Raven Darkholme

You can get accuracy gauntlets +5 early on in Raedrics, just check the thread in this forum, whete you can download a file with all the dates for specific drops in random loot table chests. Also I can only encourage you to use warbow, it's not only similar dps to heavy weapons, but also more reliable focus. Take marksman early and biting whip. Wood elf is an awesome class for ciphers distant advantage also works on spells.

You pretty much thought of an awesome strategy I was too lazy to come up with myself, but I saw the theoretical capability of EE, thats why I opened this post. As to FF, as soon as somebody said"Echo doesn't do FF", I was like wtf, didn't it do FF before? Many people denied it ever was, but I'm pretty sure it was at least in 1.03 maybe in 4 also.

His tail slap also hits ridiculously hard and targets Reflex. On a party member with 135 Reflex and 21 DR to the attack, it "grazed" my party member for 175 points of damage. That said, I find it ironic that you point out Low Dex as a problem. Why? 1. You get +30 to Reflex from sword and shield style and an Orlan with max Perception can get +24 to Perception, which results in a total of +58 to Reflex. (+28 from having 24 Perception.) 2. Dumping Dex to 3 and adding +2 from an item results in a -10 to Reflex from the stat. Even if you have 10 Dex and take no penalty, you're still going to get damaged by that breath weapon, grazed by the melee attack, or grazed by that tailslap - all fairly often while in melee. (Depending on if you're behind the dragon or in front of the dragon. A party might have 2 tanks and the the dragon can target any of them. Plus, I've noticed that enemies can and do target Rogues, even though they have been engaged by the tank. This particularly occurs when knocked prone or some such effect occurs to the tank.) 3. The net gain from Perception, Dex, and Sword and Shield Style is +48 to Reflex. Not too shabby. 4. From what I've seen, having done the fight now, It's better to have larger Endurance Pool from Constitution to absorb that damage, with potions to heal and a priest at the ready, than to have a 10% lower chance of being grazed. Even at 170 to either Deflection or Reflex and 25 DR, you'll still take some serious damage from grazes. You have to choose something - you can't have it all. (At least, without consoles commands or hacks.)Your Fort will be low if you lower Might to raise Dex and you'll have a harder time overcoming the DR of the Adra Dragon. Your Health and Endurance will be low if you lower Constitution to raise Dex. If you lower Resolve, you would have lower Deflection and Will. And, you won't be able to lower Int. So, which stat would you lower to gain Dex and why? If I could, I'd have 24 in all stats, but that's not possible in normal play. We have to choose what we max and we have to accept any trade-offs we get for not maxing one stat or another. Are you advocating dumping a different stat or just not dumping Dex and, therefore, not maxing Might or adding to Con? What is your plan/build that gives better defenses, in total? First you talk about soloing and now all of a sudden its a party with priest? Sword and shield also applies to deflection so your point is moot. What you say about reflex could also be said about def (having the stat dumped to 3 don't matter) but it shows you haven't actually done the fight solo yourself.

Since you keep referring to soloing Adra. Specifically in that fight dumped Dex is a bad idea. He also has a breath attack which hits even harder than melee.

Rings of unshackling if you already got hit by insect plague. Charm to keep them from even casting it.

Shield does not affect spells, cautious attack does.

It's also to note that summoning and resummoning Phantoms is faster than the other summons. Don't wanna cast echo when the fight is over.

Ok, sorry and no hard feelings, I will edit the post, deleting sadly doesn't seem to work here.

That was not intended as insult. You can't even express if you find something funny these days. A similar jab might as well have hit me.

*bad joke* please delete

Afaik one handed works with a shield. Not sure about stacking though.

I don't know where you get b) from. Afaik 2 enemies are enough to flank a fighter with maximum engagement.

In that fight I had no resting or food boni, so "only" 20 MI.

If you have a full party full CC is enough. If you solo massive damage is the way to go.^^

Yeah my first solo was with a cipher who had only 95 def with level 12 and way less before. If you can dish out enough damage you don't need a tank. Game is just more enjoyable with one or two tanks I feel.

You can't avoid getting flanked except by not getting surrounded btw.

You do not engage period if you don't attack in melee.

You don't get stat points on lu. Int is most important followed by MI than DEX. IN gives you duration AND AoE.

Hard is not for veterans but rather for players who touched any tactical game at all and liked it. Even PoTD is too weak for BG veterans. You might restart your character if you are a perfectionist and want to restart PoTD all of a sudden. (Like I did, lol)

It's 4 but for paladins F+C is maxed out at 3.

1. Use War Bow. Since you are not soloing damage type matters less and war bow damage is nice. Don't take any bonus level spells, rather grab offensive talents like focus, penetrating shot and marksman.

Yep that too. I didn't take Hold the Line this time like I did last time. People were saying its a waste of a talent. But I know I was not having this issue on my last run. Granted it was on Hard not PoTD so less enemies. Hold the line doesn't work if you don't attack. If you're prone, heal or similar it doesn't work. It truly is a waste of talent because you will always engage more enemies than you can. Enemies are mostly stupid and will engage your tanks if you place yourself well. With the bad pathing as it is right now you will find a safe spot for your squishies in almost any fight, you don't need doors.

What other perspective do you feel that they use? If nobody complains we don't need to fix. I feel like high DT enemies are especially vulnerable to it, since the echo relentlessly rolls every second and sometimes with 50+ damage, nobody has that high DT.Ofc there are other too strong abilities, but can you spam them the same way? Most certainly not. DT clearly hurts beams more than any other types of attack, since it fully applies to each tick (unlike DoTs where each tick is only reduced by 25% of DT or single hit abilities where it only applies once). 50+ damage is a bit of an exaggeration, maybe on a lucky crit. Overall it doesn't do that much damage to enemies with 20-30 DT, Granted there are not that many of these. As for spammability - well, chanter's Dragon Trashed does like 160 aoe damage over time passively with good stats and some abilities like rogue's deathblows add a ton of damage passively as well. As I said, yes, it's one of the OP abilities, but there are tons of these in the game. So Mad, I just did the Cail fight with my 3 chicks group and again massively used echo. Killed all drakes with it including Cail Against Cailk who has a whopping 24 DT I regularly did over 20 dmg all hits no crits. One graze even did 16, the highest hit did 29. Crazy about it is the number of hits grazes I land on that mofo without any debuffs or accuracy selfbuffs I destroy him in the duration of 2 beams. The damage done by my bow and my pally + fighter is not even nearly on the same level. (cipher level 9)

Or you just cast echo right at the start of every fight and recast only if either there are many enemies in line of it or if your squishies get attacked. You can build focus while Echo is active so it isn't really a waste.

Cail the silent: https://youtu.be/zdLA6Pibl5w?list=PLzscMCQ3321tXXG7MbJa_j40-puzt3BAk