Triple Crown Thaos - party composition

[elena_the_cat]

Hi guys,

 

I'd like to apologize in advance in case my question is dumb.

I'm currently finishing up my Triple Crown play through (currently at Council of Stars) and I'm wondering which party composition would be optimal for the last boss.

 

I currently have lvl 12 party (will be 13-14 after completing WM2) with the following:

 

2x Rogues (including main character)

Barb with Tall Grass

Monk with fists

Tanky Chanter

Cipher

 

I have only completed the game once on Easy/Normal before, so I had to do some research and figured that priest and wizard would be nice to have (resurrecting + Gaze of the Adragan).

 

So, a question:

1. Who should I dump from the party to grab these two? Barb seems to be the obvious choice as Carnage is not useful on this boss. But who should be the second one to dump? I'd like to keep the monk (his damage is ridiculously high) and the chanter (ogres for the win!).

2. Or am I overreacting and should just go and kill the boss?

[Raven Darkholme]

Just go and kill the boss, if you want to play i perfectly safe because it is TCS, put the chanter in a corner out of sight of the enemies and spam ogres.

Why don't you level to 16?

Did you do all bounties?

[AlexDeLarge]

Played some easy/normal, and then you decided to just casually jump in some potd/toi/expert mode eh? Not bad, chief..

[elena_the_cat]

Played some easy/normal, and then you decided to just casually jump in some potd/toi/expert mode eh? Not bad, chief..

Yeah. I usually jump in hardest difficulty on my first play through and ironman on next in all games, but in case of POE I was mostly playing while raiding in WoW. So now I'm finishing up the proper run. I just don't see a point of doing easier runs to learn game mechanics because it turns out to be entirely different on harder difficulties - suffering in early game and a restarting a few times seems much better idea to me.

 

Just go and kill the boss, if you want to play i perfectly safe because it is TCS, put the chanter in a corner out of sight of the enemies and spam ogres.

Why don't you level to 16?

Did you do all bounties?

Killed Adra dragon just like that :D All party died but chanter accidentally ended up in a safe corner and spammed ogres until boss died :D Took ages though :D

Glad to know there is an emergency plan for Thaos too!

Did only 4 bounties thus far, will finish them up I guess, thank you for the advice.

[Raven Darkholme]

Bounties give mad xp so you will get max level.

For the Thaos fight if you aggro the judges right after combat start and maybe even Thaos witth one char, then you can run your chanter all the way to the west (left) side of the map and he should be fine.

[Phyriel]

I finished my potd run with wizard tank (main), cipher, ranger, priest, monk and pellagina. If you got cipher + monk all you have to do is cast reaper blades on monk, and monk alone autoattacking destroys everything ;p unless it was nerfed that is. I haven't played for a while. 

Edited November 29, 2016 by Phyriel

[JerekKruger]

I finished my potd run with wizard tank (main), cipher, ranger, priest, monk and pellagina. If you got cipher + monk all you have to do is cast reaper blades on monk, and monk alone autoattacking destroys everything ;p unless it was nerfed that is. I haven't played for a while. 

 

Whilst definitely good, I'd say your first stop with a high level Cipher should be Defensive Mindweb. If you can find a good way of building the focus required to cast it super quickly at the start of a fight (I think Raven Darkholme settled on Twin Sting for this purpose) then you'll usually find the rest of the fighter pretty easy. Admittedly this works best when your main character is a Paladin with good Faith and Conviction scores, but it'll generally work well for any party.

 

After casting Mindweb though, Reaping Blades on a Monk is of course an excellent choice.

 

I assume however that the Monk loses his Transcendent Suffering bonuses whilst using Reaping Blades?

[Raven Darkholme]

 

I finished my potd run with wizard tank (main), cipher, ranger, priest, monk and pellagina. If you got cipher + monk all you have to do is cast reaper blades on monk, and monk alone autoattacking destroys everything ;p unless it was nerfed that is. I haven't played for a while. 

 

Whilst definitely good, I'd say your first stop with a high level Cipher should be Defensive Mindweb. If you can find a good way of building the focus required to cast it super quickly at the start of a fight (I think Raven Darkholme settled on Twin Sting for this purpose) then you'll usually find the rest of the fighter pretty easy. Admittedly this works best when your main character is a Paladin with good Faith and Conviction scores, but it'll generally work well for any party.

 

After casting Mindweb though, Reaping Blades on a Monk is of course an excellent choice.

 

I assume however that the Monk loses his Transcendent Suffering bonuses whilst using Reaping Blades?

 

You do, but the knives are still very good, since it's raw damage and any WF buffs them.

I usually went mindweb so my party got 140 def, 180 fort, 160 ref and 130 will from my pally, then either instinct or reaping knives, order doesn't matter too much.

Melee cipher without fear of enemy attacks because of mindweb builds plenty of focus even without knives.

With knives you kinda stop attacking with the cipher and just spam powers, which is quite potent ofc.

[elena_the_cat]

Turned out that I've been worrying too much. I swapped barb for a priest, didn't bother with wizard. Did all bounties as you guys suggested, finished WM2 and some side quest. Ended up dinging 16 right before pulling Thaos. I think it would be MUCH harder on lvl 12 (or if I agreed for content scaling), but on 15-16 both Kraken and Thaos ended up being zerged without any clever tactics (2nd rogue died on Thaos tho).

 

Thank you all guys for the tips!