grasida

In my approximately 5 minutes of testing I noticed that disengagement attacks are clunky. Sometimes they just don’t happen. Engagement doesn’t “take” immediately either and maybe sometimes the game tells you you’re engaged when you’re really not, since it seems enemies have to be standing still and attacking you in order to engage you. So this build can’t just run around everywhere and passively deal damage, unfortunately. It needs to pause and let enemies attack it, then run away. I noticed riposte triggering pretty reliably, though. I know someone posted a disengagement riposte build for Pallegina in this forum using whispers of the endless paths, maybe I’ll ask in there about they made that work. Tuotilo’s palm also has a riposte chance, comes with binding block and doesn’t penalize accuracy. But it also provides much less deflection. I’m not at home, so I can’t check the apex ward’s other enchantments to really compare. Edit: Of course, it also makes sense to use both. Tuotilo’s when you’re running around, casting or attacking, apex ward when you want to turtle or are under heavy fire from ranged enemies.

Here's an offbeat idea for a skald build: disengagement riposte harbinger. It's unlikely the harbinger can stack enough deflection on its own to get a significant number of ripostes while standing still amidst a group of foes, but it can certainly stack enough defense against disengagement attacks to be almost untouchable. With swift runner (+5), tumbling (+20), gipon prudensco (+25), magnificent escape cape (+20), boots of speed (+15) and the fox from the farmer did leap and run (-20 enemy accuracy), you could get a swing of 105 deflection vs accuracy on top of tuotilio's palm and the trickster's deflection buffs. So the idea is to escape into a group of enemies with engagement, cast empowered white winds while riposting whatever attacks you can, then once escape times out, run away and trigger disengagement attacks and subsequent ripostes to rebuild phrases. Binding block works beautifully with this build, since you get the accuracy with almost no penalty and you can use the sabre modal with nearly no penalty as well. This build looks like a great pair for arterial strike, too, since you're running around constantly trying to get enemies to follow you. Of course, there are issues. I've never really payed attention to which enemies have engagement and which don't. In fights where there aren't a bunch of enemies with engagement, you can't use your gimmick, but you still do have powerful trickster stuff to do along with the occasional invocation. And enemies aren't always going to cooperate and engage you, You only get 2 engagement slots yourself unless someone buffs you to have more and you don't have something like into the fray to suck them in. But you can push enemies engaging another party member away with thunder rolled on black seas, and you might even find a reason to take coordinated position (probably not). I don't know how the build would work out in practice, but I love the concept. Using movement to trigger ripostes with a scimitar has a really cool bagua zhang feel and a lot of the skald invocations have a wind/weather magic theme that fits well with an a character whose main tactics are to avoid and evade.

Has anyone tried toxic strike with cleansing flame? I might test how they interact later today.

So do ciphers. Try death of 1000 cuts with antipathetic field and mindblades. Both spells hit repeatedly in a short time, and each hit reapplies the full effect of death of 1000 cuts. Death of 1000 cuts + recall agony + antipathetic field alone will do hundreds of raw damage in seconds, then you can throw in a mind blades for a couple hundred more. Nothing can survive that for long. And ciphers get time parasite at level 8, which is also absurdly powerful, and lets an ascendant machine gun out top tier aoe or single target damage at lightning speed. Single class cipher has a harder time getting focus, but at high levels, once they do heaven help their enemies... Soul blades are unquestionably better as multiclasses, though. Soul annihilation multiplies your melee damage, so it works best with another class that already deals high damage. It's probably pretty competitive single class at certain levels, like from 9-13, when single class has borrowed instinct and multi doesnt, and from 16-19, when single class has time parasite, but before it gets death of 1000 cuts. But by level 19, soul annihilation just can't compete with deal of 1000 cuts, so you're strictly worse at single target damage than vanilla cipher or an ascendant with good focus gain.

