[Slayers Claw can upgrade tier 1 Might inspiration to tier 3]

On 12/19/2023 at 10:55 AM, thelee said:

yeah it's a pretty neat trick. i think someone here even posted an aI script they used to automate the upgrade to tier 3 inspirations.

 

Might have been me but I can't remember... I just use some scripted weapon switches which is particularly effective if you're running a fighter / x with quick switch. Even more with a black jacket, where with quick switch you have zero delay.

Slayer's Claw is the reason I always do path of the slayer even though it has some of the hardest fights for soloing. Also only path that doesn't force a rest. It's unfortunate you can't access SSS content until fairly late, though it's possible to leave most of the hard fights for after you get it and become an interrupt-machine. 

[Quality of Life detect traps]

I'd really recommend you have at least one character with maxed perception in general. Since NPC perception is not so great, I generally max PER for the MC. Would definitely max PER on a conjurer/wael MC. Also Effigy's Resentment: Sagani gives +1 PER, and is probably the best choice for non-tank builds. Can also use Cauldron Brew at Outcast's Respite for +1 PER, and alchemic guile is +2 PER, which while not permanent can be done for free and repeatedly. Savage cunning from Overgrowth quest (galawain's boon) gives +1 PER as well. Also prostitute bonuses from Aenalys (+2) or Konstanten (+1). If you REALLY need more PER can waste a rest in Dunnage King's Coffin (+3 PER).

Short of all that yeah just take drugs and wear gear. 

Gear: Torc of the Falcon's Eyes (+2 amulet)
Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak (+1 cloak)
Blackblade's Hood / Horns of the Bleak Mother / Blackened Plate Helm / Cowl of Piercing Gaze / Serpent Crown (+1PER headgear)
Maw of Ingimyrk (SSS item, +2 PER headgear)
Kuaru's Ring (+1 PER ring)
Various pets (+1PER)

If you have the best of these items plus svef or ripple sponge that's +10 PER, before even going into the permanent bonuses, so even meh-PER chars should be able to detect everything. 

As for nemnok could be a number of reasons not penetrating. Lot of spells tend to have poor penetration which could be an issue, depending on your tactics. I don't recall his armor values and they aren't on the wiki unfortunately. Generally just check the combat log and adjust equipment, food, etc. as necessary. Can also debuff his armor with stuff like phantom foes or physically flanking, body attunement, expose vulnerabilities etc., though you only get one armor debuff plus flanked, so generally you can maximally debuff by 3 (4 with blackened plate). IIRC...

I'd also keep in mind another reason for high PER and buffing accuracy in general is so you can hit/crit things. Your grazes and hits may or may not penetrate high level enemies, but your crits basically will always penetrate due to getting +50% PEN, in addition to the bonus damage. So even if your PEN sucks if your accuracy is buffed enough you can kill things.

[Test results for the Wizard subclass PL bonus with weapon-sourced spells and Substantial Phantom]

There are a lot of problems with phantoms and duplicates in general, like some equipped item effects not working correctly on phantoms, different weapon penetration values, etc. I've tested them a lot before but am too lazy to find the post...

Good but unsurprising findings about power level bonuses from weapon-spells...IIRC there are other stats that aren't reflected in item-spells, like accuracy? I think it's anything derived from a player stat, so also this would include duration.

My 2k hours of Deadfire memories are fading rapidly, I'm afraid. Probably start playing again at some point. I think BG3 may have killed these forums at least for a while.

[Returning player, are these still viable in 5.0?]

 

19 hours ago, Neviskio said:

Ah great! Thanks for the answer, I was very worried since nowadays not much time and too many games to play still so kinda hate dedicating hundreds of hours potentially to a build that falls apart at the key moment

Btw was wondering, for both poe1 and 2 is there a guide that explains HOW to make/evaluate builds that is up to date? While I don't mind stealing internet builds I also kinda want to try and understand what I'm doing if possible, but I could not find one. For example aloth I'm not sure how to keep develop since I've not identified where I stole the build at the time but kinda getting a bit of a whimsy to try and make my own build on him, just as said I'm quite... mediocre at it usually <.<

Sintee builds are still good for potd party runs. I used them back in the day...

I'm unaware of like a meta "how to make builds" guide. That would be an interesting project but personally I'm too consumed by BG3 at the moment. Really it is kind of hard to mess up NPC builds unless you're trying like a trial of iron run or something. Aloth for example is good as a wizard, battlemage, or spellblade. They just fulfill different party roles. And speaking of party roles having them covered is more important than optimizing individual characters. Like you want at least 1 tank, 1+ healer/support, usually an offensive caster, and a couple DPS. Sometimes this adds to like 7 roles but multiclassing allows you to cover multiple roles with one character.

Your party seems fine as far as covering roles.

Much easier to mess up the main character like if you pick a weird multiclass and don't know how to make it work. But there are many good build guides on this forum for main characters. And heralds are always good.

[Godlike builds for POTD]

Godlikes suck IMO. Only reason to take one is death godlike if you have a character that can stay near death with barring death's door or potions of final stand. But even then you're probably better off with a human. Moon godlikes are undoubtedly the worst. Nature godlike and fire godlike are "meh" but have rare use cases. They're all much better balanced with BPM. 

5 hours ago, kronozord said:

I was thinking in using an ancient druid or ancient druid/hellwalker monk, im not really sure, with the following stats:

Mig10/ Con 10/ Dex14/ Per 19/ Int15/ Res 10

What do you guys think?

What is the idea behind ancient/helwalker? High damage druid spells I guess? The thing is the best druid spells are tier 8+. Avenging Storm and Great Maelstrom especially. Furies are the best damage dealers but Ancients are probably sufficiently good. I did a recent run with SC Fury in ultimate-like conditions, and IIRC my stats were MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES 18/9/11/19/18/3, or somethng like that. 

But druids have meh accuracy so you're better off taking a different race (humans are nice) and wearing helmet acina's tricorn IMO.

[Tyranny vs Deadfire (my experience)]

Tyranny is too dominated by magic. Make a mage MC. I used this build to great effect, with some minor adjustments.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814845354

All that really matters is collecting sigils and boosting lore to high levels with skycap (and other means) so you can craft stupidly powerful spells. The game becomes pretty easy once you get your lore high enough, and saving trainer points can be used to get lore well over 200.

Barik sucks. The best companions are magic users. Lantry is probably the best, then I'd take Eb and Syrin. Syrin makes the best tank. I do find fights kind of degenerate as all you need to do is have enough spells and sigils to blast off all your ice/fire spells like with frostfire sigil, and if you have enough spell slots and lore (cyclical energy sigils) you can just cast nonstop. 

@thelee I do miss farsight + wizard eye + spell immunity + mislead/project image. Also BG is one of the only games I've played that actually had good thief classes (I particularly enjoy bounty hunter maze traps). And I didn't learn about the limited wish quest until my third or fourth playthrough which was awesome. Also the optional but insanely hard fights like the twisted rune, kangaxx, etc... I'm thinking of playing it again. I always have to start with BG1 and play the whole series so I have all the tomes and whatnot so it takes a while though. I know you can use shadowkeeper to just edit the tome stats in and items but it doesn't feel the same. 

