jakesmurf

MC - I feel like this char is gonna be pretty weak. Cipher and Ranger are two of what I consider to be the weakest classes in the game, personally. Marginally above Druid and Priest, but pretty weak. Cipher does have a couple OP spells above tier 7 but you'll basically have beaten the game before you hit that stride, and you'll never get the best abilities as a multiclass. Ascendant becomes gradually better as the game goes later but I personally think Cipher spells kinda blow and Cipher is more about whip damage than anything, and Ascendant has lower whip damage unless ascended. Ranger just doesn't offer a lot imo and Ghost Heart has to summon every combat start. Paladin/Chanter - Both very strong classes. Make sure you have enough INT that your chants actually reach everyone, though, because being in the middle of the party risks failing to buff everybody. Paladin and Chanter are both pretty strong healers imo so should be fine in that regard. Eder - Fighter is strong. Can't really go wrong there. Rogue has decent damage with deathblows. I would go 1hand+shield, personally. There are some really great shields and no daggers that really speak to me, as far as uniques go. Aloth - Fighter doesn't get you much if you're planning to chain cast spells. Fighter aloth is probably most useful as a tank because Wizard gets some insane selfbuffs. If you're chain casting then melee attacks get you nothing. The crit conversion discipline might be better than power levels for a CCer, since CC crits have extended duration. I think that works properly? Weapon doesn't matter if you're chain casting. If you're planning to melee, I would try using the summoned weapons. They're pretty strong. Takehu - Druid is very meh but I understand the appeal. If it were me I'd take pure Monk Xoti for DPS or something. That'd probably leave you over budget for melee chars though.

Frostseeker is one of the best bows in the game if you want to abuse the GAMEBREAKING ability Swift Flurry and don't care about using a mechanic that probably wasn't intended to generate infinite instaneous damage. Once it gets going it will make the game extremely boring. You will one shot entire encounters of enemies on every difficulty. If you like playing games with no challenge just to break the system then Frostseeker + Swift Flurry is for you. If you want to actually enjoy the combat system in the game then don't. You can use Frostseeker without Swift Flurry but it's pretty much just an average bow with a meh AOE damage radius on crit. It's not bad, but it doesn't do a lot either. Has a nifty special animation when it fires, though. Fortunately it's somewhat viable because of the way they changed the armor system, but it applies damage from active abilities and some passives weirdly so it's not what I would consider an amazing weapon on it's own, either. The main reason people cite Frostseeker a lot is because it's really the only alternative to the Blunderbuss for the gimmick Swift Flurry build because it generates a lot of hits. It's weaker than Kitchen Stove / Fire In The Hole for a Swift Flurry build, but stronger than most other ranged weapons. Personally though, I don't recommend it. I tried a Swift Flurry run and abandoned it halfway through because it's essentially the same experience as if you had given yourself 100000 might via console. It's effectively cheating, even if the game allows it through poor design.

Uhhh, this is super easy to do on a boss. I tried a swift flurry build on my first playthrough and started a different run after I 1 shot the kraken while triple-red-skull underleveled on POTD.

Nalpacza is probably the strongest monk subclass, and monk is probably the strongest class overall in the game... so... probably TOO viable?

Actually get flanked? Target yourself with an ability that inflicts a flanked status e.g. distracted? Blunderbuss probably the easiest way though.

I've tried it both ways and personally I don't think taking a wizard specialization is worth it. 1 power level is really not worth losing access to 50% of wizard spells, and the evocation multicast passive is too unreliable to matter much. Maybe if you're running a mod that reduces subclass penalties or they buff evocation to lose access to 1 school instead of 2, or +1 power level maybe, or give it a flat action speed buff with evocation spells, but for now I think just having access to something like chill fog is worth losing 1 power. Also, I'm not convinced that max dex is worth the int dump. Short inspirations, small aoes, etc doesn't seem worth.

