tank advice

[Crucis]

Int is absolutely essential for wizards because of duration.

There's plenty of things pally can tank and fighter can't, but it matters less with a party ofc since you get external buffs and enemies die fast.

 

Duration doesn't matter for (bleep) if you can't hit what you're aiming at.

[hilfazer]

Druid's dps is in the lightning spells, aoe spells, and shapeshift. His weapon is more... more of support thing for his other activities.

With 21 might my Relentless Storm has 4.(6) DPS and that's with 0 DR enemy. Is it that much?

Other lightning spells have more but they are single target.

[Raven Darkholme]

 

Int is absolutely essential for wizards because of duration.

There's plenty of things pally can tank and fighter can't, but it matters less with a party ofc since you get external buffs and enemies die fast.

 

Duration doesn't matter for (bleep) if you can't hit what you're aiming at.

 

I was replying to your post before. (That's kind of the reason I quoted it. )

You were talking about self buffs of a wizard and he doesn't need Int for AoE.

You don't need to "hit" with those.

I never said Wizs don't need PER.

I max PER on almost any class.^^

[Ymarsakar]

 

Druid's dps is in the lightning spells, aoe spells, and shapeshift. His weapon is more... more of support thing for his other activities.

With 21 might my Relentless Storm has 4.(6) DPS and that's with 0 DR enemy. Is it that much?

Other lightning spells have more but they are single target.

 

 

When you add in other aoe spells and shapeshift... then it's not 6. That's not how those combos work together. That's why the druid's dps is not in having high might. If anything, it's more like a wizard, in that per and int affects its overall damage more due to spell combos. You can read Boer's explanation of the druid combos here, although even early game just combining wild strike + shapeshift + outlander's, can be pretty potent.

 

The fighter is much better these days with Fray, overbearing engagement prones with +10/+20 (can't remember exactly what other people's tests said) accuracy buffs on it, and that aoe redirection shield at level 11 I think.

 

 

 

Either one could work, it's just a matter of managing the inventory items and slots that give retaliation. Well, also helps if it can have some engagement talents and abilities, to hold enemies better. In that sense, fighter + overbearing guard +1 engagement item/talent would probably work better as the paladin can lose engagement when it uses special abilities. So you may not get retaliation from paladin tank, if you keep using the abilities, not do any damage, etc. Until the 11+ levels, the paladin has no aoe damage abilities if I recall, other than perhaps from some of the special orders.

fighter seems to be the choice then , thanks for advice , what do you think would be a proper fighter build ( stats and talents ) for main tank ( hireling from the inn so can be min maxed ) who is using as much retaliation and engagement bonuses as he can to keep enemies on him and retaliate as much as he can ?

Havent played fighters in poe yet always went with pala+chanter for tanks and i have no idea how to build one .

 

 

Fighters can take 10-14 con and be okay, if you take constant recovery or get 18 might to make sure you self regen in time. Since might affects your self regen, that makes up for having a smaller con, unless you get hit by 2 crits in a row with no heals. Fighters can't drop int lower than 10, due to their abilities. 15 int can be nice, but not critical/necessary. Dexterity can be dropped to below 10 with less affect. They aren't casters, action speed just affects the animation frames of your potion drinking and specials/melee animations. If you want to knock people down reliably, get some per. Doesn't need to be 18 or 16. Shouldn't be 8 at least. Fighter has highest base accuracy, 30. 

 

As for talents, I would take Disciplined barrage, shield, constant recovery, weapon focus, and then fray if it is available at level 5. In more or less that order. 

 

The weapon slot would be Daenysis/shatterstar + small shield. And the second slot would either be crossbow/arbalest or some kind of two handed weapon or two dual wielding weapons for damage when you don't need the deflection. Keep in mind that +acc weapons do stack with other passives and modal/actives, and applies to your knockdowns. Knocking somebody down, then sneak attacking them with rogue, is one of my more reliable combos. Also helps to break engagment for some squishies.

 

<NPC name="Eder" >

<Might>18</Might>

<Constitution>13</Constitution>

<Dexterity>5</Dexterity>

<Perception>13</Perception>

<Intellect>15</Intellect>

<Resolve>11</Resolve>

</NPC>

 

Is what I set Eder's custom stats to in the new IE mod xml text files. Just an experiment. I used him with Int 10, and it was pretty good. So I thought I would try the paladin shield or chanter shield tank stat spread, via dumping dex as well.

