masterty66

Kinda funny how two of the best Priest kits out there are on NPCs. Vatnir and Xoti's kits absolutely rule. Vatnir's might be my favorite Priest one out there. Having such a diverse toolkit as an offensive Priest is great.

Outworn Buckler is a particularly strong item for swapping back and forth. I had it on a Darcozzi Paladin/Shifter on my last run and it was actually quite OP how fast I could clear out negative effects by button smashing it back and forth. Mashing between that and my other slot (Lethandria's Devotion) was really strong. Iirc if you mashed the swapping while paused it wouldn't actually work though. Or maybe it would only work once. I seem to recall that the actual mashing would need to occur with the game unpaused in order to get the effects. Doing it while paused would I think only give the effect once to you once you unpaused, but I could be wrong. Either way if you unpause and mash a bunch for a few seconds you'll get a lot of benefit out of it.

I am not actually sure how Whispers of the Endless Paths works with Whispers of the Wind. I've never tested that interaction. I would think in general any on hit or on crit effects could be nice with Wotw because Wotw will let you apply those effects/roll against many enemies at once. Something like Saru Sichr for example could put a bunch of dots on everyone if you teleport around the battlefield smashing them in the face with it via Wotw. Mohara Tanga is an especially potent weapon however because Red Flag Flying (the proc on Mohara Tanga) gets its own roll which can also crit, and when it crits, it rolls again. So you can see absurd crit chains where it procs like 20 times in a row off of itself and makes enemies explode for tons of damage. If you search around Constentine did a good thread on weapons with neat interactions like that. There are some other cool ones.

That's an interesting point with Vatnir. I'd never thought about how Sun & Moon is good with him regardless of what time of day it is. That's actually really cool and nice in that you don't have to metagame it hard to get a nice PL advantage with him. I suppose Watershaper's Focus can also be alright with him for the +1 PL bonus if you want him with a ranged wep.

Lol you may be right. I didn't use Heaven's Cacophany with her so maybe that's why my game wasn't crashing. I think I just had her with the Spear and Gatecrashers. A Ranger/Monk would probably be ludicrous with all that accuracy and crit chance

It was absurd when I used it with Xoti as a monk. And I probably wasn't even as optimized with her as I could be gear wise etc.

Mirke: Never much used her, but Monks are very good obviously. I would think dual Mortars would work well as it always does, like @Boeroersaid. You could also make her use a single weapon and gear her for crits and have her use Mohora Tanga. If you take Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming she can get into some ridiculous crit chains, especially when you get Whispers of the Wind. I had Xoti as a single classed Monk in a recent run doing this set up and she carried me in Forgotten Sanctum. Wotw is just absurd with the crit chains with that Spear. Her dps was silly. Ydwin: Cipher or Cipher/Rogue is fine for her. I often have her use Kitchen Stove + Wildshot to max her focus bar early in a fight, and then switch her to Essence Interrupter for single target dps. Then she can do the usual Cipher things like charming/paralyzing enemies or doing single target dps with Disintegrate and Soul Ignition and so on. How I use her really depends on what I'm fighting. I had her using charm spells more often than not in Beast of Winter recently as being able to take a few of those a-hole Burning Archers out of a fight via charm was extremely valuable there. But if I don't need CC as much then I have her dps. Fassina: Typically use her like Boeroer said. Blackbow + Phantom with Blackbow (make sure to summon the Phantom after you cast Black Bow so it gets that weapon) is always good and she can do it well. Sorcerer like @theleesaid is also a nice combo for her. Roid yourself up with buffs and then dump all those useful Druid dots onto enemies, or storms to cc. Sorcerer makes her pretty versatile since she can heal well too if needed. Vatnir: Typically I have gone Single Class Priest with him. His kit is amazing and the bonus spells he gets really makes for a diverse offensive arsenal. I typically have him cast a few buffs and then start unloading with his symbol, shining beacon, his bonus offensive spells, etc. You can also summon his battle axes with his spiritual weapon and then have him wade in after he's done casting a few spells and start adding even more dots with the battle axe modal. Only thing is, if you do use him in melee ever, make sure you protect him or use him on the flanks. He can be kinda squishy especially if you keep him in his starting robes. I haven't played around with him as multi class as much so can't comment there.

