Metaturtle

If this is your first time you might want to just pick something you think you may enjoy just to figure out the combat system. Often times you may want to reroll just to check out other classes as you encounter more of their skills. If you want to be spoiled right off the bat, put a lot of points into perception and have someone invest deep into mechanics. It's so hard to not have those things early in the game for easy access to a lot stuff.

I'd probably go with one of the fighter mixes if it is going to be one of your stronger tanks having to face tank a battle opener. Brute if you care about opening crowd damage burst which sounds more like the character you described and swashbuckler if you want more single target burst/sustain only because frenzy is finite. In a party you still can have a marauder tank to a degree granted you're not going balls out with frenzy, though it sounds like you're particular about a certain damage build.

I've often leaned towards VTC with Castrol's goals of progressiveness and it seemed more pro-kith with the watcher's dealings with the gods. Maybe it'll lead to the second round of artificial gods. The RDC is similar too, but the whole imperialism thing felt stuffy for me. I loved the whole carefree style of the pirates led by Aedalys, but they didn't do much for the greater good though that can be subjective. Similarly, an unhelped watcher has an ending like the Aedalys ending, so maybe you were meant to be a pirate after all! I really liked the prince from the Huana since he seemed a lot more open than what his appearance portrayed, but the whole Huana system felt entitled.

I think the portal in the middle trips out a lot of people honestly since there's no direction hints about it.

If you're talking about soloing in PotD+, it takes a bit of a mindset to get into since you are kind of pigeonholed to certain skillsets in order to survive some of the tough encounters and often times you will be wearing equipment/using skills that doesn't feel optimal for a build, but it really works. So if you are trying to do it for some RP style, it's not going to jive much. Notably for a solo holy slayer, you can't rely on only the high deflection and AR to carry you all the way in some encounters and need to adjust at times. You'll appreciate a lot more what other classes would have brought in a party that allowed other builds to perform at their optimal capability, which in turn makes for better, tuned builds. Having played solo, I'll have to agree that once you're able to clear encounters with a single character, everything seems easy in a full party. I wouldn't do a first time solo play including BoW, that sounds like a bad time. lol

Similarly I love the ranger acc bonuses for my beastmaster since it allows me to land all her raw dots on a boss.

I honestly think Tekehu is better off as a pure druid nuker or support theurge. I really do like his unique variety of skills he can do for invocations, but a pure chanter can only go so far singing phrases the vanilla way. He has too many invocations that compete for resources and often times he's just made to nuke like a time-gated druid, so giving him all the other possible chanter invocations feels wasted. Sure he has infinite resources as a chanter, but if the point ever comes in a battle where the party is starved of resources, he just becomes a resource invocation bot and any chanter can do that. As a support theurge, he has access to the druid spells to heal or dps and can fallback to chanter. As a pure druid his amazing subclass is put to really good use than his chanter counterpart since it allows many hazardous aoes with tactical use like chillfog and ice pillar suddenly becoming even better without the positioning hassle and he has stronger nukes.

I could be remembering incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure I pickpocketed this in my current playthrough. I have the helm and have always solved that quest peacefully, never killing Ezzali. I was able to pick pocket Deltro's Cage Helm but not the armor. Maybe I need a higher sleight of hand? Before 2.0 I would solve it peacefully, then kill both houses for their gear and get both. I just tried it on a new play-though in 2.0 and she didn't drop the armor when I killed her . Going to try a few other things before deciding I have to side with her to get it. Edit: Second time I got the chest (and a second Bardatto's luxury). The only difference was on the first try essence interrupter changed her to an ogre. We may need to test if the change breaks the loot table (unless the drop is chanced based)? I believe it's totally the Essence Interrupter with the way it's bugged with Kith/Wilder. You can test this by critting your companions then knocking them out, which instakills them and you can't loot their bodies.

I think Bronlar's Phalanx is better for this class. It gives a deflection bonus that scales with your health (up to 20 deflection, so +10 deflection when Bloodied), which helps staying in Bloodied state. The deflection bonus is compareable to Cadhu Scalth with mediocre athletics investment, only with full athletics investment Cadhu Scalth is better. And Bronlar's Phalanx also gives a long INT buff at combat start, that helps with your chanter abilities (summon/chant duration). I was thinking along the lines that I wasn't going to dodge much from ranged attacks and blanket dmg reduction was nice on top of the redux when eating the hit. I think just saw deflection and glossed it over because of that lol. I'll have to test out a run with Bronxlar to see how it feels since I usually always get it kind of late in the game. That INT bonus is very nice too. I'll have to add a note for it.

