Polearm mid-line melee builds for turn-based?

[Lampros]

What would work? Since he's a mid-liner who won't be tanking much, I probably would want to mix in a pure melee class such as Fighter with hybrid melee such as Chanter.

[Boeroer]

If I wanted to build a reach weapon user I would def. pick a Wizard/something because of Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff first and especially Citzal's Spirit Lance later. There are no really good early unique reach weapons. Unless you count Whispers of the Endless Paths which also has reach, but a bit reduced (normal melee: 0.8m iirc, WotEP: 1.2m, pike & quarterstaff: 1.8m).

Wizard/Monk, Wizard/Paladin, Wizard/Fighter, Wizard/Barbarian and Wizard/Rogue all work fine. My personal favorite is maybe Wizard/Monk because of Stunning Surge and Instruments of Pain which gives your lance 11 meters of reach instead of "only" 1.8 meters.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

28 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

If I wanted to build a reach weapon user I would def. pick a Wizard/something because of Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff first and especially Citzal's Spirit Lance later. There are no really good early unique reach weapons. Unless you count Whispers of the Endless Patchs which also has reach, but a bit reduced (normal melee: 0.8m iirc, WotEP: 1.2m, pike & quarterstaff: 1.8m).

Wizard/Monk, Wizard/Paladin, Wizard/Fighter, Wizard/Barbarian and Wizard/Rogue all work fine. My personal favorite is maybe Wizard/Monk because of Stunning Surge and Instruments of Pain which gives your lange 11 meters of reach instead of "only" 1.8 meters.

 

Thanks; I will likely have multiple Rogue muti-class characters in my group, and I am not a fan of the Barbarian. So I will look at the first three types. As for alternative weapons, what about Lord Darryn's Voulge?

[dgray62]

Barbarians are probably ideal users of LDV, since hits via carnage apply static charge, and then when you crit, the multiple charges erupt in potentially a huge AOE. Out of the first three types, fighter/wizard is best for LDV since the weapon only binds to barbs, druids and fighters. Or you might consider an ascetic, i.e., druid/monk build. Or, if you prefer, a pathfinder, maybe fury/trickster. You could cast druid spells that apply afflictions and then get in sneak attacks. Trickster would add some nice defensive buffs which druids lack.

[Lampros]

5 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Barbarians are probably ideal users of LDV, since hits via carnage apply static charge, and then when you crit, the multiple charges erupt in potentially a huge AOE. Out of the first three types, fighter/wizard is best for LDV since the weapon only binds to barbs, druids and fighters. Or you might consider an ascetic, i.e., druid/monk build. Or, if you prefer, a pathfinder, maybe fury/trickster. You could cast druid spells that apply afflictions and then get in sneak attacks. Trickster would add some nice defensive buffs which druids lack.

Hmm, can you use the weapon with Druid/Fighter or Druid/Barbarian type of characters and use both the weapon and Relentless Storm in turn-based mode?

[Boeroer]

Pollaxes - despite the name - are no reach weapons in PoE. Since you mentined that you won't be in the first row to tank I assumed with pole weapons you mean reach weapons. Those are only quarterstaff and pike. So Lord Darryn's Voulge would be out.

If you want to go with LDV nevertheless, in my opinion there's nothing better than Barbarian/Monk due to the awesome synergy of Static Thunder with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming (disregarding your dislike of Barbarians) - especially on lower difficulties but also on PotD (but to a lesser extent because less crits): Carnage applies Static Thunder in an AoE and Swift Flurry can trigger cascades of crits which again apply carnage with Static Thunder which immediately get released by the crit again. The big AoE bc of Turning Wheel helps to sometimes clear a whole room with a single attack if you're lucky. And if not it's still very good. You maybe want Berserker in order to get more crit conversion in melee which helps with Swift Flurry. Berserker/Helwalker is quite tricky though. Furyshaper/Helwalker is also great because the fear ward leads enemies to break engagement (use Barbaric Shout to get +3 engagement) and lowers enemies deflection, the Disengagement Attacks help with Swift Flurry etc., too. 

Stuff like Devoted/Helwalker also works well. Once you get Clear Out you can do the same as the Barbarian version - but not passively and less often per encounter. But still impressive. Here the Disciplined Strikes help a lot of course. 

 

[Lampros]

48 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Pollaxes - despite the name - are no reach weapons in PoE. Since you mentined that you won't be in the first row to tank I assumed with pole weapons you mean reach weapons. Those are only quarterstaff and pike. So Lord Darryn's Voulge would be out.

