thelee

i would kindly disagree. i tend to either max out RES (19-20, depending on race, though generally i pick a race that lets me get to 20 if i'm going this path) or pretty much ignore it--taking a few points out of it--and only rarely do something in between when it comes to making my own character/hirelings. for a modest survivability boost i think putting a few points into CON has better overall utility than RES. this may also be a matter of difficulty, since on PotD you start off essentially at -15 defenses (enemies have an accuracy bonus) so you really need to grab every single point to make it worthwhile at all. the only exception I can find is where you know you will be using shields, but even then starting off with 20 res will make your defenses ginormous.

underlining something boeroer said, in addition to might increasing damage/healing it also increases the self-damage from the bloodmage's blood sacrifice. it's actually working against your higher con. there is a total cap of 35, but at character creation the cap is typically 18, with a few cases (based on racial bonuses and backgrounds) where you can go up to 19, 20, and for an orlan from the white that wends, 21 perception. (edit: this latter point has made hearth orlan supplant wood elf as my preferred race in recent plays) edit: in practice it's fairly uncommon to get to 35 without explicitly gunning for it. might is probably easiest using a helwalker. intellect/constitution probably next easiest by virtue of using any monk (duality of mortal presence)

sorry, i forgot that you were picking bloodmage, which makes CON more important. (thanks Haplok) RES is a weird stat because it's mostly not great. BUT, if we're talking tanks, RES becomes absolutist-ly important for the same reason that RES is not recommended most of the time: it's increasing returns. This means that when you're behind the defense curve, it doesn't do too much to dig you out of the hole you're in. However, if you are ahead or getting further ahead of the defense curve, each additional point of deflection (provided by RES) becomes even more important than the previous. [In an extreme case, the difference between one point of resolve is literally infinite survivability] A wizard tank has lots of ways to boost deflection to skyhigh levels (arcane veil, wizard's double, also plus shield if needed) which makes the case for RES to be much more important. Plus, the biggest liability for a wizard tank is Arcane Dampener from enemies and having a sky-high will defense will protect you from that, which you'll get with a max INT and a max RES (plus the bull's will passive).

You get Infuse with Vital Essence at tier two, and it lasts a long time and I believe is a free action. For that reason, you might rather do INT (max) > RES > CON = DEX (resolve has increasing returns from a defensive standpoint). I would still pick up Tough later on.

imo poe2 is much harder than poe1. it used to be much easier, but one of the patches a long time ago significanlty amped up PotD and then later Veteran difficulty. Some of the difficulty is a function of the new armor mechanics - high defenses and high armor are much more punishing to fight against in poe2 than in poe2; with scaling it's also much harder on potd (and a bit on veteran) to mitigate incoming damage. Some of it is just smarter AI/fights (early on, enemy rogue-types with finishing blows or blinding attacks are my bane). Some of it is just enemy fights being incredibly overleveled for the typical party compared to poe1 (early-mid game not uncommon to fight multi-skulled enemies, and casters flinging spells around way above what you yourself are capable of). that being said i feel like the difficulty curve is less smooth than poe1. poe2 PotD (and veteran to a lesser extant) frontloads a lot of difficulty on the first island, and once you open up the map and pick and choose your path the difficulty curve drops down quite a bit (and then goes up again in the DLC, which are similarly linear to the beginning of hte game). i worry that you might end up finding this underwhelming in mid-late game. enemies have more health than in poe1, so while assassinate + fod might be useful early on, it won't make as much of a dent later on. You also need to use a big two-handed weapon since if you dual-wield guns, you'll only get bonus on the first shot. And to get the backstab bonus you need to be extremely close to the bad guy (basically melee range). armored grace is good so long as you are not stacking it with an armor-penalty-reduction pet on light armor. the speed up you get from dual wield and miscreant's leathers affects a separate parameter - armored grace merely reduces the penalty you get from armor, whereas the others will actually speed up your recovery regardless of how much armor penalty you have.

a big, big, big caveat is that on its own the sporelings won't have any engagement. it will be a rather common problem is that some enemies will wisely just move away from the sporelings to your squishier folks. with two, in hallways, you can block off baddies, but in open fights the lack of engagement can be problematic if you're leaning on sporelings to soak up damage for you. chanters have the benefit that they can get a chant to grant engagement to everyone, including summons. i will add that in the "Aggro" sense, engagement basically functions like a "taunt." once an enemy is engaged by someone, they pretty much stop in their tracks and attack whomever is engaging them. having lots of engagement can be useful in this regard, though there are steeply diminishing returns since past a certain point you can't squeeze any more enemies around you. some enemy AI will purposefully disengage and eat the disengagement attack if a juicier target shows up. Many rogues (and rogue-types) and--oddly--fampyrs tend to this.

