thelee

mid-game: Kapana Taga and St Drogga's Skull (I play almost 100% of the time with Skaen's challenge so illumination is very important) i have a second weapon set that is Endre's Flog of Obedience (a flail to penalize reflex can be great with a beam spell, though increasingly i rely on my merc to debuff reflex) with a simple torch (torches count as a club so despite the DPS hit, it's still blunt damage and it can still debuff will). Kapana Taga has low penetration, so a backup is helpful. This second weapon set was/is more important when i have a spear equipped (due to common pierce immunity). late-game plan: Stalker's Patience and St Drogga's Skull. I probably will sub in Shattered Vengeance for megabosses, that damage debuff is so good for long fights.

your intuition is right. there are very few ways to boost spell damage, so what boosts you can find (might, griffin's blade) can be close to a pure multiplicative boost instead of an additive boost for weapons that gets diluted by enchantments and such. that being said, for offensive casters i tend ot prefer intellect and perception over might still.

i have very bad news for you. all negative numbers use inversions, so it's not additive per se. it's not multiplicative either. if you're familiar with harmonic means or how fuel efficiency standards in the US are calculated, it's that. if you really want to be able to calculate it yourself, there's a post by MaxQuest pinned, and there's also my write up here (which also explains the fuel efficiency standard comparison): https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions i've been playign enough deadfire that i know a few inversions by heart (-30% recovery speed from 2w style is equivalent to a +42.85% action speed bonus during the recovery, with two weapon style taht becomes +60.5%), but it's definitely not intuitive.

it's a very steep difference, unfortunately. it's been a while so i don't know where my notes are, but i think it's something like a ~30% net damage difference (net, so multiplicative). not as high as the maxed-out speed bonus from two weapon style would suggest because bonus accuracy and the ability to crit from one-handed style does count for something, especially against high-armor enemies, but it's still pretty significant downgrade to go to 1h style. one-handed style would be better (if still niche) if you use weapons that don't get +penetration modals (like club, flail, etc.) because when you're underpenetrating that chance to crit and bonus accuracy can be huuuge in overwhelming enemy armor when you're down by even just -1 (-25% damage).

ISTR that i did and it worked. i cast a lot of fan of flames in the gullet this is also why Delayed Fireball is great. NOT a meh spell, and the delay before it blows up is just enough to get back your spell cast. i play on potd w/ challenges with only moderate min-maxing, so i do find the need to refill (mostly early game) and empower (mostly late game). probably each member of my party empowers, on average, once/two encounters, so i find the need to rest after 5-6 fights. it can be a bit punishing on rymrgand to downgrade on rest bonuses when doing this, but that's just part of the challenge/fun. edit: early on, empowering a spell for blaster casters is kind of a trap. doesn't meaningfully help your accuracy, and the boost in power isn't significant compared to getting spells back. eventually, your spells are better and additional scaling is hot, and especially with the empowering talents you can easily swing a fight. case in point - i used to be pretty bullish on blood mage, and blood mage is super good no doubt, but alpha-striking the start of a mid-late game fight with an empowered top-level spell can pretty much end a fight right then and there, so the fact that you can regen spells with a blood mage almost becomes moot.

Adding a post to mention that against high level enemies and bosses, SC blaster casters eventually take care of themselves. Many tier 8 and 9 spells for casters are really character-definingly good. Especially empowered (which a pure SC will likely be able to do much better for any spell anyway by picking up the empower passives). I’ve recounted this anecdote before on the forums but no joke once I had an SC evoker in one run and they empowered the tier 9 missile spell and got a lucky evocation echo and that one casting knocked out a forgotten sanctum boss pretty much single-handedly, on PotD no less

