Frontline Priest?

[claudius]

Difficulty setting: Normal

 

I have the game on PS4 now which means I can be upstairs where I can watch the dog while playing.  So I'm trying a play through with a priest of Wael.  The initial idea to try to make a front row Priest, but based on performance even at level 1 the low endurance of a priest and small damage output it seems like a bad idea.  So I decided to take a different eventual party composition and have my Priest of Wael as a back row character.  I've picked up Eder and Aloth and now level 3.

But I was just curious if my idea was not terrible and did I just not implement right?

Here's the level 1 build plan:

Wild Orlan

Might 14, Consitution 9, Dexterity 12, Perception 12, Intelligence 15, Resolve 16

Iximatl Plains, Philosopher

Lore, Athletics, Survival (small), Stealth (small), Mechanics (none)

Level 2 talent Interdiction

[baldurs_gate_2]

Priest gets his first good spells with lvl 7 and he gets better after that. He has the weakest early game. TBH, the bonus you get from disposition of your deity, is not really worth it, to play him as a main character. Durance stats are horrible, so i would just create a priest, when you hit level 8 with your main character.

Int / Might / Per are the most important stats. He has not so good endurance gains, so putting points in con doesn't provide much. Dex is not necessary, because you can't make casting speeds faster. You should just give him potions of alacrity, to make him faster. Res should be at 10, not really that important. You can buff your priest way higher, than anything that resolve provides.

[demon72]

The 2 strongest low-level classes are Druid and Wizard from my point of view.

Overall Wizard, Priest and Druid (in this order) are the most powerfull classes.

But on normal difficulty the game should be quite easy with any party composition.

 

A Frontline-/Support-Priest is the best option in the early game for several reasons:

• priest don't need accuracy as they just buff/heal your party most of the time and don't have many good damage / debuff spells in their arsenal
• therefore you can give them the heaviest armor and the biggest shields (and you will find a very big shield in the very early game)
• that way priests can block enemies and heal / buff your party without any significant disadvantages, as you don't need accuracy therefore

Later and with a larger number of spells available, you might want to change to lighter armor to cast faster and this might result in changing your position from "front-line" to "flank protection".

 

Support Priest:

At least in PotD the priest needs to cast as many buffs and protection-spells as fast as possible! Time is sometimes that critical, that you might want a 2nd priest or give some priest-scrolls to melee-builds. Keep your priest in working condition and the priest will keep the rest of your party operational! Loosing your priest early may result in loosing the battle. Most important are buffs and protections spells, healing is just secondary. Don't use the priest for debuffing or damage dealing, other classes are definitly better in this tasks! A Melee-Wizard will kill everything that fast (when fully buffed), that the battle is over before the priest even starts to change to melee!

 

Stats in order of relevance (support priest):

1. DEX: it's all about speed - as you want to cast as many buffs as fast as you can - especially later in the later game
2. INT: AoE is very small for many good buffs, you might want a larger AoE and you get longer lasting buffs that way
3. -
4. -
5. RES: defence at it's best - underestimated in many builds from my point of view
6. -
7. -
8. PER: somehow the counterpart to RES, but as a pure support priest, you're spending 90% of your time with buffing
9. MIG: more healing and damage, but overestimated in many builds from my point of view! Especially as the priest doesn't (need to) heal in the later game anymore. In the few hard fights on PotD you might want to cast holy radiance, but my priest never used any other healing spells after Act I. ("Moonwell" is much better for healing and MIG is a very usefull stat for a druid!)
10. CON: not lower as 9 or 10, as a "knocked out" priest can't help anyone (therefore a Wild Orlean or a Coastal Aumaua might be a good choice for a priest).

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by demon72

[Boeroer]

4 hours ago, baldurs_gate_2 said:

 Dex is not necessary, because you can't make casting speeds faster.

DEX is the only thing that increases casting speed. DEX also affects recovery and reloading time. The rest of all the other "speed" bonuses only affects recovery and/or reloading time.  

So DEX is absolutely necessary if you want to cast fast. One reason why Durance is considered to have bad attributes is his low DEX. I think if you want a frontline priest Durance is pretty solid though.

Of course Priests get great spells before lvl 7. Prayer against Fear is one of the best spells to have against anything that has a fear aura (most notably Dragons), Consecrated Ground is a good survival tool if you cast it before things go south (not while), Iconic Projection only has to overcome 1/4th of DR because it is a fixed dmg spell and thus has some good uses and most famously Devotions for the Faithful not only buffs your party with insane ACC but at the same time debuffs enemies' the same way - which is awesome for a frontline priest. Shining Beacon is devastating with high MIG and INT. If you combine it with Champion's Boon (+10 MIG, +10 PER etc.) and Inspiring + Aggrandizing Radiance (+10 ACC, +2 MIG and PER etc.) it will do tremendous damage over time (even better with Minor Avatar). And so on and so forth.