 

EDIT: Level 7 is when the fighter class gets overbearing, I checked just now. So you have to save that. You won't need engagement slots until after then. Just don't aoe debuff (with your back line) enemies that are circling the fighter, to keep them on the fighter longer. Level 11 is indeed when "take the hit" modal comes out, so you'll want to reserve that as well for later.

 

The fighter has some pretty good class talents now, so level 9 is going to be hard to choose which one. I took armored grace. For a pure single tank, unbending is hard to beat. Combining unbending with take the hit, might produce a good synergy, if they trigger each other.

 

 

I just always have problems with stats distribution for melee mage, always thinks that im doing it wrong. Could You advice how stats should be distributed or just what stats could be dumped in case of min/maxing or just what would be stats that i should increase?  Is there any reliable build for WM2, with key talents?

 

Aloth's stats seem fine, for range or melee builds. The wizard has naturally low accuracy, but a lot of their better weapons like 3rd level blight and citzal's lance tends to add a lot of accuracy buffs. But if you want to hit more reliably early on, getting 15 per will make it slightly less painful.

 

Stat distribution isn't crucial for a mage, but like others said, try not to dump any stats below 10. Pillars was designed to make each stat important to all classes. And it has more or less succeeded, although people do have specialized builds that do dump some stats over others.

 

To address the previous point made about how wizards might not need 16+ int, maybe 14 or less, that would affect the wizard's versatility a bit I would think. Their self buffs would  probably still last long enough, but not if they wanted to cast spells or debuff for long times. Having 15+ per and not have to use the accuracy spell, can very convenient at times. That would translate 5+ attribute points into one extra spell per encounter, almost.

 

But the muscle wizard, something built purely around self buffs and tank, would probably be the ones taking a lower int but higher con.

 

Before 3.0 or 2.0, fighters were pretty one dimensional. So I would agree that the old fighters didn't offer much to a party in terms of group benefits or synergies. Although I personally found creative ways to use fighters in tactics, such as holding off enemies far enough away that they wouldn't target anybody else, but would also put the fighter out of healing range. These days, though, fighters can be pretty good. Very reliable, due to disciplined barrage and the high accuracy. At level 11 or thereabouts, they get a modal that halves damage people around them take, diverting it to themselves in the form of raw damage, which makes use of their constant recovery if nobody is attacking them.

 

EDIT: When I started Pillars, I made much use of Kana and Eder as chanter and fighter, respectively. So it's good to see those classes get some balance changes to buff em up. Especially that broken ancient healer thing. I needed chanter as healer back when I dropped durance and went without a priest and often without a druid, for much of the game. However, ancient healer was broken/too limited and chanters didn't have any heal invocations...

 

 

Edited March 12, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Boeroer]

^ Sword of Daenysis doesn't have Guarding. I guess you mean Measured Restraint?

Edited March 12, 2016 by Boeroer

[Ymarsakar]

^ Sword of Daenysis doesn't have Guarding. I guess you mean Measured Restraint?

 

Ah, yep. I only recently unloaded the early game's special backer weapons out into my stash, so I had those two rapiers side by side often. I actually don't recall what Daenysis had, but it was useful for something or other.

 

They also seemed to have updated the models on them, but I didn't really look at their original versions.

 

I tried to take on the barbarian/fighter guards at Cragholdt with my level 5 party. Hilariously difficult, and died when fighter was at 60% endurance and barbarian was at less than 25% endurance.

 

Just didn't have enough healing, no fighters or chanters or druids even. Just a priest and 2 monks, plus ranger, barbarian.

 

The marksman they had patrolling around, I ambushed and he just got interrupted so many times. But fighters are really good for those difficult and long fights like that, since they can hold their own and add their self regen to external healing sources, and just hold that line.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Boeroer]

Sword of Daenysis has rending and speed. It's pretty neat.

[Teioh_White]

Rending is a pretty awesome mod for a fast weapon, it's like a +0.3 mod, which probably makes it the best enchant after Speed and Wounding. For damage, of course, not utility. (And of course, Daenysis also has speed...).

[Braven]

Daenysis is great. I like combining it with March steel dagger since both are available at the start of Act 2, no fighting required, both are Noble weapons (for weapon focus) and have different damage types (to mitigate immunities) and both have speed, which greatly increases attack speed because of how they multiply with each other and apply to both weapon recoveries. Add vulnerable attack and anyone can be a great damage dealer.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Braven