I’m assuming you’re talking about hard or PotD, and I’m assuming you mostly mean a blaster caster. In those difficulties I think it really, really helps to have a source of penetration advantage. Otherwise you can only really reliably use the high-PEN spells for damage for a long time and they aren’t that great for damage (though way better than an underpenetrating fireball). Priest SC can work as damage (if a bit underwhelming early on) bc of Champion’s Boon. They can also support a different blaster caster with it. multiclassing with Monk helps (they get tenacious), also you can make a Berserker barbarian work. chanter offers best support by far IMO with their AR reduction invocation. With the upgrade you can get permanent uptime on it. You can slot that into any party and make a blaster work real well. i think a fury naturally works really well. Inherent bonus PEN, extra range, plus Druid also has a ton of great raw damage DoT effects that are really efficient damage/cast. aside from fury and chanter these are all mid-game solutions. And yeah IME early game for blaster casters is pretty rough. You miss half the time and even when you hit you’re getting like a -50% or -75% damage reduction penalty. It is sort of a fact of life that pure blasting is not as good on higher difficulties because of health and under penetration, at least until you accumulate better levels and gear.

you know i just realized after writing my last post that i do have some more directly relevant pointers here, because i actually am using ydwin as a front-line character as a pure sc cipher. some things that i've been doing with ydwin to ensure success: (not saying you have to do all these, but these are how i've been thinking about it and maybe give you your own inspiration) immediately picked up spear proficiency and spent money on fine and eventually exceptional spear for main hand, for the engagement so ydwin can actually control enemy foes. eventually i got the club that grants bonus engagement, so i've been using that instead of a spear, though eventually i'll swap back to a spear that has the enchantment to get occasionally free recovery attacks. magical spears are pretty uncommon so it's a weapon type you just have to shell out for. and it's important to shell out because you have no way to penetration-boosting modal. so you need those enchantments to boost PEN (on top of the other normal benefits of magical weapons) i started off keeping ydwin equipped with medium armor, dual-wielding. i gave her items that would boost resolve or deflection. eventually i get fleshmender (superb light armor that has bonus to AR and health regen that goes away if hit). as usual i pick up tough (early on i also use an amulet to boost health instead) i use ydwin primarily as an alchemy character, with a tiny amount of athletics. action economy is very tight for melee cipher, esp with medium armor's penalties, but alchemy lets me load up beforehand with drugs (coral snuff, deadeye, and ripple sponge are my favorites), and at the start of fights, while stealthed, i quaff a helpful potion or something (like merciless gaze or deftness). i also almost always rest with Grog for her (and i have the drunkard's regret ring which eliminates hangover effects... more relevant for me bc i'm also using rymyrgand's challenge so it's frequently a waste of money to rest multiple times just to clear hangovers). also, making lesser health potions very effective is good. a bit controversially, i picked up the soul whip upgrade that increases weapon damage, not focus gain. just to try something different. in practice there's not many focus powers i want to use, because i also picked up the two beam powers, and you can't double up on each of the beam powers anyway. party support comes from pallegina with lay on hands and my merc, whose build i'll probably post here eventually b.c. it's played out very interestingly. merc is a warden (blackjacket/druid) who has out of the fire, which i use if ydwin is getting overwhelmed. overall i think it's pretty good and last time i checked ydwin was also party damage leader. those beam spells are really good. especially if you have a neat line of enemies and you empower a beam. outputs tons of damage.

