Boeroer

Ah, you didn't say. It sounded like a party setup to me. Illusionist is cool for some spells but so limiting in a solo run imo. For example no Phantom (which can be very useful in solo runs). You said you don't care about that too much - but at the same time the benefits of the Illusionist subclass aren't outweighing the drawbacks imo. At least for a solo run. About Streefighter: I'm regularly playing Edér as Fighter/Rogue tank and it works well with a large shield + modal. The cool thing about any solo Spellblade is that you can use the large shield Cadhu Scalth + modal in combiation with Adept Evasion and high Reflex to just shower yourself and the enemies with AoE friendly-fire AoE spells that target Reflex. All grazes will get turned into misses and the rare hits will get softened a lot by the modal + shield passive. I can cast almost everything I have on an enemy group with my spellblade tank in the center - and he will hardly get scratched. You don't need a Trickster for that so I'd say Streetfighter is good enough, too. But I personally would pair it with a Bloodmage (although that's everybody's choice for solo and thus that might be a bit lame) - also because Blood Sacrifice can be a tool to actively bring you down do flanked + bloodied and profit from the On the Edge passive - even if you don't get hit at all. If you tank around you also wouldn't need Powder Burns to get flanked. You'll just get flanked the "natural way". But I guess Illusionist also works.

Speaking of Ranger + AoE: Am playing an Arcane Archer/Troubadour as hireling atm and I love her. Plenty of AoE - and the synergy between Sure-Handed Ila (which applies both its recovery and reload bonuses to reloading weapons) and weapons such as Spearcaster (+modal = great) or the Red Hand is great. But then... anybody tried Imbue:Web + Imbue:Eora with high INT, Driving Flight and Waterhaper's Focus and combined it with being energized (Their Champion)? If you shoot from stealth you'll apply 6 pulsing AoEs (3 webs + 3 pulls) with insane accuracy in a heartbeat. And all pulses will interrupt enemies if they crit. At the same time they can't move and get pulled together. It's just not fair. Also, with high Arcana very useful against hard to hit enemies because Imbue Shots get Arcana as accuracy bonus - and Spearcaster does that, too. I just leave the modal on . With SH Ila I'm still fast enough to prone-lock those enemies.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

For solo I'd suggest Tactician and Steel Garrote from your list. Steel Garrote would be my preference. The rest is cool in a party but not as reliable in a solo run (if you don't like to use Smoke Veil) imo.

They give a lot of XP if you are of low level. At higher levels that's not that much anymore. I mean the amount stays the same, but relative to the amount of XP you need to advance through higher levels it's not that much anymore. If you reach lvl 11 you can still upscale WM. The game will recognize that you're too high of level and will suggest upscaling then.

For the first time I think lvl 10 is good for non-scaled WM. The first fight can be tough because it's very long and stretched over the whole map. After that it gets easier but then the difficulty surges again at some point (in a certain map with certain annoying enemies who use paralyzing blow darts... ;).

White March is designed to be tackled from lvl 8 on. It can be started earlier but the initial fight is too difficult for most partys < lvl 8. So it is def. easier than doing upscaled Act 3 and I would totally recommend going there (I mean WM) first. Just don't try to do Crägholt Bluffs "on the fly" while traveling to the WM. CBluffs is very high level content and will mop the floor with lvl-8 parties.

The bestest weapon! By the way, speaking of Willbreaker: in earlier runs I never enchanted it with "Make them Flinch" (25% miss to graze conversion) because I thought the alternative has more impact. But I came to realize that when it really matters (meaning taking on the tough nuts and not "winning more" against the trash mobs) it's a great enchantment. Especially if you combine it with Gloves of Greater Reliablity (also 25% iirc). Grazes are sooo much better than Misses. Even if the enemies' deflection (or fortitude, what is lower - hello Brute Force) is so high you would only miss otherwise you will graze quite often and apply effects that will make it more easy to hit properly.

I just used the console to give a Stormspeaker/Watershaper (Tekehu) the Fury subclass - inkluding the Fury's +1 PEN passive: unfortunately the "elements" keyword were stripped form those invocations and thus the +1 PEN of the Fury does not apply. Still a nice concept thematically though.

Yes, Knockdown and Bonus Knockdown are better with a dual wielding (or bashing shield) setup. Unfortunately the additional Knockdown ability from the belt Girdle of the Driving Wave is a Primary Attack only.

Wow... I have an SSD and I'd say the absolute max I have to wait are 10 secs. I'd even be bold and say 5 seconds but I want to have some wiggle room. By the way: I found it helps to sell stash items that you won't use regularly. A full stash means a lot more game objects have to get loaded into the scene (I guess).

