Boeroer

The Empower mechanic will be gone completely. Blood Sacrifice only gives you back Wizard spell uses. It can indirectly give something to the second class, like giving Wounds for a non-Shattered-Pillar/non-Forbidden-Fist Monk, Heating Up/On the Edge for a Streetfighter or Blooded for a Barbarian - all through the self damage of Blood Sacrifice which can be nice synergies, esp. the Monk one. But in general the second classes' resources don't gain anything from Blood Sacrifice directly.

There is this very rare bug where enchanted items lose their enchantments. I don't know what the cause is, I guess save game corruption. In over 5K of hours I had that only once I believe. Before unbinding/rebinding and leveling it up again I would use the console to test if this actually works: save the game, open console, type "iroll20s", then unbind the dagger and rebind it. Then type "levelupsoulbind <player_name> dagger_soulbound_marux_amanth". Instead of typing out everything you can just lead with the first 2 or 3 letters and then use the tab key for autocomplete. Saves tons of time and frustrating typos. Player name starts with "player_" for example so just type "play" and hit tab and it will complete the name properly. Do that leveling command several times until the dagger is fully upgraded again (after each time the tooltip/description of the weapon will pop up like during the real process when you level up a soulbind). Then you can see if that fixed it. If it did you can reload and go through the process "properly" - if not then trying it would be a huge waste of time. If rebinding doesn't work: You can get a non-bugged dagger again via exporting a non-bugged dagger from another save game und importing it into the current one (achievements stay, costs lots of money, you have to level it up again) or the lazy way via console: "iroll20s" and then "giveitem dagger_soulbound_marux_amanth". And then level up the soulbind via console as described above until it is like it used to be. This will of course disable achievements. But it takes almost no time and will fix the problem.

I'll always be here (I mean as long as I'm able to). Checking in at least once a day. I'm just not playing the game atm (really squeezed everthing out of it I guess), there are very few new players who come here and ask something - and also nothing new was coming for Friends of Eora™ during the last months*, so not much to talk about. * although I get some weird PoE3 vibes from Twitter the last days...

Welcome to the forum!

I think tehre are some in the build list that mention that they are good with AI, but I don't remember a specific one. But for example: Edér as tank is very straightforward and easy to set up with AI. If you build Aloth into an "Blast-Wizard" with an implement (wand/rod/scepter) and the Blast talent (and other implement-related abilities and talents) and let him use auto-attacks with the summoned weapon "Kalakoth Minor Blights" mostly he will also be quite easy to manage with AI. Same can be true if you skill him to be a melee wizard from the second row with a Pike, the goal would be to get Citzal's Spirit Lance at some point and use melee attacks with that mostly. That way you can turn a normally very micro-heavy class into a relatively low-maintenace class which runs well with the AI. Once can do the same with Druid (see Hiravias) if you focus on the Spiritshift instead of spellcasting. That way those classes can be useful and yet low-maintenance in not-so-difficult fights - but when you need the full arsenal of spells you can still switch to direct control and have more impact when you need it.

In general everything that relies on active abilities needs more micromanagement: all per-rest casters (Druid, Wizard, Priest), Cipher, Monk and Chanter if focused on invocations. Ranger if the Animal Companion is involved a lot. Also fragile classes tend to eed more attention - like glasscannon Rogues or Barbabrians, especially in the early game. Classes that rely more on passive abilities and have restricted per-encounter resources are usually easier to manage via AI settings. Those are Fighter, Paladin, Ranger (if Animal Companion is neglected), (sturdy) Rogue, (beefy) Barbarian, Chanter (if focused on chants). I think in general the classes which are easiest to run successfully on AI are Fighter and Paladin tanks, tanky Chanters with Dragon Thrashed as main "weapon" as well as Rangers with bows who use their Animal Companion as bodyguard and not much else. Defensive-minded shield Rogues also work very well on AI, as do sturdy Rogues wit reach weapons (pike and quarterstaff) or even ranged Rogues. Barbarian is the same, only that ranged Barb doesn't make much sense. Everything that needs fine adjustments (placing and timing of spells or other abilities) and every character who needs attention because of squishyness and the risk of getting knocked out is detrimental to the success of steering by AI. There are exceptions - for example it's totally possible to build a Monk who runs beautifully on AI alone (see a build like "Fulmineo Prondroni" in the build list in this subforum - a Monk specifically build to run on AI) - but that needs some deeper knowledge of the classes and their abilities I'd say.

