Boeroer

Holy moly the Helwalker/Boar shifts for over 30 secs and the raw DoT lash lasts for over 13 secs. Also Heartbeat Drumming was doing some procs (picked Lightning Strikes so lesser chance of crit-chaining). But I totally forgot how good Taste of the Hunt with maxed INT and MIG from Helwalker is. Jeez it applies its forst tick with the attack which already leads to great dmg right away but then ticks for ~30 raw every 3 secs, lasts nearly 30 secs (that's 300 dmg yo!) and naturally stacks with the boar lash. ONE strike with Taste of the Hunt as Boar with 30 INT/MIG almost kills a CRE_Dummy. And it's not even a Full Attack... Streetfighter is pretty crazy, too. But I encountered something weird: Ring the Bell's raw dmg doesn't apply. Toxic Strike and the rest does. I suspect that the claw weapons ar not recognized as "proper" one-handed weapons by Ring the Bell or something?

So he will do ~50 dmg? Sweet. Since lashes work extremely well with PL scaling and additive dmg bonuses I guess a Boar/Rogue should be great. But if the raw lash also takes elemental lashes into account then maybe a Helwalker/Boar with Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes would be even better? Not only because of the dual lashes but also because of the +10 INT which directly translates to higher/longer raw lash?

If this is your second run then most likely you are experiencing the immense positive effect of meta-knowledge - not so much the increased power of custom adventurers. Also because your party doesn't seem like overly optimized in terms of party synergies and crazy class combos. Custom adventurers start 1 level below official companions which def. balances out the somewhat unoptimized stats and class choices of the latter. So at least in the early game it doesn't make a lot of difference. At least for me who's not experiencing the effect of increased meta-knowledge anymore. Later in the game there can be big differences of course because the difference in levels is gone and certain multiclass- and party synergies start to really have an impact. One thing that really can make a good impact in the early game is an Assassin who's opening fights from stealth with his +25 ACC. This is a huge increase that early in the game and can tip the battles right at the start.

Never heard about this. Did you try what I suggested? Like with the out-of-range attacks? That way you can upgrade the robe in one single fight. Then you could be 100% sure if there's an error or if you just had incredible bad luck.

Highly depends on the type of enemy, the weapon etc. (e.g. Monk with Swift Flurry can be extremely potent against low deflection enemies) but generally I would say yes, a Rogue helps you to reach the highest single target damage potential (with weapons). Just because of the scaling Sneak Attack. Lashes are not multiplicative with each other. So a burning lash from Turning Wheel and a lash from Flames of Devotion will not influence each other. So if you are a Monk/Paladin doing 10 slash dmg you'd have two 20% lashes and you would get 10 slash + 2 burn + 2 burn = 14 overall. Would you have a Rogue/Monk with Turning Wheel only who does 12 slash dmg you'd get 12 slash + 2.4 = 14.4 overall. So you see that simply stacking lashes is not the best way if you not also try to raise the initial physical dmg. A mix of both is best. The Monk/Paladin could try to stack additive damage bonuses to "feed" his lashes better, e.g. be a Helwalker with +10 MIG, giving him +30% additive dmg. Upgrading his weapons. Also Power Level Scaling from low-level abilities like Force of Anguish is really good in combination with lashes since it scales the base physical dmg. At some point it's more effective to add a lash than to raise the physical dmg. But at low levels and with low physical dmg output it's better to raise that instead. I didn't try to determine the break-even point though. Just as a rule of thumb a Rogue will want to add lashes because his physical dmg is already high and the Monk wants to raise physical dmg because he has access to up to two lashes already. One reason why Helwalker/Streetfighter does great single target dmg is the combo of physical dmg + lashes. Same with Assassin/Bleak Walker. But as always: dead chars don't do dps.

Stun?

Steel Garrote/Bloodmage with Whispers of the Endless Paths (use enchantment "Offensive Parry") can kill all the CRE_Tigers you can spawn easily. I think the vibe of Steel Garrote/Bloodmage also fits. You can summon Concenhaut's Draining Touch and then an Essential Phantom in order to get a pretty great summon, too. Cast Miasma and Dazzling Lights and the Phantom will crit often with its Draining Touch, doing good dmg, weakening the enemy and healing itself.

Are you playing Turn Based mode? The miss range is significantly lower than in Real Time with Pause. Maybe that's the problem. In RtwP you can get missed reliably if you take your wizard and let him fight against any enemy who can't engage (often beasts). Once the enemy wants to hit you you just step out of range. This will result in a miss (out of range). I don't know if this is somehow possible in TB mode - I guess not. Another way woul be to enchant Edérs armor so that it makes you immune to reflex attacks (until something else will hit you). Then cast some reflex-based spells on the wizard which will all miss automatically.