Nobody's graphics card is. That's the power of Unity3D.

Iirc Berserker/Devoted with Morning Star was my first character in Deadfire (didn't finish). It was a coincidence - I knew nothing about Body Blows + Spirit Frenzy being cool with Brute Force etc. because I dove in blindly. Back then Cleaving Stance/Mob Stance was absolutely overpowered because it did a Full Attack on all enemies in melee range - and that was pretty hilarious in combination with Blood Thirst. Also iirc Disciplined Strikes/Intuitive had 50% crit conversion at release. With a Morning Star+Brute Force I also would pick Spirit Frenzy over Blood Frenzy any day. The added -10 fortitude is great then. Also you'll remove Might inspirations on enemies on the fly. I have a few questions: Why did you pick Spirit Tornado and not Blood Thirst? Because of the Terrify effect helping you survive? Without Community Patch Spirit Tornado will not apply the stagger effect to all attack rolls anymore (afaik Spirit Frenzy staggers with all attack rolls, even Carnage, AoE spells and Shouts, Spirit Tornado only with direct weapon hits). At the same time Blood Thirst works very well with Cleaving/Mob Stance...? If sturdyness was an issue - why no Savage/Stalwart Defiance? Did you consider Leap instead of Lion's Sprint? You could reach any spot with Leap (even land between enemies where you normally can't run because path is blocked) and you can even cancel it mid-air if your character circle appears at the target location: it will cost no Rage then and you won't daze anyone at arrival, but you will still land where you aimed and have no recovery. Imo its better than Lion's Sprint - but it doesn't give an inspiration of course.

Hm... maybe subclasses which would "borrow" Druid spells could also profit from the Fury's passive. For example: in theory some of Tekehu's special Stormspeaker spells could profit if he were a Fury instead of a Watershaper. From the top of my head I don't know any non-druid subclass besides Stormspeaker that uses one or more "elements" spells though. But maybe cool for a modded main character. I think Stormspeaker + Fury makes a lot of sense thematically. But that's not a sorcerer then of course.

Indeed. The +1 PEN of Furies only applies to damage dealing spells that are keyworded with "Elements" - and only certain Druid spells have that keyword.

The Lanter's refund does and her Sickle's dmg bonus also doesn't care how an enemy died - but the +3 wounds she only gets from melee weapon kills. At least that was the case. Don't think that was changed but mayb it was. I found out rel. early because I wanted to get +3 wounds from using Blessed Harvest (Priest/Monk) but it doesn't work. Also Inner Death kills didn't give Xoti wounds without CP iirc.

Huh - I didn't think about Shifter at all but you are right: his bonus spells fit best in this case. If you don't shift the class has no drawbacks. The pros/cons are in the shifting itself.

Besides the Sasha's Singing Scimitar Chanter who can empower "for free" and doesn't need empower points for resource refill I use it frequently with wizards, priests and druids. But I play wizards more so most of times wizard. I will spend some points on empower abilities, too. Mostly I will empower the PL8- or 9 stuff. If you use The Least Unstable Coil then empowering an ability such as Minoletta's Missile Barrage, Meteor Shower, Great Mealstrom, Avenging Storm, Sigil of <god> Rain of Holy Fire will give you all tier-3 inspirations, including Brilliant. That's worth an empower point imo. Also the Weyc's stuff. Another time I used a Xoti Monk with Empowered Strikes and Inner Death since that makes sure you actually land a crit. With Xoti's Inner Death isn't so inferior to Whispers of the Wind because WotW costs more Wounds - but Inner Death does not cost more Mortification. And with the Lantern you even get back +1 Mortification per kill (and +3 wounds if you are using Community Patch which turns Inner Death from a "spell" that doesn't work with Turning Wheel, Enervating Blows, Swift Flurry and Xoit's Wound mechanic into a melee weapon ability which then works with that stuff).

If you can wait until you get Charge you might have a lot of fun with Edér as a rusher, zipping behind enemy lines and taking out casters and so on. He will have the sturdyness but also the offensive output then to be good at it. Charge not only damages the enemies in its path and the one you are targeting with crush dmg, it also does an "invisible" full attack at the target. So using dual sabres or something heavy like that (maces, hammers and so on) is the way to go imo. If you time/position it right it can be very effective. For example if you pull a bunch of enemies with Edér so they form a nice line behind him, then charge to the last enemy in that line and then back to the head of the line. Granted: it comes pretty late. But maybe it can also be fun to just build him towards that dual weapon setup before and play him more offensively - like a sturdy rogue. Fighters are not the most impactful class at higher levels and fall behind other classes, especially casters - but Charge can bring them back a little.

