thelee

i would personally stay away from shadowdancer. in case you aren't aware, mirke automatically gets the streetfighter subclass, so while mirke would kick butt for DPS, you might not like the incentives to be reckless on a tank. for a tank build, i would go for brawler. fighter will help you with the higher deflection quite a bit, though the payoff isn't as nice as a riposte rogue.

does xbox support mods? because someone created a mod that hides a lot of unnecessary details in the tooltip window

all the specialized armor boosting spells are worth a check because they give you so much versus the +2 you get from a generic constitution inspiration (or +1 from something like paladin aura). pierce damage is so common that woodskin and form of the delemgan (which gives you +6) are very frequently worth using, but bulwark, weather the storm, and the chanter invocation are also all worth using as well. at +6 even cloth wearers might be able to shrug off pierce damage. my current party features a fire godlike with magnera's chain (not even legendary). between form of the delemgan and ashen skin, she has something like 16-18 burn and pierce AR. she is basically immune to pierce and burn damage.

i prefer plate early, but extremely early you don't have much of a choice (port maje and shortly after), only brigandine is available to buy. all armors have weaknesses, yes, but pierce weakness is particularly glaring IMO early on for tanks because most every early ranged weapon is piercing or part piercing (and of those that are part piercing, the other part is generally slashing, which plate is not weak to either) and they tend to be the biggest combat threats early on. YMMV based on your experiences in turn-based though, perhaps melee is a bigger deal for your tanks.

there is! but... it's vailian and requires giant adra pillars unlike a boat, which can be lost at sea, it is much harder for a fort/settlement to just randomly go missing. depending on your actions in-game, the RDC might notice that the watcher went to sayuka, and then later left sayuka and mysteriously all comms and such ended with sayuka. it's kind of hard to avoid the conclusion there. similarly, it's established that Maia is an RDC spy/agent who writes notes about you and your adventures (though obviously this explanation doesn't work if maia is not recruited). the RDC is chomping at the bit to dominate the other factions, all they need is a plausible pretext, right? don't get me wrong, i think "entire faction goes hostile" is poor design for an incidental quest that seems to clearly give you one of two relatively balanced choices. typically for OBS consequences are relatively symmetric. this is a quest where there clearly is a "good" resolution and a "bad" resolution, and the "bad" resolution is very very bad. it's like if in Trade Secrets the choices were "discretely supply the gullet with food, petition the royalty for more prize-share, OR thanos finger-snap the entire archipelago."

also another thing is - i don't know when the alst time you playd potd rtwp was, but kind of what elohnin was saying is that 1-8ish is the hardest part of the game honestly. even on RTWP it can be extremely brutal because the encounter scaling/balancing early on is brutal and you don't have plenty of options. these days i have a pretty systematic way of doing lots of combat-free questing in port maje and nekataka to get up to level 8 or so with cash and items before engaging in some of the more combat-heavy quests.

as a thought experiment, typically melee weapons range from 6-8 PEN mundane. at PotD they get +2 by default. 7 armor might as well be 0 for all the protection it's going to give your tanks (not quite, because of overpenetration). exceptional medium or mundane heavy may give you a small -25% damage mitigation or so, but if you can really get above the curve you can typically get the bulk of your damage to -50 to -75%, which will do wonders for your survivability, especially if those attacks also graze. edit - to add, based on what kaylon is saying, and your experience (esp TB), and my experience (lots of rtwp potd), part of hte problem is that you're not getting the damage mitigation you need. grazes can add up, but a -50% graze malus on top of a -50% or -75% AR malus is a vanishingly small amount of damage. edit 2 - for additional CC, consider daze (wizard and priest have tier one spell sources). -4 PEN will help you a lot.

yeah, 7 is not going to protect your tanks. typically i have to steal better gear (at that level you can find some exceptional medium armor which almost fills the same hole, sometimes even better since its weaknesses and recovery penatly aren't as bad as mundane heavy) or blow all my money at e.g. mahiri to get fine heavy armor. but even mundane brigandine (available in port maje) isn't great because its weakness is pierce, which IME means my tanks get shot down real fast from the almost-unfair ranged rogues at the early stages of the game.

