Party comp and gameplay advice

[Fruney]

Hi guys, looooong time lurker here. Thank you very much for all your work I used for both PoE games.

I love Deadfire, I struggle with a few concepts still, but I am slowly wrapping my head around it:

- Limited spell library for casters - I am pretty much already at the point I know what I want from them, so it's getting alright.

- Penetration. How is it? Is it weapon inherent + abilities/buffs vs enemy's AR and that's it? If it's 10 for me and 11 for them and it's over? No additional roll, or anything, just simple arithmetics?  

- Chanters - how often do you guys play with the chant playlist? Do you tend to change during the fight to react? A bit too much micro too me with other casters to handle. Also there's a lot of fun chants and abilities for them, but usually I neglect it due to lack of experience with Chanters and the other class feeling more important for the ability points. And I run only MC chanters at the moment. 

- Lowering defences. During tougher fights enemies tend to be quite resistant to spells. So, I'd like to debuff them first. But then debuff is another spells with, say, 50 or 60% chance of success. Feels like a waste with limitted per encounter resources I have. How do you go about it usually? Do I need to know the spellbooks by hard to find the spell that targets specific defence? Or you have some proper-debuff-inducing weapons on hand? Yet again, it means a PhD in Deadfire. Sometimes, for easy fights I tend to go Buffs->Citzal on Wizards out of lazyness. On tough ones I do the same because CC feels pointless. I have my Watcher Cipher (I regret not going Ascendant a bit) take his chances at debuffing, since he has theoretically unlimitted resources. Hopefully something sticks.

 

Now, for the second part. I always play cRPGs with the story companions for the banter. Never got too much into IWDs because of the parties feeling "dead". But with Deadfire and the multiclassing system it has, I am very tempted to run a custom party with some fun builds, but I'd need your advice. My idea is to have a 4-man team with, maybe, occasional story companion for a quest.

1. Psion/wizard or psion/troubadour. Some implement for autoattack, but I don't think he'll get to shoot it much, which is a pity, considering certain builds here.

2. Herald or maybe Livegiver(Bear)/Goldpact as suggested by Boeroer elsewhere. Why Goldpact specifically tho? Weapon and shield style is quite tempting, because I will lack engagement.

Now the rest is more tricky and depends on previous two:

3. Either some kind of crazied, fast melee orlan (Marauder? Preferrably dual-wielding small weapons) or, for the lack of ranged capabilities, I'd maybe try one of this fun implement builds with Ranger/something. I am fine with animal theme too.

4. Some kind of durable melee character. I have very little experience with monks and only recently tried it a bit with Rekke as fighter/monk. I like it, depite badly build Rekke! So, some fun monk MC is high on the list. But no way I am going bare fist. However, if I go with Herald at position 2, I feel I will lack buffs/healing and would need some priest or druid MC here. Any suggestions and how to handle action economy? 

Thank you!

[Boeroer]

Hi and welcome!

13 hours ago, Fruney said:

- Penetration. How is it? Is it weapon inherent + abilities/buffs vs enemy's AR and that's it? If it's 10 for me and 11 for them and it's over? No additional roll, or anything, just simple arithmetics?  

Yes, that's it. Not only weapons but every damaging ability (spells etc.) must compare its PEN vs. the respective AR. Fortunately there a many ways to buff your PEN and/or debuff your enemies' AR.
And then there's raw damage which just ignores PEN completely (but cannot deal bonus overpenetration damage like attacks with a PEN vs AR check can if the PEN is way higher than AR).

13 hours ago, Fruney said:

- Chanters - how often do you guys play with the chant playlist? Do you tend to change during the fight to react? A bit too much micro too me with other casters to handle. Also there's a lot of fun chants and abilities for them, but usually I neglect it due to lack of experience with Chanters and the other class feeling more important for the ability points. And I run only MC chanters at the moment.

Me personally: not much (in a party). I will have a standard chant and then one or two other chants for special situations. Like resistance chants when I know I will meet enemies who dish out a lot of annoying afflictions. Solo it's different because you need to be more versatile.

