Boeroer

Looks very nice. Discofire Eternium! ;)

I once used Aloth as SC Wizard as a tank with a large shield (Cadhu Scalth with maxed Athletics and Metaphysics), dropping lots of illusion self buffs and use the Essential Phantom with Concelhaut's Draining Touch as an additional tanky body). That worked pretty well - but later game enemies who throw around Arcane Dampener every chance they get can be annoying. Still, he can be a good frontliner. He even works well enough for me in the froint line with just a quarterstaff (+modal). The recovery malus only applies to attacks he's doing with the staff, so for casting without accuracy malus yet good (melee) deflection that's a nice setup. However, the Phantom cannot use the modal so it's a lot tankier if you use a shield. You could switch to a shueld, summon the phantom and switch back to a staff - but I find that to be a tedium after some fights. I also use Xoti as SC Priest in the front line frequently with her lantern and sickle. She can hold the line as well - as long as she's not the only one. I'm sure Konstanten could hold off some enemies in the front line, too. This might be the best place for him anyway because of his low INT and therefore short invocation ranges. As a Skald he could use a dagger setup with modal (bonus deflection) and become super fast. His melee damage would suffer a bit from the modal, but he would be study in melee and generate a lot of attack rolls and therefore a lot of crits for his already cheap offensive invocations. Something like Ben Fidel's stuff should work nicely for the Bloody Parry: no hard CC that prevents attacks completely, but frightened enemies cannot use offensive abilities and spells then which limites them to auto-attacks mostly - great for the Bloody Parry to only receive standard attacks. I think if you combine two of them with the Bloody Parry build (who can be in the middle and be the "main" tank without having to tank every melee enemy) it can work very well. What I mostly meant when I was saying that it doesn't work too well as a main tank was that it will struggle to be the main and only tank(ish) character out there. If you have some two decent offtank support characters it should be good. Those also prevent enemies from just running past the central tanky guy left and right. Anything that lowers enemies' accuracy is great for the Bloody Parry build: PER-afflictions (Wizard, Rogue - e.G. Blinding Strikes with AoE weapons such as mortars or rods with Blast, Smoke Bomb), Accuracy malus (Priest's Desponent Blows is great here) and such. And in additon to that_ anything that raises deflection and stacks with the Bloody Parry's own deflection buffs (RES Inspirations and Circle of Protection for example). So Wizard (or Wizard/Rogue), Rogue and Priest are great, Chanter is good, too. Cipher would also be great.

I don't think so: longer casting time (3 sec vs. 0.5), shorter duration (10 vs. 20 secs) and higher PL (3 vs 2) which leads to lower PL bonuses (for duration mostly). The advantages are a longer range (15 vs. 5) and only a 200-damage shield instead of being untargetable etc. which can be overcome. Also a Priest can get +1 spell casts for PL 2 with the Footprints of Ahu Taka while Druid's cannot get that for PL3 (on top of other bonus spell mechanics like Empower). That's one more auto disable per encounter early in the game. I find that to be a pretty significant advantage. Besides that: doesn't the disabling part of Beetle Shell drop with high Resolve? Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought there was some way to shorten the disabling time on allies considerably which allowed them to act and walk around while still having a 200pt dmg shield. Maybe I'm misremembering though. I always liked that with Withdraw the beneficial effect and the disable are not distinct and thus cannot be shortened by any "-x% of hostile effect" stuff because there is no official hostile effect with Withdraw.

Yeah. I mean Rogue is a class with limited resources so it's a good combo for sure. Also with Toxic Strike because Brilliant gives +5 INT which works nicely with AoE sizes and durations. Tactician/Trickster should be plenty tanky and have some great versatility with the added spells in a party. Tactician/Debonaire could charm kith enemies who are not flanked and make them allies, achieving Brillant that way (alternative to flanking every enemy somehow). Tactician/Assassin solo is very good, too (search for the "Glimmer Man" build from Kaylon in this forum for an example and an explanation why, if you are interested). For party play the most impactful multiclass with a Tactician is Tactician/Priest I think. Brilliant + Salvation of Time is a combination that's really hard to beat and rel. early and rel. easy to achieve.

