Boeroer

Isn't that a lvl 8 quest (officially)? I always tackle it before lvl 13 and never had any problems. So I'd say lvl 13 is absolutely fine...? Just take out the totems first (they summon blights). Coral Naga Archers and Warriors have rel. low Will so INT and RES afflictions work well. Unique loot is indeed the same. The peaceful option is a lot less hassle obviously but you'll miss some "normal" loot.

Totally. Bloodmage or non-subclass. Depends if you really like to empower spells from invisibility/stealth (non-subclass) or like to regain resources during encouter (Bloodmage). But... nobody mentioned Evoker in the first place... but it sounded as if sombody did so I was feverishly searching for the passage I overlooked... Edit: Until I found it in the title!

You cannot spam spells from stealth. Your stealth gets removed as soon as you hit somebody. However, you can go invisible several times per encounter... Generally Wizard+Rogue is a good combo because the Rogue's strike abilites work with AoE weapons and the Wizard has some nice ones (Kalakoth's Minor Blights, Spirit Lance etc.). Casting high dmg AoE spells from stealth/invisibility works nicely. Spells with high base damage work best with the additive dmg bonus of Assassinate. Good thing is that there's a unique spell in Arkemyr's Grimoire named Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure. It creats an invisibility that will NOT break if you cast CC that does no damage the enemy (while the usual invisibility will break on every hit roll). That means you can cast a lot of nasty CC spells and stay invisible and all of them get +25 accuracy. Another thing is that all hazard spells (like all Wall spells) will not break invisibility even though they deal dmg. So if you cast a Wall of Draining you can stay invisible 100% of times as long as you don't cast a damaging spell. Or you cast a Wall of Flame or a Wall of Many Colors from that invisibility and deal damage. You can only have 1 wall spell active at the same time.

Nothing's really overpowered in PoE over the course of a playthrough. The game's balanced too well and all the really gamebreaking stuff was patched. But there are some builds that are better for certain roles than others. It also depends if solo or party play. For party play Priest is the most powerful class there is - and I think most "experts" here would agree with this. Not only because of their awesome support abilities (prayers alone) but also because they can become superb nukers after some levels and are good healers. They only lack CC - but that's easy to come by in a party. It's even so that more than one Priest isn't redundant like one might think. Because Inspiring Radiance stacks with itself you can go with 6 Priests, cast 6 Inspiring Radiances (and 1 Devotions) and then nuke everything with +60 (+80) accuracy. In solo runs survivability trumps damage dealing. There are only few exceptions (like Heart of Fury which theoretically is capable to one-shot even the toughest bounties) but even then it's not reliable. While you can annihilate trash mobs just fine with a very good damage dealer you can't do the same against dragons or enemies with nasty CC (Adragans, Lagufaeth etc). You will just die before you can win. I mean if you don't want to rely on cheese, massive use of consumables or kiting. That's why Paladins are pretty good solo characters because their passive defense boosts mean you can prolong a fight for a very long time without really getting hurt while they whittle down enemy after enemy. Boring, but very effective. Works against everything. But whatever build you choose you can never steamroll a solo playthrough on PotD difficulty.

Nope

Sturdy Riposte rogue with Badgradr's Barricade is really good. Thrust of Tattered Veils (unlimited procs per encouter off of bash-crits) benefits from Deathblows (not Sneak Attack), so that's +100% dmg.

ALso, if you flank your enemy will suffer from -10 deflection which also helps a lot with crits (and with Sneak Attack).

The Long Pain is one of the best weapons in PoE. The single target dps is quite insane.

I guess it only has to connect once to verify your copy and afer that you could play offline. Just a guess though. On PC you don't have to be connected in order to play.

In general: everything that is attached to your character, has a duration and gives you any sort of positive effect (buff, summoned item or healing etc.) it's a benefical effect. Note that some cipher "buffs" are not attached to you but to the enemy (like Wild Leech or Time Parasite) and thus are not a benefical effect on you but a hostile effect on the enemy. You benefit of course, but in terms of mechanics (like with Salvation of Time) they work differently.

