Ymarsakar

Late game bows benefit from the attack speed buffs now (or more), since if you stack +100% attack speed, you get more than 2x the damage. It's easier for wizards and rangers to stack this because of items and the Durgan steel buff, given the wizard's alacrity spell and the ranger's attack speed modal. Low DR or naked/clothed rangers are very practical even in Path of the Damned high level content for White March, you just sort of have to keep them way way away, while using tanks and healers to block the enemy from moving past you. Or give them someone else more annoying to shoot at like a druid/wizard/priest spell caster. Generally for war bow, Borresaine with the stun on crit, until ranger is level 11 and can take the talent. Even then, the war bow can fire very very quickly with the attack speed stack trick. That 14/15 interrupt issue might be a rounding error or something of that nature.

Is this in combat or out of combat? If it is out of combat, reload times may be interrupted and then become instant to save time, but it would normally work as normal in combat. The weapon switch avoids reloading, but there should still be a short time between each switch. The talent reduces that to a very short time, however, allowing a build that spams firearm damage at the beginning of combat for a spike dps.

It may have to do with all that snow and special effects they added to the new maps. Those are 3d unity objects, definitely not the 2d background. Generally this kind of game benefits from having more gigs of ram, it would speed up the load. It's either that or the cpu being the bottleneck.

One work around I heard about is to turn on the AI and check the box for on rest abilities. Don't know if the class box needs to be filled with a type. I would go back to the PX1 2.0 white march build. It was more playable even with the stash disappearing.

I've heard that the new 2.01 patch they used to fix the stash bug, has partially broken a data base. All kinds of bad stuff happening now. I would go back to the original PX1 release, at least if you lose items there the next patch will restore em.

I turned off the info where they tell me I don't meet a requirement. Very distracting and annoying, immersion wise. Obsidian really loves their reputation points Up and Down, but I don't really consider that good role playing dynamics, which is why they gave us the option of turning that stuff off or making it invisible. The wizard's melee spells do so much damage you don't even need might above 10. Dex at 14, 15, 16 sounds good. Con... needs to be 10-11 at least. Resolve needs to be enough where if you cast spirit spell level 1, you don't get interrupted so often. At times you'll need to cast a spell, but people are shooting you. It's not that hard on Hard difficulty, but on Path of the Damned, half of my party gets downed so I need the other half to be MVPs in full plate. Per is really important for dps and cc aoe wizards, less so if you're just going with the self buff dps spells. The self buff spells benefit a lot more from INT. It's almost like they made Aloth's stats to be for a muscle wizard. Anyone see the similarity? If the Japanese had used their aesthetics on Aloth, his gender would be female pale elf, with Aloth's second X being the other one.

There's potentially a lot of issues with spelling. If you mispell a command or talent, who knows what'll happen. But I avoid adding or removing talents, that's not really necessary due to IE Mod class change commands or the recent Re Specialization system. http://rien-ici.com/iemod/pillars_of_eternity The commands are on there. The safest way to use them is to type them out on the notepad and copy/paste. Generally, it's pretty hard to mess up attribute changes. It either works or it doesn't. And if it does work and some other attribute changed, the msg pops out and you can check your spelling. There was a serious bug back in 1.0 I think it was, that certain effects on you didn't go away and various modals stacked until forever, due to save/reload bug. So IE class change actually got rid of some of that. It runs an auto script that removes the class' abilities, just like the new respec option. Some stuff they left out or removed too much back when the script was still new, but I could always add it back in using a simple search on the Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle Now the IE Mod is pretty polished, although a lot of beta changes due to the PX1 patch. <B>Personally, the one time I tried doing something simple (removing one talent from each of my tanks and replacing it with another), it caused weird glitches like the new talent not being successfully added, yet some other talent being listed twice on my character sheet.</b> I recommend using the IE mod for that, it's a lot safer, but you have to relevel up. That way, they check what you should or shouldn't have. However, the mod replaces a code file, and if you have gog, you should back up that entire folder due to the way patches work. In the objectbundle folder talents start with tln_arcane_veil So it's important to use the exact case and spacing there, hence why I used notepad to get it just right. If you get it wrong or shorten it, the game may add the "effect" not the talent or power, so you get a double stack of it and the save file gets bugged until that character gets reloaded or purified by a script. The attribute changes are much simpler. You don't need to hunt for item names or talent names in that folder. The only time I need to add talents instead of re spec is because of wizards like Aloth. So annoying.

