Climhazzard

I usually cast it from stealth. Something like, party stealths in, unstealth tank, Xoti activates lightning strikes then casts devotions while the rest of the party starts casting any self buffs they need, devotions hits then party unstealths. If I use it in battle I still consider it worth the time to cast as long as I can also hit a number of enemies with it, it's a nice debuff too after all.

The nerf to the keybreak scepter hurt the offhand scepter monk concept pretty badly. It's still good for enemies with really high armor of which there are a number in the new PotD, but otherwise I can't recommend it anymore. I hope some decent scepters get added into the game in the expansions. Scout is stronger than ever though, with guns of any type. A gun toting scout might eventually be on the list of MC I make.

Hang on there, what? Devotions is suppressed by inspirations now? How does that even work, since +10 ACC is better than any perception inspiration's bonus? Devotions still stacks with perception inspirations.

I think it's probably fine. With lesser wounds you'll get about 2 wounds per hit and 3 wounds per crit endgame on your normal attacks. Hit the enemy from 1 to 2 times after torment then do it again, if he's stunned for 6 seconds you can still stunlock him. The main problem for that is that torment targets fortitude which is often the highest enemy defense, but that was a problem before too.

I personally think you shouldn't get the drug crash if you get hit by arcane dampener, if you have clarity of agony on it will sometimes last only a few seconds, but even when the drug bonus comes back you still have the crash effect. Kind of silly imo, I hope they fix it, but I suppose it's probably not even on their radar, in the meantime just play like mentioned in my previous post.

In reply to someone up above, Devotions of the Faithful is in the same spell tier it's always been in, tier 4.

Hardly. Unless there's like 6 guys standing around waiting to cast it.. it's no problem. Leave a ranged interrupter in stealth until the wizard starts to cast then interrupt it, they only try to cast it once, there's probably a decent reset timer on the AI script used for arcane dampener. You can also use another character to bait out the arcane dampeners at the start of the fight. Another good thing to do as Nalpazca is take a will boosting passive, like I take the +15 will passive on my transcendent. After that, use the will boosting drugs when you're in any encounters against wizards that have arcane dampener. My transcendent can get up to 150 will defense at level 14. Lastly, if you do get hit just immediately pause and consume another drug.

I personally don't think it's OP at all, I like both upgrade options and I'm cool with the attribute bonuses being intellect and constitution.

Also I just checked to make sure but you can get both upgrades for duality of mortal presence.

I hadn't noticed that change of description on shattered pillar, before 1.1 they could get wounds off all their abilities.

All I know about is this one... https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Category:Pillars_of_Eternity_II:_Deadfire_items But it's missing a lot of info like item location.

Maybe it depends, but I know it affects ancient memory. Since the heal per second will round up my goal on my Herald is to have enough might/healing to get it to 2hp per second at level 7 when I pick it up.

From the armor values I'm seeing I honestly think you want to multi class to something with thunderous blows if you go Devoted. So brawler or brute to really put a weapon to good use.

Except heartbeat drumming is only supposed to proc off of crits, and it is shown after hits several times. I'm assuming that the reason it's so powerful is because even the procs from swift flurry and heartbeat thrumming are AoE hits, but you can't really tell if they are chain proccing from that screenshot.

Honestly can't even tell what is proccing off what from that screenshot.

I was considering doing that - doesn't Frenzy go up in cost if you upgrade it? Not with patch 1.1

Pretty sure that's not a bug. Active bonuses of the same type don't stack with each other. Passive bonuses stack though. Perception inspirations are a bit different so you can stack one with zealous focus or whatever.

Would that not just shift the problem from favoring dual wielding to favoring 2h weapons, or reduce the number of 'optimal' attacks for damage builds? I think it would make more sense to have full attacks do reduced damage while dual wielding but still hit twice, or have 2h/single weapons do extra damage on full attacks. Perhaps, I'm no balancing expert. I think dual wielding would still have a big advantage in reactivity from low recovery, plus it'd still have better auto attack damage and be better with on hit effects.

Weapons basically fall into penetration and speed categories with a bonus for each weapon category. High penetration/dual damage type like scepter or warhammer have a lower base damage. Low penetration/dual damage type have good base damage. Low penetration/single damage type have the best base damage. Imo the problem with two handed weapons isn't their penetration. It's full attacks, which favor dual wielding, and their recovery time, which make the character far less reactive than characters dual wielding. I was rather hoping to see many or most 1 resource full attacks nerfed to primary attacks for the sake of 2 handers (I'm sure much crying would ensue), but that hasn't happened. Perhaps obsidian actually think 2 handers are good right now, maybe they have other ideas and they just didn't implement them. Incidentally making full attacks into primary attacks would also buff single wielding and dual wielding a single ranged with a single melee.

I forgot to mention you can counter dominate with liberating exhortation, not to mention a Paladin passive that lets you wake up party members by whacking them with your melee attacks.

I'm using my transcendent build. Soul annihilation was nerfed pretty hard, and the keybreak scepter, which were both foundation components for the build, but it still seems to be doing the most damage in my party by a fair margin, perhaps because enemy armor was buffed and the build has good penetration. I haven't had the chance to compare it to other builds. Cipher is still easily the weakest caster imo, but I don't really take a lot from the cipher side.

I'm enjoying the new PotD as well. I always grab a hireling that I spec to Herald at the start of new games, so I didn't really feel the pain of newbie island that others are feeling. Getting Aloth was a bit dicey, but once I had him I was able to take care of half the looters with chill fog. After that quests around Queen's berth and Dunnage for a few levels. Then Hasango. Hasango hasn't really changed much but the boss room is a lot harder than before if you don't rush down the totems. I would normally do Poko Kihara before Hasango, but that place is just scary now. You'll want to eat those disengagement attacks to avoid the Titan's grab, because it's a OHKO on many characters at level 10, lol. And kite him around until you can focus down the Risen. The old city area was easier than Poko Kihara, but it's received some love too, and I learned the worm boss can grab and smash too (He's way beefier now as well). That's pretty much as far as I've made it atm. I'm a bit sad that the unexplored islands were untouched, makes exploring a bit boring in comparison.

I would say use suppress affliction... but you forgot to bring Xoti. Look for Intelligence inspirations then set the AI to use them as following... Self: Has intellect inspiration (not) Tactical Barrage

1. It's not to buggy that I can tell. 2. Not sure, but you can get all the sword fragments properly with custom history now. 3. It's many times harder. Don't even try Poko Kihara at level 9... lol. It's a little inconsistent though, because basically all the unexplored islands are the same as they were before, while most of the quest related encounters are either buffed a bit or buffed a hell of a lot.

Yeah my highest soul annihilation pre patch was 290, but it regularly hit around 200. Currently at level 12 post patch I still haven't got it over 80.