Pretty simple, really. Started doing a "murder literally everyone" run through for ****s and giggles. Murdered Silvia in Port Maje. Pop the door to the cell to murder Rum-Dumb Riggere. He thanks me for saving him. I murder him too (and literally everybody else, yay!). I notice later that he's still a crew member on my ship. Totally ruins my murder everyone experience. There are people who will survive the Deadfire Purge! ARGGHHHH

I think I would be OK. Combined with monk, frostseeker deals pierce + ice + fire dmg. I don't think enemies with all 3 immus exist in the game. Even so, I can always pause the game and kill the process before its too late. While I agree that Frostseeker deals enough damage types you can probably do damage, I'm not sure you can pause in time to stop it. For me it was basically instantaneous with the blunderbuss. It still threw a few frames but the game was not giving me any feedback. CTRL+ALT+DEL pretty much the only option, lol

I don't want to tear down your build, but Swift Flurry being broken as hell is widely known. I think you should rename the post to "In case you haven't heard, this is how you gimmick build". I didn't follow the forums either until after launch. I thought Swift Flurry would be neat, decided more hits would make it work more reliably, built the thing around the Blunderbuss. I killed that playthrough when I 1 shot a major boss with like 50 crits in one long Swift Flurry proc chain. In an amusing turn, though, there were some treant type enemies? somewhere that were apparently immune to physical damage, and that encounter crashed my PC because it kept generating crits + more shots infinitely but they didn't actually take damage, so it generated n+1 projectiles on my screen and my vidya card gave up.

I'm sure it would work fine. Wizards can be very powerful melee combatants because they have access to a LOT of self-buffs with martial purposes, especially things deflection related from Illusion. I would suggest that you plan that build more around using a summoned weapon though (there's a bunch of them in Wizard). You cannot melee attack AND cast spells at the same time, so casting nukes from melee range doesn't really do much unless you just want to absorb damage.

All I know is that I made a 5 beckoner party / 1 troubador party and they cleared POTD so fast it was laughable (to be fair there were 2 paladins multiclassed in there somewhere). I've had a beckoner and troubador (yes, both) in every run I've done so far and they're both great for what they are. Beckoner summons rarely die and have never despawned on me in POTD, I guess if you're playing a super defensive party that takes a while to finish enemies this might be an issue though. The small size is useful because they need to swarm around things. Double the amount of half-sized bodies is still roughly the same amount of body blocking potential. My only thing is that I think the middle dragons (I don't remember the name) are much better than Ogres, even being a tier lower. I had a lot of issues with ogres (slowly) gathering around an enemy and not attacking for what felt like a long time, whereas the middle dragon summon throws out it's fire breath AOE poor man's fireball the instant it spawns, which is nice utility. P.S. try the 6 chanter party. At least for a little bit. Summoning a screen full of the small dragons and their ranged attack spam is kind of hilarious. P.P.S.: You might not have given it much thought but I think the stride chant is super useful for a summoner because the summons can move between enemies a lot faster.

I'm planning on trying a Ranger/Rogue blunderbuss sort-of-solo POTD build. I'll actually probably use companions but I won't micro them and will set them to autolevel / default AI etc. Just to have them for the story etc. I suspect they'll die a lot and be largely useless. Anyway, I'm looking for ideas of ways to apply sneak-attack/deathly blows qualifying status effects. Preferably passively with on-hit / on-crit / on-kill / on something else proc effects or auras but open to other suggestions. Would also prefer that it not be a weapon slot item because I have intentions for those already, and that it work with ranged weapons. TL;DR; Are there any gloves/armors/rings/etc that can apply sneak attack qualifying status effects "for free" somehow? I've tried looking at the wiki but it's largely unfinished right now.

Yea, you have about 20% chance to see one or the other total. Since it hits twice with driving flight you see it do the split every other hit. Though it triggering 8 times doesn't happen every fight, you see 4-5 triggers often and very quickly cunks high health enemies. The drawback is the reload time unfortunately. It's not 100% reliable, but procs enough to be helpful. Combo this with Kitchen Stove in the other hand. Wild Shots/Barrage (the per rest buff you get / can enchant onto Kitchen stove) adds +1 or +2 bounces (and damage, and a huge reload speed buff, basically wtf op) to ranged attacks for 20+ seconds (with both guns). I used this combo with Fire in the Hole because it already has 1 bounce and deals AOE damage around the target (size of aoe scales with int, so its a pretty gigantic AOE on certain chars, lol).

How does this work with crit? Imbued Ammunition just adds crush damage and a chance at another effect from enchantment... how do you get the damage to proc that many times? I upgraded it to chance to split into multiple bullets enchantment (up to 3 I think). Driving flight lets it hit twice. Since it proc'd 8 times after DF I'm guessing the splits also have a chance to split. Otherwise it would have hit 6 times max. It looks like two driving flight hits split (2+2) and those split (2+2+2+2). I mainly put crit in there cause of how much it adds to the damage even with pistol. It's mostly relevant for the frost bow (frostseeker?) I have as backup that triggers on crit like this. Isn't the split chance like super tiny though? 15%/5%? Seems like it would be really inconsistent to get multiple split procs at a time.