13 hours ago, Fruney said:

- Lowering defences. During tougher fights enemies tend to be quite resistant to spells. So, I'd like to debuff them first. But then debuff is another spells with, say, 50 or 60% chance of success. Feels like a waste with limitted per encounter resources I have. How do you go about it usually? Do I need to know the spellbooks by hard to find the spell that targets specific defence? Or you have some proper-debuff-inducing weapons on hand? Yet again, it means a PhD in Deadfire. Sometimes, for easy fights I tend to go Buffs->Citzal on Wizards out of lazyness. On tough ones I do the same because CC feels pointless. I have my Watcher Cipher (I regret not going Ascendant a bit) take his chances at debuffing, since he has theoretically unlimitted resources. Hopefully something sticks.

My general approach is:

1. buff accuracy
2. debuff defenses/do CC
3. deal damage

Buffing accuracy can also mean that I attack with a debuff/CC spell from stealth with an Assassin/Wizard (+25 ACC) or something like that. On the higher difficulties CC or debuffing is absolutely not pointless. There it's often a lot less effective to start the fights with direct damage.

13 hours ago, Fruney said:

1. Psion/wizard or psion/troubadour. Some implement for autoattack, but I don't think he'll get to shoot it much, which is a pity, considering certain builds here.

Both very good. Psion/Troubadour is better for the really tough fights that last very long. I'd generally say it's better overall but it also depends whether you like to play wizard or chanter more. The Wizard has the advantages of nice defensive buffs so that the danger of getting your focus generation stopped is lower than with the Troubadour. Unless the Troubadour uses a lot of summons for distraction...   
You don't need to use a weapon at all for attacking - so best to use some kind of stat stick. Psion in general works very well with hatchet + small shield or dagger&modal + small shield imo. 

13 hours ago, Fruney said:

2. Herald or maybe Livegiver(Bear)/Goldpact as suggested by Boeroer elsewhere. Why Goldpact specifically tho? Weapon and shield style is quite tempting, because I will lack engagement.

The Goldpact's Swown Enemy ability is nice once you spiritshift (bonus PL for Rejuvenation healings, good melee dmg). You'll have the very thick armor of the bear form (with no recovery malus) and on top you get the Gilded Enmity's +4 AR which makes you very hard to kill while being able to cast and fight quite fast. But other Paladin subclasses also work.

13 hours ago, Fruney said:

3. Either some kind of crazied, fast melee orlan (Marauder? Preferrably dual-wielding small weapons) or, for the lack of ranged capabilities, I'd maybe try one of this fun implement builds with Ranger/something. I am fine with animal theme too.

Imo Berserker/Streetfighter with dual daggers (Lover's Embrace + Pukestabber) with all the speedup gear is mad fun - also because it's a dance on a razor's edge. Very good dps and fun, but also goes down very quickly if you don't pay attention. With a good healer it's manageable, just don't use that character to jump into the fray. Better to deal with single foes like casters and so on (using mobility abilities like Escape and Leap).

Durable melee fighters are plenty. SC Forbidden Fist can be one for example. 

 

[Fruney]

Thank you for the welcome!

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

My general approach is:

1. buff accuracy
2. debuff defenses/do CC
3. deal damage

Buffing accuracy can also mean that I attack with a debuff/CC spell from stealth with an Assassin/Wizard (+25 ACC) or something like that. On the higher difficulties CC or debuffing is absolutely not pointless. There it's often a lot less effective to start the fights with direct damage.

Well, that's roughly what I do as well. It just sometimes feel random. When the fight is easy, then nothing matters, when it's tough with lots of enemies, then it's cognitive overload for me, so I just do things that seem reasonable, but I don't really verify it. Then only for tough fights against single bosses I can bring myself to more closely analyze what is targeting what, etc. Only then it feels worth it.

As far as party advice goes:

-Berserker/streetfighter sounds like fun! I might be actually into that. I had Lover's Embrace and some fun clubs in minds, specifically, so checks out just fine.

