Had any luck with Priest nukers?

[Frog Man]

Would like to run a priest main character for next run! Actually ran a Priest of Berath for my first run through the deadfire on hard at release and had a great time, but I’m looking to optimize this go around. So please pass along suggestions!

 

Just to be clear I’m looking to hopefully run a priest who can be the top dps and nuker for the time. Will likely even bring Xoti to handle the Devotions buffing and teammate saving. I want this guy to be the bringer of the apocalypse.

 

Some general questions...single class priest the way to go? Which god - magran for fire priest (ring of Fire accuracy, dropping shining beacons and pillars of fire)? Berath again? New woedica? Does it matter?

 

Go single class for higher power level and top spells? If not, multi class with what? Could see the helwalker caster formula with enduring dance helping the spell damage.

 

Thanks for the ideas!

Edited January 4, 2019 by Frog Man

[Yosharian]

Would like to run a priest main character for next run! Actually ran a Priest of Berath for my first run through the deadfire on hard at release and had a great time, but I’m looking to optimize this go around. So please pass along suggestions!

 

Just to be clear I’m looking to hopefully run a priest who can be the top dps and nuker for the time. Will likely even bring Xoti to handle the Devotions buffing and teammate saving. I want this guy to be the bringer of the apocalypse.

 

Some general questions...single class priest the way to go? Which god - magran for fire priest (ring of Fire accuracy, dropping shining beacons and pillars of fire)? Berath again? New woedica? Does it matter?

 

Go single class for higher power level and top spells? If not, multi class with what? Could see the helwalker caster formula with enduring dance helping the spell damage.

 

Thanks for the ideas!

I have a build that I'm using in my 5-man custom party that's similar to what you describe. I have no experience with it yet, though. It's based off the Templar build in the builds sticky post.

[Enoch]

I'd go single-classed.  Getting to tier 7 (incl. Storm of Holy Fire and Cleansing Flame) at level 13 instead of 19 is pretty huge. 

 

The trouble, of course, is dealing with stuff you can't burn.  Vatnir is probably the best nuker-Priest, as he gets access to some good AoE Freeze and Corrode damage.  If you decide that you're not troubled by this problem, Magan is the way to go.  If you are, I'd say Berath is OK in that you can fall back on Rot Skulls, before the Tier 8-9 stuff opens up some other non-Burn options. Although, if you're mixing nukes with debuffs, Woedica offers too much neat stuff there to be ignored.  

Edited January 4, 2019 by Enoch

[brasilgringo]

Single-class Priest of Magran using +PL fire items (Sun And Moon, Magran's Favor, Ring of Focused Flame, Kuaru's Prize, Pozzi cat (https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pozzi) or the AOE/dmg pets (Peter - https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Peter), etc.  Stack stats like Might (spell dmg & healz), Int, Per .... you can BDD yourself, add Salvation of Time, and run in to nuke ....stack other PL items like Nature Godlike (buff yourself), the Priest spell that gives +1 PL, and Prestige talent.

 

The hard things about Priest nukers:

1) Spell cast times are soooooo sloooooooow  even with dex, fast casting talent, etc.

2) Ref the Magran Priest, if you run into fire-immunes you're kind of SoL and need to go back to support Priesting .... (there's a Rymgrand vairant that I don't think has been released yet, but you can mod it, focused on Cold)

Edited January 4, 2019 by brasilgringo

[dunehunter]

I think you would want to use the soulbound dagger and dlc3 robes because both gives u a chance to recast your spell.

[Rimiu]

Now that I think about it, it seems that priest builds are super underrepresented in general. How come?

Edited January 4, 2019 by Rimiu

[MaxQuest]

Some general questions...single class priest the way to go? Which god - magran for fire priest (ring of Fire accuracy, dropping shining beacons and pillars of fire)? Berath again? New woedica? Does it matter?

I have tried a Helwalker of Berath.

Sceptre (with modal on) + Tuotilo's Palm, Aloth Armor. And Magran's Favor + Tuotilo's Palm in offset.

 

You get to +10 MIG/INT really fast and Shinning Beacons damage is amplified quite nicely to 230+.

But in practice... this was still not good enough.

 

 

The general fire-priest problems were:

- enemies that are fire immune or have high fire AR

- enemies on upscaled PotD have relatively high will; and you can't as easily debuff their will in 4m AoE as you could before. You will have to deal with grazes - and that's not good.

- this priest easily kills trash... but so do other party dps'ers. And then there is relatively little he can contribute damage-wise vs remaining enemies.

- in Deadfire priest can cast only 2 Beacons per encounter (3 with empower-resources). In PoE1 priest could cast 5 (4 + talent).

- in Deadfire bosses have up to 7500 hp. While in PoE1 bosses had less than 1k endurance, and priest had enough spell damage to deal with them. Additionally scrolls no longer benefit from character's MIG, INT and PER.

 

 

Additionally Helwalker of Berath struggled with:

- focus fire from enemy archers, and requiring increased amount of healing. Figured that going for Helwalker of Wael was better due to Arcane Veil. Also he was a consistently the weakest link during Neriscyrlas fight. Dracolich was keeping tunnel-visioning him, so I stopped resurrecting the helwalker and it was basically a 4-man fight.

- lower PL comparatively to single-class priest, and especially delayed access to next spell ranks. He was able to cast 2 beacons per encounter only starting from lvl 12, and by that time my mindstalker was consistently out-performing him damage-wise by a great margin.

 

 

So what would I do now, if I wanted to go for a priest-nuker:

- built him as a single-class priest of Wael (if companion or hireling) or Berath (if main character). Reason being: Wael provides access to Arcane Veil for extra protection; while Berath provides access to extra DoTs and Rot Skulls. MC can get away without Veil, because he gets extra stats, talents and is usually better supervised anyway.

- although there is a late game bonus of going for priest of Magran or Rymrgand. As these are the only ones who have periodic damage spells at rank 9.

- or perhaps ditch the idea of nuker-priest entirely, due to encounter design behind boss-fights in Deadfire.

Edited January 4, 2019 by MaxQuest

[dunehunter]

@maxQuest I also don’t like the boss fight design in DF, like u said, boss in PoE 1 only have 1k endurance but bosses in DF usually have over 5k hp, which is a very lazy way to make them hard to kill zzz.

 

I don’t really urge to replay the bosses fights after I beat them because it’s more a repeating labour than a brainstorm.

Edited January 5, 2019 by dunehunter