Raven Darkholme

A 15% chance on a gun build is pretty low tbh amd in most cases trolls stitched will heal you for more on avg, that being said Rekvu's prevents the damage from happening in the first place, while you might get unlucky and have a lot of procs in a short time. Also ofc since you are a bloodmage you could have scordeo's in 2nd weapon slot, proc it first and then prolong it with wall of drainhing weapon switch and use dd. (that does sound ver counterintuitive for a range dchar tho :P)

AA is either very buggy or if the way imbues work is intended just plain bad. Neither power level nor other buffs that affect your ranged attacks also affect your imbued spells, so they do not scale at all. (as far as I know, never picked AA due to multiple trusted sources telling me this, pretty sure @Boeroer also confirmed this) As for passives everything that increases your accuracy and also marked prey as an active will highly benefit your spells, pretty sure you already listed all of them in your last post.

That's what I confirmed tho. (but my english is horrible)

Ranger is a good mc for blood mage but I would not go Arcane Archer, either go classic ranger or sharp shooter. Still less "good" than a single class but the pet and some of the ranger passives synergize very well with mages.

Hm I never tried Fury Shaper but in my opinion a single class Fury Shaper is much better, because the PL8 Ward is just insane. Maybe the multiclass is more interesting as you say, but since the mage already gets a lot of spells and can be played in a very diverse way I kind of doubt it. (Not everyone is gonna use the same spell every encounter or at least you don't have to) I worded the line about the regen weirdly. What I meant is that the blood mage passive regen is already scaling with PL, so other sources of increased healing can make it very powerful, Dawnstars Blessing, items with increased healing, Mercy and Kindness from the chanter etc

If an item says ranged weapons it will not work for spells, if it just says ranged it will work with all "directed" spells (which for some weird reason are also hazard like walls, but won't be most ground aoes). edit: so in case that was unclear Acina's works with spells, ring of the marksman for example does not)

You can win the dig site fight only with cheese (one example: Other than that it is smart to just get non combat xp early, explore the world map for exploration xp, go to Sandswept ruins for trap disarm xp, do quests in Neketaka etc. If you are not on the ultimate you can get to at least level 17 without a single fight (even on the Ultimate you can get to 16 without fighting). I don't think there is a compact guide to soloing per se, there is however guides to non combat xp on this forum and there is plenty of videos of peoples runs, if you search for the ultimate video threat on this forum you will even find several people who posted their entire ultimate run.

Hm as far as i remember from Scordeo's recovery also applies to reload time, no recovery = no reload. Blood Mage multiclass can be really good in a solo play (even tho I would not recommend Arcane Archer), but in a party I honestly would keep it single class. The main reason to multiclass a blood mage would be better sustain, but in a party you should have enough sustain as single class. You still get healing from corrosive Siphon and later Concelhauts Draining Missiles. You can boost the PL scaling BM regen by quite a bit if you really want to, but you also have the option to use bdd potions with wall of draining (should not be needed if you have a priest in party). The PL 8 and 9 spells are just too powerful and even solo a single class bm is a serious consideration.

The things you consider cheese are not required whatsoever for a non ultimate PotD solo run. However killing the megabosses might involve some tactics I personally would consider cheese. If you are playing non iron man, you should be able to figure out non cheese ways to even beat the megabosses tho, but if you never played solo before it might take you either a long time to figure those out, or alternatively you could look it up on this forum. :P One of the most impressive Dorudugan kills I have seen, I personally would not consider cheese (but ofc everyone has different views on what is cheese) has been uploaded by jaggedjimmyjay which I think is @Waski on these forums but sorry if I mixed you guys up, I'm getting old. :P

I only discovered the brutal backlash glitch after my ultimate run with chanter was done and I wasn't gonna put myself thru another torture. No you encountered the same issues I had, focus gain can be a problem vs very sturdy enemies. I struggled a lot with Magran's faithful, but later found out there is a cheesy tree that blocks all but one of them from meleeing you, which makes the fight pretty easy. Cipher gameplay is just very tedious as opposed to smth like chanter, priest, druid or wizard and lategame even paladin kills groups faster. Its definitely not too squishy in my opinion if you go the shield route, but you have to keep spending focus for Instincts, which just makes the entire focus issue worse. That being said cipher has by far the safest dragon kills from all classes on an ultimate run, against Bog Dragons I even went cheesy and let them kill themselves, as long as you are level 14+ for the other dragons and 16 for bogs, there is no way to die vs them.

Personally I would reduce both Dorudugan's hp AND his resolve, but keep the immunities. The immunities make it so lower resolve is not gonna make him too easy all off a sudden, but atm certain classes like ciphers are utterly useless vs him with stuff like borrowed instinct. Him losing will would be fine, it's bloated anyway. maybe his deflection could be edited back to the original manually? edit: Oh and agree with what others said give hi more movespeed and make his specials go off faster.

