Boeroer

Depends on the boss. Stuff like Beast of Winter can be critically hit rel. easily. Others like Dorudugan and Belranga not so much. Even random stuff like guards in Drowned Barrows won't receive crits a lot.

Yes, Lightning Strikes is better against tough foes on PotD. If you don't crit a lot Swift Flurry does almost nothing - while Lightning Strikes always delivers a 15% multiplicative dmg increase (unless you miss or enemies are immune/very resistant to shock). Of course Swift Flurry is more spectacular once it chains. If you have a build that's focused on crits (lots of ACC and crit conversion, maybe also lowering defenses with the help of party members) I would pick Swift Flurry. Else Lightning Strikes.

While I will only pick Swift FLurry for very special builds I will nearly always take Heartbeat Drumming (I mean as long as I'm playing a melee Monk - else it doesn't make sense) - because even if the chance is not very high it's still good for a passive. Works well enough against low defense foes.

Iirc Spiritshift was very potent in the beta because the lashes of Wildstrike were higher (same with Flames of Devotion, Mith Fyr and other lashes). So maybe they first nerfed the PL scaling and later also all the lashes but forgot to un-nerf the missing PL scaling? Maybe... no idea...

I just checked in game: rod's Blast still works with Concussive Tranquilizer, making Watershaper's Focus + Driving Flight the perfect tool for removing buffs from whole clusters of enemies. Fire in the Hole: same. Tested against a flock of 20 Xaurip High Priests who ALL did cast Holy Power as their first official act after spawning.

I mean obviously.

Concussive Tranquilizer with Watershaper's Focus and Driving Flight used to remove beneficial effects with the Blast AoE as well - which triggered thrice and thus removed 90 secs from most enemies in the AoE (those who got hit thrice of course). Don't know if that's still the case but might be worth checking.

I think that it's not cool.

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.