Kaylon

Don't know if it's feasible or not, but you could in theory upgrade Visage of Death's Herald to Energized and have it for about 1 minute which would allow then to use scrolls of Storm of Holly Fire to try to rapidly deal damage and interrupt. PS. Assassin/Tactician would be a good candidate because he can easily debuff reflex and then become invisible for increased accuracy. When they split for the second time it might be possible also to spam Mule Kick with WotEP because the oozes are smaller.

How can you have Blade Cascade? If you have Blade Cascade then you can have any buff and it doesn't matter anymore what class you're using.

Once one has his hp low enough it will stay next to the other one and try to merge, it won't follow you. Also Clear out suffers from the same problem as WotEP and it's not even spammable. If you are able to get the energized buff long enough, then you could use a ranged weapon with bounce and interrupt on crits (easier when you target deflection instead of fortitude).

I was talking about summons without scaling weapons - Animated Weapons, Dichotomous Soul and Wizard's phantoms are all good ones. Other than that they're just expensive damage sponges.

Avenging Storm doesn't stun, only Returning/Relentless Storm and they aren't very reliable because they target fortitude and strike randomly.

All summons without scaling weapons are very weak, not weak. The high level ones are just damage sponges, while the lower level ones aren't even good as damage sponges. Uncontrollable summons should be equivalent to charmed enemies, while the controllable ones (chanter's summons) equivalent to dominated enemies - that's common sense and balance. Whisper of Treason - lvl 1 spammable cipher spell is stronger than most summoning spells in the game - you can charm stronger enemies than any summon without number limit for nearly the same duration.

Won't work either because you can't control the summons and they're too squishy anyway. Avenging Storm helps deal more damage, but won't solve the main problem - without Blade Cascade, Conduit and Bleeding Cut there's no way to kill them fast enough. For solo only ciphers (kill during Disintegrate), blood mages (spam Concelhaut's Crushing Doom), chanters (keep the oozes away with the Animated Weapons) or monks (perma stun with WotW) can deal with Hauani without exploits (ie Blade Cascade & Co). If you don't play one of these classes you're doomed.

Nah, doesn't work with WotEP because you have to target one of the oozes and the cone won't reach the other. Also they can still merge even if one of them is untargetable (for example casting Stasis Shell on one of them doesn't prevent it).

You can't interrupt both oozes at the same time.

This combo becomes powerful only at high level and requires heavy buffing to be effective (which becomes boring pretty fast). I wouldn't recommend it for normal play unless you want to use exploits (at which point it's better to pick a class that you really enjoy and use Strand of Favor).

You should be aware that you won't be able to kill the ooze megaboss with this combo.

Maybe it's possible to go even lower in combat, but I think it's already overkill. PS. I think it's possible to reach 350% lash from Conduit with a solo assassin (the last time I tried I missed a few buffs).

It's possible to stack Tempered Fury with Bolting Strikes and Captain's Banquet on top of DEX and reach 0.2s attack speed with a fast weapon.

Not really. If a class is picking always the same ability it simply means it's better than the others, not overpowered. You can have an average ability and multiple weak ones and then the choice is obvious. Also the discussion here is not about obvious overpowered abilities, but more about fine tuning.

I always wondered how some people can make claims so easily about something being balanced or not. The balance is something subjective, based on the experience of the average player, which is very difficult to judge. Personally I prefer to use just common sense. If summons were not considered unbalanced at low level, I don't really see how could they become overpowered at higher levels because of scaling weapons. From my point of view all summons should have scalable weapons if they were intended to stay relevant at higher levels. And since the entire PL system advertises just that, I think all these inconsistencies are just bugs left unfixed (because OBS cared about things that were considered too strong, not too weak).

I think Draining Touch is special because it doesn't work like regular summoned weapons and disappears after one use.

They might be worth exporting and used from the start, maybe not as expensive as other unique weapons.

There are two reasons to use a melee and a ranged weapon at the same time: you don't have to switch weapons to alternate between melee and ranged you don't alternate between weapons like a normal dual wielder (a good thing if you have weapons with buff/debuffs/procs on hit or if you don't have weapons of equal strength to use) The disadvantage is (most) full attacks won't use both weapons. Once the spiritual weapons reach 30% lash there are very few weapons able to match their dps. PS. Of course the ultimate combo is a human priest/streetfighter under BDD.

I disagree... If you rely on abilities to penetrate armor then you're doing something wrong. Also if you really want to be the most efficient with your bleeds/afflictions then you should use a mortar/blunderbuss instead of melee attacks anyway. Basically you have to choose between losing the bonus on the second attack or switching weapons and for me it's very easy to pick, not just for the simplicity of use, but also for the overall dps.

I suppose you want to use the blunderbuss just to trigger the bonus from time to time and the rest of the time use your melee. It might work if you dual wield a melee weapon and a blunderbuss. At close range you will attack with your melee weapon and when you need to refresh Powder Burns you just target a distant enemy. The disadvantage is you can't hit with both weapons when using full attacks. However, with your melee weapon, you will attack just as fast as a dual wielder and will have great dps. Just make sure to dump you resolve to 3 because it will add a few seconds to your Powder Burns duration and don't wear Strand of Favor. You can play as a berserker too if you have in your party characters with strong heals over time (herald Pallegina, Serafen, Tekehu, etc) - just make sure you wear Voidward and other items with health regeneration too. PS. For armor you can also wear later the Guardian's Plate which gives better protection and some nice bonuses while afflicted. (to remove confusion you can just switch to Modwyr)

It depends who you pick and how you spec/equip them. At high level Eder (fighter/rogue), Pallegina (chanter/paladin), Maia (Ranger/Rogue) and Xoti (monk) can deal with most encounters just by themselves on AI.

There's no need to gimp your INT because with 35RES, Ring of the Solitary Wanderer and Strand of Favor the curse will last at most 2.3s (with 35INT at max level) because of the double inversion.

Hauani can be destroyed directly only under the effect of Disintegration. Marux Amanth is just the best and easiest way to do it. In other words only a paladin/cipher, rogue/cipher or a priest/cipher can finish the ooze with Worthy Sacrifice.

Playing without resting isn't some kind of exploit, it's a choice the game allows you to make - benefit from passive bonuses or instead use powerful "per rest" abilities. It was the same in PoE1 and in Tyranny too. There are a few classes able to solo in PotD in a "normal" way - like the paladin/troubadour or paladin/blood mage - but it still requires very good knowledge and optimization. Not sure about the second with your mods because I think the blood mage was nerfed pretty badly there...

I wasn't talking about tanking either. However, once you start dealing big damage, your target (at least) will switch aggro to you and 2-3 hits in a row can be more than a helwalker/rogue can handle.