Fruney

As I said, I am no minmaxer, so I'd go medium con anyway. Clever trick with item effects. I need to check it. So far I don't need to pay attantion to it, so I don't. Yeah, that's exactly why I wanted a 2-handed guy in the party - Willbreaker and, if Barb - also Darryn's. For this one it fit me thematically to dual wield two preferably fast weapons, but I can switch to see Darryn's in action. I have it on my current run on Tekehu, but that's just a stat stick. By the way, I probably go SC druid and maybe /wizard instead of /priest (of Wael) for psion. Priest, I think, would fit me better, but I am playing FS at the moment and dammit those gods!

Right, I completely forgot about it and didn't reread. I am no mixmaxer and you guys made me aware about the MIG "penalty" for zerker, so I'd go, say, MIG 10, CON 8 or 10. Also I think that might not be a world of difference for early game Essence Interrupting vs later game dual-wielding build-wise. And respecc is always a possibility. Actually, I'd suspect that BDD has very limitted application on Berserker, since you cannot see health. It may be great situationally - Frenzy ends, Zerker is Near Death -> BDD -> new Frenzy. Don't you think? Also, since I am currently testing waters by running a PotD party inspired by my other thread (so, paladin and chanter heavy) and I have a holy slayer there who fulfills more-less the same function as intended for this Marauder, maybe I will go Lover's Embrace on that guy and go 2-handed for zerker here for a change, especially that I realized that the herald here would need probably need to be quite offensive, Kind Wayfarer fits nicely and in such case it's better to dual wield. Also, another interesting realization from that run is that I assumed psion/whatever implies defensive use, but in fact nobody cares much for my troubadour/psion in that run, so I can go full ham offensive with abilities.

In other thread I realized that berserker/streetfighter seems to be intended for ranged. I had melee dual-wielding in mind, but then - how much babysitting would this guy need? Full time Barring Death's Door?

@dgray62 thanks a lot, this is exactly the build I had in mind and also probably will make him the Watcher. Although 4 is quite open still. Would be quite nice to have an SC character to benefit from quicker progression. SC pally was originally the idea for the skeleton abuse and maybe I will come with some ideas for kamikaze tactics, such as these self-immolation abilities + Effort effect in case of knockout. Yet, Valiant Demise looks underwhelming, but aren't there more items like that? The more I think about it, the more I lean towards chanter - less gimmicky, more sustainable and I realized I can get class resources for OTHERS with His Heart instead of drowning in my own skelly-indeuced Zeal. Then extra PEN with lvl 9 chant and lvl 8 invo to top it off. EDIT: Now I realized I end up with 4 chanters and 2 pallies. Well, that would probably mean swapping Herald for Inquisitor, which may be even better, more interesting. Then SC Chanter will go sword and board in place of the Herald and this fellow will get the pike and high PER. But first I will check "tanky inquisitor build" I've seen here.

Very nice, Gentlemen, many thanks. So, for the moment I would opt for: 1. Psion/troubadour - weapon + (small shield), maybe this Thundercrack pistol or some implement. But for this guy it's merely a stat stick anyway. 2. Pal/rogue dual wielding Lover's Embrace and something else (Marux Amanth? Magi's Cudgel?). Trickster most probably. 3. Herald (Darkozzi w/ Outworn buckler is tempting, but not sure if worth it. Would rather go Shieldbearer with large shield (Cadhu Scalth?) and max engagement slots. 4. I am tempted to go single class with at least 1 character and leaning towards Paladin to farm zeal from skeletons. In such a case, a 2-hander would be in order. 5. I was tempted to go inquisitor or crusader here, but wait a second, I have seen some fun cantor builds around here!

Lover's Embrace! Yes, thank you! It pains me that I cannot really find a way to use it in my current run. By the way, what other items are there that provide some kind of aura or other party benefits? Blackened plate, as mentioned. St. Omaku Mercy war bow, Xoti's lantern, what else? I have a foggy memory of items that cause effects on knock out (Effort greatsword, but I am pretty sure there is more). With paladin and chanter heavy party maybe it would be viable to have one suicide bomber go in to die and be revived, at least as a backup plan? Also, how to specialize? There's probably a nuanced balance to be found by testing. I'd guess it's best to focus on support with literal shieldbearers and on offensive skills with dual-wielders and 2handers due to accuracy penalty of the shield. But then these offensive guys would probably end up to squishy which defeats the purpose.

