Boeroer

While Testing Swift Flurry with Shattered Pillar I found out that when I use Stunning Surge I always get 2 wounds. Doesn't matter if dual wielding or single handed or so. Always 2. Huh? I have no other wound abilites like Parting Sorrow etc. What is this? Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming indeed do NOT generate wounds. In case of Swift FLurry this is a bit sad since Lightning Strikes' lash does (I guess at least)?

I didn't do this for a long time and didn't play all those variants but only tested it in a console session rel. long ago - except the rel. recent partial run with Offensive Parry on the SP/Soulblade which def. worked. I'm also pretty sure about Riposte (which I didn't mention above). So maybe some of the interactions with additional attacks/SP got removed at some point in the past? Sorry if my info was deprecated and false. Now that I think about it a bit longer: maybe Cleaving Stance et al. worked before the "ability attacks don't generate wounds" nerf. If they count as ability attacks this might explain the discrepancy. Can also check each ability separately in an hour or so and will report what I found out. So in the meantime the cleansed list would be Mortification of the Soul, Dance of Death, Parting Sorrow, Imagined Pain, Offensive Parry and Riposte (the last one not 100% sure but like 87% ).

With "work as usual" I meant that you'll get wounds from those abilities as a Shattered Pillar like all other Monk subclasses (including Forbidden Fist). But your clarification is very useful nonetheless.

Mortification of the Soul and Dance of Death as well as Parting Sorrow and Imagined Pain work as usual with a Shattered Pillar. Stuff like Swift Flurry, Heartbeat Drumming, Riposte, Cleaving Stance and Offensive Parry (Whispers of the Endless Paths) count as non-ability attacks for a Shattered Pillar, meaning they will give you wounds. Speaking of Offensive Parry: I once played a Shattered Pillar/Soulblade named "Barry" obviously (with WotEP/Offensive Parry) and it was pretty cool to fill up wounds and focus kind of passively with parrying, especially when using Nomad's Brigandine with the immunity to Disengagement Attacks and then just disengage to provoke Disengagement Attacks (results in 100% miss --> triggers Offensive Parry).

Good bye and all the best.

Okay... ...mhm... ...wait what?

Fortune for a pand, good sir?

A fun CC/damage hybrid I played recently is a Troubadour/Psion. The idea is that while one resource pool (phrases/focus) is refilling you can cast from the other one. No fuzz with regenerating resources: it's purely automatic. Pick Killers Froze Stiff, Phantom Foes, Ben Fidel's Neck, Secret Horrors, Mental Binding and so on. For the damage part pick Thrice She was Wronged, Soul Shock or whatever you like. You will have nearly no casting downtime. With Killers and Mental Binding I could paralyze-lock one enemy 100% and the rest for a good amount of time, too. If enemies cluster around the tank then I can cast Soul Shock almost non-stop after some levels because the focus regeneration is faster than the spending of 10 focus and the recovery time. Should focus generation stop because I got hit there's always my phrases. Healng can be done with Ancient Memory, Pain Block and Two Fingers of Daylight. You can even revive. I wasn't too impressed with the idea first but after playing it I have to say it was one of the most fun character concepts so far. It may be though that the basic idea doesn't work as well in TB mode. But I think it's still valid. I don't like Barring-Death's-Door- and Salvation-of-Time cheese. The fun of breaking the game only lasts a short while for me.

Sonce alwais thx ubi

I agree that it would have been nice to be able to see the respective defense in those spell lists. For Deadfire there are lists of abilities (in another wiki though) which directly show the defense the ability has to overcome. Doesn't help you with PoE of course.

There are also other spells and abilities that target reflex but instead of damage, prone or stun cause a debuff like for example "hobbled". Especially the Druid has stuff like Tanglefoot (hobbles) and Nature's Mark (lowers deflection and reflex) that targets reflex. A stun effect targeting Reflex is more of an exception. Usually stuns (and also weakened, also sickened etc.) are defended by Fortitude. Effects that have illusion and 'mind' vibes often target will. But there are also some priestly fire spells that target will. There is no strict systemic rule to this. Honestly it's all over the place and depends a lot on the whole idea, in-game explanation and "lore" of that spell/ability. Like how does char X apply the prone effect? Does he swipe you off your feet? Then he targets reflex. Does he induce a dizzyness right into your head so you fall over? Will. Does he shove you? Fortitude. And so on. Sowithout lots of meta-knowledge (been there, done that) you cannot know which defense the enemy is targeting with a certain spell/ability. I would just dive into it and not overthink it. Most players restart after a few hours anyway because they understand the game mechanics a lot better then and have a better idea what they want from their character. My first ever char was a Fire Godlike Barbarian on normal difficulty. I scrapped him after some hours and restarted after Act I with a Hearth Orlan Rogue on PotD and so on...

