Ok, so for a couple of days, this guide is Work in Progress. Means that I'm slowly and steadily filling it up with the builds. There's more levels than in PoE 1 and there are much more toys to play so more explanation is required so more time is needed. Be patient.

The game is a bit too easy right now but it doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. We'll focus both on efficiency and the joy of playing.

The races really don't matter as much as they did. So they can mostly be swapped without much worries. There are some exceptions but they're rather rare and obvious.

Just like in the first game, the armor progress seems to go from heavy to light. Heavy armor doesn't eventually get useless, though, so certain builds will like to stay ironclad through the entirety of game.

Magical items are much stronger than they used to be in PoE 1 so you'll feel much more impact from them.

Hard control has been really nerfed so now it's more about debuffing enemies then just keeping them still. And casters are more about either direct damage or support than about CC.

In terms of party composition - it's all pretty simple. You don't need more than one pure tank and even one is optional. Instead, you need 3 sturdy party members and that'll be enough to support 2 squishy damage dealers. 4+1 setup may also work. 2+3 is perhaps too greedy. And full 5 sturdy party members are probably redundant - it's not like there will be enough foes to burden them all at once.

If I'm not explaining something then it probably doesn't matter as much and can be done at your discretion.

Role: Damage Dealer.

Race: Mountain Dwarf
You'll already have lots of resistances as a fighter so why not have even more of them?

Subclass: Devoted
Simply the best subclass. The go-to choice. Extra penetration and critical damage, combined with the fighter's ability to score some easiest crits ever, increase your fighting potential greatly. And, given how good and diverse the swords and greatswords are – your basic weapon of choice – you're not really paying too much for all that. On the other hand, Unbroken is for a very narrow tanky build that requires a certain synergy to bloom. And Black Jacket is simply weak – the burst that it generates is not all that great so all the gun-switcheroo shenanigans are not that worth it in Deadfire. Besides, even if you wish to be having them, you don't really need to invest into a subclass for this.

First ability: Disciplined Barrage
It's a great skill that allows us to frequently hit (and, after an upgrade, crit) while having an average Perception. And maybe even to hit while sporting some serious accuracy bonuses. Knock Down isn't that bad but Discipline (as well as most other class resources) is scarce and we can't be burning it on subpar choices.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago): 20-12-18-10-15-3
The strange thing is that the very basic fighter has the most unconventional stats for the fighter. The explanation here is simple, however – if we go into the power tiers 8 and 9, we want to be fully utilizing them. Otherwise, it's just a waste of a solo class. So we have high intelligence to boost our main attack and low resolve so enemies will actually crit us. Yes, you've heard that right – we absolutely want them to be critting us so we're pretty much invite them to do so. And hostile effect duration becomes somewhat more tolerable with all the debuff resistances we're sporting. A bit of extra constitution is also taken to endure through those crits better. And high might & dexterity with average perception is your average damage dealing fare – well, generally you want perception to be maxed too, but Disciplined Barrage sorta absolves that.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics or Explosives
Exact choice depends on the amount of healing in your squad. If you already have enough of that – go for the extra damage.

Weapon of Choice: Great Sword. Good modal (for a fighter, at the very least), good versatility and plenty of them in the game. This build can even use Whispers of the Endless Path (if you have the access to them).

Armor of Choice: start heavy and then go lighter. Two-Handers love minimal recovery penalties.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner. It's picked quite often as early levels are starved for nice options and, well, extra mobility never hurts.
3: Fighter Stances and Two-Handed Style. Early on, we'll be mostly using the Warrior Stance.
4: Determination. Debuffs are icky.
5: Disciplined Strikes and Rapid Recovery. Strikes are a no-brainer – one of the best things that a fighter can offer to us and one of the main reason to play them. Freebie crits are just delicious and doubly so for the Devoted. Recovery just compensates for the low Resolve.
6: Confident Aim. From this point, we can even use the Great Sword's modal (it's not that hot, though, and the gains are at best minimal).
7: Fearless & Body Control
8: Unstoppable. Two level ups spent in making us care even less about afflictions.
9: Mob Stance & Unbroken. Stance is a great source of damage, both through action speed and extra cleaving attacks. It works the best on potd as the combat is thickest there. Unbroken is the main survivability tool of this build and an important combo-piece – we prioritize it over Vigorous Defense as it makes us last but doesn't hinder the incoming criticals.
10: Armored Grace. Some pretty good armors become truly great with this one.
11: Clear Out & Tough. Clear is our main source of damage dealing from this point. It's not that amazing in the basic shape but it still allows us to spread love between multiple foes and that's all we truly need. And Tough is an extra layer of critical protection – we want to be getting them, but not to be burst down by them.
12: Weapon Specialization. It's a mediocre talent but some extra damage is still better than the weaksauce which the other options will provide us here.
13: Unbending Trunk & Unbreakable. The combination of these will make your fighter to be ultra-durable, able to go through any kind of hell unmolested.
14: Weapon Mastery. Huge bonus, 'nuff said.
15: Power Strike. The cost is too much, tbh, and I don't like it as much but, if empowered, it can be good against ultra-sturdy single targets. Aka bosses.
16: Clean Sweep & Toughened Fury. Even better AoE damage and, finally, enough discipline to be using all the goodness. Fury is the major reward of this build – you want to get hit aplenty so your Unbendings are free and maybe even giving you some extras to cast a spare Clean or two.
17: Inspired Discipline. Mostly as a way to counter enemy debuffs, though.
18: Improved Critical. Now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel in our quest for extra damage.
19: Chopping Wood & Sundering Blow. Armor removal is a rather rare option in this game so we probably want to have the access to that, if only for the good of the party. And wood just makes our empowered Clean Sweeps & Power Strikes much better.
20: Prestige. Just so everything that we have works a bit better – other upgrades here are rather marginal.

Role: Tank / Healbot

Race: Moon Godlike. It has been overnerfed a bit but it sill keep your party steady, especially early on. Or you can go for a Dwarf – you don't really need Constitution resistance and Boreals are awful in this one but it allows you to shave more Dexterity in favor of either Intelligence or Perception.


Subclass: Shieldbearer of st. Elcga


First ability: Sworn Enemy, depending

Attributes (Background – Aedyr): 18-7-4-14-16-19

As a tank, you absolutely need to max your Resolve. Only when maxed out does deflection become efficient. As a healer, you can't avoid might. Intelligence makes your abilities last and it makes your auras big enough to matter. Perception will be required to land few of your offensive abilities. And you're not a very active character so Dexterity can be sacrificed for the sake of it all.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics

Weapon of Choice: Dagger early (for the deflection passive) and various utility stuff later. Hatchets, Flails or Clubs – all this will be known as the standard tanking fare. You'll start from the Tower Shield but, when you'll gain your upgraded beacon, will switch to the small one so it actually hits more often.

Armor of Choice: Heavy.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith. No-brainer for every paladin – you pick this class because it gives you all these defenses.
3: Zealous Aura & Weapon&Shield Style. It's mostly about Armor Aura, especially once the upgrade kicks in. And about your tankiness too.
4: Divine Purpose. It's good to be protected from all sides.
5: Brand Enemy & Greater Lay on Hands. In slow, drawn-out combats Brand Enemy can do surprising amounts of damage. And it's not like you can miss with it. We're not making this character into a damage dealer but we adding a bit of an edge. And, because of ridiculous casting time, even without Dexterity it's really easy to spam it (to a lesser degree, that also applies to Lay on Hands – that's why we can dump our Dex). Next, we're picking Greater Lay because it's better in the majority of parties – we just receive even more healing for the same price. There might be rare exceptions where Hands of Light are needed, mostly for their ability to prevent interrupts. But you'll see if you need them and it's easy to adjust.
6: Glorious Beacon. At this point of the game, it's hardly glorious. It will get better so we're taking it for the future.
7: Exalted Endurance & Mental Fortress. Best part about Endurance is that it scales, healing more & more health with every level. It's one of the better sustainability skills in the game and other auras are not even close to its level. Fortress is just fortress – sharing tanks is no fun.
8: Clear Head.
9: Inspiring Beacon & Iron Gut. Now we switch to the light shield, just so the beacon shines a bit brighter. You see, the beauty of this skill is that it adds damage to everything, not only to the damage. So stuff like spells (where it's not that easy to be gaining extra damage) also profits from it. So your tank will be acting as a spotter to your casters. Or something like that. Oh, and ofc it also applies to its own abilities (as well as the Sworn Enemy).
10: Reviving Exhortation. Just in case as you never know.
11: Liberating Exhortation, Liberating Command. All high-tier exhortations are heavily overcosted so don't expect to be casting them further. Still, here we can delay debuffs while gifting two inspirations – not that bad of a deal.
12: Rebirthing Exhortation. The alternative isn't that great because we already have the access to Robust, Fit isn't that hot in its shadow.
13: Sacred Immolation & Tough. The basic damage looks lukewarm but take the Sworn & Beacon bonuses into account and suddenly things will begin to heat up. And while the self-damage is really painful, laying hands on yourself (in a positive way) will fix the majority of that. At the very least, it won't let you die. Tough will also alleviate the risks a little.
14: Aegis of Loyalty. It's not that great but in Fampyr fights you'll want to do everything that's within your grasp.
15: Scion of Flame. Let's make our immolation a bit better.
16: Healing Chain & Providence. More redundance than anything else, tbh. Well, redundance is not that bad.
17: Practiced Healer. Just so all your healing gets even better.
18: Inspired Zeal. More fuel for the fire.
19: Divine Immolation & Divine Retribution. As if we need more healing. And, well, now we at least receive a discount on those resurrections.
20: Prestige.

Barbarian

Role: Tank/Damage Dealer

Race: Human. This build will be taking lots of damage so human bonus will be rather frequently up and running.


Subclass: Berserker. Even if the build itself doesn't feature any way of negating Confusion (which is the sole issue with this subclass), there are many items that will fix this problem. For example, Devil of Caroc's Breastplate. So there's little point not to be going Berserker and other subclasses are so awful that there's no reason to ever pondering them. Being a Mage Slayer has more disadvantages than advantages (potions are pretty good, buffs too) and Corpse Eater can't spam its abilities and corpse eating takes too much time to pay off.


First ability: Frenzy.

Attributes (Background – Rauatai): 19-19-3-18-15-3

This build is based around taking lots and lots of criticals to the face. And, in the process, harming the enemies more and more. It's an item-reliant build – there are plenty of items which cause strong negative effect unto foe on the crits. Also, though they look synergic, avoid Fire Godlikes for this one – they can't wear helmets and there's incredibly good, almost mandatory helmet for this one. Because we plan on taking criticals, we have this weird tank with minimum Resolve (so there are crits) and maximum Toughness (so we're not insta-killed). This also makes this character an incredible good tank in a sense that, unlike with the basic tanks (whom enemies try to avoid), they will be absolutely drawn to this one. Rest of the stats is mostly about counter-attack efficiency – they need to be strong, precise and with big AoE. Dexterity is ignored as this build doesn't really need basic attacks – it's mostly about counters. This build loves to be teamed with st. Elcga paladin, btw, it'll make the early game much easier for it.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics. Gotta stay alive, after all.

Weapon of Choice: duals. Eventually, you'll be doing full attacks on each crit and nothing works as well with Full Attacks as the duals. Early on, though, you may sport the poleaxe Wahai Poraga as it has some nice counter-attack properties.

Armor of Choice: heavy.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. This condition is easily reached and keep in mind that it's a global damage bonus, not only physical one.
3: Thick Skinned & Barbaric Yell. You plan on getting lots of crits so you don't want to get overpenetrated – quite the contrary, you want to survive through them to the best of your ability. And Yell is something that we take for the future.
4: Two-Handed Style. As I've said, early parts of the game you'll be spending with certain two-hander so we're just boosting its damage.
5: Bloodlust & Bloody Slaughter. It's a rather empty power tier for us so we just amplify our future killing capacities.
6: Bull's Will. Just so we're not as mentally vulnerable.
7: Savage Defiance & Unflinching. Defiance gives us at least a modicum of self-healing. Which is probably not enough so this build needs to have a dedicated party healer. Unflinching is more about general tankiness – might prevent a disable or two.
8: Barbaric Shout. Another pick for the future. Engagement doesn't really change anything here as the enemies won't be eager to disengage the ultra-low deflection barbie.
9: Tough & Barbaric Blow. With so much Constitution, Tough becomes quite a sweet option. And Blow will get good from the next level..
10: Barbaric Smash. It's a great way to finish an almost dead foe for free. Not so great with 3 Dexterity but still usable enough.
11: Snake's Reflexes & Wilder Hunter. More level ups in waiting...
12: Bear's Fortitude. Mind you, this is a bit of a midgame build, it's better hired then than leveled up from the scratch.
13: Blood Thirst & Stalwart Defiance. Thirst will get good once we eventually get going and Defiance just allows for some cheaper self-regeneration.
14: Wilder Hunter. This is another generic bonus so it will apply to your various on-crit received goodies.
15: Accurate Carnage. The final level in waiting...
16: Heart of Fury & Vengeful Defeat. Heart is expensive but it gives us a ton of damage and, most importantly, it is really, really fast. With recharging Empower we'll do three three of these through the battle and that'll count for a lot. And, if we're taken down, Defeat is pretty much another cast. Needless to say, this build loves resurrection effects (or just stealing unique armor from Eder). At this point, you switch for the duals.
17: Improved Critical. Frenzy gives you plenty of these so let's make them a bit more valuable.
18: One Stands Alone. There's a reason why we've delayed this one – we love having our armor at the lowest possible level. So this thing can be somewhat detrimental, however weird can this sound. Now, though, it's probably alright to take it.
19: Barbaric Retaliation & Dazing Shout. Now the butterfly emerges from the coccoon. Retaliation is just that – the enemies will pay in blood for each crit. Well, thanks to the magic items, they've already did that, but those all have a chance of proccing whereas this hits every time. So now blood tax is unavoidable. And Dazing Shout is actually ridiculous – the damage within the description will not look like much, but thanks to power level and other bonuses the actual numbers are much more eye-pleasing. And the area is insane. While it costs only 1 rage. You can pretty much spam it through the majority of the battles and it's gonna be super efficient.
20: Prestige.

Paladin/Cipher

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Wood Elf so you're all pointy.


Subclass: Bleak Walker/Soul Blade. Bleak Walkers are the only paladins which combo well with the soul blades – others lack a bit of damage for this while extra lash damage is exactly what pushes bleaks over the top. And it's a basic Soul Blade efficiency – each point of focus gained is, basically, a point of raw damage then dealt. Do 100 damage – gain 66 focus – do another 66 damage. Quite a nice amplification.


First abilities: Sworn Enemy & Valorous Echoes. TBH, cipher spells here don't matter at all – you never intend to be casting anything but Soul Annihilation.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends ): 18-8-19-20-3-10

This build needs no intelligence so we're doing classic tri-DPS parameters build. You're doing damage to do even more damage so it's all about the damage, yeah. Did I say you need to do damage?

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics

Weapon of Choice: Rapier in your primary hand and medium dual in the secondary. You see, the only bad part about Soul Blade is that it's an incredibly hit or miss character. You're investing a hundred of focus into one swing and if it misses, it's all squandered. So, while the rapier's modal is too slow to be using it on a constant basis, you do it this way – you enable it before Soul Annihilation. Use it – it's a primary attack so one rapier is enough. Hopefully, you land it with that +20 Accuracy bonus. It increases your odds greatly. And then you disable the modal and until the next annihilation you're fighting as usual.

Armor of Choice: medium.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith. You're not a tank but you can be slightly less squishy than your average dd.
3: Iron Will. Being charmed is never fun.
4: Two-Weapon Style & Draining Whip. The more focus we gain – the more damage we deal. So, in the long run, Draining Whip gives us much, much more damage than Biting.
5: Zealous Aura. Most likely it will be accuracy one.
6: Divine Purpose.
7: Sworn Rival & Hammering Thoughts. We plan on burning pretty much all our zeal on the Flames of Devotion so discount on Sworn Rival is quite welcome. Keep in mind that it amplifies all damage, even the Raw from Annihilation. And we're just getting all useful passives from the cipher – it's not like we have much else to pick there.
8: Eternal Devotion. It's not that much of an upgrade but it's still an improvement to your most used skill so yeah.
9: Bull's Will. Our Will save is horrible so let's do everything to salvage it.
10: Exalted Focus & Greater Focus. More focus for our first annihilation and more criticals, I suppose. TBH, you can as well take Exalted Endurance if you don't have another paladin in your squad – the radius of aura is crappy but at least the effect is so much better.
11: Mental Fortress.
12: Inspired Path. Just another cast of Eternal Devotion.
13: Uncanny Luck & Keen Mind. This class has really strong initial abilities and rather disappointing later ones. Doesn't make it weak as it's already serviceable enough, but these level ups are not the most exciting ones. Just more crits & focus.
14: Clear Head.
15: Iron Gut.
16: Virtuous Triumph and Improved Critical. Well, if we plan our actions right, Triumph can give us quite a bit of zeal. Just keep in mind that the more of such kill-stealing abilities in the party, the less efficient they become. And critical is just picking anything that can give us a tad more damage.
17: Tough.
18: Spell Resistance.
19: Aegis of Loyalty and Psychic Backlash. Aegis is nice when you're meeting fampyrs and Backlash would've been great if it wasn't once per encounter only.
20: Fast Runner.

