Kaylon

Well, you can transform any class into a melee monster if you want: - give him high MIG, DEX, PER - buy 2 Rimecutters from Azzuro (+superb and durgan refined); use 2 swords vs monsters immune to slash - get two weapons style, vulnerable attack, weapon focus knight, savage attack, gallant's focus, apprentice sneak attack - equip Azalin's Helmet, Ring of Thorns, Lilith's Shawl, Pensiavi mes Rèi/Girdle of Maegfolc Might, Glanfathan Stalking Boots and some armor with up to 15% recovery penalty You will attack with no weapon recovery and you'll have great single target dps (with up to 170% critical damage bonus)...

Well, my mistake, in fact with 10INT you can also hit the second row next to your target. And yes, if you put much effort in it it's possible to hit also a third row, but that's not the point, because in doing so you neglect other stats. I like my special barb to do as much DPS as possible and I give him high DEX instead of INT. PS. INT doesn't affect bleed damage, it just makes it longer. PPS. I know most people think that INT is very important because it affects some core abilities of the barb thus I won't prolong the debate.

You can safely let INT at 10. While carnage is affected by INT its radius will never grow enough to affect more enemies than the ones right next to your target. Also another 4s of Frenzy or Savage Defiance don't justify high INT for a barb.

For me engagement is just a small advantage for melee attackers (to compensate the fact it's harder to attack at melee than from range). It gives them a free attack with a small bonus when the target tries to run away from them. It's not supposed to make tanks hold the aggro like in MMOs. AI goes for squishiest targets first and it has nothing to do with the damage dealt by the tanks. You have to use other tactics to keep your party alive.

Dex isn't useless because it's the only thing that can reduce the attack animation (and also reduce further the reload animation of ranged weapons). However the speed bonus from dex works differently - the total action frames (attack+recovery+reload) are divided by (1+DexBonus). If we consider BaseAttack the attack delay for someone with 10dex, then someone with 20dex will have an attack delay of BaseAttack/(1+0.3). PS. The max dex you can reach is 38 which will reduce the animations lengths to 54%.

With scaled content the difficulty of Longwatch Falls is comparable to the one of Crägholdt Bluffs. (however not as ridiculous as the drunken monk with dragonlike defenses who summoned his clones twice during the fight )

If you want to debuff multiple targets then yes, but against single targets the ranger is king

Scaled content? I will go to Longwatch falls quite soon I think. If you go to WM while you're over lv12 (I think...) the game is asking if you want to scale the encounters to your level or not (same thing for Thaos when you jump into the pit). The encounters become much more difficult (not sure if it affects the alpine dragon however )

Attack speed affects the recovery of all attacks. Melee speed affects only the recovery of melee attacks (including spells benefiting from Vulnerable Attack like Jolting Touch). Ranged speed affects only the recovery of ranged attacks (including ranged spells benefiting from Penetrating Shot like Minoletta's Missiles). Fire rate affects only the recovery of ranged weapons (bows, firearms, implements). The only thing that affects the attack animation is the dex.

A ranger with Lenas Er is much more effective because Twinned Arrows and Stunning Shots which lower defenses even further. The problem is most targets will be dead even before they will reach their lowest defenses...

The ones you find in the ogre cave aren't very dangerous. The ones you'll encounter in the Longwatch Falls can be very dangerous however, especially on scaled content.

I did a few tests too and the speeds from each weapons works for both and stacks multiplicatively. However there's a slight difference in frames compared to what I was expecting. A ranger can indeed perma dual wield without recovery while wearing any kind of plate and also use Vulnerable Attack and Cautious Attack (1.2*1.15*1.2*1.15*1.2*1.15+0.2=2.82).

Yes, it's 153%... As for Cautious Attack I consider it a feature... PS. Melee rangers can achieve perma 0% attack recovery with Swift Aim while wearing durgan reinforced leather+shield.

Ok, I did a few tests and durgan reinforced shields give indeed another 15% attack speed which stacks additively. In other words you can reach 158% bonus recovery while using a shield (that explains my observation from my previous post). I discovered also a nice bug involving Cautious Attack - the speed penalty will be suppressed when using any attack speed buff (meaning you get no speed reduction at all). A ranger with Swift Aim could use for example Cautious Attack without any drawback.

Bonuses from different categories are additive. If you add two weapons style you would have 138%+20%=158% recovery. For the shield enchantment I can't say yet how it works precisely, but I can say it allows swinging with no recovery while wearing durgan reinforced plate and using vulnerable attack. However it doesn't add speed,it's some kind of negative recovery working with abilities that slow your attack speed.

