PotD Party Advice

[koski]

I finished the game on a regular, NPC based run on Hard and my next intention is to min-max my way through the game with my own custom party. Currently I've been thinking of the following setup:

 

Priest (Magran) - Arquebus / Sword & Shield and Heavy Armor - Mostly using Arquebus & Ranged

Barbarian - Sword & Shield / Crossbow - Main Tank

Rogue - Arbalest / Warhammer - Mostly using Arbalest & Ranged

Druid (Wolf) - Spear (& Shield) / Hunting Bow - Early Off-Tank (With Knockdown, I don't like bear) & End Spell DPS & Ranged

Wizard - Wand/Rod - DPS &  Disabler

 

The last spot is something I am not sure of. I would like to make a Cipher as the PC due to it fitting best, but I'm not sure if the barbarian can handle another ranged member. I was hoping I could build one that might even Off-Tank late game, but I am not sure how I could pull that off. The biggest problem is that I would not want to make it into a plate wearing character.

 

Would a Kensai type Cipher be able to survive at all? And by Kensai I mean cloth or light armored, maybe with Estoc (Biting Whip) or Saber (Blunderbus synergy with talent)? I am also interested in the Mind Hunter type of gameplay (dual wielding daggers or stilettos, blunderbuss for some good starting focus), but I am guessing that also requires light armor and won't be able to Off-Tank.

 

Should I give up on the Barbarian and make a Fighter as a tank instead? Or should I maybe delegate Off-Tanking to the priest? What would you suggest as the last party member? If it is not a cipher, who would you make into the PC?

[Urthor]

Um well for starters, if you go Cipher/Barbarian/Rogue/Druid/Wizard/Priest you will have a party of 6 squishy characters and get instantly murdered, so there's that. 

 

 

You want 2 tanks in PoE, at least 1 Fighter because fighters can engage 2 more enemies than any other class which makes them far and away the best tanking class, and if you were going balls to the walls min/max you'd take 2 unkillable fighters as your best possible tanks, but your options for the 2nd tank can be a Chanter/Paladin/Monk or Barbarian/Ranger builds, those are the classes that can go into melee and take damage.

 

Ciphers can't tank lel.  Idk where you got that idea from, but they're a clothes wearing caster class who don't survive being attacked.  Melee kinda works if you engage with the two tanks then have your cipher melee attack someone who is attacking a tank, but the optimal build has 2-4 blunderbusses and penetrating shot.  

 

There's flat out no such thing as a Kensai in PoE, if you want to take damage you have to give up your ability to do damage by putting on armour and getting some DR. 

 

Priests also can't tank to save themselves, they're squishy.  All caster classes basically want to cast as fast as possible once they hit lvl 9, cast an endless string of lvl 1 spells as fast as possible while holding hatchets, not wander around in heavy armor or using any sort of weapons.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Urthor

[koski]

Um well for starters, if you go Cipher/Barbarian/Rogue/Druid/Wizard/Priest you will have a party of 6 squishy characters and get instantly murdered, so there's that. 

 

 

You want 2 tanks in PoE, at least 1 Fighter because fighters can engage 2 more enemies than any other class which makes them far and away the best tanking class, and if you were going balls to the walls min/max you'd take 2 unkillable fighters as your best possible tanks, but your options for the 2nd tank can be a Chanter/Paladin/Monk or Barbarian/Ranger builds, those are the classes that can go into melee and take damage.

 

Ciphers can't tank lel.  Idk where you got that idea from, but they're a clothes wearing caster class who don't survive being attacked.  Melee kinda works if you engage with the two tanks then have your cipher melee attack someone who is attacking a tank, but the optimal build has 2-4 blunderbusses and penetrating shot.  

 

There's flat out no such thing as a Kensai in PoE, if you want to take damage you have to give up your ability to do damage by putting on armour and getting some DR. 

 

Priests also can't tank to save themselves, they're squishy.  All caster classes basically want to cast as fast as possible once they hit lvl 9, cast an endless string of lvl 1 spells as fast as possible while holding hatchets, not wander around in heavy armor or using any sort of weapons.

 

As far as I've understood, Barbarian is not that squishy? Aside from 10 less starting deflection from start and 5 less deflection and 10 other defenses because of Wary Defender. This is assuming you're running with Cautious Attack (+10 deflection) instead. The only real downside is being able to hold 2 less opponents, but on many fights even on Hard I handled in doorways, where engaging more than 2 was not really an issue. I was hoping One Stands Alone would help reduce the numbers faster too.

