PotD Party suggestions

[Boeroer]

14 minutes ago, Dyxx said:

Does the increase in PL add for the casted Invocation or does it get added after it ?

I gets applied to the invocation you did cast directly and stays a few secs (so that invocations that actually take some time to complete - like that Eld Nary spell - will profit for their whole duration).

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, dgray62 said:

If you go with Tactician/skald you'll want to maximize crits

You need not to focus on that. I see it as a nice-to have bonus, but the focus should be on the fact that Skalds have reduced costs for offensive invocations. 2 phrases for two very good invocations (e.g. Her Revenge and Killers Froze Stiff) while getting phrases from singing (1 per 6 sec) and Brilliant (1 per 6 secs) is a significant advantage. If you can get some crit-phrases: even better - but no need to force your whole build around that. If you build it around those cheap invocations it's already more effective than any other subclass choice even without getting any phrase from melee crits. Imo relying on crits is not very effective because it's.. well... unreliable. You will crit most when enemies are easy to kill already and you'll get only few crits when you need phrases most. 

That's one reason why Blightheart is good with a Skald although his crit-phrase generation cannot even happen then.

If you don't want to focus on those invocations then of course my point is moot and Troubadour or Bellower might be better picks. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Boeroer

[dgray62]

6 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

Honestly Tactician does not work well with Skald, The -5 acc/-1 pen against anything not threatened by a teammate is very significant. You'll also want to rely on Her Tears Fell Like Rain for most of your damage later on -- needless to say this means that you are easy to flank if you are using it at point blank to shotgun the enemy with multiple projectiles, and you do NOT want to be confused the instant before you finish the invocation, because it hits hard enough to OHKO your own teammates.

These are important considerations. However, with a couple of chanters you can flood the battlefield with summons, mitigating the -5 acc/-1 pen problem. And it's even easier to mitigate the flanking problem. You can either acquire one of the gear items that make you immune to being flanked, or you can just use luminous lobster, captain's banquet or svef to make you immune to the lowest tier of mind afflictions. Getting immunity to flanked or low level mind afflictions is pretty much a requirement for any tactician build, with the exception of those that want to make creative use of the confused affliction.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I gets applied to the invocation you did cast directly and stays a few secs (so that invocations that actually take some time to complete - like that Eld Nary spell - will profit for their whole duration).

In fact, the buff triggers upon starting the invocation cast. This has a perverse effect where if your intellect and dexterity are a little low, it is actually possible that the buff wears off before you can even benefit from it on slow-cast invocations. And, as I think mentioned before, the Eld Nary upgrade will most likely see only minimal benefit because the spell effect is so slow compared to the duration of the PL increase. It's a weird implementation of the effect to be sure.

 

It does mean if you play turn-based mode, SC bellower is much better than RTWP. SC bellower using the upgraded Eld Nary in turn-based mode is guaranteed to complete the spell before their PL buff disappears, which would probably be akin to opening a fight with a spell like Greater Maelstrom in how much of an advantage it would get you in the first round.

Edited December 17, 2021 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Yes, it's a bit funky. I only had this problem with SC Belower and the upgraded Eld Nary though. But I never tried a Bellower with low INT.

As I said a Bellower/Wizard can prolong the PL boost duration with WoD. In theory you should be able to cast an invocation for max PL bonus then and uphold that bonus even if you are casting invocations with less phrases after that. 

By the way: back then when I tried Skald+Blightheart I discovered that White Worms did not work with the kill-phrase. I assumed that the kill was treated as if the exploding corpse did it or something. However, yesterday I tried with the upgraded Worms and it works! At high levels this can be pretty great because Skald only pays 2 phrases but due to its high base dmg it scales very well with the PL of higher char levels (it also fits the whole decay/Blightheart theme pretty nicely I think). Maybe this is a side effect of the CP fixing the "oops I missed the hit roll vs. corpse" bug?