For the rest I am tempted mostly by two wariants:

-Psion/wizard (any subclass that might be worth it? We are talking CC/debuffing mostly, I don't expect damage dealing here) - Herald - Some monk or priest frontliner MC

- Psion/priest of wael (how good does it sound?) - herald - frontliner fighter/wizard (but is there a reasonable build that is not going full Citzal?)

During my current playthrough I really appreciate my SC chars, as it indeed makes a difference to have access to higher level abilities. However, Deadfire's MC system is hard to say no too. Yet, maybe I will settle for SC druid for the last char, as I have only MC Tekehu in my current run and I won't see high level spells in action.

[thelee]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Me personally: not much (in a party). I will have a standard chant and then one or two other chants for special situations. Like resistance chants when I know I will meet enemies who dish out a lot of annoying afflictions. Solo it's different because you need to be more versatile.

this is normally me - it's not only the micro that's annoying, it's that you're blocked out from selecting chants a) a few seconds after an invocation b) a few seconds after a chant starts and c) from stealth. if you do an invocation A & B actually double-up into two distinct phases of blocked out. so even if i wanted to micro, i'm frequently blocked out from changing my chants even when i want to (and then i forget by the time i'm no longer locked out).

my current run is where i actually have two main chants i like to use, one that has the fire lash song, and the other that has the reload/ranged-attack-speed song (among other). it's because i have a "flex" character who switches between weapons, one of which is The Red Hand arquebus. when they switch to arquebus mode I change to the reload chant. when they switch to melee or after a fight ends, i switch back to the fire lash chant. this is probably the most i've ever actually micro-managed a chanter's singing before.

 

18 hours ago, Fruney said:

On tough ones I do the same because CC feels pointless.

CC is absolutely not pointless. I play on PotD with challenges and up-scaling, and CC is worth a lot more to me than just straight up damage (e.g. citzal's). I even use CC on megabosses.

cast Slicken a couple times on a batch of foes and see how little the enemy will manage to get done the entire time. 

CC is hard at the start of the game on potd because enemy defenses are really high relative to you bc you don't have much of a choice in progression yet (wheras after port maje you can go do some other quest if something is too hard), but the same goes for basically every attack or spell.

 

18 hours ago, Fruney said:

But no way I am going bare fist. However, if I go with Herald at position 2, I feel I will lack buffs/healing and would need some priest or druid MC here.

why no fist? fists are extremely powerful.

also, frankly a herald is immensely powerful sustain and buffing. if you've never played one, you're underestimating it. if you have played one and think it can't carry your party, you did it wrong . a herald can be your single point of sustain and defense. heck a paladin alone carries a lot of healing/buff duty.

lay on hands from a paladin is extremely spammable (costing only 1 zeal) and extremely effective healing. you can upgrade zealous endurance to bestow regeneration (in addition to a small AR boost). you can insta-res party members with an exhortation (and if you didn't put on too much might and the target has decent health or you have barring death's door, they'll even stay alive once the exhortation runs out). chanter gives you even more regeneration (ancient memory), with options for more defense (silver knight), more healing (the beams of light), another res source, or even more sustain (there's a vampiric chant and/or the health shield chant and/or the chant that boosts healing effective). and you can also summon powerful allies like ogres, drakes, or ancient weapons.

 

edit: the first time i ever attempted the ooze megaboss i stumbled into victory because i happened ot have pallegina set up as a herald and she literally carried the entire party/fight between her immense, resource-free health regen and her infinite summons.

Edited December 14, 2023 by thelee

[dgray62]

6 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Both very good. Psion/Troubadour is better for the really tough fights that last very long. I'd generally say it's better overall but it also depends whether you like to play wizard or chanter more. The Wizard has the advantages of nice defensive buffs so that the danger of getting your focus generation stopped is lower than with the Troubadour. Unless the Troubadour uses a lot of summons for distraction...   
You don't need to use a weapon at all for attacking - so best to use some kind of stat stick. Psion in general works very well with hatchet + small shield or dagger&modal + small shield imo. 

