pi2repsion

@teclis23 Chanters bring more than summons to the board. If you intend to use your paladin/chanter as melee tanking lots of hits, just focus on supporting your strong passive chants (whichever you prefer) with 0.5s cast-time offensive invocations. There are a lot of good ones out there (foeAOE armour reduction debuff, foeAOE paralyze, foeAOE stun, foeAOE charm being the go-to for most builds; if wanting to go primarily paladin with few points spent chanter-side, you could even stick with the AOE paralyze alone, though having somebody around who can reduce enemy armour is pretty nifty for penetration purposes). Alternatively, rather than belting out an offensive invocation whenever your gain enough phrases, you might consider building up and holding phrases while concentrating on having some of the strong 0.5s cast time party buffs instead - all depending on what would have the best synergy with the rest of the party. They are generally trickier to apply unless your party is bunched up, but there are some very powerful ones. This does not preclude you from also taking a summon to cast in situations where you can get it off without more interruptions than your concentration, of course. If going for a ranged paladin/chanter, you'll have few interruption problems with summons. You'll still be able to have your part in your chant AOE, but most enemies won't, so you should stick to party-buffing chants and invocations (other than summons) that either buff or have long range.

It wasn't in the game from the start. It was introduced as a reward from a specific companion adventure in the stronghold revamp patch, that added fluff text and fixed rewards to stronghold companion adventures.

A sword has 6 penetration, not 7. Prior to 1.2 a great sword had 6 penetration just like the normal sword had (and still has), now it has 7. Just like all the other 1H/2H variants of the same weapon type went from having the same penetration for 1H and 2H prior to 1.2 to the 2H variant having +1 penetration. You may "never in a million years" have thought that great swords would have had 6 penetration before the buff and that as a consequence they got 7 with the buff, but I explicitly told you so in the very first post I made in this thread answering you. My statement, "ALL great swords have 7 base penetration. They had 6 penetration prior to the 1.2 patch like normal swords. They got +1 and now have 7. So this is not a bug." in that post really doesn't leave much room for misunderstanding. Moreover, I listed the base penetration values in 1.2 of all the different weapon types in one of the several prior threads you started on this topic, allowing you to clearly see the +1 penetration differences, allowing you to notice that swords had 6 base penetration, etc. (Of course, you could also just see that by looking at a sword in the game, but I was trying to be helpful.) And Boerer explicitly showed the 1H/2H weapon type matching for the +1 penetration in the same thread. So you may not have thought it in a million years, but you certainly were told. Repeatedly. I'd say that by now there's conclusive evidence that you haven't been listening, since you keep starting new threads on the subject, substituting your old assumptions for the data you are provided by people who attempt to answer your questions in previous threads. ----- Again, if you for whatever reason can't hack if with base 7 penetration weapons on POTD and disdain great swords for that reason, only being able to succeed with base 8+ penetration weapons... That's fine. We don't all have the same playing styles. So simply don't use them and use weapons with higher base penetration instead that will work with whatever approach to group composition, equipment, and ability use that has put you in that position; the game allows you to approach problems in many different ways. But don't for a minute believe that 7 base penetration is not enough for POTD with either 1H or 2H weapons. It is. As you've been repeatedly told by people using such weapons. And as you can also see in the POTD build lists in the build subforum. But it may require another approach than whatever you are using. EDIT: My apologies if this answer seems too harsh... I probably should have been more diplomatic in my presentation. It is just... this is the second thread of yours dealing with this subject I'm taking part in, and it gets tiresome writing helpful answers based on the state of the game showing you where you've made errors or wrong assumptions, when you mostly ignore the answers and repeat those errors and assumptions.

The 2 handed sword effort has the same problem I spawned Effort via console in 1.2 to test, just now; Exactly as expected, it has 7 base penetration from its weapon type and gains an extra +2 in its default state from being exceptional. If you have a current save game where Effort does not have 7 base penetration, I think it is time for you to put up or shut up provide a save game illustrating the problem. EDIT: Wait a moment, in your original post you already wrote that Effort had 7 base penetration. WHICH IS THE RIGHT AMOUNT FOR IT TO HAVE. As you've been told repeatedly. So now I just wasted time testing because you claimed Effort had the same problem as Oathbreaker's End when being told it was fine... when you already knew it had 7 base penetration. Thanks for nothing; My bad for taking you seriously, I guess. Do you have any point at all for two-handed weapon types outside the special case of Oathbreaker's End that is a one-handed weapon type that requires two hands and might/might not need to be looked at? Any at all? You keep claiming bugs and problems for the other two handed weapon types, but all I'm reading is "I want penetration to be higher on two-handers and it isn't"?