i'll let others w/ more experience w/ soul blade comment on it, but cheap shred is good, and there is some insane cheese you can do with the soul blade's ability, if that's your thing. chanter/troubadour is always aces. i would personally suggest you lean more towards int and con than might in such a build. might is less important for a tank, and getting longer linger/larger chant and more survivability would be helpful if you're going to be on the front line. if you're not into summons, i suggest giving tekahu a whirl as a pure, single-classed chanter. i've geared him up like a tank, with heavy armor, a high-quality small shield and a hatchet to start (until better defensive gear and chants), and also make sure to pick up chants like ancestor's memory for heal or her courage thick as her shield and especially silver knight (for bonus deflection and engagement). chanters start off a little squishy before you lay on all the defensive chants, but overall it worked out very well as a secondary tank, and tekehu's unique invocations can be very good (chain lightning is great when it unlocks, so is tornado, and tekehu has unparalleled chanter cheese capabilities with avenging storm + sasha's singing scimitar). you lose summons but it sounds like you don't want those as much. (edit: another consideration is that tekehu gets so many invocations for free that you can spend your ability points on tons of passives that aid survivability or general utility. in fact with tekehu i typically don't really pick up any invocations explicitly except for maybe the resurrection or the tier 9 class resource restoration one.) not that important IMO. not worth dumping it, but also not worth investing heavily into. i think konstanten is underpowered as a companion because he puts so many of his stat points into constitution. a properly built party with careful enemy management can skate by even with a front-line with minimal constitution investment (my aforementioned fighter only has 12, investing mostly in might, my other frontline in this run is ydwin who has 10). i also always pick up tough for virtually every character (incl ones i've dropped their con below 10), and IMO that's a way better bang for your buck than investing in con with your precious stat points. res you have to be a little careful. it can be very insignificant but it can also be very good. for a tank i would consider strongly finding a way to get to 19 or 20 that still leaves you happy w/out too much compromise on the other stats. but you have to back that up with a shield as well as weapon+shield style. you get increasing returns from resolve/deflection and it'll all pay off. (but it can feel rough on esp PotD early game some enemies just have such stupid accuracy that it doesn't always feel like a good trade-off, but it eventually works out). an underrated side benefit is the reduced harmful effect duration from res (a new aspect compared to poe1). another reason you get increasing returns here. at 20 res, debuff durations are down -30% which, thanks to complicated inversion math in deadfire, can be much more powerful than you think, able to cancel out up to +43%'s worth of duration boosts from the enemy (mostly intellect). and it keeps getting better the more resolve you add on. basically a high-resolve tank can shrug off attacks and debuffs really easily. in my current run i have a merc that only has 6 resolve, and compared to my higher-resolve fighter it can be a massive difference in debuff duration sometimes. not as different as in poe1, but there are still differences: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/classes-single-classing-focus. the most notable one is fighter, who gets a +5 deflection bonus, which makes them already pretty tank-appropriate, and any fighter multiclass will get only part of that deflection bonus (i forget if it rounds up or down). on the other side barbarians get -5 pretty punishing combination with frenzy

one-handed style is very niche in deadfire compared to poe1. and that niche is not focus generation, you are tanking your focus generation unfortunately (for more info on the niche, i wrote it up in one of the sidebars here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/weapon-styles). two weapon style is overall best for dps/focus, two-handed style is also good and has other advantages (quarterstaff and pike give you reach like in poe1 so you have good dps/focus while being relatively safe like a ranged attacker if you have a good tank to body block). with party support a club will work best. also, the cipher doesn't need to use a club, you can have someone more melee-capable use a club to keep enemy will low. ciphers will actualy suffer with club because of the -25% damage penalty from the modal. eventually you get a high-level passive that you can take that gives you bonus to accuracy vs will which will help. edit: same thing goes with morningstar modal. put it on a front-line tank, hit an enemy with it, and suddenly you have a juicy target for a cipher disintegrate. IMO the tier 1 beam spell is always good although the targeting can be a bit challenging. ascendant is not really meant for front-loading powers, since you have to build it up. there are other ways to super charge focus generation for an ascendant (there's a unique blunderbuss that can be enchanted with a once/encounter massive push back attack that will top you off with focus almost assuredly). aside from psion, the other ciphers will do overall better with front-loading attacks, and the beguiler can generate tons of focus real fast with the right powers. i think those are decent stats. unfortunately a cipher on hard/potd is just going to be squishy for a melee-er, you don't have survivability-boosting abilities/passives compared to martials and heavy armor is really taxing on your ability to use powers; so additional con/res may help a bit but won't help the big picture that much. eventually by mid/mid-late game with more powers, the ability to pick up Tough, and the slowdown of the AR vs PEN arms race on hard/potd will make things easier. in the meantime, rely on your party to support you. firearms are great. their #1 feature is that while reloading, you can do switch to doin anything else, like quaffing a potion, using a power, etc. one-handed pistol with modal is also a super way to do firearms w/ basically minimal reload time (the math works out heavily in your favor doing one-hand pistol with modal that it doesn't with any other weapon). crossbows/arbalests are similar, but they especially come with utility for interruptions, which is more important than any damage they can do. there are also some frankly stupidly good unique firearms. there's a pistol that can do raw damage and be enchanted to do even more damage on top. there are two blunderbusses that instead of firing 4 bullets, fire one bullet that explodes (also decent for focus generation). there's an arquebus that lets you fire twice before reloading--basically eliminating the slow reload tax. that's kinda what i do. i give each character a main skill to focus on, maybe two tops. the diminishing returns on party assist are pretty nasty. more important for watcher to focus because there are lots of checks that are watcher-only, but that's the general idea. the main argument for not giving everyone these skills is that IME keeping your characters stocked with enough potions and scrolls is expensive. eventually by late game you'll be overflowing with high-powered scrolls (through forgotten sanctum dlc) but good potions will always be hard to keep up. I max out at two characters investing in those skills at a time. similar with explosives, though explosives are honstly easier to keep stocked up (most explosives recipes give you more than one bomb/craft, and even really basic ones are good). in terms of potions being usable by all, the best benefit from alchemy to me is making even lesser health potions extremely useful. combat is slower than in poe1 so drug durations won't get too high relative to fights, but high alchemy is needed if you want to do more than one fight (+ some exploration) with the effects of a drug. edit: also if you are interested in poisons maxing out alchemy is basically mandatory for them to be usable at all on hard/potd. on potd you also need additional help from items and miscellaneous general buffs (like a source of aware to get graze->hit or independent accuracy bonuses not tied to perception). athletics is also good for a lot of characters. it falls off quickly, but even with the fall off it's very useful heal. i have a fighter mainchar right now that is maxxing athletics (for an item that gives you -% recovery based on athletics), and at level 12 i can heal ~200 health with athletics (at fast speed with no recovery). for mercenaries i might need i tend to pick up laborer as a background since that's +2 athletics off the bat, and that's basically a free, no-recovery potion every encounter. if you hover over your character, there's a tooltip to the top left of hte screen by default. There should be a number next to a "Concentration" label near the top of that tooltip that will have a number if you have more than one layer of concentration. Plus I think there's "Concentration" next to whatever effect is granting it in the list of active effects. edit: there's also a visual indicaiton in the above-your-head combat short tooltips - the circle that shows your current action will be glowing if you have any concentration. very important for at-a-glance info on whether that enemy caster is interruptible.