 

On hard, I rarely needed a second tank in addition to the NPC Fighter, so I figured that since he was able to hold 4 targets and I was rarely left with more than 1 for Off-Tank, I would do just fine with 3+2 (Main + Off-Tank). Another option is to make the Fighter and put lower emphasis on the Off-Tanking aspect.

 

As for ciphers tanking, from what I've read you can do wonders in heavy armor with the help of Psycho Vampiric Shield and Body Attunement. Pain block can further be used to help the main tank. This is not likely the most optimal route of course, but like I mentioned before, it might be doable when the main tank can hold his own, possibly when the maximum adds you'll have to put on the Off-Tank is 1~2. What I am wondering more, is whether the damage reduction from heavy armor is the key, or if you could get by it by focusing on draining the DR and Deflection and using blind while wearing lighter armor instead. I mean successful eyestrike alone makes the enemy get -35 ACC. That should easily offset any deflection deficiencies.

 

A for priest tanking, its the same case as with barbarian. They start with 10 less base deflection and get 5 less deflection and 10 other defenses from modal. Aggrandizing Radiance can however brings this difference to 2 less all other defences and 11 less deflection (with Cautious Attack covering the remaining 10 from Wary Defender). The only real problem is the loss of speed from heavier armor. Which might or might not be a problem as I never had an issue with priest casting speed (nor did I need their spells that often). Tanking however does not exclude them from casting endless strings of level 1 spells, as long as they stand ground long enough to grab aggro.

Edited April 8, 2015 by koski

[Kelstrom]

You are talking about PotD and thinking of using tactics/classes that can work on hard.

 

You will be surprised in most fights.

 

If you want to use a Barbarian, use him for DPS you wont regret. For tanking you need someone to stop as many monsters as possible without the need to heal. The Fighter is the best option.

 

For me the ideal setup is 2-3 front line 3-4 back. When i finish my play with the premade companions on PotD i will start a new with the following classes:

 

Fighter (weapon/shield), Barbarian (estoc), Paladin (soldier specialization), which can be front and back with arquebus. The Paladin has a great utility, not only he can protect your nukers, but it can heal and disable the debuffs (which is huge), and it also giving accuracy/critical to all.

 

For the back row the Priest is mandatory for the buffs, then there are a 2 free slots for nukers. The most OP is of course the Cypher (with blunderbuss) , then maybe the Druid, but a ranged Rogue (again with blunderbuss) is not bad choice as well.

[cavemandiary]

My POTD party is:

 

Cipher(main) - Coastal Aumaua (because I hate knockdown). No explanation needed, ciphers can adapt to any situation, target many resistances

 

Chanter tank

 

Paladin tank - Pale Elf Darcozzi - basically immune to fire and cold dmg, and retaliates every attack. Allows my Wiz, druid and priest to target the surrounded paladin without damaging her. Really good against shades.

 

Priest - cc, heal, dmg

 

Druid - cc, heal, dmg

 

Wiz - cc, dmg

 

I usually just send my paladin into the fray, cast flames of devotion and painblock on her. That pretty much makes her unkillable. Have the rest of the party equipped with ranged weapons, and have chanter chant the phrase for faster reload. Use cipher to snipe stray targets going past the paladin with mental binding and rotate party. Managed to get to lvl 8 in the endless dungeon at lvl 6 with this strategy on POTD, which I am pretty happy about.

[Exoduss]

Barbarians DIe Instantly on POTD or they drop dead after Fury ends , and yes this team seems to squishy PoTD you need 2 Tanks to make tanking walls and ton of aoe for the increased enemy number , also keep in mind that : Easy Normal and Hard difference is number of enemies and nothing else , but in POTD you not only get twice the enemies of hard but also they got beefed up stats ( PoTD is the only mode where stats are changed for the enemy ) and then suddenly your tanks start dieing like flies , your melees get 1 hit , and your ranged + casters will miss a ton compared to hard , get 2 tanks mix of Fighter/Paladin/Chanter , A priest , 2 ranged 1 melee or 3 ranged if you want your life easier (Melee dpsers on POTD is just meh )

[Kelstrom]

