Odd Hermit

Just because you can doesn't mean it's better. The less focused a build the more poorly it does its job. Why have a character that does mediocre damage and is only somewhat durable when you can optimize a few durable characters to take the damage and then have damage builds that wreck everything? Well, as the op said it's pretty damn boring to play a main character that deals absolutely no damage, but he also doesn't want a character who falls over when the enemy so much as looks in his direction. As it's perfectly possible and viable and even pretty effective to play the game on a balanced build (at least on medium difficulty, probably on hard as well), why would he make a build he doesn't find fun playing? My argument is more with your medium attribute build and my point is that medium deflection builds specifically aren't worth it. Unless you're stacking deflection, you may as well get your durability elsewhere. DR preferably, since Con sucks. I offered a solution I think is better. Pallegina is not a very effective character - she's my favorite companion but she just sucks in combat period. Depends on whether you're going Force of Anguish or Turning Wheel. Turning Wheel is damage output which is why I suggest low int. They don't play well together either especially on a tank that'll have somewhat limited wounds to work with. Any tank is going to take a decent amount of damage on harder difficulties. You can still wear a bit lighter armor if you want more wounds, rather than sacrificing deflection. That has the benefit of reducing your recovery time as well. 8 Con also still leaves you with plenty of Endurance as a monk.

It's harder than any of the IE games were. It has some pacing issues though. Some encounters early on are abnormally difficult due to accuracy/deflection/defense disparities, while the mid-late game starts to get much easier as that disparity lessens. Same could be said for IE games with a few exceptions though - Mind Flayers for example were very difficult for people to deal with unless they knew how to counter them. Which is a great example of how IE games was also way more tedious and preparation based with more encounter pre-knowledge requisite. Having all the right buffs stacked before a fight was very important. Using the right sequence of save/resist lowering spells could make a difficult fight trivial. They tried to avoid that, and I think that was wise and a success. There are some new issues as a result but overall I think many players are just seeing through rose tinted glasses when comparing PoE to BGII/IWD at least.

I think they should revamp PotD a bit. A stat boost doesn't make for enjoyable combat, it just reduces viable tactics and spells. It'd be better if enemies had better gear, more composed and more numerous groups with casters and ranged. PotD does some of that, but the main challenge is just overcoming the higher defense stats and dealing with lots of RNG and whiffing. Which favors accuracy boosts considerably. 4/6 of my PotD crew are Wood Elves.

They buffed solo XP gain. Gold is easy enough to get. Net gain for solo players.

It's important to keep in mind when people are asking for builds what they actually want. OP's post suggest he wants something fairly effective. And just generally when people ask for build advice they don't want a "this is a build that sucks but you can still complete the game with it" response. Dumping at least one attribute is the only way to make an effective tank + damage character in one build. And there are only a few classes that can pull it off. If I had to make one w/out dropping anything below 8 though I'd say: Fighter or Monk 17 might 8 Con 8 Dex 18 Per 8 Int 19 Res Ideal would of course be dumping int entirely though. Defender + Wary Defender or Cautious Attack for Monk should be taken Could try to pull off 2h or dual wield, but I'd sooner go with a strong 1h weapon + small shield and Weapon and Shield style. Monk with Turning Wheel can do some solid damage even with a 1h weapon. Alternatively could swap between one damage and one tanking weapon set depending on situation which is probably ideal once you have the equipment to do it.

Yeah...but a custom wizard can do both, better.

Just because you can doesn't mean it's better. The less focused a build the more poorly it does its job. Why have a character that does mediocre damage and is only somewhat durable when you can optimize a few durable characters to take the damage and then have damage builds that wreck everything? Especially since deflection is so weak unless you stack it really high, and constitution is just terrible for anything but a dedicated tank. You gain very little from 14 perception / resolve, but 8 points put in Might and/or Dex can dramatically increase your damage. Especially since might is so important for pushing damage over DRs.

http://i.imgur.com/1AGdxCj.jpg Seems like it works. I'm going over the tooltip's damage on a character with no DRs.

