Shai Hulud

I forgot armored grace, I was going off the top of my head. Yes take armored grace. Leap is not worth it because it only dazes, also has a 1s cast and 2s recovery whereas charge stuns anyone caught in the path and has a .5s cast (but still a 3s recovery). It's a good ability but not as high priority as some others. I loaded my brute build, these were my choices (the order may be wrong, and ones in parentheses are alternative decent choices) 1 Disciplined Barrage, Frenzy 2 Blooded 3 Arms Bearer (can take Knock Down if you want but I never use it with this build, fast runner also fine) 4 Accurate Carnage, Fighter Stances 5 Confident Aim 6 Thick Skinned 7 One Stands Alone, Tactical Barrage 8 Bloodlust 9 One-handed Style (or other weapon style, Determination, Rapid Recovery, or Bloody Slaughter) 10 Spirit Frenzy, Vigorous Defense 11 Savage Defiance (or bloody slaughter) 12 Charge 13 Interrupting Blows, Unbending 14 Conqueror Stance 15 Armored Grace 16 Unflinching, Refreshing Defense 17 Brute Force 18 Clear Out (or weapon specialization) 19 Blood Thirst, Unbending Shield (or whatever) 20 Stalwart Defiance Also if you do take Knock Down Mule Kick is a good upgrade. Stalwart Defiance + Unbending Shield is overkill, but this was a solo character, so you may prefer not to take the defiance line, or even the upgraded unbending shield/trunk. Most important actives are Tactical Barrage, Refreshing Defense, Spirit Frenzy, and Unbending, and the various passives are important, then after that prioritize solid actives like charge, clear out, stalwart defiance, or mule kick For weapons I was one-handing Stalker's Patience most of the time, but earlier I was dual-wielding rapiers with the +20 accuracy rapier modal. Squid's Grasp and Rannig's Wrath. They have super high accuracy this way and dual-wielding with two-weapon-style and the rapier modal is slightly faster attack speed as one-handing and +8 accuracy comparitively. Rekke can get around 145 accuracy dual-wielding the rapiers, eventually. Also squid's grasp has "attempted parley" that gives an action speed boost when threatened by 3 enemies, so it is great to wield if going into the fray (also it has flank immunity). (should note though conqueror's stance doesn't stack with rapier modal, which is part of why I switched). Lot of stuff is resistant to pierce though so have backups. Morning stars also work, if you want to do that take brute force, if not it isn't as high priority but still decent

Doesn't your mod require the community patch? I tested FF / Shifter some, it is actually really good because you can still use FF when spiritshifted, and you use the FF attack speed, so for instance as a bear in robes I have 17 armor with iron wheel and attack every 1.7s with FF at 10 dex (with swift flurry), and you use the FF damage with forbidden fist bonus, so you're doing like double bear damage, attacking faster, and healing yourself. LOL. I'm doing about 100 damage per attack, it's pretty good. Plus you can trigger Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming while spiritshifted. The stag is really good too since heartbeat drumming and swift flurry trigger carnage. I can see what he was saying though, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to being a shifter since the cooldown is the same as other classes. I mean yes you can take different spiritshifts which is sort of useful, but it's a questionable tradeoff for not being able to cast spells, particularly when the bear and stag are the only ones you'd want anyway with this particular build.

I posted this in another thread, but it could be helpful to you with controlling the ghost heart with less micromanagement. These script blocks will keep your animal companion summoned if it dies, priority attack things you mark as prey, and auto-target your character at whatever your animal companion is attacking so you can benefit from stalker's link (and flanked if someone else is attacking it). The top two blocks summon your companion if you don't have one or he falls unconscious, and they summon the companion near a marked prey if possible. The last block has your character attack whatever the animal is attacking. You can't script the animal himself so I find rangers are easiest to control if you script the person and control the animal. Though the animal should auto-attack the marked prey after being summoned near it (provided its AI isn't turned off), so you probably won't have to do anything besides maybe retarget him to priority targets now and then. It says "being attacked by my animal companion" in the priority block btw.

