Boeroer

I think it's fine. There are some fights in WM2 that are quite tough - lvl 12 isn't too high.

Primal Carnage also works with an Animal Companion, hm... Berserker/Stalker with Stalker's Patience and Hunter's Fang etc...? Maybe Ngati's Tusk is not so cool with a party when you are confused... :oops

? I don't know how it's implemented internally, but the enemies get a hostile effect named "Hunter of Hunters" and their defenses get lowered directly in the tooltip. Maybe it's just UI - but if you check the log there is no hint that you get an accuracy bonus. The enemies' defenses show the malus: (ignore Razor's Edge, it's a consoled multi-multiclass ) Since everybody profits from that debuff I think this is the only implementations that makes sense. The other way round (accuracy for everybody who attacks that enemy) would be unnecessarily complicated, wouldn't it? Like Cap of the Laughingstock's aura this just seems to be a direct, auto-applied debuff? But yeah, Ngati's Tusk is very nice, especially Hunter of Hunters. Also you can get pretty high survival values with items and Galawain's boon and such. By the way the Cap's deflection debuff and the one from the Pike modal do stack which is nice for a Berserker/Skald with Brute Force who can just attack the lower defense (Fortitude or Deflection - and both get debuffed).

Ngati's Tusk is also nice. You can stay away, it has a crit conversion and the auto-defense debuff as well as the pike's modal (-10 deflection on hit) works in your favor, too. If only Druids had early beast summons... this would feel even nicer with a Berserker/Druid I guess.

Servus!

Holy smokes, Berserker/Skald with Stalker's Patience and Changeling's Mantle is fun with this setup. With Old Siec + Ancient Memory + Abraham I can even heal myself enough so that I'm not going down from the self damage. Also 3 Wurms is kind of easier to manage than 6, hehe...

Sun & Moon: it doesn't proc Carnage twice, so nothing special. Amra: The "Carnage" of Amra doesn't work with Primal Carnage. Pukestabber + Lover's Embrace works very well (+20% Action Speed from Pukestabber and 25% Action Speed from Lover's Embrace if you attack the right gender - it stacks with everything). You will stack a lot of action speed, daggers are already fast and you don't instantly kill the wurms with Carnage because the base dmg of daggers is low enough so they survive enough Carnage procs to give you 15 stacks of Primal Carnage. Only thing is that Daggers don't look so nice with that armor. Stalker's Patience would be nice. Maybe even Berseker/Skald is cool with the recovery-skip of Stalker's Patience. 3 Wurms instead of 6 means double the attacks needed - but if I can crit and skip recovery with the speas once in a while it should still be fast. And I can prifit from the phrases and the lower cost of offensive invocations... hm...

Hello! I just got the Changeling's Mantle again. And while I was looking at the possible "routes" for the soulbound upgrades I got an idea for "Primal Carnage": can a confused Berserker's Carnage which hits your own beast summons (for example wurms) give you the action bonus? This would turn Primal Carnage from a situationally cool gimmick into a thing that's always useful. So I tested it and yeah: you can summon your 6 wurms and place them around an enemy, then attack that enemy with - let's say Barbaric Smash - and immediately get +15% Action Speed which stacks with all other speed buffs. As a bonus you get Blood Thirst and Bloodlust should you kill your own wurms that way. I think that's pretty cool because the Changeling's Mantle looks awesome in the first place and I really needed a justification to wear it. Next I will test if Amra's Carnage would also add stacks of Primal Carnage. It's capped at 15 stacks so maybe this isn't superimportant - but good to know I guess. I'll also check if Sun & Moon (which should proc Carnage twice) will give me twice the stacks per attack. Till later!

While we speak about not spending resources for abilities: A Priest can use his seal spells out of combat. So he can just place a seal on th ground, wait until the spell use gets refunded and only then start combat. That way you can even use empower twice for the same encounter: empower a seal spell, then start combat and empower another spell.

That's right!

