This will be my first time playing through Pillars of Eternety (and my first time playing through a RTWP CRPG) and looking for or some good builds to fit with my party comp and to verify the builds I did choose for some will work with the party comp. Mostly looking at builds from This post

PC: Monk using Monksterlasher

Fighter: Unsure

Priest: Either Fire priest or full support

Wizard: No idea, want a caster and not melee build.

The classes I'm not entirely sure of adding or not

Chanter: Unsure, maybe Chll fog or the gunslinger

Druid: Boar build

Cipher: Soulbinders build

Maybe Ranger but most likely the other classes

Any advice would be helpful. Also I plan to use only companions.

Hello again.

If you want to play with the official companions then the Druid (Hiravias) will be a Cat build. But that's okay since it's also a great spiritshift form. If you want to use Spiritshift more than once per encounter,out should give him the soulbound scepter Gyrd Háewanes Sténes because it allows the Druid to regain one use of Spiritshift per encounter. Wildstrike Shock, Greater Wildstrike Shock, Weapon Focus Peasant, Two Weapon Style, Outlander's Frenzy (activate shortly before shifting), Heart of the Storm, Savage Attack, Apprentice's Sneak Attack. Will rip through everything while shifted... Get the Wildstrike Belt asap, it's extremely good.

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A main character like the Monksterlasher would profit from a Chanter build for Kana Rua that eventually uses Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr as main phrase in a chant (and a short one like the +1 Movement/+10 reflex phrase from level 1 that Kana Rua automatically has). The +25% burning lash from it stacks with the rest of the Monksterlasher's lashes and also gets boosted by Scion of Flame. In the early game you should only run short phrases in order to be able to summon the Phantom (pick that invocation up despite Kana already having skeletons - the phantom is way better and can save whole fights that somehow went downhill in the early game - it's that strong).

Also pick up Ancient Memory and Beloved Spirits asap.

Since a support Chanter like that doesn't need attack speed you can give him a shield (a small one will do so your accuracy won't suffer) and thick armor and use him as offtank. If you don't have a Paladin then giving him Gallant's Focus is a good idea to boost your whole party's accuracy on the fly.

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The Wizard Aloth is good as a Blaster Wizard because he's a Wood Elf (and gets distant advante as racial ability). Use implements and pick up Blast + Penetrating Blast and fitting talents (fitting Weapon Focus, Marksman, Dangerous Implements) and summon Kalakoth's Minor Blights in tougher fights (it's an AoE weapon and all AoE hits will proc AoE Blasts, leading to absurd dmg if enemies stand near to each other). Late in the game try to pick up Llengrath's Blunt Wisdom (unique weapon summon spell) because it's extremely good.

For filler fights it's nice to get a wand/scepter/rod that does something on hit/crit. Because those effects also proc off the Blast AoE. Something like Golden Gaze, Curoc's Brand and the Rod of Pale Shades (my favorite) are nice. In tougher fights it's best to summon Kalakoth's Minor Blights and later Llengrath's Blunt Wisdom.

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For the Priest (Durance) I almost always give him Inspiring Radiance first, then Inspired Flame (a talent that gives him +10 accuracy with arquebus and sword) because you will get a very early arquebus from Kana Rua and a well aimed arquebus **** here and there can make some difference in the early game. Then I pick Interdiction and Painful Interdiction because it's awesome to have some castings that you can use in very encounter. Then Weapons Focus Soldier (arquebus +6 accuracy) and then Marksman and Gunner. The main focus is still to support and buff the party, but sometimes you want to spare spells and then it's cool to be able to shoot around with some proper impact. For melee you can use Forgemaster Gloves or the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer and then summon Firebrand if melee enemies bother you. It does lots of damage per hit and it works with Inspired Flame (+10 accuracy) and Weapon Focus Soldier (+6 accuracy) so you will be pretty good with it. And it's a flaming great sword which fits a priest of Magran very well. You don't need additional talents for it.

