Help me make a templar.

[teenparty]

Hi! Is there a smart person out there who can help me come up with a build for a priest of Eothas/kind wayfarer multiclassed character?

[Boeroer]

Are you taking part in the beta?

[teenparty]

No. I want to go in fresh, I don't have the time and I don't think my current laptop could handle it I can barely run Pillars 1. 

 

I want to make an Eothan Priest/Kind Wayfarer, because that fits the personality of one of my characters from Pillars 1. I am guessing I should build him as a tank. 

[Boeroer]

Ok, but the beta is not equal to the final game. So many things will change that it's of no use to consult you on a build that most likely will not work the same way once Deadfire comes out. 

 

Also, the beta is only from lvl 6 to 9. So there's hardly enough info atm for a complete build for a whole playthrough with the final game.

[Gromnir]

No. I want to go in fresh, I don't have the time and I don't think my current laptop could handle it I can barely run Pillars 1. 

 

I want to make an Eothan Priest/Kind Wayfarer, because that fits the personality of one of my characters from Pillars 1. I am guessing I should build him as a tank. 

initial observation: am not gonna waste your time by suggesting other templar combos is superior.  if you wanted to play a priest o' berath/goldpact knight you woulda' mentioned such, no?  point out advantages o' other templar combos is silly. 

 

as boeroer notes, the beta is hardly the final say on builds as there will be changes before final release to priests and paladins, and we only have 'bout 1/2 levels and powhaz and such.  converse, if the class playstyle radically changes 'cause o' powers available late in game, then the developers made a mistake, and such mistakes is one o' the common poe errors the developers is trying to avoid repeating in poe 2. as such, we got a good notion o' the general strengths and weaknesses o' goodie two-shoes templar as you envision.  sure, with beta feedback from 2/14/18 you won't know all the absolute bestest exploits and synergies at this point, but only a few hardcore build monkeys genuine play the game at the margins.

 

however, am also gonna observe how most build suggestions and plans curious ignore party composition, as if such stuff were only a minor concern.  weird. other than solo runs, your party composition could/should impact how you wanna build your templar.  is only a five-man party for deadfire, so our first run is unlikely to benefit from any hirelings. a surfeit o' support or healing from companions means your templar is gonna need carry more o' the healing and support load, yes? sure, with benefit o' multiple plays o' deadfire you will know how to game the game and you can use companions to account for any o' your character shortcomings, but there is a good chance you ain't gonna be trying to work the angles with your first run o' deadfire, yes? we don't know a great deal 'bout the companions beyond basic class limits, so is kinda a schrödinger cat problem for the nonce. tekehu sounds kinda lame to Gromnir.  a self important artist who is no doubt gonna face a personal crisis which... whatever.  gonna need be extreme well written for us to get over initial disinterest. that said, having played the beta, am definite wanting a chanter in our party.  tekehu is a chanter/druid. converse, for story reasons alone, xoti will also be in our initial run party as she is a priestess/monk follower o' gaun (an aspect o' eothas) and a refugee from readceras.  so even if we don't take pallegina, we would have potential at least two support characters in our party in addition to the templar.  party composition will impact how we would build a templar, particular an eothasian/kind wayfarer, and considering how little we know 'bout the companions at the moment, am suspecting we will change our mind 'bout party composition once we start playing the game. nevertheless, we got a few broadstroke observations 'bout the templar combo you envision. 

 

first, don't think you need be a tank.  yeah, a templar tank is obvious, but don't feel limited. frontline dps can work as well as tank does for such a character.  have personal played every combo o' templar, votary, and contemplative possible in the beta.  eothas combos is rare the most effective, but they can be potent even so, and as you are aware, the dispositions for such a multiclass combo as you want align favorable. a striker templar is a potent deadfire damage dealer who will be almost as resilient as a tank while also contributing valuable party buffs and much needed heals. being able to do everything well can be fun.

 

people get serious worked up 'bout starting ability scores 'cause o' how important such stuff is in other crpgs.  attribute scores is important in the poe games, but less so than in d&d and most other games.  attribute benefits is typical additive and largely linear.  also, unlike in poe1, it appears attribute scores is less important when determining dialogue and those cut-scene encounter options... but we have only a small portion o' the game to judge such.  in any event, most o' our dps templars has been built much the same as most o' our non dedicated casters: s13-15/c10/d15/p13-15/i15/r10.  'tween defense and armour boosting powhaz, you need not put much into resolve to be a highly resilient in combat.

