Not So Clever Hound

Yes. In general as a Berserker/Chanter, you absolutely do want to get rid of Confusion with Modwyr or Devil of Caroc breastplate or consumables. Except if you are going for the Confused version of the cheesy Gravecalling combo to spam Chillfogs until the end of time (summon skeletons, kill them with Gravecalling, that creates a foe-only Chillfog, but not foe-only anymore since Confused, summon more skellies, they are all destroyed by Chillfog creating more Chillfogs, etc. etc.) until your GPU commits suicide.

Besides Powder Burns, a popular way of triggering Distracted is to have a Chanter cast The Lights Danced Across the Moor and have the upgraded Wisp target your Streetfighter. You can also Blind yourself but that is a severe penalty! I personally find the alternatives to Powder Burns too gimmicky. IMHO then you're much better off with Battlemage for melee. It gets better! Maje is a well-known grind on PotD. Do not despair, soon enough you will be stomping on everyone with relative ease. You can look for Maje strategies on this forum.

Considering your parameters of choice and what you ultimately seem to want to get out of this Char, I would strongly consider: Fighter (vanilla) / Wizard (Bloodmage or vanilla) specialized in 2Handers, wielding the Willbreaker (see all posts, great synergy with Wizard abilities) and occasionally going bonkers with Spirit Lance. You will see that certain synergies will be a ton of fun (Spirit Lance + Clear Out, Unbending + Wall of Draining, Willbreaker + the Ryngrim spells). You will be powerful, durable, versatile and have a clear Battlemage flavor. If you want to really focus on Willbreaker or another specific 2H weapon, you could go Devoted but it's limiting on a first playthrough. Your other classes of consideration are very good also, but IMHO less aligned with what you seem to be looking for.

A War Caller (Devoted/Troubadour or Skald) with Long Night's Drink (+ maybe Old Siec EDIT: I was thinking Howler, for War Caller another secondary chant might be more useful) can be very straightforward and powerful. With the occasional ...And Their Fear spamming. Nice, self-contained synergy between Weapon/Chant/Invocation that anyone else using RES/MIG affliction or other WILL/FORT targeting abilities can benefit from in the party. Please do not forget to Clear Out from time to time.

Yep, they should stack. Both will also boost Flames of Devotion and benefit from Ring of Focused Flames IIRC. I would personally go with Magran's Favor because it is less hassle (you don't care about the nighttime effect of Sun & Moon) and because Magran's Favor is a better autoattack/FoD weapon with the modal on. Then of course there is Eternal Flames + Clear Out etc. for extra juice but I don't know if you have any room for that of if it fits your char. Anyway, just remember to ideally equip something else against fire resistant enemies.

Glad you have fun with it! Yeah I guess the Spiritshift component can be a turn-off, but it comes with several strong advantages. To your typo, I would love to see now a Spiritshift: Car or Spiritshift: Truck for an interesting Transformers vibe. Maybe @Elric Galad can make a mod. Touch of Rot is indeed a sweet addition and brings a nice additional DoT on the way to total enemy obliteration, once you've started debuffing FORT while applying DMG.

Outstanding. Keep it tight mate! Ryngrim’s Enervating Terror is so good. Everything about it is neat: duration, radius, targeting Will which combo with Miasma, double affliction, lowers RES, triggers Disengagement….. So good it can possibly make you forget that some of Deadfire’s tougher customers are resistant or straight up immune to RES afflictions. Just sayin’ I’ve made the mistake of over-relying on it against powerful crowds.

https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Sacrifice for the detail. A known tactic is to only spam low level spells to guarantee spell gain and limit self damage. But on a build with good defenses and as much healing as Thundercat 2.0 you can just go nuts with higher level spells if you want. Given the amount of spells this build can cast per encounter, it is hardly ever needed anyway and I mostly use Blood Sacrifice for the +1PL Wizard bonus prolonged with WoD. This build really shines once you get a bit more levels under your belt - especially once you get Relentless Storm!

Eventually I use Llengrath safeguard (triggered through blood sacrifice) which gives better AR bonus than Spirit Shield on top of the +20 all defenses. indeed I stay in cat form to benefit from awesome speed and lifegiver PL bonus to rejuvenation. This is easy to achieve with Wall of Draining.

As far as solo caster/caster builds, Sorcerer is an absolute beast of arcane destruction and an affliction machine gun, very durable too. Fun to play (but it requires a bit of setup). And if you want a quick change of pace, it’s a solid melee damage dealer too. You can check out my solo build here.

