masterty66

Personally I don't think high con is extremely necessary on a Helwalker. You could eventually use Iron Wheel to boost your con when having a bunch of wounds, and you can always spend your wounds as well if you think you're taking too much damage. But if you combine Iron Wheel with some heavy armor I would think you'd be sturdy enough, especially since it sounds like you're using Tuotilo's Palm as well and planning to have decent Resolve. So your deflection will be good. All that said, I think your stats are perfectly fine and your character should still perform well with them. If I were to lower those points from con at all I would probably pump Resolve even higher (deflection has increasing returns).

I think they key with Soulblades is to realize that sometimes a well placed power is more effective than just dumping your focus for another SA attack. If you're playing it well you should always be doing that calculus of should you use a power or should you dump the focus. Most of the time just dumping the focus is an easy answer but a charm spell at the right time or a secret horrors etc can turn the tide too. So that's why I think it's important to be present when playing that class and don't just be lazy and spam SA all the time. Sometimes a power really is the better choice. But it's easy to get into a habit of just spamming SA 24/7 because frankly that is very effective more often than not lol.

Arcane Archer/Ascendant is very powerful. Use the Frostseeker bow and you'll generate enough focus to get ascended very quickly. From there you can spam powers or continue to ranged dps as desired. With the high Ranger accuracy you'll crit often and your spells will land well and spells like Borrowed Instinct will make you even more accurate. If you don't want to deal much with a pet you could do Ghost Heart/Ascendant which would also be quite good. Another weapon which pairs well with ranged Ciphers of any variety is Kitchen Stove with the Thunderous Report upgrade. That is a 1/encounter ability which will do a ton of damage and get you to max focus (or very close) quite quickly. So that one goes well with Ascendants. Essence Interrupter is a good ranged weapon as well. You said you're not totally opposed to melee builds. I recently played a Stalker/Soulblade using Sun & Moon + Tuotilo's palm (and then later Seeker's Fang + Grave Calling). The way the Soul Annihilation ability works is it does a primary attack, so the off hand is ignored. Sun & Moon strikes twice (once with Soul Annihilation, and then once by itself) so the way that works is you dump your focus with the first attack and then instantly regenerate focus with the second attack from Sun & Moon. In essence that means you can spam Soul Annihilation all day. With this character I would usually throw on a buff or two (Borrowed Instinct and/or Psychovampiric Shield) and then go to town spamming SA. It was quite effective. You can use powers as well when you want to. A good charm spell or debuff can sometimes be more effective than spamming SA, so don't totally neglect your powers. Just a few ideas. Hope this helps.

Losing illusion spells kinda stinks for tanking but she'd still have Spirit Armor, Ironskins, and Llengrath's Safeguard so I don't see why she wouldn't be capable of tanking if you really wanted to. Heavy Armor + those armor buffs and Llengraths should make her quite sturdy. I think the issue more than defenses would be the lack of engagement slots.

A Devoted/Soul Blade should be able to stack extremely high accuracy and solid defenses as well and so should be a fairly resilient character. With Armored Grace you can eventually afford to wear heavy armor as well without suffering much offense. Take the spells Borrowed Instinct & Psycho Vampiric shield and buff yourself with those and you'll have fairly decent defenses and high accuracy too. With Armored Grace you can cruise around in Heavy Armor being quite durable and you'll still attack fast enough. Devoted + Berserker has the obvious synergy of being able to use Modwyr's upgraded ability (Immunity to Intellect afflictions) to make it so that you don't get confused when you berserk. I don't have a ton of ideas beyond that as I don't often play Barbarians (want to try them at some point) but I thought I'd point that out. Definitely second the recommendation to read @thelee's gamefaqs guide as well. It's pretty easily digestible and helps break down a lot of the mechanics of Deadfire.

