Boeroer

Not to forget Lord Rodriguez!

To be honest: not much balances out the loss of Resonant Touch + Whispers of the Wind (and also Razor's Edge in this case). But as you said that comes pretty late and it's reasonable to trade some late game "oomph" for a more interesting early to mid game (build-wise). What you said still works very well. Swift Flurry/Heartbeat drumming doesn't work well on high defense foes, but like Mob Stance it's great against... well... mobs. I once again recommend Morning Star + modal since you can turn Force of Anguish and Clear Out (both target Fortitude) into beastly crit generators against certain enemies (everything that hasn't stellar fortitude) - and against the others it helps your teammate land their fort-targeting spells. Use Enervating Blows + Stunning Surge or Charge or Raised Torment for even more fortitude debuffing --> leading to Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming cascades. But other weapon types also work of course. I'd only make sure they are not crush-only - because you'll always have your fists as crushing backup. Something to consider: Whispers of the Endless Path's Offensive Parry triggers both Heartbeat Drumming/Swift Flurry and Cleaving Stance (if it kills of course). In this special case I would also consider Shattered Pillar instead of Nalpasca (which is a nice subclass) because Offensive Parry also generates wounds for Shattered Pillars... Rooting Pain is good for a melee Monk who spends/gains wounds often, Flagellant's Path is ok-ish with normal melee weapons but great with mortars and rods + blast or Spirit Lance (which you all won't use I reckon).

You can use wand/rod/scepter and one of the best already comes rel. early in Defiance Bay (Engwithan Scepter). Gyrd Háewanes Sténes comes even earlier and without any fight. I would use those as backup though because as I said, Blast + Penetrating Blast are most powerful with Kalakoth's Minor Blights. It it correct that using Minor Blights will spare you a lot of other damaging spells. You invest 1 spell use for the whole fight (maybe 2 or 3 because Chillfog and Combusting Wounds are just too good) but usually one shot of Blights + Blast does the same damage as a damaging spell cast at lower levels. Later on the combination woth Pull of Eora is also very powerful. ALso note that Klakoth's Minor Blights have a pretty insane inherent accuracy bonus which is extremely benefical in the early(ish) game. Weapon Focus is one of the most effective talents you can take early in the game if you plan to use weapons more than occasionally. Having to overcome a different defense than the one that gets lowered is the biggest advantage. Aspirant's Mark is also good because it is accessible very early on and it's 1/enounter which means that Wizards can contribute to a fight without spending spell uses (besides Arcane Assault which is decent). Of curse you could rest after each fight and then it doesn't matter, but I find that to be a rather boring approach. That's for you do decide. It will give you +20% implement damage which is great for Kalakoth's Minor Blights - since all the AoE hits of it will profit (additional cascade of Blast hits will NOT) while it will give you some self damage with every shot (watch out if combining with Alacrity spell which also does harm you). It would stack with Apprentice's Sneak Attack (+15%). You can turn it on and off at will (modal). You confused Penetrating Shot and Penetrating Blast. Penetrating Shot will give you 5 DR bypass on ranged weapon attacks (and some spells like missiles for example) and will slow your ranged weapon recovery down by 20% (not spell recovery) - and doesn't work with Blasts. Penetrating Blast only works for the Blasts (DR bypass) and has no downsides. Reason why I recommend it is because the Cascade of Minor Blights + Blast generates so many Blast hits that the accumulated damage by DR bypass is often enormous. Let's assume you manage to hit 5 enemies in front of your tank who's guarding a doorway with Minor Blights: 5 hit rolls with Minor Blights, each dealing their normal elemental damage, then each of those hit rolls generates a Blast which hits all 5 enemies --> 25 Blast hit rolls. Lets assume the enemies' crush DR is 5 and Blast does 10 crush damage. Without Penetrating Blast you would deal 125 crush damage and with Penetrating Shot you would have dealt 250. That's quite substancial. Add to this that you can do such a shot every few seconds... Penetrating Shot can be good - but it depends on the situation. With Minor Blights and if you use Alacrity (50% speedup) it's usually a win if you can manage to hit several enemies at once with the Blight's AoE. When hitting 5 enemies you'll do 25 additional damage. You would have to do some math in order to determine once the slower attack speed would result in less damage then... With implements that apply an effect on hit you usually want to fire as fast as possible though - so Penetrating Shot wouldn't be the best pick then. To estimate your attack speed with several weapons, modals, items and setups in general you can use this: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ For simulating the Alacrity spell you can use the option "DAoM potion" (same thing basically). Note that only DEX affects the actual attack animation speed. All other speed modifiers only affect the recovery phase. The more speed effects you can stack the more impact (increasing returns), but not all do stack. Usually for melee wizard (which can be great) Citzal's Spirit Lance is the holy grail. So no sword & board (althoug that would work as well, for example with this build here: Bilestomper). Spirit Lance is one of the best weapons in the game (reach, highest base damage + AoE damage) - but Apprentice's Sneak Attack only works with the initial hit, not the splash damage (still a good pick imo, also Savage Attack once you have some ACC buffs in the party).

Blast + Penetrating Blast is very powerful once you use the summoning spell "Kalakoth's Minor Blights". That spell summons a wand which fires projectiles which do area of effect damage. Each hit in the area triggers a Blast (a second area of effect attack) which results in a ton of hit rolls. Combine with Combusting Wounds spell for max effect. Other potentially good talents for a Wizard: Weapon Focus, Marksman (with said Blast), Aspirant's Mark, Dangerous Implement (with said Minor Blights)... Also depends on what the Wizard's role is (like melee damage dealer, spell damage dealer, spell crowd control and so on). For example a melee Wizard also profits from Veteran's Recovery and Arcane Veil (which you took).