But compared to a rogue, the afflictions a cipher can apply are either far stronger, or apply to a larger area. And that's not to mention that after one swing, a multiclass cipher can usually cast several spells in succession. A cipher can swing once and use eyestrike more often than a rogue could use blinding strike in an entire fight. Nobody questions that high tier intellect afflictions like charm and dominate are some of the most powerful effects in the game, and the cipher's access to them in untouchable by any other class. But even in delivering soft cc powers like blind and frightened, cipher still maintains a claim to the throne. However, it's really hard to assess how much those are doing for you without hundreds of hours of experience in the game (that I don't have). On paper, blind and frightened are extremely strong, but it's really hard to say exactly how much damage they're preventing, whereas it's very easy to answer that with hard CC. Who knows how much damage you've reduced by dazing your opponent? Sometimes it's a massive amount, sometimes it's almost none at all! This is a big issue with the generally weaker inspirations and afflictions in deadfire compared to the powerful buffs and debuffs in PoE 1, in which even soft CC was usually attached to massive defensive debuffs that enabled your hard CC. So I think it's easy to undervalue powers like eye strike, mind plague or secret horrors, because it's really hard to assess exactly how they're helping you. Another thing that pushes people to dislike cipher is that it's clearly a hybrid class. You deal good damage and your control spells prevent a lot of damage, but you can't do both at the same time. For people who value action efficiency above all else, that makes cipher uninteresting (or they just go ascendant). But for people who like versatility and enjoy choosing between two very different, but powerful options, that makes the class more fun. That's why I like the current state of soul annihilation. It forces a lot of choices. Do I want to drop my focus into melee damage now to kill something dangerous (the best status effect is dead, after all) or is it more important to protect the team through control effects. If I could cast spells with soul annihilation, I wouldn't need to make any choices. I do agree that ciphers could stand to get a good buff power at early levels. They have the best personal buffs in the game by a very large margin later on, but dealing weapon-based damage early can feel awkward. Psychovampiric shield and recall agony are great offensive powers against a single target, but they only work against single targets. Something that gives the cipher a little extra speed or damage early on would help a lot.

It turns out the accuracy bonus on lion's sprint applies for the duration of the ability instead of just for the next attack, as the description suggests. The duration is very short, but you attack so fast that it will still apply to a solid number of hits. It's also a nice mobility tool. That makes it hard to justify choosing anything other than barbarian. I'll probably just have to grit my teeth whenever I level up or enter the character sheet and see my class name. Regarding killers froze stiff for hit to crit conversion, a paralysis machine is probably the strongest use for a skald, since they're practically guaranteed to cast low level offensive invocations much faster than a troubador could, but it feels like a really boring way to play. I'd rather just skip the ability and focus on damage invocations instead, since one or the other are all better at different occasions, which means you have to make interesting choices in combat.

Wait, chanters suck? They’ve been nerfed repeatedly, but I’m under the impression most people still think they’re really strong and that troubador is one of the strongest classes in the game. Cipher is really good now. They have powerful wide area soft cc that weakens groups considerably, ascendants can easily rival or surpass other casters in damage output, soul blades deal excellent melee damage, they have the best single target hard cc in the game hands down and they have access to limited, but powerful support spells. Obviously a single cipher can’t do all of that, but you can specialize in a few domains, say, melee damage and soft control, and be really, really good at it. There are still a few dud powers that just don’t make sense at all, but the class as a whole is great. I agree that targeting fortitude is a real weakness of eye strike, but it’s still great for a level one spell. Blind is a powerful debuff, eyestrike is dirt cheap and it affects a wide area. At higher levels, it starts to last a long time, too. I cast it once after using secret horrors to lower fortitude and if it doesn’t work, that’s fine. Edit, son of edit: wouldn’t complain if it targeted will, though. I don’t think that would be too powerful compared to the access other classes have to blind at level 1, like chill fog and sun ray. I have no idea what the use case of fractured volition is, it seems really weak.

