Priest of Eothas, POTD Completionist Suggestions

[Sharidin]

Hey everyone. After finishing an "evil" completionist run on POTD with my imported Monk from POE1 (who converted to Steel Garrote / Forbidden Fist), and whom I used to get The Ultimate achievement there, I think it's time to import my "good" completionist character and do another, final full completionist run in Deadfire POTD, this time with All - Upwards Only upscaling I think for the extra challenge.

I was looking for some suggestions for a character like that. Bear in mind that it'd be a character that avoids almost entirely all fights that can be avoided, so builds centered on loot taken from avoidable fights (or for example revenge faction ships) are probably not gonna be there. I'm always going for core NPC parties, too.

Not sure if it's a good idea to stay SC Priest and go for a Fire dmg build (Eothas gets really nice damaging/support spells later in the game), or if there's a fun multiclass that can be used for POTD. Thing is, the priest needs to spend some time at the start of every encounter to buff the party with like 4-5 core buffs and Salvation of Time after so it can get quite annoying sometimes, and not sure what multiclass can benefit from those.

I've already tried Helwalker in the past that was nice for nuking when you need it but extremely frustratingly squishy sometimes (works great in turn-based though which I'm not doing again), tried Ascendant but between buffing/debuffing and gathering focus usually fights were over so not getting much out of it, tried Lifegiver but since Eothas has some nice healing spells anyway not sure if I should sacrifice the SC bonus for it... Don't have any idea how well it'd go with a martial class cause I usually get to pump high Int/Res/Per so I can have most conversation options open, with means I have to dump a bit of Might and a lot of Con...

Haven't tried some Chanter options or Wizard specialist class but not sure how those would turn out, but those could be interesting to explore I guess. Any suggestions welcome even for the ones I've tried, though! As a final note, I do plan on trying megabosses so also have something viable for that, too (kind of afraid of upscaled megabosses)!

EDIT: The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced I should go with Troubadour for full support and class economy/endless resources, or full on Ascendant for perma Brilliance/Ascendant with salvation of time, just not sure if these will really work. Still open to a good, viable martial class multi though.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Sharidin

[thelee]

8 hours ago, Sharidin said:

Still open to a good, viable martial class multi though.

wael + rogue (streetfighter in my case), wael + fighter (a monastic unarmed training build) remains some of the most enjoyable builds i've done from a MC/priest perspective.

you'll do less buffing, because you'll be burning spell casts on Arcane Veil and Mirror Image a lot for massive protection. getting gaze of the adragan and arkemyr's wondrous torment at high levels are also fun.

 

skaen works for a martial multiclass, but honestly i'm a bit burned out on the subclass because of my deadfire ultimate run so i don't have specific recommendations for it.

 

it sounded like you were interested in eothas, though, and honestly eothas doesn't offer as much for offensive martial multiclassing. i did try eothas with a paladin (kind wayfarers) as well as with a beckoner, and it was pretty acceptable play for both, you just give up on some direct offense in favor of indirect offense. though given your preferred stat spread, maybe the latter two are angles you want anyway (my beckoner wielded a shield and acted as kind of an off-tank with lots of support spells, so missing out on e.g. might and accuracy wasn't a big deal because most of my power came from lots of summons).

 

8 hours ago, Sharidin said:

The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced I should go with Troubadour for full support and class economy/endless resources, or full on Ascendant for perma Brilliance/Ascendant with salvation of time, just not sure if these will really work. Still open to a good, viable martial class multi though.

both of these will definitely work. i'm also going to put a plug in for Bellower. Not as much flexibility/cheese potential as a troubadour, but can do some insane things with all the extra PL you get on invocations, and the flexibility/cheese potential loss is somewhat made up for by being MC with a priest.

ascendant with SoT is also good, but can also get a bit boring. you pretty much only really get much use out of ascending once you have salvation of time (otherwise the focus efficiency isn't nearly as great as a single class) and non-trivial fights can play out extremely same-y once you unlock that spell.

 

8 hours ago, Sharidin said:

As a final note, I do plan on trying megabosses so also have something viable for that, too (kind of afraid of upscaled megabosses)!

almost literally any priest build will be viable for megabosses so long as you have a combination of brilliant, barring death's door, salvation of time. they will basically carry your party. you need some special handling for auranic and hauane's cleansing effects, but a priest puts you on extremely strong foundation.

Edited September 24, 2021 by thelee

[Sharidin]

@thelee Thanks for the info! Indeed, I want to continue as a priest of Eothas from my POE1 char, so Wael is out unfortunately.

