dgray62

This looks like a fun party, @omgFIREBALLS! Thanks for sharing this, and also for your excellent Waukeen's Berth mod, which made the game much less frustrating.

You're right, investing in Enlighted Agony is a good idea for a berserker ravager. And I suppose that Blood Storm is probably more impactful than Spirit Frenzy in the long run, since I'd definitely want to get Stunning Surge as well.

Ah, you're right. And if you were going with Spirit Frenzy you'd stagger yourself, too. So, if you want to go with rooting pain and spirit frenzy (for even more FORT debuffing) you'd need to mitigate confusion with DoC breastplate, drugs or food. Or you could skip Rooting Pain and go with Blood Frenzy/Blood Storm. I think the latter would be better, for faster wound regeneration and healing as well as the nice raw DoT from Blood Frenzy/Blood Storm. Do you agree, @Boeroer?

For tough single targets like megabosses I think I would go with a tankier berserker/forbidden fist build. You wouldn't get the automatic wound generation from frenzy raw damage. Rather, the high RES of a FF build would mean you'd get very little self-damage from frenzy. Instead, you could alternate FF attacks (which would proc attacks from Sara Sichr due to swift flurry/heart beat drumming) with Efficient Anguish attacks, and you'd get back your wound when the FF curse expires after a few seconds. You could throw in rooting pain for constant interrupts as a bonus. I think I'm going to try this, as I have yet to play a Ravager with Sara Sichr.

Don't you need a melee weapon to use Clean Sweep or Clear the Path? I thought that they wouldn't be available for a mortar build.

I personally prefer Bellowers. You feel the impact of the their +PLs in the first fights on the ship and on the beach, in that you're much more likely to crit and one shot foes with the Thrice/Her Revenge invocation. Personally, I prefer bellowers with a melee multi class; when you're up on the front line the smaller chant radius doesn't matter much. And my favorite chants with this sort of build, Thick Grew their Tongues and The Long Night's Drink, don't work well with Brisk Recitation.

There are many mods that add cool new items. Worth exploring if you're interested in tweaking the game a bit.

The nice thing about the troubadour/psion mix is that you can rapidly generate resources on both sides, and pretty much alternate casting between the classes. Bellowers regenerate phrases more slowly, but hit with greater oomph. Personally, I prefer multi classing bellower with melee classes, such as barbarian or monk. Probably the best combo is a bellower/barbarian (berserker, mage slayer or fury shaper), wielding Blightheart, which gives you +1 phrase per kill, dramatically increasing your phrase regeneration, while the Barbarian gives you faster speed due to Bloodlust and Bloodthirst. You can really crank out devastating invocations with this build.

I'd recommend making #5 a cantor, and specifically a Forbidden Fist cantor, such as @Not So Clever Hound's FF cantor build. Cantors are fun in general as you noted, but the reason I recommend this is the Forbidden Fist attack, which you can spam with the right build and afflict your foes with the enfeebled affliction. This is, by the way, the very best way IMO to eliminate the tankiest fighters you'll encounter, since it shuts down all their incredible healing from unbending trunk, which can otherwise pretty much out heal the damage you inflict. Alternately, you could do something else with #5 and make #4 a steel garrote/FF.

I agree. Energized is otherwise impossible to get for most classes, without Strand of Favor cheese. For that reason I too almost always do the Slayer's path to get it, unless I'm playing a cipher melee MC in which case the Seeker's Fang is even better.

To add to the paralysis, @Constentin Lévine's suggestion of a monk + chanter is an excellent idea. I have really enjoyed playing cantors. If you're interested, I'd suggest you check out @Powerotti's Rumbling Boar build. One cure for the paralysis is to replay the game multiple times, something I've been doing for the past few years.

You might consider poison/blood mage, so that you'll have renewable resources for both classes. As for the helwalker/ancient, you'll want high PER and DEX to facilitate spell casting. You can keep STR and INT flat since you'll get the nice +10 from helwalker. You can dump RES if you want, but I'd personally keep it flat too. You might want to boost CON a bit too so that you're not one-shotted by crits. As for streetfighter, it is a rather fiddly class and is not my favorite to play. The easiest way to do streetfighter is to use the blunderbuss modal to get flanked. You might consider the streetfighter/priest of wael build that @thelee included in their excellent guide.