To follow up on @Boeroer's excellent advice, Bloodmage/soulblade is also great for a very powerful and durable melee/caster hybrid. @Shai Hulud posted a great build for this combo, if you're interested. For melee, IMO SC Forbidden Fist or any FF multi class, such as FF/steel garrote, FF/soulblade, FF/trickster, is great. It's my favorite melee subclass, due to its durability and tremendous damage output.

[Fruney]

Thank you very much for your posts, guys. I think my reply to Boeroer is still invisible and waiting for mod's approval. Let's see about this post.

Quote

CC is absolutely not pointless. I play on PotD with challenges and up-scaling, and CC is worth a lot more to me than just straight up damage (e.g. citzal's). I even use CC on megabosses.

cast Slicken a couple times on a batch of foes and see how little the enemy will manage to get done the entire time. 

I made like 3 attempt at my post so this must have skipped edition. It's not like CC is pointless. I would very much would love to CC or debuff the f*k out of the basterd, but when I aim a spell at it, it estimates the chances at, say, 60%, which seems to me like too big of a gamble for the limited resource that is cast-per-spell-tier. So I'd like to debuff him first, but it's same story - usually chances are low and I am not yet familiar enough with all these analytics. But it's already better due to my party higher levels.

Quote

why no fist? fists are extremely powerful.

also, frankly a herald is immensely powerful sustain and buffing. if you've never played one, you're underestimating it. if you have played one and think it can't carry your party, you did it wrong . a herald can be your single point of sustain and defense. heck a paladin alone carries a lot of healing/buff duty.

 Yeah, not denying that, but you won't me make me go bare handed in a game with truckloads of toys. Regarding herald - that's one of the reasons I want to run a herald in the new party. I have herald Pallegina in the party now and she's great. I always felt I need Xoti or Tekehu alongside her, though. But now I will try after I finish quests with Tekehu. 

@dgray62 , @Boeroer - yeah, I guess for serious stuff the Psion will run with a stat stick, but I need a job for the guy during trashmob fights. If you, dgray, suggested builds for my 4th char, then FF/trickster sounds tempting. Not exactly what I had in mind thematically, but both trickster and priest of Wael caught my attention with "all the usual stuff plus fun".

[dgray62]

A FF/trickster with max RES is extremely tough and very deadly. You can go unarmed initially, and can later wield some of the fun toys like the Magran's Favor axe or the Seeker's Fang rapier. Heralds are always useful, and troubadour/psion is extremely useful in the tougher battles, as noted above. For the ultimate in CC, try a SC ascendant dual wielding Current's Rush/Frostfall. See @Constentin Lévine's build for more info. I was just playing it, and once you get Shared Nightmare it's incredible; a single crit with the scepter can lead to a cascade of procs of High Tide from Current's Rush that wipes out every enemy on the screen, except perhaps the boss who's crippled with multiple afflictions with agonizingly long durations. Of course, they'll be dead long before they expire.....

[Boeroer]

For a Forbidden Fist I actually prefer to not use fists as standard weapon, because you will have your Forbidden Fist attack anyway (crush damage and scales like your Monk fists) while your weapon can have an alternative type of damage - which makes you more versatile when it comes to PEN vs. AR. And you might profit from some universal enchantment or modal of the weapon - for example I like to use a Dagger + modal with a Forbidden Fist: as long as I mainly use the Forbidden Fist attack there is no drawback (dmg malus only applies to dagger attacks) while the +10 melee deflection still applies. Could also be a spear (+engagement) or a hatchet (+deflection)...

[dgray62]

Alternately, you can use an axe in the main hand, and Tuotilio's Palm in the off hand, with both modals on. The idea is that you won't really be auto attacking, but will mainly be attacking with the FF attack, alternating with other attacks if you multi-class (soul annihilation, etc.). When you crit with these attacks, with swift flurry and heartbeat drumming there's a good chance you'll get a full attack with your weapon sets without the recovery penalty from the modals. When you do, the axe modal will apply a DoT. With the small shield modal, you'll get +15 ACC to your next attack whenever you're missed in combat, which will happen often, since you'll have the shield, the shield weapon style plus the bonus to DEF from balanced shield, which will be +10 most of the time, since using the FF attack costs no wounds so long as you wait for the FF curse to expire, which happens very quickly with max RES and Clarity of Agony.

