Raven Darkholme

So I tested Firebrand on Crägholdt map and I'm sorry to be blunt but it sucks. Damage isn't higher than bittercut, but since I neither respecced for flame damage talent nor had flame damage chant on I'm sure that can be changed. My main beef with it is the accuracy, which dropped to 75 from 98 I had before. Ofc I also didn't have 0 recovery and might I add also quite slow recovery in comparison to for example the Blade from the endless path.

Drifting to far ot here so it's my last post, but however one argues be it damage "beast" or different damage types there are plenty of weapons superior to Ravenwing in the endgame, but if you choose it for the looks/rp thats perfectly fine, me I love the look of dual bittercuts and Gwisk Glass on my cipher and the damage is the best ingame.

Just the longer durations are totally worth it not only on debuffs but self buffs.

Um Ravenwing only has 1 damage type, that's why I recommended a hammer for 2 damage types. Combined with bittercut thats 4 damage types.

Yes, that's the name. Your paladin has 18 RES right? With that shield, and shield talent the survivablity should be great on the paladin if you have def and protection ring.

If you don't use a shield I would not use the talent it only works for shields. The question is if you want to support your group, +5 defense from the Gilded Vale shield is nothing to scoff at and as already mentioned your damage will really come to play with SA and be pretty mediocre before. Weapon and shield is an awesome talent, since it buffs both deflection and reflex and doesn't steal attack speed.

I once thought about doing a party that simply is built around giving the rogue all the support to constantly land max dmg hits with a heavy ranged weapon. Mainly wanted to see a) how high the damage can get and b) how viable it is for not only 1 chosen but most encounters. But then I thought why waste my time while a cipher also supports the party and doesn't need a party built around it.

Haven't been to Def Bay in a while but I will give firebrand a go, I have 200k anyway and since I haven't been to Cragholdt yet that seems like a nice and underleveled place (I'm maxed lol) to test out stuff.

The 2 opening shots with FoD are always nice. On low level try to always get a pistol/bb/arquebus/arbalest shot in to engage not only great for FoD but also many other chars in your group. But yeah your main damage will come from immolation but even tho it's quite late, Kana and GM were always lower in total damage than my paladin in my trio, GM mostly because she comes quite late and I had to use a hireling before also stuff like disintegrate doesn't seem to count for more than the initial damage. Between 9 and 13 Kana never caught up in the statistics but I'm afraid those are not representative because ticks just don't seem to count and dragon memed chant has ticks, too. Right now I understand the high damage of the pala cause of my 24 MI without any food or resting bonus (just Garodh's chorus) SA hits like a truck.

Hm, then I'd probably combine shatterstar with slashing damage is there an interrupt weapon for that, too?

Not quite sure about spirit shift but it should. The order in itself doesn't matter but at least for paladin the choices you do in dialogue also matter for hireling. You can always dumpo Res on backliners, for Con I wouldn't go below 10 but that's just personal preference and safe, not absolutely necessary if you know what you're doing.

Yeah dragon slashed coupled with 20+ Int destroys any high dr targets by stacking (don't use invocattions until it's stacked. What level are you? If you have reaping knives with GM cast it on the barb or Devil and you should destroy them, too. Aloth's summoned weapons should also do wonders. If you are quite low level Ectopsychic Echo works well if you have Mi bonuses on GM.

Couldn't find a lance or pike doing a quick search, but before you are durganized you will be quite slow with a 2hander compared to a dagger.

It doesn't? I can't seem to find the corresponding patch notes, does it target deflection now?

Well I'd say Mosquito is flat out best being a dagger and all, if you duplicate it with Helwax I don't even wanna begin to imagine what a barbarian with carnage will do to whole encounters if built for attack speed and interrupt.

Yea I noticed that the other day too, when you talk to companions in Brighthollow their quest advances as far as pure dialogue goes, so if Durances doesn't require you to go anywhere you're totally fine with completing the quest that way. And you also get to send him on stronghold quests, wouldn't want to miss that dual Bittercut.

