not include the base shield deflection in the comparison and sword and shield also gets that weapon quality accuracy bonus (you are still holding a weapon too), so that is not an advantage. Also, you are not considering the reflex bonus of shield-style. There is also the bonus that large shield profiency has no real downside and that the medium shield modal power is very powerful; maybe the best of all modals. It is just a shame there is no good unique medium shields so it never sees use from me except in the early game. Small Shield 4 base deflection 0-8 normal to legendary quality 6 shield style = 10-18 deflection and reflex Large shield -8 accuracy 12 base deflection 0-8 normal to legandary 6 shield style = 18-26 deflection and reflex That is potentially 36 points in defenses for a small shield or a whopping 52 points in defenses for a large shield. But comparing numbers alone is not actually that helpful. it really depends on your party role. If you are a slow, low damage tank, deflection is better since you will never do much damage anyway and will take many more hits than other party members. If you are a ranged DPS role, a shield is pretty much useless to you regardless of how much it deflects because nothing is ever in range to hit you. Finally, regarding your comment on the dagger modal. That only increases deflection against -melee weapon- attacks. It doesn’t help against ranged attacks or reflex attacks so it is not really as good as a shield. There are a lot of ranged enemies in this game and it is still considered ranged even if you fight them in melee range.

Well, not everyone uses a shield and there are many things that can increase defenses besides the shield quality that you also gain when leveling. I think they are more concerned about balance of shield vs no shield to make sure one or the other is not too powerful relative to each other. One handed gives 12 accuracy and a small shield (legendary) now gives 12 deflection. Of course, one handed gives it at the very start of the game.... but you don’t get other unique enchantments like a shield. I think it is actually really reasonable to stay one handed early game and transition to a shield, or other weapon style, later on.

Yes, the idea was to shape shift right away. Since you are spending so much time just sitting in withdraw spell waiting, dex seemed like a waste. I have since updated the build to use 8 dex and shifter subclass. This should help the early game when you do need to attack more. I would love to make it higher, but the other stats are more important. Like you said, you absolutely can’t lower perception with casters.

I tried using the de-buff illusion spells of wizard before, but found they had the same problem basically that you have with the druid spells; you could miss and then they do nothing and wasted a bunch of casting time and a power resource. Also, they have too small of an AOE area. If you can only hit one or two enemies, you might as well just use a club/flail/morning-star weapon proficiency modal to de-buff your enemies since weapons generally have higher accuracy, take less time, and cost no resources. The only good de-buff spell wizard has early is chill fog because it is a ground hazard that is able to attack repeatedly. That means accuracy is much less important because if you miss one on the first tick, you will likely hit on the next one. Eventually everyone will have the affliction. Note with Druid: You can also debuff enemies, though not as well as chill fog. The best spell is Tanglefoot which reduces reflex at tier 1. That said... it is only -10 reflex, so I don't know how much of an impact it would have. Tanglefoot has: 1) A huge radius. Same as Plague of Insects, so it will hit everything. 2) Works like a ground hazard so it fires off every tick. This helps the accuracy a lot since there are multiple opportunities for it to hit, as explained above. 3) Long enough duration 4) If you have resistance to dexterity afflictions, you should be able to stand in the middle of the AOE. This makes a wood elf an interesting racial option. 5) Autumn's decay targets reflex at level 2 (has a large AOE area so I like it better than insect swarm at that level, plus reflex > fortitude) and the storm spells all target reflex. You can lower both fortitude and reflex with Spreading Plague at level 3. That has the poison keyword so it will benefit from your alchemy which should increase accuracy, number of jumps, and duration, though I haven't tested it. It cannot be combined with tanglefoot since they both cause hobbled. I like Tanglefoot better because there are good other spells at level 3 while level 1 is kind of lack-luster anyway. -- Soap Box -- I think debuff spells should have the same casting/recovery time as the priest single target buff spells, or otherwise improved, like adding a large accuracy bonus. As they stand, with the full casting time, they just aren't worth using because you could just miss with them and the effect is not that powerful. In fact, I don't think it would be over powered if they had the same cast time as the wizard self-buff spells (near instant). My guess is that the developers were using the following logic for determining cast time: 1) self-buff should be the lowest because it is the least flexible (can only target one specific character) 2) single target buffs should be the next lowest cast time, but higher than the self buff because it can target any player. 3) AOE buffs should take the longest time because they can target multiple characters De-buffs are treated like the third category, but that is not taking into consideration that you need an accuracy roll while a buff does not and both have a similar effect, power-wise. Accuracy is really hard to increase in POE2 and it is much easier to miss, so this is a big deal. It also doesn't take into consideration that your party can clump up to all be in the AOE area while you can't force your enemies to clump up so easily. De-buffs typically have a lower duration than buffs and some of that might be wasted if you kill them before it expires. Many buffs have 30, 45, or 60 second base durations... The longest de-buff I can think of is 20 seconds. Wizard is very powerful for a solo character because the first, second, and third categories above are the same so you are better off with self-buffs instead of targeted buffs and should avoid AOE buffs because they probably are not worth it. Of course, I don't expect them to balance around solo play, so that is fine.