Toxic Strike doesn't stack with itself. But what does happen is that a reapplication of Toxic Strike extends the duration. And the longer Toxic Strike lasts the higher every damage tick becomes. This can be very good against bosses but against normal enemies it's usually overkill to hit them with Toxic Strike more than once. A Tactician can cause a lot of flanking by himself with the use of Serafen's Hand Mortar and the enchantment Blinding Smoke. Ot shoots out a disorienting cone on crit - and since the shot has an AoE and any crit on the AoE triggers Blinding Smoke, you can disorient a lot of enemies at once. If you get Clear Out you can put Hand Mortar in the main hand and a melee weapon in the offhand (to unlock the use of Clear Out which is melee only). Clear Out will still be executed with the mortar though and every enemy in the cone of Clear Out will trigger an AoE shot of the mortar which then will trigger a disorienting cone with every crit. Because of this you are pretty free with the second class (and party members). Picking a second class that profits most from replenishing resources means picking a class with otherwise limited resources. So Rogue, Wizard, Priest, Druid and so on. Toxic Strike with the mortar applies the poison DoT to every enemy in the AoE, too. Pretty damn powerful.

I don't think I tested this particular combo but iirc Twin Stones did cause Deep Wounds so I guess Embrace of the Earth Talon would, too. Wicked Briars should also work. Wall of Thorns not so much because walls are hazards and hazards act like summons when it's about "which character on screen dealt this damage?".

I marked the suggested spells based on what I wrote above. Only hazard spells (wall and sigil spells) and summons will work even if they deal damage. DoTs (Plague of Insect, Malignant Could etc.) and pulsing spells (Chillfog, Venombloom, Wicked Briars etc.) will break the invisibility.

The DoT past is not right. At least not judging by the tests I did some while ago. There even a pure DoT such as Brand Enemy would cancel the invisibility and so also did running DoTs from Gouging Strike or Lover's Embrace's True Love's Kiss if you turned invisible AFTER the initial hit roll. As far as I can tell ANY kind of damage that is connected directly(!) to you, including pure DoTs, will lift the invisibility. So it's pretty simple in general: don't cause any damage and you will stay invisible. This includes self damage(!) like Blood Sacrifice. Using Blood Sacrifice will break the invisibility immediately. I don't remember my results with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion but I'm pretty sure that canceled it, too. There is one exception with dealing damage though: hazards that cause damage don't count as damage which you did directly - but instead the hazard itself takes the role of a character who did it (so to speak). A bit like if a summon deals damage. So if you use hazard spells to deal damage you will stay invisible. This is mostly wall spells (Wizard, Druid) and sigils (Priest). Wall of Many Colors on a SC Wizard is a great spell for this. The downside of hazards is that they also don't profit from your buffs (accuracy, PEN and so on, see Assassinate which doesn't work on hazards like walls and sigils). But usually the massive debuffing and disabling you are able to do will make the hazards more effective. Summons obviously also work since they are their own characters and their damage isn't connected to you. --- Now hazards and summons aside: pick any spell that doesn't hurt the enemy and you can stay invisible. This is very potent with Assassinate (on an Assassin/Wizard) because your CC spells will have +25 stackable accuracy which allows you to bring down enemies' defenses and disable them even if those enemies have way more levels than you have. One little additional trick with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and Assassinate: if you use the great sword Effort and pick p"Hemorrhaging" as upgrade and pair that with Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak, you can create near endless cycles of stunlocks in an AoE with cheap, pulsing CC spells: the +25 accuracy from invisibility will cause a lot of crits which proc Hemorrhaging which in turn procs the stun from the cloak which in turn can proc Hemorrhaging... Hemorrhaging itself does no damage but only hobbles or sickens (which can reduce health without dealing damage via -5 CON debuff). When going solo it can pose a challenge to keep the encounter active although you aren't there anymore (because invisible). Usually a running DoT keeps encounters active - but then you'll lose the invisibility. Summons and mind control (charm/dominate) do help. So calling Maura's Tentacles or an Essential/Substantial Phantom can be a way to keep the encounter running even though you are untargetable and invisible. As you suggested, mind control would need a second class that can handle that, for example a Wizard/Psion. This is a fun solo combo, too imo. No crazy accuracy buff like an Assassin has, but the constant focus gain that won't be interrupted (because invisible -unless you use Blade Sacrifice since self dmg pauses Soul Mind, too) is powerful and dominating enemies and putting them against each other while you are invisible is a fun way to play solo imo. It takes a while to get to Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure, but a Bloodmage/Psion can take care of enemies in the earlier game without invisibility, too.

