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Wodjee showed how to win the game by thinking outside of the box and by only going for the kills that were needed. Several of the high level fights, for instance the fight for the White Forge were non-events with both my wizard and druid. However, I needed to do at least 10 test runs with my test rogue before I was comfortable doing this fight with the TOI save. Even then I still needed luck to survive. However, the rogue, who was level 12 or 13 when I fought Thaos demolished him in a way that my wizard couldn't at level 16. My wizard fought him and the henchmen head-on and barely survived, but he only took damage because I needed time to immobilize the henchmen and then buff before I took on Thaos. The rogue split the fight and just destroyed everyone he then faced individually. The rogue would not survive the fight without splitting the group, where the wizard should quite easily. So, as said before, different classes have different strengths and weaknesses and require different strategies and different tactics to thrive. Part of the fun is figuring these out and then optimizing those to completely dominate your foes.

The animat is not that good, but it can provide a distraction allowing you to avoid fights. Early game it can be a life saver. The wood beetles are great if you combine them with combusting wounds and the shades are probably best because their hits cause the targets to become blind.

My Frozen Crown Solo was done with a rogue so I can appreciate what Rogues do well. Insane single-target DPS with the ability to perma-stun or perma-prone single opponents and the best escape button in the game. The DPS math cannot account for different playstyles and party composition. My Frozen Lance build controlled the battlefield in a way that allowed him to survive almost unscathed, but the rogue would do more single target DPS. My rogue took out single opponents like taking candy from a baby, but he could easily be overwhelmed when fighting crowds. So, in conclusion - the game is pretty balanced amongst most classes I have seen, but each one needs to be adapted to their specific strengths. DPS is great, but there are other factors that make my builds survive - strategy being number one and tactics being number two.

Regarding 5 stealth, JerekKruger is right. I think that is the minimum you need to avoid that fight, but I usually have more than that with Boots of Stealth, so I may be mistaken. For solo runs if you want to avoid fights, stealth is the most important attribute. Wodjee has a full ultimate speedrun and he generally used the minimums for most sections. Review his ultimate run of about 9 hours for ideas. He avoids most fights to accomplish the speedrun, but I did POTD (non-TOI) solo runs with both a wizard and druid and did most of the fights - you need to plan differently, but they are all possible. A wizard with Arcane Veil can get off a lot of fan of flames before the spectres can hit him. An Adra animat blocking a choke point buys you time to cast fan of flames a couple of times if you are not a wizard. It takes time to get a strategy that works - trust me, I would not drop armor unless I felt I had no other choice. I must have died at least 10 times trying to beat those spectres, but after the first time it becomes a lot easier.

When playing solo the best course of action is often to avoid a fight. For this specific fight, you can sneak all the all the way to the door if you have 5 stealth. Once the triggered conversation finishes, combat will start and you would need to summon the animat (bronze horn figurine) as bait while you hide, or as I like to think of it, wait for combat to end at the stairs. Closing the door also increases the odds of you being out of line of sight when the animat dies. If you really wish to take them on, you need Rymgard's mantle and as many scrolls of fan of flame as you can manage. I did this fight naked, by sneaking to the door, triggering combat and then using the door as a choke point while casting fan of flames until I ran out of scrolls. Not sure if being naked help for recovery time, but I managed to kill almost all of them before I ran out of scrolls. I think I only needed to kill one shade or shadow after that barrage. Edit: during the fight I was not stunned once and did not take any real damage due to the mantle healing me whenever I got hit.

I am assuming you are referring to the total damage in the character section. A wizard will lag behind initially, but can make it up for it later, depending on how you play him. You would need to choose all of the relevant blaster talents, you would need to buff using Kalakoth's Minor Blights, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Merciless Gaze and Eldritch Aim (can be replaced with Citzal's Martial Power later if you want to do even more damage). If you then have one of your tanks use the Ring of Searing Flames (saves you time by not casting Combusting Wounds) and you then blast a group (blast damage can be significant) then you would probably outdamage everyone. You would however need to use choke points so that the enemies cluster together in order to maximize the blast effect. With Spell Mastery that you could get the blights, Merciless Gaze and Eldritch Aim and not need to use memorized spells. You can then only use DAoM when it is really needed. This will minimize the amount of resting to regain used spells.

