Kaylon

Drawn in Spring works like it should, however it's not the best weapon for HoF. Drawn in Spring strength comes from a combination of damage and speed and for HoF the speed is irrelevant. For HoF you should pick the weapons with the highest damage per hit and the sabers are the best right now. The next patch however I'm expecting dual Drawn in Spring and dual Bittercuts or a combination of them to be the new top options.

It's possible, of course, and there are 3 possible approaches (and you can also combine them): - build him like a tank (heavy armor+shield and defensive abilities) - use a firearm to open the fight and finish the enemy at melee (splitting enemies, figurines and using choke points is essential) - build him like a sniper (a damage dealer using hit&run) - you can switch firearms for heavy damage and finish the target with a bow (outrunning enemies is essential here, confusion scrolls/figurines can help if running isn't a solution) - build him to avoid fights (high stealth, figurines, speed and escaping abilities) - most quest can be finished using diplomacy or without fighting yourself (you can free the cook by pulling the bandits into the wolves, if you pick the hidden passage you can let the pillagers kill Maerwald, etc...) and deal with the other encounters when you feel strong enough

The ranged weapons were pretty balanced before WM (the arbalest was even the best ranged weapon at some point) for a few reasons: - the speed enchantments weren't working and the main ways to increase the attack speed were the dex (which affected everything), Swift Aim & Sure Handed Ila (were reducing both recovery/reload times) - Deleterious Alacrity and other speed buffs which reduced only recovery were less common (limited ingredients, no spell mastery...) - Swift Aim, Gunner and Sure Handed Ila all stacked, reducing the reload times by over 50% WM1 introduced changes/fixes that swinged drastically the balance in favor of bows because: - speed enchantments on items were fixed, durgan enchantment was introduced and all were stacking multiplicatively - Twinned Arrows greatly favors bows - Swift Aim and Sure Handed Ila reload buffs don't stack anymore - it's impossible to reduce the reload times by more than 45% - no soulbound firearms - speed buffs reducing the recovery times are very common making 0% recovery easily achievable

A simple solution would be to make all the speed buffs affect also the reload times (like Swift Aim does).

Potions of infusion with vital essence is all you need to recover your health. When you respec and when you level up you also get healed. At the beginning a combination of rangers/chanters is probably the most effective team (you have the pets who can hold the aggro until the chanters can use their summons, while the rangers can easily take out dangerous foes). For a party it shouldn't be much more difficult to beat the entire game with a single rest in PotD. It should be also possible solo if you adopt a pacifist play style until you become strong enough to deal with any encounter...

That's not the way the DOT damage is calculated. The total damage is divided in ticks and each tick is reduced by the DR/4 of the target.

Actually Enduring Flames benefits from the lowest INT possible. Because its total damage is fixed the INT just spreads it over more ticks which, unlike the raw damage, are reduced each time by the DR of the target. If you're not bothered about the range of your auras or you don't use exhortations you can safely dump completely your INT until you reach lv13.

While the chanter has great AoE damage potential when he stacks his damage chant, he does it at the expense of his defenses which are just average. The chanter shines vs trash mobs however the only way he has to beat the hard encounters is to abuse summons/kite.

Yes, I find the buffs working only on allies being a bad design because they become useless while soloing. The same applies to the stronghold quests.

During ch.1 it's best to start the encounters with an arquebus and then switch to a war bow for the rest of the fight. In ch.2 you can replace the war bow with the engwithan scepter (lash, exceptional, durgan enchanted). In ch.3 the engwithan scepter can be replaced with the rain of godagh field war bow (lash, durgan enchanted) which is the ranged weapon with the highest dps for a cipher.

From a RP point of view and lore wise I agree that ciphers are the class of choice. Based on actual gameplay I consider the paladin the best class overall.

Nice, do you know if there's a limit to that?

I never observed Wild Leech stacking on the same stat, but maybe I didn't pay enough attention...

20% dmg means only 2.7 more dmg compared to the other weapons. That puts regular sabres behind hammers and swords. For pure dps the speed enchantment will be the next best thing after wounding and weapons like Rimecutter, Strike Hard, Last Blade of the White Forge and maybe Bittercut will fight for the best 2nd place - depending on the build/class...

The max dex achievable by a cipher would be 18(base)+1(racial)+1(culture)+3(rest)+2(brothel)+4(item)+1(effigy)+1(boon)+5(invocation)+10(leech)=46. With the Gauntlets of Swift Action, the buff from Spelltongue and Time Parasite he can also have close to 0% recovery.

You don't have to return to the entrance. You summon the animat to attack the closest phantom and then send him in the NE corner of the throne room with all the aggro while you wait near the stairs to the next level until the fight ends.

