Livegood118

"Pure tanks" in this game - I.e. A char with fully reduced offensive stats in favour of maxing their defensive stats are completely useless now, because the enemies will just zoom right past them in favour of better targets. It's better to have a front line with their offence/defence more balanced to spread aggro out. That said, extra knockdown and the +knockdown belt might be something to look in to for your fighter, as that should give you four knockdowns which are four full attacks (I.e. Four free offhand attacks with no recovery/wait per fight). Remember, generally speaking, the advantages of 2H vs dual wield tend to grow the more speed your character can stack. A high might, high int, outlanders frenzy and sanguine plate 2H fighter imo will generally cut through dudes a lot better and can actively provide a support role through consecrated ground and you should be able to attack with the blade of the endless paths at 1.15 * 1.15 * 1.2 * 1.33 = 2.11 recovery mod and use armoured grace for like 1.9 recovery.

You should be able to hit them for like 400 damage – maybe more – with Seven Nights She Waited providing they're paralysed. I wouldn't worry too much – though high flame DR might be very useful for their ray gun move.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I get it. Thanks, that makes sense now.

Sorry if I caused any offence – I didn't have anyone in mind when I made the comment. All I was suggesting was that the average person that plays these games probably plays with a party of six different characters and each a different class, so looking at the "balance" of the game in a context other than this probably isn't reflective of how the majority would play it. For example, having one Dragon thrashed chanter in a Party is arguably not OP taking in to account the other abilities you get in the game. Taking six Dragon Thrashed chanters means you'll completely roflstomp any encounter in the game, but the game shouldn't be balanced around taking six chanters along because this is more of an outlier example than the ordinary six character set up, which is what the game is balanced around e.g. people on their first few playthrough like to play with different story companions, each a different class. I'm essentially saying 1 or 2 things; – The strength of the priest should be adjusted so that while they're still better/more convenient buffers than everyone else in the game, they're not as stupidly powerful as they are at the moment. – The buffs available to other classes should be brought up to compensate for the absence of a priest. And of course, you can definitely play through the game without a priest if you want - but it's like the sabre choice: you're making a conscious decision to gimp yourself.

Not I'm even more confused. Do you mean it's not the base damage?

That's really cool. I never knew it worked after base damage had been calculated. So if your dude did 27.5 – 40 Damage with a 150% damage modifier on a large 1H weapon, confident aim would add 27.5*0.2 = 5.5 to your minimum roll, which means 33 – 40. That means it's much better than it would first appear.

That's cool. I personally love Pillars for the difficulty and the way that the gameplay mechanic, various abilities and class mechanics interact. I dunno – I'd just love to be able to not bring a Priest along without feeling that I'm somehow intentionally putting myself at a disadvantage.

I'm not sure – Chanter is interchangeable with Paladin in my opinion in a tanky support role: AoE Heals, Buffs, debuffs and later AoE damage and CC depending on what you want. You could even use a tanky barbarian if you want to focus on the AoE damage element. Cipher, Druid and Wizard are all interchangeable – they can all provide good AoE CC on demand with damage too if you need it. I'd have at least one of them in any party to fulfil that function. Sure, they're somewhat interchangeable, but your question specified a six man party with no repeated classes. Under those rules I'm probably going to be taking a Cipher, a Wizard AND a Druid if I want to be as powerful as possible, just like I'll probably take a Chanter AND a Paladin. As such the question about whether or not taking a Priest is more powerful boils down to whether a Priest offers more than the remaining five classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Monk and Ranger) and I think it does. Also you specified optimality. A Barbarian can fill the role of tanky AoE damager, but I don't think that's the optimal choice compared to a Chanter or late game Paladin. Fair enough I guess. I suppose what I meant was not a super-optimal party, but one which fills all the "roles" and which would be typical from an ordinary playthrough. Classes of course shouldn't be interchangeable – some of them should be better at some things than others, but the Priest's abilities are so "un-interchangeable" that you're gimping yourself if you don't bring one along. The main offenders are the spells I spoke about in the OP, like with Devotions for the Faithful: +20 Melee Accuracy, +20 Ranged Accuracy, +4 Might and then the opposite for enemies. The Ranged Accuracy/Melee Accuracy distinction is really important here, because it means it'll stack (or anti-stack vs enemies) with any other general +accuracy you can add (e.g Eldritch Aim, scroll of valour). No other class has a buff to melee accuracy/ranged accuracy if I recall correctly other than the Cipher. Then you can throw on inspiring holy radiance (+10) general accuracy which stacks with everything and Crowns for the faithful (+6 Accuracy) in AoE or Champions Boon (+6) individually. If a priest was to throw a scroll of valour, they'd be able to buff for +15 (Scroll) + 20 (Devotions) + 10 (Holy Radiance) + 6 (Crowns) = +51 Accuracy in an AOE which is insane and so far beyond anything that any other class can throw out. Deflection Bonuses can stack up to +15/20 (Circle of Defence/Symbol of Eothas) + 25 (Shields for the Faithful) + 25 (Crowns for the Faithful) = +65/+70.

