Boeroer

The nice thing about Chanter is just the Singing Scimitar which turns Empower into 1/encounter and gives back 3 phrases instantly. A Skald/Bellower for example can use Her Revenge + Empower and then can always follow with another one (non-empowered) right away (since it only costs 2/3 phrases) which is pretty cool. And you don't need to be a single class for that. Just fiddled around with Skald/Wizard for the combo of Combusting Wounds + Her Revenge.

Since I love the combination of Monks & Mortars it's nearly always dual mortars for me. Stunning Surge with dual mortars is just great. Hard disable AND damage for free most of times (because AoE and jumping projectile nearly always leads to at least one crit). And the focus gain is pretty insane, too. Especially with the huge AoE from +10 INT. Also: dual damage types of mortars + Thunderous Blows usually means no PEN issues. For single targets I summon the Long Pain which is very good. But you can also use a reach weapon (aiming for Chromoprismatic Staff for example) and then later use Instruments of Pain with it. You'll get 10.8 meters of melee range and can use Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming (I actually never cheched if those would also trigger Soul Storm) and stuff to quickly gain focus off of weak enemies that are far away. And you would still be able to also use Force of Anguish, Torment's Reach, Envervating Blows and all that. Which isn't possible with ranged weapons. Lots of options really.

My first CRPG was Pool of Radiance.

No, I just keep it on for Offensive Parry and draining while dazing the enemy (people forget that Daze does -4 PEN which is a huge improvement when it comes to survivability) and do the real damage with Eternal Devotion + spells. I can clean up single foes with Run-Through and then switch to another weapon. But against mobs it' just a very good combination of defense, healing and offense that doesn't stop you from casting at all. Usually Arcane Knight either hit stuff with weapon OR cast spells. This does both at the same time which I find great. You can drain more I guess with Spirit Lance, but then you can't cast other spells while doing melee dmg. I can ususally tank everything that mainly attacks deflection with this guy and at the same time he dishes out lots of damage for a tanky frontliner. Winning against 6+ CRE_Tigers solo on PotD is not that easy even for a lvl-20 char. Also works with Cipher ()get focus from parrying), Shattered Pillar (get wounds from parrying - also Offensive Parry works with Swift Flurry etc.), Trickster (way better weapon dmg) and Skald (Offensive Parry-crits can give phrases). I just think that the draining is very nice in combination with Bloodmage. You can spam spells unlimited while parrying. I pick Hands of Light because at the beginning you might get interrupted by accuracy foes. Hands of Light makes you immune to interrupts. I even used WotEP/Offensive parry on a melee SC Wizard (because I like Minoletta's Piercing Sigil and Cloak of Death so much) and that also works. But of course there's not that much synergy, just dazing enemies and doing some melee and retaliation dmg while casting stuff.

Missile Salvo also works. Maybe even the other missile spells.

That's without any buffs. Sorry, the following gif is huge (50MB+). I had to scale it down a lot to even get there. But maybe one can somewaht see what's going on:

I can record a short animated gif against several tigers to showcase how it's like. Wait a minute...

Well Offensive Parry is melee and it triggers all the time as long as you are getting attacked (no recovery or anyhing). And of course you can also strike with WotEP in an AoE. For cleanup you can switch to a normal great sword. If you use FoD with Ring of Focused Flames you can switch on the Great Sword modal which does +30% dmg. In combination with FoD-lashes and Zandethus Fury you can achieve good damage. But the bulk ofthe melee dmage comes from Offensive Parry. The good thing is that you can deal melee damage WHILE casting offensive spells. Blood Mage because it's very powerful to be able to spam the most powerful spells more than once or twice. Like Death Ring for example. You can cast it till it's empty and then use Blood Sacrifice to fill it up again while the Steel Garrote's draining (and Exalted Endurance) fill up your health again.

Zandethus Draconic Fury is a nice spell for a melee Arcane Knight. Its lashes stack with FoD/Eternal Devotion.

I only remember that he attacks Wizard's Eye because he has true sight and can see invisible objects. But Wizard's Eye can't be harmed. Since it has very bad stats though (I guess) he keeps attacking it as he thinks it's the weakest link in the party. You can then just wack at him all you want while he's fruitlessly pummeling the Eye.

It's very good in general - but especially good in my opinion as Steel Garrote/Bloodmage with Whispers of the Endless Paths + Offensive Parry. Offensive Parry triggers on every melee miss (like a 100% Riposte basically) and it dazes the enemy, thus automatically unlocking the draining effect for the Steel Garrote. You can cast spells while dishing out Offensive Parries at the same time which heal you and damage foes. The constant draining also means that Blood Sacrifice is not a problem since you are healed up most of times automatically. If not: Lay on Hands/Exalted Endurance/Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon do the trick. Usually the drainig + healing is so strong that I can run Sacred Immolation + Alacrity with not problem. It's a fun and powerful combo defense- as offense-wise. The only thing that messes it up (that messes most Arcane Knights up) is Arcane Dampener. By the way (not related to Arcane Knight) : Offensive Parry (and Riposte) also works with Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming.

Sorry, no idea.

Ouf, no, sorry. I'm sure that Rymrgand approves that message though.

I tested with Come Sweet Winds and Dragon Thrashed and the damage didn't change a bit with both items. So I assumed DoTs don't work. Maybe other DoT's will? Are chant-DoTs implemented differently? I don't think so but it may be worth a try. I know that other dmg-boosts do work with DoTs like Disintegrate (see Takedown Combo).

