Boeroer

Keep in mind that if you add poison to spells like Insect Swarm, that spell might become useless against everything that is immune to poison (such as many vessels and spirits but also Coral Nagas etc.). So while it might sound nice to have additional power levels, it can actually hurt the ability. I experienced this in my second-latest solo run with a DoT based Assassin/Bleak Walker: while I like Toxic Strike a lot there were many, many encounters where I couldn't use it. I used Ring the Bell (one handed version with DoT) and it always works, no immunities. If I didn't had that that would have been quite the bummer for my enjoyment of the build an run. Now if Insect Swarm, Plague of Insects and Venombloom would all be poison, a beast/plant focused Ancient would be pretty frustrated once meeting some undead etc. I'm happy that he can be happy. So (rather long) bottomline: I'm actually quite okay with not too many spells having the poison keyword - although it might sound sensible to add it (but it's not 100% clear): Plague of Insects or Insect Swarm - those names do not necessarily mean that it's venomous insects (unless description says otherwise). With stuff like Venombloom and Toxic Strike it's very obvious of course.

Amra is one of them and you can get it pretty early.

Extra PEN is always good if you don't like to switch weapons. In the worst case it "only" leads to overpenetration. And you won't have St. Omaku's Mercy right from the start.

As always: depends. On difficulty, on play mode, on preferences, on weapon setup, on build. There is no universal "best" melee striker. Monk/Rogue is very good in general though. Lacks the absolute oomph of Resonant Touch and Whispers of the Wind, but is very impressive during mid game. Helwalker/Bloodmage has the advantage of infinite Wall of Draining - which is gamebreakingly good because you can prolong all kinds of benefical effects endlessly, including Minor Lay on Hands from gloves. Unlimited healing + wounds all the time + huge AoE + Spirit Lance + endless Merciless Gaze + Swift FLurry and so on and to forth.

Depends on the weapon and on your play mode (RTwP or Turn Based).

Warbow is a good example: With Veilpiercer and St. Omaku's Mercy there are two war bows that have an enchantment that has a 50% chance to skip Recovery on a crit. With a Ranger you not only have high ranged ACC and thus can crit with a war bow more often than most other classes, you also have Driving Flight (crits of Driving Flight count as well!) which increases your chance to trigger a recover-skip significantly. So you could do a Devoted/Ranger for example and try to land as many crits with those war bows as possible, skipping recovery often enough and thus raising dps significantly. This is an example for RTwP mostly because skipping recovery is very benefical there. No idea if it's any good on TB mode. Another setuo would be to use Watershaper's Focus with Ondra's Wrath. A Ranger with Driving Flight and that weapon has 3 AoE attacks with one shot (initial attack+blast, 1st jump + blast, 2nd jump + blast). ALl those attack rolls can proc Ondra's Wrath which is a powerful AoE dmg effect. It can trigger multiple times. Very powerful combo from stealth. A Monk/Ranger with dual mortar increases his chances to get a refund for Stunning Surge because his AoE shots will jump, doing more attack rolls which might crit. A Fighter/Ranger with Driving Flight, Clear Out and Fire in the Hole can produce a lot more hit rolls because his Clear Out is not only producing AoE*AoE*2 attack rolls but instead AoE*AoE*3 attack rolls. Stuff like that.

With certain setups Driving Flight can be reason enough to pick a Ranger. I would still summon the Animal Companion though. It's cheap and a powerful summon.

Yes, only the duration gets reduced. But if you are applying a hard CC like stun the enemy still will still get stunned from a graze. It would be better imo if he only got dazed (but not for reduced duration but the normal one). That would also make more sense in terms of "realism"(TM): if you only graze the face of an enemy with a stunning blow he shouldn't be stunned, only dazed. Graze = Daze you know?

It can still be good with certain multiclass combinations. Especially with Riposte and/or Offensive Parry builds where you get so many wounds on the fly that the lesser max doesn't matter too much. But a solo class it's the weakest monk subclass in my opinion.

I guess. You can still contact Obsidian and ask for the discs. I mean the worst that can happen is them not answering - or saying they don't have any left.

