thelee

lololol i was rereading my post and something about the eder reference didn't sit quite right but i couldn't put my finger on it. i think the benefit for shields is that they don't have to be all or nothing - medium and large shields have modals that can give you huge survivability returns without necessarily needing to go all in on deflection. even on my characters that don't stack deflection i sometimes use med/large just for those. small shields are a lot iffier. (i tend ot mostly use them on ranged casters with firearms so that they have slightly better chacne of shrugging off ranged attacks)

i disagree - depending on how one builds, one does not need illusion at all. both the +AR and +deflection class of spells suffer from a relatively similar problem in that they can be close to worthless or very valuable, all depending on your character (both are pretty sensitive to difficulty setting as well). my eder focused pretty exclusively on spirit shield, ironskin, bulwark, and llengrath's as well as spell reflection as defenses and it worked very well, but i also had heavy armor. his dps was pretty ok, but it was not based on weapons (spells), but OP seems less concerned with a super-optimal build. i do agree that depending on what OP is going for, trickster + fighter is a very compelling option. imo that's one the better ways to get a (non-summoned) weapons-focused caster.

scordeo's edge is very good but these days i avoid using it or upgrade it suboptimally because the temptation to exploit blade cascade is too great, that's how good it is. even without blade cascade, the increasing accuracy boost is crazy, which for you would probably be adaptive for generic +20 accuracy when maxed out. you can't go wrong with it. tarn's is actually probably better overall than grave calling outside of metagaming and vessel fights - you don't have to ramp up your lash (which can take a while if dual-wielding with another weapon) so while grave calling maxes out higher, tarn's starts off higher which means grave calling spends a lot of time initially just catching up. it also has bonus PEN, which is always nice. i also really like aldris blade of crow or whatever. it has a really great on-crit effect and the +10 shock damage is affected by other damage modifiers. it has also a subtle syenrgy if you pair with tarn's and its upgrade to reduce target deflection, making crits more common. (though if you're going with this synergy alone, scordeo's adaptive upgarde is better) if you've done the valian quest line there's also animancer's energy blade, which is great for tough fights because of its speed and its ability to completely ignore AR. (it does lower damage, but it also has only a 3s recoveyr instead of a 4s recovery) this was good enough that i mained it for one of my glass cannon builds against megabosses. edit: with eder, you probably have lots of primary attacks instead of full attacks - is tha tright? if so, you might just want one weapon and then a blunderbuss. that way you could max out on one weapon at the cost of having worse full attacks. (this also has fun synergies with the clear out family of abilities)

if i were to be honest with myself, i think the games that got consumables closest to "right" is something like final fantasy tactics. there the game, as you say, is pretty much balanced around the expectation of using potions and phoenix downs and throwing bombs or some such - if not that, then the spell equivalents from a white mage or black mage. there's also a pronounced lack of scarcity - even if you can only afford like 10 potions going into one fight, you can be assured that you'll be able to buy more at the next town after the fight. there's also katana, which one of the classes can use as a consumable - everytime you use a katana there's a 15% chance or so it breaks, but you can buy more katanas. There's also unique katanas with powerful effects, and I guarantee you most people who ever played a samurai in FFT hardly ever used those unique katanas for their abilities even for "only" a 15% chance of losing it, for the same reason that it's frequently a struggle to use a basic potion in a party-based RPG like deadfire; you never know if there's a harder fight just around the corner you *really* should save it for. the reason why i say "if i were to be honest with myself" is because it's far from my ideal world where you'd have consumables that are (1) interesting [in deadfire you get unique effects with potions of impediment or invisibility or ascendance, and in poe1 you got some unique spell scrolls], (2) with the expectation that you could really get a leg up on a fight with them (instead of them just being part of the standard expectation in every fight like in FFT or Diablo 1/2/3), but also (3) don't induce anxiety to use every single time. it really seems like no one has really figured out a way to get all three.

minor correction - the initial DoT landing does, but DoT ticks do not break most invisibility. They do break stealth (though i'm not sure how you would be stealthed in a legitimate scenario where you managed to land a DoT) and they break shadowing beyond/enduring shadows, but not any of the other invisibilities. keeping in mind DoTs are different from things like wall of fire or venombloom. edit: after the last discussion on invisibility mechanics on the forums, i updated my section on the guide to be as comprehensive and accurate as possible. i'm pretty sure it's accurate, and honestly for myself it's hard to keep a handle on all the various oddities about invisibility and stealth without referring to it: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/invisibility-vs-stealth

