Boeroer

If I were a Fighter/Skald I would want to put out Killers Froze Stiff all the time (since it only costs 2 phrases for a Skald iirc) to a) increase crit chances even more and b) to hard-CC enemies. It seems like the best synergy between invocation and passive. When using Offensive Parry it obviously leads to less enemies attacking (and missing) you but there's still enough of them who will either be resistant or get missed. I can see "Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone" being useful for a Tactician/Chanter with WotEP (would be able to regain Discipline just with auto-cone attacks) and of course in all those cases where you desperately need more PEN. But since Fighters can interrupt with a lot of different abilities I guess I wouldn't use it that much. WotEP already has +1 PEN compared to other great swords. Afaik Soft Winds doesn't interrupt even with Energized. Certainly not the DoT ticks but maybe even the initial attack roll won't do it (not 100% sure though). A nice phrase for using Mule Kick and Clear Out with WotEP is "The Long Night's Drink" by the way. It lowers enemies' fortitude by 14 points - which is the defense that both of those abilities will target. Also Weakening lowers enemies max health pool quite a bit (which often gets omitted when talking about useful afflictions). Afaik it's not a poison or disease effect so it should work on everybody who's not immune to CON afflictions. The -2 Might part should always work I guess(?). Not realated to Champion but to Skald in general: As a Skald you should make sure that you pick one (or a few) non-offensive yet useful invocations every now and then. Skald players tend to only pick and use offensive invocations - which seems to be a smart choice initially - but your max phrase counter is determined by your most costly invocation(!). If you only pick cheap offensive invocations then your max phrase counter will be very low. You don't want that for obvious reasons. Something like "Ancient Instruments of Death" or "Set to their Purpose" can give you a max phrase counter of 6. So if you are full with phrases you could cast 3 Killers Froze Stiff in a row without even gaining one single phrase in between.

There seems to be a misconception of the term "evidence". It's a list for builds that can do the Ultimate Challenge. Thus the amount of builds on this specific lists says nothing about the interest in making builds for this game at all. There's zero causal relationship. It's just circumstancial evidence that there's little to no interest in posting builds for the Ulitmate Challenge in this thread. Whoops this isn't a list for the ultimate challenge but an ultimate list. Got fooled. Forget what I was saying.

Only Brilliant (from Cipher for example) and Chanter's "His Heart Did Fill With the Light of the Dawn".

Clear Out + WotEP does indeed work like that. Skalds can only get 1 phrase per attack though. It's capped. So even if you do a ton of crits with one Clear Out + WotEP you'd still get only 1 phrase (at least that was the case some time ago). Same with the normal AoE cone. But of course the chance to get a phrase in the first place is a lot higher. Offensive Parry does generate additional phrases on crits and that can be pretty cool. You just have to make sure that your deflection is high/enemies' accuracy is low.

Ah - I thought integrated meant that the DLCs do get inserted into the main game - and not take place after the finished main story line (see BG2->Throne of Bhaal and such).

They are integrated. You can go to the DLC areas and return to the main game at (almost) any time. I personally would start with all DLCs installed (if you are planning to buy/play them anyway). Beast of Winter is really good, Forgotten Sanctum is also nice. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is mostly a battle arena (with a story and quests). I liked it but it's focused on combat and thus it might not be everybody's cup of tea.

I'm not 100% sure, but usually when it says "ally" (see Divine Retribution of Paladin) it works with summons and when it says "party member" it only works with your actual party members. Burden says "party member" - but I didn't test it. I know that Woedica's Crown etc. which has the same description does not work with summons. Edit: I just checked in-game and while the enchantment Grieving says "party member" its upgrades says "ally" (bravo Tooltip! 😕). So I did a quick test: Killed some skeletons from Beckoner and got nothing, killed Aloth and got the bonus. Tl;dr: doesn't work with summons.

Yeah, totally wild conclusion...

You judge quality of writing based on the amount of words - the less text you have to read the better the quality. So... Hyper Light Drifter is your candidate for best game writing of 2016?

Hi @lishuai! Thank you. 🙏 I guess so - can't really confirm 100% since a significant amount of time passed since I played PoE. But since those talents work with all elemental damage (except DoTs) it should work, yes.