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For Eder I like dual sabres (Sabre of the Seas asap, it's awesome) and Plate Armor, Knockdown, Bonus Knockdown, Weapon Focus Ruffian, Two Weapon Style, Disciplined Barrage, Armored Grace and later Charge. It much more fun than building him into a sword & board tank and the Knockdowns are very impactful in the early to mid game (and still good later on but then there will be a lot more options for disabling enemies so it doesn't stand out anymore). I usually end up giving him Sanguine Plate (because Frenzy + Armored Grace + dual wielding + two weapon style makes him pretty damn fast while being sturdy). I add a Blunting Belt and Shod-in-Faith boots for plenty of DR and healing.

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I don't fancy Ciphers much so I don't have any glaring recommendations. Usually a war bow Cipher is a very solid approach though.

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Make sure to give the following (relatively) early items to your party (whom they fit best) because they have a big impact early in the game:

• Shod in Faith Boots: proc 2/encounter if you get crit and grant great passive healing and that spares you a lot of healing spells. Give it to a front liner who gets attacked a lot.

• Rotfinger Gloves: the Touch of Rot spell on them is vastly(!) better than the spell from the Druid that has the same name. It is foe only and has a huge(!) AoE size. Can turn fights easily. Doesn't work against poison/disease immune enemies like vessels and spirits. I like to give it to Kana Rua because he has decent Might and Intellect which both boost the spell effect. Also chanters don't have much to do until their invocations are ready so your casting of Tough of Rot won't interfere with other actions much.

• Azureith's Stiletto: I give it to Edér early on together with the Sabre ofcthe seas. He has enormous accuracy with Disciplined Barrage and the help of Durance's Inspiring Radiance. The Jolting Touch this stiletto procs on crit does very high damage for the early game and makes many fights much easier because usually enemies hit by it die (if not right away then soon)

• Wildstrike Belt: it lifts the Druid's spiritshift damage a lot because it adds 10 points to both(!) Wildstrike lashes: Wildstrike goes up from 30% to 40% and Greater Wildstrike goes up from 15% to 25%. Combine with Heart of the Storm and they go up even further to 48% and 30% which is great.

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One talent I find extremely useful in the early game (and which stays useful later) is Aspirant's Mark. It gives you a weaker for of Nature's Mark, but in every encounter. In combination with Inspiring Radiance from the Priest you can shift the ratio of your accuracy vs. enemies' defenses a lot in every encounter. Cast Radiance first and then Aspirant's Mark and you party's accuracy is raised by 10 while the enemies deflection and reflex is lowered by 8. That's an 18 point swing in a matter of seconds. 18 points is the accuracy-equivalent of 6 character levels(!) and you can do it in every fight. Again: I like to give it to the Chanter most of times because chanters don't have mich to do otherwise until their phrase points accumulate for an invocation.

Cheers!

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

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I don't fancy Ciphers much so I don't have any glaring recommendations. Usually a war bow Cipher is a very solid approach though.

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Curious, what is it you don't like about Ciphers. Being new to the game I can't say I know too much about what they do but from my reading they build focus to cast spells which sounds slightly similar in how the Monk needs to recieve wounds to use skills (although opposite maybe?).

As for the Druid, while it still sounds cool as cat, I'm less interested in it vs. other forms (Stag sounds the most intersting) and I'll still likely run with him, but how are Ranger and Paladin played? I was trying to avoid these 2 as Ranger is generally one of my main Go To classes in games and Paladin was my first BG3 playthrough (and seems to be almost everyone runs wwith on on first playthroughts) but I do enjoy both classes. I am also a little worried adding a Ranger will increase the partry micromanagement being it has a pet also.

Thanks for the increadibly detailed reply. Looking at some of your builds has been a great help since they are so detailed.

1 hour ago, Tobimaru127 said:

Curious, what is it you don't like about Ciphers. Being new to the game I can't say I know too much about what they do but from my reading they build focus to cast spells which sounds slightly similar in how the Monk needs to recieve wounds to use skills (although opposite maybe?).

