Your perfect 3 person party for PotD+megabosses

[Lunateric]

Hey guys, as the title says I am interested to know what party compositions have been used to clear PotD plus megabosses and what you like about them.

 

Personally finished the game my first time  on veteran with a Marauder (berserker/streetfighter), Herald (wayfarer/troubador) and Tekehu (stormshaper/watershaper) composition and it felt pretty easy, almost too easy. Will give it another go with PotD but don't want to fall into the obvious trap of trying things that are essentially bad for the difficulty.

1. What would you recommend as primary damage dealer that stays relevant for most if not all encounters?
2. What would you recommend as support characters?

[TheMetaphysician]

The Healing Wall is the best tank/support character I know of; once the self-healing gets rolling (which happens early), the party can usually outlast anything. (Scroll down about halfway on page 2 on that thread for a detailed build, with items.)

Others can give you better advice on damage-dealers to pair with it. The most success I've had is with (on Boeroer's advice) dual-blunderbuss monks or monk-streetfighters (I use Xoti and Mirke for this). Mortars (and the Avenging Storm helmet or scrolls) on Xoti (the monk), Kitchen Stove/Xefa's/mortars if they are free or just one of those (with the modal on) and Scordeo's pistol on Mirke (the monk/streetfighter). Mirke actually has a higher damage count for the playthrough, but when you hit Whispers of the Wind on the single-class monk things explode.

I don't know how good those are against megabosses. They clear the screen of all other encounters though.

[Lunateric]

4 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

The Healing Wall is the best tank/support character I know of; once the self-healing gets rolling (which happens early), the party can usually outlast anything. (Scroll down about halfway on page 2 on that thread for a detailed build, with items.)

Others can give you better advice on damage-dealers to pair with it. The most success I've had is with (on Boeroer's advice) dual-blunderbuss monks or monk-streetfighters (I use Xoti and Mirke for this). Mortars (and the Avenging Storm helmet or scrolls) on Xoti (the monk), Kitchen Stove/Xefa's/mortars if they are free or just one of those (with the modal on) and Scordeo's pistol on Mirke (the monk/streetfighter). Mirke actually has a higher damage count for the playthrough, but when you hit Whispers of the Wind on the single-class monk things explode.

I don't know how good those are against megabosses. They clear the screen of all other encounters though.

Thanks a lot for the advice on a tank, that lets me think on a DPS that can play around not being targeted by most enemies. I was thinking on a shattered/streetfighter shadow dancer with Community Patch on (raises wound cap for shattered pillars) but it seems the wound cap bugs once you take lesser wounds according to its mod page.

There are plenty other options though including casters, blood mage sounds really fun, could go for one and settle with a ranged DPS. I have read it multiclasses pretty well with tactician but that's mostly on solo settings. I like small parties but not quite ready for solo.

[Haplok]

Mages also pair well with Assasin IMO. +25 Accuracy, +4 PEN and +50% Critical damage is huge! Although Assasinate for spells is a bit sketchy and doesn't always register for some reason and you have to wait for Shadowing Beyond to do it more then once per fight, its still good synergy.

The mobility from Evasion/Shadowing Beyond is also great for someone who like to explode in the middle of enemy ranks with stuff like Torrent of Flame, Death Ring and Mineletta's Piercing Burst.

Passives are also good: Dirty Trick for +10% Crit conversion, Immune to Mind afflictions when Bloodied (as a Blood Mage you tend to spend a lot of time under that status, particularly if human or Death Godlike), Reflex Grazes converted to Misses.

 

Not entirely sure if its worth giving up PL 8 and 9 spells, but its certainly a fun playstyle. Best multiclass for a mage that wants to focus on nuking trough offensive magic IMO (and not on gish-style fighting or CC). And I read that for a Blood Mage its tricky to recover PL 8 & 9 spells anyway (maybe you don't need to recover them after one cast, though...)

Edited April 20, 2020 by Haplok

[Haplok]

Should you have interest in Turn Based mode, the persistant aoe spells and in particular Ray spells have undergone an interesting translation into rounds - they used to last 10-15 seconds and tick every second, but now they only last 1-2 rounds and dump all their damage in 2-3 ticks. That makes these rays really attractive for an Assasin nuker.