Feel like it was easier to dump in Poe1 because deflection mattered less there with all the items that gave buffs based on you getting crit (The boots with consecrated ground on crit frenzied plate etc) but also because of all the Prayers Against Effects that Priests had. Don't much care debuff durations when you can make yourself immune. Res seems a lot better in Deadfire with fewer immunities and lots of nasty debuffs to deal with. I'm using Whispers Of The Endless Paths on Tekehu right now and that's not so bad either, mostly because you can apply Taste of Hunt with it to a lot of enemies at once, which is nice.

Personally I don't like completely dumping stats as low res = afflictions will affect you longer and low con = you'd be fragile enough that you could go down quickly. Remember that even as an Archer you'll still occasionally get hit by afflictions and you don't want those lasting forever. And enemies will still make it to your back line on occasion and you probably don't want to instantly fall over when they do. Also enemy archers will be a pain in the butt if your con is too low. Those nasty Burning Archers in Beast of Winter can be tough to deal with as you can't reliably pin them down with a tank. Also, if you're using Berath's Blessings that's +2 to all stats which can help make for a decent stat spread. So then, I would normally go no lower than 8 on a stat. That's just me though. I play on POTD/upscaled. In my opinion if you're gonna completely dump a stat you should have a really good reason for it and/or be very confident in your ability to crowd control enemies as otherwise you're just asking for trouble.

From the main menu, click options and then click mod manager. You should see something like this if you installed it correctly: I have more mods installed than you probably do but you get the picture. You should see the mod there and it should be enabled.

CP isn't necessarily a massive overhaul but it fixes a lot of things and makes some bad abilities/spells a lot better. Normal game is playable without it but I'd say it's worth an install.

It depends on the spell. Not everything is counterable iirc. But it should say on the spell tooltip. For example Shining Beacon has Counters: Water, Frost listed on the spell. That means that Moonwell for example (key words: Rejuvenation/Water) will counter and cancel the effects of a Shining Beacon. I don't know if there is a guide anywhere that goes into detail on how it all works but you basically have to pay attention to the key words on spells. If something says it's countered by Water, Frost then you need to find spells with those keywords to counter it.

Yes this is very nice although honestly I didn't find the casting too slow even without it. I only picked up that talent recently and I'm pretty deep into the game. But YMMV of course.

Using Spiritual Weapon on my Berathian/Helwalker PC and man this thing slaps. The +15 accuracy made it very nice from the start of the game but even now that I've started finding late game stuff it still feels strong. Between lightning strikes, turning wheel, and the lash on the sword itself, I hit extremely hard. Getting 100+ hits on squishier enemies is a lot of fun. Feels like all the lashes add up pretty well too. This is my first character I've actually used Lightning Strikes on. Usually would take swift flurry but lightning strikes has actually felt worth it with this build. I'm sure swift flurry still gives spikier damage but there's something to be said for consistently hard hits.

I did not know about this until very recently and I wish I'd known earlier. Probably put like 200 hours into this game without knowing that lol

Interesting. I'll try that instead and see how it goes. Thanks for the tips.

I had some high ranked cannoneers but it still didn't seem to happen super often for me. Or not as often as I'd hoped. Yeah it didn't seem to hurt the enemy accuracy much. My strategy was to put a flamethrower on my aft cannon and get within 100m and shoot/dance away if they tried to board, but even that close the enemy still bombarded me easily. Yeah I was using the 0-75m one. I would just rush towards the enemy and then turn my ship and start burning them with the cannon, but they would just shoot me back and kill me faster than I could them. Being close to them didn't seem to hurt their accuracy enough for the strat to work. I haven't tried that. Might have to give this a shot some time. The only effective strategy I've seen so far for myself is to load up on double bronzers and just blast the enemy to bits lol. I wish I had the finesse to pull off something else, but so far that is the only thing that has consistently worked across my many playthroughs (apart from boarding ofc).

