Priest of Magran's summoned weapons: Making them work

[AndreaColombo]

Recently I've been looking into Priests' summoned weapons, unsurprisingly because they look rad.

Among my favorites are Magran's, an unfortunate pistol/sword combo.

While I've got nothing against picking a suboptimal class/feature for roleplaying reasons, if I do, I still want to build around it as optimally as I can—which leads me to the question, how can I get the maximum out of Magran's summoned weapons?

My first thought was to go Soulblade/Priest of Magran. The reason is that I used the ranged/melee combo with some success on Ydwin as a Mindstalker dual-wielding Scordeo's Trophy and Scordeo's Edge. Granted, the Scordeo weapons synergize a lot better than Magran's—but the gist of it was the combo enabled Ydwin to generate focus at a distance with the extra speed of dual-wielding, while being able to defend herself in melee without having to switch weapons or incur a penalty.

So I figured, let's do the same with Magran's weapons—and to an extent it works. It deals OK damage, can keep up the Soulblade's perks with SoT (though it requires another Cipher in the party to get Brilliant), and has pretty good spike damage via Soul Annihilation.

...and yet, the thought I might be missing something gnaws at the back of my head. Are there better ways to milk these summoned weapons?

What about Ranger to get the maximum out of the pistol? Though once engaged in melee, the sword would be unimpressive.

Tactician? Though in order to get Brilliant reliably I'd need a Cipher to cast Phantom Foes and my front line would be pigeonholed into using weapons that make them immune to Flanked.

Rogue for the bonus damage that gets multiplied by the burning lash?

[Boeroer]

Unfortunately it's just a bit of a ****ty combo. The abilites with which you could cheese a bit (e.g. Whirling Strikes) are PL 8 or 9 non-priest. 

Rogue sounds like the best bet. 

I wonder why they didn't keep the arquebus as signature weapon of Priests of Magran - as in PoE.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Boeroer

[AndreaColombo]

The Cipher multi isn't that bad, after all. When I tested it, I did so in parallel with a Devoted/Priest of Berath (another combo I'm interested in) and forgot I had maxed Berath's dispositions, so the latter had an advantage lash-wise. I also forgot to spam Recall Agony with the Soulblade/Priest of Magran, which I should have done. Devoted/Berath hit harder but those two things would help make the gap smaller.

I'll try out the Rogue variant too for good measure, though.

[AndreaColombo]

By means of an update, the Rogue/Priest of Magran works pretty well too.

The problem is that pistol/sword is just a bad combo. They don't synrgize as well as the Scordeos so you either optimize for one or for the other.

A couple things I noticed:

• Priest of Magran's Minor Avatar is fiery like the fire twin from the Dichotomous Soul, which I thought was a very nice touch. Looks very cool with Flame Shield and Magran's summoned weapons.
• Some of the bonus spells, like Torrent of Flames or Symbol of Magran (the latter unfortunately unavailable to MC Priests), are plenty cool

Now I'm curious what the Incarnates look like (except Rymrgand's, which I've seen already.)

Edited May 29, 2019 by AndreaColombo

[thelee]

2 hours ago, AndreaColombo said:

By means of an update, the Rogue/Priest of Magran works pretty well too.

The problem is that pistol/sword is just a bad combo. They don't synrgize as well as the Scordeos so you either optimize for one or for the other.

A couple things I noticed:

• Priest of Magran's Minor Avatar is fiery like the fire twin from the Dichotomous Soul, which I thought was a very nice touch. Looks very cool with Flame Shield and Magran's summoned weapons.
• Some of the bonus spells, like Torrent of Flames or Symbol of Magran (the latter unfortunately unavailable to MC Priests), are plenty cool

Now I'm curious what the Incarnates look like (except Rymrgand's, which I've seen already.)

i actually summoned them all up to see: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/priest (sorry was gonna copy-paste but it's in a table format, scroll down and look at the Incarnate column)

it's odd that magran gets a special minor avatar - i haven't noticed if any of hte other priests get something special.

 

On 5/26/2019 at 12:20 PM, Boeroer said:

I wonder why they didn't keep the arquebus as signature weapon of Priests of Magran - as in PoE.

well, they got one: the sword. 

though as a quarterstaff-wielding waelite from poe1, count me as a little disappointed that only one of each spiritual weapon was preserved in deadfire. i think spiritual arquebus, quarterstaff, morningstars would all have been fun to have (mace not so much).

Edited May 29, 2019 by thelee

[AndreaColombo]

Yeah, just checked them out.

Berath's and Rymrgrand's are the best ones; Magran's is really nothing special.

Also checked Minor Avatar for all other deities and only Magran is getting the special fiery one; all others look the same.

Symbol spells and spiritual weapons all look pretty rad.

[Boeroer]

They kept stiletto AND club from the PoE Priest of Skaen.

Would have been cool to make two spiritual weapon spells per Subclass: e.g. Spiritual Sword and Spiritual Arquebus for Magran. If you want both you'd have to pick both. Then you'd have the same options as in PoE bus consistent with Deadfire.

Hm... maybe worth a mod. Although I don't know if you could replicate the "spiritual weapon look" for weapons like arquebus, quarterstaff etc.

Edited May 29, 2019 by Boeroer