Tuotilo's Palm with the right enchantment (+1 deflection and reflex per wound) is better than a large shield. It's very good with fist as main weapon especially. But also great with any other one handed weapon. Later you could pick up this Brigandine: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Kāhako_Nihi Also Aloth's Armor isn't bad when it's fully enchanted to +2 crush AR . It's not heavy armor of course - but it's better than a Robe but looks like one. And the enchantments are pretty good. After the +2 crush AR it becomes a very well rounded armor without weaknesses. Maybe that's as far as one can go with a robe-looking armor compromise. Another option might be the Garari Cuirass. It is a leather armor but has the base AR of a breastplate basically. And it comes early and legendary. Nomad's Brigandine is nice, too. It looks like a normal Brigandine (which don't shout "heavy armor" such as Plate Armor does) but has great enchantments for a tank (especially bonus deflection). An SC Monk can even use it to willfully disengage and get wounds in the process (Imagined Pain).

Yes, or extremely high defenses. The Humility Robe would be cool if its pierce/crush/slash resistance enchantments would scale with wounds (or Metaphysics or Insight or whatever).

Why not. There are several great sabres in the game. It's not tank-ish though. You can achieve better tankyness with the small shield "Toutilo's Palm" that's made for monks. That would also look cool with sabres imo. Quarterstaff + modal is an option for a more tanky monk as well. Chromoprismatic Staff comes rather late though. But any quarterstaff + modal would work before that. You could also place a sabre in the offhand and be a dual wielder (while looking like a one-handed guy). You would attack with your main hand fist and the offhand sabre then. That option would be the only one if you wanted to use St. Drogga's Skull (can only be equipped in the offhand since it works like s torch, too). Back to one handed sabre: If you pick up the Animancer's Blade at some point you would look like a Jedi. And they are monks, too (sort of).

Funny. I only knew that Wall spells are "hazards" like traps and the Priest's seal spells (the ones you can put on the ground out of combat and which will stay there for a long while - like traps basically). Hazards seem to be a "character" of their own. At least in several situations the game will not treat them as spells that were cast by the character. They don't break the invisibility of Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure, they don't profit from lots of benefical effects the caster might have an which would apply to other spells and so on.

Yes, it is very weird ability once you start using "non-standard" weapons.

Yes, you can also pick either Tactical Barrage or Enlightened Agony and get Smart at nearly all times (+5 INT - doesn't stack with Duality oMP's INT bonus) and pick Iron Wheel instead. Fortitude is an important defense (more important than deflection in the late-ish game) and thus raising CON and AR is good for a tank. Non-fluctuating, stable +5 INT will be as good as +0-10 INT based on wounds imo. Besides that Clarity of Agony is great for a tank since it removes afflictions so well. I personally would pick Devoted's Disciplined Strikes for Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming and Enlightened Agony for +5 INT and go with Iron Wheel. You can go Helwalker for additional fortitude (and healing and damage) via MIG if your defenses and AR are great. Damage reduction via AR (underpenetration) and other sources of damage reduction (Death's Maw for example) have a lot more impact than the Helwalker's increased received damage. The first ones work a bit like multiplicative reductions while the Helwalker's increased dmg received is "only" and additive dmg bonus for your enemies. Still might hurt, but the additional fortitude defense and healing power shouldn't be neglected either. I personally would use Forbidden Fist though (if Community Patch is used). Just because the synergy of Forbidden Fist punch + max RES and the whole unique wound trait is so good.

Reading my post again and thinking about Hunter's Claw while doing so. I think I now understand why mortars always gave me other outcomes than I expected. If not the hit rolls count but only "attack launch" - and initial Attack, every AoE blast of mortars and also Blindikg Some cones count as separate launches - the mechanics of Hunter's Claw seem to make more sense to me now... I mean I knew Blinding Smoke is OP in the right hands (see Resonant Touch and Avenging Storm) but maybe it's even more OP than I knew. That also means that maybe Arcane Archer's Imbue effects not only proc off of jumps but also Blinding Smoke procs? I think I only ever used Fire in the Hole...

They don't.