Edited December 17, 2021 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

Vatnir can become the strongest companion in the game. But using him as a SC priest is wasting his potential... Priest/Chanter (Bellower is ideal) is one of the strongest combos in the game - incredible support and offense. It has access to all tier 3 inspirations (through Least Unstable Coil) and all weyc's buffs every fight (thanks to Sasha's Scimitar). Basically you can spam Her Tears Fell Like Rain and Storm of Holy Fire over and over until all enemies are dead. With Blightheart equipped, Muse of Mistery from the robes and Brilliant you will be flooded with phrases. Of course if you're tired of annihilating everything you can also just buff/heal or CC enemies...

Of course some key items are from the expansions and you have to play them ASAP if you want to enjoy his full potential long enough.

[Dyxx]

50 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

Vatnir can become the strongest companion in the game. But using him as a SC priest is wasting his potential... Priest/Chanter (Bellower is ideal) is one of the strongest combos in the game - incredible support and offense. It has access to all tier 3 inspirations (through Least Unstable Coil) and all weyc's buffs every fight (thanks to Sasha's Scimitar). Basically you can spam Her Tears Fell Like Rain and Storm of Holy Fire over and over until all enemies are dead. With Blightheart equipped, Muse of Mistery from the robes and Brilliant you will be flooded with phrases. Of course if you're tired of annihilating everything you can also just buff/heal or CC enemies...

Of course some key items are from the expansions and you have to play them ASAP if you want to enjoy his full potential long enough.

That sounds interesting, can you explain it a bit further?

 

I've tried Tactician/Bellower and the starting island has never been that easy. I found myself casting Invocations most of the time and stayed a bit behind with an arquebuse for safety reasons (this will be melee soon). 

The dmg was very good and the summon support was enough to have 100% uptime.

 

But @Boeroerhad a good point with his Skald and 2 phrased Invocations. That's a really big point ! I think I have to test this and decide between Bellower and Skald. I'm just afraid that I end up casting only Invocations so a SC Bellower/Skald would be fine for higher PL too, but then I would be more of a caster and no melee bruiser.

Oh god so much to think about 

 

@Kaylonlet's me think about a Priest/Chanter but there would be no melee anymore and someone else has to go bruiser from the group...

Edited December 17, 2021 by Dyxx

[Boeroer]

A Priest/Chanter also has a fun synergy with Sasha's Singing Scimitar:

You can empower a seal spell (for example Searing Seal) out of combat, then start combat with an empowered Storm of Holy Fire (very strong) which gives you two empowered spells for the same encounter (and all tier 3 inspirations via Unstable Coil of course). Then in the next encounter you cast an Empowered "Her Revenge" to get back all spend empower points (if you cast it vs. enough enemies).

Empowering seals (hazards) isn't super impactful, but you can trigger "x happens when you empower y" stuff and since you get the point back anyways...

Of course you can also just empower a seal and then enter combat with empowered Her Revenge directly. 

[Kaylon]

1 hour ago, Dyxx said:

That sounds interesting, can you explain it a bit further?

The bellower works well with a priest/wizard who can prolong every buff (the +5 PL buff of the bellower included) for the entire fight (using SoT/WoD). The priest has a slight advantage because of better buffs, Barring Death Door and also because SoT is easier to use. 

Sasha's Singing Scimitar (with Refreshing Finale enchantment) allows to use Empower every fight on Her Tears Fell Like Rain. Empower will trigger the enchantments from the Robes of the Weyc (Muse of Mistery, Omnipotence), Weyc's Wand (Attuned Channel, Follower of the Obscured) and the Least Unstable Coil (all tier 3 inspirations if Her Tears..  hits 6 enemies). Then all those buffs can be instantly prolonged using SoT/WoD for the entire fight which won't last very long. After the first cast of Her Tears... you switch from Sasha's + Weyc's Wand to Blightheart and all the kills (combined with Muse of Mistery and Brilliant) will restore the phrases very fast allowing you to spam Her Tears... (or alternate with Storm of Holy Fire if needed).

Edited December 17, 2021 by Kaylon

[Dyxx]

41 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

The bellower works well with a priest/wizard who can prolong every buff (the +5 PL buff of the bellower included) for the entire fight (using SoT/WoD). The priest has a slight advantage because of better buffs, Barring Death Door and also because SoT is easier to use. 

