Templar (Paladin + Priest) or single Pally/Priest with updated high levels?

[PneumaticFire]

Hey

I'm aiming to avoid spoilers for a while once Deadfire is released.  So I'm hoping I can get some opinions and build suggestions for a either:

 

a) Templar - Kind Wayfarer / Eothasian Priest  or

 

b) Eothasian Priest  or 

 

c) Kind Wayfarer Paladin

 

 

I'm definitely leaning towards the Templar, however (as it should be) there are some pretty cool high level abilities that will be sacrificed that I saw in the life stream; particularly for Paladin.

 

* How would you build your Templar based on the current knowledge abilities.

 

* Or would you prefer to go single on either class based on the highest level abilities?

Thanks for your help!

 

 

[Nemesis7884]

maybe magran works well because he has so many fire spells

[PneumaticFire]

Yeah it would, but rolplay-wise I definitely want Eothasian priest

[Ensign]

My impression is that Paladin is much better as a multi-class. Most of the class' power is in those first tier abilities and upgrades, plus auras and Liberating Exhortarion, which you'll get regardless. The other Exhortations are a lot different this time around, relatively low impact but fast to cast; they aren't game changers anymore. The high level abilities are more flavorful than powerful.

 

Priest is going to play a lot differently from PoE1. There aren't Prayer Against X spells anymore and group buffs have, in general, been nerfed hard. Most of your critical reactive utility is in the very low level spells, and Devotions is inexplicably unchanged at level 4...after which it's a wasteland until the high level abilities.

 

The upshot of that is that a multi-class Priest should play nicely as a Devotions to open combat, then as a mini-Paladin with Restore / Suppress Affliction / Withdraw to supplement Lay on Hands and Liberating Exhortation. If the alternative is not running a priest, Devotions alone is worth the loss of high level abilities on basically every other class, even if you use nothing else from priest. So a Crusader will naturally play as an extra supporty paladin. Main concern is being able to cast much of anything on the front line due to lack of concentration; fortunately the aforementioned important spells are all ultra fast casts.

 

Pure priest is almost assuredly a fire priest nuker; that's where the residual power is. At high level you'll be able to (heavily nerfed) Crowns / Shields / Devotions, and then nuke with all your residual spell casts.

 

If you're leaning Crusader I'd go that way. Restore / Suppress / Withdraw with Devotions opener is more than the high level paladin abilities offer and will spike much earlier in the game.

[SummerAnne58]

Can you stack the fire pen passive on both of those classes?

 

Summon Cool Weapon -> Buff up -> Immolate/ Sworn Enemy -> FoD when group needs healing/spam -> give other buffs when needed

 

How bad is a two hander vs two one handers? In case your priest of choice is Berath.

Edited May 7, 2018 by SummerAnne58

[PneumaticFire]

Wow thanks for the great breakdown. This is similar to what I was thinking re lvl 4 priest spells capping off nicely for a multi.

The downside being spell power but that's a given for versatility.

I like the look of Paladin reviving at the highest levels though.

 

I'm looking at Templar though and not Crusader, although in principle it will be similar there will be slight variations.

[Ensign]

Er, right, Templar not Crusader. Got the multi-class names mixed up. Paladin + Priest. Should play super well as tanky support, especially with White Flames. Restore, Suppress, Withdraw, your summoned weapon all show up real early, and Dire Blessing and Devotions aren't delayed too much. That last bit is important - the main penalty of multi-classing in my mind isn't the loss of PL8-9 spells at max level, but pushing the PL5-6 spikes from 9-11 to 13-16. If you have core spells in those power levels, you're talking moving those spells from the esrly-middle part of the game to fairly late.

 

But neither paladin nor priest has critical abilities at those power levels! So instead of hitting a down period for a single classed character of either, you get to keep filling in with more great low level abilities. Score!

 

I wouldn't sweat the loss of a couple power levels. The damage and duration scaling from the beta was really modest. As you're not using abilities where penetration matters, +2 power level is something like 3 might and the duration half of two int. Whatever.

[SummerAnne58]

Does anyone know what the "special", if any, attributes to the summoned Priest weapons or are they just standard? Can you go to the end game with them?

[PneumaticFire]

Thanks again Ensign and good question SummerAnner58, I'd like to know as well.

 

 

I'm having trouble choosing the right balance of attributes for a Templar, as the requirements are quite needy across the board for multiple attributes.

Game says that Resolve, Might and Intellect are primary.  However I also recall from my PoE single priest build that Dexterity was very important. 