it's not your fault, it really is a game design trap. someday someone will design a game system where using consumables doesn't trigger people's instinctual hoarding instinct. i got used to using up consumables in poe/deadfire, i just started pathfinder: kingmaker and i'm falling into the (not-using-) consumable trap all over again. some instincts die hard, i guess

i think adra ban (and a few other mats) are not on any vendor loot tables, so you can never buy them. maybe that's a bug or something, because i can't believe that the same materials you use to upgrade most things to legendary are also an element for some medium-high level potions and scrolls... they really ought to warn you when you craft a scroll of revive the fallen or potion of improved arcane reflection "WARNING are you sure you want to use 1/2 or 1/4 of one of like four-five legendary upgrades on this not even that powerful one-use item???" edit - some items don't use adra ban to go up to legendary but use sapphires or emeralds or rubies; these are also not on vendor loot tables iirc, but they are so common from drops and loots that it's not too much of a concern (i've even used them to craft scrolls and bombs without feeling like i'm running out). given how *many* more legendary upgrades require adra ban, it really does seem like something got missed in some loot balancing.

with a bloodmage/streetfighter i highly absolutely recommend prioritizing int over con and dex. if you plan on using citzal's or other summoned weapons, you definitely want them to last a while, and int will also control the area effect of citzal. absolutely. i have played far more dangerous glass cannons with good success. you will want to make sure you have good support from your party because a streetfighter in particular can be knocked out really quickly if you're not paying attention. i suspect you're mostly focusing on using blood sacrifice to get to bloodied, and in case you are, keep in mind that a blood mage can also trivially trigger "heating up" by using chill fog and standing in it. the way inversions work, the speed bonus of heating up will be much more powerful than the combined recovery and accuracy penalty of being blinded, so while it's not quite as good as just "heating up" from being distracted or bloodied, it's a pretty foolproof way of doing so. at the very least, concelhaut's staff at tier 1 combined with something like chill fog is a pretty safe, good option to deal damage: with reach you're not next to anyone dangerous (depending on how you aimed your chill fog) and you regenerate a small amount of health with each hit.

i think in particular you need to worry about the action economy which is a problem for all caster multiclasses, especially in turn-based. i don't have a lot of experience with turn-based mode, but i suspect that most of the buffs are free actions. evoker is fine - i would also recommend enchanter, but it sounds like you don't care too much about much of what conjuration has to offer. as an evoker i think illusion magic is your friend, combined with engagement. i don't know how well it works in turn-based mode, but a close-range terrify effect (ryngrim's repulsive visage) on RTwP will occasionally cause enemies to run out of engagement range, triggering a disengagement attack, which can be pretty brutal coming from a fighter multiclass - not only does doing this protect you from harm, but the free attacks are a way around the constrained action economy. a shield is going to hurt your accuracy, but if most of the spells you cast don't care about accuracy (because they are buffs), then it's less of a big deal. plus, if you pick up disicplined barrage and an upgrade, and also pick up confident aim you can worry even less. rolling as a blackjacket might be interesting - when you pick up the passive quick switch your weapon slot switching becomes a free action. you could have some sort of stat stick and just switch to it in the same round as when you cast a spell, e.g. keeping magran's favor (+2 fire PL) in one slot, putting the SSS axe in another (for free upgrades to might inspirations), griffin's blade with +10% spell damage in another, and you can just switch to whatever you need in the moment. (pick up arms bearer for a 4th for a non-spellcasting weapon)

TBH most of the passive skills are like that. half of them do probably have a super hard high check involved to bypass some hard fight which--if you don't care about a specific way to finish quest or aoiding fights--is not really a big deal. Survival is probably the most useful because of all the survival checks in scripted interactions, but beyond that I find them mostly useful if I want some synergy with items (religion, history, metaphysics, etc. diplomacy does have a synergy but it's a club that doesn't seem particularly great to me) devotions is indeed pretty special. Paladin's zealous focus aura comes closest, but only with a +5 acc (upgradable to a 5% hit to crit as well). don't forget that devotions also gives every ally +4 might, and also debuffs enemies for -10 acc and -4 might, which just makes it super. i am still honestly perplexed of people back in the day when devotions used to be a 20 accuracy up or down change who thought that wasn't utterly broken. these days i will make priests who don't pick up devotions, but it's mostly just to do something different. don't get me wrong, other tier 4 spells are still pretty good, it's just devotions is obviously very good. with your second slot already taken i think veilpiercer is a perfectly fine weapon to have. the area cleansing effect can be a life saver in some of the final fights you have (especially in SSS). if you plan on doing some megabosses i am a big fan of shattered vengeance over kapana taga - kapana taga has -1 PEN and compensates by doing two different damage types, but i find most of the times I don't care about the secondary damage type i just would switch if blunt isn't enough. shattered vengance can also get you bonus engagement (it is also super on a non-tank since it can be upgraded to grant you immunity to engagement). however if you don't plan on doing megabosses, i'm not sure there are enough bullet sponges left to make it worth switching out and upgrading (pretty much just a few fights and final boss in SSS and then the endgame), since by this point you are probably beefed up enough to shred trash mobs without the need for the shattered vengeance damage buff. does eder have flail proficiency? flails can be pretty handy, and there's a particularly good religion-powered flail in SSS that would be excellent for mobs.

that's an interesting idea, but i'm not sure if unbending triggers off of blood sacrifice. maybe someone can verify.