Sasha's Singing Scimitar (with Refreshing Finale enchantment) allows to use Empower every fight on Her Tears Fell Like Rain. Empower will trigger the enchantments from the Robes of the Weyc (Muse of Mistery, Omnipotence), Weyc's Wand (Attuned Channel, Follower of the Obscured) and the Least Unstable Coil (all tier 3 inspirations if Her Tears..  hits 6 enemies). Then all those buffs can be instantly prolonged using SoT/WoD for the entire fight which won't last very long. After the first cast of Her Tears... you switch from Sasha's + Weyc's Wand to Blightheart and all the kills (combined with Muse of Mistery and Brilliant) will restore the phrases very fast allowing you to spam Her Tears... (or alternate with Storm of Holy Fire if needed).

Oh my god, this is incredible and nothing I would have ever thought about. 

I guess it's only available a bit later in the game but it sounds very potent to be a gamechanger/-break.

Thanks for sharing your insight @Kaylon

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Dyxx said:

I guess it's only available a bit later in the game but it sounds very potent to be a gamechanger/-break.

Most of it is only available (very) late in the game (Unstable Coil, Weyc's items, Storm of Holy Fire, Her Tears Fallig Like Rain etc.) but the class combo already works very well on the way there - because you can get Sasha's Singing Scimitar quite early (if you have the cash) and can enchant it with Refreshing Finale soon afterwards (if you have collected the right ingredients and again have enough cash).
As soon as you have that sabre + enchantment you can start with empower 1/encounter. As soon as you get "Her Revenge" then you can also empower Priest spells 1/encounter and use the "Her Revenge" invocation to regain all the spend empower points (I mean all of them) so that the Empower mechanic becomes a per-encounter event not only for invocatios (as was to be expected with Refreshing Finale) but for Priest spells as well. And as I said you can even empower twice per fight if you use seal spells.

The (most) Unstable Coil can be obtained earlier than the Weyc's items (still kind of late but earlier). After you get that your Priest side will increase in power even more - because with the Coil and the empowerment of Her Revenge (and later other invocations or spells that function the same way: counting as multiple empowered spells for the Coil, giving you all tier-3-inpirations most likely) you will gecome Brilliant (and Energized and Curageous etc.).
Being Brilliat as a Priest means you can cast Salvation of Time over and over to again prolong Brilliant. Brilliat gives you back those SoT casts... This gives you unlimited Priest spells. 

Later (very late) the Weyc stuff puts the cherry on top the empowerment cake.

So - it's not only a nice combo very late in the game but is also nice to play on the way there.  

Edited December 17, 2021 by Boeroer

[dgray62]

One might note that you can also get Blightheart relatively early, around lvl 8 or so, after you first visit Neketaka. With Sasha's Singing Scimitar and Blightheart you can have loads of fun empowering invocations and spells and getting phrases quickly restored for most of the game. Then the expansion items are icing on an already very nice cake.

[Dyxx]

There's one question in my mind regarding Bellower and PL.

So I cast a Invocation and all phrases get converted to PL.

Do really all phrases become +PL or is it phrase count Invocation cost = +PL ?

Does a let's say PL 5 Invocation get the full PL bonus or does is only get +PL above 5 ? 

I mean this: 7 phrases = +7PL

PL5 Invocation is casted, so would it get +7PL or +2PL

Does empower PL and Bellower PL stack ?

[Constentin Lévine]

Bellower PL bonus is a class passive, stacking with everything including Empower.

If you get a +7 PL when casting an invocation, then the invocation get the +7PL bonus for the duration (this point is important like explained before). The bonus is still +7 for the duration, whatever if you cast a lowest PL spell (it profit to the +7).

An empowered spell gain for exemple +7 and +5 PL bonus.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Constentin Lévine

[Dyxx]

Thanks for clarifying !

So a Bellower can get absurd amounts of +PL, only downside is every Invocation clears the whole phrase pool.

But +35% dmg multiplicative is nothing to joke about, not including the given +pen 

Edited December 18, 2021 by Dyxx

[Constentin Lévine]

Absolutely, as a SC Bellower, with end-game stuffs, a little preparation at the begining of the fight and a Salvation of Time priest (to keep the effects), you can reach the PL34. I explain how I made in the topic about Transcendant suffering Scaling if you want to see the screenshot of Eld Nary invocation at PL32

The Bellower is really interesting even multiclassed, but that depend of how you want to use the chanter part of your build

[Kaylon]

2 hours ago, Dyxx said:

So a Bellower can get absurd amounts of +PL, only downside is every Invocation clears the whole phrase pool.