How would you build an affective Templar (Pally/Priest) without significant min-maxing and for general conversation checks (as balanced as they may be) now?

 

(give or take depending on race - Im going with human, prob from Aedyr)

 

MIGHT:  16?

CON: 

DEX: 

 

PER: 

INT: 14?

RES: 17?

[Ensign]

I think it comes down to how you want to play the character.

 

In PoE1 a pure buffing priest wanted to stack Crowns -> Devotions -> Shields/Blessing/Protection from X and still get the Inspired Radiance in there somewhere...and that's just to open. If you're playing such a buffer then you'd want to max dex. But I don't think you'd want to do that as what's the point of the multi-paladin then?

 

I would want to play this character as a tanky front-liner with a lot of situational support and utility, but I would generally be swinging weapons rather than buffing. In that case dex is not nearly so important (reactive spells are generally all 0.5s casts), but intellect and (somewhat less) might are.

 

Resolve is very all or nothing. If you can push it to the extreme and become nearly immune to afflictions it is amazing, otherwise forget about it.

 

As I am personally interested in seeing how well that works I'd run something like 13 might 15 int 20 resolve (10/10/10 con dex per) and main tank the character. Would be nice to have a main tank immune to CC with Liberating Exhortation and Suppress Affliction, right?

[PneumaticFire]

Awesome. Great suggestions as always.

 

This multi is just asking to be tanky/support. But if you wanted a little more of offence flavour thrown in, would you change anything? Or do you think it would be sufficient as is?

 

Sworn enemy or lay hands?

[SummerAnne58]

It's tough it feels like with build this you can't tank two stats like you could in PoE1. I agree with Ensign, you(I) would be an off-tanky damage dealer that would start the fight with priestly spells and throw support when needed, but in general you would be cracking skulls. So...

 

Str - 10/15/Max (Could go with any here, definitely can't dump it but could get away with lower if you can stack damage elsewhere.)

Con - 10 (Can't dump but 10 is probably fine)

Dex - Dump? (Maaaybe, I'm going 2-hander so I'm already slow so what's a little more)

Per - ??? (I'm 2-hander so with the modal I need this, but it could be dumped, FoD has Acc built in)

Int - 10/15 (This is probably fine between those numbers as long as your'e hitting the party with buffs and effects)

Res - ??? (This is the tough one it's probably all or nothing and I would be fine with nothing but I feel like it's still a dialogue stat even if they say it's not)

 

Feel like I would go: Max/10/Dump/10/15/Max)

 

Fun fact the summoned Berath weapon has 50% extra(?) corrode damage or 50% of it's damage is corrode not sure. However they can't actually be Bleak Walkers so it sucks that you can't FoD with all the extra juicy poison damage, oh well. So I guess you just take the 50% corrode for what it is and mainly deal fire all over the place.

 

I believe you can get double fire pen since FoD is tagged Fire and then you'll just do Fire/Corrode. Maybe that's good in case you run into immune mobs.

 

Edit: Actually how does it work if you FoD with Berath's sword? (25% White DMG/25% Burn/50% Corrode) or is it staraight up extra? (100% White/25% of the white as burn and also 50% of the white as Corrode?)

Edited May 9, 2018 by SummerAnne58

[Ensign]

More offense? Dual wield for the double white flames heal. Cast Devotions and Dire Blessing before engaging. But honestly you're not going to get a lot of offense out of the combo, not compared to the dual martials - you just don't have the modifiers available.

 

Normally I would say Lay on Hands at level 1, but between White Flames and Restore you might want to get Sworn Enemy. It's a minor point, though, you'll want to get them both pretty quickly.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Ensign

[PneumaticFire]

Great ideas and options above, but I may as well play this build to its strengths in heal/tank/support.

 

I may even go sword and board and flail as secondary (Eothas). Or considering the great sword and flail/shield as secondary.

 

Then it just comes down to choosing between the better paladin and Priest talents where applicable.

[SummerAnne58]

I know this isn't the point of the thread but I feel like Paladin/Druid(Shifter/Lifegiver) might just be better in every way you can build it. Role-Playing wise I suppose not, if you want to be a priest then you just have to deal.

[PneumaticFire]

Yeah, definitely want a priest.

. But out of curiosity, what's your reasoning?

[SummerAnne58]

I haven't played yet because I'm waiting for the hotfix/patch. As I seemingly look at all the trees it just seems harder and harder to multi a martial with a caster or caster/caster. Since most things "fight" for the resource points to be spent it becomes a priority game rather than in PoE1 where you used abilities when you needed them but they were once per encounter/rest. Martial/Martial or straight Caster seem to flow the best. Obviously if you gotta role-play you gotta role-play.

