Help for Blunderbuss build with a streefighter

[Taitealch]

Hi,

I seek all over the internet a build pirate like with blunderbuss and streetfighter (who had bonus with Powder Burns modal) 

My character in pillar of eternity 1 was a solo berserker build. So i prefer a Marauder for roleplay reason but i'm open to suggestions about it (I just want to keep Streefighter if possible. I just don't want paladin, too limited in dialogues interactions) 

My main problem is the starting attribute, i don't know how to put my stat point efficiently for this build

And i will be happy to take some advices about how not **** it up with a Marauder who can die easly (berserker + streetfighter)

Thank you for your help.

[Boeroer]

I guess by Berserker you mean Barbarian. Because there's no Berserker in PoE1 - but there is one in Deadfire as a Barbarian subclass. 

Streetfighter with blunderbuss is very straightforward.

If you want to use Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole (which I would recommend unless you want to build a Mortar Monk in the same party as well) then you want max INT because of the AoE of both weapons.

If you want to use "regular" blunderbusses you don't need that much INT. With regular blunderbusses there's a small problem: you need backup weapons with non-pierce dmg because there's quite some pierce-resistant or even -immune enemies. But that's all basically. 

For a damage dealer you want high PER and DEX and also usually MIG - a Streetfigter can do with less MIG though because he already gets a ton of dmg bonuses so that a little chunk from MIG isn't really noticable. DEX (being a multiplicative dps influence rather than MIG which is additive only) is more important. PER, too because not only do blunderbusses have an ACC malus but also Powder Burns will cost you 5 PER because of the distraction it will put on you. 

As second class: you can use Barbarian or even Berserker. Berserker is nice because of the added PEN, but besides that it's also very dangerous because the self damage is high and you can't see you health.

On the other hand you can get yourself to bloodied (50% health) in no time and then you're not only "On the Edge" (where your Streetfigter gets a lot of bonus crit damage) but also profit from Blooded of the Barbarian. Combined with Bloody Slaughter and Barbaric Smash you can do a lot of damage in a very short time and even get a Rage refund if you use it as killing blow (way better then Finishing Blow imo).

Some additional cool stuff with Berserker + mortar blunderbusses: you can either apply Spirit Frenzy's staggered in an AoE with every shot or Blood Frenzy's raw DoT which stacks with Deep Wounds etc. With Blood Storm + mortars you will land crits so frequently that your Frenzy will stay on forever without recast, too. But so will the self damage (so beware).

There's one other problem with Berserker Frenzy. It confuses you. That means with mortars the AoE will get smaller and you will hit your friends with the AoE. That last part may not be as bad as it sounds because you will hit friends with Powder Burns already so you want to make sure nobody friendly is where you are aiming your blunderbusses. You can get rid of confusion by using Svef, eating special food at rest (like Luminous Lobster) or using items (like the Devil of Caroc Breastplate which can be enchanted with a resistance which makes you basically immune to Confusion. It's a great armor for a Rogue/Barb anyway so I would aim for that).

There are other problems with Barb/Berserker:

Blood Thirst doesn't work with reloading weapons - you will still have the reloading time. It's one of the best passives of a Barbarian so that's a shame. 

Berserker Frenzy has a really good crit conversion. But it only works in melee.

There are other passives that don't work with ranged weapons, like Interrupting Blows. 

So... it's fun but it's tricky. Since it's a bit difficult to monitor your health you will def. go down in combat from time to time. High CON and a fat health pool with passives like "Tough" and at the beginning an Amulet of (Greater) Health can help. A healer, too of course. So with a Berserker high(ish) CON isn't the worst idea. Like... don't dump it.

Stalwart Defiance and the Voidward Ring are two things (among others) that may save you a lot of headache.

If you have a Priest in the party you can use Barring Death's Door + Salvation of Time on your Streetfighter/Berserker which gives him god mode basically. 