I feel like that scaling with Int has to be a bug, lol

How does this work with crit? Imbued Ammunition just adds crush damage and a chance at another effect from enchantment... how do you get the damage to proc that many times?

One that I think is amusing and will probably be tried out on my first solo run is Item: Nomad's Brigandine Class: Rogue (Maybe Trickster, maybe Streetfighter/Wizard or Streetfighter/Paladin, whatever floats your boat for big defenses) Ability: Riposte Stack as much deflection as you can (E.g. the passives / items that give bonus defense against engagement attacks). Nomad's lets you reflect when struck by disengage attacks (and reduces their damage by 60%), Riposte lets you full attack on disengagement misses. Just run around letting everyone take free disengage swings at you during your auto recoveries to get free hits. It's probably not super OP but it strikes me as an amusing build nonetheless.

You start combat with a bunch of phrases now. A high level Chanter will either be able to cast it straight away it do so after on or two chants. Once the invocation is cast it builds up phrases in addition to your normal chants so keeping it up is easy (is got a big duration anyway). So I didn't say this is much of a downside to it. Honestly I think it's a most powerful ability in the game right now. Watching VictorCreed using it to spam Charge is just insane (Charge is also kinda broken as it full attacks everyone on the path which, when combined with cleaving stance, leads to rapid death). The starting phrases seem kind of strange to me right now, sometimes I start with 7 phrases, sometimes with 6, sometimes I can chain cast it out of combat to spot traps, sometimes it will not regen back up to 7 and I can't recast it. But even if you start combat with "only" 6 phrases it doesn't take that long to get it to 7. I'm atm trying to figure out which class could be more broken than fighter with it, since it needs to be a resource hungry class, wizard seems pretty crazy with meteor shower (please keep in mind the invocation not only regains resources but also empowers you for the whole 60 secs duration ) Chanters start combat with phrases equal to the cost of their highest invocation (which includes cost penalties, e.g. troubador+1). This is why it is useful to pick up the most expensive invocation available in your tree, even if it's not not something you intend to use, because it provides the passive benefit of having more starting phrases. You regen up to your maximum starting phrases again after combat. If you jump into the next combat too soon you might not be at maximum when combat starts, but otherwise you will always have enough phrases to cast your most expensive inv. I don't think you read my post. Phrases are not constantly the same on my level 20 chanter, with an invocation which costs 7 phrases. I kind of feel like repeating the rest of my post is moot. Must be a bug or some kind of confusion, because my 2 max chanters ALWAYS have 6 or 7 phrases respectively (beckoner and troubador) at the start of a fresh combat. Are you using some kind of mod that affects class tables or something?

Whatever the best thing you have available is? Most of the weapon specialty modals kinda suck anyway, so you don't HAVE to stick to your proficiencies. Generally speaking though, sabres are very strong and there are a ton of legendary sabres in this game. If you're going for a Quick Flurry build there is probably a strong case to made for spears. There is a legendary spear that gives you a 33% chance to have a 0sec attack recovery after a critical hit, so even if you crit and don't Flurry, you have another chance to instantly attack again. That being said, Quick Flurry / Inner Death builds are totally broken and will ruin the gameplay experience for you unless you're into that sort of thing

I also took too sailing alone. I would've liked to have kept the location of Ukaizo a complete secret from everyone else as well but it doesn't seem like that's an option, at least I didn't see a way to trigger the ending without it. An interesting thing I noticed is that if you find