Right...

Or you get the Grog pet. It removes engagement from the game completely. It will also outright kill any party member that gets knocked out. But that's a small price to pay, right?

I tested it: Hand Mortar with Blinding Smoke: I went from 0 to 8 (max) phrases after one shot into a bunch of 5 dummies. Refund at least *3. Most likely Blinding Smoke. Hand Mortar without Blinding Smoke: I only got 6 phrases. Refund *2. It seems the initial shot and the AoE couts as two "procs" or instances of Avenging Storm. Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot: 8. Refund * 3. Most likely the jump. Sun & Moon: got 6 phrases from one swing (two flail heads each count as proc I guess). Blunderbuss: only 3 phrases. Different implementation than Sun & Moon's mutihit obviously. Thuderous Report: only 3. Despite Avenging Storm doing multiple hit rolls. Only couts as one proc. --- So - we both were right and wrong - sort of. You got the exact right idea about the workings (lauches do refund not hits) but maybe didn't know that AoEs and jumps might count as separate lauches (I didn't know that)? And I remembered the multiple refunds from mortars correctly (had that some time ago but didn't pursue) but drew the wrong conclusions. And yet again some weird mechanic we have to keep track of.

Yes, that's why I said that Druid won't empower 1/encounter. I worded that poorly. I meant that certain spells procs multiple times from one cast - I was mainly thinking about Least Unstable Coil. That's what the Reddit quote from you said: Avenging Storm procs with every hit roll of a weapon's attack. But maybe the reddit person, you and me mean something different when we use the word "proc" here. And maybe the Unstable Coil works differently from Sasha's Siging Scimitar. I'm not sure, so time to test... Edit: yep. You were right. It's launch attack. Only that AoEs and jumps count as separate lauches.

Every proc of empowered Avenging Storm will also trigger the Least Unstable Coil (usually leading to all tier-3 inspirations from one cast). For Chanter Thekehu it's not that important to have Brilliant, but still nice. Also SC Druid Tekehu can have Avenging Storm - just not 1/encounter. Usually a Chanter's Her Revenge or Eld Nary also does this (every proc counts as singular spell), so I guess it also works with the Scimitar. Spells that behave the same (every proc counts as singular spell) and might do something with "moar power to empower"-items like Weyc's Wand or whatever: Storm of Holy Fire, Great Maelstrom, Magran's Might, M's Missile Salvo, Meteor Storm... I guess more but these I know for sure. I would look at Freezing Pillar etc. as well. Avenging Storm is very nice because it lasts for so long and you can control when the procs should occur (so you are not "wasting" the phrase refund as much). The above example with SC Stormspeaker Tekehu is especially nice if you use Sasha's + Hand Mortar with Blinding Smoke (without CP because there BS triggering AS was removed: ((1+AoE_circle_HaMo)*(1+AoE_cone_BliSmo) procs) or Fire in the Hole (1+AoE_cirlce_FitH+1+AoE_cirlce_FitH_jump procs) or Blunderbuss (4 procs) or Sun and Moon (2 procs) or Keeper of the Flame (1+AoE_circle_KotF procs). Edit: that's not entirely correct. The procs don't work per projectile but instead initial attacks, any kind of AoE blasts (as a whole) and all jumps work as separate procs of Avenging Storm which refund phrases (see test results down below). Blunderbusses don't yield multiple refunds, but mortars and Sun & Moon do.

Okay, I gave Aloth all three spells and attacked him with Magran's Might (convenient because it's single target, gets reflected and every pulse counts as one spell so I don't have to cast so many spells). The VFX of all three combined look cool by the way. What I found: the reflection spells don't get supressed by superior versions. However, as I suspected, a reflected spell (here Magran's Might) substracts its levels from all three reflections simultaneously by the time it gets reflected. So it's not a "layered" reflection - they don't really stack. Thus it is useless to have them all active at the same time. Better to cast a follow-up once a former reflection spell expired (that way you also get a way longer duration of reflection overall).

Turn off AI during those fights.