Boeroer

I was referring to the Edér dating sim "Under Oaf" that should be pitched to Josh. Before the new theme that got slapped onto the forum recently that was a laughing-tears emoji at the end. Now it's a sad one. Kind of messes up the tone and intention of my post I guess...

Touch of Rot is a good dmg spell in RTwP. Insect Plague + Infestation of Maggots, too. Don't know how they behave in TB mode though.

That also works. I personally don't use consumables much so I always try to make things work with ability and talents only. Instead of Swift Aim one could also use Outlander' Frenzy or Frenzy from the Sanguine Plate.

Magran's Blessings is Berath's Blessings in this case, the achievement points you get during playing the game. Some of those can be used to get twice the skill point bonuses at char creation. Just saying so OP doesn't get confused. I just imagined that if you unlock Edér's pet slot with Berath's Blessings there might be a secondary pet effect that boosts your bombs, too. Didn't check all pets' party effects now, but maybe there's something useful.

Yes, atm they are doing Wasteland3 for example. And most of their (admittedly small) games were quite lucrative for the investors. Deadfire however was absolutely not. There was another one that was disappointing but I forgot the name.

Players often forget that summons are very impactful because having an additional body is impactful. Well having an additional companion is as least as impactful. But the focus is always on the Ranger. Naturally the Ranger alone can't be as offensively powerful as a Rogue - that would be totally unfair since the Rogue doesn't have an Animal Companion. And still at the end of the game the Ranger comes pretty close even without the Animal Companion. Stunning Shots with a dual wielding setup and Swift Aim (aiming for 0 recovery) is extremely good. You can stunlock any enemy (who's not immune to stuns).

If you'll use Flames of Devotion (+20 ACC), Zealous Focus and have a Priest in the Party (always mandatory for me: Inspiring Radiance) then you can easily do with less PER. DEX is the most impactful dps attribute. If you want to deal respectable dps you shouldn't drop DEX too low. If you are going for a tanky approach you can use high RES: every point of additional deflection has increasing returns. So if you already have high deflection from shield etc. then every additional point of RES helps even more. If you have mediocre deflection to begin with (e.g. using a two hander or two weapons and not using Deep Faith) then putting a lot of points into RES doesn't do as much. If you want to use a shield: There's a shield in the starting village (Gilded Vale) - obtainable at the smith iirc, it's called the Outworn Buckler. It can only be used by paladins. It's a really good shield because its defensive enchantment (covers the party) stacks with everything - even with a similar shield that can be worn by everybody but can only be found a lot later in the game. It's a small shield so it will give you no ACC penalty - which is kind of a good compromise between offense and defense. And because of its enchantment its defensive capability is nearly as good as that of a large shield (and it helps the party, too).

With maxed out Flames of Devotion Paladins can be good alpha strikers, but after that the dps will be mediocre at best. Still - killing some enemies right away can have tremendous impact on the encounter. I didn't play a Paladin with Tidefall (since I always find somebody else who's better suited for it) but I played one with Firebrand and one with the Hours of St. Rumbalt (also Blade of the Endless Paths/Half-Mast as very effective marking paladins as variant of my Counselor Ploi build: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/89995-class-build-counselor-ploi-charming-paladin-supporter-tank/ ). Both great swords are annihilating which means they have increased crit damage (+100% additive instead of +50% additive). Firebrand has huge base damage and profits from Scion of Flame (+20% additive) while Rumbalt causes prone on crit. A Paladin with Zealous Focus and Flames of Devotion (+20 ACC innate bonus) can crit fairly reliably. As I said the dps after FoD use isn't super high, but on the other hand they don't go down easily - and dead chars don't deal damage, so... And of course once you get Sacred Immolation your mediocre dps turns into awesome dps all of a sudden. For Tidefall you want the highest Might you can get because the wounding enchantment scales with MIG (so that it actually does more than 25% once your might raises over 10). Every dmg bonus (Two Handed Style, Sworn Enemy, Apprentice'd Sneak Attack) is good because the wounding lash is a multiplicative dmg bonus that takes all other ones into account. Add a burning lash and pick the talents that max out Flames of Devotion. Also pick Runner's Wounding Shot for another special attack. It's strong. Wounding is best with low INT, but that's not a great option for a Paladin and also not for Sacred Immolation.

