Kaylon

If you want to keep your party complete until the end and also choose a faction, then you don't have many choices... In general Serafen is considered the weakest overall but he is also required if you go with the Principi... My advice is to always try to have in your party a paladin, a chanter, a cipher and a priest and choose the MC accordingly, in order to have a strong and balanced party.

What I meant by hand damage is that you have the same base damage and speed as the fists.

If it uses monk's hand damage it's ok, but I'm not sure his weapon works that way.

Yes, but if it's a weapon you don't benefit from Transcendent Suffering. Maybe if you don't want to make a specific monk armor, you can make another piece of equipment for them. Maybe a helmet with the Pearlescent Rhomboid Helstone skin.

If you want less micro you could do berserker/devoted instead. Frostseeker with high accuracy does tremendous single and AoE damage by itself and as a monk you can spam Stunning Surge to stun enemies with it (like in PoE1 but without the pet 😃). Monk's Thunderous Blows can also be upgraded to Energized and that will also add interrupting ability to your crits. The AoE also benefits greatly from the high MIG/INT of the helwalker. You can also use mortars instead for AoE stun, but for less damage overall. Since it triggers up to 6 AoE, if you add also Avenging Storm/Combusting Wounds you can clear entire packs of mobs with just a few shots.

It would be nice to see a monk armor using the male dancer's outfit (with leather pants, naked torso and covered arms) - maybe borrow some attributes from other specific monk items (like monk resources on kill, add pierce damage to unarmed attacks, etc)

Here's an example of a very powerful party involving some of the strongest builds in their category: tank (caster) - paladin/blood mage melee AoE DPS - berserker/tactician melee DPS - soul blade/rogue ranged AoE DPS/CC - ghost heart/helwalker ranged + support - priest of skaen/troubadour

There are two build categories - for solo and for parties. For solo they're almost non-existent in the list but you can see most of them in action in the videos of the people who did the ultimate or soloed the megabosses (like priest/streetfighter, priest/blood mage, tactician/blood mage, SC monk, paladin/troubadour, assassin/tactician, blood mage/paladin, etc). The builds used in parties are more specialised and are built around items offering great synergies. You have Frostseeker builds (ghost heart/ascendant, gost heart/helwalker), Lord Darryn's Voulge builds (berserker/tactician, berserker/monk), Rust's Poignard builds (SC rogue or SC assassin), Sun and Moon builds (soulblade/trickster, soul blade/paladin), Sasha's Singing Scimitar (SC bellower, priest/troubadour, bloodmage/troubadour), Red Hand builds (rogue/ghost heart) and I'm sure I still forgot...

Using two fast weapons allows doing more attacks but for less damage and in the end the dps will be the same. If you want to optimize your character you should use a fast weapon in your left hand with a normal one in your main hand, while spamming full attacks (Gambit). A great combo is Magran's Favor with modal activated in your MH and Rust's Poignard in the OH.

Draining Touch with Zandethus Draconic Fury does lots of melee damage and heals too, but as a mage you're not limited to melee.

All builds still work, it's just some of them feel less powerful. But if you look for the strongest builds in 5.0, most of them were never posted...

Firebrand could become a very nice option for many melee classes if, for scrolls, it would be possible to make count the Arcana lvls above yours.

For weapons I recommend Tarn's Respite + St. Drogga's Skull and for armor Magnera's Chain. Aldris Blade becomes strong only with high crit chance. Grave Calling is over rated because people always consider max stacks when in fact you'll spend most of the fights with less than half. (also Grave Calling works better with a shield because you attack more often with it than if you dual wield). However keep in mind that sabers do only slash damage and vs enemies with high armor resistance/immunity you'll be in trouble. Modwyr + Watcher's Blade is another great combo which doesn't suffer from that issue.

Chanter and monk summons are ok, but druid/priest summons aren't affected if I remember well. For the summons/weapons scaling with level/PL the model should be Monastic Unarmed Training.

Another issue with the summons is the fact that not all of them are affected by the Animancer's Cat. And talking about summoning in general, I don't know how hard it's to implement, but I would like to see the empower bonus or any PL bonus above your current one affecting the level of your summoned creatures/weapons.

