Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Fedora Master]

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[perfectslumbers]

Why put Seelah into 10 different classes when you can go 1 witch/1monk/18 druid

Why witch?

As for AC multicalssing I feel like going 16 alch, 2 paladin, 1 oracle and 1 cha monk is the way to go if you want to stack maximum amounts of Cha AC. And thanks to that one item your AC bonus from smite changes to sacred so you can stack it with deflection AC items. Two levels of paladin means you don't get to smite much but there are two separate ways of permanently increasing smites per day.

That was a Lann build, not Seelah. Also witch is +5 natural armour with lizard and iceplant ring.

That witch dip is so decline it makes me sad. To think that's you'd spend 6k or so of your early game gold for a ring that gives +2 AC, just to make an horrible, class destructing dip a bit less horrible when instead you could buy a bunch of scrolls that would allow you to tank unfair just fine. With the invaluable benefit of not having to take a BAB neutral level that is only half decent if you give up a ring slot.

None of the companions can 100% tank unfair since I believe the highest you'll get is Camellia with 84 ac whereas mc can get ac in the low to mid 100s, and enemies will have over 70 ab. Also 6k gold is absolutely nothing unless you're on unfair and wanna buy scrolls to get you through the harder fights. All you get for more levels in druids is more wildshape charges but you get infinite ones so there's not any point to not dip for those 3 levels. Witch/vivi are the two best 1 level dips that you'll be taking in those 3 levels for extra ac, not really sure why you'd level druid past 17. But yeah if I was playing unfair I'd just make Lann a cleric and either tank with summons or mc (or just pick Azata and have no tank.)

 

[Sharpedge]

Demon changes could be good if it made them get the aspect earlier.

The biggest problem with demon (in my opinion) is that 99% of the path is gated behind Demonic Rage, which is a feature that you can only have up a small percentage of the time unless you rest spam. This would be fine if Demon was significantly stronger than other mythic paths during Rage, but it really isn't, barring things like the combat maneuver interaction. Instead Demon is more or less on par with other mythic paths during Rage, which is why I personally consider it to be 1 of the weaker mythic paths.

Why put Seelah into 10 different classes when you can go 1 witch/1monk/18 druid

Why witch?

As for AC multicalssing I feel like going 16 alch, 2 paladin, 1 oracle and 1 cha monk is the way to go if you want to stack maximum amounts of Cha AC. And thanks to that one item your AC bonus from smite changes to sacred so you can stack it with deflection AC items. Two levels of paladin means you don't get to smite much but there are two separate ways of permanently increasing smites per day.

That was a Lann build, not Seelah. Also witch is +5 natural armour with lizard and iceplant ring.

That witch dip is so decline it makes me sad. To think that's you'd spend 6k or so of your early game gold for a ring that gives +2 AC, just to make an horrible, class destructing dip a bit less horrible when instead you could buy a bunch of scrolls that would allow you to tank unfair just fine. With the invaluable benefit of not having to take a BAB neutral level that is only half decent if you give up a ring slot.

None of the companions can 100% tank unfair since I believe the highest you'll get is Camellia with 84 ac whereas mc can get ac in the low to mid 100s, and enemies will have over 70 ab. Also 6k gold is absolutely nothing unless you're on unfair and wanna buy scrolls to get you through the harder fights. All you get for more levels in druids is more wildshape charges but you get infinite ones so there's not any point to not dip for those 3 levels. Witch/vivi are the two best 1 level dips that you'll be taking in those 3 levels for extra ac, not really sure why you'd level druid past 17. But yeah if I was playing unfair I'd just make Lann a cleric and either tank with summons or mc (or just pick Azata and have no tank.)

I really consider the smoothest unfair leveling experience to be playing solo until the chapel where you re-recruit companions. If you want to play with companions you could then pick them up there and have them at a much higher level, or you could just continue to play solo if you enjoy that. Trying to tank unfair is imo the wrong approach to it, what you really want to do is kill things as quickly as possible before they kill you. Whilst you can build a tank MC, you could just as easily go all in on damage and eliminate everything before it becomes a threat.

 

[volklore]

That ring is 2 ac, the dip is 3. Witch dip is unneeded when there is polymorph scrolls for 1k ish that give 4 form ac plus some dex. Market square enemies don't have that much AB, basically just like shield maze. Also UMD gets you seamantle on anything and Frightful Aspect on anything since you can craft scrolls (for late game). AC isn't that hard to stack. Late game you shouldn't need to tank much stuff anyways, your casters should be winning initiative and deleting or C/Cing entire screens of enemies with persistent spells and quicken rods. It's not hard to get enchantment/illusion DC to the 60s Even on companions.