I also think CON would need a little boost because it's not that important if you know what you are doing. But instead of using it for deflection I would do something else with it. Resolve raises deflection (I see no good explanation for this but it's the way it is - so one could also argue that CON might raise it some way, but I digress...) and duration of hostile effects on you - and still it's a dump stat in many builds. Mostly it gets dumped in offensive builds because it has no offensive purpose. Same as CON. The other attributes do contribute to offense and defense - and I guess that's why we see CON and RES dumped so much - offensive character seem to be more fun I guess. Atm you can build around low CON and RES relatively easily. With good healing and enough AR it's not too bad if you have lowish health and deflection. But it's difficult to make up for dumped INT or DEX most of times for example. Since I can't see a way for CON influencing offense in the Pillars system I would double down on the defensive capabilities. I mean in another system I could see CON influencing an endurance pool that lets you execute more special attacks than somebody with less endurance. Something like that. But in PoE/Deadfire we don't have that sort of endurance pool that fuels attacks but specialized ones for each class which wouldn't make sense to get influenced by CON. Instead of raising deflection to simulate "tanking" DMG my idea would have been to give CON not only +/-x% to health but also give it damage reduction. So a character with 10 CON suffers the incoming damage unchanged (besides armor and other DR effects of course), but somebody with 20 CON not only had more health but also would have a damage reduction of - I don't know - 20%? That's 2% per point. I just made up that number. A char with 3 CON would receive more damage than is actually incoming: +14% (a bit like Hekwalker or Assassin passives). Since damage reduction is quite impactful due to double inversion mechanics I wouldn't go higher than that maybe. But that would need playtesting. Another idea was to influence "healing received". At the moment a healing ability that heals 100 health will heal up a squishy completely from near death to unharmed - but only give like half of health back to a really beefy character, from near death to bloodied. Isn't that a bit unfair? What's all the max health of Mr. Meat for if your pool fills up as slowly as Mr. Glass's does? So a char with 10 CON would receive +/-0% of the applied healing, a char with 3 CON would get a -35% malus (5% per point of CON) and a char with 20 CON would receive +50% healing. Those were my two ideas I had some time ago. I also suggested the RES change (influences hostile durations). Don't know if Josh read that or cane to that conclusion by himself. But unlike the RES change CON was only boosted from 3% per point to 5%. So maybe those ideas have some flaws I don't see now . Anyway - I would implement either DR or healing factor, not both. I'd prefer the healing factor I guess. It's mathematically less complicated and makes most sense imo. But both could work. That way somebody who dumps CON will be really soft and can't counter with high armor values and/or healing that easily. It would make CON a lot more attractive I think.

So... when I'm upset about somebody else's childish ways to ask for info I can't express my emotions with an answering post? OP should be able to rant and express his emotions "honestly" - but I should suppress my urge to answer "like a flawless emotion robot"? Maybe that's just my way to communicate my valid criticism? It may be too civil though so I apologize. I have feelings too, you know, even if they are diplomatic feelings in a well-mannered shell. I hope you are not trying to cancel my feelings and opinion about childish behavior because it doesn't align with your way of communicating disagreement? That would be really oppressive and wouldn't that basically "destroy human society" in the long run?

Ancient is more beast and plant themed. I think I'd go Animist (the standard druid) since there is no subclass that's dedicated to decay spells. But I could also see a "twisted Lifegiver" being a cool concept. They usually can't summon creatures (with druid spells I mean) so this one might have found a way to give "live" to his undead creations as Beckoner or Troubadour and then cast decay on his enemies (but is able to heal his summons). The undead Animancy Cat would make a great pet.

The confusion is so convenient and powerful in order to kill all your selektons at once with Chilling Grave itself (which procs new Chilling Graves at once and so on) that all the dmg of the Streetfighter can't keep up with that immediate chain reaction imo.

Yes, had the same with Berserker/Beckoner + Grave Calling. It's like 1 fps once the chillfogs start exploding. Try to fry your machine and use Avenging Storm on top (procs from Chilling Grave), haha.

I would put INT, DEX and PER over MIG. How about a Druid as second class? There are some Decay spells that would fit nicely. You can use the Lance of the Midwood Stag as weapon. As soon as you cast Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan on yourself you'll have +2 Power Level for all your spells, Chanter or Druid one. It also looks a bit like it could be a Necromancer's item imo. Berath is also fine.