You start combat with a bunch of phrases now. A high level Chanter will either be able to cast it straight away it do so after on or two chants. Once the invocation is cast it builds up phrases in addition to your normal chants so keeping it up is easy (is got a big duration anyway). So I didn't say this is much of a downside to it. Honestly I think it's a most powerful ability in the game right now. Watching VictorCreed using it to spam Charge is just insane (Charge is also kinda broken as it full attacks everyone on the path which, when combined with cleaving stance, leads to rapid death). The starting phrases seem kind of strange to me right now, sometimes I start with 7 phrases, sometimes with 6, sometimes I can chain cast it out of combat to spot traps, sometimes it will not regen back up to 7 and I can't recast it. But even if you start combat with "only" 6 phrases it doesn't take that long to get it to 7. I'm atm trying to figure out which class could be more broken than fighter with it, since it needs to be a resource hungry class, wizard seems pretty crazy with meteor shower (please keep in mind the invocation not only regains resources but also empowers you for the whole 60 secs duration ) Chanters start combat with phrases equal to the cost of their highest invocation (which includes cost penalties, e.g. troubador+1). This is why it is useful to pick up the most expensive invocation available in your tree, even if it's not not something you intend to use, because it provides the passive benefit of having more starting phrases. You regen up to your maximum starting phrases again after combat. If you jump into the next combat too soon you might not be at maximum when combat starts, but otherwise you will always have enough phrases to cast your most expensive inv.

well, its not hard to find items with resistance to intellect afflictions, so confusion issue becomes irrelevant, or multiclassing with fighter, there is a passive for that Have you tested this? I think this confusion is hardcoded. I gave my Berserker both immunity and resistance to intellect afflictions via various sources and noticed that he was still carnaging my allies...

Having played with cipher the whole time (lvl 18 right now) i must aggree that hes pretty weak for a long time. then he gets tier 6 and aoe knockdown nukes half the screen an goes up to tier 2... then he gets tier 8, gets time parasite, buffs himself with +250% action speed (im not kidding) and kills himself with scepter modal within seconds if you dont watch his health. cypher goes at least equal to the monk in powerlevel at that point How do you get 250% action speed from Time Parasite alone? Nevermind, I forgot Time Parasite bounces. It's really strong. I made a Cipher adventurer to fool around with it, but I gotta say... I still don't think it's Tier 0/Monk strong. First off, you've already completed most of the game with a gimped character before you even have access to Tier 8, and your Cipher is basically dead weight before that. Amplified Wave is pretty decent but it's still Tier 2 or 2.5 until you get Time Parasite. After you have Time Parasite it's probably Tier 1. It's still really weird to me though that the saving grace of Cipher is basically a single ability that makes you not want to cast many cipher spells. The action speed basically begs to be used Auto Attacking since you don't need to spam prones that fast, and once again you've got an entire tree of spells for nothing. To me it's just a really poorly executed class, even if it's Tier 1 in extreme lategame (when the game is at it's easiest anyway imo).

