0rangekun

A little bit. Goldpact is leaps and bounds above the rest for me, for RP, and Paladin generally has a special place in my heart. I hated playing my Paladin in PoE1 on release, then come White March rebalancing and introducing new abilities it felt so worth sticking with it! I suppose it couldn't hurt to check out Wael, it'd just be such a shame to ditch Berath. I know you can make your character from scratch when you import your save, but it feels best trying to keep the character as close to their imported history. But yeah, the spells... I used Touch of Rot early on, but I've never used it to much good effect since getting a full party. I don't use the free Resolve buff much because it only lasts about 20 seconds for a 3 second cast. Wandering Plague, I don't think I'm using right because it never seems to wander, and Divine Terror I want to use but mechanically it's not jiving, and it's been easier+more effective to let Aloth toss his own fear (I forget the name, but IIRC it does Weakened and Terrified). That's as high as I've gotten so far, but I don't think the higher level spells stand out much more to me (the Berath ones, I mean; long cast time or no, some of all-priest ones I'd be using for sure). Maybe the Rust -4 armor spell? But I don't know that I'll need more than the -2 I can get from a Chanter Invocation playing on Veteran, especially when I'm not locked to any damage type as a Devoted or something. Anyway, thanks! I'll check those links out tomorrow - think my brain's too mush for big reading right now.

Appreciate the detailed response, even if I'm sad (but not surprised) to hear you don't have a magical fix to the problems I've outlined. I was thinking this just the other day while taking a few minutes to actually read what other Priests can do (I didn't bother before, because I wasn't even considering sullying my first, full RP playthrough with some other deity). The 0.4 action speed Wael spells, though... ugh! Would have fit perfectly; jack myself up to be even harder to hit so I can focus that much more on gibbing everything with Flames of Devotion. It does have the added benefit of action speed from its upgrade, too, which I don't mind. I just like Focus' Hit to Crit. Crits are fun. It's lame to hear about Zealous Endurance's armor not stacking, though. I've been running it on Pallegina since she spends more time tucked in the middle of my group (assuming the heal over time upgrade even stacks with Ancient Memory). Although it honestly feels a bit like I should have Pallegina running around gutting people while I sit tight playing support. All in all, I'm still very conflicted. Even if I do restart and try Fighter/Priest, I'm not sure it would quite hit the mark for me. The Priest changes as a whole get me down. Maybe less so if I'd designed my character to better lean into that role, I don't know. Fighter/Priest may feel better, or maybe I should just trade out Priest altogether for Fighter/Paladin.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, yeah. It's a general lack of synergistic feeling more than anything. I think the two work thematically (hey, their dispositions synergize really well!) but mechanically there may be a bit of a gap. Even on character creation it occurred to me there might be (Paladin in general seems like it might be a better fit with Magran? Fire and all that jazz) but Berath is my bae. Likewise, I can imagine Bleak Walker might have more synergy with Berath by way of Corrosive damage? But my knowledge of Bleak Walkers is hazy; I just remember their Flames of Devotion granting extra Corrosive in Pillars 1, anyway. I've mostly been using Whispers because it looks so damn cool and I'm early enough along that the only other greatswords I've seen are generic Fine ones. And because it brings me joy to think of Eder getting teary-eyed after I melted down the shards of the Estoc I had him swing for half of PoE1 to make myself a sword instead. My general line of thought with the Templar here was that in Pillars 1 Priest was fun with a lot of things it could do. My Goldpact was a nigh-untouchable juggernaut by mid-game without a shield, providing my party with big utility by way of cheeky Rumbalt knockdowns and massive single target damage (her record by the end of the game was around 220 damage, iiirc), but she was also a little lacking in gameplay. It seemed logical to squash the two together in Deadfire, since you can, but it isn't proving as fun or effective as I'd hoped. In a worst case scenario, I could just restart the game. Probably wouldn't take me more than 3-5 hours to more or less catch myself back up since I'd be able to skip through dialogue. I'd prefer not to, and especially would prefer not to without first planning out a new build & party to better fulfill this particular character's fantasy, but it's not the end of the world. I'm only working part time right now anyway thanks to unspecified global events, so it's not like I don't have the time.