So, I finally managed to do both the Triple Crown Solo and Frozen Crown Solo using @Wodjee's guide which can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miTjrBLDaQ4. I followed most of this guide to the letter, but did a couple of easy xp quests before Act 3 and thus was always half a level ahead. It made sense to me at the time, but it did not really matter as the Wodjee's run really is extremely well planned. This is now my second completed POTD solo playthrough. I have managed this with the Frozen Lance and with this Rogue. My third run is with a Druid who is currently level 16 and kicking butt, however, I find both the aforementioned classes stronger. May revise this once I complete my solo run with the Druid, but he just seems to lack the ability to take down the toughest enemies. Compared to the Frozen Lance, the Rogue was an extreme glass cannon. Where a wizard has options when things go wrong, I found that this particular build had very few options. Unless you have an escape plan or a way out, then it is very easy to die in record time. Shadowing Beyond is a great escape mechanism, but there are some fights where it doesn't help at all. However, when things go right, they go right in a big way. I have also reviewed all of Tod Wilkinson's run for ideas for my own Ultimate run (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRrP5mqwU0U&list=PLiyQ3-dkh2sRIhbJMnCp9ihRC8mV0k5XO). I don't know if I will copy Wodjee's Ultimate run, as there were certain sections that were really cutting it close and I survived with Second Chance more than once. Tod Wilkinson seemed to survive much better even if he made bad tactical decisions as the wizard just had more tactical options available. Quite amazing to see how the approaches differ, but by using the strong areas of both runs, I am sure it will make the Ultimate somewhat easier to achieve.

Ok, back to the blaster Wizard build then. One more question about this build though: According to a very extensive Steam guide on class builds, DPS Wizards fall off considerably in late-game relative to the non-caster DPS classses. Is this true? Also, is your Priest an implement user or a melee? I ask, because I might be unable to avoid having 4 melees anyways, since I think the Priest needs to be up-close. Regarding DPS, sure a rogue who hits for 50-80 with each hit, dual-wielding and with a potion of DAoM is a pure DPS machine, but a wizard will do more damage with 1 Ninagauth's Shadowflame followed by 3 Kalakoth's Freezing Rakes. Damage output will be just over 600 in a very short period of time. If you can petrify your opponents, then just cast Gaze of the Adragan after the Shadowflame and watch the total damage output go to over 1,000 from the 3 rakes. Rogues won't easily beat that, but in the same vein, I just beat Thaos with a level 13 rogue (using Wodjee's FCS run as a guide) and he just crushed him. Thaos stood absolutely no chance as he was perma-stunned or perma-proned, but I needed to split the fight. My level 16 wizard did not bother splitting the group, but came close to dying from a couple of Cleansing Flames. So, they are different playstyles. Regarding my priest, I used Durance up front but probably should have used him in the backline. Having fewer melee bodies up front makes it easier to place AoE spells without nuking my own chars.

Posting from my phone and struggling to quote what I need, so bear with me. All of the wizard buffs I used were instant cast and had no recovery. For the list of buffs, review the Frozen Lance combat tactics as they give the exact order I cast buffs in order to maximize overlap. Casting DAoM earlier did not speed up casting time as there is no recovery time for the wizard - not sure about buffs with other classes. Playing with a party my casters tend to be ranged. Blaster wizard or rot skull druids are pretty effective and don't get in the way of the more melee oriented team members. A melee wizard could get his buffs up pretty quickly, but it ended up being more micro in a team for me. Not only did I have to manage him, but I also needed to ensure he would get in on the action. Seems like a small thing, but with four melee dudes all anxious to get in on the action, once the melee wizard was buffed, the rest of the team had already gotten to the best positions and this just led to him doing less damage than he would by blasting.

