thelee

i forgot to mention in the original post (updated now) that as a watcher you need to get the "mien of death's herald" set of abilities, which grant you up to a tier 3 perception inspiration. while probably every min-maxer (including myself) would normally recommend getting brilliant, for general utility having intuitive for cases where enemies have just an unfair high defense against you really helps (mostly matters for end-game). it's in beast of winter DLC, off the frozen elf statue. It is absolutely a game-changer for the build (it was actually the starting point because after seeing it in some earlier experiments at how generous the +10 accuracy was I was trying to find a build-around that could take good advantage for it). Even before you are able to interrupt, it just gives basically the entire build a wonderful upgrade in effectiveness. even just using tier one sunbeam at +20 accuracy is very good.

do you have helm of the white void? it gets you a completely stackable, almost 100% effective +10 flat accuracy bonus. do you have ben fidel's invocation? that'll give you a flat -10 all defense debuff against foes. the hearth orlan really helps with its high max perception and hit to crit passive.

1. I mostly found myself extremely constrained in ability points, so compromises were made in places. Thick Thick was a victim of this, because you did miss that the Animist gets Plague of Insects for free :), which was a point in the Animist's favor. 2. Honestly I have no idea, I forgot about items like this. 2 (3?). grumble grumble! yes, on top of this, it's only one of two chants at tier one that actually targets enemies, and of the two, this one seemed like it had much more general utility because of its steady self-heal and the raw damage is very relevant help early on when PEN/AR mitigation is in shorter supply and enemy health lower. as a fun bonus, it interacts with any combusting wounds shenanigans. edit - unfortunately my assumption was wrong on this. it still has decent utility otherwise it "works" on non-interruptible bosses, just not with the interrupts against them this functions more just like a normal theurge. though all the debuffing of defenses and AR and +2 PEN has such great general utility that a "normal" theurge is still very effective.

I should've made that more clear, all those were 100% for like mega/boss encounters, where I don't want to necessarily be up close, but I want to disrupt the enemy doing something critically important. These days I *always* have every single person in my party take xbow or arbalest at level 16 or 20 so I have freedom to equip my characters with extra interrupts that can be done basically at will; for this character in particular since most of the proficiencies are taken care of early I picked up both just for maximum flexibility. The warbow is there because I though St Omaku's Mercy was a nice convenient synergy (scales with religion, can instant recover on crit and you already have a high accuracy from perception, gloves of accuracy, hearth orlan) for typical non-boss situations where you're in cramped indoor environment and can't get in melee range anyway. absolutely. in fact it might be close to being utter cheese. at least it's a bit "fairer" than using brilliant . edit - on the scale of all possible cheeses, this is probably pretty tame. this combo has been around for ever, it's just that this theurge package expressly uses a lot of damage ticking abilities and piles on the debuffing.