It applies to the recovery of the main weapon (which makes this enchantment very worthwhile). If the shield has bash the enchantment still applies to the recovery of the main weapon - but I do not recall if it also applies to the bash of te shield itself. I'm relatively sure it did not, but not 100% sure. Sorry, it's been a long time I played PoE and my memory about some of the mechanics started to fade.

I wasn't clear, sorry. I meant that one of the things I like about Insect Swarm in general is that it's not tagged with poison - compared to some other DoT spells that have this drawback, like Plague of Insects (not Autumn's Decay). Another thing I forgot when comparing Insect Swarm vs. Autum's Decay directly is that Insect Swarm is foe-only - while Autumn's Decay might also hit your allies.

I haven't checked the code, but I guess that the duration for the wounding DoT wasn't actually set. So the DoT ability may inherit its duration from the parent ability - which is Boar Spiritshift of the Shifter subclass (it's a different ability than the "normal" Boar Spiritshift which is shared among the other subclasses - except Fury of course). But again: I'm just taking a guess here. The hint is that the base duration of the DoT is the same as the base duration of the Spiritshift. Anyway - it's brutal, especially with a Helwalker (+MIG, +INT) who boosts the already huge damage-over-time like nothing else. Also prolongs the Spiritshift duration of course - as another bonus. What I like about Insect Swarm (besides the raw damage and that it's not tagged as poison) is the complete removal of Concentration on the targets. What I like about Autumn's Decay is that its AoE scales better and that it does target Reflex instead of Fortitude. Most Druid DoTs target Fortitude and it's great to have some alternative.

That someone was Feargus.

If you used Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming with the Brawler then Sun & Moon will work better that expected - because every crit with an individual flail head has the chance to trigger a Swift Flurry and/or Heartbeat Drumming attack with both(!) flail heads again. This naturally leads to a lot higher chances for crit chains. Same happens with all weapons which have multiple melee weapon attack rolls per strike (Saru Sichr, Wicked Beast, Mohora Tanga...)

Gatecrashers only have a "passive" Knockdown effect. The push effect of them is only 1/rest. I don't know what that means.

Carage got nerfed pretty hard in that regard. Unlike Carnage, WotEP's cone-shaped area of attack (AoE) does transport all attack effects (focus generation, SHattered Pillar's wound generation, all CC effects like stun for example, push effects from Knockdown or Force of Anguish and so on, dmg bonuses from weapon quality or stuff like Sneak Attack etc). Also every attack roll in that cone-shaped AoE can trigger another AoE attack IF your attack ability has its own AoE. Example: Clear Out (Fighter) has a cone-shaped AoE attack - and every attack roll from the cone ot WotEP will trigger a cone from Clear Out. AoE times AoE if you will... Same with Heart of Fury (Barbarian), Whirling Strikes (Ranger), Whispers of the Wind (Monk)... Soul Annihilation works a bit wonkily with AoE weapons: the first hit will get all the raw SA-damage, the next enemy will get close to nothing, the enemy after that will get a bit more again and so on. It's not predictable which enemy will get how much raw damage (besides the initial target) but it's pretty decent nonetheless. Citzal's Spirit Lance does the same and so do Serafen's blunderbusses "Hand Mortar" and "Fire in the Hole" (those two don't work with Soul Annihilation of course because they are ranged weapons). Citzal's Spirit Lance + Soul Annihilation is a very good combination. That's what makes a Wizard/Soulblade a surprisingly good melee character (besides the great self buffs and the fact that).

Never experienced that. Maybe because I'm playing so CC-heavy, no idea. I didn't even see him use HoF once.

