Boeroer

I believe you'll be free after 5 approved posts. The moderator's seal of approval is necessary to keep the bots out. You can thank those asshats who script and deploy them I think it's fine as is. You can min-max more (like dumping DEX or CON even further) but a Paladin usually needs a fair amount of solid attributes. Lso it's not D&D where attributes have a high impact. A few points hardly make any difference in the long run. Dual hammers or dual sabres usually is the way to go. Dual sabres have the highest "dmg per strike" ratio but are not great against slash resistant enemies (since thesy only deal slash damage). You can get a sabre that deals corrde/slash damage later though which is great. Hammers will deal a bit less damage but have two types of damage (get more suitable one automatically gets applied depending on the enemies' armor). Both come with good unique weapons that don't come too late. The one handed weapon with the highest dps potential is Drawn in Spring, a dagger. But it comes very late. You can start with Rapier + Dagger though. In the very early game that might feel a bit meh, but you can aquire a very good Rapier and a good dagger quite early in the first city (Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger). Both have the speed enchantment which makes them one of the best dps setups with autoattacks until you can get Drawn in Spring. A Rogue, Cipher, Monk or Ranger would profit most from Ploi's accuracy buffing I believe - at least against the hard bosses. If you bring a Barb I would suggest the Cauterizer. For me it was the most fun to play and the fun starts quite early already (once you get the belt and the golves). Anotehr very straightforward but good build for Barbs is one with the great sword "Tidefall". It's wounding and draining work with the Barb's Carnage passive AoE. The Leech is very good once you get Spelltongue, but that will take quite some time. I don't think fighters are very exciting until you reach lvl 13 (and unlock Charge which is great). A Monk will always be better then a Fighter imho. I especially despise Finishing/Devastating Blow since it's just a mighty overkill ability. The rogue builds I like are the ones that go outside the box. Like a rogue focused on spellbinding gear for example (High Accuracy, Deathblows works with spells, Depp Wounnds work with crush/pierce/slash spells). Rogues become better and better (compared to the other classes) the lower the difficulty is. The lower the enemies defenses the less important (AoE) CC , buffing and debuffing becomes and also AoE damage and the more impact the Rogue's good singel target damage becomes. Other high-performing single target damage dealers who bring something additonal to the table: Monk, Ranger with Persistence & dmg-focused Animal Companion, Spiritshift Druid (Boar or Cat). Perceived advantage of the Rogue: starts really strong into the game. That's why most players like Rogues at first. That and seeing high damage numbers in general.

Lvl 16 is the max (20 is Deadfire) - but yeah. I don't recommend Rogues a lot, especially not two of them. They are really good at the beginning - but on PotD their "power curve" doesn't climb very steeply; mainly because their great single target damage isn't that useful with the increased number of high-hp enemies later on. One is cool, but two... not for me. If you need two of any class I would bring two Priests or two Chanters. Priest has a very big impact on the performance of your party. Especially the combination of Inspiring Radiance + Devotions for the Faithful. Note that Inspiring Radiance's ACC bonus stacks with everything, even itself - that's why bringing multiple Priests can make a big difference. Chanters play really slow (which isn't bad per se - but it can be detrimental to the performance of the party if the rest of your party members are build towards fast combat and max offense). But Chanters can be really good if you give them some time to develop. Especially from lvl 9 on they are absolutely devastating if you pick "The Dragon Thrashed" chant. It stacks with itself, too - so you can only run that chant and be happy with it. That's also why bringing more than one Chanter can be great: Dragon Thrashed phrases all overlaps ech other, stack their damage and will thus deal very good AOE damage - without actually having to do anything except standing there. It even works when a Priest uses the spell Withdraw on the Chanter. That's like creating an indestructable death totem on the battlefield. Note that Dragon Thrased only comes at lvl 9, so a bit late(ish). But before that you can summon a Phantom or use White Worms which both can be very powerful, too. Counselor Ploi is build for sturdyness (not as the only tanking guy - but can take some beating), great support and good coverage of dialogue options. Imo it's a good pick for the MC - if you like Paladins to begin with. He's not a dps machine obviously - but he can make other party members very effective by raising their accuracy into the sky. Dragons are usually a lot easier with Counselor Ploi because it's easy to hard-CC the dragon when you have your accuracy buffed up like crazy. Stacks with the Priest's ACC boosts, too. The Mind Control options are another thing that is nice to have. Wizards and Druids: to me they come right after Priest. All casters start more slowly than let's say Fighter, Monks and Rogues but their power curve is much steeper imo. Imo Monk is the best/most fun martial class. Is good right from the start and stays good. Barb is even more fun for me personally, but beginners often toss Barbs aside because they are a bit weak in the early game. But they can become real AoE killing machines later.

