Boeroer

Why is it terrible? Or do you mean terrific?

Yeah, everything was powerful with the old "Set to their Purpose". Strong healing + Blood Sacrifice is good though. What I didn't check: do the -2-AR debuffs of Expose Vulnerability and Hel-Hyraf/Shield Cracks stack? I guess not... but if that would be a great combo for a Loremaster to cast I guess.

Actually Pallegina is a potentially sturdier companion as a Herald - as long as you pick the right abilites (as is always the case).

Hmmm - I don't see particularly great synergy effects with Loremasters in general... Well - maybe Alacrity + Sure-Handed Ila + Mith Fyr + Kalakoth's Minor Blights is nice. It's easy to maintain both chants with a Troubadour. Or using the Bloodmage for endless fast-buffing and the Troubadour's Brisk Recitation with Ancient Memory for dishing out invocations non-stop while healing the Blood Sacrifice? No idea if that's cool - I didn't really play Loremasters much... But at least you'll have plenty of refillable resources.

Of course it is a matter of taste and/or perspective. I was speaking about what I think the average player feels. And my assumption is that winning faster feels more powerful to most players than winning more slowly (but more reliably) once you lose only occasionally. This can get shifted a lot by certain circumstances - for example playing Trial of Iron.

Of course the +20% dmg bonus from sharp is an advantage - it's just not higher base damage. Keep in mind that you have to hit several times to build up the 20-30% lash of Grave Calling while a weapon like Modwyr will have its lash from the first hit on. If you have long fights with a lot of hits then Grave Calling will have the higher average lash - in shorter fights the average lash will be lower. With Stalker's Link we shouldn't forget the +5 ACC. Magran's Favor has Bleeding Cuts and a 15% burning lash and good burn DoT on crit. Against non-slash resistant foes it may be the weapon with the highest dmg per hit? Bleeding Cuts stacking and all... Can it beat Stalker's Patience, @Kaylon? The raw lash DoT of Stalker's Patience it pretty strong... All in all I guess the differences in Riposte dmg output are marginal on average (considering resistances/immunities). Also keep in mind which weapon can be obtained when. And one can use all of those and pick the right one based on the enemy you are facing. I value Cadhu Scalth over Wintertide Bulwark because the DR - like underpenetration or grazes - is a very potent factor for survival (since damage reduction effects go through double inversion most of times) and the Deflection bonus can be higher than the Bulwark's (not only on average - Bulwark has to build up it's bonus in every fight - but absolutely, too). But mostly the setup I described above (Reckless Brigandine etc.) looks nice with Cadhu Scalth but horrible with the Bulwark. Bulwark kind of forces you to use the other frost items - optically I mean.

I still don't know why.

Sure, but it didn't sound as if Taldan35 was asking for fluff worth but powergaming worth.

Grave Calling doesn't have higher base damage than Modwyr. It just has a +20% additive bonus from "sharp". All heavy one handed weapons have the same base damage. I would value Modwyr over Stalker's Patience and Grave Calling because of dual damage. Spears are pierce-only and sabres slash-only. If you like to switch weapons that's no big deal though. Additive dmg bonuses like sharp or Mohora Taga are less potent than lashes (be it Modwyr, Grave Calling or Stalker's Patience which has a raw DoT lash). Because those are multiplicative. Also good Riposte weapons are Battle Axes. Bleeding Cuts works kind of similar to Stalker's Patience but the DoT does stack. They usually pay for this with +50% recovery but this doesn't matter for Riposte. Plus is that every Battle Axe has this and you don't have to pick up a unique first. Same thing as with spears and sabres: only one dmg type. A great Riposte weapon although it hasn't particularly high dmg per hit: Kapana Taga. Used it several times on Swashbuckler Edér with Cadhu Scalth, Reckless Brigandine, Mob Stance and Entonia Signet as well as White Which Mask.

There are no power levels in PoE so I guess it's Deadfire. Your actual power level is rel. easy to determine: check which ability tier you can pick. For example if you are able to pick PL 7 abilities bit not PL 8 abilities you are at PL 7. All other effects except Prestige are just temporary and you can see them under active effects. Prestige usually means you get from PL 9 to PL 10.

Since Firebrand is just a shadow of its former PoE glory I personally would do 2.

He didn't miss it. It wasn't there when the list was made. It's rel. new.

1) active. But in case of Dagger modal + Mirrored Image they stack because Dagger modal gives +10 deflection vs. melee only who h stacks with Mirrored Image which is universal +30 Deflection (not only melee) 2) Disengament Attack is done with your main hand weapon (not a Full Attack). Riposte is done with both weapons (like all Full Attacks). 3) You can use both. The deflection bonus won't stack, but Mirrored Image gives +30 and loses 5 deflection with every graze/hit/crit you receive - and if you drop to 10 Llengrath's takes over. As Raven said the conversion is always good.

Yes, my most beloved monk (Mortar Monk) uses Aloth's armor.