For paladin/troubadour I would go goldpact knight for the "blessing of gold" they get from sworn enemy and sworn rival / brand enemy. This give them +4 armor for a decent number of hits, four or five, and it is a cheap cast. Will help you with tanking early since the other big paladin armor thing is stoic steel which you dont' get until L19. This is a solid choice for a tank though, and can also do summoning, support, and some CC as needed. Bloodmage / soulblade eventually plays like an offtank, but during early levels will be more of a second row striker with a staff or pike, or can be used as backrow caster. What really brings the build together is L13 when you get borrowed instinct, llengrath's safeguard, and citzal's spirit lance. The lance makes collecting focus trivial, and you can send it back out through the lance with soul annihilation, which will hit every single enemy in the lance's AOE radius, so if your focus is full and you hit five enemies you'd do about 1000 damage, and can refill it in one or two hits. Lance also has extended range and can be used behind your main tank if needed. Before then, you could use a high DPS bow to get focus, but you need a melee weapon for soul annihilation so I am a big fan of Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff. It isn't the fastest at collecting focus but does solid damage and you can use soul annihilation without having to be on the front row, plus it will heal you a decent amount. The staff remains a good alternative for highly pierce resistant enemies, though another option for pierce resistant enemies is target an adjacent enemy with the lance, and the AOE attack does crush damage, so as long as something isn't resistant to both pierce and crush (basically nothing) the lance typically works. Only real exceptions are 1 on 1 fights versus pierce-resistant things like Dorudugan, where you'd want the staff. Ghostheart / ascendant is a solid choice for ranged damage dealer and offensive cipher spells. Generally what you do is keep up borrowed instinct, summon your companion to flank an enemy, then use a high DPS bow (like Essence Interrupter or Frostseeker) to attack that enemy. When you reach ascended, go nuts with disintegration, soul ignition, mental binding, ancestor's memory, pain block, echoing shield, secret horrors, phantom foes, whatever is needed. You can easily script your character to attack what your animal companion is attacking, just use these blocks, then when you reach ascended you can take manual control of your character, disable the AI, or add more blocks for cipher spells (unfortunately there's no conditional to check if you are ascended without an AI mod). The top two blocks summon your companion if you don't have one or he falls unconscious, and they summon the companion near a marked prey if possible. The last block has your character attack whatever the animal is attacking. You can't script the animal himself so I find rangers are easiest to control if you script the human and control the animal. Though the animal should auto-attack the marked prey after being summoned near it (provided its AI isn't turned off), so you probably won't have to do anything besides maybe retarget him to priority targets now and then. It says "being attacked by my animal companion" in the priority block btw. Either berserker / streetfighter or berserker / devoted could work for the fourth. I'd pick whatever you're comfortable with. You could use either character for ranged or melee. One thing to note about berserker/devoted, you get the weapon proficiency you pick PLUS unarmed, so take monastic unarmed training and you can use the character as a very solid offtank early with either dual fists or fist + tuotilo's palm, then later when the blood mage / soul blade becomes the big offtank, have him switch to a bow (Essence Interrupter or Frostseeker again are fantastic, so probably pick hunting bows or war bows, whichever the ascendant won't be using). And for your fifth a single class druid is solid, they can do a lot of damage and support if necessary. Grab the sword Effort from Bekarna's Folly, enchant with Hemorrhaging and this character's DPS becomes nuts using avenging storm (it causes ANY crit to produce avenging storm bolts, like crits from pulsing spells like venombloom and insect plague). For subclass any of them could work (besides fury), though I'd probably pick shifter or ancient personally. Fury not being able to cast rejuvenation spells is too much of a downside in a party IMO, and lifegiver can't summon, which may or may not be a problem given you have a troubadour, but some of the druid summons are really good (like call to the primordials, bog ooze mainly, also the summon sporeling from ancient is very good for a L1 spell). Shifter has good default spell selections so even if you don't plan to shapeshift it is still slightly better than animist IMO. So one possible party based on this list: goldpact knight / troubadour, bloodmage / soulblade, ghostheart / ascendant, berserker/devoted, SC Shifter I think this looks very solid but you may want to wait for other veterans to chime in

I agree with thelee conqueror stance is going to be better than mob stance most of the time. Also definitely want accurate carnage. Take that as your first stance, and id also spend your resources roughly in this priority Tactical barrage -> spirit frenzy -> refreshing defense, try to keep these up always. Use unbending, charge, and savage defiance as needed. Not sure about optimal weapons for rekke. Morning stars are generally pretty good, but I did a custom brute recently where I one handed stalker's patience with maiming and mercy strike. When mercy strike procs multiple hits it is especially good because they also get carnage, and it procs on crit. Not sure if you can get rekkes accuracy high enough to crit often, but 14 PER isn't bad so my guess is yes. My guy was wearing cap of the laughingstock also, which may not be ideal in a party. Gauntlets of accuracy + blinky as pet when you get him IMO. Before that maybe Nikki or nalvi. Once you have some money ring of prosperity fortune goes well for the 15% hit to crit, and would be preferable to both your rings. Bone setters torc is decent though hang on to charm of bones vs vessels. And Horns of the Bleak Mother vs beasts.

Is this with or without community patch? Because weapon specialization and mastery aren't worth taking in vanilla. Combined they give +15% damage for two abilities. You also don't take unbending or savage defiance. You really need one or the other if not both. Wild Sprint seems kind of meh compared to charge, which costs more but is an actual movement ability and can stun. Penetrating Strike is probably a skip. Also barbaric blow / smash are not high priority IMO. Clear Out is okay but not super high priority. Basically if this guy is meant to tank at all he needs more defensive abilities IMO. Take unbending, vigorous defense -> refreshing defense, accurate carnage, and charge, roughly in that order of priority. Maybe Conqueror Stance. Savage -> Stalwart Defiance if you need more healing. Without context of the party it's hard to give equipment suggestions, though boots of the stone are a bit redundant with unflinching (maybe footprints of ahu taka are preferable). Garari Cuirass is kind of mediocre. For tanky armor, reckless brigandine is better, for fast armor devil of caroc BP is better, for really light armor miscreant's leathers are bettre. Also Lord Darryn's Voulge ultimately becomes kind of disappointing since it maxes out at superb, but it's a good weapon for half the game. Probably switch to will breaker or saru sichr after. Use body blows when needed. Consider equipping the slayer's claw when you get it and if not using it, at least cycling to it to upgrade your attacks to energized, and if you do this and maintain spirit frenzy you no longer need interrupting blows.

