Hi, first of all I would to thank you a lot for all the information you provided, whether it's here or elsewhere (reddit and steam comes to mind). While I usually have no trouble building my party on my own on this kind of game (completed PoE and Tyranny on PotD {2/3 into PoE2} and DOS2 on tactician, all with personal builds) I must admit that the depth of Pathfinder is something else.
I've spend ton of time reading about the mechanic and the class/feat/spell/etc., and it was often written by you, so thanks again, and I'm sure there's a lot of others silent readers who are grateful to you too.

Now for a bit of context I'm playing on hard difficulty and will go to the goblin fort next (108H in, yes I've slack a lot reading stuff and was struggling in the first act). While I'm not really having trouble right now, I'm still wondering on two main points and would love your help on them.

My current party consist of (mainly mercs, any feedback is of course appreciated) :
- Tank/DD (your Dex scion build) [MC]
- DD/secondary tank (your dragon build, though she still can't really tank but does a good job as a ranged DD for now)
- Summoner/Buffer/Healer (pure MT, using longspear to provide feat while avoiding to directly tank)
- DD/Buffer (pure bard + vivisectionist 1, focused on bow)
- Buffer/Healer (pure cleric, community domain, using some feat on DD talent like precise shot)
- flex spot (was initially going to be a DD/CC Sylvan Sorc, but I'm liking Kanerah or more recently Nok-Nok and was thinking of using one of them)

So my first point is, as you probably have noticed, I'm lacking CC with this comp and was wondering if my cleric/inquisitor could fit this role. If it's possible I suppose that I want to max my DC with feats like Spell Focus Enchantment ? Maybe to do that I would need to switch the Domain of my cleric ? I'm not sure as I'm not super familiar about what are the best CC spells you can get. Also bonus question, what are the best spells to get to buff my team ? (I find it hard to know what stacking or not without testing everything q,q).

My second point is more straightforward, can you maybe provide some advices on what are the best/worse feats given a certain role. I've seen the "Top Feats" section of your "Character Building DIY" post, but still have a lot of questions. For example, for a ranged dd, while Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot are pretty obvious, I discovered after using it that Deadly Aim was pretty bad (and seen you confirm this afterward, like Hammer the gap), but what about Manyshot, Clustered Shots, Critical, etc. Another example would be Dazzling Display, at first I thought this feat was worthless, but it appears that it unlocks Shatter Defenses which is awesome. Kinda hard to know every feat and what it unlocks.

And once again thanks a lot for all the time you've taken to share your knowledge about this game !

@InEffect, in your class guide you mention that Monster Tactician is a 17 level investment. What would you use the other 3 levels for?

I'd guess 1 for Vivisectionist and 1 for Monk at least?

there are several ways to go about CC.
1) Hard CC. Obviously most abusable since enemies standing there waiting to be murdered are not to everyones liking
2) Soft CC. Just debuff enemy to oblivion. Slow is decent at this. Also glitterdust is awesome early and useful for most of the game.
Then there is a question of party-friendly or not. With no dismissal without mods it's pretty hard to justify using unfirendly control. And to be honest even with dismissal it won't get much more attractive. With how fast one can kill things dividing them in waves is not the most useful thing ever.
as to how to CC... There are phantasmal webs and stinking clouds as clear best. Things that are immune to poison can be CC'd with grease. Sirocco is fine if you want to murder something without ever seeing it move. You can even stack several of them. kineticist deadly earth with bowling is much the same, except even more cancer with more damage attached and virtually unlimited casts.
Pretty much whatever you like goes. Monk will at least provide him a chance of being anywhere near melee, so that's nice. Can add F2 for more feats.

Thanks for the answer. So after having checked the spells it seems that my best choice will be to focus on Conjuration instead of Evocation on my Scion. That will give me decent DC (despite the fact that I will be one level behind) for Grease, Glitterdust and Stinking Cloud (which will be good since I've got 3 caster that have access to Delay Poison), also my "dragon" will have Sirocco for late game. Plus my MT will also have Hold:Monster and Hold:Person with Spell Focus:Enchantement for single target.

And I've got another question about my bard. So he's pretty much here to give Inspire Courage, provide ton of skills points and some occasional buff/heal as his DC will be too low to CC/DD anything with spells. Then I think going ranged DD with the available feats is the best choice as I don't want him in melee ?
Oh and I will change my cleric into an ecclesitheurge as I don't see what I'll be losing by doing it (my cleric is already ranged).

Bards mainly do several things:
-They can dirge. No save, no nonsense shaken in AoE. Awesome
-They get heroism stuffs early and get good hope to press less buttons for most of the game
-Since they are spontaneous casters they get an easy AC ramp with DD4 at virtually no cost

Don't expect any damage records, but even something like bard12/DD4 is CL15 which is exactly enough to get 5d6 sense vitals, so it's not even that bad in terms of stacking dice. Main good thing about bards if that they do frontline thing well enough and provide something extra, while having enough of an AC ramp to afford wearing singing plate.

If you wanna see how a CC-oriented caster looks like you can take a peek at sylvan sorc from unfair guide. That's how it's done.