Too far: maybe. Although in my solo Assassin/Bleak Walker run I never experienced this. But most of times I only stacked True Love's Kiss with Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy (maybe finished off some weaklings with Ring the Bell etc. before going invisible), retreated and then waited until the enemies dropped dead. I didn't switch weapons a lot nor did I cast a ton of stuff while I was retreated.

I surely didn't.

Reflex gets targeted by a lot of Area-of-Effect spells such as Fireball and so on. Have a look at this list for example (same stuff exists for Druid spells, Priest spells, Chatner invocations and so on and so forth). If you click on each spells you'll get a description which also tells you what defense it targets. List: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Wizard_spells Individual spell (look at "Defended by") : https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Arkemyr's_Dazzling_Lights If you don't want spoilers then you can assume that most damaging spells that have an AoE and are not having a disabling component but rather deal direct damage will target reflex.

interesting. Well - for the case of this Bloodmage it wouldn't be a problem though because you can easily prebuff etc. first with Lover's Embrace still in hand and afterwards switch to another weapon, right after walking back in sight I guess.

Huh? Never heard about that. I just tried again and I can switch weapons just fine whenever I want (while invisible or later), no problem. Doesn't matter if I use Smoke Veil or potion. Maybe it's Pukestabber in your case? It has some buffs that work for all daggers (that are equipped) - and maybe on weapon switch it overrides True Love's Kiss or something. No idea. I just switched from Lover's Embrace to Watcher's Blade and nothing weird happened. Combat and DoT went on as expected.

Nice idea. That would have been fun.

It heals for 20 base. edit: that was close. By the way: you can cast Nature's Bounty with Spellshaping, giving it +1 PL. I don't know if that does anything though.

Ah, yes. I now remember that my last Barb/Monk had that Frenzy+Swift Strikes issue. How could I forget? Maybe because it was still useful to use both because of the +5 DEX.

Just checked Lover's Embrace + Potion of Invisibility on Edér in Fort Deadlight: combat did not end once True Love's Kiss was applied.

I've done a whole playthrough as Assassin/Bleak Walker with Lover's Embrace (also Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy) and never did the combat end prematurely. Granted most of the time I used all three on one enemy. I can check later if the True Love's Kiss is an exception. Yes, Lover's Embrace only works from stealth. But you can sneak up tp any enemy with 0 stealth with the help of Bounding Boots and the "cancel action before landing" trick. Important part is that once you applied True Love's Kiss (obviously with single handed usage for the +12 ACC) you drink the potion and retreat. Then the combat shouldn't stop and you can do whatever you like (out of sight). There are some spots where that can't work due to space limitations (e.g. Water Dragon). Other DoTs would also work but most of them don't last long enough to give you enough time for buffing up etc.

You can keep combat running endlessly without Berath's Challenge if you use DoTs like Gouging Strike, True Love's Kiss etc. Endlessly not really because at some point the "dotted" enemy will die - but you know what I mean. Shadowing Beyond and Arkemyr's BD won't work (they break on any DoT tick) but Smoke Veil will not break. You can run away (out of sight) and prepare stuff all day, then return. Obviously Smoke Veil is no option as SC Bloodmage. But Potion of Invisibility works the same, so you could use that: Hit enemy from stealth with Lover's Embrace, retreat a bit (Alacrity maybe), drink Potion of Invisibility and run out of sight. Then prebuff all you want and return.

Are there any speed buffs that get suppressed? Since stacking of speed buffs is different from PoE's (where it had increasing returns so the stacking was limited) I believe there are none that get suppressed. Or are there? At least I didn't encounter those. But I don't use comsumables besides food so maybe I'm missing something.

[open console] iroll20s [hit enter] [reopen console] levelUpSoulbind <character name, if player char just type 'play' and hit tab> LAX03_Robe_Armor_Soulbound_Robes_Of_The_Weyc [hit enter] [reopen console] iroll20s [hit enter] That will do it. It will deactivate further gatherings of "Berath Blessings" points though because that savegame will be marked as cheated.