Generally for role playing and flavor, I like the Planescape Torment dialogue system concerning the grimoire or magic spellbook. If they could make something like that into a game mechanic, it would be even better. There's always IE mod for people who want to go back to a more familiar magic system. An example of a rp/mechanics power system would be to give Aloth an extra spell slot that he can cast in emergencies, but as a result of over taxing his inner soul power, the other X comes out. Which might cause something interesting to happen in combat. Other comments here

If you really want to change or go back to the old mechanics, use IE Mod for Pillars. The new one for PX1 version is out. IE=Infinity Engine like Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, BG1 to address a previous question. In D n D, int gave bonus spells per level, and your level also increased your spell slots but not beyond a certain point per level. <B>I remember the frustration in BG 1 using the SCS mod and not being able to find a breach spell until after I made it to the big city.</b> I used to use AI scripts I custom wrote for myself to do potion spamming as well as correct auto attacks without freezing, in order to basically outlast some wizard protections. Their durations would go off, and then I would hammer them. That's probably the only way I had back then to bypass wizard protections without breach or other counters. The grimoire needs to be switched when the wizard wants melee/defensive buffs vs cc/damage spells. A lot of the switches in the grimoire should come before a fight, but it's nice that they allow in combat switching as well, but it's not very optimum given the delays and looking through each grimoire using up a quick slot to figure out if it has the spell you want. Out of combat grimoire is nice, in combat needs a look at. For example, if they had an ability to use 2-3 per encounter spell levels to cast spell X, that would be nice. Or a way to metamagic boost stuff using spell levels or using higher spell levels to give lower spell slots back (tactically useful with some spells). Josh Sawyer and others at Obsidian made the choice to tweak the attributes so that it is harder or impossible to make classes with dump stats. Like DnD wizards with high int and low whatever (cha). Then every good wizard is just a cookie cutter version of the other good wizard.

The blunderbuss is pretty rare in the early game. You have to go to a certain quest area to be sure to get one, but that's the good one. A lot of the good exceptional weapons are near the late game, but Lead spitter is relatively easy to get on the way to the crit path. <B>On big armoured bosses or enemies I'll just have to pierce and debuff enough to negate the advantage of might over dexterity unless spells are the main damage source on those big bosses from the cipher?</b> Your current might is okay. I played a cipher with 3 might and 10 might. So that's why I notice differences like the one I wrote before. Like I said before, 2 points in any attribute one way or another, won't break the game or strategy. 5-10 points? You'll see a difference then, big ones even. Of course there's always a difference, but it's hard to notice until you go extreme one way or another. Ciphers make mince meat out of big hard hitting enemies, that are alone or easy to isolate. It's generally because unlike early druids, priests, and other wizard like debuffers, the cipher can cast his spells so long as he can do dps. That means there's no such thing as avoiding the debuff or cc of a wizard by using defense until the spell caster runs out of spells. Eventually cipher will get lucky, maybe with a crit, and the big fella goes down to focused dps. Action speed from dexterity is a very unique bonus. Spells can increase attack speed and light armor can reduce recovery, but there isn't anything that naturally makes casting slow/normal spells faster other than dexterity as far as I know. The Baldur's Gate 2 expansions, used to have spell sequencers that instantly cast stuff, which was a huge tactical advantage. Other than traps and dexterity on casters, it's hard to do that kind of overwhelming tactical assault. If you like doing pulls, I suggest using Kana's chant that increases party move speed, getting a wizard and a druid. Those two spell casters have very long distance spells which can aggro enemies, as well as putting down aoe hobble debuffs. It will make pulling more fun and easier against extremely large groups of enemies. Like in the bounty quests. <B>I'm certainly going to enchant might as soon as I can in any case! By the way, I'm not finding much in term of equipment advice (apart from weapons, there's tons of things on weapons), that's a little strange for a RPG.</b> That's partially due to spoilers. If you want us to give you advice on where to get specific cipher plus items, you might need to ask directly. Since I think while people will tell you the item name usually, they won't tell you where to find it, since it involves story/quest issues. A lot of the items so to speak, cater more to solo tanks, solo run throughs, and various defenses. For a ranged character, you can be naked, no items whatsoever, with a good weapon, and you're still a good dps member of the party. There's only like one ring that adds +20% damage against certain enemies, most items give defensive bonuses or utility bonuses. While it's certainly possible to get cloaks, belts with spells on them, and bracers that add +3/+5 accuracy, they aren't necessary. And if you really need more perception buffs, you can use food for that or resting bonuses.

