Boeroer

That's why I like a Beguiler better for the unmodded game - a Beguiler can gain lot of focus from just casting one or two of the cheaper AoE deceptions (like Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors) on enough enemies. And also spells like Whisper of Treason etc. are considerably cheaper. Also do not pick Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming if you want to use the Forbidden Fist attack a lot (I guess everybody does ;)) and if the game has no Community Patch mod. They won't work. Lightning Strikes (+15% shocking lash) does work though. By the way: Inner Death (Monk PL9) has the same problem (also fixed with Community Patch) - but that's only an issue with single class monks of course. If you do install the Community Patch mod (not possible on consoles, otherwise it's easy - but don't know about Steam Deck) then both of my objections are moot and FF/Soulblade and also Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming are cool options.

But it is - because lashes are multiplicative damage bonuses instead of the additive ones (for example the forbidden curse bonus - which is pretty high but still only additive). A lash takes all the damage that gets rolled into consideration (all additonal dmg bonuses, crits, overpenetration, forbidden fist curse etc.) and calculates the 15% based on that. While the additional damage bonuses only use the base dmg of the weapon (or ability, PL scaling counts as base dmg). A persistent 15% lash for rel. little investment is actually pretty awesome to have. If you can't use the Lightning Lash of Lightning Strikes then you should stick to Swift Strikes - but I assume that's what you meant in the first place. And yes, +5 DEX and an additional action speed bonus is a very good thing to have for only 1 point of Mortification. --- I would absolutely recommend the Community Patch. It's free and easy to "install" (aka copy a folder into the game folder). It's a mod that doesn't go crazy with wild and fantastical "improvements" but focuses to address some hickups and oversights of the original game and does that well imo. See the Forbidden FIst punch which doesn't generate focus in the original game and also doesn't work with some of the Monk's own abilities (clearly an oversight by the devs). The mod also has unique icons for every passive ability - which the vanilla game doesn't have due to time restrictions during development. The original game uses the same icons for a lot of totally different passive abilites. That can be confusing if you ask me. Me advertising that stuff has obviously nothing to do with the fact that I created those CP icons, ehehe... You can also individually trigger every change the CP does to the vanilla game by deleting or renaming some files in the mod folder. They are named in a way that it's easy to guess which file contains which individual modification. In addition to that the mod is even split in two parts (basic and extended). Edit: now I read the part with the PS5 - rofl sorry. :super-embarrased-emoji

I always liked FF/Beguiler in order to extend the duration of Mind Control via DualityOMP(INT), Enfeebled and Lingering Echoes. You can charm or dominate an enemy for a really long time with that combination. Also I think Beguiler and Old Vaillian fits somehow - also with the portrait options. Also nice that you can hit a charmed enemy with Soul Ignition and/or Disintegrate and that enemy won't flip back to hostile but will keep fighting for you while dying. --- Not on your list, but FF/Berserker has its appeal with the Confusion/Clarity of Agony & Crucible of Suffering combo. Don't pick Rooting Pain because you will interrupt yourself (while confused). With the shouts and Spirit Tornado there's als some afflictions to prolong, but mainly it's about using the self-inflicted confusion to your advantage. --- Also not on your list, but ever thought about FF/Druid? Like FF/Ancient for example? Touch of Rot and Taste of the Hunt are brutal with enfeeble + INT bonus. And stuff like Insect Swarm and Plague of Insects profit a lot from +10 INT. But the shock spells such as Relentless Storm and Nature's Terror, too (maybe better with pick Fury then). Embrace of the Earth Talon is also a good spell candidate. And if you would pick Hold Beasts you can paralyze beasts (except immune/resistant ones) for a really, really long time because the base duration is a whopping 20secs. With Tanglefoot you can create your own source of short-lived and rel. harmless afflictions (hobbled) that can give you wounds and healing all the time (because it does friendly fire). Also, one of the most hilarious findings in my Deadfire time so far was that some spells work with Instruments of Pain (because they are labeled "melee" internally) - among them is Sunlance. It already has very long range (20m) and goes to 120m range via Instruments of Pain. You can stay at the other side of the map and throw a Sunlance towards an enemy (as long as you have a party member in place to actually see them - can be invisible or in stealth mode). Just a tidbit but it's fun. --- FF/Wizard can be nice too. I mean Sage in general is a nice multiclass and with FF there's no exception. May I lead your attention to the spell Fetid Caress? It is often overlooked because its paralyze is single target only (as is your FF attack with the Enfeeble though) - but it delivers a pretty long paralyze effect for such a low level spell (PL or tier 2). Combined with +10INT from DualityOMP(INT) and +50% from Enfeeblement - and also the generous Power Level scaling (because it is of low starting Power Level) - you can get a very long paralyze time out of it. Also targets fortitude which should be a fair bit lower after you struck an enemy with enfeeblement. It has a range of 5m which is roughly in line with your melee range+Instruments of Pain (4.8m). Even an Illusionist can cast it. The most interesting spells might be Ryngrim's I think. --- FF/Chanter is also appealing. The cone shaped invocations gain the most impressive AoE increase from all the INT the Monk has to offer. And stuff like Killers Froze Stiff turns into a very good tool with that much size and also additional duration from the INT bonus alone. Picking out some individuals and giving them even longer downtime is fun, too. Also check out "Ben Fidel's neck was exposed" - because its "-10 to all defenses" debuff stacks with all debuffs from afflictions and also other debuffs of individual defenses (like with a Miasma for example). And it causes frighten, too (helpful to cast it before Killers Froze stiff for example). So - it can be a nice addition to the debuff cycle - or just an alternative if enemies are resistant or even immune to DEX afflictions (see Killers FS). There is no immunity to Ben Fidel's defense debuff (only the frighten part). --- I personally think the first and the last options would be the most enjoyable (at least they would be for me, for now) because resources would be limitless and the abilities are still impactful and fun to use.

