beta build suggestion: The Tankpire strikes back (fighter/rogue)

[Madscientist]

I have played around in character creation and I will post some ideas I have thought of.

 

warning:

- This is the first version of the beta, so tons of things will change.

- I do not know what equipment can be found in the game, so I assume similar things as PoE1.

- I have not played the char, I just created the char to see whats possible.

Feel free to play such a char and give comments weather they are useful or not and how they can be improved.

 

The Tankpire strikes back

 

I want to create a char who will strike back at each enemy who attacks him, no matter if the enemy hits or misses.

 

class:

Unbroken/Trickster

 

race:

Human

 

stats:

Max out resolve because this is a tank. Might is also importent because you want to strike back hard. Int and per should not be dropped too much because you have to hit things and you want your buffs to last. You need enough con to survive the battle and dex is also not so importent because you are slow anyway.

 

talents:

lv1: constant recovery (auto), knock down, escape, Arkemyrs dizzling lights

lv2: weapon + shield style

lv3: disciplined barrage

lv4: fighter stances, dirty fighting

lv5: confident aim

lv6: into the fray

lv7: disciplined barrage upgrade, riposte, mirror image

lv8: hold the line

lv9: rapid recovery

lv10: vigorous defens or weapon specialisation, persistent distraction

 

equipment:

The weapon should have +engagement or something else that is useful for a tank. The best shield would be a medium shield with retaliation, shield bash would be the second choice after retaliation. Use the heavies armor and try to get your defenses (especially deflection) and armor rating as high as possible.

 

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It is very easy to create a char that is very hard to hit (unbroken or shieldbearer, either single class, both combined or one of them combined with a mage with illusion and evocation spells). But those chars deal little damage ( evidence please). In heavy armor and with weapon and shield you will never hit hard by yourself, so in order to do damage you have to strike back. The way to do it is retaliation AND riposte. If you have a retaliation shield, another retaliation item and fire shield you will strike back  3 times every time your char gets hit. If the enemy misses you with a melee attack you strike back with riposte. Riposte is a full attack, thats why a shield with bashing is the second choice after retaliation because you would attack twice for each enemy attack that misses. You should also try to engage as many enemies as possible. Thanks to a later fighter talent disengagement attacks hit really hard and knock down enemies.

 

what do importent talents do:

- arkemyrs dizzling lights: causes  AoE dazed. dazed causes -5mig, no engagement and -4penetration. This means enemies will have it much harder to damage you, especially with the current penetration mechanic

- escape raises deflection by 50 for 3 sec. 3 sec is not much, but if you expect a hard hit it can save your life and you strike back via riposte instead of losing lots of health. It can be later be upgraded to shadow step, so your next attack paralyses the enemy

- riposte: the most importent skill why I chose rogue. You make a full attack when a melee attack that targets deflection misses you. Rogues are usually more offensive than defensive so it will trigger rarely on a normal rogue. But it should happen quite often when you have a full tank.

- mirror image: long lasting delection buff, helps to avoid damage and trigger more ripostes. I does not stack with vigorous defense unfortuanatly ( I guess).

- hold the line: more engagements are good because of more chances for disengagement attacks and also something else (see later)

- persistent distraction: you get +1 engagement and all engaged enemies get -5per and flanked. Flanked enables your sneak attack and your party can hit them easier.

- Later you learn confusion, which was very useful in PoE1 often. But the casting time is so extremely long.

 

note: If you think that the illusion spells are not so useful, you can use a default rogue instead.

 

This char will still cause less damage than a specialized damage dealer, but if I want a tank I would prefer this one over an unhittable wall that can do nothing but slow auto attacks.

 

Edit: When you block an attack with the modal of your medium shield, does it trigger retaliation or riposte?

Edited November 18, 2017 by Madscientist

[dunehunter]

Hmmm just wanna point out that a sword/shield rogue might not perform at its optimization because currently Full attack use main hand first, offhand late order.

 

So your Blind strike, or any rogue abilities will hit with sword first(which is not a sneak attack unless target is already vulnerable to it), then a soft sneak attack with shield. Not a big deal, but still impact your performance.

 

Thanks to Boeroer, he mentioned that in POE1 the order is offhand then mainland for full attacks. So it might be a mistake.

Edited December 20, 2017 by dunehunter

[KDubya]

A Paladin mix would have about the same deflection but could dual wield. Deep Faith would get you +20 deflection which would be as good as a weapon and shield style using Unbroken. An offhand dagger would give you the flexibility of activating the modal for more defense when desired.