Correct. Blunderbuss has 6 projectiles and each will do an attack roll. As you said this is very nice with abilities like Rogue's strikes which apply an affliction - like Blind.

Who are Palledina and Vladimir? Friends of Cindy & Bert?

Correct

You mean on consoles. Afaik @Madscientist plays on PC...?

With Cleric you mean Priest in this case I presume? Cleric is the name of the multiclass Fighter/Priest. Since spells of the same Power Level compete with each other for spell uses (usually 2 per encounter) and since Priests and Druids don't have trinkets/grimoires I usually only pick one or two spells per Power Level and the rest goes to passives. Except with single class Priests/Druids because there aren't that many useful passives to take then.

According to Twitter they are feverishly working on it.

If Cipher or Kana have Penetrating Shot then I'd give Lead Spitter to one of them. Kana's invocation "Hel-Hyraf" is also great for this weapon as is the "Sure Handed Ila" chant. With Lead Spitter a Cipher can gain a lot of focus with one shot. Its dps is most likely worse than a bow's, but you can fire the Blunderbuss and then switch to bow. If you have a Wizard with Combusting Wounds in the party I'd also use the Blunderbuss: its 6 projectiles will each trigger an instance of Combusting Wounds which is a strong combo.

It depends which ability you are using it with. For example with a Paladin's Flames of Devotion the arquebus is better - while a Rogue with Penetrating Shot, Sneak Attack/Deathblows and Crippling Strike might prefer Lead Spitter. Reason is that lashes (see Flames of Devotion's burning lash) don't profit from DR bypass at all - so all the nice additional burn damage of each of the 6 low dmg projectiles will get eaten up by enemies' DR. A Rogue doesn't have a lashing ability but instead uses high additive damage bonuses. Those help each pellet to overcome DR more easily and lead to higher damage (unless enemy has really high pierce DR) because all 6 pellets combined have higher base damage than an arquebus. Lead Spitter is also rending so it has an additional 3 DR bypass with means +18 dmg per shot for the blunderbuss. Add Penetrating Shot (adds +30 dmg per shot). And on top of that you get 6 chances to apply Hobbled (Crippling Strike) or Blinded (Blinding Strike) and so on while an arquebus only gives you one chance. So if you tell us which class you are using we can give better advice.

According to Deadfire lore the breaking of the Wheel causes all souls to be stuck in the In-Between once they leave Eora. But I'm sure one could come up with an idea how souls who don't go to the In-Between (like Spirits usually) can possess corpses.

@Abuachumi: I didn't reply to you. I didn't realize you were asking a question because it was nested in the quote.

Carnage doesn't generate focus. Battle Axes are strong because of the modal in synergy with Blood Thirst. But the DoT of Bleeding Cuts doesn't generate focus either. But yes: solid choice - only bad thing: only slash damage. My recommendation with a Barb/Cipher would always be a Morning Star. The modal helps a LOT to apply certain Cipher spells that target Fortitude, there's a unique Morning Star that also lowers Will on hit (and had hit to crit conversion) and Ciphers can lower Fortitude and Will further with spells easily. With the Barbarian's Brute Force you can crit a lot more because you will automatically target Fortitude if it's lower than Deflection. Berserker: not too much MIG because Frenzy's self damage will kill you quickly at high levels with a lot of MIG and no countermeasures. Biting Whip is bad (I don't say such things often). I'd always take Draining Whip. Cipher Subclass either Beguiler or Ascendant.

But Deadfire uses streaming! This was specifically stated after the complaints with PoE's loading times. The loading times are still quite long it seems. Not for me though (fast SSD and a good PC, running Linux) but to be honest they weren't terrible with PoE on an old laptop without SSD which could run PoE on minimal settings as well. PS4 seems to have really slow IO. And Unity3D doesn't seem to be optimized in that regard.

Maybe - but a PoE/Deadfire map is one huge(!) piece of a high res image which gets loaded in one go while a 3D game (even the maps) consists of separated, rel. small 3D objects with textures which all can be loaded separately. Maybe that's the problem. I'm only guessing though. But the fact that a SSD drastically improves loading times is an indication for that. Afaik pure 3D titles in Unity3D don't have such excessive loading times, do they?

Bodies without soul are like Hollowborn though, not vessels. Vessels have a soul, but its connection to the body is not "right". Maybe "undead" without a soul can exist if there's some kind of will or soul driving them (which is not their own - see Concelhaut and his necromancy). I like the god stuff.

Mal nonchalant den Google-Translator angeworfen, wa?

Not enough INT for my personal taste but I'm sure it will work well. Beware the early game: Barbs need several levels to lose their squishyness (due to low deflection - high CON/endurance pool don't make a big difference in the beginning but later). So don't give up if he gets knocked out often: that's normal and it gets better and better (unlike a Rogue who always stays tissue paper) with every level up since then the enormous endurance/health pools start to pay off at some point. Also Barbs start with rather bad accuracy. Your Carnage will miss all the time, especially with a mediocre PER value. But the great thing: Carnage gains +1 ACC per level (on top of the usual level-up-improvents) and at some point it's superaccurate (if you take Accurate Carnage it will be as good as your original ACC by level 5 already). Give your Barb Accuracy buffs (Priest's your best friend. Inspiring Radiance and Devotions stack!).

I'm 99.9% sure that doesn't work since only the summoning should be tagged with "shred" but not the weapons themselves.

And after the next three fights or so: no more fun as well!

You don't need an import save. You can use one of the predefined stories (e.g. "Benevolent Soul" - although that one didn't really fit here ;)) or do those also not exist on consoles? Attributes depend on the direction your Inquisitor should go (build-wise).