I updated the build to use the shifter druid subclass and changed the stats to lower might/con a bit and increase DEX. This will help out the early game performance a lot and not harm the mid-late game. I am okay with skills helping out certain powers, but I don't think it should be a 1:1 ratio and there should be some kind of cap to discourage dumping all your skills in a single thing, which is currently the best min/max strategy. I guess it would add more confusion to the system though, but would at least help associate skills more strongly with class archetypes. Like rogues being good at slight of hand, wizards being good at arcana, druids being good at alchemy, etc. For alchemy, it could boost poison spells every 3 skill points and cap off at a max of Power Level 4 and maybe have a lesser effect on healing spells (max 2 power levels). There are not that many poison spells, so it wouldn't really create imbalances. Stealth could do the same for illusion spells. Arcana can boost all spells, but at a lower rate like 1 every 6 skill points for a max of 2 power levels. Athletics could increase martial ability power levels at the same rate as Arcana. Slight-of-hand can help rogue ability power levels. Explosives could help some special abilities like smoke bomb and certain AOE effects like blunderbuss modal ability. I am hesitant to give it magical AOEs since arcana is already boosting that. I am not sure why explosives is separate from mechanics.. I would be fine with them being merged into one skill. Mechanics and Explosives could boost firearm damage (maybe greater of the two). Athletics and Mechanics could help crossbows. Arcana could increase the damage of magical implements. Athletics could increase two-handed melee weapons, large one-handers, and bows. Slight of hand could increase the fast one-handers like dagger, rapiers, etc. I don't expect the developers to ever do this since it would add a lot of confusion to the game, but maybe someone will create a mod some day.

I have early game accuracy issues. You can get around early game luck with cheesy tactics. First, pull enemies away from thier starting area in a zone. Then cast your DOT and then withdraw. They will immediately head back to where they started and leave you alone. If you missed with your accuracy roll, just head back and try again. Since the “encounter” ended after they left your field of view, you can try again with your spells restored. Also, keep in mind you don’t have to kill everything you see early on. You can sneak past almost everything in this game and the vast majority of EXP and Gold is from quests and most of those can be completed without fighting. In fact, I wonder if you can just sneak past every enemy on the first island completely.

