Boeroer

In a party I usually value single class wizards, priests and druids more than their multiclasses. Ciphers and chanters I prefer to multiclass. The main reason is that Cipher's and Chanter's PL 8 and 9 spells aren't very exciting to me. Speaking of Cipher and Chanter: Psion/Troubadour has nice synergy for a caster multiclass imo. Not that one side boosts the spells of the other - but in terms of resouce generation and action economy it's a great fit. Also you can combine two of the most impactful things in one character: summons and mind control. Also works with Beguiler if you concentrate on the cheaper AoE deception spells (mostly Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors). Since you spend resources (and not spell slots) with those two classes you don't have the same situation as with wizards/priests/druids: you'd need to wait for new resources to fill up anyway. Instead of waiting or doing something suboptimal like attacking with a weapon, you just cast with the resource of the second class. Some caster multiclasses (which focus on casting) where I see synergies that can be worth multiclassing: Psion/Troubadour (or Beckoner or Bellower) Tactician/Wizard, -/Priest or -/Druid because of Brilliant I still like Steel Garrote/Bloodmage with Whispers of the Endless Paths because Blood Sacrifice gets automatically fueled by Offensive Parry. The weapon is basically a tool for more casting, not for melee attacks. You trade PL 8 and 9 for more tankyness and an action-economy-friendly spell refill. Helwalker with any caster because of the increased MIG (+15), INT(+10) and PEN (+2) as well as accuracy (+12). The summons are also good to have. But imo best with Cipher or Chanter because losing PL 8 and 9 doesn't hurt as much. Assassin/Wizard with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure as you said Berserker/Priest just because of confused Withdraw (it's an autohit on enemies, too) which is really useful and is accessible so early. Cat Livegiver/Bloodmage because Wall of Draining prolongs Spiritshift + Cat Flurry (and the +5PL powerful healings) - the combo makes casting superfast and lets you use Blood Sacrifice without risk Troubadour/Druid where you use Brisk Recitation with the "Thick Grew their Tongues" chant anf Their Champion invocation as well as all pulsing spells (especially the ones with multiple rolls such as Venombloom) in combination with the Great Sword Effort and its enchantment Hemorrhaging as well as Hylea's Talos in order to generate countless crits with your spells and chant which will all interrupt. A walking interrupt machine.

I personally don't like Seven Nights a lot because I feel that the phrase/damage ratio is worse than Her Revenge in most cases. Eld Nary is great when you have more spread out enemies. I generally like White Worms. Its casting range, base damage and AoE size are decent, it's foe only. The drawbacks are long casting time (compared to Her Revenge for example) and that you need a corpse to cast it on (which gets consumed, so you need another one for the next cast). That makes it not viable against spirits for examples and makes it harder to use with other enemies that don't leave bodies (like disintegrated ones - or ones that explode from crits if you don't turn off the gib option). It also makes it harder to position. That's why I often skip it, even if I don't think it's bad. But with a character who doesn't want to get too close it could be a good alternative to stuff like Her Revenge and Seven Nights which require you to get somewhat near the enemies. But Eld Nary is also good with that - it just comes a lot later than White Worms. I almost never use And Evil turned away. The AoE is just too quirky and the effects are not really impressive for the cost.

