Boeroer

The animation for drinking a potion is longer than the animation for attacking with a weapon - and also the process of drinking a potion is a little buggy and gets interrupted often enough so that you have to repeat the command. Drinkin a potion takes ~75 frames (has no recovery like a weapon attack). The effect of the potion already starts in the middle of the drinking process, not at the end. You can compare that to the frames a weapon attack takes with the tool I linked above. It shows the frames for weapon attacks in the bottom left. If you count normal, non-sped up recovery at 10 DEX, too (animation + recovery from weapon attacks vs. only animation time of drinking a potion + 0 recovery), then drinking a potion is faster than attackig with heavy melee and ranged weapons and slower than attacking with fast melee weapons (daggers and such). But recovery can be shortened with dual wielding and other speed boosts so you can shift that balance in favor of weapon attacks. Nothing speeds up animations (weapon attacks, drinking potions etc.) except Dexterity. All other speed bonuses only apply to the recovery phase. So tl;dr: it depends. But in general I would say that drinking a potion takes longer after a while because you cannot shorten it while you can shorten your weaoon recovery times. And because it's buggy and often takes several tries to actually work.

With auto attacks: yes. With Full Attacks (see the Knockdown ability) the offhand will strike first and then the main hand will strike. Yes, significantly faster. Dual wielding gives you a much shorter recovery phase after each strike. You can shorten recovery of dual wielding even further with Two-Weapon Style (talent). Maybe it's best to play around with the abilities and talents a bit. For that you can use @MaxQuest's attack speed calculator for Pillars of Eterninty: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/

Hello, an arquebus is also a gun. Did you mean "arbalest" maybe? Several classes can make good use of guns (or arbalests). Paladin, Rogue, Ranger, Cipher, even Wizard... My favorite arquebus build is a Darcozzi Paladin with Zealous Focus, Inspiring Exhortation, Coordinated Attacks and the the pistol St. Garam's Spark (first) and the arquebus "Pliambo per Casitas" (later). It's a geat support Paladin who makes taking down tough foes a whole lot easier for the party. My favorite arbalest build is a Ranger with Swift Strikes, Driving Flight, Gunner, Marked Prey, Stalker's Link, Stunning Shots and the arbelest Hold Wall. With high attack- and reload speed this Ranger can deal nice damage to a single target but even more important lock down a single enemy because of he prone effect the arbalest has - in combination with the stun effect of stunning shots later. The prone effect applies to two enemies if you have Driving Flight. My favorite pistol build is a Priest of Skean with Inspiring Radiance, Divine Terror, Painful Interdiction, Prey on the Weak, Apprentice's Sneak Attack and the Fellstroke pistol. My favorite blunderbuss build is an Island Aumaua Wizard with Arms Bearer, Quick Switch, Penetrating Shot, Coil of Resourcefulness, Expose Vulnerabilities, Combusting Wounds and any four blunderbusses you can get.

You can circumvent the friendly fire easily (become resistant to INT afflictions), Devoted or Streetfighter makes no difference. Counting the self damage is easier with a Devoted indeed. Attribute distribution would work. MIG can be as low as 10. Berserker is one of the few subclasses where high CON makes sense sice it makes managing the self damage a lot easier imo - especially with a Berserker/Streetfighter. My preferred build with Berserker and a Morning Star is Berserker/Helwalker with max CON and Saru Sichr (early unique Morning Star). But Devoted/Berserker with Morning Star is also very nice because of the synergies between the morning star modal and the Devoted's and Berserker's abilities that target fortitude specifically.

Hi! If you give him a large shield and use the modal the Carnage damage from a Berserker is a non-factor. The main concern with a Berserker is whether you can manage the self damage (so it's still fun) or not (then it might become frustrating). Hurting oneself can actually be benefical (see the Ability "Blooded" and the synergy with the Streetfighter's recovery speed) and even Confusion can be used to your advantage - but it's not super obvious how to take advantage of those things. The damage of a Berserker compared to another Barbarian subclass can be significantly higher in certain encounters - and early the same in others. The most important upside of the Berserker (when it comes to damage output) is the +2 PEN via Frenzy (becoming Tenacious instead of strong). Penetration makes a huge difference in damage output if you meet enemies whose armor you would otherwise not be able to penetrate. Underpenetration causes such a big dive of he damage you are causing that you want to prevent it. However - iIf your enemy is "soft" anyway then the difference in damage output between Berserker and reg. Barb is not that noticable. A Devoted/Berserker has insane Penetration (+4) but cannot switch to a more fitting weapon if he meets enemies who are resistant to the damage type of his devoted weapon. Therefore I almost always recommend Morning Star or Pollaxe for such a Multiclass. They both have two types of damage and the more effective one will be used automatically. The Morning Star has he additional synergy of its modal "Body Blows" + Brute Force and Knockdoen/Mule Kick. Pollaxe include a nice soulbound weapon which works very well with Barbs, too (but this can really mess up your Edér with a Berserker's Carnage). So my pick would be Morning Star. But all of the dual-damage-type weapon work well (war hammers, great swords etc.). The surdyness of the Fighter's abilities helps to iron out the self damage of the Berserker a bit. A Streetfighter/Berserker can do an insane amount of weapon damage (in melee naturally, but even ranged) if set up and played right. The damage per hit as well as the attack speed are tremendous which leads to ridiculous dps. But that combo is also prone to getting knocked out. For me it's a ton of fun - but I guess it's not everybody's cup of tea. Here I tried all sorts of weapons and the Morning Star is still great, but because the Streetfighter has good "Full Attacks" (attack that strikes with both weapons) like Crippling Strikes for example it's also nice to use a dual wielding setup. And of course that adds to the already high speed. The most fun I had with a dual dagger setup (Pukestabber + Lover's Embrace). Superfast attacks (I guess it's the highest sustainable attack speed you can achieve in thge game without "cheesy tricks"), good accuracy, lots of fun. Since the Streetfighter/Berserker is not bound to a special type of weapon you can always switch to a different weapon set if you meet enemies who are resistant/immune to the damage type of your preferred weapon set (here: slash damage from daggers). Just use a set of daggers and a set of clubs or stilettos as alternative or whatever.

