Two handed build

[Raja Monyet]

Any tips for two handed build?

[Dorok]

I'm curious to see suggestions. Myself my first play was with 2H, and I found it very strong. But after a strong start, the character started lag behind most companions for level up.

I ended with half conclusion (feeling no real analysis) that 2H was a burden for XP.

But firstly the character was using heavy armor, I do believe this is a burden for XP by slowing overall the character. Secondly I realized later that I didn't developed that much magic aspect of character and still most training was for Lore, not that much used, so lower level skill, so less XP.

Verse suffered the same XP training penalty but not the two other mage companions. But Verse had overall quite a lead for XP.

Quote that despite this 2H character was behind for levels, it's still been a very solid character with 2H and Heavy Armor, I never build a Verse as resilient.

In my second play, mage character was leading largely for any stats over companions, this mage was using Light Leather Armor. Later I switched him to Heavy Armor because there's just too many cool Heavy Armor items. I feel I saw the difference, it's still leading, but probably slowly lost the lead. Most probably Heavy Armor is a burden for XP.

[Hawke]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=811178535

General tips for early game:

Get as much might as you can in early game
18 might as starting attribute, max might at level 2 then proceed to max finesse next. I spend all skill points into parry then lore. Started as dual wield in primary and 2-handed in secondary expertises. This way you will get fury blows and sunder blow as your starter skills and 2h-warmace.

Wear light gears , use crush weapon
Because oathbreakers have extremely high defense against slash & pierce dmg.One great way to find good quaility gears is not to unlock any locked stashes in early game , ignore them , come back after you hit lvl8 or higher , you will likely get blue gears or even ones with unique opt.

Get Arrow Armor at level 2 and focus on training parry then lore everytime you level up.
Create and use a combo of 2 illusion spells : Spectral Blur and Mirror Image. They does well with light gears , you have those 2 up at the same times and you will be invulnerable for like 80% of the times.

Use consumables ( like eating a load of them before big battles )
You can buy foods from a merchant in disfavored camp , keep in mind food doesnt restock but usually found from looting . Poison enchants for weapon in Scarlet camp , also not restock and extremely rare so use them on big fights only: DoT is extremely good in early game

Other than that , keep kiting enemies unless you are confident that you are strong enough
To take 3 or more enemies at once. Heres how to "kite" : get enemy attention then run far away to lose enemies sight then fight those who are still chasing you. All battles in Vendrien Well is kiteable , even the one in Ascension Hall, though not recommended as its supposed to be your "test" challenge.

I tried 2H and light armor (most abilities from the Agility tree, Blade Wall from the Defense, stances from the Power), it's pretty fun, possibly due to high armor penetration rating. The only problem for no-magic builds is the Magebane, so if you survived the 1st Havoc, it's going to be fine. Also, because of the XP system, training more than one weapon isn't recommended (it leads to lower accuracy and less hits/crits). The ability that replaces dodge checks with parry is recommended to get as soon as possible, then train Lore via trainers (it's necessary for dialogues).

Edit. Also there's a quite interesting sword, which gives a bronze ring for each enemy defeated. Located near western wall at Sentinel Stand Keep, requires some Subterfuge to spot it.

[andrew smash]

I am currently about halfway through act 2 rebel path with a 2H, heavy-armor-wearing PC tanking for Lantry, Eb and Sirin on POTD. Act 1 is rough but you will manage. Once you get lantry casting selfless mirror image, haste, and volcanic weapon modded weapon buffs on the PC you are pretty well set. The hardest thing to deal with becomes Malices because their passive aura will strip your buffs.

Here's what I did: 18 might/finesse at character creation, spread the rest out evenly and bring up vitality as you level. Put as many points into lore as possible but take your character creation talent options in 2h and 1h/shield. Early talent priorities are bandolier for better consumables and challenger stance, the AoE taunt aura is basically how you will hold aggro for the entire game. Then you want to flesh out your ability to disable enemies while your DPS characters eliminate them, so take sunder and the talent that adds a stun to it. I took the shield bash + the stun talent for that as well as the unarmed stun from power, but they don't scale well for me because i'm not leveling those weapon skills so you might find those talent points more effectively used elsewhere. Other useful things are the AoE affliction removal and extra spell slot talents from Leadership. Build lantry for maximum +lore talents and spell slots, he will be able to stack the best buffs and throw out lots of damage. I trained 5 ranks of lore on PC/Lantry/Sirin/Eb every level, in act 1 you can train other stuff on Barik/Verse if you want to.

As I said, Act 1 is rough. You really need to master your micro in act 1 or you will get stuck on ascension hall. Generally you will start fights with aggro on lantry or verse because their armor is lower. Learn to position the PC at a choke point on the battlefield if one is available and train enemies into the taunt aura range by moving your other characters. Once they get taunted onto your PC they will generally stay there. If you can pull it off, wedge your PC and either Barik or Verse into a spot where the enemies can't get around them and put lantry and the other person behind them (in ascension hall you can do this with the tables). It's probably worthwhile to give Barik and Verse their taunt talents in case you need to rescue lantry. Otherwise it probably doesn't matter how you build them, I build verse as a ranged character this time but she would do fine with her dual wielding tree also (but take the 2 burning arrow talents, they are good and you don't have much magic DPS in act 1).

Once you hit act 2 you can ditch Barik and Verse if you want. I used Sirin and Eb, as I mentioned. I put Eb in the back with lantry and build her for maximum spellcasting. I went all-in on Sirin's war tree and just put her next to the PC, she is very rarely targeted if you micro the PC's taunt correctly and with 3 levels of her shield talent she can take a few hits without needing to worry. Let her go to town with songs of your choice and then use her breaths up as you see fit. As far as spell schools go, Sirin and PC should use illusion as much as possible because you want the illusion cone spell to land its stuns when they use it. Lightning is good too once you get the accent that adds a stun to those spells. Basically focus on using the PC and Sirin to keep enemies taunted onto the PC and disabled as much as possible and let Lantry and Eb clean them up.

