Boeroer

Right, with Turn Based Mode this would be less of a problem I think.

If you want to apply all those modals in every fight and switch around all the time then it is indeed a grind at some point and it would be more practical to distribute those weapons+modals across the party instead. If you just want to be a swiss army knife of debuffing and just have the indeal weapon-modal at hand then it doesn't become so tedious imo and is good to have. This is true. You can apply a modal like Body Blows to a whole bunch of enemies with Clear Out (or the upgrades Clear the Path and Clean Sweep). Check out this page to learn more about them: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/fighter#:~:text=Clear Out%2C Clean Sweep%2C and Clear the Path Note that Clear Out targets fortitude instead of deflection (like normal attacks would do). Then Clear Out (and upgrades) pushes enemies around - which often messes up the targeting for the party members who want to profit from the defense debuff (like for example Wizards, Druids and so on). But if you have the enemies in confinded spaces so that they don't get scattered too much it's very nice. A combination with a Monk is not bad imo because the added INT (Turning Wheel) makes the Area of Effect of Clear Out much bigger. Also Monks can provide additional accuracy which is sometimes needed to reliably apply the debuff. Single class Fighter would have the advantage of Clean the Path (very long AoE, pushes enemies in one direction so they don't scatter as much) and Clean Sweep (very big circular base AoE, scales very well with additional INT and stuff like Ring of Overseeing, the pet Loki etc. - but pushes enemies in all kinds of directions away from you). Besides that the single class Fighter isn't particularly appealing in my book.

--- Rogue with bashing shield: You can build a sturdy Rogue with a shield who is capable to survive in tough battles without hiding and still do good melee dmg. Let the Rogue use a bashing shield to still profit from the Full Attack strikes that contain afflictions (Blinding Strike etc.) and a hard hitting one handed weapon (war hammer, sabre, mace and so on). WIth a Full Attack the (weaker) offhand will strike first, not dealing that much damage but applying the affliction already. Second swing from the harder hitting main hand then gets the Sneak Attack bonus right away. A Bash is considered an ability - so it scales its accuracy with level (char level -1 = acc bonus) and is never behind your main weapon's auto attack too much - it keeps being decent (in terms of accuracy). My favorite late-game setup for such a rogue was Godansthunyr + Badgradr's Barricade. They work beautifully together. The bash of the shield procs Thrust of Tattered Veils - which has no limit per encounter. It will proc on every bash-crit. ToTV is a spell and thus doesn't profit from Sneak Attack - but it profits from Deathblows (+100%dmg) which makes it a nice addition to your dps. At the same time Riposte makes a lot of sense with such a Rogue (bash-crits from Riposte will proc ToTV, too). Godanthunyr allows to stun enemies on crit (so they won't be able to attack you) which also helps with unlocking Deathblows right away. The early to mid or even late game can be done with the superearly Larder Door and later Scath Gwannek if Azurro wants to sell it (kinda random event). Unfortunetly Dragon's Maw can't be bound to a Rogue so that leaves Badgradr's Barricade as the best option. Scath Gwannek is also nice because it has a 3/rest-spellbinding of Winter Wind (spellbinding with a Rogue: see below). This is still not a tank - but it's a quite sturdy Rogue who doesn't lose a lot of damage output. And you know what they say: "dead Rogues deal the least damage"... --- Ranged Rogue You can of course also play a ranged Rogue and thus circumvent the problem of getting knocked out so much while still contributing nicely to the party's damage output. Rogue with maxed MIG, low INT and Persistence (its wounding dmg per tick scales with MIG, its overall dps raises the lower the INT) has great ranged, single target dps. Also arquebus with Rogue is not a bad pick imo. Especially Pliambo per Casitàs, which has a marking enchantment, is great to hunt down casters and such in the back rows. You can team up with another ranged party member near you and while delivering deadly shots give your nearest partner all-stacking +10 accuracy on the target. Shoot at he same enemy and they will go down very quickly. ---Spellcasting Rogue Another way is to focus on spellbinding/-holding/-striking (and so on) gear. Since Deathblows works with spells you can pile all sorts of damaging spell-per-rest gear on the Rogue (see Flames of Fair Rhian, Amulet of SUmmer Solstice, Sun-Touched Mail etc.). Once enemies have two afflictions on them the Rogue can bombard them with his double damage spells with high accuracy. As with all spellcasters, you might want to spare the bulk of the spells for the tough fights and "just be a normal Rogue" in the easier ones. But once it's time to turn the tides the Rogue can really pull off some tricks then. Same with scrolls: a Rogue with Deathblows and a scroll of Missile Barrage on double-afflicted enemies is very deadly (again: +100% damage). --- Draining Rogue A Rogue with a draining weapon and good DR can survive a single encoutner long enough do have decent impact. Tidefall is a great weapon because it combines the health draining (which is dependent on the damage you deal) and the wounding (which works like a multiplicative lash and thus also is dependent on the damage you deal). Hitting with it won't raise your health of course (use potions of Infuse with Vital Essence for that), but it will work well for your endurance. You will sacrifice a bit dps because no Full Attacks/dual wielding and also bc. of longer recovery due to thick armor - but it's doing very well against high DR foes (wounding is raw dmg that bypasses DR completely and the higher base damage of two handers has an easier time with DR in the first place). It also makes using Backstab+Shadowing Beyond (and Cape of the Master Mystic) worthwhile in tough encounters. There are other alternatives with draining and they start pretty early (Gaun's Share, Oidhreacht etc. ). It's one of the very few times I actually used Rose of Salthollow - and it worked quite well. Also looks badass imo. --- The standard melee Rogue unfortunately isn't that well-suited for PotD's late game. Way too many enemies with way too much health (or endurance) for a single target damage dealer who's not able to survive concentrated attention.

