Rolling a 2nd character in PotD, what are some must-do's and must-not tips you could offer?

[Theorycrafter]

Played normal, shooting straight to PotD. Especially considering 2.0 changes, what are some things you should do to get by? Some specific skills to grab, weapons/equipment to grab? I feel rather lost and even normal felt like a challenge to me.

Could I get some pointers from you guys? Thanks!

[rkade8583]

What class are you going to play as?

[Nobear]

And, probably even more importantly, are you planning to solo or play in a party? You say you're rolling a second character, but some people just focus on their main and kind of forget about the rest of their party. The only general advice I can give based on your limited info is that, unless you're soloing, you should consider the synergy of your whole party.

[Tomice]

Also: Do you wanna play with the precreated companions (Eder, Sagani, ...) or a custom party?

 

If you've already beaten the game on normal, you know when each companion is available. The expansion adds a monk and a thief. There is no barbarian companion yet, so if you want one, you need to create one.

Your second character should probably fill a gap your preferred party has.

 

If you don't know how to choose classes for a strong party composition, there were a few rules pre 2.0. As example, the awesome steam guide by nerdcommando suggested the following: 2 frontline tanks, 2 sturdy second-line melee DPS with high-reach melee weapons and 2 squishy ranged DPS.

Many people consider a priest essential. You also shouldn't forget about reliable physical damage in addition to spells (ranger, rogue).

 

The problem is that most precreated companions were biased towards 3rd line ranged damage or spells, there was a lack of melee-capable chars in the base game. The expansion might have changed that.

 

 

 

Overall, I suggest creating 2 lists:

- the precreated companions I like enough to have in my party

- the classes/roles I wanna have in my party

Then create characters for roles you still need.

[Nobear]

If you don't know how to choose classes for a strong party composition, there were a few rules pre 2.0. As example, the awesome steam guide by nerdcommando suggested the following: 2 frontline tanks, 2 sturdy second-line melee DPS with high-reach melee weapons and 2 squishy ranged DPS.

 

I still haven't found the time to actually play 2.0 yet, but from what I've been reading, this type of party composition might be even better now than it was before. My pre-2.0 PoTD party had two tanks and four ranged who almost never got hit. With enemy AI improvements, having the two slightly less squishy melee DPS in place of two of your four potential ranged might not be a bad idea.

[Ymarsakar]

Playing POTD from the beginning, I mostly stuck with the defensive philosophy of raising deflection on a main tank (was paladin, turned out Eder worked out almost as well) to tank the damage, and thus allow the rest of the party to figure out what to do.

 

Having a cipher and a chanter together, really helps early on, because you can actually use your abilities. Even with the 1/4 focus start nerf. It's a lot better than having to rest every few fights because the priest or the mage or the druid ran out of spells, which can happen before 5th level at least.

 

So big tank with highest deflection, will carry you through to most fights. It's how I survived the beatles next to Dyrwood, with 5 very weak level 4 characters that weren't supposed to be there. Also killed Caed Nua with kiting techniques at level 2 party, but that's only for really difficult encounters you want to cheese. Or have to cheese through. Although in the Caed Nua dungeon, I pulled a bunch of spiders to the paladins, and they killed each other. That was funny. The chanter speed buff chant is pretty important for that, otherwise you might get caught.

 

As you progress to level 5 party or beyond, or the Caed Nua dungeons where enemies start having crazy numbers (or just spiders and dragon tribes), you will need a second off tank/dps. The chanter is pretty viable for that. A priest is more viable now with the higher health pool. All the NPCs can be built to sustain that kind of party tactic, I didn't use pre built parties. It's more like I built the NPCs in such a fashion that the tactics I did use, took advantage of whatever they had. Know yourself and all that.

 

I had IE mod for that before, but now you can respect (99% of it at least) with gold. It's not necessary to respect until you get six people and realize that this one NPC should have had 2 different talents. It's usually a good idea to have 1-2 dps characters with mostly offensive talents, and the main/off tank with all defensive talents.

 

The gear is partially randomized now, but it's easier to find purple hidden containers. Mostly you want rings and items that buff your defenses, mainly deflection. Then you want healing items. Then you want dps and items that buff perception or constitution or any other attribute you need on one character build.

 

 

Generally it helps to understand what a party's tactical role configuration and design is built around.

 

1. Main tank prods the enemy, aggroes and kites them into position, holds their attention so that dps can nuke the enemies without being killed.

2. Off tank dps helps the main tank by preventing the main tank from being surrounded/flanked, and distributes incoming damage so that aoe heals can heal the tanks before the tank gets gibbed by an ogre critical or something. Also helps to protect casters in case the main tank somehow loses a few enemies from his circle.

