Boeroer

Getting prickly is his lifeblood though...

That is correct. A steeper progressive inheritance tax, higher tax on income from capital/investment and a small tax on financial transactions should do the trick. I also wouldn't oppose luxury tax (expensive watches, jewelry, second car etc) and property taxes. Everything with certain thresholds of course. And before people start to scream "that's socialism" or "but the middle class!" and nonsense like that: Last time I checked our personal household income was among the top 5% of Germany. Since Corona it dropped a bit because I spend a lot of time with homeschooling my 3 kids (and since I'm self employed...). But still top 10% - zero doubt. And those kinds of taxes would barely touch us! The top 1% are so far away for me I might as well live in a tent - the difference in wealth would basically be the same. And the little those taxes would touch me: I'd be happy to earn a bit less from my fancy fonds and stocks I bought for retirement etc.. My kids still won't go to bed hungry and I could still buy the latest crap from Amazon whenever I wanted to.

Uff! That was a joke. The picture is "Q", an omnipotent being from the Star Trek universe. Q as leader of his Anons you know.

Iirc Smoke Veil is not a free action in TB and only lasts 1 round. So you can't go invisible and then attack from invisibility. Is that correct? You'll need to use Shad. Beyond since that is a free action. That limits the amount of invisibility uses per encounter a bit more. Instead of 5 Smoke Veils you can only use 3 SBs. Devil of Caroc Breastplate can lift you up to 4. Somebody correct me if I'm talking nonsense, I didn't play TB mode and am only repeating what I (think I) read.

I'm not playing in a way that my tank needs to resolve the encounter alone and the rest of the party stands by. Of course the tank will get party support. I didn't think this was an outlandish concept...?

Even one of those book pages - slipped between the sides of the current prologue where Eotahs emerges - that would say something along the lines of "you tried to convince people that the gods were made by kith - but everybody just went 'lol, lmao'" would have sufficed I think.

Also keep in mind that not only Engwithans were sacrificed but also lots of Huana gave their lives (and souls). Not only are sacrifices of Huana (together with Engwithan "priests" depicted in several of the ruins - but also BoW shines some light on how the Engwithans toppled over one of the biggest empire with all their create-godlike-essence-golems-with-fancy-machines shenanigans.

In terms of versatility and more interesting options I would also go for an Assassin/Caster. Most likely Assassin/Bloodmage. That you can use Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure to cast CC from invisibility (without breaking it) is cool. You can put a bunch of debuffs and CC on enemies without getting noticed and then finally strike with a perfectly prepared nuke. Or you can just use Ninagauth's Shadowflame from stealth and invisibility all day long. Lots of options. Assassin/Paladin however can kill almost everything even if severely underleveled with stacked True Love's Kiss + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy. First attack from stealth is with single handed Lover's Embrace + Gouging Strike. It gets +42 ACC (5 dagger + 12 single handed + 25 Assassinate) so you won't even miss bosses. And Brand Enemy is an auto-hit. You can do bounties with three red skulls easily and take on almost everything prematurely. It's kind of a two-trick pony though: either shoot your arquebus and kill the enemy right away, then turn invisible to flee and reset encounter - or apply endless DoTs and then turn invisible, retreat and let them bleed out/burn to death. Don't know how well that works in TB mode though. You need Smoke Veil for the DoTs (Shadowing Beyond will break with DoTs) and I believe SV only lasts one round? Can you still retreat far enough then? No idea.

Totally immersive 'cause it's like in real life.

Unbroken/Trickster would be my personal pick.

Two Handers do more base damage and that helps against thick armor. They are as slow or fast as the heavier one handed weapons (hammers, swords, spears etc.). But those you can dual wield which will give you a 50% recovery bonus. So basically yes: you will have a lot faster recovery with your weapons if you are dual wielding and thus thick armor won't feel as slow as long as you are using your weapons. Flames of Devotion is a Full Attack and thus you will hit twice with it if you are dual wielding. Offhand will hit first, then main hand will follow without recovery in between. Recovery will start only after the second strike. Generally speaking I would say dual wielding will be better with FoD against most enemies. But two handers aren't that far behind - especially if you are taking into account that some of the best unique weapons are in fact two handers (see Tidefall for example). I think dual Bitttercut might be the optimal melee weapon setup for a Bleak Walker as @Desmodeus said. Also because Bittercut has two damage types (corrode/slash) which is a big advantage over normal sabres (which only do slash damage).

Monk. 😄 My favorite class when I started PoE was Barbarian and I still like it - but he more I played the more often my favorite class changed: from Barb to Wizard to Druid to Priest to Monk I believe. Monk took me some time to get into but I think it's the best and most fun to play martial class in PoE. I especially liked this build (Witch Doctor) because once you get the Long Pain it's like you are playing a walking fist-shooting machine gun. One other build I had most fun with is maybe this: One that did very well from a powergaming perspective as well as from a role-playing perspective (including dialogue options etc.) was this:

Iirc Goldpact's DoT will have lower dps the more INT you have. Because the overall damage will be the same no matter the INT - it just gets spread out over a longer timespan. Same thing with the wounding enchantment on Tidefall (and other wounding weapons) the way. If you go with Goldpact and lowish INT you might as well use Tidefall (and high MIG) and also pick Runner's Wounding Shot as additional attack ability to use after FoD. You can indeed make a Paladin with 3 INT and get away with it. There are several abilites/talents that are not influeced by INT or even profit from low INT. For a quick inspiration here's a "dumb" Paladin build I made five years ago (I think it was one of my first builds here) :

I think that was just done to give players as many romance options as possible with the companions they had.