@Boeroer YES! Gouging freaking strike! It's the second thing that came to my mind after Herald when I was thinking about it a few days ago. Ydwin posthumously won the Messenger fight with it. Are there any other until-combat-ends abilities out there? @omgFIREBALLS nice! I wouldn't overdo it with a full pal party to meet the diversity quota, but it's yet one more reason to hate 5-men party cap. The game begs for differently build duos of Pals, Chanters and Ciphers at least. Anyway, I'd probably do such a run as a RDC-backing ruthless-but-not-unnecessarily-cruel party, steel (brass?) clad steamroller, so definitely picking up some ideas from you. Do you play your psions with Community Patch? I play vanilla game. By the way, that's quite a clever idea. Im not usually lacking focus for my Cipher, but when I do lack it, it's the hardest fight and the clutch moment, cuz I can't do enough damage. With trash mobs I overflow with focus, obviously, but there's hardly a target for Disintegration anyway.

Hi again guys, Can't play much so I scratch my itch theorycrafting. After several more difficult encounters in my "normal" run I was thinking (running out of resources, etc), how viable would it be to have a party centered around outlasting the opponent and grinding them down with DoTs and auto attacks. Some builds seem to be already out there for individual chars, especially this kind of good-for-solo-nor-really-party-viable. Anybody tried it? Any nice synergies? Preferably no cheese such us Ancestral Memory into Salvation of time. So, obviously classes with infinite resources come into mind - cipher, chanter, monk. Conditionally: barbarian and paladin (pal with bonus points for the auras, etc). Then other martial classes for their passive and auto attacks. Ranger is the most debatable IMO, because of the companion being a potential liability with this approach. The casters - limited resources put them at the end of the list, but maybe some builds may justify it - my buffed-up Aloth set for melee combat has very long durations anyway and I could perform the combo twice per combat, if I skimp the spellcasts for other purposes. Thoughts, experiences? I've come across the Swordsinger heral/war caller and Burn Baby Burn pal/monk, which seems to fit into the theme.

I am playing Herald Pallegina at the moment and she's doing great. Also, as far as I am concerned, Paladin's ability tree isn't usually that exciting to me. A lot of good stuff, but I am rarely hesitating where my points should go. Also, there seems to be no pure paladin builds here, but a ****load of paladin's multiclasses, which is saying something. Same with chanter, by the way, but I'd say - for different reasons. With chanter tree it's a constant struggle. ****load of abilities on every level and to top this off - a division between chants and invocations. Adding my 3 cents despite being a Deadfire noob, because I've seen you are a fellow summon-sceptic. I understand and support your decision. I wanted to test out a drake summon on Pal and man, this got weird. Now she tends to start the battle with a long summoning invocation and then a huge winged lizard covers half of your screen. Weird, to say the least. Maybe I will apologize to the lizard when game's content will catch up to my party's level.

Happy New Year, guys! Several real-life things taken over Deadfire completely, but I came to say that I've just finished BoW with a party on lvls 16-17 and now I am steamrolling everything despite playing with upscaling. Well, seems like chaotic (first) playthroughts is a price one has to sometimes pay for the open-wordly feel. Guess I am switching to veteran finally.

OMG, that was it. Thank you and Merry Christmas!

What is exactly happening to helmets? Eder in my party currently lost his helmet and no matter what I do - no helmet shows on him - neither in Equipment screen, nor "in the field". However, his stats do change depending on the headgear, so I think special/conditional enchantments work too, but I didn't test it.

Quite interesting indeed, thank you. I have certain ideas in mind and I am looking for a way to express it via Deadfire's system and at the same time not duplicate story companions and have a overall fun party. Hence at the moment I am gravitating towards maybe druid/stalker instead of barb/x to put an accent on the animal theme instead of fury. This will allow me to go barb/wizard for the most fuzzy of the chars - so far seems fun and will allow me to explore the unexplored side of wizard. Herald is herald, I can't help it. Then psion will probably get priest of wael multi, cuz wizard is taken by the barb. Let's see. Sure, I am tempted replay the game over and over, but I am a man of permanent time shortage. Totally different story party (with different classes and relationship development, etc. And I will be yet to see pure chanter and pure druid in action, which is doable with story companions) is an obvious idea, another would be to play, say, 3 man party, but highly synergistic, very dependant on each other for setups. By the way, I have an issue with late game builds, because I enjoy the voyage more than the destination - much better to get the core items early and observe steady growth and the strategy paying off more with each level than struggle 80% of the game to get some powerplay gimmicky statstick on which the whole thing revolves. Not that's not fun, much appreciated and fun intellectual endeavour to craft such builds, but not worth the investment for me. Anyway, when I will be find worthy of posting without Mod's supervision? Edit: Hah, just did exactly that, I am an obsidian adult now! Edit 2: Seriously tempted by the Warlock, indeed. And to build him around https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Zandethus'_Dragon-Scaled_Grimoire - nice selection of self-centered (he he) spells for a dude that leaps in the middle of enemy ranks (unique Zandethus' Draconic Fury looks really good). Fire, as cliche as it is, is alright to try to follow as a general theme. I was leaning towards 2-handed style and maybe Willbreaker/Darryn, but with this fire focus I feel kind of bound to go Magran's favour. EDit 3: Obviously, I was not the first one to have this idea: Cheers mate!