this is a minor detail/possible brainstorming point, but what kind of armor do you have your tanks on? it's hard getting a clear picture of your gear. one problem with PotD scaling and item balancing is that heavy armor is relatively uncommon, and you start getting mundane heavy armor when you have already started getting magical light and medium armor. this is a problem because on PotD the +2 PEN enemies get for free means that heavy armor itemization is effectively no real improvement over medium armor in terms of damage mitigation. you need to go out of your way to get fine and exceptional heavy armor ASAP, and make sure you are keeping up with game progression (e.g. use non-PL scaling as a goal i.e. fine at level 5-8, exceptional at 9-12, etc) and rock some additional stuff (e.g. hardy inspiration, potions of spirit shield, etc.) to actually get decent mitigation. obviously i don't have much experience with turn-based, but on PotD a melee character with appropriate heavy+ armor (a buff or enemy debuff plus e.g. generic tank with appropriately scaled heavy armor, or a stalker with above-curve medium armor [because stalkers get an additional +1 AR]) is basically unkillable unless i get really unlucky with the damage types in the fight.

notably, around march or so of this year the steam game page had an updated message welcoming new and returning gamers. though josh did say taht even if the game did break even, the fact that it limped over the finish line was pretty demoralizing to everyone who put in so much time and excitement into it, which is contributing to a bit of burnout and not (yet) doing a poe3.

my pet theory is that the insistence on using fig crippled deadfire's word of mouth, which is the main mechanism that smaller-studio games have of marketing.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/chanter (courtesy of myself and Elric Galad) "Chanter chants are a bit like some other abilities that do benefit from power level scaling, but they do so using a single-class progression. Also unlike other PL scaling, chants gain +2 accuracy per PL instead of +1. An oddity is that chants aren't internally keyworded as "chanter", despite being a chanter-specific set of abilities! The main place this has an impact is with the bellower subclass, because the +PL bonus from the bellower is just to chanter-keyworded abilities, which means chants don't benefit at all (only invocations). An additional oddity is that chants don't count as spells. This has very minor but odd interactions in situations where whether an ability "is a spell" is being considered."

to add to boeroer's stuff, i'm a big bellower fan but i would go right out and say that for most purposes you want a beckoner or troubadour for summons. bellower is good for summons where you expect them to be durable and you want them to stick around while also getting linger. if you want to do more damage, a beckoner with 6-8 animated weapons is what you want. but if you want your summons to facetank for you, you should go with a bellower. for a beckoner the malus on summon health is so severe (-75% i believe) and the duration hit so strong (-28% or so; 25s down to 18s base) that even the super duper tanky dragon will be whittle down to miniscule levels of health and even if it survives it'll be unsummoned so quickly that it'll almost be a waste to use them. but even then, a troubaoudr can get you summon uptime with brisk recitation. bellowers will get you linger and long-lasting summons, and can synergize well with other invocations. so... it depends!

is deadfire on console essentially abandoned by vs evil? i haven't heard much about patching from vs evil. which is a shame, becuase on PC it's pretty much as stable as can be for games of this genre IMO.

i don't know much about consoles - does PS5 not support running PS4 games as-is?

goddang it!