A dual-wielding rogue who has two weapons that both cause afflictions can be extremely effective against single targets - refer to @Wodjee's run and see a poor Sky Dragon get taken out like it was nothing. Hours of St. Rumbalt will only have one disabling attack in the same time as a DW char can have two, i.e. twice the chance to stun/prone. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to calculate the DPS difference to account for these factors due to the "luck" element involved. The point is that while the DPS calculation are very useful, they do not take all of the factors into account. With my Frozen Lance wizard, I liked higher speed as I could interrupt more and thus get hit less. While the end-build was built with DPS in mind, the interrupts tended to be more valuable.

I tried running through there to get the Alguls and Deathguards do the fighting for me. I cleared the entire map, except for one lone Bannerman and the last group before the Algul section. I kept one Bannerman alive since I need to be in combat to drink a potion of fleet feet. Once I drunk the potion, ran up to the last Bannermen, had the conversation and tried to run past them. Unfortunately, the Bannerman block the entrance so I could not make in past. Died pretty quickly and retried by drawing them away. Managed to clear the way through and then run to the Alguls. Perhaps I ran too fast, but the Bannerman go back to their default location by the time the Alguls engage me. So I ran back and tried to get them to engage each other. Unfortunately, everyone targeted me, I got caught and died again. Thereafter, I used the same tactics and got a Deathguard involved as well. Running around in circles just had everyone still targeting me. Perhaps if some AOE managed to hit the Alguls from the Bannermen, they would have started attacking each other. In my case, it did not happen and they seemed quite happy to ignore each other to focus on me. When the potion of speed wore off, I was still pretty fast due to the boots of speed, but I ended up running out of room and dying. I gave up after trying this a couple more times. If anyone wishes to try this, you should also wear something that protects against stuck as I had one or two runs end prematurely due to being stuck by a Bannerman spell. While I wish I could get this to work, I guess I will just have to slaughter everything in my way...

If your rogue sneaks behind enemy lines, he would most likely be isolated and not survive long. It could work as an opener if you have high stealth, otherwise you would have to use it in conjunction with Shadowing Beyond, i.e. Shadowing Beyond or stealth to get within 2 metres of your target, Backstab, Shadowing Beyond again to get you out of trouble. Sort of makes it a once per rest ability. @Raven Darkholme mentioned @Wodjee's run where he achieved the Ultimate with a rogue. The Frozen Crown run can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miTjrBLDaQ4. Reviewing his strategies throughout the various Acts will give you a very good idea of how a rogue can be utilised and of course you would need to adapt that to party play.

@Torm51 You got a lot of advice on adding a chanter to the party. They can be quite effective, but not so much when paralysed, petrified or stunned. My first playthrough of PoE was on normal, and thereafter everything on PotD with a couple of solo runs (not TCS though as I like targeting circles). When playing as a party, my MC tends to have high lore for the conversation options, but also so that I can use all of the scrolls of prayer against xxx. Unfortunately, the wiki is a little incomplete on the scroll info, so I can't exactly tell you which scrolls to use. However, the idea would be to start off by getting everyone protected against paralysis and/or petrify (these may be two different scrolls), and then protect against fear (priest or scroll). Thereafter, the fight will be much easier. Another alternative would be to disable the Adragans with something like an Overwhelming Wave (can be cast out of combat) and then hit them with a Calling the Earth's Maw before the stun wears off to try and keep them perma-stunned or perma-proned. However, these can be tricky without targeting circles and if you are terrified from the Caen Glaws, then landing these spells is even more tricky. So protection against fear is highly recommended again. The above options are aimed at a) neutralising the worst effects the enemies have or b) neutralising the specific enemies that are most dangerous. You can plan most encounters that way and if you carry sufficient scrolls in your quick-slot amongst your party, it takes something really unforeseen and extremely unlucky to cause the whole party to die.

