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i get that it's a bit out of flavor, but adding DR to tough doesn't sound seem like it would buff con so much as slightly buff tough. I'm still not incentivized to take boost con or have high-con characters pick up tough, because tough generally gives me so much extra effective health already, even for my squishy characters. healing received however, does actually solve a problem depending on the #s involved (problem being: hard to heal a vast health pool). ideally it'd be attached to con itself somehow, but failing that, it seems second-best choice of attaching it as a bonus effect to tough would be great.

@Elric Galad is pretty much right. In contrast to some other classes, priests gain quite a bit from being single-classed; when multi-classed you miss out on some incredible top-end spells; not just the symbol, but also hand of weal and woe, dismissal, call of rymrgand, magran's might, etc. what's less obvious, is that you're actually missing out on 3 power levels, because you don't get access to Prestige, which is a "you should definitely take this" single-class passive that grants +1 PL at tier 9. you also are able to get all the empowered passives. might not sound like much for a first time game/lower difficulties, but by potd/end game is stupidly good. A fully jacked up empowered priest symbol will clear even most DLC fights on its own (on top of possibly triggering empowered-related effects on certain late-game gear). the big question though is whether you care about being more priest or priest-ish. If you want to be more priest, no amount of multi-classing will get you the priest qualities of getting tier 8/9 abilities. if you only want to be priest-like, then it won't matter that you can empower hand of weal and woe to make your party invulnerable compared to the extra role/ability diversity multi-classing gets you. that might be a question only you can answer for yourself, unfortunately. just know that both MC/SC priests are great options (whereas some classes might be better off being MC-ed due to a lack of really compelling tier 8 or 9 options).

i would not consider furyshaper/ancient to be that bad. you don't have to use the sporelings and wild growth, and in fights where they would be a really important carry (which can happen early on), you don't have to use wards. it's a wee bit of anti-synergy early on, but later on, +10% ward and +25% action speed from frenzy is a whole lot of casting speed. great for emptying your spellbook real fast. when you run low on spells, replace teh +10% ward with the fear ward for good times. why is everyone so keen on berserker/fury? the confusion seems like a deal breaker for much of the game, and raw damage later quite a liability [esp as fury you lack as much sustain]. Of all casters, fury needs +PEN the least.

hey welcome, sorry you haven't gotten a reply yet! barbarians and priests are "weaker" in poe2, but that shouldn't be a cause for concern because they could be stupid good in poe1. By far the biggest downgrade for barbarian is the much less generous carnage damage and aoe. but barbarians are still very effective. priests still have great support capabilities, they just aren't an omni-carry for your entire party like they were in poe1. (the way i've described it in the past - the priest was so good that basically my poe1 games could really be divided into two sections, before-"devotions for the faithful" and after-"devotions for the faithful", such is the step change in power due to certain abilities) hm, none of these include a chanter like you mentioned! i hope you know that poe2 has party-size of five, not six. of the two options personally i think the second is stronger. A priest actually doesn't have a whole lot of healing capabilities on PotD compared to poe1 - in terms of sustain they're good for emergencies and revives until really late game when you get things like minor intercession or hand of weal and woe; so your first option is kinda brittle. the second option gives you a ton more sustain (paladin lay on hands, druid has tons of good heals), which might be better for a first time pass on poe2 PotD (which I find to be generally much harder than poe1).

if you're familiar with it, it's akin to a harmonic mean, e.g. how do you combine different "rates" of stuff (e.g. CAFE fuel efficiency standards in the US). in the example of -50% dr and -10% dr, the way the game actually treats it is to consider them "rates" and combine them by inverting them: -50% dr => 1/(1 - .5) => 2 -10% dr => 1/(1 - .1) => 1.11 if it's just negative modifiers, you just add them together after subtracting, subtract out a 1, and then re-invert them: 2 + 1.11 - 1 => 2.11 1/2.11 => .474, 1 - .474 => -52.6% DR it gets more complicated if there are also positive modifiers edit: ninja'd; you basically got it

double inversion fiasco. you can see this take place with things like that girdle that gives you -% weapon damage at lower health plus fighter's guardian stance.

not just for healing, but health as well. we only have 5% for health right now because they buffed it because a simple +/-3% was too weak. 3% health plus 3% healing effect is nicely symmetric with other stats and would probably work well in total (tho would need testing)

we already have some redundancy of durations via intellect (outgoing durations) and resolve (incoming hostile durations), so I do not think it's a bad thing if CON duplicates might on the healing end. con is already weird in that extra health is even less useful because healing from a given caster grants the same absolute amount on a 300 health char as a 200 health char, so essentially once you eat up the extra 100 health "reserve" the 300 character has over the 200 character, the two characters essentially don't have different health, unless you manage to overheal the 200-health character a lot. The overhealing is more relevant earlier on when health amounts are lower and it's more likely you can overheal, but ironically CON is even less effective at that point because it's a percentage boost off a very tiny base -- class differences in health will probably matter more. i forget which rtwp RPG it was where most healing effects healed a % of health (maybe it was tyranny?). i thought it solved the con problem quite nicely. you could dump con on your squishy wizard, but then your potions would hardly help you out, whereas healing a paltry 20% on a beefy tank could still be a huge save.