Yeah, I would wait a couple more patches before risking adding any of mine to the build list. . The alchemy thing is almost certainly going to be patched away eventually. I just really wanted to use priest for something really broken, haha. I will change the Title to “build concept” to better show that it is not fully play tested out from start to finish. I did use the cheat console to test at different levels and locations and tried it out in a few battles. The build's strategy is immune to arcane dampener since enemies just completely ignore you when you withdraw and it doesn't use other buffs. I tried all the poison spells and some non-poison ones and found plague of insects to easily be the most powerful. The huge range, area of effect radius, and accuracy just makes it so reliable to cast and the really long duration means you never need to cast it twice or anything else for that matter. I also just played till the capital normally to get a feel for the first few levels. The high health and arcane veil, along with shape-shift for faster speed and higher armor made this part easier than most builds I have tried out, though "shifter" subclass would be MUCH better early. In fact, I will update the build to use it. By mid-game, it won't matter what druid subclass you picked and you just won't shape shift. Withdraw comes at level 2 and there are decent druid DOT early on. The main problem is limited number of casts until you level up a bit. I did run into situations where my spells would just miss and then I die because of the low dex and resolve meant I didn't get much done in melee. That is a problem for all spell casters early that rely on accuracy rolls instead of just buffing themselves. This gets better over time, but you really have to pick your battles carefully. There is no reason to kill every enemy you see; most can simply be avoided and you can come back later in the game and clean them out after you have leveled up more. Almost all EXP comes from completing quests and most of those can be resolved without any combat. In truth, this would work fine without priest. You could certainly, like Boeroer suggested in another thread, just focus on high health regeneration. I would go that route if playing with a party since most of the heals are AOE and you can have someone else tank for you. Plague of Insects would still be great because it is FOE only, so it won't hurt your team mates. With a party, I would go pure druid in order to get that spell faster. The only reason to multi-class is to survive soloing since a ship full of bad guys will just kill you in under 10 seconds without immunity. Instead of abusing priest immunity spells, you could go all-out max defenses. I have done that with wizard/monk and it works as long as you carefully pick the order of your quests and avoid taking on higher level enemies too early. But that is more trouble then I wanted to bother with and druid isn't really the ideal class for a super tank. I don’t really expect all the imbalances to be fixed already (my comment alluding to this was done in jest). It is more to poke a bit of fun at the seemingly pointless balance changes like reducing a lash damage by 5 or 10% when there are clearly bigger fish to fry like the alchemy effect on power levels, never resting to retain one use powerful buffs forever, 150 second immunity combos, max defenses such that nothing can even graze you, or just escaping any battle you want with per-encounter invisibility abilities and trying again with all your powers recharged and half the enemies dead. You could alternatively play this build "straight" and just get some normal healing spells instead of withdraw and use something like returning storm instead of plague, etc. But I don't think anyone really needs a guide for that and it is not as interesting as... The Lord of the Flies! Repent you heathens or be purified by the small bites of thousand killer insects. I will pray to my god for the absolutions of your sins as his radiant glow keeps the blood splatters from staining my freshly laundered, priestly white robes.

The concept of this build is to use Damage over time spells to slowly (or not so slowly as explained later) widdle away enemy hp. This is designed for solo. Otherwise you might be better off just going pure druid to get your insects faster. Now, of course, this wouldn’t be a Braven build without cheesy tactics and exploiting questionable game design. Some might call it exploiting bugs, but it wasn’t changed in 1.1 beta patch so I will assume this works as intended. Here is the cheese: 1). Boost alchemy as high as possible to super charge plague of insects. Each level of alchemy increases power level of that spell. With maxed out alchemy it does disgusting amounts of damage. Enough to kill every enemy (not immune to poison) in the game with one casting. Oh, and it doesn’t miss because those power levels also massively increase your accuracy. Further, it has a huge AOE radius so you hit everyone and it is foe only. 2) Become completely immune to everything while the plague of extremely poisonous insects eats everything down to the bone. This is where priest comes in. The level 2 withdraw spell heals you and makes you invisible for 20 base seconds. The downside of not being able to take actions does not matter since your insects do not require you to do anything but survive. In my testing, everything was dead before withdraw duration ran out, but you also have barring deaths door and salvation of time to also make you immune to death. Class: priest of Wael / shifter druid Race: moon godlike Might: 19 Con: 9 Dex: 10 Per: 18 Int: 19 Res: 3 We pick moon godlike to make the early game easier. Priest of wael allows you to cast arcane veil at level 1 to protect you while casting plague of insects and withdraw. It provides concentration too so you don’t get interrupted. Mirror images can be used also to protect against firearms. These are nearly instant cast with no recovery so low dex is not a hinderance. Until you get plague of insects, just use other similar spells at earlier levels; druid has AOE damage over time spells at every level I think For priest, just use arcane veil and withdraw. At level 3 take the “smart” inspiration buff and triumph of the crusaders at 4 and barring deaths door at 5. UPDATE: I changed my recommendation to shifter druid and increased dex at the expense of some con. This helps the early game a lot. In a different druid build I found that made the early game very easy since you could just stay in animal form when you don't have very many spells to cast and animal form is very strong at the start of the game before you have good items. You also get 5 free healing spells (6 if you count the boar passive) in addition to the three from moon godlike. This doesn't matter later in the game but helps a ton in the beginning. I originally had life-giver with the idea that you would cast while shifted as a bear for some extra armor without recovery penalty for the initial wave of hits you take while casting. However, by the time you get a bunch of spells, that small advantage is simply not needed so it is better to help the early game be dramatically easier.