yeah like boeroer says it's pretty rare. it's corrupted a handful of items in my ~2k hours personally but because it's so rare it can be really devastating* when it does happen, because i normally don't catch it in time so being able to restore a save becomes impossible. * though this was back when i cared about not using cheats, now i just iroll20s and fix it.

lol oh yeah. somehow i almost always end up picking a background (not intentionally) that gets all three maerwalds. pretty rough, iirc maybe the roughest SSS fight in the required critical path.

i might be misinterpreting this, but want to clarify that Autumn's Decay isn't tagged as poison. (though many other druid spells are surprisingly affected by poison immunity, like the very-similar-but-definitely-affected-by-poison-immunity plague of insects)

"Animist" is the no-subclass option. It gets bonus spells like other subclasses, but has no special class features. If you like shapeshifting, Shifter is stupid-good. You can't cast spells while shifted, but it's a pretty minor drawback for the sheer boost in power you get (and the free healing). Shifter boar form is insanely good because it's bugged where the damage-over-time effect it has lasts a really long time compared to other druids' spiritshift. Do you play Path of the Damned? If so, I highly recommend Hold Beasts and/or Charm Beasts, will make the digsite fight waaaaay easier. (don't pick it as your character creation spell so you can respec out of it later if you don't need it... though they are still handy against some dangerous beasts) I second Sunbeam. Super-solid all-around performer. Damage is low, but the Penetration is high (very useful on path of the damned), and blind is really really a good debuff. It ain't hard CC so it might seem less obviously powerful compared to other tier3 afflictions, but it so terribly punishes recovery, accuracy, deflection (on top of the normal reflex defense debuff) that it is a huge survivability buff. other spells i like tier 1-3: the moons's light (solid heal over time spell) firebrand (couple with ring of focused flame from the dark cupboard [steal or buy]) to be a powerful melee-er woodskin - basically instant cast, if you cast it from stealth it's basically instant cast and instant recovery. bonus piercing armor can be a life saver (basically makes you harder to punish with ranged damage), and burn and shock are pretty common enemy damage types esp early on (especially early drakes). as a bonus, it's a plant effect that activates the +2 PL bonus for lord of the forest upgrade on lance of the midwood spreading plague - i'm very bullish on this. lasts a super long time, bounces a lot (if slowly), and making the entire enemy battlefield hobbled and weakened is very effective, both in terms of making it easier for your various spells to land, but also making it easier for your squishies to escape danger and to make life a nightmare for enemy healers for doing damage, do not sleep on Touch of Rot and Autumn's Decay. They do insane damage, just over time. But compared to other classes, pound for pound you get way more damage efficiency from these little guys. Unlike same-rank Insect Swarm, Autumn's Decay does instantaneous damage as well, has a huge area, and casts faster; it also targets reflex instead of fort, which tends to be a lot easier for the typical druid-inclusive party to debuff, especially early on (on PotD fortitude is a really tough enemy defense in the early-mid game). Insect Swarm is still a good spell, too, just that I think Autumn's Decay might get slept because no subclass gets it for free, and it doesn't do raw damage or remove concentration.

