Boeroer

Hah, right. But one more reason to have good alternative weapon sets, right? Dmg variety is much more important in Deadfire than it is in PoE. Underpenetration is a severe disadvantage that has to be avoided. So best not to roleplay a Devoted with something else than a Devoted.

As I wrote in another thread (where I told the stuff about Shared Nightmares/Soul Blade) the proc of Current's Rush (which does crush dmg) is an AoE which can proc itself(!) as Ondra's Wrath used to. If you have enough enemies in the AoE it can lead to a chain reaction that means instadeath (of enemies I mean). Since it only happens on crit this might mean it's not working so well on high defense enemies - but as I also wrote I had fabulous results with it on a SC ranger (bc. of Driving Flight + Twinned Shot maximizing proc chance) - with the normal AoE. So I reckoned it could be as good with a non-ranger but a huuuge AoE. It may take some time to proc on a single enemy, but when it does and there's enough enemies around it has the potential to go *boom-boom-boom* all the way. It was a killer on that SC Ranger (also with Whirling Strikes in combo with club+modal).

You should really try Current's Rush now and see how that goes.

Sungrazer's more powerful AoE triggers on crit-kill which can happen more often with Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming. Same with the weaker 5% skill. But Sun & Moon massively increases the chance to get some crit chains because of how the dual flail head attacks are coded. It becomes really obvious once you get Heartbeat Drumming, too. If you are using Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming I would def. recommend Sun & Moon (besides the +2 fire PL at daytime which is also nice ofc). It has a lot more impact then than Sungrazer imo. Although I'm a secret fan of St. Drogga's Skull I wouldn't pair it with Magran's Favor - because two slash-only weapons. If you have a second weapon setup with another dmg type it's okay though. For example one with Magran's Favor + St. Drogga's Skull and the other with Sun & Moon + Sungrazer, eh?

@Not So Clever Houndbecause of bot/spam/flood control new forum posters need to have their first posts approved by a mod to get them published. Those posts will appear as soon as they get approved with the original timestamp (when the poster hit the save button basically). That can be confusing because it indeed means that they get sorted before the actual end of the thread and forum users might winder how they could miss it before (they didn't, it wasn't there). This ends after 5 (? I believe) approved posts.

See you tomorrow with some other build suggestions.

Just rechecked: Mask of the Weyc stacks with everything except Arcane Veil - and Magnificient Escape also stacks with everything except Escape (even with the Mask). I got my SC Bloodmage up to 230 deflection without any consumables and resting bonuses easily (with the help of Wall of Draining).

Yeah, I used it with the Steel Garrote/Bloodmage and it stacked with Mirrored Images and naturally with Llengrath's Safeguard. Great stuff!

Mask of the Weyc has an Arcane-Veil-like deflection buff that stacks with other deflection buffs (don't remember if it stacks with Arcane Veil, too - since it seems to be a copy of that ability). Magnificent Escape Cape has an Escape with the +50 deflection which also stacks with other deflection buffs but not Escape itself (because direct copy I guess but who knows). At least it used to be so. Cool if you can prolong those with whatever trick (WoD, SoT, SoF etc.) Bardatto's Luxury has some inspiration stuff that used to stack with other inspirations of the same kind iirc. I don't use it much (actually only once) so maybe this isn't the case anymore.

Yes, Seeker's Fang is bonkers on ciphers. Too bad all plaques of the ultimate are gone by now.

Sure. But what melee abilites does a cipher have? During Ascension a Witch with Blood Thirst wants to spam "free" damaging cipher spells in order to kill asap - so that recovery gets removed and the next "free" spell can follow. And most of the damaging abilites of ciphers are ranged ones. But of course you can totally use melee weapons to collect focus and ascend. As Barb/Ascendant you could even stop casting spells alltogether and just use the higher Soul Whip dmg bonus to boost your melee damage. But imo you could as well (or even better) play a Barb/Rogue or Barb/Monk then.

Oh wohawohawhoa! Does that also mean that the "renamed" effect like Brilliant from Shroud of the Phantasm and an ordinary effect like Brilliant could stack?

I just always use it.

3.8K focus rofl. I love Watershaper's focus. Ondra's Wave also generates focus, right? I mean not that you need that with 3.8K - but still. Ondra's Wave used to proc off itself. That was patched out at some point but it is still such a fun weapon (even without Blade Cascade).