I don't really care about the specific mechanics of storage and crafting, what I really want is for them (or any game company) to hire the best UX designers they can find because pretty much every user experience for crafting has been a b y s m a l (with console releases the worst). I'm sure they have UI experts, and maybe even a UXer, but they need some serious resources and more headcount because you can have the richest crafting system in the world but if you still make me scroll through endless lists of inscrutable items trying to remember which goes where it's still gonna be mediocre. grounded is better than some other games, but considering how big of a role crafting plays in that game it's still a struggle.

yeah, i think some long-gone forum member noted in some ancient thread where people were exploring the bloodmage potential as like "oh great, so now you can just cast slicken over and over every fight, swell"

for me, it's not about "running out of spells." it's the fact that normally, when you play a caster with finite resources, what you are effectively in combat is doing "in this situation, there is a best spell to cast, a second-best spell to cast, a third-best spell to cast, etc." you start off with the first-best spell to cast, and then move down the list, adjusting your mental list as situations change. you're likely doing this constantly even if you're not actively conscious of this mental model, e.g. "oh i was gonna cast ninagauth's shadow flame, but i'm out of tier 4 casts, so i'll instead cast..." a blood mage simply gets to say "i will always cast the first-best spell to cast" regardless of how many other spells you have. the fact that you also frequently are doing that at +1 PL and the some of the most synergistic spells are also the easiest to regen is icing on the cake. edit: i do agree that in many situations on potd, a blood mage is so powerful that it's effectively overkill. in addition, in very late game trash fights, a SC wizard can empower a spell to completely obviate the need to cast anything more than a couple spells (+5 PL with all the empower talents is really hard for the blood mage to compete with over the span of just a few spells). however in boss fights they really do get to shine, but they do need a lot of healing support or some sort of anti-death combo due to the length of some of the fights (esp megaboss).

you were probably asking boeroer specifically, but my opinions 1. SC fire-based evoker (if you're doing megabosses, I would instead pick SC bloodmage) 2. a streetfighter glass cannon martial build, like streetfighter/bloodmage. i would not recommend this for first-time ironman mode and/or berath's challenge. 3. honestly i think this is the wrong question to ask, or you're asking for something else. everyone has the same number of spellcasting, so outside of blood mage or resource regen combos i don't know what you're asking for here. 4. for melee? paladin (any)/(any) wizard. for a caster? probably lifegiver/(any) wizard or a priest/(any) wizard. 5. have you considered a deadfire lich? https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/case-study-2-deadfire-lich (edit - i just realized this needs to be updated a bit because of nerfs to wall of draining in 5.0) keep in mind that if you're not playing solo you have other party members who can fill in the gaps. "Most survivable" for a caster wizard doesn't matter as much if you have a priest or druid in your party.

i deliberately avoided mentioning bloodmage since OP mentioned doing an ironman run. i'm sure it's doable, but it seems like more headache then what it might be worth for a new deadfire player.

are you sure you're talking about the same issue as this thread? a) frightened child is supposed to be a very hard fight. if you don't know the mechanics of the fight, you should figure it out. on PotD taking the fight naively will end up getting you utterly defeated very quickly. that includes being hit hard by very powerful spells that can come close to or actually one-shot weaker characters. b) among other things, some enemies (incl in frightened child's fight, and especially many enemies in Forgotten Sanctum) will use Disintegration which--if you get knocked out with Disintegration--will result in annihilation, which is permadeath regardless of how many injuries you have. c) there are some spells that are intentionally instakill effects if it strikes a Near Death target, including your own party members. Frightened Child definitely features a few of them (Petrification is the one that hit my near-death mirke in my last run, which did in fact permanently paralyze her). how did you lose your PotD save?