Personally, I would keep Int maxed. All the good fighter abilities need Int, it is the most effective stat to increase lay in hand healing (better than might even) because it is a heal over time and 5% per point > 3% per point. It also lengthens inspirations and increases aura size. Same deal with constant recovery. Perception is the least useful after dex and con. None of the paladin utility skills require accuracy rolls, nor does fighter ones like constant recovery, stalwart defense, etc. You can use disciplined strikes to increase your accuracy and fighter has the best graze-to-hit bonuses of any class so they kind of want average accuracy. Reflex is going to be bad, yes, but that is why you have the large shield to block 50% of reflex damage. That said, accuracy is hard to come by and you do have the large shield malus, so you don’t want want to drop it too low. Might helps healing and damage, moderately, but we mainly want it high for fortitude defense since Con is low. These are the stats I would personally use, but feel free to adjust. Str: 18 Con: 5 Dex: 8 Per: 11 Int: 18 Res: 18

There is no advantage to any sort of special increments. All stat benefits scale linearly. The main thing I suggest is not go too high with CON. 10 is the max I would assign here and you can go lower if you wish. High armor and constant recovery will be able to keep you topped off so extra health is kind of a waste if you prioritize those. You can always use lay on hands if needed. Perception is important if you want to see traps and secret objects. Otherwise, you need to find a companion with high perception. If you dump dex, you definately want to have large shield proficiency at the ready. Your reflex defense will be low with the unbroken penalty and it will provide a large damage reduction to those attacks. Enemy gunners can really hurt so having that active is great once you are planted. It basically has no downsides since you can just turn it off to move and it greatly mitigates ranged burst damage potential. Dagger is a great starting weapon prof. You will learn others later, but dagger will help a lot early with the deflection bonus (and accuracy). Sword is a good option later because of useful enchantments, but you don’t need the prof. to use them and the modal ability is detrimental to your character role.

Spreading Plague is an option. It gives weakness and hobbled which could help spell accuracy later. Either Priest (with subclass) or Druid can access it at tier 3 which is one of the likely classes you want anyway to outlast enemies. It has a huge range because it jumps 5 times with a 10m distance for each. It also hobbles for good measure. It only has a 15 second base duration, but it is considered a "poison" spell which means it benefits greatly from alchemy (not sure if this was changed in 1.1). Each point of alchemy adds 1 power level to the spell, which translates to 5% extra duration per point of alchemy. So, 20 alchemy buffs duration by 200%. I think "jumps" are also increased for every 2 power levels, so basically this hits every single enemy regardless of where they are. I don't really know how jump mechanics work. If you have 15 jumps and 5 enemies, can the same enemy get hit with it multiple times? If so, that could solve the accuracy issues. It does target fortitude which can be hard to hit, but I think most things that will cause weakened rolls against fortitude. It is considered "disease", which some enemies might be immune to (example: constructs, elementals, some undead), but those are not the ones self-healing anyway. I agree with others that chanter phrase is probably among the most effective. It is passive, decent size AOE, and keeps getting applied over and over so it is not a big deal if an accuracy roll misses.... and misses happen a lot in this game when it comes to spells. Particularly effective with brisk recitation since you can get the accuracy rolls twice as fast, if needed.

Take both. Whispers costs 1/3 the focus power of Ringleader. The duration will be 10% longer from power levels. Like others said, the range is better and sometimes you only want to charm one enemy. Ringleader is still good at the start of a fight to divide and conquer, but later it might be better to just charm one enemy. Charm is either the best affliction in the game, or worthless because the enemy is immune to it or has really high will. Great tool to have around for sure when it shines and really the reason to have a cipher, in my opinion. It is true that AOE healing will heal the charmed enemy and it will also get buffed... but why does it matter? The idea is to charm an enemy to take them out of combat and then just gang up on them with everyone at the end. Health/Buffs doesn't really matter then. If they distract the enemy, that is a nice bonus. If they get in the way, I suggest having more party members using ranged weapons. It is kind of ideal if they get in the way as you would rather have enemies attack them than your own party.

Yes. Power Level scales 1:1 with alchemy for "poison" spells. Noxious Burst and Malignant Cloud are both poisonous (and the only wizard spells with poison). So if you have 20 alchemy, those spells will have an extra 20 Power Levels which would significantly increase their damage output. I am not sure if this was changed in the 1.1 patch Beta or not, but that is how it works currently. I have not heard if this is intended or not, but my guess is that it was meant to increase poisonous traps or something, not spells, and is a bug. Druid also has about 3 poison spells, by the way, but they don't specifically have the poison keyword. However, the tooltip will say that they are countered with antidote which is one way to tell (or you can read the power description which implies poison).