I can't help thinking that if the compulsive "it is OP, nerf it!" brigade had existed back in 1999, and if developers had actually paid attention to them, we'd never have seen Carsomyr in Baldur's Gate II, and that would be a crying shame. It was ridiculously powerful for the stage of the game you got it, and given the right party member might (with an upgrade) last you all the way to the end in ToB if you inclined that way. And let's not get started on Crom Faeyr, Staff of the Magi, Blackrazor, Spectral Brand... Well, perhaps it is just me. I like occasionally finding exceptionally powerful items that put most of the competition for their use to shame; I do prefer it when acquiring them is a challenge, but even when it is not it is nice when something stands out enough from the general run of items that it becomes truly memorable. EDIT: Which, by the way, I appreciate Obsidian taking a stab at in POE2.

@Teclis23, your title is wrong. I refer you to my post in the last thread you made on this issue, where I listed the base penetration values for the different weapon types. 1H melee goes from 6-9, 2H from 7-10. Your idea that there are a lot of 2H melee weapons out there that didn't get +1 penetration fails to acknowledge that the penetration boost was applied directly to the base weapon type, not to individual weapons, and thus apply to all weapons of 2H melee weapon type. THUS, Effort is a great sword. ALL great swords have 7 base penetration. They had 6 penetration prior to the 1.2 patch like normal swords. They got +1 and now have 7. So this is not a bug. Oathbreaker's End is a one handed weapon type, a battle axe, and thus has 7 base penetration. It is a truly great weapon, that has only one downside: It has the special property that it requires two hands to use. While I understand you might like to see it have higher penetration, whether it should have it all depends on what the design intent was: if the intent was to use the two-hander property to avoid having to create a new weapon type (two handed axe) with only one weapon in it, it probably deserves 8 penetration, whereas if the intent was specifically to have a battle axe that as a downside requires two hands to use, it probably does not. So it may either be an oversight to be fixed or working as intended depending on circumstances. More generally, regarding having 7 penetration, endgame, and your ideas of usefulness. Penetration 7 is not only the most common base penetration amongst weapon types (dagger, battle axe, club, flail, hatchet, rapier, sabre, spear, great sword, pistol, and wand all have it), a lot of builds in the class build subforum use weapons with base 7 penetration all through the endgame, showing that even obsessive min-maxers find them very useful - or at least, find the best of those weapons very useful. Including a few great sword builds (though some are obsolete builds from 1.0, where the great sword only had 6 base penetration and thus was worse). What I'm trying to say here, is that if your party can't hack it in the endgame using weapons with 7 base penetration or you find that base 7 penetration great swords are useless in the endgame, then it is not because the great swords are defective, bugged, or useless: it is because you are using them in a group that - for whatever reason, be it composition, ability choices, or whatnot - doesn't use them effectively. A superb great sword already puts you at 10 penetration, and there are penetration buffs and armour debuffs in the game. Consider using them.

The easiest way of reducing the fortitude of enemies that doesn't require specific weapons or use of limited spell slots is probably the chanter's T4 chant, that weakens (-5 con) all enemies in range and gives them -2 might at the significant opportunity cost of not having another chant active instead. The only downside apart from the opportunity cost is that it is itself a fortitude roll to apply the effect, so it is more useful for passively reducing the fortitude of some of the enemies you face in larger encounters where you are slinging out fortitude AOEs than for reducing the fortitude of individual boss enemies with high fortitude.

Honourable mention to the T5 chant Her Courage as Thick as Steel, that with Brisk Recitation refreshes the 10 pt all-damage shield on all allies in range every 3s, making it the one chant that increases in potency when thus used by a Troubadour. Enough to make it worth using in the first place? Perhaps, perhaps not, much depends on party composition and how much damage is spread out, but it is something to consider - mainly if you are also running another chanter that runs the healing or vampirism chants. (Same Brisk Recitation advantage applies to the T7 Many Lives Pass By, Each Leaving Footprints, but I'm not sure an auto-skellyspamming kind wayfarer/troubadour quite fits the OPs wishes.)

