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Here's an early draft of the Lady of Pain build for the Deadfire backer beta. Most things are subject to change as newer beta versions are rolled out with balance changes; more so once the game is out and we get to see whole ability trees and all unique items. These were the defining traits of the original build, which I'll pursue again with this one: Maxing out its MIG score. Packing as many damage bonuses as possible. Pumping Accuracy as much as possible. Reaching 0 recovery (or getting very close to it.) Turning its low Deflection into an asset. With this in mind, my Lady of Pain build for Beta 1.0820B is as follows: Race: Coastal Aumaua Aumaua gets +2 MIG bonus; Iit is crucial to go for the Coastal subrace in order to get Resistance to Might Afflictions, which makes us immune to Stun. Background: Any Attributes: MIG 20* CON 10 DEX 10 PER 18 INT 15 RES 05 * Can be 21 if you remove one point from another stat. I chose 20 to stick to an even number; I didn't want to dump CON (as you'll see, this Lady of Pain is quite the glass cannon compared to its PoE counterpart) and I wanted to allocate all points from RES to INT in order to make up for the Will defense penalty while profiting from a longer duration on all self-buffs. These attributes include the bonus point from your chosen provenance. It can be anywhere so long as you rearrange your stat points to look like the above. Class: Devoted/Helwalker In Deadfire, synergies between the Fighter and Monk classes abound and nothing screams Lady of Pain like this combination. A few highlights: Helwalker gets +1MIG per Wound up to +10. This is what turns low Deflection into an asset: Let them help you hit them harder. The bonus MIG from Wounds increases your Healing received, including Constant Recovery—this beautifully offsets the extra damage per Wound you take from the Helwalker. * Duality of Mortal Presence can be used to gain up to +10 CON (1 per Wound) in a build that already encourages you to hoard Wounds. Thunderous Blows gets you +5 MIG and +4 penetration; Lightning Strikes adds a whopping +50% lash and +35% attack speed. The Devoted adds +3 penetration and +25% critical hit damage off the bat, plus access to Weapon Specialization, Armored Grace, and fighting style talents. * as of the upcoming beta build, MIG will no longer affect healing, thus eliminating this synergy. Proficiency: Sword Here is another deviation from the original build, as Deadfire makes heavy armor + two-handers a rather impractical combination. Namely, heavy armor's recovery penalty was doubled from 50% to 100%. Based on the information we possess from the beta, it is not possible to reach 0 recovery in heavy armor unless you dual-wield—and even then, you must sip a Potion of Relentless Striking to achieve it. Additionally, the modal for Great Sword is rather underwhelming. Swords have a nice modal that gives +2 penetration in exchange from -20 Deflection—a good trade-off for the Lady of Pain, since its Deflection already sucks Granted, there will be fights where taking the Deflection hit will have you killed pretty fast, so we can't have the modal on all the time; however it's a nice-to-have and Swords have good base damage. Talents: Many good talents in the Fighter/Monk trees. Here are my picks for the beta in no particular order: Disciplined Barrage Two Weapon Style Disciplined Strikes Fighter Stances Knock Down OR Force of Anguish* Confident Aim OR Into the Fray OR Determination Rapid Recovery * Now that Prone no loner has a duration and merely counts as an interrupt, Knock Down is no longer as powerful as it used to be in the first game. The push back from Force of Anguish may prove useful if you're taking too much of a beating, as it shoves the enemy and gives you time to drink a potion. Mortification of the Soul Swift Strikes Lesser Wounds Lightning Strikes Clarity of Agony Bull's Will Note that I am not taking any active Monk abilities that may cost Wounds (we want to keep Wounds high in order to benefit from the extra MIG) or Mortification (we want to use it to pop Lightning Strikes back up when it expires.) Confident Aim is only really "necessary" in this first backer beta build, since Disciplined Strikes is granting Miss-to-Graze conversion without also granting the ability to Graze. From the next update on, I suggest Determination to gain a +20 bonus against Charmed/Dominated effects which could prove ... hurtful, if they landed. Clarity of Agony is very good in case those Afflictions landed anyway, since it will make them last 50% shorter. Bull's Will is highly recommended to make up for the relatively low Will defense. Going into higher levels, make sure you pick the following: Armored Grace Weapon Specialization Body Control Unstoppable Fearless Duality of Mortal Presence Thunderous Blows Clarity of Mind Recapping: Damage Up to 35 MIG with no spell or item buffs (20 starting + 10 Helwalker + 5 Thunderous Blows); that's a multiplicative 75% damage bonus. 