Not really. Early game it's good but it falls behind rather quickly. There are some special builds where it can be good, but generally it's an inferior pick.

It also has no AoE indicator (cone shaped indicator). The upgrades don't have the line indicator (Clear the Path) or circle indicator (Clean Sweep). Iirc Whirling Strikes (Ranger PL 8 ) also has no AoE indicator...?

Afaik it's Concelhaut's Draining Touch (at least the base damage is the highest). It's also very good with Riposting because of draining. Requires a wizard of course. I guess Grave Calling is one of the tops as well. Also its enchantments like the paralyze after certain stacks are pretty powerful for Riposting. Modwyr will be good as well.

Not that I know of. Not yet at least. I think Phenomenum is planning to give weapon proficiency to Minor Blights and so on.

No. I think you mean Prestige (the ability that gives you +1 PL), not Power Level itself. Power Level is a secondary measurement of class advancement. A bit like character level (since your basic Power Level is tied to your class level), but it will get altered by multiclassing (lower PL than single class in general) and can be increased/decreased by abilities, consumables and items. Little problem: the "base" Power Level also describes the ability tiers. Tier I = Power Level 1 up to Tier IX = ability tier 9. This might be confusing for some people: that the term Power Level is used for that char-level-like thing as well as for the ability tiers. Multiclass chars can only reach base PL of 7 (they can never pick abilities of the tiers/PL 8 and 9). They also reach Power Levels more slowly than single classes. So in order to reach PL 3 for example a MC char needs more character levels than a SC char. That also means that SC chars reach certain abilites much earlier in the game. All abilities automatically scale with your "actual" (not base) Power Level. That's your base PL +/- abilities (like Wellspring of Life, Tactical Barrage/Acute/Brilliant, Blood Scarifice, Ascension, Prestige and so on), consumables (like Potion of Ascension) and items (like Stone of Power, some pets, Spine of Ticket Green and stuff). However, those bonuses don't change your base PL which determines which ability tier you can pick from. They only chance your "actual" PL. Abilities gain PEN, +5% base damage, accuracy and other goodies like duration or more projectiles etc. per Power Level. So for example a SC lvl-20 Paladin's Flames of Devotion will be more powerful than that of a MC Paladin/Wizard at lvl 20. Because the first one will have reached PL 9 and the other one PL 7. That means the SC Paladin's FoD will have 10% higher base damage (among other things like higher PEN and accuracy). But... wasn't all that explained above by other posters already?

As I answered in your dedicated thread about this topic: It doesn't have a weapon proficiency. Like Kalakoth's Minor Blights, Reaping Knives and Concelhaut's Draining Touch. Which means it doesn't work for Devoted, Fighter's Confident Aim and has no modal. It's still very strong though (against non-poison immune enemies).

They are designed for those players who complained that PotD upscaled is a walk in the park and dragons are made of wet tissue paper.

It got changed to unlimited procs with one of the latest patches - before it was just too weak. I guess devs simply forgot about dragon auras proccing it non-stop. If they hadn't those pulsing fear auras it wouldn't be so OP.

And according to your experience of 38 years: if you never saw something before it must be wrong... Here is the Wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollaxe Maybe next time just double-check before ranting in a forum about "what to expect"? It's just a Google search away...

The description is misleading. Not every point of percent counts. Afaik it's only the different stages of endurance ( below 75%, below 50%, near death: below 25%) that matter in this case. I don't know the exact formula though. But generally it's correct: the less endurance the target has the more damage it will get per tick from Maggots.

Not entirely because in PoE bashing shields didn't count as dual wielding. So you alternated between main weapon and bash at normal (slow speed). In Deadfire bashing shields count as offhand weapon and thus get the innate 30% speed boost and also profit from two weapon style. So generally the dps should be higher than with a normal shield (with rel. normal weapons). BUT: most bashing shields don't scale their offensive properties with quality. That means PEN etc. will stay the same even if you enchant the shield to superb etc. This makes their offensive capabilities very poor in the late game because they almost never penetrate. "Tuotilo's Palm": its offensive stats scale with Monastic Unarmed Training (or Transcendent Suffering, but that's Monk) and the "Best Defense" bashing shield can be enchanted with +25% dmg and +2 PEN "manually". But the rest of the bashing shields (there's only Magrans Blessing left iirc) won't do much dmg. By the way: a dagger in the offhand + modal can be a viable alternative to a shield for a Riposte build. +10 deflection is good and while the -25% dmg is a bit sad you can still count on proccing nice effects (see Pukestabber for example). And their PEN and dmg will scale with weapon quality. But again you'll lose engagement. A great offhand weapon could be Kapana Taga (club) which can make you immune to flanking (basically the equivalent of +10 deflection and +1 AR if surrounded) and it can give you +2 engagement. But again: it might look funny with the rest of your gear. Fits very well with Reckless Brigandine and Champion's Helmet though...