I like the build, but I want to point out one thing: soul annihilation doesn’t work better with two handers than it does with dual wield. In fact, the opposite is true. Even though it’s “only” a primary attack, you’ll still use soul annihilation significantly more quickly on a dual wielding character. And that actually improves your damage output more overall, since soul annihilation has a non-trivial amount of base damage (10 base damage, equal to 20 focus), so swinging faster applies the base damage more frequently. Also, single weapon style suits soul annihilation well, unless you’re so accurate that you never miss, since it loses comparably more from missing than normal attacks. That hardly means that the AoE two handers are a bad idea, though, just that two handers in general aren’t the best natural fit for soul annihilation. Edit: I did some testing, and I wonder if a really strong weapon configuration for soul annihilation is sun and moon with tuotilo's palm. Sun and moon hits twice, so the first hit deals the damage for soul annihilation, then the next hit builds focus to use it again. Since SA is a primary attack, you'll never swing with the shield if every hit is soul annihilation, so you enjoy the full damage benefit of dual wielding and get the defense from the shield. And flails are fast weapons, so you'll benefit from SA's flat damage even more. That goes in a totally different direction from this psyblade, though, seeking to get a huge number of fast soul annihilations rather than using class powers to build up a ton of focus, then drop bombs on someone to proc mob stance. I imagine both styles work well, which shows how cool and flexible soul blade is. Sun and moon probably is best with a transcendent, though, since it's cheesy in conjunction with swift flurry and heartbeat drumming.

Stalker’s patience works very well with the monk crit abilities, since it can be enchanted with a 20% chance to recover immediately on crit. That can proc itself and can proc off of or from swift flurry and heartbeat drumming. The 1/3, 1/4 and 1/5 attack to immediately attack again whenever you crit feed off of each other and lead to some really fearsome crit chains. However, I’m not sure it’s better than fists. The flanking enchantment puts it over the edge for monks paired with classes that don’t have high damage boosts, but trickster does, so the higher base damage and faster attack speed of fists pushes ahead. The wounding enchantment on stalker’s patience doesn’t stack with itself, so it only adds a pretty small amount of damage. There are very few weapons that work better than fists for a monk. But if you want to use tuotilo’s palm on a shadowdancer and don’t like the aesthetics of fists + shield or don’t like unarmed much at all, the clear choice is scordeo’s edge. The stacked accuracy bonus it can get pushes your damage through the roof once you have both swift flurry and heartbeat drumming even without considering blade cascade. However, it’s not available until the end of the game.

I agree that shattered pillar looks pretty bad in general. Nalpazca with dance of death can generate 3 wounds per 6 seconds without getting hit, which, depending on your weapon, means a torment’s reach every 2 to 3 attacks. That’s pretty much the same as a shattered pillar. But a shattered pillar can also use dance of death.And if you go for a crit build, extra attacks from heartbeat drumming and swift flurry also build wounds. So a shattered pillar with a really high crit rate would handily beat a nalpazca (that’s not taking hits) in number of wound abilities used. But, nalpazcas can build up to 10 wounds, and use wound powers frequently while enjoying the impressive boosts from duality of mortal presence. And not taking any damage at all is the exception, rather than the rule. I’ve never had trouble playing monks as flankers that take the occasional hit. Then they’re never in much danger of dying, but always have a ready supply of wounds. So while shattered pillar might have a very narrow niche, that niche is truly very, very narrow.

I’d love a more combat focused game. The exposition and exploration is mostly a chore for me after the first time through and I hate doing fetch quests almost as much as I hate skipping them. But I adore the character building and combat system. I think that would be more appropriate as another game, though. I doubt it could be done in a satisfying way as an alternate game mode tacked on to deadfire, though I’d be delighted to be proven wrong.

I don’t like that it’s attached to flanked at all, rather than a passive that scales with number of threats and health lost. Not only does the attachment to flanked mean you can activate it at will with a blunderbuss, it also makes equipment with immunity to flanked break your build. These kind of situations where specific pieces of equipment are arbitrarily superior or worthless because of extremely specific mechanics feel like really clumsy design.