It's not a downside if you're using the invocations as soon as you have enough phrases or if you just use the most powerful invocations. 

[Dyxx]

15 hours ago, Kaylon said:

It's not a downside if you're using the invocations as soon as you have enough phrases or if you just use the most powerful invocations. 

That's right and brilliant will give a good boost to phrases.

I want to use mainly killers froze stiff, her revenge swept across the land, seven nights and maybe one summon. There'll be always a little delay between Invocations, but I guess it's fine.

And I want to use fighter skills too so maybe Bellower gives me enough space in my action economy. Dont want to cast only offensive Invocations, even if it's very effective, so a big bang from Bellower sounds very very good !

Edited December 19, 2021 by Dyxx

[MaxQuest]

On 12/15/2021 at 8:15 PM, thelee said:

bellower PL bonus is very good, even for early phrase invocations. when i had a SC bellower they were actually party damage leader for a huge chunk of the game. esp on PotD, you can have extremely non-linear outcomes where the extra PL digs you out of underpenetration thresholds, on top of the multiplicative damage bonuses and accuracy bonuses and debuff durations. (and even if less optimal, getting extra duration on buffs or summons can be useful; mostly for high-level summons where only troubadours and bellowers can consistently get 100% uptime)

troubadour is overall solid, but bellower is still very effective. with ez brilliant at your disposal, the benefit of the troubadour becomes more marginal.

Thank you for pointing out the underpenetration.

I didn't think of getting PEN from PL.

 

On 12/16/2021 at 7:31 AM, Dyxx said:

For my group I favor:

SC Priest Xoti-> Vatnir 

SC Cipher Serafen or Ydwin

Swashbuckler Eder

Last slot Tekehu/Fassina/ Aloth 

Maybe I'm going without mage

Regarding Eder: I've made a mod for myself that changes his subclass options: fighter -> tactician, rogue -> trickster, swashbuckler -> tactician/trickster.

If you want, feel free to use it: google drive link

---

And regarding penetration: thelee made a good point above; but I would also heavily recommend having the following sources in your party:

• Flanked: -1 AR (doesn't stack with itself)
• Death's Usher (Blackened Plate passive): -1 AR (auto-apply, lasting aura) (doesn't stack with itself; but stacks with everything else)
• Biting Cuts (Beza's Toothed Blade): -2 AR on Critical Hit for 10s (doesn't stack with itself; but stacks with everything else) (could be carried in off-set)
• Blunt Rock (Sungrazer): -1 Crush Armor Rating on Critical Hit for whole encounter (doesn't stack with itself; but stacks with everything else) (could be carried in off-set)
• Rending Smash (Mace modal): -1 AR (vs deflection) for 10s (doesn't stack with itself) (doesn't stack with itself) (gets suppressed by similar active effects)
• Body Attunement: -2 AR for 20s (-3 AR with CP) (doesn't stack with itself) (gets suppressed by similar active effects)
• and possibly Rust Armor (spell/scrolls) / or Driving Echoes

 

Edited December 22, 2021 by MaxQuest

[Dyxx]

1 hour ago, MaxQuest said:

...

Regarding Eder: I've made a mod for myself that changes his subclass options: fighter -> tactician, rogue -> trickster, swashbuckler -> tactician/trickster.

If you want, feel free to use it: google drive link

---

And regarding penetration: thelee made a good point above; but I would also heavily recommend having the following sources in your party:

• Flanked: -1 AR (doesn't stack with itself)
• Death's Usher (Blackened Plate passive): -1 AR (auto-apply, lasting aura) (doesn't stack with itself; but stacks with everything else)
• Biting Cuts (Beza's Toothed Blade): -2 AR on Critical Hit for 10s (doesn't stack with itself; but stacks with everything else)
• Blunt Rock (Sungrazer): -1 Crush Armor Rating on Critical Hit for whole encounter (doesn't stack with itself; but stacks with everything else)
• Rending Smash (Mace modal): -1 AR (vs deflection) for 10s (doesn't stack with itself) (gets suppressed by similar active effects)
• Body Attunement: -2 AR for 20s (-3 AR with CP) (doesn't stack with itself) (gets suppressed by similar active effects)
• and possibly Rust Armor (spell/scrolls) / or Driving Echoes

 

I'd love to use your mod, but I'm on PS4. I can't mod it there so I'm stuck to no subclasses on companions. 

