Boeroer

I just learned that Lethandria's Devotion does an instant healing tick as soon as you switch to it. Black Jacket/something for instant 0-recovery switching, healing you and Vela up in no time? Sounds nice...

True. It is an ability which is rather independent from items. Also several of the Barbarian passives don't work with it (since no weapon attack and not melee). A SC Barbarian with some PL boost can reach good numbers with Monastic Unarmed Training, also with Carnage. So one could do a build which doesn't rely on (lots of) special items as a general idea. Some items that might also work well with Driving Roar: Sash of Judgement (belt) and Precognition (amulet). Besides Berserker Corpse Eater might have been nice for this (because Kith Meat Food can give you +2 PL) if only the cost of Driving Roar wouldn't be doubled.

Stacking Power Level is good for this. Also Driving Roar counts as power level 1 ability. So the base damage you see gets multiplied by 8*5% = 1.4 right when you reach PL9. Only because of the PL bonus. It raises base dmg - so MIG bonus and other additional stuff will be based on this increased damage.

I don't know if being a Paladin (which means being zealous about something) and being zealous about Berath (being a rational an stoic entity) does work at all. Like "I'm being zealously stoic" or something. On the other hand we have Goldpact Knights... So why not?

Mosquito --🤪--> SJW Ninja Communist Elephant with a tinfoil hat roaming the Outer Worlds. *törööö*

While I like a Warlock nowadays I think Druid/Barb is even nicer. TryBerserker/Ancient. In my opinion that's even better. Berserker/Fury is nice, too. Although I like the DoTs more. Ancient/Helwalker is also very nice. +10 MIG/+10 INT with AoE DoTs is great. For a Debonaire/Wizard you just want to play it as a ranged caster. Since Debonaire can't engage (so no Persistent Distraction) he wants to stay at range anyways. Makes it also easier to keep party members around to prevent "Cowardice" from happening. Stuff like Kalakoth's Minor Blights with Toxic Strike is still very nice.

Tricorn works, Ring doesn't. Driving Roar also causes prone - so maybe the White Void Helmet with its +10 ACC to affliction attacks might work as well. Obviously you want Bloodlust and Blood Thirst. Driving Roar targets fortitude, so you want to make sure to lower it with everything you can apply (staggered/dazed/sicken/weaken/Body Blows etc.).

Debonaire/Wizard if you use your Cipher for mass charming. Debonaire gets 100% crit conversion on any charmed enemy. And Wizard has many friendly-fire spells. This can completely remove the PEN issues of most damaging wizard spells on PotD. Use items and abilities which increase crit damage.

I agree.

I don't think that damage needs a tune down. The original jump already suffers from a dmg malus and an additional one (from Driving Flight) would get another malus. The base dmg itself is already rather low.

Not useless. That's a term that's used very often here but almost never is correct. Not useless, but also not particularly special or effective.

Funny. That would also mean a Fury/Cipher can't generate focus while spiritshifted, right? Sounds wrong. I would pot for changing it to a weapon attack. Kalakoth Minor Blights etc. are also balls of fire/acid/ice/shock but still count as weapons and work with Driving Flight. I can't think of a single reason why Fury's auto-attacks should be treated differently.

Ascendant/Trickster has no significant synergies. I mean concerning the special mechanics of Ascendant. Maybe that's why you feel multiclassing Ascendant isn't worth it. It is though if you find those speed synergies. Although I personally prefer SC Ascendant due to the great PL8 and 9 abilities.

If you do multiclass ascended you want bonuses to attack/casting speed and/or recovery and/or INT bonuses and/or MIG bonus and/or PEN bonuses. You can achieve that via Berserker (+2 PEN, +30% attack/casting speed and +5 MIG via Frenzy, Bloodlust, most notably Blood Thirst, even AoE Staggered via spells+Spirit Frenzy). Or Streetfighter (-50% recovery time, fast focus gain). Use mortars with powder burns. One of the most popular, especially with DoTs, is Helwalker (+10 MIG, +10 INT, a little speed via Swift Strikes, +2 PEN, +12 ACC via Enduring Dance...). Priest with high INT and Salvation of Time also works well with Ascendant. SoT prolongs ascended state as well. You want speed and shorter recovery so you can cast faster while ascended. You want more INT so ascended and DoTs lasts longer, you want higher MIG so the ticks of DoTs are higher. If you go single class Ascendant you want Time Siphon for the same reasons: cramp as many casts into the ascended phase as you can. In general you want high DEX and Fast Cast passive. Bet thing is the power level bonus, not the 0 focus. Ascendants generate more focus per point of damage while not ascended. With Draining Whip (never take Biting Whip) also a SC Ascended can generate plenty of focus quickly. I personally find that Beguiler has the superior mechanic, but you can cheese around with Ascendant quite a bit (see Helwalker/Ascendant or Priest/Ascendant).

FoD also works with the Ring of Focused Flames by the way. +10 ACC is nice. Another nice effect of Ranger/Priest is Takedown Combo. If you combine it with a good single target dmg spell like Pillars of Faith or Divine Mark it can be pretty devastating. +100% base dmg for a spell with high base dmg is usually a lot more effective than for a simple weapon attack. If you want to use it with a weapon attack though you should pick Arquebus (because its highest weapon base dmg is most effective for Takedown Combo).