Barbarians DIe Instantly on POTD or they drop dead after Fury ends , and yes this team seems to squishy PoTD you need 2 Tanks to make tanking walls and ton of aoe for the increased enemy number , also keep in mind that : Easy Normal and Hard difference is number of enemies and nothing else , but in POTD you not only get twice the enemies of hard but also they got beefed up stats ( PoTD is the only mode where stats are changed for the enemy ) and then suddenly your tanks start dieing like flies , your melees get 1 hit , and your ranged + casters will miss a ton compared to hard , get 2 tanks mix of Fighter/Paladin/Chanter , A priest , 2 ranged 1 melee or 3 ranged if you want your life easier (Melee dpsers on POTD is just meh )

Lol you make it sounds like the barbs are useless. They are useless if you make them glass cannons. Barbarians are DR tanks, not deflection. Most of their talents require them to go alone vs 2 or more monsters and juts pwn them. Support is key here as with every DPS class. Do you think that when a shadow teleports to your wizard/random cloth nuker and he will survive a few hits? The barb can survive more than that. All you need on the hardest fights is a that self-heal talent and maybe one heal from the paladin/priest. The fight will be over before you need to cast 2 heals.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Kelstrom

[Exoduss]

 

Barbarians DIe Instantly on POTD or they drop dead after Fury ends , and yes this team seems to squishy PoTD you need 2 Tanks to make tanking walls and ton of aoe for the increased enemy number , also keep in mind that : Easy Normal and Hard difference is number of enemies and nothing else , but in POTD you not only get twice the enemies of hard but also they got beefed up stats ( PoTD is the only mode where stats are changed for the enemy ) and then suddenly your tanks start dieing like flies , your melees get 1 hit , and your ranged + casters will miss a ton compared to hard , get 2 tanks mix of Fighter/Paladin/Chanter , A priest , 2 ranged 1 melee or 3 ranged if you want your life easier (Melee dpsers on POTD is just meh )

Lol you make it sounds like the barbs are useless. They are useless if you make them glass cannons. Barbarians are DR tanks, not deflection. Most of their talents require them to go alone vs 2 or more monsters and juts pwn them. Support is key here as with every DPS class. Do you think that when a shadow teleports to your wizard/random cloth nuker and he will survive a few hits? The barb can survive more than that. All you need on the hardest fights is a that self-heal talent and maybe one heal from the paladin/priest. The fight will be over before you need to cast 2 heals.

 

Barbarian's are not tanks in PoTD thats what i mean barb will never die if played right but for this to be true he has to never get hit , ofc you could build barb as a POTD tank that would be huge waste imo and i dont rly even mind my barb dieing after Fury on POTD fights are so AOE heavy that barbarian can simply pop furry deliver ton of aoe and go to rest mode on the ground because fight is over by that time 

[koski]

If you want to use a Barbarian, use him for DPS you wont regret. For tanking you need someone to stop as many monsters as possible without the need to heal. The Fighter is the best option.

 

Outside being able to hold 2 more monsters down than any other class, I am having a hard time seeing why fighter is so much better at tanking? Is 15 deflection really such a deal breaker? Because that (and 10 on all other defences) is what you're losing as a barbarian compared to a fighter. And the constant regen, which starts to be better in fights that last a lot longer than 30 seconds.

 

I'd love to see some numbers that demonstrate how much better 15 deflection is on a tank with say... 120~ deflection range (with fighter getting 135~).

[MaxDamage]

There you go :D

 

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/29612972887407194/D7ADE496F63C39DD3E13921ACDDAE0E20CD8B4EA/

[koski]

There you go :D

 

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/29612972887407194/D7ADE496F63C39DD3E13921ACDDAE0E20CD8B4EA/

Care to elaborate on what this graph represents exactly?

[MaxDamage]

Amount of damage and duration per attack on average depending on the diffirence between accuracy and defence. You can see how the fighters having +30 defence will be taking like 1.6 times less damage then the barbarians because they have +15 innate defence and +15 from advanced defender perk.

 

This doesnt include DR tho.

Edited April 8, 2015 by MaxDamage

[Psychevore]

 

If you want to use a Barbarian, use him for DPS you wont regret. For tanking you need someone to stop as many monsters as possible without the need to heal. The Fighter is the best option.