I didn't yet but I might test it a little later. I looked at firebrand not too long ago, but I don't like it hitting reflex since most dragons have quite low deflection compared to reflex (Adra has slightly higher def but both almost the same, one of the Bog dragons has insane deflection, but you can charm that one) Once I switch to melee my focus built is insane anyway, especially as soon as I have Time parasite, I've almost stopped going for reaping knives but it's good fun against less squishy targets, I just can't spend the focus anymore. Main "problem" is focus build before mindweb, but I have a ****ty exceptional arquebus and I don't wanna go pistol cuz range. It's still not a problem since worst case scenario I have 75+ish focus and one melee strike easily builds enough.

Casting reaping knives on the chanter whilst having 0 attack recovery also makes it very viable in melee, but then again that counts for everyone even rogue. In the initial post I missed the part about the op saying paladins suck. As others here stated, that couldn't be farther from the truth. The paladin has always been an awesome tank and group supporter. With the addition of sacred immolation it also became one of the best damage dealers, if you max Might and go with high Int. With the addition of Defensive Mindweb to the cipher a "tank" generally got raised in usefulness by a massive amount, since that spell transforms your whole party in a tank, ofc each retaining their unique abilities. My paladin in my trio party is not even optimised and has in combat with the use of Llengraths potion (you only need to use it on the tank for mindweb) 152 deflection 172 Fort (she is also Coastal Aumaua, wears boots of stability and little savior), 162 Reflex and somewhere in the 140 will range. No other class has this widely spread defenses and even tho it's useless if the rest of your party gets roasted, with mindweb now you have the amazing ability to transform all your party into monsters. The paladin already supported the pparty with various abilities this is just a further form of support. Not possible ofc ithout the cipher who is also amazing support, whilst being a vicious attacker. (And yes my high defense paladin still has maxed Might and almost maxed Int and with SA still a damage monster)

Whoops, maybe I should have tested it before spouting nonsense. I assumed since it doesn't show suppressed if you hover your mouse over the character and since it does 2 different effects (attack speed steal and straight out buff) it wouldn't suppress each other which is partly true but the part about 50% attack speed is suppressed, my bad. At least by jumping ingame and testing it on GM I can confirm she also rocks with tidefall even tho slightly less than with dual bittercut.

Oh another fellow German. You don't miss a lot of content from the companion quests, Kanas for example is pretty ****ty and so is GM's. Never used Durance for long he annoyed me too much. :D Yes you can start playing without the expansion it just gets added to your save.

edit: I'm an idiot.

In BG I never used Keeper before I completed the game without it (didn't even know about it then). But when you go back to an old game and wanna have some fun with it you might get a lil crazy about what your char should look like. In PoE I haven't used the console for a long while and haven't even downloaded Keeper, but it certainly is helpful for correcting mistakes (less so since respecs, that's why I stopped using it) or adapting companion stats. Sure you could also build uber chars to get your achievements easier but let's be honest the game is a lot flatter than BG and it would be a lot less fun. (No illegal multiclasses and so on)

First of all your post had me laughing prtty hard, good job. (In a very positive way) If you really want to do a lot of damage with your weapon I can only advise cipher. Cipher is less squishy than rogue and also buff itself. But I'm not gonna lie it's not a char you learn how to melee with in 1 day, ranging is a lot more inituitive (and less fun). Also you get to use powers which are ofc partially spells, but you could just use buffs and debuffs to accentuate meleeing.

If you own the game nobody can inhibit you from using a savegame editor. Oh the crazy characters I built with Shadowkeeper just for fun.

This theory about full attacks sounds to me like it only works in quite low level with a) targets having less health and b) there not being enough targets to use up those abilities. I don't think a level 16 rogue has as much slaying power as a cipher of the same level, even if the cipher only uses a handful powers for selfbuff and then stops using focus and keeps meleeing (which is ofc not advised). This gets crazier if you solo and the rogue can't easily deathblow anymore, since flanking only works with summons and you have to inflict other afflictions.