Jeez! Testing Berserker/Skald with Blightheart at lvl 20 is so much fun. Great synergies and also quite versatile. I guess I'll have to start a new playthrough to see if it's also ok in the early game. Mith Fyr + Barbaric Smash + Bloody Slaughter does some nasty damage as finisher. Costs no rage then and gives 1 phrase (sometimes more when Living Wood procs and kills some other enemies). As soon as the first enemies fall it's:

That guy wouldn't be particular useful against bosses in general - besides being a Bloodmage which is one of the best choices against (Mega)bosses because of the theoretically unlimited spells. But in general it's a lot of fun against mobs - but "only" a normal Arcane Knight against other enemies. But Arcane Knight is always a good combo so that's okay. If you pick Brand Enemy instead of Sworn Rival you'll have a tool that can help to win against most Megabosses quite easily - even if it takes a lot of time. But don't use it on Dorudugan.

You can kill Serafen and loot the Hand Mortar if you enabled the solo option. Fire in the Hole: nope as @Not So Clever Houndalready said (with solo option enabled I mean). Edit: dang, missed Waski's post which already explained. Oh well...

Works pretty well.

Holy smokes... Barbarian/Skald with the combination of Blood Thirst & Her Revenge is fun. Once you kill you'll get a phrase and Her Revenge only costs 2. And it has 0.5 sec casting time only but the recovery becomes 0 because of Blood Thirst. Feels like playing angry Palpatine...

Played her with Godansthunyr + Badgradr's Barricade and she was great (the bash can proc Thrust of Tattered Veils on crit unlimted times per encounter - and spell damage works with Deathblows).

Right. You'll have good tap water anywhere in the DACH-Region and won't realize that this is not a world-wide standard. When I moved to Uzbekistan in 2010 the hardest thing was to "untrain" the behavior to drink tap water and use it for brushing teeth etc. Even using it for tea, coffee, cooking (rice, pasta etc.) wasn't recommended. You'll get used to it - but it was so weird at first and so inconvenient. On the other hand all the kids in the neighborhood drank directly from the garden hose and didn't drop dead right on the spot - so maybe it wasn't so bad after all and we just were sissies.

Maybe that's because I like mortars so much - so naturally the broken builds I stumble upon have a high chance of containing mortars. Here's something which is not with mortars but OP in the early game: Streetfighter/Berserker with Essence Interrupter. Activate the Hunting Bow modal and Frenzy. You will come to bloodied health quickly because of the self dmg. You will have insane attack speed all the time (first bc. of Frenzy + modal, then bc. modal + Streetfighter passive). Blooded + Streetfighter passive will grant very good dmg per shot and the shooting frequency is insane. You can blast through Gorecci Str. and Digside with almost no effort as long as you can keep enemies away from that guy.

Yeah - non-melee Skald sounds like the kind of counterintuitive out-of-the-box thing I would like to play. Assassin/Bloodmage also sounds nice - the dmg bonus on crit paired with the multipl. lash: cool. If Inspired Beacon wouldn't have such abysmal recovery and short duration then a Paladin/Bloodmage with Eternal Devotion and Blightheart would also be a very good offensive caster - besides the obvious defensive goodies.

