Preist vs Cipher vs Druid

[sendart]

Want to finally finish this game but having trouble choosing a build for the player character, hoping you guys might be able to help. I'm torn between Stormcaller Cipher, Tidefall Priest, and Spirit shift druid since all are cool concepts and require similar attribute spreads. Will be playing on hard with a party of Eder, Aloth, Durance, Kana, and either Hiravias or Pallegina. Wondering what class/build those with more mid/late game experience think would be the most fun, while still working well with the planned party.

[Phyriel]

I vote for spiritshift druid. Super fun to play

[Chike]

I played a spiritshift Druid on hard for my first playthrough, using one of the builds from this forum.

 

Druids allow you versatility and variety; you can change up your playstyle from encounter to encounter. Eg: Let the melee guys engage, drop a couple of offensive spells, spiritshift, start chunking mobs. Or stand in the back with other casters and relentlessly pound the enemy back line. It's fun to have a toon that's good at both AoE and single target. I never got tired of shifting to cat form and just killing everything with my claws.

 

There's a lot of great spells, too, at low levels. (Charm Beasts, Tanglefoot, and Winter Wind are a little underrated, I think, from veteran players. Whenever I screwed up and got into trouble, they helped save my behind. They also made tough early encounters waaaaaay easier.)

 

The only thing I'd think carefully about is the rest of your party composition, especially by the time you can get all the original NPCs (so around levels 4-6). You may not need multiple controllers/disablers/buffers because in a pinch Druids are pretty good at everything.

 

Personally, there were many times I found the combo of Aloth / Mother / Durance + Druid main to be a little redundant and wished I'd brought along one or two pure DPS / melee heavy hitters instead.

[MaxQuest]

I second the spiritshift druid option out of the listed ones, because:

- Tidefall Priest will require extra backup (under the form of cc-on-demand), or his health will drop faster than that of your other frontliners.

- Stormcaller Cipher is mostly good between [when you acquire it, especially if that's below lvl 8 when you can't enchant to exceptional yet] and the moment you can durganize your weapon; because durgan + lash enchants outweight shock DR debuff + Heart of the Storm, in terms of focus generation.

[sendart]

Thanks for the responses, only listed three builds just to try to narrow things down since so many builds here seem like the could be fun.

 

Druid sounds like it would be my best bet at actually finishing the game with its versatility. I think the main reason I didn't just make a druid is that I wasn't sure if I wanted to use Hiravias or Pallegina, but with Pallegina being in the next game I'm more inclined to use her.