Analysis paralysis. Thanks a lot guys. I still have my current run to finalize and a lot of time to think while doing certain works around the house in the coming weeks, so maybe I will come to some decisions. I haven't played anything in ages and dammit, Deadfire's so good and now that I am lvl ~16 and playing BoW and so many pretty uniques drop left and right and fit noone in my party (not that I haven't got a stash full of yellow treasures before. And I know well more are to come). I don't really have anybody to wear all these shiny shield. The Frozen Elf Suit begs to be worn with all the accessories. Also, shoutout to the guy that said you can loot the floating body in the soul of St. Waidwen quest. Mmm, tasty! By the way, are disengagement attacks triggered when enemies are pulled-of-eora or llengrath-staffed out of tank's melee range?

Yepp, this build looks fantastic. Maybe I will just roll 5th character with this? So far I the team looks like this then: zerker/streetfighter, herald, psion/wizard or psion/priest of wael and the mysterious 4th. Now: - I have no idea how to actually play streetfighter, which is, I believe, centered around maintaining bloodied status. I wonder if I will suffer from gear competition between streetfighter and helwalker. You know, all these items that makes you harder to kill the lower you go. - Any comments on psion/wizard vs psion/priest of Wael? The latter fits better thematically - a "pacifist" (de)buffer/CCer, but with the team as it looks like at the moment, I can easily forfeit having a priest, but having no wizard at all doesn't feel comfortable. But that's probably just old conditioning, it's not D&D with Breach and True Sight. - As for the 4th, I considered ancient/helwalker, but as far as I've read other threads it seems like he's pretty much full time caster and monk is there mostly for MIG and INT buff from Helwalker and Duality, respectively, correct? What would be stat priorities there, without minmaxing? I'd pressume something like 16 for MIG and INT, 14 for PER, 10 the rest. As far as I've read other threads, I suspect that helwalker/ancient is more full-time caster than anything else and monk is added for buffing MIG with Helwalker and INT with Duality, correct? What's recommended stats distribution? I am not a minmaxer, but I guess the point to prioritize MIG and INT, then the rest needs to go to precious PER. I don't think I can take anything from CON with helwalker being helwalker. If I don't dump RES then there's no extra points for DEX. MIG 16/CON 10/DEX 10/PER 14/INT 16/ RES 10 then? Any comments on the psion/priest of Wael vs psion/wizard? I'd rather not go troubadour, because I have the chanter in herald already (also, probably troubadour) and I need to fulfil the diversity quota. Depending on the choice I will determine the 4th character. Maybe aforementioned helwalker/ancient, maybe something more martial. I was thinking also about some MartialClass/Wizard, but I am under impression that it's all mostly buffs+citzal. Now to tune them to synchronize best... Well, there's always respec. By the way, I was about to switch difficulty to Veteran after a very underwhelming encounter with Concelhaut, but I started BoW soon after and man, this is something else. First I swapped Maia for Ydwin (underequipped and -leveled) and barely won the fight with The Postman Lizard. I kept reading that it teaches you interrupt mechanic. It taught me weapon modals. Then I swapped Xoti for Vatnir and thank you very much, I got my ass almost handed to me in both encounters on the glacier. Vatnir your lackluster buffs and frost spells, many thanks, much help, very damage. I reloaded, respecced the guy and now it's a completely different story. A tale to lift the spirits of people of little faith.