It will work well IF Overwhelming Wave does all hit rolls in one go (like a Fireball or a Blizzard would). I never tried it with Overwhelming Wave but I suspect it works a bit like Rolling Flame, where the enemies in the line get hit one after the other. If that is the case then the first hit roll will lift stealth/invisibility and remove the assassination bonus. So you would only get it for the first enemy - which would be a waste. Maybe try it out with the console before committing to such a character. I would do it but am currently on a family holiday without access to the game. If it doesn't work with Overwhelming Wave it can still be worthwhile to use assassinate with other spells which hit all enemies at the same time. Like all circular and cone-shaped ones basically (Touch of Rot, Blizzard, Hail Storm, Embrace of the Earth Talon and so on) and of course the single target ones (Sunlance is devastating with assassinate for example). If you are set on using Overwhelming Wave (is is a cool spell) and it doesn't work with assassinate, you could switch to a Hekwalker and get much more damage and longer CC time out of Overwhelming Wave that way. A Helwalker can get up to +12 accuracy (Enduring Dance of Death), +10 INT (Duality of Mortal Presence and +15 Might (Thunderous Blows + Helwalker passive) as well as +2 PEN (Thunderous Blows). The increased INT also grows the AoE sizes alongside the longer durations, something an Assassin cannot do. And those bonuses are not limited to stealth or invisibility. The added MIG (up to +15) and INT(up to +10) work especially well with all pulsing spells and DoT spells because both will add more damage (one directly and additively via dmg per pulse/tick and the other multiplicatively by adding more pulses/ticks via longer duration). Another plus of the Helwalker is the Swift Strikes abilities which lets you cast a lot faster (+DEX and an action speed bonus). You can pair that with a Cat Druid's Cat Flurry, resulting in fantastic casting speed. Long Strides helps to get out of danger mich faster. But you can also do that nicely with Assassin's Escape and either Smoked Veil or Shadowing Beyond of course. Assassinate has the advange of the whopping +25 stackable accuracy - which is ofc. pretty awesome to have.

👍🏼 The Bloodmage/Druid combo is very fun imo.