Is it possible that this is only working because of the Community Patch? Because that mod removes Wizard keywords from spells that get used as Priest spells (see Fan of Flames for Pr. of Magran) and gives them fitting priestly keywords instead. Or does it also work without Community Patch (or the keyword component that's contained in it)?

If you are using Wall of Draining (and playing around with being bloodied) a lot I would take a look at the Magnificient Escape Cape. It's an early item and when becoming bloodied it unlocks the use of the Escape ability which - in addition to the mobility - grants +50 deflection for a few secs which can be prolonged with WoD. Since it's a buff from an item it will stack with almost everything (except Escape itself, but Paladin/Wizards don't have that). Since LL Cool's Safeguard is a "+20 to all defenses" buff it will stack with indivudual defense buffs (see Arcane Veil for example). So you can conveniently get +120 deflection with Escape+Veil+Safeguard, extendable with Wall of Draining. You won't even get grazed by anything that targets deflection. Combine with the other stackable item-buffs such as from Duskfall etc. for extra ridiculous deflection and defense numbers. On the other hand it is more fiddly to use/less convenient than a plain Cape of Greater Deflection for example. But if you can make it work it's a bit like god mode - at least against the usual melee and ranged attackers. I used this to make an "Offensive Parry" Arcane Knight (Steel Garrote/Bloodmage) viable in the late game on PotD because otherwise it was hard to gain enough deflection to be fun to play (solo). This also works with the Mask of the Weyc - but that comes superlate and doesn't stack with Arcane Veil so I usually don't consider it for any x/Wizard. --- If I remember correctly you can use the Shining Bulwark's aura with an Essential Phantom to gain an additional +1 AR: switch to the Shinig Bulwark, summon Phantom and then switch to your other shield setup. The Phantom should give you +1 AR. This doesn't work if you keep using the Shining Bulwark yourself: all active bearers of it get excluded from its aura. The +1 AR buff from the aura stacks with everything afaik. --- One of the best boots for solo (not Ultimate bc. no pause) are Bounding Boots - at least for me. If you cancel the jumping animation before landing (cancel as soon as the target green circle appears) the per-rest use will not get substracted and there will be no effect upon landing - but you will have moved for free. Very long range, no recovery, only short animation. Gets you into and out of all sorts of troubles. Of course it's a bit cheesy to exploit the boots in such a way... I find Boots of the White occasionally, but I remember a spot where thy seem to be a fixed drop: on the top of the mountain in the BoW-DLC, where you fight those crazed pilgrims after you did climb up there. One of those guys always drops them iirc. I also consider Boots of the Stone solid footwear. I usually have several of those in the early-mid game already - and they provide RES vs. MIG affl. which the Paladin doesn't get via passive.