I really like (solo) Stalker/Bloodmage with Willbreaker. Good AR, good deflection (both even awesome once you get Ll. Safeguard), good fortitude debuff for Takedown Combo + spells like Killing Bolt and a superstrong Essential Phantom with Draining Touch (which profits enormously from Willbreaker+Miasma since DT targets Will - and it lowers target's fortitude even lower through weakaning). It's like a party of three. Also Willbreaker can deal a DoT that unlocks Predator's Sense. And with the high ACC of a Ranger But it needs some setup time at the start of every encounter and is not the fastest killer - so in a full party such a guy slows things down a bit. But can bring down stuff like Dragons solo easily. Didn't try Megabosses solo with it though.

Wavering? Anyway: which weapon did you use to test this? Reloading weapons (Crossbow, Arbalest, all guns) don't work properly because their reload phase doesn't get affected by Blood Thirst. If you used a non-reload weapon: I never heard/read about this bug but it may be that a corrupted game file causes this. Maybe a reinstall can fix this. Or maybe GOG has a function to check for file integrity (can't remember).

The "awful watcher soul reading vision text" of PoE are background stories that backers send in who got an NPC for their pledge. Naturally the quality of those texts may vary. Besides that there isn't more "soul reading" than in Deadfire. Backer NPCs have golden name plates while genuine NPCs have silver ones - so you can tell them apart. How could you determine whether the writing of Deadfire was better or worse than that of PoE?

I like Skalds. Youcan do some cool stuff like using Offensive Parry from Whispers of the Endless Paths to generate more crits in a given time (parry-crits and AoE hits can lead to phrases, too). Offensive Party lets you shift parts of the "attack to gain phrases" process into the passive realm: you don't need to actively attack to use it and can concentrate on invocations. You just need the enemy to miss. I used a Steel Garotte/Skald for this since the parrying also drains life passively then - and it was fun. Sun & Moon is cool for obvious reasons. It is also good with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drunning which might cascade a lot of crits, so Helwalker isn't a bad idea besides the +MIG and +INT. Sun & Moon is also good for Hunter's Claw (which can help enormously with the crits) - so a Ranger is also a good idea. But: note that there is a cap of 1 phrase to be gained per swing. So even if you crit with all attack rolls of a swing: max 1 phrase. But it still raises the chance of getting a phrase in the first place of course. Dragon Thrashed is boosted in CP indeed - I believe it went from slash/burn to slash AND burn, so the potential damage is doubled. Don't know if this was enough to make it worthwhile though. I did briefly test a Herald with combined Sacred Immolation and Dragon Thrashed and it was ok, but that was a Troubadour - so no idea about Skald. I reckon since a Skald needs to attack with weapons a lot something like Mith Fyr might be better suited?

Usually they hold position before firing. I don't pay much attention to their cannons and their reload cycle. I just know that when they hold position they will most likely fire on the next turn.

LMAO - that goes right into the awesome typo box besides Buttercut, Lord Rodriguez and Direballs. 😄

Uhhh - @thelee was a .