Yes, it wasn't a crit build by any means. It was more about fast shooting speeds/short reloading time while still delivering hits reliably - so that White Flames do actually trigger (won't on misses). That way I could dish out the AoE healing while doing ranged damage on top. And with ranged weapons it's a lot easier to target the enemies with the lowest deflection - if you want to make sure to get the healing procs.

Counterintuitively my most useful pistolero was a single class Kind Wayfarer. The main reason is that you can achieve inexhaustible Zeal which you can spend at very high speeds for damage and party support and healing. In detail: Reasons: If it's not the main character it requires almost no micromanagement and can function vey well with simple AI settings. As main char you can use nice decision making to pick certain enemies apart and which party member to support mist effectively. With pistols you can stay near the rest of the party all times to make the best use of White Flames (AoE healing) and Shared Flames (AoE burning lash buff). With Ring of Focused Flame you will have +20 ACC for your FoD pistol shots which outbalances rushed reload (pistol modal) should you want to use it. In combination with Scordeo's Trophy (its stacking recovery bonus) and two weapon style+dual wielding you will be reloading incredibly fast - while your accuracy is still okay. Against tough enemies you can turn off the modal to hit more reliably. In a second weapon slot you can carry a single pistol for even more accuracy against really tough nuts. Add Acina's Tricorn for even shorter reloading time and more accuracy. Also add the Ring of the Marksman for even more ACC (and +1 PEN which is useless for Eccea's main attack but nice for the elemental additions and of course for Scordeo's Trophy). Staying in the back line makes most of the self-defensive passives of the Paladin class rather pointless - so you can skip those which frees up a lot of points for the support- and offensive abilities. Even without most of the defensive passives a Paladin is still most likely not the weakest link in the backline, so you don't have to worry too much about getting targeted by shock troops/skirmishers and that sort of ranged- or high mobility enemies that try to disrupt your backline. It is possible to take almost all exhortations (they have instant casting time und no recovery) to cover tier-2 inspirations for all attributes. Normally spreading your actiuve abilites like that would also spread your Zeal thin and I wouldn't recommend it - but your high level goal is to get infinite Zeal. So it's useful to have a big portfolio of active abilites in order to be very versatile. The trick to gain unlimited Zeal is to have a Chanter buddy in the party and to take "Devine Retribution" at PL9. Devine Retribution gives you 2 Zeal once an ally goes down. This includes party summons(!). Which means that when the party chanter sings "Many Lives Pass By" and also summons "Ancient Brittle Bones" there will be a ton of potential Zeal on the field - especially because all of those summons, while being great bait and distraction, die pretty fast if enemies even look at them sharply. Before that you can gain a bi Zeal back if you constantly snipe enemies near death and trigger Virtuous Triumph. Doing that also triggers Inspiring Triumph for your party members so it's a nice strategy anyway. Having so much (endless) Zeal lets you shoot FoD with While Flame and Shared Flames (or Eternal Devotion if you prefer the damage for yourself) at all times at very high speed and good ACC. This means good dps - and more importantly constant AoE healing for your party. It's pretty difficult to go down if your Pal is shooting healing into the air every few secs. Once you get to the "unlimited Zeal" part you can cast exhortations on all party members in no time (remember: instant casts, no recovery) and become a super-supporter. You an also put Brand Enemy on every enemy in no time. "Burn in hell y'all!" If you have a Ranger in the party you will be his best friend - because you can revive his pet instantly and without limits. You can also use a different sublcass of course. Bleak Walker would be more about damage, Steel Garrote can paralyze lots of foes with the Garrote ability, Shieldbearer can use Lay on Hands to barr Death's Door all the time and so on... I found Kind Wayfarer to make the most use of this pistol/FoD combo. I played this as an hired adventurer from start to finish. Originally only hired that guy in Port Maje just to test out the concept, but it went so well I stuck to it until the credits rolled.