A) FUN: I'm kind of a lazy player in RTwP games, so this might influence my decisions since I don't like to micro 5 chars and wear my spacebar out. Single Class Beckoner: I've really enjoyed the beckoner I decided to add to the final slot in my party. It's not the most powerful member of my team, but it has fun utility on top of hordes of summons. I especially enjoy the animated weapons summon, or the way that the dragons launch a huge AOE breath attack the instant they spawn and clear out big packs like I'm an AOE wizard. Single Class Missile Wizard: This is a really, really simple character to play, the AI can even do a good job of it with the right custom script, but it's just really... satisfying. Since the number of missiles your spells launch increase by powerful level, you go Evoker/Nature Godlike and fire off a dozen missiles at a time, sometimes you even get the evocation proc and double it. The animation is satisfying, and the damage is probably one of the highest of a class I've seen outside of all the shenanigans going on in Monk. B/C) POWERFUL / SUBCLASSES Tier 0/Too Godlike) Monk. This is obvious. The class is broken. Even if Swift Flurry weren't super gimmicky/you skipped it the class is still super powerful. You have constant access to resources, a good balance of defensive and offence options, prones, etc, all of the subclasses have a great niche with downsides that are easy to work around. Basically every top tier martial build, including ranged ones probably, would be better with the inclusion of Monk. It has access to easy pen, a modal that gives a ton of Constitution/Int/LashDamage/armor/etc, a passive version of melee Swift Flurry at Tier 7. I've actually gone out of my way to remove monks from my party because they spoil the fun. I actually wanted to make a Swift Flurry gimmick build because I love it conceptually, but once you hit level 7 and get Kitchen Stove it actually one shots everything on POTD, literally infinite damage against Triple Red Skull enemies, doesn't matter what order you complete the map in anymore. Tier 1/Pretty Godlike) Chanter. Nothing *in particular* screams godlike, I know. Doesn't have many martial passives to back up it's weapon DPS, it's offensive invocations are generally not that amazing, etc. Still, it's utility is really strong just because it brings so many little things to your party. Summons, especially as Beckoner, feel satisfying enough. They're not that strong on their own but you summon a lot of them at a time with the double summoning thing, and some of them have abilities they use the instant they spawn, like the dragon, which makes them effectively an AOE damage spell like fireball with bonus bodies afterwards. They have an AOE Paralyze (gives 50% hit to crit conversation) and the reload/recovery chant for buffing martial allies. They have chants that can effectively make your party immortal by providing healing, defensive buffs, or HealEffectiveness%, which combos really well with people who have passive sources of healing like fighters, paladins, priests, etc. Oh and the Brilliant passive they get in Tier 7 is basically infinite resources for your whole party if you need them. They're not that strong on their own but they're worth more than a single character when you aggregate all they bring to the table for the whole party. All subclasses are pretty good within their niche. Skald didn't feel as reliable as I thought it would be, Beckoner is fun if you want a summoner, Troubadour gets a lot of invocations at the expense of some chant utility. Tier 1.5/Pretty Godlike Most Of the Time) Wizard. Wizard has a lot of damage and a lot of utility. I love that all spells are per-encounter now, but I'm not in love with how few casts you get of individual spells. That said, there's two things that Wizard does exceedingly well. First off, Missile Wizard (mentioned in Class A) is really strong for DPS. Granted, it doesn't do much of anything BUT DPS and runs out of spells on long fights, it's front loaded alpha at the beginning of a fight can carry your party through to unlikely or swift victories. Besides Swift Flurry shenanigans my Missile Wizard is probably the highest DPS char I've made thus far (and I've made a lot.. I have a problem). Generalist Wizard is actually very strong as well. A few spells seem a little over budget for damage (chill fog etc), and Illusion spells can make a Wizard nearly impossible to hit with spells or deflection attacks - combine into a multi-class tank or just as a way to get away with a glass cannon build and you're good to go. The only thing I haven't tried yet is "martial" wizard via summoning weapons, but I'm assuming it would work as well. Minor Blights is still very strong. I give Wizard a tier 1.5 because including it in a party is almost always beneficial, but certain builds might not have use for or the ability to benefit from all it's strengths simultaneously. I don't recommend taking a subclass unless you want to make a Missile Evoker, and even then you could probably make a solid argument against it. The downsides here are just...steep. Tier 1.5/Pretty Godlike If You're Willing To Work For It) Rogue. Take this with a grain of salt because I haven't used Rogue that much, but where you place it in the list probably depends on a lot on what you plan to do with it. To me personally, Rogue doesn't do a lot that just screams to me that I need to take it, and I don't like microing a bunch of stealth/invisibility stuff. That said, Sneak Attack and Death Blows are probably two of the highest sources of bonus damage in the game and combo well in a party that can apply afflictions easily and widely. There are also some serious backstab shenanigans to be had. With the right build and party composition (especially with a chanter to regen your guile) Rogue is probably easily the highest DPS class, but also high maintenance. Rogue also has quite a few useful passives for martial damage and some really