I remember the Ascendant multi being OK but quite boring and annoying sometimes, so I guess Troubadour could be somewhat better. The reason I've tried Ascendant a bit in the past is because I remember that Cipher has Disintegrate, which is like Priest's Cleansing Flame, in that they apply over time and not on tick. This helps with keeping Might low and having max Intelligence, so I can put some points in Resolve.

I'm not sure if there's a comprehensive list somewhere of which spells exactly behave like that, so I can pick them up? Does any other class have spells/abilities like that? Does Chanter have such spells I could pick up? Really leaning on Chanter to try out some fancy stuff with Troubadour/Bellower/Beckoner. Paladin could work for off-tank, buff-heal-bot role, too...

 

[thelee]

I put it in my guide, but there are so few that I can just try listing them off the top fo my head (there are so few that it almost just seems like a bug that these were all applyovertime instead of applyontick)

• priest cleansing flame
• cipher disintegrate
• rogue deep wounds
• ranger wounding shot

edit: whoops, forgot about

• druid taste of the hunt

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by thelee

[SirMirrorcoat]

Imma hijack this thread because that seems interesting

What is the difference (in execution) of damage on tick vs damage over time? Why is MIG less relevant for dmg over time?

[thelee]

you should check out that link in my post

 

the tl;dr is that mig is less relevant because of essentially a math bug. because ApplyOnTime is so weird, the game has to figure out a per-tick damage, and it divides your MIG bonus by the number of base ticks, and then accidentally divides it again by the number of ticks. So your might bonus is significantly diluted by the base duration of the effect. Intellect and PL scaling work normally though.

[SirMirrorcoat]

Thanks for the TLDR, @thelee. I should have just checked the link

Now I have more to read in that guide 

[Sharidin]

Thinking of giving the Ascendant build another try. Thing is, I'll be needing some good power generation weapons. Kitchen stove / blunderbuss comes to mind, but I'd love to hear any other good alternatives. Problem is, in some fights where it's against piercing immune enemies I tend to have so little dmg that focus gain is really slow, and don't know what else is good as I haven't played ciphers yet in Deadfire.

[SirMirrorcoat]

I love Serafen consoled into a Beguiler over Ascendant. On paper, Ascendant seemed far more appealing to me, but once I tried Beguiler (thanks to Boeroer), I was enamoured. To gain casting resource by casting is pretty dope imo.
With Phantom Foes/Secret Horrors cast at the start of combat, I have enough Focus to cast 2 offensive spells AND cast another PF/SH to repeat the process.
From what I could gather, Ascendant seems better as a martial/cipher julticlass for better focus gain and premium damage while ascended.

[dgray62]

With Kitchen Stove's thunderous report, you can ascend instantly as you know. Also, if your accuracy is high enough, you will often be able to ascend from the two shots of The Red Hand. Another great weapon that is available early is the essence interrupter, which does pierce and shock damage, so it's great against pierce immune foes. These are great early weapons for a SC ascendant. You might also consider trying a melee witch. The speed bonuses on the barbarian side will let you spam powers very quickly which ascended, and melee is generally faster when it comes to building focus in my experience.

[Sharidin]

Great suggestions, never gave much thought to Essence Interrupter, always skipped it. For some reason I'm still of the POE1 mentality that hunting bows are crap but I can see they seem to be quite damagy and versatile in Deadfire. As for the Bellower multiclassed with priest, any suggestions on the best invocations to pick? Should it be the damaging ones / summons or again the buff/debuff ones? I guess the latter are better with a Troubadour.

[SirMirrorcoat]

Because every weapon has PEN, low-dmg weapon types are a lot more viable than in poe1. Not that they weren't in poe1, but it was mostly specific weapons and not the type in general.

[Boeroer]

6 hours ago, Sharidin said:

For some reason I'm still of the POE1 mentality that hunting bows are crap 

Huh?

Massuk Hunting Bow: early dual damage (pierce/crush) hunting bow with only 0.5 points reduced base damage
Persistence: potentially best single target ragend weapon in PoE due to the wounding lash.
Stormcaller: dual damage (shock/pierce), +20% dmg from Heart of the Storm, cool enchantments.

---
Essence Interrupter is very potent. It does good damage (hunting bows have the potential for very high dps anyway because of the modal - and this one has a scaling lash on top), has good dmg types (shock/pierce) and the "summon on kill" part is very useful, too.