The amazing megadungeons like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep seem lacking in any recent video games including Deadfire. POE1 did have Endless Paths, wish Deadfire had something like that. 

[Evil run thoughts (CP)]

FF/Steel garrote is extremely powerful indeed, and more appropriate for woedica since steel garrote is woedica's group.

Another good choice for evil runs is a blood mage / soul blade, particularly if you use cheese to extend your max focus buff. You're greatly encouraged to murder everything in sight so you have insane amounts of focus and can blow up groups with soul annihilation + citzal's spirit lance. I think of it as collecting souls to make you grow more powerful. 

 

[Wolf or bear on my ghost heart / ascendant seer?]

On 6/18/2023 at 5:45 PM, Pharaoh said:

Is multiclass ascendant really that better than single class?

I'm playing as SC ascendant, it finally cured my restartitis, and I'm lvl 20 about to do the DLCs

So far it has absolutely destroyed everything on PotD upscaled

Just open with kitchen stove and insta-ascend and then Xoti can prolong it forever with salvation of time

Can't imagine multiclass being any better

Don't you basically gimp yourself by being 3 lower PL?

Multiclass ascendants are more "self-reliant" you might say. Also if you are going for specific things like sky high accuracy so you always crit then the accuracy bonuses from ranger are useful. Hierophant blood mage / ascendant become pretty powerful once they get wall of draining. You do miss good cipher spells but can extend the ascended state with wall of draining indefinitely. Though as you've discovered a priest can do this as well. Just depends what you want.

For party support SC ciphers are extremely good because of time parasite, reaping knives, defensive mindweb, and shared nightmare.

Multiclass is definitely better playing solo because SC ciphers are too squishy. 

[Sage Advice]

On 6/18/2023 at 8:29 AM, HumanChalice640 said:

This is good info. Ok so would it be too much to ask if you could share your attribute distribution between each class? Or do you have a link I could view that shows the best way to distribute the points? I'm torn between the helwalker and pure monk. Does the lance work better with helwalker than pure monk?

Sorry, been busy this week. 

I don't have a full build guide for these but would use the stat distributions as suggested in the previous post. I assume by pure monk you mean monk/blood mage.  For helwalker/blood mage you could do something like MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES - 8/13/15/19/18/3, and for a regular monk you'd just increase MIG a bit at the expense of some other stats but you don't need as much CON because regular monks don't take more damage based on wounds like helwalkers, so something like MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES - 10/10/7/14/18/18. The high resolve version will help make the monk more sturdy. I go low resolve with helwalkers and just keep them off the front lines unless you are buffed to the max with wizard spells or potions of final stand (not relevant until high level). You could also do a pure monk with dumped resolve, something like 12/11/13/19/18/3, it just depends how you want to use the character. For tanks you generally want max resolve, if not a tank you can usually just dump it. But even with dumped resolve you can have decent defenses since wizards have so many ways to buff deflection. And keep in mind once at L10 you can take turning wheel or iron wheel (or both) but only one active at a time, which gives +1 INT per wound and a fire damage lash, or +1 CON per wound and some armor. Armor doesn't stack with llengrath's safeguard though, which you'd want active basically always. 

The main difference for helwalkers is they get +1 MIG per wound and +5% damage per wound, so at 10 wounds you have +10 MIG that stacks with other sources like Thunderous Blows, but you also take +50% damage. So they are tremendous damage dealers with the bonus might, but getting hit hurts a lot more. Citzal's spirit lance works well with both, you just do more damage per hit with a helwalker, and possibly attack faster if you dumped resolve for dex, and you generate wounds more quickly so you can spam wound-based monk abilities more. Once you get wall of draining at L19 the helwalker will be considerably more powerful since you can negate the damage malus by drinking potions of final stand. These give brief invulnerability, which can be extended indefinitely with wall of draining spell. So as long as you cast wall of draining every roughly 30 seconds, and use blood sacrifice enough to get back wall of draining to recast, you can maintain invulnerability while doing tremendous damage and spamming monk abilities.

Basically the helwalker/blood mage is more powerful but squishier and requires more care so he doesn't die. Vanilla monk/blood mage are plenty powerful though if you don't want to risk the increased damage.

[Sage Advice]

Yeah monk fists have good penetration and damage so you'll be fine going unarmed. Also crush is the least resisted physical damage type.

Best thing about the lance is it will distribute monk abilities like stunning surge, skyward kick, force of anguish, whatever. So if you have decent accuracy you can spam stunning surge. You'll stun everyone in the AOE (if you make the roll) and if you crit even one you get back the mortification. I believe you can actually get back more than 2 mortification if you crit multiple enemies but I haven't tested this recently. 

Helwalker will do the most damage but is a bit squishy. Still, with the pike you can attack from behind your tank, and wizards have tons of defenses so helwalker / blood mage is my favorite sage combo (blood mage for replenishable spells but also to get wounds). 

With helwalker you can dump MIG a bit so personally I'd do a stat spread something like this

MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES - 8/13/15/19/18/3

You could lower DEX if you want more MIG or CON. Take Turning Wheel for max stun duration and lance AOE.

If you want a tanky sage though I probably wouldn't take helwalker at all so the stats would be pretty different. Can take nalpazca or generic monk, nalpazca is better but takes a lot of micromanagement to feed him drugs. In either case I'd do something like

MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES - 10/10/7/14/18/18, and probably take iron wheel

Should be noted iron wheel armor bonus doesn't stack with llengrath's safeguard, but it does protect you until you're bloodied so you might want it anyway

If you want to focus on unarmed entirely then forbidden fist / blood mage is the best and you'd just stick with forbidden fist attacks, using distro something like 18/3/9/18/10/19 with iron wheel, wear helm of the white void when you get it

[Wolf or bear on my ghost heart / ascendant seer?]

19 hours ago, Tomucci said:

The idea atm is mostly to use the pet as a meat shield with tactical meld and pain block after I evasive roll into the enemy back line and cast puppet master on their priests/wizard's ect

Ghost heart first and foremost because I think its cool but since the idea for the pet is to be a meat shield being able to reflexively cast it in between me and an enemy is important 

For weapons using Griffin's Blade and scordeos trophy, Griffin's for either action speed or spell dmg, scordeos with driving flight to build up focus and recovery bonus simultaneously, them together with pistol modal for attacking very quickly specifically with scordeos so I'm always racking up that recovery bonus

All the other regular seer stuff is pretty straightforward I think, accuracy buffs to help land spells, pet with ectopsychic echo, takedown combo with disintegration ect

So, is this a good idea or is using the ghost heart pet as a meat shield a waste? Would it just be better to use a wolf and lean into the bonus dmg?

Any other pointers/ideas with the build?

Edit: another bonus of using the pet as a tank instead of dps is saving on 2 ability points which this multi is stretched thin with

Definitely bear. Does almost as much damage as wolf but has much better armor. Ghost heart summon has a long duration and you can't heal companion so you want your meat shield to last longer to conserve resources.

I'd probably use a bow or just go melee but it really depends on your party, you can make that work I'm sure. But you'd build focus faster with frostseeker or essence interrupter. For melee I like stalker's patience.