Witch/vivi are the two best 1 level dips that you'll be taking in those 3 levels for extra ac, not really sure why you'd level druid past 17.

See that's where most people have it wrong with dips. I don't care about lvl 20. I care about tempo. If it was KM, i'd have shrugged the witch dip because KM difficulty curve flattened out at lvl 7-8. But Wrath actually keeps up the tempo up lvl 15-17 with the difficulty curve flattened at mid act4. So the cost of dips is a lot more because it costs you the access of class features and spellcasting being delayed. If you go druid and take witch early for a bit of AC you delay your druid level, the access to wildshape, the access to your spellcasting levels, the access to communal aspects (If you go for drovier for example) by 1 level. And every dip on top of that is an extra level of delay. Sometimes that could cost your more effective stats for one level that you'd get with that witch dip (temporarily). If you run seelah with tons of dip, let me tell you that when you reach level 11 and don't have mark of justice for another 3-4 levels because you dipped so much, you'd wish you skipped some of them and found alternate solutions. The scroll vendor offers you such solutions : 15 min +4/6 AC form with a big STR/DEX boost and some resists on top of that to also tank casters, stoneskin scrolls (DR applies before difficulty dmg multiplier).

 

[LannTheStupid]

Spoiler

Hotfix is coming.

 

[perfectslumbers]

I really consider the smoothest unfair leveling experience to be playing solo until the chapel where you re-recruit companions. If you want to play with companions you could then pick them up there and have them at a much higher level, or you could just continue to play solo if you enjoy that. Trying to tank unfair is imo the wrong approach to it, what you really want to do is kill things as quickly as possible before they kill you. Whilst you can build a tank MC, you could just as easily go all in on damage and eliminate everything before it becomes a threat.

There's really no reason to choose between ac and damage since you can easily have both. There are some super high damage builds that you can do instead, like with trickster, or thanos snap azata/lich/angel, but my favourite part of pathfinder is making unkillable monsters that deal good dpr and it works extremely well on unfair. That's the nice thing about pathfinder, there are many perfectly viable ways to tackle it even on the hardest difficulty. Like that streamer who beat unfair in 600 hours with a shieldbearer.

See that's where most people have it wrong with dips. I don't care about lvl 20. I care about tempo. If it was KM, i'd have shrugged the witch dip because KM difficulty curve flattened out at lvl 7-8. But Wrath actually keeps up the tempo up lvl 15-17 with the difficulty curve flattened at mid act4. So the cost of dips is a lot more because it costs you the access of class features and spellcasting being delayed. If you go druid and take witch early for a bit of AC you delay your druid level, the access to wildshape, the access to your spellcasting levels, the access to communal aspects (If you go for drovier for example) by 1 level. And every dip on top of that is an extra level of delay. Sometimes that could cost your more effective stats for one level that you'd get with that witch dip (temporarily). If you run seelah with tons of dip, let me tell you that when you reach level 11 and don't have mark of justice for another 2-3 levels because you dipped so much, you'd wish you skipped some of them and found alternate solutions.

That's true but from my playing with it the 1 level dip works fine and doesn't fuck with tempo, I don't straight do it at level 2 ofc. I do it in act 2 since imo there's not really any point trying to tank act 1. Like I said I wouldn't use this build on unfair, just that having a tank is my preferred way to play the game (and has worked fine on my few unfair playthroughs,) so I enjoy building for it.

 

[Grunker]

Spoiler

Hotfix is coming.

People telling me there's no point in waiting until summer to play this because the game is virtually bug free

 

[LannTheStupid]

People telling me there's no point in waiting until summer to play this because the game is virtually bug free

It is virtually bug free between the latest hotfix and the latest big patch. It is not bug free after most large patches.

If you are able to update manually you will be fine.

 

[Sharpedge]

I really consider the smoothest unfair leveling experience to be playing solo until the chapel where you re-recruit companions. If you want to play with companions you could then pick them up there and have them at a much higher level, or you could just continue to play solo if you enjoy that. Trying to tank unfair is imo the wrong approach to it, what you really want to do is kill things as quickly as possible before they kill you. Whilst you can build a tank MC, you could just as easily go all in on damage and eliminate everything before it becomes a threat.

