Boeroer

Oh, then you will have the same problems with Storm of Holy Fire, Missile Salvo and other stuff that triggers the Least Unstable Coil multiple times I guess.

Nice! How did you do it?

There's no "best". It depends what you want to do. If you release his soul your stronghold will get +2 prestige which increases the taxes and quality of positive events (unique item merchant, prestigious visitors and so on). If you bind his soul to the stronghold you get +2 security which reduces tax robbery and the frequency of bad events (attacks on stronghold and so on). If you siphon knowledge you can get a unique sabre names "Flames of Fair Rhîan" which is an exceptional weapon with a burning lash and 3 Fireball casts per rest. For example if you ar a character who likes to use spellsbindings - maybe a Rogue with Deathblows - you might want to use the sabre. If you want lesser attacks on the strnghold because you are annoyed by those then bind his soul. If you want good stronghold events earlier release his soul.

Absolutely. But you can use Svef (it's rel cheap), Potion of the Focused Mind, Devil of Caroc's Breastplate, Modwyr, Luminous Lobster, Captain's Banquet or an INT inspiration from a party member (e.g. Priest or Chanter) or scroll (Prayer for the Spirit). In the early game I will often use Svef. You could also use the Ring of Mule's Wit - but that's bit suboptimal of course. The easiest solution is the Breastplate imo.

I just thought it would fit as part of an INT inspiration - because the other way round (turning foe-only into friendly fire) is part of an INT affliction.

Huh? Shouldn't it get implemeted like Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy? So it only lasts until the end of combat?

Reinfection is not unheard of with other viruses, too. It's possible to fight off an infection but not have a long-lasting immunity. It's also possible that a vaccination doesn't work for an individual. As I said some time ago I don't respond well to Hepatitis A vaccinations and have to refresh it every few years in order to have sufficient immunity. Nobody knows why.

I wouldn't say it's impossoble to fail. You can build bad characters if you want to. It's just so that if you pick what sounds reasonable and fitting you will not have a trap build. Also because all stats have their uses for any class. In other systems like D&D you could - as a beginner - make choices that sound reasonable but are complete trash.

By the way - the Fire Stag had (maybe still has) some hidden gem mechanic: If you put Barring Death's Door on it you could let it explode over and over again and it wouldn't die. Don't know if tht got fixed.

Heh - of course I'm using the Community Patch.

Yes, right. You are at PL 4 at lvl 7 as a SC Priest. I forgot that BH is PL1, not 0. So +3 PL seems right (not +4 as I wrote above). Also right: 11 + Devotions (which I forgot) = 15 MIG -> 15% dmg increase. If the dmg bonuses get applied to the "base" dmg of 120 before the 100*health_percentage gets substracted then it may indeed explain the numbers. Cool - I guess this is not too far off. Hm... a graze will do the same dmg as a hit and I assume (since there's no graze malus to dmg) there's no crit bonus either. Now I haven't tested if dmg malus/bonus from under-/overpenetration will get applied. If not it would be like doing raw dmg. Needs more testing obviously.

Different enemies react to different stats. For example Barbarians prefer to attack low deflection. Rogues seek enemies with low DR and also low percentage of endurance. And so on. I made a druid tank build and posted it here. It's cool but first of all it diesn't work well until you reach a certain level and secondly the defenses are not good enough for some of the late fights. It great as a second tank but not so great as the only one imo. I mean in PoE I think one single tank doesn't really work well in the first place.

Infuse with Vital Essence and the potion of Infuse with Vital Essence are your friends. The health-healing gets influenced by MIG and other effects that boost healing, too.