I've been playing this game for a while and one thing I've never fully grasped is alternative ship combat strategies. My strat has always been to load up on double bronzers and blast enemy ships into dust. Jibe-->wait-->blast--->repeat has always been my strat and it's always worked. I take some hits but the double bronzers usually out dps the enemy ship's cannons regardless of what ship I use. On this current run I decided to try and mix it up and use the Voyager with a flame cannon on the aft but even when I went to within 100 meters and tried burning them I found two things: 1) the flame cannon did OK dps but didn't generate a ton of events and 2) the enemy ships still blasted me to bits even when I was within a range where they should have been taking huge accuracy penalties Now I am using Ondra's challenge which I think buffs enemy ship captains so maybe that's why, but is there any good strat aside from the double bronzer bombardment? I don't mind that strategy - it works super well - but I wouldn't mind trying other ship combat strats if there are any that work well. But every time I go away from the double bronzers I struggle lol. There really just isn't much more efficient than blasting with those it seems. Or maybe I just don't understand alternative strats well enough to execute them well. But unfortunately the Voyager was a massive bust for me this run so I upgraded to a Dhow and my usual double bronzer strat and it is still dominating like it always does. But like I said I wouldn't mind trying other strats if I can figure out how to make them work. I know you can also just board too but I'm using Berath's Challenge this run so I've been avoiding boarding because I think my party members that I'm not using can die permanently in those fights so it's not worth the risk/micro to keep them alive during those fights.

Any kind of Blood Mage comes to mind. As long as you can keep your defenses up you can just spam forever and use corrosive siphon to get health back. The best version of this would be with Steel Garrote but you said no Paladin. I think a Stalker/Blood Mage would very good solo. Survivable thanks to the pet + armor bonus + spells, and can spam, and can summon a phantom with CDT and beat up anything it targets.

Since it's a shield and a weapon I think it also benefits from the two weapon fighting talent as well as the shield talent. So if you're using it it may be to your benefit to take both.

Bleakwalker/Arcane Archer is good. Skill up Arcane a lot and use Spearcaster. You'll hit pretty hard and accurately, and it's a weapon you can buy pretty much immediately too which is always nice. As a single target dpser you'll hit hard and safely (from range).

Are they necessarily obsolete though? Drug crash penalties are pretty severe. You can rest or just take more drugs, but there's a cost there to both compared to a potion which has no downsides other than the action economy of drinking it during combat instead of doing something else. Being able to use drugs pre combat is admittedly super nice and one of the main benefits imo. That said you can rest any time or obviously take more drugs and neither is that big of a thing to deal with unless you're playing with Rymrgand's challenge. Losing high cost food bonuses can be annoying but you get so much money over the course of the game that by mid/late game it's not too big a deal to use food again. Early on it definitely sucks to lose a Razor Skewers bonus or whatever though.

One of the simplest things you can do to be effective is to have a tanking character and load that character up with abilities/items that improve their defenses and grant engagement. So with Eder for example if you have him as a Fighter or Fighter/Rogue and have him use Defender stance and wear a shield and the best armor you can give him, then he can keep opponents on him via engagement and he won't easily die. What you then want to do is open combats with everybody except Eder stealthed. It doesn't matter if your characters have points in stealth or not. Then, when the enemies mob Eder (who is the only one they see to start combat), he will engage them. At that point you can unstealth your party members and begin combat. Why is this an advantage? Because enemies will not be able to easily disengage Eder to attack your squishier party members. And if they do, Eder will get a free disengagement attack on them. But a lot of times the AI doesn't like to disengage so they will stay on him. This leaves your other party members free to position themselves to do damage/buff/etc without worrying as much about getting mobbed by enemies and cut to pieces. This strategy isn't bullet proof. Rogue NPCs will use escape to target your backline. Ranged attackers will still switch and shoot your squishier party members. But this strategy will at least ensure that a lot of the initial melee enemies in a combat will be on Eder instead of your backline. And if he has enough engagement slots (from defender stance + shield + any other gear/talents that improve that) then he will keep them there. Imo this strategy is so effective that it's one of the number one things I'd recommend to a new or veteran player alike to have an easier time with combat.

I believe it will echo any Priest spell, but it's going to be more useful for an offensive spell typically. If you echo say devotions for the faithful, that's not terribly useful because that's just going to recast a buff you already just cast aka what's the point. If you echo a damaging spell, that might actually be pretty impactful.

Empower is really strong with powerful offensive abilities imo. Empower like a Maelstrom or Missile Salvo or something like that and watch the havoc that ability wreaks. Empowering is raising PL which could be raising pen/accuracy/damage/duration etc. Or if it's a melee ability it's raising pen which could help a lot. I do generally hold my empowers in reserve to regenerate resources but there are times where empowering a powerful ability can make a big difference. Marux Amanth - Echo recasts a spell you just cast. So imagine like Two Cleansing Flames going off or Two Pillars of Holy Fire, etc. You can see how this might be pretty strong with the right spell.