Suggestions for Serafen for POTD playthrough

[Vasvary5050]

Hi folks.

I want to start a new playthrough and could really do with a few suggestions. I want this to feel a bit different to my previous playthroughs and could do with some help on the following:

1) Serafen: This time around I really want to have Serafen in my party throughout. Previously I've always benched him because I find single class Barbarians a bit boring, and his Wild Mind too risky. But this time I really want to see if I can make him work as a Witch (Barbarian/Cipher). Any recommendations for how to play him, on PoTD, so that it's not a bad thing (for me) if he explodes. I'm used to playing with a fairly close squad most of the time, but I guess the trick with Serafen is to have him fighting as a bit of a stand by himself berserker away from the rest of the party? How big is his explosion? Any suggestions for how to build him as Witch to make him more survivable and not a liability?

2) Serafen's party: Any suggestions for a good party to build around using Serafen? I'm happy to use a mixture of companions, sidekicks and completely custom mercenaries.

3) Priests: As a side question, I'm thinking of making my main a Priest/something this time around. I've never played a priest, and it occurred to me that in a story that heavily involves all the gods of Eora, being a priest might offer some role-playing/narrative potential that other classes lack. Do any of the priest subclasses have interesting narrative during the interactions with the gods? Any suggestions for what a Priest might multiclass well with.

Best wishes,

Vasvary.

[Shai Hulud]

8 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

Hi folks.

I want to start a new playthrough and could really do with a few suggestions. I want this to feel a bit different to my previous playthroughs and could do with some help on the following:

1) Serafen: This time around I really want to have Serafen in my party throughout. Previously I've always benched him because I find single class Barbarians a bit boring, and his Wild Mind too risky. But this time I really want to see if I can make him work as a Witch (Barbarian/Cipher). Any recommendations for how to play him, on PoTD, so that it's not a bad thing (for me) if he explodes. I'm used to playing with a fairly close squad most of the time, but I guess the trick with Serafen is to have him fighting as a bit of a stand by himself berserker away from the rest of the party? How big is his explosion? Any suggestions for how to build him as Witch to make him more survivable and not a liability?

Miscast is probably the worst wild mind effect. That's the one that causes a shock explosion centered on Serafen. Couple ways you could deal with that. It has shock PEN 7, so you could use armor and/or spells to make sure this always underpens vs him or nearby chars, additionally it rolls vs will so you could prioritize will so it grazes and misses more. Also the damage is 1.5 * focus, so if you only have 50 focus it is survivable. If you have 200 maybe not. I would just not let him get more than 50 focus. As a witch he really doesn't need any spells that cost more than that anyway, besides maybe Ancestor's Memory in long fights. The miscast explosion has a radius of 2.5, which is the same as mental binding or secret horrors. I don't know if the size of the explosion is affected by intelligence like other abilities.

So you can script him to cast his spells anytime he has more than X focus. 

Conditional: cipher resources, focus > 50, Action (list cipher spells in order of use preference)

Can also make multiple blocks with the spells you want, just duplicate the first one. 

Spells you want are psychovampiric shield, phantom foes, secret horrors, recall agony, borrowed instinct. Mostly those. Pain Block, Echoing Shield, Tactical Meld are also quite good. Mental Binding is super good for how cheap it is. Maybe Body Attunement. The charm spells if you need more CC, though I feel it isn't the best use for a witch. Mostly witches want to buff their own accuracy, debuff enemy deflection, resolve or fortitude (fort for brute force), and attack things (morning stars work well with body blows and brute force, particularly willbreaker since it also debuffs will). Cipher passives take the empty soul, echoing horror, lingering echoes, iron will, hammering thoughts. Normally I'd take draining whip but possibly serafen would do better with biting whip if you're using mostly cheap abilities anyway. 

For barbarian side take all the damage and action speed passives, and brute force and interrupting blows. Use spirit frenzy since it applies staggered on hit which makes brute force work better. Also take stalwart defiance for emergency heals. Can take barbaric shout or roar if you have room, though the shaken debuff won't stack with frightened from secret horrors, so I'd skip it. 

8 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

2) Serafen's party: Any suggestions for a good party to build around using Serafen? I'm happy to use a mixture of companions, sidekicks and completely custom mercenaries.

Well as witch his role is mostly DPS, with some debuffs and CC. So you will need at least one proper tank, maybe two. You need at least one healer. And a second damage dealer. With multiclassing it is easy to cover lots of roles with a few characters, so there are many many ways you could go. Pallegina as herald is a solid tank + support char. Aloth can tank as battlemage or be a DPS caster. Eder is an okay tank, I prefer him as swashbuckler where he is more an offtank / bruiser. Tekehu is solid however you build him, can do a lot of damage as SC druid, or provide tons of support/damage as single-classed or multiclassed chanter. Maia is great ranged DPS particularly as a scout. Xoti is good DPS as a monk, contemplative is also nice for mixed damage and support. Too many sidekicks to go into all their uses but I feel like Rekke is probably the best tank, Mirke is very good DPS as shadowdancer, Vatnir is probably the best priest, also great as a celebrant. And Ydwin is the best offensive cipher, can also provide tons of support with higher level cipher spells.