I remember trying to obtain the flanking 3 bonus using scrolls and even though the game allowed me to select it (and later even without the scroll), I was finishing only with flanking 2 on my character's portrait. For the fun try to post a screen with a rogue having flanking 3 bonus without using +2 survival bonus from caed nua...

It looks like you get the bonus but you don't. And scrolls don't help anymore either.

It should also be mentioned that +5buffs will suppress the food bonuses, which means the effective gains are less important...

Tested for the fun paladin solo vs adra dragon with the last patch, but without WM1&2 installed, and it's by far the hardest fight in the game. All the changes/nerfs to paladins made this fight very different from what it was before 2.0. Before 2.0 you had just to use food and with Drawn in Spring you could easily take her down without even using a single potion. After 3.0 you have to use potions like crazy to stay alive and be able to outlast her...

Tested again wounding vs immune enemies and it works (however I had negative duration vs them - not sure if it was because of my very low INT - and all the wounding damage was done instantly). The optimal lash damage for Persistence would be corrode (to avoid enemies with immunities to both pierce/lash dmg), while for Drawn in Spring is fire. That will ensure at least 50% of your weapon damage no matter what DR/immunities your enemies have.

You can also steal without fight the crate from the bandits and finish the quest to obtain the discount and the shield you can sell back.

Yes, I factored the MIN damage. For Persistence you have 1.15*1.15*-1+.2=52.2% speed, thus you're left with 47.8% recovery. And for RoGF you have 1.15*1.15*1.2*-1+.2=78.7% speed, thus you're left with 22.3% recovery. The base recovery of Persistance is 1.66s which means you're left with 1.66*.478=.79s and the base recovery of RoGF is 2.5s which means you're left with 2.5*.223=.56s. The attack+recovery phase of Persistence 1+.79=1.79s is reduced by the dex bonus to 1.79/1.51=1.19s and for RoGF 1.5+.56=2.06s which is further reduced by dex to 2.06/1.51=1.36s.

For the set-up Arranvin used the numbers are a bit different actually. Damage per shot after DR comes to 8.4 Pierce + 8.4 Raw + 4.3 Corrode + 4.3 Burn = 25.3 total for Persistance, and 14.9 Pierce + 6.2 Burn + 6.2 Corrode = 27.3 total damage for Rain. At the very least you seem to be missing the +20% hit-to-crit conversion, but I'm also not sure whether you are accounting for the 20% minimum damage after DR reduction. I have attack durations at 1.39 and 1.55 seconds respectively, and 60 * 25.3 / 1.39 = 1094.6 and 60 * 27.3 / 1.55 = 1059.5 damage output for 30 seconds I reported above as well (I'm using the underlying unrounded values for computation, obviously). My computations are not for fast mode, just normal mode; and Arranvin couldn't have used Fast mode either, since he tested during combat. I computed the expected damage for my own tests in the same way as well, which as noted matched the observed results very well and suggests that my computations are sound. Yeah, I was tired and watched the olympics at the same time... However I don't understand how do you get so much lash dmg... After corrections I have: - for Persistence 12.5*(.28*1.48+.47*1.98+.24*2.78)=25.2pierce, 6.3corrode, 6.3burn, 8.4raw and after DR 8.2pierce, 2.1corrode, 2.1burn and 8.4raw (20.8 dmg total) - for RoGF 16.5*(.35*1.48+.40*1.98+.24*2.78)=32.6pierce, 8.2corrode, 8.2burn and after DR 14.6pierce, 3.7corrode, 3.7burn (22dmg total) And for the delays (gloves+durgan+chant): - for Persistence (1+1.66*(1-.52))/1.51=1.19s - for RoGF (1.5+2.5*(1-.79))/1.51=1.34s And over 30s Persistence would do 1048.7dmg, while RoGF 985.1dmg... PS. Corrected speed...

With 118acc vs 104def you should have on average 1%miss, 35%grazes, 50%hits and 14%crits with ROGF and 1%misses, 28%grazes, 57%hits and 14%crits with Persistence. The average damage per hit would be: - for Persistence 12.5*(.28*1.48+.57*1.98+.14*2.78)=22.4pierce, 5.6corrode, 5.6burn, 7.5raw and after DR 7pierce, 1.1corrode, 1.1burn and 7.5raw (16.7 total) - for RoGF 16.5*(.35*1.48+.50*1.98+.14*2.78)=31.3pierce, 7.9corrode, 7.9burn and after DR 13.5pierce, 1.6corrode, 1.6burn (16.7 total) The delay between shots would be: - for Persistence (1+1.66*(1-.38))/1.51=1.34s - for RoGF (1.5+2.5*(1-.66))/1.51=1.56s Over 30s that would make 747dmg for Persistence vs 642 for RoGF with Twinned Arrows. The advantage should be clearly on Persistence side, however my numbers are much lower than the ones from the test - maybe you used Fast Mode...