DR is negated by might, as each attack that does more damage, naturally applies more over the same DR per attack. Dexterity is good at increasing the number of actions per minute, which is useful against hordes of enemies in long fights or extremely large enemies with a lot of hitpoints but with easily debuffed defenses. Perception is good in both situations at the same time, because graze, hit, and crit conversion chances. Since a graze does 50% of normal damage of a hit, it's like having x points of more might in that one hit. It is very easy for high DR to mitigate the damage from grazes. A DR of 20 being hit by 19 points of damage, only allows like 20% of the 19 points through, a minimum dmg per hit. Even if you attack twice in one second, that's still 3.8 x 2 worth of damage. Whereas if you could convert that 19 points of damage into 40, then each attack you would still apply 40-20DR=20 points of damage. Of course a high level cipher can steal DR from enemies, which is why it's one of the hard hitting dps classes. The blunderbuss synergizes well with cipher because the cipher gets a natural base damage to their attacks, due to the whip effect. Although I haven't tested it recently to see just what exactly the bonus is. It says +140% base damage on the page of course. <B>I do know about the pre-cast but I'm lvl 5, so I can't do it before next level I would guess (it's 2.5 focus per level right?)</b> Something like that, although if you take greater focus or whatever it's called, that adds +10 to max focus, you might be able to bump that up faster. Currently your starting focus is 1/4 of your max focus. The cipher has a lot of good offensive and defensive talents to choose from, so it's hard to justify doing it just to get +10 focus. Antipathetic and echo were always pretty op for the cipher, as the numbers just are hard to beat, even if you only damage one enemy with it all the time or spread it out in chunks. But they were also extremely difficult to use and often wasn't necessary with the spank/tank strategy of old versions. Also without pulling tricks and solo stealth, the cipher used to have issues managing aggro without another character using engagement to stop enemies from bumping into the cipher. On another note recent tests in White March with a naked cipher and low DR ranger, has worked out pretty well. If I can control the number of enemies and then engage the most dangerous ones, the number of times they attack my backline can be reduced by a large amount. If they are not paralyzed or cced, I just move them out of view of the enemy's backline, problem solved more or less. And often even that's not necessary if I make the wizard have close to the highest perception and close to the lowest deflection of the party. That tends to draw in a lot of aggro once he starts casting spells and damaging people with chill fog. He's a natural aggro magnet but unlike others, he can cast some super defensive buffs. With some healing, he can stay paralyzed forever. Unlike a fighter though, once he gets unparalyzed, he will be the enemy's nightmare once the buffs and debuffs start stacking on enemies. DOn't need that many to do a ringleader or charm with cipher. The monk zahua isn't bad for a tank/dps, except when everybody ignores him. Which they will generally do if he isn't the first one they see. His stats aren't as good as the ones designed for that solo tank triple crown build however.

