Boeroer

I also tried a Skald with WotEP and it works well - but instead of a Skald/Bloodmage I chose Skald/Steel Garrote for critfishing via Offensive Parry and dual draining. That def. didn't solve the "Jeez Woedica sucks" problem though.

Bombs are quite bad as the sole source of damage. They profit from Character level (+3 ACC per level), Explosives skill (basically like Power Level scaling), base accuracy of your char (20) and accuracy buffs (not PER). Intellect, Might and so on have no effect either. So you want a class and a background that gets a bonus to explosives and has access to a lot of accuracy buffs. Like Ranger for example and/or Priest (Devotions) and/or Cipher (Borrowed Instincts). Best to stack those with a multiclass that has two of those buffs that actually stack. Anything that can reduce reflex defense on the enemies would also work. Items that raise ACC directly also work. Reverse Pickpocketing increases the accuracy and dmg of bombs a lot, but you can only do it to non-hostile NPCs and need high stealth (which would clash with the wish to have high explosive skills). You can substitute stealth with Leap (from boots or as Barbarian ability). It is possible to leap right next to an NPC from stealth and to reverse pickpocket then without any stealth skill. But even if you get all that right the damage from explosives is still quite bad - especially in the late game. You can get decent utility out of them but they lack base damage and synergy effects. Here's a thread with more detail:

Paladin goes very well with Wizard imo. Wizard has lots of direct dmg spells that profit from Eternal Devotion and also Wizard's self buffs stack nicely with Paladin's passive buffs, making an Arcane Knight a potentially quite tanky guy. Paladin also works well with a Fury if you want the Fury's damaging capabilities with the rel. high spell penetration but still want to have some source of healing (via Lay on Hands). I personally would prefer Arcane Knight. Especially with Bloodmage since Lay on Hands and Exalted Endurance with Blood Sacrifice is a very useful synergy. My favorite is Steel Garrote/Bloodmage because of the draining that helps Blood Sacrifice even further - also in "mid range" with a reach weapon like Parasitic Staff (draining stacks with steel Garrote's) - but I know it's hard to pull off for a lot of players because of the cruel disposition for Steel Garrotes.

Depends (I know it's frustrating). If you are planning to use Grave Calling with Chilling Grave in the party then Beckoner. If you have a SC Paladin in the party then also Beckoner. If you want to use Grave Calling and have a SC Paladin then so very much Beckoner. If your Grave Calling wielder is a Berserker then you must bring a Beckoner, it's a law. I never tried two Dragons with the Beckoner for tanking purposes but offensively the Animated Weapons dish out a lot more dmg with a Beckoner than with a Bellower. I would also argue that Troubadour is top notch as soon as you get the chant Many Lives Pass By. He will pop a skeleton every 3 secs and they don't replace other summons, not even themselves. It's a constant stream of skeletons on top of the faster phrase collection for the other summons you want to call forth. Also remember that the Bellower is bad at supporting the party with chants.

Don't know if there's actually that much of a difference given that druid has raw DoTs and sometimes enormous AoE sizes and that a Fury can gain higher PEN than a Wizard. I mean if you wanted to only take damage into account and leave the rest of a class aside (which is not a very useful analysis in my book but anyway). Druids can be healers, buffers, CC/debuffers and damage dealers with the same char - while the Wizard can only do CC/debuff and deal damage. I personally think the special CC/debuff effects of Wizards are the best (see Pull oE, Miasma, Arcane Dampener and such). Thus the difference in damage dealing (compared to other casters) isn't that important to me. For me, in the end it depends on what your party needs. Since the druid can do a lot of stuff at the same time I guess it's often easer to find a slot for him than for the more specialized Wizard. Subclasses like Fury aside which are specialized on a certain role in the first place. But at the same time a Bloodmage has a big impact right from the start because of his simple spell-recharging mechanic that I would be inclined to use him if I didn't have before.

Did you check entries in the combat log (after a hit) or did you only look at the tooltip on the char/inventory sheet? It may be that it's only an error of the Tooltip that doesn't handle the bonus correctly for display purposes - but handled correctly during actual combat roles. If it indeed applies to the main attack roll as well: congratulations, you found a reason for me to try another Barb run.