Wow it's super interesting, I would have never thought of going DD4, which seems indeed super good for the price. Although that suppose you'll go melee, then aren't you super fragile (in hard/unfair) unless you take all the usual defensive feats (monk -> dodge -> crane -> etc.) and then you're another level behind ? Or maybe then you go with a 2H reach weapons and enlarge ? Sorry if some of my remarks are stupid, I'm still not super familiar with the game.

there are two val bards in unfair guide for different use cases. That's how you do bard things.

Thanks a lot for the quick answers! I've checked and this definitely gave me some ideas, although I'll probably change some little things since I think hard difficulty can be completed without this kind of min/max and it'll make things more fun for me.

Hi again,

Finished my challenging playthrough with my ill-specced sorcerer xD and was now considering two things, which I'm having trouble choosing from.

1. Wanted to do a Magus type of build (in reality I was interested in something like figther>mage in Baldur's Gate and it seems the magus is the closest to it) and was considering a dex based sword saint. You feature some magus builds but none of this particular style. In my ignorance it would seems that having high dex (+AC, +toHit, +dmg with the feat thingie)+ high int (+AC, +spells) be a really great way to have a tanky (through AC and arcane buffs) heavy damage dealer in the frontline.

2. Heavy armour dwarf cleric with bludgeoning weapon and shield (perfection would be once again, like a Fighter/Cleric in Baldur's Gate) to buff both himself and party and act as main tank and also heavy bruiser. It seems to me (once again, a noob) that with this race and available stats, I can't make anything remotely good for this effect. Especially since I would also love for him to shield bash :p
If a fighter/cleric type character would not be possible, what would be the best tank/physical damage dealer with a lot of attacks/round, good AC and shield bashing goodness (leaving the buffing to others)?

Cheers !

1. BG was stupid in a way that you could get martial part without paying most anything from the mage part. That's not how PF does. At least not unless you cheat mercilessly. As to gishes - they are alive and well, but make no mistakes - they are fighters with arcane support, not offensive casters that can do melee as well. Regarding fighter/mage there is always melee sorc, as good as ever. The build is in unfair guide next door.

2. Clerics don't really tank. It can be done for the lower difficulties, but reality is you get two half-assed parts out of it. It's mostly the same as with arcane casters, except there is even less to support divines existing in that capacity. Not to mention being melee has a distinct anti-synergy with the nature of the class. Cast in melee => fail concentration => provoke attacks of opportunity => get damaged => failed spell and you didn't get the effect you wanted either. And divines get no mirror either, so there's even less of a reason to toss them to the frontlines. If you are adamant on doing it - at least install cotw, With holy vindicator 8 it at least won't be as awful. Since you'd need at least some mirror in melee you can do asmodeus(trickery+law)11/Vindicator8/TM1(for tempo feats)

Hi,

thanks for the reply.

In regards to 1.) For pathfinder I am indeed interested in a fighter with arcane support. Meaning that my purpose for arcane magic would be to buff myself up with mirror image, displacement, shield and whatever other things would increase my combat prowess. Actually casting spells during combat doesn't really interest me for this character. With that in mind, do you have a suggestion for what I mentioned in the previous post, in this case for a dex based sword saint. If dex based sword saint is poop in comparison to another variant, let me know :D

2. Yeah, it was what I kind of expected so I pretty much abandoned the idea of going for a divine fighter and am just more inclined to go for a fighter type character. Just unsure on what sort of build to use. From what I've found, looks like shield bash build would require quite a bit of dex. Maybe I can just tune my stats for that effect or maybe try to go for a ranger for the ranger feats which ignore the requirements. Do you have an idea for a character of this type?

1. First of all, Str-based is better than Dex. There is DD, there is legendary and itemization in the game is such that you don't get almost anything of value. Str saint and melee sorc are the best gishes in the game. Then come some str bards and some such. Dex scion is designed in a way as to be an accessible monk-based melee that doesn't require much in a way of buff-stacking. The damage will inevitably be about half of what str saint can pull off, though.

2. Items count towards feat requirement, so you don't actually need a lot of dex to shield bash. Main issue with shield bash is finding something that has a ton of free feats for it AND good additional dice, since there is no other damage ramp for shield bashing. For a decent shield bash build there is slayer. It can be further optimized, but the builds in this thread are designed without party synergy. One can realistically drop dreadful and BF there as they are not needed with good party comp and one can shuffle levels and gear and a lot of things to make it better, but that's not universal enough as to be posted. It's good enough to be played in any comp and if someone wants it for unfair they would know what changes to make.

From what I've read in various places, Sword saint is basically the strongest build in the game, at least potentially. So OP it's totally borked. You'll probably be fine even if it's not at 100% efficiency ;-)

https://i.imgur.com/dDSQx6C.jpg

@InEffect, on your Monkadin build (Final Build: Paladin 17/Monk(Scaled Fist) 1/Bard(Archaeologist) 2 ):

Are the crane feats necessary? Crane Wing won't work with Vanquisher (needs hand free), and there's probably a better usage of 4 feats instead of Dodge + 3xCrane for a 2H frontliner?