Some PotD power party suggestions

[mosspit]

Well if you wanna boost your Cipher, it is one of the good reason to use Aefyllath. My last playthrough, my Cipher dual wield Bittercuts with Aefyllath. During late game, she generates "too much" focus. After Defensive Mindweb, Time Parasite and Borrowed Instinct, she still hits 180 Focus too fast. Almost annoying that I had to trigger Defensive Mindweb just to burn out Focus. Only battle that Focus generation was "normalized" was in Lenegrath's battle lol.

Edited October 4, 2017 by mosspit

[Boeroer]

With a cipher Mith Fyr is nice. So is Spark the Souls of the Righteous (also generates focus). I didn't check if Sparks also gets a lash from Mith Fyr...?

 

When combining a burning lash on a weapon and Mith Fyr on a character who has Scion of Flame you will get 2 burning lashes with 30% instead of 25%. Both are seperate and will have to overcome 1/4 burn DR. Against 0 DR this means 60% lash damage (not 70 - but the important part is to overcome DR two times).

 

As I said you can optimize your Chanter for Dragon Thrashed and deal a lot of damage while you can't do anything for Mith Fyr. It's a better alternative for a Chanter who doesn't have the right stats and equipment, but I don't think that it can beat an optimized Dragon Thrashed other than adding a lash while spell spamming - or in a party with multiple ciphers. Or multiple rangers perhaps, too (more party members).

Edited October 4, 2017 by Boeroer

[Moneo]

When combining a burning lash on a weapon and Mith Fyr on a character who has Scion of Flame you will get 2 burning lashes with 30% instead of 25%. Both are seperate and will have to overcome 1/4 burn DR. Against 0 DR this means 60% lash damage (not 70 - but the important part is to overcome DR two times).

 

Oh, yes, it seems, I've been mistaken in my calculations with different types of lashes and different DRs of enemies. PoE mechanics is so damn sophisticated.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Moneo

[Kaylon]

With 25mig/int and max Brisk Recitation,  1xDragon Trashed deals on average 19.9dmg (14.5x11/8) every 3s to all the enemies in range.

 

Aefyllath adds 7.5 dmg to Sacred Immolation every 3s too. If there's also a 2h barbarian it can add another 10 dmg to carnage (which hits easily faster than every 3s).  If we consider Heart of Fury and the damage of the other party members then Aefyllath becomes clearly the best choice even if Dragon Trashed might affect 1-2 more enemies.

 

Thus for a party with carnage and Sacred Immolation the most offensive combo is Aefyllath+Dragon Trashed...

[Boeroer]

With 25mig/int and max Brisk Recitation,  1xDragon Trashed deals on average 19.9dmg (14.5x11/8) every 3s to all the enemies in range.

 

Aefyllath adds 7.5 dmg to Sacred Immolation every 3s too. If there's also a 2h barbarian it can add another 10 dmg to carnage (which hits easily faster than every 3s).  If we consider Heart of Fury and the damage of the other party members then Aefyllath becomes clearly the best choice even if Dragon Trashed might affect 1-2 more enemies.

 

Thus for a party with carnage and Sacred Immolation the most offensive combo is Aefyllath+Dragon Trashed...

 

I don't understand your damage calculation. With 25 MIG one instance of Dragon Thrashed deals 14.5 slash + 14.5 burn on every tick for 11 seconds or 4.83 + 4.83 damage per second . Did you overlook that it deals 10 slash AND 10 burn damage as base per tick? Or am I missing something? Also you can stack 3 instances for 3 seconds with Brisk Recitation at lvl 16 with a gap of 1 second (where it's only two instances):

 

In that grey area you should do 3 times 14.5 burn + 14.5 slash per tick. Against 0 DR this means 87 damage per tick.  During the gap it's 58. To everybody in range. Or am I doing something wrong?

   

I also doubt that you will only hit 1-2 enemies more compared to HoF if you have 25 INT, Voice of the Mountaintop and an overseeing item. Heart of Fury can hit a lot of enemies, but usually you hit 5 or 6 and that's it. With above AoE of the chanter you usually hit everybody - maybe you missthat one skeleton archer who stands far away every now and then (screenshot with 25 INT, Voice of the Mountaintop <chanter only> and Overseeing on both chanter and paladin):

 

 

I laid both AoEs over each other so you can see the exact difference. Yellow inner circle is chant base AoE, red circle is SA's base AoE. The translucent circles are the ones with 25 INT + Overseeing + Voice otM. When we speak about area, chant's AoE is twice as big as SA's. Radius is about 1.4 times bigger.