I am actually working on a build that might partially be up you alley. I'm not posting it yet because I haven't finished a playthrough with it, so I don't quite know how it'll play out in the end-game, but you might consider a chanter to pick up the "their companion" invocation that grants energized. you can single-class it or combine with a party or multiclass that gives you further accuracy or crit bonuses. you also want ring of focused flame and helm of the white void. the trick here is that many of the bombs tick periodically as a persistent aoe (not a hazard or a DoT), which means every 3-6 seconds they get an attack roll (most bombs tick every 3s, immolator and maybe a couple others tick slower). That means every time you crit with one of these persistent ticks, you trigger an interrupt because of your energized inspiration, even if the tick was only for like 3 damage (normally only the initial explosion of a bomb can interrupt). In addition, energized gives you a +2 PEN bonus that can help your explosives do better damage. ring of focused flame gives you +10 stacking passive accuracy with cinder bombs, sparkcrackers, stun bomb, and immolator (all count as fire), and helm of the white void gives you +10 stacking passive accuracy with cinder bombs (for +20 total), blister bomb, frost bomb, essence of imp spray, implosion charge, lightning bomb, sparkcrackers (for +20 total), and stun bomb (for +20 total)... basically the vast majority of bombs [though for half the game you won't have helm of the white void whereas ring of focused flame can easily be stolen after port maje]. out of all these options, cinder bombs are your best bet, because not only do they get the full +20 accuracy, they also are easy to make, easy to buy, and their affliction helps further ticks crit (blinding provides an effective +10 additional accuracy). but in harder fights you can layer multiple bombs and make it challenging for enemies to get much done. note that even though i listed sparkcrackers and stun bombs, it was only for completeness's sake - for this setup they don't have follow up ticks for interacting with energized. you can also pick up additional supplemental gear to boost your explosives, e.g. firethrower's gloves gives you +2 explosives. lucero pet from FS might be worth it (-25% item recovery bonus). if you really want to be bomb-focused you should single-class the chanter and rely on party members to provide further buffs (mostly a priest for aware and/or devotions plus acute for +1 PL. a cipher providing tactical meld can help in a pinch). this is because the invocation for energized comes pretty late for a multiclass. if you're patient, you can multiclass it with a fighter, who might be the overall best choice because of their easy access to intuitive (25% hit to crit) and conqueror stance (up to +10 non-stacking active accuracy). like boeroer says, bombs won't really do that much damage - grenade and concussion bombs are the biggest damage dealers (maybe immolators too, but they have low PEN and it takes a while to scale up their damage competently) and they're not really going to win fights for you that much (in fact, because grenades and concussion bombs push enemies out of their explosion range, they are their own worst enemy for spamming damage bombs). but they can serve a fun utility and disruption role.

The sigils don't deactivate when she dies. They will happily rip you to shreds if you leave all five up and kill auranic first. Can't de-aggro them either, at least nothing I tried worked, they have infinite range (in that area). Auranic has a death prevention shield that only goes away after she uses Endless Assault, which reveals all five sigils (even if all five sigils are gone). She only uses this attack once at Near Death. not true. if you hit her with instakill before she has had a chance to use endless assault, it will do nothing (except trigger other instakill-contingent effects). I've seen this happen myself. i know this is just a list, but do not use petrification on auranic. if you time it poorly (read: before she uses endless assault) she will be permanently petrified and her scripting to let her use endless assault will never trigger. you will be soft-locked into the fight. detonate is also an instakill that targets near death and causes an explosion if an instakill succeeded/ blessed harvest is a pseudo-instakill that affects bloodied or lower. i say "pseudo" because for much of the early game it is functionally equivalent to an instakill because of the damage it does (100-150).

graze is enough. waski is right about the sigils. in fact, even if you land an instakill spell, you will get any effects from the instakill spell but auranic just will not die. this is very weird if you use chanter's boil the flesh invocation, because you will get healing and action speed buff as if you instakilled auranic, but she will still be standing.

i did this fairly recently with aloth. it worked pretty well. i gave aloth heavy armor, had an AI script that automatically cast spirit shield at start of fight, and cast deleterious alacrity of motion if he didn't have a dex inspiration already. i also would cast a reflection spell and bulwark depending on the fight. i would cast various illusion magic as necessary (repulsive visage and mirror image; in some fights a wizard's double). he was pretty tough to kill in most fights. remember that vigorous/refreshing defense stacks with pure +deflection active bonuses for extra hardiness. wall of draining will keep your buffs up and can make unbending extremely powerful. if you haven't tried a spellblade, it's also worth a shot. sneak attack + kalakoth's minor blights is absolutely brutal.

