Boeroer

That's a rather short-sighted argument. As if every encounter would go the way one wants. Also: If I could have invisibility without any drawbacks - why not use it (I mean besides cheese aversion of course)? Then the party doesn't have "to defend him while he decimates his enemies" but can just do the same: decimate enemies.

I reckon a fun spell to steal would be Shadowing Beyond from a Priest of Skaen. Unlimited uses, instant cast, no recovery, no much impact of lacking Power Level either. I also tried Thrust of Tattered Veil - just because having a 100% interrupt at hand that has 0.5 casting time could be nice. With Blade Cascade it becomes an interrupting machine gun which can't miss, hehe. Too bad it's only pierce dmg. But still fun and useful.

That, my prosopagnostic friend, is a woman.

That's correct. But as you can see in @Raven Darkholme's video all you need is the right enemy Priest with Salvation of Time (+ Barring Death's Door maybe). Did anybody try what happens to those "abilities" when you export that character? Can you use premade characters for an Ultimate run?

Yes, like that. Except I use it all the time as a precaution, not only when threatened.

**** - too bad this comes to light so late. It would have been fun to read Josh's reaction to an ultimate run with this trick.

Stalker/Goldpact can tank better than Stalker/Priest (cheesy stuff like Barring Death's Door + Salvation of Time aside). I pesonally like Stalker/Bloodmage better because you can tank well while you'll have a good summon (Essential + Substancial Phantom) and an Animal Companion and lots of spell uses. But Stalker/Goldpact requires a lot less fuzz and can be quite effective with very little use of Zeal. AR and defenses will be great. Accuracy, too. Also Paladin can heal the Animal Companion and make it sturdy without casting lenghty spells. Revive it even. I think it's a good combo for solo.

No Death Ring from invisibility on near death enemies? I find the instakill-feature quite nice at times.

Huh? Since when? For me they only did that if they got destroyed. I didn't use a lot of Rage for active abilities. Only Blood Storm (then you don't need that much Rage because it prolongs with kills) and wards. Sometimes HoF at the start of a fight to apply Bledding Cuts to a whole group of enemies at once. I didn't do Megabosses. They just stink. For the rest it was fun. Of course I was only half serious: Barbarian in general really isn't that great for solo. Furyshaper isn't supergood either - but the Blood Ward mechanic makes it viable and lots of fun imo. One of the few combos where it's actually viable (in most fights) to jump right into the crowd and swing your weapon around like a madman. In a party Blood Ward can obviously be totally bonkers (hello Plague of Insects and stuff).

I didn't try that - but it's likely. By the way: you can also steal spells from your hireling's grimoires (which they haven't learned). That includes unique spells like Zandethus's Draconic Fury etc. For that you need to be a SC Wizard though because only then you can cast Major Grimoire Imprint and not only Minor GI.

Taste of the Hunt - excellent spell to steal for a Berserker/Wizard. The non-scaling isn't good for the attack roll but the weapon quality helps. And the raw dmg and healing are great to have. Healing 40+ health with every hit just so while doing around 20 raw per tick is still great. And now you can have Firebrand as non-druid, too. The duration is quite long anyways so the lack of PL doesn't hurt either. Edit: also just being able to spam Thrust of Tattered Veils at any time for the 100% interrupt (cause auto-hit) is quite nice. Stacking Chillfogs like there's no tomorrow... It's all quite fun I must say. I use some Priest or Druid heals to stay alive while spamming all those wizard nukes with Tenacious for free.

It's true that the non-existent PL is a bit offputting. But there are some spells where it doesn't matter that much (e.g. summons and summoned weapons - maybe I can steal spiritual weapons as well...?). With a fellow Priest/Druid/Wizard hireling you can exactly determine which spell you want to steal (with the help of confusion). You just only learn that one with the hireling... Edit: I just tried Consecrated Ground - I never realized that it stacks. Since you can spam it like crazy (when stolen) it provides immense healing even if it doesn't scale with PL. Cool...

Oh my God I just made a Berserker/Wizard and stole Blessed Harvest from Xoti. Hello and welcome Willbreaker + Spirit Frenzy + some con affliction + Bloody Slaugther + Blessed Harvest! *boom*

Ohhhhhhhhh

Indeed. It's fun - although I did struggle a bit without cheese and consumables (which I usually avoid) in the late game. With scrolls though...