The thing about penetrating strikes is it is an active ability that gets you ONE shot, and in the tough fights, where you're going to get wiped, you will run out of fighter resources without a cipher spamming ancestor's memory, and he probably can't do that fast enough for you to use penetrating strikes most shots. It is much better to stack passive bonuses, like berserker's frenzy while not a true passive can buy you 10 or 15 shots with Essence Interrupter, while benefiting from the bonus might, action speed, and hit to crit in addition to the +2 PEN. The main draw of a devoted is the +2 PEN and bonus crit damage IMO. I would also consider very high accuracy ranged builds versus high PEN builds. Seers can achieve even higher penetration because of how crits work. Your devoted with penetrating strikes, razor skewers, and a legendary essence interrupter has 17 PEN (when using the ability, otherwise 14), which is either enough to penetrate or in rare cases not. Compare a seer with 13 PEN who crits every shot, that is translated to 13*1.5 rounded up to 20 PEN which will get through basically everything. This is large reason why ascendant / arcane archer was suggested (in addition to cipher versatility and imbued attacks). Devoted/ghost heart does help with the accuracy, at least if you use the pet correctly, so it's not bad I just think you're overemphasizing penetration (particularly penetrating strike) in this case. The best way not to die is to prevent damage in the first place. This is about killing the enemy quickly, and/or stacking so much armor that enemies underpenetrate (-75% damage) or don't penetrate (-25%) and stacking defenses so they miss or graze (-50%). A graze combined with underpenetration is basically nothing. Second best way not to die is passive healing, like ancient memory and steel garrote passive. Third best is active heals that take time to cast. In kaylon's third party, there is plenty of healing, it is just not of the form "cast a spell and heal everyone". FF/SG has so much armor, deflection, etc. that he takes very little damage and what damage he takes... The FF attack itself also heals in addition to SG passive. As a paladin this character can also use lay on hands in an emergency but for himself it will never be necessary. A skald/berserker meanwhile can use stalwart defiance, but more important can chant ancient memory + mercy and kindness or her courage thick as steel. Can also use "Rejoice My Comrades" in emergencies. Assassin/tactician has unbending which can provide a ton of healing, though probably you'd prefer to keep this character out of the fray. Blood mage / troubadour has a small amount of self-healing from blood mage passive, also can have high armor and defenses from wizard spells, and can also chant ancient memory, her courage thick as steel, or mercy and kindness, as needed. Wizards can also drink potions of final stand and use wall of draining to extend it indefinitely (as a blood mage). Ascendent/arcane archer can cast pain block as needed. Has no self-healing but this isn't a problem as this character stays out of the fray, and if he does need healing the paladin can deal with it, or he can just drink a potion. At your current level some characters may be underdeveloped or not have the gear they need. Like tanks really need sufficient armor they don't get damaged when hit. There is a huge, huge drop-off in damage from when you have 14 armor and enemy has 14 pen versus when you have 16 armor (-75% damage). Okay so your current party is unbroken/troubadour, devoted/ghostheart, and assassin/ascendant, plus Aloth and Xoti? And you want to remove the last two? So you still don't have a great tank, but war caller is okay I guess. Devoted/ghost heart does solid damage. Assassin/ascendant, not really sure what this character's role is? For damage... Many high damage builds. Mine were with the caveat of including both a druid and priest. And BTW there is nothing wrong with having druids and priests! But you should not look at them as healers or just support. A SC druid can be a tremendous damage dealer. Helwalker/priest is also very good. With the druid his main role should be casting things like insect swarm, relentless storm, avenging storm, venombloom, etc., and throws out nature's balm or moonwell if needed. And helwalker/priest is versatile, you can use this character as a high DPS striker or pull back for support. Or both. Start fights with a couple buffs, then beat things with your fists, using withdraw in emergencies. So in general you want chars who if they're going to get hit have high defenses and armor, and preferably self-healing, and hopefully can still do damage. Forbidden fists are really overpowered as tanks because not only are they tremendous tanks, e.g. FF/SG iron wheel stacks with exalted endurance and eventually stoic steel, but they have good self-healing, and their attacks do a lot of single target damage and enfeeble. SC FF eventually gets WOTW which does multitarget damage. If you keep up Llengrath's Safeguard and other spells wizards can be very tanky too. There are tons of high damage builds, e.g. FF, helwalker / priest, blood mage / assassin, FF / soul blade, berserker / streetfighter, stalker / soul blade, berserker / devoted, helwalker / blood mage, troubadour / sharpshooter, troubadour / FF, barbarian / FF, barbarian / soul blade, FF / streetfighter, blood mage / soul blade, bellower / priest, SC druid A simple solution is to make one a FF, they are pretty fire and forget once you make like a 3 block script to spam FF. For the other one, IDK, I'd just pick one you like, personally I'd probably go with a SC druid, they become really devastating when you get the sword Effort (Hemorhaging upgrade) combined with Avenging Storm and are decent before then. Furies do the most damage but can't heal so I'd probably go with a shifter or animist. You were originally going with a blood mage / soul blade, which is extremely high DPS by L13. Why did you change your mind? The build is a little complex but I've written on it extensively if interested https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/131992-advice-on-a-hierophant-build/ https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/131345-build-guide-the-soul-devourer-multiclass-blood-mage-soul-blade-optimal-for-potd-solo/

Yeah if you add higher level spells via console they don't appear in the UI except under script abilities. Scripting overrides the user interface in some ways, like you can cast higher level spells and drink potions of final stand without being near death. So a multiclassed character could use such a spell in scripts but that solution is pretty janky...

I know it doesn't work on phantoms (including monk duplicates) so I had assumed the differentiating factor was whether a summon was party-controllable. So I checked (vanilla game) and Doesn't work on any duplicates (wizard phantoms, watery double, dichotomous souls) Works with chanter summons in general, but not the skeletons from Many Lives Works with Call to The Primordial Oozes, Blights, and Sporelings Works with Spiritual Ally, does not work on incarnate of skaen Does not work with ghost heart summons Didn't test everything but what I did holds with my thesis that you get animancy cat benefits if and only if a summon is party controllable, except in the case of ghost heart summons because animal companions are also tagged differently, which is why for instance you can make scripts to attack whatever your animal companion is attacking but can't do this with summons.