If you want to go with LDV nevertheless, in my opinion there's nothing better than Barbarian/Monk due to the awesome synergy of Static Thunder with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming (disregarding your dislike of Barbarians) - especially on lower difficulties but also on PotD (but to a lesser extent because less crits): Carnage applies Static Thunder in an AoE and Swift Flurry can trigger cascades of crits which again apply carnage with Static Thunder which immediately get released by the crit again. The big AoE bc of Turning Wheel helps to sometimes clear a whole room with a single attack if you're lucky. And if not it's still very good. You maybe want Berserker in order to get more crit conversion in melee which helps with Swift Flurry. Berserker/Helwalker is quite tricky though. Furyshaper/Helwalker is also great because the fear ward leads enemies to break engagement (use Barbaric Shout to get +3 engagement) and lowers enemies deflection, the Disengagement Attacks help with Swift Flurry etc., too. 

Stuff like Devoted/Helwalker also works well. Once you get Clear Out you can do the same as the Barbarian version - but not passively and less often per encounter. But still impressive. Here the Disciplined Strikes help a lot of course. 

 

 

Oops! I haven't played in over two years, and I guess it shows in my ignorance! Pretty counter-intuitive though.

I recall that I really disliked Barbarian, because of the low Deflection causing him getting constantly hurt and needing baby-sitting. But perhaps the issue won't be as severe in turn-based, I guess. Devoted/Monk, however, sounds very attractive. Wouldn't Devoted/Shattered Pillar work better though in turn-based, since you will get hit less often if you set things up right? Also, one question about Clear Out though. I read in another thread that Clear Out clears engagements: Does this mean essentially that I'd need a main tank to lock down enemies while the Devoted/Monk goes to town?

 

[Boeroer]

Clear Out also throws enemies back and interrupts them. I'd still use one or more proper frontliners in addition to the Devoted/Monk.

[Lampros]

On 10/11/2020 at 5:43 PM, Boeroer said:

If I wanted to build a reach weapon user I would def. pick a Wizard/something because of Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff first and especially Citzal's Spirit Lance later. There are no really good early unique reach weapons. Unless you count Whispers of the Endless Paths which also has reach, but a bit reduced (normal melee: 0.8m iirc, WotEP: 1.2m, pike & quarterstaff: 1.8m).

Wizard/Monk, Wizard/Paladin, Wizard/Fighter, Wizard/Barbarian and Wizard/Rogue all work fine. My personal favorite is maybe Wizard/Monk because of Stunning Surge and Instruments of Pain which gives your lance 11 meters of reach instead of "only" 1.8 meters.

 

Okay, I am narrowing to Wizard/Monk and Wizard/Fighter.

Two more questions about this build type:

1. Will the mage spells be used at all - or is this guy strictly a melee? I will also have 2 other melees, and I'd like to have some back-line support/nuke functions for this guy.

2. For turn-based, wouldn't Shattered Pillar be better than Helwalker - assuming you have a lot of crowd control and thus won't get hit all that much? Or is Shattered Pillar still useless? (I vaguely recall people saying the early nerf killed the sub-class way back...)

[Boeroer]

Shattered Pillar only has a max wound count of 5 which hurts the Turning Wheel bonus. I would pick Helwalker: the +MIG is great for a lot of Wizard spells as well and you can generate lots of wounds on the fly with Alacrity's seld dmg + Enduring Dance (doesn't get canceled by self damage). I would use Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon often, especially if you pick a Bloodmage. Also use self buffs of course. There's a grimoire of a guy named Zandethus (Zandethus' Dracon Scaled Grimoire) which has an awesome melee spell in it: "Zandethus' Draconic Fury". It adds two big lashes to all your melee attacks and also terrifies enemies. Stuff like Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst is also nice. You can cast nukes, sure. They are actually very impactful with the Helwalker's bonus MIG and the bonus INT from Turning Wheel as well as the +2 PEN from Thunderous Blows. One of the most impactful spells is Wall of Draining. With it you can prolong all buffs and healing over time(!) on you endlessly as long as there are still enemies alive. Even lowish healing sources like the Minor Lay on Hand glove become really good this way.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