Paladin/Druid

Role: dd/healbot.

Race: Pale Elf. Whenever you rely on armor boosting, pale elf is nice to have around as she can get almost unkillable in certain encounters.

Subclass: Animist with Bear Form/Goldpact Knight. You don't want to invest too much into druidic spells so you choose animist as they have the most fitting free spell list. And this build needs sturdiness which goldpact provides aplenty.


First abilities: Lay on Hands & Touch of Rot. Can't be a healbot without any healing. And touch of rot is just a workhorse of a 1-st level spell, capable of doing quite a lot of damage for a cheap price.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends): 18-9-10-20-18-3

A pretty standard caster distribution. Thanks to the Goldpact's specialty, though, we're not as glass cannon-ish as your average caster. Especially when we are in the Bear form – that gives us enough time to do what we need, then to return to the safer position.

Active Skill of Choice: Arcana. Thanks to the paladin's bonuses, this is one of the best magical item and scroll-using build.

Weapon of Choice: Standard tanking fare. We're not a tank but we don't mind the extra sturdiness. Light shield is required, though, so we don't spoil our aim.

Armor of Choice: Heaviest possible. Otherwise the Goldpact protection doesn't work that well.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith.
3: Fast Runner.
4: Hold Beasts & Zealous Aura. More protection for ourselves and our squadmates. And while Hold Beasts doesn't work in each an every encounter, it's absolutely devastating when it does so it's nice to keep around.
5: Weapon & Shield Style.
6: Divine Purpose.
7: Nature's Balm & Hands of Light. Generally, I prefer Greater Hands to this skill, but since we already have plenty of Robust from Balm it doesn't make much sense to be taking it here. And, well, we have so long casts so maybe a source of concentration isn't that bad.
8: Sworn Rival. As Goldpact, we love to be spamming Sworn Enemy. But we also love to spend our zeal on Lay on Hands. Which puts a certain stress on our zealous reserves that is removed by the pick-up of this skill. Freebie Sworns are fun!
9: Glorious Beacon.
10: Moonwell & Exalted Endurance. We're taking two ridiculous healing abilities at this level so now our party should have all the sustainability it'll ever need.
11: Mental Fortress.
12: Clear Head.
13: Nature's Terror & Inspired Beacon. At last, we can be something more than a walking medkit. It's all about both Beacon & Sworn being applied to spells. So you Empower the Terror and for a minute or so you'll have a huge aura that does 20-30 on every proc while also spreading the frighten around. Which is a great way of reducing the incoming damage, btw, as the AI loves to be spamming its skills.
14: Practiced Healer. Let's get even better at healing.
15: Rapid Casting. We're not too fast so we'd love to get a bit quicker.
16: Venombloom & Liberating Exhortation. A nice source of damage and some utility for our squad. By this point, we should be having enough Zeal to spare some on this.
17: Liberating Command. Some buffs in addition to utility.
18: Iron Gut.
19: Weather the Storm & Stoic Steel. A solid counter for certain scenarios and a way for us to get more tanky. Unlike many other skills, Stoic Steel actually stacks with our Goldpactness. And you can use Tower Shield modal to prevent yourself from moving so it doesn't break off.
20: Accurate Empower. We deal most of our damage with just one Empowered Spell so making it more reliable is quite a sound plan.

Ranger/Paladin

Role: Tank/DD

Race: Wild Orlan. Just so we have as much resistances as possible.

Subclass: Stalker with Bear Companion/Goldpact Knight. This build is all about heavy armor stacking. So we're taking all possible armor sources here. Mind you that we're avoiding the Fire Godlike racial as this is a gun shooting build and Godlike is not able to wear Acina's Tricorn, a crucial hat for a marksman. We're going for a bear companion because it's a slow tempo build so we need to be paired with something that's truly durable.


First abilities: Flames of Devotion & Marked Prey. We'll be having lots of accuracy penalties so we're taking everything that we can to negate them.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends ): 10-9-18-19-3-19

This build is based around using a weird pistol & tower shield combo. Tower shield gives you a -8 accuracy malus and then pistol's modal (which should be pretty much constantly on) will provide another -15. So, while the average rangers don't care much about Perception as they just drown in accuracy, here that attribute will be quite helpful. We're also a tank so Resolve is no-brainer. Which is why we remove all the brain to pick it up – it's not like this build has lots of Int-dependent abilities. And finally we're taking Dexterity as it's the best damage multiplier in the game – much better than the Might which we leave neutral.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics. Best tower shield in the game profits from this skill greatly so yeah.

Weapon of Choice: Pistol & Tower Shield. You can also try an occasional blunderbuss but the range there is inadequate. And keep a scepter handy so you can fight those annoying piercing-immune monsters. At least until you get the best pistol of the game which doesn't care about such trivialties. Oh, and early in the game your accuracy won't be that great so stick to the small shields until it grows up.

Armor of Choice: heaviest possible. It's an armor stacking build, after all.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith.
3: Resilient Companion. It's a very perk-starved build so we're definitely not promoting our pet to the maximum. But, at the very least, we want to keep it sturdy so it doesn't die and keeps providing those sweet bonuses.
4: Gunner & Zealous Aura. More shooting power and more protection for the team.
5: Weapon & Shield Style.
6: Wounding Shot. Just a preparatory pick up, in basic shape this is quite mediocre.
7: Accurate Wounding Shot & Sworn Rival. Now we're talking. From this point, we can leave that pistol modal constantly running as we'll be spamming Wounding Shots & Flames of Devotion for quite a while. And then we'll empower ourselves and spam for some more.
8: Marked for the Hunt. Cheap marks are best marks.
9: Protective Companion. Awful skill but it's a necessary sacrifice to gain something greater.
10: Stalkers' Link & Exalted Endurance. Even more compensating accuracy and some durability to boot. Your aura is not the biggest one so, if you have another paladin in the party, you may wish to skip upgrading it – other two upgrades are not really worth it. Give an extra treat to your pet instead.
11: Marksman. You're a tank so this one feels silly – you're trying to rush into the battle, not to loiter on its outskirts! However, no one really prohibits you from shooting into a faraway target and, well, accuracy is accuracy, you need it.
12: Mental Fortress.
13: Driving Flight & Clear Head. From this point, you just do 50% more ranged damage. It's as simple as that. And, for that best pistol of the game, extra "shot" means an extra chance to paralyze some foe – nasty. And we've exhausted the majority of excellent paladin abilities at this point but that's ok as we have much ranger goodness to get.
14: Vicious Companion. Just so our buddy stays relevant in combat.
15: Concussive Shot. Just as a prerequisite.
16: Concussive Tranquilizer and Iron Gut. Now that's much better – some dangerous foes just love to drown themselves in buffs so removing all of that in one go feels pretty satisfying.
17: Survival of the Fittest. Now we have more or less enough accuracy for our needs.
18: Evasive Roll. Mostly a setup for the next level.
19: Superior Camouflage & Stoic Steel. Now the build is complete. Stoic Steel is really strong – it's +3 armor that stacks with everything else. With Goldpact bonus, Stalking and legendary heavy, we're talking about 21 Armor is total. And the mobility issues are obviously solved by our gun proficiency. Smart people don't run – smart people shoot. And even if you need to move, you just use evasive roll – it doesn't count as movement so you can change position while retaining all the armor. Cute! Finally, that's the actual reason for the tower shield – even with the AI disabling, it's very difficult to prevent your character form moving if only a tiny bit when attacking. They just love to be taking those small steps. Tower Shield's modal, however, absolutely prevents that, guaranteeing that the armor stays up while also giving you some serious damage reduction. As if you hadn't had enough of that already. So that's the plan.
20: Eternal Devotion. Just so we can do even more damage.

Role: Tank/DD/Mostly an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Race: Human or Orlan. Just so we have max Resolve.


Subclass: Streetfighter / Shieldbearer of st. Elcga. This class doesn't fight in the conventional sense so most subclasses aren't really useful here. Any paladin class would do and Streetfighter is mostly about getting bonus sneak attacks & crit damage, not about recovery time.


First abilities: Escape & Sworn Enemy. Escape doesn't really matter but Sworn Enemy will be turned into a source of extra damage. Eventually.

Attributes (Background – Aedyr or Ixamitl - Laborer): 17-10-3-18-10-20

This is a bit of a memebuild. If that's not obvious from the name, lol. So the Rogue class has a very peculiar skill that's called Riposte. You're missed in melee so the opponent receives a free punch to the face as a reward – what's not to like? In PoE, it was very tempting but also inefficient – enemies have plenty of accuracy, Rogue has no deflection so being missed often is nigh impossible. Through introduction of multi-classes in PoE 2, Riposte became much more usable. However, this build is not about honest Riposte. Instead, we're banking on another weird factor – through the course of the game, you'll be finding plenty of items that give +20 or +25 of deflection against Disengagement. They all stack. There are also the spells and the perks which, when combined, will give you something like 240 deflection. If not more. Enough to be 100% missed by the absolute majority of foes. And then, well, you run into the enemies, they engage you, you run back, riposte in process... You tip-toe across the battlefield like a total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and, somehow, people are dying. It works better solo than in the full squad (it's easier to guarantee that people will actually aggro onto you) but even there it's a great experience to try out. Just hire a high level merc or something.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics. Best shield for this build scales from Athletics so you want to be a Laborer to ramp this up to the max.

Weapon of Choice: Tower Shield and Dagger at first (with modal on). Then – unique spear Kahua Hozi. And unique shield Cadhu Scalth.

Armor of Choice: Nomad's Brigandine. It has been specifically made for this playstyle so there's probably no other choice.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith.
3: Fast Runner. Generally, you're just autopick this crap because there's nothing better to take. Here, it's actually good. Well, I suppose a synergy between crap and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is quite reasonable
4: Weapon & Shield Style, Zealous Auras. Before we get our synergy going, we fulfill the role of a pure tank.
5: Divine Purpose.
6: Dirty Fighting. Nothing better to pick here.
7: Riposte & Brand Enemy. Riposte is already well-explained and Brand Enemy is yet another way of dealing damage – it's not like we have lots of ways of spending our Zeal.
8: Greater Lay on Hands. Just so we're a better tank – I doubt you'll have all the necessary disengagement gear at level 8.
9: Aegis of Loyalty. More support for the squadmates. Running across the entire battlefield serves our plans all right.
10: Tumbling & Exalted Charge. Pretty much the only paladin build that wants to have charge. Well, it's just another +32 anti-engagement defenses. With the uncommon cloak & boots, you can have something around +82 at this point. Time to embrace your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I guess.
11: Persistent Distraction. This one is too good to skip and the reason we go Elcga – so we have more engagement and, thus, more distraction. If the enemies don't chase us then it makes us a better tank, at the very least.
12: Mental Fortress.
13: Deep Wounds & Clear Head. Just more damage & durability.
14: Iron Gut.
15: Liberating Exhortation. Time to remember that we have a squad, I guess.
16: Slippery Mind & Liberating Command. We can't boost our disengagement even further so we just polish our side-tank role.
17: Glorious Beacon.
18: Inspired Beacon. It's not the best beacon ever but hey, we have to do something with our paladin levels.
19: Deathblows & Reviving Exhortation. Lots of damage and a little bit of utility.
20: Coordinated Positioning. You know, this sounds awesome in this build. Our biggest issue is enemies aggring on our allies (instead of us). So we just swap our comrades in arms, forcing all those bastards to focus themselves on us. Then we do what we do the best – run.

Wizard/Fighter

Role: Tank / Crowd Control

Race: Fire Godlike. They're really, really weak right now as their counter-attack is absolutely underpowered but this build survives by stacking Armor and they're the only race which adds something to that.


Subclass: No Subclass / Unbroken. This build relies on armor and frequent disengagement so it's the only one where the Unbroken can shine. Keep in mind that, for this build to work, you'll need to have resolve 3 Assassin in your party (any build of it) – the idea is that Heartbroken will engage your enemies, but that squishy assassin will prove too much of temptation and they'll chase after him madly, causing the punishing disengagement strikes to happen. Once that's done, the asssassin goes invisible so, disappointed, his pursuers get back on the tank. Rinse & repeat.


First abilities: Disciplined Barrage & Spirit Shield. In basic brigandine, with both physical & Spirit shields, this character will have 13 Armor. 14 under the godlike's racial. The enemies will have fun time chewing through that.

Attributes (Background – Old Vailia, Hunter): 18-8-4-10-20-18
Disengagement attacks are free and the enchanting self-buffs are almost free. So this build doesn't have much need for the attack speed and it's a very convenient dump stat, allowing us to max all of the necessary attributes. If you think about maining this character, you may even swap the might for perception for best dialogue outcomes. And better crowd control, I guess.


Active Skill of Choice: Athletics, Eplosives or Arcana. If you have some healing in your squad, you probably don't need athletics – this build is a sturdy one.

Weapon of Choice: Sword & Buckler. There's a really good sword for this at the start of the game and, ultimately, the best weapon for this strategy is yet another sword Kapana Taga.

Armor of Choice: heavy. You're not hurring anywhere with this build.

Level ups:
2: Chill Fog. Spirit Shield lasts for quite a while so often we won't need a second cast of it, thus being able to heavily debuff our foe. Keep in mind that we pick up key self-buffs as the core spells and we're bringing more control & maybe even damage from our grimoire. Yeah, we're not casting fast but Disciplined Barrage provides us with plenty of Concentration so we're not afraid of Interrupts. Not as much, at the very least.
3: Fast Runner.
4: Fighter Stance & Weapon & Shield Style. We're primarily tank so first we focus on that role.
5: Determination.
6: Confident Aim. There are no 2nd tier spells which are core for this class so just use whatever the grimoire offers to you.
7: Disciplined Strikes & Llengrath's Displaced Image. Keep in mind that Strikes applies to everything, spells included. And Displaced Image just ramps our defenses to the max while also negating that Relexes malus from Unbroken.
8: Rapid Recovery.
9: Bull's Will. No annoying charms, please. Hold the Line might seem natural for this one, but there are too much engagement bonuses available to you – it's pointless to be able to engage more than 4-5 foes at once, you just won't get that much attention from your foes.
10: Body Control & Minor Arcane Reflection. Yeah, this class is striving for absolute or nigh-absolute invulnerability.
11: Unstoppable.
12: Fearless. We're skipping Armored Grace because it just doesn't stack with our wizardly buffs.
13: Guardian Stance & Llengrath's Safeguard. Keep in mind that extra attack from the Guardian Stance doesn't do any damage – it just prones the enemies. And Safeguard just ramps our durability even further.
14: Quick Switch. This one is weird and I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature – whenever you switch your weapons, your Guardian Stance triggers, thus proning all the engaged foe. Then you switch back, reengage and then you can prone them again. If you hit, that is, but Disciplined Barrage helps that greatly. It's a bit too slow in the basic shape but Quick Switch makes it much more usable.
15: Charge. Gotta have a way of spending our discipline. TBH, here it's less about the damage and more about mobility and positioning. Just transitions you into the core of the battle.
16: Overbearing Guard & Arcane Reflection. Finally, the biggest payoff of the build – now our disengagements are as unforgiving as they get. And, well, more durability for ourselves.
17: Armored Grace. A tiny amount of speed won't hurt – we don't need to act much but we'd still love to.
18: Rapid Casting.
19: Unbending & Substantial Phantom. Kinda disappointing tier. Unbending just finalizes our immortality and gives us another sink for our discipline. If it seems like an overkill, go for Weapon Specialization instead. Citzal's Martial Power isn't really giving this build anything that it already doesn't have so it seems skippable.
20: Superior Deflection. We obviously need this one, just had higher priorities previously.

Monk/Chanter

Role: Tank / Damage Dealer

Race: Nature Godlike. Monk enables the passive easily and we're casting a lot so we'll be gaining plenty form extra power levels, especially early in the game.