Psion has the advantage of not screwing up the action enonomy of a caster and not needing to invest into anything martial (abilities, items etc.) in order to gain focus. This makes it a lot better against tough foes which are hard to deal weapon damage to than a regular cipher. Those ciphers are usually more potent against weaker (and more numerous) foes. But why would a Psion only use low level dps spells (I mean why use dps spells in the first place - but that's another discussion)? There's no real reason to limit yourself to low level spells unless you cannot bear to wait for a few seconds. Sure, it takes longer to collect the focus for the higher tier spells - but that's the case for all ciphers, they have to deal more weapon damage while they cannot cast. The difference with a Psion multiclass is that you don't need to attack (in a non-optimized way in this particular case) with a weapon to collect focus - but they can instead cast spells with the other class' resource in the meantime. Also I think many players forget that Soul Mind scales with Power Level and it doesn't actually take that long to fill up focus - especially if the other class spells that you like to use have longer casting time/recovery. Soul Mind doesn't stop to generate focus even when the Psion is doing a lengthy action, recovering, prone, disabled, debuffed etc. I think it's one of those things a player has to experience to really value its advantages (and also disadvantages if you play it in a "wrong" way). If a player now wants to concentrate on shred spells AND provide focus without actively investing time by attacking with a weapon (instead using the Chilling Grave trick) - and thus circumvent the action economy problems that Soublade/Caster combo normally would have - I can at least see the possibility that this might work. Tough enemies with high defenses will keep a Soulblade from gaining more focus with weapons. This includes Chilling Grave. I think it's really frustrating to play a cipher who cannot gain enough focus in certain fights. The Psion removes that problem and makes focus gain relatively predictable without investing into anything. As I said the need to attack with a weapon messes up the action economy and overall optimizing towards either spellcasting xor weapon usage. I think it's not a coincidence that the most liked Soulblade combos are made with martial classes and then focus on weapon usage + Soul Annihilation (and see the spells as an addon) and the most liked caster/Cipher combos usually gravitate towards Beguiler or Psion. But... if somebody tries to use the other advatages of the Soulblade (like cheaper shred spells) for a change and wants to see Soul Annihilation as the optional add-on and not main part of the build: I'm all for it. I just cannot predict if it will work well.

Depends. Soulblades also have cheaper shred spells and gain more max focus on kill. You can def. build around that and only view Soul Annihilation as a nice-to-have occasional ability. Also I think many players underestimate the potency of Aefyllath Mith Fyr + Soul Whip in general. But I agree that Bellower/Soulblade feels/reads like an odd combination. Skald/Soulblade would be the obvious choice (if you want to go melee Chanter/Cipher in the first place I mean). But... maybe if you want to really concentrate on casting damaging invocations and shred spells it might make some sense (although I'd still prefer Psion for that). Maybe the added versatility of having the occasional strong raw dmg melee attack - especially when you can exploit Chilling Grave + skeletons - is worth it. I can't really say, I haven't tried it. And what countless runs with a lot of odd combos have taught me: you can never be 100% sure how a build idea really works out (for you) unless you try it. On the other hand you don't want to waste precious playing time with things that don't work out for you. That's why I like the console. I simply load up any savegame, alter a character to the combo I want to try, spawn some enemies and try it out for a bit. This still isn't a guarantee that it works well throughout the game but imo it gives you a better sense for it. And sometimes you immediately notice "nope, doesn't work for me" - which is also very useful imo. You'll have three potential enjoyable things going for this combo: a) bombastic invocations, b) cheap shreds and c) a strong melee punch. Or four, if you count in the fact that you have d) two potentially bottomless resource pools. My gut felling says it wouldn't be a nice choice for me personally, but everybody's different so maybe this could really work for you. Sorry for the vagueness...

When Hauani o Whe is about to die (very little health left) you cast Disintegration on it. When it finally dies (health = 0, doesn't matter from what damage it dies) Disintegration must still be active as hostile effect. If that's the case it won't split into lesser oozes and the fight's done. When interrupts don't work then Hauani o Whe (or its child ooze) probably has Concentration stacks left. You have to remove those with (more) interrupts until they start to really interrupt the ooze and prevent merging. Iterrupts will cancel the merging action but not totally prevent the oozes from moving towards each other. Crossbow+modal or Arbalest+modal should work fine (once Concentration is removed).

I just tried it wout again and got proper damage numbers. Must have been some weird hickup back then. I played a solo Geomancer and used a lot of Takedown Combo but didn't use it with Killing Bolt because the dmg numbers were not working out - and it was the only spell that acted weirdly with it. Now I tested it with Aloth and some random AC and it works like it's supposed to. Ah well...

There was no graze afair. If it rolls like 70dmg (50 was just an arbitrary number as example) and Takedown Combo adds +100% you would expect at least 140 final dmg. But it always resulted in less. I didn't test it for years though. Maybe I can do that today and report later.

Killing Bolt also doesn't work properly with bonus dmg for me. When I do a Takedown Combo (+100% dmg for next attack) and follow up with a Killing Bolt I will not get +100% dmg but significantly less although the log says it applied the 100%. Sth. like Dmg roll: 50 +100% Takedown Combo +x% MIG and whatever else = 80 Very weird. I didn't find another spell that does this. Other strong single-target stuff I tried (like Sunlance) works properly.

"costs twice less" - meaning it costs half?