i think based on the video you shared in the other thread, the dexterity is irrelevant. i was worried that you wouldnt' be able to disrupt dorudugan because i had assumed the knock up ended at the current turn, not at the beginning of the party member's next turn. it might still be an issue for hauane, but if you are good about landing disintegrate then it might not matter either. edit - i briefly forgot that in turn-based mode the graze range is 0-50, so you have a much easier time of trying to land disintegrate than in rtwp.

interesting - so i assumed that mule kick would act a lot like a prone in turn-based mode, which is simply an initiative delay. the video shows that the "knock up" effect lasts the entire round, so dorudugan stays down. i have a hard time figuring out what else is going on, so i don't know if the monk skyward kick is critical to stunlocking dorudugan. the big thing is that you need a generous amount of accuracy to hit dorudugan with mule kick; even with turn-based mode's more generous graze range, dorudugan has sky high fortitude defense. i think what's happening is that both mule kick and skyward kick expire their 1 round "knock up" duration when the person who did the action gets a turn again. so if you have two characters A and B who can both knock up, you have both use it, and by the time it's A's turn, dorudugan would try to stand up, but it still has a remaining knock up duration from B. So A mule kicks again, refreshing the knock up duration, and by the time dorudugan would try to stand up on B's turn, they are still affected by A's knock up. you would definitely needs lots of accuracy and/or redundancy to ensure this works (~180 accuracy to have 100% chance of landing mule kick). I see they use morning star modal, which would help alot (-25). I think returning storm might be for the might affliction for another -10. a monk could land sickened for another -10. single-weapon style (doesn't look like the video poster used it) would give a free +12 accuracy. devotions would give another +10. you'd need brilliant to keep everything up. turn-based mode rounding ironically would make this strategy work a bit better because dorudugan's high resolve wouldn't matter, the durations of stuff would get rounded up to a minimum of 1 round. probably has downvotes because the audio is so poor quality it's almost impossible to tell what's happening

Aha, so this is where all that research energy has been going into! Fun theme (I was not active much on the forums for PoE 1 so did not see this before). As for megabosses, what I really did was just skim your build and see if you had a chanter and/or a cipher. You have both, so I think you are absolutely set. I've done megabosses a lot. Not on turn-based, but I believe the overall principle will be the same: you can handle any challenge so long as you're willing to get and use the following skills (either on your way up or respeccing just for megabosses): chanter - one dozen stood (chant). this is to persistently resist auranic's terrorizing sigil without relying on something that can be easily cleansed away chanter - blessed was wengrith (chant). you don't need this, but this (or having paladin's zealous charge aura) helps a lot with running around and avoiding dorudugan's fiery death. chanter - called to his bidding (invocation). the fabled animated weapons. they can run lots of interference for you, and when belranga/hauane gets lower defenses the sword can knockdown the megaboss perpetually cipher - ancestor's memory. a recurring source of brilliant will cure all ills cipher - disintegration. massively simplifies hauane o whe fight if you can land it. both the priest and paladin will also offer hugely helpful spells (salvation of time, barring death's door, lay on hands [optionally with a death shield]), but those five abilities up top are central to "easy" attempts at megabosses for myself. do note that turn-based dorudugan and hauane might run counter to some advice about de-prioritizing dex, because it becomes important to be able to have party members have their turns before critical abilities activate (dorudugan's various fiery death options, hauane's attempt at merging if you were unable to land disintegration in its first form). i do not hav ea lot of experience in this realm. edit - warning: i am extremely dubious that turn-based mode megabosses is going to be very enjoyable. even on rtwp they can take a long time. on turn-based they might be an utter slog. i know someone beat the ultimate in turn-based mode, but "possible" and "fun" seem very at odds here.

not exactly, though it does require more work than heavy armor. spell PEN doesn't get as high as weapon PEN. Some arbitrary buffing might be good enough. It's just that even with maxed out deflection, armor can still matter.

most damage spells don't hit deflection. high AR would basically let you shrug most of that off.