Speaking of DoTs and Holy Radiance + Priest's Dispositions: if you build a max MIG/INT priest and use Aggrandizing Radiance and Minor Avatar and max out your dispositions you can one-shot nearly all but the toughest vessels (like high level Fampyrs etc.) with your Holy Radiance because on a crit it can reach over 300 burn damage (that's per target). Also the healing will be good. If you don't want to invest in that kind of minmaxing that then I agree that dispositions will not do much for you.

It's true that Priests have bad endurance and health numbers. You will need to make use of Potions of Infuse with Vital Essence if you want to prevent a lot of resting due to health. That is because also his defenses are not so great and in early levels he will get hit no matter what you equip him with. Later with more defensive spells this will change and a Priest can become sturdy enough to not be a liability in the front line. 

[demon72]

Boeroer do you really see the need to cause damage for a priest (as part of a party)?

From my experience other classes perform much better in killing enemies.

I would keep a priests specialized on the things he can do best - buffing and protecting the rest of the party (in Act I also healing)

Therefore the priest needs to stay functional and under this aspect I would sacrifice some MIG to increase RES and CON.

If you run in the need to deal damage the priest can easily buff MIG on its own, but my priest almost never enters melee before the battle is almost over.

Edited May 19, 2021 by demon72

[baldurs_gate_2]

On 5/19/2021 at 11:34 AM, Boeroer said:

DEX is the only thing that increases casting speed. DEX also affects recovery and reloading time. The rest of all the other "speed" bonuses only affects recovery and/or reloading time.  

So DEX is absolutely necessary if you want to cast fast. One reason why Durance is considered to have bad attributes is his low DEX. I think if you want a frontline priest Durance is pretty solid though.

Of course Priests get great spells before lvl 7. Prayer against Fear is one of the best spells to have against anything that has a fear aura (most notably Dragons), Consecrated Ground is a good survival tool if you cast it before things go south (not while), Iconic Projection only has to overcome 1/4th of DR because it is a fixed dmg spell and thus has some good uses and most famously Devotions for the Faithful not only buffs your party with insane ACC but at the same time debuffs enemies' the same way - which is awesome for a frontline priest. Shining Beacon is devastating with high MIG and INT. If you combine it with Champion's Boon (+10 MIG, +10 PER etc.) and Inspiring + Aggrandizing Radiance (+10 ACC, +2 MIG and PER etc.) it will do tremendous damage over time (even better with Minor Avatar). And so on and so forth.

Speaking of DoTs and Holy Radiance + Priest's Dispositions: if you build a max MIG/INT priest and use Aggrandizing Radiance and Minor Avatar and max out your dispositions you can one-shot nearly all but the toughest vessels (like high level Fampyrs etc.) with your Holy Radiance because on a crit it can reach over 300 burn damage (that's per target). Also the healing will be good. If you don't want to invest in that kind of minmaxing that then I agree that dispositions will not do much for you.

It's true that Priests have bad endurance and health numbers. You will need to make use of Potions of Infuse with Vital Essence if you want to prevent a lot of resting due to health. That is because also his defenses are not so great and in early levels he will get hit no matter what you equip him with. Later with more defensive spells this will change and a Priest can become sturdy enough to not be a liability in the front line. 

I was not aware anymore, that dex lowers it

But Devotion & Co are all lvl 7+ spells and i meant, character level 7 and not spell level.

On 5/19/2021 at 12:38 PM, demon72 said:

Boeroer do you really see the need to cause damage for a priest (as part of a party)?

From my experience other classes perform much better in killing enemies.

I would keep a priests specialized on the things he can do best - buffing and protecting the rest of the party (in Act I also healing)

Therefore the priest needs to stay functional and under this aspect I would sacrifice some MIG to increase RES and CON.

If you run in the need to deal damage the priest can easily buff MIG on its own, but my priest almost never enters melee before the battle is almost over.

You can. In the early game until you get shining beacon, you won't deal much damage to enemies with a priest but he has not really good buffing or protecting spells before lvl 5 SPELLs what you get with character level 7. If you don't go to searing falls early, you don't even need prayer against fear.

[Boeroer]

On 5/19/2021 at 12:38 PM, demon72 said:

Boeroer do you really see the need to cause damage for a priest (as part of a party)?

From my experience other classes perform much better in killing enemies.

It depends what you want to play.

A support priest can be very effective because he just drops PER and it has no effect because he never needs to hit anybody. High MIG and INT provide long durations and good healing and high DEX makes his casting fast. Cool.