Yes, it mostly is a hard fight (both: Gorecci Str. and Digsite) because you don't have many options. Digsite is noticably easier with somebody who can mind control (Charm Beasts or Whisper of Treason). Especially at the digsite the beasts have low Will defenses and can easily be charmed, tanking for you.

Agree. Hiravias has a great Spiritshift form (Stelgaer) which is awesome for dps. At high levels (with Avenging Storm active and maxed Wildstrike + Wildstrike Belt) he can do more single target dps than a Rogue (while shifted) while at the same time do massive AoE-CC and- dmg with Relentless Storm and Plague of Insects and the like. Also great fun to play. Only thing is: if you have a lot of micromanagement-intense characters like monks and shifting druids it can become too much. So I often put in a chanter or paladin or something into the mix who usually can function well without lots of micromanagement.

Yes, monk is a very well rounded package: sturdy, great AoE dmg, good single target dmg, speed, replenishablke resources (so more fun abilities to use per encounter) and so on. But actually the most fun I had with a Monk was a melee/ranged hybrid one (although that might not be what the OP was looking for) :

Ok, lower but still in the "decent" category.

Oops, I didn't realize that that might be unclear. Yes, you can upgrade the quality enchtantments. Also Damaging II with Exceptional and so on. But while you can replace quality enchatments with better quality you can't really revert enchantments in general. E.g. if you put a burning lash on a weapon it will always stay there.

Yes

Same protagonist but 5 years after PoE. Another place (on another continent) but same world.

Oh, I didn't realize that the healing scaled so well with Religion, given that it only starts at 10. That's cool then. You are right by the way: Rooting Pain is quite nice on Xoti IF you can manage to kill often (also when you combine it with Endurung Dance and Hylea's Talons or Furrante's Breastplate or Voidwheel or even Keeper of the Flame - although KotF will remove Endurnig Dance and also give you Resonant Touches if you are an SC Monk).

I guess both.

How does she get 4 wounds when killing with Twin Eels? The passive gives her +3 on kill and you can't use the Lantern with a Great Sword...? Besides that: why Twin Eels in the first place? Because of the AoE heal on kill? Wouldn't Engoliero or Oathbreaker's End be better on-kill effects? I wonder if Magistrate's Cudgel wouldn't be good with Xoti since it's bindable to Monk and kills lower level kith on crit right away. Also Death Sentence on Saru Sichr seems to be a fitting thing. Doesn't trigger too often though...

Yes.

@thelee: thanks for the heads-up on the lantern and its wound-on-kill mechanic. That it doesn't need melee weapons is good. Does it only work with weapons though or will it also work with any type of killing blow (like Blessed Harvest etc.)? But still I wonder: why did Obsidian restrict the subclass mechanic to melee only? It's already bad (+1 Wound const is a harsh penalty, especially for cheap abilities like Efficient Anguish etc. - which more than balances out the +3 Wound on kill). Resonant Touch, Rooting Pain, Long Pain, Inner Death (not a weapon attack) - maybe even the AoE of Torment's Reach - won't trigger it. This is a bad decision. Edit: just checked: Inner Death does trigger the wound refill. It is considered a melee attack but not a melee weapon attack. The restirction seems to be that it has to be a melee attack but not necessarily a melee weapon attack. Also the lantern works with every kill (no matter what caused it). So it works fairly well with spells like Blessed Harvest and Pillars of Holy Fire etc. because you can get back Mortification and Wounds (+1/+1) that way. The two +2 PL bonuses are also nice obviously. Edit2: just dabbled around with Xoti as SC Monk and Contemplative a bit. Grave Calling's Chilling Grave (Chillfog) will trigger the wound gain. So if you kill enemies with a Chillfog you will get +3 Wounds from subclass and +1 from Lantern. Since the Chillfog profits from all weapon dmg bonuses (and Monk's lashes) it's a very strong combo. You only need vessels... Morning Star is still my preferred method even if I lose the Lantern. Also because it's very easy to trigger Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming once you use Enervating Blows + Stunning Surge + Body Blows and then do Efficient Anguish. You'll lose the lantern refill but do a lot more killshots because of chained additional attacks. Have tried Sun&Moon but it's not as good in my opinion. One thing though: Blessed Harvest seems to be broken somehow. My tooltip says I can do 160 dmg with it (base + PL + MIG). But when I crit with it (easy since the fortitude is so low) I get very low numbers like 45 or 70 slash damage (no PEN issue). Also the combat log gives me no dmg calculation, the window is empty...?

