Need an answer to this w/o spoilers. Will priests gain a "story advantage" as in getting more content or special / unique endings?

[Ouroboros226]

I'm simply wondering if playing a priest has a massive impact on the story and endings or not.  Reason I'm asking is, I feel like I'll be missing out a lot by not worshipping a God. However - I really - really dislike the priest class. Especially for multiclassing. While other classes are basically "Wish I could get everything", with priests I'm struggling to find ... anything useful.   

 

Most priest spells are low duration, low returns (for the cast and recovery times), ok but kinda mediocre CC and debuffs. Their debuffs also suffering from low duration. Too many super situational spells. Druid is superior in both healing and support. Hell, I'd even go a herald or just paly/chanter single class for heals over a priest. So I hope you see my problem! It would be cool to worship a God and play a priest. And I'm afraid I'll miss out on so much by not playing one. I really WANT to RP a priest, but priest just looks so bad compared to basically everything else. Especially when multiclassed. 

[house2fly]

Not a massive impact, no. Priest does have the largest number of reactive dialogue options, but I don't think there's anything at all locked behind being a priest specifically.

[Boeroer]

I don't agree on your assessment of the value of the priest class  - but if you don't like it (which I understand, I'm not overly fond of them either): you won't miss anything important by playing something which is more to your liking. 

Besides that, Priests have the biggest portfolio of inspirations. That means a Priest can always - with the right spell selection - cancel any affliction (party wide). Or just prevent afflictions from happening if the inspiration is cast first. 

Besides that there are certain mechanics (for example Brilliant + Salvation of Time + Barring Death's Door) that can make a Priest extremely powerful (that's why most successful Ultimate runs used this class). But that's why I personally don't like them so much. Yet I always bring one in a party playthrough. Stuff like Devotions for the Faithful is just too impactful and being able to nullify any affliction is very useful. Healing can be done better by a Druid, right. Even a Paladin can be a better healer. But inspiration-wise (can be seen as buff but also as countermeasure against afflictions) there's nothing similar. Also one of the classes that works well as single class as well as multiclass.

The whole class portfolio makes it hard for me to play them as main character though. No idea why... They always feel a bit... boring(?) to me.

[omgFIREBALLS]

17 hours ago, Ouroboros226 said:

I feel like I'll be missing out a lot by not worshipping a God.

I would say the greater opportunities for this don't stem from your class choice. Might depend a bit which god we're talking about, though.

[Ouroboros226]

Hmm so inspirations counters negative afflictions and prevents them? I was only looking at the buffs... I'm playing on expert which hides a lot because I wanted to follow my gut. But pretty big if I missed this. Still. I don't see it being that important, I'm playing on veteran and the hardest encounter yet has been the early game encounters. 

[Boeroer]

4 hours ago, Ouroboros226 said:

Hmm so inspirations counters negative afflictions and prevents them? I was only looking at the buffs... I'm playing on expert which hides a lot because I wanted to follow my gut. But pretty big if I missed this. Still. I don't see it being that important, I'm playing on veteran and the hardest encounter yet has been the early game encounters. 

Exactly. Inspirations counter afflictions of the same attribute (MIG, CON, DEX, PER, INT and RES) and vice versa. It doesn't matter how "strong" an affliction or inspiration is: for example if you are Paralyzed (DEX affliction tier 3) a simple Quick inspiration (tier 1) is enough to remove the paralyze. On the other hand if you are Swift (DEX tier 3) and get hit by a Hobbled effect (tier 1) your swiftness is gone as well (but you will not be Hobbled either). 

It's a whole (simple bc. not gradual) system of bonuses and maluses that counter each other. 

It's not as important in the lower difficulty settings and especially not in the mid game. But on Path of the Damned it's very helpful in the later game especially since even the high defense chars can get grazed by nasty afflictions that take you out of the action for quite long. Best if you can prevent or counter that. Yet buffs like Devotions (+10 ACC which stacks with PER inspirations such as Aware to a nice +15 party-wide ACC bonus) are also very useful - and that is true for the whole game. A bit of healing on top and very good damaging spells in the high levels. It's a well rounded package imo. It's just not superexciting - for my taste. That's why I seldomly play a Priest as main character. Most of times I just bring Xoti or make a beeline for Vatnir (who has the most interesting subclass imo). 

[xzar_monty]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Most of times I just bring Xoti or make a beeline for Vatnir (who has the most interesting subclass imo). 

Heck. What makes it the most interesting?

The reason I ask is because in both of my playthroughs, I was quite stern with Vatnir who seemed to be a very dishonest coward. I didn't like that at all -- and I didn't want to take someone like him with me. So, Vatnir is the only NPC/sidekick I've never had with me, even for a moment. All the others I can talk about, but not Vatnir.

The only thing I made a beeline for on my second playthrough, btw, was that excellent two-handed weapon that you can simply pick up from the map (and has something to do with storm and lightning, later on. I'm 100% you know what I'm talking about.)