Ah. Well playing with a small party is pretty challenging unless you know the game very well. I'd probably go with a full party, at least if you plan to play more difficult content like DLCs and megabosses. Some of the DLCs are pretty good, the megabosses are just kind of pointlessly difficult encounters but I still like the challenge. So Shards of Woedica is an interesting weapon though I've never used it. As a club you can use the modal to decrease a target's will by 25. The "shards of woedica effect" also increases damage taken and you can either give the club to a tank with the "Blessed Defiance" upgrade, but IMO "Coordinated Escape" is more interesting. This allows you to give the club to a non-tank who can wade into the fray, debuff an enemy, not get engaged, and flee. The will debuff is especially useful to ciphers but there are priest and wizard spells that target will also. Even some paladin abilities, like Glorious Beacon. The higher level "sacred immolation" and upgrade abilities target reflex, so you might consider having a character with a flail. There are some nice flails like "sun and moon" as a stat stick, and sungrazer for its ability to cancel recovery as well as stun on crit. Flail modal debuffs reflex by 25. Looking at your party... I've played probably 80% of multiclass comboes but never actually played a fanatic. A berserker/paladin would have good armor (+2 from frenzy's hardy, +1 crush/slash/pierce from thick-skinned, +1 from exalted endurance, and eventually +3 from stoic steel). Should have decent defenses with deep faith. And has some self-healing options with lay on hands and eventually savage defiance. The health loss from frenzy eventually gets to be pretty bad but it is manageable. It's too bad carnage isn't like in POE1 where the Shards of Woedica effect would be distributed to everyone hit by the carnage. Anyway, you should take spirit frenzy because it applies stagger on hit, and this will trigger the SG passive so a SG attacking the staggered enemies gets back health. Don't upgrade it to spirit tornado (ability is buggy). You also definitely want blooded, not just for the damage bonus but because it is one of the only ways to gauge where your berserker's health is when it is concealed. If the blooded effect is active it is under 50%. Your character will make some comment about healing when he first hits 25%. You can also script him to self-cast lay on hands when near death. I'd take the other barbarian passives and savage defiance / stalwart defiance. On paladin side there are many options, definitely take exalted endurance. Liberating Exhortation is quite useful, as is Reviving Exhortation (unless you're expert enough noone ever dies). The willbreaker would also be an interesting weapon choice for woedica themed party since it is a punishment-themed weapon, and it debuffs will as well as the modal debuffing fortitude, both of which would be helpful to your ciphers. Also if you take the brute force ability as a barbarian you can target fortitude instead of deflection. Deflection is normally lower, but staggered from spirit frenzy Trickster/Unbroken is fairly straightforward and should make an okay tank / fighter. I find enemies don't break engagement that often. I'd consider the devoted subclass because it offers +2 penetration and +25% crit damage with your weapon of choice which would help with damage output especially if you want him to use 2 blunderbusses anyway. If he's meant to switch weapons a lot you might consider black jacket, which can remove the delay from switching weapons and gets an extra weapon set. Unbroken is good too but best on tanks, and this character won't have enough armor to be a great tank, though probably good enough for regular POTD. Priest of Woedica will be good as long as he/she doesn't run into combat unbuffed. Priests are fantastic and have some of the best party support spells like devotions for the faithful, champion's boon, spiritual ally (has unlimited heals), consecrated ground, barring death's door, and at higher levels I'm a fan of spark the souls of the righteous. The writ spells are extremely powerful debuffs as well. Writs of war and sorcery can shut down a lot of enemies, but even the humble writ of engagement is useful. And the writ of mending gives mass enfeeble which is extremely powerful. Stalker/beguiler is interesting. I've played seers quite a bit but not this specific combination. IMO...if this is a melee character you're better off with soul blade. If not, you're probably better off with ascendant or psion if you don't mind the redundancy. Also if it isn't a melee character, don't take stalker. I'm guessing since you picked stalker it is melee, and soul annihilation provides fantastic burst damage on hard to kill enemies. Beguilers are best at spamming low level spells, but psions are just as good at that, so I don't see a lot of reason to take them unless it's just for variety. For cipher picks I listed most of what you want below, it's generally the same stuff you'd want for the spiritualist, but also take draining whip, hammering thoughts, lingering echoes, and the empty soul (last two take with spiritualist also). For ranger picks, I recommend the bear as an animal since it is the tankiest and attacks pretty fast. Take vicious companion and resilient companion. Protective companion and Stalker's link give big accuracy buffs when you attack an enemy the animal is threatening. Also want at the least heal companion, revive companion, evasive roll, and marked prey. Concussive Tranquilizer is nice if you have room. Predator's Sense can give your companion a big damage boost, provided there is a damage over time effect, and ciphers have lots of DOTs (soul ignition, disintegration), and there are also weapons with DOTs like I'd recommend Stalker's Patience. It fits thematically but is also a very powerful spear with bonus damage on flanked targets from ambushing, mortal wounds provides a constant stacking DOT effect, and best of all mercy strike has a 33% chance to attack again on crit, which means you can often get double, triple, quadruple strikes, or more (which is extra great as a seer since you will gain a TON of focus). Seers can stack accuracy higher than any other build so you should basically always crit. Marked Prey is +10, Stalker's Link is +10, flanked is +10, Survival of the Fittest is +10 (when active), borrowed instinct is +20 (keep this spell up ALWAYS), and psychovampiric shield debuffs resolve by 10 making it effectively +10. These all stack for roughly +70 to +80 accuracy on top of whatever you get from equipment. I'd consider one-handing stalker's patience (or whatever if it has good on-crit effects), that's another +12. If your accuracy is high enough from the other things you're already always critting, then use a shield or dual wield. Other weapons with good on-crit effects- aldris blade of captain's crow heals you, sungrazer stuns, ball and chain prones, magistrate's cudgel is particularly good for its "judged" marker and is soulbound to ciphers giving 3s stun on crit. I'd probably use stalker's patience and magistrate's cudgel, either dual-wielded or just switching weapons after an enemy is judged. Troubadour/psion is a build I've played a LOT and it is fantastic, very versatile, on chanter side there are many good picks but you probably want summons, thunder rolled like waves on black seas, and at the sound of his voice and upgrades. The instruments of death are ultimately the best summons but until then the wyrms are good damage and the ogres are solid. For chants you probably want thick grew their tongues, ancient memory, and many lives pass by. Beyond that it is more specific to what you are trying to do, and the resistance chants can be very useful, or the damage chants (mith fir), or sure-handed ila if you have a lot of ranged characters, especially if using weapons with reloads since sure-handed ila applies twice on reload weapons. On psion side, you want at least one charm spell, psychovampiric shield, mental binding, secret horrors, soul ignition, body attunement (situational), borrowed instinct (always up), echoing shield, pain block, tactical meld, disintegration and ancestor's memory. Normally you want brisk recitation on so you can cast more invocations but it depends on the situation. Overall your party looks pretty solid. It's a good combination of tanks, support, and damage, and I think you'll be able to do all the content provided decent gear choices and stat spreads.