I don't know which spells can be stolen from enemy druids/priests/wizards - but after some testing it seems the choice is rather limited since I often ended up with the same old spells - or I had bad luck. Anyway: the ability to cast spells non-stop is extremely tempting. Maybe I will try a spell stealing Berserker/Evoker and try to spam lower level stolen nukes in combination with Blood Thirst. Or something else that gives me high casting speed and short/no recovery... Streetfighter/Evoker with mortars maybe? Or should I shoot Scordeo's Trophy with Wall of Draining and collect an absurd amount of recovery bonus before start spamming?

I'm quite surprised I don't see Killers Froze Stiff and Ben Fidel's Neck in that list. Were two staples of my Troub/Psion run. Especially as soon as I got Many Lives Pass By since it lowers the necessity to summon other creatures that often. At some point I used Ngati's Tusk + Cap of the Laughingstock (sometimes) to lower enemies defenses by -10 without any attack roll - and combined with Helm of the White Void for improving my "virtual" accuracy for all kinds of debuffs/CC a lot. Cap of the Laughingstock means no fear effects on enemies - so I mainly used it against enemies who are resistant/immune anyways.

Just pick FF/Beguiler and it's a non-issue most of times. Enfeeble can be very helpful in certain encounters. Not only because the duration of enemies' afflictions is longer but also because enemies who heal get messed up very badly.

I see you didn't play solo Furyshaper. Melee Geomancer was one of my favorite solo runs.

You use either Watershaper's Focus or Fire in the Hole and pick Driving Flight. Imbue shots of the Arcane Archer will proc their effect with the initial hit and with every bounce, too. Initial attack + build-in bounce + Driving Flight's bounce = 3 instances of Binding Web or Pull of Eora. This is extremely useful to start an encounter with. Even the Blast's recovery penalty from Watershaper's Focus isn't a big deal if you can start from stealth. Your first shot (Imbue:Web) will have -85% recovery from stealth - so you can follow up with the second one (Imbue:Eora) nearly right away. After that the recovery will be long. But you did two shots with grand CC in a few seconds and dealt 6 Blast attacks on top of the CC which an many cases also procs Ondra's Wrath. In order to hit as many enemies from stealth as possible you can either send in your Animal Companion as bait or you use traps or Sparkcrackers etc. to lure them. Then fire from stealth. The enemies will get pulled together like crazy and they can't move, too. Tis results in a lot of enemies in a very tight space. You can then shower them with whatever spells you have. I wouldn't use damaging imbue shots because PEN is not scaling for those in vanilla game (that's fixed with the Community Patch). But as Priest you will have enough late-game goodies you can throw at such a clump of enemies. Arcane Archer also has high motivation to raise Arcana to the max - and high level scrolls are very good for soloing. For example you can unload Great Maelstrom onto those gathered enemies or switch to Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole and use Avenging Storm. For emergencies you can use Potion of Invisibility and just leave combat (unless Berath's Challenge is active). Against bosses Stalker is better though imo. Often bosses are resistant to DEX afflictions - so Web doesn't have a great effect. Pull of Eora can still be useful but in the long run the AR and deflection of a Stalker are great. But I guess you can have some good tools as Priest vs. bosses, so maybe it doesn't have to be a Stalker. And as soon as you have that Brilliant + Salvation of Time thing going survivability doesn't matter anyway... I did a solo Stalker/Wizard run and it was very good, no doubt (Megabosses aside which sometimes require some special feats - see Huani o Whe). But in general I value the Arcane Archer higher because of his unique effects that can make most encounters trivial. With Priest I would pick a class that not only has fire damage at its disposal. Berath is nice bc. of corrode dmg alternatives for example. If you want melee then def. pick Stalker imo. Animal Companions are not good at tanking. You can use them in many ways but pure tanking is not what ethey excel at. But you can for example pick the Bear, give him Resiliant Companion and then cast Chamipon's Boon on him. That will give him quite high AR which lets him live longer and also give him +3 engagement. Against every target he then engages you will have +10 ACC because of Stalker's Link. Combine with Marked for the Hunt and your spells will get +20 ACC against those enemies - which is great. If you use good debuffs (Searing Seal + Devotions + Desponent Blows for example) the enemies' ACC will be abysmal and your Bear will be able to stay alive for quite some time while you take out enemies. However - if you play the Barring Death's Door + Brilliant + Salvation of Time game then you can also make your Animal Companion immortal and tank with it forever of course.