Subclass: Nalpazca / Troubadour. Drugs are the only way for this character to be gaining wounds steadily as you won't be doing or receiving much physical damage. And you will need plenty of them to keep your main skills online. Troubadour, as well as the entire Chanter subclass, is picked up because it's a very time-efficient class – you don't have much acting space and invocations are very "dense". Lots of power packed in just a couple of seconds that is easily slipped in-between your protections being recast. Troubadour specifically as this build wants to cast the heaviest stuff possible and this subclass specializes on doing such casts at a huge discount.


First abilities: Swift Strikes, Thrice She Was & Come, Come.

Attributes (Background – Old Vailia): 14-8-19-14-20-3

This build is centered around relentless usage of blade turning. So you're playing mostly pacifist style and just allow those unmannered aggressive people (and not so much people) to choke on their own negative energy. So we have maximum possible Int to gain the best Blade Turning Duration. Maxed Dexterity allows us to actually manage to do something in-between those constant Blade Turning casts. Perception & Might are split because we want to have both extra healing, damage and accuracy. And Resolve is minimized because you dodge most of the attacks automatically – no deflection involved at all.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy. Can't have much floral power without that.

Weapon of Choice: Anything & Tower Shield. While you mostly don't need the deflection, that's because the majority of attacks in this game are melee. Ranged ones, however, are incredibly dangerous to you. So the stance comes to the rescue – this class doesn't need much mobility and 50% incoming damage reduction changes a lot. It's either this or being a cushion pin.

Armor of Choice: Light. We need to act fast.

Level ups:
2: Lesser Wounds.
3: Not Felled – it's less about this and more about the future upgrade that'll give us extra Piercing resistance. We need that greatly. Stupid archers.
4: Clarity of Agony & Weapon & Shield Style. Being disabled is not that fun so we're doing as much as possible to prevent that. And yet another safeguard against the archers. Mind you that, for the sake of the early game tempo, you'll probably want to take At The Sound instead of Shield style here, then later you'll respec it into a proper shape.
5: One Dozen Stood. You dislike debuffs so you heavily prepare against them. And, well, your party will also enjoy that.
6: Dance of Death. This is probably the only melee monk build that can actually hope to run this for long.
7: Blade Turning and Combat Focus. Once again, for the sake of the tempo you can take Ancient Memory or Her Revenge Swept instead of focus – depending on what your party needs more, dmg or healing. But eventually you'll respec into focus – you don't want your Blade Turnings to be interrupted. And, in this build, this skill is incredible – makes you utterly impregnable against melee, does lots of damage unto the foes and still allows you to do one action in-between.
8: Lightning Strikes. We don't need it too much but we'll still be doing some auto-attacks here and there so it's ok.
9: Mortification of the Soul. Just in case we're not having enough wounds. Against full melee parties gaining them (i.e., actually taking damage) can be a problem, lol.
10: Duality of Mortal Presence & Nor Flame, Nor Thrusted. For the sake of tempo, once again Nor Flame is probably better temporarily replaced by either Aefillath or The Silver Knights, whichever your party needs better. Or maybe even The Lover Cried Out. Ultimately, though, you want to have your anti-archer system fully online. And Duality is what allows us to steadily keep our Intelligence at the mark of 30, thus having the longest Blade Turning possible.
11: Rooting Pain. It's mediocre in the majority of other monk builds, but here we have all the components to make it work. Huge AoE and good damage so it contributes an amazing amounts of damage. Well, maybe not so amazing, but it's as good as it gets in this build.
12: Thunderous Blows. We're still a bit of damage dealer and extra might & penetration helps that greatly. Remember that it's a universal Pen – it applies to spells & abilities. Rooting Pain, for example.
13: Enduring Dance & Seven Nights. Finally, an empty monk tier so we can mind our chanty business. And we have some serious business to mind as chanter tier-5 is turbo-charged. We begin from our main finishing move – as the tank, we tend to gather plenty of foes on ourselves so point-blank shotgunned Seven Nights will be very efficient.
14: Her Courage. The shield is not that huge but by refreshing every 3 seconds in brisk mode it just brings too much regeneration for the entire team.
15: The Bride Caught. Not so hot right now but it'll get better.
16: Turning Wheel and They Shielded Their. I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature but right now Turning Wheel adds its damage to everything you do. So now Rooting Pain and Seven Nights get +50% fire damage. Needless to say, there are very few foes which will survive an empowered point-black Seven Nights from now on. And, well, more anti-debuff stuff.
17: Seven Men. Debuffs are impolite.
18: Rise Again, Rise Again. You never know when you'll need full party resurrection.
19: The Dichotomous Soul & Her Tears Fell. Best thing we can take as the monk (and, well, summons are not that awful) and the finalization of our DD potential. When these tears fall in the rain, it's gonna be total time to die.
20: Set to Their Purpose. TBH, Mercy and Kindness also has great potential. Both of these things are so sweet and you can have only one, duh. Look at your party needs, I guess.

Monk/Barbarian

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Death Godlike. Barbarian has lots of killstealing abilities so we're just amplifying those heavily. This build will also be frequently blooded so you can choose humans for the sake of extra accuracy. Or you can be an Orlan for the better hit to crit conversion, that'll work too.


Subclass: Berserker/Nalpazca. Sorry but I'm a bit biased towards Nalpazca. Drugs are plentiful, potent and virtually endless. You don't have any downsides while drugged – only upsides. At the same time, Helwalkers make you into a glass cannon which cannot be fixed nor saved. And Shattered Pillars cut your wound count in half, thus crippling your Turning Wheel gains.


First abilities: Frenzy and Swift Strikes. Mind you that the Action Speed bonus from these doesn't stack. But it's ok as plenty of other stuff does.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago, Hunter): 3-9-20-18-10-18

What can I say? In PoE II, might sucks even more than in PoE I. There's just too much damage bonuses floating around. So, while 3% per point sounds nice, in reality you don't go from 100% to 130% - you go from, like, 200% to 230%. And that's only 15% already. And if you go from 250% to 280%, that's 12%. In other words, there's too much diminishing returns with it. And these numbers are not unreasonable – we'll be landing plenty of criticals and Crit bonus is not a multiplier, it's just another of these arithmetical bonuses. So yeah, you can do lots of damage while having Might 3. It allows you to max out your Dexterity & Perception which multiply damage while not really going into diminishing returns. Not as hard, at the very least. And they just have much better synergy with the monk as this build is based around frequent criticals. Then we're having average intelligence (as having Carnage is nice) and high Resolve so we're not as glass-cannonnish as your average barbarian. We're still far from being a tank but at least we'll die from four hits instead of just two.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: One handed fighting. As soon as you'll find it (it's not that hidden), it's gonna be the Sun and Moon flail. It has one of the fastest volumes of attack in the game (second only to blunderbusses) and that's what your build is about.

Armor of Choice: anything with recovery bonuses.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. Not that easy to activate and it alone acts like +8 Might. Yeah, what a precious stat that is.
3: Lesser Wounds. Can't have enough of these as you want to stay at 10 wound count while being really spammy with your abilities.
4: Thick-Skinned and Clarity of Agony. We're doing what we can to make this build somewhat sturdy and self-reliable. And there'll be another reason for us needing the Clarity.
5: One-Handed Style. Yes, in terms of plain DPS it's absolutely underpowered when compared to the Duals and even two-handers. But we can gain an incredible lot of extra damage from landing frequent criticals and that's what this fighting style is all about. Synergy matters.
6: Wilder Hunter. They're not that uncommon of a foe and 25% is a great chunk of damage.
7: One Stands Alone & Swift Flurry. OSA is yet another easily activated damage bonus that further alleviates our gentleness. And Swift Flurry is one of our main combo pieces – with good accuracy and 20+30% (that's 44% in total) hit to crit conversion we'll be showing some bloody miracles.
8: Bloody Slaughter. Speaking of bloody miracles...
9: Bloodlust. And DPS versus near-death foes is rather important for us so we can keep this thing constantly up.
10: Unflinching, Duality of Mortal Presence. Duality is mostly intelligence-based here – we don't want to self-buff as often and carnage, while being somewhat weak in Deadfire, is still a source of extra damage. So we want to be utilizing that to the fullest. And, as this tier is weak for the barbarian (upgraded frenzy is somewhat questionable as it costs a bit too much rage), we're just getting extra protections.
11: Enlightened Agony. That's one of the main benefits of Barbarian/Monk combo – with our high Resolve, Agony has already negated the majority of Frenzy's confusion (which is another reason to have it high). And now it's just instantly negated so we can strike everywhere we please without fearing the friendly fire. That matters a lot.
12: Torment's Reach. It's a great source of AoE damage but mostly we're preparing for the next level.
13: Barbaric Blow, Raised Torment. This barbie level is not that hot so we're preparing for the future goodness. And Torment is just an excellent upgrade – we can spam it easily and such bountiful sources of crowd control are actually rare in PoE 2.
14: Barbaric Smash. It's not that strong with the one-handers but hey, we're mostly using it for free so why not? It's just a great tool for kill stealing.
15: Enervating Blows. Weakened is a rather strong debuff so we're not against having extra sources of it.
16: Blood Frenzy & Turning Wheel. Now we probably have to take frenzy upgrade, just so we take something useful. And we probably have enough Rage from this point. And Wheel is glorious – just a 50% multiplier to all the damage we do. Ok, taking into account the Sun and Moon's in-built lashes, that's a 33% actual bonus. Still respectable.
17: Uncanny Luck. Extra criticals? Why not.
18: The Long Pain. Just a prerequisite.
19: Blood Storm & Heartbeat Drumming. Blood Storm sorta negates the major flaw of Frenzy and Drumming is the final piece of our combo. Now 49,75% of our crits will result in a second attack and that is a lot.
20: Instruments of Pain. They provide us a much needed reach. It's not that big of an upgrade but it's a nice tactical option to keep handy.

Role: Tank/Damage Dealer

Race: Hearth Orlan as this build loves criticals.


Subclass: Devoted/Nalpazca. Devoted is a great subclass to pair with the monk because you automatically have the fist proficiency so the Devoted bonus applies both to your chosen weapon and them, thus giving you that forbidden flexibility.


First abilities: Disciplined Barrage & Swift Flurry

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago, Hunter): 7-7-18-10-18-18

Fighter doesn't have as much plain damage bonuses so you can't cut down your strength as much. And you need quite a lot of intelligence here because it's a Whispers of the Endless Paths build so you want its AoE to be really, really high. Extra intelligence also helps your buffs to last longer which can be rather positive for the long-term fighter's survival and which is the thing that makes you tanky. In combination with maxed out Resolve, that is.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: Great Sword Whispers of Endless Paths. Unfortunately for some, that requires imported save where you've actually had the Blade of Endless Paths at your disposal. So it's a bit of a rare build. And there are plenty of simpler great swords in the game that will be useful against solo targets.

Armor of Choice: Light as two-handers hate anything heavy. Mb you can go heavier after acquiring Armored Grace but only if that armor has Recovery Reduction enchantment (like half of them do have it, though)

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner.
3: Lesser Wounds. Lesser perks, more like.
4: Fighter Stances, Two-Handed Style. Generally speaking, you start with the Warrior Stance and then you gradually move into the Cleaving one. Whispers produce some pretty cool cleaves.
5: Confident Aim. TBH, it's only something like a +5 accuracy bonus but even that is not too bad.
6: Determination. Original character, do not steal, please.
7: Disciplined Strikes, Lightning Strikes. Theoretically, Swift Flurry would've made more sense here. Practically, Whispers doesn't seem to count as the melee strike so you'd rather just have lots of damage from the very reliable lightning lash.
8: Clarity of Agony. Coupled with high Int, this makes us almost affliction-immune. Which is why we go cheeky and avoid the fighter's resistances.
9: Torment's Reach. We have great intelligence so this thing will actually have some reach. And the disciplined strikes will guarantee that it actually hits something – Fortitude is not the easiest save to target.
10: Weapon Specialization Duality of Mortal Presence. Gotta fix that low might somehow. And extra AoE is a no-brainer choice. BTW, Charge might look tempting but, somehow, it doesn't work with the Whispers. Besides, we have better sink for our resources.
11: Thunderous Blows. Coupled with Devoted it'll give us ridiculous penetration. Some damage too.
12: Long Stride. This build tends to be moving a lot if only to attain a better attack angle. So extra speed won't hurt.
13: Mob Stance, Raised Torment. So now we deal even more AoE damage and it can also stun. Good.
14: Unbending. This thing is expensive but this build will have durability issues so a little sacrifice has to be done. It makes you almost unkillable, though. And that's another Int-payoff - makes it so this thing can be constantly online.
15: Armored Grace. We love our attack speed.
16: Superior Deflection & Turning Wheel. A bit of extra survivability and the god-tier fighting upgrade.
17: Enervating Blows.
18: Uncanny Luck. Just more and more crit synergy.
19: Unbending Trunk, Heartbeat Drumming. Heartbeat doesn't seem to work with whispers so we're taking it mostly against solo targets.
20: Weapon Mastery.

Rogue/Cipher

Role: Damage Dealer / Crowd Controller

Race: Hearth Orlan. Mostly for the starting 21 Perception. Doesn't matter as much, though.


Subclass: Ascendant/Assassin. A


First abilities: Escape and Whispers of Treason

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends, Drifter): 10-7-18-21-18-4

The idea of this build is simple. It's based on a fact that Assassination's bonus applies to everything, not only to damage dealing attacks. So if you cast your Whispers from stealth or invisibility (which you absolutely intend to do), they're performed with +25 Accuracy. And that's a lot for a spell. What's better is that you can leave your party in stealth, sneak on, charm someone then immediately go invis. Under normal circumstances, monsters are not very eager to assault their now ex-buddy. But when he's the only hostile target that they can see – what choice do they have? This approach allows you to slowly start any combat with half of the enemy team charmed so then you unstealth your squad and swiftly mop up the opposition. And so the stats are glass cannon-ish and precision oriented – our charms are fast, precise and long-lasting. And the lack of might is compensated by the rogue's passives.

Active Skill of Choice: Stealth & Sleight of Hand divided evenly. Just so this can be your party's thief. Or, if you don't need that, this can be your party's mechanic.

Weapon of Choice: Arquebuses, Arbalests, Hunting Bows. Powerful two-hander ranged hitters, in other words. Just so you can get enough focus from a single shot.

Armor of Choice: robe.

Level ups:
2: Lingering Echoes. It's not a lot but we want our charms to be up for as long as possible.
3: Backstab. Just so we have the potential for some proper assassinations too. It's also a great way to generate focus. One good headshot may just fill it up to the brim.
4: Smoke Veil & Draining Whip. Veil is our main source of invisibility – cheap and efficient. This build blooms fast and we already can do our stealth-charm thrice. Which is probably as much as you need. And Whip just gives us all the focus in the world.
5: Psychovampiric Shield. Just so we can have some diverse tricks at our disposal. The victim will lose lots of deflection, will and further debuffs on it will last much longer – that's bound to be useful. Mind you that we're mostly avoiding the long-casted cipher spells – they're not really worth it.
6: Two-Handed Style. More damage – more focus.
7: Dirty Fighting & Hammering Thoughts. Note that this build has insane core potential and quite mediocre perk development. So we'll have plenty of meh level-ups, but overall the build still plays strong. Here we just take more damage.
8: Secret Horrors. It's lot of pseudo-damage (as sickened foes are easier to kill) and silencing foes (which is what Frighten does) prevents a lot of annoying things from happening.
9: Fast Runner. Just so we get out of danger faster – this build is a glass cannon.
10: Tumbling & Pain Block. Pain Block turns this build almost into a healer as that's an incredible ability. Keep in mind that Robust doesn't stack, obviously, so that's not the best thing to couple with either a druid or healing paladin.
11: Body Attunement. Armor penalties are actually very rare and precious so being able to apply a whopping -5 is quite a unique opportunity. Needless to say, if you have difficulties with breaching that fortitude, you can always go invis and use the Assassin's bonus.
12: Psychic Backlash. Works only once per combat, unfortunetely. But at least the duration is ridiculously long.
13: Deep Wounds & Borrowed Instinct. We're always starved for accuracy so +20 bonus is quite welcome.
14: Ringleader. Not half as amazing as it sounds, though. The range of it is really, really short (which, by the way, is a reason we're ignoring Puppet Master) and most encounters have been built in a fashion where you're rarely hitting more than two foes with it. I guess you try to lure them by Sparkcasters or something. Still a good utility to have, though, especially against the Intelligence-resistant foes.
15: Rapid Casting. So our charms are faster.
16: Slippery Mind & The Empty Soul. Extra defenses and, most importantly, extra precision for the majority of our spells.
17: Disintegration. We're not doing too much damage with it due to low might but at least that's an extra option.
18: Amplified Wave. Mostly to cleave through the trashmob encounters.
19: Deathblows, Echoing Horror. Cipher's tier-7 spells are dumpster fire so there isn't much to be taking here. At least rogue gifts us with a ton of damage.
20: Farcasting. Just so we can cast from the safer posittions.