I'm not sure – Chanter is interchangeable with Paladin in my opinion in a tanky support role: AoE Heals, Buffs, debuffs and later AoE damage and CC depending on what you want. You could even use a tanky barbarian if you want to focus on the AoE damage element. Cipher, Druid and Wizard are all interchangeable – they can all provide good AoE CC on demand with damage too if you need it. I'd have at least one of them in any party to fulfil that function.

Are we allowed to use scrolls? Of course!

Guys, I appreciate that a lot of you have got the chops to go through the game with two or three characters However, I'm talking about ordinary setups and balance really. It wouldn't really be so bad if there were other classes that could compensate for what the priest does – for example if you want frontline steady AoE DPS you can go for Barbarian, Paladin or Chanter, or if you want backline spellcaster damage/CC you can go for Cipher, Druid or Wizard or if you want some really good single target dps you can go for Monk, Rogue or Hunter. There's diversity in different roles and that's cool and leads to interesting and unique party compositions with different strengths and weaknesses, which is part of the big attraction of the game. No other class comes close to providing the benefits that bringing a priest along brings in terms of buffs for the vast majority of the game. There are of course other offensive and defensive spells which are arguably overpowered like defensive mindweb and relentless storm but at least there's enough of these other abilities spread over such a large number of classes that you don't feel compelled to take one or the other. I think what we're looking at here is the sabre debate all over again. Before they were nerfed, nobody HAD to use sabres but there was no denying that mathematically and under most circumstances dual sabres was pretty much the optimal option for every damage dealing class that wasn't using a shield. Likewise, for party composition, you're more or less gimping yourself on POTD every time if you don't bring a Priest along. At the end of the day Pillars is a numbers game, and the bigger your numbers are versus the enemies numbers the more likely you are to win. The Priest is the only game in town when it comes to making your numbers bigger rather than reducing the enemy's numbers – and out of all of these numbers accuracy is king, because it's the thing that's going to mean that your hard CC lands. I'll rephrase my question/idea like this: Can anyone on the board build a six man party, which, for the majority of the game, is more optimal without a priest than with a priest? (Assuming of course you want to take 1 of every class member and don't want to do something silly like 6 chanters) I can think of plenty of different party compositions that don't involve every other class but I can't think of one not involving a priest.