Greater Maelstrom is awesome. It's cool to build around it because it can get a lot of PL bonuses from different "directions". For example +7 with Magran's Favor + Sun & Moon + Otto Starcat + Deltro's Cage. Or +6 when using Lord Darryn's Voulge or Chromoprismatic Staff. Even with Watershaper's Focus or Lace of the Midwood Stag you still can get to +5 (which is like an empowered version of the spell). And as Elric said the combined multiple PEN passives of Scion oF etc. + Fury are great as well. All that because Maestrom has so many PL-relevant keywords. But your Druid will turn into a one-trick pony once you have it. Another good spell with a Fury is Avenging Storm: if you use Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole you will trigger a TON of Lightings because Hand Mortar's Blinding Smoke cone does trigger Avenging Storm (and you can produce a bazillion attack rolls with Blinding Smoke if there are enough enemies in the cone). Fire in the Hole has a build-in jump which means Avenging Storms proc in the AoE twice (sort of). It's fun because it's a completely different approach to SC Fury than anything else. Of course you could have that even better witch another class using scrolls. But I don't like using consumables too much, so...

If you can keep the Streetfighter flanked or bloodied (or both) then the Streetfighter variant will do more melee dps. But besides shorter recovery the Streetfighter will not do much for your spellcasting. If you want to use Barring Death's Door + Salvation of Time in combination with Streetfighter and Pallid Fate then Streetfighter is a good pick though. I would rather keep DEX rel. high and lower something else like MIG a bit (you already can get +15 MIG via Helwalker passive and Thunderous Blows).

Okay, but what other alternatives in terms of "keeping engagement"/"preventing enemies from rushing past you" are there? I mean with the official companions. Pallegina can have the higher passive defenses in theory but she doesn't have any tools to stop rushers. She would be better in chokepoint situations - but every withdrawn character could do that. In case of chokepoint tanking Kana would be my number one. Just withdraw him while he's chanting Dragn Thrashed. Even better if he has double preservation (e.g. Blaidh Golan + Ilfan Byrngar's Solace) so Grieving Mother can cast Definsive Midweb on him before he gets withdrawn: whole party gets +100 to all defenses and Kana is an unmovable and untouchable blocker while doing great AoE dmg. But of course that's not really "tanking" like a Fighter can potentially do it with engagement etc. Still works in the open field because +100 to all party members turns everybody into a real good tank. Maybe there should be a definition first what kind of tanking we are talking about.

If you make Backlash an auto-hit it would be valuable against high defense enemies and in that regard (i mean hitting enemies which are hard to hit) better than Mind Plague and such. Also remember that it's a passive and would cost no focus and no time while casting Mind Plague would cost both. Instead of a might affliction I would also be open to any other affliction that might fit. I would even consider a flat attribute debuff. Just no hard disable like stun because chaining/upkeeping always has the potential to break balance while a upkept daze or such wouldn't. As I showed above a cooldown would not prevent upkeeping the stun if you stacked enough duration with PL and INT (and Lingering Echoes) - unless you make the cooldown so long that Backlash is again worthless against weaker enemies. Another reason to hate cooldowns: they don't automatically adapt to the situation and are not flexible at all unless you want to make them real complicated. They are just bad and always feel like a band-aid solituon, sorry. Another idea I had was giving the cipher a bit of focus with Backlash. So every time somebody attacks their Will they would gain a bit. Don't know how much would be good but this could be really great in prolong fights against Dragons and such - and it wouldn't hurt in other fights. Yet another idea would be that they get a stacking Will defense bonus for quite some time. That would make them practically immune to something like a fear aura after some time.

Tbh I hate cooldowns. They are a very unelegant mechanic and also potentially frustrating. Also you have to keep track which is annoying imo. One reason why I didn't like Tyranny's combat system was cooldowns. Also cooldowns are not that common in Deadfire - at least on the player's side. The only "cooldown" I remember from the top of my head is when you are switching modals - I mean besides recovery/reloading which is a sort of cooldown itself of course. That's why I still think a non-stacking DoT is way better than a flat dmg output with cooldown. You'd achieve the same overall dmg with mechanics known to the player, it fits thematically if you view it as a hefty retaliatory migrane (and only people who never suffered from migrane would say it's not brutal - ask Gromnir). Since one doesn't want to do seperate the timings/durations for the Psychic and Brutal Backlash effects but keep it simple I suggested to downgrade the stun. Unlimited stun obviously would break the game as soon as you meet any sort of aura that targets will (chants, drake/dragon auras and the like) and also pulsing spells that target will (Venombloom for example) would crush the user of such abilites. Even a 10-sec stun with 30 sec cooldown would be way too powerful against those enemies. With enough INT and Lingering Echoes (hello Monk/Cipher) you might be able to keep up the stun at all times. A low DoT could be kept up without turning into OPness. And downgrading the stun to (a longer?) stagger or a daze maybe (daze is plenty good) would make sure you couldn't stunlock and you could still stagger resistant enemies. Keep in mind that this also would mean that you would clear all MIG inspirations on the enemy every time Backlash fires. It would also be pretty simple to implement I guess?