Has anyone ever tried to kite Dorudugan with Helwalker, but instead of using multihitting ranged weapon use a battle axe with bleeding cuts via Instruments of Pain? While bleedinc cut ticks prolly don't add resonance, they still add significant dps so one would maybe need less stacks of resonance? No idea if that would actually speed up the fight or still be slower than multihitting ranged, but with dualwield axe + scordeo or maybe even 2 axes should still be a lot of hits

You want to combine Tactician with a resource hungry class. Bloodmage is probably the strongest of all of them, priests prolly come next. Both wizard and priest have summons btw, technically not as many as a chanter, but if you keep brilliant up (chillfog is quite great for it and ofc flank immune armor or weapon) you will always be able to resummon when a summon runs out. Also the wizard phantom gets the items you have quipped which makes for some very potent combos, the phantom is definitely stronger than any chanter summon.

Any ability won't break your weapon, but the monk can generate wounds without the need for brilliant, which can be useful. Fire is viable for most of the challenge, but since Dorudugan is the boss who requires most damage input (unless you are a single class monk) you have to plan your single target at least partially around that.

I didn't mean terrify instead of engagement but for disengaging attack shenanigans (if one wants to go that route, but lets be real what other use is there for engagement anyway lol). I don't think arcane dampener plays a big role vs paladin/mage, it will mostly affect the early stage of a fight, where paladin has more than half hp and the only things suppressed are skills that trigger when bloodied. On top of that lately i've just been interrupting dampeners it has such an insanely long casting time, and as you said there is quite a few things on top one could do vs it, but in a full party it will ahrdly ever be necessary and stuff like stoic steel wont be suppressed anyway (or the base ar).

why? all you need is terrify from the wizard, you never need max engagement anway cuz not enough enemies can engage you and as pala/wizard you still get enough.

Paladin/Wizard is the best tank, but honestly the others are all pretty close. The big thing about the paladin combo is the amount of AR you get from Stoic Steel + Llengrath's Safeguard. Combine this with a big DR body, and if you want to be silly Nemnok's cloak prolonged with wall of draining (can even self proc it if you are a bloodmage) With a 17 AR Patinated Plate you will get 28 AR without the ironskin of nemnoks, which would add another 5 for a certain amount of hits. On top of that the wizard will have many buffs for deflection on top of safeguard and with wall of draining you can prolong them indefinitely.

Yeah sorry I worded that wrong, because I replied to op who said So what I meant to say was full attacks with dw, but somehow my lazines won and I only typed full attacks.

Depends how willing you are to go crazy on buffs (and what kind of mc class you want to play). In this game it is insanely easy to get way over 200 deflection, but one of the easiest ways to do it is also somewhat tedious and really cheesy. Full attacks are less great in this game compared to poe 1 because of the damage penalty. Also once you reach late game there is a way to reach permanent 0 recovery with any weapons including greatswords, but it is as tedious and cheesy as the thing giving you deflection.

No afaik single class monks couldn't get past SSS, cuz it was too squishy, but never tested SSS with monk myself so idk if there is a workaround with Ooblit. (Most/all (??) people who did the Ultimate did SSS before Forgotten Sanctum tho.) Oh interesting, so in the end it does scale the same. edit: as multiclassed monk that is.

Skyward kick is also wounds based and knockup is really powerful because it is not an affliction, so no immunities vs it. Blade Turning is pretty op too in many fights like Dorudugan. @thelee Are you sure monastic has the same scaling as monk fists? Not saying it doesn't, just curious. But yeah, in general it doesn't really matter what to multi either a priest or blood mage with and as you say in case of monk single class can be an option, to me personally its too squishy for ultimate and I'd definitely prefer multi.

Priest + anything works perfectly. Monk is one of the better options to dual it with.

Against Megabosses I pretend the pet is Vela. (even called my pet Vela :P) Hit it out of combat with blunderbuss till Blight from Magran's Belt pops, Draining Wall. I have to look at Willbreaker, mostly used Battleaxes.

Dragon Thrashed technically is a linger (or at least was in PoE 1) but I think Brisk Recitation is coded to remove the linger for effects on you (or smth like that), either way it helps the chant being less ****ty than it is, doesn't make it exactly awesome tho, because of deadfires pen system and multitude of fire immunes and even some healed by fire. Monk/Skald get enough accuracy in melee, in fact IF you were willing to cheese with Wall o Draining/SoT and Scordeo in weapon swap any class will have plenty of accuracy, and even without that source hitting against deflection is quite easy in this game, fortitude is usually the hardest defense to attack. A really fun martial combo I've been trying out lately is Ranger/Bloodmage. It is really fun solo, but I imagine in a party it is a lot less useful compared to other ranger OR bm multis.

@Topic Sadly translating builds from poe1 to deadfire is almost impossible, as others have already answered. Not only did classes and abilities get changed but we also have new items. Deadfire is more of a buffing game than Poe1, a lot of enemies have way more hp than the mighty dragons in poe1, so oneshotting doesn't happen in the same way it used to happen. Even casters are more effective if they have a way to augment their auto attacks, since the most powerful modal - bleeding cuts is so strong it shreds thousands of hp in a minute if properly prebuffed. So in a way casters are stronger than in poe 1, they can output more dmg (which they actually need to because enemies with thousands of hp actually exist, unlike in deadfire where 900 hp was max) and can last longer in a fight because of infinite resources and healing/bdd. They just don't do their primary damage thru spells, but the main reasons for this aren't even the nerfs to spell damage (high tier spells actually do MORE damage than any poe 1 spell), but mainly the really weird implementation of ar and pen combined with the fact that other things do damage simply better than those spells.