Splitting with Boots of Speed could work if you have sufficient room to around in. You would need to outdistance yourself from the group otherwise the entire group will keep on following. Fast enemies, for instance monks, make such tactics very unlikely to succeed.

In this specific situation, I need to pull just a single enemy at a time or I die - too low level to win against all 5 undead, nowhere to run to and need to do it at this time to get the loot I need. By just unstealthing rather than attacking with a bow, I have the option to immediately attack without waiting for a switching or attack cooldown. Most of the time in solo runs, this tends to be my preferred approach as I can immediately get up a summon using a figurine. My guess is that the aggro mechanic incorporates both line of sight and enemies being a certain distance from each other. For instance, if you continue watching the video, then it is possible to take out one of the revenants without aggroing the final skeleton merely by him not having line of sight. However, I am having issues with the first pull even though I pull him to a spot where I think there is no line of sight, which is why I am hoping someone else can offer some insight. Perhaps I am merely doing the pull wrong...

Ok, so I am doing another attempt at a Frozen Crown Solo using @Wodjee's run as a template. YouTube video can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miTjrBLDaQ4. On my first attempt all went well until I got to the part where I need to rescue Giacco (refer to 17:50 in the video). I entered the cell southeast of Giacco, pulled the first skeleton and then had him walk back to his post without him discovering me. Of course, once he walked back I tried to pull him back in by approaching him. Net results was that I aggro'ed both as I was badly out of position and that of course pulls all the undead and lead to a quick death. Ok, so attempt number two and roughly twenty minutes later, I pulled the skeleton, had him walk back to his post and tried to unstealth before he was out of sight and again aggro'ed both and died shortly thereafter. Luckily I realised at this point, that it might be a good idea to do a special character allowing me to test the mechanic. Unstealthing when the skeleton reached the point where he stops tended to give me a roughly 50% chance of just pulling one. Of course, after getting a couple of decent results with the test char, I did the same thing again with a new FCS Rogue. He ended up dying again about 20 minutes into the run due to facing too many undead in that tiny cell... Luckily the 4th time was the charm and I managed to only pull one. At this point, they got what they deserved! So, after this lengthy post, does anyone have any advice for what I could do to ensure that I get this correct 100% of the time for my next run?

Not quite sure what nerfs were introduced for Little Saviour now, but I mostly used it to get my deflection and reflexes up while buffing. Almost any small shield works for that. Even with all of my buffs, I (Merciless Gaze, DAoM & Eldritch Aim), I found that Unlaboured blade procced less than I expected. It was nice when it happened, but I could not reliably count on it. The Citzal's combos worked much better since the blast of the lance is guaranteed. In essence, anyone within range takes a ton of damage and you can find yourself slicing through hordes of enemies quite quick. If I used a doorway as a bottleneck, I took almost no damage and most fights were over before my buffs expired. Several enemies were damaged by the blast and by the time the first enemy went down, those who followed were in bad shape. Considering you can go for 4 encounters like this before needing to rest, it is not that bad, but you do need to follow a set sequence and similar tactics for most encounters. Yes, I used the weapon focus for daggers since I used Drawn-in-Spring, but once you use soulbound or summoned weapons any weapon focus will do.

You can really take anything here. A fully buffed wizard does not get hit that often. Not sure if you are playing solo or in a party, but this could also affect which spells you want for Spell Mastery. If you use the right weapon combos (Unlaboured Blade + Little Saviour) you do not need to cast Citzal's every encounter, but you may lose more health and this need Infuse with Vital Essence more often. If you plan your spells right, you can use Citzal's 4 times before needing to rest. The best defense is a good offense IMO. If you take out the battlefield before your buffs expire, you tend to walk away with very little damage.

