I am a real hardcore fan of rpgs, pretty much of any kind but mostly towards old and classic ones. I played several times poe 1 and the classics like BG 1 and BG 2. I always try to play many classes to see how they function and what play style could be awesome and I have to admit that in poe 2 the possibility to mix all classes and nearly all sub classes, paladin and priest have a preset combination, is amazing and broken at the same time.
In my opinion the most fun classes are the same like my favorite ones in poe 1: Paladin and Chanter. They were already awesome in poe 1 because of their flexibility as support. They could do damage, heal, buff and debuff, while the Paladin is a good semi tank and the chanter has summons. Now in poe 2 they becamse even more awesome. Especially the Paladin, because Chanter needed mainly two things, starting with maxing spirit and having higher chants not needed to sing longer. 2 simple changes that made this class completely different from play style. By the way I played mostly in poe 1 the Chanter class with a mod that allowed me to start combat with maxing spirit.
And the Paladin,... holy moly. Either way you can make him now to a dps character (not really possible in poe 1) with his intense FoD and his strong resource on kill recovery or you can give close allies an insane damage boost with the shared flames which can hold pretty much for ever and it increases all damage they do not only weapon damage by 20%. Now when you combine this with the fire damage buff from the Chanter and it is pretty much done.
But things come even better. Not only are in my opinion those classes because of the flexibility and some broken stuff ( the resource regeneration buff from the Chanter is just broken, remove it pls! ) pretty high in the top tier, they have also shared with the Cipher the best sub classes.
All Chanter sub classes have an insane play style benefit:
Beckoner -> can be played with everything, literally, and is super strong. I played first with a dual pistol wielding herold (bleak/beckoner) killing everthiyn with over 100 damage FoD hits at lvl 8,.. and summoning phantoms ( they are alive all the time ) while buffing me, myself, my minions and my group at the same time.
Skald -> just go any crit ( monk/ fighter/ rouge ) even paladin because FoD + Sworn Enemy + exalted focus and some gear lets you crit anyway enough
Troubadour -> a better base chanter, because he can either be better at buffing with his chants or be better at invokation casting speed, double spirit gaining. When you dont want to build a crit Chanter or specialist into summoning then chose this one. He is especially awesome with any caster, because the Troubadour allows you to always have minimum 1 chant all the time up while gaining twice as fast spirit to keep up invoking and holding up the secound class spells for more situations.
a look onto the Paladin:
all four except Darcozzi, are pretty neat. I just didn't borther with them because minor flame shield was complete **** in poe 1. But as a Paladin the sub classes do just give a little push into a specific build. But I would say the Shieldbearers are the best for any melee Paladin that wants to take damage.
The Retribution talent is also a good way to increase a front line Paladins damage. This talent alone allowes me to go for a better mixture between might, dex and per because I dont need any more to be a slow but extreme hard hitting giant like in poe 1, now I can put some points away from might. Even more after you realize that it is additive and not multiplicative. That means that 1 Retribution stack gives you basicly 1 and 2/3 might.
Well and so the Herold is by far my top tier class of all. He is a Jack of all trades, Master of all. Who has probably the most build possibilies of all and he needs only intellect. Just go 18 intellect and you are fine. You dont need any min, max just 18 intellect. Well not even 18, 15 is enough for PotD and with the preset npcs.
And besides that a Nature Godlike Berserker / Goldpact is probably the strongest character I made.
