Ymarsakar

I build it as a range dps/ spot tank/ aoe dmg/ caster killer these days. I like builds that don't focus on too many required talents. But a few wand talents are good for the blights at least. Most of the wizard's dps per spell is from the summoned weapons. So a high INT is almost required, and I really like the aoe dps of citzal's lance. Later on you get the black bow at spell level 8. And you can use the tentacle spell to tank for you or just block people rushing you. Chaining the defensive spells together has become more important. So rotation might be deleterious alacrity/frenzy, mirrored images, Llengrath spell for more deflection, then citzal's lance or minor blights. If you are way in the back, protected by layers of other stuff, then Boer's offensive spell rotation would be better. I just really like using dimensional gate. It takes advantage of the wizard's flexibility, but tends to use a lot of spells and I don't like switching grimoires. So most of my spells would be self buffs, then a summon spell for dps, then maybe a blackened sight for cc or a web for cc. Essential phantom can also be useful, as something to block for you and do aoe damage on its own. CON of 12-14 to absorb some hits that get through deflection. I usually use the Caed Nua +3 con resting bonus, though. The wizard has that high endurance max buff, but that's using up a spell.

To attack your party while it is in perma combat, just aggro a tavern and then don't kill em. Setup a choke point where they can't get through your tank walls. As for persistence, I think they upgraded the Accuracy 3 and Damaging 3 abilities, to also give two bonuses. That ups their dps considerably, since 4 accuracy with 45% is pretty good. If it is in the hit range. It's really hard to give up permanent passive stuns from Borresaine on Ranger sagani. Those accuracy bonuses from pets and what not, are pretty easy to stack.

Can't people solo kite the phantoms and just shoot them with ranged weapons? They split off depending on how far they get from each other and their original patrol areas. A passive dot might be pretty good in those circumstances. Kana chanter's phantom summon always stunned on a hit or graze. I thought that was pretty useful.

I also used a shield on my monk in the White March against those paralysis Lagus. But, I had it on the secondary slot. Fist/Shield. Only used it when I had to. Dual fists are still great damage, if the monk isn't getting KOed.

I put my priority on torment's reach, swift strikes, and anguish prone. You can get move speed from survival camping now, so not that high a priority. Rooting pain, resonant touch, might be a good combo at the end game. I tend to go with the high defense juggernaut build. Braven, have you tested lesser wounds? Maybe that'll give you more wounds per 10 damage or something. As for shod in faith, the cheesy way to do it is to have your high party member do a blunder attack on the monk, when combat starts, to give him wounds and activate crits. The Russians had the same idea in WWII

There was a crafting bug that wouldn't let people do that before. But I think that was really old. Pre 2.0 patch days even. Can't remember exactly what patch they addressed crafting bonus problems on.

Anyone ever play Warframe? Basically the rogue in Pillars needs to have the feel of a "ninja" that is very "athletic".

You know... I thought this was a missed opportunity. Especially with Durador. His relation with his staff in many of his conversations could have had a unique physical representation as the game progressed. I was sorf of expecting the weapon to reflect his evolution. Maybe at some point that was an option in the development of the game that was discarded. Aloth, Eder and other companions, all have their unique items when you get them. Back on topic, I found out after my first playthough with me and 5 companions on PoTD, that their power is good enough that it doesn't merit a min-max appoach to succeed. And that's with me being the huge noob that I am at this game. You'd also be losing quite a lot of flavor and lore (YMMV, of course) if you went with hirelings. I would recommend going with companions for your first playthrough, at least. Were you hoping for something like Dakkon's black sword that reflected his willpower and current thoughts? Chris AV did a blog post or something about some of the stuff that was cut out of his NPC designs. INT or Might tends to be the only two stats I want to max out at times, since they seem to give the best bang for buck. The other stats are good too, but item bonuses stack better. For example, 0% recovery attacks/spell use doesn't need 18+ Dex. Some of the new builds listed here by certain commenters, also are more equipment and tough based, not glass cannons. More easy to use with balanced stats.