 

Outside being able to hold 2 more monsters down than any other class, I am having a hard time seeing why fighter is so much better at tanking? Is 15 deflection really such a deal breaker? Because that (and 10 on all other defences) is what you're losing as a barbarian compared to a fighter. And the constant regen, which starts to be better in fights that last a lot longer than 30 seconds.

 

I'd love to see some numbers that demonstrate how much better 15 deflection is on a tank with say... 120~ deflection range (with fighter getting 135~).

 

You'll notice how incredibly important holding down 2 more monsters is once you start PotD.

[eubatham]

 

If you want to use a Barbarian, use him for DPS you wont regret. For tanking you need someone to stop as many monsters as possible without the need to heal. The Fighter is the best option.

 

Outside being able to hold 2 more monsters down than any other class, I am having a hard time seeing why fighter is so much better at tanking? Is 15 deflection really such a deal breaker? Because that (and 10 on all other defences) is what you're losing as a barbarian compared to a fighter. And the constant regen, which starts to be better in fights that last a lot longer than 30 seconds.

 

I'd love to see some numbers that demonstrate how much better 15 deflection is on a tank with say... 120~ deflection range (with fighter getting 135~).

 

Fighters have access to much more passive deflection, target engagement and defense bonuses. On top of that, they can instantly regain endurance when knocked out (though this only comes into play at level 12), receive less crits and have have constant regeneration.

 

I've said it several times now, but there's really no equal to the fighter when it comes to tanking. The closest 2nd are Paladins, but even they pale in comparison to the abilities of a Fighter. If you want a tank, get a Fighter.

Edited April 8, 2015 by eubatham

[Eos]

Started my PotD playthrough today so I was in exactly the same spot as you. Here's what I cam up with

 

Tank

Fighter

 

In my oppinion the only choice here. Fighter have the highest damage avoidance (you wan't avoidance, not reduction; reduction just leaves you dead on the ground when you get unlucky with a few too many hits in a row), can tank the most mobs (and there are many mobs on PotD) and have the incredibly usefull infight endurance regeneration (start tanking with anything but a fighter and you'll see how much this increases your overall survivability in comparison to a class which' HP only know one direction to go).

 

Off-Tank

Chanter

 

Because of the increased mob density (and because sometimes mobs make smart choices about their targets) you need two tanks. Your fighter can't tank 5+ mobs alone and not always is there a door around. Chanter suit my playstyle the best. They have high deflection and average hp (or low?), which makes them a natural fit for an off-tank, their chants are perfect for supporting the group and - most importantly to me - they can switch between off-tank and support on the fly. My chanter either off-tanks some mobs wielding sword and shield chanting +saving throw/-damage songs, or he has his ranged weapon equiped standing in the middle of my DDs chanting the +attack speed/+fire damage song. All the while he summons minions to take some stress off of the main tank, create flanking for my DDs, add to the groups damage or whatever. Chanter is also one of the few hybrid classes that can play well on both offense and defense without having to put stat points into every single attribute. Granted, he doesn't deal any damage himself (2 Might, 3 Dex), but he tanks like a boss (14 Con, 19 Per, 19 Res) and increases my group's overall performance with his songs/summons which totally do not care about his stats :D

 

DPS

Rogue

Rogue

 

From my experience rogue DPS is best dps. It's ranged, it's bursty, it's highly sustainable and it's way too high. With all the sneak attack damage and the +accuracy stuff, they fell the enemies pretty quickly. Granted, they don't do well against groups of enemies, but then again the most difficult enemies are usually the ones that are big and beefy (or casters) and not the ones that are many and puny. They make sure that the most threatening targets go down quickly and to me that seems more important than to be able to breeze through big groups of trash mobs.

 

Support

Priest

Cypher

 

The priest because priests do it all: they buff, they heal, they disable, they damage (if only they could also slice and dice).

And cypher because cyphers are op :D they do everyting a wizard does, except better and more often. They are also able to dish out way too much physical damage for a class that's supposedly a caster-hybrid. Their focus generation with a blunderbuss allows you to spam their spells which have too much range, too short of a casttime, hit to well and have too strong effects. Feels a bit cheesy when you can trivialize many fights by keeping whole groups of enemies perma-prone with your cypher's level 1 spell or a single enemy perma-stunned with his level 2 spell. All the while he packs quite a punch with the +damage from whip and the chanters +attack speed/damage song.