ROFL

Hello and welcome. It works just like it used to. There were no changes to the workings of those particular abilities of the (Darcozzi) Paladin and also the items didn't change. For a ranged "marker paladin" you can use three diff. unique ranged weapons, you can find them here: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Marking The earliest ranged one is still St. Garam's Spark (pistol). For good shots with Flames of Devotion (and no weapon switching) however the arquebus Pliambo per Casitàs might be the preferabe choice ifyou want to squeeze everything out of your alpha strikes. It's pretty difficult to get that weapon early though.

The animation doesn't really matter in this case - it's mostly cosmetic (except when we look at attack speeds). Torment's Reach - despite looking like a kick - does use your main hand weapon. Stuff like Skyward Kick is also animated like it was done with your foot but uses your weapon anyway. On the other hand Forbidden Fist looks like it is done with your fist (which is a weapon) but it doesn't use your actual fist, but I digress... With Swift Flurry/HBD the only thing that matters is whether the attack and damage roll - under the hood, in game logic - are done with a melee weapon (fists count as weapons, too) or not. With Torment's Reach and most other attack abilites this is rel. easy to check on the tooltip of the ability in the action bar or even better in the combat log (where you can rel. easily deduce which weapon or other damage effect was used by the damage type and other infos around the rolls). There are some abilities that are more complicated to figure out, but fortunately Torment's Reach is relatively straightforward: it is a melee weapon attack, executed with your active main hand weapon (called "primary attack"). At least that's true for the initial attack of Torment's Reach that hits the first enemy: it can trigger Swift Flurry/HBD. Note that additional attacks from Swift Flurry or Heartbeat Drumming do not repeat the attack they originated from (in this case Torment's Reach). Instead they execute an invisible (no animation) standard attack with your main hand weapon - so it does NOT repeat Torment's Reach with all the cone AoE and so on. Now - the cone AOE of Torment's Reach/Raised Torment that follows the initial attack roll - and which eventually hits other enemies behind the initial one - is NOT a melee weapon attack. Instead it actually is implemented as a spell-like effect. Thus it does NOT trigger Swift Flurry/HBD. You can check that in the combat log when the attack rolls for the cone were made. --- Addendum: for easier assessment it is good to know that every attack ability that says that it is done as "Primary Attack" or "Full Attack" (see its description) is 100% using your active weapon(s) - and if that's a melee weapon then it's a melee weapon attack for sure and will trigger Swift Flurry (see below example of Torment's Reach). Ouf, got carried away a bit. I hope that answers your question (and was not too elaborated/confusing).

Hello and welcome! Those are absolutely fine. They would be fine even for higher difficulties. The changes that were made with 5.0 etc. didn't invalidate normal/reasonable character- and companion builds. Maybe some powergamey stuff took a hit, but usually what was viable before still is viable now - when it comes to a full party and so on. Solo playthroughs on PotD difficulty or even Ultimate challenge etc. which require special tricks are another story.

I don't think that it's finished yet.

Combine with Boots of Speed and you're back at normal move speed. Maybe one can add additonal ways to profit from the self-induced hobble? There should be other items that trigger something useful on getting hit or crit... What usually makes self-healing tricks less potent (without resting too much) in PoE is that they only affect endurance but not health.

Wizard/Psion (Cipher subclass that regenerates focus on time like a Chanter generates his phrases) sounds like a combination that could be fun for you. However, it is not great for melee combat but is focused on casting. But it's extremely versatile and useful in general and for me was a lot of fun to play. Wizard's defense buffs make it easier to not get hit (stops the focus gain briefly) and later the best defense buff of the Cipher (Borrowed Instincts) even stacks with most of the wizard's self buffs (see Mirrored Images, Arcane Veil etc.). Vanilla Wizard/Psion works well. Another good Hierophant variant could be Bloodmage/Soulblade - because the Soulblade's attack "Soul Annihilation" works very well with Citzal's Spirit Lance (a wizard-only summoned pike that does AoE damage naturally). Great mix of defense, melee and casting. Also works as vanilla Wizard/Soulblade. --- Trickster/Soulblade in general is a good combo, you cannot really fail with it. Good defense with fantastic offensive capability.

Fast Assassin is intended for party play on hard. No idea if it would also work for solo. It might... The following one is dedicated for solo on Path of the Damned difficulty (which makes it viable for normal difficulty also): https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94414-class-build-the-sprightly-scorpion-potd-solo-stun-locking-rogue/

Ah - doing it the other way round. Very good.

Hello! They are the same as the solo builds for the last ~6 years. The game didn't change since Dec. 2017. I think in the build list here in this forum you can find several solo builds that are still viable for the latest game versions (3.0 to 3.07). Most builds name the game version. If they are for Path of the Damned difficulty then they surely also work for the lower difficulty settings.