masterty66

Woops wrong forum. Uhh disregard I guess.

5 Clerics (Fighter/Priest) isn't bad. They could all tank, heal, dps, and control crowds with aoe dps spells. And could take turns making each other invulnerable with barring death's door/salvation of time if they ever got into trouble. I dunno how well the AI would handle such a party though.

Weaker...I guess, but they still feel very powerful to me. I'm playing a Cleric (Wael) right now and I also bring Xoti everywhere I can. Xoti hits pretty hard with her burn spells and she's not even optimized stats-wise or gear-wise to take advantage of the burn spells. For example, if I really wanted to optimize for burn damage I could dual wield the Axe and Flail that both give + to fire PL. Xoti is only using one of those. I could also use them on a character with higher might than Xoti has. But anyways Priests can do pretty nice AOE damage (party friendly too in many cases) with their burn spells. Shining Beacon/Symbol of Eothas are great. I've won many a fight with those spells. As for my Cleric, he is able to buff himself up to be very tanky thanks to Wael spells. He's basically a Battlemage but with heals. A pure Battlemage does have access to a little bit more self-buffs probably than the Wael version does but he's still very tanky. He's able to fill just about any role I want - tank, dps, heal, etc. Very jack of all trades character. And of course Barring Death's Door, Resurrection, and Salvation of Time are all enormously powerful buffs and are in fact game breaking if you combo them with Ancestor's Memory since you can make yourself effectively invulnerable. Granted Ancestor's Memory is cheesy with a lot of classes but none moreso than a Priest I think. Anyways all that is to say Priests are still plenty strong. They aren't the one man gods they were in Poe1 but I almost always want one in my party in Poe2. Between Devotions of the Faithful and all their utility (rezzes, etc) they are worth a spot.

The Sepulchers is always a tough area. I'm not sure if there is something weird with level scaling there or if it just starts high level but I usually don't go in there before level 14ish. I remember trying a few times and finding it pretty hard.

First of all, I'm loving turn based mode so thanks for this. After extensively playing it I've run into a bug that seems to happen sometimes. At least, I assume it's a bug. So what happens is, after a round ends, the game will sit there with no noticeable gameplay/video lag or anything like that, but it simply won't allow me or the enemy to act regardless of who has the top initiative that round. It will say next round etc but it just won't allow me to do anything, and if the enemy is going they won't do anything either. Eventually the game will allow me or the enemy to act, but it usually takes around 30 seconds to a minute. It doesn't happen every fight but when it does, it's fairly annoying. I'm not sure how to reproduce it because it doesn't always happen. I noticed it just now fighting Belranga which made it take forever to kill her. I can't even pin it down on the enemy AI taking forever to do an action because this delay in allowing me to go seems to happen even when I'm going first in a round. Anyone else seen this?

I've made Maia a Geomancer in my current turn based run and it has made me see Rangers in a new light. Her high accuracy makes it easy for her to land devastating spells, and when she doesn't have spells available or would rather be shooting, she can blow things to hell with the Red Hand. She's devastating with Ninagauth's Death Ray. Her accuracy lets her land it even on high fort targets as long as I help her a bit and debuff them with the Morningstar first. Ranger seems like an underrated class to pair with any kind of caster. The accuracy bonuses really do help land your spells.

I've had good success with a Black Jacket/Priest of Wael build. It's good for a variety of reasons. It has survivability thanks to the Wizard buffs that Wael grants. It has solid damage since the Fighter half provides good melee abilities/accuracy bonuses and you can afford to use a 2 hander or dual wield thanks to the Wael buffs providing more than enough defenses. It has good support abilities since it can heal. It's versatile in terms of what damage it can apply since you can use Priest spells like Shining Beacon/Divine Mark or you can use different melee weapons. Being able to swap weapons as a free action is really nice on turn based since it means you can always have the right tool for whatever enemy you're facing. It's not the very best at anything it does. But it's an excellent jack of all trades character that can do anything in a group.