I recommend trying a chanter to draw aggro first, using his death chant aoe. Have the chanter pull the mobs so the back of it is facing your stealthed rogue. Or even just wait until enemies circle to flank the chanter. An easy way in is to have a buffed wizard run to the place he needs to be, then teleport switch to your rogue. You can use that as an escape or as a setup. The wizard can also dish out some flame fans as a result of being that close too. So long as your rogue doesn't do aoe damage, the enemies should stick to trying to circle the chanter for awhile.

Fighter is better as off tank dps with greatsword or some kind of dps weapon. Main tank would be paladin with weapon/shield for that +5 bonus or better deflection. Of course, these days, I love the Chanter main tank, all defense talents. That death chant is awesome for drawing aggro and forcing people to pay attention to the chanter, even without engagement. It's like when wizards or druids do AOE and everyone swarms them. 4 death chants, 1 dragon slash, works great for the longer fights. Then summon down some ogres for dps/meat shields. I like that kind of gameflow. The chanter is like a dps tank to me. It doesn't need talents for to do dps, the death chant bypasses DR (or hits so often it looks like it does) and the dragon slash is aoe and quite a good chunk of damage. Sort of like a monk, the more damage they absorb, the more damage they can still dish out. Assuming the chanter has a shield and good deflection, like 100+. Monks are also good for the front line, with more dps than a paladin. Slightly squishier until they get iron wheel DR. Clarifying some terms. Main tank for me is mostly anyone with very high deflection and DR, able to take on 3+ enemies at a time without dying in 30s. Off tank and secondaries, have more utility or dps, and tend to only need to engage 1-2 enemies at a time.

I've come to like the chanter as a tank, because the aoe death chant draws a lot of attention and it's free. Stacking every defensive talent around on one character. Probably affects the chanter the least. Now that the outlander's frenzy is per encounter, I was wondering if it might be useful for some caster builds, to speed up their cast rates like when the wizard uses the +50% deleterious alacrity all the time. Lowering deflection on the cipher might also be useful if the enemy has too low of an ACC. The new cipher in 3.0 feels much easier to gain and regain focus, via amplified thrust, while maintaining single target dps. I was thinking of switching my build order for the ranged cipher, so I got two ciphers, one MC and GM, and did a comparison between melee/heavy armor vs ranged/guns talent wise. I found out I probably want a ranged weapon, but the talents will be going into defense, probably. The BatS build looks pretty interesting as well, I always thought about putting hiravias on the front to make use of his cone attacks, but never got around to it.

If you get knocked out, you still get fatigued. The inventory items took up a lot more space than second wind did. And second wind is activated by the AI. So adding in one icon is still less than all the other icons they took off the first bar.

