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.

Trickster/SG and Assassin/BW sounds interesting. Never done a Rogue playthrough. I suppose the former is more about applying dots via aoe while being reasonably tanky while the latter is more of a single target burner?

FF/Steel Garrote does seem interesting. Haven't played a FF ever. Bm/SB is I am sure quite powerful but I just played a Soul Blade so not sure I want to dive right into one yet. I know Steel Garrote/BM is also a powerful build. I think I'd prefer to at least stick to the Paladin base since that's what I'm doing in Poe1 so if I do deviate from my original idea it'd probably be one of those two.

So in all my time playing Poe1/2 I've never done a full evil playthrough. I'm aiming to correct that finally. Currently making my way through Poe1 as a Death Godlike Bleakwalker. I'm thinking of making this into a Templar (Bleak Walker/Woedica) in Deadfire, as I aim to make the evil choices in 1 (empower Woedica). My thought was that I could use Woedica's Summoned Fists + Bleak Walker FOD lash to hit hard and accurately. And of course, I'd have some utility between lay on hands/buffs/writs. Only worry is, Templars don't seem like they have great synergy. Nor does Woedica have any fast casting spells really. Has anyone tried something similar and are there any obvious synergies I'm missing? I know action economy might be an issue, so my thought was to bring Xoti (perhaps eventually Vatnir) along to help with the buffing duties and so I can spend more time hitting things and casting offensive magic. I also know that Death Godlikes aren't exactly a meta choice, but I wanted to play one for some reason. The +Pl might eventually come in handy if I use myself/Xoti to prolong BDD. I figure my basic strategy in fights would be to cast a buff, cast a writ, and then summon fists and beat on things, throwing out other support magic (or the occasional lay on hands) as needed.

I did not try Keeper of the Flame, but I'll keep that in mind if I ever do another Soul Blade. I was impressed by the Seer overall. I'd heard people rave about it, and it did not disappoint. It's amazing how much easier bosses are when you have a character who does that much single target dps.

Guess it depends on what flexibility you want. A Blood Mage/Ascendant for example could prolong its own abilities with Wall of Draining, and have more survivability with wizard spells. It could also help enable itself via using Miasma on enemies and then casting Cipher spells. But as you note in your example sometimes it can be more efficient to not roll all those things into one and just have a party member do it instead. For example having Aloth cast miasma and then having your Cipher do his thing instead of doing it all yourself. Or as you wrote, having Xoti prolong your buffs with SOT instead of needing to use WOD for that.

I just completed a playthrough of a Seer (Stalker/Soul Blade) last night. My routine in fights tended to be to cast Borrowed Instinct and then just spam Soul Annihilation and re-apply Borrowed Instinct as needed. Sometimes I would toss out a Secret Horrors to try and shut down enemy abilities. I did not use Shred abilities at all. Very rarely I would charm enemies if there were big tanky (yet low will def) enemies on the battlefield. For weapons I relied on Sun & Moon + Tuotilos for the vast majority of the game. Gravecalling/Modwhyr was my backup set. Towards the end I started using Seeker's Fang/Gravecalling. I didn't do this because Sun & Moon was bad, but more for variety's sake and because I wanted to test out Seeker's Fang. I used Seeker's Fang for the entirety of Forgotten Sanctum and was quite impressed with it. Not sure if it's strictly speaking better than Sun & Moon (being able to spam SA is so nice) but I did enjoy it a lot and the dps was quite high. I feel like Obsidian wanted Soul Blades to use Shred powers still but SA almost always felt like the most efficient use of my focus. Honestly in some fights I would even not necessarily cast Borrowed Instinct if I didn't feel like I needed the extra accuracy or defenses. Or just if I needed to burst down a target asap. The dps on this build was disgustingly good. I dpsed the Oracle down so fast that I didn't even bother with its allies and just killed it first. I used summons and a Wizard with Blackbow to keep the other enemies busy.

For me it depends on what you want to do with the pet. I just finished a playthrough with a Seer (Stalker/Soulblade) and I had a Wolf pet. I actually did not find the Wolf too difficult to keep up, but I didn't use it to tank. More like a flanker. At high levels I relied heavily on play dead to save it when it got mobbed, and that worked well enough. It would die if it got surrounded but if I managed to avoid that it would usually be ok. If you want your pet more in the fray, Bear would be the answer, but do keep in mind that even then it's no substitute for a real tank and it will require some healing to keep up.

I tried turn base once or twice. It is cool how much control you get in that mode, but I found that it took forever to resolve battles. If I'm not mistaken someone made a half health mod at some point but I've never tried that. I've gotten good enough at scripting in Deadfire that I don't know that I'd ever go back to turnbased. Maybe I will give it another whirl at some point. I didn't hate it or anything, but I just found the battles taking longer than I liked.

What choice do you usually make for Maerwald? Because if you absorb his essence or bind him as a guardian that also makes the fight a lot harder. If you're nice to him and release him it's easier. But I agree if you open a fight with just the tank unstealthing and then everyone else moving in once positioning is sound that does make things a lot easier in many fights. Once enemies are stuck to for example a high level Eder they tend to not disengage from him. And that can make things easier. If you open a fight with everyone unstealthed it can be a scramble to stabilize positioning.

That's one of the hardest fights in SSS for what it's worth. If you're having trouble in any fights in SSS don't be afraid to change up your party comp. Some fights require different things. Obsidian tried to make a variety of challenges that can give different parties issues. So some fights might be a breeze for certain parties and hard as heck for other ones. Some fights are heavily endurance focused as well so having Ciphers and Chanters can be big there for resource regeneration.