Thanks for the input. Regarding changes across the board, my main purpose here is to make a lot of the abilities that don't really get a look in edgewise viable and alternative choices to the more standard ones e.g. Dragon Thrashed, Aeyfyllath Ues Mith Fyr, Seven Nights, The Ogres and the Level 2 CC invocations. Something to remember about the Chanter is that their abilities are essentially on cooldown all the time – so it's not the same as the priest where you can simply spam spells and their actual ability selection is very limited indeed. So, if you want to go support route under the changes I've proposed, you will definitely have to sacrifice some offence, which is fine imo. That being said, some of the buffs that the priest gets are 100% flat out ridiculous. They basically cover all immunities, can buff chars with 65+ Deflection and 40 Accuracy, +105 concentration etc ... I think in principle I would like to be able to take the immunities from Shattle Their Shackles and put them on the Fox and the Farmer but this is definitely beyond my abilities with the UABE. If Loren Tyr was still around he might be able to work a bit of magic but definitely not me with my pleb computer skills. I think that the best that I could do is keep Shatter Their Shackles as a Level 2 Invocation so it's not available super-early, but reduce the phrase count requirement to two phrases. At level 7, one level after you get your first level 2 Invocation this would mean that the max you would ever have to wait to cast the spell after brisk recitation would 8*0.8 seconds, which is 6.4 secs. I don't think there's any monster in the game that spams paralyze that quickly apart from Laguefeths. By the time you'd get to Laguefeths at level 10 you'd be able to use it every 5.6 seconds, and then every 4 secs at level 16. This seems fast enough to me? So, a sample "back line"/support build under what I've proposed might look like this: Chants: 1. Fort + Will Buff 3. Speed + Reflex Buff 5. One Dozen Stood Against the power of the Saint (Immunity terrified + frightened) 7. Sure Handed Ila (Attack Speed + Reload Speed Buff) 9. Confuse/Charm/Dominated Immunity 11. Seven Men, Onto the Deck (Prone Immunity) 13. Damage Shield 15. 100% healing increase Invocations 1. Hel Hyraf's Fury 2. Skeleton Summon 4. White Worms Writhed 6. Shatter Their Shackles (Immunity Stuck, Paralyze, Petrify and Hobbled) 8. AOE Paralyze 10. Might + Con + Resolve Buff 12. Dex + Per + Int 14. Their Champion Braved the Horde (+60% recovery reduction, which also affects waiting period after chants - so more buffs even faster) 16. Ancient Instruments of Death So at level 16 this guy would be able to give all kinds of immunities more or less on demand, big buffs to the party every 20 secs or so (+8 Dex, +12 Per, +8 Int, + 12 Might, +8 Con, +8 Resolve) and attack from the back row with Stormcaller every 36 frames with big interrupts and AoE CC on attack. A genuine alternative to having a priest around but without stepping on the priest's toes too much – most immunities to afflictions can be granted more or less instantly but you have to wait much longer to get your buffs out. You could switch the reload buff to level 5 and get gunner before then and start shooting with 70% reload reduction - something which would definitely fill the void that chanters have between level 3 to 9 currently.

