Ideas for good/ interesting merc tank build? (unfair)

[atm]

I'm looking for ideas for building a decent mercenary tank for my current group. I've beaten the game multiple times on unfair, so I've tried a fair few combos and am looking for some ideas to keep things interesting (or that might be stronger than what I already know of).

My criteria for a tank is obviously good AC, but will also need to be able to fill one other role at least fairly competently (even if not amazingly), such as DPS or support.

Some previous mercs I have built that worked well were:

Monk 1, Psychokineticist 19:
using water defensive talents gets either something like +9 shield, or +12(?) armor without needing archmage armor, and monk dip yields around another +12 or so from wisdom. Single primary stat of wisdom makes it easy to invest fully into defensive stats. Blue Flame Blade lets you nova for thousands of damage against enemy touch AC, and normal fire blade lets you chew through trash mobs' touch AC. (Tip for anyone who wants to do this is to use both 24h Transformation on them for +5 hit, and Greater Magic Weapon on their kinetic blade for another +5, which might not seem like they would work on kineticist).

Witch 1, Vivi 2, Sensei 17:
+5 AC from witch, +4 from mutagen, +15(?)-ish from monk. Took spell specialization in shield, and school focus abjuration, to get shield to 5 mins so he could cast it on party members. Had bard song from sensei, the ability to cast flurry and true strike on the whole party, to give the party evasion, to give the party a stacking move speed increase, and all other other sensei goodies.
Overall was a tank that was focused almost purely on support. I think he was mid 80's for AC.

Scaled Fist 1, Sword Saint 19 (ish):
+12 or so AC from sword saint, +8 from scaled fist - can be lawful good to benefit from Bestow Grace, and Grace of the Champion.
Taking Scimitar as the chosen weapon lets you wield Faith Bearer, to heal the party for 20 per crit. (This can be boosted by healing-increasing abilities, like celestial totem, including from a skald). Prescient Strike lets you force flat-footed on enemies, and you get your INT as bonus damage against flat-footed enemies (which even with all their feats, a fighter would struggle to match that for DPS).

Ideas for a good Faith Bearer build would be appreciated, since my current group could use some passive heals. (I'm getting up to some longer end game battles).

I'm not sure if its possible to build a viable unfair tank without a monk dip, so if anyone knows if/ how it can be done I'd be all for it.

[mudakonn]

There is broken combo Half Elf Scaled Fist 1, Paladin 2, Oracle 17

Oracle can do anything - summon skeletons, buff, gets pet etc
https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/builds/Angel_Oracle

[Gracey Face]

I am curious, why haven't you tried any mount tanks? The enemies are programmed to attack your mount before your character for some reason (though every so often they will violate this rule) so you can dedicate your mount entirely to tanking and still have a glass cannon character and get the best of both worlds. And you can also dismount and sent your mount fowards. I ask why you haven't as it is a fairly natural thing.

As to how tanky a mount can get, you can get an endgame AC in the 90-100 range and saves in the 40-50 range. So they're not quite as tanky as a dedicated char but they're tanky enough to survive everything on unfair. And they also have an advantage where because they materialise out of thin air when you sleep you don't have to put any effort into keeping them alive.

This lets you have anything up to 6 tanks while also having anything up to 6 characters actually doing useful things.

[Deo]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

The enemies are programmed to attack your mount before your character

This was fixed I guess, at least on Unfair mobs now attack rider quite often. Maybe coz Unfair has "advanced AI" check mark at all times.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Deo:

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

The enemies are programmed to attack your mount before your character

This was fixed I guess, at least on Unfair mobs now attack rider quite often. Maybe coz Unfair has "advanced AI" check mark at all times.

Unless it was fixed in the last couple of weeks it's still true on unfair. Advanced AI as far as I can tell doesn't change how the AI actually behaves, it just changes what abilities they have.

Though I must add I was playing on turnbased and I have seen people say the AI acts completely differently turnbased to realtime. For example turnbased enemies just ignore your units and walk through them to hit your backline, whereas supposedly in realtime they actually get move blocked.

