[Fighter multiclass tank/caster] Help me design/brainstorm this character

[Yosharian]

Hello, I have an idea for my main character, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help me out with the finer details, choices etc.

 

This is the concept:

 

A Fire Godlike Fighter tank using the Unbroken subclass, multiclassing to either Druid or Chanter (am willing to consider other multiclasses as long as it's not a Paladin).  Uses spellcasting as a way of dealing damage, healing or crowd control.  Weapon used mostly as a way of debuffing enemies rather than dealing high damage.  Good 'face' character because of high Per/Int/Res.  Probably will use the heaviest armor possible, although not 100% on that; maybe the casting speed loss from Plate is too much, even with Armored Grace.

 

Difficulty level will either be PotD or the one below it, haven't decided yet.  Probably the latter, I might save PotD for my second playthrough.

 

My other party members:

Eder: Two-Handed Fighter/Rogue [DPS/Tank]

Maia Rua: Ranger/Wizard [Ranged DPS/Support/CC]

Serafen: Barbarian/Cipher [DPS/Tank]

Xoti: Priest/Monk [support/DPS]

 

• Str: Low/Very Low (5 or less) - don't care about weapon damage
• Con: High (15) - want decent HP in order to tank effectively
• Dex: Medium (10) - would like faster casting but other stats more important
• Per: High (15) - need accuracy for spells to hit
• Int: High (15) - need duration.. I think?  not sure about this one actually
• Res: Very High (18 or higher) - need deflection to tank, spell damage & healing to be high

 

Unbroken: +1 engagement.  Increased penetration on disengagement attacks.  +2 Armor Rating with a shield.  Lower Stride in combat.  Lower Reflexes.

Please note that I do not want to play a Paladin.  I don't like the role-playing aspects.

 

2nd class choices:

 

Druid pros:

• Brings a lot of spells to the table.
• Versatile (healing, damage, CC)
• Lightning Storm/Returning Storm are incredible for dealing damage and stunning
• Short range heals are no problem on a melee character
• Summons are ok but I am considering Lifegiver

 

Druid cons:

• No real use for Spiritshift
• Casting takes a long time, could be risky/not work in combat
• Maybe spell accuracy will be a problem?
• Not sure how lower Power Level affects spells, will my Lightning Storm be too weak to damage enemies?

 

Chanter pros:

• Passively sings, requires less micro, more time to chug potions etc
• Invocations can be powerful
• Is Dragon Thrashed still in the game?  That was awesome.  Fits the Fire Godlike very well.
• Ancient memory can heal

 

Chanter cons:

• Too passive.  Not much to do?
• Invocations can also be crap.  In PoE1 most of them were very bad.
• Takes forever to cast any invocations
• Don't really understand how Chanter mechanics have changed so not sure about the rest

 

Ok so that's the concept out of the way, now for some thoughts:

 

1. Does my carried shield affect my spell accuracy as in PoE1?  Example, a medium shield has an accuracy penalty.  In PoE1 the best shields were medium, so I'm concerned about having to choose between 'omfg this shield is awesome' and 'damn, now my spells suck'.  I know Bucklers exist but they are kinda boring.  I guess I could just use a Buckler.
2. Fighters have Weapon Specialization, but I have no idea which weapon could be the best to specialise in.  Are there Soulbound weapons in Deadfire like in POE1, and if so, do they function with any Weapon Specialization like they did in POE1?
3. How important is Intellect to this build?  I sort assumed I'd need decent Int, but actually thinking about it, I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be better to leave Int at 10 and buff Con/Per even higher, or maybe put points into Dex instead.
4. Which weapon has the best active ability for a tanking/debuffing role?  I'm thinking either to debuff enemy Reflex/Fortitude saves for Lightning Storm, or something.  Or maybe a Deflection boost?  Not sure.
5. Which subclasses would be suitable, either for Druid or Chanter?  I am a bit lost on this.  The loss of Restoration spells from Fury seems brutal.  I know that I probably won't Spiritshift much since I will be wearing tank gear, and have low Strength.
6. What armor should I wear?  I was thinking Plate, but maybe it's too slow for a caster?
7. Any other modifications you would suggest to the attributes?  Am I overvaluing CON, for example?
8. If I went Chanter, which subclass would be the best?  I am not sure about Skald because of the crit part, doubt I will be critting much.