 

one aspect o' character development which gets relative little attention from beta folks is skillz. sure, you get a bit o' feedback 'bout which combat-related skills seem best, but little beyond.  worse, obsidian doesn't make clear what are the class skill bonuses during character generation.

 

priest skills: alchemy, arcana, diplomacy, history, religion.

paladin skills: arcana, athletics, diplomacy, intimidate, religion.

 

one point bonus for multi-class and two points for single.  

 

pretty much every Gromnir character is gonna get a minimum 1 point in athletics.  is a nice insta heal, particular at low levels. am also gonna observe how, in our opinion, the current seeming most valuable combat related skill is alchemy.  potions is powerful and may provide highly potent action speed buffs as well as heals and any number o' other effects.  'course ain't as if you need alchemy to use potions, whereas you do need athletics to get the freebie heal. even so, a priest/paladin gots noteworthy inherent arcana, diplomacy and religion benefits.  am thinking white that wends mystic is the only background which has two skills in common with your highest inherent class skill bonuses: religion and arcana.  even so, most simple and straightforward, ignoring role-play concerns, would be the colonist (multiple locales) background as it gains you both alchemy and athletics points.  can't go wrong by focusing on athletics, alchemy and/or both.  gonna start with at least 2 in diplomacy and religion no matter what background you choose, which ain't a bad start for two passives.

 

for race, am kinda digging wild orlan.  orlans got more dialogue options than other races in poe, and such seems to be the continuing trend in deadfire.  is seeming widespread racism directed at orlans, so am suspecting you will see intriguing dialogue options when playing an orlan.  we already know eder is bigoted towards orlans, so am believing an orlan protagonist with eder in the party will have unique dialogue opportunities. furthermore, the wild orlan receives resistance to resolve afflictions, which is a huge benefit in our estimation.  the low-level priest resolve buff... sucks.  is inexplicable only ten seconds long and considering the cast time and recovery time, is almost worthless... save for fact that resolve afflictions is so debilitating in deadfire. paralysis/stun kinda stuff were serious op in poe, but not so much in deadfire.  the 50% increase in crit chance for paralysis will be a killer with a few builds, particular monks, but frightened and terrified appear far more significant to our way o' thinking.  wild orlans is never gonna be terrified.  good. 

 

choose talents is obvious the most significant part o' building a templar, but as noted earlier, your party composition is gonna play a big role in such choices.  low-level paladin abilities is fantastic, and you will be tempted to choose 'em all. low level priest offerings is less clear good. priests need make hard choices when choosing talents. there is a few seeming essential buffs and no brainer spell choices at each level, but if you have xoti in the party or a druid, you might be able to skip a few seeming essentials in favor o' more personal combat related buffs/abilities.  for example, 'tween your kind wayfarer fod healing and your priestly holy radiance ability, restore might be less o' a need choice, particular if you have another party support character who can heal. additional, the eothas priest bonus spells is, for the most part, classic healing/protection stuff. withdraw, watchful presence and circle of protection is automatic spells for your templar, so is no need to obsess 'bout whether to choose 'em.   the stat attribute score spread we recommended does not have great resolve, so your spell damage will be sacrificed in favor o' weapon damage-- with a few exceptions, we would skip the pure damage spells. 1st tier? holy power lasts a good and long time.  interdiction is, we feel, highly underrated... though not the op spell it were 'fore penetration were nerfed a bit. 2nd level spiritual weapon is still highly effective in the beta, but am not certain if such will continue at release.  nevertheless, at the moment we would deem spiritual weapon to be essential for a striker paladin. might as well make flail one o' your weapon proficiency choices, eh? depending on what eventual happens with grazes, dire blessing could be essential or pointless. am suspecting higher level priest spells is where the templar is gonna genuine benefit the most.  

 

paladins is extreme powerful at the moment.  obsidian should reintroduce the paladin malus to balance out a few o' the paladin orders, but such is fodder for another thread.  point is virtual all paladin abilities is desirable for a frontline striker as am kinda/sorta describing. sworn enemy, upscaled to sworn rival is our first choice.  lay on hands is worth considering, but 'tween your fod (automatic choice) and sworn enemy, you is gonna be able to guarantee easy kills per encounter. take deep faith AND retribution.  doesn't matter if you tank or not 'cause deep faith is too darn good to ignore. also, assuming you are playing other than story mode, you will be getting hit often enough, regardless o' defense, such that retribution will stack quick. inspired defenses AND inspiring triumph is also de rigueur.  am knowing it likely feels wrong, but we would personal likely skip the auras-- too many other good options.  want auras? take pallegina along.  

