Boeroer

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.

Yes, Wahai Poraga has its problems with the "AoE". I think there is a mod on Nexusmods that fixes it and makes it so that it matches the description properly. I personally love the Berserker/Fighter with Cleave + Blood Thirst with Amra if you have any Chanter who can summon "Ancient Brittle Bones" and sing "Many Lives" in the party. Best if combined with a single class Paladin then as well (to profit from Devine Retribution for +2 Zeal for every dead skeleton). And then a Druid who can cast White Worms etc. to profit from all the skeleton corpses. Also it's nice for the Berserker/Fighter to wear the Belt of Magran's Chosen. Due to the many, many hits he delivers in a short time he will frequently summon Flame Blights which die quickly in the meat grinder, too - producing even more kills (with the accompanied effects). If someone uses Essence Interrupter to produce even more expendable allied summons to be send into the Berserker's vincinity: even better.

Also: if you switch to a set with Lethandria's Devotion you will immediately trigger a healing tick. If you are about to die you can pause and then switch back and forth to/from Lethandria's Devotion and gain significant health that way before un-pausing. Bit cheesy but it works. Besides that, regeneration gear and consumables it's Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon, Draining Missiles and heal-on-kill pets (see Cajux and Abraham for examples). That last one is out bc. all Wizards (no Edér).

Like Constentin said. We usually use "pulse" to differentiate those spells which do a new hit roll (the pulse) every 3 secs from "dot" spells which only roll one hit and then do a status effect that "ticks" every 3 secs without further rolls.

For any other weapon than Wahai Poraga (which always causes friendly fire) you'd need a Berserker in your multiclass in order to have friendly fire Carnage. With Wahai Poraga you'll have more freedom for the second class. If you go with Berserker/Black Jacket there's actually a better weapon to exploit Skeletons + Cleaving + Blood Thirst, and that's Amra. You'll need at least 25 Might (during Frenzy - so it's a good idea to go with Aumaua, Dwarf or Human + MIG item) but will be rewarded with Riven Gore. When this procs it immediately destroys Skeletons summoned by "Many Lives Pass By" and it also kills Ancient Brittle Bones a lot faster. At the same time the base damage of the axe is a lot higher than that of Wahai Poraga and the Bleeding Cuts modal is extremely strong in combination with bonus attacks (Cleave, Blood Thirst). Amra is a weapon that's accessible quite early, that's a plus, too. This combination is an absolute blender of a fighter. However, you need a ton of INT to be able to reach as many skeletons and enemies as possible despite being confused (-4 INT means smaller Carnage and Riven Gore AoE). Also items which enlarge AoE (Ring of Overseeing, Loki pet and so on) can help. If you have Edér then give him a pet that grants +10 health on kill to the whole party (like Abraham). It will help your Berserker/Black Jacket a lot bc. every dead skeleton will trigger the healing for you. It's also a good combination to instakill/destroy party members if you don't watch out. ;) Keep them out of Carnage range while the Berserker/Black Jacket is frenzied. With Wahai Poraga you can go a lot of routes as long as you have a source of skeletons in the party. Beckoner gives you a lot of weak (easier to kill) Ancient Brittle Bones early while Troubadour gives you a lot more frequent Many Lives Skeletons later on - in addition to being able to summon Ancient Brittle Bones twice as often (with Brisk Recitation). Any class that gives you something on hit, crit or kill is nice here: Monk for Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming, Paladin for the Inspiring Triumph and the chance to gain Zeal back, Barbarian (not only Berserker, Furyshaper with Fear Ward can trigger disengagement attack and thus produce even more bonus attacks which might cleave) for Bloodlust and Blood Thirst. Skald can be nice for additional phrases via crits and then supercheap White Worms casts (Ancient Brittle Bones' secondary skeletons and Many Lives skeletons leave their corpses when they die). But if you have Konstanten you can also use him for cheap White Worms on skeleton corpses you leave behind. Ancient Druid also isn't bad because you can summon additional two great summons right from level 1 and use skeleton corpses for Garden of Life which is very strong with a lot of corpses in one area. The +12 healing every 6 secs is per corpse... But of course any Druid in the party could use that, doesn't have to be the Black Jacket. I think the most enjoyable might be the Monk with Swift Flurry then. But keep in mind that the AoE of Wahai Poraga is fixed and will not grow with bonus INT from the Monk's Turning Wheel.

Hello, Rogue as second class was not a consideration? Berserker/Streetfighter can be very strong (but also very fragile). Paladin is also a good choice for a Berserker. Goldpact would fit best thematically I think. Priest could be... maybe Wael? Berserker/Priest has an awesome combination of Frenzy's confusion + Withdraw which can put any enemy(!) away for a long time with an automatic hit. Very potent in boss fights. Chanter is also a strong combination, especially with summoned skeletons in combination with Bloodlust and Blood Thirst. If "accidentally" kill a skeleton with your carnage you will get all the benefits you would get from killing an enemy. Also maybe nice to roleplay to be able to call in henchmen (like Ogres). ;)