Paladin is a pretty op class right now, since for emergency spike healing their lay on hands has a high tick and casts quickly. In fact many of the paladin abilities are either instantaneous or fast, which saves a lot of time. Got to love trying to heal party members before Caed Nua with the priest, when his dex sucks and then the tank dies before the heal even activates. Consecrated ground and the ionic dps/heal wave attack are the most used 2nd level spells for priest. I didn't really use the level 3+ buffs all that much. I kept saving them for unpredictable fights later on, but my control techniques made harder fights more manageable. Druids are awesome in corridor and bridge fights, anywhere where terrain bottlenecks can create a kill zone. Don't even need melee tanks for that, just someone to block them from going across the line while everyone else just snipes at range. As for difficult, per some early tests and beta information, the tooltips are relatively accurate for difficulty rating once you read them in the options. Generally, each encounter has a mix of enemy types which may be different groups together or different sub types of the same group. So if there is six in your party, and you meet 3 slimes, you can manage easily. If those 3 slimes are replaced by the more dangerous slimes, you would have a slightly more difficult issue on hand. If those 3 weak slimes are in front, then 3 more hard ones spawn in the back, that's even more difficult. At the highest difficulties, you have everything spawn in each encounter, they all have more hp and defenses, and they might be packing some special caster type enemies as well on top. Easy and normal are good for people that dislike the combat system in Pillars and just want to do quests and grind out experience to get more powerful items and abilities, to finish the game quickly. Hard and Path of the Damned, cater more to people who like to play tactical games like X Com Ufo defense (old one) and various war games/simulators. As it allows longer fights and more detailed understanding of enemy defenses and behavior. Generally if you go with the stronger builds and combinations now, hard basically becomes like normal or easy in terms of relative difficulty. A person that is figuring all of this out, playing on normal, will have a difficult time. It took me several fights against enemy party compositions in this game before I got good at understanding and using my own party's power combos. So a lot of fights become a breeze as you gain tactical knowledge and in game stats/items/power. <B>3) For my PoTD party (meaning it'll work even better for lower difficulties), I have a PC paladin main and Eder as tanks, Aloth the wizard and Durance, Hiravias the druid, and Grieving Mother the cipher.</b> I used that combo before as well, and it's pretty strong, especially with per encounter spells. But before then, I tended to hoard spells overly much so a lot of my casters also became support ranged dps. That required a couple of respecs though, in 1.03. Except my main was always the cipher and pallegina filled in the paladin slot. I generally experiment with different stat combinations with the companion classes using the console. This saves me from having to miss out on some story dialogue and it saves me from having to create an entirely new characters which I have to manage the inventory of. <B>an aside from Eder, and the wizard in guilded vale (his name escapes me right now) and Durance, which other 2 companions should I consider for my party? (for both a paladin and a rogue PC)</b> Eder, Aloth, Durance, and Kana the chanter are available in the first area group. The rest are only available after you get through a few hard fights against a certain fortress along the crit path. So generally you won't need to choose in the early days. You only need to choose once you get past the crit path and the world opens up more. Then you can collect the druid, the cipher, the paladin, or the ranger. And the White March npcs too. Party composition is generally something you need to worry about only if you play on Path of the Damned and only if you lack certain roles. So basic party composition is made out of tank, dps, healing. So if you choose some of the op healing builds or the paladin, you don't have to worry about healng, and can choose as many tank or dps classes as you wish. So a paladin MC has the tank/healing roles down, usually. A rogue MC has the dps role down. The other 5 slots can then be filled however you wish, so long as you at least keep the party ratio in balance. 1 tank, 1 dps, 1 healer. So for example, Paladin fills tank and healer role at same time. Cipher can fill the tank and dps role at the same time if you got the armor. Ranger is better at the dps role, in range. For tanking, they have relatively good deflection and health. Priest has the healing role Druid has the dps/control role as well as some close range aoe healing spells. Or to use the Kickstarter npc guides, the classes are set into various categories. Leaders who provide healing and buffs. Paladin and priest. Hard hitters, the primary single target dps characters like cipher or rogue or ranger. The tough mainline fighters and tanks. Monk, Fighter. The barbarian is somewhere between a second line fighter and an aoe dps. The paladin is a strong hybrid of healing and tanking roles. The aoe debuff/dps/control class like the Druid and Wizard. The designers at Obsidian wanted for a more flexible class system with a few hybrid elements, in order to avoid multi class and other game balance issues. So a lot of the classes have powers that can do a number of different roles as they level up. Because any class can use any weapon or armor combination, there's no limitation due to that. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Monk The wiki is still a good place to get some background information on various classes. It's also good for role playing.

Moon godlike is pretty op for first and second line party members. Having more than one, you won't even need to heal yourself. It's an auto heal. For every ally on 2 screens over. Normal and hard isn't much different. Path of the damned is where things get real different tactically. <B> Having three AoE heals per encounter for free that auto activate sounds like cheating to me.</b> Whoever is doing the balance changes tend to buff things too much and then nerf things too hard. They complained about the moon godlike being useless, so now it's what it is. Of course, it was useless to people back then because most people didn't know how to use any tactics in Pillars to begin with. It was probably a little bit weak, but most of that was due to the opaqueness of the tool tips. Generally a melee tank can keep 1-2 enemies engaged, via swapping, without terrain bottlenecks or talents. On path of the damned, the spiders may number 5+ so one tank won't handle them. In certain caves and waves, there might be 10+ of them. Wildlings are also a problem, because of their AI and paladin heals. The beasts are dangerous because of their high dps and stats. Generally build eder with sword and shield and have him as fighter switch main tanking with the paladin. That should work. Generally if you find the game too difficult, bring in more paladins/monks/priests. The paladin and fighter can fight back to back, so they aren't easily flanked. Also makes it easier to cast buffs and heals on them from one area. People who can tank, who can dps, and who can heal, are always pretty op. As for tanking, you just need deflection and DR. So anyone can wear full plate, if you get it. After that is whoever has the most endurance/health and then healing.