Can really build the party however you want...just keep in mind you need sufficient tanks + damage + support

8 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

3) Priests: As a side question, I'm thinking of making my main a Priest/something this time around. I've never played a priest, and it occurred to me that in a story that heavily involves all the gods of Eora, being a priest might offer some role-playing/narrative potential that other classes lack. Do any of the priest subclasses have interesting narrative during the interactions with the gods? Any suggestions for what a Priest might multiclass well with.

Best wishes,

Vasvary.

From a roleplaying perspective it makes little sense to me how the watcher could be a priest given what they know, but I guess a fanatical berathian would fit well since you're serving berath. I don't recall anything special narratively, besides some conversational choices for Wael during Forgotten Sanctum. Priest is strong enough you can multiclass with anything really, but a few combos come to mind

Priest/bellower is extremely strong, you can extend the +PL from bellower with salvation of time, late game items like least unstable coil and weyc gear work particularly well
Priest/blood mage has the greatest ability to buff and to extend buffs, as you have both salvation of time and wall of draining, and can repeatedly blood sacrifice while under the effects of barring death's door to get back wizard resources. Has so many spells can be played as a caster or as melee. 
Priest/ascendant can extend the ascended effect with salvation of time, priest/psion is also interesting since you passively build cipher phrases while casting priest stuff
Priest/monk is quite good especially helwalker for +might or FF for a melee-oriented priest (need community patch for FF to work right).
Priest/ranger is surprisingly good, you can stack tons of accuracy and buff your animal companion

I don't know as much about the other priest multiclasses but I expect you could do any of them and it would work all right. For subclasses Wael has very good special spell selection, especially for fighters like a priest/monk (mirrored images, llengrath's displaced image), and Skaen has probably the best overall selection including uniques (to priests) like escape, shadowing beyond, and finishing blow. Woedica has some interesting spells with her writs but I haven't played this subclass much. Berath has some decay themed druid spells like Touch of Rot, Spreading Plague, and Rot Skulls, all of which are pretty good. Eothas' only unique is the druid spell Sunbeam. Magran has some fire themed wizard spells that are kind of disppointing. 

It really depends who else you want in your party but a priest/helwalker is very attractive as a caster for the +10 might and +10 INT you can get with helwalker and turning wheel, making your buffs last longer and your damage and healing much stronger. Does make you more fragile but its partially compensated by improved healing and it isn't too hard to keep the priest out of the fray. Priest/FF with iron wheel would be tanky enough to fight on the front lines. And priest/bellower is a great choice for focusing on damage. At high levels you have storm of holy fire and her tears fell like rain, with gives tremendous fire and frost damage respectively.

Edited May 7, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Kaylon]

To minimize the impact the effect of the Wild Mind there are a few tricks:

• make sure the shock AR on Serafen and the party members near him is high enough (if I remember well miscast has 7 PEN and you will need just 10 shock AR to reach max under penetration)
• use mostly charm/domination spells on enemies (so any affliction/inspiration they get is a win/win situation)
• use foods with immunities and items with resistances on your party to reduce the possible afflictions they can get

Serafen is probably more suitable as a melee offensive tank (to benefit from Carnage and put miscast to good use) but can be used from range too. 

PS. You can also give him Deltro's Cage Helm to benefit from the occasional self-damage inflicted.

[thelee]

On 5/7/2023 at 3:53 AM, Vasvary5050 said:

I'm used to playing with a fairly close squad most of the time, but I guess the trick with Serafen is to have him fighting as a bit of a stand by himself berserker away from the rest of the party? How big is his explosion? Any suggestions for how to build him as Witch to make him more survivable and not a liability?

Miscast is un-fun, but is also not as dangerous as it used to be, just (as Shai Hulud says) keep spending your focus.

Honestly, there are worse:

• random affliction
• random inspiration
• invisibility
• push

Those don't come up in discussion much, and "random affliction" is categorized by one of the wiki as a good effect and "random inspiration" as a bad effect, but having tried to make Serafen work through several runs, I can attest to several things:

• those things, esp random affliction and inspirations do not care about who you are targeting. So a buff can also apply a random affliction and a debuff/damage spell can apply a random inspiration, which is why those fan wiki categories don't make sense. same thing with invisibility. you can make enemies invisible, but you can also make your own party members invisible depending on what procced the effect.
• general unpredictability is bad. worse than miscast. miscast you can kind of prepare for a bit (keep your armor up by being appropriately geared, keep spending your focus). but randomly hard-CCing your party members, or granting something like energized or robust to an enemy (or multiple enemies, if it's a multi-target effect) is extremely annoying and can easily take you from a fight that you were a winning to fight that you might lose.
  • controlled invisibility is great. random invisibility is horrible. it's an invisibility that doesn't seem to break until duration runs out. on enemies it's annoying enough, but most of the time i just start running away until the enemy re-appears. but on party members, i've literally had party members get KO-ed by DoTs (and at least a handful of times, completely annihilated in FS due to all the high-level cipher-types around) because they suddenly get turned invisible and while they're invisible they can't be targeted with anything, such as heals.
  • push is a great way to have all your plans messed up, depending on what effect procced it.

