Boeroer

You should see Riposte as a nice addon, not as the centerpiece of your whole build. A rogue with Badgradr's Barricade is pretty sturdy (for a Rogue anyways who else is squishy as hell) but can never compete with a fighter or paladin when it comes to tankyness. You should still play him offensively and not dump everything into defense. Several attack abilities as Crippling Strike and Blinding Strike etc. work very well with a bashing shield since offhand strikes first. By the way: Riposte also gets triggered by misses and grazes from Disengagement attacks. There are some talents (like Graceful Retreat) and items (Nightrunner) that give you a bonus against disengagement attacks that stack with any other deflection bonus. You can then run past enemies, trigger disengagment attaks that will most likely miss or graze and eventually do a Riposte. This shouldn't be used a a core technique but it can make running past enemies in order to reach backliners rewarding.

Adaptive gives you +2 ACC per hit for 30 secs. It stacks up to 10 times (and should stack with everything else since it's from a weapon). Thing is that you basically get up to 10 instances of Adaptive which all last 30 secs. So it's not uncommon that the first instance runs out while you are not yet at 10 stacks. If you are hitting too slowly you can never reach 10 stacks because the first ones already expire. So let's say you hit every 10 seconds (just for simplicity) and add a stack (stack A,B,C and so on, seconds remaining in brackets): sec 0: A[30] --> +2 ACC sec 10: A[20] B[30] --> +4 ACC sec 10: A[10] B[20] C[30] --> +6 ACC sec: 20: B[10] C[20] D[30] --> +6 ACC sec 30: C[10] D[20] E[30] --> +6 ACC and so on. If you'd only hit every 10 secs you'd only be able to stack 3 instances of Adaptive. If you'd be able to attack every 5 secs you could stack 6 instances. On-hit usually includes on-crit when it comes to procs. Flames of Devotions should add their ACC bonus to everything. Also works with Ring of Focused Flame by the way (another +10 ACC). Usually you can check the used ACC per attack roll in the combat log (press shift while hovering over the log entry).

Gods the new forum is so ****ty when it comes to bb-tags. It messes them up 100%. I can't fix the nested spoiler tags above. Hope you can still understand what I was trying to say. You have to click "reveal hidden contents" (of two tags) to see everything. In my case I can't use the overbearing fun-inducing power of hand mortars with Xoti because they are ranged weapons and ranged weapons won't trigger her +3-wound-on-kill passive.

@Madhofd: You're missing everything. The advantages of Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole: AoE weapons: they deal their damage in a rather big area of effect all CC or DoT abilites (except Wounding Shot) get applied in the whole AoE. Example: Rogue's Toxic Strike poisons every enemy who gets hit by the AoE. dual damage: they deal pierce/slash instead of only pierce dmg (normal blunderbuss). This is important against pierce-resistant/-immune foes. targets Reflex instead of Deflection. Reflex is very easy to debuff. Hand Mortar an be enchanted with Blinding Smoke. Blinding Smoke triggers a ton of hit rolls (that distract but don't damage). Although no damage is dealt, every such hit roll will triggere Avenging Storm (from scroll or Heaven's Cacophony) Fire in th Hole can be enchanted with Chain Shot which lets the projectile jump (like Ranger's Driving Flight). The AoE also jumps. As a Scout you can stack Driving Flight with Chain Shot and have three AoEs with only one shot. Hand Mortar will even trigger more Blinding Smokes with Driving Flight. In my case (why I was talking about above) the Monk's very good ability Whispers of the Wind becomes outright ridiculous with hand mortars because you basically get 2* Powder Burns * AoE * (AoE+AoE+AoE) * x Blinding Strikes hit rolls:

They were only "best" in PoE1 when you're not looking at dmg types, lashes and Durgan Steel. Not being able to enchant them was what made them fall behind at some point. Both lashes and Durgan Steel are multiplicative dps increases. Missing out is ouch. Fists were still viable though. In Deadfire enchanting is more limited and you can't put a lash on anything as freely (also there's no Durgan Steel) so that disadvantage of fists has way less impact. Also the Power Level scaling (no other weapon has this) makes them better than in PoE since you can stack a lot of Power Levels and push them into mythic quality and beyond (impossible with weapons). They are great weapons in both games for several reasons, but a monk is in no way bound to use them since every attack ability that works with fists also works with melee weapons.

Those are the dmg reductions when underpenetrating (AR-PEN < 0): -1: -25% dmg -2: -50% dmg -3: -75% dmg If you have -4 or-5 it doesn't matter, it's still -75%. Those are the actual numbers. Also see: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/armor-and-penetration The -70% thing was an early version that got patched into the more granular one you see above. As you can see it's simply -25% per point of underpenetration until you reach -3. Note that this dmg reduction is not a simple additive malus but goes through double inversion most of times (as long as you have any damage bonus as well), meaning the dmg loss is in fact way more severe, especially if you cumulate several maluses. For details see: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions Tl;dr: avoid underpenetration at (nearly) all costs since it's one of the most severe dps losses you can have (besides misses, grazes and hard CC). It also means that having very high AR is extremely beneficial for your survivability. It has a lot more impact than armor had in PoE1.

Of course. Because the best game ever made obviously is FTL.

