Eder Swashbuckler build help

[SenSx]

Hello,

I'm back with a new build question,vthis time concerning Eder Swashbuckler.

He is currently my tank, and my PC is rogue/cipher.

I know fighter/rogue can be really good with dual wield, but that is alwready the case of my rogue, and I wound find it redundant.

I wish to make him use a shield, and be more tank than dps, and yet still have him deal some damage thanks to the rogue part...

But the bash shields seem bad so that is probably not an option.

I don't really know what to do with him...

[Boeroer]

Hi,

I almost always build Edér as my party's swashbuckler "offensive debuffing" tank somewhat like this (this is just an unordered list and maybe I even put too many abilities there):

 (would be better with an Unbroken/Streetfighter instead of Edér but also works with him)

• large shield + modal* - the goal is to use Cadhu Scalth Luminous Harmony and max Athletics and Metaphysics* (if it's too weird for you to raise Metaphysics on a doofus such as Edér I'd go for Bronlar's Phalanx instead). engagement slots: 1
• club + modal - the goal is to use Kapana Taga with its enchantments Champion's Relic and Unblockable. Before that I use Shattered Vengeance. engagement slots: 3
• brigandine - the goal is to use Reckless Brigande with its enchantment Into the Breach. engagement slots: 4
• Upright Captain's Belt - for the immunity to push & pull effects
• Escape (important to be able to move even when the large shield modal is active)
• Weapon & Shield Style*
• Mob Stance -  at the beginning, before upgrading the stance and before getting the engagement gear I'll use Defender Stance though. 
• Hold the Line. engagement slots: 5 - that's enough
• White Witch mask - this is one of the few helmets that matches the style of Kapana Taga+Cadhu Scalth+Reckless Brigandine and that's the only reason I pick this. Later the Champion's Helmet from SSS is the top choice. Could pick any other good headger and just hide the helmet if it looks bad. 
• Tactical Barrage (because Edér's INT is low and his durations so short otherwise)
• Determination
• Entonia Signet Ring
• deflection gear
• Refreshing Defense
• Riposte
• Confident Aim
• Superior Deflection
• Armored Grace
• Adept Evasion*
• Persistent Distraction
• Deep Wounds
• Slippery Mind
• Deathblows
• if there's still room I'd use stuff like Bear's Fortitude and stuff
• a pet like Abraham

One goal is to make him a tank that needs almost no attention (except at the start of the encounter) but can still contribute besides tanking via "passive" debuffing and dealing (some) damage. 

Edér will be almost invulnerable to AoE attacks (see shield modal + Cadhu Scalth + Adept Evasion) so you can use him to tank & bind a lot of enemies and then shower them with all the friendly-fire AoE stuff your party has to offer without affecting Edér much (if at all). Even Pull of Eora has no effect on him if you give him the Upright Captain's Belt. I usually approach the enemies with Edér as the only visible party member, hit shield modal, Tactical Barrage and Refreshing Defense, "escape" into the mob's center and then let him do his thing rel. unattended.
And while all the enemies concentrate on him I will buff the party's ACC and then start bombarding the enemies around him with debuffs/CC and then damage. This way you can make sure that he will always engage up to 5 enemies right away. 

Those 5 engagements makes him quite fast for a guy in a Brigandine (Mob Stance, Reckless Brigandine) which adds to the speed advantage he gets from Abraham and Armored Grace. He will have up to +25 melee accuracy by his own (Tactical Barrage + Kapana Taga's enchantment Unblockable) which makes it easy for him to hit enemies with the club - which lowers their Will by 25. On top of that he will flank and distract the engaged enemies just by engaging them which also debuffs their defenses and also their armor (there's no defense against Persistant Distraction). Ripostes also will apply the effect of the club modal by the way.

Works every time for me. He isn't sturdy enough to facetank megabosses this way - but anything else he will handle fine as long as he has support from the party every now and then.