For example at level 10 you can:

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Haplok

[Lunateric]

20 minutes ago, Haplok said:

Should you have interest in Turn Based mode, the persistant aoe spells and in particular Ray spells have undergone an interesting translation into rounds - they used to last 10-15 seconds and tick every second, but now they only last 1-2 rounds and dump all their damage in 2-3 ticks. That makes these rays really attractive for an Assasin nuker.

For example at level 10 you can:

 

I come from playing quite a lot of DOS2 and I'm enjoying the novelty of real time with pause combat, I appreciate the suggestion a ton. Blood mage just yells renewable resources to me and it seems running out of those is something that can happen in higher difficulties. There's also monk but I already tried one a bit. Was seeing a shifter/streetfighter build on steam that obliterates things but then again, shifting is limited too.

[Haplok]

Well, in real time a Nuker Assasin simply focuses on 1-off aoe spells: Fan of Flames, Necrotic Lance, Fireball, Ninagauth's Shadowflame, Torrent of Flame, Blast of Frost, Death Ring, Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst, Ninagauth's Killing Bolt.

Of course, as a Blood Mage, nothing is stopping you from using all the other good spells (while an Evoker would have serious limitations there).

Edited April 20, 2020 by Haplok

[Lunateric]

8 minutes ago, Haplok said:

Well, in real time a Nuker Assasin simply focuses on 1-off aoe spells: Fan of Flames, Necrotic Lance, Fireball, Ninagauth's Shadowflame, Torrent of Flame, Blast of Frost, Death Ring, Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst, Ninagauth's Killing Bolt.

Of course, as a Blood Mage, nothing is stopping you from using all the other good spells (while an Evoker would have serious limitations there).

I'm really fond of Slicken, despite it not nuking anything, it shuts down ranged characters pretty well. I think I have my first slot set with the Healing Wall build though. Now it's just a matter of finding two other builds that compliment it well

[thelee]

19 hours ago, Lunateric said:

Hey guys, as the title says I am interested to know what party compositions have been used to clear PotD plus megabosses and what you like about them.

if you include megabosses, chanter is an absolute king, so healing wall build that @TheMetaphysician mentions will be fine. there are plenty of powerful metagaming options you can do with other classes and builds, but i feel like a chanter is an almost brain-dead easy way to support and take care of megaboss encounters. With a chanter you just need either the animated weapon summon, or the big dragon summon (not possible if multiclassed).

 

if you feel like going single-class chanter, a bellower or troubadour for 100% uptime on the big dragon is even better than animated weapons. Animated weapons do good damage and can knockdown up to 11 times, but can die pretty easy. Big dragon has 1000+ health, various elemental immunity, and can literally facetank megabosses for you. You could probably just mix in whatever else for damage.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by thelee

[Lunateric]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

if you include megabosses, chanter is an absolute king, so healing wall build that @TheMetaphysician mentions will be fine. there are plenty of powerful metagaming options you can do with other classes and builds, but i feel like a chanter is an almost brain-dead easy way to support and take care of megaboss encounters. With a chanter you just need either the animated weapon summon, or the big dragon summon (not possible if multiclassed).

 

if you feel like going single-class chanter, a bellower or troubadour for 100% uptime on the big dragon is even better than animated weapons. Animated weapons do good damage and can knockdown up to 11 times, but can die pretty easy. Big dragon has 1000+ health, various elemental immunity, and can literally facetank megabosses for you. You could probably just mix in whatever else for damage.

 

 

That dragon summon sounds amazing, specially for a class that can generate its ownt resources. What would you run as a reliable damage dealer?

Quote

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Lunateric

[Lampros]

On 4/20/2020 at 12:05 AM, TheMetaphysician said:

The Healing Wall is the best tank/support character I know of; once the self-healing gets rolling (which happens early), the party can usually outlast anything. (Scroll down about halfway on page 2 on that thread for a detailed build, with items.)

Others can give you better advice on damage-dealers to pair with it. The most success I've had is with (on Boeroer's advice) dual-blunderbuss monks or monk-streetfighters (I use Xoti and Mirke for this). Mortars (and the Avenging Storm helmet or scrolls) on Xoti (the monk), Kitchen Stove/Xefa's/mortars if they are free or just one of those (with the modal on) and Scordeo's pistol on Mirke (the monk/streetfighter). Mirke actually has a higher damage count for the playthrough, but when you hit Whispers of the Wind on the single-class monk things explode.

I don't know how good those are against megabosses. They clear the screen of all other encounters though.

