Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition - now with A Dance of Masks epilogue DLC

[Desiderius]

Hate to waste a Martial class on that though.

Yeah. If you're gonna waste a feat for anything I think you should be getting 18-20 base crit range out of it. In that instance you can justify it as just picking improved critical a 2nd time.

Solving the same problem over and over is both kind of boring and often doesn't address what is actually making you reload or "very bumpy". It's not a one-dimensional game. Fauchard itemization is less interesting than Glaive and staying Simple with Longspear opens up a LOT of other interesting options (while also getting the Lance effects with TTT). Tactician > crit somewhat more often unless you're virtually soloing the game with you MC.

Angel gets a pretty early +4 Longspear.

 

[Haplo]

Think I'll just go with Kitsune Gendarme with Glaive/Longspears, can always respec if something doesn't work.

Glaives would be a very sub-par choice.

MC gets passive Glaive bonus from book in Maze, and they're well-itemized throughout the game. Depends how much you want to rely on crits. TTT gives Lance bonuses to Longspear I think?

Hate to waste a Martial class on that though. Make sure you have a specific reason for those extra Feats if you go Gendarme, it gives up a *lot* for them.

...if by "well-itemized" you mean excellent start, early peak at the end of Act 2 and then 2 full acts of basically nothing, untill you finish DLC3 (IF you have it and get to the end in Act 5), then I guess?
Apart from the end game DLC specimen, many other weapon types have much better specimens in Act 2/Act 3.
The Act 3 fauchard isn't quite a meta item, but its still better then nearly all unique glaives IMO (even before we factor the crits).

 

[Average Manatee]

Thing is, as soon as you get Outflank crit range is king. A 15-20/x2 becomes more like a 15-20/x6 when 4 other characters get to make attacks on your crit. So rather than thinking of weapons as 18-20/x2 vs. 20/x3, think of it as 18-20/x6 vs. 20/x7. The 18-20 setup is clearly far better, especially when we get more crit bonuses (and don't forget that other characters making their attacks can crit as well!). A bunch of boring, basic +1 or +2 fauchards will still shit on +4s of most other weapons.

 

[volklore]

I was planning on doing an Aeon playthrough like that using the caster gazes (caster level and DC) but I am not sure about the concept yet.
Only thing I am kinda fixed on is I want a court poet in my party and focus on cha/int casters.
Problems to solve is competition for gear, especially spell penetration wise. If playing vanilla, allied spellcaster teamwork feat should basically solve it but it is fixed in TTT.

Yeah. My problem is that my spell nuking game is always very bumpy with a few levels where my casters do basically nothing but cause a mild itch to enemies. With worse equipment loadouts that would only be magnified. At the same time I'm not sure exactly how far high you could stack spellcaster buffs with certain classes like Court Poet.

Another problem is that there's not really good companion classing options to divert them to being a better caster the same way you can martials or hybrids. You're just always way behind, and casting is more reliant on base stats than physical stats which are easy to buffs (and AB gets more buffs than DC).

I didn't really think about it much yet, but instinctively I would build for hollistic CC rather than blasting as primary focus making use of all the DC gear and use loremaster to shore up spell list and feat issues for companions.
I'd probably still run some physical DD if only to mop up CCd goons faster, and probably play most of the early game with a balanced party.

 

[Parabalus]

Think I'll just go with Kitsune Gendarme with Glaive/Longspears, can always respec if something doesn't work.

Glaives would be a very sub-par choice.

MC gets passive Glaive bonus from book in Maze, and they're well-itemized throughout the game. Depends how much you want to rely on crits. TTT gives Lance bonuses to Longspear I think?

Hate to waste a Martial class on that though. Make sure you have a specific reason for those extra Feats if you go Gendarme, it gives up a *lot* for them.

...if by "well-itemized" you mean excellent start, early peak at the end of Act 2 and then 2 full acts of basically nothing, untill you finish DLC3 (IF you have it and get to the end in Act 5), then I guess?
Apart from the end game DLC specimen, many other weapon types have much better specimens in Act 2/Act 3.
The Act 3 fauchard isn't quite a meta item, but its still better then nearly all unique glaives IMO (even before we factor the crits).

I should have written that as Glaive ->Longspear, meant using them until you get something better, they are decent with book + items in A1+2.

Gendarme charge should be enough to pop mooks even without crits?

The Act3 fauchard is the good aligned one, right?

while also getting the Lance effects with TTT

What exactly is the difference between vanilla and TTT regarding lance effects?