Yes, that is the main thing indeed. THat's also why - in a party - you shouldn't cramp all the synergistic stuff into one character. It absolutely hurts the action economy of your party. It's cool if a character X can do A, B and C, but it will take thrice as long as if char X does A, Y does B and Z does C at the same time. That's also why single classes shine in a party more than solo (generally speaking) because it's easier to cover all necessary "roles" with 5 chars. The individual chars may look more "boring" - but you will simply be faster imo. But that's why I love the Barb/Chanter debuffer so much - because he can stagger + weaken with a phrase (Spirit Frenzy triggers from phrases, too) and can focus on hitting stuff with a morning star and Ben Fidel (or whatever invocation). And the repeating phrases make it easy to eventually hit. Against Dorudugan Ngati's Tusk is great because its debuff is auto-hit and there's no duration or immunity (RES is useless). That's already -10. Afflictions don't work well because of resistance/immunities. Miasma and Psychovampiric Shield could help with the high RES though? I didn't fight him that often so I don't remember how long the Body Blows lasted - but maybe against Doru I wouldn't really want to play the debuff chess game anyway. I'll just hit him with a Gouging Strike from Lover's Embrace and say Sayonara. Superannoying dude he is...

Shared Nightmare works like INT (and other stuff like Overseeing etc). It may feel like it's not because it comes on top of a big INT bonus often. Area has the quadratic function π * radius². You won't see that much increase in radius the bigger the area. AoE increase/decrease in Deadfire is different from what it was in PoE. In PoE the INT modifier was directly multiplied with the radius - which lead to ridiculous AoE growth as soon as your INT reached certain numbers (because of quadratic growth): AoE = π * (mod_INT * radius)² Let's do an example for PoE: base radius of 5m with 30 INT --> +100% modifier; AoE = 3.142 * (2*5m)² = 314m² Let's assume Shared Nightmare was a thing in PoE and add +200% from focus: 3.142 * (4*5m)² = 1,257m² (quadrupled) In Deadfire INT and stuff like Overseeing and Shared Nightmares directly affects the area, not the radius: AoE = (π * radius²) * mod_INT Same exemplary numbers in Deadfire (5 base radius, 30 INT): AoE = 3.142 * 5² * 2 = 157m² With Shared Nightmare at +200%: AoE = 3.142 * 5² * 4 = 314m² (doubled) So naturally when you already have an AoE bonus of +100% then another +100% will not be that visible because the radius won't grow much (because a tiny increase in radius will already have a bif effect on the size of the area). Still: the area the circle will cover is doubled. In PoE the returns were increasing. Now looking at the circles in Deadfire one could think that the returns are diminishing - but mathematically they are linear. It's debateable though if they are kind of diminishing in the scope of the game - because enemies have a rel. fixed space they occupy. Even if the the area is growing in a linear fashion and you'll double it... it's the growth of the radius that's more "obviously important" to reach new enemies and not how much m² you actually cover. But radius will only crawl forward with already big AoEs - even with huge additional gains of area. You'll see a bigger increase in radius with cone-shaped AoEs (which are actually cicular sectors and not cones, because a cone is a 3D body - but whatever) because they use the formula for cicular sectors: AoE = radius²/2 * (α - sin α), where α is the angle of the "cone" which is usually listed in the tooltip. Therefore cone AoEs will grow more visible with high INT and also Shared Nightmare. Also here the radius will increase less and less with more stacked bonuses - but the "decline" of radous-growth isn't that steep as with circular AoEs. Also AoE effects with already big base radiuses will feel a lot better with high INT and Shared Nightmare than AoEs which start with small base radiuses. Check out Amplified Wave (5m base) with 30 INT and Shared Nightmare vs. Soul Shock (2.5m base) for example. If you want to have Shared Nightmare to have a big visual an practical effect you should use it with a Cipher who has 3 or even 1 INT. Not kidding, I played one quite some time ago. Only picked abilites that don't care about INT (beams, Mind Blades, Mind Lance etc.) or even were better with low INT (Disintegrate back then) and then after PL9 retrained and got the ones with AoEs, too.

One reason why I like bringing a Furyshaper/Skald or Troub with Willbreaker. The "on the fly" Fortitude and Will debuffing + the individual Body Blows are so great against imo. I used to enchant Willbreaker with the DoT but found that you don't need it at all and that the "Make them Flinch" enchantment that gives 25% miss to graze is much more useful - it stacks with the Gauntlets of Greater Reliability (25% as well) which makes it quite easy to debuff enemies' fortitude by 25 initially even if you wouldn't otherwise be able to graze them (which isn't likely to happen a lot - but just for showing how good and overlooked those enchantments are). Then cast Ben Fidel's Neck for another -10 to all defenses and enemies' fortitude is at (-25-20-10=) -55. And that's achievable before your buddy even gets to Disintegration iirc. Later combine with Brute Force of course. You can stack it with a party member with Ngati's Tusk later with max survival. The defense debuff is an auto-hit aura. I also employ one char with a club + modal and one with Draining Touch (trick). In various setups, doesn't matter. Often the club bearer is a fighter because Clear Out = AoE Will debuff then. Add a nice Miasma on Top for massive Will reduction (-40) and good deflection debuff (-10). You'll then have a party who can debuff Fortitude and Will off to never-neverland which is both great for any cipher (but also Barb, Furyshaper, Trickster, Wizard, Priest, Chanter and Druid). Yeah I love to play the debuffing game I have to admit.