Escape is fantastic just for setting up attacks. I use it all the time with Eder. I use it with Shadow Step which is a very expensive ability but which helps me lock a caster down for a round which I've found invaluable on turn based.

interesting balance adjustment for TB, I guess to avoid strings of misses and quicken the pace. Though seems to me a "be careful what you wish for" situation since I can only assume the change is symmetric with enemies against you (riposte just got extremely crappy). Re: forbidden fist - looking really eager to see how this ends up working out. Frak: where are you to run the numbers/tests?? edit - still awaiting that summon/vela scaling fix... The patch notes says "Characters" when referring to the graze change so I wonder if this is a change that only effects the player and their party or if it also applies to enemies.

That's actually a really good question. I haven't tested it. If they did, that would make it extremely attractive for a Battlemage.

Messed around with an Ancient as my merc in the prologue and they are quite nice. Sporelings are sweet on turn based mode since you can really position them well to achieve flanked status and they're meat shields as well that the AI actually will target sometimes. Furyshaper is interesting on turnbased since I think their totem gives initiative but not improved casting speed? I could be wrong on that, I'd have to take another look. That might make them less good than they are on RTWP though initiative can still be nice.

That could definitely work. Guns for most enemies and bows that do slash/pierce against enemies that are pierce resistant. And Rods for things that need to be hit by crush damage. And of course you could still use your other niche weapons like the Eccea's Arcane Blaster against enemies that have very high damage reduction. My Black Jacket/Priest has been rolling so far. Wael buffs make him tanky and Black Jacket abilities let him always be penetrating (that sounds wrong lol). Other general impressions I have are that high dex is actually not a bad thing. I went 16/16/16 might/dex/int on my guy, and being able to go early in rounds is nicer than I thought. The reason for that is I can get positioned, get some hits in, and get arcane veil up. If I were to always being going later in a round I'd want more defenses since you can take a lot of damage before going. And the high dex lets casts finish earlier which is also nice for getting those buffs up. I think dex is less important for characters that don't cast or have high natural defenses. But if you do, it's quite nice. I've also been using the pet which gives lower initiative (think it was sold by the custom merchant you get w/ Berath's blessings) so I often go first in rounds. The only thing that worries me about going early in rounds all the time is that I imagine later on Arcane Dampener might become an issue so if I buff in my first turn and then an enemy goes I might get hit by it. I assume Arcane Dampener is a cast and not free action though so interrupting it should be possible and will be a high priority.

I haven't noticed this, but I play on POTD and admittedly haven't gotten very far yet. Potd actually seems harder in some ways since the nature of turn based means you can't as easily split encounters. In RTWP you can kite enemies around and split tough pulls, but here that seems harder to do. I started a Cleric (Wael/Black Jacket) and I gotta say the Black Jacket bonus is actually super nice on turn based mode. Being able to switch weapons as a fast action ensures you basically always have the right tool for the job. That's huge in turn based where you want every attack to count.

I think I'm already restarting. Wael Priest/Assassin is a bit too squishy for me. I was really struggling at the Engwithan ruins. But I also didn't like doing Eder as pure fighter or Xoti as priest multi. So gonna change those two as well. I'm definitely sticking with the Wael Priest theme but think I might do something slightly beefier as the other multi. Probably Barbarian, Fighter, or Ranger.

Man, I'm getting absolutely pulverized by the Engwithan ruins drake fight on turn based. Even luring them up top I still keep dying. The early accuracy issues on Potd are just brutal. Was playing a Waelite Priest/Assassin. I think I'm gonna restart and make sure to grab at least one Wizard henchman (assuming I myself don't choose Wizard). Chill Fog got me close to winning a few times and is a hugely powerful spell on potd. I also don't think I liked having Xoti as monk/priest or Eder as pure fighter. So both of those are getting changed by me also. I do still want to stick with the Wael Priest theme but maybe not go Assassin for my first run through on potd turnbased since it's a bit squishy even with the buffs.

