Boeroer

Spellblade (Wizard/Rogue) with Watershaper's Focus (for the jump which will give you two Blasts) + all the Rogue DoTs, especially Toxic Strike is very potent. Max MIG and INT. Community Patch reordered and added keywords. Stuff that does corrode damage usually has the acid keyword now. Dedicated poison spells should all have poison and antidote keywords.

I even had more fun with Ancient/Berserker and Whispers of the Endless Paths (using Taste of the Hunt). The DoTs (like Plague of Insects or Insect Swarm) will kill a lot of weaker enemies during the fight without you having to do anything while you can hit them with a weapon. With Community Patch (=fixed Stag Carnage) it's also fun to shift and have dual Carnage while hitting enemies. Without Community Patch Stag Carnage is just ridiculously bad.

Warlock is cool, especially with all the Rekvu items. They key to fun is always Blood Thirst + spellcasting. Yeah, Carnage can't crit. Even high rolls are condiered hits. I don't know why. The main downside of this is that Blood Frenzy won't get triggered by Carnage attacks ever - while Spirit Frenzy will (since it procs on hit, not on crit). Druid + Barbarian is equally fun I'd say. Other than in PoE death by DoT does reliably trigger Blood Thirst in Deadfire.

I only use the Community Patch and the Enhanced UI mod (which is very good).

Iirc I already suggested to fix this issue (at least the one with Cleaving Stance. Mob Stance is just the upgrade to Cleaving Stance that gives you an attack speed bonus based on your engagements). SA's damage calculation already got altered by the (extended?) Community Patch if I'm not mistaken. I think the problem is that SA itself is not considered to be a weapon attack and thus it will not trigger a cleave on kill. THe problem might be: if it's a weapon attack it might generate focus. I guess that's not wanted. But I don't know the details of the implementation so I can't say for sure. But I did put it on a list of "things to fix" - because it is indeed annoying and not plausible to players. I can't say that it will get fixed though. The next step of the community patch - trinkets - seems to be on halt as well since I didn't hear anything about it since weeks. Atm @MaxQuest and @Phenomenum seem to roam these forums less frequently than they used to. Me as well. It's summer after all.

@Decadency: My congratulations! Now I'll keep my fingers crossed that it gets valididated by Obsidian. 🤞

My main reason is Blood Thirst combined with DoTs. Frenzy and Bloodlust are also nice of course.

No idea. I was speaking about Blade Feast in that old post of mine from 2018. So I guess this wasn't patched.

Only when you have a serious speed buff. Beguiler is better if you don't want to stop casting (e.g. because your weapon dmg sucks anyway). Ascendant needs to use his weapons every now and then to refill focus. And once he does ascend he wants to spam spells as fast as possible. Else he could have just spend his focus the normal way and might have had the same results (see Disintegration example - except PL bonus). If you want to spam damaging spells and nothing else really fast then Ascendant may be your thing. But you'll have to pause casting in order to refill focus (with a weapon). If you want to cast nonstop and are fine with alternating between cc and dmg a Beguiler may be better because you don't need to interrupt your spell casting. Both are pretty great with Shared Nightmare: Beguiler's Deception spells can be cast without dropping below max focus (if you focus on deception only in that case) - giving you huge AoE with again gives you huge focus refunds. Ascendant will not spend focus while ascended and has more max focus which will lead to huge AoE sizes (that don't change) while ascended.

Berserker/Ancient with Whispers otEP is great. I didn't even shift. Cast DoTs and hacked away. Try Taste of the Hunt with AoE cone of WotEP.

I don't know if that got patched. What still works is: if the ghost blades from the weapon kill something they will proc another ghost blades instance - and so on. Chain reaction is possible. Same with Grave Calling (Chilling Grave): if Chillfog kills a vessel that will proc another Chillfog. Also Hel Beckoning: if your Noxious Burst kills a spirit it will proc another Noxious Burst.

Not special compared to NPCs and/or enemies of that level I guess. Afaik only the Watcher has some abilities that are unique. And they are pretty meh by the way.

Seems the uninstalling of the mods didn't work out.

Yeah, but that explicitly says so. I thought we were searching for some "hidden" or obscure weapon enchantment that procs from other attacks that do not originate from that weapon. But actually I never managed to charm anybody with a (non-charming) spell while wearing that wand. Another weapon enchantment that works with spells is again Blightheart which gives your damaging wizard spells a 10% corrosive lash which is rather good since it's multiplicative with the PL scaling and all additive dmg bonuses (MIG bonus and crits etc.). But of course that's not a "proc" from a weapon enchantment but a permanent, passive dmg bonus for your spells (as long as you have the weapon equipped). Eternal Devotion and Shared Flames work with several non-weapon attacks as well (e.g. Driving Roar or Arcane Archer's Imbue-Spells like Fireball. But I don't know if they also work with normal caster spells.

Correct. However: some soulbound items that require special actions to "level up" allow the player to do those special actions with spells. Example: Blightheart wants you do cause affliction x on y enemies. But you can use spells and not Blightheart itself.

I wish more creative directors had the courage to give a **** what Twitter and forums are saying. Except when I say it.

Bit long I'd say...

Aha... I may have to test that. I find it rather easy to drop will on enemies as a wizard since you can cast Miasma + stuff and use a club in the offhand.

Wouldn't you want to give Effort to the phantom as well?

I'd like to solve the puzzle...

Oh... that seems to be unintended. It's the weapon with the highest base damage in the game and also targets Will instead of deflection and weakens on hit. Having no duration whatsoever makes it extremely powerful. Are you sure that you didn't just graze with it? Grazing doesn't remove it. What was the situation? I would like to try out myself but I'm on vacation.

In the meantime I learned about several new small changes. Seems we got a silent patch.

Did we get a silent patch or something? There are several new (small) changes that suddenly popped up. Does it have a duration or disappears after x hits - or how does it work now?

This seems to be new. As you said: it wasn't enchantable before. Or do you use any mods that may have done this?

If you do it right (high INT, hit as many enemies as possible with stuff like Phantom Foes, Eyestrike or Secret Horrors) you can alter between Deception spell and damaging spell (like Amplified Wave) without the need to attack with a weapon at all. Especially the high level passives that buff powers that target will, increase AoE based on held focus etc. are very nice for SC Beguilers.