Call to Slumber is a very good option for an Assassin/Wizard as an opening spell imo. It can buy the party a lot of preparation time at the start of combat.

With Driving Flight + one of the weapons @Sympetrum mentioned (I believe Fire in the Hole is best because it has a build#in projectile jump as well) you can gain a lot of stacks pretty quickly. You just need more enemies to hit. But could be that Hand Mortar's Blinding Smoke also triggers stacks of Beast's Claw. I did some tests with this in the past and know that both weapons are good with this, I just cannot remember witch one performed better.

I just leave it on all the time. You can turn it on/off for maximum efficiency, but I didn't really bother. That's too much micromanagement for my taste and the loss of damage is negligible imo.

You don't need Kapana Taga to make the Phantom work with Draining Touch - it's just one of the best items to gain engagement slots for the Phantom so it can do disengagement attacks. A small shield would also work. You can get Kapana Taga early if you do some ship fights against easy ships early - so that your cannoneers become masters (four stars). Or you hire some (with Berath Blessing point for example) who already are master cannoneers. Master cannoneers have a high chance to trigger special effects on hit: flooding, burning sails, knocking cargo loose etc. If you combine this with high firing rate (sloop has quick jibe, use Royal Bronzers or other, even faster reloading cannons), this prevents the enemy ship from firing back since it's occupied with salvage/repair etc. It's a slow process and it can go wrong (you'll have to reload sometimes) but this way you can sink almost every ship, you just need a little luck with with cannoneer's rolls. Winning a boarding fight against Firgist and his crew when you are severely underleveled is much, much harder or even impossible. When wielding a melee weapon I think it's usually the nearest enemy. It stops when getting engaged of course. It will not disengage voluntarily. I haven't really examined what it does when its immune to engagement (if it picks different targets then). It doesn't switch targets once it has decided whom to attack - unless the "duel" gets broken up by something (pushing, pulling, enemy uses Escape, Phantom gets disabled and so on). The phantom will gladly run into friendly fire spells, walls and other zones of death (like a Meteor Shower you cast or so) - it seems to have zero self preservation.

It's a problem with save + reload. It also affects some other bonuses. Something alters the status of those buffs so that the stacking rules get sidelined.

Imo the best way to utilize the Essenial Phantom (until you get Caedebald's Blackbow like @SenSx said, that's an awesome combo) is to give it Concelhaut's Draining Touch as a single handed weapon or with Kapana Taga (reason for Kapana Taga see below). At the same time I let Aloth cast Miasma of Dull-Mindedness onto enemies who will get attacked by the phantom. Bonus points if you have somebody in the party who uses clubs + modal (for me it's often Edér with Shattered Vengeance or Kapana Taga). Club modal + Miasma results in -65(!) Will defense. Maybe Aloth follows up with a mass Confuse and somebody adds a Shaken/Frighten/Terrify effect (Xoti, Aloth) and some -10 defense to all (see Shining Beacon or Ben Fidel's Neck) and enemies' Will defense is at -95 without too much effort. Should you use some party member with maxed Survival and Ngati's Tusk (Hunter of Hunters enchantment) enemies' will is at -105. The reasons why this is a great combination (besides that fact that debuffing Will profits other party members as well) : Concelhaut's Draining Touch doesn't go away on a Phantom. It stays as long as the phantom will last. it targets Will instead of Deflection. Since Will is so easily debuffed the Phantom will land lots of crits as single weapon the phantom will get +12 ACC Draining Touch has very high base damage. It works very well with crits (likely overpenetration + crit damage bonus) It weakens the enemy (prevents proper healing and lowers max health as well as fortitude) Since it weakens on hit it works with the Helm of the White Void (+10 ACC, also works with the phantom) it drains health which makes the phantom a lot sturdier Now you can give Aloth items with +engagement (like Kapana Taga: +2 - or a small shield: +1) and terrify enemies with Aloth (Ryngrim's spells). The enemies will not only get their Will debuffed but also disengage constantly. If the phantom has engagement from items it will use disengagement attacks which have a big dmg bonus - which again works very well with the Draining Touch's high base damage. I usually also give the phantom boots of speed. That way it will close gaps to disengaged enemies very quickly again, re-engaging. It is a very potent setup rel. early in the game: a summon that is sturdy and deals tremendous damage while it also causes weakened. In addition one can wear items that trigger AoE damage on knockout or when damaged: White Witch Mask (Repulsive Visage when blooded), Effigy's Husk, Mantle of the Seven Bolts and such. They also work when the phantom gets killed (not if the duration is up and it simply vanishes though). And it the effects are limited to 1/rest it doesn't matter as long as Aloth doesn't use it up: the phantom will get a "fresh" copy of the item with 1 use/rest every time it gets summoned. You can also give Voidwheel to the phantom so it damages itself with every attack and eventually kills itself, triggering those effects deliberately. Or the Great Sword Effort: it does a Full Attack to all enemy bystanders if the phantom dies. Other nice things to do with the phantom: give it Essence Interrupter - the effect to summon a friendly creature after the enemy is dead also works with the phantom and its copy of the bow Willbreaker or Blade of the Endless Paths (or other weapon which put limited "stacks" of debuffs on enemies on hit) : Since you will have two weapons (1 original , 1 copy) you will put two separate stacks of debuffs on enemies. 2 Willbreaker for example will put 2 stacks of will debuff on enemies, lifting the max of -15 Will to 2*-15 Will = -30 Will. BotEP will be able to debiff deflection by -40 instead of -20 only and so on. Another candidate is Ball and Chain with the Action Speed debuff for example. Citzal's Spirit Lance high deflection gear (armor such as Nomad's Brigandine, bracers, cloak) and Whispers of the Endless Paths with Offensive Parry - phantom will daze enemies if they miss and deal some damage with parries Cast Salvation of Time on the phantom: it prolongs its summon duration The Red Hand - pretty awesome if its enchanted with Double Tab ang you're fighting against vessels I'm sure there's more cool stuff you can do with it. That's what I remembered from the top of my head.

