Clerith

Afaik both upgrades are meh, the third tier blood is okay while the third tier spirit is meh again. Initially I thought that spirit would be better, but turns out that most builds use blood. Alternatively, just never upgrade Frenzy, that's fine too.

Soloing is an acquired taste and the gameplay difference takes some getting used to, you can't facetank a group until later when you're powerful. Abuse everything (stealth, summons, consumables, pulling) early. You switch to another set of weapons (hey dual sabres how I missed you) for fire immune. For enemies who become immune near death, idk, run away until the buff ends? You can probably dispel it somehow. Can you craft Death Ring scrolls? Amulet is greater health/+2 resolve/bone setter's torc for extra hit to crit and healing. Boots is random resolve garbage like the beach sandals early, boots of stone for res, dex, might resist, then there are +2 dex and increased healing sandals somewhere. There are some good gloves, +2 might and prone on crit you can buy in Neketaka. Get the Devil of Caroc's breastplate for +2 Zeal asap, and you get more Zeal as you level up, it gets pretty smooth later on.

True, Wizard sucks early. It's kinda traditional, I'm very used to it. I'll allow it. It's always challenging to make tier lists if you consider the average of low, mid and high levels, and how impactful those stages are. For example, a class that is powerful early but becomes mediocre later could be considered top-tier by some (early game is the hardest, nothing matters everything is op later) and mid-tier by others (early game is over fast, power peak at high levels is the true power where classes should be rated). Wizard is something that is worth raising early and with a good build blooms early mid-game and completely destroys late-game, which makes it top-tier for me, even with the weak start. But the same weak start will definitely make some people rate it high-tier at best, and mid-tier if they don't know how to play it, but that's another bag of worms.

My first PC was a Devoted Fighter multiclassed with a Soul Blade Cipher. I never got hit by much of anything due to all the free stats. So was mine, and I thought it was powerful, until I tried some of the actually powerful multiclasses like Fighter/Monk. And 1.1 significantly nerfs Fighter and Soul Annihilation. RIP that build, glad it was my first. Now it's mediocre at best.

Did you reall just rate Shieldbearers (best Paladin, death immunity for a good while) in the same tier as Darcozzi (situational and mediocre flame shield) in the same tier? Shieldbearers and Bleak Walkers were the go-to Paladin orders, and 1.1 nerfed Bleak Walkers but left Shieldbearer immortality untouched, afaik? Base Wizard is also high tier at least. Paladin (Shieldbearer)/multiclass, Monk, Wizard, Berserker/multiclass are top tier if you ask me.

Vigorous Defense and Armored Grace make Fighters now a secondary class to a heavy armor tanky martial class, I guess. They bring +20 defenses buff, hit conversion buff, recovery speed buff. Something useful from a stance. Instead of being the main star, they're now the backup support to a better martial class.

No.

Any point? Some extra loot, that's about it. Ship combat is extremely simple once you understand it. There are two ideal ways to go about it - max speed forward and board, and 5x Double Bronzer guns for 80-120 damage per volley. If the enemy ship is in ideal cannon range and you have stopped, good cannoneers should have 100% hit chance. The idea behind sinking is that it gives you much more exp, so you can get a maxed out crew at level 5 or something, and go sink those level 15+ ships for superior and legendary loot or that unique item you really want early, when your combat level is still very low.

I run Eder as my main tank, usually as fighter/rogue, and I have regretted making him a 1h+shield character. This was on 1.02, but shields were completely unnecessary, my Eder never dropped below 70% HP after the first levels on PotD, dual wield would have tripled his damage. But now for 1.1 shields were buffed, PotD is a looot harder, and Fighter's Charge was nerfed, so... I might make him a 1h + shield for PotD, even though I'm unhappy with that, lol. I'm pretty sure that dual wielding will be better than shield on PotD at high levels, though. Early that extra deflection from the shield might be necessary for survival, but later you have your Fighter defensives to be extremely tanky even naked, so dw for more damage to finish fights faster, especially with all the rogue full attacks.

I can recommend some sort of mobility item (boots, helmet) with a dash or jump or charge for the Herald, since that is its only weakness imo (no mobility skills). This is sort of personal preference, but I just got so used to Charging everywhere with my fighters that playing a Herald can feel slow as molasses. Seven Nights is a really cool skill, and I'm actually pretty excited to use it. Also pretty flavorful RP for my Pale Elf character (white worms -> ice nights chants).

I imagine it'll still be pretty good (I just finished my Fighter/Monk playthrough today), but pure Monk might be better.