I know that the Paladin/Chanter multi-class has tons of fans as the purported "best tank," but I was never persuaded of this build in a party setting. More specifically, being a good tank requires the ability to grab and retain "aggro" in MMORPG-speak, not just the ability to take hits and survive. So how is this guy grabbing aggro? Wouldn't a Fighter multi-class with the ability to close distance easily, oodles of Engagements, and on-demand CC fare better?

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Lampros said:

More specifically, being a good tank requires the ability to grab and retain "aggro" in MMORPG-speak, not just the ability to take hits and survive. So how is this guy grabbing aggro?

a shield and some deliberately selected gear (and the silver knight chant if you want) will give you plenty of engagement. you don't typically need more than three.

a herald can also summon animated weapons, who can also tank for you (especially with the silver knight chant).

 

1 hour ago, Lampros said:

Wouldn't a Fighter multi-class with the ability to close distance easily, oodles of Engagements, and on-demand CC fare better?

the ability to close distance doesn't matter after the first moments of combat. a fighter's constant recovery eventually ends (and can be cleansed/suppressed away). i don't know what "on-demand CC" is (isn't all CC on-demand?), but whatever the fighter gets is no match for infinite CC. remember that a chanter can keep summoning animated weapons, one of which has up to 11 uses of knockdown: whatever fighter support you're thinking of a chanter can essentially keep re-summoning a version of said fighter support. this is on top of other invocations the chanter can use.

remember that that the 10-pt dmg shield chant only refreshes every time it starts up again and any linger is irrelevant if depleted, so the "downside" of the troubadour's brisk recitation isn't even a downside - you can absorb 10pts of damage every three seconds, on top of any passive regen from exalted endurance or e.g. lethandria's devotion shield. E.G. against hauane o whe, you don't have to worry about symbiote at all. (and hauane and sigilmaster's cleansing are irrelevant because exalted endurance doesn't have a duration and you just refresh your damage shield in a second or two) all while getting invocations at almost 2x typical speed.

the first couple runs i did that included megabosses i had a herald with me, not even in a tank format (one was pallegina, one was a custom troubadour/paladin). it was so utterly convincing of how powerful a carry it was for the rest of my party (the experience also single-handedly upgraded my estimation of the chanter in general, and i tried hard to underline a chanter's value when i wrote up the megabosses in my gamefaqs guide). i didn't even try to metagame the build/equipment that hard, especially the first time with pallegina, it was pretty ad-hoc. with more thought and some proper itemization, a herald will absolutely tank for you and carry your party.

 

there's plenty of fun tanks to be made that include a fighter, but you are going to find it extremely hard to argue that a herald is not somehow the king of survivability and sustain.

Edited October 19, 2020 by thelee

[Lampros]

7 minutes ago, thelee said:

a shield and some deliberately selected gear (and the silver knight chant if you want) will give you plenty of engagement. you don't typically need more than three.

a herald can also summon animated weapons, who can also tank for you (especially with the silver knight chant).

 

the ability to close distance doesn't matter after the first moments of combat. a fighter's constant recovery eventually ends (and can be cleansed/suppressed away). i don't know what "on-demand CC" is (isn't all CC on-demand?), but whatever the fighter gets is no match for infinite CC. remember that a chanter can keep summoning animated weapons, one of which has up to 11 uses of knockdown. this is on top of other invocations the chanter can use.

remember that that the 10-pt dmg shield chant only refreshes every time it starts up again and any linger is irrelevant if depleted, so the "downside" of the troubadour's brisk recitation isn't even a downside - you can absorb 10pts of damage every three seconds, on top of any passive regen from exalted endurance or e.g. lethandria's devotion shield. E.G. against hauane o whe, you don't have to worry about symbiote at all. all while getting invocations at almost 2x typical speed.

the first couple runs i did that included megabosses i had a herald with me, not even in a tank format (one was pallegina, one was a custom troubadour/paladin). it was so utterly convincing of how powerful a carry it was for the rest of my party (the experience also single-handedly upgraded my estimation of the chanter in general, and i tried hard to underline a chanter's value when i wrote up the megabosses in my gamefaqs guide). i didn't even try to metagame the build/equipment that hard, especially the first time with pallegina, it was pretty ad-hoc. with more thought and some proper itemization, a herald will absolutely tank for you and carry your party.

 

there's plenty of fun tanks to be made that include a fighter, but you are going to find it extremely hard to argue that a herald is not somehow the king of survivability and sustain.