I also don't. If there were individual devs who new all of the mechanics and how everything worked under the hood: they would have forgotten most of it by now because they simply moved on to something new. I cannot remember the details of my own programming once I moved on to a new project. Just recently I was looking back at some specialized search for duplicate data entries which I wrote a few years ago: "Huh? What the heck is happening... and... why?" <insert jacky_chan_wtf.gif/> I like that you can cast Wall spells while under invisibility of Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure - and the invisibility won't break even if they deal damage. I don't like that Wall spells are hazards which don't profit from a lot of character feats and gear but are more acting like stationary summons (which they are not ofc... but kind of ;)).

Depends. Has lower PL scaling - but has no friendly fire. I slept on Miasma of Dull-Mindedness long enough. Imo one of the best spells in the whole game. Also because there are so many good other spells that target the Will defense. I usually also don't pick many spells but rely on grimoires - but Miasma is one of those I almost always pick.

It does (armor and weapons) - but those spiritshift "items" don't have any 3D-model, so your phantom looks like your normal character with bare hands. But it is actually holding invisible claw/tusks/whatever and also wears an invisible (decent & scaling) natural armor with 0 recovery penalty. It may happen that the phantom's attack animation gets a hickup because the game wants to play the attack animation for claws for example - but the phantom's character model doesn't have the corresponding "moves". Oha, I didn't know that. Edit: a sorcerer can keep the natural weapons from spiritshift as permanent items if he casts Kalakoth's Minor Blights and then spiritshifts. The Blights will cycle to a different element and replace the natural weapon in your hand. You may not be abe to use the Blights because again: clash of attack animations (->jitters). But after spiritshift is over (and Blights' duration, too) you will end up with a claw item in your hands. You can do that as often as you want (and then keep two of those for dual wielding or so). Also works with Fearsome Brute's fists by the way (which are pretty awesome weapons which make a cool metal clang sound on hit).

It's nothing worth building around imo (except maybe with a Bleak Walker/Fury or so where you can stack ACC, lash and PEN a lot with it), but it is very nice to have when you meet enemies who are vulnerable to fire (see BoW DLC). I mean +25% burning lash on a weapon that does burn damage itself is very efficient against hte right enemies. You can also give it to the Essential Phantom. Edit: the Phantom also profits from Ring of Focused Flame which is nice.