There is a big difference between Monk's and Cipher's resource mechanic: the Monk doesn't have to use any action time in order to gain wounds - he just turns the (inevitable) damage he receives into wounds. So he doesn't have to pause what he's doing in order to gain wounds, it happens at the same time he is active with other stuff.

The Cipher has to stop casting spells in order to deal weapon damage. Here the action economy is way worse. You cannot harvest your resorce on the fly, you must either spend action time harvesting resources xor use action time spending them.

Op top of that the Cipher's resource harvesting is extremely reliant on the defenses and DR of the enemy: weak enemies = easy focus gain. Tough enemies = hard focus gain. And in which fights do you actually want to have a lot of focus because they are harder? Right, the fights against tough foes. This is why Ciphers - to me - feel phenomenal againt weak mobs (or in general at lower difficulty settings where good hit quality is easier to achieve) and pretty much suck (imo) against tough foes (especially on PotD difficulty).

There are ways around it: Reaping Knives for example shifts the necessity to deal weapon damage to another party member (who wants to use melee attacks most of times anyways) so you can cast non-stop basically. But it's a late game ability.

There used to be a very potent way to harvest focus "passively" like a Monk basically: using Retaliation items/abilities. They made it so that you could automatically relatiate with a bit of pierce and/or burn damage which in turn generated focus for you. This decoupled the harvesting of focus from your own weapon attacks and allowed you to gain focus while castig and basically tanking attacks. I made a build anout this, called the Backlash Beldam. It was very powerful and so Obsidian nerfed the mechanic so that Retaltion effects no longer generated focus.

Because I play on PoTD this is a constant bother for me with Ciphers in PoE1. I don't need their bombastic performances during easy filler fights - and I'm frustrated with their lackluster performance in difficult fights. With Deadfire it's a bit different because there's the Beguiler and the Psion subclasses who both don't need to deal weapon damage in order to gain focus.

But many players don't play on PotD so they will have a lot of fun with Ciphers in all fights and that's cool.

Edited Sunday at 02:42 PM1 day by Boeroer

6 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

But many players don't play on PotD so they will have a lot of fun with Ciphers in all fights and that's cool.

Which pertains to me since I'm playing Normal. When I go into Deadfire I may try a harder mode, depending on how well I grasp RTWP or if I even enjoy it (May end up TB but we'll see). So far in the early game I'm kind of enjoying it but have a lot of auto pause settings setup.

If I recruit a companion and decide that the class they are isn't what I want how hard is it to switch out companions later? This way I could test Cipher/Ranger/Paladin/Rogue to see what is more enjoyable.

I'll research the classes a bit more as I pick them up. I can kind of figure it out on my own at least for some of the classes, The Wizard may be a bit harder to figure out what to use given the sheer amount of spells though. I'm loosely going by your suggestions and mixing This build with it to figure it out.

I don't know if I mentioned this but my ONLY experience with CRPG is BG3 and DOS 2 and have 0 experience with D&D so pretty much everything is new to me. However what made me fall in love with the genre is character building, I have always enjoyed playing RPG's of all forms and love executing intricate builds and watching characters grow, I avoided this genre until a few years ago because they were daunting, and had a few bad experiences way in the past with RTWP (I was significantly younger then) but then BG3 came out and a bunch of friends not into D&D/CRPGs started playing it so I tried it out and now I'm hooked. I can easily do my own builds for soulslikes, JRPG's, ARPG's (Diablo 2 being my favorite), but here I'm still learning so all the help you've given so far has been fantastic, thanks.

3 hours ago, Tobimaru127 said:

If I recruit a companion and decide that the class they are isn't what I want how hard is it to switch out companions later? This way I could test Cipher/Ranger/Paladin/Rogue to see what is more enjoyable.

It's no problem. You can "park" currently not used party members in your Stronghold and let them do stronghold quests so they don't fall behind on XP too much. New companions you pick up will have the same XP as you. So you are very flexible with your party composition.