Elendriel

Do you mean the Goldpact +4 AR bonus? I thought that didn't stack with other active abilities. Any class could get a similar effect from Potion of Ironskin/Spirit Shield (and Wizards can cast those). Goldpact can get it easier tho, and they could also take Inspiring Defenses/Stoic Steel to add passive AR.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you deal with confusion? I'd usually use armor with Int resistance but I don't think that works with Shifter, unless you cast Frenzy before shifting?

A few similar ones that come to mind: Arcane Knight (Wizard/Any Paladin): Flames of Devotion is strong for a 1 cost attack ability, should work well with Spirit Lance Warlock (Wizard/Berzerker): presumably this combo would work too for even more AOE. Sage: the other two subclasses would work too I think. Shattered Pillars is probably more fun to use with the lance though. but yeah, if you're feeling inspired by Wizard/Streetfighter, that sounds like the one to choose.

Evoker benefits the most from the extra power level. Offensive spells PL will scale damage, bounces/projectiles, accuracy, penetration, and duration (if applicable). Evocation has offensive spells at every level, some of the most used spells for a Wizard. The Evoker special bonus gives a chance for extra damage. Many other spells just get a little extra duration (or accuracy if a debuff), which doesn't mean much. And the special bonuses are much weaker in other subclasses. I feel like Evoker is decently balanced compared to generalist. I don't really like losing two schools though, it takes away so many good spells. I wish they'd choose some other penalty, other classes don't lose 2/5 of their ability tree from picking a subclass.

Found a bug, I think. Deleterious Alacrity of Motion seems to randomly give either the 15% action speed or the Swift buff, but not both. This can be seen on the character status effect icons, the stats page, as well as recovery tooltips for weapons/spells etc. Can be reproduced in the very intro battle if you use the console to level up to 5. Also existing mods seem to be broken, this may be intentional(?). For example this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/30 ... if it's enabled, it breaks a wizard's ability to choose spells at level up or character creation.

This build is awesome! Dumb question: would a similar build work for a Crusader? It'd miss out on late game power, but it'd come together a bit sooner & be more tanky. Those fire weapons are neat too, because they'd give a reason to skip Devoted (unlike most builds involving fighter): use swords or whatever early/mid game and then switch to these later for more heretic burnination.