Guarantee we'll get more in the expansion. Dunno about before then. I'm making due. There are helmed/hooded ones that multi-purpose. Male Aumaua IMO is the worst right now. There's one with a beard but the models themselves can't have beards which is a travesty.

What is your Might at and what talents have you taken? Are you dual wielding? Are you using fists or weapons? (Weapons are currently better due to enchants) If weapons, which ones? Fast weapons without DR penetration may not be a great idea.

I think the trick to tanky damage dealer is Might / Per / Res. You won't hit fast but you'll hit hard enough to matter. Monk can actually pull it off on PotD where damage is high enough to feed wounds pretty quickly. On hard it's maybe not as great. And you'd want to dump int. You can take Turning Wheel and Rooting Pain and deal solid damage. Rooting Pain is AoE and can interrupt adding to your tankiness a bit. You won't be quite as tanky as Paladin or Fighter but pretty close and deal solid damage especially vs. weaker groups. Other than that I'd say Fighter with Wary Defender but using a small shield to avoid accuracy loss, and a strong 1h weapon(maybe spear also for accuracy). Paladin IMO kind of a waste to try it with. Low base accuracy, no special damage talents other than Flames of Devotion which you don't get enough uses of to waste talents on.

This what I've concluded with my Chanter experiences as well. I think Wendgridh(+reflex +move speed) is their best Chant still, you can kite with a whole party using it while building up phrases. Obviously, doesn't work if you don't have space to work with but then you can use Soft Winds of Death for drawn out slogs in chokepoints and so on. Haven't found much use for second and third tier phrases. There are some I might use only if they were as fast as first tier. Also, having no linger bonus from int really makes it feel pointless to use a chant sequence. They don't fully overlap so I rather keep the chant I want to stay up going than cycle through chants. So my chanter pretty much uses a single tier 1 phrase and then summons stuff or occasionally uses a CC of some sort. ___ Cipher OTOH I disagree with you a bit with. They are very useful debuff/control. Certainly, if you can only have a Wizard OR a Cipher, I pick the Wizard every time because they're simply more powerful for the hard fights. But, having both adds options and synergy to a party, while making smaller/easier encounters much smoother and faster assuming you're not just spell dumping on every fight with your spell/rest casters and then resting a ton. They're also ideal openers with Tenuous Grasp. Wood Elf + Paladin Aura active, and I've got +11 accuracy to it and can confuse most things. Confusion is kind of overpowered and buggy though, since they're treated as friendlies. But for the time being you can confuse a single enemy in a group, the group mobs that enemy, and then you can drop AoEs on the blob.

with max dex and about average per you get quite a high interupt rate though And you get hit way more and take tons of interrupts yourself because your resolve is low. OP's build is not a real tank, that's why it's dying.

It was in some odd locked chest IIRC, in one of the defiance bay buildings. First thing I did when I got to defiance bay was loot everything I could while getting, of course, lots of lockpicking/trap disarming XP. I can't recall exactly where TBH. I didn't have to kill anyone for it. It might be technically stealing, but I was able to get it without being spotted. All of their defenses are pretty high so they don't really respond well to debuffs. Fortitude is their weakest and it's 50. The Shades' and Phantoms' are even higher.

You can make lots of things work, that doesn't mean they're good. Even on PotD you can make it through with companions. The thing is though, it's not fun using boring, ineffective, unfocused builds. It's fun having a well composed party which also means having the individuals be well built for their role. The companions aren't built toward any role - even the ones whose classes are only really good for one role.

So there's a 1 per rest Summon 3x Shade item. 3 Shades vs. most things = things lose. I've got it equipped on my tank PC on PotD. Any time a battle goes seriously south on me, I pop shades and quickly turn the tides. I've even had ONLY my tank left, summoned shades, and they clean up everything NP. The Phantom summon Chanter gets is pretty good. But 3 shades basically spam stun a single target, or you can split them up and CC three targets for awhile. It's hard for most enemies to deal with just a single shade beating on them. Shades themselves, and shadows, phantoms and the like are probably just overpowered themselves. They're easily the most difficult/frustrating part of the early game to face. They have crazy high deflection and high defenses, seem to have sneak attack, and they attack fast and interrupt a lot. And of course as many people have found out they like to teleport past melee and just KO your Aloth.

