AlphaMagnum

Has anyone looked into whether it would be possible to mod the Spell Mastery feature so it is available at lower/different levels, or whether higher-level spells could be added to the feature? e.g.... Level 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 for Spells lv1-6? Or something like that?

The game is balanced around playing in a party, not solo. Even though there may be achievements for completing it solo, I have no desire for the game to even attempt to balance itself toward soloplay. Because that would make parties inherently overpowered -- to complete the game solo IMO you should be forced to use every possible cheese in existence in order to beat the game, so party play is reasonably accessible and challenging but not impossibly so.

Well autoattack DPS and Full Attack abilities are two different things. Autoattacks even when dual wielding strike with each weapon one at a time. There is a normal recovery between each strike, as is the case with two handed weapons. That recovery is modified and can be reduced by talents, abilities, gear, etc Full Attacks, you are correct, strike with all equipped weapons, and generally give dual wielders an advantage. Secondly, sabres get a 20% boost but this is applied to their lower base damage: Sabre: 11-16 base (13.5 avg), +20% Sabre, +20% Spirit of Decay, +45% Superb, +30% Might, +50% Sneak Attack, +100% Deathblows (total +265%) So damage is (11 - 16)*(100% base + 265% bonus) = (11 - 16)*(3.65) = 40.15 - 58.40 Great sword: 14-20 base (17 avg), +15% Two Handed Style, +45% Superb, +30% Might, +50% Sneak Attack, +100% Deathblows (total +240%) So damage is (14 - 20)*(100% base + 240% bonus) = (14 - 20)*(3.40) = 47.60 - 68.0 As you can see, if attack speed is the same, Greatswords will do more damage per second since their damage per hit is higher. Whether attack speed is the same, and if not, how different it is, is another problem.

Brisk Recitation -- added in 2.0 or 3.0, it reduces chant time by increments of 10%, starting at -10% at Lv4 and capping out at -50% at Lv16. You'll see the ability in your character sheet. It's an automatically added class feature like Transcendent Suffering for Monks. You don't have to choose it at level up.

I mean, I feel like with this premise I'm more than willing to have everyone using the +Healing survival bonus at all times because it certainly seems better than +3DR, although the targeted accuracy may be more useful in difficult encounters. Also, you raise a very good point. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me to just compare the builds and come up with my own hybrid!

Question -- I love both the damage of the Dragon Thrashed chant as well as the healing of the Chillfog build. How can I combine them? I don't mind doing a bit less damage or a bit less healing if I can provide massive party regen. I've just started a PotD party for the first time and Ancient Memory + Veteran's/Constant Recovery on my other frontliners has been amazing. Even just the 20% healing boost + Fulvano's amulet is great! They just heal through everything except burst damage (those damn boars in Magran's Fork hit like trucks!) At this point my biggest issue is that Kana keeps running out of Health every other fight! My Lv4 pick is necessarily going to be Wound Binding as a result.

Does this bug affect enemies? I remember saving and loading causing enemies to stack deflection to infinity, but can I avoid this issue by simply not taking confident aim?

Do the vs specific creature type talents (e.g. Primal Bane, Ghost Hunter, etc) increase Spell damage? I was thinking of taking one or two on a caster class but didn't see the point if they didn't work with my main damage source.

My biggest concern is the enemy defenses bug. Holding off on getting the expansions because there may be a decent deal/sale between now and when it gets fixed, but as soon as it does I'll probably pull the trigger and start a fresh 3.0 play through.

Most enemies have higher Will than Deflection? Do you have a source for this? In my anecdotal experience the opposite was true...

What other weapons have you guys considered using for this build? Now that immunities are in the game I'm hunting for something that'll work vs most enemies, and the best options I see are Steadfast (slash/pierce + outmaneuvering) and Bittercut (slash/corrode + sabre). Thoughts?

Critical hit, once per encounter. At least that's how it was on my last test. Seems fine to me in terms of a unique property -- lets you deal one massive blow per encounter without consuming other resources, but offers no passive benefit beyond that.