By "on-demand," I meant any time you need/want it. For instance, the Chanter needs enough Phrases stored to cast Invocations; the Fighter can Charge, Into the Fray, etc. as long as he has enough Discipline. But I guess the Fighter's CCs are also not "on-demand" in longer fights.

Overall, I guess our differences regarding who is the better "tank" has to do with semantics. First, as I said, tanking does not merely involve survivability, but the capacity to obtain and maintain "aggro." You've partly addressed this. Second, I am also assuming that in full party, you will have a Chanter and other supporting tools, so they are not strictly part of the "tanking" package.

[thelee]

21 minutes ago, Lampros said:

First, as I said, tanking does not merely involve survivability, but the capacity to obtain and maintain "aggro."

like i said, engagement is not terribly hard to come by, and that's the main mechanism (otherwise there's no "aggro" in the sense of generating and managing threat like in a MMORPG). a fighter can get 2-3 engagement extremely easily (defensive stance, or any other stance plus a shield and hold the line), but other characters can get 2-3 engagement as well with a shield and other items (or a chanter chant, if we're counting only persistent effects). if an enemy breaks engagement to do something else, a chanter has summons to body-block or re-engage them without having to do an attack roll. i've personally found into the fray extremely underwhelming for "maintaining" engagement because of its need for an attack roll and because enemies rarely are positioned either in range or in a way such that i actually pull them into engage range (they get body-blocked by another enemy). it also costs a whopping two discipline.

i think re: "on-demand" it's hard to overstate just how powerful brisk recitation is and animated weapons are. you start off basically being able to summon them at the start of the fight, which gives you a bunch of "on-demand" effects, and brisk recitation will mean that you have 100% uptime on it, while also rapidly generating other CC effects with invocations. At 3s per chant, the lag time is hardly there.

because animated weapons can keep getting re-summoned, i even went so far as to setup a keyboard-mouse macro that spams "F, shift-click" as long as i hold down the macro button. every time i summon an animated weapon, i select the sword, hotkey knockdown to F, and then spam that macro on an enemy i want to disable for the rest of the fight. when that enemy dies (because the sword also does a boatload of damage and has tons of accuracy), i re-spam that macro on a different. rinse and repeat with each resummon. this even works on megabosses (except dorudugan who is immune to knockdown). even on a much dumber level, i've literally held big enemies in place with animated weapons and plunked at it form a distance, simply because the enemy has a big footprint and can't squeeze past my properly spaced animated weapons.

 

put a whole different way, these days i make deliberate abstentions to try to maintain challenge in the game. in terms of builds, a herald is the main one i refuse to roll (even as a pallegina option) simply because of how easily it can trivialize the game without even doing anything exploitive (e.g. brilliant-based combos).

 

i'm all a fan of exploring different options and finding strengths in other builds, and toying around with contrarian ideas to explore new creative avenues. there are plenty of good fighter builds and multiclasses, and you shouldn't feel pressured to not play one because you think you must play the "best" option. but by the nature of the thread and how well-established the metagame is on this particular point, i think you will find it an extremely uphill fight to convince people that a herald is not just an all-around superstar for carrying a party to victory against all the big challenges of the game. you can literally just outlast your opponents in some setups (e.g. brand enemy). (the only exception i can make is if vela is involved, because a herald by itself has no effective protection mechanism for vela.)

Edited October 19, 2020 by thelee

[Lampros]

1 minute ago, thelee said:

like i said, engagement is not terribly hard to come by, and that's the main mechanism (otherwise there's no "aggro" in the sense of generating and managing threat like in a MMORPG). a fighter can get 2-3 engagement extremely easily (defensive stance, or any other stance plus a shield and hold the line), but other characters can get 2-3 engagement as well with a shield and other items (or a chanter chant, if we're counting only persistent effects). if an enemy breaks engagement to do something else, a chanter has summons to body-block or re-engage them without having to do an attack roll. i've personally found into the fray extremely underwhelming for "maintaining" engagement because of its need for an attack roll and because enemies rarely are positioned either in range or in a way such that i actually pull them into engage range (they get body-blocked by another enemy). it also costs a whopping two discipline.

i think re: "on-demand" it's hard to overstate just how powerful brisk recitation is and animated weapons are. you start off basically being able to summon them at the start of the fight, which gives you a bunch of "on-demand" effects, and brisk recitation will mean that you have 100% uptime on it, while also rapidly generating other CC effects with invocations. At 3s per chant, the lag time is hardly there.