Thing is, as soon as you get Outflank crit range is king. A 15-20/x2 becomes more like a 15-20/x6 when 4 other characters get to make attacks on your crit. So rather than thinking of weapons as 18-20/x2 vs. 20/x3, think of it as 18-20/x6 vs. 20/x7. The 18-20 setup is clearly far better, especially when we get more crit bonuses (and don't forget that other characters making their attacks can crit as well!). A bunch of boring, basic +1 or +2 fauchards will still shit on +4s of most other weapons.

How does Steal Glory interact with Outflank - you get two attacks as expected?

 

[Yosharian]

Imagine using anything that isn't Jinx

 

[Yosharian]

And yes the Law gaze is nuts, if the only way the enemy can do anything to do is by making you roll 1s on your saves, and/or the only thing stopping you from destroying your target in 1 round is rolling a bunch of 1s

Just never being able to roll below 5 ever again, on your entire party, is insanely good on a martial/defensive-oriented team

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So...how are you supposed to survive the devarra fight? You have no time to prebuff because of the cutscene and she just one shots or badly wounds a party member in like 5 seconds of the fight beginning.

I do not like the scripted cutscenes in this game. Most of them so far just fucks over the player and takes control away for silly reasons.

 

[Average Manatee]

And yes the Law gaze is nuts, if the only way the enemy can do anything to do is by making you roll 1s on your saves, and/or the only thing stopping you from destroying your target in 1 round is rolling a bunch of 1s

The latter is not good at all when it comes to AB, if you hit 95% of the time you are destroying your target no questions asked. If you think not rolling a 1 in melee is so good than there's already a mythic ability for that. Or hexes that reduce the chance of a 1 to 1 in 400.

The saves thing is nice, but hexes again cover that well enough, or you can just gain immunity to a lot of things. It's cool but not as cool as e.g. picking angel and casting immunity to everything for the whole day.

So...how are you supposed to survive the devarra fight? You have no time to prebuff because of the cutscene and she just one shots or badly wounds a party member in like 5 seconds of the fight beginning.

I do not like the scripted cutscenes in this game. Most of them so far just fucks over the player and takes control away for silly reasons.

If you mean the ambushes, just run away lmao.

If you mean when you fight her for final there's a path through the skill checks that lets you prepare.

How does Steal Glory interact with Outflank - you get two attacks as expected?

Never used it but I assume you never get more than 1 AoO. Seize the moment and Outflank don't stack. Which would make Steal Glory kind of useless since you want Outflank anyway.

 

[None]

MC gets passive Glaive bonus from book in Maze

This is news to me. Good thing I've saved every book I find, even if I never intended to read them.

 

[Parabalus]

MC gets passive Glaive bonus from book in Maze

This is news to me. Good thing I've saved every book I find, even if I never intended to read them.

There's a ton of them.

Never used it but I assume you never get more than 1 AoO. Seize the moment and Outflank don't stack. Which would make Steal Glory kind of useless since you want Outflank anyway.

If true it makes Order of the Cockatrice much worse than it looks initially.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So...how are you supposed to survive the devarra fight? You have no time to prebuff because of the cutscene and she just one shots or badly wounds a party member in like 5 seconds of the fight beginning.

I do not like the scripted cutscenes in this game. Most of them so far just fucks over the player and takes control away for silly reasons.

If you mean the ambushes, just run away lmao.

If you mean when you fight her for final there's a path through the skill checks that lets you prepare.

Oh wow you can. Ember still died though because of Daeran's fucking curse. I'll go back and replace him with Sosiel.
Its still a little jank though because the cutscene won't happen immediately so you have to turn off party AI so the idiots don't try fighting the dragon.
It also gives the dragon a little more time to kill a character. I'm not really a fan, but hey at least you're not expected to fight the damn thing yet.

In other news, Arue and Daeran's aura is now showing up. I'm not sure why, maybe its an aeon progression thing.

It seems that the Aeon is designed for inquisitors. Aeon bane stacks with inquisitor bane and I don't see too many swift actions so far? Gazes seem to be toggles, and this is vanilla.
I'll see what the Devil path is like when I get to it. I hope its as cool as the Aeon path.

 

[Yosharian]

It seems that the Aeon is designed for inquisitors. Aeon bane stacks with inquisitor bane and I don't see too many swift actions so far? Gazes seem to be toggles, and this is vanilla.

Not really, Inquisitor is as good as any other Aeon class

 

[LannTheStupid]

I never intended to read them.

"Reading is hard" (C) me a year ago.

Its still a little jank though because the cutscene won't happen immediately so you have to turn off party AI so the idiots don't try fighting the dragon.