I thought I'd bump this since no one's chipped in yet. I'm hovering around Act II and not sure as to what order I should be doing these quests to maximize challenge and entertainment. Given that I have 3 story quests and a bunch of side quests, I'd love any advice on the matter. What I've found so far: Blood Legacy is best completed at level 6 or higher. Cinders of Faith is best left to level 7+

I think it's definitely do-able with the right party at level 7 or up. Wizards can mass-confuse to buy time during the big combat in question, in addition to summoned figurine creatures to act as tanks. Landing a Dominate effect from a Cipher party member will also make a considerable difference. The biggest difficulties IMO are positioning to avoid getting wiped by the heavy-damage AOE which the major enemy in that area can use. I've seen it deal 100-150 damage to 3 characters, knocking them all out and forcing a reload given the death of half my party.

Agreed with the above. OP is hilarious in that depressing sort of way, but of course we'll find one or two radicals to endlessly echo him here soon enough.

Arbalests have slightly less killing power but prone on crit and you can get a useful unique (Hold-Wall) whose speed boost might actually let you surpass the Arquebus in terms of damage per second. I really wish there was a useful unique Arquebus in the game, but unfortunately they all seem to suck lol

Wait, so your character took over 100 damage without any record of it appearing in the combat log? All the log had was the 33 damage hit? That's really weird. Might be worth it to try and reproduce the bug if possible. Did it happen more than once? Or did you just clear the fight in one go?

I've always wondered about Heart of Fury -- if you use it against 5 enemies and each hit procs Carnage, does that mean each enemy gets hit for 1x (normal damage) + 4x (carnage damage)? In other words, landing a Heart of Fury against multiple enemies at once would basically let you deal several times your attack damage to all of them, all at once. What does your combat log say? How was the 130 damage dealt? All in one blow? Spread across several?

This is probably a good place to ask as well. Would you be able to verify that the +crit damage bonuses are working as expected? I'm thinking of Battle Axes, weapons with Annihilation (+.5 crit dmg), The Merciless Hand talent reward from working with the Doemenels, Rabbit Fur Gloves (+.1), and a helm whose name escapes me which does the same. My guess is that Battle Axes and Annihilation weapons work correctly but I've seen comments on this board suggesting that other mods don't function as they should.

How far have you taken this build? Bursting for 60-80 damage a shot is great when it takes out the 60-80hp casters early on (like in Raedric's Hold) but does the damage output hold up as enemy health increases? As far as I can tell, you'll max out with the following: +45% (Superb Weapon) +36% (Might) +20% (Vicious Aim) +50% (Crit, assuming Doemenel's talent) That's +151% damage or an effective multiplier of 2.51x base damage. 2.51 * 36 = 90 max physical crit damage (pre-DR), which means roughly 22 lash damage (pre-DR). I guess Marked Prey will give you another 36 Lash damage pre-DR as well. Each source will deal with DR separately so you'll probably end up around 120-130 max damage depending on enemy DR. Is that enough to take a lategame enemy out of the fight?

There's some bug about enemy Paladins' Deprive the Unworthy removing player passives, typically encountered by players going through the Noonfrost. Haven't been there myself but I heard about it elsewhere. Not sure if there's a forum thread here.

I just defended my keep and the scene transition left me in front with the lootable corpses sitting where they were left at the end of the combat. Not sure if that's an anomaly or something but the bandits who attacked my keep had crappy loot anyway, so whatever.

Shades are indeed present in the Temple of Eothas on Hard. They tore my party a new one until I gave up and hired a lovely Moon Godlike Barbarian to soak some pain and lay the smackdown on those fools.

It bothered the hell out of me so since I was using IE mod, I went ahead and used the "addexperience" command to add -1000 experience and thereby let me pick up Eder/Aloth/Priest/Chanter at level 2. I rushed past everything and avoided all combat to do it, but things worked out pretty well. My plan is to give myself negative experience enough to grab Druid/Ranger/Cipher at lv3 and proceed to play normally from there.

Please ensure that your game difficulty is functioning correctly. There's an insidious bug where the menu still lists Hard or PotD or whatever but where the in-game enemy density and composition is forced to Easy. Changing menu difficulty options makes no difference and the only solution I could find was deleting saves until I found an unaffected file.