Kaylon

Indeed the hostile effects are refreshed during the attacks, but if you reduce their duration in the 2s range they will expire at the end of the recovery phase of the WotW.

I don't think immunity to pull/push has anything to do with the wounds, at least from my experience... With Pull of Eora you can indeed get wounds in two ways - when the stride debuff misses or when it expires. When it misses you get only a wound, while when it expires you are also healed. The belt prevents only to be pulled. A thing to keep in mind however - later if you cast Pull of Eora with the monk it will stack Resonant Touch on him too. The FF can also generate wounds during WotW using Hylea's Talons bleed and Powder Burns from a blunderbuss - it's possible to reduce their duration to around 2s. A good way to increase the survivability of the FF is to use Voidward (to reduce the raw damage) coupled with items with %healing. Instead of using a belt giving some constitution it's more beneficial to use for example the Physicker's Belt. At Port Maje, using a brigandine + medium shield with modal + dagger with modal allows to spam FF and you can solo basically all encounters. (however you have to find the right balance between int/dex). The FF can also generate wounds while attacking with a blunderbuss and maintain Blade Turning all the time once you get Ooblit. The Dichotomous Soul can also be used in various ways to weaken/damage the enemies.

Modwyr is cool but isn't that great for crit builds - one of the best combos for that is Grave Calling + Scordeo's Edge + Fair Favor (high accuracy and once you start freezing enemies you start chaining crits like crazy), however it takes some time to max your buffs and requires high INT to keep your stacks maxed. Grave Calling opens also some great combos with Chill Fog and your skeletons.

The most limiting challenges in the ultimate are keeping Vela alive and having to repair your equipment. Basically all classes relying on shield/armor to survive are excluded. You're left with two possibilities: be invincible (BDD or being able to out heal the damage taken) or don't get hit (or very little). Being invincible always require some sort of cheese/exploit... Not being hit involves CCs, pets and invisibility. The monk can spam WotW and stay invisible as long as there are at least two enemies alive while vs single enemies he can use his summons to do the tanking for him. The bloodmage also has access to invisibility, summons, CCs, heavy damage and unlimited resources. The chanter has access to unlimited pets and paired with a bloodmage is another great choice. There's also the tactician/invisibility interaction which triggers brilliant inspiration opening some powerful combos - wizard/tactician, priest of skaen/tactician and assassin/tactician. These are probably the main combos able to solo the encounters without heavy cheese/exploits. In theory all of them can keep Vela alive using Withdraw/BDD or by using different strategies to keep her away from the battle.

There's no duration. These are the bonuses of the Barbaric Blow itself.

What's the point of nerfing abilities? I think it's fine like it is and I always pick it for my archers. Once you know how much you have to move between shots it works like a passive recovery reduction.

? Why would you give them only burn damage? That changes nothing and you just nerf them...

Like I already explained in a post above, a fix would be to make the enemies immune to elemental damage instead. However it doesn't fix non immune enemies absorbing damage like Dorudugan and especially flame nagas. Personally I don't see a clean solution to avoid burn damage while using Firebrand or Sunlance against them. It's possible to increase their burn AR, but that will make their absorption less effective overall.

If everyone agrees that existent weapons should keep their keyword, then we can discuss further if putting them in line with Essence Interrupter, Frostfall and LDV is a good thing or not. Personally I consider it more of a flavor thing with no major implications (like opening doors to new powerful builds). It means you will have to switch less vs immunes/very high AR enemies (mostly on upscaled PotD): Frostseeker - helps vs constructs, big ooze, fire titan Thundercrack - helps vs bog lurkers, skeletons, death guards, some vithraks, most constructs, warden/tyrant of decay, Hauani, Ukaizo guardian, Auranic Dragon's Dowry - helps vs bog lurkers, skeletons, tyrant/warden of decay, Hauani Sun and Moon - helps vs bog oozes, some grubs, some panthers, Hauani; it makes also its draining ability less useless Grave Calling - helps vs earth blights, eotens, rathuns, menpwgras, flame nagas, Hauani, magma dragon, Fire Titan, Soul Collector Hel Beckoning - helps vs some ogres, constructs, Belranga A special case is Magran's Blessing shield - it already does crush/burn damage but it has no keyword attached to it...

No, in fact Shot on the Run makes you attack faster than normal because of the double inversion - it gives -50% recovery while moving (like Rapid Fire modal) but of course you get also the 50% penalty which will reduce a little its effectiveness.

I think fire absorbing monsters like Dorudugan don't need fire immunity at all - they will just heal from fire damage (like the player using Rekvu's cloak)

From what I remember, some weapons were made elemental when the arcane archer was introduced, to offer people more weapon choices. The changes proposed by MaxQuest are basically more nerfs introduced to the vanilla game, but don't fix the main problem... Personally, the problem that bothers me the most is the fact that monsters immune to an elemental type are also immune to other damage types because of the keyword immunity. Also the same monsters take damage from the same elemental damage they're supposed to be immune if there's no keyword attached to it (lash damage for example). My solution to this problem is to make monsters immune to the respective elemental damage (by changing their armors), instead of elemental attacks (remove immunity to keywords). As for the weapons tagged as elemental I keep my previous suggestion - give them a second damage type to justify the elemental keywords, instead of removing them - or let them like they're now.