And check out this post for some ghost heart scripting. I haven't made a complete seer script but this tries to keep your companion active and that you're attacking the same enemy, also a block for targeting the pet with ectopsychic echo (can duplicate it and adjust to target with pain block or whatever). Can also script to cast psychovampiric shield on whatever your animal companion is attacking.

 

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

On 6/13/2023 at 1:28 AM, Kaylon said:

The point was the herald is able to achieve better melee AR (which is what matters because you encounter all of them in almost any fight) than the votary, the resources are irelevant here... In practice the herald can do very well just with Magnera's Chain and doesn't have to spend any resource or cast any buff.  In a party the herald also provides more support and can carry easily his companions easily from the start to the end, compared to the votary/arcane knight who are more solo centered.

Okay now you're saying the herald doesn't need the ability you previously said makes it the second best tank. If we're going down that line of thinking, FF/SG does not need armor at all.

And I never made the argument heralds aren't good in parties. 

On 6/13/2023 at 1:28 AM, Kaylon said:

Magnera's Chain can be obtained very early if you desire but, until then, Devil of Caroc Breastplate/Patinated Plate are superior to anything else. With brigandines I wouldn't bother unless I can cover the pierce weakness (or else you feel like wearing robes against ranged enemies) and the Bloody Links is a very bad armor overall, not even worth upgrading in my book because when you get it you don't want to be bloodied at all and latter it becomes obsolete.

Very early? Not really. Maybe if you could pickpocket the maps but I'm pretty sure you can't (checked with Torkar, can't). But it's a pretty hard series of fights for lower level groups. Also requires bad pathing which may or may not be an issue. 

I did say bloody links assuming you fight bloodied... but even not it isn't as if the bonuses are irrelevant. Your armor at low health is more relevant than armor at high health, provided you can't be one-shot. Say you get penetrated at 20 armor, so you're tanking and taking a bit of damage, once blood price + crimson chain kicks in that may be enough you no longer lose health faster than you can gain it. There are other abilities and items that benefit from being bloodied, particularly relevant for tanks is Akola's Apex Ward which gives +10 accuracy for blood rage (and +1 armor, +3 deflection always), and for arcane knights llengrath's safeguard (plus blood sacrificing to bloodied replenishes spells). There's also fire godlike, death godlike bonuses, etc.

Devil of Caroc BP is great for a lot of builds but not all of them. Patinated Plate is fine if you don't care about the recovery time malus. I just think you're really simplifying things saying X armor is superior, the end. 

Why do bloody links become obsolete in your opinion? Assume this is on a character that fights bloodied so bonuses are active. 

On 6/13/2023 at 1:28 AM, Kaylon said:

Regarding the Reckless Brigandine, it requires 4+ enemies engaged just to compensate the slower recovery over medium armor. It's very good for berserkers because you can also monitor their health at any time based on their armor, but for a thank who rarely gets bloodied there are armors with more desirable bonuses. Nomad's Brigandine is much more desirable because +10 deflection and immunity to disengagement.

Well for a tank I don't think getting that much engagement is much of an issue, especially for solo builds, but even in parties usually not a problem unless you have multiple tanks.  There are exceptions of course like v Dorudugan, but you can switch armor for specific fights, not like you're married to it.

Disagree about Nomad's Brigandine in general, though for builds that want immunity to disengagement it's obviously good.

But it doesn't give +10 deflection, as I'm sure you know...If you're near allies, you get +5 deflection (with the horde) and you can pick +5 deflection vs melee or +5 deflection vs ranged (head/tail of the column), but this is not the same as +10 deflection. It's a conditional +5 deflection and a limited +5 deflection.

My point is that best armor is build specific, and all I did to prompt all this was answer a question regarding highest attainable armor for two builds.

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

On 6/11/2023 at 4:35 AM, Boeroer said:

Iron Wheel also requires resources. If you would constantly spend your wounds (= Iron Wheel requires no resources) you could not have a meaningful AR increase.
The "cost" is basically the same - you don't have resources to spend or you have resources you cannot spend.

Yeah IDK boeroer. I was comparing FF/SG with a herald. With FF/SG I literally do nothing but spam FF, and once it hits 10 wounds it stays there. Even scripting to maintain Enlightened Agony and/or Thunderous Blows, which usually isn't necessary, I can attack fast enough to stay at 8 to 10, so iron wheel only costs resources in the since I can't use abilities I haven't taken and don't want to use anyway. Whereas using phrases costs you 6*phrases (or 3*phrases plus linger) seconds for the invocation, and chanters usually have lots of other invocations they'd like to use as well so it's a more serious blow having to maintain one for the armor, which also doesn't cover crush/corrode. 

I mean I do agree with you that IF maintaining 10 wounds was preventing me from using abilities I wanted to use, then it's costing resources, but that's just not how I run a FF/SG. 

15 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

Obsidian must have heard you! They just posted an official gameplay trailer video for Avowed a few hours ago (I just saw it now!)

Ha. The power of skeptical thinking bears fruit. Just watched it and read some articles. Looks Skyrim-esque and Living Lands setting is cool. Apparently won't be as large as Skyrim despite initial claims of being larger, which Obsidian is spinning as a positive so the game can focus more on stories or something. I'll almost certainly play it whenever it comes out, though I'm skeptical (crosses fingers) the game will be awesome. 

Oh and I've thought about buying Stellaris at times but there's so many DLC IDK. I usually want all the DLC for a game but in this case the "ultimate" bundle on steam is $230 on sale. This the kind of game where you need/want the DLC or it's more like extra content? 

[Build Principles for Soul Blades]

21 hours ago, Pharaoh said:

But I'm open to suggestions need an off-tank with good dps and defenses that can carry the team in PoTD upscaled since I'm playing with vanilla companions

FF/SG is a great offtank with good defenses and decent damage, can solo the game. Straight FF also works. If you want a soul blade FF/SB is extremely good. Not quite as tanky as FF/SG but tanky enough not to die and does good DPS with high damage FF spamming plus soul annihilation. I've soloed with magran's challenges with FF/SB. If you want a streetfighter FF/SF can be pretty good but is kind of hard to script. I've been messing with it and it does tons of DPS and can tank, but it's tricky to balance equipment so heating-up and looking-for-a-fight both balance with spamming FF without stacking forbidden curse. I'll post a build when I figure out the scripting. 

BM/SB is extremely strong from level 13. Won't carry team before then. I don't think trickster/SB would either, though you can stack deflection decently high. 

21 hours ago, Pharaoh said:

P.S. Reading the Dune series right now, what amazing books, I had no idea they were so good.

Right? I didn't read the whole series, lost interest in book 5, but I've read the first three IDK how many times. 

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

18 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

What matters are the lowest melee resists (the elemental ones being covered easily with items), which is basically 10 in the case of plate/brigandine. For that reason, Magnera's Chain is the best armor overall for a votary/arcane knight, with 12 as its lowest resist.

The herald has basically the second best AR because he can cover the pierce weakness of the brigandine with ...Nor Flame... 

