Boeroer

That goul rush fight in SSS. I'm just too impatient.

Helwalker/Ascendant and Berserker/Ascendant still seem to be a better choice (both can get +2+1 PEN and either a long Ascended uptime with +10 INT and also huge AoE or total removal of recovery and speeding up casting time). Both also do generate focus very quickly. Don't know how a Devoted wants to beat that. But that's maybe something for another thread. Streetfighter/Soulblade I tried again and what's particularly awesome ist that if you get flanked and bloodied your Soul Annihilation will also get the Streetfighter's increased sneak attack and crit bonus.

Hi QA folks! I thought I read a bug report about this - but I couldn't find it anymore. Sorry. This is an old bug but it seems it never got fixed. So: If you play a Soulblade/Fighter and kill an enemy with Soul Annihilation you will not get an additional attack from Cleaving Stance. Imagine that: not a single one. That's somewhat disappointing. It seems that Soul Annihilation isn't considered a melee attack when it comes to Cleaving Stance - which it totally is. But I can't say for sure. Anyway: doesn't work. No savegame needed (I guess) since you can reproduce this easily with any Soulblade/Fighter. Bye!

By the way: I tested Soul Annihilation + Cleaving Stance and it still doesn't trigger if you kill with SA. Will bump the bug report... edit: made a new one since I coulnd't find the old one.

In my opinion Ascendant is not the right choice - if you want high melee damage. For casting the occasional power a Soulblade is as good as any cipher (even better if the occasional power is a Shred power). Ascendant is nice if you want to spam powers while ascended. But this doesn't seem to fit the OP's description too well: - dual wielding swords - melee - single target dmg - "I already have 2 other Companions who deal AoE" Soulblade is a nice combination of melee damage and occasional cipher power use. Most likely you will be mainly using Soul Annihilation - because it's great as single target melee damage tool. But in no way are you stuck to it. Shred powers are cheaper for a Soul Blade. So stuff like Recall Agony on a tough boss or an occasional Disintegration on a high deflection but low fort enemy are still viable and nice options. Ascendant really shines if you are a power spammer - especially if you have abilites that either buff attack speed and recovery (like with Ascendant/Barbarian for example or single class Ascendant with Time Parasite or Ascended Streetfigher with Heating Up) or extend the duration of Ascended (Priest's Salvation of Time, Wizard's Draining Wall) or both (like Helwalker's Swift Strikes and +10 INT bonus) so that you can squeeze more casts into your ascended phase. Ascendant never appeared to me as a particularly great fit for a Devoted (especially if you want to focus on melee single target damage). The PEN bonus doesn't work for the powers you mentioned (unlike Tenacious from Monk or Berserker), also the increased crit damage is only for your proficient weapon. The only thing that's maybe cool about Fighter/Ascendant is Disciplined Strikes/ Tactical Barrage and the ability to fill your focus completely with a use of Clear Out. Or am I missing something here?

It's even more absurd to assume it's intentional. It's outright ridiculous.

I did! Here's a screenshot:

I have no idea what asnjas smoked while posting his answer. Or what I accidentially swallowed to not being able to follow his statements with regard to your question - but I think I can explain why Berath got mad. In PoE you have to pledge to a God (in that big tree, remember?) in order to decend down the last pit on Burial Isle. You make a promise to God Y to do X with the souls of the hollowborn children. If you don't do that you betray him/her and she/he gets mad. If you pledged to all Gods it means that you can only keep your promise with one of them, betraying the others. So that's why I guess(?) Berath gets mad if you choose that option. She doesn't get mad if you pick just another God you pledged to. You could not pledge to Eothas because he's kind of dead in PoE and isn't present. So no pledging to him at that point.

Nice catch. But where's the lie? "Outside party" is an elastic term without further definition. One could argue that even if you are confused or charmed/dominated you will not be part of an outside party (can't be controlled etc.). But this is quibble of course. So this is either a bug or another vague description. Is it a lie? No. Calling an error/bug/oversight a lie is pretty absurd. A lie would imply intention. I Ithink we agree that the developers don't intend to put false information into the game descriptions.

That would be really nice. But unfortunately: what thelee said last.