If you have a recovery time of, say, 50 frames and you reduce it by 100% (i.e. you reduce it by 50 frames), by definition you attack without recovery. If you reduce it by 138% (i.e. you reduce it by 69 frames) you still attack with no recovery because negative recovery makes no sense and I don't think the engine contemplates it If you wear a durgan-reinforced plate with Armored Grace, you're left with a 15% recovery (7.5 frames using my example), which gets further reduced by your DEX score. Playing at 60 FPS, 7.5 frames equal 0.13333333333 seconds, so probably no bar would appear over your character's head. How were your tests conducted? Mine were mere frame counting; the latest can be found here. I could never get the math to be 100% accurate (mostly because DEX doesn't really apply a full 3% action speed bonus for some reason) but it was fairly close. You don't need armored grace, just durgan reinforced plate - which has 35% recovery penalty - that's enough to see if you have some recovery or not... Of course negative recovery doesn't make you attack faster but it allows you to use abilities or armors that otherwise would slow you down... PS. For tests I used a character with 10dex and counted frames for various speeds and items combinations and then I found the formula.

Yes, it was me who tested that too... Back then they stacked with the chant. What makes you think that? Because I have tested... Also it's very easy to verify they're not additive - if they were additive you would have just 100% recovery reduction and you wouldn't be able to wear also a durgan reinforced plate and attack without recovery time.

With durgan reinforced armor because same enchantments on armor/clothes/accessories don't stack. Passive talents stack with everything.

Wanted to verify how durgan's enchantment stacks with different attack speed buffs and I found pretty surprising results. Here are my findings: 1. There are different categories of bonuses affecting the attack speed even if they share the same name in game: - armor recovery - durgan reinforced, Pilferer's Grip, Armored Grace - all stack additively with armor's recovery penalty - melee speed - Vulnerable Attack - ranged speed - Penetrating Shot (include spells) - two weapons speed - Two Weapon Style - fire rate - Vicious Aim, Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed (only ranged weapons) - reload speed - Gunner, Swift Aim, Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed - attack speed - Cautious Attack, Swift Aim, attack speed enchantments on weapons/items, all attack speed buffs from spells/potions - action speed - dexterity 2. Reload speed buffs from ranger and chanter don't stack anymore - reload speed reduction from Swift Aim will suppress the one from Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed - thus a ranger with Swift Aim and Gunner is the best you can get. 3. Attack speed buffs stack multiplicatively: - the best you could have is a weapon with attack speed enchantment (20%), durgan refined (15%), Gauntlets of Quickness (15%), Deleterious Alacrity of Motion (50%) which will give 1.2x1.15x1.15x1.5=2.38 bonus speed. That means it will remove up to 138% recovery from your weapon. 4. Attack speed enhancements from different categories stack additively: - chanter using Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, The Rain of Godagh Field durgan refined, Gauntlets of Swiftness, durgan reinforced plate and Penetrating Shot would have 100%-20%-138%+35%+20%=-3% ie no recovery with the bow - a dual wielder could also wear plate and use Vulnerable Attack with no penalty if he's stacking speeds

Being a good ranged chracter isn't just about damage. Ciphers are mainly casters using their weapons to recharge their focus. Blunderbusses are good just for fast recharging focus at the beginning of the fight because their dps is terrible. If you want to use a ranged weapon as your main damage then rangers and rogues can add to the table much more than any other class. Rangers are obvious because their abilities are centered around ranged weapons and by the end they become very versatile AoE damage dealers. Another interesting choice is the rogue for two reasons - their damage and their high critical chance. Rogues are basically snipers dealing high single target damage, but their high critical chance means bows like Borresaine or Sabra Marie become very strong in their hands adding more to the party than just damage.

At the beginning of the fight Thaos casts buffs on him and for over 1min he has something like 180 def. However you shouldn't focus on him anyway because you can't kill him first (when he's low on endurance he will cast a shield of invulnerability on him until one of the statues is dead and then comes back with full endurance). Also Twinned Arrows coupled with Persistance would kill them much faster. If you keep the statues moving while he's buffing himself he will buff just himself and the statues will be easy to kill. Also Thaos has unlimited spells, but he has a pattern which can be interrupted under some circumstances. PS. I suppose you skipped a lot of content if you already finished the game...

Well, for AoE attacks it doesn't help...

Yeah, there are 3 kinds of reflections: - Soul Mirror ability which reflects only misses (50%) - Reflection (Aila Braccia) which reflects only grazes (100%) - Reflecting (Golden Scales), Major Reflection (Badgradr's Barricade), Durgan-Reinforced (Shields) which reflect only crits/hits/grazes (10%). So a monk using Aila Braccia could, in theory, make himself immune to ranged attacks and at the same time reflect back 57.5% of all ranged attacks.

Heh, found a way to make this fight trivial... With a potion of Llengrath and Aila Braccia you have enough deflection to make his Cleansing Flame graze you at best and return back to the sender. Basically he will disable himself for the most of the fight and finally suicide himself... PS. The laguafeths also become trivial with this shield and on a monk it's probably even more hilarious.

If you were able to beat the ghosts in the throne room you should be able to reach lv4 too. For chest use cloth until you can enchant Gwisk Glass with durgan enchantment.