Thanks, any contributions, negative or positive, greatly appreciated.

[KDubya]

I'd keep strength at ten anyway, no big payoff to gimp your damage.

 

A Skald would be a great choice. You'll have a good Perception, access to Disciplined Strikes and if you use a spear, club, dagger or rapier get another +5 to accuracy. All in you'll crit pretty frequently which as a Skald will get you more phrases. The lesser costs for offensive invocations are great as well. The armor debuff is godlike and the paralysis one is pretty good and even the lightning stunning one is pretty cool.

 

Shields affect spell accuracy but a medium is not too punishing.

 

For proficiencies I'd go with a one hander that has an accuracy bonus like spears, clubs, daggers or rapier. The best armor penetrating one hander will be a stiletto since maces and warhammers do gimped damage. Sabres are always a top choice as they do more damage than anything else plus they'll probably be way over represented again as well. Regardless you get a lot of proficiencies so don't sweat it.

 

Not sure a Fire Godlike will be that great for a tanking guy as you'll need to be damaged in order to activate the racial. Nature Godlike gets a nice power level boost which will make you multi comparable to a single class, or something like either Orlan, Mountain Dwarf, either elf, or Coastal Aumaua would get you a decent racial that doesn't require your tanky guy to get beaten up first.

 

Intellect always helps with durations and AoE so definitely don't dump it.

 

If you don't want to shapeshift I'd avoid Druid.

 

For armor pretty much go naked or go heavy, at least unless they change how things work from the beta. Having your armor being above their penetration drastically reduces the amount of incoming damage that does manage to hit you, but once they start to penetrate you might as well be wearing robes.

[Yosharian]

I'd keep strength at ten anyway, no big payoff to gimp your damage.

 

A Skald would be a great choice. You'll have a good Perception, access to Disciplined Strikes and if you use a spear, club, dagger or rapier get another +5 to accuracy. All in you'll crit pretty frequently which as a Skald will get you more phrases. The lesser costs for offensive invocations are great as well. The armor debuff is godlike and the paralysis one is pretty good and even the lightning stunning one is pretty cool.

 

Shields affect spell accuracy but a medium is not too punishing.

 

For proficiencies I'd go with a one hander that has an accuracy bonus like spears, clubs, daggers or rapier. The best armor penetrating one hander will be a stiletto since maces and warhammers do gimped damage. Sabres are always a top choice as they do more damage than anything else plus they'll probably be way over represented again as well. Regardless you get a lot of proficiencies so don't sweat it.

 

Not sure a Fire Godlike will be that great for a tanking guy as you'll need to be damaged in order to activate the racial. Nature Godlike gets a nice power level boost which will make you multi comparable to a single class, or something like either Orlan, Mountain Dwarf, either elf, or Coastal Aumaua would get you a decent racial that doesn't require your tanky guy to get beaten up first.

 

Intellect always helps with durations and AoE so definitely don't dump it.

 

If you don't want to shapeshift I'd avoid Druid.

 

For armor pretty much go naked or go heavy, at least unless they change how things work from the beta. Having your armor being above their penetration drastically reduces the amount of incoming damage that does manage to hit you, but once they start to penetrate you might as well be wearing robes.

 

Thanks for the response!

 

a) Keep str at 10: do I really need weapon damage with this build?  With my weapon damage being average, won't most of it be negated by DR, even with high accuracy?

 

b) forgive my ignorance, what is Disciplined Strikes?  Something that boosts accuracy?  The wiki isn't complete.

 

c) At what percentage is 'Near Death'?  Battleforged used to trigger at HP<50% did it not?  I figured +AR would be great...  If I don't go Fire Godlike I'll probably be a Pale Elf.

 

d) Int won't be dumped but it is important enough to boost to 15?  or should it be left at 10?