I had nice results with a Morning Star on Xoti Contemplative as well. Body Blows lowers Fortitude by 25 which is a huge debuff that early in the game. And it helps to land Blessed Harvest a LOT which tends to miss often otherwise. That can be frustrating. Once you get Stunning Blows and Enervating Blows it only gets better (or lower: now -25 & -20 fortitude on top). Also Force of Anguish + Body Blows and friends is just awesome. You can keep most annoying enemies away from you that way. Aaand Morning Star was a preferred weapon of Eothas in PoE, too (besides flails) - so that kind of fits as well. If you choose Willbreaker then it also helps to land Divine Mark and other will spells. Fists are good, too. I honestly gave up on her monk subclass and ignored the wound-on-kill mechanic - which is awful. It's only nice a SC Monk when going full on Whispers of the Wind. Kills with Resonant Touch don't count. It doesn't even work with ranged weapons - only melee weapon kills -which totally is an insult to my best buddies: Hand Mortar & Fire in the Hole. Also not with Blessed Harvest which is a bit of a bummer and not optimal design (theme-wise and mechanical). But seriously: trying to melee-kill-steal with Xoti in order to get 1 or 2 (with that lantern-kill the restrictions of melee are not there I think) more wounds is absolutely not worth the hassle if you can instead just use a decent weapon or fists and use Enduring Dance and Hylea's Talons to give you a steady stream of wounds.

I'm pretty sure I never said that about soulbound weapons on Barbs. What I might have said is that their disadvantages (no lash, no Durgan steel) can sometimes be less significant on a Barb because of Frenzy/Bloodlust/Blood Thirst and that they will proc their stuff more often because of Carnage. So if you want to use a soulbound then a Barb is often the best pick. But that doesn't mean that soulbounds are the best choice for Barbs. Tidefall is very good on Barbs, so is Hours of St. Rumbalt, Tall Grass, Edge of Reason, We Toki, Godansthunyr, Cladhaliath (stunning) and others. General rule of thumb: if it has an on-hit or on-crit effect like draining or stunning and so on - or a proc chance - it's good for Barbs. Carnage has a -10 ACC malus so people think you can't crit often with it. But what they miss is that it gets +1 ACC per level which means that at lvl 10 it has the same ACC as you main attack. And from that point on it will even have better ACC. If you take Accurate Carnage this point can already be reached at lvl 5. So from mid to late game you will actually crit quite often with Carnage. Especially if you lower enemies' defenses with some nasty spells like Miasma and Cursed of Blackened Sight etc. first. The best dps choice is Tidefall. St. Rumbalt is a great mix of CC+dps. Tall Grass/pike is nice because you can stay safe behind the front line which is good in the early game because Barbs tend to be very squishy in the early game (gets a lot better with some levels). Against vessels there's nothing better than St. Ydwen's Redeemer (if you took Blood Thirst). The destroy-vessel proc triggers Blood Thirst and works with Carnage. There are some good monk builds in the build list. Melee Wizard: Spirit Lance is always best in my opinion. The AoE and the very high base damage are too strong. Especially if you can pull together several enemies with Pull of Eora or with a tank so that you can hit a lot of enemies with the AoE. Drawn in Spring is a very good weapon and better in 1:1 situations once it's fully enchanted - but as soon as you can hit more than one enemy the Lance would be my pick. Also I feel it's a bit of a waste to give Drawn in Spring to a Wizard. Drawn in Spring works best with highest MIG and lowish INT Other gear for melee wizard with Lance: everything that gives you dmg bonuses (via MIG etc.), attack speed and INT/AoE size.

Like... dual mortars?