Hi all, this is a project I’ve been thinking about doing for the past while and which I might release a first version for this weekend. I'd like peoples' views on the balance of various chanter abilities with a view to making a mod that'll allow for more diverse character builds. One of my primary objectives was to provide a genuine alternative to having a priest in the party. With the changes made the Chanter will be able to provide immunity to the following status afflictions: – Charmed (Level 3 Chant) – Confused (Level 3 Chant) – Dominated (Level 3 Chant) – Frightened (Level 2 Chant) – Terrified (Level 2 Chant) – Terrified (Level 2 Chant) – Prone (Level 3 Chant) – Stuck (Level 2 Invocation) – Hobbled (Level 2 Invocation) – Paralyzed (Level 2 Invocation) – Petrified (Level 2 Invocation) Which is more or less exactly what a priest can give you except for sickened and weakened. There’ll be three main components to the mod: 1. Chant Changes 2. Invocation Changes 3. Item Changes I’m not a genius and this is babby’s first modding project for Pillars, so I welcome commentary/views/suggestions. Some of the changes may seem overpowered, but when you take in to account what you could be doing (e.g. the Dragon Thrashed, Mercy and Kindess, Aeyfllath Ues Mith Fyr or low level chants for faster invocations) then they don’t really seem that bad after all. The bottom line is that many of the Chanter’s abilities are completely useless when examined in isolation or in comparison to the benefits that just bringing another class along can bring. I'm looking at you "The Fox From the Farmer". ITEMS For the time being my only plan here is to: – Drastically increase the Proc chance of The Thunder Rolled by Waves on Black Seas for Stormcaller (Approx 25% I think) – Increase the %area increase of Voice of the Mountaintop, as this gives much smaller benefits than int CHANTS Lvl 1 Chants – At the Sight of Their Comrades: made in to a passive so it will stack with everything – Blessed was Wengredh; made passive and Movement Speed increased to +2 – Come Soft Winds; about 80% damage increase at level sixteen through scaling – Dull the Edge, Blunt the Point; both start at -15% damage reduction, increase -3% per 3 levels to max of -30% – Thick Grew Their Tongues: -20 Concentration to start, increase of -2 concentration per 3 levels to max of -30 Lvl 2 Chants – The Fox From the Farmer: +60 Defence against disengagement attacks – Lo their Endless Hosts: the Same – One Dozen Stood against the power of the Saint: Immunity to terrified and frightened – Rime and Frost: the same – Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows: Reload bonus increased to 50% Lvl 3 Chants – Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr: the same – Seven Men, Onto the Deck: +60 Prone Defence, +20 Concentration, + 10 Freeze DR, + 10 Shock DR – The Dragon Thrashed: the same – The Silver Knights' Shields; Buffed to +20 Deflection - still non-passive, so will not stack with other modals – They Shielded Their Eyes from the Fampyr's Gaze: Moved to Level 3, immunity Charmed, Dominated and Confused Lvl 4 Chants – Her Courage Thick as Steel: Damage shield increased to +55 – Old Siec would not rest: Endurance Drain increased to 35% Lvl 5 Chants – Mercy and Kindness: the same – With All Your Strength: the same INVOCATIONS Level 1 – Hel-Hyraf Crashed upon the Shield: DR Reduction starts at -6, increases to -12 at Level 15 – Reny Daret's Ghost: the Same – If Their Bones Still Slept; Big deflection buff for the skeletons so they can tank better, increased duration – Not felled by axe, nor broken by storm: Slash DR Bonus = +10, Shock DR Bonus = +15, both increase +1 per 3 levels – Thrice She was Wronged, and Thrice Justly Avenged: Starts at 12–19 Shock damage, increase +9 per 3 levels to 57-74 @ level 16 – The Thunder Rolled: Stun Duration increased by 2 seconds – White Worms Writhed: the same Level 2 – At the sound of his voice, the killers froze stiff: the same – Gernisc Slew the Beast: Increased damage and accuracy for the Wurms, increased duration – The Lover Cried out: the same – Do you see your sisters across the moor?: Wisp Accuracy increased – Rejoice, My Comrades! Two Fingers of Daylight: Still immunity to frightened + terrifed, Endurance heal increased to +60 – Reny Daret's Ghost spake I'll catch you Ben Fidel: Terrified duration increased to 20 seconds – Shatter Their Shackles, Cast off their Chains: +30 Disengagement Bonus, Immunity to hobbled, stuck, paralyze and petrify Level 3 – Gernisc's Beast: Drake improved damage, accuracy and endurance – increased duration – Urdel and Gurdel: the same – Rise Again, Rise Again: +15 all defences on revive – Seven Nights She Waited: the same – The Bridge Caught their Ruse: +8 Dex, +12 Per, +8 Intellect – The Brideman Slew Thirty: +12 Might, +8 Con, +8 Resolve Level 4 – So Singt Thy Biting Winds: 4 extra bounces to compete with Seven Nights – Their Champion Braved the Horde: Attack Speed bonus increased to +60% – What Rou Naka Found: More accurate spore with more endurance. Duration Increased Level 5 – Ancient Instruments of Death: More accurate, more endurance, more defence. Damage type = Raw – Boil their Flesh from skin to bone: Damage and Huge Range increase.