 

on the forums i'm probably one of the most negative on serafen. i think his cipher is a trap class. you get all sorts of unpredictability and there's no real payoff. at least in other system equivalents (wild mages or wellspring mages) your actual benefit is that you can get/cast more spells (and the randomness is properly treated as a cost).

so i guess what i'm saying is that, if you're really keen on giving seraphen cipher a full go, miscast is not really the effect you should be super worried about. instead i think you should be more concerned about casting conservatively and having defensive redundancies (like the resist foods/items kaylon mentions). it's also a warning that serafen as a cipher is not really "fun" imo, but more an experience in coping with things suddenly going sideways or pre-limiting yourself in what you do with a cipher. (though tbf many of the times a wild surge happens, it's a nothingburger. that's what adds into the annoyingness of it.)

[limaxophobiacq]

On 5/7/2023 at 12:53 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

3) Priests: As a side question, I'm thinking of making my main a Priest/something this time around. I've never played a priest, and it occurred to me that in a story that heavily involves all the gods of Eora, being a priest might offer some role-playing/narrative potential that other classes lack. Do any of the priest subclasses have interesting narrative during the interactions with the gods? Any suggestions for what a Priest might multiclass well with.

Priest of Wael works with pretty much anything melee because of defence buffs. In addition to Shai Huluds suggestions just a simple cleric (Devoted: axes for Magrans Favor) works very well. Early game Monastic Unarmed Training + devoted with arcane veil & mirror image is very strong melee, and later you can buff yourself to 170+ on every defence long enough to last through every non-megaboss fight, and for megabosses you're a priest with a cipher in the party. Does solid spell damage thanks to tier 2 int/might/per buffs as long as enemies aren't fire immune and for that you can at least still tank + heal and throw a Gaze of the Adragan.

Speaking of fire; on the off chance you go single class I would personally recommend a class that gets a symbol that deals something other than fire damage (so Wael, Berath, or Skaen) since priest is already stacked with fire damage spells at 7 and lower. Also sidenote; since waels symbol is keyworded as an inspiration, you should be able to steal Xotis lantern for +2 power level with it.

[thelee]

On 5/7/2023 at 3:53 AM, Vasvary5050 said:

Do any of the priest subclasses have interesting narrative during the interactions with the gods?

they're not really deep changes, but you do get varying levels of acknowledgement, mostly as just a bit of flavor on occasion.

i documented a bit in my write-up: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/priest, though I honestly to revisit that section with the DLC and the impacts of patch 4.0 in tow.

most of the quest changes can generally be got through alternative means (e.g. it's not exclusive a priest subclass benefit), they just help you avoid varying skill requirements and some such. exception being: getting the effigy item as a skaen subclass, since i don't think there is any other way, other than sacrificing a party member, which is a steep price to pay for a 1-use item (and if you fight the skaenites, you don't get the item iirc).

iirc, aside from what i mentioned there I believe priest of wael gets an easier time in some of the final dialogue checks in FS, which is pretty substantial (other dialogue checks that priest subclasses help you avoid might have been pretty easy to meet in other ways).

[Vasvary5050]

Thanks everyone for these comments and suggestions for Serafen as cipher or witch, and for priests in general. I'm sort of coming back around to my original conclusion for Serafen that he is at best a challenge class, and at worst a trap class as @thelee suggests above. I really want to make him work, but his unpredictability in combat is hard to deal with. Some great ideas for priests though which I'm looking forward to trying out! 

[Kaylon]

11 hours ago, Vasvary5050 said:

I'm sort of coming back around to my original conclusion for Serafen that he is at best a challenge class, and at worst a trap class as @thelee suggests above.

At worst Serafen can be considered a challenge class if you do nothing to guard against his random effects. Wild mind isn't triggered that often and if you don't play him as a caster spamming AoE spells in the middle of some squishy characters you won't even feel it. If you have a solid party he can be even very fun because it adds a little spice to the fights. 

Regarding the negative affects you should keep in mind they have lower accuracy than normal spells (and will be often resisted) and have very short duration. Afflictions target Will and miscast targets Reflex. Miscast becomes basically a non-issue even with max focus if you stay near tanks with +10 shock AR and high Reflex (easy with large shields and some items). Against afflictions you can also increase your Will (cloak/ring of protection,  Bull's Will) - which will make them barely noticeable. Invisibility breaks after the second attack and it doesn't make any difference most of the time.

Your bread and butter spells at high level should be: Ringleader, Disintegration, Borrowed Instinct, Pain Block, Tactical Meld and Ancestor's Memory. Some people tend to spam AoE spells which sometimes can have of course a bigger impact if many enemies get tier 3 inspirations or become invisible (but if they're charmed/dominate it's actually a good thing for you). However your main role should be as offensive tank/debuffer (stack items with +reflex on him to resist the occasional miscast - Pathfinder's Boots, The Giftbearer's Cloth, Ring of Minor Protection, Iridescent Scale...) - Lord Darryn's Voulge/The Willbreaker work great on him.