I'd say dual wielding once you have a Devoted/Soulblade. Just because in the early game a one handed setup is best. You can easily miss with Soul Annihilation and then your focus is zero with no damage done. It's very annoying. The +12 ACC helps a lot to prevent that. After a few levels that issue is gone and you can safely switch to a dual wielding setup. This wouldn't be possible with a two handed weapon. Except if you'd pick Battle Axes - but the single dmg type is off-putting.

Kana (arquebus guy) and Edér can be build into sturdy frontliners. Edér as dual sabre guy is nice. Give Kana a shield and a hatchet and once you hit lvl 9 give him the Dragon Thrashed chant and nothing else. Using Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits helps both fighters as well. Sagani (Lady looking for Persoq) is nice with Persistence (bow from lvl 4 of the Endless Paths) and focus on pet damage. The Wounding of the bow makes it so that Predator's Sense of the Fox (Itumaak) always applies. You should bring Durance (priest at Magran's Crossing). Priests are the most useful party members in PoE. Give him Inspiring Radiance and later use Devotions as well. Use Aloth as debuffer/CC guy. Cast CC spells right after Durance did cast Devotions + Inspired Radiance.

Do they scale with level?

Deathblows comes very late with a multiclass while Soul Annihilation is your friend from lvl 1 on. I wouldn't say that a Devoted/Rogue always does more damage than a Devoted/Soulblade over the course of a playthrough. Cipher can get Borrowed Instinct which stacks with Disciplined Strikes, giving you a lot of crits with Soul Annihilation which works well enough with Devoted's passive and Cleaving Stance. Pure melee dmg potential is maybe higher for Devoted/Rogue in the end. But as you said: You're not only doing melee dmg but can also cast powers like Body Attunement and Borrowed Instinct which can also be a really nice help even if you wantto focus on melee. Recall Agony as well. Wait: was the bug that kill by Soul Annihilation doesn't trigger Cleaving Stance ever fixed? By the way: do Phantom Foes (flanked: -1 AR) and Body Attunement (-2 AR) stack? If so then Devoted (+2 PEN) + Soulblade (+1 PEN with Hammering Thoughts) would be a really nice "penetrator" even with the low-pen sword. Very nice dmg synergy is Rogue/Soulblade of course since all of the rogue's dmg bonuses apply to Soul Annihilation as well.

Then you can totally focus on offense without getting punished for it too much. I mean if he's not the only frontliner.

What is untrue? That I remember it that way? Guess I can't remember differently anyway since I always kill Benwith right away (no flag, climb the fort, go to Benwith, free the gal). I guess the important thing is that you can't free her once the fort turned hostile. Because then she also seems to turn hostile (as does Mike et al.).

No idea.

If you go for Soulblade don't pick Biting Whip since it's a lot worse than Draining Whip - also for dps. In it's current state Biting Whip is a trap choice for any cipher who wants to use his powers - including Soul Annihilation. If explanation is needed I can elaborate. Assassin only makes sense if you utilize Stealth and invisibility. If not then the Streetfighter is better. Once you get flanked and get bloodied you will do crazy crit damage. Unbending and a Devil's Breastplate with+2 AR on bloodied help to stay alive while Cleaving Stance and Crits will make short work of enemies. Devoted/Trickster can manage to use Riposte even without shield (Vigorous Defense stacks with Mirrored Image). This can be nice in combination with Cleaving Stance. Other strong yet sturdy damage dealers are Trickster/Nalpasca and Trickster/Soulblade. The latter can be outright tanky if you wish since Mirrored Image, Psychovampiric Shield and Borrowed Instinct stack. Riposte does generate Focus.

Solo or with a party?

They are doing a lot of patching and balancing after release. Parts of the descriptions are getting generated to keep the descriptions up to date. But generated stuff can't be too specific. This means the more precise a description is the more likely you have to alter it after a patch. Altering descriptions isn't a big problem if you are only deploying an English version, but it's horrible if you have a lot of localized versions. If I'm right it's not a matter of laziness but a matter of resources and costs.

Oh sorry, I didn't see that thelee answered. Saw my quote and somehow overlooked that. :oops: Yeah - but "+x% speed with weapons" would not work on Modwyr since it would suggest it would also works with other weapons (in offhand or after a switch or whatever). Also on gloves you might want to be more specific since they can't profit from a speed enchantment themselves like weapon can. Best would have been to include a general "for attacks with this weapon" - like it's added for some other enchantments. Would make things a lot clearer.