I don't think it's that simple to say Magnera's Chain is the best armor, and you're overstating its advantages.

Assuming we fight bloodied (as indicated in the build I linked), reckless Brigandine pierce is more like 11 to 12 since the armor value increases as you lose health, and there are other benefits to reckless brigandine like +action speed and +engagement and +damage. And enemies do variable damage types so the maximum value does at least sometimes matter. The Bloody Links are also competitive armor (better even) compared to Magnera's Chain given crimson steel gives +2 armor and blood price +5 all defenses. I do like Magnera's Chain for riveted links, padded underlayer and magnera's commitment, but it's typically acquired quite a bit later given the prerequisite bounties and map collecting, so for most of the game I'd use one of these two I mentioned, and sometimes not switch. So bloody links (when bloodied) gives +2 all armor, +5 all defenses, whereas magnera's chain gives always +2 pierce/crush and +10 fort/will, which overall is just less bonus but could be preferable for builds with low fortitude and will, or ones that don't fight bloodied. 

You can also cover pierce with lance of the midwood stag's woodskin + wall of draining. For arcane knights anyway. And "nor flame" is a cone AOE, so you don't really need your tank casting it. Also I'm not convinced +4 slash/pierce/shock/burn that requires spent resources is better than iron wheel which does not, particularly since an FF/SG can heal itself so rapidly, but I agree heralds make good tanks. 

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

On 6/9/2023 at 1:57 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

So, I just finished my first POTD-upscaled run, and have unlocked 53/55 achieves. Now I'm planning my next run to hoover up the last 2 achieves. I don't think solo is my thing, as I enjoy the playing with multiple builds and seeing how they work together, but perhaps I'll impose a 3-person party limit.  Maybe I'll also take some of the god challenges.

I am stuck at 51/55, missing Making Waves, A brighter world, burning bridges, and some hidden achievement. I don't really care about achievements though so it's fine.

If I were to rate the god challenges on difficulty and tediousness/annoyance it would be something like this (1 being easiest, 10 being hardest), though it's hard to give a single number since some challenges are easy by themselves but very hard with other challenges

Eothas - difficulty 2, annoyance 1 - it isn't too hard to plan a route and it adds believability to the story, because it makes no sense eothas would just wait for you indefinitely before proceeding with his plans IMO. If you combine with Woedica it's quite a lot harder and will limit class selection.

Galawain - difficulty 3, annoyance 1 - gives big buffs to beasts, but since beasts usually aren't that big of a deal it's a good difficulty scaling challenge that doesn't really require you do much differently, just beasts are harder to kill.

Berath's - difficulty 1, annoyance 1 - you shouldn't be letting your characters be knocked out for 10 seconds so in my experience this challenge makes little difference. If a build requires fleeing combat like assassin it's more impactful. Also impactful for tacticians due to the weird invisibility = brilliant interaction

Magran's - difficulty 4, annoyance 3 - Inability to pause makes things very tough if you rely on pausing frequently, so this can make the game much harder or make almost no difference if you're good at scripting behaviors. Scripting can be a little tedious but once you get the basics it's easy. For solo runs you can get by without scripting just playing on slow mode. 

Abydon's - difficulty 7, annoyance 7 - more impactful for solo runs. For party runs you can likely still use unique weapons and armor without them breaking, though repairs will be expensive, making it more of an annoyance than a huge difficulty spike. For solo runs it is a big difficulty spike since weapons break too fast for one character to get through a lot of battles, and even armor will break in longer fights

Skaen's - difficulty 1, annoyance 2 - basically you need to carry a torch or xoti's lantern on at least one character. Doesn't increase the difficulty much, but adds a bit of tedium.

Ondra's - difficulty 1, annoyance 3 - makes sailing more circuitous because of the huge storms, but by itself is not very difficult. Combined with eothas and woedica it adds more difficulty since you may have to take a long route to avoid a storm, and hitting a storm causes you to lose days so you have to be very careful on the world map

Rymrgand's - difficult 1, annoyance 5 - makes inventory management of food more tedious, but if you're doing a one-rest run it doesn't really increase the difficulty much, even with a full party

Hylea's - difficulty 8, annoyance 10 - I've actually gotten used to babysitting vela but it is very technical getting her to stay where you want, and she is killed very easily. With a full party the difficulty is less because you have more resources (if you have a priest or wizard) to e.g. cast withdraw or temporal cocoon on her. The other methods for controlling her are complicated but can be done by any class. For me the most annoying part about Vela is you can't tag her in scripts, so you have to manually cast withdraw or whatever, which combined with magran's adds a level of "oh ****" to the game when you see she's gained the ire of an enemy

Woedica's - difficulty 4, annoyance 5 - by itself not that difficult, just requires you to rest between fights. Combined with rymrgand and especially eothas, makes it hard to rest so builds with infinite resources like chanter, cipher, blood mage, monk, go way up in value. If combined in said manner difficulty is more like a 8. 

Wael's - difficulty 2, annoyance 10 - tons of data including stuff in the combat log is replaced by ?, makes ship battles impossible since you can't see enemy distance or how much health you have. Also can't see how much money you have or what things costs. If you know the game well you can work around all this without a lot of difficulty but this challenge is just pointlessly annoying and I wouldn't use it unless you're going for the ultimate

solo - difficulty 6, annoyance 1 - your build has to be well-planned but there are a number of builds capable of soloing the game. First solo attempt is the most difficult but once you're used to it it isn't as bad. Becomes much harder to solo with various magran's fire challenges. Abydon is particularly rough since builds reliant on specific equipment will suffer, and of course babysitting vela solo is very difficult. 

expert mode - difficulty 2, annoyance 3 - removes some helpful features, more impactful on some builds than others, can't see AOEs of spells and the like

trial of iron - difficulty 9, annoyance 10 - getting wiped is supremely frustrating, I wouldn't recommend turning this on unless you really know what you're doing and/or want the ultimate. Combined with hylea makes game very very hard. 

ultimate - difficulty 10, annoyance 10 - exponentially harder than individual challenges since there are synergies like eothas + woedica + abydon + hylea that make a lot of builds outright non-viable, and failing to babysit vela even once and you wipe, even sailing into a storm or ship combat can wipe

So basically if you wanted to try a few, I'd recommend you start with berath, eothas, and galawain as these add some challenge without changing gameplay that much. Could also do ondra, rymrgand, and skaen if you want as these aren't too hard but IMO are annoying. Can then add Magran if you're comfortable with scripting or going solo. I normally play with all of them on except wael and iron, because wael is just annoying and iron deletes the save file and I need to test things. You can turn on/off challenges in game but it requires using iroll20s which disabled achievements. 

 

On 6/9/2023 at 1:57 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

I was a bit surprised by just how dark the finale was for Xoti (I had followed the dark-path with her during her quests). When talking to the party shortly before confronting Eothas: 

  Reveal hidden contents

"If it's all the same to you, Watcher, I'd rather not miss the moment the moment my god brings the darkness down upon us. I want to see Gaun become the true deity of Death". When asked if she thought it was all worth it: ""It was, and I'd do it again, only bloodier this time. Think of all the souls I could've gatered if I'd reaped them right from the living."