Shattered Pillar only has a max wound count of 5 which hurts the Turning Wheel bonus. I would pick Helwalker: the +MIG is great for a lot of Wizard spells as well and you can generate lots of wounds on the fly with Alacrity's seld dmg + Enduring Dance (doesn't get canceled by self damage). I would use Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon often, especially if you pick a Bloodmage. Also use self buffs of course. There's a grimoire of a guy named Zandethu which has an awesome melee spell in it: "Zandethu's Draconic Fury". It adds two big lashes to all your attacks and terrifies enemies. Stuff like Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst is also nice. You can cast nukes, sure. They are actually very impactful with the Helwalker's bonus MIG and the bonus INT from Turning Wheel as well as the +2 PEN from Thunderous Blows. One of the most impactful spells is Wall of Draining. With it you can prolong all buffs and healing over time(!) on you endlessly as long as there are still enemies alive. Even lowish healing sources like the Minor Lay on Hand glove become really good this way.

 

Got it. I will go Helwalker, then if I choose the Wizard/Monk route. Now the harder decision about Monk or Fighter...

[Lampros]

Hmm, unfortunately Citzal's is not free cast in turn-based, I just noticed in-game

Is the build still functional? If not, then are there any other reach weapons that can work here? I recall that there was a really good reach weapon on PoE 1; it's too bad nothing jumps out here

Edited October 13, 2020 by Lampros

[dgray62]

The Chromoprismatic staff is arguably one of the best reach weapons in PoE 2. It's a great stat stick for casters, and can be a fantastic melee weapon if you pump up metaphysics, to get a substantial bonus to damage and action speed.

[Boeroer]

You can simply initiate combat with a tank an then start casting Citzal's Spirit Lance from stealth, then use it, can't you (I am not playing on TB mode)? It's totally worth the cast. In RtwP it's also not an instant cast. 

Chromoprismatic Staff is great. But you can not aquire it early.

A good reach weapon for the early-ish game can be the Lance of the Midwood Stag. If you enchant it with Lord of the Forest and get a plant or beast effect (e.g. Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan etc.) it gives you +2 universal Power Levels which is pretty great for casting. So if you have a Druid in the party who can put something like that on you it's good. 

An alternative can be the Spine of Thicket Green which can be stolen from the Dark Cupboard easily. It's not particularly useful for a wizard and is better for Druids and/or Priests, but it comes exceptional which might be a big improvement early in the game. Later grab Chromoprismatic Staff.

Another alternative would be to give the character the actual Spirit Lance weapon with the console (or mod) to carry it around like a normal weapon. Cheating, yes, bit more like a QoL cheat if you want to use it all the time anyway. It will even scale down of you use it with a lower level than you would normally do (with summoning), so it's not even too high quality if you use it from the get-go.

Summoned weapons should have been instacasts. We pushed for it in beta and after release but unfortunately Obsidian didn't want to do that.  

A cool mod would be to add a unique pike with normal stats but that automatically casts Spirit Lance as instacasts at the start of combat. Like a "trapped" Spirit Lance inside the physical one.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

You can simply initiate combat with a tank an then start casting Citzal's Spirit Lance from stealth, then use it, can't you (I am not playing on TB mode)? It's totally worth the cast. In RtwP it's also not an instant cast. 

Chromoprismatic Staff is great. But you can not aquire it early.

A good reach weapon for the early-ish game can be the Lance of the Midwood Stag. If you enchant it with Lord of the Forest and get a plant or beast effect (e.g. Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan etc.) it gives you +2 universal Power Levels which is pretty great for casting. So if you have a Druid in the party who can put something like that on you it's good. 

An alternative can be the Spine of Thicket Green which can be stolen from the Dark Cupboard easily. It's not particularly useful for a wizard and is better for Druids and/or Priests, but it comes exceptional which might be a big improvement early in the game. Later grab Chromoprismatic Staff.

Another alternative would be to give the character the actual Spirit Lance weapon with the console (or mod) to carry it around like a normal weapon. Cheating, yes, bit more like a QoL cheat if you want to use it all the time anyway. It will even scale down of you use it with a lower level than you would normally do (with summoning), so it's not even too high quality if you use it from the get-go.

Summoned weapons should have been instacasts. We pushed for it in beta and after release but unfortunately Obsidian didn't want to do that.  

A cool mod would be to add a unique pike with normal stats but that automatically casts Spirit Lance as instacasts at the start of combat. Like a "trapped" Spirit Lance inside the physical one.

 

Thanks for the comprehensive answer! Now, are there any modders on this forum who'd be willing to make a mod that makes summoned weapons instant casts?