Thanks, I was already leaning heavily towards fighter, but I suppose this pushes me even further. I feel like fighter has more stuff to do or manage than barbarian, like using mule kick, clear out, managing positioning for mob stance, maybe using the occasional penetrating strike, etc. Strictly in terms of crit generation, ranger should win out, right? Berserker frenzy gives 30% hit to crit and barbaric blow gives another 30%. If you’re using fair favor and the bone setter’s torc, you get totally around 60% hit-to-crit (.7*.7*.9*.9). That influences about 30% of hit rolls total if you’re at least at 50% hit rate. But you’re probably only using barbaric blow to kill enemies, so actually it’s 21-22% of attack rolls most of the time. Rangers, on the other hand, get 20 accuracy all the time, better than what berserkers get from frenzy, eventually get another 10 against targets under 50% hp (meaning it’s relevant more often than barbaric blow, since you’re presumably mostly using that for killing blows), then get another 20 from accurate wounding shot. So, if you’re getting all your bonuses, which you can quite frequently, you’re improving your crit rate by 50% compared to the berserk’s maximum of 30%. Of course, berserkers also get a big speed boost and eventually get blood thirst, which speeds them up even more, so maybe they do come out on top.

This game probably gives me the worst restartitis of any game I’ve ever played, and I probably enjoy planning out builds and messing around testing things in the console than I do actually playing the game. My current idea is to build a skald around sasha’s singing scimitar. I know troubador is probably a better match for the scimitar and that a skald will likely be far better off with sun and moon or an AoE melee weapon, but I like the flavor of a skald with the scimitar and want to build around it. I have basically two criteria for the builds. First, the builds should feel fairly reactive and fun to play with varied options and lots of stuff to do in combat. Second, it doesn’t need to be the most powerful possible build, but it needs to not feel completely worse than other options. The scimitar may generate phrases at less than half the rate of better choices, but it at least has some particular advantages (the shocking lash applies to invocations, and it refreshes phrase count after empower), so it may not be best, but it still offers something other weapons can’t offer. I’d like my build to not feel like some other equipment and class choices would do the exact same thing, but better. I want to either use the scimitar by itself, with tuotilio’s palm or paired with grave calling for a stacking lash that applies to my damage invocations. Here are my choices in rough order of interest. Skald/Devoted: Pros: Less dependency on full attacks means I don’t feel as punished by avoiding two sabers, which is a little silly looking for my tastes. Clear out should have great potential for generating phrases. It gets good, reliable hit to crit and accuracy and should have excellent attack speed with mob stance and armored grace. Durable and reliable. Cons: Less versatility than other options, mob stance wants you to be surrounded, but clear out and black thunder, some of your best skills, push enemies away. Into the fray is too expensive to be a reliable way to suck enemies back in. Damage output might not be amazing. Skald/Kind Wayfarer: Pros: Flames of Devotion. 20 Accuracy, cheap full attack should lead to lots of high damage crits that also heal the party and add even more lash damage to my spells. Lay on hands is awesome and really adds versatility. It’s exactly the kind of reactive skill I want on my character. Cons: Heavily favors two sabers, which is silly looking. Less sustained crit output and thus phrase generation compared to other builds. Therefore, I’ll feel more stupid for not choosing a troubador. Skald/Trickster: Pros: Riposte. Generate phrases passively while casting invocations. High damage per hit. Can use a buckler to great effect and is a great build for binding block, since it has no on class accuracy buffs, attacks passively with less need for attack speed with riposte, and binding block doesn’t slow down recovery of invocations. Has great utility with trickster spells. Cons: Chanter offers no deflection buffs that stack with trickster, so I’m not sure it can manage enough deflection to make riposte do good work. Skald/Ghost Heart: Pros: 20-30 passive accuracy against a single target with a 20 accuracy full attack means the highest crit rate of any combo. Cons: Otherwise pretty bland. Favors two sabers. I’d like to play a ranger at some point, but hopefully after the companion gets buffed. Skald/Berserker: Pros: Great crit rate and attack speed. Carnage. Cons: Not much to do or manage on the barbarian side. Favors two sabers. Definitely less crits than the ranger and possibly less crits overall than a fighter. I hate the name “howler”. Skald/Soul Blade: Pros: Great for a saber and buckler build with soul annihilation. Cipher can boost accuracy very high, has a better single target paralyze than chanter and a powerful option to break down deflection with psychovampiric shield. Cons: Poor action economy synergy. Casting cipher spells doesn’t generate crits and casting chanter invocations doesn’t generate focus. Each class’ powers cuts into the other classes resource generation. Skald/Helwalker: Pros: Stat boosts contribute hugely to effectiveness of chanter powers. Swift flurry generates more hits, which generates more crits. Turning wheel adds even more lash damage to spells. Cons: I’ve played a ton of monks already. I’ll feel even more stupid for not using fists or sun and moon. Helwalker would be extremely frail. No reliable accuracy or hit to crit bonus on either class. I know there are other options. Wizard might work, for example. And I know this is a really long post. But does anyone have any thoughts on which class would be the most interesting to play and still feel effective? Which weapon configuration would you recommend for your choice?

