Climhazzard

I wish chanters had more debuff chants, like the one that debuffed accuracy that they had in PoE.

I'm always using a hired adventurer Paladin/chanter for my tank. My MC is never a Paladin, but the Aura only ever gets stuck on my MC.

Maia scout using Arquebus is amazing. With her starting gear, plus an easy to obtain hat and the gunner passive, she gets -60% reload time, has amazing range, and can use rogue attacks to interrupt spellcasters. Once she gets driving flight + the 45k gun she does a ton of damage.

Cipher gets several, Monk mostly gets shrine interactions, though Nalpazca gets one or two drug conversation interactions. Various culture and backgrounds get interactions.

Yeah, that's fair. Hopefully they don't roll out a bunch of nerfs or anything like that. So far it seems like the only class they've thought about tuning was Chanter. I wonder if that's still the case? Certain Wizard spells or power level scaling for those spells really need nerfed. They mentioned chanter summons. I think a couple other chanter things need nerfed or shifted to a later tier. I hope certain full attacks get changed to primary attacks, such as charge. In fact I would like to see most full attacks changed to primary attacks to also balance dual wielding, or perhaps just the ones that cost 1 resource. Inner death + empowered strikes ought to be adjusted imo. I personally think Faith and conviction + deep faith ought to be more evenly split with Deep faith only obtainable at a high tier. Certain things just plain need fixed for better or worse, like unbending or time parasite. Beyond abilities, a lot of equipment needs some solid hits from the nerf bat as well. Ideally some of the garbage would be brought up as well, like many cipher and priest spells. If they are serious about balancing I expect to see a lot more than just a few chanter adjustments anyways, thought it may be spread out over several patches and not all just in 1.1.

Right now both combinations are pretty good, but I feel like we ought to wait till 1.1 before answering the question if you really want to know what's going to be good for 1.1.

Yeah this happens to me on every game I play with a Paladin in the party.

If you use something to boost power levels, like Nature Godlike or the Stone of Power amulet, or both because they stack, then fists will be competitive with weapons even on a multi class monk.

I've never had it happen from a debuff but on almost every character I've played I've got a buff that I couldn't remove... usually a Paladin aura. So if resting doesn't remove it then it might be a bug.

Mages in this game should have a few spells they prebuff with to make fighting them slightly more interesting. They don't even need trigger spells like in BG since there are so many good instant cast buffs anyways. If they at least cast a mirror image and something that gives them concentration at the start of the fight they'd be much more threatening. Not that it would make mage slayer particularly more valuable at killing mages than other classes.

I don't really see how the teleporting ability could be significantly stronger than charge or flagellant's path. The Death palm ? ability is OP for sure, but the game is basically over by the time you get it. Resonant touch is also pretty strong, but only for bosses really, and not so strong that multi classing isn't beneficial. Transcendent suffering scales a lot better if you single class, but you can just use weapons if you multi class. Plus multi classing gives you a lot of other benefits. In the case of Paladin you'll gain a lot of survivability and utility. Monk by itself isn't the toughest, the talents are more suited to damage, but multi class with a fighter or paladin and you have someone who can take a licking as well as dish it back out. It's a bit harder to spec for multi class though, you need to understand the abilities a bit better to know which you need and don't. SIngle class monk can just take everything basically.

Especially since he's been actively working to stamp out or control the Leaden Key. Why would he go from near arch mage status back to a level 1 dude? The other characters could use lazy as an excuse but that would be criminal for what Aloth is trying to do.

Use Berath's Blessing to start them at level 4 with fine equipment and 5k gold, makes more sense from an RP perspective imo, and doesn't really do much to change the difficulty since the starting island is a joke anyways. I can just see the MC asking Eder at the beginning of the game.. MC: What happened to our good equipment? And my gold? Eder: Ah well some of it got stomped on by Eothas, the rest I tossed out because it was to much of a bother to bring along... MC: You what...?

I was making a list of conditionals that I wished to see, but I got bored before finishing it. Here's a few... A way to check immunities and resistances. Example, Target: Resistant to dexterity afflictions. A more defined way to specify # of targets. Currently you use Target: Allies in melee range > 0 or 1. They should have 2, 3, and 4, as well as <. Perhaps not just rely on melee range too, something like.. Target: Allies within 5 meters > 1. Check for chance to hit. If chance to hit is red I don't want the spell to cast. Use the red-yellow-green accuracy ranges for the conditional. Max focus, max wounds, etc. Why would you give me the choice of 9 wounds but take away the choice of 10 wounds? Ascendant absolutely needs a max focus check, plus my soulblade easily gets up to 150+ focus in a fight so why cap the check at 90? Buffs that don't have inspirations need to be able to check for their own presence. Something like Self: Has borrowed instinct. Conditionals organized into sub menus so more can be added without making an obscenely long list. Meters to target, to prevent characters from doing the run around if their chosen target is to far away. Something like Target: > 10m away, or < 10m away (not). Would also prevent the AI from seizing up when it can't reach its target. Ranger pet abilities. # of Inspirations an enemy has for programming the use of arcane dampener or similar abilities. Example. Target: Has 2 inspirations. Target: Has 3 inspirations. A check for targets using long cast time abilities to program interrupts. Example. Target: Using ability with >3 cast time. A greater than health check to stop heal casts when a target heals themselves. You could program a heal as follows Target: Less than 75% health Target: Greater than 90% health (not) I actually thought of many more, but didn't write them down, so if I do think of them again I'll put them here.

