Clerith

Yeah. Some defensive buffs are nice with near instant cast time and no recovery, but a lot of the offensive buffs were nerfed, like DAoM is shiiit.

I've done this for DnD before. Yeah, I think I put 14 as my highest attribute. Average humans really are pretty average, 16+ would be very impressive and anything putting 18+ is probably lying. Name: Let's keep this private Race: Elf (given a choice, it's always elf) Class: Wizard Mig: 13 Con: 11 Dex: 8 Per: 11 Int: 14 Res: 9 Background: Scholar Clever: 2 Passionate : 2 Honest : 3 Benevolent: 0 Aggressive : 1 Deceptive : 1 Diplomatic : 2 Stoic: 3 Cruel : 1 Rational : 4 Something like that seems pretty accurate.

Boeroer said it very well. Difficulty and levels matter a lot. However, generally speaking, these are my rankings: 1. Wizard 2. Priest 3. Druid 4. Monk 5. Paladin 6. Ranger 7. Chanter 8. Cipher 9. Barbarian 10. Fighter 11. Rogue Basically, the top 3 (all traditional spellcasters) are the clear top 3, then the rest are extremely close to each other. Despite putting rogue in last place, I think it's a pretty good class. To be honest, I had real problems with the 6-11 placements. People who've beat the game solo with all the classes probably have the clearest image, or people who have rolled mains as every class. The classes that you choose to focus on really shine, while you could have some negative experiences from npcs or if you didn't know how to play the class optimally. So I think that people with <300 hours of play time will have very varying opinions.

If you have enough damage bonuses, the sabre's ridiculous base damage can scale so high that it's the best weapon, even if the enemy is slash resistant. Of course, that's usually late game, when whatever you do doesn't really matter. I think what I bolded is the crux of the matter. If your enemy is super resistant or immune to your damage type, of course you ought to switch your weapons, assuming you have a good backup pair. For PotD, you probably should. If you're lazy, then sure, pick a two damage type weapon and stick with it.

For cc, like stun and prone, fast weapon are nice, of course, but the go-to 1h dps weapon is sabre (highest base damage, average speed). The go-to 2h dps weapon is estoc (dr bypass). For dps, people like to lower the recovery as much as possible, so the weapon speed isn't as important as you might think. Basically, damage > dr bypass > speed when you want damage, generally speaking. The high speed, per and int on-hit cc build is another thing entirely, and even then, you pick the superior cc over weapon speed.

There are no working multiplayer mods, and there are zero intentions to add a co-op option in the future. The game's done, they said 3.0.3 was the last patch. Now, they might do a bugfix patch or something, but there's basically zero chance that they're developing something major for the game.

Main dps weapons (if I have a dual wielder, usually Bittercut or something) - if I'm unsure, check the character records, see which character has done the most damage and has a non-soulbound weapon, and enchant that guy's main weapon. As for armor, my tank's, of course.

Long Pain Monk is legit. Check the sticky, it should have a build for it.

You can play the game just fine without the expansions. They start as a sidequest that unlocks a new area in the world map. White March is its own region. They included level scaling with them, so if you go there after, say, beating the main story, you can, and upscale the levels to be appropriately challenging. The rewards are great, so try to go there as early as possible, but it's fine to do later. It's sort of its own story that only loosely connects to the main story but it does expand the world a great deal. Story-wise, they're meant to be done around halfway through the game and a bit later.

Imo it's obvious that dual wielding is better than one handed or two handed, especially with HoF now being per encounter. Full attacks, carnage and on-hit effects, the ultimate barbarian dual wield synergy. I like two handed the most, but I have hard time justifying it when compared to dual wield.

