Raven Darkholme

There is quite a few effects that can be triggered out of combat and will still end after combat, not saying it's the same for Counterattack cuz I haven't tested it, but for example it's what makes infinite deflection stacking with Gipon Prudensco less op, because you have to repeat it after every single fight.

I have noticed several times that deadeye breaks the stacking, so maybe most orders with deadeye at the end are fine?

Filthy casul

Oh yeah the info is very useful.

Barbarian.

No, you can make almost any order work I tried that extensively. If you get stuck on a specific drug just take literally any other drug sof a couple times save and reload and go back to the drug that didn't work. This is not a puzzle its one of many bugs, lol. The chromoprismatic buffs can be kept without having the staff equipped, as with pretty much any item related buff in this game the name of the buff changes to the name of the item if you take it off, quicksave and reload. This will take off any metaphysics scaling however, so the buff will be pretty small.

Very interesting i used to be able to stack each kill fed, but then when I did it somewhat recently all of a sudden it didn't stack anymore (however my inspirations were mostly from items). The perfect drug order is definitely not by chance in the sense that it will most likely work 100% of the time. It's just never been intended by the devs that drugs stack.

I don't really agree. Even without SoF you can reduce your recovery enough to make bleeding cut worth on ANY enemy type except slash immune ones ofc but thats one single ooze type thats super rare as far as I remember. Underpenning is not as bad as you might think with bleeding cut, because this game has a "minimum" damage of 1 and bleeding cut stacks for 70 seconds, which is quite insane. (in most cases you will never see one damage per tick, battle axe base damage is not THAT pathetic. :P) edit: also if you are wizard with WoD it's kinda counterintutitive not to use WoD to prolong scordeo's blade cascade, just put battle axe in main hand and scordeo's in offhand.

I wouldn't say two handed is better for SA in any way or form, first of all you are attacking slower with two-hand while getting more focus per hit but the overally focus gain is very similar. But you also gotta consider your gameplan is not just about SA, but killing the enemy fast, if you're killing too slow you obviously have a problem. Bleeding Cut massively speeds up your kills, it has a dot effect that does raw damage just like SA. There is also a 2 handed Battle Axe for Sale in Dunnage if you're really keen on 2h. As @Boeroer pointed out modals don't stack with actives in this game and wizard has a lot of deflection active buffs, so quarterstaff is pretty much your least ideal weapon choice. edit: one thing I forgot to mention: In this game your PEN has much more impact on your dmg per hit than your base weapon damage, your damage can get a penalty up to 75% if you underpen. The only answers to this are either constantly switching weapons to match enemy AR (not really recommended), constantly critting to ensure you get +50% pen (also not really practical) or using smth like bleeding cut with raw damage or as @dgray62 mentioned draining touch with grimoire switch trick (does only work if you did NOT learn the spell) just because its base damage is so insane and it does a less commonly resisted damage type.

Using a battle Axe with bleeding cut is the answer to almost any damage problem and ofc Soul Annihilation. It profits from them, not too sure what kind of synergy you're looking for?

Cipher/Wizard is BY FAR the best mc for a cipher and soul blade would be the best cipher sub for sure. One of the most glorious spells for cipher/wizard is Pull of Eora. Succ in the enemies to reliably hit all your Aoes. Now do it with Soul Blade, Citzals Spirit Lance and Soul Annihilation.

You honestly just need a chanter and cipher in the party, Kana and GM are ok. One thing I did not realize back when I made those 6 chanter vids, I did not have my chants set up correctly, so a single chanter can actually do almost the same dmg then those 6 combined did (Kana will do less, cuz not maxed Int and MI, but you can push him quite a bit with items and food ofc). All you need to do is put dragon chant several times in a row in your edit chant window, that will stack them together even with a single chanter (the higher level the chanter is and more int they have the higher it will stack, up to 4 times) For GM you really just need 2 specific things for an "afk" party before you fight your first dragon or even just spirits you need psychic backlash, because despite the description it procs infinite times per encounter. And then if you have a high defense tank defensive mindweb will be super op, just get enough focus by alpha striking with twin stings and your whole party will be pretty much immortal if your tank has good defenses. Those are tips to have a party with little micro, ofc you can do many more things with a cipher and the rest of your party, all depends how much micro you wanna do, if you want to do no micro at all, this will still carry you thru potd.