[thelee]

On 12/14/2023 at 1:44 PM, Fruney said:

it estimates the chances at, say, 60%, which seems to me like too big of a gamble for the limited resource that is cast-per-spell-tier. So I'd like to debuff him first, but it's same story - usually chances are low and I am not yet familiar enough with all these analytics. But it's already better due to my party higher levels.

60% is still decent for a good CC, especially when a little bit of CC can really swing the fight your way. it is definitely rough early game, but i think ~70% is what i get to by mid-game and i'm pretty happy with that. anything more feels like i'm already trending towards a fight that is one that i'm dominating.

clubs, flails, and morningstars are more foolproof ways to debuff enemy stats.

[Fruney]

On 12/15/2023 at 7:45 PM, dgray62 said:

A FF/trickster with max RES is extremely tough and very deadly. You can go unarmed initially, and can later wield some of the fun toys like the Magran's Favor axe or the Seeker's Fang rapier. Heralds are always useful, and troubadour/psion is extremely useful in the tougher battles, as noted above. For the ultimate in CC, try a SC ascendant dual wielding Current's Rush/Frostfall. See @Constentin Lévine's build for more info. I was just playing it, and once you get Shared Nightmare it's incredible; a single crit with the scepter can lead to a cascade of procs of High Tide from Current's Rush that wipes out every enemy on the screen, except perhaps the boss who's crippled with multiple afflictions with agonizingly long durations. Of course, they'll be dead long before they expire.....

Yepp, this build looks fantastic. Maybe I will just roll 5th character with this?

So far I the team looks like this then: zerker/streetfighter, herald, psion/wizard or psion/priest of wael and the mysterious 4th. Now:

- I have no idea how to actually play streetfighter, which is, I believe, centered around maintaining bloodied status. I wonder if I will suffer from gear competition between streetfighter and helwalker. You know, all these items that makes you harder to kill the lower you go.

- Any comments on psion/wizard vs psion/priest of Wael? The latter fits better thematically - a "pacifist" (de)buffer/CCer, but with the team as it looks like at the moment, I can easily forfeit having a priest, but having no wizard at all doesn't feel comfortable. But that's probably just old conditioning, it's not D&D with Breach and True Sight.

- As for the 4th, I considered ancient/helwalker, but as far as I've read other threads it seems like he's pretty much full time caster and monk is there mostly for MIG and INT buff from Helwalker and Duality, respectively, correct? What would be stat priorities there, without minmaxing? I'd pressume something like 16 for MIG and INT, 14 for PER, 10 the rest.

As far as I've read other threads, I suspect that helwalker/ancient is more full-time caster than anything else and monk is added for buffing MIG with Helwalker and INT with Duality, correct? What's recommended stats distribution? I am not a minmaxer, but I guess the point to prioritize MIG and INT, then the rest needs to go to precious PER. I don't think I can take anything from CON with helwalker being helwalker. If I don't dump RES then there's no extra points for DEX. MIG 16/CON 10/DEX 10/PER 14/INT 16/ RES 10 then?

Any comments on the psion/priest of Wael vs psion/wizard? I'd rather not go troubadour, because I have the chanter in herald already (also, probably troubadour) and I need to fulfil the diversity quota. Depending on the choice I will determine the 4th character. Maybe aforementioned helwalker/ancient, maybe something more martial. I was thinking also about some MartialClass/Wizard, but I am under impression that it's all mostly buffs+citzal.

Now to tune them to synchronize best... Well, there's always respec.  

By the way, I was about to switch difficulty to Veteran after a very underwhelming encounter with Concelhaut, but I started BoW soon after and man, this is something else. First I swapped Maia for Ydwin (underequipped and -leveled) and barely won the fight with The Postman Lizard. I kept reading that it teaches you interrupt mechanic. It taught me weapon modals. Then I swapped Xoti for Vatnir and thank you very much, I got my ass almost handed to me in both encounters on the glacier. Vatnir your lackluster buffs and frost spells, many thanks, much help, very damage. I reloaded, respecced the guy and now it's a completely different story. A tale to lift the spirits of people of little faith.