(the fandom wiki) I noticed today that some weapons had disappeared off the unique weapons list (an arbalest, an arquebus, and a crossbow): https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_unique_weapons_(Deadfire) Try as I might, I cannot figure out why they aren't showing up; that page uses some sort of template, and there's nothing special taht I can tell about e.g. Spearcaster that would cause it to disappear off the list but would cause Mechanical Marvel to re-appear.

Clear Out for sure. Boeroer even made an easy to understand graphic.

i don't use it too much but whenever i've used it's been pretty effective. as a caster weapon it works better than most other caster weapons since it operates best when you mix it in with casting due to the DoT nature of it. i don't know much of the details of how it works to best optimize it though, i've been meaning to take a look at it in more detail (e.g. actual damage done, PEN, etc.)

nifty i never knew this. does it work with beetle shell? that would actually be great to take advantage of the AI targeting, a fully-effective totem that absorbs hundreds of damage from silly enemies.

yep. druid already has arguably the strongest petrify effect, and then you get an absolutely stupid amount of accuracy that even against megabosses you'll have a near-100% success rate. you generally need to pair with a cipher or wizard to debuff enemy resolve though I mean, it's definitely that, but the itinerant build also took advantage of predator's sense + berath dots (rot skulls and touch of rot and shining beacon) and also an underappreciated synergy between stalker's link and champion's boon (+3 engagement = lots of +10 accuracy bonuses from your pet; also works with cipher)

I actually recently tried a beastmaster (shifter + stalker) and it kind of wrecked house. Enough that I got bored and switched to a Sorcerer (ancient + enchanter). (If I had kept with it, it probably would've been a tailor-made build for wrecking megabosses since beastmaster + druid = incredible petrify effects) Maybe I should write it up. There's obvious Boar DoT + ranger synergy, but ranger + caster is probably just a really underappreciated combination (I also really enjoyed a itinerant=berath+ghost heart class). Ranger/caster really shine on PotD where ranger's insane accuracy can really help a caster pull out of the -15 deficit effective accuracy you start with at that difficulty. edit - shifter boar form, unfixed by whatever balance mod, is probably just too good on its own, and it merely is exacerbated by a martial multiclass like ranger. helwalker or rogue would also be stupid good.

Trickster/Shifter. You counterbalance the shifter's drawback (since all of the trickster spells can be used while spiritshifted) and in boar form you will do a ton of raw DoT thanks to sneak attack (and eventually deathblows) plus your wild lash.

something you have to be concerned about is many undead are immune to pierce and most guns only do pierce damage. I mentioned Red Hand because it's an arquebus that has the special enchant that it can auto-kill vessels on the second consecutive hit, even if you don't do any damage. (If you aren't aware, Red Hand can fire twice before reloading, so in fights with lots of undead, a fast party member with Red Hand will be VIP)

just going to add for your consideration a priest. It's hard to say "undead slaying" without talking about priest, because Holy Radiance is a really useful nuke to have that simultaneously heals everyone but also harms all vessels (can outright one-hit KO the weak skeleton ones). also possibly a ranger, if you want to stick with being part wizard as a caster. you can pick up the hunter's claw and focus on training it up just against vessels, while also equipping the red hand (which can be ugpraded to auto-kill vessels on a second hit). you'd basically be the person to call if anyone in the deadfire is having undead problems.