Pallegina as a herald is an extremely strong tank considering a chanter's summons can tank anything indefinitely when managed and you still have a pillar of a paladin class that can also tank and support. Fassina too can have her summons tank as a Loremaster and blasts them with her wizard spells without a care though her conjurer subclass kinda locks her out of a bunch of good nukes. As a sorceror (druid multiclass) she could cinch up the healing by grabbing a few druid healing spells since they are pretty strong. If you are going for banter and additoinal dialogue, don't expect too much from sidekicks.

Odd, the first version only allows me to select one corpse to blow up until I upgrade it. I wonder if it has something to do with a micro patch not applying changes to previous games. Nice reminder of gibs too! I have it off since i play a lot of chanters. I'll update the guide with that. :D

Sweeper Agent Class: Harbinger ( Streetfighter/Troubadour ) Difficulty: PotD+ Version: 2.0 Solo?: You can cheese a lot of stuff in solo PotD+ with a chanter (summons) and rogue (dot & run) granted you may have to make a few adjustments in skills and prep your fights, but the build is better appreciated with a party. (Sorry if this is long. I wrote it in a very general way.) DESCRIPTION: The Sweeper's main focus is an interrupt and utility build that is tuned more towards range, but it can handle well also as a midline melee. It does various sorts of things that I will like to call "sweeping" and in this particular build, the unique quarterstaff, "Street Sweeper" is part of the utility kit. The Streetfighter rogue subclass is very popular with the amazing bonuses received when it hits its requirements of being flanked and/or bloodied. A very popular way of achieving this is by using the blunderbuss modal to achieve the speed bonus, but in this build we are achieving this with the harbinger's advanced wisp summons attacking the harbinger with its distracting attack. Now that we have our own wisp battery triggering our "Heating Up" buff with its autoattacks, it gives a lot more freedom in using a wider selection of ranged weapons or meleeing a single target without the need of being surrounded. The wisps also serve 5 other functions: 1. Damaging you down gradually to bloodied (<50% health) for "On the Edge" dmg buff if you like to take it slow to bloodied range. 2. Use the 2nd wisp to act as a spotter that debuffs your target for sneak attack potential. 3. Chain interrupting the enemy with the wisp's interrupt active ability. 4. Being a decoy. 5. Supply another streetfighter ally with "distract" if they don't have super high defenses. If you have more than 2 streetfighters, you can do additional micro to hit additional targets. Technically you could delegate the wisp work to another chanter who then uses those wisps to fuel other Streetfighter hybrids opening up the way to some party combos, but I want to highlight the points for this build combo as a whole package. First Sweep: Sweeping gunfire (or blast! or strikes!). Not new to the hand mortar rogue builds, but using a weapon that has aoe capabilities like hand mortars or rod + modal allows the harbinger to apply its debuffs enmasse. Second Sweep: Sweeping them off their feet (Interrupts) The harbinger's active skills come with a degree of interrupt depending on the grade of the attack. To further supplement the kit, many weapons have modals and crit effects that can keep the enemy from doing stuff efficiently and I'll mention some of these weapons at the weapon section of the guide. The energized buff you can get allows crits to interrupt so it could possibly work with other weapons, but the buff upkeep can be taxing so it is mostly used only when extra PEN is needed. Wisps are your strongest interrupt as they can chaincast their interrupt skill to eat up a massive stack of concentration and lock down even the toughest of enemies like dragons. Third Sweep: Street Cleaning - Buff countering The streetfighter has access to many types of afflictions, which can be very beneficial to countering the buffs of enemies granted they are not immune to the counter. Some hard enemies have no timer on their buffs and require its respective counter to strip them off it. An example is using blind to strip the enemy of the perceptive buff, which then lowers their hit and crit chances on your tank. For other buffs with durations, this is were the quarterstaff Street Sweeper's buff clearing feature shines. For other notable cleaning options the war bow, Veilpiercer, has a chance to clean buffs and even has a on-rest skill that can strip out all duration effects in a tiny area. Fourth Sweep: Cleansweep - Situational AoE burst Chanters have a skill, "White worms writhed in the bellies of the dead," (that I will just refer to as "Corpse Explosion"), where it will detonate a single downed enemy and inflict crush damage within its average radius. The upgraded version of the skill, "Their Putrid Stench Wafts Across", has its tooltip only state that it now applies a long lasting sickened debuff. The upgraded version now blows up every body within the massive targeting circle that now covers nearly the entire screen thanks to the high INT of the build. Even if the target circle does show red in the middle (hazardous aoe), it doesn't actually affect your team at all. It even can target your dead skeletons from the skelly chant if you are fast enough to cast it before its corpse disappears. No reason to not clean those floors up. Assuming you are not facing crush-immune or ridiculously high Reflex enemies, this skill makes having a bunch of downed enemies into a cheap nuke that can escalate into a deadly cycle. I usually like to spend Sasha's Singing Scimitar's free empower point here on trash. Alternatively, with the streetfighter's' fast recovery coupled with a high arcana skill you can machinegun expensive scroll nukes if you have the resources as a last resort. (edited) TIP: Turn off gibs in options so they don't get chunked when they die and not leave a body. Optional