Thank you very much for your posts, guys. I think my reply to Boeroer is still invisible and waiting for mod's approval. Let's see about this post. I made like 3 attempt at my post so this must have skipped edition. It's not like CC is pointless. I would very much would love to CC or debuff the f*k out of the basterd, but when I aim a spell at it, it estimates the chances at, say, 60%, which seems to me like too big of a gamble for the limited resource that is cast-per-spell-tier. So I'd like to debuff him first, but it's same story - usually chances are low and I am not yet familiar enough with all these analytics. But it's already better due to my party higher levels. Yeah, not denying that, but you won't me make me go bare handed in a game with truckloads of toys. Regarding herald - that's one of the reasons I want to run a herald in the new party. I have herald Pallegina in the party now and she's great. I always felt I need Xoti or Tekehu alongside her, though. But now I will try after I finish quests with Tekehu. @dgray62 , @Boeroer - yeah, I guess for serious stuff the Psion will run with a stat stick, but I need a job for the guy during trashmob fights. If you, dgray, suggested builds for my 4th char, then FF/trickster sounds tempting. Not exactly what I had in mind thematically, but both trickster and priest of Wael caught my attention with "all the usual stuff plus fun".

Thank you for the welcome! Well, that's roughly what I do as well. It just sometimes feel random. When the fight is easy, then nothing matters, when it's tough with lots of enemies, then it's cognitive overload for me, so I just do things that seem reasonable, but I don't really verify it. Then only for tough fights against single bosses I can bring myself to more closely analyze what is targeting what, etc. Only then it feels worth it. As far as party advice goes: -Berserker/streetfighter sounds like fun! I might be actually into that. I had Lover's Embrace and some fun clubs in minds, specifically, so checks out just fine. For the rest I am tempted mostly by two wariants: -Psion/wizard (any subclass that might be worth it? We are talking CC/debuffing mostly, I don't expect damage dealing here) - Herald - Some monk or priest frontliner MC - Psion/priest of wael (how good does it sound?) - herald - frontliner fighter/wizard (but is there a reasonable build that is not going full Citzal?) During my current playthrough I really appreciate my SC chars, as it indeed makes a difference to have access to higher level abilities. However, Deadfire's MC system is hard to say no too. Yet, maybe I will settle for SC druid for the last char, as I have only MC Tekehu in my current run and I won't see high level spells in action.

Hi guys, looooong time lurker here. Thank you very much for all your work I used for both PoE games. I love Deadfire, I struggle with a few concepts still, but I am slowly wrapping my head around it: - Limited spell library for casters - I am pretty much already at the point I know what I want from them, so it's getting alright. - Penetration. How is it? Is it weapon inherent + abilities/buffs vs enemy's AR and that's it? If it's 10 for me and 11 for them and it's over? No additional roll, or anything, just simple arithmetics? - Chanters - how often do you guys play with the chant playlist? Do you tend to change during the fight to react? A bit too much micro too me with other casters to handle. Also there's a lot of fun chants and abilities for them, but usually I neglect it due to lack of experience with Chanters and the other class feeling more important for the ability points. And I run only MC chanters at the moment. - Lowering defences. During tougher fights enemies tend to be quite resistant to spells. So, I'd like to debuff them first. But then debuff is another spells with, say, 50 or 60% chance of success. Feels like a waste with limitted per encounter resources I have. How do you go about it usually? Do I need to know the spellbooks by hard to find the spell that targets specific defence? Or you have some proper-debuff-inducing weapons on hand? Yet again, it means a PhD in Deadfire. Sometimes, for easy fights I tend to go Buffs->Citzal on Wizards out of lazyness. On tough ones I do the same because CC feels pointless. I have my Watcher Cipher (I regret not going Ascendant a bit) take his chances at debuffing, since he has theoretically unlimitted resources. Hopefully something sticks. Now, for the second part. I always play cRPGs with the story companions for the banter. Never got too much into IWDs because of the parties feeling "dead". But with Deadfire and the multiclassing system it has, I am very tempted to run a custom party with some fun builds, but I'd need your advice. My idea is to have a 4-man team with, maybe, occasional story companion for a quest. 1. Psion/wizard or psion/troubadour. Some implement for autoattack, but I don't think he'll get to shoot it much, which is a pity, considering certain builds here. 2. Herald or maybe Livegiver(Bear)/Goldpact as suggested by Boeroer elsewhere. Why Goldpact specifically tho? Weapon and shield style is quite tempting, because I will lack engagement. Now the rest is more tricky and depends on previous two: 3. Either some kind of crazied, fast melee orlan (Marauder? Preferrably dual-wielding small weapons) or, for the lack of ranged capabilities, I'd maybe try one of this fun implement builds with Ranger/something. I am fine with animal theme too. 4. Some kind of durable melee character. I have very little experience with monks and only recently tried it a bit with Rekke as fighter/monk. I like it, depite badly build Rekke! So, some fun monk MC is high on the list. But no way I am going bare fist. However, if I go with Herald at position 2, I feel I will lack buffs/healing and would need some priest or druid MC here. Any suggestions and how to handle action economy? Thank you!