Help me explore a character concept: per rest abilities.

[Myrtillo]

After one playthrough on veteran, and another one on PoTD almost wrapped up, I came to the realization that, because classes are overall well designed (not necesseraly balanced, but well designed), they were pretty much self-sufficient in their roles, and the need to use scrolls and items with per rest abilities was almost non-existent unless I forced myself to do it for fun.

I used my watcher abilities for RP purposes, and summon figurines because I love this, but that was about it.

 

Now, with the new rest system, per rest can basically become per encounter, as long as you make the effort to do a click. So I started to put some thought into a character that would rely mostly on actives from items and other per rest abilities, and top it off with super high arcanna scrolls.

I think this playstyle could provide a lot of fun and variety, and I will probably be looking to do this on my next playthrough (or the one after that as I have currently two characters I want to roleplay, but this is a differnent story)

 

Although I realize this might be doable with basically anyone, the objective is to find a way to somehow optimize it, this is why I am posting this topic: It really is an open discussion to provide ideas, synergies, even stats recommendations etc. You can also discuss the items that have interesting per rest (or per encounter) effects and that would be great for this build.

 

Given how short battles can be, even on PotD, we must make sure to find a build that does not really make use of the class active abilities, as our action time will be taken by using our items.

This left me with three ideas:

 

- Ghost Heart ranger:

Marked for the hunt and summon pet takes no time. A lot of points can be used to take passives for the pet. Bond can be used by the pet to cast takedown.

I went with ghost heart because it is underused, it justifies the use of one bond point to summon the pet, and the ranger doesn't have to worry if something bad happens to the summoned ghost.

 

- Troubadour:

Half the interesting stuff for Chanters are passive chant abilities, which obviously don't take action time. Troubadour lets us stack two chants permanently with decent int. Since we will not be casting invocations, the increase cost does not affect us.

The stack of phrases is not completely lost either as you can pickup Sasha's very early for extra action speed while holding those phrases.

 

- Black Jacket:

Fighters have great passives, and instant self buff that we can cast at the start of combat, and weave in uses of items without affecting our efficiency with those.

Black jacket is an obvious choice as a lot of weapons have active spells. The ability to hold for sets, so up to 8 weapons and swap between them without penalty.

 

I could also include wizard, since there are so many instant buff spells that could be cast in three seconds at the beginning of the fight, but I mean, playing a wizard already offers great variety with spells, and it kind of defeats the purpose. I guess it would be very strong though.

 

So, here are my ideas to start the conversation. I think the best combination might be a multiclass Black Jacket/Troubadour, but as I said, this is really open for discussion.

[Gruntle42]

Given that you won't be taking many actives, a Black Jacket/Troubador would be a lot of fun. A stat distribution similar to what you used on your Intelligent Captain would work pretty well; you could consider dropping res a couple of points for more might or dex if you wanted? More dex = faster item use I guess?

 

Similarly, a high per/high int ghost heart ranger is a lot of fun; I just ran one as a multi with Ascendant cipher (focusing on marksmanship with my arquebus and using charms to even the odds in tough battles; I think someone has a build on here like that too). Doing a ghost heart/troubador might be really fun. Lots of synergy with the ranged buff chant and the damage chant, and you could maybe focus on knockbacks/paralyze/etc. for foes that get past your pet's engagement. Add in a few buffs from party members and that'd be really flavorful. If you really limited the active slow-cast stuff on the chanter side in favor of passives and a few situational things, you could focus on dex/per/int/might and leave con and res at 10, I'd think. Could maybe even dump them a little bit lower.

[Teukros]

An interesting idea, I approve

 

So let's think about it. I prefer Black Jacket over Ghost Heart: sure, Marked Prey/Marked for the Hunt is very nice, but Black Jacket has some very good passives, and Disciplined Barrage works very well with items. I recommend against bringing scrollcasting into the mix. The thing is, itembound spells are rather slow (on par with Cipher or Priest spells), and PoE 2 fights are very quick. It's either scrollcasting or "itemcasting", and - frankly - scrolls are much better than items. Besides, if you want to create scrollcaster, go Barbarian, they are absolutely the best with scrolls. However, I recommend Alchemy. You'll need speed, and Coral Snuff is one of the best (and easiest to get, for a Fighter) speed buff in PoE 2.