 

alternative, a paladin support-tank works great in part 'cause it is one o' the builds which benefited most from the change from might to strength.  you can build a human or orlan who starts poe with a 20 resolve.  attributes o' 10/12/10/12/14/20 works well. again, attribute scores ain't the be all and end all o' poe character development, but there is little downside to building a tanky paladin in such a way.  not only does resolve boost deflection, but it increases heal bonus and spell damage. a templar tank, perhaps ironic, will be doing some serious damage with the few powerful priestly offensive spells at his/her disposal, as well as being nigh invulnerable.  priestly damage spells which your striker paladin ignored, such as iconic projection, divine mark and shining beacon, become viable choices... though be aware of penetration numbers for divine mark and pillar of faith. priests don't appear to have many high penetration options for offensive spells. if your party doesn't have a scheme for lowering armour, then you must needs pay close attention to penetration.  is yet another example o' why party composition is so important. tanky templar don't need sworn enemy or retribution for paladin powhaz, and you can skip inspiring triumph too... at least until late game.  take auras and lay on hands (hands of light).  can target self with hands of light for an additional 5 points o' resolve and immunity to interruptions. tanky templar is gonna be difficult to fail.  take defensive stuff for win.  

 

am knowing folks like a level-by-level rundown o' builds.  is a mistake in our opinion to limit self to a build. am knowing with all the possible choices it seems obvious there is more opportunities to choose wrong.  also, if you listen to beta folks you get the impression that any number o' weapons and abilities is horribly broken and sucky.  don't be discouraged.  takes horribly bad luck to make character choices which will cause a genuine fail, and there will be a respec option regardless.  also, when beta folks claim stuff is broken or sucky, they is tending towards hyperbolic.  there is better _____.  spells, weapons, synergies all is having bests and worsts, but genuine bad and fail stuff is rare.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[PneumaticFire]

I was initially intending to build a Kind Wayfarer/Soul Blade build to begin with, but recently have been leaning towards a Kind Wayfarer/Eothas build as well, and this is reflected in the look I requested in my portrait.   Fortunately it works for both.

 

It brings back the flavour of Pally I've always preferred while adding more depth in regards to roleplaying options with the Pillars story as we know it.

 

Great points and I look forward to this being fleshed out upon release.

Edited February 15, 2018 by PneumaticFire

[LampStaple]

 

No. I want to go in fresh, I don't have the time and I don't think my current laptop could handle it I can barely run Pillars 1. 

 

I want to make an Eothan Priest/Kind Wayfarer, because that fits the personality of one of my characters from Pillars 1. I am guessing I should build him as a tank. 

initial observation: am not gonna waste your time by suggesting other templar combos is superior.  if you wanted to play a priest o' berath/goldpact knight you woulda' mentioned such, no?  point out advantages o' other templar combos is silly. 

 

as boeroer notes, the beta is hardly the final say on builds as there will be changes before final release to priests and paladins, and we only have 'bout 1/2 levels and powhaz and such.  converse, if the class playstyle radically changes 'cause o' powers available late in game, then the developers made a mistake, and such mistakes is one o' the common poe errors the developers is trying to avoid repeating in poe 2. as such, we got a good notion o' the general strengths and weaknesses o' goodie two-shoes templar as you envision.  sure, with beta feedback from 2/14/18 you won't know all the absolute bestest exploits and synergies at this point, but only a few hardcore build monkeys genuine play the game at the margins.

 

however, am also go

 

....

 

am knowing folks like a level-by-level rundown o' builds.  is a mistake in our opinion to limit self to a build. am knowing with all the possible choices it seems obvious there is more opportunities to choose wrong.  also, if you listen to beta folks you get the impression that any number o' weapons and abilities is horribly broken and sucky.  don't be discouraged.  takes horribly bad luck to make character choices which will cause a genuine fail, and there will be a respec option regardless.  also, when beta folks claim stuff is broken or sucky, they is tending towards hyperbolic.  there is better _____.  spells, weapons, synergies all is having bests and worsts, but genuine bad and fail stuff is rare.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Great, thorough post, but what's with the overuse of contractions? It made an otherwise great post really difficult to read

[KDubya]

I was initially intending to build a Kind Wayfarer/Soul Blade build to begin with, but recently have been leaning towards a Kind Wayfarer/Eothas build as well, and this is reflected in the look I requested in my portrait.   Fortunately it works for both.