You need two master cannoneers (on the sloop) and then you're set. you can hire one at the Kraken's Eye with BErath Blessing Points or just train some guys who only have a star with cannons (and nothing else). Those can become master cannoneers as well if you don't use them for something else. I start with Iron Thunderer cannons - but Royal Bronzers or Vaillian Hullbreakers are better. Ship combat usually starts at a about 300 meters so the short range of the Hullbreaker isn't a problem most of times. With the Sloop you can use cannons with up to 6 turn of reload because: Fire Jibe Hold Position (gives extra ACC) Fire Jibe Hold Position Fire Royal Bronzers have 6 turns reload speed and that's why they are especially good (because they can fire as often as Iron Thunderers but do way more dmg). Hullbreakers only need 4 turns to reload but only have 250 range (farther away: you will get some ACC malus). They do trememdous damage. Since you can't buy Royal Bronzers nor Hullbreakers everywhere I ususally end up with a mix of both. If you have Haeferic's Nose from an event: very good cannon as well. Keep it. Cannons with under 6 turns reload are best for ships who don't jibe after shooting (because they are slow). Which I never use because it's a waste of money. Exception for me is the Hullbreaker. Obviously more cannoneers and more cannon ports would increase the chance of tiggering a special event per salvo - but on the other hand you will jibe so slowly that your rate of fire will be very low - so actually your are not causing more special events during a fight (only per salvo). Faster cannons without jibe will result in more special events - but the dmg is so low that it takes too long to take out the enemy ship (for my taste). Master cannoneers have a high chance of causing some special effect on hit (man over board, knocking cargo loose, start fires, hull leaking and so on). As soon as such things happen the enemy captain will send crew to fix the problem instead of fighting you, loosing a turn. Often ships get into a stupid "turn left-turn-right-uhhhm, what to do?" modus because you shower them with special on-hit effects. Sometimes (very seldomly) I die when taking on the really hefty ships because my cannoneers screw up the first shots - but most of the time my sloop just sinks them because they can't do a lot of stuff while they have to send crew here and there to fix stuff. At some point I will buy the Red Dream hull in Dunnage because it makes you sturdy as heck - you can then affort to screw up a little because you are sturdy like a galleon but with a tiny hull (fast jibes and turns, low chance to get hit). Then later some better sails (like Stormwind or even Goulskin or whatever). If you can't buy a master cannoneer right away you can train your cannoneers in easy fights against such wussies like Beggar Winfrut and such. They are exceptionally weak - and all what your guys need is some practice in order to increase their skill. Nowadays I don't use any other ship than the sloop. I used to buy a Voyager in the past because it's fun with Flamethrowers on the stern - but the sloop is very good as well (because of the low chance to get hit and the fast turning) and costs nothing, so... Ah - if you jibe and the enemy is about to fire: don't hold position! You will be easier to hit then. Instead go full speed (parallel to the enemy ship). Often the enemy will not fire then but hold position and wait until you stop going full speed. You can do so until your cannons reloaded and then just fire "from the hip" without holding your position first. The chance will be lower but the enemy ship was holding its position which should give you some accuracy. If you ar lucky your cannoneers will trigger a special event and the enemy ship won't want to fire at you anymore but send crew. Time to jibe, hold and fire.

Yeas - some form of PL-scaling would be nice.

The constructs will occasionally hit bystanders with one of their fire bursts - then the town guards and other bystanders will turn hostile towards Katrenn et al. instead of you. But this can also lead to a questgiver's or merchant's death so I would try to avoid the involvement of third parties entirely.

Since Wall of Many Colors is a hazard I guess it wouldn't even register as your characters' crits. But I didn't test it. Gambit is very good if you use it with full Guile and crit reliably (like with multihit-attacks). As I showed before it calculates guile refund without cap during the execution which can lead to very high dmg bonuses before the refun gets cut back after the execution - because Gambit's attack rolls get a dmg bonus based on the current amount of guile.

Keep in Mind that both (Greater Focus and Keen Mind) let you cast powers at the start of combat that would otherwise be too costly for you. Which is - in my opinion - the main reason to take them. Also some passives use max focus (or current focus) variable in their mechanics (Shared Nightmare, Soul Annihilation etc.). Giving both Greater Focus +20 instead of +10 might destroy the balancing of those.

Not really redundant - Sickened and Weakened not only mean reduced healing, but also -5 CON. I personally don't really care if a Priest of Woedica might want to take a Skaen spell or not. What I would care about when looking at Skaen spells is how a SC Priest of Skaen can cast a cool spell (which does more than just blinding at such high PL). And if the -50%/-75 healing aura of Effigy's Husk stacks with sickened (or weakened) that would be awesome - since enemy healing effects would almost get nullified IF you wear Effigy's Husk which could be really useful.

Yeah what is?

I guess Kalakoth's Freezing Rake works with Murderous Intent - but Wall of Many Colors doesn't (since it's a hazard)? If it does work then I would totally pick Murderous Intent. Maybe an empowered Pernicious Cloud with Murderous Intent is good (never tried)? Toxic Strike with dual mortars and max INT + Murderous Intent IS pretty good though (not really casting but still). Trickster could also make some use of Wall of Flashing Steel. It's a passive and stacks with every other deflection bonus (not with itself though). Maybe could even make good use of WotEP + all deflection bonus one can get in order to use Offensive Parry + Riposte?