1) Wizard is one of the strongest classes. Your spells are limited, but powerful and impactful. You either have to play conservatively or rest frequently, but when you unleash your full power, it's a sight to see. A fully self-buffed melee wizard is insanely strong. There is no encounter that you can't solve by spamming your best spells. 2) Rogues take a lot of micro. They're squishy, so they attract enemies. The stealth mechanic in this game is kind of broken. Backstab is trash, way too much effort. Just rely on your Sneak Attacks to do damage. Stealh skill is the most useful on rogue, but it's still much worse than mechanics. And if you have a rogue, he'll probably be your mechanics monkey. Rogues do the highest sustained single target damage, but require a lot of babysitting and building the rest of your party around him. And yeah, as a ranged dps, ranger is better. 3) Fighters are good main tanks and offtank dps. You can even make them dual wield pure dps, but they're build to be sturdy. Monks are excellent tank and dps hybrids, but require micromanagement. They're one of the strongest classes atm. Barbarians are aoe monsters, but lack single target damage. You can build them as tanks, but they aoe goodness usually has everyone build them as dps, often with on-hit cc effects because, again, aoe. Paladins are the most defensive of the lot, with party support, healing and high saves, but you can also make a very solid dps build, thanks to stuff the expansions gave us. You're fine with two tanks or one main tank and one off tank. 4) Ciphers are mind mages. Expect good cc and damage. The npc companion is... average. Could be better, but serviceable. Ciphers work best in pairs, actually. Picking the cipher class also gives you the most class-specific dialogue in the game. Sounds like you might enjoy a cipher or a paladin tank. With cipher, you have infinite spells, tied to how much damage you do, so you build your cipher to do the maximum possible damage. Again, you usually pick whether you focus on cc or damage spells, both which are quite strong. You come with very high damage modifiers, and you're free to pick melee or ranged, both work fine. And you get a lot of roleplaying out of the class. Paladin tank is a very typical PC build. You put points into your conversation attributes, your paladin passive works best if you're the PC, and it's just a solid build. My favorite class is the wizard. Early on it's meh, but at middle levels you already feel op. It all comes down to how much you like the arcane casting and limited spells per rest style of play. But most of the board consider wizards very strong.

If you're looking to minmax int, the thing is, you either get a lot of it to make your durations last long, or you minimize it and avoid abilities with durations, if possible. If you're going 6 int, might as well reduce it some more and put points into con for survivability. Human is fine, Moon Godlike was amazing in vanilla, but the White March expansions have given us some amazing helms - like +4 might - that made having a helmet slot very valuable.

Yes, almost all the builds here assume that you already know the game inside out, especially the ones with spell holding item combos, like the ever popular Sanguine Plate and Shod-in-Faith combined with Resolve dumping for min/maxing. I'd honestly recommend Hard difficulty for a cprg veteran's first playthrough. PotD often assumes that you already have knowledge about the enemies, their attacks and weaknesses, the strategies to beat them, tactics that you learn as you play the game. It's possible for a first playthrough, but depending on how quick you get used to PoE's system, you might be yelling "unfair" and reloading a lot. As for the actual topic... yes. A lot of builds are viable for PotD. People slightly prefer estocs over greatswords, but there are excellent greatswords in the game, and available much earlier than the good estoc. Greatswords are probably the second best 2h weapons when it comes to straight dps, but they're the most flexible ones - when it comes to their damage types and effects. The good ones, as already mentioned, are Tidefall, a superb quality (requires level 12 to enchant yourself) weapon with draining (heals you for 20% of the damage you do) and wounding (dot on enemy) that can be obtained at level ~5. This is one of the best weapons in the game, with superior enchant, found super early. Great for frontliners because of the heal. It's almost like Carsomyr. The Hours of St. Rumbalt can be bought about as early as you can get Tidefall, and it can knock enemies prone when you crit them. When prone, enemeis are knocked on their backs and can't do anything. This is fairly good cc. And St. Ydwen's Redeemer makes you one-shot Vessels, one of the enemy types in the game and quite a bothersome one. Basically, there are good enough greatswords in the game to make a build out of. And fighter is good enough of a frontliner, even on PotD. If you're set on fighter (barbarian is quite interesting with carnage), you'll probably end up being some offtank dps hybrid.

Three melee is the max, imo. Even then, characters sometimes get stuck running futilely trying to reach the enemy and you have to micro them some. Two melee and a third with reach weapon is pretty much my limit.