Role: Crowd Controller

Race: Nature Godlike. As most of the casters are.


Subclass: Generalist / Skald. For anyone but pure nuker, having a wizard subclass is mostly neutering. And, when it comes to the chanter's evocation, we're mostly interested in the cheap-ish ones where going from 3 to 2 phrases means just too much.


First abilities: Chill Fog, And Hel Hyraf, Come, Come. Some long-lasting control, some synergy for the party. And all first tier chants are meh so it doesn't matter which one you choose.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago, Merchant): 3-8-20-18-19-10

This is a rare, 100% controlling caster build. You load up with the most punishing stuff possible and you have both speed and precision to unleash it all unto the foes in the best fashion. What helps here is that the chanter's casts are pretty fast – most dualclass casters don't work simply because you have too much to cast and don't bring enough impact, but the stats here and the spells themselves somewhat overcome that.

Active Skill of Choice: no great choices, tbh. I guess you go Athletics.

Weapon of Choice: small shield & dagger. Just so you're not as vulnerable.

Armor of Choice: Robe. Action speed is crucial.

Level ups:
2: The Thunder Rolled. With Chanter's invocations, we'll mostly try to paralyze our victims. But sometimes they'll be immune so Stun comes to the rescue.
3: Fleet Way. It self-triggers our godlikeness and accelerates all further casts.
4: Miasma of Dull-Mindedness, At The Sound of His. Paralyzation is our go-to disable – the following 50% hit to crit conversion is too sweet to ignore. And Miasma can somewhat setup for that – after all, losing 40 will from it is no joke.
5: Arcane Veil. Great way to bail ourselves out of most trouble. This build needs to be somewhat close to the foes to unleash invocations so that'll come handy.
6: Weapon & Shield. Better safe than sorry.
7: Llengrath's Displaced Image, Sure-Handed Ila. More self-protection and, finally, the first good chant. You're almost bound to have one or two ranged combatants in your party so they'll enjoy that. It's not as good as it was in PoE 1 (as acceleration bonuses now have diminishing returns) but it'll do for now.
8: The Shield Cracks. Just so we don't have to recast this often – that's a really useful thing but our phrases are quite limited.
9: Combat Focus. Just in case.
10: Dimensional Shift, Aefyllath. Mmm, wizard fast casting, don't mind if I do. And Aefyllath is one of the most efficient and reliable chants so you're never against taking it.
11: The Lover Cried. Charms are great and so is this thing.
12: One Dozen Stood. Time to work on that traditional counter package.
13: Ryngrim's Enervating Terror, Seven Men. An incredible controlling spell and yet another counterchant.
14: Rapid Casting. At this time, we certainly need that.
15: The Bride Caught. We don't plan to cast it, it's just so we start combat with more phrases.
16: Gaze of the Adragan, They Shielded Their Eyes. Weird package but yeah – more incredible disables and more counters.
17: Spell Resistance.
18: Tough. Filler time, pretty much. You can easily replace these two with any spells that you wish to have.
19: Substantial Phantom, Mercy and Kindness. I'm not a fan of Tayn's Chaotic. Because it's too chaotic. So I'd rather just have a summon. And Mercy, coupled with just one healer, makes your party unkillable.
20: Accurate Empower.

Ranger/Rogue.

Role: Tank / DD

Race: Fire Godlike. It's a bit annoying in the shooting build as we lose access to Acina's Tricorn but this build is all about staying at half-life and it relies upon armor greatly to do so. Therefore, we really need that racial bonus and we can make some sacrifices for it. As an alternative, you can always go Human.


Subclass: Streetfighter/Stalker with Bear.


First abilities: Escape, Marked Prey.

Attributes (Background – Ixamitl Plains, Drifter): 10-16-19-10-4-19

A rather unique ranger/rogue blend. You see, ridiculous damage bonuses from Rogue make the Might to be rather obsolete. And similar accuracy bonuses from Ranger perform likewise towards Perception. And both of these clases are not that Intellectual from the very beginning. So there's not much of a choice here, right? Besides, this is a point blank shooting build. You go face to face to the foe, you enable your streetfighting flair (why not bring a gun into a fistfight) and you also turn on those pistol modals, unleashing your shots salvo after salvo. So you need high Resolve and Constitution to stay in the fight safely and Dexterity is here to make you act even faster.

Active Skill of Choice: Sleight of Hand & Stealth; this is a nice thief build.

Weapon of Choice: dual pistols & dual scepter as a side-arm.

Armor of Choice: heaviest possible. You rely on armor to survive.

Level ups:
2: Resilient Companion.
3: Vicious Companion. One of the beauties of a ranger is that you almost never have empty level ups.
4: Two Weapon Style, Gunner. Gotta catch all of these speed bonuses.
5: Faithful Companion.
6: Wounding Shot.
7: Finishing Blow, Accurate Wounding Shot. These two will be our main sinks for both Guile and Bond. Just Bond, no James Bond – that one can't really be sunk. If only in martini, I guess.
8: Marked for the Hunt.
9: Protective Companion. Not much comments as it's a rather standard ranger development.
10: Dirty Fighting, Stalkers' Link. As good as persistent distraction is, we're not picking it as ranged weapons cause no engagement, even if applied point blank. For the same reason, we don't care much about marksman. We're still having some nice picks so that's ok.
11: Predator's Sense. As rogue, we'll have an infinite source of bleeding so this one is too easy to enable.
12: Concussive Shot.
13: Devastating Blow, Driving Flight. Devastating blow is really good with the duals and the damage bonus is so great that it's efficient enough even against the half-life targets. And flight is just 50% more damage for us. The basic DPS of guns is kinda low-ish and yet this thing absolutely salvages that.
14: Deep Wounds.
15: Defensive Bond. It's pretty decent against mass debuffs.
16: Slippery Mind, Concussive Tranquilizer. Lots of utility.
17: Tough. It get pretty good once you have high Constitution.
18: Merciless Companion. This class has enough spare perks to fully upgrade its pet. Greenpeace approved.
19: Deathblows, Play Dead. Deathblows is nuff said and Play Dead is an expensive necessity. Losing pet means that we're losing 10 accuracy instead of gaining +10, a total of 20 net change. Too much. So we'll have to invest into our furry a little.
20: Superior Camouflage.

Fighter/Paladin

Role: Tank / DD

Race: Human. It doesn't matter much here so you can pick anything that doesn't offer resistance.


Subclass: Devoted/Kind Wayfarer. Wayfarers have been overnerfed so they're really not that good in this one, but all other paladins have even less synergy. And this allows us to start the game with Sworn&Flames combo (which we certainly want).


First abilities: Disciplined Barrage, Sworn Enemy.

Attributes (Background – Ixamitl): 19-8-18-10-3-20

This is a Sword&Board build that tanks mostly through deflection and thus is able to compensate the lower DPS of this style by wearing really, really light armors. Robes at first and then, after the armored Grace, leathers. Hence the name – you need only a cape for this crusade (and it's figuratively speaking – it's not like this build is tied to any specific cloak). So we have high Might and Dexterity for damage dealing and then fighter's extra accuracy allows us to keep perception medium so we can maximize our Resolve.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics. Mostly to boost the best tower shield in the game. Oh, and you might consider maxing Intimidation as your passive skill.

Weapon of Choice: Sword. There's many of them and they're just too conveniently situated.

Armor of Choice: Robes then Light. There is one very curious medium armor for this build but it's a hard find.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith.
3: Knock Down. I don't like it in the majority of the build but here it looks like an excellent way to burn through our spare
4: Fighter Stances, Weapon & Shield Style. Our First level ups are spent in gathering as much deflection as possible. For this purpose, we even delay our paladin auras a little.
5: Confident Aim. We'll be running the Tower Shield so extra ways of negating that -8 accuracy malus won't hurt us.
6: Zealous Aura. Now it's about time.
7: Disciplined Barrage, Sworn Rival. Even more accuracy to us and the ability to use both Sworn & Flames. After all, we don't mind against spamming the latter ones heavily.
8: Mule Kick. While other builds prefer to spam Charge, here you really don't have that much damage to merit it. So instead we're kicking it – nice accuracy bonus, nice damage and lots of juggling time to mess with your foes. You're striking relatively fast so you'll be able to bother a singular foe for quite a while.
9: Determination. Another beauty of this build is that it's a bit of an anti-mage build – it has insane resistances versus everything.
10: Weapon Specialization, Exalted Endurance. A bit more damage & durability.
11: Divine Purpose.
12: Iron Gut. And then we begin our resistance collecting. Keep in mind that we're avoiding the seemingly awesome Vigorous Defense because there's plenty of buffs like that and buffs do not stack. So we don't want to spend our talents on redundant things.
13: Mob Stance, Mental Fortress. A great source of extra damage and more protections.
14: Armored Grace. Now we can use something heavier than the robe. Most likely it'll be the Miscreants Leather.
15: Superior Deflection. Just what this build needs.
16: Overbearing Guard, Clear Head. Even without any class or skill bonuses, you will be having 3-4 engagements at this point – the bonuses towards them are plentiful. And, given how high this tank's deflection is, enemies will constantly try to sail for some more welcoming shore. And that's exactly where you'll mercilessly punish them as disengagement attacks become hell after this one.
17: Fearless.
18: Body Control.
19: Unstoppable, Virtuous Triumph. Last of the defensive perks & a little more zeal to play with.
20: Eternal Devotion.

Rogue/Barbarian

Role: Damage Dealer/Tank

Race: Human


Subclass: Berserker/Streetfighter


First abilities: Frenzy and Escape.

Attributes (Background – Aedyr, Drifter ): 4-18-18-15-3-20

When combined together, these classes just drown in the damage bonuses. They also don't have any significant inner healing. So Might? Who needs that. Intelligence is also useless for the Rogue. It can be considered for the barbarian, but this build will easily survive without it. Yeah, you lose carnage and have to recast your Frenzy more frequently but, at the same time, no carnage means you're not hitting your teammates. And, considering how weak it is against the enemies, it's not a big loss in the first place. And instead of all the uselessness we have tremendous health and good damage to accompany it. Couple this character with a nice healer (and healing overperforms in this game) and she'll have no problems at all.

Active Skill of Choice: you can make a thief out of this one so stealth & sleight of hand.

Weapon of Choice: Two-Handers. Once you have plenty of action speed going for you (which this build does have), they become pretty decent. The actual weapon choices will be less about modals (as two-handers don't really have strong offensive ones, strangely) and more about whatever strong weapon you'll manage to find. Or steal – there are some really nice ones which can be stolen quickly.

Armor of Choice: Light.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. One advantage of having a million life is that half of it is half a million.
3: Fast Runner.
4: Two-Handed Style, Thick-Skinned. Combining overcompensation with overpenetration prevention (though if someone is overcompensating then overpenetration is kinda doubtful).
5: Wilder Hunter. A bit situational but this one gets most fun early on when you can actually feel its presence.
6: Blinding Strike. We're taking it solely as a prerequisite as our Int doesn't really support much debuffing.
7: Gouging Strike & Bloody Slaughter. Raw damage on Gouging lasts indefinitely so it's probably the best way to spend our Guile. I don't like Finishing/Eliminating blows here as they're not as great with the two-handers and they will conflict with Barbaric Smash.
8: Dirty Fighting.
9: Barbaric Blow. Another prerequisite pick up.
10: Persistent Distraction, Unflinching. Lots of offensive potential & some protection.
11: Adept Evasion.
12: Snake's Reflexes. Your Reflexes are pretty high so, on a couple of empty level ups, why not get this defensive duo?
13: Deep Wounds & Barbaric Smash. So we're finishing foes for free and we're just bleeding them extra. Nice.
14: Tough. Not a very tough choice when you have max Constitution.
15: Uncanny Luck. Streetfighting will make our crits really painful so we're maximizing the chances.
16: Slippery Mind & Interrupting Blows. Protection and a bit of disruption.
17: Improved Critical. Small bonus but we're causing so much of those that why not?
18: Blood Frenzy. More of a preparation pickup.
19: Deathblows, Blood Storm. More damage & hopefully prolonged Frenzy.
20: Blood Thirst.

Fighter/Cipher

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Mountain Dwarf. Dwarves & axes, duh. Well, in reality it's more about collecting resistances than anything else.


Subclass: Devoted/Soul Blade.


First abilities: Disciplined Strikes, Valorous Echoes. Keep in mind that you're never casting spells here – it's all about the Soul Annihilation.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago, Hunter): 20-7-18-18-3-12

Your bog standard damage dealing build. This build is centered around very simple combo – charge allows the fighter to perform a quick chain of attacks at once, doing lots of damage and, if he's a cipher, gathering plenty of focus. Then Soul Annihilation allows to swiftly turn this focus into even greater amount of damage. And so forth, and so on. Generally, Fighters don't really need their Perception maxed, but missing with Annihilation is so painful that we're having it here.

Active Skill of Choice: Mechanics.

Weapon of Choice: dual Axes. It's just another nice interaction – before charging, you can turn the modals of your axes. Then the crowd that you've run through will suffer from massive (or not so much) bleeding. Then you turn the modals off and fight as usual. Keep in mind that right now the axes are very scarce and that sorta spoils the effect – you can stick with something safer (like swords and sabers, duh) until they implement more of the good stuff.

Armor of Choice: medium.

Level ups:
2: Iron Will.
3: Fast Runner.
4: Fighter Stances, Draining Whip.
5: Two Weapon Style. A rather standard development with not much to comment. Just picking everything that gives you more DPS.
6: Determination. We pick it before Confident Aim as we won't be having that much grazes at this time.
7: Disciplined Strikes, Hammering Thought. Hammered Devoted allows us to more or less safely specialize in either pure slashing or pure crushing weaponry. Crushing is probably better as it's almost never fully resisted. Clubs and maces are also very rare, though. Flails are developed so, speaking seriously, mb this is more of a flail build.
8: Confident Aim.
9: Bull's Will. Have perks – will resist.
10: Charge & One Handed Style. Charge is obvious. As for the style – I'll explain in a second.
11: Quick Switch. So we really, really hate to miss with our Annihilation. It's also a primary attack. And crits from it are totally living up to the name. So what about switching for the spare one-handed weapon set before unleashing the annihilation? With this perk, it won't take that much time and yet the attack will receive +12 Accuracy and 20% hit to crit conversion. Nasty.
12: Weapon Specialization. More dmg, please.
13: Mob Stance, Uncanny Luck. Battle axes love criticals so we're raising our chances, if only by little.
14: Fearless.
15: Body Control. Then we can finally get to collecting these.
16: Overbearing Guard, Improved Critical. Enemies won't disengage from us that often but you never know.
17: Unstoppable.
18: Greater Focus. Just to raise the Annihilation's cap a little.
19: Unbreakable, Echoing Horror. Second chances & there's not much to be picked in the cipher tree.
20: Weapon Mastery.

Priest/Ranger

Role: Damage Dealer / Healbot / Buffbot

Race: Nature Godlike. Just for the potential power level.


Subclass: Berath / No Subclass. This is Berath-only build, others don't have the necessary spell. And no sub of ranger is really good here. You don't want to stay close to the foes so Stalker is out (your pet is still a frontliner). Sharshooter is just awful and hurts you more than it helps you. And Ghostheart's duration on the pet's summon is too small to consider it seriously. Pet type is not as important as it usually is, btw.


First abilities: Marked Prey and Restore. Just so you can heal your squadmates.

Attributes (Background – Old Vailia): 18-7-19-11-20-3

Magical glass cannon build. Int and Might are inevitable. We favor Dex over Per as rangery stuff will compensate for that. And resolve is more or less safe to sacrifice, considering we'll be fighting from far away.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: Hunting Bow & Scepter will get you through the early game. Then it's gonna be mudtime.

Armor of Choice: Robe.