Just wondering if anyone could provide some advice for a Templar, possibly extending into the rest of the party as well. Going into Deadfire, I took my Priest of Berath and slapped Goldpact Knight on top of it (my favourite PoE1 character was a Goldpact) but I'm not sure if I like it. I'm playing on Veteran and I'm not struggling immensely, but I feel like something isn't clicking for me. Before starting the game I browsed some builds, but every Templar I found was not Berath, not Goldpact, or neither. I love the pair thematically and RP-wise, and further unto RP, I'm using greatswords (primarily; I've got a morningstar as well for crushing since it doesn't seem feasible to brute force through Armor like in PoE1). The problem I think I'm having with the character is that I just don't know what to do with her/where her strengths lie and how to capitalize on them. Priest spells have a long cast time. I want to drop a buff/debuff, then go HAM with Whispers of the Endless Paths, but it often feels more like I drop a buff/debuff, then I swing once and rebuff/debuff. Again, it's not like I'm having horrible issues in combat, at least not yet, but just that I feel like I'd be getting much more out of the character if I'd not been a Priest. What I want out of my character is: aggressive, versatile front liner, emphasizing the melee aspect more than the spellcasting, but the spells being there to add variety. I'm just not sure how to really make it work. My party is: Eder (Sword and board Swashbuckler), Pallegina (Herald, which was the class I'd originally thought of playing before seeing she can be one), Aloth (Pure Nerd), and Xoti (Pure Priest; my thinking was the spell changes to 2/encounter per spell level and limited spell pool, overlapping wouldn't be too bad, and she could fill the more typical Priest role while my MC does the whole righteous battlefield devastation shtick) Right now, I have Xoti and myself cover buffs/debuffs (she has more buffs, since I generally like to cast my at the start of a fight, then focus mostly on offensive play afterward) and Pallegina is practically the primary support between Ancient Memory, Zealous Endurance, and (Greater) Lay on Hands. Eder and Aloth do Eder and Aloth things - they're fine, in my book, I just need to find more grimoires and meticulously respec and piece together the ultimate spell list for Aloth. The big questions, I guess, are as follows: What are key Priest spells? Beyond crucial general Priest spells, which would best benefit this character? How would you build a Templar meeting the aforementioned criteria? Both the Priest and Paladin side of it. (Berath, Goldpact, Greatsword; should I have been a Crusader for this instead? I almost wanted to try Devoted + Priest, my Paladin was forever envious of Fighter Armor Penalty reduction in PoE1, but swapping sword for morningstar was the only reason I beat Steelclad Constructs) Should I have made Xoti a monk? Feels like my melees are crowded as is, and whether or not ranged monk works, it feels weird conceptually. I like fairly traditional classes and roles. Which effects don't stack with Zealous Focus/Endurance? I recall reading somewhere that Armor buffs don't stack with Endurance (really, really bummed by that, honestly) but does that mean Accuracy buffs don't stack with Focus as well? Do Hit-to-Crit not stack with the Zealous Focus upgrade? Do other Heal over Time effects not stack with Endurance's upgrade (Ancient Memory, for example). Without necessarily listing off where to get everything, are there any particularly great items I should be on the lookout for? I'm like 15 hours in, level 10, (I play RPGs very slowly) and only just really branching out from Neketaka, and my party has very little interesting equipment yet. As a bit of a side note, Pallegina loathes Xoti. I'm sure I could might find this with a quick search, but my experience with looking up these kinds of questions in games usually leads to massive, often unrelated spoilers, so just while I'm the general subject of party composition... will companions hating each other ever result in them leaving the group like good vs evil NPCs in Baldur's Gate? I like them both, Pallegina probably fits my character better but Xoti's more engaging being that she's A) more sociable B) a new face. Lastly, the scope of this post kind of mutated as I wrote it, so apologies in advance for the haphazard mess of words above. Thanks for reading though, if you made it through to the end. P.S. I don't suppose Deadfire has a totally busted greatsword with +50% critical damage that causes prone on crit?