If you are looking at Megaboss fights specifically and want to compare isolated Druid to isolated Wizard then the Wizard wins - just because there is the Bloodmage subclass. Megaboss fights last a loooong time compared to most other encounters and all classes with fixed resources will have spend all their stuff long before the fight is over. Bloodmages can refill their spell uses with Blood Sacrifice. That's the advantage they have over other Druids (and the other Wizards). If you have some form of healing (be it from a fellow party member, items, food etc.) you can basically cast forever (with pauses maybe but still). In combination with Wall of Draining you can do a lot of weird stuff that a Druid can't. Especially with buffs from items. As soon as you have a party, a source of Brilliant (see Cipher for example) and Salvation of Time it's not that clear anymore. A druid can't have Wall of Draining of course, but with a Priest + Cipher in tow he can profit form Salvation of Time endlessly. A brilliant Druid with some stacks of Salvation of Time with then quasi-infinite healing/buffing and raw DoTs and CC spells can have a significant impact on a Megaboss fight. But you have to get there... It doesn't matter much if you cast a Missile Salvo or Great Maelstrom so on the offensive side I don't see huge advantages for either one. I think I personally would pick the Bloodmage because he's more impactful on the way to the late game contend - as long as the rest the druid can do and which the wiz can't (healing, party buffs) are covered by the rest of the party.

Did you try it in TB mode?

Yes, but Barring Death's Door naturally didn't play a role in my answer to the question whether Wall of Draining is the best way to abuse Unbending or not.

Yes, Wall of Draining only works on the Wizard himself. So it would have to be a Fighter/Wizard. Best would be Bloodmage because he can cast Wall of Draining endlessly with Blood Sacrifice. If you want another party member to prolong your Unbending you need a Priest with Salvation of Time. But as long as the Priest doesn't have Brilliant it's not as impactful as Wall of Draining with a Bloodmage. But if he has Brilliant (e.g. from a Cipher buddy) then it can also be very impactful since the Priest can cast Salvation of Time over and over again (on himself to prolong the Brilliant inspiration and on others to prolong their stuff).

Dragon's Dowry does excellent ST damage, yes. Lashes do generate focus so that's a great weapon for Ciphers in TB mode.

Because if you hit several enemies at once you deal more damage and get more focus. I recommend Watershaper's Focus especially because I went for Arcane Archer and the weapon has an integrated jump (works with the Blast AoE as well) - and because the Blast modal's big drawback in RTwP (+50% recovery time) is not a problem in TB mode. Also because the Ondra's Wrath proc generates focus and does good dmg.

If you want to see Watershaper's Focus in action with Ondra's Wrath (on a Sharpshooter/Trickster Scout though) then check this small animated gif: I just shows how Ondra's Wrath triggers and does considerable dmg.

I didn't play TB but I suspect that Watershaper's Focus with Ondra's Wrath does more damage per turn than Frostseeker - but I might be mistaken. With Imbue shots Frostseeker will omit the two remaining projectiles once the first triggers the imbue effect. But even if WSF is better (it is def. better as opener with Pull of Eora and Binding Web because you get an additional proc per shot) I would still keep Frostseeker because there will be lots of situations where it's the better weapon because of AR resistances and immunities. Arcane Archers get some special attack ability called "Imbue:XY". It's basically a wizard spell attached to an arrow you shoot. Those abilities get bonus accuracy from your arcana skill. And they trigger their effect with every jump of a shot (makes Driving Flight mandatory kind of). The imbue effects are Minor Missiles, Binding Web, Fireball, Pull of Eora and Death Ring. Although it may sound amazing to trigger three Fireballs with WSF though there is a problem with the damaging imbue shots (missiles, Fireball, Death Ring): they don't scale properly with PL and get no additional PEN which makes them very underwhelming in the later game. One solution is to install the Community Patch which lets the PEN scale with the Arcana skill and makes then usable again. I still like Web + Pull better because the impact on the encounter is so much higher than some Fireballs. Even if you want max dps (or dpT since it's damage per Turn) it's great to have an effect that pulls and stucks most (or all) enemies in a tight space from which they can't escape. It raises your damage considerably because now you can hit all enemies with your AoE shots, be it from WSF or Frostseeker. More enemies hit with one shot means more damage per Turn.

