jazzthing

You don't need to fight anything in the cave. Invest your points into stealth and stealth through everything in Port Maje. After that you can do a lot of quests without fighting (there is a thread "growing strong without fighting" for solo players somewhere here). You are Level 15 pretty fast and everything will be a lot easier.

The Hand of Doom Build from @Powerotti. Sorry for the confusion. I am doing a solo run with it and it's one of the strongest solo builds I tried so far.

I played this build to Level 20 and tried some of the harder fights (Nemnok, Splintered Reef) and it gets annihilated. The normal content is not a problem, the build is strong. But it lacks the will defense to resist the spell that turns you into a pig. I think with borrowed instincts you get to 180+, but at some point I miss it and the mages turn me into a pig and I die quickly. It's still a strong and fun build, no doubt. If you have more patience then me, you might get through the hard fights. For me personally, the Doomfist Build is way stronger. I also found the lack of actionspeed and recovery hurting this build. I guess you can solve it with items (Conquerers Plate etc.) and/or drugs and food.

I guess you use a SC chanter. Chanters kind of jack of all trades master of none. Except summoning. They are the kings of summoning. I haven't tried Bellower yet, usually I use the mighty Troubadour. You can use the chanter as Off-Healer, Buffer (Brilliant!), summon some help or keep him as a ranged attacker as you are doing it. Chanters are very flexible and can save a lot of situations. It seems you don't need that flexibility right now

A Melee-focused Skald works great as Enoch pointed out. You may want to use "... And the Killer frooze stiff" to support your party and get even more phrases and use "Thrice.." to clean up the rest.

They do. That doesn't matter much on Veteran though as resistances and mob HP are relatively low compared to upscaled PotD. If you want more power levels on your spells, use the Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff or Sun&Moon.

I finished a Solo PotD Run (without Megabosses, at least now) with a Troubadour/Bloodmage. It was pretty smooth run because they compliment each other really well. Troubadour is still the best Subclass, if you want to play with a full team a skald would to it as well. On stats drop Resolve and some Con and max Per. Distribute the rest between Might and Dex. Take the summon invocations if you play solo or duo or take the damage/support invocations for a group. Be aware that you need to be in melee range for the lightning invocation. Use the wizard side for selfbuffs, debuffs and all the good damagespells. Don't forget spellshaping for the Pl bonus. The lightning invocation hits like truck with it.

Just a quick off-topic question regarding the Tactician/Skaen some are talking about: is there a way to reliably trigger Brilliance with it?

I second that. After Boeroer posted a lot of interesting builds for PoE1 he now keeps them all for himself. I guess there are no more nerfs, so you can start posting mate!

SC Monk is very strong, no doubt. I think Bloodmage/Troubadour and Bloodmage/Priest are not far behind.

Right now I play a similar build Bloodmage/Troubadour. I forgot about the "Set to their purpose" nerf and was quiet disappointed. Anyway, it's still a strong build and with Blood Sacrifice you can get random spells back, so it's worth it.

After finishing my Solo-PotD run with a single class Troubadour I'm looking for a new class to start TCS. How good is the Warlock solo? I guess the limited spells will hurt early on.

Playing a single class Berserker right now and having a blast. I maxed Might and Con. With absurdly high health and armor the barbarian can take a beating while beating the crap out of enemies. Single class is fine if you can't decide which way to go multiclassing. Heart of Fury is worth it.

Skald combined with Rogue, Fighter or Barbarian (all Crit a lot) is actually really good - mid game. Early game crits are rare (on PotD), so the Skald is more of a latebloomer. Then again, in my test my party killed so fast that I rarely used more then two invocations. For me every specialization has pros and cons and should be used with different goals and in different combinations. Only the bland chanter falls off a bit.

I started a solo run and there is no need to fight the beasts. You can skip the encounter and go directly downstairs. In my group run, I used split pulls and druid charm. Both net the same result.