 

For the above it just flows better. Sworn -> Shift -> FoD spam mainly then when you pop out you can use utility. However I'm now on the Fighter/Priest or Fighter/Paladin train.

 

Edit: Don't listen to me. Anything can probably work even on higher difficulties. Going back to Paladin/Priest (Goldpact/Berath), roleplay away!

Edited May 10, 2018 by SummerAnne58

[PneumaticFire]

After a long hiatus Im back and ready to play Deadfire to the end (DLCs released, hectic year over).

Bumping this topic as my first proper playthrough will primarily be roleplaying.  So def want Eothasian Priest - and most likely with Kind Wayfarer or 2nd choice Shieldbearer.

 

Now that everything is 4.0, how would you ideally build this Templar...or would you  even consider straight Eothasian Priest?

 

Pour your collective wisdom on me!

Edited January 7, 2019 by PneumaticFire

[Yosharian]

Paladin is very versatile.  I'm using Paladin to complement a Priest of Magran, quite similar to the Templar build in the builds sticky.  You can see it here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107241-critique-my-5-man-squad

 

It's meant to do 3 things:

 

1) heal party members with LoH and Restore

2) hit things with FoD

3) hit things with fire spells

 

Eothasian priest I'm not sure about, though

Edited January 7, 2019 by Yosharian

[Boeroer]

I would do single class Priest of Eothas despite all the catcalls.

[PneumaticFire]

I would do single class Priest of Eothas despite all the catcalls.

 

 

Whats your decision based upon?

[Boeroer]

My experience with single class priests in Deadfire - I don't multiclass them anymore since I think they make the party better when they are single classed. Stuff like Devotions and Salvation of Time (amongst other spells) are so crucial to my parties' performances that I want them ASAP.

 

And because my last PoE run that I took over to Deadfire was a Priest of Eothas.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Boeroer

[Ensign]

Given those options I would choose single class Priest of Eothas.

 

I am not as high on single class Priest as Boeroer, but it is a reasonably powerful support class that you can build your party around. Single class Paladin on the other hand is rather weak; it is pretty tanky (but not exceptionally so); otherwise it doesn't offer anything all that exciting that you can't get from a multiclass. Multiclass Priest + Paladin doesn't have any important synergies that compensate the power loss from going multiclass.

 

The weakness of Priest is its inflexibility. You take the good spells and need to build your party around those to be effective. Fortunately those spells are really good and worth building around! Priest of Eothas is the most linear of all the Priest subclasses, so there isn't a lot of nuance - there is, as far as I am concerned, exactly one right way to build a Priest of Eothas - but it's a worthy character to main.

[Elric Galad]

1) Pure Priests :

 

As said above, a pure priest is always welcome in a party.

 

 

However, Priest of Eothas isn't great because he only gets a couple of spells that other priest don't get.

He is nice for multiclassing because he provides all the healing spells for free, but as a single class, you'll have enough ability points so it is not as important.

 

 

On the other hand, the new priest subclasses, Priest of Woedica is really really interesting IMHO. All the Writ are really unique spells (especially the high level ones : mass enfeeble, disable spells or abilities) and feel a bit more active than healing.

Dispositions don't matter much for priest, so provided you don't care about perfectly optimal stats, you may even play a Priest of Woedica exactly as a Priest of Eothas.

Just pretend to play a "fallen priest". It totally makes sense lore-wise.

 

 

2) Pure Paladins :

 

Pure Paladins are meh. Their most interesting specific ability is Divine Retribution which provide 2 zeal per downed ally.

Including summons. Which means they may be able to regenerate their power pool like forever with the right support (chanter...).

They also auto-rez and can basically rez allies for 1 zeal (3 zeal for reviving Exhortations - 2 zeal per downed ally).

So they are kind of life-insurance.

 

 

3) Multiclass :

 

There is are few relevant interactions between the 2 classes.

They both benefit from Mig and Int, and that's about it.
Minor Avatar may be nice for auto-attacking and inspirations are great to boost secondary defenses even higher than usual paladins. 

[Boeroer]

One nice multiclass with priest was Assassin/Skaen.

 

If I had to multiclass a Priest of Eothas I would maybe pick Helwalker because the +MIG and +INT will be great for healing, nuking as well as support duration. At the same time he could do good melee dmg. I didn't try out spiritual weapons (faith attuned flail) with Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes yet, but the lashes should add up nicely.