slick Guile abilities for bonus damage like Finishing Blow and Strike the Bell. Assassin seems like it has the most obvious benefit from a build intending to use a lot of stealth or invisibility stuff. Trickster is probably a solid choice if you want a bit of tankiness from the Illusion spells. Streetfighter is pretty neat but I don't want really want my frontliners Bloodied and the numbers for the sneak attack bonus / flanked buff/debuff are unclear to me. Tier 2/Really Good) Paladin. Paladin is kind of like Chanter. There's not a lot in there that necessarily DEMANDS it's inclusion in certain builds, like Monk does, but it has a very powerful niche. Namely, it's A) Really easy to make tanky and practically unkillable, and B) It feels really solid as part of a martial DPS multi-class build. It doesn't have many "DPS" abilities, but the ones it does are high-impact. Flames of Devotion and it's evolutions give big damage and lash effects. Inspired Beacon is a huge damage boost against tough enemies. Sworn Rival is practically instant and gives a respectable damage boost as well. 6 skill points get you most of what you need and the rest can be spent on utility like Lay on Hands for solid offhealing, Auras, etc. Paladin is a good choice for a front line fighter built mostly for damage because they get a ton of "free" defenses and have several revive other / self-revive options if things get hairy. All of the subclasses have their uses, but Shieldbearer seems to have very little in the way of penalties, and Bleak Walker's FoD is very strong. Tier 2/Really Good) Fighter. Fighter just has a lot going for it, like Chanter. Can basically become immortal without even trying that hard. As long as you don't get 1-shot by things you're tanky enough with some heal effectiveness food / healing belt / rapid recovery / unbending / natural defenses. Disciplined and Tactical Strikes both give good inspirations (hit to crit or powerlevel) and their stances are pretty good, especially Cleave/MobStance. Mob Stance is actually enough to make fighter Tier 1, but I set it to Tier 2 simply because Fighter isn't necessarily unique / mandatory and you could make a strong case for replacing it with other classes like Paladin or Rogue for tanks or dps. Obviously it pales in comparison to Monk, as well. The only subclass that speaks to me from Fighter is Devoted, which would be really strong if you knew the meta and exactly what weapons you wanted to use the whole game. Black Jacket probably has it's uses but not any that I'm gonna put it to, and the penalty for Unbroken doesn't seem worth the extra engagement, mainly because.. who wants to lose stride on a melee char? I guess you have charge and into the fray, but they're kinda pricy on Discipline with all the other things you have. Tier 2.5/Really Good If You Build Around It) Barbarian. I feel like Berserker needs to go here, but my experiences with it haven't been as exciting as I had originally hoped. An Orlan Devoted/Berserker using Barbaric Smash has 100% crit conversion and a ton of bonus crit damage, but not being able to see my own HP / degening health is irritating, and carnaging my allies limits who I can put near them. That said, the reliable crits are really good for high auto-attack damage and proccing On-Crit abilities like Quick Flurry or weapons that apply afflictions or bonus damage on Crit. The other two subclasses are totally forgettable or actively self-defeating. Tier 3/Okay) Caster Druid. I've heard Druid is very powerful combo'ed with Martial Classes in Shifter form, but my only attempt to use it was primarily as a Single Class Caster. I was very unimpressed with it's performance, personally. I loved Relentless Storm in POE1 but it feels weak in 2. Most of their damage spells didn't seem that impactful, and the DoT spells didn't provide much value when my burstier teammates killed enemies before it had an impact. If you were going for a steady, super-tanky party Druid would fit in great, though. Druid heals are very solid but largely unnecessary. You can get healing from a lot of random locations (Paladins, Chanters, Etc), it felt redundant to make room in my party for a dedicated healer when other classes have adequate oh **** buttons. The main weakness here is long cast/recovery cycles. They're just... slow. Tier 3/Okay) Cipher. Okay so Soul Blade might deserve to be a bit higher than this because it can combo with something like a Barbarian and spam Soul Annilhilation which is a decent source of damage (but basically negates the entire Cipher ability tree at the same time by using all the Focus). Cipher's abilities really don't speak to me and usually don't seem like they'd be worth the cast time relative to just firing another auto attack off for Whip damage except maybe Dominate/Charm for a few dangerous enemy special cases. Basically though, Cipher just seems like an obvious choice if you want that whip damage. That said, a few of the higher tier, focus expensive Cipher spells look REALLY powerful, especially the shreds, if you're willing to put the work in get one that high. If I were gonna Cipher I'd probably just leave it out of the party until I was already Ability Tier 6+ and then swap it in. Tier 4/Meh) Priest. My player character on my first playthrough is a multi-class priest/paladin. I literally NEVER use the priest spells themselves. They're just kinda awful. I use my priest spell charges to cast wizard Illusion spells from Wael tree so at least I can be tanky and not spend the whole day casting spells (Illusions are .4 sec no recovery, priest spells are usually 3 sec cast + 4 sec recovery). Most of your martial classes can apply their own inspirations instantly anyway, whereas Priest applies them to more people but incredibly slowly and in very limited AOEs. They might have a niche if it wasn't so easy to access instant/.5 second Inspirations for practically every martial combination out there, or if Chanter wasn't already