Level ups:
2: Resilient Companion.
3: Vicious Companion. We won't be spending much on priestly spells, mostly relying on auto-learns and levels where we must gain something from the second class.
4: Withdraw & Marksman. Withdraw has great utility, nice combo potential and and a fast casting speed. At the very least, that's just a good way to save your pet for cheap.
5: One-Handed Style. Mind you, at the moment you'll probably need Two-Handed one more. But eventually you'll respec into this.
6: Wounding Shot.
7: Consecrated Ground & Accurate Wounding Shot. Bog standard ranger progression and one of the best healing effects in the game to keep your teammates alive.
8: Evasive Roll. We're picking this one early – it's not only to escape trouble but also to make ourselves Quick, thus accelerating the casting of our spells and enabling that nifty racial.
9: Protective Companion.
10: Devotions for the Faithful, Stalkers' Link. One of the most stupidly broken spells in the game and more accuracy to land it. Yeah, rangery stuff will apply to debuffs too. So, before landing devotions, you might consider marking the most dangerous foes.
11: Marked for the Hunt.
12: Concussive Shot. More typical rangerism. Outside of landing buffs & heals, this build is more ranger than caster.
13: Rapid Casting & Driving Flight. The thing you're quietly gaining here is the namesake of the build – Rot Skulls. Those things are incredible – it's a two-hander damage at range with all the one-handed bonuses applied and a constant area of effect corrosion. Which also applies to the secondary Driving Flight strikes. Good range too. Worth it. That's why we're not picking any other Priest spells – we'll be spending our casts on this one. And rapid casting will just help us to assemble all the necessary buffs quickly.
14: Predator's Sense. Skulls are also great at enabling this thing.
15: Faithful Companion.
16: Minor Intercession, Concussive Tranquilizer. Lots of dispel in both massed and targeted package.
17: Survival of the Fittest.
18: Merciless Companion.
19: Shields for the Faithful, Superior Camouflage. Yet another incredible buff. The only problem right now is applying of them before getting into sweet, sweet mud-flinging rampage.
20: Practiced Healer.

Rogue/Monk

Role: Glass Cannon DD.

Race: Human. The racial is pretty important here as it'll be almost constantly on.


Subclass: Helwalker/Streetfighter. This is probably the only build where Helwalker will be decent enough. Naturally, it's atrocious as it gives mediocre damage bonus while helping the foes to one or two-shot you. Here, however, it's part of the synergy as you want to be taking lots of damage quickly. You can go with a more boring Nalpazca, though.


First abilities: Escape & Swift Strikes. One of the rare Rogue builds where Escape will be actually useful.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago, Hunter): 19-3-19-18-9-10

Rare damage dealing stat set with Constitution minimized. The idea of this build is simple – you want to reach Blooded state by self-damage and then you want to retreat somewhere safe to bombard your foes with some 12-meter ranged goodness. So the lower the damage – the faster you're at the brink of death. Which is a good thing, apparently. Monk here is mostly to utilize that self-pain, channeling it to inflict even greater punishment unto your foes.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: Scepters with modal then Hunting Bow/Arbalest/Arquebus. Whatever you manage to scavenge. Scepters is how you bring yourself low. Hunting is best on the paper, but good hunting bows don't really exist. Good Arbalests and Arquebuses will be found swiftly, however.

Armor of Choice: robes.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner. Surprisingly good here as you'll have to reposition this build quickly to get out of harm's way. It's not like you can tell them the safe word.
3: Lesser Wounds.
4: Smoke Veil, Two-Weapon Style. Actually, Veil is your safe word. If something threatens you, you'll be mostly using it to take the aggro away. And two-weapons just accelerate your self-damaging scepter maneuver.
5: Dance of Death. Given the overall strategy of this build, it's a very pleasant thing to have. Also, if you pay enough attention (this build is micro-intensive) you can use Veils to cancel the enemy attacks, thus saving your bonus.
6: Long Stride. Further mobility & positioning.
7: Dirty Fighting & Lightning Strikes. You can try some combos with Swift Flurry and Frostseeker bow but this really isn't the build for that as the crit rate is not high enough. So we go into more reliable territory.
8: Clarity of Agony. No debuffs, please.
9: Two-Handed Style. For our actual killing weapon.
10: Finishing Blow, Thunderous Blows. This level blows. Just kidding – well, Finishing is a bit questionable as we'd rather spend our Guile on self-protection. But Thunderous just give us damage and penetration, what's not to like.
11: Enduring Dance. So there's less risk of this thing breaking. It gets mad once we go into 5+ stacks territory.
12: Duality of Mortal Presence. We don't have much need for it now so it's mostly for the future. I guess it gives you enough intelligence to be using Rods, though.
13: Deep Wounds, Bear's Fortitude. Long pain might seem attractive but it's questionable – the damage is great, yes, but the range is not so hot. Just look at how well does your squad support you, if there's no problem – it's easy to retrain for it. If not- stick to the distance's safety.
14: Devastating Blow.
15: Uncanny Luck.
16: Slippery Mind, Turning Wheel. Mind is all too easily enabled here. And wheel is wheel, gotta have it to keep rolling.
17: Adept Evasion. Your reflexes are exceptional and you don't want to be taking even the lesser of blows (unless you do).
18: The Long Pain. Tbh,there's just nothing to pickup here so you're losing nothing by not getting this combo.
19: Deathblows, Instruments of Pain. Instruments do even more damage and you may combo them with something like a Pike, I guess. So they're definitely better than the alternative.
20: Heartbeat Drumming. So your Instruments have more potential.

Paladin/Chanter

Role: Tank/Healer/DD

Race: Boreal Dwarf. Doesn't really matter but you really enjoy low Dexterity as this build so why not make it even lower.


Subclass: st. Elcga / Troubadour. Paladin class is malleable but you don't want Wayfarers or Walkers – you don't need Flames of Devotion. Troubadour is so we can cast our good stuff much faster.


First abilities: Sworn Enemy, Thrice She Was Wronged, Come, Come. This is one of the rare builds where Come, Come is actually useful.

Attributes (Background – Ixamitl, Scholar): 20-9-2-18-10-19

This build is based around the fact that both Paladins & Chanters have plenty of useful actions that take only 0.5 seconds to apply. Thus you can be very, yrev slow and yet remain useful. And this sluggishness allows you to get really nice tanking stats while, at the same time, not being that bad with your spells once it's the time to apply them. Also, since our Brisk Recitation will be constantly up, the intelligence stops being as crucial for this build as it is for your average caster. The AoE is generally good even without it and you won't be applying much timed effects.

Active Skill of Choice: Arcana. Scrolls are pretty fast so, in dire need, you can burn through them even without dexterity.

Weapon of Choice: standard tanking fare. You want a buckler shield, though, as precision is important for you.

Armor of Choice: heavy.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith.
3: And Hel-Hyraf. We tend to avoid timed effects but after the upgrade this one becomes sorta infinite so it's ok.
4: Zealous Aura, Weapon and Shield Style. Tank up!
5: Divine Purpose.
6: One Dozen Stood. In this build, we can afford to be picking this early. Given how frequent the Sickened is, it's actually pleasant.
7: Brand Enemy, Her Revenge Swept. Our damage dealing package. Brand is very swift to cast and soon it begins to cause some serious damage. Cheap and efficient. Point blank Her Revenge is just a nice finisher move. And it's easy to cast point blank as you're a freaking tank, nothing to be afraid of.
8: The Shield Cracks. Now its duration is good enough.
9: Hands of Light. This one is actually important – it's needed so you can cast your ultimate finisher safely.
10: Exalted Endurance, Rise Again. Mass healing and mass raise in cases where it won't be enough.
11: Aefyllath or Silver Knights. Depends on whether your party needs damage or protection.
12: Aegis of Loyalty. Despite all your protective auras, you might still need it.
13: Practiced Healer & Seven Nights. We're boosting our aura even further and we're getting our main killing tool. Really long cast time but that's what the Hands of Light are taken for. Point blank seven is really tough to survive.
14: Her Courage Thick. In brisk mode, that makes the party incredibly tough. This pretty much was balanced around brisk mode and that only.
15: Seven Men. More protections for when we'll need them. It's the reason why we're not picking up paladin's resistances, btw – in the battles where we'll certainly need them, we'll be running this.
16: Liberating Exhortation, They Shielded Their Gaze. Gotta pick something as paladin so we pick utility. And we finalize our protective arsenal.
17: Rapid Casting. We need to accelerate our Seven Nights.
18: Liberating Command.
19: Stoic Steel, Her Tears Fell. This is not a very mobile class so stoic still can get helpful. More so if you pick up the Tower Shield modal. And Her Tears Fell makes our finisher to be even greater.
20: Mercy and Kindness. Another insanely good things that we don't want to miss. Even buffing our own relatively meager healing will be great. Coupled with druid or priest, this one is just imba.

Barbarian/Wizard

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Nature Godlike. Casters love that power level.

Subclass: Berserker/Generalist.

First abilities: Frenzy & Fleet Feet.

Attributes (Background – Old Vailia): 3-8-19-18-20-10

This build combines the fact that high Int is useful for both martial Wizard and Barbarian – longer self-buffs, bigger frenzy and Citzal's aoe. It's able to pack on all the good damage boosting attributes and its low might will be compensated by barbarian's arithmetical bonuses. It's also able to apply Smart inspiration to itself easily, thus negating the Confusion without any additional help.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics or Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: first summoned staff, then summoned pike.

Armor of Choice: heavy first, then light. Two-handers don't really like to wear heavy armor but you have frenzy to negate it. And, once you combine robust's +2 with your heavy armor and Concelhaut's vampirism, you'll become very durable in the early game. Almost like an extra tank.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. Let's take care of that pesky might, more or less.
3: Fast Runner. Our plethora of buffs puts us on the clock so we don't like to waste any time running. Keep in mind that ealy on you'll probably take Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff here and then you'll respec it. Just so you can be sure to have it.
4: Infuse with Vital Essence, Thick-Skinned. Infuse fixes all your friendly fire problems which will be quite helpful for now. The proper order of buffs is Infuse > all other buffs > Frenzy, btw, just so all your buffs profit from +5 Int and nothing suffers from Confusion's -5. And we depend on our armor to survive so we need that +1 point of it.
5: Two-Handed Style. Two-Handed just further works on our low Might.
6: Arcane Veil. Doesn't last that long but it's something that we always want to keep handy. Once we'll find some other solution to the Confusion issue (a doze of Svef, for example), this'll be our main tier-2 spell.
7: Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage, One Stands Alone. You can go with the safer & faster Llengrath's Safeguard, but Ryngrim is so amazing when it works. Almost 20 seconds of strong debuff, constantly torturing your foes and helping you kill them while they're totally helpless. The Voltron I saw didn't mention such intricacies. And OSA is both great protection and source of damage.
8: Wilder Hunter. Situational but groovy.
9: Bloodlust. We have enough intelligence for this to be cool.
10: Dimensional Shift, Unflinching. Some fast stunning and something to alleviate our poorest Fortitude.
11: Bloody Slaughter. Hmm, since when kids cartoons feature bloody slaughter? Damn, kids nowadays are so happy when compared to us... Just kidding – in my 5 years, I was watching Alien, Predator, etc. Now that's a proper upbringing!
12: Barbaric Blow. Prerequisite.
13: Citzal's Spirit Lance, Barbaric Smash. Now we're having our favorite toy and a nice way to use it. Unlike the previous game, Citzal's damage is not that ridiculous, it's just a well-enchanted pike. But the AoE is still there and, coupled with the multiclass bonuses, the overall DPS is good.
14: Rapid Casting. So we assemble our Voltron quicker.
15: Bear's Fortitude. Gotta do something about our lowest save.
16: Arcane Reflection, Interrupting Blows. Reflection is good at punishing the enemy mages, something that we're more or less vulnerable to. And interrupting blows can prevent some specials from unleashing onto our party which is a more or less fine choice.
17: Uncanny Luck.
18: Blood Frenzy. Some critical potential & stuff that profits from it.
19: Llengrath's Warding Staff, Blood Thirst. Warding Staff is bugged atm and doesn't give the deflection that it's supposed to be giving. Maybe after that it'll become a good choice. Everything else here isn't worth is – even the Martial Power as it has been overnerfed and doesn't really give us that much, considering its buffs can be replicated in an easier fashion. And we're just continuing our killsteal routine.
20: Blood Storm.

Monk/Cipher.

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Nature Godlike. What can change the nature of casters?


Subclass: Ascendant/Nalpazca. Ascendant is the basic cipher casting class, just too much focus to ignore. And nalpazca is the best choice for the ranged monk (if we don't do any shenanigans) – you can stay far away while still getting wounds steadily.


First abilities: Swift Strikes & Whisper of Treason.

Attributes (Background –Deadfire Archipelago Hunter): 18-7-20-18-12-3

This is a ranged glass cannon build. All the physical damage dealing stats are here and the size and length of the cipher's casts will be eventually fixed by the great bonus from the Turning Wheel, thus allowing us to succeed at everything. Good damage output and, eventually, good control.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy. Hard to shoot high without it.

Weapon of Choice: Arquebus and Arbalest. Both types have some really great pieces that can be purchased relatively early on.

Armor of Choice: robe.

Level ups:
2: Lingering Echoes. Yet another way to compensate for our low Int.
3: Iron Will. Our basic will is so-so so we'd better compensate.
4: Two-Handed Style, Draining Whip. Let's get enough focus so we can actually spam something.
5: Mind Blades. Later on, you'll want to respec this into some slight utility perk – probably Long Stride. But for now, they're doing a great amount of damage so they'll be your most spammed spell (outside of whispers).
6: Clarity of Agony. We want to shoot and cast, not to stay stunned.
7: Lightning Strikes, Hammering Thoughts. More damage output to keep the focus flowing.
8: Secret Horrors. That's a rather strong debuff that's a fast cast.
9: Dance of Death. Mostly as a prerequisite.
10: Duality of Mortal Presence, Pain Block. Now we finally have an excellent casting duration and good AoEs. And all of it almost for free. And we're capable of doing some healing because why not?
11: Enduring Dance. With couple of hits being allowed, it's much easier to utilize this thing.
12: Body Attunement. -Armor can solve some annoying encounters and it's a rare effect so it's good to have it handy.
13: Thunderous Blows & Borrowed Instinct. We'd love to get Blows earlier but there were higher priorities. And Instinct is yet another self-buff to keep us steady.
14: Long Pain. In case we'll need some crushing damage.
15: Two Weapon Style. So we can utilize both our fighting options steadily.
16: Turning Wheel, Amplified Wave. Wheel is a s great as ever but, once again, don't forget that it applies to the spells. For now, at the very least. So while the basic Wave is nothing to write home about, the wave with +50% burning damage...
17: The Empty Soul. We're using quite a few of these, after all.
18: Disintegration. This one will be decent against strong solo targets.
19: Instruments of Pain, Echoing Horror. Better pseudo-ranged weaponry and the best thing from cipher's tier-7. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
20: Heartbeat Drumming. Mostly to buff our long fists. Or something like a pike/staff if we wish to play it absolutely safe. We probably do.

Rogue/Priest

Role: Damage Dealer/Buffer

Race: Death Godlike. Bonus damage here will apply to the spells and, if this one is near death, it can easily cast the spell with that +3 power level bonus.


Subclass: Assassin/of Skaen.

First abilities: Escape, Restore.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago): 18-3-20-15-19-3

The glassiest of the glass cannons. And that's even without taking the Assassin's penalty into the picture. However, it's perfectly fine because this build doesn't intend to play fair. First, the Rogue has access to the Smoke Veil, the standard assassin's fare. Then the skaenite priest himself can cast Shadowing Beyond, thus gaining 2-3 additional invisibility. And since the battles don't last that long and all the priestly casts are very, very slow that pretty much means that all your casts will be done from the stealth. Meaning that all of them will be very safe. So who cares about protection, duh? There's some invis charging to be done!

Active Skill of Choice: Arcana or Explosives.

Weapon of Choice: Something really, really long ranged. Doesn't matter which one, really. You can also use Rust's stiletto – not it melee, it's just 2 more doses of invisibility.