The biggest fear I have with this build concept of using Monk's Rooting Pain is running into enemies with high fortitude or high armor that rooting pain can't penetrate. As far as I could tell, rooting pain is stuck at 8.5 penetration and does not increase with power levels. If it can't penetrate enemy armor, it will do pathetic damage, and with the built in accuracy penalty, it will not be able to hit some enemies very well at all. Not sure if priest/paladin/druid has any tools to help compensate for this downside. Druid has some really powerful DOT damage spells that do raw damage which could be used instead of or along side rooting pain. I wonder if alchemy still scales poison PL at a 1-to-1 ratio in patch 1.1? I will test later, or if anyone knows: Chime in. With that insane PL buff, all you need is druid for damage and then use priest for immortality tricks, since they didn't bother to nerf that. You could do priest/druid and just rely on the druid DOTs to kill things and do tricks like hide in the "withdraw" spell while the damage ticks away and barring deaths door along with salvation of time. That is 80 base seconds of complete immunity by using priest spells. Add in 25 INT (with smart buff), and it is 140 seconds of immunity. I am pretty sure there are items to increase that further yet. That is plenty of time for everything to die to returning storm, wicked biars, plague of insects, etc. Since those all use different defense types and damage types, you can make it work with any collection of enemies. Some, like plague of insects have a huge AOE area. You could even cast that Beetle Shell level 3 druid spell on yourself, though enemies will probably chew through that 200 damage shield pretty quickly later on since it can't be buffed further with PL, Might, or Healing modifiers. At least I think so... never cast it before. Still a decent emergency further delay when needed. With a medium or large shield modal, you can slow down the damage. The nice things about priest/druid is that it gets going as soon as tier 2, attainable before you even leave the first town. 2 withdraws is already 70 seconds of immunity. With the level 2 insect swarm or autumn decay, you will deal out over 300 damage, AOE, in that time frame. That should easily kill off anything early game. Plus, you get around 300 HP of healing from the withdraws, in case you need it. Priest of Wael provides arcane veil at level 1 and is a good way to block damage while you cast your initial DOT spells. After that, withdraw, arcane veil again, reapply dots (maybe against another enemy clump), withdraw, things die, win. Paladin/Priest could slowly kill everything with sworn enemy’s “branded” upgrade. Does base 4 damage with unlimited duration and no accuracy roll. 240 damage over immunity duration. Not so good against fire immune though.

The lesser healing hands, unfortunately, does a comedically low amount of healing so it is not worth the recovery time to use or glove spot. I am not sure if the physicks belt is better, or just one that provides +2 Con. When I tested this as a level 13 character, I healed for way more than my total health pool with Crusaders so I think just having a larger health pool is better than healing multipliers, if you need to pick between the two. I would not be afriad of the 35 Might/CON limit being exceed since you never really want full wounds since you need your wounds empty in order to trigger rooting pain. So basically, the passive bonuses from wounds doesn’t matter much. If you steal a certain companion’s lantern, you can bump up your priest power levels by 2. In my experience you have no time to attack so might as well hold a “shield”.

I checked the belt and it only provides one random potion now. My past experience with it is that it tends to provide useless potions a lot, like ones that just increase a couple skills by +2, which are useless in combat. Alchemy is still a good option though, of course, and monk gets bonus skills for it too. Yeah, It did occur to me after writing this that Triumph is not really the best for slow, AOE damage. But in my experience it is actually extremely fast AOE damage; each hit triggers several rooting pains all at once with a single hit (like 5+) and multiple enemies are hitting you at once if soloing. I consoled a character up to test it and it was quite devastating to the pack of enemies I used it against. I had to just spam the thunderous blows instant cast to keep my wounds down so I could create more rooting pains (doesn’t work if you have max wounds). Luckily, thunderous blows was nerfed and requires 3 wounds now making it easier. I guess you could say it is a buff. Helwalker and lesser wounds makes you take wounds so fast that HOTs will never keep up, no matter how much healing per tick you manage to push out. My 3 resolve certainly didn't help. I didn’t take the “reflect melee” ability when I tested, but I wish I did. I think that would actually be extremely powerful since it slows down the wounds and also contributes a ton of damage to help proc Triumph. It makes flame shield useless, but you can always take other spells like barring deaths that works will with Crusaders at that level. If you go druid instead, the melee block will slow down damage allowing your HOTs to be much more effective. If soloing with priest, you can use the level 2 withdraw spell. That heals for a lot since it is a HOT, scales nicely with power levels/might/int, and more importantly, you are safe while it heals so you don’t have the issue of keeping up with the damage. With your huge health pool, you can afford to wait until low to cast it to get the full benefits. Barring deaths door with a HOT is also super powerful and you will full heal before it expires since something is bound to die. The crusaders healing is insane. It can be like thousands from one spell cast. Sadly, most of it is wasted since there is no place to store it.