Other things to keep in mind - definitely try to unlock as many faction reputation abilities on the PC as possible, they can be really useful. Combo skills are also really good, particularly Eb's AOE heal/nuke and Lantry's quicken. Do not be afraid to use consumables liberally, the defensive potions are particularly good and they come cheaply to free if you get the infirmary spire right away (which you should for the lore trainer). Finally, once you get artifact weapon 2Hs and volcanic weapon buffs the PC will start doing an obscene amount of damage as well.

Anyway, that's my general approach. Path of the Damned is absolutely doable using this method and there are definitely ways to optimize it further if you want.

[andrew smash]

Oh yeah, the other thing I forgot to mention is more just high difficulty advice but it's helpful. Whenever you can, sneak into sight range of an encounter so you can see what enemies are there and what they are going to be susceptible to. This is especially important with bane. Don't get attached to your specific attack spells, basically you should be willing to rewrite all your attack spells to avoid immunities and exploit weaknesses before any fight. For that reason I recommend keeping Fifth Eye's helmet (if you killed him) around to just swap on and off for the +10 lore bonus when writing spells. Also if you are playing on path of the damned, save all the time.

[Dorok]

Is the name of the spell (default) is really mirror image? I'm in my second play, probably 2/3, and still never noticed it. That said there's still some magic types I didn't tried.

[andrew smash]

Yes, it's called mirror image but it is possible to miss it. You need the guarded form sigil, which is incredibly powerful (also the sigil for haste and vital body). As far as I know you can only get it from 2 places: First, the merchant that is outside the disfavored camp in act 1. When you meet him he is being hassled by a few disfavored soldiers. Decide against them and allow him to sell his ♥♥♥♥, then when he gets set up (i think the next time you reload the map but i'm not sure, there might be some other progression trigger) you can buy the sigil of guarded form from him. If you chase him off or kill him you can't get it.

Second, it is possible to get it much later in the Burning Library. To do so, you have to clear the Scarlet Chorus guys out and finish the area. You have to leave an artifact in place of the one you take to maintain the integrity of the building or you will miss this. Once you have done that and left, put lantry in your party and go back into the lower level lava area. You should see a sage guy in the lava you can interact with. There will be a description of him having a sigil on his chest that seems to be keeping him alive in the lava. You must pick the option to strip the sigil off his chest and kill him, and you will get Guarded Form. If you rescue him from the lava you will lose it.

[Dorok]

Tanks, so each time I had haste, so I checked wiki, and it's a spell I saw and tried a bit during first play. I don't remember the name in my language I suspect it is different. Moreover I notice the description in wiki is different. In my language the description seems say that at first damage the spell is cancelled.

[andrew smash]

it's illusion + whatever the sigil for haste is called in your language, in english it's guarded form. The wiki is wrong, sort of, the bonus decreases each time you are hit but it lasts longer than one hit. If you put enough extra sigils on it (+ selfless magic cast by lantry) it basically doesn't matter.

[Dorok]

The French name for this spell is just incredible, it's a relatively rare word but I didn't even knew it could have a meaning that could evoke even vaguely the idea of mirror image, lol.

For the description, my fault, I never read the long description at bottom that requires a bit of scrolling, this long description is like wiki and is ok. The short description at top in game is pretty wrong.

[Wyrtt]

Ignore power after few lvl up and go agi, Power active talents are rare and garbage after early game except for stunning sunder.
Agi gives you 3 hits in row. Fo dualwield its meh but it turns slow 2h into machinegun.
On POTD I jut cast haste on 2h and go to sleep. You might want to cast weapon elemental buffs and just faceroll the game.

[Dorok]

One element I found cool in Barik and KIS is it's not "just" chain abilities, that standard attacks when used at right context will be the max DPS, and that stances benefit of adaptation to context.

This point is in fact a rather interesting design element aspect to dig in context of combats and system like used in game.

But ok thanks for the suggestion I totally admit that for main char 2H attempt I used only some talents of agi tree. I have 2 plays forward and could try such approach with one.

[Raja Monyet]

So, for a two handed cahracter, which stance is better?
The blitz or the other one(I forgot) in the power talent tree. The one where penetrate armor I think.

[andrew smash]

If you want them to tank and wear armor, challenger stance (aoe taunt pulse) is basically mandatory. If you just want them to crap damage while someone else tanks, i don't know.

[Dorok]

Might 4 armor penetration is 15% damages of 26/27 damages, with 2H and weapon switching this will become rare low damages when you level up.

Blitz is 15% more standard attacks, so when skills are involved it's more complicated. For example double and triple attack lower the effectivity of Blitz and skills duration to use them isn't lowered by Blitz.

Also the game applies rounding so if you have low recovery time like when wearing high level leather armor, this will make Blitz real effect lower than 15%.

Another aspect is XP and skills XP, to know if number of attacks matter or not at all. The problem on that aspect is I don't know if this matter.

So I don't have an answer with Light Armor. For Heavy Armor, intuitively I would pick Blitz but I don't have the math to justify it. :-)

[Dorok]

Well at end of act 1 Rebel path, at PotD I wouldn't advise a non min max character, it's rather soon in the game and it's quite a challenge to find a target and killed it despite the constant healing from Ashe. First wave of Disfavored is ok but chain with second wave is very difficult.

And the skill training system is definitely making non specialization weaker. If you play a 2H I would advise not bother on training magic nor even lore, use few support magic for sure but focus on one weapon type that is 2H because you need increase quickly you chance to hit and DPS.