Boeroer

I read the whole post (difficult not to since that statement came at the end). Still can't find the causal connection.

Engagement/Disengagement has a lot more impact than it had in PoE. One of my favorite tanks is still an Unbroken/Trickster with large shield who has about 5-6 engagement slots. A Crusader is very tough from the start and gets Lay on Hands + Constant Recovery + Unbending as well as multiple resistances. For most parties that's tanky enough without a shield - but you'll have to use thick armor. Pet + Armored Grace help to counter the recovery malus. Enemies severely underpenetrating you is one of the best things for your survival. If you can combine it with more dmg mitigating effects (like food - see rice etc.) you can keep incoming dmg really low. Stuff like focused gunfire can still hurt, so switching to a large shield setup during such occasions is a good idea. But against most opponents you can go with a two hander or a dual weapon setup. Another idea could be to stack some retaliation. You can stack Flame Shields of Darcozzi and Magran's Blessing. Magran's Blessing also is a bashing shield as @thelee suggested (not small though). You could also take Brand Enemy. It's cheap and it has no recovery. So in theory you could spend most of your Zeal with putting Brand Enemy on most of the enemies and leave the rest for healing. Maybe one or two for Eternal Devotion (works with the Fire Shields as well). Brand Enemy is a slow death but inevitable (can't miss, has no duration). Except against fire immune enemies obviously. The fire shields + brand stack up decently enough. You can then add some other retaliation effects (there's not too many though). Late-game shenanigans: If you have a SC Furyshaper in the party then Brand Enemy (as any DoT) will heal you with every tick once the FuryShaper casts Blood Ward... So putting multiple Brand Enemies out will give you a never-ending trickle of healing (as long as there's a Blood Ward - which lasts a really long time).

I can confirm that. He wrote about it not too long ago.

I think that was done because players (smartly) put a weapon + slow modal (like +2 PEN or Bleeding Cuts) into their main hand and then something fast (dagger or such) into the offhand - then did only Full Attacks. With Bleeding Cuts that's a special kind of cheese since it's damage increase is very high (also because the DoT instances stack) and is only balanced somewhat by the horrendous recovery malus - which was circumvented entirely with the "old" Full Attack implementation. I frequently suggested to use Battle Axes that way and was recently surprised that it doesn't work anymore.

That might be. Does stuff like Missile Salvo also get +2 ACC per PL?

Was still about a great sword build though. So it has its place in this thread.

In PoE1 the stacking of seals (and traps) was fixed as well at some point iirc. You can "stack" any pulsing spell that has a long enough duration and is castable out of combat from stealth as long as you don't hit any enemy - see Chillfog for example or Wicked Briars. It's not exclusive to symbol of XY spells. Walls can't be stacked by a single char though (like seals). But you have to prevent that enemies get lured into the AoE by the noise of impact or stealth will break. I don't think it's overly powerful cheese in a normal playthrough (party setup I mean) because it's rel. tedious to manage. Abilities shouldn't be balanced around solo performance imo. +2 ACC per PL on Storm of Holy Fire: explains why I intuitively use it as often as I can. It always has great impact (as long as enemies aren't very resistant/immune). Since it's not too high-level this has some noticable effect later on. I think it's ok because the spell (like some others like Missile Salvo) has no foe-only area no matter your INT and can't be shaped with Spell Shaping. Both is annoying as hell if I am with a party - and balances out the higher ACC for me.

Shadowing Beyond nowadays also immediately breaks if you have some stuff like Gouging Strike/Bleeding Cuts/Poison Dipped/True Love's Kiss etc. going. I don't mean on appliance but also later if you re-use SB after the initial attack. I think I remember that this was a complaint after release and got changed - but it seems to have been reverted to its crappy state? Afair Smoke Veil does not break if you use it after applying those DoTs. I knew that ACC/PEN values etc. get updated all the time. Also see healing over time with Livehuber over the course of their shifting cycle and such things. I thought that was common knowledge (but what is in this game ;)). @thelee: did you also try and compare Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure? It doesn't break at all as long as you don't damage enemies (or use Walls - I guess hazards are somehow their own "character instance" which also explains their behavior with certain other buffs/debuffs etc.). It seems that there are not two similar invisibility effects in the game. Stealth, Shadowing Beyond, Smoke Veil, Vanishing Strike, Arkemyr's BD all use their own stuff. I suspect the original code got copied and then altered individually by different devs for each ability. Like every ability in the game that got reused (see Wizard spells which can be cast by Priest of Magran etc.) is indeed a copy and not a reference to some basic effect.

It was an Offensive Parry&Riposte Steel Garrote/Trickster. The only construct that heals from burn damage is Dorudugan (the megaboss). The other Iron-/Steelclads are only immune. Flame Naga will heal from burn damage though.

Do you mean seal spells or symbol spells?

That only shows that the effects of Conduit (sometimes, but you have to cheese) and Blade Cascade (always) are too powerful - like Brilliant. Giving players superpotent but ultrashort effects and then allowing flat prolonging isn't overly smart in the first place if you want to achieve balance. Either do not deliver very strong effects in the first place or don't allow flat prolonging. On the other side: "abusing" SoT in order to extend very short potent stuff like Blade Cascade can be fun and interesting. I still don't think SoT is the problem. Blade Cascade is just too good. It would have needed a counter and not a duration. Conduit would have needed a cap. Or simply a fixed lash. Using BDD in order to survive 300pt shock damage is the cheesy part - not casting SoT afterwards imo. Casting of SoT itself takes some time away from the duration already. Besides that: shouldn't SoT only add 10 seconds? At least that's the number I'm referring to. Anything else is either a bug or wrong description.