He could be made more defensively of course and I guess you wouldn't really notice in terms of offensive prowess of your party overall - because his damage-dealing is nice for a tank - but it isn't enormous. But I think he's more interesting this way. And advantage is that if he should be the last man standing he can end the fight on his own. Superdefensive tanks sometimes struggle to deal enough damage to finish an encounter on their own (in a reasonable amount of time). 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Boeroer

[Ivanfyodorovich]

@Boeroer beat me to the punch, with a much better overview of Swashbuckler Eder. Basically go with his build for guaranteed success.

If you want to tinker a little, I've had fun keeping Eder equipped with a Medium Shield and use the Block modal ability most of the time. It gives 30% resist to weapon attacks, which count as a miss for the purposes of triggering Riposte. Because Eder doesn't have all of the Deflection buffs that some other versions of this build could get (Trickster, etc.), I think the modal makes him a little bit tougher vs weapon attacks (though you lose the nice AoE damage reduction from the Large Shield). Another way to play this is to use both and switch as needed. 

If you are using a Medium Shield, I like using Magran's Blessing, because it makes Eder a little more responsive once you are able to pick up Two Weapon Style (Lowers his recovery quite a bit on weapon attacks). Note, you can have both Weapon & Shield Style AND Two Weapon Style with this setup. One downside here is that you are hitting less often with your Main Hand weapon, which might matter if it has a proc you really want. 

Speaking of procs you might want, a synergy I found in my last run was giving Eder Magistrate's Cudgel. The debuff applies on every hit and grants your entire party a stacking (because it works like Hunters Mark) +10 accuracy vs. the target for a generous 30 seconds. This can be applied to multiple enemies quickly via Riposte, and is just such a huge boost, especially on harder difficulties. 

[SenSx]

Oh ok thanks a lot guys I'll think about all of these.

The thing is, I wanted to give Rekke that Reckless brigandine, I made him a pure fighter with one handed passive skill, if it works (I will switch to Rekke sometimes, and I don't really know what to do either with him).

 

And well, would have loved Eder to resist to Megabosses as well 

 

Also, I red the bashing shields like Magram shield are not good.

Even if dual wield works, the damages of the shield are so low that it lowers dps.

A character with an other shield that does not bash attack and no dual wield would deal more damage.

[yorname]

Bashing shields results in slightly less damage, but you are looking at a much shorter recovery time, so if something goes wrong, you don't have to wait for a whole 4s to use Second Wind.

 

You can use mods to make bashing shields scale with enchantment so their PEN is usable.

 

The thing about megabosses is, a paladin has at least 3 more AR than fighter, and it matters a lot when tanking megabosses, which are literally, megabosses, you know, you're not supposed to tank them without a dedicated build.

Edited December 28, 2023 by yorname

[yorname]

To be more specific, among 4 megabosses:

Colossal: you can't tank it anyway

Mage: you don't need to tank it

Spider: it will eventually reliably crit you, anyone wearing heaviest armor and large shield is good enough. Also you can't tank it in melee.

Slime: only thing you can tank in a normal way, and you really need the extra AR.

Fighter is just not a great tank for extremely long fights. It's a supportive class for your other side of multiclass. As a swashbuckler the best role is tanking weaker enemies and deal damage.

[thelee]

3 hours ago, yorname said:

Bashing shields results in slightly less damage, but you are looking at a much shorter recovery time, so if something goes wrong, you don't have to wait for a whole 4s to use Second Wind.

the one exception to this is tuolito's palm if you have monastic unarmed training, i crunched some numbers in a spreadsheet relatively recently.

you get reduced recovery time AND you do actually get a DPS boost. the actual DPS boost goes down the better your mainhand weapon, but monastic unarmed training makes the shield bash so un-bad (and it actually scales up, if slowly) that it's a net positive for most reasonable cases.

 

edit: also i wouldn't sleep on the +1 engagement you get. downside to straight-up 2w is you lack battlefield control w/out investing ability points or getting specific +engagement items (like a spear). fighter especially has mob stance which can be real good but really needs a lot of engagement, so a bashing shield gets you engagement w/out completley nuking your dps like a normal shield.