And it gets darker from there. To Eothas she says:

  Reveal hidden contents

"But you seek to break that wheel. I beseech you, Gaun, that when you do, you do it right. Burn to ash every adra root in Hel, so that it may never regrow. Let the darkness reign eternal."

Yikes. I think I turned her from LG to CE.

Yeah Xoti is a disturbing character, almost as much as Camellia from Pathfinder WOTR amiright?

On 6/9/2023 at 1:57 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

Yeah, I've played and completed PF:WoTR (and abandoned PF:KM in the final act). I didn't enjoy it as much as Deadfire TBH even though there is a lot in it to like. In theory I liked the build variety, which makes Deadfire's 121 different single and multi-class combinations look small in comparison, but whereas in Deadfire all combinations are more or less viable (though not optimal), in PF it's easy to create a non-viable build without knowing what you're doing. Nearly all my characters ended up with 17 or 18 levels in one core class, and just a few dips into other classes for some of their excellent low-level benefits, which TBH doesn't strike as interesting as having 2 major classes like in Deadfire (something that doesn't really work in PF). Fortunately I know enough about D&D 3.5 edition to not be totally baffled by PF. From a QoL perspective, I prefer Deadfire's system of having all abilities available again at the beginning of each combat (a move away from D&D's and PF's system of getting spells back only on resting that I applaud from a gameplay perspective), and I'm not a fan of casting dozens of buff spells pre-combat, preferring Deadfire's system of going into each fight unbuffed. And yeah, the balance was all over the place in PF (esp. KM). But mainly it was the unnecessary filler content that I didn't like having to do (stronghold management in PF: KM and the army battles in PF: WOTR). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed PF: WoTR (and PF:KM to a lesser extent), but I only played it once, whereas I've now played Deadfire 3 times.

For me the main problem with pathfinder system is so many of the classes are really similar and basically do the same thing just in slightly different ways. E.g. wizard/sorcerer/arcanist. And because the rolls are d20 and many enemies even in Act 1 have attacks of +15 or more you have to really stack stats, necessitating bizarre builds and making in the end all that really matters stacking as much AB and AC as possible. Armor also sucks, so the best tanks are usually casters who dip in monk, which makes little sense. And enemy stats are so bloated you're forced to bloat your own stats so much by late game my characters often had like 30 different buffs on them.

The worst thing though for a RTWP game perspective is the AI is really bad. Enemy AI is bad and just picks the first character to attack usually, or sometimes they'll just gangbang the main character. And the party AI is almost nonexistent. For RTWP games to play smoothly you really need decent party AI like baldur's gate, dragon age origins, or deadfire. Otherwise you have to pause every couple seconds and I get why people don't like that. Deadfire does a pretty good job of having accessible AI, though most people don't avail themselves of it, and the default scripts aren't very good. 

On 6/9/2023 at 1:57 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

There are a few CRPGs I haven't yet tried that I probably should. I haven't played T:ToN. I bought Tyranny but it doesn't grip me (I think it's the lack of classes that puts me off it). I'm hoping that Broken Roads will be good (and hopefully RTwP). I would be excited about BG3 if it was RTwP rather than turn based. I should probably try Black Geyser too.

I've played Torment and Tyranny a fair amount (30ish hours and 70ish hours) but haven't finished either one. Torment has a better story but the gameplay is not super great, and Tyranny has an okay combat system but the story is not interesting. Tyranny classes are more limited, companions are not that interesting, and party AI is bad. Also I'm not a fan of the 4 person party. Or even 5 person party. I liked the classic 6 person party, 5 is acceptable, but less is not. 

I wish I could say Black Geyser was a good game but it isn't. You can tell the devs really like Baldur's Gate, and the studio did their best with limited funding and while they got the look of Baldur's Gate down, it doesn't feel like it, and the story is bad. It's also kind of buggy. Still, you might enjoy it. I played about 80 hours before abandoning it. I think if the studio had more funding and experience it could have been a really good game.

I'd never heard of Broken Roads but I just searched for it and am downloading the demo. Looks cool though pretty sure combat is turn-based. That's not a deal breaker for me I just prefer RTWP. 

One other game I enjoyed was Solasta: Crown of the Magister. It's turn-based and 4 person but does a really good job of simulating dungeons and dragons rules, and I played it for.. 175 hours, which may sound like a lot but games I really like I play for 1000+. 

Disco Elysium is unequivocally awesome, but it's a very unusual game not easily categorized. Definitely an RPG just not like other RPGs. 

Yeah I too was very disappointed BG3 went turn-based, also that your party is just 4 people. But Larian is a good studio and I like the Divinity games so it will probably still be pretty fun. I've played the early access for a couple hundred hours but you max at level 4 so I stopped after a while. It will probably be at least decent and worth playing at least once, but IDK if it will have the kind of replay value I've found in deadfire or baldur's gate. Doesn't "feel" much like baldur's gate games either, but that could just be the initial setting. Feels more like divinity original sin in a forgotten realms setting, which isn't a terrible thing, just not baldur's gate. 

Really seems like most RPGs are going turn-based these days. Turn-based games can be fun, but I really like the niche filled by RTWP where it's like almost an RTS, there's just more reactivity and strategy. In turn-based games I typically just wipe things out on turn 1. Also doesn't feel realistic at all to take turns fighting. Maybe it's just the nostalgia in me wanting things that feel like Baldur's Gate. 

On 6/9/2023 at 1:57 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

I should check it out. It looks interesting but I'm not sure it is quite my cup of tea.

I thought the same, and the first hour of playing Pentiment I was like "this is the most boring thing I've ever seen" but by the end "oh my god what a masterpiece, why can't it be longer?"

[Build Principles for Soul Blades]

2 hours ago, Pharaoh said:

Playing a soulblade/streetfighter right now and was wondering what BB/SoT means

I know SoT is salvation of time but what is BB?

I think it's probably a typo for BDD (barring death's door) since the implication is a streetfigher/soul blade would be squishy.

Looking through this thread I disagree with some of the ideas stated. IMO citzal's spirit lance is far and away the best weapon for soul blades, making wizards one of the best multiclasses. The lance can fill max focus typically in one hit and distributes soul annihilation damage in same crush AOE, plus interrupts on crit everyone in the crush AOE. Lance does massive damage even 1v1 given if you hit with the pierce attack the crush AOE still applies, so the only time other weapons would be better is in 1v1 fights where the enemy is highly resistant or immune to pierce (or you want some special weapon proc). In most situations you can simply alternate lance attack with soul annihilation, though I'd use pull of eora so you can hit as many people as possible per attack, various instant cast wizard buffs and llengrath's safeguard, cipher spells borrowed instinct and sometimes psychovampiric shield (and phantom foes etc.), and wall of draining so the buffs only need be cast once (doesn't work on cipher buffs sadly). 

Forbidden Fist attack should have an honorable mention if playing with community patch since it gets not only transcendent suffering bonus but forbidden curse damage bonus (and heals you, and gives you wounds). FF/SB is extremely powerful since both abilities are spammable. From my experience with this build it usually takes two attacks to completely fill focus, sometimes three. Has a very good balance of toughness and DPS as well as huge versatility in tactics. Not as much DPS as a SB/streetfighter that is "on the edge" and landing crits and deathblows, but much less squishy and with infinite resources. 