50% lash damage from Lightning Strikes. 15% damage bonus from Weapon Specialization. 25% crit damage bonus from the Devoted sublcass. You can get an extra 20% from the Potion of Relentless Striking, which becomes 40% with 10 ranks in Alchemy. Penetration +3 from the Devoted subclass. +4 from Thunderous Blows. +2 from Half-Sword (Sword modal.) That's +9 on top of the extra penetration from the Swords' enchantment; should be enough to guarantee over-penetration every time you land a critical hit. Accuracy +8 from Perception. +5 from Conqueror Stance. +5 from Disciplined Strikes. 50% hit-to-crit conversion from Disciplined Strikes. That's +18 Accuracy on top of that from the Swords' enchantment with no spell or item buffs. You can get +20 from Devotions for the Faithful, which also gets you another +4 MIG that I think stacks with everything else we've been using so far. You can also get +6 from a Potion of Deftness, which becomes +8 if you have 10 ranks in Alchemy (which I dearly endorse for the extra attack speed.) When you crit, you get extra damage and extra penetration; with over-penetration, everything gets a 30% multiplicative bonus, including your MIG which was already multiplicative. That's pretty massive. Recovery: -35% from Lightning Strikes (20% from the ability; 15% from the Dexterity boost.) -50% from dual-wielding. -20% from Two Weapon Style. -20% from Armored Grace (can't get it as a multi-class in the beta, but eventually you will in the game.) That's -125% recovery and some of those abilities also boost your attack speed. If wearing medium armor (e.g. Scale Armor, +50% recovery) you must get to 150% to have 0 recovery. Based on the above, a speed weapon would already get you to 5%; an item that gives +2 DEX would get you to 0 without using potions. If wearing heavy armor, that's another 50% penalty—you'll need the Potion of Relentless Striking to get to 0 recovery. Alternatively, a Potion of Deftness with 10 ranks in Alchemy gives you a 75% attack speed bonus, which is enough to reach 0 recovery in Plate armor with no speed weapons and no other boosts to DEX. It is not known how many potions of that kind we'll be able to hoard in the game, nor do we know whether speed weapons still exist and how they work. Hopefully there will be at least one end-game sword with that ability and the potions will be available in large supply. In the beta you can reach 0 recovery wearing medium armor and popping the potion (150% recovery - 155% recovery bonuses.) Defenses: Your Fortitude is unconquerable, especially once you get Duality of Mortal Presence (can't get it as a multiclass in the beta.) Your Reflexes are pretty good owing to the bonus from Perception (further increased by the PER bump from Disciplined Strikes and the DEX bump from Lightning Strikes.) Your Will is relatively weak, as it's only getting a bonus from Bull's Will. You may want to take the talent Determination for another +20 against Intellect Afflictions (that's +30 total against Confusion/Charmed/Dominated before any item bonuses, which is solid.) You are immune to Stun thanks to your racial; with Body Control, you are also immune to Dazed. You are immune to Paralyze thanks to Unstoppable and to Terrified thanks to Fearless. Your Deflection is poor. Granted, the Conqueror Stance makes up for the 5 points you lose on Resolve, but you're gaining no bonuses from anywhere. Popping a potion of Relentless Striking gets you -10 and using the Sword modal gets you another -20. You'll need to either boost it with spells and items, or watch out when you use those to avoid getting critted too much (enemies will over-penetrate your Armor Rating and hit you for a multiplicative 30% extra damage that also applies to the extra damage you take from the Helwalker ability.) You should wear Scale Armor at the very minimum—better Plate or Brigandine. With low Deflection, you want to boost your Armor Rating at every opportunity.