Edited December 28, 2023 by thelee

[SenSx]

39 minutes ago, thelee said:

the one exception to this is tuolito's palm if you have monastic unarmed training, i crunched some numbers in a spreadsheet relatively recently.

you get reduced recovery time AND you do actually get a DPS boost. the actual DPS boost goes down the better your mainhand weapon, but monastic unarmed training makes the shield bash so un-bad (and it actually scales up, if slowly) that it's a net positive for most reasonable cases.

 

edit: also i wouldn't sleep on the +1 engagement you get. downside to straight-up 2w is you lack battlefield control w/out investing ability points or getting specific +engagement items (like a spear). fighter especially has mob stance which can be real good but really needs a lot of engagement, so a bashing shield gets you engagement w/out completley nuking your dps like a normal shield.

That seems interesting.

Not for Eder because he won't be fighting with fists, but maybe for Xoti ?

I'm playing her unarmed because I'm not a big fan of her weapon and lantern (keeping it for 2nd weapon slot if she needs pierce/slash damage or better healing with the lantern).

But maybe I can play her with one fist and tuolito's palm in the other hand ?

[thelee]

On 12/28/2023 at 12:18 PM, SenSx said:

That seems interesting.

Not for Eder because he won't be fighting with fists, but maybe for Xoti ?

I'm playing her unarmed because I'm not a big fan of her weapon and lantern (keeping it for 2nd weapon slot if she needs pierce/slash damage or better healing with the lantern).

But maybe I can play her with one fist and tuolito's palm in the other hand ?

yeah, it'd be better than what i was saying because monk fist scaling is better than monastic unarmed training. that's how i play xoti as a monk or monk/priest. even if you did keep her sickle, tuolito's palm would still scale pretty well as monk/contemplative.

i don't mind the lantern that much on a contemplative though because it can be a way to restore mortification available in the early game (it hurts monk dps quite a bit, but as priest you get that tier 1 harvest spell that is very good at finishing enemies off)

Edited January 2 by thelee

[SenSx]

That settles it then, I think I'll have Xoti contemplative with fist + tuolito's palm (slightly less dps than two fists but better defense) and sickle and lanterne when she needs to deal pierce or slash damage or use priest spells.

 

As for Eder, I'm still not convinced with the Magram shield or anyother bash shield...

From what I understand it will only makes his active abilities faster, but I don't think I'd be using much of them, so far crippling strike and fatal blow when needed, bearly use knockdown (I should use it more), I don't know if penetrating strike is worth it, and second wind...

 

[thelee]

40 minutes ago, SenSx said:

As for Eder, I'm still not convinced with the Magram shield or anyother bash shield...

From what I understand it will only makes his active abilities faster, but I don't think I'd be using much of them, so far crippling strike and fatal blow when needed, bearly use knockdown (I should use it more), I don't know if penetrating strike is worth it, and second wind...

it's not just about making his active abilities faster, it's about making him entirely more responsive. if you're not playing RTWP it doesn't matter. but in RTWP, a medium-armor slow-weapon 1h will take 5.3s to recover (assuming +35% medium armor, eder's starting 11 dex). If you're 1.5s into recovering during which you get brought to near death, you have to wait another 3.8s before you can do anything else, like Second Wind or potions or whatever.

A medium-armor Eder using magran's blessing and 2w style will take 3.1s (+35% medium armor, -30% dual wielding, -15% two weapon style, eder's starting 11 dex) with either slow weapon or shield. In the same scenario, if you're 1.5s into recovering when something happens, you now only have to wait 1.6s to do anything else. That is a massive improvement in reactivity, and you'll readily notice it in hard fights - the second eder might do a little less damage, but you'll be able to respond quicker to changing circumstances (for me it mostly means needing to use a second wind or drink a healing potion).

the situation is more extreme when interrupts are involved. when interrupted, you end up having to recover for 2s. if you get interrupted multiple times, then that stacks. the only upper limit to this is your recovery time. the first eder can easily become extremely sluggish in a fight where interrupts are involved. extremely common with rogue-type enemies, who also like to dual-wield; a successful dual-wielded crippling strike will knock the first eder's recover back 4s. the second eder can only ever be knocked back at most by 3.1s, a significant improvement in interrupt resiliency. i.e., if both eders had 1.5s left before their next action (again, maybe a queued Second Wind to heal) and got hit by a dual-wielded rogue's interrupt, the first eder would reset completely to 5.3s recovery, whereas the second eder would get back to 3.1s; you only lost 1.6s versus losing almost the full 4s.

on especially harder potd fights you can definitely be in a situation where the first eder barely gets to do anything at all before getting knocked out. general responsiveness is a huge win.