Well then... https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_soulbound_items_(Deadfire) They're not necessarily the best items in the game, especially compared to other uniques enchanted to Mythic-grade. But there are lots of synergies with those uniques for specific character builds. The major ones that come to mind: Modwyr great for Berserker to autoclear Confused, Lord Darryn's Voulge awesome for a Brute or a SC Fury for respectively Static Thunder and Storm Power Level, Slayer's Claw awesome for anything Barbarian for Tenacious/Energized, Seeker's Fang for Ciphers for the Raw DoT, Blightheart for casters for the multiplicative Corrode lash, Marux Amanth for Ciphers to kill Hauani o Whe in its first form, The Weyc's Wand in combination with Sasha's Singing Scimitar on anything Chanter for Empower bonanza.

Only a specific Fighter subclass called "Devoted" has this quirk (as in you devote yourself to a particular weapon type). Otherwise any class can equip (and become proficient with) any weapon. Each weapon type has a specific weapon modal that can be activated or not if you are proficient with it. Those modals feature an advantage e.g. more accuracy but at a cost e.g. less speed. Now there are also a few unique "soulbound" weapons which you link to particular character and that have power thresholds that you unlock by doing certain things with the weapon. Those links can be severed/reset at any point. Just as in PoE1. I personally second that but there is not a good or a bad way or whatever. What appeals to me about SC (particularly on a first playthrough) is to have a chance to "fully" discover a class and all its abilities, advantages and limitations, before considering hybridation. Others just only ever play multiclasses because they offer such variety of playstyles. You can't go wrong either way .

I'm assuming for Party play (not Solo)? Ranger SC can be a lot of fun and pretty powerful ranged, though at PL8 there is one ability called Whirling Strike that requires at least one melee weapon and that is devastating. You can use this ability with 2 melee weapons or say, with a melee weapon and a gun, and that is a lot of fun. Twin shots is also great together with Driving Flight with a 2H ranged weapon. Anyway you can always carry two sets of weapons and adapt. As far as multiclassing, it is arguably more powerful and there are tons of great builds involving Monk, Wizard, Rogue, Fighter... but SC is very viable if you want to focus on a specific class for your first playthrough (which I personally like to do - but that's just me). As far as your weapon choice, be advised that Crossbows are a bit lackluster in PoE2... BUT, there is one unique Arbalest (a big crossbow basically) that is very easily obtainable early and that synergies very well with one of the Ranger subclasses, i.e. Arcane Archer. I won't say much more if you don't want to be spoiled of anything but all in all, an SC Arcane Archer could be a sweet choice for you.

IMHO this isn't useful. If you're a tank: you're likely going to have high defenses so the idea is to not be critically hit by enemies. you're frontline - you probably want to lock opponents in place with engagement. So you don't really care about being immune to their engagement. again, you're frontline - you don't want to flee somewhere if you're taking too much heat (which this ability is all about). Otherwise your backline will be exposed and crumble. As a tank, you don't want extra mobility in a pinch, you want extra healing or defenses in a pinch. But maybe there's an awesome synergy I'm missing...

Yeah, I guess you could put those points back in INT then for greater impact - though I think on this kind of build SI can still be situationally nice. It's costly and all... but when you truly need it, it works wonders (e.g. to initially overwhelm the enemy and diminish the threat level). Plus, since DEF has increasing returns, on such a build you will get more mileage out of your extra points of DEF from RES than other builds that disregard DEF or rely upon mage buffs and the like to raise it. Just my opinion, I really don't think there's a definitive answer.

Maje is a nightmare on PotD. On Upscaled you can win all fights only with a handful of builds. Unless you stealth 100% OR... you go with the Berath Blessing to start at lvl4, level up to 6, go hire a SC Assassin level 5 with Gouging Strike (or just use Eder as a Rogue) and give him a nice ranged weapon e.g. Fine Arquebus from BB or Essence Interrupter. Game over, autowin everything in Maje. Also, a big yawn-festival. That being said I personally still find Maje less punishing that Act I of PoE1. I just checked on Upscaled PotD: the Digsite's Boar Gore attack has an ACC of 70 and a PEN of 12+. On a Crit, one lucky boar can land 100+ DMG in one attack between the initial blow and the DoT... Sweet! Getting hit by a Tier-4 Affliction that does hard CC after less than one hour of gameplay is one of the fun tricks of the Maje island.