Armor of Choice: robe.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner.
3: Defensive Roll. Not that you're going to use it much but early levels are somewhat awful for this build. Thanks God you're breezing through them.
4: Smoke Veil, Pillar of Faith. Our first combo, pretty much. Skaenite weaponry may sound curious but, while it looks great by the measures of PoE 1, it's nothing special from the looks of Deadfire. So it's pointless to make a build around it.
5: Dirty Fighting. You want more crits with your spells.
6: Two-Handed Style. So you can shoot a bit better, I guess..
7: Snake's Reflexes, Consecrated Ground. All our Guile will be spent on invis so we don't care about Rogue's abilities. And it never hurts to have some good healing.
8: Combat Focus. Just in case of AoE attacks that could hit through invis.
9: Bull's Will.
10: Adept Evasion, Devotions For The Faithful. Devotions are absolutely worth to assassin-cast. They take a lot of zest out of your foes so you want them to hit.
11: Shining Beacon. You're rarely casting it but just as a side option.
12: Scion of Flame. Most of our damage is fiery so we'll boost it all.
13: Deep Wounds, Rapid Casting. We'll be mostly casting Shadowing from this tier of spells so we don't need much else.
14: Revive the Fallen. Maybe only this one as a precaution.
15: Uncanny Luck.
16: Slippery Mind, Pillar of Holy Fire. With this build, you'll truly be playing Pillars.
17: Improved Critical. For spells, it's a bit more noticeable than for weapons.
18: Bear's Fortitude.
19: Deathblows, Storm of Holy Fire. Deathblows just to keep handy against the trashmobs. And Storm is your ultimate assassination tool.
20: Accurate Empower. We're missing on the shields but this build seems to be much more about landing Empowered Storm than anything else.

Rogue/Fighter

Role: Damage Dealer.

Race: Human or Hearth Orlan. Just for Resolve.


Subclass: Devoted/Streetfighter. Putting some fighter into streetfighter, yeah.


First abilities: Disciplined Barrage, Escape.

Attributes (Background – Drifter): 10-9-18-18-3-20

Streetfigher is one of the strongest subclasses in the game and its only problem that a lot of strain is put onto your character. So we mix it with the traditionally sturdy fighter. It allows you to hold under the pressure and fighter also has lots of freebie criticals thus getting the most out of Streetfighting bonus.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics or Stealth/Sleight of Hand to make this your party's thief.

Weapon of Choice: Duals. Swords, most likely. Mb Sabres or Flails. Mb Daggers because you love extra accuracy giving you more criticals. There are some really nice magical daggers but being a piercing Devoted has its own risk – piercing is the most resisted kind of damage. You may also consider Hatchets – Xoti's sickle will be pretty cool here. Don't forget to study religion then.

Armor of Choice: heavy. You have enough bonuses to mitigate the downsides.

Level ups:
2: Monastic Unarmed Training – wouldn't be much Cammy without that, duh. Well, this is for non-flail builds – if you encounter anything that's immune to your weapons, you can just switch to your fists. They're not that strong but, initially, they'll do. Oh, and they actually profit from your Devoted status instead of being penalized, that's the point.
3: Fast Runner.
4: Fighter Stances, Two Weapon Style.
5: Determination.
6: Confident Aim. Rather standard fighter development.
7: Disciplined Strikes, Riposte. Don't expect wonders from your riposte but it will be doing something here and there.
8: Finishing Blow. That's gonna be our main guile output. It's just too good with the duals.
9: Dirty Fighting. With our critical bonuses, we're loving this stuff.
10: Charge, Persistent Distraction. Our main Discipline-burner and just lots of buffing. Don't forget that Distraction also makes you more survivable by taking 5 of their Perception (and so Accuracy) away.
11: Hold the Line. So we gain more from Distraction.
12: Fearless. We don't want to be losing Deflection.
13: Mob Stance, Devastating Blow. Given our preferences, we're bound to be as surrounded by foes as possible. So Stance will be dealing tons of damage. And Devastating rather guarantees its triggering. C-c-combo!
14: Armored Grace. So much to do, so little time.
15: Deep Wounds.
16: Overbearing Guard, Slippery Mind. We have enough deflection to make enemies try to escape from us, so let's maximize the punishment potential.
17: Superior Deflection. Just so we stay strong.
18: Body Control. Time to remember we have the access to these.
19: Unstoppable, Deathblows. If we play correctly, we probably don't need the Unbreakable. So let's take more utility instead.
20: Weapon Specialization. If you think you'll need it, you can take Unbreakable instead. Not too much of a difference as Specialization pales in shadow of Rogue's goodness.

Priest/Rogue

Role: Buffer/Healer/Tank

Race: Human or Orlan.


Subclass: Priest of Wael/Streetfighter. Mind you, this is Wael-only build.


First abilities: Escape, Restore

Attributes (Background – Aedyr or Ixamitl): 15-7-10-10-16-20

This build is based around the fact that Quarterstaff makes for an excellent Riposte weapon. It's modal will give you almost as much deflection as a proper Tower Shield but it won't cripple your accuracy and two-handed riposte is obviously stronger than weapon&shield one. And it also enables stripper jokes, duh. Our stats are a bit tough but we have maxed resolve, enough Int for the buffs and enough Might for the healing. Generally speaking, this is less of amazing damage dealer (though Riposte here works as good as ever) and more of a healer/buffer that does additional damage during the casts. And streetfighter here can seriously accelerate those casts if you ever get Flanked/Bloodied.


Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: Quarterstaff. You just carry your pole around.

Armor of Choice: Dancer outfit, lol. Too bad you can't enchant generic items in this one. On a more serious note – robes.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner.
3: Backstab. No point in taking any additional 1-st level priest spells as you need nothing but Veil. And you can do sporadic invis shenanigans.
4: Two-Handed Style, Withdraw. Withdraw is great at saving our companions (and maybe even ourselves). And just more damage for the future ripostes.
5: Smoke Veil. Gunners pierce through both Veil & Staff so we really, really hate them. Therefore, in heavy-gunning fights we might be using some stealth casts.
6: Dirty Fighting. Something to go with our Dirty Dancing.
7: Riposte, Consecrated Ground. Riposte justification here is sipmle – staff modal and Veil give you +70 deflection. Then you hopefully land your Devotions, denying another 20 to the foes. Then you maybe blind them or distract them, making yourself even harder to hit. Enemies miss and you get some nice counters in the process.
8: Blinding Strike.
9: Confounding Blind. Rogues rarely have the intelligence to use this but, actually, this thing can be quite nice. Especially if you have a Blunderbuss character in your squad, then that deflection penalty grows lightning fast.
10: Persistent Distraction, Devotions for the Faithful. Less accuracy to the foes, more fun for your team.
11: Combat Focus. Our casts are long and we tend to perform them while staying in risky position so this one won't harm.
12: Bull's Will. Let's get totally willfull.
13: Deep Wounds, Rapid Casting. Priest's tier-5 spells are trashy so we're just getting fast casts instead.
14: Revive the Fallen. Just in case.
15: Withering Strike. Additional situational debuffs.
16: Slippery Mind, Pillar of Holy Fire. Some protection & magical damage.
17: Toxic Strike. Once again, a rare intelligent rogue build that has enough stats to use this. It will be doing 80 or so corrode damage per strike. It's a bit too expensive guile-wise, though.
18: Uncanny Luck.
19: Deathblows, Shields for the Faithful. Doesn't stack with the Veil but, on the other hand, it does affect our entire party.
20: Spell Resistance.

Ranger/Druid

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Wild Orlan. If we go furry, we go to the bitter end.


Subclass: Shifter / Stalker with Lion Companion. This is a melee ranger build so Stalker is pretty obviuos.

First abilities: Marked for the Hunt, Charm Beast.

Attributes (Background – Aedyr): 13-7-18-10-10-20

The beauty of shifter is that its bonuses progress naturally, without much unnecessary ties to druidic power level. So it's the class which only makes sense on the multi-platform. At the same time, it's a greedy class – it's a damage dealer which doesn't need the intelligence that much but which will have to keep it at the very least neutral so you're having enough shapeshifting. Yeah, sure, you have five charges of it but all animals are not equal – Cat is the best for the damage dealing (it's gonna be our favored form) and Bear is the best for tanking. Others are just good for nothing lowlifes. So we need Int to make the good forms last. So we need to pick a second class that's not too stat reliant – in this build, that's the ranger that allows us to build an insane accuracy without much Perception. It also allows us to bring an extra kitty on the battlefield, hence the name. Too bad you don't have any kitty summons. But do bring a cat pet with this one, ofc! Otherwise, you won't be drowning in ♥♥♥♥♥.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: Claws.

Armor of Choice: Hide.

Level ups:
2: Resilient Companion.
3: Vicious Companion. Ranger's patented way of filling up empty levels.
4: Faithful Companion, Wildstrike. While we would truly love Two Weapon style, we're delaying it so we can pick it up on a totally fruitless druid level. So we're buffing our pet and we're getting a wildstrike – doesn't really matter which one, it seems.
5: Merciless Companion. In this build, we really care about our ♥♥♥♥♥.
6: Wounding Shots.
7: Accurate Wounding Shot, Nature's Balm. Balm is one of the rare spells that we actually wouldn't mind casting – great regeneration and it makes our kitty form even sturdier. Also stacks nice with our Stalkerism. And Wounding shots are extreme when done from under the beast shape.
8: Predator's Sense. You get the joke.
9: Protective Companion.
10: Stalker's Link & Greater Wildstrike. More of that sweet damage, please.
11: Marked for the Hunt. So we're using our Bond efficiently. This build should especially care about the Bond, after all.
12: Evasive Roll. Mostly for the self-quickness in times when we'll want to cast something.
13: Concussive Shot, Two Weapon Style. It's about time! And since we have no projectiles to Driving Flight, we're just taking some interrupts/dispels for the future. Mind you that the Nature's Terror you receive on this level is a really, really good spell so you'll be casting it and maybe even Empowering it. It's an important one.
14: Defensive Bond. Yeah, Bond is generally pretty defensive of his ♥♥♥♥♥. And, well, we're fighting close to our beast so it's gonna trigger a lot.
15: Combat Focus. Losing our spells is not nice.
16: Concussive Tranquilizer, Rapid Casting. Much needed dispel and even faster casts.
17: Survival of the Fittest. More accuracy, please.
18: Play Dead,. Losing pet sucks so let's try not to do this.
19: Superior Camouflage, Weather the Storm. Weather is just a nice optional effect to have.
20: Heart of the Storm. To boost our Nature's Terror.

Rogue/Wizard

Role: Nuker.

Race: Nature Godlike or Hearth Orlan. Either extra power levels or extra criticals.


Subclass: Evoker / Assassin. Pure blaster is the only time when you actually wish to go specialized. The chance is crappy but you don't really miss the lost schools and the bonus is sweet when it happens.


First abilities: Fleet Feet, Escape.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends): 18-7-12-19-19-3

The standard casting DD setup. Intelligence for the AoE, Might for the damage and Perception so your precious casts actually hit – you'd love to be casting faster but you don't have that many key spells and you need them all to land and preferably crit. And the entire idea of the build is to be casting incredible evocative spells from under the stealth, thus applying +25 accuracy, 4 extra penetration and +50% critical damage to them. Right now, an empowered high-level evocation from stealth will pretty much wipe out the encounters (and you can use the spark crackers to lure them into a convenient ball formation).

Active Skill of Choice: Arcana & Stealth, 2:1 split.

Weapon of Choice: Rust's Stiletto for extra invisibility. Early on – two-handed shooters.

Armor of Choice: robe.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner.
3: Eldritch Aim. For when we absolutely need to land that crit.
4: Smoke Veil, Rolling Flame. Our first combo. Not the best one but we'll do with what we have. Don't be afraid to burn scrolls at this point – it's not like they're worth much.
5: Merciless Gaze. That's for the future.
6: Dirty Fighting. Yeah, we love when our spells do crit.
7: Combat Focus, Fireball. Outside of the starting ability, Rogue level ups are mostly pointless for us. But it's ok as Assassination alone is worth it.
8: Bull's Will. We'll be picking some more or less useful perks and rely on our Grimoires to keep our spell arsenal vast.
9: Snake's Reflexes.
10: Shadowing Beyond, Minoletta's Concussive Missiles.
11: Scion of Flame. We don't need penetration per se but it's mostly to increase the overpenetration chance.
12: Secrets of Rime.
13: Uncanny Luck, Blast of Frost. More good nukes.
14: Rapid Casting. Faster nukes so our invisibility is enough.
15: Bear's Fortitude.
16: Slippery Mind, Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst.
17: Improved Critical. This does apply to the spells.
18: Chain Lightning.
19: Accurate Empower, Potent Empower. Both evocation spells here are meh so we'd rather boost our empowers through the roof.
20: Penetrating Empower. Now those crits are almost guaranteed to have overpenetration.

Priest/Chanter

Role: healbot/buffbot

Race: Moon Godlike. The name should be telling. This is a squishy build so moonwaves will maybe give it enough time to withdraw and live another day.


Subclass: of Eothas/Troubadour. Just like all caster support chanters, we're aiming on casting our highest-tier evocations first and foremost. And, for pure healing, Eothas has the best spell list. It's not tough to adapt this for other gods, though.


First abilities: Restore, And Hel-Hyraf, Come, Come.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends): 18-7-18-14-18-3

Attributes for this build are tough as we just need too many different things. Unlike with other chanter combinations, dexterity matters as priestly spells are just too slow without it. Might can not be touched as we aren't much of a healbot without it. Perception is important so our best casts hit. So is intelligence. And, well, we can get everything we need only by becoming a glass cannon. That's a bit annoying as many of the troubadour's casts are rather point blank, but we'll try to avoid the risky stuff and focus on being a good support.

Active Skill of Choice: Arcana.

Weapon of Choice: buckler & dagger.

Armor of Choice: robe.

Level ups:
2: Not Felled By. When picking the chanter invocations, we'll be carefully looking at their range. Rest of the first tier stuff is just too short to function on a glass cannon. This, however, is alright as we're applying it to our squad instead of the enemies. So we won't be out of position when casting it.
3: Suppress Affliction.
4: Iconic Projection, At the Sound.Iconic is a nice damage & healing combo. And At the Sound won't touch as many foes as for the usual aggressive chanter but it'll still catch some and this effect is too precious to miss out.
5: Weapon & Shield Style.
6: One Dozen Stood. Standard support development.
7: Consecrated Ground, The Shield Cracks. Consecrated Grout is cast at, well, the ground. So you can rush in, cast, then retreat. It's not pleasant but it's too big of a spell to miss out. And the shield just last for quite a while, thus saving us from the need to recast it – even with our rapping powers on, we're not gaining that many phrases.
8: Sure-Handed Ila or Ancient Memory. Depending on what your party needs the most. If your party is heavily ranged, you can even get it at level 7.
9: Combat Focus. Always a good thing to accompany slow casts.
10: Devotions for the Faithful, Aefyllath. You might also consider the Silver KKnights, but Aefyllath is generally better. And devotions is the best priestly spell, prepare to cast it a lot.
11: Nor Flame, Nor Thrusted. So this things becomes more universal.
12: Rise Again, Rise Again. So they would, well, rise again.
13: Barring Death's Door, Her Courage Think. Courage is the Troubadour's routine. And Death's Door is mediocre. But so is everything else from priest's tier 5. Death's Door works best when there's another glass cannon character in your party, something like Streetfighter or anything. Then it buys a lot of time for it and they can do enough during that time.
14: Searing Seal. That may not make much sense at first but because the priest's tier-5 is so weak we're picking two spells from it. Simply so maybe one of them will be useful through any particular combat. Better to overpay than to miss an entire level. Well, seal is big, its blind is long and it can be cast before the combat starts, I guess that's good enough.
15: Rapid Casting. With our slow casts, we truly need this. Mind that we're avoiding the Seven Nights – as good as they are, we just don't have the sturdiness to cast them.
16: Pillar of Holy Fire, Seven Men. A bit of offensive potential & buffing.
17: They Shielded Their Eyes. More anti-afflictions.
18: The Bride Caught. Mostly prerequisite.
19: Storm of Holy Fire, Set to Their Holy. While this character is a buffbot, I think the healing from this point will get so overwhelming that we don't really need Shields. So we're taking more damage. And our ultimate chanter payoff will be his best buff that allows our team to spam, spam and spam their abilities.
20: Mercy and Kindness. Quite a fitting pick for a healbot.

Barbarian/Paladin

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Moon Godlike. This is a squishy class so you can use this race to get a bit sturdier, especially in the first half of the game.


Subclass: Bleak Walker/Berserker. This is mostly a walker build. You can go Goldpact as well but it's a bit less efficient as its armor doesn't stack with Berserker's Robust. On the other hand, it's still +4 armor and that's a lot of durability.


First abilities: Sworn Enemy, Frenzy.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends): 18-6-10-19-15-10

Tough class, stat-wise. We want some Int for the carnage, self-buffs and auras, not to mention that lots of weapons will do certain debuffs on crits and high Int will prolong them. At the same time, we don't want to be a glass cannon and we need to do decent damage. So these stats is the best balance I could've found. Per over Dex mostly for the sake of criticals – there's too much such synergy to ignore.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics.

