Camilla Ineffective?

[thelebk]

We have two basic NPC options for trickery specialists to deal with traps and locked chests-- Camilla and Woljif. While both characters are potentially squishy in the front line, Woljif's spells significantly add to his resielience and his damage output justifies putting him in melee. Camilla on the other hand has many feats that focus on her rapier, optimizing her for melee. Despite this she frequently misses, and when she hits her damage is paltry. She also diverts healing and buffing resources from more useful characters to try and keep her up. I am using the auto level scheme for NPCs on my first play through to get an understanding of what the developers intended. Party is in Act III and level 11. What strategies are the rest of you using to get acceptable damage output from Camilla while assuming acceptable risk?

[Fluff]

Camilla is helpful

[Lightning]

I saw Cohh speccing Camellia as a melee in his playthrough but in all mine i just spec into heavy crossbow and go from there in range mode and yeah i usually bring her over anyone to unlock and find stuff

[JustSmile]

Camellia is by far the tankiest of NPC companions after a few levels and proper feats. Woljif's a piece of paper because most actually dangerous things will have true sight, which completely negates all his defences.

[Lex]

Originally posted by Tusk_Luv:

Camilla is helpful

And I hope you appreciate it

[Takichi]

For Camilla to be effectiv as Meele is her Dex to AR and Damage. But yeah she isnt a Damage Dealer, her Main Job is to suck out that AC a lot of Enemys got with Evil Eye and Hampering Hex.
Also she can be a pretty darn insane Tank with her Hexes.

[stars2heaven]

Well, the auto level is going to fail you every time. I did not stray from the theme of each character, or even their base class, and Camellia was always strong for me. She off tanks well and has good support options. She is better at critting than anyone else, I think, and you can use that to your advantage with team feats. I feel like she is a good generalist.

[thelebk]

Her spells are useful, but none of them are must have spells. The only reason she has a slot in my party is for trickery. If I was custom levelling the NPCs I would probably give someone else trickery and be done with her. I also see more value in using a heavy crossbow for safety, but she still has poor damage output. Woljif seems a more solid choice in every regard. Forgot to mention I am playing on normal difficulty for first run so Rogues are still viable builds. Also no NPCs seem to take team work feats with auto level enabled.

[DarkFenix]

I find her damage quite acceptable with fencing grace and piranha strike. But I'm not a fan of her spell list so I tend to ditch her anyway.

[Edmund Greyfox]

For me she's an off tank and back up healer. I could care less about her damage output as long as she can keep mobs occupied while Lan and my casters do the serious damage.

[Star Paladin]

Umm, I "loved" Wolifif, but the game totally removed him for me.

[Syiss]

Hmm, I don't know what her auto-level chooses for her, but I have her in my party and she does great as a tank, her AC is even higher than Seelah (have not multi-classed either of them).

Her damage is really bad the first few levels you have her, but you should be able to pick up, I think its Fencing Grace, whatever the feat is that lets her use her dex modifier for damage rolls, around level 5-7 iirc. From that point on she is basically just as effective at tanking and damage as Seelah. Camilla overall gets a slight boost for the utility of her spells, but Seelah is especially effective in boss/mini-boss fights because of Smite Evil.

[Esmian]

never trust those chaotic neutrals

[Frostfeather]

She wasn't useful to me for damage directly, but Entangle is extremely good in the early game. 2 chances to affect enemies when cast, keeps enemies off you while you're weaker in the early game, and it lowers enemy Dex - which is basically a force multiplier for anyone using any attack roll or Reflex spell. (As a side note, Sickening Entanglement would usually be outrageously powerful by adding Sickened to that, but demons are immune to poison, so that's mostly out, unfortunately).

Then it's buffs and Hexes. I don't know what stupid things auto-level gives you, but Hampering Hex was very useful to me in the early game especially. Flame Curse can potentially be a dramatic damage boost for Ember, Woljif, maybe Nenio, and definitely any Fire Kineticist/AT/bomb Alchemist/etc. She can bring quite a bit to the group even if she's not in melee. You might consider respeccing her for better Hexes or just live with making better use of her spells.

[Dixon Sider]

Camilla has a hex that she can spam that lowers the enemies AC, saving throws, or accuracy. If you spam it, the hex has 100% uptime even if the enemy saves it each time. It is incredibly overpowered.

[OwO]

I liked giving her elemental barrage and leading strike, then just adding every element to her rapier, she does good dmg that way.