[atm]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

I am curious, why haven't you tried any mount tanks? The enemies are programmed to attack your mount before your character for some reason (though every so often they will violate this rule) so you can dedicate your mount entirely to tanking and still have a glass cannon character and get the best of both worlds. And you can also dismount and sent your mount fowards. I ask why you haven't as it is a fairly natural thing.

I agree that pets can be amazing tanks (especially if you build for it, such as with a hunter main). I will usually have pet as main tank, since it's really hard to match a pet's AC with anything short of a purely dedicated tank. My current party has a pet sharing tanking duty with a mercenary who's a triple-dragon-bloodline sorcerer 12, scaled fist 1, dragon disciple 4, loremaster 3, and is a pretty decent blaster when he's not tanking (required me to take spell specialization in hellfire ray, for the third hellfire ray, due to slightly low caster level). Even with full buffs, though, including shield from an alchemist, the pet is still somewhat behind the sorcerer tank in AC (and considerably behind once you consider the sorcerer's wings and seamantle, which puts him at about 91 AC vs melee, compared to the pet who's on 72).

One reason I don't take many pets is because you only have so many buffs - if you have to buff 6 pets as well as 6 party members, you're going to be coming up short of resources all the time, not to mention the buffing routine in this game can take several minutes or more, and doubling that is making something painful into something even more painful.

Then there's the fact that pets do fall off at a certain point, unless you're specifically building for them (such as with a hunter), and all those extra pets kind of end up getting in the way. They might have 60+ strength, but they'll still hit for only 30-40 without some real shenanigans (my Aoen hunter's Perfect Form did turn his smiting pet into an absolute beast), which is really damage you live without when your dps characters are doing hundreds of damage per hit.

I also find mounted combat a bit awkward. My main this run is a sohei/ cavalier, intended to go trickster to legend (I'm near the end of Act IV). This run was an experiment to see what kind of broken archer character I could build, and he's pretty nuts. But he's ranged (which is strange for a cavalier, I know, but I took 8 levels of Order of the Lion for the For the King ability, which gives me +CHA to attack and damage to the whole party for a round every pull, which is proving just as nuts as I thought it would be). My intention is to go Sanctified Slayer for the majority of his Legend levels, so he might be able to pick up Point Blank Mastery as a slayer feat, I'm not sure (although I could also get it from Loremaster, I guess). But by then I think the majority of damage is coming from things like enemy Tsunami spells and such, which are save based, and I think my main's saves will leave his pet's in the dust.
The other issue I find with mounted combat, is that the pets can do vastly more damage while polymorphed into dragons, getting roughly 2x as many attacks and a large strength bonus, and sadly you can't ride them in dragon form, which is silly because of course you should be able to ride a dragon.

[igor140]

Aldori Defender. These things are insane. I created one as a way to test some stuff, and I've blow away by how amazing she is.

The trick is that their "listed" AC on the character sheet is about 10 points lower than it is in actual combat, due to all the weird ways that their crazy class abilities interact with Defensive Fighting and Crane Style.

Speaking of, I think it's worth a one level dip in monk (doesn't really matter which one) for the unarmored AC and the Crane Style feat. Note that Aldori Defender gets a very late (lvl 19, iirc) flat DR 5 with no bypass, provided they're wearing armor. So going unarmored will lose out on that... but that may be worth it for what may very well be close to 10 AC. IMO, the dip is worth it for the Crane Style feat alone; the Unarmored Defense just gives you options.

I THINK that Crane Style is not supposed to work while wielding a weapon with two hands... but it does. So if you think that's abusing the glitches too much, definitely skip the monk dip.

So if you read all the guides on the intarwebz, they all say to go STR for Aldori Defender, because a) Slashing Grace doesn't give the 1.5 multiplier to damage based on DEX, and b) it's too difficult qualifying for and chasing around all the Duelist feats, when you're better off using one hand anyway.

Weeeelllll.... those guides did not account for Mythic Weapon Finesse. I can 100% confirm that this allows you to add 1.5x DEX to damage while two-handing a Dueling Sword. So build DEX over STR.

I know fighters (including Aldori Defenders) get access to a similar feature at level 9... but a) I don't know whether or not it allows the 1.5x DEX to damage, and b) level 9 is considerably further down the line than Mythic 1. So you can spend your fighter feats on other things. Either way, this means you can't completely dump STR, but 12 should be sufficient to make it to Mythic 1.