[Missing the Mask of the Weyc]

8 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

Scratch that. I had the mask, it was the shield (Oracular Focus) that I missed, but I looked up how to get it and now I've completed the achieve.

Nice

 In case anyone else has the same issue, note there are two possible places to get the mask, depending on the route you took in the forgotten sanctums. 

If you did the stacks before the enclosures (east before west) then you'll find the mask of the weyc on fyonlecg's husk after fighting him, following his "argument" with maura, in the oratory of wael.

If you did the enclosures before the stacks (west before east), then you'll instead fight maura in the oratory of wael, and you won't be able to pick up the mask of the weyc until just before the oracle of wael fight, when fyonlecg finishes his ritual. With some stealth you can grab it off the body before triggering the boss fight. 

Ultimately it doesn't matter which route you take, though doing the collections first is probably easier since you can get the warden contract and make the vithracks friendly, and if you managed not to kill any librarians you won't have to fight the oracle during your first encounter. Also you can still fight maura for her belt (maura's grasping belt) if you revisit the oratory after completing the enclosures as well. 

[Help with choosing the loveliest blood mage multiclass]

12 hours ago, CeciliaPhoenix said:

Thanks for the replies  @Shai Hulud I tend to play arcane spellcasters in the pathfinder games, I finished kingmaker with an arcane trickster and a kineticist (that is cheat mode by the way), and played sword saint, sorcerer - eldritch knight, and the illusionist arcanist (forgot the name of the archetype) in wotr, have to finish it eventually with the new dlc. But of course, you multiclass a million times in that one except for the "real" full casters like the illusionist.

(...) As for the hierophant, it plays quite okay before the wall of draining, and a bit of a one-man army in terms of spellcasting. Kitchen stove is boring but enough to gain ascended, and then you can cast whatever. I found that wizard aoe spells like the pillar are still better tho, despite the power level increase, but fast casting cipher cc and single-target damage (or two targets via mind blades, that is disgusting) is superb. But, as I said, I tried to do a bit of too much at the same time (which I still do with the other ideas, lmao) - I found/tried the draining touch while playing this, but I ended up using the kitchen stove and then casting most of the time, I want to experiment more with that summoned weapon (and ofc the lance) @Boeroer I really like your ideas about how to maximize the usage of the draining touch. I am still kinda unsure what character I want in the end, keeping in mind that I want to be flexible enough to use other "styles" of dealing with encounters, like the lance and pure casting. I am still debating between the sage, the warlock, and the fighter - the latter is less about blowing things up, but flexibility and immortality in several forms. I guess the main debate is between sage and warlock for me, like what can each provide on a meta level. Sage has extra accuracy, loads of stats (kind of pathfinder logic here, where the answer to most problems is more stats ), endless resources (although harder-to-use blood sacrifice), and extra action economy in melee via crits (I wonder if disengagement crits also produce more crits, like feared target trying to run away from the draining touch and gets critted). Barbarian, on the other hand, seem to have interesting ways to gain action economy for everything, including casting, but I wonder how much of a constraint is the fact that their abilities are expensive, and they have no way to regain rage. 

1) Ha yeah, I put like 1300 hours into Kingmaker. I sucked at first but eventually soloed unfair with a couple builds. One was like sword saint 18 / don't remember (maybe arch 2?), used bloodhound dueling sword to great effect and stacked dex plus weapon finesse. Another vivi 14 / arch 2 / dd 4 I think, motherless tiefling with lots of bites and cloak of the white wolf or whatever it was called, serpent prince and then mastery fauchards. Both get pretty nutty but I cheesed through that door where the lich is to get all those awesome weapons while low level. I've never played a kineticist but I've heard deadly earth is just super broken. In WOTR I'm currently trying scaled fist 1 / seeker 16 / pal 2 / hellknight 1. Going angel this time but at some point I'd like to try legend so I can make a monk / seeker / paladin / stigmatized witch / hellknight / demonslayer or something lol. I really liked sword saints in kingmaker but they don't seem quite as good in WOTR. Vivisectionists either since no cloak of the wolf. The oracle is really annoying early on unfair. He's pretty untouchable but has bad damage output, only hits most things on crits...

2) You might have had a better time with blood mage / ascendant if you cheesed a little with scordeo's edge blade cascade. If you can remove recovery the cipher has tons of .5s casts so you can really machinegun wizard defensive spells and cipher CC. Also I tend to get like 1700 damage from a disintegration crit, if you just cast disintegration on everyone it tends to kill most things but it's kind of reductive I guess. 

If you want to be able to both fight and cast well then helwalker/blood mage is tempting, because you can wreck things in melee, then if you're too hurt fall back and cast with the +10 might bonus. Blood mage / soul blade also fights and casts but it's mostly cipher casts. Stats aren't nearly as important as in pathfinder though. Having enough resources and class synergy is what really matters (sage has both). Lance goes really well with monk abilities like stunning surge but even force of anguish applies through lance.

Warlock seems like he should be able to regain rage via barbaric smash, which says +2 of each barbarian resource per kill on kill, so I figured combining with citzal's spirit lance if you take out multiple enemies in one attack you could regain resources, but in my limited testing you just get +2 even if you kill more than one enemy. Still, you can do very high DPS as all you really want to maintain is blood storm or spirit frenzy anyway, which can be extended with wall of draining indefinitely so that just costs 1 resource once you're high level, and before that it has fairly long duration anyway. And once you have blood thirst you can effectively spam barbaric smash, and as long as someone in the huge AOE is near death you trigger bloody slaughter plus barbaric smash bonus damage / hit-to-crit / crit damage, and are very likely to regain the 2 rage with no recovery from blood thirst. A berserker/blood mage is particularly strong, albeit squishy, but can do extremely high DPS with the lance and barbaric smash in this way. Probably not quite as high as blood mage / soul blade but I haven't crunched the numbers. barbaric smash bonus damage + carnage + lance + lance crush AOE + blood storm DPS is a lot of damage, especially when you proc blood thirst.

But...if I were you I'd probably go with helwalker/blood mage, as it's pretty versatile and easy to keep up resources, or if you want to solo then tactician/blood mage. Blood mage/soul blade is my favorite but I don't think it's what you're looking for as it's almost pure melee build (can cast, it's just inferior to soul annihilation with the lance), so I don't use much more than pull of eora and wall of draining aside from defensive spells.

------

And to answer your question about mods buffing godlikes, there may be others but the one I'd recommend is @Elric Galad's balance polishing mod. It has a lot of cool buffs to various classes. Also has nerfs, but you can just install the buffs package. Makes godlikes substantially better and competitive with their helmet-wearing brethren. Boeroer mentioned one amazing helmet, the helm of the white void, but rekvu's fractured casque is also ridiculously good in some builds as it can prevent interrupts (necessary if you want to use grimoire of vaporous wizardry since that grimoire makes all received damage proc interrupts). You have to carry an injury but there are several injuries with minimal effects to gameplay like wrenched knee (from stepping on caltrops traps) or acute rash (just kill yourself with necrotic lance). 