After my keeper build, I was fascinated with the druid (a class that I have really underplayed) and tried to brainstorm some fun setups with it. It took some testing to make sure everything worked as I anticipated, but I'm happy with the results, which is a debuffing druid/chanter with some party utility that is so good at disrupting enemy plans in a zany way. How zany? Well, this build has yielded the first and only time I've ever been in a situation where it has been an optimal decision in a high-level fight to cast an empowered Tanglefoot (and yes, it wrecked the enemies!). Basic build outline: stats Hearth Orlan, 8 might/9 con/14 dex/20+1 (white that wends) perception/18 intellect/8 resolve. Classes: skald + animist[boar or cat] Skills: alchemy (try to get up to 10 with a combination of gear and buffs) and explosives (put the rest here); religion Level-by-level guide (with free spells in [] brackets, respec options in {}, respec points in <>, optional picks with an asterisk) Hel-Hyraf...; Come, Come | Tanglefoot [Sunbeam] Fast Runner Arms Bearer {White Wurms... => One Dozen...} | {Hold Beasts => Two Handed Style*} [The Moon's Light] Firebrand Two Weapon Style Reny Daret's... | Spreading Plague* [Returning Storm] <Respec "White Wurms..." to "One Dozen..."> The Shield Cracks The Fox... The Long Night's... | Wicked Briars [Conjure Blight] <Respec Hold Beasts => Two Handed Style, optional> Tumbling Form of the Delemgan Ben Fidel's... | Embrace the Earth Talon [Plague of Insects] Tough* or Uncanny Luck* Rapid Casting Their Companion... | Venombloom [Sunlance] Farcasting* Nature's Terror* Spellshaping* | Nature's Bounty* [Lashing Vine] Accurate Empower This build has you respec a couple times. The first is because White Wurms just gives you so much value early on, but as the build hits its theme it becomes less important compared to getting some chanter utility. The second is because beasts become significantly less dangerous later on in the game (with the late, small exception of SSS), so you respec out of Hold Beasts into a weapon style. I marked this respec as optional because you can hold onto Hold Beasts if you want, or you can pick up a different spell. Recommended chants: Song 1: One Dozen -> Come, Come... Song 2: The Fox... -> The Long Night's... -> Come, Come... edit: the justification for these recommended songs is that you start with the situationally valuable chants first, so if you switch your songs you get those going first (e.g. your party gets hit by terrified, switching to song 1 will quickly dispel it). beyond that, come come targets fortitude so having it come right after the long night's (-14 fort) helps it land/crit. Recommended weapon proficiency and order: flail|club, quarterstaff, greatsword, crossbow/arbalest, warbow, arbalest/crossbow edit: forgot to mention, I highly recommend getting the watcher ability that gives you a tier 3 perception inspiration. this build actually gets a lot more general utility out of being able to generate Intuitive vs Brilliant. Gear Weapon slot 1: Keeper of the Flame or Ondre's Flog of Obedience main hand, Kapana Taga offhand Weapon slot 2: Spine of Thicket Green with modal on Weapon slot 3: a crossbow, arbalest, or St Omaku's Mercy Armor: Changeling's Mantle Other items: Helm of the White Void, Ring of Focused Flame, Gloves of Accuracy, Boots of Speed, the Magnificent Escape Cape, Ring of Prosperity's Fortune Pet: Lucero for the -25% item recovery bonus and dex resistance, or Frau Nils or the Obsidian Worm for the bonus melee accuracy Misc: do the RDC quest to go into the underwater dungeon, and then do what Galawain asks of you to destroy the dungeon so that you get a +1 perception buff. Possible late-game alternates: replace of Ring of Focused Flame with Kuaru's Prize since action economy means you use less and less Fire-keyworded stuff. As another alternate, in end game if you have a consistent source of a mind inspiration, consider swapping Magnificent Escape Cape with Shroud of the Phantasm for the action speed buff - your defenses are extremely good against most threats at levels 19-20 and being able to interrupt easily makes it easier to disengage safely so the cape itself with its only +10 disengagement bonus becomes less useful. How the build plays Early on, you are just a general theurge. You should take advantage of the ability to get an early Ring of Focused Flame by making good use of Sunbeam and Firebrand. Use Tanglefoot to help soften enemies' reflex defense up against your own Sunbeam and the rest of your party. At about level 10, you become a premium debuffer. The Long Night's... chant will give you repeating afflictions against the enemies totalling up to -14 fortitude, which will help land a couple of your spells (Wicked Briars, Spreading Plague, and Returning Storm) in addition to helping your party members. Wicked Briars becomes a great utility spell doing damage and also adding a further source for reducing reflex. Your chanter invocations help soften enemies up even more with -2 AR from The Shield Cracks, and the general utility from Reny Daret's and especially its upgrade (which bestows -10 all defenses even if the enemy is somehow not affeted by the main frightened effect). But if you really want a preview of where this build is going, go rest periodically in Tikawara, which can give you a resting bonus that lets your abilities interrupt when empowered (this resting option goes away if you destroy the adra in poko kahara). Try it with Wicked Briars and watch in amazement as enemies can get very little done. Whenever you get the Helm of the White Void (shoot for level 13-15, depending on skill and difficulty), your power as a general debuffer and aoe damage dealer gets kicked up a notch. At level 16, the build takes off. Energized from the chanter invocation will let you interrupt on a crit (on top of a nice +2 PEN and +5 might), but the real magic is that your druid and chanter arsenal is full of stuff that ticks multiple times. Combined with up to +20 accuracy (+10 from ring of focused flame and +10 from helm of the white void) a high perception, tons of enemy defense lowering effects, you'll be critting a lot. In a typical non-trivial fight you can layer these effects (including bonus from helm of the white void): Venombloom, every 3s at +10 acc (each component can crit interrupt) Wicked Briars, every 3s at +10 acc (both the damage and the hobbling can crit interrupt) Tanglefoot, every 3s at +10 acc Cinder Bombs, initial hit and every 3s at +20 acc The Fox..., The Long Night..., and Come Come... chants will hit every 6s; The Long Night will do so at +10 acc In harder fights, you can empower