Boeroer

If you use Spearcaster against single targets you want to put everything into Arcana. Your ACC, especially with imbue shots, will be enormous. Shadowstep and Sap are crap (sorry - but it rhymes). Finishing Blow is mediocre. As a Ranger I would always pick Takedown Combo. Its +100% dmg bonus stacks with Backstab, Sneak Attack, Deathblows etc. It also raises DoT dmage and will not get removed by pure DoTs (e.g. Disintegrate). What is really good is Toxic Strike with Watershaper's Focus + Driving Flight. You'll create 3 AoE projectiles which will apply Toxic Strike in a huge area, hitting every enemy more than once. Same is true for Arterial Strike as an opener from Stealth. Also works well with Fire in the Hole+Hand Mortar. In case of Watershaper's Focus you can often expect Ondra's Wrath to proc (which is devastating as a Rogue because it profits from the weapon enchantaments like superb etc. and also from Sneak Attack and Deathblows etc.). I had a Trickster/Sharpshooter and did this build with it (scroll down to see some animated gifs of the char in action) : Ondra's Wrath got nerfed after I posted that. But I tried this build again and it still rocks. Trickster is supernice because you can lure enemies to a spot with Arkemy's Dazzling Light (as if throwing Sparkcrackers). Then, when they all stand tehre in a tight group looking around like idiots you go *boooom* It was a lot of fun. Also note that Arcane Archer's imbue effects will proc with every jump. So an imbue Fireball will proc 3 times from one shot if you use Watershaper's Focus or Fire in the Hole + Driving Flight. Even 4 times if you use Kitchen Stove with Wild Barrage (but that's per rest). Also note that Arcance Archer's imbue effects will not scale properly with Power Level. E.g. the PEN of Fireball and Missiles will not rise which makes them rather bad at some point. This was acknowledged by the devs but never got fixed. You can fix that with the Community Patch (see my signature) which lets the PEN of imbue effects scale with Arcana (it was the easiest solution and works fairly well).

I really would have liked a Magranite DLC that enabled PvP (with automatic Magran's Challenge). I know... party or solo? Would anybody even play it, what's the point etc. etc. It would have been fun for me, that's all. I would include an ingame highscore list. No need for good story (just needs a hook), no new assets - not even new items. Just the PvP functionality. Maybe that would have been fairly cheap (if the networking aspect wouldn't ruin your devs' day) to make?

Yes, but to be honest it's faster and more effective to use Forbidden Fist instead of Mortification otS. Only if your RES is stellar of course - but that should be the case anyway when you play a Forbidden Fist. Usually the curse lasts less than 2 secs with lots of RES and some other hostile-effect-duration debuff (from food and/or items). And you get 1 wound for it when it expires. Mortification has longer recovery than that, also damages you and also gives you 1 wound. Also Hylea's Talons will put a small DoT on you all the time. With high RES its very short, too, giving you another wound when it expires. And then Eduring Dance synergizes prettty well with a high defense Monk who has CC capabilites. Because of all that I hardly used Mortification otS after some levels. In the early game it's golden though. But after some levels I think I would retrain.

Yes, a bit expensive so early on. You can also just take non-unique ones and enchant them it with a lash after Caed Nua courtyard (you will get resources for burning and corrosive lash from the blights there). Oidhreacht (the done from the spider) comes free.

First it basically is like a Withdraw or Beetle Shell. Only that you'll be out of the game shorter (6 base) and afterwards you will be invisible (10 base). Both durations scale with INT. Smart rogues will be knocked out longer than dumb ones. Or in other words: it's like getting knocked out, then revived and then becoming invisible.

I noticed no difference to Helwalker or Nalpasca monks in that regard.

Nope. Lance and WotEP (and also rod+blast) do the initial attack first and then the AoE follows a fraction of a second later (sometimes I manage to pause in between). By then the stealth is already gone. It's different with AoE spells like Fireball where all targets get hit at the same time (basically). With such a spell Assassinate works for all hit rolls.

Most important part is the Prayer and buffing up your parties ACC via Inspiring Radiance and Devotions for the Faithful. You can also cast Champion's Boon on Grieving Mother (for Whispers). It does +6 PER and that means another stackable +6 ACC.

You can buy the first unique one right in Gilded Vale from the smith. It's decent. The next early one is in the fist lvl of the Endless Paths with the big spider.

The AoE didn't get the Backstab bonus nor the Assasinate bonus last time I checked. Edit: was before 5.0 though...