Besides Barbarian/Berserker there are other classes that fit nicely:

Ranger has high accuracy and the other obvious ranged abilities like Gunner and so on but also Driving Flight (especially awesome with mortars since the AoE also jumps). If you don't like animal companions there's the Ghost Heart subclass. With mortars and Driving Flights there will be mayhem. If you use stuff like Blinding Strike with that setup it's like a guarantee that you will always hit all enemies because there's so many attack rolls. Fire in the Hole has a build-in jump. It stacks with Driving Flights. If you pick an Arcane Archer: his Imbue shots release their effect with every jump. Fire in the Hole in the main hand with Driving Flight and Imbue:Eora will drop three(!) Pulls of Eora with enormous accuracy which will pull everything together. Now hitting with AoE stuff becomes so easy - while it's also a great CC effect obviously. If you combine it with Imbue:Web you will have locked those clumped enemies in place, too (3 parallel instances of binding web stop anything that isn't resistant/immune).

Monk is very good as second class, too. Especially with mortars. Monks have Duality of Mortal Presence which can give you +10 INT. It leads to very big AoE sizes for your mortars. Also Monks have Stunning Surge which is excellent with mortars, too. Basically it's a free AoE stun without costs most of times in this combo. The Helwalker subclass even adds up to +10 MIG which is cool - but it also makes you more squishy (but nowhere as bad as Berserker). And also Monks can use Thunderous Blows ti get that sweet +2 PEN that the Berserker comes with, only later. Enduring Dance adds not only wounds to fuel your abilites but also let you gain up to 12 ACC which is good. Finally Lightning Strikes make you even faster and add a sweet shocking lash. Also with the Long Pain the Monk later gets an excellent backup for blunderbusses should you need crush dmg at range or simply want to finish off single enemies with good single target damage (mortars are not that good then). 

Chanter is also a good second class, especially Troubadour because he has an easy time to keep up two parallel phrases at once. When you combine Mith Fyr + Sure Handed Ila you (and the party) will be having a nice burning lash and incredibly fast shooting speed (because Sure Handed Ila has this effect with reloading weapons that it applies both the recovery bonus AND the reloading bonus to your blunderbusses - stacked with your Streetfighter recovery bonus from "Heating Up"). And besides the shooting you'd also have plenty of cool invocations to choose from. For example summons that will help to keep enemies away from you. 

Black Jacket Fighter would allow you to switch weapon sets without any recovery. You could basically fire blunderbusses as soon as you want to heat up, then switch to something else and use the lightning speed with those weapons instead. 

Plenty of options. I personally consider Streetfigter/Arcane Archer and Streetfigter/Helwalker with dual mortars (Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole) to be most fun - but that's my subjective opinion. I like strong "on the fly" CC in combination with damage and both have plenty. Berserker/Streetfighter is brute force. Lots of dmg and speed but little CC. And risky - but that can be fun, too. Troubadour/Streetfighter is strong and very versatile - but it requires to do more diverse stuff, not just shooting. Which might not be what you're looking for (?).

 

 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

I suppose you want to use the blunderbuss just to trigger the bonus from time to time and the rest of the time use your melee. It might work if you dual wield a melee weapon and a blunderbuss. At close range you will attack with your melee weapon and when you need to refresh Powder Burns you just target a distant enemy. The disadvantage is you can't hit with both weapons when using full attacks. However, with your melee weapon, you will attack just as fast as a dual wielder and will have great dps. Just make sure to dump you resolve to 3 because it will add a few seconds to your Powder Burns duration and don't wear Strand of Favor. You can play as a berserker too if you have in your party characters with strong heals over time (herald Pallegina, Serafen, Tekehu, etc) - just make sure you wear Voidward and other items with health regeneration too.

PS. For armor you can also wear later the Guardian's Plate which gives better protection and some nice bonuses while afflicted. (to remove confusion you can just switch to Modwyr)

Edited May 18, 2021 by Kaylon

[Boeroer]

With a ranged/melee setup also Blood Thirst and other melee-only stuff like One Stands Alone etc. would become usable. Unfortunately Barbaric Smash only refunds on kill and it's more tricky to kill reliably with a single weapon attack compared to a Full Attack. But that would be the only downside (besides the Rogue's other Full Attacks being limited to single strikes then).  

[Haplok]

39 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Unfortunately Barbaric Smash only refunds on kill and it's more tricky to kill reliably with a single weapon attack compared to a Full Attack. But that would be the only downside (besides the Rogue's other Full Attacks being limited to single strikes then).  

...which is a pretty huge disadvantage IMO.

When using a Full Attack ability you're not only halving your number of attacks with their damage, Penetration (most rogue abilities have Pen bonuses) and Accuracy (some), but also you reduce your chances to afflict enemies with assorted debuffs and/or DOTs (two-weapon attack = 2 chances to inflict statuses).

