Sire Of The Shadow

UPDATED 2018-09-02 Looking for opinions on how to best optimize (min/max) this build for an entertaining/fun playthrough of POTD completely solo (upscaling on). Ultimately I'm completely open to ALL ideas here, really whatever will work best and is the most optimized for solo play. Class: Brute (Berserker/Devoted) Game Version: 2.0.1 Difficulty: POTD Solo: Yes… Hopefully Race: Human (for Bloodied) Histories: Custom Background: Deadfire/Hunter Skills: Athletics 10/Mechanics 10/History MAX Starting Attributes (before blessings or gear): Mig: 13 Con: 8 Dex: 18 Per: 13 Int: 18 Res: 8 Abilities: Level 1: Disciplined Barrage/Frenzy Level 2: Monastic Unarmed Training Level 3: Blooded Level 4: Fighter Stances/Barbaric Blow Level 5: Two-Handed Style or Two-Weapon Style Level 6: Thick-Skinned Level 7: Disciplined Strikes/Bloodlust Level 8: Unstoppable Level 9: One Stands Alone Level 10: Vigorous Defense/Spirit Frenzy Level 11: Bloody Slaughter Level 12: Charge Level 13: Unbending/Barbaric Smash Level 14: Conqurerer Stance Level 15: Penetrating Strike or Weapon Specialization Level 16: Armored Grace and Interrupting Blows Level 17: Bear's Fortitude or Weapon Mastery Level 18: Refreshing Defense Level 19: Blood Thirst/Unbending Trunk Level 20: Spirit Tornado Equipment: Pet: Abraham Weapon (Two-Handed): Blade of the Endless Paths or Sanguine Great Sword. What upgrades are needed here for max DPS? Alt Weapon (Two-Handed): Unarmed Weapon (Two-Weapon): Scordeo's Edge & Beza's Toothed Blade (early game Tarn's Respite & Beza's Toothed Blade). Alt Weapon (Two-Weapon): Unarmed Armour: Patinated Plate (group fights) and Blackened Plate Armor (bosses fights). Helm: Cap of the Laughingstock (Two-Weapon) or Helm of the Falcon (Two-Handed). Gloves: Gatecrashers or Rekvu's Stained Grasps? Neck: Strand of Favor or Charm of Bones? Cloak: Cloak of Greater Deflection or Cape of the Falling Star? Rings: Voidward and Ring of the Solitary Wanderer or Entonia Signet Ring? Belt: The Undying Burden Boots: Boots of the Stone Food: Mohorā Wraps Svef

Well and companion/faction quests. Other than that I’ve found no use.

Does anyone know if the sharp effect from Scordeo’s stacks with the sharp effect of Tarns? Because if it does I feel like that’s the winning combo!

Looks like i'm going with a pro-principi run which suits me just fine since they are the only faction i haven't played through. What pairs best with Scordeo for max DPS? I think I'll start putting together a build and post it soon. I like the option to build it either with and Estoc or Sabers at this point.

Interesting. Thank you for your input. My decisions have gotten harder it seems I think i read on reddit that the nerf was quite high... though i'm not sure you can believe it or not... since my source is reddit... Well i'm officially torn now Do you have some recommendations on dual wield options for devoted/berserker?

--Stats: The stats you listed are literally identical to the stat distribution I'm running with. So they look good to me! (If you wanted to ditch a little Might to boost Dex and Per even more, I'm sure that would work well too. But anything along these lines should be good.) --Race: Yeah, I went with Human for the Bloodied effect. Unlike Streetfighter, the benefits of being Bloodied, even with the Human and Barbarian talent boosts, aren't quite enough to make being Bloodied something you need to try to be in all the time. But you'll be Bloodied often enough in solo PotD without really trying that it ends up being a nice boost a fair amount of the time. (EDIT: And the really nice feature of being Human is that it gives you a way to keep track of what your health is, even though Frenzy hides it from you. That was my main reason for going Human.) Dwarf is also nice, since it gives you resistance to Constitution effects, which can hamper all of your nice healing abilities. --Armor: I find that in solo PotD I need to vary up the armor I wear depending on what the encounter is. Reckless Brigandine is great when you're in the middle of a swarm of enemies (i.e., most of the time), as long as you don't have a lot of powerful archers or rogues hitting you with piercing attacks. If you do, then it's a deathtrap, and you want to swap it out for one of the nice unique plate armors (I think there are at least three). Ditto for encounters in which you face a lot of corrode attacks, like the boss of the BoW DLC expansion. --Weapons: As a rule of thumb, it's nice to pair Devoted with weapons that do at least two kinds of damage, so they don't have to switch out if they encounter something that's invulnerable, or has extremely high armor, against (say) piercing or slashing. So that's a tentative reason to not go with sabres or estocs (Blade of the Endless Paths). Though I suspect both of those options are viable. Three natural options to consider (IMO): I. Pollaxes. This is what I went with, following the advice given by a number of people on these threads. (See this for a yet-to-be-played build using pollaxes that inspired my current run.) They're really nice for a Devoted/Barbarian multiclass for a couple reasons. (1) There are two great unique pollaxes, Lord Darryn's Voulge and Wahai Poraga, that you get can really early in the game. You can get the Voulge as soon as you get off the first island, and with a handful of points in stealth (coupled with the stealth boosting familiar and boots of stealth), you can sneak in and steal Wahai Poraga with very little combat, making it accessible by level 9 or 10. (2) Pollaxes do two kinds of damage (Bludgeoning or Slashing). And, even better, Lord Darryn's Voulge does Slashing or Electric, meaning that with those two pollaxes you can cover *three* damage types. (3) Both of the special pollaxes have great synergies with Carnage. As was noted above, Carnage hits with the Voulge stack charges, allowing you to hits tons of things with the charges every time you swing, and do a ton of damage whenever one of your crits sets them off. Likewise, Wahai Poraga's two free extra attacks it makes against nearby creatures also inflict further Carnage damage, allowing you to triple the amount of Carnage damage you're doing. Again, really great with a Barbarian. II. Warhammers Theosupus has a nice build that dual wields Warhammers, which are nice since they have two damage types, a high base penetration, and there are a couple really nice unique Warhammers, though they come later in the game. III. Swords Dual-wielding swords is also nice, since they do two kinds of damage, and one of the unique swords (Modwyr) gives you immunity to your Frenzy's confusion effect. (Though I'll note that if you grab Tactical Barrage, you don't need to worry about it, since Tactical Barrage cancels the Confused effect of your Frenzy by giving you the Acute condition (in addition to the Aware condition). That's a net swing of 10 Int points, which makes a really big difference to how big your Carnage field is (+100% area), and how long your other abilities last (+50% duration). And Tactical Barrage is pretty nice for this build in general, since, in addition to that(!) it gives you a +5 Perception boost, a nice graze-to-hit conversion boost, and a +1 PL bonus to everything. Pretty sweet...) Those are my thoughts, anyway! Thanks so much for the feedback. I"m currently running a build that uses poleaxes, so i'm thinking that this solo build will use whispers of the endless paths (slash/pierce). I also saw that dual wielding is getting a 35% damage reduction. So it seems only natural to go two handed.