As always with builds starving for ability points (and this one is) it all depends on the tradeoff and what you would be taking instead. But on PotD you never have too much defense, and refreshing defense is such a nice boost (although actually you don't want defenses to be so high that nothing ever hits you, otherwise you miss out on the Refreshing Defenses part ).

In the initial discussion we had, @Boeroer already pointed out this weakness while fighting Rathuns and @Raven Darkholme suggested that a good battleaxe with the modal on could solve that problem - because Deep Cuts is so powerful. So you could focus down tough cookies and dispatch them one at a time. But still of course offense will never be stellar with this kind of build.

But... I thought we had an agreement..? [Sadly puts costumes away]

This exactly! You're happy to get a bit of free time for yourself but then you're also happy when the free time is over and everyone is back home. This is the best.

It's funny. Decades ago when I was a teenager, I would dread the time when my parents would come home as that would usually mean the end of my cRPG unsupervised marathon. Now I'm so happy when my parents come to our house because it means they can play with our kid and both my wife and I can get to respectively read and play video games.

If you don't wanna go BM, then I would pick a vanilla Wizard over the other kits, especially if you solo. Losing schools of magic is too high a price to pay for 2PL. From your list the 2 combos that come to mind are: Paladin + Wizard = top survivability. You can raise your defenses very (very) high, regenerate HP, raise your spell damage with Eternal Flames. For Solo, optimal choice is probably as many have said before Steel Garrote for the life steal on weapon attacks vs. afflicted enemies. One note that might not be that useful without Bloodmage: you can reliably use Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry without using the Rekvu's Fractured Casque trick if you pick Hands of Light and prolong the Courageous Effect with WoD. Then you can pick another useful hat like Acina's Tricorn which +ACC also applies to spells. Assassin + Wizard = also very solid choice but if you like stealth playstyle. Nuke from stealth/invisibility. Or if you like hybrid you can try fun combos: e.g. gather enemies with Dazzling Light from Stealth, Terrify the pack with Enervating Terror, apply Vital Essence + Deleterious Alacrity + Zandethu's Draconic Fury and then bum-rush all those terrified enemies with devastating melee attacks while reapplying Enervating Terror / Repulsive Visage from the occasional Smoke Veil invisibility. Finish the stragglers with Precisely Piercing Burst or add a friend with Essential Phantom. Very fun! EDIT: actually for both builds Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardy is probably very helpful to get more spells/encounter otherwise as Solo you will run out very fast if not Bloodmage. For Paladin as mentioned you can use Fractured Casque or Hands of Light at higher level. For Assassin it doesn't matter as you won't really be in harm's way. Troubadour, Scion/Ascendant and Stalker could also be interesting multi but a step behind those two IMHO.

I know we've discussed separately so you're probably not looking for a repeat of my last answer but just for the sake of the group discussion I will paste my last point: Maybe go (with BB) on something like 18/10/10/18/18/16? Or 18/10/10/16/18/18? With e.g. the belt of Eoten CON and the Tough ability, you don't need to pump CON IMO especially because you will have all your healing to top it up. Especially if you're keeping the self DMG duration in check with high RES. I would keep high INT to maximize impact of SI. with high RES and gear as Boeroer pointed out in the other Crusader thread we discussed, I think you should be fine.

Inspiration working as a counter for corresponding Afflictions is very true. But Inspirations don't "stack" in the sense that they don't get combined into a stronger Inspiration. you just reapply a duration on the same Inspiration. However since you mention Strong and Tenacious... specifically for the Strong Inspiration, you can wield Slayer Claw which "upgrades" your Strong to Tenacious. Which is why it's a weapon of choice for many Barbs out there. (Can be also interesting for a Berserker, then it's upgraded to Energized).

All this talk about CON as a primary stat to be maxed out reminded me of The Anvil, the Monk fire godlike build that relied upon crazy-high endurance and Battle Forged + other retaliation effects to kill his foes in PoE1. Back to @Elric Galad's initial observation, it's too bad there isn't a possibility to play around high CON builds for unexpected effects in PoE2. I mean of course there are Human/Streetfighter/Death Godlike shenanigans but generally speaking you don't want to mess around with low health, unless you're abusing BDD or Potion of the Final Stand in which case sky-high CON is not really useful anyway.