Probably this should be in the modding forum? I don't know the answer but have you tried adding the ability via console? I've been able to cast higher level abilities in some cases by adding it via console. It doesn't appear in the spells because they only go up to tier 7 but it can be cast by script. I didn't mess with anything in notepad though AddAbility Player<TAB> name_of_ability Might work, I feel like @Elric Galadwould know the answer to this

How much have you played tje game and what difficulty settings?? If you aren't doing POTD a ton of parties will work so whatever you like the most is best. Assuming POTD upscaled...If I did a woedica themed party I would probably make everyone a priest of woedica or in the steel garrote, but im not that creative. Maybe have a Priest, a paladin, and a few "initiates" who would be multiclassed from whatever and want to join the steel garrote or priesthood. The SG classes have great synergy with afflictions so we pick classes that cause afflictions For a really simple small party that works incredibly well, use Steel garrote paladin x 2 Priest of woedica / troubadour The Priest chants many lives and the paladins can spam divine immolation healing each other and burning everything and getting back 2 resources each per skeleton dead. Priest of woedica / bellower also extremely good. Weyc robe can reduce chant duration by 50% narrowing the gap between them and troubadour, and they can cast invocations at +6 power level I've tried this party and it shreds anything not immune to burn. But doesn't fully come online until very late. --- For a full party that isn't as gimmicky...far from optimal due to restrictions of priest and SG but... Steel garrote paladin - divine retribution goes well with theme and is procced on any summon death, at high levels would sacred sacrifice a lot Priest of woedica - it's a Priest with writs. SG / FF - great tank and damage dealer Priest of woedica / bellower - becomes very powerful with weyc items and least unstable coil, chants many lives for main paladin Priest of woedica / blood mage - cannot get more versatile, king of buffs Also like sg/troubadour, helwalker/priest, streetfighter/SG, SG/soul blade. Actually id prefer the helwalker/priest versus the priest. For woedica themed stuff theres the hood worn by the inquisitor in oathbinder. Also the magistrates cudgel in subterranean temple, which judges people giving you +10 accuracy (for spells too). Restricted to cipher, fighter, and monk. I like the cipher version the most since he benefits a lot from extra accuracy and stuns on criit And make sure you import a history where you went woedica, like keeper of secrets. Mostly flavor, but NPC steel garrotes do have a special boon. Unfortunately you can't get it. Kind of weird that enacting woedicas plan makes no difference to the games plot...

Ah, kinda skimmed your post, I was envisioning a melee character, but I can see how berserker/streetfighter would work ranged. +100% crit bonus is a lot of damage though, and berserker/streetfighter won't have the best accuracy but gets what, 30% hit to crit from frenzy + 10% dirty fighting? Another 20% if one-handed? I mean I know it doesn't add like that, but throw in ring of prosperity's fortune +15% and what is it, 1 -.7*.9*.8*.85 = 57% hit to crit? I'd also stack accuracy gear so always at least hit and often crit outright, so this guy could do a lot of damage, attacks pretty fast also, you give him a weapon like aldris blade of captain crow and/or slayer's claw and will heal decently enough. It's funny, I remember arguing against berserkers, usually don't like them versus normal barbarians but their upsides/downsides are really nice put together with a streetfighter, since their meh accuracy is complemented well by the hit-to-crit and the major downside of self-damage is turned into an upside because of streetfighter's heating up. My streetfighter/FF is pretty tough. Can solo most encounters, possibly all but I haven't tested everything. Berserker has roughly the same armor as iron wheel (no CON bonus, but more base CON), given hardy +2 and thick-skinned. Big difference in health regen though, FF regains health from attacks whereas berserker bleeds health (though savage defiance helps). Needs healing support but otherwise shouldn't be one-shotted unless he's built that way. Barbarian/rogue has base HP of 44 +14/level, which is higher than anything but a pure barbarian, so it really doesn't have to be squishy, particularly if you take tough and eat hylea's bounty. I'd probably prioritize stats as RES > PER > CON > MIG > INT > DEX. Would be different if built ranged, but the halving of recovery time is huge and frenzy contributes so much action speed if you keep that up you can completely dump dex. It is possible to script weapon switches but it's pretty janky because the AI doesn't recognize individual weapons but weapon configurations, so if you want to script them they need to be unique, like if you had three slots where one is a ranged weapon, one is a ranged weapon and a shield, and one is a melee weapon, you could tell the AI to switch to the second set (say blunderbuss + shield) and fire every X seconds, or alternatively start with it and switch to one of the other sets. More than the AI jankiness, the weapon switch delay is a bummer... Unfortunate quick-switch isn't a universal talent anymore. Honestly I don't know how you can stand playing without AI. Especially a whole party. Yikes. I was kind of forced to learn scripting doing an ultimate run since lack of pause makes micromanagement seriously difficult, but the interface is really intuitive and simple so it was easy to pick up compared to other games I've played, and it is way way easier to figure out builds if they're properly scripted given the default ones are awful. --- edit - another thing I realized when trying to use powder burns for flanked was that rogues riposte procs on guns, reloaded or not. This is particularly interesting for a streetfighter/FF, because for the FF attack your weapon doesn't really matter, so you can have two blunderbuss and do powder burns all the time