Unfortunately one cannot really push enemies down something - because on the maps there are no real elevations. The things I did with push effects: Force of Anguish + Carnage (Monk/Barb) : push the victim into its own Carnage proc. It receives the normal weapon damage + Carnage dmg. Llengrath's Warding Staff + Carnage (Wiz/Barb) : same thing basically Force of Anguish + Arterial Strike (Monk/Rogue) : obvious Llengrath's Warding Staff + Essential Phantom (wiz/whatever) : playing tennis with an enemy (as the ball) - if you concentrate on one enemy it's hard for them to get up. Spearcaster's Knockback (50%) + Arterial Strike (Arcane Archer/Rogue) : like with Red Hand - but less reliable Force of Anguish + Warding Staff didn't seem to do anything special despite the double push it should create. I didn't try the Staff with Clear Out.

I'm not a huge fan of the Fighter class in the first place, so I am inclined to say "yepp, that's all a Fighter has to offer", but that would be unfair. Fighters possess some nice abilities that work well with multiclassing in general. Also WotEP + Knockdown is a nice combo to have in your backhand because it has a neat ACC bonus build in an provides good CC for times your focus is empty. Yes, a Cipher doesn't lack CC at all (if you pick your abilities accordingly), but it's driven by focus. And sometimes you don't have that. The WotEP+Clear Out combo deals a lot of damage and thus generates a ton of focus which you can then use for whatever Cipher power that seems useful at the time. Still... Soulblade/Devoted wouldn't be my favorite pick because Fighters are pretty boring to me personally. But that doesn't mean they are boring for everyone else. It's a very subjective take. Yes, that would be fine as well. The whole Parry thing is just a neat little trick that is fun to me but doesn't completely alter the validity of a Transcendent. Monk/Cipher is a good combo in any way, generating resources from both damage dealt and damage received - which is a nice combo in general. Also the added Helwalker MIG with the add INT from Duality of Mortal Presence/Turning Wheel is great for most spallcasting and especially great for stuff like Disintegrate. True, I mixed it up with Antipathetic Field which works similarly to Ectopsychic Echo (a beam of 10 secs with 1 sec procs, but instead of anchoring it to an ally you anchor it to an enemy). It's not an Echo ability but surprisingly enough it is of Shred - and imo it is the best option for Death of 1000 Cuts since it procs so rapidly (1/sec) and is so cheap to cast with a great range. But you need a second enemy (if you are confused you can anchor it to anybody, hello Berserker ;)). Sorry for the confusion. I don't think it's as bad as some other players think it is - I just don't think it's useful enough to be a reason to go single class Cipher and especially a melee SC Soulblade.