Speaking about best spells in the game, imo it's Ninagauth's Shadowflame and Gaze of the Adragan. Shadowflame is just amazing. It's Fireball on steroids. Same good aoe, same fast cast speed, higher damage, and the amazing long paralyze effect. And it becomes per encounter in the end. The amount of mobs and bosses I nuked and perma cc'd with this is ridiculous. At least for the playthrough that I finished yesterday, this was my main dish. Shame about the freeze immune enemies in White March though. And then there's Adragan - even after the nerfs, petrify is still the supreme disable. Works against almost everything, completely shuts them down and makes them shatter like glass. I accidentally killed Thaos after I petrified him yesterday, I was supposed to just cc him but he died in a few seconds. Well, everything Boeroer said is true, I just wanted to praise Shadowflame some.

Attributes and defenses stack, but the rest don't. So con +2 or -5 will or deflection +5 stack, but attack speed, crit multi, wounding, lashes, etc don't and only work for that weapon. Hmm. Could it be said that everything that shows up in the character sheet stacks?

All right. Everything in this topic has convinced me to go for dual sabres. Still unsure about which sabre, but thankfully you can respec nowadays. With Time Parasite and including Vulnerable Attack to the build, I have a feeling Purgatory will be the winner. Thanks for the links, they were useful. Even if your math gave me a headache. I haven't done any in eight years, I need a calculator... lmao. Time Parasite, huh. Like I said, I haven't played Ciphers since 1.xx patch, so I have no idea how the high level powers actually work and feel like in combat. Starting every fight with Time Parasite - how's it feel? How fast can you get the focus? In a few seconds? Does it impact the fight too negatively, to not go for any cc in the opener? Basically, I'm asking how annoying it is to use. Is it additive or is it multiplicative with anything? If it's additive, you can have 3% recovery in plate and Vulnerable Attack, which sounds really strong. If it's multiplicative, no recovery whatsoever. IF my math holds true, lol. Right, it just came up in the dual wield dps discussion. I understand that it's not as great for Ciphers, and I've been conviced of the dual sabres anyways.

Nah, it took like 7 hours for my post to show up. I still have <5 posts, so a mod has to be awake to approve of my post before it goes through. Party synergy, huh. That's a massive topic. There are so many ways to build characters and have synergy that it's really, really hard to just give you the best party. It depends on your skill level, knowledge of the game, encounters and mechanics, difficulty plays a huge part, how much you micro, how often you want to use potions, scrolls and food, how often you want to rest... basically, it depends on too many factors. However, I think that you can't go wrong with a main tank (usually fighter), off tank (paladin for support or monk for dps), priest (buffs and heal for tough fights) and a ranged dps (ranger, cipher, rogue, wizard...). Wizards (and druids too) are insanely powerful later on if you're willing to rest. You can pretty much clear any encounter with just spamming all of your good spells. There is also a concept of "high attack speed tactics", like having all of your dps ranged with a bow/gun and using a chanter with the chant that increases ranged attack speed, or the same for melee with Pallegina buffing attack speed with Vidorio.

1) This forum probably has the most updated mechanics and theorycrafting discussion. The wiki is okay, but desperately lacking when it comes to the dlc content. Reddit isn't bad either. There is no magical site - you're going to have to google your questions, read a lot of topics and gather your own understanding of the game. A lot of the things I searched for I ended up coming to this forum for, so yeah. 2) This game has a ton of attribute requirements in conversations. Skills too, but nowhere as much. There is an idea of a "conversation pc", - only your pc's attributes and skills qualify for all the checks in the game. The most common checks are resolve, perception and intelligence. There are some might checks and a few dex and con ones too, but those are rarer. The main three stats lend themselves well to a cc tank or something, so paladin is a pretty popular class for pcs. As for skills, lore and survival come up the most. So decide - do you want your character to pass all the conversation checks for maximum rp, or do you just want to be good at killing mobs? After we know your preference, it's a lot easier to give build advice. Oh, and there are 11 companions, one for each class, so you don't have to make your pc anything. The rogue companion is probably the worst of the lot (combat-wise), though great for evil rp. Cipher pc has the most class-specific dialogue by far. 3) Not really. There are very few truly missable things, however. Mostly it comes down to which quest reward you get, which you should probably approach from a roleplaying perspective. Some quests have different rewards for picking different sides, and there are a bunch of times you have to choose a side. There are a lot of quest talents too. The wiki is probably the best? Check all the available talents, and if you have any doubts about a quest, check that too. Only those blasted ghosts really teleport to your backline. Yeah, they changed the enemy AI, and enemies are more likely to disengage from your tank and go after your squishies, but I barely noticed it, coming from 1.05 to the current patch. My tanks still tied up most of the enemies fine 80-90% of the time. Positioning on doorways, chokepoints and the like is still extremely effective. Nothing you could ever do to shades, though.