Iirc it has an enchantment upgrade that takes away the reflection but makes you completely immune to gazes (100% miss). Would a Monk's Soul Mirror reflect those rays then? Never tried...

After the ACC-buffing via Priest and the usual starting routine (casting Frenzy for example) I will start the fight with Phantom Foes + Secret Horrors. This will give you a lot of focus that you can use later and it drops the Will and Fortitude of the enemies already - while preventing them from using offensive abilities which in turn makes the whole party more safe. Note that a Wizard with Miasma of Dull-Mimdedness does help immensely with this Witch because that spell debuffs Will into the ground like nothing else. Ideally you can use the Wizard's Phantom with Concelhaut's Draining Touch as weapon. It targets Will and causes Weakened (also Fortitude debuff). It's a nice party synergy. Then my Witch will summon the fear ward somewhere into the bulk of the enemies and let my Priest withdraw it immediately (not only when it's under attack - just always; one less thing to worry about). I want my Priest to have more than two spell uses (via items and resting bonuses of possible). Then I will jump into said bulk (first with the Bounding Boots trick which doesn't use up the per-rest resource of the boots, then later with Leap), do a Barbaric Shout to maybe shake those enemies up which I missed before, but mainly to get +3 engagement. Then I start swinging. When I manage to body-blow an opponent I can use Disintegrate easily. Or I just keep swinging. That's why I prefer the miss-to-graze enchantment on the Willbreaker, combined with Greater Gauntlets of Reliability. That way I can even graze the most defensive enemies with Body Blows. Because Will is profoundly debuffed already the enemies will get affected by the Fear Ward often - which lets then disengage from me (remember the:+3 engagement from the shout). This will trigger disengagement attacks eventually which adds significant numbers to my dmg output. If things go sideways I have plenty of options with Charm, Dominate (cheap because Beguiler) and other spells to my liking. Once Blood Thirst is available the terrify/disengagement combination becomes pretty devastating and allows for either very fast weapon strikes - or very fast casting (focus on the damaging spells that have short casting time but longer recovery). I think it's versatile and very fun - also because the whole "walking terror" theme is so coherent. Imo it's best to use a different char for the club+modal. For me it's almost always Edér as Swashbuckler main tank. That way he not only contributes with tanking but also debuffing (in combination to Persistent Distraction for up to 6 engaged enemies later on). But yes, early on it's a good alternative to a Morning Star. I think using another char for the club+modal action frees up considerable action time for the Witch and improves the action economy overall. In a party it's often better to use division of work because of better action economy. Speaking of Priest + Withdraw earlier: When looking for a fitting Priest for a Witch one might be interested in a Berserker/Priest (I used Wael to counter the low deflection bc of Frenzy - and because crazy Priest of Wael somehow fits). The reason is that a confused Berserker/Priest can cast Withdraw on anything and anyone, giving you the opportunity to take several (remember empower points for additional casts) of the enemies out of the battle without any "saving throw". Withdraw is an auto-hit (because usually a beneficial spell for friends). When confused you can simply cast it on one or more dangerous enemies who get sidelined for a minute or so, deal with the rest and when they come back into the fight their comrades are already gone. Just an idea though. I played Witch + Berserker/Priest as if they were brothers Of course Xoti or Vatnir are perfectly fine Priest picks as well.