Yes, then it's time to switch weapons to something that works better against single enemies.

Are you soloing? I wouldn't recommend to play that solo (in a strict way). Against enemies with ranged and spell damage a large shield with modal works wonders until they stop spamming that stuff. I believe even Minor Missiles suffer the high dmg malus from "The Wall". You should have plenty of weapon proficiency points for stuff like that. Usually Minor Missiles shouldn't overpenetrate. They can't crit so your corrode/crush DR must be quite low...? As I wrote elsewhere: such a setup is nice and fun against lots of melee attackers - but not very good against ranged ones (or spellcasters). That's why I wouldn't do it solo - and if I would I wouldn't stick to that setup too slavishly.

I repeat myself but I think both PoE's and Deadfire's biggest flaw is the weak explanations and tooltips.

Well, mechanically it makes sense and it actually works out quite well (as long as you don't want to know what exactly is going on). The problems are that a) it's hard to explain, b) it's unusual, c) it's complicated and unintuitive, d) neither the game nor the devs ever even tried to explain what's going on but left players wondering how the tooltip calculations would make any sense mathematically and e) designers didn't seem to fully understand what the programmers concocted there either.

I forgot that the +1 PL from Tactical Barrage also will raise the self damage from Berserker's Frenzy - oopsy.

The confusion would actually remove any INT inspiration completely (not downgrade it by one tier). Inspiration vs. Affliction always goes *pouf* - nothing left, no matter the tiers. So yes, your PL bonus would be cone, also +5 INT. You could simply cast Tactical Barrage again though (has no recovery and no casting time). The second time there wouldn't be a confusion to counter it and that would only cost one additional Discipline (which is easy enough to regain as a Tactician imo). But as I said: +17.5% crit conversion is also good. And Devil of Caroc has four good reasons to be worn besides the resistance to INT afflictions: a) it looks fantastic with the Helm of the Falcon and b) it gives +2 Discipline/+2 Rage and c) with a pet like Abraham and Armored Grace it's even faster than being naked iirc (or nearly as fast - don't remember the actual numbers) due to its own action speed bonus. and d) it can give +2 AR when bloodied - or healing on dealing crits which both is great for a Berserker. It's a tough decision...

Remember remember... the -25% of Blunted Criticals.

Right... I thought it's a complete failure in its current state. But maybe it has found a niche after all.

Last time I tested some <can't remember class>/Trickster with WotEP the Mask's Veiling Hood didn't stack with Escape - and I'm 100% sure. It wasn't a long time ago, maybe a month. So it can't be a ptach what changed this. I looked at the actual hit rolls like you and Rogue's Escape wasn't mentioned at all. Weird... maybe due to mods (using Community Patch)?

Haplok is right. +17,5% is still good imo. If you use stuff like Bloody Slaughter: it stacks the same way. What you can do to calculate it yourself easily: multiply the probabilities NOT to convert: Disciplined Strikes: 0.25 conversion --> 0.75 no conversion Berserker Frenzy: 0.3 conversion --> 0.7 not conversion 0.75 * 0.7 = 0.525 no conversion --> 0.475 conversion (or 47.5%) With another 15% conversion (-->0.85 no conversion): 0.75 * 0.7 * 0.85 = 0.4462 no conversion --> 0.5538 conversion (or 55.38%) One advantage of Tactical Barrage would be that you can use it to counter Berserker's confusion (could free up the armor slot from Devil of Caroc's Breastplate and take something that makes you immune to flanked - like Giphon Prudensco) - or to enlarge your Carnage/Static Thunder's AoE size. +1 Power Levels also means +5% multiplicative dmg for all your abilities (including Static Thunder), a bit more ACC and PEN as well. Carnage scales especially well with additional PLs. Keep in mind that Carnage itself can never crit. It only misses/grazes/hits.

Correct, it doesn't. I never tried if the "Wall of Flame" (it has a different name) from Dragon's Dowry will add Resonant Touches. It may be since it originates from a weapon. I once saw Grave Calling's Chillfog add stacks of RT, so maybe it also works with Wall of Flame. The Wall itself would heal the big D, but if it would add a lot of stacks for later to "finish" it could be worthwhile? Maybe...? Don't know if it adds stacks at all - because the dmg will get transformed to healing at some point (before or after RT gets checked?).

Tested Wahai Poraga again a few weeks ago with all sorts of abilities. Unfortunately it seems to be a bit broken now: you will only hit two targets max - and not the initial+3 like the descriptuion suggests.

Pallegina can be build into a decent marker with Blade of the Endless Paths. Take Coordinated Attacks and use Zealous Endurance. This will give the party member who's attacking the same target as Pallegina and is nearest to her a +20 accuracy passively. Zealous Focus stacks with those to a total of +25. Because Coordinated Attack and Marking stack with everything. This is a great help against any high-defense enemies like bosses and such. If you also have a Priest with Devotions + Inspiring Radiance (+30 ACC) it's very hard to miss anything. Before getting the Blade you can use the Spectacular Spetum (Salty Mast CRPG shop). It's a pollaxe and thus uses the same weapon focus as an estoc and also has the marking enchantment. It's also a good backup weapon for later if your Blade otEP meets pierce-immune enemies. That early in the game a stackable marking weapon can be very impactful. Marking from different chars doesn't stack.