[KDubya]

There is no DR, only armor vs penetration. If your penetration is greater than their armor you do full damage.

 

Disciplined Strike and its upgrades are one of the best abilities in the game. It gets you the +5 Perception buff and converts grazes to hits, upgraded it gets a good hit>crit effect that was +50% but might have been changed.

 

Yes you need to be below 50% health, but with your Constant Recovery regen (which is buffed by your Resolve and Intellect), your high armor from plate and your good deflection from your shield (and weapon and shield style) you probably won't be below 50% health very often.

 

I'd find a way to keep Intellect  at 15, drop a little from Con and Resolve if needed, larger area invocations with longer durations plus longer chant linger makes Intellect a good choice.

[Boeroer]

In Deadfire:

 

Blooded = below 50%

Near Death = below 25%

 

Disciplined Barrage and later Tactical Barrage will give you bonus PER and convert 50% hits to crits and 50% grazes to hits. It's quite awesome and only costs 1 point of Discipline (the resource the fighter uses).

[mrmonocle]

any tank caster combo while seeming a plausible option on paper because of a high resolve tempt fails miserably in actual performance in beta, except for maybe a tank/chanter with the concentration chant, but who in clear mind will want to chant concentration when you have fyr or reload time.

[Yosharian]

Thanks for the responses.

 

Ok, so based on what everyone is saying it definitely seems like Fighter/Chanter is the way forward.

 

Not convinced that weapon damage is a focus for this build.  I can still plink away at weaker enemies with my spear or whatever, getting crits, without having good damage.  I'm thinking points in Strength could be better placed in stats like Perception, Intellect or Dexterity.  I'm now considering:

 

Str: 5 (-25% weapon dmg I believe?)

Con: 10 or less

Dex: 10 or more (maybe squeeze points out of CON?)

Per: 18

Int 15

Res 18

 

The idea being that -25% weapon damage isn't that significant compared to more crits (= more phrases) from PER, bigger AoEs and durations from INT, and better Deflection/Spell Dmg/Healing from RES.  Also, hitpoints might not be as important as having faster actions?

 

Soooo.. am I wrong?

[Boeroer]

I tried single rapier with modal. That leads to a great hit/crit ratio but is also slow. I didn't test if it's worth it since you can stack Tactical Barrage with Killers (50% conversion * 50% conversion = 75% conversion) and crit a lot with dual wielding fast (light) weapons as well.

 

I also tried dual wielding club+flail with modal and that is a nice combo with Killers and damaging invocations because they target will or reflex mostly - so you can reliably hit at least the guy in front of you (nice with high defense bosses).

 

For more defense and good crits dual dagger + modal seems nice as well.

 

I agree that weapon damage isn't important once you can get a lot of crits and deal damage with invocations and do great CC as well. You could even dump Strength and go full Resolve. Also better for Constant Recovery and Ancient Memory (should you combine both).

[Yosharian]

I tried single rapier with modal. That leads to a great hit/crit ratio but is also slow. I didn't test if it's worth it since you can stack Tactical Barrage with Killers (50% conversion * 50% conversion = 75% conversion) and crit a lot with dual wielding fast (light) weapons as well.

 

I also tried dual wielding club+flail with modal and that is a nice combo with Killers and damaging invocations because they target will or reflex mostly - so you can reliably hit at least the guy in front of you (nice with high defense bosses).

 

For more defense and good crits dual dagger + modal seems nice as well.

 

I agree that weapon damage isn't important once you can get a lot of crits and deal damage with invocations and do great CC as well. You could even dump Strength and go full Resolve. Also better for Constant Recovery and Ancient Memory (should you combine both).

Ancient Memory is a chant now, right?  Seems bad...  or does it heal enough to warrant using it situationally?

[Boeroer]

If I remember correctly it can be stacked (if you only sing that phrase) and with high RES it will heal for ~3 health per second at lvl 6 - which is not bad in an AoE.