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/438

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

3 minutes ago, Vasvary5050 said:

Okay, I admit, now I'm very tempted to try an Arcane Knight or Votary as my next tank (probably Arcane Knight). I just completed FS, so it won't be long now before I'm ready to start another run (though I'm thinking of finishing off all the optional SSS artefact hunts before I head to the end (to pick up the Archivist of Kazuwari achieve).

Could try a solo run, or small party. I eventually got bored with full party runs. You level up faster with fewer people and either of these guys could solo. 

3 minutes ago, Vasvary5050 said:

I really enjoyed the DLCs, especially FS (the most enjoyable of the 3). Makes me sad that they didn't release more DLCs or a PoE 3. I am really looking forward to Avowed (if it ever releases), but would prefer another isometric CRPG in the Pillars-verse.

You and me both. POE3 apparently is still a maybe but I am skeptical it will happen. Also skeptical about Avowed since we've heard nothing in ages. All there is right now in the isometric CRPG scene is Pathfinder, which is good but dizzyingly complex with the zillions of classes, and not as well-balanced IMO.

I played Pentiment recently. It's a very different kind of game but Josh Sawyer directed it, and IMO it's amazing.

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

3 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

That's a lot of armour. I'm not very familiar with Monks - I've multi-classed a couple of backline ranged Dps-ers with Helwalker but never used an FF (or a Monk of any type in a tanking role). And whilst I've used Paladins a lot, I've never used an SG. Could you please let me know how much max armour you manage to get to with your FF/SG, and what gear you recommend for it?

Same question. I've not played an Arcane Knight. How much armour do you manage to get to with this build, and what gear do you recommend for it? [I'm just planning ahead for my next run]

FFs are the best monks for tanking and offtanking. Ridiculously good melee class that multiclasses well with basically everything.

Max attainable armor for votary (to my knowledge)

Mythic plate/brigandine - 14, up to 16 with reckless brigandine into the breach enchant

Iron wheel - up to 3, usually 2 to 2.5 (also gives up to + 10 CON)

Stoic steel - up to 3

Kapana taga - 1 (lone champion)

Akolas Apex ward - 1 (hide and tooth)

Giftwrapper pet - 1

Fire godlike - 1 (2 in BPM)

Hardy/robust - 2 (can proc hardy from death and taxes enchant on bardattos luxury with dichotomous soul, or some other source)

So up to 28 bloodied (29 bpm), usually more like 24

Arcane knight - same except no iron wheel, and llengrath's safeguard (or ironskin) is +5

So max 30 for arcane knight, 31 in bpm, very easy to maintain 24+ since safeguard isn't dependant on wounds like iron wheel and has like 2 minute duration with good INT

In effect 21+ is very good, normal enemies won't penetrate but bosses probably will, and 24+ is basically invulnerable especially when combined with high defenses both builds have, with defenses typically 200+

Kapana taga and akolas Apex ward are ship battle rewards, but you can get them quite early. Lone champion won't work with allies near though. Reckless brigandine also available early. Only item you get late is giftwrapper which is probably overkill at that point, I don't use it unless it puts me at a threshold value of armor where enemies no longer penetrate (check log attack resolutions for their exact PEN). 

I wouldn't recommend fire godlike for these classes since it's overkill (more attractive with bpm), but you might take it on builds with less but still solid armor that still want to take a hit, like maybe a FF / streetfighter fighting bloodied

[Help with choosing the loveliest blood mage multiclass]

14 hours ago, CeciliaPhoenix said:

Hey, I am an old PoE 2 player who was lurking around, and playing a lot years ago when it came out. I am not that much of a gamer these days, so most of my fun is testing out builds on the highest possible difficulty, and then trying a new one with a new set of companion builds when restartitis kicks in (roughly 2/3-way into the main game) - but that is the most fun part of this game (I might prefer pathfinder rpgs as a powergamer and an occasional gamemaster of pathfinder, but there I have my set-in-stone builds). I never fully finished PoE 2, so I kinda want to at least once in this life   I play with upscaled path of the damned, deadly deadfire normal, and community patch. 

What do you like in WOTR? I'm playing an angel oracle atm, getting wrecked early game unfair. Played a sylvan sorcerer lich before, seemed a lot easier. Are you playing deadfire turn-based or RTWP? Most of us do RTWP and some builds work better/worse depending on this

I can't seem to separate your paragraphs with double <enter> like normally so I'll just respond with numbers.

You should try playing solo if the game is too easy. Or maybe a party of 2 or 3. Or add some magran's fire challenges. Like you I played Deadfire a bit when it came out, got bored, never finished the game, played other stuff, came back to it less than a year ago and started messing with solo builds and magran's fires. Well-built full parties are going to be overpowered in general. I've found builds that can solo everything with magran's fire challenges and deadly deadfire hardcore (even without cheese strategies), so if you add a full party to this type of character it could be overkill.

1) Why is tuotilo's palm a must? That shield is really only going to help you with a sage. Otherwise you're better off not using shields or if making a mage tank like arcane knight using akola's apex ward.

2) sage - you can use FF with the lance but the lance won't distribute the FF attack, it just works as normal single target FF, but if you trigger swift flurry or heartbeat drumming you do hit everyone. FF sages are best as tanks, using FF to heal themselves and wearing heavy armor while casting fast defensive wizard spells and using iron wheel. Helwalker sages are high DPS build, but you may need to deify yourself (potion of final stand + wall of draining) to not die given their squishiness. The lance is particularly good since it distributes monk abilities like stunning surge and skyward kick. In fact if you use it on a group and crit more than one enemy you can get back more than the cost of the surge. If your accuracy is high enough you can use stunning surge in this way to quickly rebuild mortification. Wounds build easily enough from blood sacrifices and damage, which is why it's best if you have a potion of final stand so you can really avail yourself of this incredible wound generation. Alternatively you could stay back and nuke things using dichotomous souls as fodder and +might for more spell damage. Shattered Pillar could possibly work okay with the lance since it hits multiple enemies, but I haven't really tried it. Any of these can solo the game once you get wall of draining, provided you use potions of final stand. 

3) tactician blood mage can easily solo the game. DPS isn't as high as helwalker/blood mage but you are infinitely more tanky and brilliant is trivial to achieve if you have on berath's challenge. Just going invisible triggers brilliant, so if you're down on resources just use arkemyr's brilliant departure. You also get back fighter resources interrupting spells and abilities so the lance is weapon of choice given its AOE crush interrupt-on-crit attack, and you can also use mule kick with the lance to mule kick groups of enemies, which is pretty fun since it only takes a graze to kick them into the air. Can also interrupt with slicken and chill fog, I like to use these spells a lot with tactician battlemage. To stay alive unbending + wall of draining will eventually make you effectively immortal the way unbended stacks with itself, and even pre wall of draining it is extremely effective with max INT. Should note there are other ways to get tenacious/energized, like using slayer's claw. If you cycle the weapon it upgrades might inspirations, so even a "strong" inspiration (e.g. from lover's embrace) can be upgraded to energized and extended via wall of draining. Lance already interrupts on crit though so there's not a huge advantage of energized over tenacious unless you're casting offensive spells, which you mostly wouldn't need to do with a battlemage. Because of easy procs of brilliant you can theoretically cast lots of spells, you just wouldn't want to because mule kicking things with the lance is much more effective. 

