Boeroer

If you are a melee wizard, even more a "tank" who want to draw and crontrol a lot of enemies it's the best. Don't waste your time attacking with weapons. Just cast something while enemies just vanish after hitting you and then get substancial DoT while they are away. Once they pop back up they are too stupid to stop hitting you... and it repeats.

Didn't @Raven Darkholme/Victor Creed do megabosses with Tactician/Bloodmage (using the Unbending/Wall of Draining cheese)?

Never happened to me.

You are comparing AoE to single target dmg though. Marauder with Amra will have two parallel AoE effects going. And dual pistols is a rather weak weapon setup to begin with.

Oops. I forgot that my parents in law will be visiting us over the weekend. So I will most likely not be finished on Monday...

Early game will be very hard since this is the part where the low deflection is most noticable.

Maybe it's 30/24 now? Maybe I will test later... By the way: last time I checked Whispers of the Endless Paths and Spirit Lance generated wounds with their AoE dmg. Whispers otEP works well with INT bonuses like from Turning Wheel or Enlightened Clarity because the cone will grow. The cone attacks do not proc Swift Flurry or Heartbeat Drumming though. But WotEP has its own speed boost that stacks with Swift Strikes.

@Phenomenum & @MaxQuest: polishing mod? It truly was and still is annoying.

@Phenomenum and @MaxQuest: maybe this is also a case for the Polishing mod? Since it won't get fixed - but seems to be easy to fix?

Noice. Will this become part of the Deadfire Polishing Mod(s)?

It depends on how many instances of TS you can stack. It jumps and every jump will cause a stack. So make sure you cast it on tight groups so that it can jump often. Also bonus PL increases jumps. The weapon shouldn't influence how high you can stack it. Maybe it was just a coincidence or you thought Red Hand wasn't sped up much because it skips one reload anyway?

He can use a shield and buff himself up no problem. The starting deflection is low but you can make it work. The biggest problem though is if you get hit by Arcane Dampener and such. Suddenly you are stripped of your whole tankyness. That being said: some high level stuff is very nice for "tanking". For example Cloak of Death. Also Minoletta's Piercing Sigil.

Use a dagger as backup. Also +5 ACC and has slash dmg.

That's not only in Turn Based mode. That's the dmg penalty in general for Full Attacks. Patch dates back to last year.

Mostly bug fixes.

No you are not. At least that's the impression you get when you read the devs' comments. Read Josh's tweets and you'll get a (fuzzy) impression. It sounds as if exploiting bugs will get you diqualified. But they will not tell you why they disqualify you. So better play it save than wasting lots of hours.

Icons for Fighter, Barb, Monk, Rogue and Paladin subclasses finished. Cipher and Druid next...

If you want a tank on whom you can cast friendly fire AoE spells like Fireball and stuff without hesitating I would recommend Swashbuckler. It's actually more tanky in this case because Adept Evasion + Refreshing Defense + The Wall is very good against anything that's targeting Reflex. All grazes (and that's most rolls against you) turn to misses - and occasional hits or crits don't do that much damage due to The Wall. At the same time you can deal more dmg AND perma-debuff your surroundings passively with Persistent Distraction + 5 engagement slots. Swashbuckler tank is my favorite. Usually it's Unbroken/Trickster but Edér also does well enough.

CombatPet? Sound like the Conjurer's Familiar.

@thelee: for Vela you could carry around that medium shield with the healing aura. Forgot the name. Lathandria's whatever or something.

How can you recruit her in a forced solo run?

That strategy was used by nearly all PoE ultimate challengers so far.

Loading times are indeed significantly longer now. I'm on an SSD and so far they were very short for me. They are still not tediously long but it's noticable.

Versus Evil in this case. Afaik they don't work with Paradox on Deadfire. But I read somewhere (Aarik on Twitter or Discord I believe) that Versus Evil is doing the port.

Obviously. Since the patch is out and all that...