Oh, I finally understood - my bad - it happens if you have multiple instances of Pull of Eora which drag enemies between them preventing them from taking any action. Indeed, if the enemies don't resist it works like a hard CC. However big enemies are immune to pull/push effects...

In my game the enemies aren't prone at all. They are just dragged toward the center of the vortex and continue to attack normally if you're close enough - which corresponds to the description of the spell. Maybe you have the same bug as @Constentin Lévine. If you are in their range they will attack you normally - ranged attackers are basically unaffected...

Pull of Eora can't be considered hard CC because enemies can still attack. The best hard CC is probably the freeze from Grave Calling - with high hit to crit and a chanter in the party it becomes basically unlimited AoE freeze. And the few dex immunes can be covered easily by a monk with unlimited AoE stuns (Stunning Surge with mortars or WotW with Ajamuut's Cloak).

If you want to be the best tank then Bardatto's Luxury is the ultimate weapon. Any summon that dies grants you Hardy inspiration which stacks with any other armor buff (including Hardy inspiration from another source). The Immunity to constitution afflictions is also nice to have if you plan to use Hylea's Boon to achieve the highest defenses.

Well, I forgot how hard the buffed guardian was. I think the True Lover's Kiss + Brand Enemy is the only way to go for the unmodded game.

It's already surprising you made it that far with your build. The Steel Garrotte with his draining passive ability has the best survivability of all paladins and with high defenses and steady draining he's almost unkillable. Keeping the Guardian affected with Fractured Volition and spamming Soul Annihilation is usually enough with a tanky build. If you want to buff yourself against bosses without minions you need the Belt of Magran's Chosen + a multi hit weapon to force the summoning of a blight which can be used the entire fight as a battery for your buffs.

I discovered recently that Xefa's Empirical Explication can add up to 12 resonance stacks per attack - it can proc knock back and prone on crit which are also considered weapon attacks (and can also trigger Avenging Storm). FF monks using WotW can use blunderbuss + melee weapon to gain easily 2 hostile effects (Powder Burns + Unwieldly from Hilea's Talons). With 30+ resolve, Ring of Solitary Wanderer, Strand of Favor and Clarity of Agony their durations is close to 2s and you can generate wounds between two WotW.

A way to fix all problems could be to change the heads of Sun and Moon to really deal fire and cold damage (or maybe fire/crush and cold/crush), which was probably intended considering the keywords assigned and the draining enchantment (draining just from the lash doesn't make much sense). (Dragon's Dowry and Frostseeker deserve probably the same treatment too).

Armor and also shields degrade when you get hit and thus have to be repaired. However weapons degrade only when using normal attacks, not when using abilities. Soulblades (with Soul Annihilation) and monks (with Stunning Surge or Whispers of the Wind) can use weapons without degrading them. Natural/summoned weapons and armors don't degrade - thus a shape shifter can be great choice for melee. Using potions of the Fearsome Brute is also a good way to avoid weapon/armor breaking during long fights. Besides that, using summons to do the tanking for you and spamming hard CCs are other great options to avoid armor degrading. To deal damage you should try to spam mostly abilities/spells or use summoned/natural weapons (Firebrand is another good option).

Scordeo's Edge has better synergy and can trigger Blade Cascade and flurries like crazy. Grave Calling is also a good choice because once you start freezing enemies they become flanked and you get another 25% hit to crit for even more crits.

The most reliable way to obtain Adra Ban is probably farming Belranga's spiderlings with a specialized team. A berseker/priest can use Withdraw on Belranga (and keep her alive) after she summons her spiderlings, while the rest of the team kills them over and over again. I think there's 1-2% chance for a spiderling to drop Adra Ban, but in theory you can kill as many as you want...

Not really, these buffs have pretty short durations and you will have a hard time to keep them up (also casting can be easily be interrupted in melee). Melee builds, in general, are simple to play and maybe don't have much variety, but they also require tactics and careful planning to overcome harder battles. If you look for more melee variety you should play a Forbidden Fist - many different play styles and unlimited resources.

I don't see much synergy for this combo and I doubt you will go very far solo, especially on potd. Melees and casters are opposites and you can't play both well. Without very high AR and some sort of healing you won't be able to tank effectively, neither you or your pet. For solo melee I would consider to pair the stalker with a paladin (kind wayfarer or steel garrote) or a monk (FF or nalpazka). If you want to play a cipher ranger solo it's better to consider a ranged dps version using the pet as a distraction and lots of CC and kiting.