you're not *really* going to get good aoe with a trickster/ranger though. That doesn't happen IMO until tier 8, which is only for single-classed tricksters. you'll get some good debuffing though and a lot of extra survivability. in such a case going melee ranger would be good imo.

early on I agree with you, but later on I feel like one generally has enough ability points or spells and action economy is more of a thing that empowering an ability/spell starts making more sense. Accurate Empower goes a long way into making empowering an ability/spell really worth it. As alluded above, I pick up Acc Empower on most characters that can when they're high enough level. There are some exceptions - for example a martial multiclass barbarians I may not have anything worth empowering (oh yay a longer frenzy...). After that it depends on the class. Single-class damage dealers get penetrating empower, then potent empower. Single-class misc classes get lasting empower, and then maybe the other two if needed. The only specific "rule" I have about empowering is sasha's, like others have said, but also least unstable coil + the right caster, and weyc's equipment. Other than that, I just suggest that even on upscaled PotD you don't really need all those spells - a properly empowered high-level spell will obviate the need for more spells because you'll be doing so much more extra that the fight will be over much sooner. E.G. one cast of a fully-upgraded empowered missile salvo will be enough to kill most FS bosses on its own. I'd also suggest that empowering an ability is much more useful for a chanter because getting half your resources back is rarely ever nearly as good when you're automatically generating them. (Somewhat true as well for monk and cipher) it's a little tougher with martial classes because they are more constrained. i may also have specific uses that i'd rather have the efficiency of more ability points than making one ability use more powerful - for example, mc fighters or mc/sc rangers i use are typically interrupt machines [mule kick or concussive/tranq shot] so i'd much rather just keep interrupting than make one interrupt slightly better. but otherwise i wouldn't underestimate how effective e.g. an empowered dazing shout, empowered inspired strike, empowered tier 9 paladins [properly geared] can be.

not to necro this thread, but ime the priest subclasses offer a suprising amount of dialogue changes, compared to the others. nothing totally unique, but you can bypass some fights easier than other classes, which might rely on specific reputation or stats otherwise. and there's a few "encounter" specific interactions that yield extra benefits that i've found only exist for a specific priest subclass (wael for a ship encounter, skaen for the effigy encounter). i haven't played much paladin as mainchar, so paladin orders might get something similar, but i was honestly surprised at the amount of options the right deity choice gave compared to other classes (especially since in poe1 priest order hardly mattered at all aside from a special feat). edit: ciphers also get occasional options in encounters along the lines of "search for the presence of other spirits." those two classes get the most impact in dialogue imo.

I did not play this solo. But wards do not count as pets. My stalker would flee away from the wards, or get it destroyed, and that was never a determining factor in getting bonded grief. Only distance from pet or pet knock out would do it.

many ranged weapons lack a way to boost PEN, or have low PEN to begin with, so one could argue that therefore the ranger has some special problems given that they tend to be built as a ranged class. but it's definitely not unique to ranger. and anyway, a warbow or an extremely high accuracy helps a lot (for crits). the ranger has a bunch of the latter. i played a stalker/furyshaper and wards will definitely not trigger bonded grief.

one can dream!

depends on how much support MSFT is throwing obsidian's way. game dev cycles are long, so it might even be the case that the team is small now for "pre-production" and ramp up as the other projects get close to done so that Obsidian has a regular cadence of releases now that they're in MSFT's financial kingdom.

the answer to your first few questions are indeed, chanter, chanter. Troubadour if you want chanter on ez mode i had an incredibly effective theurge (animist/skald) that is probably my favoritest multiclass i've done. i posted it in these forums, and also wrote it up here on gamefaqs (edit: here's the forum link which has a bit more discussion and explanation of how it comes together). i would also argue that compared to cipher or druid, chanters are uniquely positioned to excelling at single-classing - their top-end summons are bonkers, and upgraded el-nary is a huge DD spell against anyone not frost immune, and even the PEN invocation is situationally amazing. the tier 8/9 chants are also situationally good too. druids get maelstrom, but it can be a bit extremely same-y to spam that every fight (and i feel that druids suffer a bit too much like ciphers in lacking truly great set of tier 8/9 stuff; not that they're bad, but compared to the extra versatility and options you get from MC, a bit uninspiring).