Hello! 👋🏼 Yes, you can simply wait if enmies are able to hit you often enough so that you get bloodied - then you def. need the added deflection of Escape. Or you can use Blood Sacrifice in order to drop to 50% health very quickly if you think you will need it anyway and want it asap. You will become immune to enemies' engagement. This won't prevent you from engaging the enemy though. There's no drawback. You can "escape" to the same spot where you started or maybe use it to position yourself even better for tanking, click on the nearest enemy and you'll engage the enemies again immediately. Getting engaged stops the movement of enemies immediately. So usually the enemies will stay with you. This won't leave your other tank exposed. As a Paladin/Wizard you'll have higher deflection and defenses in general so I don't need the added deflection too often. Also a Steel Garrote/Bloodmage heals a lot on the fly due to the Paladin's passive . In fights when I need it I simply wait until I'm at 50% health and then use it. I don't try to unlock it asap. As a SC Wizard you won't have as high defenses - but imo they are high enough, especially if you are not the only tank. And you get some more goodies that help if you should you get grazed or hit more often than you'd like (Zandethus's Draconic Fury, Minoletta's Piercing Sigil, Cloak of Death). Also don't forget Llengrath's Safeguard which stacks with all singular defensive buffs. I just view the escape cape as a nice addon which can be used if enemies' accuracy is high enough to threaten me. I don't try to force it in every fight.

Yes, they will stack. No, it will not be possible. WIth the optimal item setup* you will be left with 1 frame of recovery (0.7 or 0.8 depending on your DEX which will get rounded up to 1 frame iirc). However, Tidefall with high MIG does so much additonal damage that it will more than outbalance the slower (non zero) recovery speed. It's just 1 frame after all. You will see a very, very short appearance of the recovery bar. To play around with your recovery time a bit, using various talents and items, you can use this tool which was impletented with respect to the code base of the game: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ *) you need to enchant Tidefall with Durgan Steel and get Gauntlets of Swift Action which stack with everything (like Deleterious Alacrity of Motion). With Armored Grace and Durgan Steel on the armor you can wear up to Scale Armor and have zero recovery penalty. With the Blade of the Endless Paths you could achieve 0 recovery and on top of that use Vulnerable Attack without slowdown and wear Plate Armor because the additional speed anchantment of the weapon drops recovery into the negative real so to speak (so the added recovery of Vulnerable Attack doesn't bring it up to zero so there's even space for recovery penatly from armor). But usually Vulnerable Attack, paired with the 5 DR bypass from Estocs (+10 dmg per attack if attack enemies with 10+ DR) isn't as potent as high MIG wounding (which also bypasses DR and stacks with itself). So the BotEP usually does a little less DPS than Tidefall but allows to be more sturdy (bc. allows for thicker armor). On the other hand Tidefall also drains endurace so you will be sturdier, too. I personally like to give BotEP to a Paladin because the Marking enchantment stacks with Coordinated Attacks which is a great combo.

If you look at the Blinded affliction you will see that it also applies -4 Perception. Every point of Perception grants +2 Reflex. If you subtract 4 Perception from the enemy, the Reflex defense will drop by 8 points. Direct Reflex debuffs stack with debuffs of a related attribute (Perception and also Dexterity) 45 - 20 (Blinded's -20) - 8 (Blinded's -8 via -4 Perception) results in 17. Aspirant's Mark get suppressed and has zero effect in your case. It's just an unfortunate coincidence (unfortunate if one wants to figure out what's going on just by looking at the numbers) that the -8 Reflex debuff from Aspirant's Mark and the -4 Perception debuff result in the same number of Reflex that's substracted which might let you think that Aspirant's Mark stacked with Blinded - which it didn't. PS: the same would happen for Deflection if you combined Blinded's direct Deflection debuff with a Resolve debuff - for example Blinded (-20 Deflection...) + Terrified (-4 Resolve...). Only that Resolve just adds/substracts 1 Deflection per point, not 2.

What's your Intellect?

Yes, it works.

All active/offensive abilities such as offensive spells (but also Carnage for example) get an accuracy bonus based on character level (+1 per level): https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Accuracy#Abilities

In PoE, everything that says anything about "speed", "attack speed", "action speed" and so on only affects recovery. Deletrious Alacrity of Motion is that same. What it is actually doing: it sets recovery time to 50% or in other words: it halves your recovery time. There is nothing that affects "action animation", "casting time", "action speed" or "action time" in PoE - except Dexterity. DEX affects those AND recovery at the same time. That's why it's even worth investing in DEX if you already have 0 recovery. If you want to know what exactly happens with all the different "speed" bonuses and also DEX, you can use this tool which is implemented with the same algorithms as in the game: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ PS: in Deadfire there is indeed "action speed/time" and r"ecovery time/speed" as separate stats - those can be influenced by different buffs in different ways. But not in PoE.

You can't. As soon as combat ends (which is the point when you would be able to pick up loot) you will leave he map. I know no workaround for that. Hitting the pause key like a madman doesn't work. Auto-pause options also won't trigger. But since they are only standard enemies the loot won't be exciting anyways.

I just remember that the Titan with those numerous annoying ads was pretty tough and the inside of the ruins also wasn't a walk in the park.

Currently the forum keeps logging me out every few days - despite me visiting the forums every day. This is new and it's a bit annoying tbh. This happens on mobile (Chrome/Android) as well as desktop (Chrome/Linux).