Not So Clever Hound

This final boss fight is super brutal. I remember on a solo Assassin/Cipher run it took me ages to figure it out, and it ultimately involved a ton of scroll spamming. Including Withdraw scrolls interestingly enough. Gouging Strike + Toxic Strike + Disintegration + self-Withdraw is a very interesting way to ruin someone's day, I'm glad no enemies is using that against us . Anyway, sorry your playthrough ended there.

One dumb party comp that works well on AI autopilot in PoE1 is 6 tanky Chanters with Dragon Thrashed... until half of them get Dominated by Vithrak... then the entire party can be very dead before you had a chance to yell "oh sh*t" . It's like Benny Hill x Battle Royale. I almost lost a ToI run like that!

This is why Eviee is such a godsend. The true emotional support pet in all its splendor. A typical go-to race is Wood Elf because on top of their racial bonus, they have nice stat allocations for common min-maxing templates. But DEX resistance is actually not as great as other resistances IMHO because DEX has 4 tiers of Afflictions, plus the first 2 tiers are actually not that hindering (depending on the build) and several classes can easily spam DEX Inspirations to clear them. However, a lot of things can Petrify (Tier4) which will get demoted to Paralyze (Tier3) with the resistance, in which case you're still screwed . So in many cases, DEX Affliction resistance is only a true lifesaver if you're hit with a Tier3 Paralyze (e.g. a Cipher's Mental Binding). Other Resistances can have a much broader spectrum of usefulness, but it also depends on the class, build, gear, consumables...

Yeah it's definitely not the most straight-forward mechanic . If you're looking for engagement slots without weapon/shield bonuses, look at Thick Skinned passive and Barbaric Shout active abilities from the Barbie. Between the two, you can get +4 engagement slots. Then, you need to plan your survival against 5+ melee enemies pounding at you .

Same here, I pause like there is no tomorrow. Pausing is life. Which is one of the main reasons why I'm so impressed by you Ultimate-finishers... Magran's Challenge is more than my nerves can ever take.

Hey - I think if you have any kind of healing going on (and you have and should ) dumping MIG over CON isn't optimal. Keep a decent CON and invest in MIG for extra healing (and DMG of course) that is a lot more helpful for overall survivability. Maybe if you're looking to increase engagement, a Shifter/Barb multi would be nice over Fighter? Surely he'll do much less self-healing on his own but if you set up healing with other toons, he could tank, damage and CC quite a bit.

It sucks but glad it’s not the end. Your crusader should spend some time in an afghani cave then write a book about his traumatic experience, someone will give him a nice movie deal . In all seriousness though, FS is a tough place and I’ve had to use high arcana + greater maelstrom scrolls with several toons that were ill equipped for certain particular fights. Hard to discover/manage on a ToI run without a non ToI advance party to fine tune strategies. IMHO in some of those fights you could bring next time an SC Fury with a Cipher to give him Brilliant. And lure/spam the real deal Great Maelstrom. Not very inventive, but quite effective.

Fair warning: So good that with WotW and Ajamuut’s Stalking Cloak and the occasional Efficient Anguish and Resonant Touch, it will do everything on its own while the rest of the party has a barbecue on the side of the encounter. Edèr: « who wants a merguez? » Aloth: « no thanks, one more merguez and I’ll sh*t fire like poor old Durance back in the days. » Main Character: « [punch punch punch] hey guys seriously keep some for me this time! [punch punch punch]. »

I will never do the Ultimate and of course I very much respect that you (and others) did that. IMHO the game is not significantly harder overall Solo vs. party based if you truly optimize for Solo play. It narrows down options a little bit and maybe the very beginning and very end offer a bit more challenge. But beyond the achievement, I usually play mostly Solo in RPGs because I find it simpler. In many cases, I find that one really good toon will plough through encounters more efficiently than a suboptimal full party. Don’t you think? One exception I found is Tyranny. I didn’t find it particularly fun to Solo. Which BTW makes me think that I need to add an entry to the list of things @Boeroerdoesn’t like: Cooldown mechanics.

What I read here is rather that you, Sir, were very good at keeping him alive . Sure, with constant party healing and babysitting to spend the wounds, and no Confusion… but are you telling me that especially in the beginning, he didn’t die more than his fair share of times compared to the rest of his crew?

"Jack? Oh no, Jaaaaaaaaaaack!" Poor old Jack died at Level 1 from being too excited about Frenzy.

Yeah, I definitely understand. Well if you do some digging around the forum, I think that @thelee and others had a lot of fun with a Priest of Berath/Fighter but I don't know if it's as valuable for a Magranite (Magran's spiritual weapon are meh for a martial hybrid build) and I can't remember if this was tested/viable for solo play. On higher difficulties, there is still the problem of running out of resources before running out of enemies.