You guys argue as if this was a thing that really happened and not a story that several designers/directors puzzled together over the course of two game development cycles. It's quite hard to mantain coherence when multiple writers add stuff to one fictional world. And "one Josh to bring them all and in the darkness bind them" might not be enough.

Shadowing Beyond is better in TB mode because it's a free action. Meaning you can turn invisible and attack in the same round. It's more expensive though. Dual pistols is not the best pick for an Assassin/Bleak Walker by the way. At least if you want to get the most out of the Assassinate bonus. That's because the first pistol shot will lift the invisibility and the next one doesn't get any assassination bonus then. Arquebus is pretty good. That is if you're not using pistols for RP or aesthetic reasons - then just go with it. There are some cool pistols in the game no doubt.

Hah! Good catch! I didn't know that this is possible. I guess in this case it is possible because the conversion from graze to hit is an effect on the character and the hit to crit effect is attached to the enemy. Makes sense now that I think a bit more about it. The conversion on the enemy works for everyone who does an attack roll against them - the game logic doesn't check whether those attacks were already converted or not. At least that's what I guess. Anyway: good to know. It's crazy how you can play this rel. old game for thousands of hours and read a ton of stuff here in the forums and elsewhere - and yet something new pops up every now and then. 🥰

Wizards don't have that many DoTs. I suppose you mean pulsing spells like Chillfog and such? We need to differentiate between two types of "damage over time" effects: One type that only does one attack roll max (might even be auto-hit like Deep Wounds) and then "ticks" away the damage (most often every 3 secs) without any further attack roll. That's stuff like Plague of Insects, Dragon Thrashed, Disintegrate etc. Those get referred as "DoT" in these forum mostly. Those don't count towards the "damage done" stat. Spells like Chillfog, Wicked Briars, walls and beams on the other hand do an attack roll with every "pulse" while they are active. So it can be a miss/graze/hit/crit with every new pulse. We often call them "pulsing spells" here to set them apart from DoTs. Of course: this is also damage over time strictly speaking - but because they work quite differently it's best not to confuse both types and avoid to use the same terminology. Those pulsing effects do count towards the "damage done" stat.

Yes, but then it can be used by everybody and doesn't need to be summoned anymore.

Indeed. You can't convert from miss to graze and then further to hit for example. High ACC is more reliable, but there can be situations where you can only hit and never crit with your ACC for example - in those cases conversions are very good. Best imo is miss-to-graze conversion. There are only few (see Willbreaker or Boreal Dwarf).

Bosses (like Dragons and stuff) will be doable. Megabosses: I don't think so. The initial cave is not repersentative because a lot of builds unfold only later while some start already strong. I don't find it to be very difficult though. Peaks are Gorecci Street and the Engwithan Digsite (that early in the game).

Instead of removing an ability: can one just "hide" an ability from the tree?

Persistence's wounding is a DoT effect. DoT effects don't count towards "damage done" in the char sheet. Animal Companion's damage has the same problem by the way (I mean it doesn't count - not that it's a DoT). Since the wounding is a big part of Persistence's damage advantage (the other one is unlocking Predator's Sense all the time which also doesn't count) it's no wonder the Ranger using it has less damage on his sheet. PoE is sloppy in that regard unfortunately.

Yes, correct. But you'll get more damage, ACC and PEN out of Great Maelstrom and your other shock spells - and you'll only have very limit casts of that. And besides that you'll have good protection. Doesn't make much sense if you are always in the back row and don't use shock spell much of course.

Why is Stormcaller's damage damn high? It has 10-15 base damage like any other hunting bow and it lacks a lash. What's good about it is its -6 shock DR on hit and the fact that it itself causes shock damage - nice synergy. Also dual damage: cool. Returning Storm triggers on 10% of hits. So not really nonstop. But of course with Twinned Shots and Driving Flight it triggers every third shot (if there are enough enemies to receive the Driving Flight hits). But yes: if you are asking whether you should go for Hunting Bows or Crossbows I would alsways say Hunting Bows. Persistence comes so early and has the potential best single target dps of all ranged weapons due to wounding, Stormcaller is awesome, too and comes earlier than Twing Sting. But if you ask me if Twin Sting is good: it is very good. 18-26 base damage with twice the attack rate as a normal crossbow, chance to trigger a big raw damage spell, some raw dmg per hit, frighten on kill... It's really good. I wouldn't want to build around it thoug because it comes way too late to be a lot of fun. And the crossbows or arbalests before that are not too exiting. Not bad, but nothing I get excited about.