Scordeo's Edge with Blade Cascade on a Bloodmage who uses Wall of Draining will grant you 0 recovery time for an extended period of time. Start with Wall of Draining and some fast defensive buffs and then use Deleterious Alacrity of Motion to speed your action time up, too. Hack away until you trigger Blade Cascade, then enjoy 0 recovery. Every now and then you have to use another Wall of Draining and Blood Sacrifice. If you wear the Cap of the Laughingstock you will put a beneficial effect on all enemies around you (and yourself): immunity to Resolve afflictions. This makes it so that the Wall of Draining always has a beneficial effect to drain from. It works mich better that way. If you think it looks stupid just hide the headgear with the eye symbol next to the headgear slot. Ofc. Wall of Draining prolongs all beneficial effects on you - like for example the light version of Lay on Hands from the Healing Hands gloves, +50 deflection from the Escape Cape and all your wizard self buffs etc. You can so a single class (get access to Wall of Draining much earlier and more casts per encounter without the need for Blood Sacrifice) or pair it with Psion (access to mind control without having to deal weapon damage helps a lot when going solo), Priest of Skaen (get Salvation of Time and Barring Death's Door, Shadowing Beyond on top), Steel Garrote Paladin (high passive defenses and armor, heal up quickly when hitting afflicted enemies with Scordeo's Edge + Blade Cascade, passive and active healing), Troubadour (unlimited summons and passive healing) and whatnot. Lots of good options there. Streetfighter also works well to start with very fast recovery until Blade Cascade kicks in. You just have to go bloodied with Blood Sacrifice asap after casting initial buffs. Almost forgot Tactician, always good with casters. Another way is to use Wall of Draining in combination with Scordeo's Trophy (the pistol). It has an enchantment that gives you a -5% recovery time boost every time you hit an enemy with a shot - for some time. With Wall of Draining you can stack a ton of those. If you Scordeo's Trophy with one hand and use Rushed Reload (-50% reloading time) you can stack those little bonuses pretty quickly into a big one. If you also multiclass with Ranger and use Driving Flight you can get two stacks with one shot. Combine with a shot from stealth to open up (-80% recovery time/reloading time) you can reach a significant amount of stacks very quickly and have very short recovery and reloading times (never 0 though). Reloading times have a hard floor though, they can't go below a certain timespan because the animation for reloading doesn't allow that. But your recovery times will be very short. The advantage of a pistol compared to a sabre for a caster generally is that reloading can be canceled in favor of doing something else. So your reactivity (before reaching very short or even 0 recovery) is much better with a pistol than with a sabre. But the ceiling of the Blade Cascade setup is higher than that with the pistol. You could combine both weapons: shoot with the pistol a few times to grant good recovery speed initially, then using the sabre much faster in order to trigger Blade Cascade. Other "fast" setups for allowing to reduce universal recovery (not just weapon recovery) is to use a Barbarian (Frenzy+Bloodlust+Blood Thirst) or Streetfighter like I said above (-50% recovery time when flanked and/or bloodied) or Cat Druid (cat flurry). Bloodmage/Cat Livegiver ia a pretty popular solo build that doesn't depend on items so much. It just combines awesome healing that fuels Blood Sacrifices with high speed casting from Alacrity + Cat Flurry. Keep in mind that casting spells quickly not only reies on short recovery but also short casting/animation times. So DEX boosts and actual action speed buffs are at least as important as recovery time buffs since most spells have lengthy casting times, too. That's where the Bloodmage/Cat shines. Barbarian, too - but there's less synergies besides the speed compared to the Druid. Shifted Druid also gets great armor with 0 recovery penalty, often resulting in shorter recovery times than Barb or Streetfighter with a big bonus but heavier armor (on order to survive the early phase of combat).

You can't be serious. What if there's a player who's deferential to authority "in real life" and plays a detective game. In that game some authority figure - who the player (and the character) knows is evil and corrupt - tells that player to not investigate further: should that player then stop playing the game? And more importantly: should that player even think about getting a refund because the devs didn't take servile players into account when designing the game? I don't really want an answer for those questions.

Both flail heads do (low) crush damage. One of them has a freezing lash of 25%. So 50% of that 25% lash will reduce the target's max health. That's 12.5% of the (low) dmg roll of one flail head. Imo it's not worth it... but in theory you could lower an enemies' max health down to zero with this. But obviously the enemies will be dead anyway long before that.

Before. If you do it after you enter the map of the quest the scaling will have no effect. The level of enemies is determined when you first enter said map.

Yes. Also Beckoners' skeletons (Ancient Brittle Bones) - like all the Beckoners' summons except skeletons from "Many Lives Pass By" - are more numerous but smaller and weaker than the summons of other chanters. This fits your character in two ways: first of all it's nice if the "Kingpin" also looks like the boss (because he's the biggest dude) and doesn't get dwarfed by his summons. Secondly the skeletons die a lot faster from your "confused" friendly fire Carnage which will trigger the effects of heal-on-kill pets (see Cajux, Abraham), Bloodlust (become faster) and Blood Thirst (skip recovery) a lot faster.