Penetration is fixed by weapon type. Currently all swords and two handed swords are inferior to other one handers and two handers in terms of penetration. The difference between best and worst base penetration is a mere +3 within each type of wielding (1H, 2H, or ranged). This shouldn't be a significant problem for you unless you are playing POTD. 6 sword, R blunderbuss, R hunting bow, R rod 7 dagger, battle axe, club, flail, hatchet, rapier, sabre, spear, 2H great sword, R pistol, R wand 8 war hammer, 2H pike, 2H quarterstaff, R war bow, R sceptre 9 mace, stiletto, 2H morning star, 2H pollaxe, R arquebus, R crossbow, R arbalest 10 2H estoc If you are going to be using weapons with low base penetration when playing POTD, it is highly recommended to include penetration buffs and/or armour debuffs in your arsenal. A chanter is probably the easiest way to consistently apply such. EDIT: I hadn't updated my list to account for 1.2's increase to 2H penetration. Now fixed.

Assuming for the sake of argument that assigning tiers is a good idea in the first place (which I'm not certain of, but I'm not the intended target audience so I may be wrong) , assigning a tier to soulbound weapons that play out very differently depending on class is definitely not be a good idea: Each of the three variants should be individually weighed and based on that assigned a tier as they are effectively different weapons. The tier you end up with for each might be the same, and might not. Take e.g. Lord Darryn's Voulge, Soulbound to a barbarian, you end up upgrading Static Thunder to also disorient. To a fighter it casts a random storm spell when you dip below 50% hp (1/encounter), and to a druid it adds 3 storm power levels. (Which is why this weapon is the weapon of choice going together with Deltro's Cage body armour for any electric god build as pointed out in the armour thread) To the two former not being able to upgrade to legendary is a concern, but to the latter who is likely to be using it as a stat stick, spending precious resources in limited supply on upgrading it to legendary was probably never a consideration in the first place. So it would make sense to assign the Druid variant a higher tier.

Yeah the problem as cited is that those level 8-9 abilities are not created equal among classes. Wizard lvl 8 but especially lvl 9 abilities are godtier quality Monk, barbarian, priest lvl8-9 abilities are strong Druid is "serviceable" until you see what a single class priest or omg a single class wizard can do Rogue while not great is again serviceable at those levels Chanter, Paladin, Fighter and Chanter are weak at lvl8-9 abilities especially the "active" abilities not the passives. Chanter level 8-9 abilities WEAK? I beg to differ. Chants, you gain the dragonslayer chant - okay, strictly speaking the beastslayer chant - and you get the +1 penetration chant, both very powerful. (Though the first is extremely situational). Invocations, you get the upgrade to the Eld Nary frost invocation taking it from 4 jump targets to 12, you get the upgrade to Braved the Horde alone that allows you to self energize for the longest time at half the phrase cost, you get the upgrade to Ancient Instruments and Swamp summons, you get the Dragon summon, you get the upgrade to the raw damage AOE that now also gives 25% action speed (and heals) nearby friends and there's the option of giving nearby friends +1 class resource if you really can't think of anything else. [EDIT: Okay, to be fair, you only get a selection of those and some of the other options depending on what you want to spend ability points, you don't get them all... I just mentioned those I consider most useful, though to be fair the +3 penetration invocation should probably have been in the list too.] ...And, of course, you get a higher Power Level than you would as multiclass (and can pick prestige for +1 as well). Now, Chanter is a class that multiclasses well with just about anything because it has so many good tools both active and passive that whatever role you intend for the composite, a Chanter can well support it, but a singleclass chanter is also very, very powerful at high levels: Its level 8 and 9 abilities aren't weak.