Ye I get very close to 1 fps even in super short fights.

This, I only ever use it with Sasha.

Here is a small proof of concept vid, just slapped some random gear on a testchar, there is definitely some improvements possible:

Tactician gets confused when they are flanked. The build works real well and I think it's even better than Barb/chanter because you selfproc unbending with the fogs, getting 500 hp in seconds before enemies even hit you and ofc cleving stance is quite nice too. Streetfighter sounds nice too, but it would be way more input, since you have to manually kill skellies, while Tactician only does that once at the start of the fight to get confused. (you can either shoot an enemy with powder burns from stealth or just cleaving stance full attack a skelly in combat, both will instantly confuse you, after that every ai summoned skelly pack will keep the loop going and ofc standing on the chill fog blinds you which also flanks and as streetfighter flank = confused)

Ye I just tried out Skald and it doesn't seem to proc. That being Said the Beckoner/Tactician is just a beast, sadly it completely and utterly destroys my frames. The chillfog accuracy will be boosted by weapon accuracy buffs like Adaptive too, so even tho it goes vs Fort it's not bad whatsover, especially since you get many stacking fogs very quickly. I just didn't dare try a megaboss yet, because I don't think my pc can handle a 2 minutes or so fight. Other fights are usually over in less than a minute.

Making a pretty fun build atm, my testchar is a Beckoner/Tactician. I'm dualwielding Grave Calling with Chilling Grave together with Hand Mortar and have Powder Burns on to confuse myself and have Mob Stance for instantly killing all my skellies. However I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to be better to go Troubadour for faster Skelli chant. My main concern is me not oneshotting skellies, but also the single skellie from chant having less impact than the ones from invocation. However Troubadour would also mean faster invocation buildup? edit: I just realized, that for all intents and purposes the game seems to treat chilling grave as melee attack, so maybe Skald would be insane?

Ascendant is not that great for solo fighter/cipher, you're much better off going Soulblade. (Ascendant is great in a party with SoT)

This is just Deadfire at it's finest: Something appears to be the rule of thumb, but then you just find countless exceptions and nothing makes sense anymore, see also passives and actives, stacking of buffs etc. As @Not So Clever Houndalready mentioned it's Weycs wand from Forgotten Sanctum, which btw with a chanter and sasha Singing Scimitar and Brilliant already on the chanter you can infinitely proc out of combat, but ofc one time is enough, if you then extend it.

Well solo it's useless because you need an allied target. Also it's combat only and only 1x per rest so it can't be extended beyond a single fight. On top of that as you said it requires you to kiil hauani so after that there's not much combat left. That being said +4 pl is quite nice, combine it with the +3 from FS (which can be extended infinitely since it's out of combat) and a couple of other PL buffs and you might even have an argument for not doing a no rest run at least after killing Hauani.

Why go wizard/priest, when you can steal all priest spells with single class wizard?

Sounds nice for sure, ofc wizards and most casters have better cc, but awesome for non casters for sure. Why not just charm with a cipher.

You can have all drugs, I already posted a vid where I have all of them on me (the grimoire cheese one). Just have more than one of each drug and when it occurs that you can't stack a specific drug do not reload, take a different drug, then save and reload. It never took me more than 2 of each drug to stack all of them but I think with 3 of each you're probably safe.

Most times you can just use an adra potion unless you don't have one ofc, I usually can craft 7+ because there is no way you ever use all of them. ... Well yes, completely depends on your strat for the run, in my last run I didn't fight until level 17 and you can even not fight until 19 in the very least, most likely even 20 with slippers. ... Ye reforge is a two edged sword, it's kinda fun for a non TCS run, but for Ultimate its kinda risky, unless you have like over 200 will I guess and can't be dampened. (low affliction duration will not help all it takes is 0.0001 sec of being dampened)