Looks like that might be true. I'll give it to Pillars, there are tons of ways to build your characters. Visually, I love clean 2h weapons on cipher, because of that sexy purple glow. But in the end, I have to go with the more effective option. I thought that dual Bittercuts outdamaged Annihilation sabres, however. Since Annihilation is only from the base damage of the weapon. Let's see, from that dual wield discussion earlier... dps affixes by Kaylon: "Wounding>>Lash>Speed>Annihilation in that order." Since corrode is an effective damage type and the SoD talent double dipping on the damage. Yeah it depends on the enemy, but on average, if Resolution and Purgatory are just as good, isn't that basically wasting a talent for a gimmick build? And giving up some healing from Purgatory too. Plate with Time Parasite, huh. Something I hadn't considered too much. I've only played ciphers in 1.x patches. How reliable way of figthing is that, casting a high level buff power after a few seconds every fight? And looks like I'll have reason to pick Vulnerable Attack at high level. I should have probably originally mentioned that personally, I was thinking about hard, not PotD. That tends to alleviate the melee squishiness problem a lot. But I do believe that the best approach to a cipher is to gain as much focus as possible, which for most most of the game is doing as much dps yourself as possible, so I believe that this is worth discussing.

I'm turning to the Obsidian boards since I can't find conclusive answers anywhere. So I'm looking to make my PC a cipher. I find ranged combat with bows incredibly dull, so I wanted a melee variant. My PC is going to be my most powerful, cared for, well equipped and micromanaged party member anyways, so I don't mind the melee micromanagement style. And melee should do more damage than ranged and generate more focus, so it's all well and good. However, what sort of melee? I'm not after attributes, I understand the damage or cc conundrum. But what weapons? Basically, which setup would allow a cipher to deal the maximum dps? Dual sabres, like Bittercuts, with corrosive lashes and Spirit of Decay? Or maybe an estoc, like Blade of the Endless Paths? And what about attack speed (or recovery or whatever you want to call it) - maybe I've just been obsessed with zero recovery builds lately, but is that something one should absolutely have? Incidentally, was the best dual wield dps option ever clearly decided? I've heard conflicting opinions about Bittercut, Resolution and Purgatory, Rimecutter, Drawn in Spring and some soulbound options that I'm not really considering. This is a duel Bittercut example that I was thinking about: Biting Whip Draining Whip WF: Ruffian Two Weapon Style Spirit of Decay Savage Attack Apprentice Sneak Greater Focus/whatever I'm not sure about vulnerable attack, since I was thinking about hitting the no recovery speed without any potions or scrolls. I absolutely detest using them. Regarding attack speed, or whatever it is called: it's my understanding that dual wielding with two weapon style, gauntlets of swift action and durgan steeled weapon and padded armor is enough for no recovery. I hope that's the case, the math confuses me in 3.0. If you care about attributes, skills and gear, high might, per, dex and int (whether you want damage or cc from your spells, and accuracy or animation speed from dex), 6 lore rest survivability, with gear like +4 might helm, +4 int ring, +4 per cloak, +4 dex boots, vengietta rugia or some robe, something something. Oh, and the bittercuts, naturally. Honestly, gear is so much down to preference. I wish someone told me what the best options were :D Then there's the estoc version. Biting Whip Draining Whip WF: Adventurer 2h style Savage Attack Apprentice Sneak Greater Focus Whatever I've thought about the estoc version a lot less than dual wield, and it shows. Basically idential talents, too. You need to use Time Parasite or consumable items to get no recovery, right? (I'm assuming that estoc is the best 2h option btw, maybe Tidefall early on) Maybe Outlander's Frenzy or something? I just can't help but to think that dual wield might be better. So, any suggestions, recommendations, mad attack speed math, armor help, anything at all would be very much welcome.