Cool and different. I never used Halt because usually on PotD there are so many enemies and only so few spell uses. If such a single-target CC misses I'll bite into the tabletop. But maybe I'll give it a try now. Since you are mentioning Woodskin and Form of the Delemgan: Did you consider using the Lance of the Midwood Stag (which is obtainable quite early)? As druid it's easy to gain +2 universal Power Level via "Lord of the Forest" reliably, especially if you are planning to use Woodskin and Form of the Delemgan anyway. The universal +2 PL is nice if your most used spells are not beast or plant (where Spine of Thicket Green would be an alternative).

Barbarian + Morning Star is an excellent choice. With Spirit Frenzy you will cause Staggerd with Carnage, lowering enemies' fortitude by 10 points without any additional effort - nearly passively. Add -25 from Body Blows from the Morning Star and Brute Force - and you have a char who always targets the lower of two defenses - and one of them he can debuff by 35 points without any additional resoiurces or action time. On top of that: lowering enemies' fortitude is so benefical for a lot of potential party members. If you take the Willbreaker (causes -3 Will per hit, stacks) and also pick one yell path (e.g. Barbaric Shout for the additional engagement or Barbaric Roar for the AoE interrupt) you can also lower the Will defense substancially which is also nice for your buddies like Wizard, Cipher and Priest. That's why - besides uttering "Whispers of the Endless Paths" - you often hear me mumbling about Morning Stars. Berserker/Goldpact is also a great combo. The very high AR (Thick Skinned + Gilded Enmity and so on) gives you high survivability, Lay on Hands helps with the self damage from Berserker Frenzy, Zealous Focus + Ring of Focused Flames + Flames of Devotion, combined with Berserker's crit conversion leads to great damage outpout and Barbaric Smash can then be a good finisher. Don't know what you expect from "fully optimized" - I don't think there is THE optimal build for the whole game, just for certain situations - but that is a pretty good, well rounded multiclass choice. My last solo PotD run was with a SC Furyshaper - and it was great. I'm a fan of Barbarians since PoE anyway, but Furyshaper is a fantastic class, especially as single class. The Blood Ward is insanely good and the Fear Ward is very impactful, either. I tried an Unbroken/Furyshaper in order to abuse the terrify-disengage situation and it's great fun (although not in solo - too specialized). Berserker is also very nice - but in my opinion you have to either pair it with something that has high AR and sufficient self healing capabilites (like Chanter, Paladin, Fighter etc.) - or you let a healer constantly rain down HoTs on him. The main appeal of Barbarians is not Carnage anymore but their attack speed (Frenzy, Bloodlust, Blood Thirst). That's not very important in Turn Based mode, so I would assume that Barbs do stink there. Except as SC maybe once you get Barbaric Retaliation and/or Driving Roar or Dazing Shout.

correct You still can - if you crit a lot. That can be done by debuffing Reflex first (e.g. with Miasma of Dull-Mindedness from a Wizard and a Nature's Mark from Druid for -30 Reflex).

The AoE is crush if I'm not mistaken. Only the initial hit is pierce. So you can simply alternate targets and should be okay.

Monk is pretty much the king of stuns. Stunning Surge + AoE weapon (WotEP, rods + modal, hand mortars, Kalakoth's Minor Blights or Citzal's Spirit Lance) is very impactful and usually you get the refund because one of the AoE rolls will crit eventually.

Nope. I think the only friendly fire AoEs from weapons are Powder Burns, Blinding Smoke (hand mortar) and Keeper of the Flames

Well done @thelee, but not enough typos! Clear Out can be pretty nice with Karabörü as well. The cone that it triggers on crit can happen multiple times if you're lucky. When going SC Fighter I always pick Clear the Path because its AoE size does not depend on INT and I find it to be pretty awesome in general, especially with weapons that have cone AoEs (WotEP, Karabörü, mortars with Powder Burns). By the way: mortars/blunderbusses are easy to use with Clear Out etc.: you just need any melee weapon in the left hand. It doesn't matter if bashing shield or dagger or flail etc. I would say the most potent Great Sword in terms of single target dmg is Voidwheel, but it comes rather late.

Hi, I haven't updated the list after the last big forum update after which we had that stupid "no edit function after x days" problem. And after that got fixed I simply forgot about the list basically. The new forum is really bad with very long posts with lots of formatting. Upon saving the post it often destroys the formatting completely and parts get lost. I have to keep a backup because of that. I try to touch it as seldomly as possible.