4) warlock - haven't played this one as much but it's interesting, would just go blood mage / barbarian personally (berserker if you use potions of final stand). Can theoretically do decent damage with lance + carnage, barbaric smash and crushing blow can be used with lance on groups to get back resources or recover very fast. Frenzy and other barbarian passives mean you attack very fast. Accuracy is not great. Savage Defiance can be extended with wall of draining for decent heals, but nothing approaching unbending so it's squishier unless you use potions of final stand. Should be noted with the lance though you can attack from behind your tank since it's a reach weapon, so you don't really need to facetank things. Can also do some casting with brute force and morning star but I pretty much always prefer the lance. 

5) blood mage / fury is a top tier elemental caster, but you'll find it rather squishy. I guess blood mage / ancient (or animist or lifegiver) could be interesting once you're able to extend animal forms, though you will won't be all that tanky. There's some interesting caster interactions like combusting wounds with infestation of maggots, and lance of the midwood stag makes a superb stat stick for +2 power levels and woodskin. I generally prefer straight druids for their amazing tier 8/9 spells but if you want a caster sorcerers are pretty versatile

6) bellower / blood mage is quite strong once you get wall of draining since you can extend the bellower bonus power level and spam her tears. Probably works better with a wizard though due to the weyc items, sasha's singing scimitar, and least unstable coil, and their interaction with empowering abilities which allows you to get all tier 3 inspirations. bellower/wizard reaches its full power very late though since these are mostly dlc items. If you want to just cast tons of high damage spells this is a good choice, not as good as the others for beating things with sticks. 

Others you didn't mention

7) blood mage / priest of skaen - can easily solo the game due to barring death's door, salvation of time, and wall of draining. Used in many ultimate runs. One of the most versatile builds, probably best suited for solo. 

8 ) blood mage / ranger - doesn't seem at first glance to have a lot of synergy but can give you a lot of accuracy bonuses and the pet makes soloing easier. @Boeroer has a geomancer build somewhere but I don't recall where it is.

9)  blood mage / rogue - blood mage / assassin in particular is quite powerful, since you can use shadowing beyond and assassinate over and over. Can easily solo the game though personally I find the combat a little reductive. Blood mage / streetfighter is also interesting. You'll probably need potions of final stand but does a great deal of damage with streetfighter buffs and lance, also you can extend escape with wall of draining to make it pretty tanky. And again the lance applies abilities like gouging strike to everyone in the AOE. 

10) arcane knights make top tier tanks. See this build for example a tank/caster (I'd probably go human not fire godlike unless playing with BPM) 

11) Hierophants are incredibly strong. Blood mage / ascendant can extend ascended stage with wall of draining and murder things with cipher spells or just use bonus damage and lance, though this comes late and I don't really know how well they play before WOD. Blood mage / psion is a great caster, and there's a build I made here, though I haven't played it nearly as much as melee hierophants

My favorite hierophant by far though is blood mage / soul blade. As far as I know this is the highest melee DPS build, possibly highest DPS period. I used it for an ultimate run. See this post I made and its links if interested

 

[[CLASS BUILD] Lactose Intolerant Armored Arcanist - Solo Upscaled POTD with Balance Polishing Mod]

4 hours ago, dgray62 said:

I used the enchantments that @Not So Clever Hound recommended. Maybe it is just a weird bug. I've switched out the weapon and shield; it works with any weapon. It goes away if I un-equip the shield, but returns if I equip it again . After several additional fights it hasn't changed, just a constant damage bonus of 1400%. It's not very impactful as I've set the AI to mainly just cast spells and Brand Enemy.

Could try consoling in another akola's apex ward. 

Or possibly you can remove it with removestatuseffect player<tab> blood_rage_se_damage. Might take repeated applications if it's stacking.

[Annihilated in first fight in FS]

5 hours ago, Torm51 said:

Does anything have Arcane Dampener in FS? It’s only thing that the Crusader has over the Arcane Knight. You can’t dampen any of their magic cause is there is none. Against Nemnok and his crew Crusader is more reliable in my experience to due heavy use of arcane  dampener by enemies.  But ya with Dampener out of the picture Arcane Knight is better.  

I don’t think Crusader is an OK tank though, if you play vanilla with a group it’s pretty great. It’s just not as meta as Arcane Knight cause Crusader needs heavy Arcana to solo. 

I don't know, I don't recall encountering it in FS. But even if they did have arcane dampener, arcane Knight will defense is so high it will never hit. I was only hit twice whole game with a hierophant (one with sigilmaster auranic) and I dumped resolve completely, in addition to lacking the paladin's faith bonus. In the build linked the stats are 8/15/7/14/13/18. Personally I'd go human over fire godlike unless you're using BPM, since you fight bloodied. This way could dump PER a bit. Also I might dump might for some more INT but even with this stat spread you have 240ish will in combat, nothing but auranic can hit and he'll mostly miss and graze (though the cleansing obelisk will hit if you don't take it out with other party members). But even if you're hit, with 35 resolve you recover very fast, especially since you're more likely to be grazed than hit.

Crusaders aren't horrible, and for party runs if you have even one solid character they're good enough, but there are many better tanks. Not just arcane knights but votaries too (and sages). FF/SG would probably be my tank of choice. They have more armor (3 to 5 more depending on gear and wounds), more health, and heal themselves passively just spamming FF. They are quite indestructible, solo or party, and are trivial to script. Also do solid damage and enfeeblement is very valuable debuff as constitution affliction is rarely resisted and even more rarely immune. Crusaders have slightly better deflection if you use conqueror stance but it generally doesn't even matter if you get hit because it's always a grazing underpen for -80% damage where damage is easily healed just by attacking. And crusaders have armored grace, but keep in mind a robed arcane knight will have just as much armor. I've even run FF/SG naked solo (because abydon) and they do perfectly fine due to how fast they self-heal. Also crusaders have slightly more engagement but it's easy to get 5 to 7 engagement with any class, and if you really think you need more there's tactical meld for +3, assuming you have a cipher.

[Help with BloodMage/Psion]

Fair enough about godlikes and consumables. Moving on

Pretty sure you can script magnificent escape at any health level. I havent checked but assuming it works like other consumables the AI overrides the UI conditionals which is pretty cool. Just use "always true" and the ability and put it near the top. 

Blightheart is weird. I don't fully understand it but it has some weird properties like corrupting beauty pulses for some reason proc avenging storm bolts and sasha's singing scimitar weyc items etc. You're probably aware of all this and maybe can explain it to me but here's a clip I made showing how it works with stormspeakers

Are you sure wall of draining gives more time with beneficial effects? I havent noticed the slightest difference in time drained, it seems like it only depends on graze/hit/crit maybe...ive tested specifically with the cap because id heard it helped add time but I couldn't tell. Maybe it was patched out at some point? I could be mistaken my testing wasn't super rigorous