Edited May 18, 2021 by Haplok

[Taitealch]

What a complete awser, thank you all very much for all this explanations.

Yes by Berserker i mean Barbarian subclass. 

I can use Hand Mortar and Fire in the Hole but i don't want to specialize to much for them, i will be happy with the regulars blunderbusses i can find (with backup weapons)

13 hours ago, Boeroer said:

If you want to use "regular" blunderbusses you don't need that much INT. With regular blunderbusses there's a small problem: you need backup weapons with non-pierce dmg because there's quite some pierce-resistant or even -immune enemies. But that's all basically. 

For a damage dealer you want high PER and DEX and also usually MIG - a Streetfigter can do with less MIG though because he already gets a ton of dmg bonuses so that a little chunk from MIG isn't really noticable. DEX (being a multiplicative dps influence rather than MIG which is additive only) is more important. PER, too because not only do blunderbusses have an ACC malus but also Powder Burns will cost you 5 PER because of the distraction it will put on you. 

 Ok that a lot's of attributes i should max ! To much for the starting character. MIG, DEX, PER, high(ish) CON (and a build with INT too). 

How do you see stat attributes repartition for a starting Streetfighter/Berserker so ? How should i balance them ? 

13 hours ago, Boeroer said:

On the other hand you can get yourself to bloodied (50% health) in no time and then you're not only "On the Edge" (where your Streetfigter gets a lot of bonus crit damage) but also profit from Blooded of the Barbarian. Combined with Bloody Slaughter and Barbaric Smash you can do a lot of damage in a very short time and even get a Rage refund if you use it as killing blow (way better then Finishing Blow imo).

Some additional cool stuff with Berserker + mortar blunderbusses: you can either apply Spirit Frenzy's staggered in an AoE with every shot or Blood Frenzy's raw DoT which stacks with Deep Wounds etc. With Blood Storm + mortars you will land crits so frequently that your Frenzy will stay on forever without recast, too. But so will the self damage (so beware).[...]

 

12 hours ago, Kaylon said:

I suppose you want to use the blunderbuss just to trigger the bonus from time to time and the rest of the time use your melee. It might work if you dual wield a melee weapon and a blunderbuss. At close range you will attack with your melee weapon and when you need to refresh Powder Burns you just target a distant enemy.

 

8 hours ago, Haplok said:

...which is a pretty huge disadvantage IMO.

When using a Full Attack ability you're not only halving your number of attacks with their damage, Penetration (most rogue abilities have Pen bonuses) and Accuracy (some), but also you reduce your chances to afflict enemies with assorted debuffs and/or DOTs (two-weapon attack = 2 chances to inflict statuses).

I've started with the idea of ranged heavy with big pirates guns, but pirates with saber and gun is realy lorefull too. Huge bonus with the two ways but big downsides too, confusion, squichyness, and the full attack problem for the melee one.

I've heard you, and i will definitely bring a priest/good healer with my barbarian pirate for compensate and access his "god mode"

You gave me a lot's of tool to make work a Berserkers/Streefighter...I don't know if i prefer full ranged or dual weapon way, maybe go with a bit of both and see ingame what fit the most for my playstyle (the philosophy of this class combo with blunderbuss remain the same no ?)

And you give me something to think of with this story of Streetfigter/Arcane Archer too. For a heavy ranged build (but without my pillar of eternity 1 Barbarian heritage. A shame but i can live with it. A pirate just need a gun, dirty tricks and bad manners, like a Streetfighter) 

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Ranger has high accuracy and the other obvious ranged abilities like Gunner and so on but also Driving Flight (especially awesome with mortars since the AoE also jumps). If you don't like animal companions there's the Ghost Heart subclass. With mortars and Driving Flights there will be mayhem. If you use stuff like Blinding Strike with that setup it's like a guarantee that you will always hit all enemies because there's so many attack rolls. Fire in the Hole has a build-in jump. It stacks with Driving Flights. If you pick an Arcane Archer: his Imbue shots release their effect with every jump. Fire in the Hole in the main hand with Driving Flight and Imbue:Eora will drop three(!) Pulls of Eora with enormous accuracy which will pull everything together. Now hitting with AoE stuff becomes so easy - while it's also a great CC effect obviously. If you combine it with Imbue:Web you will have locked those clumped enemies in place, too (3 parallel instances of binding web stop anything that isn't resistant/immune).