Wall of Draining is indeed the best way to exploit Unbending. Every instance of Unbending's healing over time effect (which are usually very short) get prolonged endlessly as long as the Wall is up. That means a lot of parallel HoT instances that basically never end. So a Fighter/Bloodmage is the way to go if you want insane healing for an unlimited amount of time. It's possible to get over 1000 health per tick. As long as you don't get one-shot and as long as you can affect enemies with Wall of Draining you are immortal.

Yes, Fire in the Hole + Driving Flight + Keeper of the Flame with Whirling Strikes and Edér's armor (prevents hits from Keeper of the Flame which targets reflex and has friendly fire) is so nice. Another really fun build I once did was one-handed Helwalker/Stalker (because they rhyme yo!) with Stalker's Patience (because the game uninstalls itself if you don't use Stalker's Patience with a Stalker). Because Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming procs also can trigger the spear's enchantment which skips recovery (20% of crits) those funny crit chains often lead to 0 recovery. And the Ranger's awesome melee ACC bonuses, paired with the Monk stuff like Stunning Surge and Enduring Dance leads to a lot of crits.

Yes, they stack. Since one is a debuff and the other one a buff there's no interference whatsoever (like debuffing Deflection and buffing Accuracy).

150 because not only Mirrored Images gets dispelled but also Refreshing Defense. Also you will not only get hit by stuff that targets deflection - but also abilites that target other defenses, fortitude mainly. Especially in the late game.

The shield only cracks, it doesn't break. #abilityNameAnalMinMaxing

...and then you get hit by Arcane Dampener.

Looking at the highest levels probably not. Stuff like Great Maelstrom and Missile Salve etc. is so strong that it's hard to beat. But during mid game stuff like Helwalker/Caster def. has its advantages.

Acolyte's Hatchet is pretty good though. Vion C'Thingy used to be extremely good on a Ranger/something with Binding Roots but it got nerfed hard unfortunately (from +100% dmg to +30% - or even +20%? Forgot...). I actually like Gladiator's Sword. Unlike weapon modals its +5 universal deflection bonus stacks with everything and you don't even have to graze anybody. The +10% dmg is not breathtaking, but the upgrade does not only remove the -1 PEN bit turns it into +1 PEN which transforms it to a sword with 8 base PEN instead of 7 which is pretty great for a defensive weapon imo.

I think not. It's been a while but I'm very confident that it's +12 ACC max. Wound generation is not limited.

+1 AR is a very effective bonus when we talk about tanking. -25% damage isn't an additve dmg malus. It goes through double inversion and is actually a lot more impactful as you might guess. If we speak about tanking an Unbroken is way better than a Devoted if you use a large shield. Devoted's PEN bonus is +2 and that's nice, but actually it's not as impactful as long as you are willing to switch weapons according to enemies' AR values. Most of times the differences between the singular AR values of foes are 2 or higher which means that if a non-Devoted just switched weapons to meet the enemies' lowest AR value he has higher effective PEN than a Devoted who is stuck with his weapon choice (unless the Devoted chose a weapon type that has two or more damage types and hasn't low base PEN - see Morning Star or Pollaxe). At the same time the Unbroken gets +10 PEN on Disengagement Attacks which is just nuts. Combined with Overbearing Guard, Sneak Attack and Deathblows his Disengagement Attacks are really devastating. The stride malus of Unbroken/Trickster doesn't matter because he's using the large shield modal anyway and mainly moves with Escape and the Reflex malus isn't so bad because Reflex-based attacks are all AoEs which get softened a ton by the large shield modal. On the plus side Unbroken gets +1 engagement in addition to the AR which can be good for a tank. Tanks are not very useful if they can't prevent enemies from reaching the backline.