I dunno why people think rolling flames is so great. It's all about combusting wounds IMO. It's a more subtle spell but it kills more targets with fewer casts if you use it with spells/ability that have synergy with it.

Chanter is the only thing close. Which IMO is fine. D&D caster/melee juggernaut hybrids were always a bit too "I want everything in one package" making the actual fighter-ish classes kinda pointless. Clerics were basically superior fighters - as long their buffs were up - and with heals, debuff, CC, nukes. It pretty much wouldn't work. Dropping might and dex means your damage would be terrible so what's the point in buffing yourself for close range burst exactly? You'd be a ~somewhat less likely to be hit wizard with terrible damage output and slow spell casts.

Gah, managed to reach Pallegina @ level 3 but she still starts at level 4. Apparently there's no point in rushing some of them. I think I'm going to wait until we can conveniently respec all of them ourselves somehow. PotD with all custom it is. These middle of the road/generalist builds are just garbage. They're not flexible to build into anything you want, rather they prevent you from turning them into anything useful. Especially with the poor talent/ability choices.

Anyway to do this early in the game? Like for clearing Caed Nua with a level 3 party? I just cleared Caed Nua(enough to unlock the keep anyway) on PotD with a level 3 party. It's a PITA a bit but not too bad with a full party even at kinda low levels. I'm finding it hilarious how useless Eder is though, even with the 1h sword with +damage/accuracy vs. spirits he just does nothing against the high deflection phantom/shadows ugh. And I used it w/out an off hand to see if his accuracy would be good enough to land knockdowns but NOPE. Paladin tank with 65 deflection (though I don't have a large shield yet I really should've grabbed one by now hah). Not great but I managed. Used all the companions + 1 hired adventurer Cipher. I'm rushing to grab companions early. Not sure I'll even use them honestly, but I'll keep a save just to have decent options. Level 4 is when deflection kinda hits the high point since you can have Cautious Attack on top of Weapon and Shield style.

Priests aren't tanks. Your character build isn't that bad really - though I always ALWAYS max intellect on priest.

Chill Fog and Slicken are less cheesy but overall it's a better balanced class along the range improvements to some key spells. Chill Fog is still really strong honestly. My PotD party is around level 5 right now and the Wizard is a major asset to the group. Combusting Wounds is even more fantastic with the boosted range. Their level 1/2 spells are stronger than Druid's, really, they're just less forgiving to play because they have such weak base durability. Yes, Druid is a better nuker on lower difficulties, but Wizard is still a strong class. They still have lots of fairly useless self-buffs that don't make sense for Wizard given PoE's combat style, but they're not crippled. The classes that really need help right now are Ranger and Barbarian IMO.

Worth noting there's an inn in one of the Defiance Bay locations that gives, IIRC, +4 int. So high Per/Res and medium Int + 4 and you can hit most of the mental-based dialogue checks.

Here's the thing though, you can build a whole character or two around mitigating damage to effectively hold chokepoints, AKA a "tank". Or you can cast a low level Priest spell and have an entirely invulnerable roadblock trivializing all melee mobs in areas with chokepoints available achieving the same thing. And there are a lot of dungeons with chokepoints in the game. I have a pure tank but some doorways you need two blockers, and withdraw makes any old character work for that and they're in even less danger than the 100+deflection and high defense tank. I think it's kind of cheesy/abusive, but it's also one of those situations where an ability is just kind of neat and tactical and it'd be a bummer for that to be ruined. I've used it on Path of the Damned to 3 man encounters that quite simply wouldn't've been possible without it - barring other cheesy tactics like kiting backwards trying to split individual enemies from a group. If it had a shorter duration that'd be more fair and retain its usefulness. Sometimes you use it to save a character, and in those situations a shorter duration allows them to return to the fighter earlier. So it'd be a buff/nerf and reduce the cheese factor a little bit without ruining the tactical potential entirely.

nah, 19 using culture to get either might or int, and wood elf for dex and the accuracy buff is min-max.