Imo if going for terrify effects nothing beats casting Miasma of Dull-Mindedness before. Of course that can be done by another party member.

I don't know actually but I don't think so. Doesn't seem to be considered a melee or even weapon effect because it doesn't generate focus, right? Shared Nightmare is very nice with Watershaper's Focus (in combination with Time Parasite to counter the +50% recovery time from Blast) and mortars (obviously). Whispers otEP does apply Soul Annihilalation in the whole cone AoE. The bigger the better. And since it's a cone its length grows quite a bit with Shared Nightmare. It's also very good with Current's Rush. That scepter's AoE proc can trigger itself so the bigger the AoE the more likely is a deadly crit-chain-reaction that kills all enemies in range. It's already very good with a high INT SC Ranger with Driving Flight + Twinned Shot (maximizing proc chance per shot) but It may be equally good with huge AoE. And the AoE proc does generate focus iirc.

Ascended + Frenzy + Bloodlust + Blood Thirst is a great combo imo. Speeding up casting times + recovery as well as removing recovery on kill is nice while ascended in order to squeeze a lot of spells into that time window. If you pick spells with short casting time and long recovery (Mind Blades, Amplified Thrust and Mind Lance for example) it can be so much fun because you can squeeze a lot of them into the ascended time eventually. Mind Blades works quite well with Bloody Slaughter by the way because it can hit the same enemy multiple times. Edit: I would either pick Furyshaper (even faster casting with Frenzy Ward which stacks with other speed bonuses) or Berserker (+2 PEN for your spells as well and faster Ascension).

He swallowed his pride and fought like a kite.

I did a solo SC Furyshaper and it went pretty well (Blood Ward draining life from all sources of dmg is just great). SSS and FS gave me trouble though and I didn't even try megabosses. Blame my unwilingness to use resting bonuses and consumables. SC Furyshaper in a party is even better imo. Just because of the Blood Ward.

Hi! Unfortunately PoE has no refined system for AI settings. Just what you can see there. It's very basic. The only way to reduce micromanagement is to choose builds that work more reliably with those basic AI settings. For example a Monk with Torment's Reach needs a ton of micromanagement because of the optimal positioning of the cone - but one who uses Force of Anguish as main attack skill works relatively well if left alone. Same with a tanky sword & board Kana who mainly uses Dragon Thrased vs. a ranged Kana who uses support chants. The sequel Deadfire has a build-in tool for creating custom AI settings which is quite detailed and allows for elaborated "scripts".

Everybody seems to play Soulblade as Soul Annihilation spammer - and of course that can be pretty boring. But a Soulblade also gets more max focus for a melee kill and (more importantly imo) has a discount for shred spells. You don't need to use Soul Annihilation all the time. For example you can play a shred caster with a ranged weapon in one had and a melee weapon or bashing shield in the other, shooting/casting at range and only using Soul Annihilation as soon as he is engaged in melee to get rid of enemies. By the way: you can extend the duration of the Soul Blade's +10 max focus buff with Strand of Favor - meaning you can stack an absurd amount of max focus for a very long time if you want. This can be pretty hilarious with Shared Nightmare (and of course with Soul Annihilation).

If you export characters with items you can later (in another playthrough) decide at which level you want to import those characters and also if they should come with items or without. It becomes (a lot) more expensive then. So basically it's like buying that item from a shop - only that the shop is a hireling. And yes - that way you will have duplicated those items. You will still be able to get the original one in the current game. I sometimes use this method to get some items earlier for a special kind of build I want to play - which otherwise would only be possible to experience very late in the game. Usually there is not that much power difference between early and late game items except the quality (fine/exceptional/superb and so on). So it's not breaking the game. For example I like to have Ngati's Tusk earlier than normal. But since its best enchantment (-x to enemies' defenses except deflection) scales with survival it's not that OP at earlier levels. With charged / per rest items it's a bit different obviously. Those can break the game balance, especially figurines. Calling forth some powerful summons without any resources multiple times per encounter is very powerful. I used two Rings of Reset for a quirky Barbarian suicide build with Vengeful Defeat and gear that triggers on knockout (Effort Great Sword, Effigy's Husk and so on). Fun but weird. Works well with party members who profit from friends' knockouts (Crown of Woedica, Divine Retribution and so on).