you might enjoy a martial/wizard multiclass then over a pure caster. there are a bunch of weapons and gear that you can cobble together to really soup up spellcasting, and a martial multiclass would be much more capable of wielding them or taking advantage of them than a pure caster. examples for a damage wizard: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Magran's_Favor +2 fire PL, a martial class would also be good at landing killing blows with it which would make the weapon even better; https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Sun_and_Moon +2 fire OR frost PL (depending on time of day), a martial class would be better capable of taking advantage of the eothas/ondra upgrades; https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Shea's_War_Staff rewards a martial multiclass because it grants bonus crit chance on weapon attacks, and weapon crits grant concentration; https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Chromoprismatic_Quarterstaff gives you lots of different +1 PL and is a good martial weapon. https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/The_Mask_of_the_Weyc makes you extremely hard to hit early in fights, and lets you empower more. there's plenty of opportunities to organically beef up a martial/caster multiclass, and it doesn't require extensive metagaming - alot of this stuff you can find in stores (albeit expensive) or find as rewards as you progress through the game. you can actually get pretty deranged with itemization - fire keyworded spells the most. magran's favor in one hand, with sun and moon in the other is +4 fire PL together (they stack, being passive). if you look in the forums for my "Firedancer" build you can see an extreme example for a monk/priest multiclass.

as an idea (sorry for walls of text, but i'm bored at work right now :)) a fighter/wizard would be pretty tanky as well but not lose as much offensively (you sacrifice some general party support over a paladin). i've not done a fighter/wizard, but i've done fighter/other-casters so the concept is pretty similar. some things a fighter/wizard gets: disciplined barrage upgrade to tactical barrage. disciplined barrage is way better than in poe1 because you can spam it a lot (instead of just 1/encounter), and because of multiclassing. getting a huge accuracy boost to your multiclass is great. tactical barrage also gives you an intellect inspiration which makes your spellcasting way better armored grace means you can put on heavier armor without costing your spellcasting as much. constant recovery means that at the start of the fight (which also tends to be the most dangerous because enemy AI frequently likes to frontload their abilities) your fighter/wizard can grind through the pain fighter stances are great. the +5 acc from adventurer (up to +10 w/conqueror) stance also helps spellcasting. mob stance's recovery speed bonus can make your spellcasting faster when you're engaging a bunch of foes. there are several wizard spells that work best at close range, and what better way to be close range than to run up and get surrounded by enemies body control is nice for an offensive caster. one of the worst things that can happen to an offensive spellcaster is get dazed, especially on higher difficulties, because spells are harder to get up to higher PEN versus enemy AR than weapons are, and -4 PEN is just brutal. body control lets you resist dazed down to something that is basically ignorable for a caster (also makes sure you can never get stunned and because stun durations tend to be so short the effect of it being resisted down to dazed is almost completely ignorable as well)

well tbf i think you lose a lot going with a paladin setup. you have to spend more of your time (at least on higher difficulties) refreshing your buffs to keep your survivability up in hard fights, and action economy means you just have less opportunity to do spellcasting. but there are ways to metagame extra offense out of it, if that's your cup of tea (such as the whispers combo that scrapulous mentions). kind wayfarers is an extremely good subclass if you want to take a support tank role. dual-wielded weapons means that each strike with flames of devotion heals, which means you can heal almost as much as a Restore, except you are also damaging the enemy, possibly buffing your party (with shared flames upgrade), and unlike Restore or most other healing spells, you can spam it for basically the entire fight since it only costs 1 zeal. for offense, i dunno. i always find paladin a little mediocre on offense, except for divine immolation setup, and a multiclass won't get as much out of divine immolation.

(sorry for triple posting) for a specialized wizard, the instant-cast nature of most enchantment spells means that the downside of picking conjuration or evoker is frequently irrelevant; getting a recovery penalty on spells with 0 recovery is still 0 recovery . similar thing with conjuration - while they are not instant, most summoned weapon spells have 0 recovery, so if you just dip into conjuration for the weapons the downside of a slower recovery for going enchanter or transmuter is basically irrelevant.

to add to @Scrapulous's list, Spirit Shield gives you +3 AR for a long time and Llengrath's Safeguard gives you +15 all defenses (again, stacks with deflection, but not with other +all defenses) and +5 AR for a long time. i suggested stalker in my last post because they get a +1 AR as a passive bonus that stacks with other sources of +AR. on higher difficulties i wouldn't recommend AR-boosters too much them unless you are on a tankier wizard multiclass wearing at least medium armor, but on lower difficulties they can make a light armor-wearing wizard very tough. AR in deadfire is very different than Damage Reduction and can give you enormous survivability if you are able to put enemies into underpenetration. my end-game tanky aloth would take piddling amounts of damage from even high level casters because they couldn't penetrate his massive AR, especially against elemental spells with bulwark against the elements (he was wearing heavy armor enchanted up the wazoo and would open eveyr fight with those buffs; not many casters can do much when dazed (-4 PEN) against 18+ AR, and those that do I would just buff up with spell reflection)