Same thing applies to Ancient Brittle Bones: the skeletons that spawn if one of the tiny original ones is killed will have normal size and health (and you can't control them either and they don't count towards the summon limit).

Too bad. I actually liked it.

Obsidian didn't do any console ports, they are only responsible for the Windows/Mac/Linux versions of the game. The Publisher gave the game to another dev studio for porting it to consoles. Afaik that's also the case for the Switch port. Hence I don't think that Obsidian themselves are doing patching on the Switch at all.

Congrats to @Astartez for discovering a bug that was sitting there right in front of us the whole time - and nobody else noticed. I've done countless hours of Barb play and never even took Accurate Carnage because I thought it's such a waste of good ability points. I personally wouldn't change the effect of the ability. Makes it viable after all. I would just alter the description.

Let me chime in and say that Mith Fyr's lash doesn't scale with Power Level. From the top of my head I don't recall any lash that scales with Power Level. But since lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses with a somewhat scaling base already that's ok.

ROFL 🤪

Snakeskin Grimoire's Nannasin's Cobra Strike is very strong, especially as Spellblade. You have to come really close though (very short range for a ranged weapon) and it doesn't work against poison immune foes. Minor Blights affects all enemy in the AoE with Rogue's strike effects (Arterial Strike, Gouging Strike, Toxic Strike etc.) so it can be very effective.

I'd go Troubadour I think. Also because it's more flexible and impactful before the high levels. Edit: I forgot something. Not only when you use Grave Calling and/or a SC Paladin a Beckoner is preferable, but also if you have a SC priest who wants to use "Spark the Souls of the Righteous". If you time it right and all summons (for example all skeletons or later all animated weapons) receive it that's nice.

Sadly, I cannot. I'd very much like to but I'm not at home until Friday evening, maybe Saturday.

Cool. But I guess you mean "Their Champion" and not "Their Companion"? #abilityNameAnalMinMaxingHitsTheLeeOnceAgain

Rangers are fine if you don't forget to use the Animal Companion which can be build to hit like a truck in PoE (not so much in Deadfire). So the Ranger char himself won't do as much damage as a Rogue, but if you add the Animal Companion it's another story. Rangers get access to Swift Aim which also works with melee weapons (unlike Vicious Aim). With it and dual wielding it is rel. easy to achieve a 0-recovery build which is not dependent on active speed buffs which can be effective and really fun. In order to get the most dmg out of your Animal Companion you need Vicious Companion, Merciless Companion, Predator's Sense and Brutal Takedown. Brutal Takedown seems meh but is actually not because it only has to overcome 1/4th of enemies' DR (for reasons unknown) which makes it awesome against all fat-armored foes. Animal Companions' base damage scales with character level which leads to pretty brutal dmg numbers at higher levels. It's important to unlock Predator's Sense as often as possible in order to gain the most from that high base damage. You can unlock Predator's Sense with any damage-over-time effect like Wounding Shot for example, but it's most easy to use a wounding weapon. Unfortunately the only one-handed melee wounding weapon is the dagger Drawn in Spring. While that's one of the highest dps weapons of the game and therefore great to have, it also comes too late to spin a while build idea around it. But maybe one can just substitute that with some other sources of raw dmg in the party until you get it - or just use another weapon like sabres entirely and leave the DoT-part to the druid of the party for example. As I said you'll also have Wounding Shots which will unlock Predator's Sense in melee as well. When in doubt you can use Envenomed Strike (talent), too. If you use Brutal Takedown on a target and then keep hacking/biting on it with Ranger + Animal Companion it's done very quickly. The initial prone from Brutal Takedown also helps. For optimizing your attack speed and reaching 0 recovery with dual wielding and Swift Aim you can play with this online tool: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/

Hm... what is Barring Death's Door for? I remember that in PoE (unlike Deadfire) it just prevents to ge killed from (maimed) 0 health, not to get knocked out from 0 endurance.

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.