Odd Hermit

Hatchet and Large Shield for pure tank is what I used. 2h for damage - or I've actually had a ranged Paladin just to give +6 accuracy to my casters.

Thing is, having such high saves means Paladins don't get CCed as much. Their defense ... is their offense in a way. I've done fairly well with offensive Paladins. They don't give spectacular numbers but you don't have to worry about them dropping like a stone and a lot of debuff attacks pretty much just bounce off them. Granted, you can avoid most debuffs by using high damage ranged and just not being hit by stuff 'cause your tank gets everything's attention first. But relative to other melee anyway. If they had stronger offensive capabilities they'd be kind of overpowered. They're already fairly clearly the most optimal tank choice(and I've tried pretty hard to make Monk work). They do need more active abilities and more interesting ones than "attack that does extra damage X/encounter". And it's hard to justify spending a bunch of talents on a use(or two) of Flames of Devotion. Liberating and Reviving Exhortation are good but they come pretty late.

Honestly, I don't understand why they're okay with Island Aumaua getting the equivalent of a fairly strong talent(Arms Bearer) and yet they're being so restrained with most other racials. Coastal Aumaua is also pretty close to equaling a talent with +20 Prone/Stun resist being about the same or even greater value as Unstoppable/Body Control(Prone/Stun are common and more threatening than most of the others). Most others, excluding Orlan and I guess Wood Elf have their niche, are also not only weak but vary between fairly and extremely situational. Edit: And I'd prefer other racials being brought up to par, not having Aumaua and Orlan nerfed.

The Druid is getting nerfed, so I didn't use it in any of my parties. Yeah I've noticed all my non-druid taking parties are substantially more difficult or at least they take longer to kill everything. Do you have a source? Do we know how they're getting nerfed/what's getting nerfed? I'm curious. Cipher is my favorite non-overpowered as hell(Druid) class as well. However I feel like it's much better @ range than as a melee class. Paladin Tank, Pike/GS Fighter are my go-to for melee. I really can't find great reason to use much else over them, seems like everything else is better off with a gun at a safe distance. Monks are ~okay~ but I feel they have a core-conflict in that to take substantial damage to generate wounds you need to be somewhat tanky and it's hard to find a balance between extremely tanky and good damage output right now.

You must not be taking druids. Personally I think they need a few strong passive talents specific to improving their durability in a way that isn't just a hopelessly small/insignificant amount of deflection for a class with a base of only 10. The more deflection you have the more valuable it becomes, so you'd need a lot of deflection to bother with arcane veil and wizard's don't have it. Then their combat buffs need to be more "bang for the buck" and/or some need to be per-encounter. Can't afford to cast that many spells/rest just to go gish mode to be able to contribute in smaller battles where a ranged build could just cast a single slicken and then wand things with blast.

True(I'd stack it instead of dex probably) but it doesn't necessarily fix the issue. Perhaps some people want to play an imperceptive character. Can you be accurate and not perceptive? I'd think you can. Visual acuity and social perceptiveness are very different. Then there's issues like might not really being strength, but in the beta it's used to push heavy things. :/ It'd just feel a lot less silly, and a lot more "clean", to me to just choose the combat strengths of a character separately.

The main metagaming issue I have is that personality is a part of combat stats in such a way that it is very sub-par to take or not take Perception/Int/Resolve on some classes. I would've preferred personality traits be a bit more separate so that class choice doesn't dictate so much of my character's personality, if I want to build that class to be effective at the role I want anyway. For example, if I am playing most caster classes there is very little reason to choose perception currently. It doesn't do anything that substantially improves those classes for their role outside of niche sub-par builds like a Skaen dual wielder. Resolve is also a bit of a dud. All of my Druid, Cipher, Priest, Wizard builds right now have high Might, Intellect, and middling Dexterity. I knock a few points off Constitution, Perception, Resolve to achieve this. If I play any of these as my main I worry my character will be penalized in dialogue for being imperceptive and weak willed when those aren't necessarily aligning with the personality I'd want to play. Right now the attribute effects don't feel that sensibly matched to their name anyway, if feels a bit like having the me attributes define combat capability and mental state was arbitrarily carried over from DnD. Probably too late now I would've rather have something like a separate set of dialogue/personality-based strength/weaknesses and neutral ones with pro/cons, while for combat I'd be fine just picking increased AoE, duration, damage without them being packaged into attributes.

Paladin - Good reasons to have high Perception, Int, and Resolve. And I believe they get some combat benefits(to Faith and Conviction) from choosing dialogue that aligns with their Order's ideals or whatever, if that's still a thing. I haven't tested it with the limited beta options.

That they felt the need to nerf Moon Godlike is concerning. Aumaua / Orlan racials will probably still be the strongest on release I guess.

This is the best melee wizard you'll get. Wizards drop like a stone in the beta. They're the class that has most consistently been KOed, and the only class I've had actually die. They are made of paper. Melee is a bad place for them. The fights are practically over before a Wizard has time to buff himself into something of a wannabe fighter and then those buffs run out and you've wasted several spells / rest contributing very little.

I think the main problem with druids is simply that their frost spells specifically are doing too much damage for how easy they are to place/how large their AoEs are. Fan of Flames does about as much damage as Blizzard, but it's a cone and short range while Blizzard is easy to use and hit a lot of targets at any range. Hail Storm is mostly just an even bigger and higher damage Blizzard. Nerfing those two alone 15-20% maybe, if they want to be tentative about it, would bring Druids down a notch. I also think many spells, as roguelike says above, are just not worth ever casting over others. Right now there are some very obvious choices and you spend most of your spells/rest on those. If you took away 4-5 of Druid's outstanding spells they'd be in almost as bad a spot as Wizards, just... still more durable and versatile. Edit: Also, Wizards have to be too close for how fragile they are for a lot of their spells. The range limits and AoE sizes on Wizard spells are laughably inconvenient relative to Druid, especially since Druids are substantially less fragile.