 

So far I'm advancing quite well. The first few levels had some tougher fights, but ever since I've reached level 4 and gotten some equipment, it's been a cruise. Will be interesting to see how my relative lack of burst AoE damage will play out in the higher levels, but so far everything either dies very quickly or can be disabled/tanked long enough to be taken out one after the other.

 

Any thoughts?

 

To your party, I'd be careful with the amount of hybrids you take (because they are almost always weaker in their specific ares than a specialist) and with your reliance on buffs/debuffs. Sometimes those fail and this might make for a very tedious playthrough when you're reliable on all your spells hitting their target in order to have a solid tank.

[MaxDamage]

What do you think about this on PotD:

 

2x fighters

maxed deflection (perception/resolve), min dex and int, maxed con, rest go to might(17 might on dwarf)

 

paladin: min per/res, max dex, str, con, rest goes to INT. Paladin damage dealer. Because i want to have his abilities like aura of acc and crit but most importantly, resurrection power and liberating exhorhation.

 

wizard: as ive explained elsewhere. max res/per/int min con/might, rest goes into dex (~16)

 

2 x priest: max res/per/int, might ~10 , dex ~16. i favor cast speed above might.

priests heal, buff and revive. TWO more sources of revival.

 

three sources of revival total.

Edited April 8, 2015 by MaxDamage

[MadDemiurg]

What do you think about this on PotD:

 

2x fighters

maxed deflection (perception/resolve), min dex and int, maxed con, rest go to might(17 might on dwarf)

 

paladin: min per/res, max dex, str, con, rest goes to INT. Paladin damage dealer. Because i want to have his abilities like aura of acc and crit but most importantly, resurrection power and liberating exhorhation.

 

wizard: as ive explained elsewhere. max res/per/int min con/might, rest goes into dex (~16)

 

2 x priest: max res/per/int, might ~10 , dex ~16. i favor cast speed above might.

priests heal, buff and revive. TWO more sources of revival.

 

three sources of revival total.

That party contradicts your forum name. It should be called "Min Damage".

Edited April 8, 2015 by MadDemiurg

[MaxDamage]

He he he i didnt take cipher because cipher has bad rep and i also didnt take rogue because the paladin has more base health as well as the revive ability. Ironman and all that. Could be useful o have multiple sources of revival.

 

Also, im not a fan of mass gunline parties. I dont like this part of the game where ranged >>>>>>>>> melee. Im playing only hard atm.

Edited April 8, 2015 by MaxDamage

[MadDemiurg]

Started my PotD playthrough today so I was in exactly the same spot as you. Here's what I cam up with

 

Tank

Fighter

 

In my oppinion the only choice here. Fighter have the highest damage avoidance (you wan't avoidance, not reduction; reduction just leaves you dead on the ground when you get unlucky with a few too many hits in a row), can tank the most mobs (and there are many mobs on PotD) and have the incredibly usefull infight endurance regeneration (start tanking with anything but a fighter and you'll see how much this increases your overall survivability in comparison to a class which' HP only know one direction to go).

 

Off-Tank

Chanter

 

Because of the increased mob density (and because sometimes mobs make smart choices about their targets) you need two tanks. Your fighter can't tank 5+ mobs alone and not always is there a door around. Chanter suit my playstyle the best. They have high deflection and average hp (or low?), which makes them a natural fit for an off-tank, their chants are perfect for supporting the group and - most importantly to me - they can switch between off-tank and support on the fly. My chanter either off-tanks some mobs wielding sword and shield chanting +saving throw/-damage songs, or he has his ranged weapon equiped standing in the middle of my DDs chanting the +attack speed/+fire damage song. All the while he summons minions to take some stress off of the main tank, create flanking for my DDs, add to the groups damage or whatever. Chanter is also one of the few hybrid classes that can play well on both offense and defense without having to put stat points into every single attribute. Granted, he doesn't deal any damage himself (2 Might, 3 Dex), but he tanks like a boss (14 Con, 19 Per, 19 Res) and increases my group's overall performance with his songs/summons which totally do not care about his stats :D

 

DPS

Rogue

Rogue

 

From my experience rogue DPS is best dps. It's ranged, it's bursty, it's highly sustainable and it's way too high. With all the sneak attack damage and the +accuracy stuff, they fell the enemies pretty quickly. Granted, they don't do well against groups of enemies, but then again the most difficult enemies are usually the ones that are big and beefy (or casters) and not the ones that are many and puny. They make sure that the most threatening targets go down quickly and to me that seems more important than to be able to breeze through big groups of trash mobs.