My advice would be to use survival for the accuracy bonus (if you know which enemies you will face). It's the biggest impact a skill can have in PoE by far. Like... fighting a dragon with +8 or even +12 accuracy makes a huge difference, especially of you want to CC the beast (see Charm/Dominate). In case you will be facing kith or you just don't know what's going to happen then the healing bonus is an okay alternative imo.

Hi, sorry - given that this build was written in 2016 I don't remember the details anymore. Usually I wrote down the values from the in-game character sheet after finishing the playthrough and I tried to exclude per-rest and item bonuses and such in order to get the "base" value, but maybe I missed something here. Or it may be because I copy-and-pasted the formatting template from another build and forgot to alter all values (like Lore for example). Survival 14 is very high. Nowadays i personally would try to get to 8 (iirc this is a threshold that allows for the next tier of ACC bonus when resting) and then let it be. 14 may be overkill - unless you are like me an don't ever use consumables, then you can skip all Lore entirely and put everything into Survival. Athletics is unnecessary imo bc. of Lay on Hands.

If "ranged" not only means ranged weapons but also (or mainly) spells then I would dearly recommend the Psion, especially with the Community Patch which is more generous with the "stops generating focus when being damaged" drawback the unmodded Psion has. Psion's focus generation almost never stops, not even when you are recovering or doing other things - like casting a non-cipher-spell. When receiving a crit it will stop briefly and also some hard CC like a stun might pause it, but in most other cases it just keeps on piling up. It also scales with Power Level, so obtaining some PL buffs also makes a noticable difference. Players often read about the focus generation mechanics of the Psion and think "that's not much, is it?" - but most fail to understand that a regular cipher will only generate focus between recovery phases - and if he has to move or do anything else than attack with a weapon he won't generate focus at all. And this also hampers the ability to cast spells more than most players initially realize. Not a problem per se - because with the right setup/combo a Cipher can also do great weapon damage so it's not a loss that he can't cast so much - but in some fights regular ciphers can really struggel to build focus because they can't damage the enemy properly (not enough ACC, enemies AR too high etc.). The Psion is not bothered by this. He just gets focus trickling in all the time. Usually I would pair a Psion with another caster class. That way you can cast from one class while focus i building up - then cast something with focus, then back to the other spells and so on. All caster/Psion combos work well, but imo the most versatile and fun combo is Psion/Troubadour or Psion/Bellower. Weapons don't matter for their damage but can be nice "stat sticks" - see Lance of the Mdwood Stag, Sasha's Singing Scimitar or Blightheart for example. The best endgame setup is most likely Sasha's SC + The Weycs Wand. While the scimitar can be obtained very early (which is always nice for a build idea imo) the wand comes very, very late, so I personally prefer a scimitar+small shield setup. It not only makes it less likely you recevie a crit (which would stop focus generation) but also lets most enemies target somebody else with less of a defensive setup. At the same time you can basically cast no-stop with a Psion/Troubadour (focus and phrase resources never run out) - which I find to be very satisfying. Almost no idle time between spells. I personally loved with combo of KIllers Froze Stiff + Soul Shock early(ish) in the game and later combined summons with mind control in order to turn a whole army against the enemy. But you don't have to do that. As I said the combo is very versatile and can do almost anything: damage, CC - even support and a bit of healing. But it all achieves this with spells, not weapon usage. Psion/Troubadour is also one of the verified builds that beat the Ultimate Challenge. This alone doesn't say too much about it's overall usefulness for a whole party - but in this case I can ssure you it also does that very nicely. Psion/Wizard is also a nice combination, also with Bloodmage althoug you can't use empower with Sasha's Singing Scimitar then. With Community Patch the self damage of Blood Sacrifice doesn't stop focus generation (don't know if that's the case with the vanilla game but it might be a concern). But of course any other Wizard will work, too. Conjurers have this funny quirk that their familiar bonuses will persist until the end of battle even if the familiar is gone. So you could cast two or three familiars and stack all the bonuses from them. It's not worth it in shorter fights but in the longer ones it's nice to have several bonuses going without a timed duration. Just an idea though... But: if a nice ranged weapon setup is a must for the ranged cipher then this is probably not a good recommendation for you. --- A very strong ranged Cipher combination is Arcane Archer/Ascendant or /Beguiler with Frostseeker (the on-crit AoE of Frostseeker generates focus, too). If it's more about CC then Beguiler (who gets a lot of focus from hitting numerous enemies with cheap Deception spells auch as Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors) - if it's more about weapon damage then Ascendant (because soul whips's dmg bonus doesn't turn off when focus is full). Ranger/Cipher can have amazing accuracy which leads to a lot of crits. And a lot of crits with Frostseeker leads to a lot of AoE procs which generate focus and deal great damage. Also against hard-to-hit enemies usually this build fares pretty well compared to other cipher combos that usually struggle building focus against tough enemies.

