whimper

Sounds like we need someone who knows a lot about this game to post a Geomancer build...

Just to get clear on the project, it looks like Method 1 would assign “(s0), (w0)” to all of the immunity to afflictions benefits, because they don’t add anything to spell and weapon damage. Is that what you intended?...

Yeah, that +1 armor pet is awesome for armor stacking builds.

You might consider a Paladin/Trickster multiclass. Very good offense, fantastic defense, lots of abilities (with two classes to get abilities from), and party-friendly with the Paladin aura.

Obviously a lot depends on what kinds of things you find fun, and what kinds of things you find irritating. But here are a couple more data points from another perspective. Given how slow reload times are, I find having to reload all the time pretty annoying. So I tend to like parties that are tactically robust — that is, aren’t usually micro intensive in a “you have to reload if you make a mistake” kind of way. If you’re doing one playthrough, doing all of the companion quests is fun. So having builds that aren’t too dependent on one another (so you can swap em out for each other) is a plus. Given all that: For MC, some Paladin/Rogue combo or Paladin/Helwalker combo is nice. High offense, but not so fragile that you need to babysit it all the time. Also party friendly with the Paladin aura. (If you want full glass cannon, though, guildwriter's suggestion of a Helwalker/Streetfighter will give you that. But a bit too fragile for my tastes, especially on PotD.) For one playthrough, I’d generally recommend single classing companions, so you get a chance to play around with the top level abilities. Two exceptions are Eder (who is great as a Swashbuckler) and Pallegina (who is great as a Herald). As others have said, Tekahu is probably someone you’ll want as part of your typical party rotation because of his great Druid subclass. Getting wizard blasting spells with enemy only AOEs is amazing, and he has a bunch of nice healing abilities to keep your party standing as well. I personally find blasting Wizards irritating to play in parties (though fun in solo runs), because of all the micro needed to not roast your own characters. If you find this irritating, you’ll probably want to avoid having Aloth be a part of your typical party rotation. Serafen’s Cipher subclass has some annoying features. So if you make him a Cipher, I’d probably avoid leaving him out of the typical party rotation (just use him for his sub quests and pirate-themed areas). Hope that helps!

It’s true that single class Paladin probably isn’t worth it. But single class Barbarian can be great.

The soul mirror’s stats are set when you enter the arena, before the fight starts. So if you unequip everything before entering the arena, and then equip stuff before the fight starts, you’ll be much better than your soul mirror. (That’s how I handled this fight in my solo run.)

Now I feel guilty... this is exactly what I did in my solo run... : P

Huh, weird. I did this part before going to the stacks, and I don’t recall getting a wound. (Though I wasn’t doing a no-rest run or anything, so I just might not have noticed because it wasn’t a big deal.) I was definitely able to make the flesh constructs friendly before going into the stacks, though.

IIRC, you don’t need to bother getting the manual if you have a high Mechanics skill.

If you tickle the gland in the organic device, you can get the flash constructs on your side. In my solo run, I made the flash constructs friendly, and then lured the frightened child + companions out into the room with lots of flash constructs, which joined in the fight. That made things a lot easier.

I’ve also managed this fight with a Holy Slayer (Goldpact/Streetfighter). I agree that this is the easiest of the four megaboss fights. It’s the only one I’ve managed to solo with a Holy Slayer without using the “gouging strike and then hide” tactic.

I’ll second that.

Just finished, and I think this is my favorite DLC, by a fair margin. Lots of fun lore, and chances to interact with big name players in the game. And a cool premise and plot thread. I enjoyed them all, but overall, I think I’d rank them: FS > BoW > SSS.

With the severe weapon nerfs, I think the "burn" part doesn't trigger reliably enough to build a character around. The paladin/monk combo in general is still very good though.

I don’t think single class monk is weak at all. Unlike some classes, Monk has nice PL8 and PL9 powers. So if that’s what you find most appealing, I’d go for that.

As of the latest update, enemy Arcane Dampners still make me drug crash. I haven’t noticed any crazy pulling after the latest update; seems more or less the same as in the initial game?

The high Might allotment is interesting, given all of the passive damage boosts rogues get. But I guess in this set up you also want Might to boost Cleric AOE, healing spells, and rogue DoT effects?

I'd certainly be interested in seeing a guide on this. I'm partial to solo runs, and this is quite different from the kinds of solo runs I've tried. What did you go with stat-wise?

Yes, pet and summons are considered allies but you can replace the stalker with the unbroken and achieve the same armor rating. Also you can achieve higher resists vs each damage type using various items.Man, pets still deactivate this? I thought that they reported that they’d fixed that bug. EDIT: Lone Champion appears to work for me with a pet. But it does turn off near summons.

Interesting. Do you think single-class barb does better than a devoted/barb multiclass (given that one's focusing on the morning star)?

Ok, solo is a different matter because you can't take care of them all at the same time. But with a party of five that fight was among of the easiest in my SSS runs. I wondered whether this fight would be a lot easier with a group, so it’s interesting to hear that confirmed. (Given the powerful regeneration effects and defenses they all have up at the start of the fight, it takes me a while to take down the first of them. It gets progressively easier after that, though. So with a party to focus fire with, I can imagine this fight going a *lot* faster.)

Yeah, the silent five fight was the hardest fight in my solo run through SSS. Carefully timed reflects, via spells or consumables, is the best counter. With luck, you can get them to tag themselves with the disintegrate, and take themselves out.

I'm going for a SC troubadour. Thoughts? Curious to hear about this myself. I did 1/2 a solo upscaled PotD run with a single class Troubador, focused on empowered Old Nary’s and Summons, and found it painful going. Even with a large shield and heavy armor, I felt very squishy, and could quickly get taken down if I couldn’t get my summons up in time. Also, I felt like in fights against kith targets I was constantly getting interrupted. (I know you can use an item and carry an injury around to avoid this, but I was trying to avoid that style of play...) Not sure whether I just needed to invest a lot more in defensive stats (I had an 8 Res and 8 Con), or whether I should have been using a lot more consumables, or whether I was just playing things poorly. But while I found it to be pretty fun when everything worked out right, there were a number of fights where things wouldn’t. Overall, it felt much more finicky, fragile, and beholden to RNG than (say) my Holy Slayer.

Without using cheat codes, I believe there isn’t any way to change your stats. So unlike PoE1 in this respect, unfortunately. :/