giving you many of the inspirations on top of other utilities. Once again, like Druid, the healing feels slow and unnecessary (and not particularly powerful relative to my health pools, either). Even if I am going to heal I probably will just use Lay On Hands because of how slow the priest heals are to cast, and LoH usually seems to heal more with a much faster response time anyway. Subclasses are just whatever flavor you want. Wael is pretty decent for providing several instant cast deflection buffs. Tier 4/Meh) Ranger. My attempts at using a ranger haven't felt very good. I don't know if its a scaling problem or what but the Sharpshooter's pet, even the bear, dies really, really fast and debuffs your ranger with Bonded Grief. The pet's damage doesn't seem crazy high, it's more or less just a body. Most of the Ranger active abilities are very situational and unexciting, it's basically just a resource pool to use if you run out of whatever else you're multiclassed into (because ranger doesn't seem worth a single class investment). Ranger does have a few solid passives for ranged attackers but their value isn't likely to be significantly higher than what other classes get in Disciplined Strikes, FoD, Soul Whip, Sneak Attack, Lightning Flurry, etc. Basically just take ranger if you want the body and minor bonus damage from having an animal companion. Subclasses are largely forgettable. Ghost Heart gets you out of Bonded Grief but requires you to summon every fight, Sharpshooter's value is nice but the Recovery Penalty seems kinda misplaced to offset a DPS bonus and the deflection penalty means you get wrecked by melee attackers (since you probably already have another deflection penalty from your weapon). Stalker probably has a usage but the value to a super tank is lost when you consider the fact that your bonus is rooted in keeping a super-not-tanky companion alive. D) Creative Background: I'll just mention concepts here. Quick Flurry: I LOVE Crit builds in games, proc on hit, bonus attacks, etc. This falls into my favorite build path wheelhouse perfectly. I instantly was hooked when I read the description of Quick Flurry and looked for a nice Gimmick to make it proc reliably. Unfortunately, they made no effort to check the power of this ability and it totally ruins the game if you build around it. I'm staying away from Monk because it has too much going for it. Quick Flurry makes it too easy to build an infinite damage loop character. Also, it occasionally crashed my game by generating too many hits / animations too quickly before I killed off my Quick Flurry char in an inn somewhere in brutal fashion. Beckoner: I loved the Necromancer from Diablo 2. This is basically that. My next playthrough is going to be 5 Beckoners just because. I know it makes no sense, the summons won't even be able to reach their targets, but I want to anyway so Backstab Rogue: [Minor Spoiler Ahead] There's a certain legendary that gives you a change to proc invis on Hit and is fairly easy to obtain early. It'd take a bit of work / micro to make it work (mainly because said legendary isn't melee) but it would be possible to make a build that procs a ton of backstabs and re-invis'es itself semi-reliably. Would it be worth it? Probably not, but it sounds conceptually entertaining for a future playthrough. Crit Barb / Crit Skald: Sounds very fun to me conceptually, but it doesn't seem as impactful as I'd have hoped in practice. Especially because Skald is trying to generate tons of phrases through melee crits but actually casting the invocations themselves prevents you from swinging in melee. Also Chanter offensive Invocations seem fairly whatever besides the AOE paralyze, which just generates more crits for you. It's kind of cyclic and the payoff isn't what I expected. The best usage for this build I can imagine is just using the [Minor Spoiler Ahead] legendary sabre that you can enchant to give your party 2% action speed per phrase held by your chanter. You could potentially generate a TON of phrases with the right build and use them only to buff your party passively, just skipping invocations all together. Cipher Spells: The "infinite resource" concept of Focus appeals to me, but the Cipher spells themselves don't seem that strong. Many of them are single target only. If your party has good damage a single target debuff is mostly wasted against anything but a boss. The party buffs are mostly single target as well. There's a few spells (Like Disintegrate) that look like they'd be crazy overtuned, but I haven't tried them yet personally. Priest: I love rolling a priest in D&D or whatever but their ramp-up time is too long. By the time my priest can throw out a few buffs most fights are already over.

I'm also not a huge fan of the Ranger. I was originally using one as my ranged character but it felt like I was constantly suffering from bonded grief because my bear was getting one shot by everything (don't know if its just underpowered or doesn't scale with difficulty well), even with some of the defensive passives selected. I decided to reroll my ranger as a Bleak Walker Paladin / Skald Chanter, and am very happy with the results. I suspect that it does more damage than before and it has a lot more utility / active abilities of interest. Bleak Walker gives us some nice damage / accuracy passives, Flames of Devotion for big hits + lash damage, defensive stats, heals, etc. Chanter gives me a big dps boost from the reload speed phrase and a ton of utility in reducing enemy armor, etc. I almost exclusively use the aoe Paralyze Invocation because it gives you a big chunk of Hit->Crit conversion against those targets, which keeps the skald resource generation going. I would say the biggest weakness here is that neither of these classes have access to reliable hit to crit conversions naturally besides paralyze. You do have a lot of accuracy/deflection debuff sources but conversion feels more consistent to me imo.