Yes, that's why I wrote "some". Against Neriscyrlas interrupts can be a key to prevent her from casting Llengrath's Safeguard - which annoys und frustrates most many players a lot once it's up. You can beat her without well-timed interrupts of course, but it's a lot harder once Safeguard is up. So I would argue that one should indeed "go out of one's way" - at least a bit - in order to learn more about interrupts and how to use them effecively. Otherwise you'll have to go out of your way in a different and most likely more unpleasant way to be able to beat her and certain other enemies. The power of interrupts (which again can be put out for free with numerous weapons and/or abilities) can be showcased with the aforementioned Arcane Archer/Troubadour: he can fire an arbalest+modal so quickly and with such high ACC (esp. when using Spearcaster+Arcana skill) that Neriscyrlas will not get anything done anymore but will be prone and interrupt-locked for the whole fight (as long as you don't let the ads come near the AA/Troub). That's one char alone who is of course optimized for interrupts - so it's most likely not a solution for players who just now encountered problems with the dracolich. But in a whole party it's often easy enough to reach similar results if one spreads out the ability to interrupt and add some hard CC over several chars to prevent certain actions of the enemy to happen. It's an efficient way to beat tough enemies without going into cheese mode. You don't have to do it, I'm just showing a rel. easy way out of a dilemma some players might have - with a tool they might already have at hand but didn't employ until now - because they didn't realize the potential. Alternative might be to go back, get other gear and stuff and then try again later.

Hello, it depends on your difficulty setting. On PotD I would go for higher PER - or put more focus on accuracy. On lower difficulties lowish PER is not a problem. For my answer I assume it's PotD: Barbs have rel. bad base accuracy, especially early on with Carnage. Since Carnage has so much potential with "special sauce on hit/crit- weapons I would give Barbs higher PER in general. Carnage's accuracy will scale with char level - and at some points its ACC will outmatch your accuracy of the normal auto-attack, but until then it's nice to not miss all the time which is frustrating. Fighters are fine with a bit lower PER imo because they get sufficient boosts out of their class and abilities. A spiritshifting Druid usually needs several high attributes - so while I would say Spiritshift benefits from high PER (because Druids don't have good accuracy by themselves) maybe 12 base is sufficient if buffed by the Priest properly (Blessing + Devotions). Ciphers have access to Borrowed Instincts which is a great ACC boost. Takes some time though. But I think with support from Priest it's okay until yaou get there. Same with the Wizard. Instead of Fighter tank/dps I would use a Monk. It already is tank/dps/cc all in one class. Fighters are good in the early game but fall off at some point imo. I firmly believe Monks are the best martial class in PoE. But of course that's also a matter of taste. An good alternative tank for CC/dps can be a Darcozzi Paladin who uses Inspiring Liberation, a marking weapon and Coordinated Attacks. Such a Paladin is very sturdy and doesn't do a lot of dmg himself, but he can buff a party member's accuracy by a stackable +30ACC which leads to an easy time against boss enemies and other tough nuts. At the same time a Paladin can provide additional healing with Lay on Hands and can substitute Priest's Blessing with Zealous Focus which spares a Priest cast. Both Monk and Darcozzi Paladin lack multiple engagement slots though. So if your tanking idea is developed on engagement in order to stop and bind enemies then the fighter is best. Priests are excellent buffers and later good damage dealers via spells, but they are not the best healers - Druids are imo. So I wouldn't use my Druid for shapeshifting alone but also provide healing to the party to give the Priest more action time for buffing. Spiritshift is pretty short anyway, so there's time for alternative actions like casting a healing-over-time spell like Moonwell before rushing into melee combat for example. When looking at "heavy CC oriented and damage output" my first instinct would be to dump RES (except on tank) and CON (except on Barb and maybe Druid a lot melee) max DEX, PER, INT and put the rest into MIG.