I agree some higher level abilities are too weak compared to lower level ones, and I agree that accuracy and penetration feel like they have an awkward progression through the game, but I’m not sure I agree higher level powers should all do more damage and apply stronger afflictions than lower level ones. A problem with the affliction and inspiration system, in my opinion, is that it can feel “mushy” compared to buffs and debuffs in PoE. It’s hard to gauge exactly how much damage I’m preventing when I daze or disorient my opponent. Hard CC or CC that provides powerful losses in accuracy or defense is much clearer. If low level characters can only hobble their enemies, then high level characters can paralyze them, that creates two problems: first, low level powers feel too low impact, so people will think they’re not valuable; two, high level powers will have much more obvious (and powerful) effects, so people will always use them. Then the effective number of choices you have in combat would be much smaller. At present, just about every rogue attack except maybe sap has a clear use in combat, even if some are stronger and some are weaker. Gouging strike, for example, may have accuracy instead of penetration, but it applies a raw DoT that will eventually kill anything regardless of its armor. So crippling strike might be the ability that you use the most, but spending two guile on gouging strike against a very tough enemy will be worth more than two crippling strikes a decent enough amount of the time to pick the ability. Top tier damage abilities like gambit, clean sweep, heart of fury, etc. blow the low level powers out of the water in both damage and efficiency, though usually through AoE, so low level powers still have a niche against single targets when you get them. At the end of the day, I’m still not sure which low level powers precisely are obviating which high level powers, and in cases where they are, I think it’s because the high level powers just plain suck or are seriously over priced. But at the same time, just because you can still find a use for, say, withering strike as well as crippling strike, doesn’t mean crippling strike isn’t still significantly better. It’s far easier to justify skipping withering strike than crippling strike, and depending on how big the disparity is, that might still be a problem.

I don’t want to completely disagree, but I do want to provide an alternate viewpoint. In terms of relative balance between weapon attack skills, how often does power level scaling influence your decision of which skills to pick? I think the answer is “not very often”. Most of the trees are designed so that low level attack skills are work-horse damage dealing attacks why higher level skills are focused on burst damage, aoe or utility. Let’s look at the 7 classes with weapon attacks: Barbarian: They get barbaric blow and heart of fury, and heart of fury will clearly be better than barbaric blow against a large group of enemies. PL scaling on barbaric blow would hardly dissuade someone from choosing HoF and will almost never influence which ability they choose to use. Fighter: They get knock down, penetrating strike, clear out and power strike. If you’re dual wielding, you’ll still prefer penetrating strike over mule kick, and clear out will always outdamage mule kick (it hits the primary target twice) and will be much more efficient against two or more enemies. Power strike looks really bad, but a number of fighter powers have inflated resource costs. If it were cheaper, it would also be competitive with mule kick since it does something very different. Monk: This is a complicated one. They get force of anguish, stunning blow, torment’s reach, skyward kick and whispers of the wind. The only problematic ability here is skyward kick. If you have whispers of the wind, you’ll always prefer it against more than one enemy. If you’ve built around stunning surge, you’ll also almost always prefer that. Torment’s reach is AoE damage and disable, so it will always have a use. It’s possible stunning blow, force of anguish and torment’s reach could outdamage, or compete with skyward kick, but they all also have issues. Stunning blow isn’t renewable and requires a specific build to be efficient. Force of anguish knocks your target away, so also requires four skill points invested (two for efficient anguish, two in the long pain line) to compete with skyward kick, which only requires one. Torment’s reach doesn’t disable the primary target and skyward kick does. So even though it’s relatively weak, it still has a nich in spite of less benefit from PL scaling. Paladin: They only get flames of devotion and it’s clearly intended to be one of the most powerful weapon attacks in the game. Ranger: They get wounding shot, concussive shot, twinned shots and whirling strikes. Concusive shot will always have a niche. Whirling strikes will always be better against a large group than wounding shot. Twinned shots will always be better than wounding shot if you’re not dual wielding. Regardless of the high PL scaling on wounding shot, each of the powers has a strong role. Rogue: They get crippling strike, blinding strike, ring the bell, finishing blow, withering strike, sap, gambit and vanishing strike. That’s a lot! And I have to admit, I haven’t played enough with a rogue to write with much authority. But past crippling strike, all the other skills offer powerful utility (confounding blind, perishing strike, eliminating blow), dots (gouging strike, toxic strike, ring the bell), or burst damage (finishing blow, gambit, vanishing strike). Only sap looks bad, and while it’s certainly influenced by PL scaling, mostly that’s because sap is just bad. Soul Blade: Soul annihilation is the core gimmick of the class and you’re clearly meant to build around it. If it didn’t scale very well, it would be a problem. Single class soul blade already becomes pointless once you get death of 1000 cuts, since that, with antipathetic field and mind blades will far outstrip any amount of damage you could possibly manage with soul annihilation. I can only think of a few cases at most where power level scaling would strongly influence ability choice, and mostly that’s because some of the high level weapon skills are too weak anyway, and don’t fill a clearly defined role.