 

It has a base healing of 1 health per 1 second. Or in other words 3 points per 3 seconds. In an AoE. Without end/no duration. If stacked this becomes 2 health per 1 second or 6 per 3 seconds. It scales with level - not Power Level (+10% at level 6) and also with RES of course.

 

Constant Recovery does 5 base every 3 seconds on a single character for 45 secs.

 

So to me Ancient Memmory is way better than Constant Recovery, applying a more powerful, endless regenerating effect on your whole party.

Of course can't use other chants then which may also be really nice and helpful (resistance chant for example).

 

If I would decide to use it then I would specialize in that. Healing is very important in Deadfire and this is a passive healing soruce that has no duration. So if I had a lot of RES I would use it as my main chant, yes. 

 

edit: just double-checked in game: yes, still stacks. People see the 1 health per second and think it's worse than in PoE, but they forget that it can be stacked via linger time. You need lots of INT for good linger time though in order to stack it all the time. Else it's stacking not 100% of times.

 

edit2: so as a fighter/chanter you can get a pretty nice regeneration rate of 6+5 = 11 base health per 3 seconds. Add level and high RES and you would end up at 15 every 3 seconds at lvl 6 with high RES.

 

edit3: just spawned a single Lagufaeth mage and he has serious difficulties to kill me if I'm just standing there (lvl 6, plate armor) because I heal nearly as fast has his spells can deal damage. After Constant Recovery runs out he finally manages.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Just tried a Fighter/Troubadour with Brisk Recitation and that's even better - don't ask me why. The healing seems to be faster although it should not be because linger time gets removed and chanting time cut in half. Maybe the overall healing of the normal chant time gets pressed together into the shorter chanting time or whatever.

 

edit: nevermind, seemed to have been a hickup. Now it works like I thought it would. Weird...

Edited February 26, 2018 by Boeroer

[dunehunter]

Thanks for the responses.

 

Ok, so based on what everyone is saying it definitely seems like Fighter/Chanter is the way forward.

 

Not convinced that weapon damage is a focus for this build.  I can still plink away at weaker enemies with my spear or whatever, getting crits, without having good damage.  I'm thinking points in Strength could be better placed in stats like Perception, Intellect or Dexterity.  I'm now considering:

 

Str: 5 (-25% weapon dmg I believe?)

Con: 10 or less

Dex: 10 or more (maybe squeeze points out of CON?)

Per: 18

Int 15

Res 18

 

The idea being that -25% weapon damage isn't that significant compared to more crits (= more phrases) from PER, bigger AoEs and durations from INT, and better Deflection/Spell Dmg/Healing from RES.  Also, hitpoints might not be as important as having faster actions?

 

Soooo.. am I wrong?

 

You cannot 'stick' enemies around you if you have low weapon damage. The AI is smart enough to know how much disengagement damage you will do and if it is low, they will just disengage and chase your backrow. I'd max Str for an unbroken tho.

[Boeroer]

If it comes to tanking/holding engagement:

 

In my experience the enemies never leave my Unbroken fighter because of the +100% damage bonus on disengagment and the +10 PER bonus on disengagement. I use a sabre so that the damage per hit is as high as possible and try to have 4 to 5 engagement slots. He almost never "loses" an engaged target.

 

The problem with low STR is that its malus is multiplicative and that's bad, even for disengagement attacks. Leaving it at 10 might be ok I guess. This all doesn't matter that much anymore if you pick Overbearing Guard at some point.

[Yosharian]

The problem with maxing Str is that I'm using Str to deal weapon damage and then Res to tank/deal spell damage and that's splitting my stats too much for my tastes.

 

I get what you're saying about the multiplicative part though.

 

Maybe I'll leave it at 10 until later on?

 

I probably will get Overbearing Guard.

 

> +100% damage bonus on disengagment and the +10 PER bonus on disengagement

 

Where's that from?

Edited February 26, 2018 by Yosharian

[Boeroer]

Disengagement attacks generally get 100% base damage and the Unbroken gets +10 PEN on his disengagement attacks on top.