Yea, I think per rest abilities for a talent is pretty bad as well given how weak they are individually. They should take a look at it in the White March part 2 or whatever else patch they are working on for now. The skeletons were always weak on the chanter. They aren't going to get better with a weaker mini talent. The spirit though, that stuns on a hit. For a level 1 invocation. Hard to beat that.

Most of the dps classes got buffed because Perception gives accuracy, just like it did in the final beta build. The wizards have longer spell ranges now and their spells are faster with better defensive buffs. Also lasts longer. So muscle wizard, semi tank, dps, aoe stun crowd, it does pretty much everything now. Just not at the same time. Ciphers have issues building focus, unless you get special items like the neck from White March or the old +10% focus one. They don't seem to generate focus per hit now, it's more like % of total damage is converted to focus. Their base damage with blunderbuss is still pretty good with the DR bypass talent and paralysis combo. Even better with the roar blunder as it debuffs -5 defenses for x seconds on each projectile hit (six projectiles now for blunder). The ciphers are back to the old ciphers if you use the two food buffs, +4 per hit and the 20% focus gain one. Final buff build, if you do about 100-140 damage with blunder each 9-15s, focus gain is more than 50 per shot. Retaliate cipher build still works for focus gain, but is a bit flavorful so to speak. Monks and rangers got buffed with White March because of one thing. Party ai. Now monks don't automatically die if you ignore them while they have too many wounds, they can use those wounds up themselves (although they are kind of dumb at doing combo rotations). So that means ranger pets also get ai, which means less micro, which means overall more dps. The full plate mail monk with +cc defense and some basic swift strike and torment dps powers, is awesome to play. Paladin is also OP, except it does a little bit of dps and a lot of healing while tanking and while giving whole party buffs, while the monk does more dps the more it gets damaged. Rogue talents haven't changed much in terms of their dps op ness, but perception definitely changes how they are built. And solo stealth mode means they don't need the invisibility talents as much. Fighters got nerfed for those using defender. Engagement targets got buffed in terms of importance, although it's not very intuitive how it works. Constitution got buffed, gives more % now to endurance and health, and the class health numbers have been tweaked a little bit to buff up ciphers and wizards. So that they can tank more damage. A lot of items have been buffed or nerfed. Mostly deflection items were nerfed by 10% and some other items were buffed, like +attack speed mods. +attack speed is incredibly good, along with dexterity, might, per, for overall dps. Rangers get a stun ability at about level 11, on targets that is engaged by the pet. Stun on crit and hit. Various weapons that inflict prone or stun on crit, goes very well with the +10% +10% hit to crit conversion from the rogue, the 5% hit to crit from zealous 2 aura, and from orlan's racial. Moon godlike aoe healing ability is pretty op now. Shod in faith boots are like that as well.\ Summoning figures are time limited, so are the chanter summons. So the chanter and figurines got nerfed hard on that vector. 20-30s for the drake. It's more like a damage sponge, hope it dies before then drawing enemy aggro. It's no longer the supreme dps of the chanter via summons any more. Charm, dominate, aoe dominate on cipher is still pretty op. Aoe confusion is pretty strong. Druid wave aoe stun spell is pretty powerful. Spiritshift got buffed, duration is about the same 20-30s but the hide of the animal had the Dr raised to about 14 I think. Enemy use of CC and ranged dps is much more efficient now and more powerful. For example, one of the new ice primordians have the old slicken, that does prone every x seconds, vs the nerfed slicken that only prones an enemy once. On a different note, Josh Sawyer said something about wanting to design stats that didn't have dump stats in an rpg. That's why the stat bonuses were changed so often in the beta and now with the white march release. And I think he accomplished that, mostly, in Pillars 1.0 Just that perception was the stat that couldn't be balanced easily at the time so they had it give deflection instead. Which only made the spank/tank strategy even worse in a sense. People still complained about getting killed on hard, Potd, and even normal in Pillars 1.0 because they didn't know how to stack deflection on their party. The paladin was always pretty powerful and useful, it was just a little bit hard to use. Same for the wizard's low duration buffs and short spell ranges. So they took some of those complaints into account for these balance changes, which are mostly good, but for some classes it is too good (paladin lay on hands) vs fighter's constant recovery. Confident aim and armored grace needs a buff or look at, to rebalance the fighter so that it can do other things while tanking.