There is nothing inherent about spending more time at the level cap that benefits multiclasses. All you’re saying is that you think multiclasses have more to gain from high levels than single classes. That might reasonable for some multiclass combos, but certainly not for all characters. Wizards, priests and druids get their level 9 spells very late as well, and those are often considered to be top-tier. Similarly, martial classes get build making abilities at power levels 8 and 9 as well (twinned shots, heart of fury, gambit), so spending more time at the level cap also lets those play with their strongest tools for longer. And mostly the best multiclass characters get all the stuff that makes them so powerful very early — that’s a core part of the strength of multiclassing! However you cut it, there’s no way adding content without increasing the level cap is a “nerf to single class characters” any more than it’s a buff to single class casters.

Lord Darryn’s voulge soulbound pollaxe is a possibility. Cipher has the accuracy to crit with it regularly and proc static charge, while it buffs the druid’s storm spells. Static charge used to build focus, but it probably doesn’t anymore in 1.2.

Toxic strikes costs 3 guile, so I figure you’ll typically only use it on a single priority target per fight so you still have guile to keep up your defenses and disable enemies. If that’s the case, I’d still find enervating blows useful. I’m honestly not sure how important the con afflictions are against average targets, rather than big damage sponges, though.

I would question the following choices, though I would also defer to more experienced players if they have good reasons to say they're useful: 1. Backstab -- This plus shadowing beyond is a lot of guile spent for a minor bonus in the greater scheme of things. As a trickster, you already have plenty of use for guile. Even for a normal rogue, some extra uses of crippling strike is probably better. 2. Blade Turning -- Between tuotilo's palm, llengrath's displaced image, mirrored images and ryngrim's repulsive visage, you probably have all the defense you need. This has a nice synergy for nalpazca, but I'm not sure it's necessary on your build. 3. Shadowing Beyond - See backstab. Also, the deflection bonus ends when you leave invisibility, so it doesn't seem worth it as a defensive tool. 4. Rooting Pain -- I guess this isn't bad. You do generate wounds fairly frequently. I'm not sure it's worth it, though. 5. Uncanny Luck -- The effective amount this will increase your crit rate is very low. And I'm not sure the defensive benefits are worth it, either. Instead of those, especially instead of backstab and shadowing beyond, I'd take toxic strike (very powerful with duality of mortal presence) and maybe one other dot on the rogue. Efficient anguish or raised torment might be a good investment also. Sustainable primary attacks are good for this build, since they benefit from the speed of dual wielding, but avoid attacking with the shield. At very high level, with implements of pain, you should be able to spam efficient anguish nearly non stop. That's a big boost to damage and defense. Not only are you keeping everything away from you and interrupting them, you're avoiding using your shield and force of anguish benefits from the hidden power level multiplier weapon attacks get.