I never really thought about Streetfighter/Unbroken - I guess I'd been in the mentality of stacking Deflection as high as possible with Trickster to use Riposte. The whole being starved for active abilities thing is a bit of a downside though. I also don't really like the idea of dual wielding a club and a spear - it seems kind of silly. Ending up starved for active abilities is what the respect button is there for. If one wants more active abilities it is a question of making hard choices. To be fair, that's also the case for the Unbroken/Trickster you mention in the first post: the issue is that the fighter class, by itself, has nearly enough useful passives in the first 7 tiers to use all skill points from leveling to 20 when building a tank (though admittedly that's including the +10 to individual defenses passives), and the rogue adds even more, so when using a fighter/rogue combination (of whatever subclasses) to build a tank there'll always be some hard choices to make because there are so very many good options, both in the split between active and passive abilities and in the choice of actives and passives. E.g. absolute minimum: Fighter actives: Disciplined Strikes (2pt), Guardian Stance (2pt), Refreshing Defense (2pt) Rogue actives: Escape (1pt), a good full attack with +10 accuracy with upgrade (2pt) This is the bread and butter. But you'd really like Unbending, possibly upgraded, and though Escape allows repositioning Charge would be quite useful too... And as for rogue, there are lots of options if you want to go further. Remember that Escape breaks engagement, which is not desirable for a tank in most situations. This is more viable if you have a differnet main tank and just want to be an off-tank dps. Charge would be better for mobility imo, but as you pointed out, fighters can burn Discipline FAST. You said you wanted to set up the fight, which to me means main tank. Just make sure you have a clear objective imo. My fighter/rogue tanks mainly stands still and only move around minimally once engaged. I suggest Escape in the list of essentials because it is occasionally useful and available at the one time a fighter/rogue build is flush with points to spend, i.e.. levels 1, 2, and 3, where you only have access to T1 abilities and you have to spend them on something. As you say, Escape is undesirable in most situations, but it is a quick repositioning tool if you desperately need it, and one you can acquire without paying a high opportunity cost of foregoing another desirable ability. In levels 1-3 you get 1 fighter, 1 rogue, and 2 fighter or rogue abilities; if you've got something better to use those four points for without picking up escape, do so. (During the early levels you'll want Crippling Strike until you get a +10 acc 2-pointer, but once you've got that Crippling Strike's value rapidly diminishes.) Charge is obviously better, but a) costs an ability point at levels where you have many attractive competitors, and b) costs discipline. Pick it up if you find it worth it.

@Ansalon, the problem with your statement "Why is putting the armors in to a comparative category a problem? There are clear cut cases where some armors are just straight up bad. Why is there a need to pretend that all items in this game is equally viable." is that you are likely to find a great many people in this forum who outright disagree with your notion that such clear cut cases exist, or at least that the cases you find clear cut are such in the first place. As an example, take your trash tier, which contains Deltro's Cage. You look at it and see "+2 All Electricity Power Levels could have been great on Fury (Druid subclass) but 55% recovery time makes it garbage", which means that you've dismissed a very, very, powerful armour for some kinds of druids out of hand due to being overly concerned with the recovery penalty. Deltro's Cage is probably the best armour in the game if you want an electric demigod in your party. It is not an armour that (in your words) "can go up or down a tier depending if you use them in a specific build", it is an armour that goes right to the top when used correctly and is pretty poor when not. Somebody with just a bit more experience in the game would say, "increased power levels is one of the most powerful properties on any item for activated abilities so long as the user makes good use of it, and +2 electricity screams druid, and a free Relentless Storm via enchant is good, and PL bonuses stack so that stacks with +3 storm power from Darryn's Voulge on a druid on all spells that are both electricity and storm, and there are a few other sources of electricity damage in the game on uniques, some of them very powerful (and best of all, they can be gotten in the early game)", would try it out, and would discover that running around with +5 PL to electrical storms is absurdly powerful. The recovery penalty isn't nice, but we can get around that, mostly. This can work nicely for a Fury or a Fury/Evoker, but while powerful it feels a bit clunky even with maxed dex and Abraham pet. Still, heavily armoured caster that doesn't cast that often, but when he does, it hurts, is a good start. And you can take it in other directions, e.g. multiclassing with barbarian, fighter or monk for recovery bonuses, which is how we got Ascaloth's Fate Testarossa Fury/Helwalker build. Or how about the inspired genius that got us the very powerful God of Storms Watershaper/Stormspeaker Tekehu companion build? Druid electricity and storm spells and T1, T3, and T6 electricity offensive invocations? (and healing, and frost spells/invocations too). I hope you will agree after reading this that dismissing some items as clear cut cases of being straight up bad isn't as easy as all that, and that in at least one case you have erred in that regard in your list. EDIT: Clarified in the above that Lord Darryn's Voulge doesn't give +3 electricity power level but +3 storm power level. There's a significant overlap in druid spells of those two keywords that thus end up with +5 as most storms are electrical, but some storms are not and thus only gain +3, just as a few spells are electrical but not storm and thus only gain +2.