So when all is said and done, your "listed" AC on the character sheet won't be THAT impressive; but Aldori Defenders get a TON of circumstantial bonuses from Defensive Fighting (which is why Crane Style is so helpful) and taking full-round attacks.

My over-buffed and gestahtled character that is flagrantly breaking a LOT of game balance rules is consistently seeing AC of ~49 at level 12. I think if you built more honestly, it would be closer to 40... but that's still REALLY good that early in the game. Also, the Aldori Defender stuff scales (a little) with your level, so it's not a "dead end" like most armor classes.

So this character has the highest AC of any character I've ever built (for this point in the game). But the REALLY crazy part is that she's also got the highest AB of any of my party members. Every round, I'm consistently seeing 45+ AC and 35+ to hit.

AND, because of the monk dip and lack of armor, her speed isn't reduced, like most armor tanks.

[atm]

Originally posted by igor140:

Aldori Defender. These things are insane. I created one as a way to test some stuff, and I've blow away by how amazing she is.

Thanks for the idea. I hadn't really thought of doing an aldori defender or duellist. It's made me think of an attacks-of-opportunity build since I know there's a sword somewhere that gives +damage based on mobility ranks. With solo tactics or fighter tactics it would be a pretty mean build.

[igor140]

Oooohhh... I am not familiar with this sword, but I am intrigued...

And yes, she absolutely has Combat Reflexes, Outflank, and Seize the Moment. I've also given her Dreadful Carnage to help out my sneak attackers. Half the time I don't even know WHY things are dying... they're just exploding everywhere.

[kodama]

Originally posted by atm:

Originally posted by igor140:

Aldori Defender. These things are insane. I created one as a way to test some stuff, and I've blow away by how amazing she is.

Thanks for the idea. I hadn't really thought of doing an aldori defender or duellist. It's made me think of an attacks-of-opportunity build since I know there's a sword somewhere that gives +damage based on mobility ranks. With solo tactics or fighter tactics it would be a pretty mean build.

Master Fencer's Sword, you can buy it from Woljif in Act 4 (or later) for 105k.

[Moo]

Bolshy has some very interesting build videos. I really like his creative builds. Too bad he doesn't make new videos anymore. He has an Aldori Duelist/Swordlord build that seems right up your alley.

[Steffan]

Any Magus with last stand and mind blank is tanky enough. It also deals obscene amount of damage with arcane accuracy, dimensional strike and prescient strike

[Moo]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Unless it was fixed in the last couple of weeks it's still true on unfair. Advanced AI as far as I can tell doesn't change how the AI actually behaves, it just changes what abilities they have.

Though I must add I was playing on turnbased and I have seen people say the AI acts completely differently turnbased to realtime. For example turnbased enemies just ignore your units and walk through them to hit your backline, whereas supposedly in realtime they actually get move blocked.

They usually attack whoever initiate the combat or whoever attacked them first. But the enemies that spawn in during the middle of battle tend to attack the backline very frequently. I play exclusively on turn based, so I am not sure of the differences, but it could be due to how walking time is factored in. In turn based, walking 6 ft and then attacking takes as much game time as walking 30 ft and then attacking. They don't walk through your front guys, but they try to walk around them.

[Soteria]

Originally posted by jeem1972:

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Unless it was fixed in the last couple of weeks it's still true on unfair. Advanced AI as far as I can tell doesn't change how the AI actually behaves, it just changes what abilities they have.

Though I must add I was playing on turnbased and I have seen people say the AI acts completely differently turnbased to realtime. For example turnbased enemies just ignore your units and walk through them to hit your backline, whereas supposedly in realtime they actually get move blocked.

They usually attack whoever initiate the combat or whoever attacked them first. But the enemies that spawn in during the middle of battle tend to attack the backline very frequently. I play exclusively on turn based, so I am not sure of the differences, but it could be due to how walking time is factored in. In turn based, walking 6 ft and then attacking takes as much game time as walking 30 ft and then attacking. They don't walk through your front guys, but they try to walk around them.

I have 100% had enemies walk through my formation without turning even a little bit to go around.