Eder's backstory went very well with the Saint's War lore I read on the wiki before game released. GM's lore was supposed to be linked to one critical plot arc, but it felt disconnected because nobody else would banter with her, she's invisible almost. In a game like Pillars, it doesn't work very well because the design of the main character and the critical story plot wasn't supposed to be heavily linked to the companions. Very different from Planescape Torment, where the companions were like part of the whole story arc to begin with. GM interceded for the player on one quest, using her cipher abilities. Not much of that happening anywhere else for anyone. Carrie Patel's designs are good. Hiravias was pretty funny. Durance was like that "evil cleric" which never made any sense in AD and D crpg settings lacking the DM/player interplay of board games, but now does. Not having companions in would probably make it difficult to read into a person's personality and backstory. Since they aren't heavily tied to main quests, you sort of have to imagine it on your own. The short stories by Patel, did a good job of describing motivations and development. Sadly, it doesn't seem like the game focused much on developing the traits of various companions. Mechanically, they develop no different than artificially created characters. There's no unique ability or power they gain in game due to their quest, that differentiates them. Hiravas doesn't get a new spiritshift nor an extra use of his druid shapeshift. Aloth doesn't get anything. It's probably due to the top design philosophy that a player should be able to play the game solo or with any party they want. It means that any special flavor or taste having to deal with customizing companions, goes to Priority C and below. Cut out. Legendary weapons have customizations, more customizations even. Companion backstories are like lorebooks, basically. Except you can't reread or trigger the banters whenever you feel like it. Patel did Aloth and Sagani, I believe. Chris did Durance and GM, but many of the features were cut. Too much content for C priority companions. As for NPC stat changes, they used to be able to be changed by console. You still can, even without IE Mod, but I'm guessing the save game system they use to balance NPC stat changes notices that your NPCs have "wrong stats" and then fixes them every time you reload. I noticed that the "adventure skits" in White March 1, seemed more involved. No longer an experimental element that was very short previously. It started becoming like an actual mini story, rather than an excuse to go from Point A over this wall to point B. Still a long way to go before they can match half of Japanese VN quality. Btw, just as an example, a storyline companion that would be critical, although not absolutely necessary, to the main story's plot would have been someone who was in on the player's secret, from the start. In both timelines. Then they would continue on, powering up their abilities, with the Watcher's abilities working in tandem, special cases, with special bonuses, just from interacting with that one person in the party. Then at the end, they would make some interesting choices, with dire consequences, which makes the end game fight easier, harder, more RPish, etc. That kind of content would be Priority A or B, something very close to the content in the Critical Path itself, because it is the Critical Path itself. The main story would also have differed, before the expansions, if the main character's content was written assuming he had to be a priest of some god. With a concurrent option to temporarily class shift due to other people's souls. Maybe by adding a bunch of those talent powers in per encounter. So because the Pillars npcs can be killed off and nothing critically fails as a result, other than epilogue, there's not as much attachment to them. There's no need for it, it's not designed into the game mechanically. I haven't played through all of White March yet, so perhaps they did something extra there.

Two ciphers with charm seemed to work easily, although I didn't have level scaling. Then I met some blights and party died to them, because both ciphers only had piercing damage. Oops. Mental paralysis wasn't enough to get the druids in the back, because they have so much hp. I think I was using corrosive aoe, essential phantom, wizard minor blights, to increase my dps. Druid hiravias lightning aoe spells helped. I think I did that fight both with and without overwhelming wave spells. Much easier with the overwhelming waves, as they both do damage and stun. Perfect for hitting the druids in the back. Then keeping them stunned via lightning. Moonwell was better healing than consecrated, due to the positioning problems. Might not have had a priest at all, just shod in faith.

I second what Boeroer wrote. I also recommend that you use the console to add experience and level up, then aggro a bar room of civilians to test it with your party. Once you are done with your test, you reload. You can optimize a lot of your builds, especially the wizard, using that, without spending stuff on the wrong spells. The spell in question has long duration and high aoe damage, with good accuracy. So when combined with attack speed buffs, the wizard can become a ranged aoe dps character. Some wand talents as well, like blast dr penetration.

There is no system per say. There are accuracy differences and talents that sometimes work better with one type of weapon than another tactically speaking. For example, the monk's torment's reach and the rogue's 2 special attacks, are full attacks. Meaning if you have two weapons wielded, it procs on both weapon. Or fist in the case of the monk. It's not necessary, it's just a tactical benefit. While every class can put points into gaining accuracy for any type or group of weapons, most people focus on a specific build. A class/talent combination that uses specific weapons to maximize output.

A lot of the wizard's damage comes from his weapon spells, not his direct damage spells. Things like citzal's martial lance, the quarterstaff, and the blight wands. For armor, usually it's all naked, light robes or heavy plate mail using attack speed boosts. Generally the more enemies there are and the more enemy cc, the heavier the wizard's armor must be.

Imagine a unit made out of 3 priests and 3 paladins. It can be a crusader knight unit.

