Raven Darkholme

Well, as I said Blade Cascade is an extreme example, the difference between needing 10 seconds and several hours is quite big, don't you agree? There is plenty of ways to kill a tanky target faster than summons could , solo. Let's stay with Dorudugan and we have two pretty common examples how people used to solo him when he came out, one was sc monk stacking resonance with a multi hitting ranged weapon, takes like 20 minutes, still A LOT faster than summon only damage, tbf you're most likely gonna use monk clones as a distraction. (as far as I remember I did mention in the other thread I think summons are quite useful as distractions) Another option is a chanter multiclass using Essence Interrupter and kiting with many lives pass by, once again utilizing the summons as a distraction. In my own first Doru kill back when he came out I used WoD (tactician/bloodmage) however I did not use blade cascade, just buffed up as much as I could with chromoprismatic and it took me about 30 minutes, still a lot faster than summons. And ofc had I known about bleeding cut it would have been over in less than 10 minutes, even without blade cascade bleeding cut is super deadly.

Pretty sure @thelee used Avenging Storm scrolls for the stun component in his Ultimate.

Hm, interesting. You can still use ooze summons or avenging Storm scroll I guess.

You don't need SoF to make a build better than a summoner. What's weak about summons is their damage output, there is not enough ways to push it. Blade Cascade is an extreme example, but it does not need SoF at all, SoT or WoD are more than plenty to melt Dorudugan in 10 seconds. Meanwhile if you tried to kill it with summons exclusively it would most likely take you several hours. Now ik Doru is an extreme example too, but this holds true for any "tanky" enemy, the others just won't take quite as long. Also you're taking this a little bit out of context, I was comparing Poe summons to Baldur's Gate summons because the topic was about that very comparison.

And here I thought we already discussed this to death.

Oh yeah it works with monk too, but at level 17 you kinda rather want them to be distractions hehe. (would have been useful for leveling tho)

Maybe I'm trying to make a brief, yet detailed post about solo potd play... Where is your contribution to the topic at hand?

Dude what's wrong with you? I went out of my way to write a somewhat detailed way of how to play without strand, I'm really tired of having this same conversation over and over with you....

Active abilities usually are on the left side of your level up screen. So just for an "easy" example let's stay with spirit shield. Even tho you play monk (I'll get to that in a second) lets take paladin as an example because they have an active and passive for AR. Exalted Endurance is on the left side and an active, it will not stack with potion of spirit shield or even Gilded Enmity from Goldpacts. Stoic Steel is on the right and will stack with anything. Now the problem with deadfire, that to all rules there are exceptions, for example I don't remember 100% if the monk's modal for AR, Iron Wheel, actually counts as an active or not, I do think it does not stack but I don't 100% remember, and this is the case for many modals, unique abilities granted by items (which are named after abilities but do stack with abilities....). You almost always have to test if something stacks or not, which isn't always reccommended on a TCS save (keep in mind, that in pillars games you can ignore TCS by simply loading a completely different save, this will not give you an exitsave, I would still just create a console toon for testing, its much more practical :P) Brilliant recovers all resources including wounds (yes its cheesy) I don't have community patch, but if you use a sc monk you "need" strand of favour for brilliant anyway, as the cloak doesn't last long enough without SoT or WoD. So you should just use brillant from the gods and strand it, however a FF really doesn't need brilliant, you can either use hyleas talons or blunderbuss modal for resource regen. Both merchants in Periki sell ingredients, there is also a gem merchant in Serpent's which you need for some recipes. As to gearbefor Scordeo's sabre, I would just go for the pistol (pickpocket the key if you don't have enough mechanics for chest, lure merchant away from chest with spark cracker (just don't actually hit anyone with the cracker or they will turn hostile :P). You can either wield the pistol in your offhand and with the right upgrades it will give you recovery stacking) or you can cheese it and just use out of combat with strand for infinite duration. (not really necessary) At level 17 you should be able to just kill fire dragon tho, don't you have resonant touch already? All there is to the fight, keep dragon at distance with Dichtosmth Soul clones and hit the dragon with a blunderbuss for resonance stacks, once it has enough resonance to die just explode it. Probably best if you practice this with a non tcs console exported clone of your char. After dragon you unlock scordeo's sabre quite quickly, doesn't take much longer than 5 minutes.

You can, with a cone weapon. You don't really need to with Blade cascade tho, because they are untargetable during knockup, so they can't merge.

Decadency's run would be the most comprehensive source of knowledge. A very brief tldr would be: Get to level 13 for phantom via non-combat quests. Now you are able to equip your phantom with Mantle of the seven bolts or a similar cloak with on death explode effect. If you have Berath's challenge active (can be activated via console but needs iroll20s) you can start a fight with a trap, while being stealthed. You can also summon phantoms and remain stealthed. Since they explode on death you can kill MUCH higher level enemies with it, takes quite a bit of patience tho. Once you get to level 16 and Salvation of time, there is no need for phantoms anymore because you can just SoT brilliant from cloak and bdd for immortality. A different easier more cheesy way would be to use Strand of favour, but as Kaylon said it would almost be better to play a less op more fun class, because Skaen/wizard is already op without strand.