I've got something to confess – I've never played Pillars of Eternity without a priest in my party before. The benefits are just too good: – All of the "prayer against" spells on demand – Massive defensive buffs: - Circle of defence/Symbol of Eothas – +15/+20 all defences which stacks with buffs to individual stats - Crowns for the Faithful – Massive concentration, accuracy and deflection boost - Shields for the Faithful – Massive deflection boost which stacks with the above - Suppress Affliction - "Litany" spells - Salvation of Time (I feel like this one never gets enough praise) - Revive the Fallen – Massive Offensive Buffs: - Devotions for the Faithful (probably the most powerful buff in the game, accuracy bonuses stack with other sources) - Dire Blessing - Champion's Boon - Holy Radiance (+10 Accuracy Bonus which will stack with everything) - Salvation of Time – Massive self buffs (e.g. Minor Avatar) – Great healing Like, given that a priest can give any character +40 Accuracy (Devotions, Holy Radiance + Champions Boon) for most kinds of attacks they're just super hard to pass up. Then again, not having a priest in the party means another back-line DPS character. But the priest can already DPS pretty well with their spells, albeit at close range. What are your tips for playing Pillars without a priest?

Or really, vs any other big targets like Thaos or Concelhaut etc ... I've never found Barbarians useful at all in these kinds of fights other than getting rid of the initial mobs that might be surrounding the big dudes, which go down fast enough anyways. Maybe there are some kind of goofy tactics you can use with spelltongue? Scrolls maybe? I'd always prefer a Chanter for steady AoE with Dragon Thrashed in normal mob fights and then vs. big dudes letting rip with the Seven Nights frost spell and hitting targets for 400-600 damage. I guess this is kind of like asking what strategies scissors are going to use vs rock rather than paper.

Very interesting!

This is great work fiddlesticks - very useful.

That's an interesting bit of information I hadn't realised.

Just did a little bit of testing there with the Flanked III bonus from Survival and the Glanfathan stalking boots and no other additional damage modifiers (i.e. might 10, no secrets of rime). The results I got indicate to me that the Flanked Bonus works with some spells, but not with others. I tried two spells vs mercenary pyromancers and mercenary warmages in Cragoldt Bluffs: – Ninagauth's Killing Bolt, which is a flat up 75 Raw Damage on a hit – Blast of Frost, which is 50 – 80 damage on a hit The numbers that I was able to hit on a blast of frost strongly indicate that it works with the flanking bonus. I think the highest unmodified roll I got was around 110 , which seems about right (80 * 1.4 = 112). However Ninagauth's Killing bolt didn't show any difference in damage whether the target was flanked or not. Weird.

This is what I am assuming – I read a post on the forums a fairly long time ago that confirmed than the boots work, and I'm making the same assumption for the survival one.

I did mention the ring and the gloves Though I forgot about the Chanter's lash - that's kinda nuts that you can add an extra 25% on again. I actually looked at the Priest spells as well and thought there might be some potential there too. A lot of there spells are DoT though, which means there isn't quite as much of a wow factor. When you're doing the kind of damage I've described it looks like the Damage Reduction system nearly completely breaks - like even if you're were casting against enemies with high frost DR, providing they're not outright immune you're always going to be doing more damage than if you went for a raw equivalent or another damage type because of the absurdly high base damage. I too am assuming the hater talents work properly with spells - if they didn't that'd be pretty stupid.