Would be cool if one could remove them with White Worms.

Sure. Look at other items (besides armor and shields) that give you a temporary deflection bonus, too. They can be prolonged as well and sometimes they stack because they are from items. E.g. look at the Magnificent Escape Cape (Escape), Duskfall (Drawing Parry) and the Mask of the Weyc (Veiling Hood)...

More max focus also gives you a bit more starting focus. So it can mean that you might be able to cast something like Ringleader from stealth with Greater Focus but not without it. But this is an edge case. Geater Focus can be useful for Shared Nightmares (AoE gets +1% size per 1 focus point). If you feel that you don't need it you most likely really don't need it. Paladin/Soulblade can alernate nicely between Flames of Devotion and Soul Annihilation. Sun and Moon is a great weapon for FoD (because of the +2 fire Power Level) and also for Soul Annihilation - because the first flail head will apply the focus-fueled raw damage and the second flail head will already generate new focus for you. A Paladin/Ascendend can use Eternal Devotion to ascend quickly and then cast damaging spells with a +10% burning lash.

2 Bittercuts + max MIG + Spirit of Decay + Vulnerable Attack + Ring of Searing Flames and the usual +dmg stuff is the best setup for HoF-damage afaik.

No, because those also do +x to all all defenses. But you can stack them with +y to one defense. Which is weird but it works. So Vigorous Defense (+20 to all) stacks with Mirrored Images (+30 to defl.), but not with Moonwell (+10 to all).

If you haven't already you should try the DLCs, especially Seeker Slayer Survivor and Forgotten Sanctum. Lvl 20 in the main game is a bit roflstompish in any case, Animated Weapons or not.

No, a Psion gains focus passively: 1 focus point per sec at lvl 1 - and then it scales with Power Level. I have no idea how that's done in TB mode. So basically you don't gain focus with Invocations but you gain focus while casting (and recovering from) Invocations. And on the other hand you gain phrases while casting Cipher powers. So basically every time you finished with one cast you already gathered enough resources for another one. There's very little downtime and you don't need to use weapons. As long as the Paladin's using Flames of Devotion with Ring of Focused Flame he can generate focus quite well since the attack rolls will have +20ACC (and maybe even up to +5 Power Level from Otto Starcat as pet, and Magran's Favor and Sun & Moon as dual weapon setup) and get more focus from the burning lash. Bleak Walkers genrate more focus than the other Paladin orders because of the secondary corrosive lash. Paladin/Cipher also can get +2 PEN for FoD attacks with Scion of Flame + Hammering Thoughts.

It used to stack the debuff effect but was made unstackable (only duration stacks iirc) after I posted this: Nowadays it stays at -5 afaik.

If you pick Cadhu Scalth and invest in Athletics (for increased deflection bons) and Metaphysics and instead of Casita Samelia's Breastplate take Nomad's Brigandine (+5 deflection and +5 against melee - no need to skill Intimidation and with the Large Shield modal ranged attacks are less dangerous anyway) you will have a high permanent, non-dispellable deflection that doesn't need SoT shenanigans. An alternative to Cadhu Scalth (which also has dmg reduction via Metaphysics which is awesome) you can be Bronlar's Phalanx which gains up to +20 deflection while your health goes down. +20 is at 0 health so that's silly, but even near death it has higher deflection than any other item and it delivers the deflection right when you need it most. But even if this leads to higehr deflection I would absolutels recomennd Cadhu Scalth because the combination of Athletics (+ deflection) and Metaphysics (damage reduction) is just too good. If you want to stick to Casita's you can still do that and use Cadhu Scalth. The deflection scaling with Athletics is still possible, but you wouldn't be able to raise Metaphysics since you need all the points for Intimidation. You can reach quite high Intimidation with the help of Berath's Blessing: pick the double skill bonus and Infamous Captain (+3 Intimidate) and later train the skill at some trainer dude (forgot who) for another +1. Also nowadays you can actually find the Bracers of Greater Deflection in the game for +7 on top.

Can you not increase INT by 5 temporarily? Basically like the Bellower's PL boost? It would be passive so it would stack with Smart etc. - it would raise durations by 20% but I guess not the AoE because at targeting time you wouldn't have it(?). Maybe it's the same problem though: not being able to apply the INT bonus before the empowered effect takes place. An alternative could be to create a separate temporary passive effect called Lasting Empower (that shows up on the char sheet under current effects and besides the portrait) that adds +20% duration. It would get added when using Empower. Same problem again maybe? Maybe looking at the Bellower's implementation of his PL boost could help? Another alternative: "Adept Empower" which simply lifts the empowered ability by another 2(?) Power Levels. This would not only benefit duration but also PEN, dmg etc. of course. But it's easy to implement I suppose?

