That’s a great question. My first instinct is you would want a Fighter (Devoted) to pick your weapon type with, but there aren’t any Katana type weapons in Pillars. I’d recommend Sabre, the highest damage weapon for one handed weapons. Then you put nothing in your offhand for that sweet, sweet +12 accuracy bonus (one handed, empty offhand). Plus, an empty off hand thematically makes sense as part wizard (even if it isn’t actually required).
For Mage, you pick buffs (like I did in the Arcane Knight video) and utility spells with some nice damage options such as Shocking Touch to round things out (shocking touch, iirc, will make your next melee attack shocking touch-enhanced, so your next Sabre strike in this case).
Just theory crafting, there may be other ways to go. Probably there are better ways to build it, but that’s where I’d start.
Slow would be a good substitute for the early level, but we don’t really know what’s coming in later levels because the beta tops out at power level (“tier”) 5 though the full version will go up to power level 9, so who knows.
I’m leaning to making a pure mage for my first character - I typically do this in any big RPG so I’m just following form. However, I’m going to be doing some multi-classing with my party members because I’m much more comfortable with it than I was a few weeks ago before I really started to dive in.
Putting aside terms like “best” or “efficient” my favorite combinations have been Rogue/Fighter, Rogue/Monk, Wizard/Paladin, and Barbarian/Fighter but not necessarily in that order. There are just so many ways to build a character now, it’s kind of mind blowing.
If you want a tank, look no further. The bonuses to defensive stats like deflection from Deep Faith coupled with ways to gain extra armor, and on the fighter side you have weapon specialization and can eventually reduce recovery with heavy armor, it’s crazy.
I talked about one I built (but didn’t record) here:
But if off-tank or damage dealer is your goal, I think an Arcane Knight would be tough to beat between the two.
I’m telling’ y’all, the Votary (monk/paladin) is the bee’s knees. If you’re a min/max’er and want raw DPS, the Holy Slayer slays like nothing else, at least at the beta’s power levels, if spec’d right.
I made a video showing off some of the UI and gameplay mechanics. So, it will be even less for everyone than my previous videos, but for those that want to learn more about how the game’s systems and mechanics work, I hope this video helps!
Wizards have a lot of CC spells, as well. Like the area effect sleep spell or the Confusion spell. Anything that causes the “Frightened” affliction takes enemies off the board, as well. And etc.
I would think a Wizard/Cipher could be the king of CC?
Yeah, that’s true - you need to be doing weapon damage to generate focus, I had forgotten. Well, Cipher OR Wizard is good for CC, but now that I think of it since Wands and Scepters are one-handed now, you could actually use one with no offhand for a big accuracy bonus and do some decent ranged/focus generation that way in between spells, too. That might work out pretty well, especially in a long fight.
Yeah it does. Cipher Rogue would be a cool combo, especially with some of the various sub classes. I may have to test that a little.
IDK, my experience is that wands do fuck all without Blast. I suppose you could spec Blast as Wizard/Cipher, but meh. Meh, I say!
I think I may have talked myself into one of your earlier experiments. Dual-pistol Ranger/Cipher sounds insane. Also ghost bear sounds possibly not the most min/maxy ideal thing, but ghost bear.