[thelee]

4 hours ago, Fruney said:

By the way, I was about to switch difficulty to Veteran after a very underwhelming encounter with Concelhaut, but I started BoW soon after and man, this is something else.

yeah IMO the DLC are much more tuned for challenge than the main game. you can kinda brute force the main game especially on lower difficulties, but you really need some mastery of game mechanics to help manage the DLC. even though BoW is theoretically an early teens-level DLC based on how many skulls I see for my party level, on PotD especially there are some parts of it (the ones with the burning archers) that are just absolute wrecking balls in difficulty if you're not prepared for it.

[dgray62]

You might consider poison/blood mage, so that you'll have renewable resources for both classes. As for the helwalker/ancient, you'll want high PER and DEX to facilitate spell casting. You can keep STR and INT flat since you'll get the nice +10 from helwalker. You can dump RES if you want, but I'd personally keep it flat too. You might want to boost CON a bit too so that you're not one-shotted by crits. As for streetfighter, it is a rather fiddly class and is not my favorite to play. The easiest way to do streetfighter is to use the blunderbuss modal to get flanked. You might consider the streetfighter/priest of wael build that @thelee included in their excellent guide.

Edited December 19, 2023 by dgray62
additional info.

[Constentin Lévine]

There is a nice way to be  melee-caster without the impression to use only one of the two involved classes instead of both if you want : Multiclassed Chanter as frontliner use chants-invocations-melee skills in fully potential, and is fun to play (I think).

Barbarian (Mage Slayer) + Chanter with Effort/Frostseeker ;

Barbarian (Berserer) + Chanter (Beckoner or Troubadour) with Grave Calling + sellies ;

Monk + Chanter  with Her Revenge and potentially +15%+15%+20% lash in melee ;

Rogue + Chanter as CC (fast and interrupting).

I know you plan to play Herald but as support, it is not the same thing for Chanter.

Excepted for the supporting chant At the Sight, at first level : +10 Fortitude is great even at end game in my concern (Might and Con are always my lower stats for my general party).

 

 

[Fruney]

Analysis paralysis.

Thanks a lot guys. I still have my current run to finalize and a lot of time to think while doing certain works around the house in the coming weeks, so maybe I will come to some decisions. I haven't played anything in ages and dammit, Deadfire's so good and now that I am lvl ~16 and playing BoW and so many pretty uniques drop left and right and fit noone in my party (not that I haven't got a stash full of yellow treasures before. And I know well more are to come). I don't really have anybody to wear all these shiny shield. The Frozen Elf Suit begs to be worn with all the accessories. Also, shoutout to the guy that said you can loot the floating body in the soul of St. Waidwen quest. Mmm, tasty! By the way, are disengagement attacks triggered when enemies are pulled-of-eora or llengrath-staffed out of tank's melee range? 

[dgray62]

To add to the paralysis, @Constentin Lévine's suggestion of a monk + chanter is an excellent idea. I have really enjoyed playing cantors. If you're interested, I'd suggest you check out @Powerotti's Rumbling Boar build. One cure for the paralysis is to replay the game multiple times, something I've been doing for the past few years.

[Fruney]

Quite interesting indeed, thank you. I have certain ideas in mind and I am looking for a way to express it via Deadfire's system and at the same time not duplicate story companions and have a overall fun party. Hence at the moment I am gravitating towards maybe druid/stalker instead of barb/x to put an accent on the animal theme instead of fury. This will allow me to go barb/wizard for the most fuzzy of the chars - so far seems fun and will allow me to explore the unexplored side of wizard. Herald is herald, I can't help it. Then psion will probably get priest of wael multi, cuz wizard is taken by the barb. Let's see.