If you like Steel Garrote/Bloodmage to begin with might I interest you into an Offensive Parry build with the weapon Whispers of the Endless Paths? You can cast spells with this while retaliating in melee with the weapon. Those Offensive Parries don't use any action time and happen passively. They will also drain health from the enemies who miss you in melee because Offensive Parries will daze the ones you hit and thus your Steel Garrote passive will get unlocked without you having to do anything. So while you are parrying (and dealing a bit melee dmg and draining health) you are free to cast your spells. You will need high deflection for this (the higher the better) which is achievable with items, wizard buffs and paladin passives. High deflection also prevents getting interrupted by most weapon attacks which is a good thing if you want to cast while engaged in melee. You can also use Rekvu's Fractured Casque though to be immune to interrupts. Just down yourself with a spell like Necrotic Lance out of combat to gain a rel. harmless injury. Items you want are all those which give you bonus RES and deflection. Especially armor like Nomad's Brigandine or Gipon Prudensco or Casita Samelia's Legacy are great. I recommend Nomad's Brigandine because it also has an enchantment that turns all Disengagement attacks against you into misses --> always triggering Offensive Parry. Besides that look for Bracers and Cloak of Greater Deflection (see special merchant you can get in Port Maje with Berath Blessing points). For me it was great fun, this combo of "hitting stuff and healing while casting stuff at the same time". Unbroken/Bloodmage with focus on terrify-effects (Ryngrim's stuff for example) is also fun: engage lots of enemies with Defender Stance, cast Ryngrim's Visage and deliver deadly Disengagement Attacks to those who leave your engagement zone. Boots of Speed help to follow and re-engage and get Disengagement attacks again.

I saw a recent (not too pleasant) update from Versus Evil about PoE1 on the Switch: Reading about those problems I believe that there wasn't much progress with Deadfire so far. I could be totally wrong though and I am by no means an official source or anything.

Hello, today I toyed around with Blightheart again. Usually I consider it for a wizard or paladin/wizard because the lashes on wizard spells are just nice and one of the few ways a wizard can increase spell dmg besides PLs, Overpenetration, crits and MIG (and stuff like Harley and Griffin's Blade). Also lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses and I don't know any other source of multiplicative spell dmg increase besides PL. Anyway - I wanted to explore the other classes' option further so I tested the individual upgrades for each class Blightheart can have and what excactly they do: Chanter/Ranger/Wizard: Living Wood - 20% chance to cast Corrode Damage cone AoE from self and Hobble target on attack: this says "corrode" but actually it is a piercing AoE. I don't know the exact base damage because it's not listed anywhere and the hit roll scales with Power Level since it's an ability. But I think it's something between 10-15 and 12-18 or so. The hobbling effect lasts fairly long but is tagged with antidote so poison-immune enemies will be... well... immune. Driving Flight will give you higher chances of triggering Living Wood per shot of course. All in all it's not bad - occasional AoE with dmg and affliction. Heartbeat - heals 20% of the damage done by the weapon per 3.0 s for a short duration: That "short" duration is 6 sac bse if I'm not mistaken. It scales with INT naturally. It does't seem to heal 20% of the damage done per tick but rather takes the 20% of the damage done and devides it through the number of ticks you are going to get. So for example I did a shot taht caused 60 pierce dmg and got 4 healing per tick (for 9secs = 3 ticks). Not too great - but better than nothing. I mean getting healed by shooting things isn't bad. Especially if you can proloing it bc. it's a healing over time effect (see Wall of Draining). The damage done by Living Wood doesn't seem to have an effect on the healing, only the initial shot. Corrupting Beauty - nearby enemies will become Distracted after killing an enemy with the weapon for 20.0 sec: works as advertised. Nice touch and also nce in combo with Hamn of Decay (see right below). Chanter: Hymn of Decay - +1 Phrases per kill: So... I didn't think much about this before testing it today because I assumed that you have to kill enemies with Blightheart itself to get a phrase - like it works with other weapons that have on-kill-effects (see Grave Calling etc.). But no! It doesn't matter how you kill enemies - you will always get a phrase as long as the kill can be connected to you. Traps, Walls and Seals will not workm but everything else will. This makes a Chanter who focuses on damaging invocation and other abilites more fun. Wizard: Tainted Being - +10% Damage dealt as Corrode with spells: just great. Stacks with Eternal Devotion so you can have +10% corrode and +10% burn on your Wizard spells. Spicy. Ranger: Blighted Shot - Grants Blighted Shot (1 per encounter): this isn't too exciting because it doesn't do much besides applying hobbled and weakened for a rel. long amount of time. Scales like other active abilities it seems. Still: the worst of the class-specific enchantments if you ask me. So the only really exciting thing besides Tainted Being was the Hymn of Decay and that it works with any kill of the Chanter. So you can use the gun as stat stick basically and don't have to attack with it to be useful. I liked it on the Helwalker/Bellower test char I used it after discovering. The high dmg per invocation was a nice combo with the increased phrase generation. I hope you like it too - thanks and bye-bye.