 

Support

Priest

Cypher

 

The priest because priests do it all: they buff, they heal, they disable, they damage (if only they could also slice and dice).

And cypher because cyphers are op :D they do everyting a wizard does, except better and more often. They are also able to dish out way too much physical damage for a class that's supposedly a caster-hybrid. Their focus generation with a blunderbuss allows you to spam their spells which have too much range, too short of a casttime, hit to well and have too strong effects. Feels a bit cheesy when you can trivialize many fights by keeping whole groups of enemies perma-prone with your cypher's level 1 spell or a single enemy perma-stunned with his level 2 spell. All the while he packs quite a punch with the +damage from whip and the chanters +attack speed/damage song.

 

So far I'm advancing quite well. The first few levels had some tougher fights, but ever since I've reached level 4 and gotten some equipment, it's been a cruise. Will be interesting to see how my relative lack of burst AoE damage will play out in the higher levels, but so far everything either dies very quickly or can be disabled/tanked long enough to be taken out one after the other.

 

Any thoughts?

 

To your party, I'd be careful with the amount of hybrids you take (because they are almost always weaker in their specific ares than a specialist) and with your reliance on buffs/debuffs. Sometimes those fail and this might make for a very tedious playthrough when you're reliable on all your spells hitting their target in order to have a solid tank.

Tbh if you're taking two ranged rogues, ciphers are almost strictly better. Some case can be made for melee rogue because of reckless assault, but at range rogue single target benefits are minimal and require additional preconditions while lacking all the cc and aoe. You also severely lack aoe with this setup.

[Exoduss]

Just get 1 Ranger 1 Ranged rogue instead 2 ranged rogues , ranger will always do more damage at the start of fight than rogue , ranger slows down after u used all 4 pistols tho 

[boon]

Just get 1 Ranger 1 Ranged rogue instead 2 ranged rogues , ranger will always do more damage at the start of fight than rogue , ranger slows down after u used all 4 pistols tho 

 

Can you hot key weapon swaps? I wasn't able to figure it out.

[Eos]

 

Started my PotD playthrough today so I was in exactly the same spot as you. Here's what I cam up with

 

Tank

Fighter

 

In my oppinion the only choice here. Fighter have the highest damage avoidance (you wan't avoidance, not reduction; reduction just leaves you dead on the ground when you get unlucky with a few too many hits in a row), can tank the most mobs (and there are many mobs on PotD) and have the incredibly usefull infight endurance regeneration (start tanking with anything but a fighter and you'll see how much this increases your overall survivability in comparison to a class which' HP only know one direction to go).

 

Off-Tank

Chanter

 

Because of the increased mob density (and because sometimes mobs make smart choices about their targets) you need two tanks. Your fighter can't tank 5+ mobs alone and not always is there a door around. Chanter suit my playstyle the best. They have high deflection and average hp (or low?), which makes them a natural fit for an off-tank, their chants are perfect for supporting the group and - most importantly to me - they can switch between off-tank and support on the fly. My chanter either off-tanks some mobs wielding sword and shield chanting +saving throw/-damage songs, or he has his ranged weapon equiped standing in the middle of my DDs chanting the +attack speed/+fire damage song. All the while he summons minions to take some stress off of the main tank, create flanking for my DDs, add to the groups damage or whatever. Chanter is also one of the few hybrid classes that can play well on both offense and defense without having to put stat points into every single attribute. Granted, he doesn't deal any damage himself (2 Might, 3 Dex), but he tanks like a boss (14 Con, 19 Per, 19 Res) and increases my group's overall performance with his songs/summons which totally do not care about his stats :D

 

DPS

Rogue

Rogue

 

From my experience rogue DPS is best dps. It's ranged, it's bursty, it's highly sustainable and it's way too high. With all the sneak attack damage and the +accuracy stuff, they fell the enemies pretty quickly. Granted, they don't do well against groups of enemies, but then again the most difficult enemies are usually the ones that are big and beefy (or casters) and not the ones that are many and puny. They make sure that the most threatening targets go down quickly and to me that seems more important than to be able to breeze through big groups of trash mobs.