Sure, I am tempted replay the game over and over, but I am a man of permanent time shortage.  Totally different story party (with different classes and relationship development, etc. And I will be yet to see pure chanter and pure druid in action, which is doable with story companions) is an obvious idea, another would be to play, say, 3 man party, but highly synergistic, very dependant on each other for setups. By the way, I have an issue with late game builds, because I enjoy the voyage more than the destination - much better to get the core items early and observe steady growth and the strategy paying off more with each level than struggle 80% of the game to get some powerplay gimmicky statstick on which the whole thing revolves. Not that's not fun, much appreciated and fun intellectual endeavour to craft such builds, but not worth the investment for me.

Anyway, when I will be find worthy of posting without Mod's supervision?  

Edit: Hah, just did exactly that, I am an obsidian adult now!

Edit 2: Seriously tempted by the Warlock, indeed. And to build him around https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Zandethus'_Dragon-Scaled_Grimoire - nice selection of self-centered (he he) spells for a dude that leaps in the middle of enemy ranks (unique Zandethus' Draconic Fury looks really good). Fire, as cliche as it is, is alright to try to follow as a general theme. I was leaning towards 2-handed style and maybe Willbreaker/Darryn, but with this fire focus I feel kind of bound to go Magran's favour. 

EDit 3: Obviously, I was not the first one to have this idea: 

 Cheers mate!  

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fruney

[thelee]

On 12/20/2023 at 2:43 AM, Fruney said:

By the way, are disengagement attacks triggered when enemies are pulled-of-eora or llengrath-staffed out of tank's melee range? 

nope. a push or pull temporarily grants immunity to disengagement... importantly that immunity actually lasts a little bit after the push or push/pull effect ends. poorly used, this can actually make it harder to manage/control combat for that reason.

 

however, when terrified, characters are not granted immunity to disengagement, so you can do tons of damage by terrifying melee-engaged enemies (unfortunately the same is true for you, though enemies that terrify are rather rare).

Edited December 21, 2023 by thelee

[Constentin Lévine]

And Engagement, as great CC effect, is more easy to manage than Disengagement. Of course you can make some really efficient builds about these attacks (especially about to take disengagement attacks) but it is not commun for enemies to break the engagement (excepted while under Swift insp). So they usually stay immobilized for free.

[Fruney]

Happy New Year, guys!

Several real-life things taken over Deadfire completely, but I came to say that I've just finished BoW with a party on lvls 16-17 and now I am steamrolling everything despite playing with upscaling. Well, seems like chaotic (first) playthroughts is a price one has to sometimes pay for the open-wordly feel. Guess I am switching to veteran finally. 

[Fruney]

In other thread I realized that berserker/streetfighter seems to be intended for ranged. I had melee dual-wielding in mind, but then - how much babysitting would this guy need? Full time Barring Death's Door?  

Edited January 27 by Fruney

[Boeroer]

On 12/14/2023 at 1:26 PM, Boeroer said:

Imo Berserker/Streetfighter with dual daggers (Lover's Embrace + Pukestabber) with all the speedup gear is mad fun - also because it's a dance on a razor's edge. Very good dps and fun, but also goes down very quickly if you don't pay attention. With a good healer it's manageable, just don't use that character to jump into the fray. Better to deal with single foes like casters and so on (using mobility abilities like Escape and Leap).

 

36 minutes ago, Fruney said:

In other thread I realized that berserker/streetfighter seems to be intended for ranged. I had melee dual-wielding in mind, but then - how much babysitting would this guy need? Full time Barring Death's Door?  

See above. If you go for high CON and have a decent healer it is manageable. Do not drop CON and max MIG though. This will make you extremely squishy at higher levels. the Berserker's self dmaage scales rather steeply and it also gets influenced by your own MIG. Streetfighter/Berserker gets lots of damage bonuses, high MIG isn't even noticable with weapon damage - so you might es well leave it at 10 (will get +5 from Frenzy anyway). High CON sounds suboptimal - but it really helps in this case. Barbs have a bigger health pool from the beginning so that works well with the bonus from CON. Last time I ideed maxed CON on a Berserker/Helwalker (same problems as Berserker/Streetfighter, maybe even more so) and also used Tough (the passive ability) and a Greater Amulet of Health. It made a hell of a difference (related to babysitting) compared to low CON/high MIG. I know raising CON isn't popular (I also usually don't) but in this case I recommend it.

