Advice for character creation

[Chromes556]

So I've run through the opening island on PoTD upscaled with an ancient druid (going for DoTs) and a furyshaper Barb. I played a greatsword wielding barb in PoE 1.

I want to have Eder in the party, Xoti, MC, and I am somewhat open on the last two slots. I liked having a ranger and druid in the prior game so maybe those two classes.

I would preferably like to be a frontliner. I would also like to be able to do everything the game has to offer (all bosses and quests) or at least attempt it. I enjoyed furyshaper but found my barb just kept dying super quickly and the few naval battles I tried. Same for the druid.

Any suggestions on classes? I've looked around a bit and found blood mage/ paladin, paladin/chanter, paladin/cipher as classes people bring up.  I'm typically a fan of heavy armor and in the thick of things in rpgs. I am open to rolling the ancient druid again if the DoTs would be viable in endgame.

Only class I'm not too into is probably rogue. 

 

Thanks

[Exanos]

Early barbarian are frail on potd but become monster later (starting near lvl 13).

Ancient druid is really good, dot and hot are effective from start to end.

If you want an easy time for frontline, paladin/chanter is king but not really fun for a mc (personnal opinion). Monk/skald are much more dynamics and very effective at damage/cc.

For your team i will go :

- eder main tank

- xoti heal/buff

- something to kill/disable mage/priest asap. Arcane archer/mage slayer with frostseeker was the most effective at it in all my playthrough. Great damage dealer/cc too.

- something for debuff/cc : chanter/psion or blood mage/psion or blood mage/chanter work fine. Monk/skald is really great too.

- offtank : barbarian, paladin, fighter, melee ranger and any multi of this.

Offtank not necessary if you have access to summons, hard and reliable cc and backline with mobility tools.

 

[thelee]

if you're open to doing ranger again, have you tried a stalker? the bonus deflection and armor, on top of beast's claw later on (requires a bit of metagaming) can make the ranger surprisingly tanky. since you get the most important effect by tier 6 (beast's claw), you can multiclass with something that can boost the damage output some more (for example, i did furyshaper and got bored by how easy mode it was)

 

edit: if you're curious about ranger and druid again, a stalker + shifter would be reeeeeally powerful, probably way more easymode than my stalker + furyshaper. a shifter boar would be able to do tons of damage, while the bonus AR and deflection would keep you extremely safe in shifted forms while being very fast. and you can spell cast with stupid accuracy when you're not shape shifting.

Edited November 4, 2022 by thelee

[foxinspace]

On 11/4/2022 at 4:49 PM, thelee said:

edit: if you're curious about ranger and druid again, a stalker + shifter would be reeeeeally powerful, probably way more easymode than my stalker + furyshaper. a shifter boar would be able to do tons of damage, while the bonus AR and deflection would keep you extremely safe in shifted forms while being very fast. and you can spell cast with stupid accuracy when you're not shape shifting.

This sounds like a very fun build, thanks for the inspiration to build another character, @thelee.
Why not a cat form for the spiritshift? What would you prioritize among the attributes? I assume INT needs to be maxed to allow spiritshifting for longer. High PER is also probably a must. Since this one is meant to be quite tanky, would any extra points to RES be recommended, or base should be enough with stalker's bonuses? Overall since this build is trying to be many things at the same time, seems a bit attribute-starved, or am I wrong?

Edited November 8, 2022 by foxinspace

[thelee]

5 hours ago, foxinspace said:

Why not a cat form for the spiritshift? What would you prioritize among the attributes? I assume INT needs to be maxed to allow spiritshifting for longer. High PER is also probably a must. Since this one is meant to be quite tanky, would any extra points to RES be recommended, or base should be enough with stalker's bonuses? Overall since this build is trying to be many things at the same time, seems a bit attribute-starved, or am I wrong?

shifter gets all forms, so you don't have to really pick. but Boar form is particularly special in vanilla (i think one of the community mods fixes it) because the boar form damage-over-time-on-attack lasts an *extremely* long time, and stacks, so you can get it to stupid high damage numbers. only the shifter boar form does this, the other druid boar forms, while good, don't last nearly as long to let you stack so much of it.

i would actually not prioritize PER as much because ranger gets so many good ways to increase accuracy. i would instead focus on dexterity and/or resolve. 

the way i think of the stalker's deflection bonus: it makes it pretty painless to dump resolve a bit, but can also make a full-defensive play extremely powerful. so you can invest more in offense stats, but if you want to be really tanky i'd go with a race that gets +1 resolve (human or orlan) and basically go all-in on resolve. combined with beast claw in late game (and either spiritshift form or hatchet/dagger early game) and some +resolve and +deflection gear you can be very very tanky. b.c. ranger gets stuff like marked prey or stalker's link for lots of bonus accuracy, it doesn't hurt your offense nearly as badly to go so strongly into resolve. (but like i said, you can also just use it as the opportunity to move some points from resolve to an offense stat without hurting your defense)

Edited November 8, 2022 by thelee