because animated weapons can keep getting re-summoned, i even went so far as to setup a keyboard-mouse macro that spams "F, shift-click" as long as i hold down the macro button. every time i summon an animated weapon, i select the sword, hotkey knockdown to F, and then spam that macro on an enemy i want to disable for the rest of the fight. when that enemy dies (because the sword also does a boatload of damage and has tons of accuracy), i re-spam that macro on a different. rinse and repeat with each resummon. this even works on megabosses (except dorudugan who is immune to knockdown). even on a much dumber level, i've literally held big enemies in place with animated weapons and plunked at it form a distance, simply because the enemy has a big footprint and can't squeeze past my properly spaced animated weapons.

 

put a whole different way, these days i make deliberate abstentions to try to maintain challenge in the game. in terms of builds, a herald is the main one i refuse to roll (even as a pallegina option) simply because of how easily it can trivialize the game without even doing anything exploitive (e.g. brilliant-based combos).

 

i'm all a fan of exploring different options and finding strengths in other builds, and toying around with contrarian ideas to explore new creative avenues. there are plenty of good fighter builds and multiclasses, and you shouldn't feel pressured to not play one because you think you must play the "best" option. but by the nature of the thread and how well-established the metagame is on this particular point, i think you will find it an extremely uphill fight to convince people that a herald is not just an all-around superstar for carrying a party to victory against all the big challenges of the game. you can literally just outlast your opponents in some setups. the only exception i can make is if vela is involved, because a herald by itself has no effective protection mechanism for vela.

You've definitely persuaded me to incorporate summons on my Chanters! (I never did after being disappointed with the low level skeleton summons...)

[thelee]

1 minute ago, Lampros said:

(I never did after being disappointed with the low level skeleton summons...)

the low level skeleton/phantom summons are a poor representation of the quality of summons chanters get later. they are good cannon fodder, but that's it.

it's not until you get ogres that you get your first taste of tanky summons.

and while animated weapons get all the love, a single-class chanter can summon a dragon which as i've mentioned in other threads in the past can literally facetank megabosses without dying (it doesn't hurt that what helps it against dorudugan is that it has fire immunity). the only time i've ever come close to losing a dragon was against a belranga that had almost 120-ish stacks of her damage/action speed buff.

[Lampros]

2 minutes ago, thelee said:

the low level skeleton/phantom summons are a poor representation of the quality of summons chanters get later. they are good cannon fodder, but that's it.

it's not until you get ogres that you get your first taste of tanky summons.

and while animated weapons get all the love, a single-class chanter can summon a dragon which as i've mentioned in other threads in the past can literally facetank megabosses without dying (it doesn't hurt that what helps it against dorudugan is that it has fire immunity). the only time i've ever come close to losing a dragon was against a belranga that had almost 120-ish stacks of her damage/action speed buff.

Is pure Chanter worth using just for the Dragon summon though? I am now in a bit of quandary; I do want to do the mega-bosses and easily. But going the full Chanter route will make the rest of the journey not as easy

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Lampros said:

Is pure Chanter worth using just for the Dragon summon though? I am now in a bit of quandary; I do want to do the mega-bosses and easily. But going the full Chanter route will make the rest of the journey not as easy

i think whatever a dragon summon can do, an animated weapon summon can do almost as well, and there are some places where the animated weapons will out-perform a dragon summon. it is mostly a nice capstone for a single-class chanter, and frankly an ability i think is underappreciated because many people multiclass chanters or just sit around with animated weapons. if you are interested in doing something different with a chanter, then i cast a vote for a single-class chanter with a dragon summon as either a bellower or a troubadour, because either of those will be able to have 100% uptime on it. (A single-class beckoner is better off getting 8 animated weapons and a modern GPU instead).

 

edit - where a dragon really excels is in large fights or against bosses. animated weapons (especially beckoned ones) can be destroyed relatively easily, especially where AoE is concerned. Dragons have tons of health and immunities so won't go down very easily. Dragons also have two pwoerful aoe abilities that have generous scaling (dragons have liek +20 PL), a tail lash and a fire breath. In SSS I've literally wiped out most of an arena fight with just a few tail lashes... i'm talking hundred+ damage per target per attack with extremely high PEN.

edit 2 - the base dragon weapon stats are so crappy but the ability PL scaling is so generous you have to pretty make sure that the dragon is *always* using an ability.

Edited October 19, 2020 by thelee