I beat Firkraag at low(ish) levels with the help of Wizard's Eye.

That is not entirely correct:

He's currently writing the Pillars TTRPG system (mostly in his free time) which so far seems to turn out pretty nicely. So for the foreseeable future he has plenty of work with Pillars stuff. I think that this is more up his alley because it's classless and there are no boundaries for him: he's allowed to do as he wishes with this project.

Instead of buffing spells directly I would rather like to see trinkets for Druids and Priests which buff and grant certain type of spells while they penalize others. The last part is optional. Wizards have trinkets (grimoires), Druids and Priests have not. Introducing trinkets for both would solve a lot without even touching the base values of the game.

K, but animals are fair game? I'm pretty sure that some Pillars game will be done. But PoE3 as another sequel? Most likely not. The sales numbers were 7 times lower than those of PoE and while that was a financial success (given the small budget) it also wasn't selling like hot cakes either. Feargus said that he would love to do a skyrim-like Pillars game and after the success of the Outer Worlds I can't think about a reason why this wouldn't be tackled. Also Josh said recently about this topic: "Well Feargus wants to make such a game and usually Feargus gets his way." Josh himself stated that he thinks that someone else should direct a PoE3 should it ever come out. He said instead he would like to do a "Tactics" game with the Pillars IP. Which sounds awesome. It's not an RPG though and I don't know how Microsoft thinks about such a game (given that they bought Obsidian in order to expand their RPG portfolio). But who knows? If you ask yourself "Where do these infos come from?": Josh does a stream nearly every evening since he's working from home due to Corvid-19. There he talks about this and that while playing games like Darklands or Battle Brothers and so on. Lately he even held a presentation/talk about reputation systems which was very nice. He often answers questions from the chat.

If you are using a melee Paladin you can also give him a marking weapon (like Blade of the Endless Paths, Cladhalíath, Shame or Glory or Spectacular Spetum) AND Coordinated Attacks (I'm still mad this doesn't exist in Deadfire anymore): if he's standing near to you and you attack the same enemy you will gain +25 ACC (+10 marking, +10 Coordinated Attacks, +5 aura). And he will gain +10 from your St. Garam's Spark. Very useful Paladin to have if you go against the high-defense enemies like dragons and bounties and such. If he's a Darcozzi he can even stack Inspiring Liberation on you for an overall bonus of +35 ACC.If he's dual wielding Shame or Glory + Cladhalíath (which looks rather ridiculous I have to admit) it's even +45 ACC. Once had a Darcozzi who was dual wielding Shame and Glory (from the Helwax Mold) with Inspiring Liberation and Coordinated attacks who teamed up with a Priest who had Inspiring Radiance and casted Devotions for the faithful and a Cipher who used Borrowed Instincts and then Tactical Meld on the Paladin. That's +115 ACC for the Cipher iirc. Poor dragons got crit by Disintegration and then crit-charmed by Whisper of Treason nearly every time.

Well it would upgrade your system for all games, not just this one. Yes, that would have been great. Not only for the console version but for PC as well. As a QoL feature that everybody would appreciate I assume.

Griffin's Blade does indeed work for Cipher spells. I didn't test the ring but I think it's safe to assume it also does (since it uses the same mechanics as the blade in terms of damage bonuses). I don't think that Ascendant/Tactician is a spectacular combo (because other classes like Helwalker/Streetfighter/Furyshaper are better with Ascendant imo). If it's all about triggering Briliant yourself with Phantom Foes I'd rather use a Beguiler: since you are going to cast Phantom Foes anyway and gain massive focus from it - no need to deal weapon damage and easy to trigger Brilliant over and over again. But it's actually better to not combine the "causing flanked" part and the Tactician in one character. Unless solo of course. Anyway, Veilpiercer's (and also St. Omaku's Mercy's) enchantment that omits recovery on crit (50%) is pretty amazing.

An SSD for your PC would help a lot. I have one and the loading times are quite short. Also Deadfire uses asset streaming - PoE did not - so loading times should be shorter in general even without an SSD.

You have to stealth and not getting seen while pickpocketing. If your "sneaking" cirlce displays an open eye and is red you got observed. It's like doing a Backstab - but instead of hitting somebody you pick their pockets.

While I don't consider Avengers (or any marvel movie really) to be the pinnacle of filmmaking, that is wrong. Time travel IS the pivotal part of the story there - and it is done quite well with the travels back to scenes of the former marvel movies - and also making it clear that altering the timeline splits it up into alternative realities - so you can't just kill baby Thanos in the past and that's it. It's done better than in most contemporary movies with time travelling, excluding Interstellar and Arrival (those I have seen and they handle that time thing very well), but certainly better than in Back to the Future where it's the main part of the story but still wildly nonsensical (but fun for me as a teen nonetheless). I personally don't like time travel too much because it always feels like a loophole and takes away consequence. But saying that its use in Endgame made the former movies pointless (why?) or that writers were lazy is just wrong. This time travel was set up since Ant Man's quantum realm and Dr. Strange's time stone. That doesn't indicate that anybody was lazy or only had one day left to do it. BUT: I totally agree that I don't want to see time travel in PoE3, should it ever come out. It's just stale by now. And I also 100% agree on open world: not worth it in such a game that is supposed to be driven by narrative and character development.