Update: Priest of Magran gets Flame shield at level 5... so you can have more retailation damage. Will update the build to go with that subclass.

How do drugs work? Does the crash go away if you take another dose? The advantages of never resting is so great that I guess you need to be an addict. Might run out of drugs and get stuck with the crash for a long time. I wonder if wizard could work with flame shield. That is also level 4 spell. The utility of mage spells could be nice, like using spell reflection to block arcane dampener. You lose the stat boosts, but the base damage of fire shield is higher and there are still a number of items that boost fire PL. reflex I think tends to be lower than fortitude as well. Guess the problem is that it doesn’t trigger multiple times from a big hit. A heavy armor strategy would be needed for wizard to work to lower damage. Also only works with melee attacks. Meh. Monk is still best.

I usually cast it from stealth. Something like, party stealths in, unstealth tank, Xoti activates lightning strikes then casts devotions while the rest of the party starts casting any self buffs they need, devotions hits then party unstealths. If I use it in battle I still consider it worth the time to cast as long as I can also hit a number of enemies with it, it's a nice debuff too after all. Interesting. The fact it has an "attack" component means you can start casting it before combat starts from stealth and basically remove the recovery time too. Sadly, you can't do this with spells that only buff. This is a trick I think a lot of people miss. You get a "free" cast if you just do so from stealth and there is a (not well advertised) massive reduction to recovery time if you do so. With multiple casters, you can queue them all up at the same time for a big alpha strike.

I haven't had time to test this, but thought I would share this idea anyway in case someone else wants to give it a go and/or wants to prove that priest is actually good still. The idea is to collect massive amounts of health and healing modifiers and combine that with the most powerful healing spell in the game, priest's Triumph of the Crusaders. Then... just watch everything die to Rooting Pain. If possible, also try to lower enemy fortitude to make sure the Rooting Pain actually hits most of the time. This is a lot like my immortal paladin/monk, except this one is not "technically" immortal... but pretty much should be. Since it takes 8 HP to generate Rooting Pain... and that is also about how much Rooting Pain does in damage... in theory, you just need more HP than the weakest enemy you are facing. They can probably actually have quite a bit more health than that because you will have other passive healing over time and weapon damage. Class: Helwalker Monk / Priest of Magran Race: Does not matter much. Maybe nature/moon/fire godlike. If Fire-godlike was ever good, I guess this would be it and it fits the theme. Starting Stats Might: 16 Con: 18 Dex: 4 Per: 19 Int: 18 Res: 3 Key Abilities: Rooting Pain, Triumph of the Crusaders, Duality of Mortal Presense, Flame Shield Weapon: Morning Star to lower fortitude or flails to lower reflex I picked Helwalker because the downside doesn't matter... if you take more damage, you generate more wounds to fuel Rooting Pain. The extra Might from Helwalker will help buff up our healing powers more and all Rooting Pain and flame shield damage, so it is quite nice. Make sure you kill off any wizards first as you don't want them messing up your spells. They also probably have the lowest health pool and fortitude/reflex defenses. At level 10, when you have your core abilities, the fun begins. Now all you have to do is get as close to as many enemies as possible and watch them die to rooting pain as Triumph of the Crusaders heals you. Also, use healing spells on levels 1-3 to further extend your health pool. At tier 5, add flame shield to the mix for more retailation damage. I recommend not resting and gathering all the bonuses you can that helps healing or health pool. Hylea's Bounty (+25% health pool) and the Blessing from the Priests in the starting town (+50% healing multiplier) are particularly helpful. I recommend focusing on Athletics with your skill points and getting the item that allows a second use of second wind... again to extend your health pool further. I think I found a cat or dog in the capital city that also grants a nice healing buff. Anyone else have suggestions on how to add additional synergy to this? I haven't really thought much about healing/health items, so there are probably some I am not aware of. Fire PL items could be good with flame shield.