Usually summons have the biggest impact on nearly all encounters - but they add quite a lot of micromanagement. Imo Bellowers are coolest with damaging invocations because there the Power Level Scaling influences not only duration and accuracy but also penetration and damage. But some CC spells also alse very good with high PL scaling (and high INT) - for example Killers Froze Stiff.

 

[thelee]

i mean i agree with sharidian; there was certainly one game-breakingly good hunting bow (persistence), but the vast majority of hunting bows were too niche because of how vulnerable they were to DR. it's been a while, but istr that you were just better off using warbows most of the time. i remember having to make a conscious mental adjustment in deadfire to using hunting bows as a damage machine.

[Boeroer]

The three bows I mentioned above somewhat circumvent the DR problem (and Lenas Er had Rending). 

Warbows were also good, but saying that Hunting Bows were crap is at least hyperbole. If nothing else they were better vs. low DR targets.

I also factor in that Massuk and Persistence come so early - so there's no argument along the lines of "but the hunting bows are bad until you get good unique ones" imo.

[dgray62]

11 hours ago, Sharidin said:

As for the Bellower multiclassed with priest, any suggestions on the best invocations to pick? Should it be the damaging ones / summons or again the buff/debuff ones? I guess the latter are better with a Troubadour.

The damage invocations benefit highly from the PL boost. A bellower's Her Revenge can completely wipe out mobs, for example. It's the best damaging invocation in the game, IMO. Seven Nights is great against bosses, if you can set it up that multiple projectiles hit. The lightning and fire damage complements the priest's fire damage nicely. You may want to get At the Sound of His Voice; the extra PLs will increase the paralysis duration. Usually I'd just cast Her Revenge instead, however. Definitely get Ben Fidel's Neck. The malus to all defenses stack with everything, so it's great to use against tougher foes. As for the buffs, definitely get Their Champion so as to get energized. The others are unnecessary IMO. But you might want to the other buffs, particularly if you plan on using summons. Bellower's summons get a longer duration due to the higher PLs, but get no other boost. It's probably one of the less impactful way to use your phrases. The Ancient Instruments summons is great however, and is definitely worth getting.

[thelee]

3 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Bellower's summons get a longer duration due to the higher PLs, but get no other boost. It's probably one of the less impactful way to use your phrases. The Ancient Instruments summons is great however, and is definitely worth getting.

yeah, forgot to chime in that aside from the weapons summon and the dragon summon (for SC), getting 100% uptime on summons isn't really worth the bellower's time.

 

i would also be careful since it hasn't been explicitly mentioned - the bellower PL boost is a temporary buff that appears on your character and expires after a few seconds, which means the "Eld Nary" is almost a trick choice for a bellower despite looking great on paper - the projectile and bounce in RTwP is soooo slow that the PL bonus will expire before you get the best benefit from PL scaling (the extra bounces). On turn-based mode, it's awesome though (since you're guaranteed to have a PL buff that lasts a round, and your guaranteed that your invocation ends before advancing rounds).

Edited September 27, 2021 by thelee

[Boeroer]

11 hours ago, thelee said:

i would also be careful since it hasn't been explicitly mentioned - the bellower PL boost is a temporary buff that appears on your character and expires after a few seconds, which means the "Eld Nary" is almost a trick choice for a bellower despite looking great on paper - the projectile and bounce in RTwP is soooo slow that the PL bonus will expire before you get the best benefit from PL scaling (the extra bounces). 

Besides the usual (+INT) you can extend the Bellower's PL bonus duration with Wall of Draining and Salvation of Time by the way, removing that downside.

Eld Nary is best with an SC Bellower however, so that leaves a fellow Priest with Salvation of Time (which has to be timed adequately).

But with a Wizard/Bellower you can prolong the PL bonus as long as you wish. It doesn't do anything for non-invocations though, gets overridden by a new PL boost as soon as you cast a new invocation - and all non-Eld-Nary ones don't have a problem with the short PL boost. So I don't see a big advantage there. 

But a Bellower's Eld Nary's curse + fellow Priest with SoT is great imo. Start the fight with an empowered Eld Nary's Curse and Salvation of Time (maybe two casts) and most encounters are already done - sort of.

But other combos like Bellower/Cipher or Bellower/Helwalker with Killers Froze Stiff are also pretty awesome. Empower Killers and profit from the Cipher's or Monks prolonging effects, stacked with the PL boost and enemies will be paralyzed for a really, really long time.

 

[dgray62]

That's a great idea, Boeroer. I never thought of prolonging the Bellower's PL boost for Eld Nary casts.