For less micro, I would go for the ranger, the pet does good dps if you get the 2 dps talents and it makes managing some battles easier with the extra .5 of a tank or aka melee user. For more micro, the priest would do more, but would sometimes need a lot of micro. The rogue and the cipher is usually a lot of micro right there. Two chanters isn't a bad setup either, once you get Dragon thrashes for aoe dps and the stun aoe shout. The priest can also handle a lot of enemies, if you have enough 2nd level spells to do the repulsing seal. That's not necessarily going to kill everyone immediately, but that's what the rogue is for once people are prone. Sneak attacks. The ranger has really good dps if you can get twinned arrows, driving flight, some pet tank/dps talents, and stunning shot. Stunning shot allows every hit the ranger makes against an enemy aggroed by your pet, into a stun effect. I think it's the actual stun effect, not the fake one from weapons, but cannot recall exactly. But it makes ganging up on an enemy easier. Ciphers can also do the same with mental paralysis, but with the focus nerfs, it's about the only thing they can do if they spend focus on that. The way ranged parties deal with swarms is to put down slow effects (wizards and druids) or use CC to disable certain enemies and party dps focus them down. The cipher usually does that with paralysis cc and later on, amplified aoes. The actual dps of the party goes way up if you can target focus cced enemies, since they have less defenses. That's not generally something a melee heavy party can do easily.

Being able to flank while taking hits is very good for using echo or anti, another variant is dual sabres with plate or full plate. The ranged cipher was always the one I normally used, as it gave the most tactical and targeting flexibility.

What does the rogue and ranger spike vs sustained dps have to do with op class builds? Might as well bring in Juggernaut monk, dps tank, builds then.

Positioning doesn't affect your tactics unless something is FUBARED. Tactics are determined by the user, the strategic party composition, and various other longer term considerations. The selected tactic then determines positioning. For people that think being 5 feet/meters away is the only way to position things... that's a limitation of their tactical thinking and their party composition, not a limitation of the paladin or stat distribution. The Paladin is already a hybrid class. The fighter is good at doing one thing because... that's how it was designed, short and simple. As for being flanked, two people fighting back to back can't easily be flanked. They're sort of stuck together. This either happens unintentionally or the user intended it to happen, but for people that don't fight that close, they can't see how it works. It's not something concrete for them, just abstract. The fighter regens on its own, so it can be positioned on the battlefield wherever it is needed and it can hold a front. Very low micro. The paladin, however, has a range on lay of hands. What happens when the off tank and tank dps are so far from the paladin, that the paladin has to eat some 4 opportunity hits to get in range to heal the off tank, and then takes so much damage they go down? It would be better if the melee dps and tanks were close enough for the paladin aura and heals to reach already, which is a positioning that depends on the tactic which derived from what composition people decided to use in their party. The disadvantage of clumping together like that would be neglible in dungeons, since it is already crowded like that. In open field fights, the disadvantage of not being able to spread out like fighters to protect the entire backline can be mitigated by having 4-5 melee hitters in front, and only 1-2 backline dps that are very very far from the front (12m).

The reason why they removed Perception as giving accuracy in 1.0, was because Perception was the op stat, since might only gave 2% per damage before the rechange. A lot of things like gun criticals were also nerfed, because the high accuracy and high crit value tended to do a lot more damage than the enemies had endurance.

Check the combat log and click to expand the hit line. If defense equals the enemy's accuracy, then it's 15% miss, 35% graze, 50% hit. Every acc point above the defense, is 1% critical chance added on. Most people find it easier to use an offensive strategy and cc, using stuns or paralyze, the enemies so they stop doing whatever they are doing to attack you.

Amplified thrust is also an easy way to break engagement, but since it doesn't target an enemy of your choice, it is hard to use. You also can't target yourself. But for people with a lot of arquebus and hobble/stuck abilities, it can be very useful to control a few mobs at a time while kiting and shooting like horse archers.