 

Dual wielding would make for a better full attack riposte.

 

The trickster would get you those sweet illusion buffs. Bleakwalker would get you a powerful FoD or Goldpact would get you the nice +4 armor from gilded enmity to help with the tankyness.

[Madscientist]

- If you have a dagger in one hand and another weapon in the other and you turn on the modal, only the dagger will do less damage while you still get the full defection bonus, right?

- Can you have only one weapon modus on when you dual wield two different weapons and do their bonusses add? (like you have dagger with +deflection and sword with -deflection)

- does the dagger modus stack with other deflection bonusses, like mirror image?

 

I chose fighter because disciplined barrage is so strong (no misses and lots of crits) and they get weapon style and weapon specialisation.

But paladin would also be good. Flames of devotion is a full attack and with eternal devotion you will have a burning lash afterwards. Their naturally good defenses work well with other things that buff defenses (dagger modus, mirror image). So a paladin/rogue dual wielding a larger 1h weapon + dagger might be a good riposte tank.

 

So the only problem is to get penetration for yourself. Paladins and rogues need it for damage but unlike devoted or sharpshooter they do not get talents for it.

 

PS: A paladin/rogue multi class feels strange for somebody who played many DnD games.

Role playing wise you may be an over zealous, self rightious freak who is devoted to purge the world of all evil ( evil = everyone who has a different point of view ). Killing bad guys is easier if you backstab them before they even know you are there so rogue is your second class.

[KDubya]

Roleplaying a Paladin Rogue would be easy:

• Bleak Walkers believe that overwhelming violence and savagery will end a conflict quickly and are the best choice for conflict resolution. Rogues allow for a surgical strike capability that lets you kill the leader without killing the minions who are only doing their job. They'd be like a medieval smart bomb
• Goldpact Knights are all about taking out the one enemy and Rogues do single target damage better than most.
• Kind Wayfarers - drawing a blank on how to make that fit.
• Darcozzis like jokes and what better than a Trickster?

In the previous version of Beta you could have two weapon modals running, one in each hand. The stacking was inconsistent and needed some de-bugging applied. Will have to see how it shakes out through the betas.

 

The penetration problem would be the same as everyone else besides Devoted, Berserkers, Ciphers or Monks would have. The solution would be to swap to a more penetrating weapon like a stiletto or Estoc, or to use something like the Chanter's armor debuff invocation.

 

I don't like squishy characters, especially melee types, and your Trickster multi-class sounds like a fun and effective guy to use. I could see an entire custom team made up of various Paladin multiclasses that'd have defenses that'd let you roll over the enemy easily.

[Madscientist]

With the new patch things have gone worse for this build.

If everyone can have grazes, riposte tanks will have a harder time.

 

But I like the changes. Grazes for everyone is better than a game where you and the enemy miss very often.

[KDubya]

I'm not sure what percentage chance Riposte has in Deadfire, I believe it was like 30% in PoE. A 30% chance of a miss being riposted is pretty bad.

 

If acc=defl and then add in the +30 from mirror image you get:

 

0-25 miss

26 - 50 graze

51-100 hit 

This makes a unit damage of 0.25x.5 + 0.50x1 = 0.625

Here Riposte would do .25x.3 = 7.5% of attacks get riposted.

 

becomes 

 

0-55 miss

56 - 80 graze

81-100 hit

This makes a unit damage of 0.25x0.5 + .2x1 = 0.325 which is 48% less damage which is a massive boost and makes the use of mirror image great. A 30% chance of Riposte means that .3x.55 = 16.5 % of attacks will be riposted. 

 

At 16.5% chance of riposting which still needs to hit is better than nothing but not sure it is enough. I guess it comes down to the value of a single ability pick.

 

Regardless of the value of Riposte I'm becoming a fan of the Trickster subclass. The defensive applications of mirror image are great.

[Boeroer]

In PoE1 Riposte has a 30% chance on graze and 20% on miss (after a patch that buffed it - before that it was 20% on miss only).

 

That's not too powerful but not bad either. A Riposte rogue works quite well - the only problem was the low health of rogues which doesn't synergize very well with getting a lot of grazes (which with a lot of health would be good for retaliation as well).

 

Since Deadfire rogues aren't as squishy anymore and can exploit healing it seems that Riposte as a concept may be stronger than in PoE1 (especially because you can multiclass) - but that heavily depends on the (probably new) mechanics/numbers of Deadfire's Riposte.