Shattered Pillar is good for offensive cc/interruption due to the way they generate wounds. Helwalker gets bonus might and a stronger turning wheel, Nalpazca gets wound generation through drugs and a stronger turning wheel. They're all good really, but once durability counts for something Helwalker would be on the bottom of my Monk play list.

Was he an albino? Never read the stories. Joe He's a Dark Elf from Forgotten realms D@D settings, Pale Elf is really the only thing that allows you to get close to the same look. In Particular, the Icewind Dale and Dark Elf Trilogies by R.A. Salvatore.

I think you could really cheese rooting pain with the monk shield, haven't tried that though... anyways, I just finished the game with a Nalpazca transcendent so here's a few pointers. There's a drug shop in Periki's overlook that restocks every 24 hours in game, you'll want to be a regular customer. There's a bounty quest obtained in Dunnage to kill a Lady Espero in serpent's crown, she drops an amulet that gives you the whiteleaf effect every time you rest. You can use it to save on drugs until you get rich. The quest is rather hard at level 7 though when I usually do it, lol. You'll want to rest, a lot, either to gain the whiteleaf effect or clear your drug crash before moving on. Since you get hundreds of fruit while exploring I usually just use fruit. Just think of it as spending most of your time sitting around being stoned. Also since you're resting all the time consider any per rest items you find as per encounter. Alchemy is your most important active skill, maxing it makes drugs very powerful, they more than make up for not going Helwalker imo. Ofc every class can max out alchemy and use drugs, you're just highly encouraged to do so if you play Nalpazca, and they do get power level bonuses for some drugs, not to mention duration. Also, beware arcane dampener which is the Achilles heel of Nalpazca because it automatically puts you into your debuff state. You can bait it out with other characters, or use the drugs that bolster your will defense and hope that's enough. If you do get hit then carefully wait it out then drug up again, the duration will be very short if you have clarity or enlightened agony active. Don't worry though it's not very common, there are a couple Fampyr groups that use it and a group of cultists that use it, and that's it for the most part.

Can you even make a Wood Elf look like Drizzt?

Hellwalker is just about seeing bigger damage numbers, they are viable right now because the difficulty is non existent. Monk in general brings a lot, mostly offensive buffs, but also the best status resistance in the game imo (enlightened agony). Btw Flagellants path = charge, you just get it later. You also have stuff like turning wheel, rooting pain, lightning strikes or swift flurry, raised torment, thunderous blows, etc.

Maia with her gunhawk passive giving her incredible range makes the best mageslayer imo, lol. Use the scout multi class since the rogue attacks all cause interrupts on hit. Mageslayer has the tools to do the job. Rogues can use full attacks that interrupt though (not to mention blind and hobble), plus gain battlefield mobility earlier than Mageslayer. Shattered Pillar is also great at interrupting, between force of anguish and rooting pain, but gains battlefield mobility a bit later.

You also probably want to multi class to something with better melee ability, like fighter or rogue. EDIT: I just noticed you already did that...

I didn't micro either of my highest damage characters, I programmed their AI and mostly played Aloth, but I didn't use any spells I thought were overly broken. I used the same party from pretty much the moment I left the starting island. Aloth and Xoti both come in a distant 3rd with around 65k damage each. My main character is using my recently posted transcendent build. I'm not quite sure how "highest damage" is recorded, but I can say I saw plenty of higher soul annihilation hits, even have a screenshot of one. But around 400 was the highest I saw. Maia was using the scout multi class, her damage starts to climb once you get the 45k gun and driving flight.

Dual unarmed is fine, shattered pillar would be viable in that case as well. But dual ranged weapons would prevent the use of soul annihilation and most monk abilities, so it's not the best build for dual blunderbuss.

In this game there isn't much difference between per encounter and per rest.

I'm thinking of going for a Sage (Monk/Wizard) multiclass for the Arcane Reflection spells in order to protect my Nalpazca's drug benefits. Could also wear one of those rings with "Suppress Affliction", I suppose. Suppress affliction rings won't help, they give you the level 1 priest spell which is a spell used reactively to counter afflictions, and I don't think it works on arcane dampener. Also doesn't seem to work on charmed/dominated/etc, which *really* ****ed my world up. I've used the version Xoti has to counter charm/dominate successfully quite frequently.