The nice thing about arcane veil is that it is almost instant, even if you are paralyzed, so long as you aren't recovering from an attack, you can cast it. So the wizard has a lot of useful abilities to make up for their poorer accuracy, deflection, and stat issues. On the other hand, all of this takes time to cast in combat. Generally dexterity helps a lot more on the normal and slow speed spells. On the fast speed spells, it's still pretty fast at 10 dex and thus the recovery is lower. Once the druid gets the wave crush stun spell, it's pretty much all over for enemies in corridors or open field fights where you aren't surrounded. So they got pretty good close in powers and good fight pulling spells at long range as well. In fact I read the stats and I realized this was maybe true before, but the lightning and other direct line attacks have 45m range, as in they cross that distance until they are stopped by a terrain block.

The base damage and the focus gain over time may be about the same. The difference with the blunderbuss is that it can be used tactically to target only enemies that have cc on them, in combination with paralysis or various other people's cc. That makes the gameplay significantly different when playing that cipher vs the constant focus regen ciphers with their steady but average attacks. Blunderbuss also gets a huge benefit from lead spitter or the roar gun. When an enemy gets cc ed and the cipher hits it with blunderbuss with DR pen talent on, the rogue hits it with some other bs dps talents, and then some magic user casts attacks against reflex, it's pretty much over for that enemy, even if it has hundreds of hitpoints. Very good for tactical level party tricks. Focus gain used to be per hit, I think, but now they just made it a base % of the damage you do, including retaliations and/or lashes. But not any focus gain from spells far as I know. To get it to gain focus the old way, you need blacsonn and the carow food buff. In full plate, blunderbuss triggers every 12s on average 10-12 dex. 14+ s at 3dex, about 9-10s at 18 dex. The NPC stats were originally designed with perception giving accuracy, then they removed it because people were min maxing accuracy and deflection over might. Now they have added it back, since they have had more time to tweak the mechanics, giving us back the old accuracy bonus from per. Which makes some of the dps npc stats make a lot more sense.

The rogue is the highest single dps class. So generally a balance party is tank, healer, dps. Most of the classes in Pillars is a hybrid, so you get some interesting combinations, which can be extended with buffs and equipment changes. The rogue would by itself fill the dps slot, so that frees you from picking another dps class. They made it so that you can spot things automatically, outside scout mode. I'm sure it still uses mechanics, but it's a lot easier now. But traps and spotting hidden stuff is made by mechanics, and there's no separate skill required to unlock hidden chambers (other than solving puzzles). Crowd control is generally taken care of by the cipher, the wizard, or the druid. With chanter, priest, and ranger having a little bit of a debuff too. Paralysis, stuns, prone, petrified, stuck for crowd control are the most powerful. If you want a tank as main, then the paladin. Any class can take mechanics per level, but the rogue can get it up faster due to the initial bonus. Later levels cost less.

I would also be very hesitant to dump both Dex and Per because of how low Reflex would be even with Sword and Shield Style. But about discouraging enemies from disengaging, do we actually know which factors the enemy AI looks at, specifically, and which ones it might not factor in? They use cc and other debuffs on the guy with the highest accuracy. So my cipher with 18+ per always gets paralyzed first after the tank gets it, and people who switch to one handed not only have a higher accuracy but their deflection is lower, perhaps motivating the AI to get them with the auto script. Spell casting seems to be pretty big. These are the AI for the wildling fishes. I would speculate that other mob types would have different AI based on their abilities, like the spirits did in 1.0 After a few battles, like 10-20, I've figured out that if I can make a line and block them using terrain or their own bodies, I can lure a couple of their special attackers to my backline and kill them. Problem is generally when this tactic pulls too many of them, so now everyone is mixed in together with everyone else, making aoe spells harder to use. Engagement worked as it did before White march, when you blocked a person charging character Z, engagement allows you to stop people that are running towards another target. In a couple of situations, my tank needed more than one engagement slot to stop people from flowing around behind him and then targeting the healers that were behind the tank. Longer weapons also work better for triggering engagement which interrupts ai of some enemies switching targets. Reflex saves aren't as important as fortitude and will. 200 endurance tanks with 20+ dr can absorb most of the spell damage. And the enemy can only cast spells against people who refuse to use terrain blocks and interrupting attacks/spells/flanking maneuvers. This is where the OP Paladin lay on hands and auras come into play. The cc debuffs are more dangerous than pure spike damage, just as it is in reverse when on the player's side.