Concerning Soulblade/Helwalker: Helwalker's increased damage received isn't as bad as it sounds. Higher CON is not a bad idea though. Monks can generate wounds in different ways in Deadfire, not only through damage received. For example look at the ability "Dance of Death". In addition there are some items which can give you moderate self damage (won't stop Dance of Death) which helps with wound generation, for example Hylea's Talons. With Whispers of the Endless Paths you want maxed INT and Turning Wheel on top of that. The cone-shaped AoE is only really useful if you have a lot on INT in order to make it sufficiently big. Stunning Surge is a great ability with WotEP (with a big cone). Hitting multiple enemies at once with a long-lasting stun is impactful - and also multiple attack rolls increase the chance of a crit, giving you the refund (Stunning Surge for free). Force of Anguish will push all enemies in the cone away which can be great for battlefield control and interrupts. The cone of Torment's Reach doesn't interact with the cone of the great sword at all. Both cones will be there but you won't get cone*cone attack roll explosions. 10 MIG is okay. One little trick with WotEP and a Cipher/Monk: Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming don't generate focus (Lightning Strikes do generate additional Focus so that's what I would pick with most weapons) but they proc off of WotEP's special enchantment "Offensive Parry" which is one of my absolute favorite enchantments in the game. So if an enemy misses you in melee you will strike back immediately (like Rogue's Riposte) - only that it's the case in 100% of misses, not only 20 or 30%. But it's a single target attack, no AoE. So your "Parry" (which doesn't use up any time or recovery) has the potential to occur twice or thrice or even more often if it's combined with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming. This is fun. Also Monks are great at disengaging with high bonuses, outright forcing an enemy miss on a disengagement attack -> Offensive Parry to the face. If you even find the right armor (Gipon Prudensco or Nomad's Brigandine) and enchant it properly you can safely disengage all the time (those armors grant immunity to disengagement attack, meaning they turn 100% of disengagement attack into misses) and deliver parries in the process, turning ALL the enemies disengagement attacks against them without harming yourself - and potentially setting off cascade of Swift Flurry attacks, too. You could pick up the disengagement abilities of the Monk in the earlier game to profit from this effect - and retrain later once you got one of the aforementioned armors which grant immunity. Make sure to bring a backup weapon against single tough foes. WotEP is great against mobs but suboptimal against lone tough nuts. A normal great sword would do for example. Or a Morning Star - such as Saru Sichr (very good in combination with Swift Flurry since it has two attack rolls per strike which both can trigger Swift Flurry). A Morning Star can also be a great backup weapon in combination with the weapon proficiency "Body Blows" because it can help to crack an enemy's fortitude defense. Many abilities and spells attack fortitude (see Force of Anguish for example). --- SC Soulblade doesn't have a lot going for it. Death of a 1000 Cuts is very specific since it only procs off of shred spells - it's basically only good against bosses in combination with Ectopsychic Echo Antipathetic Field. Time Parasite is nice - but like all Cipher spells it competes for focus with you Soul Annihilation which is just the best damaging tool overall. So you are constantly wondering "should I invest that bulk of focus to speed me up - or do I outright splat an enemy with it?" - if you can cast Time Parasite on a tight group of enemies it's pretty great though. One fun thing you can do as a SC Soulblade is to use Shared Nightmare with AoE weapon such as Whispers of the Endless Paths, making the cone huge, especially since Soulblade gains temporary +max focus on kill. But it's not gamechanging. --- Soul Blade/Devoted with WotEP(and high INT) can use a nice trick later in the game: Clear Out's cone DOES produce an AoE from the Great Sword with every hit roll in that cone. With a tight enemy formation and sufficient INT (and maybe other AoE size modifiers such as Ring of Overseeing or a pet) this can lead to an absolute explosion of attack rolls that sends all enemies sprawling over the screen, hit by multiple attacks, often killing a bunch of them outright. This is very satisfying. --- Since Soul Annihilation profits from damage modifiers such as weapon quality, crit, Sneak Attack and Deathblows etc. a very popular combination is Soul Blade/Trickster since it provides awesome damage through Soul Annihilation+damage mods while it also makes you sturdier (Trickster's self buffs). Also Offensive Parry of WotEP and Riposte do stack... So maybe that's a combo that is interesting to you as well? Some players also reported that Soul Blade/Blood Mage was a lot of fun with the use of Citzal's Spirit Lance. Its AoE is bigger than WotEP's and it's circular. In combination with the reach of the pike/lance this makes the placement of the AoE a lot easier: more focus, better distribution of Soul Annihilation. Also Wizards make surprisingly good melee characters due to their fantastic and fast self buffs. Also with Essential Phantom + Spirit Lance you can have two AoE-swinging chars on the battlefield at the same time (Essential and Substancial Phantoms inherit all your items, including currently summoned weapons). They don't use your attributes and abilities - but they are sturdy summons with decent accuracy and the item effects alone can be great in them (see lance).

I just remembered that The Dragon Thrashed doesn't profit from Ring of Focused Flame. Eh... sorry. But if it's about more ACC for the chants in order to interrupt more you can use the Helm of the White Void and use the chant "The Long Night's Drink" istead. It doesn't deal damage but it does work with "Rymrgand's Influence", giving it +10 ACC.