Of course Barring Death's Door and lots of constant healing also works. Then you can make that guy a complete glascannon. But that's a lot more micromanagement.

Edited January 27 by Boeroer

[Fruney]

Right, I completely forgot about it and didn't reread. 

I am no mixmaxer and you guys made me aware about the MIG "penalty" for zerker, so I'd go, say, MIG 10, CON 8 or 10. Also I think that might not be a world of difference for early game Essence Interrupting vs later game dual-wielding build-wise. And respecc is always a possibility. 

Actually, I'd suspect that BDD has very limitted application on Berserker, since you cannot see health. It may be great situationally - Frenzy ends, Zerker is Near Death -> BDD -> new Frenzy. Don't you think? 

Also, since I am currently testing waters by running a PotD party inspired by my other thread (so, paladin and chanter heavy) and I have a holy slayer there who fulfills more-less the same function as intended for this Marauder, maybe I will go Lover's Embrace on that guy and go 2-handed for zerker here for a change, especially that I realized that the herald here would need probably need to be quite offensive, Kind Wayfarer fits nicely and in such case it's better to dual wield. Also, another interesting realization from that run is that I assumed psion/whatever implies defensive use, but in fact nobody cares much for my troubadour/psion in that run, so I can go full ham offensive with abilities.

[Boeroer]

16 hours ago, Fruney said:

I am no mixmaxer and you guys made me aware about the MIG "penalty" for zerker, so I'd go, say, MIG 10, CON 8 or 10. Also I think that might not be a world of difference for early game Essence Interrupting vs later game dual-wielding build-wise. And respecc is always a possibility. 

I you plan to use a Berserker/Streetfighter at range then of course a more squishy build is easier to maintain because it doesn't get attacked so much. I was thinking about melee.
I must say that while a Berserker/Streefighter with Essence Interrupter is very good in the early game it tends to become a bit boring later on. Melee is more interesting in this case (imo). SO I think retraining would be good later. But you cannot retrain attributes so I personally would still invest in CON - although you won't need that with a ranged early game and it will actually prevent you from becoming blooded from one Frenzy cast (because in the early game the self damage is low but the health would be quite high). 

16 hours ago, Fruney said:

Actually, I'd suspect that BDD has very limitted application on Berserker, since you cannot see health. It may be great situationally - Frenzy ends, Zerker is Near Death -> BDD -> new Frenzy. Don't you think? 

 Once you pick "Blooded" on the Berserker you can always see once you hit <50% health which is a rel. convenient indicator. Also your Streetfighter passive will change from "Looking for a Fight" to "Heating Up" as soon as you get bloodied. And then later there are items that activate when you get near death which would add another indicator for your health even though it's concealed. So while it's not possible to see the actual health number it's still possible to (roughly) know how much health there's left.

16 hours ago, Fruney said:

maybe I will go Lover's Embrace on that guy and go 2-handed for zerker here for a change

Sure - I recommend Morning Stars: great synergy with the Morning Star modal "Body Blows" and the Berserker's Brute Force, also the 2 (cood) unique morning stars in the game don't come late. Pollaxe would also be cool. There's a nice soulbound pollaxe with a lightning/storm theme that's obtainable early and works well with Barbarians. Both Morning Star and Pollaxe have the advantage of dual damage types and good penetration. 

 

[Fruney]

As I said, I am no minmaxer, so I'd go medium con anyway. 

Clever trick with item effects. I need to check it. So far I don't need to pay attantion to it, so I don't.  

Yeah, that's exactly why I wanted a 2-handed guy in the party - Willbreaker and, if Barb - also Darryn's. For this one it fit me thematically to dual wield two preferably fast weapons, but I can switch to see Darryn's in action. I have it on my current run on Tekehu, but that's just a stat stick.

By the way, I probably go SC druid and maybe /wizard instead of /priest (of Wael) for psion. Priest, I think, would fit me better, but I am playing FS at the moment and dammit those gods!