On the damage-dealing side: Combusting Wounds + Wall spells (multiple if you have different chars with wall spells, like Wizard + Druid for example), beam spells and pulsing spells of all sorts (Chillfog - yes it works with CW, Venombloom, Wicked Briars and all that stuff that does damage rolls every few secs) make short work of the Messenger's health pool. It's easier to land Combusting Wounds if you have a character with a Morning Star + modal who debuffs the dragon's fortitude a bit first. In general: use interrupts. Interrupts, wisely applied, make a huge difference with boss enemies. For example you can have one char with an Arbalest or Crossbow + modal who doesn't mindlessly fire and reload but waits for the dragon to execute an ability and only then fire a bolt to interrupt that. My most cherished character for that is a Arcane Archer/Troubadour because it not only fires very quickly with high accuracy but also becaue it can remoive all layers of concentration right away with a chant - but it works with all sorts of chars who have decent accuracy and some form of speedup. Without interrupts (or hard CC which is usually resource-restricted while interrupts are not ) you cannot beat some Megabosses - so it's better to getting used to employ them early imo. I usually beat the Messenger around lvl 14 or so. I mostly use story companions, maybe one hireling now and then.

Heh, maybe the proper name is setAttributeScore. I don't 100@% remember because I only type "setA" and hit tab and the console completes the command for me. The drawback is that I don't memorize the exact commands so we'll compared to when I would have to type them out every time. I don't know much about adding food effects because I don't pay attention to consumables at all (somehow I never incorporate consumable effects into my game, some generic food that's readily available will do for me) - so that's something that I almost never test, sorry.

You can. Spiritual Ally will replace the Animal Companion just fine. It would have been nice if the Ghost Heart's AC didn't count towards the summoning limit. It is balanced in itself (some benefits, but costs Bond and time to summon) and doesn't need this additional drawback imo. Ah well...

Ah yes. It is one of the few fights where the individual encounters are apart far enough from each other that you can save and reload or just retreat and come back later or simply rest.

Instead of using Character Creation and manually build your test char you can use setClassLevel and addAbility and give your test char all classes and abilities you want to test faster (or as an alternative for more detail/control). Due to the fact that you don't have to type the commands after the first time because you can use cursor-up and down to cycle through your previous commands and use tab to autocomplete your commands. With a bit of practice this saves a lot of time. Sometimes you don't even need to chance class. For example for testing passives you can simply add the passive ability to the character, no matter the class. Most passives don't care what class they are attached to. Like... you can test if a weapon works with Driving Flight even if it's not a Ranger. Some abilities are compositions of multiple "hidden" abilities. You then need to add all of them in order to get proper test results. Examples from the top of my head are Resonant Touch and One Stands Alone. In that case it may be saver to use the Character Creation. Also when you want to test empower mechanics the character creation is better because abilities added with addAbility can't use empower for whatever weird reason. In general I'd say if you want to test a whole character concept then the character creation is better, but if you just want to test singular aspects or only a certain idea about a character then setClassLevel and addAbility are better (faster). You can also remove abilities with removeAbility if they would skew your results (e.g. Heartbeat Drumming or Turning Wheel or the Helwalker passive often get in the way, or Carnage...). Subclass passives are also added with addAbility. They are usually named like the subclass itself (although several subclasses have additional abilities on top of the subclass-named one - example Streetfighter has three additional passives on top of his "Streetfighter" passive which does not do much). Your character doesn't need to have the right subclass in order to test subclass passives. However, for the proper ability tree display you can use setSubclass and see the correct tree. Always use tab to check out if a command and ability etc. actually exists. Saves you from guessing names. Sometimes it can make sense to raise or lower attributes with setAttribute. For example when testing out FF you can raise and lower INT and MIG and DEX and play around until you find the sweet spot. I think for getting into it the character creation screen is a great starting point.

I'd say it's mostly likely your defenses that are not high enough to evade cannon ogres' fire often enough - and your accuracy might be too low to reliably land CC effects, too. Robes don't help I guess - but the effect of DR might even be negligible. It is all doable from lvl 6 on maybe - but then you really need to know all the obscure stacking tricks and the ideal approach for the initial fight and so on. And although the following map is a bit easier then you'll still get your ass kicked by way more difficult enemies in the adjacent maps around - so I would just level up more before coming back. What immensely helps in the following maps in the WM is to first go to Twin Elms in the main game and obtain a small shield named Aila Braccia. Not mandatory by any means, but it really helps in some of the harder fights in WMI.