[...]

Plenty of options. I personally consider Streetfigter/Arcane Archer and Streetfigter/Helwalker with dual mortars (Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole) to be most fun - but that's my subjective opinion. I like strong "on the fly" CC in combination with damage and both have plenty.

I don't see this build in the forum. May you share your Streetfigter/Arcane Archer build, with starting attribute ( A question who always give me headache) and skill lvling please ? You make it look very fun ^^

I know you can't provide me this for Streetfigter/berserker if you haven't personaly played it, but as Streetfigter/Arcane Archer seems to be one of your favorite i make the assuptions you may have it writed somewhere. (Some screenshot of you character profile may do the trick instead)

Anyway you have already given me plenty of informations, so no problem to say i had enought ^^

Thk you again, it's very helpful ! 

 

 

[Kaylon]

On 5/18/2021 at 1:53 PM, Haplok said:

...which is a pretty huge disadvantage IMO.

When using a Full Attack ability you're not only halving your number of attacks with their damage, Penetration (most rogue abilities have Pen bonuses) and Accuracy (some), but also you reduce your chances to afflict enemies with assorted debuffs and/or DOTs (two-weapon attack = 2 chances to inflict statuses).

I disagree... If you rely on abilities to penetrate armor then you're doing something wrong. Also if you really want to be the most efficient with your bleeds/afflictions then you should use a mortar/blunderbuss instead of melee attacks anyway. Basically you have to choose between losing the bonus on the second attack or switching weapons and for me it's very easy to pick, not just for the simplicity of use, but also for the overall dps.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Kaylon

[Boeroer]

What I found a bit annoying with a melee/ranged weapon setup is that sometimes when I wanted to shoot stuff and was pretty near (but not in melee range yet) the char moved the small distance and attacked with the melee weapon instead of the ranged weapon. So I often make sure I aim at enemies that are more far away even if I would prefer to shoot somebody who's nearer. 

By the way: some "melee only" abilities work with a ranged/melee weapon setup. For example Hunter's Claw can be used with Fire in the Hole (if the other hand holds a melee weapon). Against groups of enemies you will gain a lot of stacks with one single shot because of the AoE and the 2 jumps. Whirling Strikes: same (but only SC Ranger of course). Clear Out has the same effect: mortars + Clear Out = lots and lots of attack rolls. Very good with Avenging Storm and/or Combusting Wounds.   

[Taitealch]

Hybrid melee blunderbuss look good for me. Both Streetfigher/Barbarian ways.

Any change with the full about the main attribute/skills you talk me about in your first answer ? (DEX+PER>MIG>CON>>Dump RES/INT) It was about full blunderbuss.

I'm interested about Streetfighter/GhortHeart or Arcane mage too. It's the same attribute repartition ? Any more advice or all i need to know is here ? :

On 5/18/2021 at 8:35 AM, Boeroer said:

Ranger has high accuracy and the other obvious ranged abilities like Gunner and so on but also Driving Flight (especially awesome with mortars since the AoE also jumps). If you don't like animal companions there's the Ghost Heart subclass. With mortars and Driving Flights there will be mayhem. If you use stuff like Blinding Strike with that setup it's like a guarantee that you will always hit all enemies because there's so many attack rolls. Fire in the Hole has a build-in jump. It stacks with Driving Flights. If you pick an Arcane Archer: his Imbue shots release their effect with every jump. Fire in the Hole in the main hand with Driving Flight and Imbue:Eora will drop three(!) Pulls of Eora with enormous accuracy which will pull everything together. Now hitting with AoE stuff becomes so easy - while it's also a great CC effect obviously. If you combine it with Imbue:Web you will have locked those clumped enemies in place, too (3 parallel instances of binding web stop anything that isn't resistant/immune).

 

[Boeroer]

For Arcane Archer/Streetfighter I very much recommend Fire in the Hole for the main hand (and whatever melee weapon you like for the offhand). And if you use Fire in the Hole - and also for the imbue shots - you want high INT. 

Again: MIG is not that important. PER, DEX and INT should be the main focus, then MIG, CON and RES. 

 Skill: obviously Arcana (max it).