I like sturdy dps fighter over tanks (since pure tanks don't work that well in PoE anyway - at least on PotD difficulty. Too many enemies). Dual Wielding has some slight advantages over two handed because Knockdown and Charge are Full Attacks (meaning strikes with both weapons). Offhand hits first, then main hand follows. Charge doesn't say it, but it not only does its crush damage on the way to the target (and also on the target) but also adds an invisible Full Attack on impact. In my opinion CHarage is the best fighter ability. Too bad it comes so late. Confident Aim's dmg bonus (20% min damage) is not, like most other dmg bonuses, an additive bonus but a multiplicative(!). That means the min base damage gets lifted which then multiplies with all other bonuses. It's an 8% multiplicative dmg bonus so to speak. Which is better than the descritpion suggests. Example: if you have a great sword with 17 base dmg which is superb (+0.45) and have MIG 18 (+0.24) and maybe Weapon Spec and Mastery (+0.15, +0.1) plus Savage Attack (+0.2) you would do on hit: 17 * (1 [base dmg itself] + 0.45 [superb] + 0.2 [savage Attack] + 0.15 [Weapon Spec] + 0.10 [Weapon Mastery] + 0.24 [MIG]) = 36.38 With Confident Aim you base damage gets lifted from 17 to 18.4. Now the damage is: 18.4 * (1 [base dmg itself] + 0.45 [superb] + 0.2 [savage Attack] + 0.15 [Weapon Spec] + 0.10 [Weapon Mastery] + 0.24 [MIG]) = 39.37 That's 3 damage. So it's about as good as a +20% "normal" dmg bonus in this case and gets better the more dmg bonuses you can stack (crit, more MIG etc.). It knd of scales with your ability to deal damage. Armored Grace is very good, too. Attack speed is a multiplicative dmg increase as well. Here's a nice calculator from MaxQuest: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ Disciplined Barrage is very good as well. Fighters can generate lots of crits because they have high starting ACC and Disciplined Barrage. It's only good with high INT though since its base duration is rather short. A good offensive fighter can be build in such a way that he can reliably prone dragons (Knockdown, Girdle of the Driving Wave, Overbearing [prone on crit] Weapon) so that they can't get up anymore. If your Overbearing doesn't want to connect you simply use a Knockdown. If you like your fighters with low INT your should consider wounding weapons like Drawn in Spring (lateish), Tidefall (early) and Acuan Giamas (comes superlate). In general I would say INT is a great stat for an offensive fighter. A fighter can be made sturdy enough with just his healing and good armor while putting the focus on his damage dealing. I didn't try a fighter with Firebrand in length, but I think that's what I would try next: buy the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer and skill for crits. High(ish) INT, high PER, high DEX. CON doesn't need to be high. RES maybe 10, rest MIG. Raise ACC and dmg. Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec, Weapon Mastery, Apprentice's Sneak, Runner's Wounding Shot, Knockdown, Bonus Knockdown, Two-Handed Style, Savage Attack, Disciplined Barrage, Confident Aim, Armored Grace, Charge (not in that order), Savage Attack, Scion of Flame (Firebrand +20% dmg), Merciless Hand, Dungeon Delver... Should be fun.

Never had the feeling it doesn't scale. That would make for ridiculous healing at higher levels and I think I should have noticed... hopefully...

Hm, I think I'm only able to free her once I killed Brutal Benny without setting off any alarm. Or that's what I remember... Don't need to clear the guards then. If you kill Benny without setting the whole fort on fire then that's enough.

No, that was thelee. I suggested less hyperbole and emotions but more reason. You stated that a problem of Deadfire's rules is that they are not like in PoE's. Here we have a case where they are. So what's the reason for complaint? That the description is not detailed enough? The descriptions are not good enough, but they are better than in PoE. I can't count how many times I answered the question if the speed enchantment on weapons in PoE is universal or not. I understand and agree that the descriptions could be better and more precise - but there is zero rational reason to rant about this if you were fine with the same mechanics in PoE. Sober feedback and constructive criticsim on descriptions, tooltips etc. are more than welcome if you ask me - because I think it's the weakest spot of both pillars games.