any one of those abilities for an additional accuracy (and duration/pen/damage) from +5 PL bonus. (In end-game you get a further +10 from accurate empower). You can quaff a potion of merciless gaze for additional hit-to-crit, and don't forget to stockpile money to supercharge your ring of prosperity's fortune. All the while, try to mix in a Ben Fidel or Shield Cracks; Ben Fidel is especially great because the -10 all defenses will make ALL your effects more likely to crit. As a general debuffing effect, persistent frightened will make your enemies more harmless while also making your own debuffs last longer on them (on top of the other usual benefits to reducing their resolve). I recommend keeping the spine of thicket green equipped at the start of every fight so that your initial round of buffing and casting gets boosted (i chose the +3 PL upgrade for beast/plant effects since that covers the effects I actually want to cast). I recommend keeping the +20 deflection modal on as protection. After your initial surge of buffing/debuffing, I recommend switching weapons - the loss in PL will weaken your ongoing effects, but using the -25 defense modal on either your flail or club will more than make up for it. Club is generally the better choice (helps Venombloom, Ben Fidel..., The Fox...), but if you plan on dropping more cinder bombs or--better yet--have someone else in your party using a club, switch on the reflex penalty one instead. (In general I don't want to use both modals if I can help it, just as a matter of personal taste. Except for...) As an optional pick later on, Nature's Terror comes along. It, too, will tick every 3s with multiple components, and beneficially targets will and reflex, both of which you can lower quite easily with one of your weapon slots. Because it's not plant or beast-based, you don't have to worry too much about losing out on the +3 PL bonus from switching away from Spine. With Energized active, you are going to make it very hard for any enemy you're nearby to get anything done. However, the reason why Nature's Terror is an optional pick is because with poor positioning, you'll also make it hard for anyone in your party to get anything done. In fact, this is a general theme of the build - you have to be very careful with targeting and positioning of everyone, especially after you unlock Energized shenanigans. In the build guide I suggest picking up Tough at level 14, and this is mostly an artifact of me playing on PotD and loving the resiliency Tough adds. If you're having problems with positioning, pick up Farcasting or Spell Shaping earlier instead. Farcasting especially - both Venombloom and Wicked Briars have very small ranges (5m) and getting an additional 1m can mean a world of difference, especially when you're fighting in awkward or cramped indoor locations. You might be wondering just how effective all of this constant interrupting is. Well, here are two ways I can put it: Originally this build picked up the animated weapon summon (as is a pretty safe bet for chanters) at level 19. However, after actually playing with this build I dropped it in favor of some passives because I'd much rather be using the phrases on refreshing Energized and any Brilliant shenanigans on creating more interrupt effects rather than rapidly summoning new allies.* Normally I feel compelled to play a build all the way to the end to ensure its utility/viability, but levels 16-17 were so utterly convincing that I felt it was unnecessary to wait to see the build to its end. When you have an entire big boss fight shut down and there's very little the enemies can do about it except melt away, it's quite astounding to see. *That being said, your biggest weakness here is The Oracle, Memory Hoarder, and Dorudugan -- all of whom can't be interrupted. In such a case, however, I feel like as a general debuffing, aoe damage theurge this build is fine, since that's what it is for half the game. Though that being said, if you're more comfortable having all your bases covered, you can pick up the animated weapon summon and drop one of the later optional picks. There's a random sub-theme here: lots of disengagement bonuses. Between form of the delemgan, boots of speed, the magnificent escape cape, tumbling, the fox chant, you can give yourself a +70 swing in your favor against enemy accuracy against disengagement attacks (it's actually a +90 swing, but disengagement attacks get a +20 bonus); this is probably one of the most efficient ways to persistently stack on deflection. Switch over or keep your quarterstaff active for an additional +20 generic deflection and you'll find that this build is actually safer actively disengaging from attacks, which is good because Venombloom, Wicked Briars, and Nature's Terror frequently require you to get very close to the front lines. I don't recommend actively disengaging for your other party members, even with The Fox chant active, unless they also have tumbling and form of the delemgan at the very least, or if you have no other choice. Random notes Ring of Focused Flame boosts the following things this build might use +10 acc: sparkcrackers, cinder bomb, immolator, firebrand attacks, sunbeam, sunlance Helm of the White Void generously boosts this build at +10 acc: pretty much every bomb except {immolator, grenade, concussion bomb, the healing bomb}, tanglefoot, sunbeam, hold beasts, spreading plague, returning storm, wicked briars, embrace the earth talon, plague of insects, nature's terror, venombloom, reny daret/ben fidel... invocation, the long night's... chant. Note that even when there is a part of the ability that is on a separate attack roll from the actual mind/body affliction, helm of the white void still generously grants a +10 accuracy bonus. Venombloom is secretly keyworded as poison and won't affect poison-immune creatures. Wicked Briars is not poison-based despite appearing similar. Wicked Briars and Tanglefoot are ground-based effects, though Venombloom curiously isn't. So keep that weird rock-paper-scissors set up in mind against poison-immune and/or flying foes. Wall of Thorns does not work with this build. Hazard effects do not correspond their effects to you very well, so e.g. the crit interrupt doesn't work at all. The build recommends a boar or cat. Cat because they have a killer buff that boosts action speed. Boar because of the utility of having a self-heal, and the raw damage DoT can help you early on in cases where you have terrible PEN or AR mitigation. The main reason why this build doesn't go all-in on explosives is because you can get great utility out of supplementing your explosives with a few select