There's really no reason to choose between ac and damage since you can easily have both. There are some super high damage builds that you can do instead, like with trickster, or thanos snap azata/lich/angel, but my favourite part of pathfinder is making unkillable monsters that deal good dpr and it works extremely well on unfair. That's the nice thing about pathfinder, there are many perfectly viable ways to tackle it even on the hardest difficulty. Like that streamer who beat unfair in 600 hours with a shieldbearer.

You can have both to a degree. You can have enough AC to tank random trash mobs even from the early stages of the game without much investment, but if you want to tank enemies like Baphomet, you do need to make some sacrifices.

People telling me there's no point in waiting until summer to play this because the game is virtually bug free

It is virtually bug free between the latest hotfix and the latest big patch. It is not bug free after most large patches.

If you are able to update manually you will be fine.

It is not virtually bug free. Just because there are very few plot critical bugs which will require you to go into toybox and manually flag etudes doesn't mean there aren't plenty of broken abilities. See Meredoth and the Icy Prison DC which bothers him so much for an example. Even then, there is content that is flat out not playing due to bugs.

Spoiler

During the beta, in act 3, Yozz would visit the player multiple times offering suggestions for crusade management. That has been missing since the release of the game. It isn't missing because it was removed - you can see it still exists in the game files (and in some cases is even more fleshed out) but the flags to start those dialogues are no longer triggering. Likewise there is a fair amount of content related to Wintersun which is not working at the moment.

Just because I enjoy the game a great deal, doesn't mean I am going to put on blinders and pretend it has no issues.

 

[LannTheStupid]

If a game can be played on Last Azlanti / Ironman from start to finish then it is "virtually bug free". This is the current state of Western gaming anyway.

 

[perfectslumbers]

You can have both to a degree. You can have enough AC to tank random trash mobs even from the early stages of the game without much investment, but if you want to tank enemies like Baphomet, you do need to make some sacrifices.

Not really, an angel gish can have over 90 ac, 5/6 attacks, 65+ ab (depending on buffs etc,), a swift action 300 dmg bolt of justice per turn, and each attack will deal something like 1d8+60 physical +22d6 divine +12d6 force. Cha is a god stat and can be 3x ac and your ab, and elemental barrage+crusaders edge gives an easy way for any build to deal a ton of damage. Sure you're not literally one shotting enemies like with Trickster but it's still enough to kill bosses in a few rounds. Even legend can do lots of damage now since it gets the super scaled mythic power attack and 8 attacks now, even better if you switch from trickster.

If a game can be played on Last Azlanti / Ironman from start to finish then it is "virtually bug free". This is the current state of Western gaming anyway.

Yeah it's pretty par for the course for western rpgs on release. If you really dislike bugs I'd still recommend waiting a while though.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If you really dislike bugs I'd still recommend waiting a while though.

Why, are they gonna patch that Deskari fellow out of the game?

 

[Sharpedge]

You can have both to a degree. You can have enough AC to tank random trash mobs even from the early stages of the game without much investment, but if you want to tank enemies like Baphomet, you do need to make some sacrifices.

Not really, an angel gish can have over 90 ac, 5/6 attacks, 65+ ab (depending on buffs etc,), a swift action 300 dmg bolt of justice per turn, and each attack will deal something like 1d8+60 physical +22d6 divine +8d6 force. Cha is a god stat and can be 3x ac and your ab, and elemental barrage+crusaders edge gives an easy way for any build to deal a ton of damage. Sure you're not literally one shotting enemies like with Trickster but it's still enough to kill bosses in a few rounds. Even legend can do lots of damage now since it gets the super scaled mythic power attack and 8 attacks now, even better if you switch from trickster.

You keep talking from the perspective of a level 20 character with Rank 9 mythic abilities. At that point in the game, pretty much anything will work. For the purposes of actually playing the game its better to just ignore act 5 entirely because unless you decide to do the Enigma its fairly short and choosing to do the Enigma doesn't improve the experience since it is just wading through trash monsters.

Angel and Lich are more or less the exception when it comes to mythic paths, not the norm. Merged spellbooks allows them to get away with heavily multiclassing because the additional CL will provide what you would otherwise lose. Using them as a comparison point isn't particularly useful. Yes an Angel can have over 90 AC at the Baphomet fight, but the Swift Action bolt of justice (barring metamagic rods) only comes after. You are not telling me anything new that I do not know, I have been there and done that.