No, the damaging enchantment puts a "damage-over-time" status effect on every hostile creature in the area of effect. It's an auto-hit, it doesn't make attacks rolls so it is not able to critically hit. It just slowly "ticks" away the health of all hostile creatures in the AoE. You can add items that do seperate hit rolls - for example the Great Sword "Effort" with its enchantment "Hemorrhaging". It adds a hit roll of either sicken or hobble to ALL other critical attack rolls you do (including spells, chants, you name it). And the sicken/hobble effect counts as weapon attack roll, so it can trigger other items' hit rolls, mainly Hylea's Talons DoT attack and the Ring of Clenched Muscle affliction - which can also crit. In other words: you deliver "invisible" weapon attack rolls (which don't do damage but apply sicken or hobble) with your chant- and invocation crits basically. This can lead to an excessive amount of hit rolls on all enemies in the chant AoE which raises the cance for multiple crits+interrupts a lot obviously. This can be useful for an offensive Herald. But of course a Great Sword means less sturdyness than a shield.

I forgot: For a support/tank apporoach the resistance chants can be very good, too. They "only" provide resistance instead of immunity - but how the system works they kind of "eat" away afflictions completely. Especially if you use Brisk Recitation. Example: if you have a paralyzed party member and sing the chant "Seven Men, Onto the Deck They Went" the paralyze will get downgraded to immobilized. But once the chant hits again (eiter 6 seconds after of 3 secs after with Brisk Recitation) the immobilized invocation again gets downgraded to hobbled. Then again to nothing if the chant hits again. Since those three chants each provide resistance against 2 attribute afflictions (DEX+MIG, INT+PER and RES+CON) you can make your party quasi-immune to all afflictions by repeating the fitting phrase. Which is not flashy - but can be very useful against enemies who makes heavy use of afflictions.

Mostly true unfortunatly. But if you use an Ancient you'll get the very good Sporelings - they become even better in combination with "Wild Growth" which gives them potent health regenration besides of making them bigger (good to block enemies). Wild Growth has no duration so it lasts as long as the summon it was put on. And then later you can get the Oozes which are very good, too. The bog one for example has unlimited(!) casts of Plague of Insects. Aspect of Galawain is bad unfortunately. That is uncool because it could have been great (look at the Chanter's Dragon for unfair comparison). Wild Growth works with Aspect of Galawain and makes it very big and tough - but its duration is short compared to Sporelings and it's so much more "expensive" (being a tier 9 spell instead of tier 1). Too bad. But tl;dr: when Druid + summons -> use Ancient imo.

Regarding "tricks": an offensively minded Herald (Troubadour) can use Ring of Focused Flame + Dragon Thrashed + Brisk Recitation in combination with Their Champion (Energized) to get +10 ACC for the chant which raises the chance for crits (in addition to the damage the chant does) - which in turn leads to AoE interrupts via chanting. Sacred Immolation also will interrupt via crit when combined with Energized and will also get +10 ACC. Ring of Focused Flame is an early item used by many Paladins - so if one uses that already this "trick" can be an additional way to let it improve your actions. Potential AoE interrupts every few secs can be very impactful on the battlefield, especially when you face multiple enemies who use dangerous abilities (mostly casters of all sorts). Such a Herald can slowly "melt" and disturb enemy groups just by standing around. Add Brand Enemy to the arsenal and later get the Blackened Plate (which can have a life draining aura) and add the interrupts and this can be effective and fun to play imo. Brand Enemy is fast and has no recovery - it is also cheap. So you can apply it to al lot of enemies at the start of battle quickly (it's an auto-hit, too). All those little ticks of damage add up quickly. If you meet fire-immune enemies you have to do something else though (e.g. switch to Soft Winds of Death). However, the invocations Kaylon mentioned, especially Instruments of Death, are usually the more effective approach. Summons are among the best tools any character can use, and Intruments of Death are very good summons on top. The question which route (defensive vs. offensive) is more fun to play has to be answered individually. I personally find puppeteering summons a bit boring - but there is no doubt they are very useful and other players might enjoy steering them around. There's also the chant "Many Lives Pass By" which is very good at summoning skeletons every 6 seconds (or every 3 with Brisk Recitation) which cannot be controlled by the player but run on AI. That's a type of summon that doesn't require any maintenance but is still great at diverting enemies or good as "sacrifice" for special tricks that require allies to go down (for example: if you have a Single Class Paladin in the party those skeletons can trigger Divine Retribution, giving the Paladin +2 Zeal each time a skeleton dies - and they die very quickly - another example is that a Berserker (confused bc. of Frenzy) might kill skeletons with his friendly-fire Carnage - which will trigger his Bloodlust and Blood Thirst).