Wouldn't make much difference honestly. I have re-ran this encounter many, many ways. If I get a couple strong Druid AoEs off they are pretty much done for. There's a remote chance of them getting some AoE/CC off but my druids have high enough reflex that their cast speed gets hail storm off quickly enough that it's unlike they can stop me from gibbing multiple targets right off the bat + I have a leadsplitter cipher who can take out a priority target like their own cipher nigh instantly. I think part of the problem is that CC spells are unreliable, but damage is not. I have opened with CC spells, and the graze/miss is much more punishing than using damage where a graze can still be devastating and with AoE you'll generally hit a few targets hard enough. Pumping damage for casters makes sense as well, since you can't improve accuracy of spells you need grazes to hit hard.

I have used low con tank builds with success, they work fine you just have to rest slightly more frequently as the tank's health wears down. Deflection and DR are the main source of mitigation anyway. Con just adds a bit of padding. There are a few enemies that get through deflection/DR more frequently that extra stam helps with, but I just use beetle shell on those fights or some extra healing. I think Con is just the worst attribute overall.

Magran gets Arquebus, making it the best priest choice IMO. But yeah, you'd think they'd be a bit better in melee than they actually are. I would wait a bit and buff the party before going into melee, and flank things that are already engaged. Just don't fight toe to toe with your priest against any serious melee enemies. Morning Star doesn't have extra reach, although 2h in general may have a bit longer than 1h. Pike is the main reach weapon though.

People are wary of recommendations before release. And the beta isn't even close to enough content to judge with any confidence. I am optimistic but I'll wait until I play the whole thing, and then I'll be posting on some subreddits with review and probably/hopefully a glowing recommendation with a few caveats.

They are viable but not very good as melee. Paladin or Chanter is a much better "Battle Cleric" choice. Interrupts aren't that scary, but if you're casting average or longer speed spells while engaged/attacked in melee you'll probably have a bad time without decent resolve.

I am fine with some tactics being more successful than others, it's not very interesting otherwise. But some people want a fight to be a fight, not just blow everything up before it can react - at least for bigger/badder encounters. I'm fine if my AoEs decimate some weaker groups of enemies, after all that allows you some sense of progression and fun. I am not using any exceptionally cheesy tactics in that screenshot. I am using two smartly/offensively built characters of a particularly strong class, nothing more. Part of this is just that druids need some toning down, but it's possible with other classes as well it'll just be a little more involved than dropping two massive high damage AoEs. A good opening tactic should not immediately decide a fight IMO. It should give you an upper hand, of course, but if enemies can't recover at all combat is at risk of become formulaic and tedious.

It at least says in the tooltip x1.2 damage. And with it active, soul whip's tooltip has "Self: 1.2x Damage, 1.2x Damage"

Ahhh see my edit I may've been wrong. Focus gains definitely are based on damage dealt, but it looks like the focus gain from draining whip might be per hit considering the bigger gap between non-draining leadsplitter hit and draining leadsplitter hit.

If you want to cast more with a cipher, it is better to use guns, to get big chunks of focus from a single high damage shot. Cipher is not very good in melee, having to cast their often lengthy powers in melee risks interrupts, plus there's just the simple fact that ciphers are not very durable. Some quick tests shooting some Skaen nubs: Hunting Bow -> 27 damage, gained 6 focus. Crossbow -> 42 damage, gained 11 focus. Leadsplitter -> Doesn't display its damage(but all shots hitting/grazing), gained 31 focus Arquebus -> 109 damage, gained 27 focus That's without draining whip. With draining whip - Hunting Bow -> 22 damage, gained 8 focus Crossbow -> 40 damage, gained 12 focus Leadsplitter -> (all shots hitting/grazing), gained 44 focus. Arquebus -> 72(grazed) damage, gained 19 focus Keep in mind a few of these may've been overkill shots(more damage than target has stamina left) not sure if that affects anything. Biting whip gets you more focus from dealing more damage which is nice on its own, which makes it IMO the better talent. But draining whip does seem to give its bonus on hit rather per/damage from what I can tell. It's hard to tell with leadsplitter.

Honestly, using biting whip and an arquebus or blunderbuss to open with I've never really needed more focus for cipher. I used to take Draining Whip and/or Greater Focus but they just don't seem at all useful as long as you have a good gun. They could unlimit the cipher's focus and it'd make no difference to me.

I've collected some evidence of combat being decided by the opener: http://i.imgur.com/9rBP0Mm.jpg That's a pretty short combat log for a boss fight. Yes I have 2x might stacked secrets of rime druids, but imagine if I had 3. Oh and apparently if you start combat and kill everyone in the opener the enemy is *NameError*

I really wish we could just buy stats all separately and then choose our characteristics for dialogue checks separately. If I don't value AoE and duration abilities on a certain class, now I should have a dumb character! If I don't value Deflection and Interrupt on a class that mostly hangs in the back, now I've got an oblivious character. /sigh.

I understand what you're going for but the lore doesn't support it(spells aren't split up as vocal/somatic and so on, they're drawn from different sources for different casters that aren't limited like that), and their general design philosophy(which I have my occasional disagreements with as well TBH) goes against this. Also I like Padded Armor. I wear it on my casters. It's a 20% penalty for 6 DR, but 8 Piercing and Crushing. Most ranged damage is piercing and that's a decent amount of mitigation. Plus I'm not always chain casting, you only get so many spells/rest so time constraint often doesn't play into it except on the occasional bigger battles.

Can't even complete the Lle a Rhemen puzzle solo. That's where my solo rogue ended since you need 2 companions to step on the symbols.