Speaking only about damage dealing, Seeker's Fang with a Cipher is very strong against single foes, but WotW has so much potential - as long as there's more than one enemy - that it almost always takes the trophy imo. Especially in combination with Resonant Touch. Bit there's more than damage dealing. A Cipher/FF can charm and dominate rel. easily for a very, very long time (Lingering Echoes, +10 INT from Turning Wheel, +enfeeble) - after getting Instruments of Pain the Cipher/FF doesn't even have to get near the enemy anymore - and as I have said a lot in the past, mind control is one of the most impactful effects in the game. It's like creating a summon while at the same time taking an enemy off the battlefield. And being able to do that with replenishable resources just makes it even more impactful. So you turn three or four enemies and then even can summon two elemental monks on top (Dichotomous Soul)... And also very importantly: you can start doing impactful stuff right from lvl 1 on which adds fun imo. I personally like Beguiler/FF most - just because weapon damage isn't needed to gain focus and that's convenient - but you can still gain focus from weapon damage. In the unmodded game Forbidden Fist ability works as a spell and doesn't generate focus, that's another reason. I even tried Psion/FF and it works very well with the Community Patch mod if you concentrate on defense more (Tuotilo's Palm and so on). I wouldn't try that combo with the unmodded game. Cipher/FF is more versatile, fun to play early on and very strong overall. But if it's about pure martial prowess not much beats WotW+Resonant Touch.

+3 MIG = +9% healing. That works for the same sources the Physiker's Belt works with (which does +10% healing). On top of that you'd get +9% damage as you said - but even more importantly (imo) you'll also get +6 Fortitude defense. +3 MIG def. better in my book.

Hi! I guess you mean this one:

Ah well - the day didn't go as planned and I didn't get to play Deadfore today, sorry.

Just a few experiences: Ghost Heart/Ascendant can be very good - also bc. of the highest accuracy a class combo can get on its own. It is very good with Frostseeker for example. Builds focus very quickly and procs the AoE of Frostseeker all the time bc. of high ACC and Driving Flight. The AoE also generates focus. No fuss with the Animal Companion but can summon it behind enemies and then use it with stuff like Ect. Echo for example. --- Arcane Archer/Troubadour is also very good, especially an Arcane Archer with high Arcana using Spearcaster (unique arbalest). Sure-Handed Ila applies to reloading weapons such as Arbalests twice (so 2* -20% reloading time) which combined with Gunner and some reloading gear (like Acina's Tricorn and Sharpshooter's Garb + penelty-reducing pet such as Abraham) leads to awesome shooting speed with very high accuracy. You can actually use the arbalest modal to chain-prone even the tough singular enemies which takes them basically out of the fight. On top of that you have lots of useful invocations, Aefyllath adds damage to your shots and the Imbued Shots Pull of Eora and Binding Web are very useful with Driving Flight, delivering double CC fields with high speed and a ton of accuracy. --- Arcane Archer/Paladin - a very versatile character with high accuracy (epecially with Accurate Wounding Shot and Flames of Devotion in combo with the Ring of Focused Flame). Flames of Devotion counts as elemental attack so it doesn'r get the -5 ACC an Arcane Archer gets with "normal", non-elemental and non-imbued shots. Can heal, support, deal damage, do great CC, is sturdier than the usual ranged char. Can heal and revive his animal companion. Spearcaster is good, but any reloading weapon is good. --- Troubadour/Streetfighter with the Red Hand is a devastating shooter once you pick up the upgrades Whisp summons. With them you can distract yourself which stacks Sure-Handed Ila (2* -20% reloading) + Aefyllath (+15% burning lash) + Heating up (-50% reloading, extra Sneak Attack dmg). Also the summons help with crowd control of course. They last long enough that you can use another invocation in between most of times. With the Red Hand you can already shoot twice before reloading - and with the combined reloading bonuses the reloading action is incredibly short. As close as one can get to a machine gun imo. Great char for hunting enemy casters for example. No ranger here of course. --- Single Class Helwalker or Nalpasca with dual mortars from Serafen (Fire in the Hole, Hand Mortar). It's great early on bc. of Stunning Shots/Surge but literally explodes once you get Resonant Touch and Whispers of the Wind. Makes most late game encounters with lots of enemies trivial. Also nice with Watershaper's Focus (+Blast) instead of mortars. --- If you have a Chanter in the party who wants to use the Invocation "Many Lives Pass By" and also uses the skeleton summons a lot and/or if you have a party with lots of summons use in general: Single Class Kind Wayfarer with dual pistols (Eccea's Arcane Blaster + Scordeo's Trophy). Ring of Focused Flame, all the shooting gear, Two Weapon Style and so on. Fast shooting in general with good accuracy. Take all the exhortations and upgrades (in a manner so that there is no overlap with the inspirations), Shared Flames, Lay on Hands... it will be a nice character for roleplaying purposes and will deliver nice healing, support and single target damage - and truly unlocks its great potential once you pick "Devine Retribution": it will give you +2 Zeal every time an ally goes down - and even summons count. So every time a summon in your party gets killes you get +2 Zeal. If you have an endless supply of summons (see Chanter or Monk) this will turn your Paladin from a limited-resource class into a class with refreshing (overflowing) resources. You will drown on Zeal which you can spend to spam FoD (+Whit Flames), constantly healing your party while damaging foes, cast all the exortations in seconds (they are instacasts and expensive - doesn't matter if your Zeal comes back all the time), revive your party's Animal Companions endlessly without drawback, put Brand Enemy on every enemy in seconds and whatnot. It's very useful in the later game but of course it's real trick only comes online very late. I still found it very enjoyable because it doesn't suck before and it was its own fun to work towards that goal to unlock Devine Retribution.