 

edit: this is also why reloading ranged weapons are very good, even though they come with significant downsides compared to bows and implements. being able to do anything else in the middle of reloading versus having to wait for a recovery period is an extremely huge advantage in a complex fight.

Edited January 2 by thelee

[Boeroer]

4 hours ago, thelee said:

edit: this is also why reloading ranged weapons are very good, even though they come with significant downsides compared to bows and implements. being able to do anything else in the middle of reloading versus having to wait for a recovery period is an extremely huge advantage in a complex fight.

This is why my dual pistol SC Kind Wayfarer with two weapon style AND rushed reload was so useful despite the ACC drop: crazy good responsiveness because the reloading was already very fast - but if even that was not fast enough I could just cancel the reloading process and react instantly. That and the party healing was done on the fly via White Flames while shooting...

[SenSx]

Ok thanks I'll think about it then.

I still don't know if I go medium or heavy armor for Eder.

I wanted to make Rekke the pure fighter one handed with fast recovery, he might get the reckless brigandine.

 

It's a bit a struggle because I would like to know which heavy armor Eder can have and still deal some damage as a fighter/rogue.

Patinated plate is great but slow, I can get it to -40 speed instead of -70 with enchant and dual wield.

 

 

 

[thelee]

6 hours ago, SenSx said:

Ok thanks I'll think about it then.

I still don't know if I go medium or heavy armor for Eder.

I wanted to make Rekke the pure fighter one handed with fast recovery, he might get the reckless brigandine.

 

It's a bit a struggle because I would like to know which heavy armor Eder can have and still deal some damage as a fighter/rogue.

depends a little bit on what difficulty you play and what settings.

IM(very extensive)E, on potd with upscaling, heavy armor is generally just a niche choice regardless of character build:

• on POTD enemies start with such huge boosts to PEN that the bonus AR from heavy armor doesn't typically help mitigate damage, but you suffer a significantly larger recovery penalty all the time
• further hurts that you getting magical heavy armor is very slow, so it doesn't keep up with enemy scaling
• further hurts that you can easily steal an exceptional medium armor as soon as you land on nekataka, which actually gives you better than normal heavy armor protection[1], for less recovery penalty, at a time when normal heavy armor is hard to come by
• [1] even with equal-enchantment medium and heavy armor, heavy armor has weaknesses as bad as medium armor (medium armor has 7 AR by default, but only 5AR against two types. heavy armor goes up to 9AR, but still only 5AR against two types).
• on top of that, the most common heavy armor at first is brigandine, which has a weakness to pierce. this is actually pretty brutal - pierce is very common, and notably a major source of ranged damage. normal breast plate (medium armor) will actually probably give you better all-around protection because it doesn't have pierce as a weakness.

it's basically not until you stat finding exceptional plate armor (which doesn't have a pierce weakness) that the tough defense really comes online, but at the same time you're starting to find great medium armor as well. magnera's chain is fantastic medium armor because you can enchant it to basically cover every weakness possible, and it's extra tough against pierce damage. contender's armor can be enchanted to give an unconditional +1 AR, which puts it in spitting distance of heavy armor, but with less vulnerable weaknesses and faster recovery time.

tl;dr - on POTD go with medium armor unless you have a very specific synergy in mind (patina's plate is useful for a sc barbarian taking advantage of retaliation - you're going to get hit tons so the stun effect on enemies can be a huge survivability boost). on normal/veteran, heavy armor is a better survivability boost, but i would only switch to using heavy if you're actually finding survivability in combat difficult, and even then mostly rely on plate armor (the "actually" is important because you might be able to be just as survivable in combat with decently-enchanted medium armor). tl;tl;dr: - wait to see how it plays out in-game.