I haven't been able to confirm one way or the other. I have noticed enemies getting attacks of opportunity when I break engagement so that's definitely a thing.

So with engagement, it seems like the way that works is you have to click on the enemies you want to engage. So as example, let's say we're facing three Xaurips in melee range. Eder can do his normal combat action to swing his sabre. Then, after that, he has no actions left but if you keep left clicking on enemies you'll see this little green stream next to them and if you view the combat log it will say Eder has engaged them. So that's how engagement works. Left click the enemies you want to engage after you do your combat action, and it should engage as many as you have slots/space for.

Yep, I'm running a Priest of Wael/Assassin right now. It's quite fun. I stealth in, shoot with two blunderbusses (or back stab with two weapons), and then I use escape to get out of there. If I can't easily get out, I also have arcane veil and eventually other Wael buffs to make sure I don't immediately die after the opening move.

The one thing I'd say to this is on POTD at least going early is nice for sure but it's not like you can always immediately capitalize on it since usually you need to debuff enemies first before you can apply effects and that will take rounds to do whether you go early or no. It's not like Original Sin (part one at least) where if you had high initiative you could immediately CC an important enemy. Here that's inherently hard to do unless you luck into an enemy that has a really weak defense. But on POTD most don't.

This is actually what I ended up going with, albeit with Wael instead of Skaen. Using two blunderbusses so far. The stealth alpha strikes are still quite nice in turn based mode. The squishiness of the Assassin is somewhat compensated for (at least so far) via Arcane Veil, which is a free cast spell. Combats for me usually involve opening with a stealth attack before casting arcane veil and getting the hell out of there until Eder can get in and pin enemies down. Main weakness is ranged attackers. Escaping melees with escape is trivial enough. Later on I'll be able to restealth too. But veil piercing attacks just murder this character. I don't know of a great way around that either since switching weapons takes a round. In theory you could grab the tower shield and use the modal if you're about to get dunked on by Gunners but I don't know if you can get that off in time in turn based. Maybe the Wael buffs will compensate enough for this later on though.

Can't you make additional attacks per round if you have enough initiative?

I hadn't thought about these drawbacks but generally in my experience you need the heals early on in a fight to help you stabilize. So you wanna shift early and have the huge PL bonus. Then once you shift back you still have the PL bonus from the staff until you summon the rod so I guess the post shift PL penalty isn't as bad then? There's probably an optimal way to manage all of this though but imo generally early on in a fight is when you're taking the most damage and so you want those massive heal over times on early. Later on in a fight you should be in a stable position (unless facing a boss or something similar) and so you don't care as much about losing the PL then. Interesting dilemma though for sure.

I played it to level 16 or so in the past while. That was the one I'm tabling in favor of turn based mode. It's as good a Healbot as you'd expect. A typical combat for me was transfer into Cat form, toss on Moonwell, Nature's Balm, etc and then after that either start buffing (Devotions, etc) or toss around damage spells like Shining Beacon and Storm spells. And then from there if combat was still going I'd usually summon the Wael Rod and snipe for the rest of combat, healing where necessary. It's actually not that bad offensively since you'll have high might anyways for healing but that also helps damage. One really nice boost for it is the penalty to healing post shift does NOT apply to Priest healing spells since most (all?) of those are tagged as Restoration. So even though your Druid heals take a hit when you shift back into normal form you can still burst out lots of healing with your Priest spells. But yes definitely use the Spine of Thicket Green. That is built for this multiclass combo. So good for it.

What about a Wael/Lifegiver? They seemed primed but optimal healing. They're good. I was just playing one. However I'm tabling that run because I want to do the new turn based mode and that forces a restart. However I still wanna actually complete my Wael playthrough so I figured rather than do another Wael/Lifegiver I'd do a Wael/x just not sure what the x is yet. But I think Gromnir's advice about not making my Priest the party's buffbot is a sound one. Xoti and whats his face from Beast of Winter can enjoy that duty.

Yeah just can't quite decide. Your Streetfighter build sounds appealing, but so too does a Shaman.