bigwillystyle

This is great!

Strange bug (?) I encountered yesterday. I booted up 2.1 for the first time and made a Nature Godlike Lifegiver / No Subclass Sorcerer. After making to level four, I self-buffed with Infuse Vital Essence, shape-shifted and then cast Moon's Light. I was getting a +40% PL buff (+8 power levels). Should have been +6 (+5 Lifegiver, +1 Nature Godlike). After playing around with it for a bit, it seemingly looks like Lifegivers are getting +2 PLs to healing, +5 extra when shifted, for a total of +7. I thought that it worked differently in the past.

Well darn it

I'd probably go with Lifegiver instead of Animist. As long as you're planning on casting Moon's Light and Moonwell, it's almost a no-brainer. I used to be meh on Lifegiver, but then I tried it. I'd probably go Lifegiver / Cat Form. Start every combat by shifting into Cat and activating Cat Flurry [available every encounter!], buff up quickly, cast Moon's Light with a whopping +6 PL [+5 Lifegiver, +1 Nature Godlike]. Then go to town. You can probably get all your buffs / debuffs out along with a round of attack spells. I might also consider moving Dex down to 10 and putting the rest into Might / Int / Per (whatever). With Fleet Feet and Cat Form Flurry, you'll be throwing out spells super fast. Now granted that's only for as long as Cat Form lasts, but still ... Other than that, your spell choice looks solid to me. I would be hard pressed not to use Nnigauth's grimoire for Shadowflame, but YMMV. I actually really like this build. EDIT: I'd also pick up the Spine of Thicket Green early on for another +2 PLs to Druid healing. That's +8 PL while shifted. +8!

Still bugged. Ugh.

I double checked with frenzy and while clarity suppresses confused it does not affect the self damage

Of those, Vigorous Defense does stack specifically with Mirror Image. I did not test with Displaced Image. A Battlemage or a Swashbuckler (Trickster) can hit some wild deflection values.

I think that for running dual mortars, I'd probably prefer a Shadowdancer for the afflictions. Scout Maia also work well for that type of build.

With Dance of Death / Enduring Dance, it works fine. Shattered Pillar would be kind of useless with this build. Most of the point of going Helwalker is to get the extra point of might per wound, to maximize damage output of the Arquebus. It's also capped at 5 wounds. I'd probably go ordinary no subclass before I went Shattered Pillar.

I ultimately did start running a Druid multiclass with a Jedi flavor, but went with Ascetic instead. Lifegiver / Helwalker. Once you get to lvl 5, it feels unstoppable. Get Moon's Light and Firebrand up, profit.

All of my fighters and fighter multis are 10 con; I've never noticed an issue. I'd probably have to play around to see how I felt about losing 7 deflection, but I can't imagine its that big a hit.

The OP made that decision deliberately and explained why.

Casita is realistically capped at 10-11 deflection. .25 points of deflection per intimidate. That is insane?

I would try to do a Shadowdancer Monk/Streetfighter build similar to Teesinz's Mirke build: https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/8t0qn6/mirke_the_speed_demon_shadowdancer_leveling/ I would make a few changes: - Armor: Bloody Links with Armor Rating upgrade - 2nd weapon: Tuotilo's Palm - Ring: Swap one out for drunkard's regret I am thinking of trying this myself, but I've already played Shadowdancer once. It's such a good class.

Good to know. In that case, I'd say Gipon Prudensco is criminally under-rated - should be right up at the top with the other big 4. +25 deflection vs. disengagement attacks, +10 deflection, +20 reflex, steadfast inspiration to open combat, immunity to flanked. Can't see why we'd put the Casita Samelia's up there and not Gipon Prudensco.

Dumb question probably, but how long has this been the case? I used this on my Shadowdancer run in 1.2 and it worked fine - I had consistent stacks of +10 Defl. and +20 Reflex. When did this change?

Lot of drama in these threads, but I didn't see a lot to disagree with , other than Amalina's Legacy being a bit lower than I would expect. Not as powerful as the Red Hand, but still quite a bit better than ranked.

Did you use your Frostyboy build for those vids? Haven't had a lot of time to play lately but giving serious thought to trying it out.

That's a lovely set of spell selections!

I actually retract what I said. I read through the second thread and saw that the poster did use a Wanderer / Red Hand Build for ~7,000 DPH. Knowing the poster, that build was almost certainly optimized. But to be that competitive against builds that primarily AoE says something.