Some concern about Essence Interrupter: it still seems to destroy loot drop every now and then. Had that problem some days ago with an Arcane Archer - again. I thought it was fixed but apparently it's still not (100%).

Last time I tried Clear Out with a ranged weapon (in main hand obviously) you just had to command the attack when at range. The char then would walk into melee range but still use the primary ranged weapon once he got there. Impressive with mortars. But I may very well be that this got patched out silently. It worked with bashing shields as well as other melee weapons in the offhand. You just had to command it from ranged so that the game didn't pick the melee weapon right away.

I think that rest bonuses (that you don't get from food) shouldn't determine if you can finish the Ultimate or not. And as far as I can tell they don't.

It's not a spell. It's the auto-attack of spiritshifted furies. It jumps 1 time but doesn't work with Driving Flight. To me this is a bug. Why does it not work - but stuff like Watershaper's Focus or Fire in the Hole does? Not related to spells at all by the way.

If there would be a way to mark the spiritual weapons as "unarmed" so that they work with the unarmed weapon proficiency (including Haymaker) without giving them bonuses from MonasticUT/TranscendentS I would support that. It's sad that Fighter (esp. Devoted) with stuff like Confident Aim etc. doesn't work with Spiritshift. Iirc the spiritual fists of Woedica now work with the proficiency but don't scale with MonasticUT/TranscendentS. So there seems to be a way to realize this. Same as allowing Form of the Fearsome Brute's fists, Kalakoth's Minor Blights and Rot Skulls etc. to use a fitting weapon proficiency (unarmed/wand for example).

Druids can be made good martial characters with the help of certain spells, not by concentrating on Wildstrike alone and omitting all spells. Wildstrike, Nature's Terror and Avenging Storm is a very powerful combo for every SC Druid who wants to go into melee. There is no need to boost the melee dmg to the same heights as those of other classes if you can have such nice and powerful support spells. I would buff Wildstrike Frenzy though since it's really not good and no motivation to go SC Druid. Avenging Storm is though.

4) was removed from PoE and Deadfire because the combo is too powerful. In Deadfire, Monastic UT and Transcendent Suffering both scale with Power Level - while Druid's spiritshift weapons scale with character level. What happens if you have both (=dual scaling) you could see when Priest of Woedica got introduced and the spiritual "fists" did scale with level AND with Monastic UT/Transcendent Suffering: too powerful for obvious reasons.

Yes, I would prefer Ancient Weapons as soon as I could. By the way: Animany Cat as pet gives all party summons +1 PEN (and +2 MIG) which can make a huge difference in certain fights where your summons are only 1 PEN short of penetrating enemies' AR properly.

Tactician/Bloodmage with Whispers of the Endless Paths (using Mule Kick in order to apply AoE Disorient/Flanking) and later Spirit Lance (same trick) with the support of Chillfog (AoE Blind/Flanking) is pretty nice. Also Clear Out with Whispers otEP and Spirit Lance is pretty good. Tactical Barrage and Disciplined Strikes are both pretty nice - but since you can get +5 INT/smart via Infuse wVE already I'd probably go for Disciplined Strikes. Unlessyou want to use Monastic Unarmed Training. In that case you want to stack every power level you can get for the fist scaling. Or if you want to use lots of spells that scale well with Power Level (like Missiles etc.). Generally speaking with Tactical Barrage vs. Disciplined Strikes on a Battlemage you trade +5 INT and +1 PL (+5% multiplicative dmg, +duration, + PEN, +ACC with all offensive abilities) for +25% crit conversion. Usually I'd say Tactical Barrage wins this comparison, but since you can already get smart with another ability... Also notable: Vigorous Defense stacks its buffs with Wizard spells like Mirrored Image, giving you +50 deflection and +20 to the other defenses. Vigorous Defense does NOT stack with Llengrath's Safeguard though. But with all other wizard buffs that raise deflection. With Spellblade the nice thing is that AoE weapons like Minor Blights and Spirit Lance can apply all your afflictions and DoTs in an AoE. Arterial Strike, applied right at the start of the encounter on a bunch of enemies, can have a devastating effect for example. Same a Toxic Strike - especially if you buff up your INT. Also Riposte can be pretty nice with Spirit Lance and all those self buffs. Llengrath's Safeguard stacks its defenses with Mirrored Image etc. Llengrath's Displaced Image works very well with a large shield and Adept Evasion in order to make reflex based spells no threat to your Spellblade. You can basically nuke yourself with reflex based spells like Fireballs but won't get harmed a lot.

Blood Frenzy does not apply its DoT via Carnage. That is because Carnage can't crit (only miss/graze/hit). Spirit Frenzy (staggered on hit) does work with Carnage. The only weapon/ability effect I know of that works with Carnage in Deadfire is Lord Darryn's Voulge with Static Charge. Bleeding Cuts: no. Rogue's DoTs also don't work with Carnage. But Blood Storm and other DoT ability effects might work with an AoE weapon like Whispers of the Endless Paths. A good way to apply stuff like Blood Frenzy and Bleeding Cuts would be Heart of Fury. But also Clear Out (Fighter).