I drank some sparkling wine today - and the first time in my life it didn't taste like bubblesharts. It was actually pretty good. It could mean that to somebody who generally likes sparkling wine it tastes really bad... it could also mean that it's so unbelievably good that even my barbaric taste buds have to succumb... or that I'm really getting old now. Male menopause: sparkling wine suddenly tastes good. RIP

I forgot to mention that the Community Patch nerfed the Blinding Smoke/Avenging Storm trick. But you can just alter the specific nerf in the mod files with a plain old text editor and remove that nerf if you wish.

Yeah I know - it doesn't fit properly. You have to imagine and pretend stuff.

Helwalker with dual mortars and Whispers of the Wind & Resonant Touch is one. And it's even fun before reaching PL 8 and 9 because Stunning Surge works so well with the AoE of mortars (and that profits from Duality's INT bonus). Whispers of the Wind is an AoE Full Attack, mortars do AoE attacks... you might guess where this is going especially when looking at Resonant Touch.

Then try to use Current's Rush (scepter from BoW) with a Ranger with Driving Flight an Twinned Shots: The scepter has a small chance to proc a watery AoE on crit. The beauty is that that AoE can proc off itself. If you can gather enough enemies it will result in a chain reaction where all of them die instantly. Sometimes you have to fire 1 Twinned Shot for that to happen, sometomes 5. But eventually it will happen. It's OP and fun but of course you need to get there and the way isn't particularly exciting.

Another fun combo is Fighter/Bloodmage. Wall of Draining is OP anyways but it's especially fun with Unbending. Unbeding gives you seperate small healing over time instances for evey hit you receive. With Wall of Draining you prolong all those endlessly. You can reach over 1000 healing per 3 secs that way. Use Cap of the Laughingstock to leech time from every enemy with Wall of Draining even if they don't use any benefical effects themselves: because Cap of the Laughingstock puts a BENEFICAL effect on all enemies automatically (not hit roll) named "Village Fool" which has no duration (always on). The game just checks if the enemy has a benefical effect on them and will allow Wall of Draining to leech duration if thee is a benefical effect. Tadaa! Downside is that you can't use RES afflictions on them anymore. nd your deflection gets -10. Upside is that deflection of enemies is also -10 (again - no hit roll, just automatically).

Another OP build is Berserker/Troubadour or /Beckoner with Grave Calling ench. with Chilling Grave. You summon Ancient Brittle Bones, start Berserker Frenzy and attack one of your own skeletons. It will die and proc Chilling Grave (foe only Chillfog normally but you are confused, making it cause friendly fire) which will kill all the other skellies, all triggering more Chilling Graves. The replacement skellies will get summoned automatically - which will also die instantly and proc more Chillfogs. Meanwhile Many Lives Pass By will summon a big skellie every 3 secs (or 6 if Beckoner) which automatically runs towards the enemy and dies from the chillfogs, triggerning another chillfog. All chilling graves profit from weapon quality and weapon dmg bonuses (like legendary, One Stands Alone, Blooded, Bloody Slaughter, Killer's Gloves and whatnot). The paralyzing effect "Grave Bound" also gets tirggered by the chillfogs so you have perma-paralyzed enemies who stand in dozens and more chillfogs, dying. This all happens in a matter of seconds (and will freeze your GPU if it's too weak). If you want you can also cast Avenging Storm because every hitt roll of those Chillfogs will trigger it (official weapon attack) - but it's totally not necessary imo. Things die superfast anyway.

Yes - but honestly using scrolls is a bit OP anyways. Downside is that Twinned Shots comes pretty late. Of course you can use other abilities before that and Driving Flight comes a bit earlier which already has a good impact. But the real deal is with Twinned Shots. You can wear a melee weapon in the offhand. For example Scordeo's Edge for the sweet ACC bonus. That way you can also use Whirling Strikes with the mortar once you get surrounded. Pretty similar effect to Twinned Shot.

True... You'd have to ignore some stuff - but I think Priest of Berath (Tangaloa) would work quite well. Druids in PoE get all their spells without selecting specific ones - so you're right that a "water vibe" is hard to get unless you strictly don't use the other spells.

k bye

So here's one: ;)