Maybe I'm exchange them after their personal quest.

 

Those sources for armor reduction are really nice ! I had the abilities in mind but not those weapons/armors.

Thank you !

[MaxQuest]

1 hour ago, Dyxx said:

I'd love to use your mod, but I'm on PS4. I can't mod it there so I'm stuck to no subclasses on companions. 

Maybe I'm exchange them after their personal quest.

Got it. 

And yeah, you can swap them later in the game, specifically for some longer boss fights.

1 hour ago, Dyxx said:

Those sources for armor reduction are really nice ! I had the abilities in mind but not those weapons/armors.

Thank you !

You are welcome)

[Dyxx]

Good morning boys and girls !

So far I have a really smooth run with my Tactician/Bellower and it's a lot of fun, I can say its like I wanted to play.

But I'm playing on PS4 and I've noticed a strange bug I've seen at the start of Deadfire on ps4. I hoped for a fix but it didn't happen. 

Every time a chant is chanted I get two phrases instead of one...

I have to do a little more testing but I fear this problem is unique to me or never been noticed by someone else, cause it's nothing to read about on the internet. And patch support has been closed so there will be no solution for it.

But this breaks my game experience completely. Two phrases instead of one are just too much of a big deal for my Tactician/Bellower and makes the game too easy.

Is there a somewhat similar multiclass to my Tactician/Bellower ? Something with the same focus on cc and dmg combined ? I want to get away from Chanters completely, cause this bug is making things to easy ! 

Thinking about Tactician/Wizard or maybe anything with or without Fighter(Tactician) in it.

I want to keep companions in my team and I almost definitely want to have a Cipher, Druid, Priest, (Wizard) In my team.

Any help is appreciated !

[MaxQuest]

4 hours ago, Dyxx said:

So far I have a really smooth run with my Tactician/Bellower and it's a lot of fun, I can say its like I wanted to play.

But I'm playing on PS4 and I've noticed a strange bug I've seen at the start of Deadfire on ps4. I hoped for a fix but it didn't happen. 

Every time a chant is chanted I get two phrases instead of one...

Hmm, just to clarify: your character is not under effect of Brilliant Tactician / inspiration?

In that case, every 6s you would get 1 phrase from chanting and one from that effect, which is normal.

[Dyxx]

2 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

Hmm, just to clarify: your character is not under effect of Brilliant Tactician / inspiration?

In that case, every 6s you would get 1 phrase from chanting and one from that effect, which is normal.

Nope, every 6 seconds 2 phrases. 

If brilliant would kick in it would not be always every 6 seconds 2 phrases.

This is just a too big gamechanger for me...

Edited December 23, 2021 by Dyxx

[Dyxx]

If any is interested how it all played out:

So the phrase bug on PS4 is for real, so its no option for me anymore, but Warcaller wass a pretty cool MC !

Then I wanted to go Tactician/Beguiler and started from scratch but realised soon its not what i have intended.

Cipher is pretty good and offers lots off debuffs, buffs and cc but i didnt feel well with it as a multiclass and i think a Beguiler dosnt need a MC 'cause its a caster through and throug.

Soulblade was never my piece off cake.

So now I went with Tactician/Wizard, somehow Tactician is catching me more than Rogue and I like the fighter class in general. So im able to play the bruiser style I wanted to and even if Im tired of it I can switch to full caster.

The rest of my party will be:

Eder as a Fighter/Rogue, as my tank what else ?

Xoti later Vatnir as a Priest for support and damage later on

Serafen/Ydwin as a Cipher, I easily like Ciphers as a SC, would take Beguiler as a custom companion but I like the story here

Fassina Wizard/Druid as my ranged nuker, not 100% sure where this route will take me but im flexible with it.