Hi all, I was thinking today that when I make a Wizard in Pillars what usually happens is that they get "diluted" in a lot of ways. There's always the temptation to try and optimise for Kalakoth's Minor Blights (which you could easily spend 6-7 talents on) or to maybe make yourself semi-gish, or to put everything in to making CC effective. Given that WM1 and WM2 have raised the level cap, and in doing so have increased the max output of the Vancian casters even further, I wanted to see what people's thought were on creating a "0 compromise" spellcasting Wizard that focuses on doing big damage with spells. Kind of like what playing a Sorcerer was like in BG2. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that this could be a really powerful way to play a Wizard now. Spells with very high base damage profit a huge amount from damage modifiers and these can be stacked aplenty from different sources, so I started to see how reasonably high you can stack them while still retaining high accuracy. Wood-Elf for the +5 accuracy is still the default race of choice of course, and I didn't want to use the +10% spell damage gloves because +5 accuracy gloves give you a better bonus, so I came up with something like the following: + 27% (Base Might of 19) + 12% (Maegfolc Skull) + 12% (Abydon's Hammer) + 9% (Teir Nowneth, Galawain's Boon, Sacrifice Eder/Maneha) + 25% Hater Talent (e.g. Beasts, Vessels, Wilders) + 20% Elemental Talent Then, with a Priest and a Cipher (Phantom Foes) in the Party, you can easily add + 30% (Champion's Boon) + 30% vs Flanked (Survival III – Achievable through stacking +survival equipment before resting) + 10% vs Flanked (Glanfathan Stalking Boots) This all adds up to +175% Damage under conditions that are pretty easy to set up, which is kind of frightening for a spellcaster. There are obviously other items as well that you can use, like the +20% vs vessels and spirits ring. And then don't forget Critical Hits too – these will give you an additional 0.5 base damage, and with the Doemenel Talent (+0.3) and the Northweald talent (+0.1) your crits will do an additional *0.9 base damage. Just by way of example let's say you rolled a 70 on Blast of Frost with this set up and you crit (very easy with buffed accuracy of around 160 - see below): 70 * 2.75 + 70 * 0.9 = 192.5 + 63 = 255 Damage - DR. If you rolled an 80 you'd end up with 291 damage - DR. That's kind of scary considering you can rapid fire these things like it's nobody's business. Even with an "average" roll of 40 out of 35 – 45 base damage on a Shadowflame you'd be able to crit for 146 damage. Accuracy can be stacked from various sources: + 20 (Base), + 5 (Gloves), + 11 (Perception with items), + 45 (Levels), + 16 (Innate Spell Level Bonus), + 15 (Eldritch Aim), + 5 (Distant Advantage), + 10 (Innate Spell Bonus) = 127 The Survival bonus to accuracy doesn't worth with AoE spells that don't initially hit a single target, but that doesn't really matter because you can stack an extra + 40 from a priest (Champion's Boon, Devotions for the Faithful, Holy Radiance). These seem like pretty crazy numbers if this all works out in practice, like being able to nuke dragons in 4 spells kind of crazy. And you don't really have to worry about your defences that much at all either. At level 16 with Abydon's hammer you can have 20 (base) + 45 (levels) + 75 (Hardened, Arcane Veil) + 25 (Llengrath's Displaced Image) and maybe -5 Resolve for 160 Deflection. Add another +25 for Crowns for the Faithful and you're more or less unhittable. The reflection spells would handle single target effects and this could more or less be kept up in completely perpetuity through smart use of spell tongue/wall of draining. Anyone here build their Wizards like this?

I've never seen a list like this sorry - the categorisation of these kinds of things in Pillars is a bit opaque.

If attack/recovery on a large 1 handed weapon is 30/30 frames respectively, then vulnerable attack takes up what like 6 frames or so? Seems like a decent trade in most instances. Lowest common denominator of 60 and 66 is 3960. 60 in to 3960 = 66, 66 in to 3960 = 60. In other words, for every 10 attacks with vulnerable attack on you would have gotten 11 attacks without. Assuming your punching for more than minimum each time, it seems like vulnerable attack is probably worth it given it'll give you an extra 100 or so damage - which is probably more damage than what that extra hit would've gotten you. The penalty's even smaller on small one handed weapons. edit, though, I suppose, the question is: is it worth the talent points on a class that's already hungry for a lot of talents?

You're doing the lord's work son. As regards Attack speed, it's fairly well documented these days thanks to the work of people in the community. The post I used when I need a refresher is Loren Tyr's: You then have to factor Dex in, which I think is Totalattackframes * (1/-+dex percent modifier) = x