BEST SPIRITSHIFT FORM

[Hallacson]

I have finished the PoE, and at the first game my toughts about druid was "meh".

What about the PoED? I'm planning to go druid, but I cant decide which form I should pick up.

What are your suggestions? Please write down every pros, cons for each form

[thelee]

I'm not going to do the whole pro/con thing, except point you to my guide's info on the forms: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/druid

 

But I will talk about two forms in particualr.

 

Cat is by far the best all-around IMO. It comes with a once/encounter active ability that gives you a whopping +33% action speed for a short duration on top of already having faster attacks; the action speed buff even lasts past your spiritshift if you end it prematurely. Get a priest with salvation of time or multiclass with a wizard for wall of draining and you can stretch out the buff for an entire fight, emptying out your spellbook and pummeling enemies with great speed.

Stag is the absolute worst. It doesn't have carnage, like it says it does. It has a lame active ability called "carnage" that attacks once for incredibly medicore damage. I believe this has to have been an erroneous implementation of it, and they never got around to making it function like in poe1 where it was like barbarian carnage except you had to turn it on.

Edited April 7, 2020 by thelee

[Hallacson]

Thanks.

I think perception with cat would be great. As I saw, the missing posibility during combats are higher than the PoE. So, with succesful hits, cat may become the best.

[Boeroer]

I would add the Boar form. It has an automatic raw damage over time effect on its attacks (kind of bleeding damage) and it heals passively while shifted. Which is nice.
Also it looks absolutely hilarious.

Stag is indeed bad. But you can install the Community Patch mod which transforms the 1/encounter ability of Stag Carnage into a passive ability like the Barbarian Carnage (only a bit weaker). Then it's a fine (but not OP) spiritshift form.

PS:  good to see that the big upgrade of Spiritshift, Spiritcapslock, still finds its use.     

Edited April 7, 2020 by Boeroer

[Hallacson]

About that...

I have already downoaded community patch with vortex. But it seems, its for an older version of game. I tried but it gave me a crash

Edited April 7, 2020 by Hallacson

[Boeroer]

Do you mean Nexus? Did you use the install wizard? I think it's called Vortex, isn't it? Unfortunately you can't use the installer of the Nexus site. You have to download and extract it into the correct directory manually as the instructions describe. 

Edited April 8, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

Boar is OP, it's just ugly af. I wish there was a way to swap the stats to a different shift.

[Boeroer]

6 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

I wish there was a way to swap the stats to a different shift.

It is relatively easy to create a small mod which does this.

[AeonsLegend]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

It is relatively easy to create a small mod which does this.

Probably, but I wouldn't know where to start.

[Boeroer]

@BMac of Obsidian posted a nice starting tutorial on modding in the modding subforum. It also has follow-ups. I think it's a good place to start:

Modding ist mostly done by altering text files that are written in JSON format. So something like (just an example):

{
      "name": "Boar",
      "model": 324234wefwef,
      "powers": [
        "raw damage DoT",
        "health recovery"
      ]
    }

I didn't look into spiritshift specifically, but judging by how other stuff works I believe there are several ways to achieve what you want.
I would try to just copy the combat values of the form you like mechanically (here Boar) and paste those into the form that looks nice to you (e.g. Cat). Then you'd have Boar, Cat with Boar's values, Stag, Bear and Wolf in the modded game. You'd lose the original Cat. To preserve the original Cat form you could make a copy of the Cat form before and name it... I don't know... Stelgaer or so - and then replace the Stelgaer's combat values with the Boar ones. Then you would have Cat, Boar, Stag, Wolf, Bear and a new one: Stelgaer. Which looks like a Cat but behaves like a Boar. As far as I know you could even tint the Cat modal of your new Stelgaer form so that it looks more dark/blackish. But that may be too advanced. 

If you want to look at an example for modding Spiritshift you could download the files of the Community Patch (nop need to install the mod) and browse through the files to see how @Phenomenum altered the "Stag-Carnage" ability from 1/encounter attack to a passive.

Also @Harpagornis made a whole mod around Spiritshift and surely has some deep knowledge about how to mod Spiritshift specifically.   
 

Edited April 8, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

Cool thanks, that looks pretty easy to do indeed.

[Hallacson]

Hello and thank you everyone. I know replying your comments now is a bit awkward. But I wanted to share it.

I chose the cat form. As a druid, my main character is an aoe caster. And while my perception, int, wise bonuses strengthen my spells, the cat form provides action speed with almost no time. With this I am only wait for casting times and I don't need any of dexterity bonuses.

I can definitely say this combo is really useful.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Hallacson