Sweep: Minesweeper. With its high perception, you can turn this character into your mechanics monkey and have it sweep the floors for traps. Other notes: It is worth mentioning that I made this build with a skillset to achieve a decent enough PEN to circumvent most enemies with stupid high armor (~15-17AR). I chose Troubadour over Skald since PotD+ diminishes Skald a bit and Troubadour is a lot more consistent. Skald is very good in lower difficulties, but be aware that its phrase gain from crit only applies to melee crits. GAMEPLAY: Open up with Artierial Strike if you have it. Summon your wisps and have them attack you. Stay in the Troubadour's Brisk Recitation modal for the "Energized" buff if you want to use a weapon with no passive interrupt or need the extra penetration for an enemy. If you can comfortably damage with your current penetration or don't need a lot of soft interrupts, turn off Brisk Recitation to have your party benefit from double linger chants. This method is easier since now you only need phrases to resummon wisps and don't suffer from inconsistent chant buffs. Apply all relevant debuffs if enemies are clumped up nicely and you can stay in aoe mode if it is more beneficial for damage. I like to save some rogue power in case I need situational buff countering or to escape since the build is meant for countering/utility and not damage output. With the opener done, Send one wisp to assist you in picking off enemies and/or possibly micro wisp to lock them down if they are extremely dangerous. Once a few enemies are down and the remaining survivors are close to the bodies, detonate them and repeat the process. In case you are using phrases to debuff enemies (Armor debuff invocation) or chaincasting corpse explosions, I recommend going back into Brisk Recitation modal to regain phrases quickly to upkeep your wisps. DISADVANTAGES: If built for more damage by dumping RES and CON, the obvious weaknesses of being squishy applies. The biggest disadvantages of a build with low RES is a deflection rating where enemies will often start chasing you down and the increased durations of debuffs with long timers. Having the harbinger with a long INT affliction can be annoying as it will go about and interrupt your backline. Other things like very long dots with low CON can threaten you if not watched carefully so dedicate a few quick slots to recovery items. Considering that you need to manually autoattack with wisps to make the build work and maintain buffs, it requires a bit of micro that can't be scripted. If you are soloing and having wisps tank and interrupt, prepare for micro hell. If you are playing with a full party on lower difficulties, the burst damage from other classes may leave you with not much to play with. RACES: Human - For fighting spirit synergy when you want to live on the edge. (Used in playthrough) Nature Godlike - Starts with ideal stats. If you prefer a power level over the helm slot using energized to achieve your buff requirement. Has interesting perk with Heart Chime amulet. Elf - Starts with ideal stats. Aumaua - About the same with elves. Hearth Orlan - To squeeze out that extra crit chance with a party. Dwarf - If you plan on using Aamina's Legacy a lot. ATTRIBUTES: My playthrough stats as a Human including background and without Berath's Blessing: (8/8/18/18/19/7). A bit of space to go glass cannon and buff out stats with blessing. MIG - Low/High. If more interested in crits and interrupts then make this "Low" since DEX/PER are better for that path. If deciding to be more of a glass cannon then dump RES/CON and make this "High". CON - Low/Dump. Not too keen on dumping this all the way since a little bit of an HP buffer for self-damage and midlining is helpful. DEX - High. Hey look! It's a DEX chanter. It does nothing for accumulating phrases, but it helps with everything else allowing more actions you can do within your "buff" windows. Depending on your weapon setup, you can get away with less. PER - High. Helps for criticals and landing abilities in early PotD. You can do with less in lower difficulties, but it still is very useful in finding hidden items and traps. You also need a bit to offset the perception affliction's -5PER penalty. In most cases this will probably be maxed in PotD. INT - Maxed. Your most important stat for increasing the duration of summons, buffs, and debuffs allowing less downtime with having to reapply. As a troubadour, you will clip your double chant lingers at some point, but more INT is always good for everything else. RES - Low/Dump. Lowering this helps the duration of the "distract" affliction to last longer for streetfighter to work, but it also increases durations for every other affliction. Too little also makes enemies peel off often to try and get you if your melee can't engage them all, but that is what skelly chant is for :D. SKILLS: Arcana - If you plan on using Spearcaster a lot, then this should be the skill to take. It also greatly helps to make certain hard encounters easier via scroll nuking. Alchemy - Great mileage for self-buffing and healing options. Athletics - Other than being useful for events, it is an okay lazy heal button after taking a bad hit or self-sustaining your hp pool when it gets dangerously low. Mechanics - BONUS RP! If you want to get extra sweepy then make them into your mechanics monkey. Stealth - Handy for ambushes and general roguing. Metaphysics - If you plan to use Chromoprismatic Staff and/or Animancer bow a lot, this skill should be your main passive skill. History - Can be useful if you plan on using The Giftbearer's Cloth. CULTURE & BACKGROUND: This part is flexible, but you will want one that has the main attributes and skills listed above. In my playthrough I took Old Vallia for INT and the Artist background because the Street Sweeper quarterstaff kind of looks like a gigantic paintbrush that paints their enemies dead on the canvas that is the ground. Kaboom! Art. WEAPONS & MODALS: +Good / ?Notable / -Bad ABILITIES: +Good / ?Notable / -Bad EQUIPMENT: +Good / ?Conditional / -Bad