The 5% chance to miss is a fumble and the 5% critical chance is a sucker punch - both can be caused by bad/luck or other factors which are not taken in account by the game. If you compare the toddler to the veteran, looking only at the critical/miss chance doesn't give the full picture. The toddler will miss 19 out of 20 hits and his crit (1 every 20hits) will never be confirmed and will do just normal damage which is very small or is completely absorbed by his target. On the other hand the veteran will hit probably 19 times out of 20 for big damage and will crit at least once for at least double damage which will largely compensate the fact that he can miss once every 20 attacks. PS. Even in reality, if you let a toddler slap you, most of the time you'll feel nothing, but once in a while he will land one that you'll feel - that's his critical.

The idea of flanking is the defender will avoid hits less effectively vs multiple attackers, thus he gets a penalty. Saying that not all attackers should get the same bonus is not right to me because the defender won't face all the time to the same attacker while the other(s) stabs him to death in the back. In a real battle nobody will let someone at his back and instead will move trying to keep enemies in front of him. In a game such behavior would be hard to implement and thus, no matter the position, all attackers share the same bonus.

Another item I like to import is Violet Redemption which you won't be able to use otherwise... PS. Make sure you don't export items generated with the console because if you import them it's considered cheating too and achievements will be deactivated.

I think there are at least 6 fixed (without the ones in Ukaizo) and you can get more as random treasure or loot from enemies (grater sand blights, Belranga's spiderlings). Belranga's spiderlings are unlimited but have a very small chance to drop adra ban (probably around 1%) so you have to kill hundreds of them (before they kill Belranga themselves...) - it's probably the best spot to farm adra bans with a specialized party if you want to play legit. If you only care about the achievements you can just save your game, enchant the item you want, equip it on a lvl1 hireling, export him, reload your game and import again the hireling with the enchanted item. 😉

I can confirm that Voidward doesn't reduce the damage taken from Voidwheel. Heal on kill and the regen from Devil of Caroc's breastplate are two easy ways to regain your health back.

Yes, you don't refill completely Vanishing Strikes but you lose 1 guile every 10-12s and with a pool of 10-12 guile you can remain invisible for 80-120s which is enough for the great majority of fights. Also you have always empower at your disposal to replenish resources for more extreme fights.

The viable possibilities in a party are: - single class assassin - at high level you can use Vanishing Strike and stay invisible while attacking (high intellect+Ooblit and brilliant buff can help you stay invisible the entire fight) - best played with 2 weapons and spamming Gambit - assassin/bloodmage - at high level you can use Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and then Blood Sacrifice to restore it back (use a weapon with draining to heal you back or have Old Siec chant from a chanter) Restoring guile with brilliant isn't viable in a party because you need 12s to gain back 2 guile, which is very long.

Unless you're a skald or a troubadour you can forget about offensive invocations because they take long time to recharge. For the common chanter the most efficient invocations are the buffs and the summons (only animated weapons are worth at high levels because they're the only summon scaling with your level) which usually last until you get your phrases back. For chants the best are Ancient Memory (strong passive healing), Aefyllath... (very strong if if your main damage comes from weapons), Old Siec... (works great if you have a party with lots of AoE dmg or a bloodmage), Her Courage... (for more tankiness), etc - these should be your main options depending on your party.

You have to interrupt their action to restore discipline - that means you have to hit them during their attack phase. If you hit them during the recovery phase it doesn't count as interrupting their action. To interrupt a melee attacker it's very hard because the action window is very short. Casters are the main candidates for interrupting (when you're successful they also lose their spell).

Monk/ranger with Scordeo's Edge is really a good combo. Because of the high accuracy and One Handed Style you will crit a lot and trigger Heartbeat Drumming/Swift Flurry very often, increasing also the chance to trigger Blade Cascade faster. You don't need Stunning Shots at all because a monk can cast Thunderous Blows with Slayer's Claw equipped and gain Energized. This build is also very effective for spamming Efficient Anguish or Stunning Surge. With two weapons you will crit less often and unless you're able to spam a full attack Scordeo's Edge itself will swing at a lower rate compared to 1h style.