Well, you would only use Blood Sacrifice once you run out of spell uses I assume. And then you'd turn visible soon anyway. The drawback of the Bloodmage and the Assassin (receiving more damage) doesn't matter much when you're invisible a lot. The other drawback (no Empower) isn't really one for most players because they don't use Empower in the first place. But another wizard subclass like for example Illusionist (or no subclass) also would work of course. You can use Empower once per fight to regain spell uses without breaking invisibility.

That depends a bit on how you operate with this build and what the rest of the party does. If you keep getting attacked frequently you need thicker armor. Your deflection is bad which leads to crits (enemy's PEN*1.5) - so you cannot have too much AR when getting attacked all the time. Even Patinated Plate would be okay then. If you're comfortable with a more "mobile" playstyle or your party (mainly your tank and disablers) is doing a fine job controlling the enemy and you can avoid getting attacked a lot then you could do with a lot less AR (obviously). I chose DoC Breastplate because it has some healing capability, counters confused and offered good enough protection for me. I was quite happy with that balance of mediocre AR and mediocre recovery penalty. So I personally would pick medium armor again. Keep in mind that once you get Blood Thirst the recovery penalty of armor - while still there - becomes less of a hinderance because Blood Thirst just skips recovery on kill. You said you don't mean specific armor, but here are some examples of unique ones I would consider (besides Devi of Caroc's Breastplate): The Bloody Links - it has nice synergies with getting bloodied - either becoming more sturdy (+2 AR) or more speedy. Fleshmender - the added AR is nice against occasional hits from enemies and the reduced crit damage is nice, too. Cool when not getting atttacked too much. Nomad's Brigandie - can make you immune to disengagement attacks which is very helpful for running from enemy to enemy unhindered by engagement. Also nice that it can get up your melee deflection by 10. This is good if you are experiencing more melee resistance since it's rel. thick (and slow). Reckless Brigandine - also nice synergies with losing health. Good AR, especially when losig health - while being faster than normal Brigandines. The look is not to everybody's taste... Magnera's Chain - the added defenses are really good and it's not too slow. Casita Samelia's Legacy - if you are using the Berath's Blessing "Infamous Captain" and want to invest in Intimidate more than my build suggests then this is a good armor to counter your bad deflection (and gain bonus Will while getting hurt, too). Patinated Plate - if you get attacked quite a lot and have problems staying alive. Bronze Juggernaut + Thick Skinned + Hardy makes for a very solid AR value Swift Hunter's Garb - if you feel not that threatened by melee foes, the crit-to-hit conversion is helpful and -15% damage while being flanked can be great in situations where you actually get surrounded (One Stands Alone makes it so that at least 3 enemies are needed to flank you). There are more suitable pieces of armor but I only mentioned the ones which one can access relatively early.

Sure! You'll get wounds well enough from drugs and normal damage you receive I would think.

Druid with Cat Form + Wizard with Wall of Draining is a nice speedy casting setup. Blood Mage aside you gain great casting speed - and a lot of spell uses (4/encounter per 7 tiers = 28 casts vs. 2/encounter per 9 tiers = 18 casts) and a nice spell collection. Here's a cool Livegiver/Blood Mage combo (with video from a fight at Splintered Reef): The downsides: later access to some great spells and zero access to great PL8+9 spells such as Missile Salvo and Great Maelstrom. I think both are great. I don't think there's a definitive answer to the question "which is [considered] stronger?".

Hm, since you'll have lots of AoE dmg potential, you might want to "form" enemy clusters. Or in other words get as many enemies in a certain spot. And I think some sort of Fighter who helps the Herald with engagement and forms a good front line that isn't rushed easily isn't a bad idea. So Battle Mage still sounds solid to me. You can even use Spirit Lance + Essential Phantom to get another front liner with AoE capability who stands in the way of enemies. Also Spirit Lance + Clear Out just wrecks houses. Unbending + Wall of Draining is a bit like god mode. Maybe something completely different would be a Stalker/Devoted with dual hatchets (and a Bear). Fists as backup. Max religion skill. Two more bodies for the front line. Use Xoti's Sickle and Vion-Ceth. Cast Binding Roots on the enemies you want to hit (unlocks Vion-Ceth's Wood Bane enchantment,+30% dmg) and profit from Xoti's Sickle's increasing bonus dmg and speed once you killed an enemy. Should be plenty sturdy for an offtank, grant engagement and an additional big body (Bear), have great acc and deal nice weapon dmg. And adds some CC with Binding Roots, too.