 

You will hit more than +1-2 enemies compared with HoF (even smaller AoE) or Sacred Immolation. Usually this area covers all enemies except in the really crowded fights like Battle of Yenwood Field or Elmshore ogres and such.

 

But as I said: you will be better off with Mith Fyr + Dragon Thrashed than with Mith Fyr and something else just to support your party.

 

It can be smart to have the chanter stat his singing with Mith Fyr first - because he will not be in range of the enemy (or not all of them) anyways. With this phrase let the barb do HoF with the lashes while (plenty of time because of linger time), then adding pure Dragon Thrashed for the rest of the fight (this is done by picking Mith Fyr and then adding a lot of Dragon Thrashed in the songbook to make sure Mith Fyr will not get sung again). THis would be the best apporach I would think.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

Yes, I considered only half of the damage of Dragon Thrashed - it should be 39.8 dmg every 3s to all the enemies in range...   However it faces 50% DR compared to Aeffylath...

 

Aeffylath isn't the clear winner anymore in the long run, but it still does a huge difference for Heart of Fury. Starting with Aefyllath and then switching to Dragon Thrashed only might be better depending on the situations.

[Boeroer]

I agree  that Mith Fyr is very nice for HoF - and you won't lose any damage of Dragon Thrashed as well because you can't hit with it right away unless you sneaked into the middle of the enemy group.

 

And usually the barb wants to jump in quickly and trigger HoF asap (should be possible within the first 10 or so seconds of combat while he still has the lash). Even if he needs more time one could use Wengrith + Mith Fyr + chained Dragon Thrashed.

 

What also could be more benefical than Dragon Thrashed is when you use a lot of Relentless Storm and such or if you use a lot of Ectopsychic Echo...?

 

By the way, since I seldomly use Defensive Mindweb: would Ogres and other summons also profit from the high defenses that Mindweb shares?

Edited October 4, 2017 by Boeroer

[vanyel54]

For my first post and after many POTD run, i think that the offense way is better that defense / passive. The goal of my team is to disable, break the enemies before they engaged

So my team will consist of :

1. Druid / CatForm / Burn specialization

2. Druid / CatForm / Shock specialization

3. Berath Priest with Tidefall for the buff and some melee if needed

4. Wizard (CC/Damage)

5. StormCaller Ranger (More Storm !!! and the companion with infinite health)

6. Whatever

A classical fight will be then :

Devotions for the faithful / Inspiring Radiance / Relentless Storm / Calling the World's Maw / ShadowFlame

After that, let's loose the Cat (best dps in the game?) and it's over

 

You can surely add a Chanter/Dragon/Tank or a wizard for more CC

[Moneo]

Yes, having several offensive casters like wizards and druids provides you a lot of burst DPS in battles. But my party is very offensive-oriented as well. I prefer to rely on weapon, not spell damage, because when your casters run out of spells, you need to rest. And weapon damage is literally endless. There is no problem in resting often even on PotD, because camping supplies are cheap as dirt. But this means you must return and buy them, and this leads to staring at these boring loading screens a lot. Though v. 3.06 is better optimized, loading time on my computer is still quite long, so this leads just to wasting your real time.

 

Thus I composed a party which can move from one battle to another with little need in resting. It's also quite tanky, and tankishness is nescessary to keep your guys' health pool on a decent level, because on PotD you need to rest rather on low health than on running out of per-rest abilities. (That's why I favor Zealous Endurance over other auras).

Edited October 6, 2017 by Moneo

[Boeroer]

For my first post and after many POTD run, i think that the offense way is better that defense / passive. The goal of my team is to disable, break the enemies before they engaged

So my team will consist of :

 

1. Druid / CatForm / Burn specialization

 

2. Druid / CatForm / Shock specialization

I would make one druid boar. The dps of the slower, but wounding tusks is better against mid to high DR while the cat is faster and better against low to mid DR. And for the sake of diversity. It's also nice to stack self healing buffs on the boar (his shifted regeneration effect stacks with Veteran's Recovery and also works with healing bonuses from survival).

