Boeroer

@Elric GaladJust wanted to confirm that you were absolutely right: it doesn't matter whether CP is installed or not - Great Maelstrom profits from Secrets of Rime in any case (both effects, the pure freeze dmg proc + the burn/shock proc as well).

Ah - I didn't know Secrets of Rime also works for water because we have specific PL bonuses for water, wind and frost in the game - so I just assumed it's the same with the PEN talents. I just guessed that CP added 1 PEN with Secrets of Rime because it added the frost keyword that was missing before although the spell does lots of freeze dmg. Might check later if Secret of Rime still applies to both dmg effects when I turn the mod off - just to be sure. Yeah, the SpShift table in the wiki is misleading. I never looked at it before.

It always works and is not connected to the Spiritshift. This makes SC Fury an excellent elemental nuker: Great Maelstrom with Scion of Flame and Heart of the Storm (and with CP also Secrets of Rime) is absolutely devastating because you gain +3(+4 CP) PEN for the shocking/burning part of the procs; and +1 (+2 with CP) on the freezing part - they seem to be completely separated effects but still: ouch. Normal hit at PL9 has 17 PEN, crits do have 25.5. Overpenetration is not common for spells, but here it happens quite often. The wiki doesn't list it as a Spiritshift bonus, it took the wording 1:1 from the game: Those are separate bonuses. One can misinterpret it if those bonuses are put into one single line of text (like the wiki did) though - and it also really doesn't help that it's structured like: - Spiritshift stuff - general stuff - further Spiritshift stuff - spells Would be less confusing if the passive came fist and spiritshift stuff after.

You mean Furies lose their passive of +1 PEN and +20% range with elemental spells once they use Spiritshift? Since when is that?

Still extremely lame and borderless pointless in unmodded game.

Megabosses are an awful grind. It doesn't matter much whether you pick Lightning Strikes or Swift Flurry. You just need perseverance.

Notepad++ is probably a good choice since it's rel. lightweight.

Don't know how Kvellen does it, but if you create a project for an IDE (such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, PhpStorm or whatever) from such sources you can search for strings of text in all files easily.

Community Patch turns the Stag's ability into a passive Carnage effect like Barbarian's (but a bit weaker). It stacks with Barb's Carnage.

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.