Bleeding Cut just melts rathuns, it doesn't even matter what kind of char you play or if you have Scordeos, heals just get negated and it's not even close.

If you play "just" a regular TCS without Magran's Fires, scrolls of withdraw and potions of invisibility are extremely useful, since they reset a fight completely. (If your positioning is right you will also be able to stealth and completely refill resources). Just for the sake of boosting your combat capabilities potion of ascension is by far the most powerful, closely followed by insubstantial form for tankiness and perfect aim for offense. A lot of the other potions like spirit shield can be very good too, however the stacking in this game is very restricted so with those type of potions you have to be very aware if any of your actives already supplies you with a stat that might not stack with a potion. Bombs and poisons are very situational and got nerfed heavily, they are not required, you might miss out by not using them, but I don't use them and am doing mostly fine. Ingredients are mostly aquired the same way than in Poe 1 as far as merchants go, you don't have Caed Nua for growing your own ingredients, but buying from merchants is as effective, traveling is just more lenghty so it is easier to just reset Neketaka merchants by resting for 2 days. The skills aren't really nerfed compared to Poe1, the whole class and ability system is just different and takes getting used to. A poe1 char will never be as powerful as a Poe2 char but the enemies in Poe2 have FAR more hp (some random mobs in Po2 have similar hp to "bosses" on poe1) and since the AR system is very intimidating at first abilities will feel weak if you fight while being relatively undergeared/leveled. Unique items are just insanely powerful in deadfire, so once you have certain pieces of gear and a char customized to work with those you will feel very strong. The forbidden fist is a very good example, you can get unlimited resources without any form of brilliant cheese, but ofc nothings stopping you from getting brilliant on top of that. Combine this with whispers of the wind and you become an unstoppable powerhouse, it just takes time to get there. (but can be done entirely without combat if you so wish)

What do you mean? Knockup op af vs ooze.

You can go to Deadlight and Dunnage first, this will open up more xp in Neketaka and make your later progress faster too. You could als visit Sandswept RUins before going to Deadlight but that would just be for disarming traps for xp and you'd most likely have to respec into full mechanics before leaving Neketaka.

There is a difference between hireling/companion quests in your stronghold and Azurro. The items from the stronghold quest are much better than Azurro items (or at least some of them) so it's kind of a shame you can't get them solo, while the Azurro items are kinda nice but not that great for most classes.

Eothas priest also gets sunbeam.

I said Carnage tho! You will make a fine redditor, reading only half the post and downvoting!

You can play the priest with absolutely anything (including chanter), idk about noob friendly, but once you get salvation of time you are playing the best class in the game.

Time to get downvoted.

Apart from the fact that people on reddit are .... special: How did you read carnage applying body body blows out of that thread? Ik the title is very misleading but the guy never claimed that anything but gouging strike got applied in an aoe. Any Aoe weapon applies abilities on Aoe, just not modals.

If you want an easy to play class just go priest of eothas/tactician. Sunbeam will be your choce for flank (blind also flanks) most of the time, but it requires some micromanagement, pull melees towards ranged enemies, so you can hit all of them efficiently. Rush items with immunity to flanked, early on it will be Squid's Grasp, later there is more choices, Gipon Prudensco is quite op but takes a little to obtain (I usually kill mad Morena and everyone down there). Mule Kick is another op flanking tool, it also helps you with micromanagement, flanking melee enemies but also making you "immune" to their disengage while they're knocked up. With a brilliant fighter/priest you can Salvation of time extend either your Unbending (heals will stack and eventually heal for thousands) or barring deaths door for avoiding to die to wounds.

Ye 0.2 was the fastest I got too, shame.

Meh. Frenzy is suppressing any source of frenzy, even if it is not named frenzy by using smth like Amra, unequipping quicksaving and reloading. frenzy ward stacks with frenzy and so does bloodlust and i suppose any other action speed buff, however 0 attack time seems impossible since the action speed modifiers are multiplicative with the base so even on a slow 2h with .7 base 33% from 20 dex will only be -25%, frenzy will only be 20% etc. I guess maxing dex would have the greatest effect and maybe get to .1 attack time with a fast weapon, but once again since the base speed will be lower the effect of the action speed will also be less. (at least thats how I understand it i'm not exactly a math guy :P) edit: 35 dex gets me to .3 with 2h and .2 with a dagger... I could add nature's bounty for 25% (aka 20%) but I doubt it does anything, 2 separate 10% buffs (aka 9%....) do nothing at all, will test later.

Yes and on the damage type. A cheesy way to self apply it would be concelhaut's draining missiles, which DO have an attack resolution, but since they deal raw damage they don't trigger it.