Priest of Eothas/AnythingElse? I'm struggling to think of any class that would work well with Priest of Eothas, that wouldn't work better with Priest of <somebody, anybody, else>, since all Eothas brings to the table that the others do not is Sunbeam at T1, filling the T2-T7 tiers of given spells with spells that all priests can get if they want to. The closest I can get is that for roleplaying purposes a Priest of Eothas/Kind Wayfarer Paladin (or /Shieldbearer of. st. Elga Paladin) would at least share some dispositions making that easier to handle, so I guess it should be Priest of Eothas/AnythingElseExceptPaladinWayfarerOrShieldbearer. Guess there's a reason there aren't any Priest of Eothas guides up yet: Skaen, Magram, Wael, Berath... but no Eothas.

I never really thought about Streetfighter/Unbroken - I guess I'd been in the mentality of stacking Deflection as high as possible with Trickster to use Riposte. The whole being starved for active abilities thing is a bit of a downside though. I also don't really like the idea of dual wielding a club and a spear - it seems kind of silly. Ending up starved for active abilities is what the respect button is there for. If one wants more active abilities it is a question of making hard choices. To be fair, that's also the case for the Unbroken/Trickster you mention in the first post: the issue is that the fighter class, by itself, has nearly enough useful passives in the first 7 tiers to use all skill points from leveling to 20 when building a tank (though admittedly that's including the +10 to individual defenses passives), and the rogue adds even more, so when using a fighter/rogue combination (of whatever subclasses) to build a tank there'll always be some hard choices to make because there are so very many good options, both in the split between active and passive abilities and in the choice of actives and passives. E.g. absolute minimum: Fighter actives: Disciplined Strikes (2pt), Guardian Stance (2pt), Refreshing Defense (2pt) Rogue actives: Escape (1pt), a good full attack with +10 accuracy with upgrade (2pt) This is the bread and butter. But you'd really like Unbending, possibly upgraded, and though Escape allows repositioning Charge would be quite useful too... And as for rogue, there are lots of options if you want to go further.

Since you want it to be pirate themed, have you considered a streetfighter swashbuckler tank? An Unbroken/Streetfighter, who'll swap to sword and board only in extreme need, but dual wield most of the time? It suffers more damage than "ultimate tank" builds but tanks quite nicely for all of that. The idea is to 1) get as many engagements as possible via fighter+rogue skills and equipment and use of the rogue's Persistent Distraction to make everybody engaged distracted and, hence, flanked, 2) punish disengaging enemies exceedingly through high penetration attacks that additionally are likely to crit, and 3) attack frequently due to the swashbuckler himself being flanked most of the time (and occasionally bloodied), 4) convert misses, grazes, hits up to next better tier Weapons to aim for: MH: Kapana Taga - gives +1 engagement (+2 upgraded) and scaling damage based on number engaged OH: Stalker's Patience - spear modal gives +1 engagement; increased damage to flanked targets scaling with stealth, or alternatively the spear Mohora Tanga scaling damage and penetration with survival OH a shield (activating the +1AR from Unbroken) when you feel the need to be as tanky as possible. Alternatively if you want to get the +1 AR bonus from unbroken all the time do so and take the shield ability rather than dual wield. The only real problem with this tank is that there are so very many fighter and rogue passives that support that tanking style, that it is easy to end up starved for active abilities.

Caster/Chanter is pretty sweet in general, fwiw It certainly is, but then, Chanter goes with everything. Ranged or melee, caster or martial, and healer, buffer, debuffer, controller, or damagedealer - whatever your intended role for a character the chanter has the tools to multiclass nicely with it.