I'd argue that Arcane Archer is the best Ranger subclass by far (if build "properly"). At least it's the Ranger subclass with the most impact on fights in my playthroughs. Double bounce leading to 3 parallel instances of Binding Web and 3 parallel Pulls of Eora with insane accuracy, done in mere seconds (if starting from stealth) is incredible CC. And the damage comes on top. Gunhawks are cool, the higher range and esp. the interrupts are nice - but it just doesn't have the same impact for me.

Uh... what would-be expert wrote those posts? Ciphers are good for PotD. Especially in a party (but also not bad solo). Ancestor's Memory alone is enough to make a Cipher very interesting for any party. A Psion with Ancestor's Memory and decent INT can keep a party member perma-brilliant. Imagine your fellow Druid to be able to spam stuff like Great Maelstrom without limit.

This is different. Sacred Immolation emits pulses of burn damage that do an attack roll with every pulse and then apply damage directly. It's not the classic damage over time where you have one initial attack roll and then some ticks without attack rolls for a duration. Dragon Thrashed is a DoT: one attack roll and then a few ticks of burn DMG. DoTs do not profit from Scion of Flame etc. (also see Soul Ignition or Shining Beacon and so on). Sacred Immolation is a Pulsing effect: every pulse does an attack roll which deals direct damage (also see Chillfog or Nature's Terror etc.). Pulsing spells like Sacred Immolation do work with Scion of Flame (and the others as long as the element fits of course).

SC Assassin with Community Patch can be bonkers with dual mortars. That is with Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak. You use Vanishing Strikes (maxed INT, all duration boosters available) and then Gambit. Best used against crowed mobs, so lure them somewhere with a trap or so. Just run right into them in order to unlock Backstabs with mortars. Stunning with the Cloak helps that they don't run around then. Hand Mortar unlocks Deathblows via Blinding Smoke, Fire in the Hole jumps around. All hits rolls in <2m range will apply the Backstab dmg. Against single targets obviously use something else. The fastest setup is nice - for example Pukestabber + Marux Amanth + Miscreant's Leather + Abraham + Blackblade's Hood and so on. Although Pukestabber prevents you from using duration+ food, so maybe do some math or tests first which approach has the better outcome (+duration food or alcohol). If you use food stacking that's a no brainer imo. You want to deal as many Backstabs during VS duration as possible. With Gambit also Sun & Moon + fast offhand weapon is great (three chances to crit and very fast recovery).

Solo runs with Assassin tend to be hit-and-run (or hit and vanish) approaches. In the vanilla game I think Assassin/Tactician with Dragon's Dowry the way to go because you'll become Brilliant as soon as you use Smoke Veil - which means you can use Smoke Veil every time after a shot to reload in peace and get back the Guile needed for the next Smoke Veil. No running needed. At least it used to work that way. No idea if invisibility triggering Brilliant was patched out but I think not. Against pierce immune foes you might want a backup weapon - e.g. Eccea's Arcane Blaster or Essence Interrupter or whatever. Ranged Assassin/Bleak Walker is very good in the beginning but I find it to lack dmg output in the later game. You won't be able to one- or two-spot most enemies rel. early which means you'll have to resort to DoTs like Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy eventually. Might as well switch to melee then and use Lover's Embrace, too. Assassin/Skaen is cool thematically but overall not overly exciting, Shadowing Beyonds of the Priest is implemented quirkily and breaks on DoTs which is meh. - Besides that it's just a Priest + Assassinate who has to vanish from combat to survive. Except if you abuse Barring Deaths Door + Salvation of Time + Brilliant of course. Then it's a bit like God mode. Or "Major Avatar"... Use a Death Godlike for thematic and PG reasons. You can then use invisibility all the time for highest DMG output. Assassin/Bloodmage with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure can CC enemies into the stone age without getting revealed and then finish with high impact DMG spells + Shadowing Beyond or Smoke Veil. With Healing Gloves and Wall of Draining you'll have enough health for Blood Sacrifice. All in all the Assassin/Tactician way may be the most easy to play and straightforward. I didn't try it myself for long (only until mid game) but I saw an impressive video by @Kaylonwho introduced this combo some while ago.