ah neat! i thought it persisted only if you cast another familiar. so that's nice then. edit: was gonna update my guide to this but then i realized that i had already known this at some point and forgotten it -_-. replacing familiar with familiar only important for stacking the stat buffs.

love to see MTG concepts here you know, originally i had this issue with conjuration, but i think in practice you just play them out differently. summoned weapons all have reach or ranged, so the illusion magic is less critical (and you still get arcane veil for emergencies, though i'd rather just slicken or pull). i like illusion magic for non-reach martial/glass cannon builds. yeah, the PL bonus is kinda squandered on a lot of conjuration spells, and there is a rough anti-self-synergy where you can't benefit from familiars and also actually use some of your conjuration spells (i wish familiars were "free" summons). IME conjuration school is more about what schools you get overall, with a slight boost from your familiar - you retain access to spells like swift, slicken, walls, combusting wounds, pull of eora. i think the guaranteed at least +1 PL from your familiar across the board gives it an edge over a generic wizard if you have a specific "flavor" or "theme" that's in those schools. put another way, transmuter would be better at some really impactful spells, but you end up dropping enchantment, and swift is so good for a martially-oriented caster that i would never. enchantment gets you access to a lot of useful evocation spells, but you drop transmutation, so it's quite a trade-off. it's basically this level of back-and-forth that means i frequently end up liking conjurer anyway for certain caster builds, warts and all. though fassina's character really annoys me because her loremaster setup invests in summons for the first skill point, which--at least without a mod--you can't get rid of. just really excacerbates the anti-synergy of relying on your familiar.

nah, i know knockdown/prone is effective. i was trying to figure out ways to make "push" specifically effective. though there are some pretty good ideas in general in this thread. yeah i was half-hoping for some push cheese like this, i've definitely seen this happen (very annoying when it happens to party member). yeah i was originally going to roll a druid/arcane archer because between the two of them that's tons of push effects and arcane archer also gets web and binding roots (like halt on steroids), plus an animal companion with engagement to keep pushed foes away from squishy folk. not knowing about cheesier push options like what constentin suggested it sounded effective. but i've rolled two other beastmasters in the past so i wasn't keen on rolling a third.

imma stop you right there. Carnage isn't a physical attack. Carnage is a "spell-like" ability that is triggered by your weapon strikes as a barbarian, and the damage is keyed off very few things, basically just: your base weapon damage, might, and power-level scaling. it doesn't interact with things that modify your weapon attacks or are based off your weapon attacks. it's basically a whole other thing. this is why i call it "spell-like" - it's like a spell in what few things actually boost it, it just so happens that the damage is based on your primary weapon as opposed to a fix number like for an actual spell.

i completely forgot about red hand having a push enchant, lol i just never bothered with that enchant in the past. the universalist build in my OP was previously going to use xefa + 1h style to get a persistent source of push mid-late game, but red hand's push on hit is going to be way way better. didn't think of arterial strike, but just tanglefooting enemies and knocking them around with each shot of red hand is going to pretty much be repeated hard cc on melee targets. also lol fighter clear out with xefa is hilarious