Haha right or Helwalker/Berserker a.k.a "I'm my own worst enemy". One of few characters that will literally die from standing around.

That is a sweet and sensible buff to the class, actually making it very much worthwhile on paper. Nice job @Elric Galad. Now you can also wear Effigy's Husk for a full Silence of the Lambs vibe.

IMHO it can work on lower difficulties but the lack of renewable resources is going to be hard to work around. If you really want a caster Magranite, as usual Blood Mage MC Theurge will be at the top of the viability list, even if you're allergic to BDD + WoD.

That's fair, but I thought since you have your White Flames dude, keeping everybody healed while the Trickster spams Walls of Many Colors. But this could get messy with your Pull of Eora idea + I understand that you don't want to babysit two Rogues.

I feel you I don't know if an SC Chanter was planned in this party comp, but with The Long Night's Drink + Body Blows you can get serious FORT Debuff. Plus a Fighter will have Confident Aim and other ACC buffs to consistently land subsequent Clean Sweeps.

I love using the Cap on a SC Assassin, but for party play losing access to RES Afflictions is a big no-no for me.

[Double Facepalm] Thanks, I somehow missed that. The point about Amra still stands though, but then you're missing out on Body Blows. Maybe you could use Willbreaker + Body Blows once to debuff FORT, then switch to Amra with your SC Fighter? no Devoted then... EDIT: SC Trickster can be a great Tank too, with fantastic CC abilities and DMG.

What about mixing that with Barbarian so you can get the double Carnage effect from Clear Out every time? Could also have it with Amra + Clean Sweep actually, but Body Blows + Brute Force would be nice. Or a Swashbuckler with WotEP that would apply AoE Arterial Strike + Clear Out?

Cool! Sorcerer is amazing . Nope. Even if one boosts generic AR and one specific types of AR - it's still the same general effect they don't stack. It's different from stacking +All Defenses and + Deflection for example, which are at the core 2 different buffs.

Yes great point, or possibly that AR debuffs like Expose Vulnerabilities or CON Afflictions like Weaken/Enfeeble could soften damage immunities... anything that would feel more like a puzzle to solve and less like "Sorry Priest of Magran, try again". To be fair, in the vast majority of RPGs you can't just specialize in one element type and be victorious against all foes. And usually Fire is the most commonly resisted element because it's the typical go-to for many players. Or sometimes these things are more obviously relevant to the game environment, e.g. go try to specialize in Cold damage in Icewind Dale . Or in the newer Divinity games, Poison that heals undead. But those games don't "force" any character build into having almost only offensive abilities that deal the most commonly resisted damage type, and they often offer tools to circumvent immunities. Last thought on the topic... yes, Deadfire has (too?) many fire-resistant foes, but at the same time, against everybody else it gives you tools to make Fire attacks absolutely bonkers - Ring of Focused Flames + Magran's Favor + Sun & Moon.

Right! I was still stuck thinking about my recent playthrough with Lifegiver/Bloodmage when in any case you DON'T want to turn Spiritshift off because you'll incur the steep penalty to Rejuvenation PL. My bad, I should have had another cup of coffee before writing... you're absolutely right for Shifter.

Great, thanks for sharing @Torm51! I don't think so, by any chance have you checked that Hot Razor Skewers and Tactical Barrage PLs stack properly? There is a thing with foods that their effects are considered Active unless you save/reload - then it becomes a Passive that can stack with other similar effects... Just curious if it works properly right off the bat on your ToI run. I think you're right and to reiterate, I really like that you don't take FoD on this toon which positively shakes up the typical resource allocation of a Pally/Crusader!

IMHO for a pure caster that can buff like crazy, Armor Rating becomes proportionally less important than other defenses/attack avoidance - but my perception comes from a lot of solo play where you focus fire from all enemies - you can't rely on AR + Healing to stay alive, you have to avoid attacks or get only grazes. So on PotD Upscaled, I typically see Gladiator Sword + Lethandria's Devotion with modal (later with Duskfall/Drawing Parry if using WoD) as making more impact on the overall survivability of a caster than AR (which can still be boosted anyway by several means). Unless I'm playing a Sorcerer where I can cast things like Relentless Storm very fast in Spiritshift Cat form as an "active" defense (perma-stun festival). Well if you use WoD, both your Spiritshift and Cat Flurry duration will get prolonged so you will keep both unless I guess if you activate flurry right at the end of spiritshift duration, go back to Kith form, then use WoD... Yeah, that sucks!