Regarding Devotions of the Faithful nerf being the "death of priest"... I always thought that Triumph of the Crusaders was better anyway at level 4. Base 200 health gained per enemy killed... that is insane amounts of healing with proper healing modifiers. For example +15% from passive ability, +50% from the dawn priest blessing, +30% or so from might, power level boosts, the pet bonus, etc... Nothing else in the game comes anywhere near that kind of raw healing power. I have thought about using that spell with a monk who uses Rooting Pain. Then all you need is more health than the weakest enemy within an encounter. This can be helped by +10 CON from wounds, 20 starting CON with a dwarf, and Fit inspiration for an easy 35 CON without items. Add in stuff like Hylea's Bounty to increase you health total by another 25% and I wonder if there is any encounter where they will actually kill you before you kill them just by standing still and hitting one with a morning star to lower fortitude and help your rooting pains hit. As soon as one goes down, you gain some 350+ health and the next one will probably die shortly after that gaining you another 350+ health. The duration is base 60 seconds so it will last the whole encounter. That is way better than some minor accuracy bonus.

Yes, every wizard I have seen so far in 1.1 has it and loves casting it if you have any buffs on yourself. Granted, I have been trying to avoid wizard encounters so far. I am not sure if spell reflection blocks it or not. It targets will defense so if you can get that defense high enough to miss you, that could also work. Or maybe bait them into casting it and then use a drug afterward.

The sad part about the nerfs is that it really only hurts players who want to play the class the way it as intended. It doesn't really hurt min/max players since they don't need the extra damage. I have a monk/wizard I am currently playing who has sky-high defenses such that they never get hit ever. The damage nerfs don't hurt him at all except making combat take slightly longer. By nerfing the damage of wounds, Helwalker is now a "new player trap" because to make it worth while you have to min/max and exploit other bad design choices in the game, like never resting and stacking all the once-only powers you gain throughout the game that normally expire when resting. If you want to play the class as a normal bruiser, you are better off just using a standard monk instead of helwalker because the benefits simply don't out weight the penalties. Basically, the nerfs hit casual players the hardest and doesn't really solve the problem of difficulty for hardcore players.

If you ask me out of all Fighter abilities, which one was degenerate pre-1.1, I'd have said "Unbending Trunk" without a single second of hesitation. It's just a degenerate ability that turned you into an unkillable enemy, the kind that solos the Elder Fampyr Crypt with nothing but the AI and no pausing and no consumables. Unbending Trunk was stupidly strong. See all those defenses and damage reduction abilities and shields that you were investing in and using? I didn't need any of that. I didn't need engagement because I was the lowest deflection target on the battlefield so enemies charged me instead. I actually wanted enemies to crit my fighter so I could regen discipline and self-fuel my invulnerability. I was simply healing myself back to full every second, passively, and triggering all "on being crit" procs that I could find. I never tried it without chanter cheese, so you may be right. You are also right that it is intended for the polar opposite build... a fighter that focuses all on DPS and no defense at all. Part of what made it powerful was the fact you could kill enemies so fast the cleave mechanics so the low duration didn't matter. If you tried to use it now, particularly if soloing, I think you would run out of discipline before killing everything. Also, it is a late game power so you are relatively weak until you get it... in my opinion something you get that late should be really powerful. There are lots of ways to basically be invulnerable at that point in the game, even after all the nerfs. I am currently running a monk/wizard that literally never gets hit at all, not even grazed, because defenses are so high from abusing the never ending per-rest bonuses and never resting (along with all the other ways to increase defenses). That is even better than healing where you could get disabled or something and run out of duration or get interrupted. Also, that is good from pretty much the start of the game (as long as you avoid certain enemies until higher level that target fortitude).

While I agree the nerfing was pretty heavy-handed on fighter, I don’t think think the class is completely outclassed now in every way. People are only thinking about fighter as a DPS machine, but the defender stance can be quite good when synergized with other things. Granted, needs help from multi-classing to gain extra armor, defenses, and healing. But pretty much every class benefits a lot from multiclassing. Unbroken/goldpact can have armor such that all damage gets cut down to -75%, combined with the armor that reduces damage scaled with the number of engagements, and combined with the ring that buffs defenses based on engagements. Then add in a shield modal adding another 30-50% in resistances... and suddenly enemies are hitting you for next to nothing and can’t escape without taking heavy damage. Discipline can be used to pull ranged into your engagement area or charge can be used to reach the ranged at the start of battle. This play style has no need for DEX so you can just dump it since you are just a black hole holding enemies back. None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.