Weapon of Choice: Duals. Best you'll be able to find.

Armor of Choice: Heavy. Armor Stacking is how this build tries to stay on the battlefield.

Level ups:
2: Deep Faith.
3: Blooded. A bit discordant with the Moon's ability but, given how hard monsters hit on early PoTD, you'll get here anyways.
4: Thick-Skinned, Zealous Aura. Aura may be on Accuracy here as its bonus also doesn't stack with Barbarian's robustness.
5: Two Weapon Style.
6: Divine Purpose.
7: One Stands Alone, Sworn Rival. Pretty traditional development. OSA gives us just way too much of everything so we hurry with it.
8: Bloodlust. Walker's Flames are pretty strong so it shouldn't be hard to kill foes. And all these speed boosting abilities compensate for our average Dex.
9: Barbaric Blow. Prerequisite and at this point we'll probably have more Rage than just Frenzying will require.
10: Bloody Slaughter, Mental Fortress. We prioritize sureproof killing and now we're protected from our own Frenzy's confused, meaning we can land those Barbaric blow without being afraid for our squadmates.
11: Exalted Endurance. Healing matters.
12: Unflinching. With healing & support, it will be useful enough to merit the perk spent.
13: Barbaric Smash, Shared Flames. More bursty damage, please. And more fun for the team – the bonus is quite strong, actually. We'd pick it more if there was more intelligent paladin builds.
14: Clear Head.
15: Iron Gut. A bit redundant with the unflinching but healing penalties can be quite lethal so let's try to avoid them.
16: Interrupting Blows, Virtuous Triumph. We're having plenty of criticals and we're killing enough foes.
17: Wilder Hunter.
18: Blood Frenzy.
19: Blood Storm, Stoic Steel. We're finishing this build in a rather standard fashion. I guess I'm not against Stoic Steel here. It'll rarely be more than +1 here but since we rely upon armor a lot even that can easily be +25% reduction. Ok enough.
20: Blood Thirst.

Fighter/Chanter

Role: Crowd Control/Damage Dealer

Race: Hearth Orlan. This build is all about criticals.


Subclass: Devoted/Skald. We'll be mostly casting low-level disables/debuffs with this one and Skald's discounts are supreme – going from 3>2 and 4>3 is a lot. We'll also be enjoying the fact that Fighter has some freebie crits so we can gain more Phrases that way.


First abilities: Disciplined Barrage, And Hel-Hyraf, Come-Come.

Attributes (Background – Old Vailia): 5-7-18-19-19-10

This is a bit of a difficult build. Dex & Per are an absolute must – you're not getting the volume of crits needed without them. Int is also highly required as you need your disables & chants to be lasting. And I think that you're rather not cut on resolve as you still need to stay in melee – only melee criticals count for skald. So that's as best as we can. Despite the low Might, the damage still won't be that bad. It's a controller build first and foremost, though.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics.

Weapon of Choice: You know, theoretically, it should be Clubs. It has a -25 Will modal that's enables some really, really debuff landing. Practically, though, Clubs suffers a lot from lacking the good weaponry. Almost no unique clubs to be found and you can't enchant generic ones into better shapes. And superb & legendary clubs are also not that common. That weapon is lovely in this build but it's just not supported. So I guess you go for better fast duals – flails, probably. For now, at the very least, the flails (especially Sun and Moon) will be much better for this build.

Armor of Choice: light. You need your attack speed.

Level ups:
2: The Thunder Rolled. Its AoE is sorta bad but it's a great secondary disable against targets which are immune to Paralyzation.
3: Not Felled By The Axe. Just as a side option.
4: Fighter Stances, At The Sound. Sound is crucial for this build – being paralyzed means free 50% hit to crit conversion. That's lots of freebie criticals and thus lots of extra phrases. So you cast more and cause even more paralyzations. Now, on PoTD resists are high so you rarely chain this stuff but the overall effect is worth it.
5: Two Weapon Style. You like fast attacks due to reasons most obvious.
6: Determination.
7: Disciplined Strikes, The Shield Cracks. Recasting Hel-Hyraf often sorta squanders precious phrases (you'd rather disable them) so this is a welcome addition. And strikes are criticals, the lifeblood of the build.
8: Confident Aim.
9: One Dozen Stood.
10: Charge, Aefyllath. You hope to Charge through freshly paralyzed mob, thus gaining plenty of Phrases. Some, at the very least. And Aefyllath is your first really good chant – you'll be weaving two of them.
11: The Long Night. Your second good chant. If you already have a frequent source of weakness, you want to consider The Silver Knights instead.
12: The Lover Cried. You'd love to pick this one faster but the thing is, you really needed those two previous phrases to stay efficient. So this had to wait as you've had no good phrases but had some nice ways to burn through them already. The Lover is simply great and it's also good because now you can attack 3 stats at once. So you can evade some resistances here and there.
13: Mob Stance, Seven Men. More attack speed and more utility. Mind you that we don't want to upgrade our Paralyzation – the effect is not that great but the price increase is too painful.
14: Armored Grace.
15: Weapon Specialization. Something to negate our low might.
16: Unbending, They Shielded. Unbending is really expensive but it's fully worth the price, even at the mediocre might. And They Shielded allows us not to spend perks on the resistance perks. In all fights where we'll need them we'll just be running those perks.
17: The Bride Caught.
18: Superior Deflection.
19: Unbending Trunk, Set to their Purpose. No great debuffs or offensive spells on these levels (for this build) so we're just taking his best buff. Yeah, it's a bit more expensive due to the Skaldy-ness but a lucky charge can push us here. And trunk is even greater at keeping us alive.
20: Mercy and Kindness. Your healers will love this.

Barbarian/Fighter

Role: Damage Dealer

Race: Death Godlike. This build is all about landing the killing blow and this race has a certain synergy with that.


Subclass: Berserker/Devoted. The sole downside is that we don't have an innate cure to Confusion. But wear something like Devil of Caroc's Breastplate and you'll do fine.


First abilities: Frenzy, Disciplined Barrage.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends ): 14-7-19-19-16-3

This build is a total glass cannon. Initially, at the very least, as both these classes have some considerable durability potential. It'll be a rough start but as soon as you'll tap into that potential nothing but smooth sailing will follow. And such stat distribution is mandatory simply because you need healing, you need DPS potential and you need high Int for carnage and self-buffs. So you cut down everything that you can afford to cut.

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics.

Weapon of Choice: Swords or Great Sword if you have Whispers of Endless Paths. You may also consider Xoti's sickle aka Hatchets. If you do go that way, don't forget to pump your religion skill.

Armor of Choice: heavy at first, then medium.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. With a glass cannon this is rather predictably constantly on.
3: Fast Runner.
4: Fighter Stances, Thick-Skinned. With this two, we'll try to be a bit more durable early on.
5: Wilder Hunter. It's sweetest the earliest you go for it.
6: Two Weapon Style.
7: Disciplined Strikes, One Stands Alone. Damage, durability, criticals – this class has incredible early game.
8: Bloodlust. And now we should start living up to the name of the build.
9: Bloody Slaughter. Yeah.
10: Determination, Barbaric Blow. Time to mind our defenses and now we're probably ok-ish enough to be spending something on Blows.
11: Unflinching. This can be fun with the Athletics to suddenly make us healthy.
12: Confident Aim.
13: Unbending, Barbaric Smash. Unbending will just make this build immortal (until they nerf it, duh). Just stand and slash as much as you please. And smash just finishes our victims instantly, allowing us to move onto the next target sooner.
14: Mob Stance. Speaking of specializing on fragstealing... We'd love to get it previously but Unbending just solves too much of our problems so it's a priority.
15: Armored Grace.
16: Fearless, Interrupting Blows. We take care of more debuffs (as terrifying lives up to its name) and we're cashing in on those frequent criticals.
17: Weapon Specialization.
18: Blood Frenzy. We delay this so not to overpay on this.
19: Unbending Trunk, Blood Thirst. This way we just get even more unkillable.
20: Blood Storm.

Ranger/Fighter

Role: Damage Dealer/Tank

Race: Pale Elf. Doesn't really matter, though, we're just here for the max Dexterity and we want to keep our ability to wear hats (for Acina's Tricorn).


Subclass: Devoted/Stalker with Bear.


First abilites: Disciplined Barrage, Marked Prey.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago): 18-7-20-10-5-18

A ranger/fighter combination has so little need for Accuracy that you could've even dumped it to 3. Not much sense to be doing this, though. So we're just having all our stats high and good. And that's a somewhat sturdy DD build, isn't that nice?

Active Skill of Choice: Athletics

Weapon of Choice: Pistol. The build is based around the one-handed shooting. You see, because of diminishing returns of recovery bonuses, there won't be as much difference as it may seem between the one and two-handed pistol shooting. One-handed, however, allows you to shoot one and the same weapon more often. And since you rely on the bonuses of certain magical pistol a lot, it's quite a fitting choice. Besides, it wouldn't have been duelist in this case – it would've switched to dualist.

Armor of Choice: Medium.

Level ups:
2: Resilient Companion.
3: Vicious Companion. Ah, to be a Ranger and not to know the useless early level ups.
4: Fighter Stances, Gunner. And then to know the great early damage potential.
5: Determination.
6: Wounding Shot.
7: Disciplined Strikes, Accurate Wounding Shot. I'm not sure if these together are not a bit of an overkill, but since when overkilling is a bad thing?
8: Marksman. We're not that pure of a tank, we're more of a DD that can hold on its own so we will be able to use this thing.
9: Protective Companion.
10: Charge, Stalker's Link. In a completely mystical way Charge fully works with ranged flintlock weaponry. So you can run through the crowd, shooting through them all.
11: Fearless.
12: Unstoppable. Just trying to become unstoppable.
13: Mob Stance, Driving Flight. We're still getting recovery from the mob stance so why not.
14: Armored Grace.
15: Concussive Shot.
16: Body Control, Concussive Tranquilizer. Just picking up the traditional good stuff.
17: Survival of the Fittest. The accuracy of this build is so high that we're the only fighter that skips Confident Aim. Our Aim is already confident enough.
18: Play Dead. Better play dead than be dead.
19: Weapon Specialization, Predator's sense. No really good perks on this level so we go for more damage output.
20: Marked for the Hunt. Just a bit of free bond to finish.

Role: Healer / Buffer / DD

Race: Pale Elf. Well, this build version is – overall it doesn't matter.


Subclass: Devoted / of Magran. Now, tbh, the best priestly class for this one is Berath. But we've already done the Mudflinger build and it's not difficult to copy it. So we're going for the Magran here. The idea is that you're using the pistol/whatever duals while still staying at range. Thus it's only the pistol shooting but with all the dual-boosted speed. And priest's accuracy buff even allows you to be using its modal frequently. So, just as Mudflinger build, you have both priestly capacity and a decent enough DPS.


First abilities: Disciplined Barrage, Restore.

Attributes (Background – The Living Lands, Scientist ): 19-7-19-12-18-3

It's a pretty convenient build – you can do lots of stuff from afar and fighter's resistances protect you from debuffs so you can go full glass cannon. We prioritize Dexterity over Perception because Disciplined Strikes will compensate for the latter – they mean a lot for spells. And once we get our Unbending (which is pretty strong with these stats), we're not even that much of a glass cannon anymore.

Active Skill of Choice: Explosives or Alchemy.

Weapon of Choice: Pistol. You can do arquebus/arbalest too – means you don't get to use summoned weaponry but that's not the end of the world as its usefulness is quite a fleeting one.

Armor of Choice: robe.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner.
3: Suppress Affliction. You'll be mostly spamming Restore as your tier-1 spell, but this one is fast cast so it's ok to keep it handy.
4: Confident Aim, Two Weapon Style. Early on, summoned weapons will be more than ok and we're getting them automatically. So we focus this level up on squeezing as much damage from those as possible.
5: Fighter Stance. Just a bit of accuracy – dual pistols with modal is not the most precise thing ever.
6: Determination. Protections are cool too.
7: Disciplined Strikes, Consecrated Ground. Very simple pick ups – incredible healing spell and the eventual 50% graze to hit conversion for all our debuffs. That's very important. And what's better is that this gives you Concentration, meaning your long & Important buffs won't be prevented.
8: Rapid Recovery. Just so we're less of a glass cannon right now.
9: Withdraw. Just so we have something useful to cast from tier-2 once we don't need the summons.
10: Body Control, Devotions for the Faithful. We don't need much of the Fighter's attacks so we go for the protections instantly. And Devotions are the reason why Disciplined Strikes are so good for us – much easier time landing those -20 Accuracies on foes. For this purpose, it's even better than Itinerant as his accuracy bonuses are more about focusing a single target and not spreading the love across the battlefield.
11: Unstoppable.
12: Fearless.
13: Unbending, Searing Seal. Stances do not give for this build so we rush out this little thing instead – while it lasts, few hard will be coming to us. And tier-5 priestly spells are pretty weaksauce so we're just taking at the very least something that we can use.
14: Rapid Casting. We don't want to spend too much time on our casting.
15: Armored Grace. From this point we can be using some leathers (as they tend to be so much better than robes).
16: Mob Stance, Minor Intercession. At this point, Unbending will carry us decently enough so get some of that Mob stance speed. And Minor Intercession is mediocre but it's the best that this tier gives us.
17: Practiced Healer. We're a healer, after all.
18: Superior Deflection.
19: Unbending Trunk, Storm of Holy Fire. Magran priest is so silly – you're auto-learning Torrent of Flame when the priest's basic Storm is just so much better. Well, at least you have enough perks to learn the really good stuff.
20: Shields for the Faithful. Just so we have choice between either buffing or striking hard.

Barbarian/Cipher

Role: Damage Dealer / Controller

Race: Wood Elf. Doesn't really matter, though, except that you don't want a godlike here. Right now, all best (at least for this build) ranged weapons are stuck with reload time so you really, really want the ability to wear Acina's Tricorn.


Subclass: Berserker/Ascendant. Berserker's malus doesn't affect ranged build as much and with the latest DLC is gets almost trivial to take care of (and it wasn't that much of a problem before that). Ascendant is just the best that cipher can offer to non-melee strats.


First abilities: Frenzy, Whisper of Treason.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends Hunter): 16-7-16-20-16-3

A glass cannon with well-rounded stats – enough Might for the damage spells to remain useful, enough intelligence for self-buffs and area, enough Dex to be speedy and maxed our Perception so you hit as much as possible. Until a certain moment of time, extra accuracy will be tough for this build to obtain – hence the maxing choice.

Active Skill of Choice: Mechanics

Weapon of Choice: Arquebus or Arbalest. Two amazing ones can be obtained almost from the start of the game so it's a question which one will you like better. Damage-wise

Armor of Choice: Robe.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. Even with your glass tank stats your barbarian status can make you sturdy enough to get some profits out of this one.
3: Iron Will. It sucks when your Glass Cannon gets charmed.
4: Two-Handed Style, Draining Whip. More damage and thus more focus.
5: Wilder Hunter. This one is just pleasant to have early and there's no significant alternatives here.
6: Barbaric Blow. One seemingly reasonable thing that we're avoiding here is the Mind Blades – while it can be really good early on, you're probably not having the Confusion solution right now. And without that solution it's definitely not a thing to be casting. And by the time you'll get it, there will be better ways to spend your character's time – it's not even about the focus, you're drowning in it. It's all about time.
7: Bloodlust, Secret Horrors. More attack speed – something that your heavy shooters definitely enjoy. And quite a decent suppression spell – makes enemies to be much less dangerous and easier to kill.
8: Hammering Thoughts. With this and berserker's Frenzy, you shouldn't be having any armor piercing issues.
9: Bloody Slaughter. A useful bit of synergy and overall damage booster.
10: Unflinching, Pain Block. Now you're almost a secondary healing and, for the faraway glass cannon, Unflinching is pretty good too – you'll rarely be focused so it's gonna be on-line and useful most of the time.
11: Body Attunement. Theoretically, Witch can be played from heavy armor and melee duals. 5 armor is big enough to enable that. But, to be honest, the stats are too tough for this and it's probably better done in the rogue multiclass where you can dump the might. So we're just taking this for the -5 armor penalty which, in most cases, will be more than enough to cause constant overpenetration for the entire team.
12: Wild Sprint. It's not much but you're gonna have enough rage to cast it periodically and, well, extra speed is extra speed. You have a lot to do in combat and it just helps to be actually doing it all.
13: Barbaric Smash, Borrowed Instinct. Great Finisher and even more accuracy to be landing all your stuff reliably.
14: Ringleader. I'm not too big of a fan of it but why not have it as a side option.
15: Tough. So we have enough time to retreat, pretty much. BTW, that's another reason why Nimble was a good pick.
16: Lion's Sprint, Amplified Wave. Lion's Sprint bonus applies to the spell so this skill is quite a must-have on any barbarian casters
17: Disintegration. Great for when we need to do some serious harm so solo targets.
18: Rapid Casting. It wasn't worth that much previously as most of our staff was 0.5 casts where it would be barely noticeable. After the previous powers being taken, however, this will actually be useful.
19: Blood Thirst, Echoing Horror. Killing foes won't be a problem here so why not use this to fullest advantage? Oh, and btw, it doesn't matter in which fashion you kill them – all these bonuses easily proc on spells. And I hope you do have the confusion cure at this point as otherwise your Witch will be frightening herself at the sight of blood...
20: Penetrating Visions. Just so our waves are a bit more, well, penetrating.