But if you want to play a Priest who hauls mighty damaging spells you can do that as well. With high MIG (and no other class can reach the might score of a Priest) and INT especially DoTs like Shining Beacon become very potent. And even the Holy Radiance becomes a superb damaging tool in certain encounters. But also Storm of Holy Fire is very good. Pillar of Holy Fire does great damage, too. And som symbol spells are very good at damage dealing as well. And at the same time nothing prevents the Priest from casting support and healing on top of all that.

A dedicated support Priest might be more effective at support, but a Priest who can also deal severe damage is more versatile. If your damage dealers go down and you are left with the support priest you are screwed. Not if he can demolish the enemies all by himself though.

And then there's stuff in between and also fun stuff. Is a Priest Priest of Berath as good with a Great Sword as a Rogue might be? No... but he can hit enemies as well as a Fighter with the right abilites/talents AND he can cast Priest spells on top of that. Very versatile - compared to a Fighter who can only whack things with the sword - and casts nothing. Sometimes it's just mad fun to hit enemies with Tidefall at 40+ MIG and see the massive wounding ticks just melt the foes.   

[demon72]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

It depends what you want to play.

A support priest can be very effective because he just drops PER and it has no effect because he never needs to hit anybody. High MIG and INT provide long durations and good healing and high DEX makes his casting fast. Cool.

But if you want to play a Priest who hauls mighty damaging spells you can do that as well. With high MIG (and no other class can reach the might score of a Priest) and INT especially DoTs like Shining Beacon become very potent. And even the Holy Radiance becomes a superb damaging tool in certain encounters. But also Storm of Holy Fire is very good. Pillar of Holy Fire does great damage, too. And som symbol spells are very good at damage dealing as well. And at the same time nothing prevents the Priest from casting support and healing on top of all that.

A dedicated support Priest might be more effective at support, but a Priest who can also deal severe damage is more versatile. If your damage dealers go down and you are left with the support priest you are screwed. Not if he can demolish the enemies all by himself though.

And then there's stuff in between and also fun stuff. Is a Priest Priest of Berath as good with a Great Sword as a Rogue might be? No... but he can hit enemies as well as a Fighter with the right abilites/talents AND he can cast Priest spells on top of that. Very versatile - compared to a Fighter who can only whack things with the sword - and casts nothing. Sometimes it's just mad fun to hit enemies with Tidefall at 40+ MIG and see the massive wounding ticks just melt the foes.   

With the "great-6-person-party" (Cipher instead of Barb and "Schemer's Needler" instead of Priest of Berath) I'm meanwhile at L16 (Act I & II, WM I and end of WM II).

In most cases I like flexibility, but I can't remember any battle (besides Act I) that wasn't already won at the point Schemer's Needler switched to melee.

In Act I she was involved in melee, but wasn't able to contribute much at low level.

Roleplaywise I really like the "Schemer's Needler"-idea but if we are just talking about a powergaming party, I would recommend a more support orientated priest-setup.

At least in this party constellation the very few situations were I run into trouble always results from a disfunctional or even knocked out priest.

Therefore I would say that a balanced build with high DEX and INT should be a good set-up for a support priest

• MIG:     9-10
• CON:    9-10
• DEX:   18-19
• PER:     9-10
• INT:    18-19
• RES:   11-13 

Equipment should help to avoid all afflictions that would stop the priest from casting:

"Weapon and Shield"-Style with a high Deflection Shield

medium Armour e.g. "Autumn Fire"

"Looped Belt", "Ring of Deflection" and "Cloak of Protection"...

...and Increase INT, DEX and Speed ("Gwyn's Band", "Viettros Shoes", "Swift action")

 

Edited May 21, 2021 by demon72

[claudius]

Hi thanks everyone for their comments.  I'm still slowly playing/leveling when I get a chance.  I hit level 8 *ding* and thinking which talents for my priest (starting stats in first post here).

Talents so far: Interdiction, Painful Interdiction, Inspring radiance..

 

In a previous play through I used Durance and he started fights with Holy Radiance (Inspring and Agrandizing) buffing the party.  This time I'm using the Main Character Priest a little different and I'm opening with different abilities and using Holy Radiance to turn the tides of battle.  I'm only on Normal difficulty so it's a case of just a different experience of the ability rather than saying an opinion of when to use Holy Radiance.. I mean opening 1/encounter is pretty efficient use to raise accuracy..

 

Anyhow at first I was thinking of trying out Brilliant Radiance, but it seems it is a small damage and I've even read older threads saying it only adds small damage to vessels and the small damage that's supposed to be to all enemies doesn't work.  Or is it that the displayed damage doesn't show to non-vessels?   And I don't know if it should or does add the frightened effect to all enemies?  So I was thinking of taking Sanctifier instead just to give the feel of a home run against Vessels with Holy Radiance and then see what forum members think about Brilliant Radiance and the other many options??

 

Thanks

[Boeroer]

Unfortunately Brilliant Radiance is pretty bad.