Spoiler

 

[perfectslumbers]

Angel and Lich are more or less the exception when it comes to mythic paths, not the norm. Merged spellbooks allows them to get away with heavily multiclassing because the additional CL will provide what you would otherwise lose. Using them as a comparison point isn't particularly useful. Yes an Angel can have over 90 AC at the Baphomet fight, but the Swift Action bolt of justice (barring metamagic rods) only comes after. You are not telling me anything new that I do not know, I have been there and done that.

If you wanna speak to the game in general rather than the outlier paths then yes you would have to sacrifice quite a bit of damage to facetank the entire game, you're right in that case.

 

[Yosharian]

None of the companions can 100% tank unfair since I believe the highest you'll get is Camellia with 84 ac whereas mc can get ac in the low to mid 100s, and enemies will have over 70 ab. Also 6k gold is absolutely nothing unless you're on unfair and wanna buy scrolls to get you through the harder fights. All you get for more levels in druids is more wildshape charges but you get infinite ones so there's not any point to not dip for those 3 levels. Witch/vivi are the two best 1 level dips that you'll be taking in those 3 levels for extra ac, not really sure why you'd level druid past 17. But yeah if I was playing unfair I'd just make Lann a cleric and either tank with summons or mc (or just pick Azata and have no tank.)

R e s p e c m o d

 

[Grunker]

Spoiler

 

[perfectslumbers]

None of the companions can 100% tank unfair since I believe the highest you'll get is Camellia with 84 ac whereas mc can get ac in the low to mid 100s, and enemies will have over 70 ab. Also 6k gold is absolutely nothing unless you're on unfair and wanna buy scrolls to get you through the harder fights. All you get for more levels in druids is more wildshape charges but you get infinite ones so there's not any point to not dip for those 3 levels. Witch/vivi are the two best 1 level dips that you'll be taking in those 3 levels for extra ac, not really sure why you'd level druid past 17. But yeah if I was playing unfair I'd just make Lann a cleric and either tank with summons or mc (or just pick Azata and have no tank.)

R e s p e c m o d

I love respec mod but I would never really talk about respec builds. And part of the fun of vanilla is turning companions into builds they weren't made for but still are decently useable.

 

[Sharpedge]

None of the companions can 100% tank unfair since I believe the highest you'll get is Camellia with 84 ac whereas mc can get ac in the low to mid 100s, and enemies will have over 70 ab. Also 6k gold is absolutely nothing unless you're on unfair and wanna buy scrolls to get you through the harder fights. All you get for more levels in druids is more wildshape charges but you get infinite ones so there's not any point to not dip for those 3 levels. Witch/vivi are the two best 1 level dips that you'll be taking in those 3 levels for extra ac, not really sure why you'd level druid past 17. But yeah if I was playing unfair I'd just make Lann a cleric and either tank with summons or mc (or just pick Azata and have no tank.)

R e s p e c m o d

Unless you are respeccing a character because a patch from Owlcat introduced some new bug and broke your build, Respeccing a character goes directly against the idea of playing on a harder difficulty to begin with. I don't understand people who want to play on a harder difficulty, but also want to use tools which are intended to be used on a lower difficulty.

 

[Grunker]

Respeccing a character goes directly against the idea of playing on a harder difficulty to begin with. I don't understand people who want to play on a harder difficulty, but also want to use tools which are intended to be used on a lower difficulty.

You are assuming one would use the respec mod to respec them into some broken stuff. Rather than some homebrewn builds that might work well enough but aren't completely broken. That's what I do.

The reason? Why limit yourself to enjoying this game's core appeal - character building - with one rather than six characters?

 

[Sharpedge]

Respeccing a character goes directly against the idea of playing on a harder difficulty to begin with. I don't understand people who want to play on a harder difficulty, but also want to use tools which are intended to be used on a lower difficulty.

You are assuming one would use the respec mod to respec them into some broken stuff. Rather than some homebrewn builds that might work well enough but aren't completely broken. That's what I do.

The reason? Why limit yourself to enjoying this game's core appeal - character building - with one rather than six characters?

I never considered it from that angle and I guess from that perspective it makes sense, but more often than not the people who are complaining they cannot respec characters on harder difficulties are doing so because they want to "fix the mess owlcat has made because the characters are not optimal." Personally I would much rather try to deal with the hand I have been dealt, so to speak and treat it as a part of the difficulty, but I can understand the appeal of wanting to build extra characters.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Respeccing a character goes directly against the idea of playing on a harder difficulty to begin with. I don't understand people who want to play on a harder difficulty, but also want to use tools which are intended to be used on a lower difficulty.