Edited January 3 by thelee

[thelee]

6 hours ago, SenSx said:

Patinated plate is great but slow, I can get it to -40 speed instead of -70 with enchant and dual wield.

nit-picky follow-up post

i would be very careful about how you talk about maluses. "-70 speed" is very different  with deadfire math from "+70% recovery time penalty", which is what patinated plate actually is (+55% from heavy armor and additional +15% from malus).

also i'm not sure about your math. do you know about deadfire's inversion math? with the enchant that grants -15% recovery time bonus and 2w style + dual wield, you actually take a +70% recovery time penalty and get it down to a -7% recovery time bonus. (dual-wielding grants you a -30% recovery time bonus, and 2w style grants you a further -15% recovery time bonus. the -15% recovery time bonus from the enchant doesn't simply take away 15% from the recovery penalty because of inversions, it actually overpowers it.)

Edited January 3 by thelee

[Kaylon]

Eder doesn't need heavy armor if he's not the main tank. The best for him is Devil of Caroc's armor which, combined with Armored Grace (and Nalvi if you unlock his pet slot), removes the armor recovery penalty. Works Well with Fair Favor, Tarn's Respite and gloves with procs on crit.

[mjo2138]

9 minutes ago, thelee said:

i would be very careful about how you talk about maluses. "-70 speed" is very different  with deadfire math from "+70% recovery time penalty", which is what patinated plate actually is (+55% from heavy armor and additional +15% from malus).

also i'm not sure about your math. do you know about deadfire's inversion math? with the enchant that grants -15% recovery time bonus and 2w style + dual wield, you actually get it down to a -7% recovery time bonus. (dual-wielding grants you a -30% recovery time bonus, and 2w style grants you a further -15% recovery time bonus. the -15% recovery time bonus from the enchant doesn't simply take away 15% from the recovery penalty because of inversions.)

So essentially, you agree that Painted Plate's +2 AR upgrade is not worth it, considering how slow you are? The only ideas that come to mind would be:

• a Paladin/Rogue Holy Slayer that uses Offensive Parry on Whispers of the Endless path (WoTEP) along with Riposte (I think offensive parry AND riposte could theoretically proc at the same time) 
• Paladin/Wizard which insane Deflection who does not need to "worry" about attack speed, since their role involving buffing to the high heavens ,being surronded my mobs, and then perhaps relying on Tactical Meld to get +3 engagements
• Streetfighter/X -- I am not a math major (hehe) but the attack speed bonus of streetfighter may greatly negate the malus of painted plate. Perhaps with Bloodlust from a barbarian, this is even less. 

[thelee]

21 minutes ago, mjo2138 said:

So essentially, you agree that Painted Plate's +2 AR upgrade is not worth it, considering how slow you are? The only ideas that come to mind would be:

i'm more saying that you need to have something specific in mind. i mentioned SC barbarian retaliation because that's not a "tank," that's someone who blindly charges in and aggros as many enemies as possible because they want to get critically hit by bad guys. if you don't have something specific in mind, you're probably better off with well-enchanted medium armors. Eder (and other fighters) also get automatic recovery for a while, which makes medium armor extremely viable at all stages even as tank (though i'd get a shield in that situation, back to that conundrum).

 

Quote

• a Paladin/Rogue Holy Slayer that uses Offensive Parry on Whispers of the Endless path (WoTEP) along with Riposte (I think offensive parry AND riposte could theoretically proc at the same time) 
• Paladin/Wizard which insane Deflection who does not need to "worry" about attack speed, since their role involving buffing to the high heavens ,being surronded my mobs, and then perhaps relying on Tactical Meld to get +3 engagements
• Streetfighter/X -- I am not a math major (hehe) but the attack speed bonus of streetfighter may greatly negate the malus of painted plate. Perhaps with Bloodlust from a barbarian, this is even less. 