Wild and unpredictable effects sounds like random on-hit effects, so probably ranger for driving flight. Nobody else can hit multiple targets per shot with a ranged attack at this point, can they?

I should have said weapon character, rather than ranged character, all weapons, melee or ranged, have accuracy bonuses from enchantment and many weapon skills get bonus accuracy, but spells typically don't benefit from either. There are ranged weapons with special on-crit effects that would be good with a high perception character, though. For a melee character, you could try a fighter/monk. Devoted/monk gains a lot from perception, between the devoted's high crit damage and the monks on-crit powers. It's also a very straightforward melee character that probably makes the best use of powerful on-hit or on-crit weapons of any build in the game.

Any build that wants to hit enemies benefits from perception. Of course, once you have enough accuracy that you always hit the enemy anyway, further accuracy is of little use. For casters, though, that's far from trivial. If you're not playing on PotD, melee characters probably don't need perception so much, if you always make sure to break down defenses and build up accuracy against what you're attacking. In terms of melee builds, monks can build for critical hits, which adds a lot of value to each point of perception. On the other end, soul blades lose more damage from misses than other melee characters. Debuff and control focuses characters, like ciphers, also benefit a lot from accuracy. So a transcendent (monk / soul blade) cares a whole lot about accuracy. But, it's not a low-micro build. I suppose you could mostly ignore your cipher powers other than soul annihilation and play as a standard melee character, but that's not using the class to its fullest.

Is there a reason you picked those? It's hard to give specific advice without a clear sense of what you're trying to do. Of them, liberator looks good to me, but here's my full analysis. Animist beguiler could be okay, as a mixed support and cc specialist, since you could lay down wide AoE druid spells to trigger beguiler bonuses. Druid wouldn't be my first choice to pair with beguiler, but it could work. Liberator looks nice as a tough, front line all around character. It should be an amazing healer that can summon, then buff and heal it's summons while tanking well on the front line. Seems like a good candidate for the lance of the midwood stag. Spiritualist looks awkward with soul blade, but there might be some synergy. Cipher spells can grant great accuracy and they can break down resolve, stun or paralyze single targets quickly and cheaply for a boost to phrase generation. But there's a serious action economy conflict with this combo. Between skald invocations and the cipher buffs and debuffs that boost your crit rate, when will you have a chance to attack to build phrases for skald or use soul annihilation? You could probably cycle your actions, like attack to build focus, drop cipher spells, attack to build phrases to max, blast out low level skald invocations until you're out of phrases and repeat, but if you're dead set on spiritualist, something like troubador/beguiler might be better. Evoker/ascendant has no synergy that I can see at all. Evoker spells won't build focus for ascendant. Evokers have access to most of the wizard melee toolkit but that's mostly focused on defense. Ascendants want to pair with a class that lets them reach max focus lightning fast, then blast out cipher spells. Cipher adds a little to wizards, but evoker gives almost nothing at all to ascendant.

Paladin multiclass looks good. Paladins are really tough to take down and both kind wayfarers and darcozzi paladini could be "neutral good". I think people don't take a favorable view of darcozzi paladini's special power, so kind wayfarer is probably more optimal, if you care. It's hard to imagine a "good" bleak walker, though you could have one that isn't strictly evil, either. Shieldbearers and goldpact knights are explicitly "lawful" and I can't imagine goldpact knights could really manage to be good. From there, it's more about what you want to do. Paladin fighter will be almost unkillable, can heal and can do good melee damage. Paladin/rogue will be a little more frail (still quite tough!) and deal fantastic damage. Actually, paladin adds great defense, utility and a cheap, powerful melee attack to any class, but other combinations might have more complicated play styles. Paladin/chanter (troubador) is the ultimate jack of all trades. Except it's not master of none here, it does everything and is amazing at everything it does. But it might have more buttons to press than a simple "you point, I punch" melee character.