Please, make youself familiar with the "H" (Hold) key.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

It seems that the Aeon is designed for inquisitors. Aeon bane stacks with inquisitor bane and I don't see too many swift actions so far? Gazes seem to be toggles, and this is vanilla.

Not really, Inquisitor is as good as any other Aeon class

I meant more that inquisitors get more mileage out of aeon because of the stacking bane. Of course every other class would be fine, its just that Inquisitors seem to get an extra benefit.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Wenduag and Arueshalae are quite effective as a pair. It seems like the enemies just melt; while Camellia curses who's needed and Nenio controls, there are none left for the melee to kill. And this is on Hard.

Pretty nice, IMHO.

 

[Yosharian]

It seems that the Aeon is designed for inquisitors. Aeon bane stacks with inquisitor bane and I don't see too many swift actions so far? Gazes seem to be toggles, and this is vanilla.

Not really, Inquisitor is as good as any other Aeon class

I meant more that inquisitors get more mileage out of aeon because of the stacking bane. Of course every other class would be fine, its just that Inquisitors seem to get an extra benefit.

Not really because Aeon Bane only really matters in the tough fights, and in those fights you have enough rounds.

All Inq gives you is the ability to use it a few more rounds per day which is useless because resting in this game is really not an issue.

 

[scytheavatar]

So...how are you supposed to survive the devarra fight? You have no time to prebuff because of the cutscene and she just one shots or badly wounds a party member in like 5 seconds of the fight beginning.

I do not like the scripted cutscenes in this game. Most of them so far just fucks over the player and takes control away for silly reasons.

This is why you need Greater Enduring Spells and those people who say you don't need it are scrubs.

 

[LannTheStupid]

The Greater Enduring feat chain is two Mythics that could have been spent somewhere else.

I did that with Arueshalae. Her spells are mostly directed at herself, and so with 24-hour spells, she is a self-contained package. However, I much prefer to have more spells on buffers and more DC on Nenio than have those spells linger for a day.

 

[Average Manatee]

Word of warning: Axe Hunters (Ulbrig's new ranged unit) have about ~40% weaker growth than they should, but when you convert archers to Axe Hunters during the event you get way more than you should, so don't be fooled on your long-term strength when you convert and get like 2x as many axe hunters as you would be able to raise over time. You do get a massive power spike from this improper conversion ratio though.

Stat-wise this still leaves them probably the best all-around unit choice. They are only about ~20% less base damage than marksman (still ahead of all other choices), can burst for double damage once per combat (applies twice if you proc morale), and have almost ~3x the survivability. Attack is high enough that if you're spamming Halls of Strategy they'll be equivalent to Marksmen vs. 95% of units.

This is why you need Greater Enduring Spells and those people who say you don't need it are scrubs.

Don't really see the point unless you're trying to do some kind of hardcore no-reloads run.

 

[Max Damage]

I don't have that DLC, but I'll keep it in mind.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I never intended to read them.

"Reading is hard" (C) me a year ago.

Its still a little jank though because the cutscene won't happen immediately so you have to turn off party AI so the idiots don't try fighting the dragon.

Please, make youself familiar with the "H" (Hold) key.

Yes, I know about it, its still easier to just turn off their AI, especially when you have fast mounts and can't press the h key fast enough.

Anyway, killed the dragon. Scripted nonsense aside, it was a pretty neat questline. Only problem is that Greybor's sneak attack at the tower didn't seem to do anything? Still a nice fight though.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Why do you need to press anything "fast enough"? Pause, select all, and press "H." Now your party is prohibited from moving but can attack anything that is within their reach. When it's time to melee, select the necessary characters and unhold them. They will rush to the fight. "H" is a toggle; there is a button for that as well.

 

[Parabalus]

Great bug - lance charge bonus damage applies in turn based mode, but doesn't in RTwP.

Specifically:

>All characters, while mounted, now deal double damage on the first attack when charging with spears.

Works in TB, but not in RTwP.

Works with longspears and shortspears, probably more too. Shows in combat log.

 

[Average Manatee]

Actually, looks like Ulbrig's Infantry unit (Houndmasters) are also screwed on growth compared to what you expect from the unit card (since normally its inversely proportional to XP, with a bit of what I assume to be rounding errors) . Wonder if this will be the case for all of his units. Was gonna make a post about how all of the new DLC units are P2W but I guess I won't now. In Houndmaster's case it looks like it makes them pretty awful, their damage output is almost as low as Shieldbearers and summoning dogs to act as a 2nd HP bar doesn't nearly make up for their HP and damage taken differential. Shame I already picked them trusting the unit card but oh well.

Updating my spreadsheets...