MunoValente

They are pretty straightforward front liners, giving out melee damage, keeping enemies off your back line and surviving being attacked. Defender change might make them less good at that than they were, but they still can handle it just fine for the most part. Most complaints about fighters seem to more about monks or paladins being better at certain things than fighters being unusable.

The estoc is great, any class can use it and upgrading just requires solving some fairly easy riddles and going some places, no kill or damage challenges. Until you upgrade fully though, it's cursed and you can't remove it. I have it on the Devil and the stats are base 20-29, DR bypass 5, superb, 10% paralyze on hit or critical, 5% invoke vessels on hit or crit, 5% cast twin stones on hit or critical, grants 3x Slow Spirits per rest (an area of effect enemy slowing spell)

A Ranger with twinned arrows, driving flight, stunning shots, interrupting blows and stormcaller absolutely owns the battlefield just using their base attacks. Then you get an improved pet on top of that.

I did a respec on Sagani at level 13, so I could make twinned arrow my main modal and noticed when I was leveling her up that Imatuuk retained all his old companion specific abilities, like takedown and predator's sense in addition to whatever new abilities I picked up.

I don't like that it is limited to Rogues and Priests. My priests almost always use ranged weapons or pole arms and Mace isn't one of the weapon types that gets a bonus from Skaen, which is what I'd probably pick if I wanted a more close up fighter. My rogue this game is using two handed weapons, I have the Devil using the Soul Bound estoc and she's murdering things with it. Might be good with a priest of Berath I guess. Would be better if Paladins could use it.

Yeah I did white march starting at level 5 and it was a good challenge, but when I came the main part of the game was really easy.

I want the description of every modal to list every other modal it is exclusive to and for less modals to be exclusive to others in general.

With the upgrade to CON, CON goes a lot farther for tanking, at least for high END classes. If you get your CON over 20 and get some good regen effects going, you're to be pretty tough to kill, even if your deflection is only decent rather than amazing, although you still need to be careful to avoid flanking and too may negative status effects.

Because 2 engagements is more than one and someone thinks the extra engagement is worth -5 deflection? The extra engagement is definitely worth -5 if it prevents flanked status and it might also be worth it if keeps more people off your back line or if your fighter can deal out good disengagement hits. It also frees you up to take an attacking ability rather than hold the line. Obviously if you're trying to max out deflection, you skip defender and take cautious attack instead, defender is either for fighters that are more active and/or have really high CON. Defender's biggest issue right now is that it's exclusive to Savage and Cautious Attack no good reason. Fighters bigger issue is that a lot of their other abilities are lacking and Defender was masking that.

I went to the expansion as early as possible to get the companions and now that I'm back, it's nice to have them around to hear their banter and have them in the party, but I'm absolutely steamrolling all the content from the main game. I think I went there at about level 5 near the start of Chapter 2 and came back at about level 9 or 10. Doing the White March at those levels was fun though and well balanced. Next time though I'll probably wait and do it near the end with it scaled up, just so I don't make the main game too easy and I'll have already experienced doing the main game the new companions.

I had GM do melee once, had her use Cladaliath with the bonus that adds accuracy and damage when attacking the same target as an ally, between that and the default accuracy bonus of spears, she was pretty reliable hitting things and gaining focus. The ability that gives bonus damage against prone, stunned or flanked enemies might be good instead, as cipher have ways of causing those effects.

I agree Defender and Wary both have their uses, but constant recovery isn't too good, Guardian is poor, Critical Defense is meh, Unbending being per rest makes it unexciting. Defender being unnecessarily exclusive with a few other modals doesn't help either; really wanted to take Defender and Savage Attack on my current game, but wouldn't let me.

The first time I beat it, I had my main party members run like hell away from it, except my toughest tank and then surrounded it with summons. Then I spammed the dragon and adragan with paralyze scrolls and area of effect damage spells to kill the adragans. My best melee fighters and a cipher fought the xaurips. Once the Adragans and Xaurips were all the dead, it was a lot easier. I'd one have melee fighter and summons engage the dragon, using revive and new summons whenever I could, while everyone else attacked from as far away as possible and I tried to give as many negative status effects as possible. The people who could revive were kept very far away, except when they were needed. I think I also had the concentration reducing chant on my tank chanter and most of my party had interrupting blows and one of my main area damage spells was plague of insects.

The Adra Dragon destroyed me time after time the first time I tried to beat it, but once I figured out things that worked against it I've almost never have to reload when I fight it anymore. Killing the Adragans quickly helps a lot. Paralyze and Revive scrolls are really good obviously, both in that fight and in general. Once you know who to beat the Adra Dragon, the Sky Dragon is pretty easy.

Yeah Guardian Stance is weak, people might use it if it directly added something to the fighters deflection.

Pre-buffing in Baldur's Gate was often essential, but also really boring, I don't miss it one bit. I'm fine with buffing in battle provided the buffs are worth the time cost of casting them. I think with pre-buffing you also can't make the abilities too strong either because you'll have so many stacked on you at once all the time. Maybe they could add a few more interesting foods, for a bit more diversity more in pre-buffing.

Fighters and Paladins I think are pretty close in quality right now, but Monks do seem to be better. I think monks could stand to be a little softer defensively at least if they are in armor. Maybe reduce their base deflection, but then give them a built in ability that raises their deflection in lighter armor. One thing Fighters and Paladins do have over Monks though is that their attacking abilities work with guns.

I agree that I like the reduction better on deflection than accuracy, because it allows for better disengagement attacks. Also even in it's current state it does help the defense the fighter some because they are much less likely to get flanked status, which is a bigger penalty than -5. I think in it's current state defender is ok, although it is exclusive with more modals than I'd like, don't see any good reason for it to be exclusive to Savage Attack for example. I'm not sure if it's exclusive with Cautious Attack, but I don't think it should be. Which modals are exclusive and which aren't is unclear, confusing and unintuitive, Wary Defender I think is kind of lacking, largely because I don't think it has good synergy with Defender anymore, maybe if they don't want add deflection to Wary, maybe they could give like +5 to disengagement attacks or something like that.

I really like fast runner on my back liners a lot now. I've always used more hybrid style front liners though, so that didn't really need to change for me. I also had success using Zahua as a quarterstaff dps, he would stand behind the frontliners and do a lot of damage, but not directly engaged, so he could move off and provide extra support to to back line characters if needed.

If you're going to use defender, the change to CON helps soak up the damage, my fighter that has it has base CON of 16, a belt that adds +3 and often eats the cookies that add +2 before battle. If I do find that fighter isolated rather than mobbed, I turn defender off. Even with the deflection penalty defender can still help survivalist some, as the penalties for flanked are pretty severe and it requires 4 attackers to flank someone with defender. I haven't take wary defender, I've focused more on damage for my other talents. One thing that is fun for fighters with the expansion is between armored grace and durgan steel, you can greatly reduce your armor penalty. I'm using Saint's War Armor and have only a 3% penalty. I also found an accessory that reduces armor penalty, but it doesn't stack with durgan steel.

Zahua seemed a little squishy to me, so I set him up for quarterstaff DPS, which he did quite well at.

I had it open up after visiting the temple in defiance bay, but only after I reloaded the game.

I'd like an after gun fire option. Would make taking a single shot and switching off a lot easier. One where a party member is sitting around idle for any reason might be ok too.

There really needs to be better rules and explanations about which modals can be used at the same time and which ones can't.

Yeah this thread is an interesting contrast to the other one where people are complaining about the enemy disengaging too much and their disengagement attacks being too weak. That thread shows how engagements combined with strong melee attacks have become more useful.