Yeah - it's also such a tight space which absolutely doesn't help. Congratulations!

After beating certain challenges you can choose to funnel soul essence into the island (gain Galawain's Gift passive), strenghten Muatu (the summon from the head trinket gets a MIG bonus and heals you more with his attacks) or receive a culmination stone which can be used to upgrade superb stuff to legendary instead of using Adra Ban & stuff: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Culmination_Stone You can get four. There are other items that can do this as well: Kraken Eyes (Kraken's Eye tavern, Kraken), Magma Dragon Gizzard Stone (Ashen Maw), Outer Godseed Fragment 1 and 2 (both FS) and Porokoa's Eye (SSS). And then you can get Mythical Adra Stones from the Megabosses which allow the same but for mythical quality. As does the Godseed Inner Core (FS). With all of those the alternative enchantment cost no money.

Enchanting can be quite expensive and sometimes needs very rare substances. Some players only judge items by their unique enchantments and underestimate the advantage that out-of-the box legendary quality will offer. I admit I'm one of them.

Not really. SoT + Anc. Mem. will prolong everything. I can see situations where your fighter might want to get out of SoT range to hunt some casters or gunners/archers - then Refreshing Defense might be useful. If you don't do that then I wouldn't spend the point on Refreshing Defense.

I can make all the difference. For example: You want to cast Slicken in order to interrupt a whole bunch of enemies. But they shoot as you with some sort of interrupt. With Combat Focus you can still finish the Slicken and now they get interrupted every 3 secs. Without Combat Focus you will get interrupted, your spell use is gone, the enemies shoot at you again and angain and you will be sad and dead. It makes zero difference if several enemies fire some sorts of interrupts at you. BUT: you can stack Concentration. So if you get some other sources like from an item and another ability you will three layers of Concentration. I had a solo SC Furyshaper centered around Barbaric Retaliation and Blood Ward and Combat Focus + some other sources of Concentration made a huge difference. Without Concentration I could not for the life of me summon a Ward because I got interrupted all the time and died quickly. With some layers of Concentration I could get the Fear Ward out and enemies were screwed. You don't need concentration if you are wearing Rekvu's Fractured Casque with an injury.

It seems you didn't get the main point of the build: He is using the Energized inspiration from the Invocation "Their Champion". Once you are energized all your critical hits will interrupt the enemy. That includes chants as well (as long as they do a hit roll that can critically hit). They do hit rolls every 6 secs (with Brisk Recitation every 3 secs). Druid's pulsing spells like Tanglefoot do hit rolls every 3 secs. Different chants target different defenses though (Come Soft Swinds targets Fortitude for example). So it's benefical to have a portfolio of offensive chants that target all different defenses. On top of that the chant heals AND can interrupt while being energized. Ancient Memory would heal better but can't interrupt (doesn't do hit rolls on enemies).

There are other storm spells that have better base damage (like Blizzard and Hail Storm) but they are not shock based, so you'll "only" get +3 PL. +3 Storm PL from the Voulge equals +0.75 PEN, not 2. If you want shock damage you can still use Deltro's Cage and the Singing Scimitar because the shocking lash from the scimitar will get applied to your (shock) spells as well, boosting their shock damage equally well than +3 PL would do (14% lash vs. 15% base dmg) and at the same time work with ALL spells, not only storms BUT only works best if you have a full phrase count. St the same time it speeds you up with every held phrase. So if you hold your phrases and cast Druid spells you'll have equal dmg for all of them but you'll have 3 less ACC and as I said -0.75 PEN. So stat-wise it's not an easy choice. Depends what spells and invocations you use most often I guess. I agree though that I like the Vougle much better on characters that go into melee, preferably Barbarians/something. I did an electric-storm Barb/Fury with it (binding it to the Fury side for the +3 PL to storms because you still keep Static Charge with Carnage - just without the Disorienting effect) and that was nice because you get the best of both worlds (melee and storm casting). I would use it as a pure stat stick on a SC Druid who aims at getting Greater Maelstrom - because there it's really great (freeing up Magran's Favor + Sun & Moon and Chromoprismatic Staff which can also be used by other classes). But in that case you don't have to decide between Scimitar and Voulge in the first place.