Fighter/Chanter

Role: Tank / Controller / Damage Dealer

Race: Hearth Orlan. You need those extra crits here.

Subclass: Unbroken & Troubadour. This is a tanky generalist build so these two are the optimal choices.


First ability: Come, Come; Hel-Hyraf & Disciplined Barrage.

Attributes (Background – Ixamitl Plains, Scholar ): 10-8-10-20-10-20

Not a lot of min-maxing space here. You need might for your spells & scrolls, constitution can't go to deep because you're a tank, you highly depend on criticals so Perception is prioritized over Dexterity, average Int is enough and Resolve is a must have for this brand of tanking.

Active Skill of Choice: Arcana. This build is one of the better scroll users.

Weapon of Choice: Mace, Flail, Club. All combined with a small shield. All for the modal usage – with the recent PoTD changes penetration became quite valuable so that -1 modal can come quite handy. Flail & Club is mostly for setting up for your own skills. As for the shield – that's actually a tough choice. On one hand, you heavily depend on criticals and on limited resources usage (i.e., scrolls). So accuracy penalties of bigger shields should be an anathema for you. On the other hand, +8 Deflection is a lot and it can also be a dealbreaker for you. So I guess you just carry both kinds of shields and switch when necessary.

Armor of Choice: Heavy, just to gain more profits of the Unbroken class. And it's not like this build is hurrying anywhere.

Level ups:
2: Not Felled. This is not an armor stacking build but it's good to have a secondary plan.
3: Fast Runner. Generic filler but here it's especially decent as it counters the Unbroken's low stride.
4: Gernisc, Weapon & Shield Style. Later – The Thunder Rolled. On actual level 4 wyrmlings will be much better. Later on you'll respec them into a stun skill – it's ok-ish disable, serviceable enough.
5: Fighter Stances. More tankiness for you.
6: Determination. And more.
7: The Shield Cracks, Disciplined Strikes. One of the best fighter skills and yet another great skill. Armor is an issue right now, especially for the scrolls – their own penetration is not too high but this build is able to bring 4-5 on the top of that.
8: Hold the Line. Tanky package.
9: Rapid Recovery. Ditto.
10: The Lover Cried, Vigorous Defense. Yet another great disable – probably the best one that Chanter has right now. Especially if you setup for it with a couple of Club hits under modal. And Vigorous Defense is your main way of spending the Discipline. Just makes you tanky enough.
11: Nor Flame. An additional layer of your protections.
12: Quick Switch. So you can get the right modals easier and so you can flip between the shields better.
13: The Dragon Thrashed, Guardian Stance. The dragon doesn't do as much damage as it used to do but it's not about damage only here. Besides, it's still not that weak and, on a distance, the actual numbers for it turn out to be ok-ish enough. And Stance upgrade just gives you more of the crowd control function.
14: Unbending. You won't be needing it too often but sometimes it'll help a lot.
15: Seven Nights. It has been nerfed but it's still a decent way of doing damage. Not your highest priority skill but still pretty nice.
16: Their Champion Braved, Overbearing Guard. The champion is what makes this build sensible – it's +2 Penetration and interrupt on crit for everything you do. So now those multiple hits from the dragon are not about damage only – they're also a nice way to disrupt some enemy skill usage. And while not many abilities of this build itself have multi-hit potential, lots of scrolls do. Scrolls can also be quite spammable. Hence the Arcana usage.
17: Rapid Casting. We're not too fast naturally so being quicker is good.
18: Superior Deflection. When you're stacking Deflection even +4 can be vital.
19: Called to His Bidding, Unbending Trunk. Despite us not being a Beckoner, weapon summons are still good. It's quite an OP spell so we're never against accessing that. And Trunk will makes us nigh-invulnerable so why not?
20: Armored Grace. Even if don't hurry too much with this build, it doesn't mean we don't wanna get a bit faster.

Barbarian/Druid

Role: tank / damage dealer

Race: Fire Godlike. This is an Armor stacking build so no other race will do.


Subclass: Shifter / Berserker. Druid spiritshifts have one of the highest natural armor ratings in the game so obviously staying constantly is good for the purpose of raising your AR beyong any reasonable limits. And Barbarian will be providing you with even greater amounts of armor through Thick-Skinned and Frenzy's Robustness.


First ability: Frenzy & Charm Beast.

Attributes (Background – Deadfire Archipelago, Hunter): 10-10-20-18-10-10

There's no min-maxing space for this build. You don't have much damage bonuses so you need the might. Constitution better left full as you're a tank, after all. Same goes for resolve. You're running plenty of buffs so cutting Intelligence is a no-go. And you need both Dex & Per to get the most out of your druidic shape. So yeah.

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy. In toughest of fights you'll probably want to use a Potion of Ironskin or Spirit Shield potion, so increasing their duration is a sound plan.

Weapon of Choice: You bring your own.

Armor of Choice: Ditto. Keep in mind that, after a recent patch, accessories are totally taken into account while spiritshifting. So you'll need to have a nice assortment of those – Blunting Belt is positively major here. Various rings of elemental resistance vs appropriate elements. Cloaks & Bracers & Rings of Deflection – you don't need it too high but you want it average, just so there's no frequent criticals. Fine Aedyran Mead will also be very, very good for your health.

Level ups:
2: Blooded. Always a nice pick for Fire Godlikes.
3: Fast Runner. Just so we use our shift most efficiently.
4: Thick-Skinned & Wildstrike. We're going deep into synergy from the get-go. Keep in mind that this build needs to time its Bear-form right – while your average shapes still have excellent armor, they don't really match the Bear one. So you'll need to assess situation correctly and to apply it at the most opportune time. Wildstike color doesn't matter, btw.
5: Wilder Hunter. So nice to have this one early.
6: Barbaric Blow. As usual, it's just a prerequisite.
7: One Stands Alone, Two Weapon Style. OSA is a s good here as it gets – we want to keep our armor rating high and not being Flanked totally helps that. Two Weapon Style is something that we could've picked up earlier but rather intentionally delayed until now – this way we're not wasting our druidic level up.
8: Bloodlust.
9: Bloody Slaughter. These two are always a fine combo to have.
10: Spirit Frenzy, Greater Wildstrike. This build is not causing that many criticals so we're going with Spirit version instead. And an obvious priority upgrade is obvious.
11: Unflinching.
12: Wild Sprint. It doesn't sound fancy but under all the power level & intelligence bonuses it can become something like 10 seconds of +5 Dexterity and that's not that horrible.
13: Barbaric Smash, Tough.We're not investing anything into druidic spells as we don't really intend to be casting anything but Nature's Terror (which we're given for free).That one is really good and we will want to use it at the start of the combat, maybe even Empower it. But for everything else we don't have the time so we focus on our barbaric skills. Here's it's just another option to do a lot while not paying half as much.
14: Interrupting Blows. We don't have much criticals but why not.
15: Uncanny Luck. Scrounging for every way to boost our sturdiness.
16: Lion's Sprint, Spell Resistance. Lion's boosts your key skills so it's not a bad thing at all.
17: Accurate Carnage.
18: Rapid Caster. To apply the Terror faster.
19: Spirit Tornado, Weather the Storm. No useful druidic perks remaining so, for a change of pace, we're getting ourselves a spell. Well, that one is really synergistic with what we're trying to do here so it's cool. Occasionally.
20: Blood Thirst.

Pure Rogue

Role: controller & damage dealer

Race: doesn't really matter. For this example we're using a Wood Elf.


Subclass: Trickster, duh.


First ability: Escape.

Attributes (Background – The White That Wends, Drifter): 3-8-19-20-18-10
(for roleplaying purposes, you might stick to something like 3-7-17-17-17-17 as it'll be able to pass through lots and lots of stat checks)

Active Skill of Choice: stealth & sleight of hand – pure rogue makes for an excellent thief.

Weapon of Choice: Two-Handers. All the useful weapons for this build are two-handers – Morningstar will help you to terrorize your foe, you have some nice riposte potential so Quarterstaff can be useful and something like a bow can come in handy versus all those foes which now are scattered in terror.

Armor of Choice: light.

Level ups:
2: Fast Runner. Backstab may look tempting but your Guile is best spent elsewhere.
3: Two-Handed Style, Dirty Fighting. Just your average early game damage potential.
4: Blinding Strike. Once again, more as a side-option and out of nothing better to pick. You may even switch this for Weapon & Shield Mastery just so you can use that approach in tougher battles.
5: Confounding Blind, Riposte. Both of these are pretty much filler – the main reason for this build's existence is Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage that you'll be getting for free. It's quite a sickening disable and, at mere 1 Guile per usage, you will be running it constantly on. Its addition in a recent patch is exactly what has validated this build. And you see, Visage mage wasn't too good because if he spends his casts on Visage & all the necessary protection for staying near foes, he's not doing much else. Rogue, on the other hand, is still rogue – you're Visage-ing and then sneak attacking to your heart's content.
6: Bear's Fortitude. This build “suffers” from getting most of the actually useful stuff for free and that just doesn't leave you enough choice for your “real” perks.
7: Persistent Distraction, Adept Evasion. More debuffs and more boosts to our amazing Reflexes.
8: Snake's Reflexes. Like, really, anything reflex-based is not a threat for this one. Might and Constitution afflictions, on the other hand, are real hurtful so you'll want to do something about those, item-wise.
9: Deep Wounds & Uncanny Luck. Bit of damage & survivability.
10: Tough.
11: Slippery Mind & Spell Resistance.
12: Arms Bearer. This character will need quite a lot of different weaponry so it's one of the rare builds that can actually profit from having an extra weapon set.
13: Deathblows, Accurate Empower. In most cases, you'll be spending your empowers to refuel. With Wall of Many Colors, however, Empower will get a bit more attractive so we'll take this one for the future.
14: Lasting Empower. These two, actually.
15: Combat Focus. So our important stuff is not wasted.
16: Gambit & Sap. Filler, mostly. Sap isn't that bad with the morningstar – if you want nothing but pure damage it can give you that at a discount price. Depends on the target, though – some enemies are just way too Fortuitous. Gambit can make for a nice opener but it's too random to be reliable and can burn through your resources way too easily. You can freely pick anything else over it (if only there was much to pick).
17: Bull's Will.
18: Tumbling.
19: Prestige, Murderous Intent. Once again we're getting all the best stuff for free. Wall of Many Colors is really, really good so being able to use it, like, 6 times through combat is a really sound proposition. Or you can do it 3 times but with one being empowered – still good enough.
20: Wall of Flashing Steel.

Rogue/Monk

Role: tank / damage dealer.

Race: Human. The ability would be almost constantly on for this one.


Subclass: Nalpazca/Streetfighter. This build will need plenty of wounds and, at the same time, it'll need lots of speed to burn through them. This combination provides you with both such qualities.


First ability: Swift Strikes, Crippling Strike. Crippling Strike is more of a placeholder but you don't have any really good ways of spending your Guile so you might as well be using it in cases where you just need more penetration, especially early on.

Attributes (Background – Rauatai Hunter): 4-18-18-18-10-10

Might is redundant here as you have no healing, no direct damage dealing and attack damage is provided in droves by your rogueishness. Otherwise, we're having the top-notch damage dealing package and lots of sturdiness to go with it. Constitution is chosen over Resolve as this build can't be really building Deflection too high. It also wants to be staying at the half-life mark so let's make that threshold less risky, shall we?

Active Skill of Choice: Alchemy. Sorta goes with Nalpazca.

Weapon of Choice: early on – fists. As soon as you find it – Pukestabber unique dagger. None other shall do. And yes, that's alone. Generally speaking, the one-handed builds are much maligned as they're not doing as much DPS as duals. However, you need to understand that all recovery and action speed bonuses in this game have diminishing returns. Here, at the very least, you'll have 50% from Streetfighting, 15% from Swift Strikes, 39% from your Dexterity (taking that Quick inspiration into account) and 15% from Rum. Oh, and 20% from Pukestabber. And 15% from your armor. So yeah, due to diminishing returns, that 30% + 15% combo does not do as much as you'd think. Compared to that, one-handed advantages stay solid – this build wants to have lots of criticals. Even more than that, this build (as well as some others) wants to strike with the same weapon over and over again – Pukestabber is the best dagger of the game and no other comes anywhere near it. So why would we dilute our offensive with some crappy do-nothing strikes when we can just stay with the best?

Armor of Choice: heavy stuff with Recovery bonuses. There's plenty of these in the game.

Level ups:
2: Lesser Wounds. We need tons of these.
3: Fast Runner.
4: One-Handed Style & Dirty Fighting. This build wants to have lots of criticals and these skills will provide plenty of them.
5: Clarity of Agony. This build will want some Intelligence so we're picking this for the future upgrade. And it's a nice utility skill overall.
6: Blinding Strike. Mostly as a prerequisite.
7: Swift Flurry, Confounding Blind. Flurry should be obvious – one-handers were pretty much made for that. And Confounding Blind will bring their defenses lower and lower, thus allowing for more crits. Not to mention that the innate 10 accuracy bonus is also quite helpful for this.
8: Blade Turning. You'll be using it a bit later, though. It's just that generally this skill suffers from its innate slowness. But Streetfighter has so much speed that it's not difficult to enable this in the timely fashion. Streetfighters also tend to stay in positions where this would cause the maximum amount of harm.
9: Long Stride. Just so we have the ultimate mobility.
10: Duality of Mortal Presence, Persistent Distraction. More intelligence for you – you have lots of duration-based stuff. And less Deflection for your foes – do everything that it takes to be landing those crits.
11: Thunderous Blows. After the recent patches, Penetration became really important. Now, you're dealing frequent crits and that totally helps, but sometimes you'll need to go a step further.
12: Enlightened Agony. Time to get even smarter. You want to apply this after your streetfighting kicks in as recovery is rather steep here.
13: Enervating Blows, Deep Wounds. Lots of damage on this one – weakening your foes is almost the same as damaging them, after all.
14: Uncanny Luck. Not a lot of criticals but you need every tiny bit of them. Keep in mind that Humans are still better than Orlans here - +7 Accuracy from fighting spirit brings more criticals than their 10% conversion.
15: Tough. With your constitution that's a lot of extra hit points.
16: Turning Wheel, Slippery Mind. More damage & protection. Grade A protection, actually.
17: Adept Evasion. Here we have a couple of weak level ups.
18: Sap. Theoretically, this can be a nice option – you're able to spam +10 Accuracy attacks for one Guile per use only. Practically, however, it hits against Fortitude and, unless you're doing some serious clubbing, it won't be easier to land than your basic anti-Deflection strike. I guess you can take Improved Critical or something, even though the bonus is almost unnoticeable.
19: Heartbeat Drumming, Deathblows. Now we're talking! Keep in mind that Drumming is separate from Flurry so you can have 3-in-1 criticals from now on. And deathblows guarantees that they will hurt oh so much.
20: Dichotomous Soul. Generally, I dislike this one as it takes too much time to cast. But just like with the Blade Turning, it's all a matter of recovery – for this build it's gonna be summoned much quicker. And while this stuff lacks the proper offensive potential, it still serves as a good magnet for the incoming blows.

Ok, so I hope you'll be having enough fun with these builds as that's what gaming is about.

Most of my builds here have a video-version, I have a youtube channel with lots of rpg and roguelite and strategy-centered content:
https://www.youtube.com/user/NerdCommandoGames


And if you wish to thank me for all the effort, you can always consider buying my own game (I'm a game designer, yeah):
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/745680/Lovehammer_400_000_The_Buttlerian_Crusade/
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/708970/X_Caeli_The_Iron_Hand_of_Love/

Looks shoddy atm but we're working on that, lol. Also, I know enough about fun so it is pretty fun. Or it will be at the full release, at the very least - huge patches incoming, etc.