if you're focusing on the martial angle and primarily using wizard as a fast-cast buffer, i think that's fine. but you talk about ranged weapons, and you'd be missing out on some of the barbarian's big strengths by doing so. there's a major action economy constraint on trying to martial and cast at the same time, so i wouldn't expect to fling fireballs around as well as smashing, but using the blood mage to cast stuff like mirror image, arcane veil, ironskin, infuse with vital essence and only occasionally casting slow spells (something like ryngrim's repulsive visage) would be a lot better. if you want to summon weapons, all the wizard summoned staffs and pikes are decent for carnage-ing, though the ultimate synergy is probably willbreaker morningstar (morningstar can debuff enemy fort, barbarian has a passive that lets you target fort if it's lower, and willbreaker will also lower enemy will so you can land stuff like wizard illusions better). edit: maybe thematically you should look at essential phantom spells for wizard - you create a spirit duplicate of yourself (with all your gear). not sure if that fits with an undead slaying theme, but sort of fits in with a general furyshaping theme.

it's the price you pay to get good heals - you have to manage your character's positioning. In RTwP it's just a skill to learn. It might be harder to do it in turn-based where everyone has to wait for their opportunity to move -in such a situation I would try tomake sure my lifegiver goes last in initiative round so everyone has a chance to move close together after an action. as a ranged caster you have to get used to anticipating when you need to heal and running in and casting it and then running back out- Nature's Balm casts very quickly so it's not bad. But you also have Moon's Light (no self-aoe) and Moonwell (large radius, at range). Nature's Balm pretty much just trades off "no range" so that you get "super good heal + fast cast." Pollen Patch (tier 9) has a much larger radius, it's not like Nature's Balm. Even without high intellect you'll probably get everyone in your party without much effort. Only in sprawling fights will positioning be more of an issue. just looking at tier 2 moon's light, you can heal more total health than any other healer in the game for one ability. HoTs scale generously with both might (increase healing per tick) and intellect (total healing altogether). Lifegiver also gets huge +PL, which benefits both per-tick heal and total healing duration. You can layer on different HoTs. Between Moon's Light, Nature's Balm, Moonwell, and lifegiver bonus PL your party is pretty much indestructible the entire duration - with moderate strength and PL scaling you can tick for like 40 health gained every few seconds (and with decent intellect this effective immortality lasts a loooong time). Your main weakness is Arcane Dampener, which suppresses HoTs. But you have so many HoTs that you can just use different-named ones to gain more healing. All the while, you don't lose much offense because you actually get all those good heals for free, so you aren't pigeon-holed into being a dedicated healer, whereas even an Eothas priest has to pick up a bunch of heals manually (and is still less overall effective at it). edit - nature's balm in particular is very good because it also gives you +2 armor, which can mean even more healing by virtue of pushing enemies into severe underpenetration. very useful on upscaling veteran/potd where difficulty scaling means armor is an arms race against the enemy that is hard to win until the late game. yeah, high intellect can help a lot. I generally have 25 intellect on my current druid (19 from character reaction, +1 from item, plus buff with intellect inspiration) and that gives me enough aoe to hit anyone I need to in a typical fight with Nature's Balm.

yeah, that tracks. My original post I mentioned that even if I find Durance and GM eye-rollingly overwrought to re-read through they still remain very interesting characters overall (in spite of the writing, GM is my favorite PoE character). I'll also make a controversial point and say that Hiravias is woefully underappreciated. Probably because he comes so late and it's actually easy to miss him.

already discussed at length already, but just wanted to personally add that I thought PoE1 was overwrought at times (Deadfire is still pretty flowery), and I think it has a lot to do with Chris Avellone's contribution, whom some people really like to stan here. I really enjoyed Grieving Mother and Durance's arc (and as characters I still think they're great), but after the first time it was just an immense amount of overwrought prose to dig through just to finish their companion quests. Well, this is promising since I really disliked the encounter design in Kingmaker. But I'm still skeptical because I find that Pathfinder 1e is not a very great system as a computer game (I have higher hopes for Pathfinder 2e, but I don't know when that'll ever get adapted into a CRPG). At this point it's such an oooold system that it's kind of amazing that they're sticking with it for another game (I mean, I get it, they put a lot of time into their engine so they want to recoup those costs).

i'm not quite following some of the numbers - what level are you at this point? it is possible you're seeing mostly the effects of ? combusting wounds stacks very generously in your favor, triggering damage everytime a new stack is applied. With a lot of aoe damage effects you could cause some degenerate numbers (and the druid has pulsing effects that would easily stack a lot of combusing wounds) you don't have xoti or someone in your party, do you?