Not sure if you will find this helpful against upscaled opponents, but with the Wizard, Ninagauth's Shadowflame was extremely useful. Even if you graze most opponents, it buys time to cast Merciless Gaze, DAoM, and Eldritch Aim. Since you can see how long opponents are paralysed for, you could try and keep them in a state of constant paralysis until you are ready to fire off the Kalakoth's rakes. I only needed 1 try to win this encounter using that technique and all of the casters were down after the last Kalakoth landed, and several of the melee opponents were badly injured or near death. It was easy to then just get the Spirit Lance combos and mop up what was left.

Here is quite a good Youtube video for solo play - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WqlSG6ueqA&list=LLtb0w8sijMspJhpVj8SHDXg&index=36. It is a speedrun with a rogue in 2.03 and I do handle some quests differently, but it gives a very good basis for getting through Act 1 and Act 2 solo. Regarding the Xaurip Skirmishers, I tend to avoid them until I am of high enough level to easily take them out. I think all of the skirmishers can be avoided in Act 1 and you can clear them out easily in Act 2. Regarding the ghosts, same thing - come back as late as possible in Act 2. Use the Bartender's Ring, use spells, scrolls and potions. With my wizard, I needed two or three tries to win the battle, but it was not impossible - merely needed to adjust tactics.

Not sure if prior versions of PoE handled this differently, but from 3.02 xp for disarming traps was 5 xp per level of the trap per the number of party members. To clarify, disarming a lvl 1 trap with 1 character in the party will give 5 xp, disarming that same trap with 3 party members will give 15 xp (still 5xp per character). Thus, if you are going solo and Heodan is still alive, just use him to disarm the traps - you end up with the same xp regardless. However, if you are planning on recruiting companions, then it may make sense to return to Cliant Lis to diasarm them with a full party.

Well Boeroer, it is your idea and your thread, so you could use whichever methodology you want in your testing. Only thing I would suggest is to keep it constant across all builds, i.e. give all builds access to all items even though they might not necessarily use them.

Never played hard - moved straight from a party on Normal to solo POTD. Am considering upscaling in my latest solo playthroughs, but with my limited amount of playtime (3-4 hours a week on average), it can take some time to get to these bounties. With the Frozen Lance playthrough, once I had opponents paralysed, the Freezing Rakes dealt about 600 points of damage if 3 crits hit. Since most enemies were already paralysed most hits were crits. Can't recall the damage output of the Shadowflames, but the nice part is that these spells are all fired off at extreme speeds. While the Fire Priest does insane damage over time, the wizard usually had everyone paralysed and then did a lot of damage almost instantly. I think the wizard can have the edge if all that matters is the speed at which encounters are concluded. However, if opponents are still standing after the rakes and the wizard needs to use the Citzal's combo then the Fire Priest would probably win the encounters in less time.

Have been playing the game with some solo characters now running in parallel and have managed to get the items as usual. Not sure if having a party influences this or if there is some other trigger that caused my prior problems. All the enemies in Act 2 are now quivering in fear at the mere thought of being hit by Combusting Wounds from the Ring of Searing Flames since they know either Touch of Rot or Wood Beetle poison will follow.

Yes, I saw some of the priest builds and they are extremely powerful. If I needed to take on one of those with the Frozen Lance and the usual Citzal's combo he I would lose. However, where wizards shine are in the combination of crowd control and damage output. For instance with those bounties you could start with one of the Llengrath's protective spells, cast Eldritch Aim, 3 Shadowflames, 3 Freezing Rakes and have cleared most of the battlefield before Eldrtich Aim expires. Another option is to open with 1 Shadowflame, buff a little and then another Shadowflame before using the 3 Freezing Rakes. Just bear in mind that my experience was with non-upscaled opponents and I have no frame of reference for how much more difficult upscaled opponents would be. Trying to take on these fights without nuking lead to a quite quick death though. The problem wasn't the melee engagements, but rather the spellcasters really were the biggest problems to both these encounters. However, if all you are interested in is the quickest time to finish the bounties, then the above nuking strategy got the job done very fast.