• offensive parry/riposte only procs on misses, so AR is largely not important for riposte strategies. in fact you're better off with medium armor bc there's a unique medium armor that gives you +deflection that scales on your intimidation.
• same as above, if you have insane deflection why bother with AR? you can just ignore attacks and put on a robe or something for amazing speed.
• you could do this, but you're honestly nerfing the best part of streetfighter, which is just stupid fast speed. in addition, many people find it easy to trigger streetfighter bonuses using a blinding effect like chill fog - this only works because the streetfighter bonus is so huge that it overwhelms the malus from chill fog. you add a huge additional malus from patinated plate to that and you lose a lot of the point of being a streetfighter.

Edited January 3 by thelee

[SenSx]

13 hours ago, thelee said:

nit-picky follow-up post

i would be very careful about how you talk about maluses. "-70 speed" is very different  with deadfire math from "+70% recovery time penalty", which is what patinated plate actually is (+55% from heavy armor and additional +15% from malus).

also i'm not sure about your math. do you know about deadfire's inversion math? with the enchant that grants -15% recovery time bonus and 2w style + dual wield, you actually take a +70% recovery time penalty and get it down to a -7% recovery time bonus. (dual-wielding grants you a -30% recovery time bonus, and 2w style grants you a further -15% recovery time bonus. the -15% recovery time bonus from the enchant doesn't simply take away 15% from the recovery penalty because of inversions, it actually overpowers it.)

Must admit I did not really get it.

So the recovery of Patinated plate  gors from +70% to -7% ?

It's great, it makes it super fast ?

[Kaylon]

Without Blade Cascade you'll be always slower than someone using medium armor. The Patinated plate is meant for tanks because it really cripples your dps - Pallegina would make better use of it.

[SenSx]

Pallegina as Herald is a better tank with Patinated plate ?

Doesn't she needs to be reactive for her heals and dps ?

[Kaylon]

Pallegina heals using chants and auras, not Lay on Hands. Her Zeal is best used for Sworn Enemy, Shared Flames or Inspired Beacon. Pallegina isn't a damage dealer, she's a support tank. If you build her well she becomes almost unkillable and can carry your party through the entire game by herself.

[thelee]

10 hours ago, SenSx said:

Must admit I did not really get it.

So the recovery of Patinated plate  gors from +70% to -7% ?

It's great, it makes it super fast ?

it's pretty complicated. if you want the gory details, you can read the pinned post in this forum, or my best attempt here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions and then a section specifically about action time and recovery: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/action-speed-recovery-time

the tl;dr is that it's the dual-wielding and 2w style that are great, because they give you tons of speed for "free." So yes, they make patinated plate tolerable, but they would make any other armor much faster. You are still suffering a lot from patinated plate, it's just that dual wielding with 2w style talent makes it a bit more bearable than if you were 1h style or weapon + shield style or 2h weapon style. but anyone who's dual wielding with 2w style would be even faster (much more so, in fact) with medium or light or no armor.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Kaylon said:

Pallegina heals using chants and auras, not Lay on Hands. Her Zeal is best used for Sworn Enemy, Shared Flames or Inspired Beacon. Pallegina isn't a damage dealer, she's a support tank. If you build her well she becomes almost unkillable and can carry your party through the entire game by herself.

i would say that lay on hands is great for occasional burst healing against something stupid happening, but upgrading lay on hands is utterly unnecessary on pallegina as a herald.

for newer players, i suspect ancient memory and zealous endurance seem like really subtle sources of healing, and numerically they do seem low, but the fact that you can keep them going for free throughout the length of an entire fight is truly astounding. chanter has even more sources of defense and sustain, but those two on a herald are easy-peasy and available early.

 

and kaylon isn't exaggerating. way back early in deadfire's history when the first two megabosses were released, i had pallegina as a herald and i basically stumbled into beating both the spider and slime because pallegina could carry my party indefinitely with her sustain and chants (and repeatable weapon summons).

Edited January 4 by thelee

[SenSx]

You mean the chanter animated weapon summon: Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death ?

It's better than the ogres ? They were good in PoE 1, even though all chanter needed in PoE 1 was The Dragon Thrashed, I wonder if it's as busted in PoE 2.

Edited January 4 by SenSx