[Boeroer]

You mean Lord Darryn's Voulge.

Vatnir maybe isn't an example of extraordinary valor, but his story will make you understand why he is who he is.

Usually players will pity him instead of holding a grudge after they had a deeper conversation.

Anyway - his subclass is mechanically more interesting because it has plenty of non-fire spells. Usually Priests' damaging spells are themed around fire (except maybe Breath who has some alternatives as well). Thematically I find it interesting because

Rymrgand has several individual appearances. This is also true for Priests of Woedica who are also more interesting to me than the "old" subclasses because Woedica is more prominent than most of the other gods. Also the spiritual claws...

. 

 

 

[xzar_monty]

Ok, thanks!

Yes, I also noticed that priests' damaging spells tend to be themed around fire. This becomes very apparent once you meet those creatures who are actually healed by fire spells and you have to come up with alternatives. It's not so easy with a priest.

I understand why people might be moved to pity him, but I found his combination of dishonesty and cowardice just too much for me. I certainly didn't want to kill him, but I didn't want him in my party, either. Which, by the way, can simply be good design: if an NPC provokes emotions like that in me, it often tells of good writing. Similarly, in BG2, I found Anomen quite irritating (good writing!) but I was still able to tolerate him long enough to produce a change in him, and I found Edwin's arrogance so annoying (again, good writing) that I kicked him out of my group quite quickly, even if he is clearly the best wizard in the game.

[Ouroboros226]

Instead of making a new post I figured I could just ask some more questions here if anyone is willing to help. I also don't want to ask in the builds and characters section because it's marked with spoilers. 

 

1) Blunderbuss as your primary weapon deals pierce + fire. Undead are immune to pierce (but not fire?) so can I play a main character with blunderbuss only all the way through? Best class combo for blunderbuss?  

  

2) I wanted to dual wield blunderbusses, but I read that you only reload one of them. Does this mean dual wield pistol and blunderbuss, is only good as an opener - and after that the offhand is useless? Or will you reload both if you don't continue autoattacking? The thing I want to play - is an assassin dualwielding blunderbuss. Sneak-> boom. Smoke->boom. Repeat.  Though I'm unsure how viable this will be in prolonged fights.  

[Boeroer]

Blunderbusses have a modal called Powder Burns. That's a cone-shaped, secondary attack that deals low fire damage with low penetration. It's a nice addon but not really viable as alternative source of dmg once you meet pierce immune foes. Also that modal will distract you when you fire. 

There is a special set of blunderbusses though that deals pierce/slash damage which are called mortars. They are blunderbusses but instead of 4 projectiles they basically fire grenades that do AoE dmg. 

When you dual wield pistols or bbusses then both weapons will reload and shoot. If you use Full Attacks you only have to reload once but two weapon will fire still. If you use auto attacks you will reload, shoot with the main hand, then reload shoot with the offhand and so on. 

The way better Rogue subclass for blunderbusses + Powder Burns is Streetfighter, not Assassin. Blunderbusses are not good for Assassins for several reasons while they are the absolute best pick for Streetfighters (that is because the distraction you suffer from using the modal counts as being flanked). But generally speaking you can use dusk blunderbusses with an Assassin. The better pick would be an arquebus though.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Boeroer

[thelee]

just to the original post, in terms of story, there are a few things that a priest of the right deity can do extremely easy, but there are no options exclusively locked to the priest, though they may be gated behind other skill checks or carefully navigating dialogue. i'm actually surprised how much reactivity there are to the different deity options, given how little % of the player base might actually ever see any given deity's dialogue options.

[NotDumbEnough]

Priests do come off as boring buffbots for the first few power levels but start ramping up in offensive capabilities significantly by PL6 with Pillar of Holy Fire. They are the best source of offense-oriented buffs (you compared them with Druids but Druids can really only provide healing and some minor defensive buffs. I suspect that you are trying to heal with Priests which they are not actually too great at) with Devotions for the Faithful and Dire Blessing. 

A very important tip if you are playing a support-oriented priest: pump Stealth really high. Any ability that doesn't affect enemies (like Dire Blessing or Litany for the Soul) do not break stealth and benefit from almost no recovery while stealthed. This means you can cast these spells about twice as fast or more.

The basic idea of a Priest in terms of gameplay is to drop all your buffs first and when your stats are sky high start nuking the enemy. The Symbol spells at PL8 are arguably the strongest damage spells in the game as they don't have friendly fire. If you have met Tekehu yet you'll notice that he gets a no friendly fire version of Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar at PL9 (that is he can only cast it once per battle). Your Symbol spells hit much much harder and you get two casts of them. It's pretty insane.

If you want to diversify away from fire damage Priest of Berath is good with lots of corrode damage (and indeed one of the few classes in the game that can deal heavy amounts of corrode damage. Corrode damage is quite rare imo). Keep in mind there are quite a few fire immune enemies in the game.