Thank you! I'm just waking up, so my brain's running at half speed, so my reply will be relatively brief but don't think I'm any less appreciative of the info. It's definitely... a change from the first game. Whether I prefer it or not I'll only know with time, but so far it's a little give and take, and that's fine. I do wish I didn't have to re-learn so many things that share a name with things from the first game, though, that's definitely confusing. In any case, I can't believe I didn't look up class abilities on the wiki. I think the page I'm thinking of for the first game had all effects, so I was searching by that. Never thought to check each individual class' page.

I haven't been able to find such a thing. The first game had a page on the wiki that laid out every (as far as I could tell) source of every buff and debuff. It made it nice and easy to track down means to reduce enemy Fortitude defenses (for example) only to find just about every source that lowered Fort targeted Fort as well (again, just for example, no salt here!) But yeah, has anyone compiled a list like this for Deadfire? It'd really help to digest the transition to Inspiration/Afflictions. Additionally, rather than making two topics to ask: What's a good way to deal with enemies removing my buffs? In PoE1, even if an enemy applied a debuff that directly targeted the same stats as my buffs, they didn't remove said buffs, so I could monitor the situation and dispel or suppress the debuff. Here, I watch my Priest sit tight for 15 seconds firing off one slow spell after another just for the effects to get stripped off by an opposing affliction. I'm just not sure how to deal with that. It hasn't been huge so far but when it happens it's frustrating - I'll think I'm okay, I've cast a buff that lasts 80 seconds, but then I'll look a moment later and the character has nothing.

Per the title, my PoE1 endgame save is from a Steam install, but PoE2 is installed with Game Pass. I thought this wouldn't matter, since I think the save game filepath is the same, but no saves are showing up when I look to import into Deadfire. Is there something in particular I need to do? Is this just not possible for some reason? Edit: Nevermind. I'd thought you import the save through the Options menu, and didn't realize/sit through the few minutes intro to reach the conversation with Berath in the prologue. Derp!

When I fought him he wasn't, but I believe that was before 2.0 and there were no immunities at that time if I remember correctly. Yeah, I went in wholly expecting to have to petrify the Adra dragon only to find she's immune now. In the end I didn't need to anyway, as she hit for about 100+ compared to the Alpine dragon. I had a blast fighting Adra. Alpine just felt entirely overtuned. I can deal with any enemy that has some immunities, high defenses, high DR, and a good bit of accuracy, but I can't deal with a monster that can one shot multiple party members with a single attack if it chooses to, or can one shot my tank when it lands a hit. If were due to some kind of "berserk" trigger once the dragon reaches a certain amount of health, I think I could manage, but when it's doing that right from the start I just shake my fist at the lack of prebuffing. It's hard to get buffs and debuffs going when any or everyone can die before you cast a couple spells.

Yeah, I've done so. My save file is like 8MB, and even packed into a .zip file it's still too big to upload here, so I'm not too confident about it being fixed for me. Unless other people are experiencing it.

Description: At first I thought this might be a spell reflect of some kind, but I'm hitting myself with Divine Mark against a variety of different enemies. I'm not sure if it's happening every time the spell triggers, as I haven't had the weapon fully upgraded for long enough to have tested extensively. In both of the screenshots below, my paladin wielding the sword it hitting herself with the Divine Mark trigger. I know Ydwen's died heroically defending commonfolk, but I don't think this was how it happened. Steps to reproduce: Just attack anything with St. Ywden's Redeemer equipped. After actively watching for the problem, it seems to me that it's happening every single time Divine Mark triggers. I couldn't get my save file or output log small enough to upload either. Even as a zip file, each is something like 4MB. DxDiag.txt

I'm not sure if this was a bug, or some kind of "reflect" thing (I'm not 100% familiar with every little ability in the game), but... well... should my weapon trigger hit myself like this? I don't want to post this in the tech support forum if it isn't a bug. Does anyone more knowledgeable than I know if these enemies cast some sort of 100% effectiveness spell reflection?

It actually was, too. Granted, a part of that is the adds suck less than spectres, IMO. And a bigger battlefield gave me some time to actually deal with a lot of the smaller enemies and get my buffs going before the dragon joined the fight. Apparently, though, Greyjaw is the most powerful enemy in the game. I keep landing bigger kills with my paladin, yet Greyjaw forever remains her strongest foe. I had no idea about weapons being an exception. Always thought it was weird that Godansthunyr had +1 Might, and now that I know that I'm a little sad I didn't use the hammer before.