You can simply initiate combat with a tank an then start casting Citzal's Spirit Lance from stealth, then use it, can't you (I am not playing on TB mode)? It's totally worth the cast. In RtwP it's also not an instant cast. Chromoprismatic Staff is great. But you can not aquire it early. A good reach weapon for the early-ish game can be the Lance of the Midwood Stag. If you enchant it with Lord of the Forest and get a plant or beast effect (e.g. Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan etc.) it gives you +2 universal Power Levels which is pretty great for casting. So if you have a Druid in the party who can put something like that on you it's good. An alternative can be the Spine of Thicket Green which can be stolen from the Dark Cupboard easily. It's not particularly useful for a wizard and is better for Druids and/or Priests, but it comes exceptional which might be a big improvement early in the game. Later grab Chromoprismatic Staff. Another alternative would be to give the character the actual Spirit Lance weapon with the console (or mod) to carry it around like a normal weapon. Cheating, yes, bit more like a QoL cheat if you want to use it all the time anyway. It will even scale down of you use it with a lower level than you would normally do (with summoning), so it's not even too high quality if you use it from the get-go. Summoned weapons should have been instacasts. We pushed for it in beta and after release but unfortunately Obsidian didn't want to do that. A cool mod would be to add a unique pike with normal stats but that automatically casts Spirit Lance as instacasts at the start of combat. Like a "trapped" Spirit Lance inside the physical one.

Nearly all offensive abilites or abilities that have an offensive component (I mean which will do an attack roll against the enemies' defenses) and that have enough resources (see wound count out of combat, also focus out of combat) can be cast out of stealth, giving you the advantage of the first strike. Even Leap can be cast out of combat from stealth which makes it an awesome tool. Just because it has an attack component (daze roll).

Note that if you use the console's "iroll20s" and "giveitem" commands to give a character a unique item and then export him - the save game where you import him into will also be marked as "cheated" and you will get no achievements/Breath Blessing points. You'd have to acquire the unique item in a "proper" way and then export it or you'd have to use a mod.

Shattered Pillar only has a max wound count of 5 which hurts the Turning Wheel bonus. I would pick Helwalker: the +MIG is great for a lot of Wizard spells as well and you can generate lots of wounds on the fly with Alacrity's seld dmg + Enduring Dance (doesn't get canceled by self damage). I would use Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon often, especially if you pick a Bloodmage. Also use self buffs of course. There's a grimoire of a guy named Zandethus (Zandethus' Dracon Scaled Grimoire) which has an awesome melee spell in it: "Zandethus' Draconic Fury". It adds two big lashes to all your melee attacks and also terrifies enemies. Stuff like Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst is also nice. You can cast nukes, sure. They are actually very impactful with the Helwalker's bonus MIG and the bonus INT from Turning Wheel as well as the +2 PEN from Thunderous Blows. One of the most impactful spells is Wall of Draining. With it you can prolong all buffs and healing over time(!) on you endlessly as long as there are still enemies alive. Even lowish healing sources like the Minor Lay on Hand glove become really good this way.

Yes, it does. You need to pick the pike proficiency.

Clear Out also throws enemies back and interrupts them. I'd still use one or more proper frontliners in addition to the Devoted/Monk.

Pollaxes - despite the name - are no reach weapons in PoE. Since you mentined that you won't be in the first row to tank I assumed with pole weapons you mean reach weapons. Those are only quarterstaff and pike. So Lord Darryn's Voulge would be out. If you want to go with LDV nevertheless, in my opinion there's nothing better than Barbarian/Monk due to the awesome synergy of Static Thunder with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming (disregarding your dislike of Barbarians) - especially on lower difficulties but also on PotD (but to a lesser extent because less crits): Carnage applies Static Thunder in an AoE and Swift Flurry can trigger cascades of crits which again apply carnage with Static Thunder which immediately get released by the crit again. The big AoE bc of Turning Wheel helps to sometimes clear a whole room with a single attack if you're lucky. And if not it's still very good. You maybe want Berserker in order to get more crit conversion in melee which helps with Swift Flurry. Berserker/Helwalker is quite tricky though. Furyshaper/Helwalker is also great because the fear ward leads enemies to break engagement (use Barbaric Shout to get +3 engagement) and lowers enemies deflection, the Disengagement Attacks help with Swift Flurry etc., too. Stuff like Devoted/Helwalker also works well. Once you get Clear Out you can do the same as the Barbarian version - but not passively and less often per encounter. But still impressive. Here the Disciplined Strikes help a lot of course.