 

Support

Priest

Cypher

 

The priest because priests do it all: they buff, they heal, they disable, they damage (if only they could also slice and dice).

And cypher because cyphers are op :D they do everyting a wizard does, except better and more often. They are also able to dish out way too much physical damage for a class that's supposedly a caster-hybrid. Their focus generation with a blunderbuss allows you to spam their spells which have too much range, too short of a casttime, hit to well and have too strong effects. Feels a bit cheesy when you can trivialize many fights by keeping whole groups of enemies perma-prone with your cypher's level 1 spell or a single enemy perma-stunned with his level 2 spell. All the while he packs quite a punch with the +damage from whip and the chanters +attack speed/damage song.

 

So far I'm advancing quite well. The first few levels had some tougher fights, but ever since I've reached level 4 and gotten some equipment, it's been a cruise. Will be interesting to see how my relative lack of burst AoE damage will play out in the higher levels, but so far everything either dies very quickly or can be disabled/tanked long enough to be taken out one after the other.

 

Any thoughts?

 

To your party, I'd be careful with the amount of hybrids you take (because they are almost always weaker in their specific ares than a specialist) and with your reliance on buffs/debuffs. Sometimes those fail and this might make for a very tedious playthrough when you're reliable on all your spells hitting their target in order to have a solid tank.

Tbh if you're taking two ranged rogues, ciphers are almost strictly better. Some case can be made for melee rogue because of reckless assault, but at range rogue single target benefits are minimal and require additional preconditions while lacking all the cc and aoe. You also severely lack aoe with this setup.

 

 

From what I've experienced so far: one Cypher is plenty of Cypher. One alone can already cover all my disable needs. No need to overdo it with a second. nd I have to disagree with you on Rogues only being 'minimally better' than Cypher in terms of raw damage output. Sneak Attack, Graze-to-Hit, talent points to spend on ranged/damage talents, base accuracy, time in the fight to actually attack isntead of casting.. all those things contribute to the Rogue coming out ahead in terms of physical damage. If I had to build a party of three solely for the purpose of dealing ranged damage while having a maximum uptime of disable on groups of 4-5, I'd prefer 2x Rogue 1x Cypher over any other combination of the two classes.

 

But yeah, I lack AoE. But then again, who needs AoE when you can deal twice as much damage than you could deal with AoE but to single targets instead. Just takes a bit longer to give everyone his share of pain but on the upside you're well off in those hard boss encounters.

 

Just get 1 Ranger 1 Ranged rogue instead 2 ranged rogues , ranger will always do more damage at the start of fight than rogue , ranger slows down after u used all 4 pistols tho 

 

Feels cheesy to me, so I don't really want to do that. Also not much into having four weapons on a single char who then only uses them for 1s of the fight. The fights on PotD tend to be longer, so imo Rogue might come out ahead.

[Urthor]

Having a second Cipher isn't overdoing it lol, having a 2nd Cipher is just strictly better.   You don't lose anything from having twice as much mental binding and ectopsychic, the optimal build for PotD is probably 2 Fighter 2 Cipher 2 free slots for DPS.

 

Fighter just gets 2 more engagements, it's a mandatory class that should be in every party, 2 more engagements means 2 more enemies tied up, making it strictly better than every other tank.  

[mrmonocle]

I used 2 fighters, chanter, priest, 2 ciphers. The whole PotD was a cakewalk, except for Thaos, but i'm yet to see an exploit free PotD Thaos kill. 

 

I didn't go defensive builds on the fighters and it was ok, but I recommend to go weap+shield+defender to make the things even easier.

Edited April 9, 2015 by mrmonocle

[koski]

Amount of damage and duration per attack on average depending on the diffirence between accuracy and defence. You can see how the fighters having +30 defence will be taking like 1.6 times less damage then the barbarians because they have +15 innate defence and +15 from advanced defender perk.

 

This doesnt include DR tho.

 

Fighters only have +15 deflection compared to Barbarians. 15 vs 25 (10 difference) and 10 vs 15 (Cautious Attack vs buffed Defender). I still fail to see how that is a lot.

 

Though with the talk about increased mob sizes between Hard and PotD, the +2 targets might really come into play. Any numbers on how many more enemies are there in average?