Those stack? That's pretty great, but geez. It's so hard to figure what stacks and what doesn't in this game, everything seems a bit inconsistent. Two flat +CON items stacking, but my +12 Will below 33% Endurance from Mantle of the Undying Boar is suppressed by my +9 ring. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I did manage to take down the dragon with a bit of luck (I was trying to confuse the other enemies, and wound up confusing the dragon for 20! seconds) and a bit of cheese (Gaze of the Adragan might be a legitimate spell, but it feels entirely cheap; I feel less dirty about using it out of desperation when the dragon's already got immunity to virtually every other major CC, however). I was just utterly blown away by how hard this thing hit, it felt plain unfair. Now I'm back to breezing through just about everything in the game 'til I go fight the Adra Dragon.

It's basic attack targets Fortitude? How do you defend against that? This thing's hitting (not critting) Eder for 120 damage. Edit: And just grazed my PC for over 300 damage. What?

That's about right. I have a very strong disdain for ranged weapons. I don't like guns whatsoever and I've had no luck getting a ranged attacker to do any damage with a bow (~15 damage a hit on low DR enemies is the best I've done, and Sagani's fox was hitting twice as hard as her; I dropped the ranger though because I didn't like babysitting her and a pet)

Some great ideas I'll have to try. I haven't used stealth much (I only have one character with it) but I'll give it a shot. 110 Deflection, though? I can't imagine how I'd get that much. With a superb shield I have that much on my tank, and with +9 deflection gear on my monk and Paladin (plus Faith and Conviction and the monk's toggleable +defense that I forget the name of) I have only 75 on them. I'm sure part of the problem I have is spell usage, but I can only cast the big +deflection spells so many times per rest. Finally, with a crit-based trigger on two of my paladin's items, and how monk/wounds work, I'm having difficulty in general finding a balance between taking enough damage to make use of these things and mitigating too much damage.

I don't think discussing tactics against a monster type you fight frequently without any relation to side or main quest is a spoiler.

Could anyone give me some advice on how to fight these? I've just entered, uh... the hotsprings area, and the sheer size of every group of lagufaeth is making it extremely difficult. I'm level 11, by the way. Paralysis is a non-issue; I died once, then cast Immunity ASAP and managed. The problem isn't CC but rather they seem to do a ton of damage to everyone in my party at once. I'll send Eder in first, my Paladin and Zahua second (both in full plate, both with 80-90 in all defenses) and I just can't kill them faster than they kill me. I'll see 160/200 endurance on my Paladin, unpause, and then she's just dead a second later. This is assuming I manage to get them to not target my casters right off the bat. If I'm successful, it's only because I was lucky enough for no one to die before Durance could cast several buffs, and Aloth some debuffs. What really gets me is they don't even seem to be landing crits. I've never seen my Paladin's Shod-In-Faith trigger, but they're hitting hard and fast through 26 DR.

I'm playing a Goldpact Paladin and have Stoic and Rational dispositions both rank 4, while neither Aggressive or Passionate have any ranks at all. As far as I can tell, this should give me 11 deflection and 22 other defenses (I'd have thought 13/26 but I remember hearing they cap at 3 ranks per disposition). Instead, I'm only receiving 8.8 and 17.6 deflection and other defenses respectively.

The trouble with fampyrs is there are about half a dozen of them all using charm near-instantaneously. A "hit them before the hit you" sort of strategy is extremely RNG dealing with them, as it relies heavily on a key character not getting charmed before they can land a spell or ability on the fampyrs. In my case, I cheesed the fight with line of sight and lucked out that none of them were successful in charming my tanks. By the time I brought my casters into view, the fampyr AI was spazzing out too hard to do anything. On the other hand, mushrooms never gave me much trouble. Just pull the small ones first. Once it's down to the big, confusion-inducing ones, it's just a process of patience really. They can even be knocked down (somehow). Definitely agree about engagement; it's based on something that only worked because it was used in a turn-based medium.