What you're seeing is an artifact of how the abilities are implemented (mostly) and it's being manifested in a confusing way because those tooltips are auto-generated. All chants have a "default" duration of 10s, but that duration is irrelevant; it gets overridden by the chant/linger mechanics, and you instead get the duration that you're supposed to get equal to chant + linger (with more or less, if you are troubadour with brisk recitation off/on). I say mostly because there's an error in your favor with the skeleton summoning chant - the summoned skeletons have the same default 10s duration, but there the chant/linger mechanics do not override the duration, so you can get very long-lived skeletons with high intellect and with a trouabdour you can enable brisk recitation with no downside - you just double the skeletons you generate.

if you're unsure, just leave it at 10 for your ability choices - the options for a druid do kind of get a bit narrow at tiers 7 and up especially in a subclass like fury or lifegiver that loses a type of spell. elemental buff would be fine. at tier 8 your only decent option is avenging storm; with a blunderbuss you could probably make it work even with mediocre PEN/accuracy. at tier 9 i would consider picking up one of the spells at least; tornado, greater maelstrom, and touch of death are all great spells to have in your pocket (in turn-based maybe tornado less so). i would pick up "embrace the earth talon" - it can petrify for a real long time, and rather uniquely for a druid with enough intellect and PL scaling you can petrify for more than one turn, which is huge. on turn based i would say that that's more important than plague of insects or wall of thorns. i suspect your tier 3 is over-subscribed with spells. Nature's Balm (you get for free) is a very good/defense spell, and you will want to use it a lot. I would at least drop the anti-poison effect. rapid casting is probably not as useful on turn-based. i would pick up great soul and more empower passives - i think it's honestly one of the best parts of single-classing, getting very powerful empower effects (whereas multiclasses don't have enough points to do the same without sacrificing a lot). accurate empower is best, but you should have enough to get all of them. a late-game empowered greater maelstrom will wipe out most normal fights. an empowered embrace the earth talon might even get you to *3* turns of petrify. an empowered venombloom will wreak havoc turn after turn. honestly, picking up all that empower stuff will single-handedly solve any struggles you might have picking adequate offensive options as a lifegiver. for turn-based maybe a better spiritshift form would be bear or boar. boar would give you a self-heal, while bear has extra armor. either of those would be useful for a support caster in the middle of an emergency. (bear can also frighten enemies)

still patches left ,but it's pretty understandable that the incentives for completion are significantly reduced without a plaque spot.

sorry i don't have much experience with turn-based. i think the general consensus is that dex is not very important, and for most casters it might be optimal to tank it (so that you go after everyone else and don't face any risk of interrupt)

they both accomplish the same core effect - healing over time. moonlight, being a higher tier, is generally more powerful across the board (including in terms of total healing done). that being said, some considerations: maybe you have some other important spells at tier two or tier four. if that's the case, you would want to use the heal in the other tier, so that you reserve your casts for those other important spells if you can. moonwell's defense bonus is nice (being an +all defense bonus, it stacks with specific defense bonuses like illusion magic) and the heal overall has a larger area of effect moonwell heal-over-time counts as a water effect and so will provide you protection from a fire effect, or cancel an ongoing fire effect sometimes this is what you want, but sometimes this is not what you want (you'd rather have the healing) at which point moon's light is a better choice the protection from fire is absolute - it guarantees you one "counterspell" from any fire-keyworded ability. For example, Dorudugan is a megaboss that has a special fire attack that can do literally hundreds of damage. If all else fails, you can cast Moonwell on everyone and survive one blast. at the same time, if you're hit with an extremely minor fire effect (like a tick from Wall of Fire or a Combusting Wounds debuff) moonwell will absolutely be a loser spell because you'll take like 3 damage and then that'll cancel the many tens of healing and defense buff you were going to get. moon light casts faster, which means you might be able to get it off more successfully when enemies are using interrupt effects