Nearly all of the monk's attack abilites work with weapons as well as fists. Only exceptions (sort of): The Long Pain: is a summoned ranged fist weapon Forbidden Fist: is not a weapon attack. It has its own base dmg and doesn't even care if you use fists or weapons. It's like a melee spell basically. Inner Death: like Forbidden Fist The last two are not considered weapon attacks and thus don't work with Swift Flurry or Heartbeat Drumming and also will not generate Focus for a Monk/Cipher. As you can see this is not even a fist vs. weapon thing. I just wanted to show the abilites that sound like they are executed with fists or weapons but are actually melee spells that don't care what you carry. So basically there is no attacks ability that would only work with fists and not with weapons. Feel free to pick any (melee) weapon. Ranged weapons don't work with several abilites though: Turning Wheel Force of Anguish Swift Flurry Enervating Blows Heartbeat Drumming Torment's Reach Instruments of Pain Skyward Kick

OP essentially does state it's just his own take - since he introduced his statement with "Anytime anyone ever asks me..." That's totally fine with me. It's nice if somebody takes the time to voice a cheerful opinion instead of a rant (which is more common). He didn't write something like "As we all know..." as some very special dudes in this forum might do (or have done. Didn't see SonicMage for quite some time...).

Anecdote: During my time in Tashkent/Uzbekistan the local Intercontinental hotel lost its brand name due to bad/shady management decisions. So they had to rename the hotel and opted for... *drumroll*... The Incontinental True story.

Great. It also has some nice icons for all passives in the ability tree. 🐡

Teleportancimation? Sounds like a Red Hot Chilly Peppers song though... I never heard of the Grey Lands either. Maybe it's a secret land for the elderly?

Dual wielding is not 100% dps. That would mean that you'll get +100% action speed. But you only get +30%. Also speed modifiers don't get added but multiplied which means that 30% + 15% don't add up to 45%. You can look up the mechanics of action speed and recovery time in the pinned thread above by @MaxQuest. But you are still right that one handed weapon usage is inferior - at least over the course of a playthrough (generally speaking, there are exceptions like pistol + modal). In the early game it's quite good though. But it quickly falls behind. Don't know what you mean with "warrior class" when using Backstab as example (from Rogue class) - but generally you are right that those additive bonus dmg abilities do most for heavy hitters if you also look as resource costs. However, most dmg bonuses are of passive nature (MIG, weapon quality, Sneak Attack, Deathblows, Weapon Spec & Mastery and so on) and thus don't need any resources. So the dmg per hit doesn't matter (but dps). Most of the dmg bonuses on active abilities are simply there to balance out the missing Power Level bonus of low level abilites vs. high level abilites. Every damaging ability gains +5% multiplicative dmg with every Power Level. So low level abilites (which are used with weapons) will scale better than high level ones. To compensate for that the high level ones often get a +x% additive dmg bonus. This is not the optimal solution since it favors heavy hitters - as you said - but I guess it was the easiest solution. But still: those dmg bonuses on active abilities don't make up a big part of your overall dmg bonuses. Most are passive. So it's not too bad. There are some nasty ones though: Backstab is an especially bad case because it's a very high dmg bonus and usually only works very limited times per encounter. Same as Takedown Combo (+100% dmg) by the way or Lion's Sprint (here it's accuracy and not dmg). They are limited in use and thus you want to Max out the dmg per hit. This implementation favours stuff like arquebus and such and thus is completely unintuitive to use for somebody who associates Backstabs with daggers and such. Who really starts the game and realizes that Backstabs are best done with guns and two handers? 🤷‍♂️ That's why the Community Patch (see my signature) replaced the percentage-based additive dmg bonus on Backstab with a flat raw dmg bonus. So it doesn't matter which weapon you use. I do recommend that mod. It's conservative (no op stuff, even some nerfs) but fixes some issues with suboptimal or illogical game mechanics.

You meant "pointless". Have a nice Christmas y'all!

Never said you were telling bull****. Improve your reading comprehension. I said that thelees's observation might be wrong and a mistake but that a) it's forgivable and certain assumptions and (non)experiences might easily lead to such a mistake and b) your reaction to this mistake is exaggerated and silly. Strong emphasize on b. You can be right about something and not be a complete douche about it. Also helps to sell your point.

First of all he didn't even say you were wrong but simply wanted to point out that he didn't mean the movies primarily but the merchandise. Then he made a wrong statement to emphasize this - but maybe only partially wrong. Because even though there might have been James Bond merchandise: I never saw it in shops and no friend of mine had any of it. But later on everybody ran around with Star Wars action figures. It was omnipresent. Soeven while there was James Bond merchandise it wasn't very obvious, at least to him or me. I also doubt that it was very successful. So... missing the fact that there was James Bond merchandise maybe a forgivable thing. Anyway, point is: he wasn't even trying to prove you wrong, he just wanted to emphasize his point of view. Secondly: even if he would have said that you're wrong your reaction would still be over the top. You reacted as if he insulted you personally - like if you are the inventor of James Bond merchandise himself. Didn't come across as mature (speaking of "kids these days").

No idea. But why are you so very pissy about it?

Depends. If you plan to take Heart of the Storm (maybe you'd also want to use Animancer's Boots) then a shocking lash. If not you can take what you want to be more flexible. Although shock is one of the least resisted/immune dmg types iirc. I personally would take shock and simply switch to another stiletto as soon as I'd meet a resistant enemy - instead of trying to cover more different dmg types.

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).