well, as an example, an arcane knight (paladin/wizard) can be pretty tough. you get most of hte defensive buffs from the wizard (not a lot you miss from tier 8-9), and you also get up to +15 all defenses from the paladin. Coupled with a shield and lay on hands you could have insane survivability. for such a setup i would recommend a generic wizard so you get access to arcane veil, enchantment buffs, as well as some illusion magic for other sources of +deflection in case you're up against gunfire or arcane veil runs out. on lower difficulties wizard's double plus all the tankiness of a paladin with a shield can make you very very hard to hit, for the entire fight (since no one will actually hit you, wizard's double will stay up; because wizard's double has no duration, it can't be cleansed and i don't think it can be suppressed either.) a more esoteric example would be wizard + ranger (stalker). if you haven't looked too deeply into the ranger ability tree, there's ways to get tons of bonus accuracy that also applies to spellcasting, in addition to hunter's claw, which lets you get up to +20 acc against a specific type of enemy. It can be upgraded to either +20% damage as well, or +20 all defenses as well (the latter can be good as a survivability measure, as +all defenses stacks with +deflection bonuses since they are bonuses of different types; the stacking rules in deadfire are different than poe1). this requires quite a bit more metagaming and micromanagement, and while you miss out on tier 8 or 9 spells the bonus accuracy and damage can more than make up for it.

tactician is indeed mentioned because of how easy brilliant is to trigger in solo runs. it is harder and requires a lot more metagaming in a party situation, but is doable. having a cipher in your party helps a lot due to phantom foes, but with multiple party members you have to pay more attention to random flanking and perception afflictions. in solo it's easy to just have your mainchar topped off with a captain's banquet (immunity to perception) or svef (resistence to perception afflictions) to help keep brilliant up, but that also gets harder in party. i don't have a ton of experience with making it work outside a solo context, but i'm sure someone can chime in. i would personally recommend just going all in on a single-class wizard, and probably pick evoker, enchanter, or conjuration (those subclasses so that you retain access to enchantment school). enchantment comes with a bunch of buffs that help with survivability. if you stick with enchantment or evoker you retain access to a bunch of unique spells (some of them are from poe1, like crushing doom or ninagauth's various stuff). conjurer you lose access to evocation and a bunch of unique spells, but in return you gain access to transmutation spells, which include more self-buffs but also very useful spells like slicken, chill fog, and late game spells like petrification or corrosive skin. an evoker loses a bunch of utility from the conjuration school (not important if you don't care about summoned weapons), but gains a lot of useful buffs and debuffs from the illusion school (wall of many colors rocks). the subclass bonus for evoker and conjurer are really good as well, IMO. one of the reasons for my recommendation is that engagement is arguably more important to pay attention to in deadfire than in poe1 - enemies are more willing to break existing engagements to go after weak party members (including you), and one can move around while engaged as long as you stay in engagement range (whereas in poe1 any movement broke engagement). So your back of the line party members (such as ranged casters) are more vulnerable. One of hte best enchantment spells is Deleterious Alacrity of Motion which functions a bit differently than in poe1. In PoE1 it was a generic movement/recovery speed bonus. In Deadfire the speed boost is not as pronounced, but the big deal is getting immunity to engagement coupled with a movement speed bonus. It is basically one of the best survivability boosts in the game - anytime a melee foe thinks they are going to land an attack on you, you can just rapidly run out of range and make them whiff their attack, and because you move so fast there's nothing they can do to catch up to you. You can literally run circles around everyone, letting a party member engagement someone chasing you. why i recommend single-classing is because the tier 8 and tier 9 spells are very good, and importantly you get the opportunity to really power up your empowered attacks with perks (wizards are unique in that essentially you don't have to pick any late game [or any] ability and rely on switching grimoires [which is much less painful than in poe1] and just invest in lots of good passives). One empowered late game spell with all the empowered passives (+10 acc, +1 PEN, +15% dam, +15% aff duration) plus prestige (additional +1 PL) can single-handedly end most end-game trash fights (and even some boss fights). Retaining access to evocation spells is best for this, with Meteor Swarm and Missile Salvo as candidates, but there are plenty of other spells you can happily abuse like this. As an example, on PotD with upscaling and challenges, a single empowered missile salvo was enough to take out the first couple of Forgotten Sanctum boss fights.

also let's remember that poe1 was a per-rest system, not a per-encounter system. Helig just hasn't figured out how to have a good night's rest yet, so all his good stuff wasn't available yet