The summons generating zeal is amazingly good with skellies if enemies are strong enough to consistently rip your summons like bosses or beginning of zerg fights. Other than that, with a strongly built party which should be the case at this point, they are not going to die as quick from enemies without further intervention that isn't detrimental to just doing normal damage. Unless you have a grave imp summoner and win-win all day. :9

Definitely Toxic Strikes assuming the target is not resistant/immune to corrode damage.

Nice work! I wish I had a list like this when I started getting into builds. I want to suggest adding the new amounts you get per point too if you are able to find that data too. :D The values on the wiki can be old.

I loved the bow with all its utility and stuff. Until I got charmed, crit my ally, ally insta-died from the "destroyed" debuff, couldn't loot body back for items , and then had same results shooting allies to test it again. I assume it can eat items too on trash so I just stopped using it in fear. :\ Damn animancy! :shakesfist:

I can see it being good as an offensive support frontliner where it can fight weaker trash in endurance fights for zeal and nullify debuffs quickly to maintain the parties rhythm since the pali does have a good range of inspirations for very fast affliction countering. I have to agree with the costs being stupidly expensive with their current resource regeneration, which can quickly lose value depending on their spec and party setup. In my opinion, the costs are an haunting artifact that still remains after all the nerfs rolled out.

It's not uncommon for a specialized type of build to have a hard counter somewhere in the game especially with newer enemies given skillsets not often encountered or encountered in a stronger form. I do have to admit that I have had to "Death by scroll" enemies that proved to be a stalemate (eg. Heal tank vs Life drain). Unless you're trying to benchmark a build or challenging yourself with that particular setup, you don't need to artificially handicap yourself being religious with your spec's modus operandi. I'm mostly a filthy chanter player, so my strategy is usually to just bait and split his friends using summons and mobility items and cheese him down eventually.

Conjurer / Shifter I don't see much synergy in it unless you just love walls and you're RPing a boar sitting in a firewall baiting enemies with that delicious smell.

Companions not in your active party still accrue injuries when being knocked out in ship battles. So if your character is able to survive ship boardings, you can treat the companions as cannon fodder who eventually end up a casualty not by your hands.

Aloth is easier to get if you take on the mindset of a rational and professional senpai that he looks up to. Especially more so if you decide to romance him where being smothering and clingy will make him uncomfortable. Him and Pallegina seem rigid mostly in part that most of the companions in deadfire are more aligned to a lighthearted watcher.

Generally I think they are okay to have in a party for most of the common fights since they offer a range of flexibility assuming you don't select spells that are redundant. It works alright for a support caster when you want your healbot to do some aoe on the side of their main healing power pool. I find multiclassing casters with set resources to each other (druid,priest,wiz) iffy in upscale potd where power levels is one of the ways to gain penetration on spells and a lot of the skills that work great in the higher difficulties are locked in the higher tiers. I'm not saying they'll do bad since a lot of the game you can be fine with them until you meet those fights that becomes their antithesis because you lack the means of punching thru the enemy's mitigation or lack the staying power to defensively draw out the fight into pure attrition.

I just imagined rolling a drunk MC, recruiting Mirke and custom adventurers with also the drunk pose, and just being an angry mob of drunk asses that gang up on targets with pukestabber and azure blade lol.

How does one get Akola's Apex ward normally ingame?

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” I just found the stat allocation funny from an RP standpoint of a Jedi. It actually sounds like a good precedent for a character that goes from good to evil in the end.