consumables, especially potion of merciless gaze. The potions from nature's bounty also benefit from alchemy. Do a lot of drugs. This build loves Coral Snuff (+15% action bonus) and Deadeye (+5 acc, 15% interrupt). Eventually Nature's Bounty (if you pick it) will obviate the need for Coral Snuff. Potion of Impediment seems to only work on weapon attacks, however (at least I didn't see it get proceed in the one fight I used it except on melee attacks), but as a skald you'll love that anyway. Possible party members and variants The ultimate synergy here is a wizard that has access to conjuration and transmutation magic. Between the AR debuffing and general defense lowering (especially resolve), it is very easy to land a long-lasting Combusting Wounds at full PEN against even tanky foes. Add on all the ticking damage effects from the druid, and add on random conjuration/transmutation magic (wall of force, malignant cloud, chill fog) and you can do an absolutely stunning amount of damage. If you weren't aware, DoT or HoT effects that stack will immediately tick for damage/healing when another stack lands. At even level 14-15 or so, I've seen damage numbers from Combusting Wounds tick for 100+ damage every single time one of {Wicked Briars, Wall of Force, Malignant Cloud, any party member attack) lands. I didn't exactly go out of my way to to do this like I have in the past (bleeding modal for axe), but it sure made absolute quick work of the Beast of Winter DLC when bullet-sponge enemy/boss health is ticking away so quickly you can literally see the bar empty before your eyes, and this was before I got Venombloom and Nature's Terror to add in to the mix. (in this case, Fassina quickly became the unparalleled damage leader of the party because all combusting wounds damage is credited towards the wizard who cast it.) A priest is also always a good choice, in particular Xoti. Prayer/Litany for the Spirit is great on this theurge for the extra AoE and duration (and PL). Devotions is a wonderful +10 accuracy. Xoti in particular has Wicked Briars and Wall of Thorns, which can help extend The Shield Cracks (and further synergizes with the combusting wounds mechanic above, if you want to trivialize many boss fights in the game). Instead of a priest a paladin also works for zealous focus (+5 acc, +5% hit to crit). A barbarian with spirit frenzy is also a subtly nice choice, because the one main affliction you haven't got covered that you would really benefit from is a might affliction, and spirit frenzy will spread staggered everywhere very cheaply. The build here uses Skald because it really helps the lower level invocations be extremely cheap to use, and later on you're likely to crit a lot with melee attacks so it's not terribly hard to get up to the six you need to re-use Their Companion. However, Troubadour is also a good choice - for a slightly worse low-end behavior (Brisk Recitation gets you the lower invocations as fast as a skald but without linger or possibiliy of getting invocations even faster with crits), you get arguably much better high-end behavior (easier to generate Their Companion when needed, your chants tick every 3s, which doubles the interrupts you can get from chants, at the cost of no linger). The build here also uses Animist because the free spells helped cover a lot of bases and provide general utility (Sunbeam is an excellent tier one spell that works great in this build, The Moon's Light is great healing utility, Returning Storm goes great with all the debuffing, Lashine Vine is a powerful summon that scales). However, because so many effects that you want to use are plant or beast based, choosing an Ancient is also an alternative choice - though your ability points are going to be a bit harder to spend because you don't get as useful free spells (though you do get Form of the Delemgan and Venombloom, and the free Hold Beasts opens up space in the early game). If you don't want to run a theurge in particular, you can also try to sub in a wizard instead of the druid. However, pay attention to the Wall of Thorns notes - the same applies to all the hazard effects the wizard has. That still leaves Chill Fog (tier one, though you should probably just use Slicken instead), Binding Web (tier two), Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage (tier three), and Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar (tier six) as options that give you at least +10 accuracy (i'm excluding the beams because i don't find them as useful for this setup due to their particular aiming needs; YMMV). That's not bad, and you also would free up a couple skill points because instead of relying on disengagement accuracy/deflection shifts, you can just use Deleterious Alacrity of Motion or Fleet Feet to grant you engagement immunity. All the other principles of the build will stay true, but you lose a bit of general utility in the process (Nature's Bounty, Form of the Delemgan, and The Moon's Light are great party support spells and Embrace the Earth Talon and Returning Storm are great druid particulars) and the wizard equivalents all have a much shorter duration than the druid effects (the wizard effects are typically 10s with a few not mentioned here [no +10 acc] that can go up to 15s, whereas the druid effects start at base 20s and can go up to 30s [Nature's Terror]), which may result in some action economy issues in shorter fights (spending more time recasting effects) and spell resource issues in larger fights (blowing all your spells too early). This build doesn't go out of its way to recommend Least Unstable Coil, but because Venombloom and Returning Storm are in your spell roster, this theurge would make very happy work of Least Unstable Coil's tier 3 inspiration shenanigans. As a possible build alteration, instead of respeccing out of White Wurms, you can upgrade it, at which point it benefits from the +10 acc of helm of the white void. You might find yourself extremely constrained on phrases though, so this might be a better choice for a troubadour with brisk recitation active. Note that because you have so many ground effects, items that summon flying help are great because they are effectively immune to all your shenanigans. It might even be worth considering a variant that picks up the Drake summon at some point. (Though do watch out for Venombloom, which should affect flying foes as well) This build has a particular vulnerability to might afflictions, because it's expensive for you to re-cast Their Companion early than anticipated. A source of might resistance might be useful (though not enough to switch away from the hearth orlan's 10% hit to crit).