If you take a Tactician/Assassin and do fights solo you can trigger Brilliant via Brillant Tactician nearly every time you go invisible. You don't need Devoted so bad since you already get +4 PEN from Assassinate. The additinal crit damage is nice but not stellar anyway. Yes, but that's only one half. The other one is piling up lashes (from weapon, Hylea's Talons, Belt of Magran's Chosen etc.). Bleeding Cuts is also nice - but the DoT can take some time to kill an enemy and that might be the time he needs to strike you down before the Slippers kick in or you can cast Smoke Veil etc. Fortunately stealth provides you with a 80% recovery bonus that almost nullifies the high recovery from Bleeding Cuts. It's still noticable though. An Assassin should always try to strike and then go invisible (via kill-->slippers or Shadowing Beyond or Smoke Veil) in order to end the encounter so that his resources refill. Then it can be very powerful and fun (if you like the sneaky "Thief™" playstyle). As Tactician/Assassin you can skip the "end combat" thing often enough though and still get Guile back. The best assassination weapon is Dragon's Dowry because of the combo of high base dmg + highest lashes. And also because guns don't have recovery. You can shoot twice (stealth reload bonus of 80%, shoot again) and then vanish. It's a bit frustrating that the best weapons for Assassins are the biggest guns - used a point blank - in general. Spearcaster with the lash enchantment is also good. If it has to be a melee weapon then Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff is also decent because of its lashes and because it has the additional advantage that you don't need to go into engagement once unstealthed (reach weapon). Oathbreaker's End does good dmg with Bleeding Cuts. Effort with Maiming isn't too bad either (raw dmg doesn't stack like Bleedig Cuts though). Engoliero do Espirs: also nice. Less base dmg but if you manage to kill with the opening backstab you'll send out Ghost Blades with all the dmg bonuses of the weapon. Basically just use a two hander with lashes on it (I'll count Bleeding Cuts as a lash since its also a multiplicative dmg boost like elemental lashes are). A suprisingly good assasination weapon is Whispers of the Endless Paths with the Run-Through enchantment. It has very high base damage. But of course you can't combine that with Power Strike because it's its own ability (but you can use it with Takedown Combo if you play an Assassin/Ranger). After a lot of testing with an Assassin some time ago I think I came to the conclusion that the best melee backstab weapon is Concelhaut's Draining Touch (of course only usable by a Spellblade) followed by Chromoprismatic Staff and then Oathbreaker's End (+ Bleeding Cuts) - iirc. If you find it stupid that Backstab favors heavy weapons you can check out the Community Patch in my signature: it changes Backstab from a additive dmg bonus to a flat raw dmg bonus (same numbers for all weapons) which scales with Rogue's Power Level and will generally be a tad higher than a vanilla Backstab with a two handed melee weapon after some PLs (but less than with Dragon's Dowry).

Soul Annihilation seems to be better in Turn Based Mode than in RTwP - because you can hardly miss. The biggest meh-moment with Soul Annihilation usually is when you count on it and then it misses, taking all your focus with it.

I agree.

It was an arena-like DLC because that's what player feedback wished for. You can hardly blame Obsidian for giving players what they wanted. If a combat-focused DLC isn't your cup of tea that's one thing, but that does not mean it wasn't a good move. Also it seems that SSS could reuse a lot of assets of the original game. There are few new enemy models. Then the simple story arc means that the writing might have been less expensive. All in all it seems to be a DLC that didn't cost as much to make as BoW or FS. And if it sold not considerably worse than the other two one could consider the release of SSS a smart move even. I personally enjoyed it. I could agree however that a combat-heavy DLC would make more sense if it started right with the beginning of the game (where you could start with easy fights and slowly climb the ranks) and you could use the nice loot you get from winning arena fights much earlier.

Correct. Also for solo play you want to put way more emphasis on survivability.