Okay if @Boeroer agrees with me about berserker/streetfighter I am pretty confident that party will murder things. Why don't you want to get flanked though? The damage bonus from flanked + bloodied is nuts. Might have to stick him in some heavy armor but I think it could be worth it. Also I like streetfighter / FF, can do like +500% damage in the right circumstances. I think it's +65% sneak attack (more with potion of ascension), +100% bloodied/flanked, deathblows is +50%, transcendent suffering high level is like 95%, forbidden curse with this build I intentionally stack to get bloodied so sometimes it's +200%. Have seen some super high DPS but the vanilla AI is so bad with forbidden curse it is hard to get down how to use without dying. I can do it with an AI mod that detects if you have forbidden curse. Most single-target damaging character I've put together, can wear the heaviest armor (plus iron wheel) and still attack pretty fast. Still has some wrinkles with using the curse to get bloodied though.

He is immune to dexterity afflictions so he should be... Now I'm having trouble defeating Nemnok. Should have grabbed late game gear first... anyway I get swarmed before he's even hurt. Should come back with Scordeo's Edge at least. EDIT: Got him. Key with this gear seems to be to start in a corner, use oozes to protect one side, try to group everyone coming from one direction and cast great maelstrom and venombloom to wipe out followers, then bog ooze can debuff nemnok who is vulnerable to stuns and petrification. That bog ooze is like miles better than any other druid summon, it's crazy. It has a huge AOE insect plague but the main draw is its foul wave ability, which it can spam indefinitely, it's a line attack with length 14 and penetration 16, accuracy 103, does crush/corrode, disorients, sickens, and prones. So good that if I don't get a bog ooze I just recast the spell ASAP. The only good thing about the other oozes is the greater black ooze splits when klilled, and the smaller oozes have no duration, so you can create an army of little oozes if you want. So at this point I'm doing concelhaut, cave grub, water dragon, nemnok, and fire dragon without the epic gear. Maybe belranga because she's in the vicinity. After ashen maw I head to SSS to grab the least unstable coil, after SSS go grab weyc items, and from there it is pretty easy.

Hmm. You don't need a dedicated healer/buffer type character, or even dedicated tanks. You need tanks, but if they can do other things fights will resolve much faster. For example, a forbidden fist / steel garrote can tank while doing tremendous damage and self-healing. I guess your war caller can summon/buff things, but overall you have too much support and not enough damage. I'm not really convinced a mindstalker does max damage either, given it is expensive to become invisible and it takes a long time to get deathblows. A streetfighter / berserker on the other hand can do tremendous damage immediately from the huge damage and recovery bonuses from heating up / etc. Prefer streetfighter / FF because doesn't die as easily but keeping them bloodied can be a little hard. Yep. Basically you have two characters that can do damage, and the hierophant isn't really online at L5. I mean I wouldn't evaluate parties based on how they perform at L5, provided you're willing to grind through those combats or just stealth past them. I still think having a character or two that comes on fast would help a lot, like FF or FF/SG. And a priest/helwalker vs priest, or if Xoti then a contemplative because monks do good damage. Depends whether you want to use companions or custom make them. I'll assume custom. This isn't completely optimal as I'm trying to make diverse characters but should work well. The key is covering lots of roles with as few chars as possible. For example tanks are usually necessary but a pure tank just stands there and absorbs damage, so we'd much rather have a tank that can also do damage. So here are my custom suggestions. 1) FF / SG votary - can tank, do good damage, can support, comes online immediately, does not need babysitting or healing usually 2) Troubadour / Sharpshooter - Uses pet (bear) and summons to tank while providing support and dealing good bow damage (troubadour/stalker for melee) 3) Berserker / Streetfighter or Berserker / Devoted - first does more damage but requires healing. Wants to stay flanked and bloodied ideally, you can tell whether he's bloodied by whether blooded is active. Use second for less micro, or if happy with the mindstalker just use that, lots of high-damage builds. 4) SC Lifegiver (or just animist) is actually preferable here IMO because the Tier 8/9 druid spells are really, really good. Avenging Storm and Great Maelstrom for damage, Pollen Patch for incredible healing. You don't gain that much from a paladin multiclass if you already have one which I'd suggest elsewhere. And higher power level = more healing, also levels up faster to provide better healing to those who need it. Also empowered avenging storm has all kinds of benefits from weyc items + least unstable coil that can supercharge your whole party. 5) Helwalker / priest - gets +10 MIG, +10 CON/INT (go INT) at L10, which is super helpful, makes priest more versatile, spells do more damage, heal more, and with turning wheel, buffs and debuffs last longer. So in this party 1 would be main tank, helped by 2 with summons and pet, 3 would be a melee striker, 4 would be back row healing and eventually damage, 2 himself can be either back row ranged or front row melee, and 5 is also versatile, normally back row support and spell damage but can also be a striker as needed I'm very confident about everything but 3, there are many DPS builds so I don't know what is the best, and a berserker/streetfighter does require some care to really reap the benefits, but I think in this suggested party it would work. Or go with a different high damage character, with the other 4 picks doing moderate to high damage themselves, it isn't as critical to have a maximal DPS char anyway. If you want Xoti, sub number 5 for her as contemplative. And if you want Aloth, sub 3. The way we solo upscaled POTD is having an OP character. FF/SG is capable of soling without cheese tactics.