Nah, it is the direct consequence of Obsidian always erring on the side of caution where encounter difficulty is concerned and not having combat being tactically challenging as an important priority. It is simply not a strength of theirs. For all the POE1 vs POE2 difficulty comparisons in this thread, it is worth remembering that POE1 Path of the Damned difficulty was also ridiculously easy for tactically adept players on game launch and that no changes to the game systems in patches changed that. The difference in this respect between the titles where POE2 is even easier is one of magnitude, not one of kind. There were a few - a very few - encounters in POE1 designed to be challenging, and those that actually were could be counted on one hand, but mostly POTD encounters were not challenging at all for players who liked playing tactical games. That might seem a bit strange given how Pillars of Eternity and POTD was originally marketed in the kickstarter, but it fits Obsidian's track record perfectly; From their inception as an independent company they have made good-verging-on-great CRPGs with good worldbuilding and interesting stories, but not tactically challenging ones. Even with Saywer copping to not properly balancing POE2 POTD before release because they ran out of time and would (naturally) prefer to spend it on bugfixing, and now talking about a difficulty rebalancing, there is no particular reason to expect that the current state of affairs where practically all encounters are a breeze to play through regardless of difficulty level will significantly change with the upcoming rebalance, because the subset of players that are interested in tactically challenging encounters in the first place (and many players are not) are most likely people who are also going to be pretty good at them, and Obsidian has never designed encounters with these people foremost in mind. If Obsidian stays true to form, the best we can hope for is for a rebalance that makes combat tactically interesting for people who aren't particularly good at tactical games and less of a breeze for those that are. EDIT: I don't mean to sound bitter here, though I guess it may come across that way. Just realistic. One has to accept Obsidian games for what they are, not what one would wish them to be.

Yup, your build does one thing, and it does it well. If one wants a wizard that does something else, well, use another build. As an example, running a singleclass evoker in a party it would make sense to dump CON for INT and a greater focus on AOE spells since the wizard would be less exposed to damage, wouldn't have enemies ganging up on him all the time, and would be able to place the greatly increased AOE of the spells to great effect (especially taking use of the "friends don't get damaged in this part of the AOE but enemies do) zone) - but all of that is completely irrelevant to your build, where going low CON would be suicidal.

You stack stack deflection high enough as a paladin/wizard to be nigh-immortal where deflection attacks are concerned (somebody posted a 212 deflection build in the forum recently); You won't be able to reach as much as a paladin/rogue, but even if you only reach 150-170 that should cause a lot of misses and the advantage of the paladin multiclass is that your other defenses are going to be sky-high too - particularly reflex if going sword & board.

Unbroken/Shieldbearer of St. Elga is another ridiculously tough combination. You lose the lovely damage from Riposte and other Streetfighter goodies, but gain extra disengagement and all your defenses covered (and more!) plus an aura and nice passives. And everybody loves an extra Paladin aura.

There might be a helmet somewhere the prevents interrupts when you are injured... (But I don't recall where.) So long as you are into a bit of assisted self-mutilation after resting, you should be able to render yourself permanently immune to interruption during combat due to always sporting one injury. Which is such a cheap way to get around the one drawback to the Vaporous Wizardry Grimoire that only a real munchkin would use it.

To eliminate one other potential source of your problems, and if you've already examined this please forgive me for asking the obvious question: Do you have any software running that interferes with permissions? A typical culprit would be an anti-virus program, and you can test this by disabling it while starting the game and trying to load, then enabling it again. That does leave a window of vulnerability, but it is a simple way to test whether a given program is the culprit. If you do have such a program running that is actively blocking POE's permissions to access the files, this specific information about which program does it information that the developers will want to know. Of course, if might be something else that is to blame, but whenever "saved information in a game doesn't show up for loading (but the data is still there on my hard drive)" shows up when discussing games, other software blocking permission to access the files is one of the most obvious things to test for and the test to identify which software it is can only be conducted by those suffering the problem, not the development team who are otherwise left guessing.

Yea, that's pretty much my current stats, Imo with vital essence con can be lovered to -5 Also, how empower work? As i understand, it's doubles all your power level's, right? I believe the Empower tutorial said it gave a fixed +10 power levels.

Finally a reason to play a max CON paladin!