First things first: drop some summons crom figurines in the path of the dragon to buy some casting time. Next cast Prayer against fear (Durance). The Dragon terrifies with an aura and no defense (unless super maxed out Will) can prevent you from getting grazed at some point. Terrify will lower your accuracy a ton (-20) which is especially bad against bosses with high defenses. Buff ACC with Durance. Devotions + Inspiring Radiance asap. Then: Adra Dragon is not immune to mind control. I find the Adragans (are there any on normal diff.?) more annoying than the dragon itself. If you charm her she will not only destroy them for you but also Charm is a hefty debuff. In order to charm you can cast Tactical Meld onto Edér while he's attacking the Dragon and then use Whisper of Treason or Munacra Arret (if you don't have enough focus). This should give you +50 ACC (Devotions or Borrowerd Instinct + Tactical Meld + Radiance) for Grieving Mother's Whisper of Treason (which itself has a +10 ACC if I'm not mistaken). If you use Tactical Meld on Edér you can also prone the dragon rel. reliably. Same with Zahua with Force of Anguish - althoug it might be better to use his dichotomous summons to distract the dragon. One thing that works very well in that fight is the Long Pain. It has tremendous ACC values which helps a lot against targets you want to hit hard and reliably but don't want to get too close. All active monk abilites (including Force of Aguish) can be used with the Long Pain. Maneha can be used to care for the Xaurip ads etc.. Against dragons Barbarians aren't particularly helpful but hey can clear trash really quickly. Oce you can reliably charm and later prone the dragon when you need to it's a cakewalk. Marking weapons on Edér (Shame or Glory or Cladhaliath or Blade of the Endless Paths or Spectacular Spetum) will give Grieving Mother another +10 ACC for her charms. I think you lack a bit of CC optios for all the ads though. A Wizard or Druid would be nice to have. Grieving Mother can do the same with Amplified Wave or Ringleader and such (very good powers) - but not if she's constantly trying to charm the dragon and will struggle with focus gain anyway. In my optinion the Alpine Dragon is harder than the Adra Dragon. But since the place is more crowded you can often manage to place enemies between you and him. The problem with lpine Dragon is that he has Sneak Attack + Deathblows. So you don't want to get hit by two afflictions and then tank him... Also here charm + prone work very well. The only dragon who can't be charmed is one oth the two bog dragons (can't remember which one). Which isn't a problem because there's another one and as long as they fight each other you can smile and clap. If you haven't already done it I would start with the Sky Dragon since that's the easiest one of the bunch.

I found this interesting. I realized that during my countless hours of PoE I never looked at those time stats.

Cool. I also voted for trinkets because I guess(?) it's very easy to just copy the grimoire stuff and alter it than coming up with something completely new. I also have to say I like to think we would somehow "finish" the work of the devs who wanted to introduce trinkets for every class but couldn't. I think you could do so much nice stuff with them without messing with the game mechanics of (sub-)classes directly.

Did you swap out that party member in between? Also it may be that certain scripted events unintentionally cause the game to handle the party as if it was spilt up and then put together again.

Also note the Perishing Strike only enfeebles after the weakening effect wears off - which will take more an more time the more levels you gain. Some dev really hated that ability...

So in order to not make it identical I opted for less broad spell choice but other features instead (like completely new spells or spells from other classes or specific PL bonuses) instead - in order to give the trinkets more flavour and story than simply being trinket a, b and c - like most grimoires are. Reason is that the underlying mechanic of grimoires (broadening spell choice) is exactly what Priest as a class needs (and Druids, too - but to a lesser exend). That was my whole motivation for trinkets: to stop the level-up-railroad of Priests.

Wow - every time? You must have done something wrong then. Do you think that 3 points of PER will significantly increase your companions' chance to hit?

@Phenomenum: I'd say it leeds to Power (Level) creep (e.g. Illusionist/Ascendant getting bonus PL for all spells from Illusionist subclass, bonus PL from Ascension, bonuses from passives AND longer duration from Lingering Echoes etc.). Which will lead to broken combos with certain multiclass characters. And last but not least it gives every ability a reeeeeeally long list of keywords. I actually like the current CP solution: it's more systemic and makes more sense but it doesn't lead to completely broken edge cases. What I wanted to do with trinkets was giving Priests and Druids more spell choices without having to use ability points. So basically I wanted to mimic grimoires which do exactly that. Also because trinkets were originally planned to be given to all classes but were cut because of "no time and money left". So trinkets (for priest, druid, later also fighter, rogue etc.) would kind of be a "spiritual" continuation of the original development progress. Just to make them a bit distinct I wanted to give Priests less spell choice (since Wizards with their "scientific" apporach and books full of spells should have the biggest portfolio) and compensate that with other bonuses. Everythig else was just for flavour etc.

Other synergies: Debonaire/Cipher can charm + 100% crit-disintegrate. Also quite nice. No enfeebling but a nearly guarateed crit on disintegrate is great, too. Helwalker/Cipher changes enfeeblement for higher MIG. It's usually more fiddly and less overall dmg with DoTs but the higher MIG is also useful for a bunch of other powers and weapon dmg (= more focus) so this might be preferrable to some. Forbidden Fist/Assassin or Debonaire with Toxic Strike and also Deep Wounds and Ring the Bell (maybe even adding Bleeding Cuts) is also a great way to combine high dmg DoTs with prolonging mechanisms (enfeeble + high INT + crits). Since Toxic Strike can climb to enormous tick rates the longer it lasts this can be very good on bosses if you manage to lower their RES first (like with a Miasma + RES affclition for example).