Finally got this going and having a good time with it so far. I've got a FF/SG (PC), SG/Trickster, Priest of Woedica/Psion. The last two slots are rotating Obsidian npcs depending on what quests I'm doing. This is the first time in a long time that I haven't been leaning on Eder as a main tank and it's kinda interesting. My frontline has hardly any engagement slots but it hasn't seemed to matter so far (potd/upscaled). If I'm ever doing an area where I feel I need that I probably can sub Eder or Pallegina in. I think the lack of engagements slots hasn't been felt too much for two reasons. 1) Enemies seem perfectly content to attack my front liners despite the lack of engagements and 2) My frontline has exceptional defenses and when needed good emergency healing as both front liners have lay on hands. The Mystic has a bit of healing and withdraw in a pinch as well. Dps has been pretty good so far. It's kinda disgusting how much dps the FF/SG outputs considering all the durability it also has. The SG/Trickster hasn't been lighting the world on fire dps-wise but with Wotep + her defenses she's a very sturdy dpser. Can't do dps if you're dead. Mystic provides amazing utility between buffs, writs, and cipher spells. Can pretty much do it all.

I have done Red Hand Maia with phantom and it's definitely a solid build.

It was a lot of fun. Sun & Moon + Tuotilo's and then later Seeker's Fang + Gravecalling. Super high accuracy and shredded single targets. Ranged Seers are fantastic as well but I quite enjoyed my melee Seer.

I'm not the chanter expert or anything but those stats seem fine to me. Per & Int seem at a glance to be the most important stats for a chanter as those will help durations, aoe size, and accuracy of invocations. Res affects deflection but also the duration of hostile effects on you so I don't particularly like dumping that one all the way down for most classes. If you dump it low, then hostile effects will last longer on you and that can be devastating if you're getting enfeebled or stunned or paralyzed or whatever for long durations. I recently dumped Resolve to 3 on a Seer (Stalker/Soulblade) that I did, but the reason why I did that was because I was using Pyschovampiric Shield and Borrowed Instinct to boost my defenses and resolve during combat, so dumping that stat wasn't a big deal. So imo I wouldn't dump Resolve much below like 8 or so. But that's just me. I'd probably max int/per and balance the rest of the attributes as best you can. If you're using the Berath Blessing of +2 all stats that should especially be enough to make you well rounded enough for your Chanter.

Whatever you do, using Sasha's Singing Scimitar for a free per encounter empower is recommended. You can use two weapon sets and swap to your main weapon once you use the empower. I just feel like that's too powerful not to make use of. Empowered her tears or eld nary can obliterate foes.

That could indeed be fun. I think I may do that. I've recently started experimenting with using a hireling in my runs. I like to grab npcs for the story but fitting in one or even two hirelings wouldn't be the worst thing. Could still have 2 real npcs that way to round out the rest of the party. Last run I paired a Kind Wayfarer dual wielding pistols ( @Boeroer mentioned this idea in one thread or another) with a Soul Blade/Stalker using Sun & Moon + Tuotilos. Rest of the party was npcs. Was my first time running a serious hireling that I kept past Port Maje and she was super effective with those pistols at healing and the dps was much higher than I expected it to be also. So I'm starting to warm up to the idea of sprinkling in a hireling or two in my runs to test out more builds.

Still wrapping up Poe1 but I am leaning towards either this or Trickster/SG. I think those are the two I've narrowed it down to.

White Crest Armor is very nice as well. Smashing Wave will absolutely win fights for you, even if it's 1/rest it's still amazing. Also has Dancing Bolts 1/rest which is less useful but still decent.

I played Tyranny I think once and beat it, and I remember enjoying it, but moreso for the story than the gameplay. I don't recall the gameplay being anything that gripped me to the extent that Poe/Poe2 has. In fairness, I'm not sure I've replayed any rpgs as much as this series apart from Bg1/bg2/tob. I should revisit Tyranny at some point and see if I still like it.

Those both sound pretty fun. I'll probably end up doing one of those two or FF/SG depending on what whim strikes me when I get to Deadfire lol. I am enjoying being a jerk. I normally play a diplomatic/benevolent type character so this Bleakwalker in Poe1 is so far about as far from my normal character as possible.