Level 11 wizard with citzal's spirit lance is pretty good outside Durgan's Battery. Generally the crunch is how to decide what spells to load into the grimoire and when to cast debuffs vs when to cast self buffs/melee spells. Lower level wizard might even be better since they can just cast a ranged wand spell and do damage that way, they don't have to get close, so a lot of options since you can technically have 2+2 weapon slots with the spells. Wizard is probably one of the only classes where it doesn't matter as much what your talents are. A lot of your self buff power comes in the form of spells. weapon/shield, ranged weapon, +elemental wand spell weapon, +lance spell weapons. The wizard's base accuracy and deflection is the lowest of them all I think, so you have to becareful how to rotate the buffs when the duration runs out. Playing on March PotD high level content level 11 party, the fights are pretty long due to the enemy paladins, melee dps tanks, and ranged dps they have in one group. I never played a wizard after 1.04, since the game I had before 1.04 aloth could crossbow fire at 10m but needed to get to 5m-8m to cast most useful spells, so I dropped him for the much more useful paladin (before it became op), while using a cipher (the op cipher) as my main dps.

One of the new 2.0 Paladin builds I saw had 4 and 4 dexterity perception. 18 int, 18 resolve, near 18 might, relatively good con. That was the player tank, using the rp bonus from conviction to tank even more. The sword shield reflection bonus covers the low reflex roll. But as a main, it's nice to trigger all those dialogue options except per.

I always get the phantom because of stun on hit. OP beyond belief if it can hit. Rereading that, for multi class apprentice sneak attack is pretty good and so is charm with will debuffs. But generally that should be after you take cautious attack and superior deflection if you want to get tankier characters. Concerning the main topic here, dropping con and resolve is less risky for the rangers and the wizards, who fire from way back in the 3rd line. Ciphers have a lot of abilities and spell powers, but they tend to be either in the second line or the first line, because they are range limited. Which means that it's more likely some enemy sees them and aggroes them. So constitution makes it easier for them to survive because it gives the tanks and healers and other people, time to do something about it and save them. Also the more hits a cipher can take, the more damage they can deal out, until they can cast paralysis and then disengage while dog piling the target with party focus dps.

Nobears you can test the dexterity thing yourself. Use the console iroll20s AttributeScore player Dexterity 17 AddAbility player tln_penetrating_shot_talent tln_gunner RemoveTalent charname ability/talent The companions for charname would go something like this Companion_Aloth(Clone) Out of combat reloads are instant in many instances, so becareful of that.

The firearm build generally needs the DR bypass talent, which improves blunderbuss six projectile spray a lot due to DR not negating it. Kana's fire dmg buff to weapons and debuffing the enemy with paralysis, will make the blunderbuss hit for max damage. It's about 100-140 dmg per fire at level 11. Shot fires every 9-14 seconds depending on recovery and attack speed/reload. If I remember, persistence has some pretty good enchants for the level. DR bypass helps that out as well. So it hits about maybe every 2-3s.

The wizard does have some talents that are per encounter, but to get dps out of him you would need double take on the blast talents. Might be useful in the beginning since you are dps limited party wise (aoe has a lot of dps), but later on you'll probably have to drop him. In PoTD Pillars 1.0, I picked up Aloth, I picked up Eder, I went straight to Caed Nua. Kana was like 1 level above me. Then with that group, I cleared out Caed Nua or at least most of it, so I could bypass it and get the other companions. Because I wanted to get them before they leveled up. It's very difficult to clear out the spirits in top Caed Nua without using that kiting trick. No good weapons, no equipment, horrible wizard spells, I just pulled them one by one and focus fired them with everyone's arbalests or ranged weapons. Eventually they all died. Well there were some groups I couldn't take on, but they were easily bypassed with stealth or fog of war. The spiders and paladins in the dungeon, I pulled the spiders to the paladins, had them weaken each other, and then used a door way to bottleneck what was left and cleaned them up. I picked up Pallegina late, but only because I didn't know where she was. Hiravias and the hunter was easier to find, including durance. Once I found them, it was easier. But you'll probably need to create some custom characters, if you can't get through Watcher of Caed Nua quest.