Yeah she is the easiest boss if you have summons. I think the skeletons from Many Lives would have been sufficient. A monk can kill her quite easily this way as well, using enduring dance + dichotomous souls. Can easily do it from stealth actually.

I watched your fight before posting this and it looked like you almost lost Vela at least once (at the beginning from the wave, and later she got grabbed anyway). Yeah petrify does nothing because he's immune to dexterity afflictions. I didn't think about chill fog even though I could see you were proccing that from killing your summons. Not sure how I would proc that with a Fury. I guess I could summon skeletons with the Charm of Bones necklace, though sometimes that summons steelspine warriors and things that aren't that easy to kill, so probably not worth it? I guess I could try "Calling the World's Maw" which prones. Maybe I just need to do it before his death attack when he detonates the wards and then cast it again while a maelstrom finishes him. Or maybe I'll just circle back when I have all the gear and can keep him perma interrupted with energized avenging storm bolts. Thought there must be a more basic way given he is meant to be fought at like level 13. I suppose if you have a full party you just kill the tentacle things and can stay safe in the protected bubbles. Also I am annoyed that beetle shell is a 3 second cast when Withdraw is a .5s cast. In the first game Beetle Shell was a "fast" cast. A 200 point damage shield + paralyze is far less useful than withdrawing someone so you'd think it would at least be a quick cast, but it's a level 3 spell with long cast and 4s recovery. It is still sort of useful, except when enemies can do like 350+ damage which is enough to break the shell and kill her. That last attack the water dragon does when he detonates the four bubbles can kill her in a shell so I try to withdraw her, but IDK why she is so hard to find on this map. EDIT: @abot why do you keep casting tactical meld? It's just one guy so what is the benefit of the +engagement? Or are you doing it for Aware? I can summon oozes, one of which (bog ooze) can be pretty useful as he has a wave attack that can prone, but there are four ooze types and you get three so you don't always get the bog ooze. EDIT 2: I figured it out thanks to your suggestion about proning him, the key with a fury is use call to the primordials, attack him with a bog ooze's foul wave repeatedly, and use calling the world's maw + great maelstrom when dragon gets bloodied. Before then use avenging storm, venombloom, insect swarm, relentless storm (mostly for the tentacles), and infestation of maggots to drain his health and proc avenging storm bolts with effort.

Just the blood mage / soul blade by himself is potd upscaled viable, so any party is going to be viable also. That said, thoughts... You could run tekehu as a sc chanter. Not that he is bad as watershaper. As chanter he can be extremely broken with late game gear (weyc + coil + blightheart + Sasha singing scimitar) and carry your whole party. Very very strong with mid game gear (blightheart and Sasha singing scimitar) able to spam invocations every 3 seconds. He can't summon things but he is set up for damage invocations so not that big a downside. Your wildrhymer could summon things. Just don't use a ghost heart because that counts towards summon limit. Bellower / priest is also super good but competes for items a tekehu chanter would want (coil and weyc). I dont know much about mindstalkers. Helwalker / assassin would be quite strong but fragile and narrow in role. You may consider something more versatile like a plain forbidden fist or ff multi like votary alternatively. Something that can do decent damage but also take a hit. I dont love sc priests, mainly because they multiclass so well. The tier 8/9 spells aren't worth everything you'd get from seven tiers of helwalker for example, though it would be fine single classed. Game knowledge is ultimately more important than getting the perfect setup, and just about any party that isn't intentionally butchered can probably make it through (might be more/less of a grind in spots is all). The early game is the grindiest, lot of builds dont become strong until l10 to l16. Thats why I'd suggest you have one character who comes online immediately like a FF or FF / SG paladin.

I'm trying to solo Scyorielaphas the water dragon as practice for an ultimate run with a SC Fury. Weirdly he is one of the hardest bosses for this build, at least with the equipment I currently have. I do have Effort, I just hit L20, but I do not have any weyc items or Least Unstable Coil, Scordeo's Edge and haven't procced Opening Barrage on Scordeo's Trophy so am fighting him with full recovery. Had no problem doing this versus the fire dragon. This guy's defenses are even worse (particularly vs lightning and I have lightning attacks) and as a Fury I tend to just kill things really rapidly more than focus on defenses so it seems like it should be easy, but it is hard to kill the water dragon fast enough. My best strategy has been just stacking pulse spells like great maelstrom, insect plagues, venombloom etc. with Avenging Storm, while keeping Vela in a beetle shell or withdrawn, but I still die probably half the time. I have three problems in this fight There is nowhere safe to put Vela as far as I can tell (she follows me through the tunnel even if I stick her on the other side), and she doesn't even stay inside the bubbles, so all I can do is expert timing with beetle shells and withdraw scrolls, without pausing, which isn't easy especially since some of his attacks can break the beetle shells, I can be grabbed for several seconds, and also Vela has a tendency to glitch on this map after certain attacks and when I press TAB I can't even tell where she is. Sometimes it's after she's proned, sometimes grabbed. She seems to get grabbed even in a beetle shell it just negates 200 points of damage. About halfway through, the little safety bubbles break and I'm suddenly attacked by every tentacle and wave on screen. I've generally just been powering through this because I don't have any healing spells and potions are slow. But sometimes I die here or Vela does, particularly when I can't find her. When Scyorielaphas is bloodied or near death (can't tell if it's time-based or health-based) he does these four lightning bolts in all directions which not only does 200+ damage it also gives a gaping wound which reduces my meagre health pool (start with little over 300) to a sliver. This is the most common spot where I die. I don't have a good response to this other than to try to reduce that last sliver of health so he goes back into dialogue mode. That and making sure Vela is withdrawn when this part comes, assuming I can find her. So that's it. There has to be a better strategy for this fight. With other builds I've had no problem because they could make themselves invulnerable or just zerg him insanely fast. If I had all the gear it would be easy because he'd be constantly interrupted by Energized, but I'd have to do bad pathing to go get the gear and come back, would prefer not to do that unless it's unavoidable.