3. DPS primarily kills the most dangerous enemies on field, using ranged attacks, that will kill either your back end characters or your tank. Things that paralyze or cast spells or cast healing buffs, are higher priority.

4. Healers these would be your priest or your druid generally speaking. Their job is to sit there and wait, while doing some ranged dps on debuffed targets. You wait for the situation to change. Cast armor spells if the tank is getting swarmed. Cast debuff or buff spells depending on the situation. Save your spells though, it's easy to run out.

 

Those are the main roles, there are also some special flavors if you use rogue or wizard or monks or ciphers, that can do a little bit of each depending on equipment. For example, the monk can do off tanking, but the more he tanks, the more dps he does too. But the monk has to wear heavy armor otherwise he can take so much damage he dies. So a high deflection monk can be useful, more dps than a fighter, but easier to kill too by crits.

 

A Paladin is another example of a dps tank, that has talents that are good for dps or healing, while tanking. Chanter is also a hybrid at times, summoning, buffing, attacking, doing melee or ranged dps, while off tanking. A chanter is probably easier to use as a tank because you don't care about his dps, most of his dps is in his summons and his invocations. You just equip a big estoc or firearm on him, and he chants as he shoots. Switch to shield if he gets swarmed.

 

It's also nice to have 2 weapon slots in use. One for ranged dps and the other one for your emergency times when you get ambushed and the casters start getting hit. If you can't CC the enemy so your caster can disengage, it's easier to just switch to shield mode on your caster and continue the fight, while using aoe heals to tank the damage until your dps guys can get rid of the threats.

 

For Main tank, I recommend fighter or paladin. Fighter is very nice in the beginning of POTD Pillars because you don't need healing spells if your deflection is high enough. Fighter just regens. Paladin has some nice lay of hands though per encounter, try to get that out, but you won't get the paladin npc until after Caed Nua.

 

For DPS roles, cipher and rogue are best early on. Druid and mage start becoming really nice at levels 9+. Rangers are somewhere in the middle, because they need good weapons. Haven't played ranger a lot, so can't say much about that.

 

For healing roles, priest and then druid. The druid's healing has range issues though, so often times, you can't get your druid in unless your druid is wearing frontline armor.

 

My main character was a cipher, pretty op back then because it had large starting focus which I used to spam paralysis on POTD enemies. That helped me learn how to get around tactical problems, though. Later on, at higher levels, it wasn't that necessary to debuff enemies since you could just buff yourself and heal.

 

For the off line fighter/dps characters recommended by posters above, the paladin recently got flames buffed so they are pretty good with pike/arquebus now. Rogue can also do offline dps, since it's normally a primary dps. Ranger generally isn't used for off line, because the range on the ranger puts it at about wizard ranges. Very far away. They normally should not get that close to any enemies, and if they do, that's what the pet is for. Sacrifice em.

 

Almost all the casting types, such as wizard, priest, or druid, can do offline dps when they aren't casting spells. Offline as in over reach weapons behind the main tanks. My favorite class to play is probably the blunderbuss rogue/cipher. The special blunderbuss has DR bypass, and you can always get it from that quest at Dyrford.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[drunetovich]

My advice - don't play PoTD, it is unfair, all endgame encounters are winnable only through paralyze scrolls spam.

[gkathellar]

I'd advise you to avoid overspecializing. A lot of people will guide you toward extreme builds for PotD, with very high main stats and everything else dumped, built overwhelmingly towards a single purpose. My experience has been that characters like these descend rapidly into uselessness when your plans start to disintegrate.

 

Give your tank a saber instead of a hatchet. Build your fighter for single target DPS. Have fun. PotD is a big difficulty jump from normal, but the best solution to that jump is to get better at the game.

 

And always, always remember your CC.

 

My advice - don't play PoTD, it is unfair, all endgame encounters are winnable only through paralyze scrolls spam.

 

This isn't even remotely true, and is a sure sign of someone who doesn't actually know what they're doing.

[Torm51]

My advice - don't play PoTD, it is unfair, all endgame encounters are winnable only through paralyze scrolls spam.

Untrue.

[Ymarsakar]

The pots and scrolls in this game is pretty op, in my view. They can make any class into a battle mage, temporarily.

 

Then again, I don't use consumables much in POTD.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[drunetovich]

 

My advice - don't play PoTD, it is unfair, all endgame encounters are winnable only through paralyze scrolls spam.

 

This isn't even remotely true, and is a sure sign of someone who doesn't actually know what they're doing.

 

I am yet to see any video of 2.0 PoTD alpine/adra dragon kill without CC spam. If you have any, please share.

[PIP-Clownboy]

I recommend not rushing White March at lvl 5 POTD; that was pretty rough since you can't camp in the area so used up all my traps/scrolls because why not. Worth it though since the initial merchant sells a the best looking robe in the game with mirror image and gloves of accuracy.