Single Class Druid has the advantage of getting all spells significantly earlier. Most players seem to forget that this has a noticable impact on most encounters. And then of course you get the spells of Power Level 8 and 9 - of which Great Maestrom is the most devastating one. On top of that you get potential +3 Power Level (if you pick the Prestige passive a PL 9) which scales all your abilites up. You can do very weird but fun things with an SC Druid because of Avenging Storm. For example the Great Sword "Effort" has an enchantment named "Hemorrhaging" which applies an additional hit roll of either sicken or hobbling (iirc) to ALL crits you do (not just crits with the Great Sword itself), including spells such as Great Maelstrom or Avenging Storm (and all their procs). Those sicken/hobbling rolls are considered weapon attacks (sine they originate from the Great Sword) - and those hit rolls will proc Avenging Storm lightnings! Those lightings are considered spells - and when they crit they will again proc a sicken/hobble roll... and so on and so forth. Such a Druid is the ultimate minion wiper and it looks as if Darth Sidious is starting a blitz party again. Or you simply cast Maelstrom on everything in sight which is also sufficient most of times, hehe. At the same time almost all Druids are great healers (except Fury) and have good CC capabilities of course. Multiclass Druids have other advantages - mostly they are more interesting to play imo. Some of my favorite combos are: - Livegiver(Bear)/Goldpact: A great healer and supporter but also a good melee character because you can stack a ton of armor without any recovery which makes you very hard to take down while being a fast attacker while shifted with great damage output (Eternal Flames + Wildstrike lashed do hurt, especially with those Full Attacks and very little recovery). - Ancient(Cat)/Wizard: Sporelings shield you from enemies in the early game which is great. The Cat form provides aweseome casting speed and you will have loads of great spells to cast so you don't even need to use Bloodmage if you don't like it (but Blood Sacrifice + Druid heals is a good synergy actually). With Wall of Draining later you can keep up the spiritshift for a very long time - as well as the self buffs. This can also become a pretty tanky character. - Ancient/Helwalker: the raw DoT spells suc as Plague of Insects and Insect Swarm etc. profit a lot from bonus MIG and also bonus INT - both will add significant damage to those spells through damage per tick as well as adding more ticks. Also the Monk side ives you access to a good ACC buff (Endurng Dacne of Death) which is something the Druid sometimes struggles with (I mean accuracy). So this is a great combination for casting fewer spells but with a lot more impact. Also healing spells that work over time profit a lot from the added MIG and INT. - Shifter/Helwalker: the Boar form of the Shifter has a little quirk - the raw "wounding" DoT which the Boar Tusks deliver don't last as long (or short) as with the other subclasses' boar forms but instead the wounding DoT has the base duration of your Spiritshift(!). If you combine that with Helwalker's MIG and INT bonuses you will apply a wounding DoT effect to enemies you hit in melee that will melt almost enything quickly. If you combine that with the spell Taste of the Hunt it even bevomes pretty dangerous for most bosses. And then you have 3 otehr forms you can shift to if that one expires to finish it up... Spiritshift/Monk has a lot of good synergies anyway so it's a fun combo in the first place. --- There's a lot more Druid combos that are fun and powerful like Druid/Chanter as @mjo2138mentioned - but those above are the ones that I thought of immediately and had a fun experience with.

After starting that thread Ngati's Tusk became one of my most used items in the following runs with all sorts of characters, even an Assassin/Wizard among them. At some point I imported it into some runs as soon as possible. It's extremely good in the later game - but at the same time it's not overpowered (besides the quality - but there are other early uniques to buy that have high quality) when you are of low level because the Hunter of Hunters enchantment scales with a skill that will not be sky high at the beginning.

It's not a Ring, but the cloak "Shroud of the Phantasm" can give you the Brilliant inspiration. It can also be activated out of combat.