I guess there's supposed to be a video, but I don't see anything. Not sure if it's the forum or me. Edit: Nevermind, got it now. Dunno what was up. Edit 2: This is awesome, thanks for the video!

Hopefully I haven't missed something obvious to make this thread redundant. Basically, I don't feel like I have a great grasp of the way Engagement functions, mechanically, in the game. Things like what determines who you're Engaged with, how close a character has to be for Engagement to work. Essentially, beyond "when you target someone with a melee weapon, you're Engaging them", I'm not confident in my understanding of the system. Given that Engagement can be a pretty big deal in combat, I think it's important to have a full understanding of it. So for the sake of simplicity, here's a list of Engagement-related things that I'm iffy on: - Range. Do they have to be literally right next to you to become Engaged? My experience in D&D with Attacks of Opportunity (similar, but not identical, I suppose) is that an opponent running by a character, coming within their weapon's reach, will provoke an Attack of Opportunity. Does reach play into the rules of Engagement? - Are Disengagement Attacks limited per 'round'? Going back to D&D, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, a character can only perform one Attack of Opportunity in a round (I may be wrong, though, it's been awhile). Anyway, is this true of Disengagement, or could one character technically perform as many Disengagement Attacks as they have Engagement slots, assuming as many opponents were to provoke them? - What determines Engagement, who are you Engaging? I know the game provides red and green lines to display active Engagements, but what exactly determines which opponents you're Engaging? This question largely stems from situations where a character has multiple Engagement slots. If I have 3 slots, for example, and 3 opponents approach, are they all Engaged? Do I only Engage the 2nd and 3rd opponent if they stop to fight me? Am I witnessing secondary opponents walking by without provoking a Disengagement attack simply because they didn't quite come into range? - Does Recovery Time have an effect on determining Engagement? For example, if I have 1 Engagement slot but there are two opponents within melee range, obviously I can only be Engaging one of them at a time. If I tell my character to switch from one target to the other, does that second target immediately become Engaged, or are they not Engaged until my character's next action/attack after having changed target? - What abilities break Engagement? I don't mean CC, but self-induced breaking of Engagement. For example, when a Paladin uses Sworn Enemy, does that briefly end Engagement? If so, which abilities do this? I feel safe in assuming Interdiction and various spell-like abilities end Engagement, but what of offensive single target abilities, such as Sworn Enemy, which don't have a recovery time? - Exactly how does Engagement work regarding Flanking? I've read mixed answers on this. On the one hand, I've read that they are unrelated, on the other, the description I've seen for the Flanking debuff says something along the lines of "when a character is Engaged by more characters than they have Engagement slots." A definite answer on this would be appreciated. - Is there any way to know how many Engagement slots an opponent has? It seems that most things only have one slot, but there have definitely been times that I've provoked a Disengagement attack while running past a target Engaged with my tank (larger monsters, like ogres, come to mind). That's the gist of it, I suppose. Don't think I'm missing anything, but just diving into a thorough explanation of the mechanic instead would be just as welcome as answering individual questions.

Yeah, I was thinking more of reflex CC spells. Any sort of reflex spell that will debuff a target with something to make it either easier to hit, or easier to debuff further with fortitude or will spells (if such a thing even exists)

I just started the DLC for the first time (I was initially turned off because I thought Cragholdt was the start of it and after getting stomped there I thought for a long time the entire DLC was intended for a much higher level) and, noticing that one of the ogres (I think it was a boss of sorts; it's dead now) had both a high fortitude and will defense, I began to rifle through my spells for something to abuse the enemy's poor reflexes. It then occurred to me that I didn't have a single spell memorized in Aloth's grimoire that targets reflex, nor any Cipher spells which do so, at least of those I've learned. This got me wondering just what spells do target reflexes, so as to better round out my spell selection. Short of a list of spells which target reflex, could anyone suggest some spells to me that do so and are useful? Much like good old D&D, there are a few spells out there that sound fine on paper but turn out to be ineffective, so I really want to avoid trial and error when fixing up Aloth's spellbook.

Ah. So the mention of some speed-draining enchantment instead was a part of that bug?