Alternately, you can use an axe in the main hand, and Tuotilio's Palm in the off hand, with both modals on. The idea is that you won't really be auto attacking, but will mainly be attacking with the FF attack, alternating with other attacks if you multi-class (soul annihilation, etc.). When you crit with these attacks, with swift flurry and heartbeat drumming there's a good chance you'll get a full attack with your weapon sets without the recovery penalty from the modals. When you do, the axe modal will apply a DoT. With the small shield modal, you'll get +15 ACC to your next attack whenever you're missed in combat, which will happen often, since you'll have the shield, the shield weapon style plus the bonus to DEF from balanced shield, which will be +10 most of the time, since using the FF attack costs no wounds so long as you wait for the FF curse to expire, which happens very quickly with max RES and Clarity of Agony.

A FF/trickster with max RES is extremely tough and very deadly. You can go unarmed initially, and can later wield some of the fun toys like the Magran's Favor axe or the Seeker's Fang rapier. Heralds are always useful, and troubadour/psion is extremely useful in the tougher battles, as noted above. For the ultimate in CC, try a SC ascendant dual wielding Current's Rush/Frostfall. See @Constentin Lévine's build for more info. I was just playing it, and once you get Shared Nightmare it's incredible; a single crit with the scepter can lead to a cascade of procs of High Tide from Current's Rush that wipes out every enemy on the screen, except perhaps the boss who's crippled with multiple afflictions with agonizingly long durations. Of course, they'll be dead long before they expire.....

To follow up on @Boeroer's excellent advice, Bloodmage/soulblade is also great for a very powerful and durable melee/caster hybrid. @Shai Hulud posted a great build for this combo, if you're interested. For melee, IMO SC Forbidden Fist or any FF multi class, such as FF/steel garrote, FF/soulblade, FF/trickster, is great. It's my favorite melee subclass, due to its durability and tremendous damage output.

Thanks @thelee. I think I'm going to skip Wounding Shot and the upgrade, but I will grab Stunning Shots. Seers have such high accuracy there's no need for accurate wounding shot, I think.

Transcendents with Soulblade are great overall, and are particularly great with SP or FF subclasses if you're using Community Patch.

After playing various Forbidden Fist multi classes over the past two years (using a mod that raises the lvl cap to 33, so you can eventually hit PL 9 with both classes), I thought I wanted to try playing a Ascendent/ranger MC using Current's Rush and Frostfall. The only thing is, I've never really played rangers before. It's clear that they have some amazing passives like Driving Flight and Survival of the Fittest that would be great with Current's Rush, as well as some essential actives like Marked for the Hunt, Hunter's Claw, Heartseeker and Concussive Tranquilizer. I guess Twinned Shot would be good too, when you can spare the bond points. I'm wondering if Accurate Wounding Shot is worth the two ability points, or if Stunning Shots is worth it, since it no longer actually stuns, as it did in POE1.

Soulblade/forbidden fist is also extremely powerful combo and very fun to play. It is one of my favorite melee MC combos. Very tanky with high RES and capable of devastating attack combos. With max RES you can pretty much alternate the forbidden fist and soul annihilation attacks, and take out most foes in a few hits.

If you play on PotD, SC Fury druids are very powerful, since all the added PEN really helps at harder difficulties. I played it wielding effort top take advantage of the avenging storm trick Boeroer mentioned. No need to worry about the lack of healing, as you can get Taste of the Hunt, to use whenever a bit of healing is needed.

For PC users at least. We MAC users are still waiting.....

Thanks. The interrupter chanter is probably the best build, so long as you have high PER or accuracy from another source.

What chanter phrases do you use with your Troubadour, @mjo2138? Troubadour is a great subclass, but it seems to me that some chants benefit from brisk recitation (such as offensive ones so they'll proc more often), while others benefit from the extra long linger, like the defensive or beneficial chants. I usually end up not going with troubadour because I get paralyzed with indecision regarding which chants to use, and whether or not to use the brisk recitation modal. Any advice would be welcome.

A FF monk/stormspeaker MC build is very fun, although only possible if you use mods.

Yes, the focus generation is amazingly fast late game. I really think psion is optimal for caster MC builds.