[KDubya]

The +100% damage on disengagement is part of the game, everyone gets that so disengaging from some heavy hitter like an Ogre is going to hurt.

 

The +10 penetration on disengagement attacks is a perk of the Unbroken sub class.

 

I think there is a big +accuracy as well.

 

PS Your missing a few statpoints, you could have an 8 str with everything ten with an 18 per, 15 int and 18 Res. To get to a 10 str you'd only have to drop the 18>17.

 

PPS There is talk of reverting strength back to Might so then you might drop Resolve to ten and make a 17 Might.

[Yosharian]

Ah I see.

[Yosharian]

Just tried a Fighter/Troubadour with Brisk Recitation and that's even better - don't ask me why. The healing seems to be faster although it should not be because linger time gets removed and chanting time cut in half. Maybe the overall healing of the normal chant time gets pressed together into the shorter chanting time or whatever.

 

edit: nevermind, seemed to have been a hickup. Now it works like I thought it would. Weird...

I admit I am quite confused overall by the Troubadour subclass. 

 

"Gain "Brisk Recitation" modal that increases the rate that phrases elapse, but shortens the duration they linger. "

 

If phrases elapse faster, isn't that bad?  If they linger for less time, isn't that bad too?

 

I don't get it.

 

I considered the Troubadour but the bonuses seem rather limp compared to the Skald's.

[Yosharian]

It does seem that Josh is going to go back to Might/Resolve.

 

I'm thinking:

 

MIG 18, CON 08, DEX 10, PER 18, INT 15, RES 10 for the old system

 

STR 10, CON 08, DEX 10, PER 18, INT 15, RES 18 for the new system

 

or something similar anyway

 

So I went from a relatively high CON tank concept to dumping it slightly...  plus ca change.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Yosharian

[Boeroer]

The Troubadour is good if you want to run two parallel chants and have no gap in between, because his linger time is always longer than those of other chanters. Or to stack more chants. So for example you can run the weakening chant AND the Mith Fyr chant without having gaps. Or you can stack two Ancient Memories which doubles the healing. This is great for several chanting setups.

 

Brisk Recitation makes phrases 50% shorter (and since it's a modal, its drawback is that it removes linger time). This is very good if you want to build up phrases a lot faster in order to use invocations. Instead of 1 phrase every 6 seconds you get one every 3 seconds which means your invocations will come out twice as often. But you lose the ability to stack/overlap chants. So you would want to use one single, non-stacking chant like Wengrith or Her Courage or Mith Fyr and chant only that - while gaining phrases for invocations very quickly.  

Edited February 27, 2018 by Boeroer

[Yosharian]

> This is very good if you want to build up phrases a lot faster in order to use invocations. 

 

OHHHH of course

 

I hadn't thought of that

[Veevoir]

edit2: so as a fighter/chanter you can get a pretty nice regeneration rate of 6+5 = 11 base health per 3 seconds. Add level and high RES and you would end up at 15 every 3 seconds at lvl 6 with high RES.

 

edit3: just spawned a single Lagufaeth mage and he has serious difficulties to kill me if I'm just standing there (lvl 6, plate armor) because I heal nearly as fast has his spells can deal damage. After Constant Recovery runs out he finally manages.

How does one run out of constant recovery?

 

Also - if you keep it as lingering chant - does it mean essentially "wasting" the whole class ability on healing-only? Even with high RES it may not be viable to try and weave in any other chant in the song.

[Boeroer]

Constant Recovery has a duration. It's constant but not endless recovery.

 

Given how powerful endless and passive party-wide healing is (since there's no more endurance/health system) I wouldn't call it wasted. Ancient Memory can give the whole party a kind of Constant Recovery that doesn't run out.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Boeroer

[Veevoir]

Ok, that's a new thing. I must read the descriptions more carefully. I guess not an issue in normal fight, considering length of a typical engagement.

Though leaving PoE1 name is a bit confusing, it should be long enough but finite recovery

[Boeroer]

It also has a duration in PoE. Same thing basically.

 

But yes: in most fights it doesn't matter because they will be over before Constant Recovery runs out.