Lvl 7 is way too early imo (esp. for not-so experienced players). I'd def. recommend to not go sooner than lvl 8 (and that's also pretty difficult).

Yes, it works. You got it backwards: the Ghost Companion can engage others (Stalker's Link contains an additional engagement slot) - but it cannot be engaged BY others.

Direct damage bonuses are only additive and only apply to the base dmg of the weapon (the damage a regular, normal Hunting Bow has for example). Let's just assume it's 10-20 or 15 on average. Now every direct damage bonus (Sneak Attack, Biting Whip bit also Fine, Exceptional etc.) uses that base damage as the... well base of calculation. So... 10% is 1.5 more dmg per hit. No matter how awesomely enchanted your weapon is. 10% direct dmg bonus for weapons is pretty pathetic. It's a bit better if you use weapon abilities (the base dmg scales with Power Level then) but still not great. Soul Whip uses all damage you dealt and generates focus from it. Not only the direct weapon damage but also the damage from lashes and so on. Thus, the bonus of Draining Whip is multiplicative. You will gain a lot more focus than before. Of course Draining Whip isn't worth anything if you only want to use weapons and never use focus (which wouldn't work anyway because Soul Whip bonus turns off of focus is full unless you are an Ascendant). But why use a Cipher in the first place then and not a... Rogue or so? Community Patch turned the Biting Whip bonus into a lash instead of a direct damage bonus. Lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses which take stuff such as crits, Overpenetration, Exceptional, Might and all other direct dmg bonuses into account and then calculate the bonus lash dmg based on that dmg roll (and not on the weapon's base dmg alone as direct dmg bonuses do). So a x% lash for your weapon is much more valuable than a x% direct dmg bonus. And lashes also generate focus. Before CP, Draining Whip was a no-brainer pick. With CP it's more balanced. --- Main selling point for the Seer is the incredible accuracy imo. Best potential (and practical) accuracy in the whole game - which is great to have with stuff like Puppet Master or Disintegrate - or crit-based weapons like Frostseeker and so on. --- I personally think Stalker/Soulblade with Sun&Moon + Tuotilo's Palm (or Magran's Blessing or Best Defense), spamming Soul Annihilation with deadly accuracy is the nicest combo, but Ranger/Beguiler is also nice, as is Ranger/Ascendant - both with bows, esp. Frostseeker.

Yes, you can spawn any prefab at mouse position for example. This ones are cre_dummy which are immobile Rotghasts with low defenses but very high health - so they are great for testing.

I guess because Obsidian was obtained by Microsoft they had to remove their games from Sony's platform?

If you value tankyness and spike weapon damage over support then go Paladin. If you value (strong) party support go Priest. Priest is the strongest class in the game if you use a party because it hs incredible party buffs. Paladin has great passives that can make him very sturdy and the "Flames of Devotion" ability provides some weapon-based offensive appeal. Generally speaking: a Paladin's primary function is there to last, a Priest is there to buff. But this is only the general concept. With PoE you can "twist" classes to a certain extend. It's possible to make a good Great Sword Priest for example (see a suggestion of one). But you can also make a great support Paladin who's also tanky (see here). If going Kind Wayfarers it's very benefical to pick dual wielding concept - because the KW's speceial feature is that he can heal allies inthe vincinity with his Flames of Devotion attack. And if you have two weapons this healing will proc twice instead of only once (if using two-handers or a single one handed weapon or weapon and normal shield). But it also works with a weapon and a bashing shield (there are only 4 of those in the game, but one comes superearly, called Larder Door). With a bashing shield you can keep the tankyness but get two attacks when doing FLames of Devotion, giving you two healing procs instead of only one. One of the strongest martial classes in PoE is the Monk. They also fit your description a bit about being spiritual/religious. They generate resources through suffering (getting damaged). Maybe your character wants to gain redemtion by receiving punishment, who knows. In PoE Monks don't have to use their fists - they are just a viable alternative to weapons. Nothing speaks againast using any other weapon as a monk. In terms of gameplay mechanics in melee combat Monks are more potent and interesting than Paladins or Priests imo. Also Monk is one of the best classes in Poe2/Deadfire imo and great for multiclassing with anything really. Raw power Priest still wins in the end though. But the curve start more flat as with all "per-rest" casters in PoE and then at some point goes steeply upwards due to the way they gather spell uses per rest.

I guess because Obsidian was bought by Microsoft - and Microsoft is in competition with Sony when it comes to consoles.