i think it's doable, but you'd miss out on what i think the absolute best meta for an sc monk is ajumaat + whispers of the wind. i would not call that even "pseudo" tanking, though, because there is still a delay between each jump and uptime and stun duration can vary, which can be a massive opening for enemies to overrun your party if you don't have any other tanks. you can also end up in odd places depending on your final jump (and not enough wounds to start up again possibly), which can leave your party SoL if you don't have an actual tank. max res forbidden fist is indeed a likely better choice, but for mirke honestly a brawler adds so much utility for a tank role that i'd be hard pressed to go with sc monk for a tank.

scripting blade turning runs into an AI issue that someone else found a short while back - the AI decides on the next action as soon as the current action is completed, regardless of recovery, so even short cooldowns might in practice result in poor uptime because the AI script (at least by default) has no way to examine the current existence of blade turning and its duration, relative to recovery. in practice i found it really hard to find an AI script that got me decent uptime while still allowing me to do other actions, especially once reality (with interrupts and things like disorienting/blinding) comes into play. in fact, i had this AI script gated by mirke health AND being actively threatened by more than 1 enemy in melee range, simply because it was so annoying at higher health levels that it didn't feel justified until i knew mirke was in danger AND basically guaranteed to have streetfighter enabled. i'm sure there exists a more interesting build (ooblit would help a lot, basically a free +20 intellect on something like blade turning. being on a non-tank who can afford to be close to naked without being slaughtered by spells or arrows would also help). but mirke in particular was not a compelling or interesting one. that being said, like i said earlier, cheese still exists. mirke was king tank against dorudugan.

i tried this a while ago on mirke and was a little underwhelmed by it. maybe my setup wasn't great. but even with duality of mortal presence, blade turning wouldn't last very long, so you still don't get to do too much. spamming blade turning almost every other action while still taking further damage from range or non-melee melee-ranged attacks wasn't a very exciting way to play. as a brief emergency tanking tool (e.g. 3+ enemies and in danger), or as a cheese with salvation of time, it was pretty good though.

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.