You don't get even that if your accuracy is high enough you always or nearly always crit anyways, which is doable with a savage and you can get it pretty high with a brute. Hit to crit has diminishing returns the higher your accuracy because fewer of your attacks are hits. And since unbending is not as good in BPM it's not as great at offsetting the lost health. Stalwart Defiance can offset it, though your lost health unfortunately scales with might and power level just like your healing. I'm not a fan of berserkers except in builds where you actually want them to lose health like ravagers (or don't care, like a warlock with potions of final stand)

I've played both brutes and savages as mass-interrupt builds. Black Jacket is interesting once you get Slayer's Claw you can insta-energize every time you frenzy. I scripted it so I switch weapons when I frenzy and then mass interrupt things. Black Jacket is tankier and less awkward but if you want to crit basically everything you can't beat savages, particularly with ranger hunter's claw being per encounter now (and you can get 6+ acc in one use depending on weapons). But ranger won't have the healing to offset berserker. I would definitely go vanilla barbarian with a ranger because you auto crit nearly everything from accuracy and the bonus hit to crit is not really worth it. Berserker / FF is quite good for the massive healing and damage but FF attack doesn't work with carnage unfortunately. Other monks swift flurry and heartbeat drumming do proc carnage actually. Edit: Hadn't actually read the above responses but elric's is good, let me add stalker's patience is an amazing weapon for this type of build

I actually tried to post that I thought it was an odd class combo, except for one obscure build relying on spamming Her Revenge and Antipathetic Field / Mind Blades etc. If you're using scrolls of avenging storm you can proc a ridiculous amount of bolts doing this, with Effort Blightheart comes in mainly for the corrupting beauty pulse and SSS interaction

SC ranger is quite a bit better than in vanilla. Barbarians also. Carnage can crit which leads to energized being able to interrupt crowds. Most interesting builds I've played with BPM are Ranger / barbarian and barbarian / black jacket. Also a big fan of FF / soul blade though this only needs the community patch. Rogues, chanters, and paladins are all improved as well (mainly single class). Priests nerfed. Monks slightly nerfed. Fighters overall about the same, unbending was nerfed but rapid recovery is better. Tacticians much harder to use. Ciphers are about the same. Druids about the same. IMO wizards suck in BPM. Blood sacrifice was nerfed very hard and wall of draining nerfed as well so its only really useful if you can hit 4+ people which is not easy. I wouldn't recommend playing a hierophant with BPM. Or any wizard besides super tank wizards like arcane knights or sages, which while they still work from stacking tons if armor, are rather boring. You can remove individual nerfs (blood sacrifice and wall of draining mainly) from the override folder or just install the buffs and summon rebalancing. Blood mages are especially bad since they can't empower and empower is better with BPM. You can still imprint because that's hard-coded but stealing spells is incredibly tedious given blood sacrifice has a recovery and completely negates healing for 6s. In addition getting back minor grimoire imprint is 50% vs 100% in vanilla, and tier 7 spells are 33% vs 50% in vanilla. One other thing, potions of enlightenment help make a lot of classes more playable particularly solo. Every 30s you can regain a resource for the duration of the fight. They're sort of expensive but not enough you wouldn't want to use them.

If you're willing to mod which I take it you are then there's an excellent mod called "more AI conditions" which among other things allows you to check if focus is at maximum. When an ascendant is ascended the focus is at maximum so your ascended blocks would just look like Conditional1: Class specific: cipher - Focus is at maximum, Condtional 2: Status Target: Has Damage Over Time Effect (not), Action: Disintegration on Enemy with Lowest Fortitude Then you could clone that block for soul ignition on enemy with lowest will (with bpm). There are many many useful conditionals like you can check if borrowed instinct is on someone (or you), whether an enemy has a specific debuff, etc. There isn't one to check if they're under disintegration but the above conditional will work because it checks if you're ascended, if so, it looks for enemies without a DOT, then fires disintegrations until everyone has a DOT. Could hand out brilliant with Condtional1: Class specific: cipher - focus is at maximum, conditional 2: has inspiration: intellect (not), target type ally, ancestor's memory by nearest ally Lot of possibilities open up with the ability to check if focus is at maximum (can't believe this isn't in the base game, you can only check if focus > 90). My scripts I linked don't use the advanced AI conditions (mostly because they can't be used in an ultimate run), but they'd be easy to modify with advanced conditionals, or add/subtract blocks https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/88 And yes the blights can be dual-wielded, opening barrage with scordeo's trophy would gain you a decent bit of action speed, although when you dual wield a pistol and something else you still have to reload the pistol so for DPS it would probably not be as good as dual-wielding a blight and a scepter or wand