Revisiting deadfire after playing around with BG3 and anyone who's played much BG3 knows that an extremely effective tactic is simply to push enemies into chasms (via athletics or push effects). Got me thinking if there's any creative way to use push effects in Deadfire. Always kind of a "meh" effect IMO but maybe there's something that can be done here (if not instantly-trivializing-encounters level of power like in BG3). I just have a random build right now as universalist skaen/animist (despite swearing off skaen forever after doing the ultimate) - using Escape as mobility tool, and using Halt or Tanglefoot + Winter Wind to keep melee enemies away from the front line. Moderately effective, probably will get more effective at mid levels and Halt is less likely to graze or miss and I get more push effects from the druid side. (This is similar to a universalist built i posted here a while back where I argue Halt is extremely effective hard-CC for melee foes - adding in a push effect here means that Halt is effective even after the front line is already engaged.) any ideas?

do you really want to lean in towards a fire theme? or you just like the flavor of Magran? like Constentin said there's a decent chunk of fire immunes, but with a universalist you can pick up tons of frost/water spells. Not particularly in-theme if you just want to be a fire-nuker-type, but gives you probably maximum versatility (fire immunes tend to have a weakness to frost and frost immunes [there's a DLC full 'em] tend to have a weakness to fire). i would also pick up Marux Amanth - when soulbound to priest you get a 10% chance to echo priest spells. 10% is not a lot, but is a pretty nice event when it triggers, especially given that Magran gives you some nukes (fan of flames and torrent of flame). dual wield with either sun and moon or magran's favor as constentin suggests.

late reply, but just wanted to chime in on some other thoughts - 1. by itself, druid is pretty jack of all trades. that means that w/ multicalss you can angle it pretty effectively towards either a martial or caster bent, but there are occasionally some gotchas (for example, devoted + spiritshift is a trap, monk + spiritshift can be awkward b.c. spiritshift claws don't count as unarmed). 2. there's some great cheese opportunities (esp w/ single-class druid thanks to avenging storm, as boeroer mentions, but also pollen patch), if you're into that. 3. requires a bit of metagame knowledge, but druid has some good item-based interactions that can sometimes be a focus for builds. i actually had a martial-oriented wizard/druid centered on the second-tier flaming sword spell, strange as that might sound in that summary. it's because ring of focused flame (ez to buy or steal) gives +10 acc to fire-keyworded spells (a lot of druid spells), but also the flaming sword (normally summoned weapons don't interact much with keywords). combined with the high base damage of a great sword, the dual damage nature of the sword, the lash, and near-instant-cast wizard buffs (especially deleterious alacrity of motion), was extremely effective. other items incl helm of hte white wind (+10 acc to tons of druid spells), unstable coil (several ways for druid to generate lots of tier 3 inspirations), lord darryn's voulge (huge bonus to storm-keyworded spells, which is basically just druid-only), lance of hte midwood stag (good power level bonus, if you have a plant or beasts effect, of which the druid has several ways). 4. a neat all-purpose trick is that for non-furies, spiritshift cat comes with a buff that you can use to give a huge +33% action speed bonus for a little bit. importantly, it's not just limited to cat attacks, or even cat form. so for whatever build you do, you can make yourself extremely effective by picking up cat form, and then spiritshifting into cat and activating the +33% buff. (shifters have to do a little more effort to shift out of cat form to cast spells.) it's so easily effective that i deliberately no longer do this just to change things up. boeroer has good suggestions, to add on, i recommend giving a psion/lifegiver a try if you want to be a very capable support caster. you get insane healing capability, and the psion is busy generating focus while you're protecting/healing your allies, so when you're done with that you have focus ready to dump on enemy-affecting spells. i don't know how much you care about summons, but druid summons are... eh. there's a community mod that improves the blights a bit, but nothign compares to how good a chanter can be at summons, but summons won't really be much more than a damage soak until you get to tier 7 spells and up (lashing vine, fire stag, oozes).

Pretty late response to OP, but Nemnok has legitimately high defenses. I recall for my Ultimate run using spiritual weapons at legendary with skaen (so, legendary stiletto and club) and underpenetrating significantly, possibly max. Nemnok is supposed to be tough fight. For goodness sake, the imp has a spell rotation that gives him infinite uses of meteor swarm!

lol is that a party full of rangers?

been slammed with BG3 so this is a bit belated, but many congrats!