I’m not specifically looking for a brainless play through. I’m wanting to make ships full or agro explode all on my own.

I'm running a solo PotD Berserker/Devoted right now, using a slightly different stat spread than 1TTFFSSE recommended: Mig: Max Con: Flat Dex: High Per: High Int: Max Res: Flat My reasons: --I kept Might and Intellect high to (1) maximize Carnage damage (since Might is one of the few things that influences Carnage damage) and area of effect, and (2) to maximize healing from Unbending and Constant Recovery (increasing both duration and magnitude of the healing they provide). As Boerer noted, a high Might increases the Frenzy damage. But since Unbending returns damage dealt (and the Voidward ring helps to minimize it in the meantime), the increase in damage just increases how much Unbending returns. It's been working well so far, anyway. --I've kept Constitution and Resolve flat and relied on stacking armor instead for defense (though I try to keep all of my defenses decent). This is a decent way to go (IMHO) because this class combination is pretty friendly to high armor rating builds. (The Barbarian's Thick Skinned ability offers a nice passive AR-boost, and (given the testing done by other people on this board) it appears that the benefits of the Fighter's Armored Grace ability depend on how heavy your armor is, with the heaviest armors getting the most recover reduction from this ability, giving you an incentive to wear heavy armor.) --Perception is pretty great, so it could be that Perception should be even higher. But the Berserker already has a number of hit-to-crit boosters, making Perception increases less valuable from the point of "percentage increase to expected damage" than it would be for most builds. (I.e., many builds get a large chunk of their expected damage from low-probability crits. And the 1% increases from Perception boosts can increase the magnitude of that probability substantially, because that probability is so low. So the resulting increase in expected damage from boosting Perception, percentage-wise, is relatively high. Whereas if you already have a very high chance of getting crits for other reasons (Berserker Frenzy, Barbaric Blow, Bloody Slaughter, Disciplined Strikes) then Perception increases don't increase crit chances by as much, proportionally speaking.) __________ Anyway, it's been working pretty well so far! Wow this sounds great! I think berserker/devoted sounds like the way to go! In terms of stat, would you say this looks OK? or are we doing to low on dexterity and perception? with Mig: 18 +2 Con: 8 +2 Dex: 13 +2 Per: 13 +2 Int: 18 +2 Res: 8 +2 On the armour front, origionally i was just going to go with DoC, but you've mentioned heaved armor here, what would you take? Race? i was thinking human just for bloodied? does Heath Orlan work solo? is there another option i should be looking at? I was thinking about dual wielding battleaxes, or swords, but maybe sabers are more optimal? Alternatively i could go two handed and grab Blade of Endless Paths. Thoughts?

Wow tons of reply’s! Thanks so much for the feedback. I kind of knew Helwalker wouldn’t be optimal, but I was just hoping there was a way. Not to worry my heart wasn’t set on it anyways. In terms of min/max. What starting stats would I need for beserker/devoted or beserker/bleak Walker?

im looking for some advice on a barbarian build to solo POTD w/ upscaling. Thus far I’ve been bouncing from new character to new character (think I’ve restarted 14 or 15 times). At this point I haven’t finished the game even once or started any of the new content. What I have done is hunt down most of the achievements, explore most islands, pillage every ship, and recruit every companion (and most of their quests). I’m ready for some solo OP play to finish out the game. What I’m hoping is that it’s possible to create a barbarian that is unkillable and can solo all the content in the game. I prefer not to use a rogue as a multiclass choice, as I’ve already been down that route with all 3 subclasses (assassins made me feel dirty). Currently I’m leaning toward Beserker/devoted or Beserker/helwalker. I’m open to other options and looking for advice. Thanks for reading,