 

It brings back the flavour of Pally I've always preferred while adding more depth in regards to roleplaying options with the Pillars story as we know it.

 

Great points and I look forward to this being fleshed out upon release.

 

A Kind Wayfarer/Soul Blade also makes for a very good character.

 

Paladins bring so much via sworn enemy, LoH, FoD and the on kill effects, while Soul Blade has a very nice damage buff, a penetration buff, a massive raw damage focus dump and the chance to cherry pick a few great powers.

 

You can't go wrong either with the cipher combo or the Eothian priest. Actually paladin/anything is really really good in the beta. Will have to see what high level abilities are lost and see if multiclasses still dominate.

[dunehunter]

 

I was initially intending to build a Kind Wayfarer/Soul Blade build to begin with, but recently have been leaning towards a Kind Wayfarer/Eothas build as well, and this is reflected in the look I requested in my portrait. Fortunately it works for both.

 

It brings back the flavour of Pally I've always preferred while adding more depth in regards to roleplaying options with the Pillars story as we know it.

 

Great points and I look forward to this being fleshed out upon release.

A Kind Wayfarer/Soul Blade also makes for a very good character.

 

Paladins bring so much via sworn enemy, LoH, FoD and the on kill effects, while Soul Blade has a very nice damage buff, a penetration buff, a massive raw damage focus dump and the chance to cherry pick a few great powers.

 

You can't go wrong either with the cipher combo or the Eothian priest. Actually paladin/anything is really really good in the beta. Will have to see what high level abilities are lost and see if multiclasses still dominate.

I think in beta 3 Sworn Enemy got a big nerf and it is not worth to invest into now. And Kind Wayfarer is also nerfed because the healing effect requires u to hit enemies. Either graze or miss won’t give u heals.

 

Actually both Soul blade and Kind Wayfarer now rely heavily on accuracy as a miss on Soul Annihilation also means lose all focus and gain nothing.

 

For optimization, both subclass should be combined with class like ranger who grant accuracy bonus.

[PneumaticFire]

Good points.  If its anything like the current beta or even PoE1, I'm hoping that they either give Kind Wayfarers more healing on a successful roll, or they include graze as well. 

At the moment because of the nature of hit/penetration Kind Wayfarers lag behind the other paladin flavours.

 

Depending on high level abilities perhaps a pure pally may also be preferable.

[Boeroer]

Or you take a single rapier in the main hand and activate the modal before using Soul Annihilation. I never had a miss or graze so far when I tried this. Too much ACC. Great modal for a Soulblade "Duelist".

But a Kind Wayfarer gets +20 acc when doing FoD. Do you miss/graze often? I don't. The real bugger is the low amount of healing. 14 points... pfff!

Edited February 17, 2018 by Boeroer

[dunehunter]

Or you take a single rapier in the main hand and activate the modal before using Soul Annihilation. I never had a miss or graze so far when I tried this. Too much ACC. Great modal for a Soulblade "Duelist".

 

But a Kind Wayfarer gets +20 acc when doing FoD. Do you miss/graze often? I don't. The real bigger is the low amount of healing. 14 points... pfff!

I think it depends on your difficulty and your build. If playing on POTD or your build is more supportive like Kind Wayfarer/Lifegiver who dump Perception, then the answer is yes you will graze a lot even with FoD accuracy bonus.

[Boeroer]

I can imagine on PotD even +40 ACC is not enough with an arquebus+modal + FoD to avoid grazes entirely. But if you take a single rapier and switch on the modal and use FoD you will have +57 ACC, am I right? Should work also well enough if you don't care about the damage anyways.

But I agree that it's kind of stupid why the healing effect is tied to hit/crit instead of just executing the ability like it was in PoE.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Boeroer

[dunehunter]

I can imagine on PotD even +40 ACC is not enough with an arquebus+modal + FoD to avoid grazes entirely. But if you take a single rapier and switch on the modal and use FoD you will have +57 ACC, am I right? Should work also well enough if you don't care about the damage anyways.

 

But I agree that it's kind of stupid why the healing effect is tied to hit/crit instead of just executing the ability like it was in PoE.

I have no idea for the change, maybe they try to nerf the dual wielding Kind Wayfarer that get two heals with FoD? But this change also make two handed Kind Wayfarer lag behind again.

[Boeroer]

I think it's pretty easy to only trigger the healing once when you activate FoD instead of tying it to every strike.