for turn-based mode, dex is pretty unimportant; i've even seen arguments suggesting that tanking dex is a good idea so you go last and can make sure your spells are never interrupted. Generally speaking Con is also pretty unimportant, because offense > defense. Resolve is really all-or-nothing. i play on PotD and Con/Resolve are my least invested stats. In certain situations [tank/deflection builds] I'll pump max resolve, but there's hardly ever a situation where I actually invest points into con. I know that some people don't like the idea of dumping stats (I hate dumping), but I'm going to suggest that at the very least dropping resolve to 8 will give you a couple more extra points without noticably hurting you that bad. My general finding is that might and perception are roughly equivalent in their net effect on your damage, and if you just care about damage, you should roughly balance them (for the same reason that maximizing the area of a 4-sided figure is to make it a square). This is only true for real time though, the graze range is huger in turn-based mode, so i think might may be better in general. However, depending on your build this rough guidance may not be the same. IMO for a Fury Druid, for example, you really really want your Relentless Storm, and Returning Storm to successfully debuff enemies (on turn-based the storms only stun on crit making it even more important to have high acc), so it may be that perception is more useful. You're also not going to be doing any healing as a fury druid, so it's not like might is going to help you heal anyway. Either way, intellect is a king stat for a caster, and is pretty good still for non-casters. On TB mode there are some awkward rounding thresholds for this, but I feel like if you go fury druid route, it's a no brainer to maximize this since you get larger AoE as well. (edit - one suggestion for TB fury druid stat spread: 13 m, 10 c, 10 d, 18 int, 18 p, 8 r; choose a background and race at your discretion. on rtwp i would invest less in perception and might and more in dexterity) i would also suggest just get going with something so you can get a better feel for the game, and don't be too worried about abandoning a character that's not working out.

just in case it wasn't on top of mind (didn't see it mentioned here) - deleterious alacrity is an insane survival spell for wizards if you can micromanage. sure it gives you action speed which is nice, but swift = doubled movement and can't be engaged (even if the game erroneously shows a red line indicating you are engaged, there's no consequence ot you moving out of melee range). if you manage to step away from a melee enemy just as they are winding up an attack (e.g. their action circle is filling up, they're not in recovery), you can make their attack miss (in combat log it is "(out of range)"), and then you can just step back in for your own attack. because you can't be engaged there's no way for enemies to punish you for doing this. if you have gear/abilities with riposte functionality, this is also a easy way to proc riposte a lot. (rannig's wrath doesn't have a riposte, but has a very similar effect that you could trigger like this). edit - forcing a melee enemy to miss like this may even trigger the small shield's binding block modal!

ooops yea yes. both my bellower and skald builds dual-wielded weapons and stayed up at the front. they weren't built to be tanks so wouldn't be able to survive dedicated enemy attention, but they weren't terribly squishy (though i did invest a bit in the gear and making sure i pick up tough; i play on PotD). you could easily do a tank build, but i would stick with small shield (or else invocations get acc penalties), pick up the silver knight chant, and be either a bellower or troubadour. Skald really wants dual-wielding or single-weapon style to maximize on crits. i actually had a short run--abandoned for now--where i was building tekehu into kind of a DD+tank hybrid using hatchet/small shield plus silver knight to help tank and survive and it wasn't bad. in such a setup i would actually put more points into resolve and give up a few--one each from perception and intellect and maybe a couple from might. the incidental loss in net damage from each of those points may be made up for by the increasing returns you get from higher resolve on top of the other tanky stuff you'd be doing.

chants for damage is a no-go in PoE1. On higher difficulties, even the tier one chant ("come come") may even do more damage than dragon thrashed, simply because of PEN issues. bellower, skald, and troubadour can certainly dish out lots of DD. the lightning bolt invocation, eld nary [more useful for skald/troubadour, but amazing for bellower on turn-based], and then the ice damage one are all great DD invocations, and skald and troubadour can punt them out very fast. Bellower can't punt them out very fast, but gets very nice damage scaling because of all the bonus PL. Even the healing/resolve-defense invocation can be upgraded to do sick damage indoors (the two rays of light will bounce, and with proper aiming in tight corridors you can get them to repeatedly bounce through your enemy and the bad guys, healing you up to full while wiping vulnerable enemies out). i had a bellower build that was actually top party damage dealer for the longest stretch of the game almost purely just off the lightning bolt invocation. i have a skald right now that is in the trades for top/second party damage dealer with my dps sorcerer build, which was also originally off of the lightning bolt invocation but now is thanks to fast and cheap eld nary's wiping out the battlefield.

No deleterious alacrity? i personally think some mobility will help, dependin gyour difficulty (enemies may make it hard to get into position for some of your offensive spells). bounding boots, the 4th tier teleportation spell [can't remember name], or charge for fighter would help. there's also a unique spell in zandethus's spellbook (spindle man in delver's row has it) that's worth keeping an eye on for a melee build, because it provides two different 15% lashes and terrifies enemies that hit you.

For late game, wizards get a soulbound rapier in SSS. teh big thing is that it does stacking raw damage DoT, and it gives some extra mobility as well. Might also be worth looking at.

on a devoted, i would go for hunting bow. hunting bow hits like a truck compared to warbow, but hunting bow's weakness is lack of PEN, which devoted fixes, and there are a couple nice hunting bows; i recommend creating a dwarf if you want to use aamiina's legacy, otherwise max out metaphysics for essence interrupter.

the ukaizo fight is a bullet sponge fight if you clear all the megabosses, so getting +4 pl for that would be still quite nice. i'm assumign this also works for wall of draining? a wizard that can get perpetually +4 PL *and* the party member back would be pretty good for whatever remaining fights you have.

this is actually my bad, i confused luminous adra potion with the potion of ascension, the latter of which has no duration but doesn't last past combat.