Advice on defending caed Nua

[Tigranes]

Good explanation, thanks. In which case I'll state even more strongly that four tanks is overkill in most situations, and such a heavy focus on defense will probably hamper your offensive capabilities and make fights even tougher later on. 

[KDubya]

Good explanation, thanks. In which case I'll state even more strongly that four tanks is overkill in most situations, and such a heavy focus on defense will probably hamper your offensive capabilities and make fights even tougher later on.

Doubling down on defense is a valid strategy on PotD.

 

Instead of going for glass cannon nuke them all before they get us, or CC everything and kill the helpless like clubbing baby seals, you can layer defenses such that you can take the pain and outlast the enemy.

 

Super high deflection is more difficult to get now and without equally high defenses you just get CC'd yourself.

 

You need the five D's - damage, defense, deflection, DR, and damage.

 

Get your defenses - fortitude, will and reflex - as high as you can. You want to avoid any crits and push as many hits into grazes. Have your Paladin run Zealous Endurance for more DR and more hit>graze. Durgan steel and some shields also can help push hits>grazes. Paladins and Monks are the easiest to five D.

 

When you get paralyzed, and you will, you want it to be a graze. Your DR will help you even when paralyzed. Squishy characters get gang raped by the new fish people in White March because they get hit or crit by the paralysis and then killed while helpless. Their super low DR from robes doesn't help here either.

 

If you can get three of your team with the five D's you can handle the bad and pear shaped battles and ambushes easier than without them. Your easy fights might last longer since you have less cannon but the hard ones will be a lot easier since you are not glass.

[Ymarsakar]

Some classes have dual or triple use to them, since their base abilities aren't affected by armor or getting higher defenses. The monk or paladin for example, as well as chanter. The paladin can still heal even if it has no dps and a lot of tank, so it is a dual use. It's like two roles in one party slot, freeing up another slot for a specialist.

 

In games where a tank build is the only role something can fulfill, it would be rather limited. In this game, though, many classes are natural multi hybrids of various stuff put together, before one builds a tank build on top of it.

Edited October 2, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[misar82]

In case this helps, I found that both clearing the first levels of the endless paths and upgrading your keep defences during act 1 decreases dramatically the frequency and the difficulty of random attacks later on. When I did this in every run the attacks were occasional and consisting of weak groups (oozes, looters etc). However, in a couple of runs I waited till act 2 to do those things and the difficulty and frequency of attacks changed dramatically (leaden key groups for starters, then lurkers and shades) - and that was regardless the level of the group, which was around 6 in all runs