Yes, I feared that might be the case. Tekehu's spells are copies of Wizard spells which got altered in name and firendly fire - so I guessed there might be no overarching effect which can do that "on the fly". But since there seems to be an effect that turns all AoE into friendly fire (Confusion) I hoped there might be a way to achieve the opposite effect.

Heyho. I didn't want to post this in one of the Balancing/Polishing threads because I feared it would bring too much chaos there since there's so many other topics to solve there already. So I made this thread to keep it tidy. Brilliant is pretty OP in combination with Wall of Draining, Salvation of Time or just Tactician. The fact that it not only gives you back resources once - but instead periodically refunds your resources makes it so vulnerable to cheese, especially for casters with their spells. So there have been efforts to mod Brilliant into a less OP version and the solutions make sense. I just had a thought though: Confusion turns all foe-only effects into friendly fire (including the extended AoE from INT that usually is foe only even if it's a friendly fire spell at its core). At the same time we know how awesome Tekehu's versions of Chillfog, Freezing Pillar etc. are. So why not turn all friendly fire effects into foe-only when being Brilliant? The resource gain can be kept but in a weaker form - especially for casters. Actually I wouldn't mind if non-spell resources would still increase like they do now - just spell use regain has to be nerfed into one-time gain or having really long intervals. The friendly-fire to foe-only effect would be an additional advantage that mostly applies to casters - the very group I would want to nerf Brilliant for in the first place. So it would give them something back for the loss. It would be neat and cool, fit well as an opposite of Confusion and will be not as "broken" in combination with prolonging effects. What do you think?

It also depends how you want to play. If you indeed want to have fun in melee AND do great casting then the Helwalker/Berath combo is def. better than an SC Priests. Helwalker is great for casters but it's also great for weapon users so imo it's the natural pick for a melee/caster hybrid. Another one would be Barbarian/Berath but I think that's so off thematically (Frenzy and Rage vs. rational and stoic) that it would be no option for me. Armor: there's a nice plate armor that's 100% Berath themed and it's called the Blackened Plate. It also has a helmet but it's not mandatory to wear it with the plate. From the top of my head I don't know any other armor that shouts "Berath"; but since you can color-tint a good amount of armors to your liking it's not a big deal - at least visually.

Don't think that explains it. She doesn't wear/use any of that and did land 160+ Harvests against all kinds of enemies before the troll. Even in Gorecci Str. at lvl 4 she did more than 120 dmg Harvests on near death enemies. Troll doesn't take increased slash dmg afaik. It's a mystery... I'm really tempted now to give her the Willbreaker with its 25% miss-to-graze enchantment and Gauntlets of Reliability (15% miss to graze), making it easy for her to land a Body Blow against any enemy and then at least graze with Blessed Harvest. Go to the Wild Mare, grab Nemnok and have 4 Blessed Harvests per fight. Edit: maybe it scales with Religion somehow and nobody cared to inform us?

What about Psychic Backlash causing only Staggered instead of Stun - but unlimited times per encounter? I mean we have stuff like Spirit Frenzy staggering everything left and right, even with Chanter phrases... Brutal Backlash could put a (small) raw DoT that doesn't stack (but would get prolonged when reapplied). Like a nasty headache. Unlimited procs per encounter (but doesn't stack as I said). It would be better in general - and quite good against anything with fear aura (but not too crazy if the DoT ticks are small enough).