Boeroer

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...

As I already said: Forbidden Curse last for a very short time if you build accordingly. Around 1.3 secs without Crucible and kind of instantly with it. You can just keep attacking with FF or alternate between it and WotW. Don't know if this is enough to kill the Oozes though. But usually the "new" FF has no trouble gaining wounds. Maybe even Hylea's Talons do work: the DoT will be very, very short and once it ends it gives you a wound. Maybe there are other ways to reliably "afflict" you with something? I besides the stuff that HOW puts on you. Maybe symbiote doesn't give you a wound when it expires because it has no finite duration. Can't one use Efficient Anguish to prevent them from merging? And what Jayd said. FF works with Instruments of Pain indeed.

I know it changed at some point. I did test it some time ago but to my embarrassment I can't remember the outcome of that test anymore.

A Shattered Pillar gets 1 wound from 25 dmg iirc. So if you deal 50 dmg you should get 2 wounds. If you deal over 25 dmg with the additional attack but don't get an additional wound it doesn't work.

Forbidden Fist with very high defenses will get missed a lot. Lots of misses means wounds through Imagined Pain. You could even stack Tumbling + Graceful Retreat and use missing Disengagement Attacks as source of wounds. Maybe...? With additional affliction reduction (Clarity + items) your Forbidden Fist curse will vanish almost immediately, giving you wounds. I don't think wound generation will be a problem.

Unfortunately it only works on enemies cought in between. But Antipathetic Field is the only Shred spell that triggers Death oTC in such a fast fashion.

Isn't Grog the best pet for an Ultimate run? If you are k.o. you die anyway. And no engagement makes for easy movement. No need to wear Nomad's and stuff.

I don't think it's a good way to get wounds. I'd still say that Forbidden Fist is the way to go. With very high Res the curse is less than 2 sec (close to no dmg) and the expiration of afflictions will heal you (and trigger Crucible). That's free wounds basically. High RES might be desirable anyway.

Or you cast a Desintegration plus Puppet Master and don't bother at all while the enemy fights for you and binds other enemies. Or you spend 10 focus for a Whisper of Treason to turn him around, remove the threat entirely for 10 focus and deal with him later. In the meantime he engages and damages your enemies and works like a summon. Due to PL scaling he does that for a really long time, too. Haunting Chain would be fine if it had a small AoE. 1.25 m would be sufficient. Then it would have a synergy with Shared Nightmare and I would be pleased. That would be an ok PL 9 ability. Single target Terrifiy is too bad for PL 9. Driving Echoes is great (if you are not solo). Death of 1000 cuts is nice if you use Antipathetic Field. The passives are great. Haunting Chains is not. If you have to pick your PL 9 ability you gimp yourself with Haunting Chains. Or you chain yourself with Haunting Chains. Except if you play solo cipher. That would be the only case where I would maybe take it. Maybe...

I helped him several times (not siphoning anything, just setting him free) and in those cases never saw the guardian.

I don't know if they count as auto-attacks since they are labeled with their ability name in the combat log. Did you test if they do?

Hyleas Talons can put a raw DoT on you (or your enemy). This happens all the time and thus you generate wounds. They also give you a lash.

I didn't play a Shattered Pillar for a long time and not when I was testing Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming. So I can't say if they generate wounds. I suspect that they don't since they are flagged with a certain ability name.

That is not correct. I didn't use Whisper of Treason for a reason. That rhymes. And what rhymes is true. You make it sound as if Haunting chain was not PL9. Petrification is another PL9 spell that nobody picks by the way. Sure there is. It's called Puppet Master. Read that somewhere...

Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming don't stack additively. They simply get both checked one after the other - which in this case means they both can trigger (!). They can trigger themselves. The best generic single handed melee weapon for forcing crits is a Rapier + modal which always has +25 ACC. There's a unique one that even has "Thrusting" (+4 ACC) on top, giving you +29 ACC. This stacks with Enduring Dance (+12) and leads to lots of crits. Another variant is to use Scordeo's Edge. It has an enchantment that gives you lots of ACC during a fight and also Blade Cascade. Shattered Pillar actually is the weakest Monk subclass atm. You will get no wounds from using active abilities like Stunning Surge or Force of Anguish or Torment's Reach. At the same time the wound limit means you won't get past 5 wounds - which is bad for Iron/Turning Wheel and also means you can't immediately repeat Whispers of the Wind like other Monk subclasses can. I don't know why they didn't lift the wound limit back up after they needed the wound generation so hard.

It's a PL9 ability that terrifies a single enemy for a big amount of focus. The enemy can't take actions against you then. Way before that you get an ability that does the same: it stops the enemy from fighting against you. But it also makes the enemy attack its allies. It's called Puppet Master. This simple comparison shows why Haunting Chains is really bad for a PL9 ability. It's not unfair hate. It's reasonable criticism. It's bad. So bad. It's so bad that it went good from meh overflow, couldn't stop and went bad again. That's how bad it is. I would even say it's worse than Kalakoths Frozen Fishfingers.

Hah! 14 done, 52 to go. Maybe I can finish till Monday. Take this, subclasses! :shakesfist:

Versus Evil is developing the console ports and afaik the release will be end of 2019.