Yes, considering they deleted the Brilliant inspiration from the game. DW is still probably going to be better than 2h even with Charge turned into a primary attack. You just do less damage wih Fighter stuff and need to find a new Invocation to use. Gearing for max Discipline should be good (Devil of Caroc armor, gloves of discipline, reap the whirlwind talent).

Fighter (Devoted) / Rogue (no subclass). Assassin is not for a tank, I already said I don't like Streetfighter (too limiting conditions), and Trickster is okay but I'd rather do more melee damage, also when the battle starts I'd rather charge/run in first and get aggro instead of staying back trying to cast spells. Also casting spells is not a great idea when you're engaging multiple enemies in melee.

If you're going to use the console to add subclasses, might as well give him two. My favorite swashbuckler build for Eder would be a devoted/rogue tank/dps hybrid, but if you want a pure tank, unbroken/streetfighter is definitely worth experimenting with for the new PotD. Streetfighter is definitely a personal preference subclass, that playstyle and micromanagement isn't for everyone.

I'm eyeballing either single class monk or wizard. It could be yet another martial multiclass, but I've just had two back to back playthroughs of those. I want to shoot awesome purple missiles all over the place, or enjoy the amazing unarmed combat animations... not sure yet. Some paladin or chanter build could also be okay, shame I don't like any of the paladin orders. Hey @Voltron, what makes Herald your number one? I've played Pallegina as one, and she was good but nothing amazing.

Sort of. Fighter gets +20 defense against int, per, con afflictions, while Paladin gets +20 against res, dex, mig. All 6 covered, but not really split into body and mind. Also, these are increased defenses, not actual resist. PotD Fampyr will still dominate you through that. Boots of Stone give might resist. There are a number of necklaces that give con resist. Gwyn's Marital Band or something. Devil of Caroc's armor for all phys or all mind resists, though apparently that's getting nerfed in 1.1.

Not everybody opts in for the beta patches. It won't be officially released in a week+.

Here's my latest 100% completion playthrough. Watcher: 252k - dw devoted/shattered pillar Eder: 23k - fighter/rogue Xoti: 6k - priest Aloth: 60k - wizard Pallegina: 18k - paladin/chanter A few notes. I controlled my Watcher 90% of the time, hence the ridiculous damage distribution. Also, the build was grossly overpowered. I loved it. Having Eder with a shield was a mistake. Next time I do the build, I'll go dual wield. He never dropped below 80% anyways. Xoti was the heal/buff bot, Aloth was good but **** AI wizards just casting ice spells all over your own party. I was too lazy to micromanage him outside of the opening move, and never bothered to set up my own AI. Pallegina... probably could have done more, but she was there to buff the party and be another frontliner. I noticed that a lack of a mobility skill like Charge really hurt the dps, my Watcher just killed everything before she could run to melee range.

Yeah, it's great and looks amazing. Enjoy it before it gets nerfed in the 1.1 patch.

It's worth noting that Raw damage is a lot less powerful in Deadfire than it was in Pillars. In Pillars Raw damage (almost) always did more damage in comparison to non-Raw damage due to there (usually) being a DR value to bypass. In Deadfire, if you have enough Penetration, non-Raw damage does full damage just like Raw, and if you can over penetrate it actually does more damage than Raw (Raw damage attacks can't over penetrate). Given how easy it is to reach full penetration against most enemies, this negates the benefit of Raw damage in a lot of cases. I get the feeling Obsidian didn't take this into account when setting Raw damage values. There are a couple of unique weapons that do Raw damage, and they have significantly lower base damage than their non-Raw counterparts. This made a lot of sense in Pillars where you could face enemies like Adra Beetles which had at least 9 DR and, often, 18+ DR, but in Deadfire it makes a lot less sense. True, elemental damage is better than raw when overpenetrating, especially in the case of weapon lashes, but you're not going to be overpenetrating with Dragon Thrashed much.

A LOT of the gear with "x% chance to cast ability y on hit" are bugged and show 0%, but actually work.

Yeah, when I was thinking about it earlier, I thought 10-15 base would be good. It's a passive big foe only aoe, which makes it super convenient and therefore the damage can't be too big, but you gotta keep those 100+ charges and wizard aoes that clear encounters in a matter of seconds. You also gotta keep in mind how far you can boost it with all the fire power level stuff. I'd be pretty happy with it if it did 25-30 damage per tick at max level max gears.

I don't even mind if they delete Swift Flurry from the game, Lightning Strikes is extremely strong.

I don't remember the name, but... the kraken drops a helmet with +2 int, raw dmg on weapon attacks from stealth, and twice per rest dash that also does poison dmg.

My current MC has done like 75% of the damage in the whole party. I'll post the logs once I hit no return on my latest playthrough, but it wasn't pretty for everybody else last time I checked.