Kaylon

Last time I checked the penetration bonus from weapon's modal stacked with food/other active buffs.

I suppose the 25% is calculated from the damage taken and not from the initial damage of the enemy (before reductions).

If you don't expect to crit often and don't have some sort of synergy (strong fortitude attacks, sneak attack, etc) it's pretty worthless.

That's sad. Does it work with Frostfall at least? Neither - "hostile effects" and "afflictions" aren't the same thing. Forbidden Fist and Crucible of Suffering work with all hostile effects, while the mace and the armor work only with the afflictions. No, it should be a real party member, not a summon. (90% sure even the ranger's pet isn't considered a party member). I think there are only 2 abilities in the game that work with all allies - paladin's Divine Retribution and Bardatto's Luxury's Death and Taxes.

It's great they finally fixed the duration of the curse because before it wasn't possible to lower its duration under 10s. PS. Guardian's Plate doesn't work with the curse.

Last time I checked it didn't work with summons and the description also specifies "party member", not "ally".

I have to admit I had to re-read the last 2 sentences a couple of times, before i got it. What do you suggest how many front liners and how many back 3-2 or 2-3? Also are ranged weapons a good idea with these builds? Like pistols or arquebuses? Thanks so far everyone. By front I mean those with the best defenses who go first and take most of the aggro, but since everyone is melee nobody will stay in the back. You lose dps if you're using ranged weapons and you also want to be relatively close to your enemies to use Thrice Was She Wronged when available.

Good armors are the Blackened Plate, Magnera's Chain, Devil of Caroc's Breastplate, Contender's Armor (with +1armor) and Patinated Plate (with -15% recovery). The herald with Devil's of Caroc's armor could use the WotEP (with Blade Form) and the Helm of the Falcon from the back for AoE damage. Shields to have - Lethandria's Devotion, Akola's Apex Ward, Shining Bulwark (give it to the guy with the highest armor), Cadhu Scalth. Stats: min con/res, max mig/per/int, rest in dex. Best race pale elf (highest dex/per and burn/cold DR). For AoE everyone in the front should use Come, Come Swift Winds (I think the DOT stacks) and spam Thrice Was she Wronged as soon as available (keep on Brisk Recitation). On the back you should keep Ancient Memory, Aefyllath Ues Myth Fyr, Old Siec, defensive chants etc. (without Brisk Recitation). If the shield's defense is overkill you can always have a 2nd setup with 2 weapons for more offense.

I would say 5 heralds but it starts to become old.

You can use the Grog pet to become immune to disengagement.

Dragon Leap has the Fire keyword?

Obsidian won't implement probably anything from this thread... But it would be nice to have at least a mod adding PL and keywords to the chants.

Adding PL scaling to phrases looks perfectly fine for me. Most of them are buffs/debuffs and get just a duration bonus while the damage chants need desperately a boost. Ancient Memory will benefit probably the most but I wouldn't call it OP. As for Brisk Recitation I really don't see what is exploitable.

That is a really late game sniper though. Yes, until then you have to use a ranged weapon.

Helwalker/Streetfighter with Instruments of Pain and Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff has probably the highest single target ranged DPS. You can easily become bloodied using Mortification of the Soul and the quarterstaff allows the monk to benefit from the melee bonuses while at distance (9m range). And if I remember well you can benefit also from the Helm of the Falcon bonus. However I never tested it in TB.

I could agree with fixes/buffs of some weak/unused abilities or quality of life changes, but I strongly disagree with nerfs or drastic alterations in behaviors.

With your actual party I doubt it's possible to beat him because it's a very long fight and you will run out of resources pretty fast. Replace Aloth with a cipher and cast Ancestor Memory on everyone. With Barring Death's Door and Salvation of Time you should be able to keep your party alive.

Is it me, or does a fighter/mage (buffed with Eldrich Aim, Arcane V, Deleterious, Iron Skin, Citzals Martial... and Llengraths and Arcane Reflect if needing more defense) using Citzals Lance hit harder with ClearOut/Mob Stance (compared to zerker/brute) and have 3x the survivability? The lance hits harder and the wizard has better defenses, however he needs time to prepare and it can become tedious in the long run. On the other hand the voulge does dual damage and the barbarian has better attack speed. Overall I don't think there's a clear winner in terms of dps.

Btw, when you are below 50%, can you swap to Darryn's Voulge, auto-trigger the storm, and swap back to whatever weapons you had?Or you need to get below 50% while wielding that pollaxe? Never tested, but I don't think it will work.

Personally I prefer to bind it to the fighter - it triggers a storm once per encounter (when you go under 50%hp) which can also do huge AoE damage. The barbarian gets only a small debuff instead.

If you go with brute then pick berserker/devoted and use Lord Darryn's Voulge (no immunities against its dual damage) for maximum AoE destruction potential (using Clear Out). Get also Devil of Caroc's Breastplate (With Mechanical Mind/Devil's Due enchantments), Helm of the Falcon and Abraham pet for faster recovery.

I think you should try a soulblade/trickster - you will have high mobility, spells, buffs and also very high damage. However I don't know how it works in turn based combat.

A fighter using Clear Out should be able to spread it on multiple enemies.

The cipher from PoE1 is gone indeed, but the soulblade/paladin is, just like the troubadour/paladin, one of the best soloers in the game - very reliable and can deal with anything you throw at him from the start until the end (megabosses included). And he's also a great addition for a party if you want a tank with good offense and versatility. That's not a good synergy at all tho, Soulblade has that with any melee class and Paladin has that with any class, and I definitely would not compare ciphers with chanters in this game, while they were similar in poe 1(the chanter was still stronger by quite a bit, except against dragons where cipher was god tier) they are not even in the same tier in this game. Yes you can solo the game easily with both, but are there really many classes that can't kill the megabosses? (I know only of a chosen few) Maybe there's no particular synergy, but they complement each other really well and is certainly more reliable than other combos. And yes, I think that only a few well rounded classes/combos can solo the entire content. PS. With the nerf of Wall of Draining I'm curious if your bloodmage/tactician still can solo Dorudugan...

Don't know, I haven't played recently. But with Draining Whip you should get the same focus as the damage dealt by the second head. The Soul Annihilation damage is half of your total focus multiplied by your damage bonuses (and the hidden PL bonus).