You are assuming one would use the respec mod to respec them into some broken stuff. Rather than some homebrewn builds that might work well enough but aren't completely broken. That's what I do.

The reason? Why limit yourself to enjoying this game's core appeal - character building - with one rather than six characters?

I never considered it from that angle and I guess from that perspective it makes sense, but more often than not the people who are complaining they cannot respec characters on harder difficulties are doing so because they want to "fix the mess owlcat has made because the characters are not optimal." Personally I would much rather try to deal with the hand I have been dealt, so to speak and treat it as a part of the difficulty, but I can understand the appeal of wanting to build extra characters.

WOTR has a big issue with companion build overlap imo and the respec mod is nice after many playthroughs.

 

[Grunker]

Respeccing a character goes directly against the idea of playing on a harder difficulty to begin with. I don't understand people who want to play on a harder difficulty, but also want to use tools which are intended to be used on a lower difficulty.

You are assuming one would use the respec mod to respec them into some broken stuff. Rather than some homebrewn builds that might work well enough but aren't completely broken. That's what I do.

The reason? Why limit yourself to enjoying this game's core appeal - character building - with one rather than six characters?

I never considered it from that angle and I guess from that perspective it makes sense, but more often than not the people who are complaining they cannot respec characters on harder difficulties are doing so because they want to "fix the mess owlcat has made because the characters are not optimal." Personally I would much rather try to deal with the hand I have been dealt, so to speak and treat it as a part of the difficulty, but I can understand the appeal of wanting to build extra characters.

I've heard WotR is much harder than Kingmaker, so maybe this doesn't apply, but when I played Kingmaker my main complaint was difficulty. As such, I would have been insane to respec the companions into something more powerful than what could be done with them core. As that would only have made the game even easier.

Since WotR is supposedly way more difficult I guess that applies to a lesser extend here, but I probably still will build most less efficiently than is otherwise possible, if for no other reason then the fact that while I may be decent at optimization I am too easily distracted by trying out fun combinations or "build dreams."

If you use the respec mod solely to munch your companions into oblivion I'm not sure I see the point - you might as well activate cheats.

But then again, I don't ultramunch my PC in these kinds of games either, unless the difficulty can handle me doing so. In which case I absolutely will.

 

[Sharpedge]

I've heard WotR is much harder than Kingmaker, so maybe this doesn't apply, but when I played Kingmaker my main complaint was difficulty. As such, I would have been insane to respec the companions into something more powerful than what could be done with them core. As that would only have made the game even easier.

Since WotR is supposedly way more difficult I guess that applies to a lesser extend here, but I probably still will build most less efficiently than is otherwise possible, if for no other reason then the fact that while I may be decent at optimization I am too easily distracted by trying out fun combinations or "build dreams."

It was on release. There have been a few patches since then that have lowered the difficulty - either by swapping out harder enemies with easier ones (ferocious monitor lizards with not ferocious versions of them, for example), or by reducing enemy stats. Toybox has an option for an on release version of Unfair, if you wish to experience that. With that being said, even that version of Unfair was not as hard as the beta version of it, when enemies were bugged and almost every enemy in the game had sneak attack dice. As it currently stands I would say its about as challenging as Kingmaker Unfair, but retains its difficulty for longer. It still does eventually drop off at lategame similar to Kingmaker, but it does take longer to get there.

If you use the respec mod solely to munch your companions into oblivion I'm not sure I see the point - you might as well activate cheats.

Agreed.

 

[Grunker]

its about as challenging as Kingmaker Unfair

That really, really sucks. More than anything else I was looking forward to the reported difficulty bump

Or rather, I enjoyed Kingmaker's Unfair difficulty *immensely* from level 1-6ish, and wish that difficulty stuck around till the end of the game. Instead, it dove off a cliff and became entirely trivial, even with my somewhat wonky party builds.

but retains its difficulty for longer.

That's an improvement, at least, though I'm still somewhat disheartened by the roll-back in difficulty. I mean, why? Unfair is Unfair, people can just lower the difficulty if it's too hard? I don't have some weird objective about wanting to play on the hardest difficulty. I just want to play something that is consistently challenging for me.

 

[Delterius]

That really, really sucks. More than anything else I was looking forward to the reported difficulty bump

just play aeon