I also agree that the Red Hand is not overpowered. I think it is absolute top tier for single target DPS, but in a total damage world is outclassed by AoE weapons. That's an important distinction.

Respectfully, Kaylon's posts do not address the "more weapon DPS" question, and if anything Kaylon explicitly shows that the Red Hand should be better overall, except against pierce immune enemies. Remember that his analysis assumed you would be applying the Guilty Conscience boost to the bow, which is clearly a bug. And also respectfully, the build analyses you posted were for a Cipher using the Red Hand, and not for a character build optimized to use the Red Hand, which would presumably be a Scout or a Wanderer. I am not 100% sure how to replicate a good DPH test, but open to learning. You're comparing apples to oranges.

Kaylon explained how the Aamina's Legacy bow gives superior DPS to the Red Hand here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/104928-ansalons-ranged-weapon-tier-list/?p=2085783 Other players have run tests and showed that builds using the Kitchen Stove and other non-red-hand weapons can dramatically outperform Red Hand builds and posted the data in these threads: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/104892-build-witch-the-banshee-build-very-high-damage-berserkerascendant-rdps-caster/ https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/104924-dps-tests-of-some-classesmulticlasses/ Presuming you don't exploit the fact that you can swap the Red Hand around the whole party to give everyone the buff, and just use it "normally" on one character, then the Red Hand is a second-tier ranged weapon at best, but makes up for it in ease of use -- it doesn't require a complex build or positioning micromanagement, and it's got very high Pen so you don't have to think about that part of the game much either. It's not so much overpowered as it is convenient. I like it on low to mid (8-15) level ciphers before you manage to collect Eccea's and the Kitchen Stove and other guns that do non-piercing damage, because it's easy to carry an arquebus in one weapon set and a quarterstaff in the other and have two solid "ranged" damage type options. Late game though it's deprecated because the damage boost it gives is insufficient to top out your focus bar on an alpha strike -- you need AoE or fly-through multitarget to do that. I'll agree that the persistent Red Hand bonus should vanish from a character if the weapon is placed into inventory or equipped by a different character. But that's the only nerf it really needs. Separately, I looked at those threads, and that's not what they showed at all. They showed that an Ascendent Cipher that used the Red Hand - at max level - to reach Ascended state generated lower damage overall than other classes. That was due to reaching Ascended status more slowly than other classes. I feel like the threads you cited don't address the actual damage of the Red Hand, but rather on the damage an Ascended Cipher is able to do. I do agree that it is obvious that a Cipher using a weapon with multi-hit capability [or Thunderous Report] should hit Ascended significantly faster than one using the Red Hand, but that doesn't address the question.

It depends on what you're using the weapon to accomplish, right? If you're using the Red Hand to top off your focus bar, then clearly weapons that hit more than one target are going to be superior. If you're focusing on AoE damage, I don't think the Red Hand could hold a candle to a well built Frostseeker build. But if you're using the Red Hand for single target DPS, it is in my opinion without question unmatched, particularly when built for it. That's one that I don't see a mathematical case against. When I play with the Red Hand, I have a total attack cycle of <2 seconds per shot (activation x2, one reload). At Arquebus base damage, that is ridiculous. Kaylon's analysis disregarded penetration, which is not trivial. Yes, you can get additional penetration. But any additional penetration you can get for Aamalina's, you can also get for the Red Hand. Kaylon's analysis also assumed in the best case scenario, a user of Aamalina's Legacy was also taking advantage of the Red Hand Guilty Conscience, which I have to think is a bug. A user of Aamalina's Legacy is also going to be less accurate than a user of the Red Hand, assuming we're going with the rapid reload option, which I can't imagine why you wouldn't. The only advantage I can think of for using Aamalina's legacy is the dual damage type, which I do like a lot. Pierce damage immune enemies are the big weakness for the Red Hand. The Red Hand has a number of bugs that need to be cleaned up. The Guilty Conscience should not apply to other weapons. Twin Slugs affects targets >4m range, which is super annoying. Double Tap also impacts higher level undead, which appears to me to be a bug, but I can't say for certain.

I am probably the lone person that likes Twin Slugs. It comes in handy for those dudes that try to wreck my squishy Ranger in melee. So good. But yeah, it can mess up your Tank's day, lol