[Moneo]

I second Boeroer, diversity is a great thing in PoE. Powergaming is my favorite approach to such RPGs. Some time ago, I enjoyed powerplaying in Icewind Dale II. But in IWD2, I designed a power party consisted of 5(!) dark elves and 1 deep gnome. Whereas in PoE, there are no weak and strong races, all of them are well-balanced and suited for different roles and various approaches. Same thing is with the classes. In DnD, classes differ in their power, and a monk, for example, is rather underwhelming. In PoE, you can beat the game solo with almost every class (I doubt about the fighter, but I suppose, everything is possible). Here you can build a definitely power party consisting of different races and different classes, and that's a great experience.

 

Of course, PoE mechanics is not ideal and somewhat weird (mighty spellcasters, intellectual barbarians), but nothing is ideal.

[dgray62]

 

For my first post and after many POTD run, i think that the offense way is better that defense / passive. The goal of my team is to disable, break the enemies before they engaged

So my team will consist of :

 

1. Druid / CatForm / Burn specialization

 

2. Druid / CatForm / Shock specialization

I would make one druid boar. The dps of the slower, but wounding tusks is better against mid to high DR while the cat is faster and better against low to mid DR. And for the sake of diversity. It's also nice to stack self healing buffs on the boar (his shifted regeneration effect stacks with Veteran's Recovery and also works with healing bonuses from survival).

 

 

I've been playing a spiritshift boar character per Boeroer's suggestion. He's very tanky with the multiple sources of regeneration, and he hits like a tank, especially once my chanter reached lvl 9 and started running Mith Fyr. His "hits" range from about 70-110 damage, and his crits, which are frequent, range from about 120-150 damage. The 25% boost to overall damage on top of all of the lashes spiritshifted druids have is really noticeable. And the wounding damage is very significant when land hits or crits in the triple digits. Moreover, it appears that the Boar tusk wounding stacks; I've seen enemies with afflicted with multiple Boar tusk DoT wounds.

[Boeroer]

Yes, it stacks. It's the same thing like Tidefall's wounding, only 20% instead of 25%.

[Moneo]

Wow, I haven't paid attention to such a great ability of a Boar form of druid. Now I have even two ideas: first, replacing the fighter with a blasting wizard, second, replacing him with a spirit-shifting druid. And, perhaps, transforming the barb into DW build, in order to grant him the Reaping Knives.

[vanyel54]

Yes the Boar Druid is really good too. Especially if you have a pet's ranger with Predator's Sense. Slower than the cat, but more resilient.

It depends of you play style.

[Boeroer]

Reaping Knives on a barb is fun.

 

Yes, the boar is nice. I like it how he combines sturdiness (stacking self heals like Shod-in-Faith, Veteran's Recovery + boar regen. and then buffing it with survial) with great damage.

The cat still does better damage against most enemies I think (there are not too many that have high DR), but I also like it how the boar only has passive abilites and not that 1/rest stuff - which I always spare for a more important fight... that never comes until I rest.

[Moneo]

Yeah, but a figher armed with Reaping Knives who is just standing amidst the massacre and meticulously cutting into pieces toughest foes, even the dragons, is, perhaps, less fun, but a very helpful stuff.

[Boeroer]

Yes - I only meant the focus overflow from Reaping Knives + Carnage or even HoF.

 

If you have two ciphers then it's also fun to cast Reaping Knives on both. Double focus per attack is funny as well and with the raw damage they don't care about DR at all.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

I second Boeroer, diversity is a great thing in PoE. Powergaming is my favorite approach to such RPGs. Some time ago, I enjoyed powerplaying in Icewind Dale II. But in IWD2, I designed a power party consisted of 5(!) dark elves and 1 deep gnome. Whereas in PoE, there are no weak and strong races, all of them are well-balanced and suited for different roles and various approaches. Same thing is with the classes. In DnD, classes differ in their power, and a monk, for example, is rather underwhelming. In PoE, you can beat the game solo with almost every class (I doubt about the fighter, but I suppose, everything is possible). Here you can build a definitely power party consisting of different races and different classes, and that's a great experience.

 

Of course, PoE mechanics is not ideal and somewhat weird (mighty spellcasters, intellectual barbarians), but nothing is ideal.

 

Indeed. One of the things that Obsidian did well in PoE is to ensure racial/class balance - or at least viability. As a result, there is a lot of replay value, and many interesting combinations to conjure up!