Hi! I'm not 100% sure anymore but if I remember correctly it doesn't work on charmed/dominated enemies. I'm about to start up the game and can test it to be sure. Till later...

Hello and welcome. Depends on the topic. Questions about mechanics and character builds I would post in the resp. subforum. Everything else here. But it doesn't matter that much tbh. Since the PoE forum isn't that frequented anymore it's not a big deal if a topic doesn't fit the subforum 100%. If it's too bad we can always ask a mod to move the topic. I don't think your questions will be silly. But even if: I'll still try to answer them. May take some time though - am not as frequently monitoring the forum like I did in the past. But I will see new questions eventually - like... once or twice a day or so. Cheers!

Yes, that is very good. I think this is indeed the best class combo when considering the special requirement and the whole game from start to finish. Maybe one could think that they lack a bit of an accuracy boost - but I think it's not a real issue.

Ach Scheibenkleister - now I want to do another run with a Blackbow Wizard in the party.

Unfortunately I don't use AI much so my experience with the scripting tools is pretty limited. But I guess the easiest way is to use a timer/cooldown with the phantom? I personally also like to cast Citzal's Martial Power after summoning the Phantom - that would make the timer/cooldown approach very unreliable I think. I think I would just set up a script for the self buffing and summon bow part and then cast Essential Phantom manually. This would also allow for better positioning of the phantom. And then I'd manually cast C's Martial Power. By the way: I really like Helm of the White Void with a Blackbow Wizard. It works for every shot (+10 ACC) bc. of the terrify effect. And it works for the phantom, too.

It has its pros and cons. For example with DoTs you can time it with powerful but short buffs/debuffs so that the attack roll of the DoT has an easy time landing. The ticks also don't count as attack rolls so they won't make you visible (while you are using Shadowing Beyong/Smoke Veil) and don't remove Takedown Combo (but still get +100% damage bonus) and little tricks like that. Also DoT often do raw damage which completely ignores armor. You can also prolong DoTs on enemies with "Enfeebled" (+50% duration) or by debuffing the RES of the enemy - because it's a hostile status effect on the enemy. Pulsing spells' duration cannot profit from that (but if a pulse applies a status effect -see Chillfog- that effect can). Besides the multiple chances to hit, pulsing spells are nice in combination with stuff like Confounding Blind or Combusting Wounds and such. I don't know a list that separates between DoT and pulsing spells, but usually the ability description is enough to tell them apart. I could go and compile such a list, but I'm with my kids visiting my parents and only have my smartphone with me. Maybe later, will be back home tomorrow evening.

in case it is not known: if you put Outworn Buckler in weapon set 1 and the copy of the Outworn Buckler in the 2nd weapon set (and then switch between 1 and 2) you can clear hostile effects with half the switches - compared to a setup where the Buckler is in 1 and something else in 2. Maybe that's useful when you can't pause and want to keep the switching jitters to a minimum. This also works with Lethandria's Devotion. Switching from original to copy and back gives you health each time you switch, reducing the needed switches to heal a certain amount by half. I don't mean a second instance of the item via export/import or so, I mean the convenient copy function for weapons when you want to create different weapon sets but with the same item (e.g. sabre + shield and mace with the same shield).

If I'm not totally misremembering things then Cap of the Laughingstock's effects also apply to the wearer. I use it on the same guy who's wearing Ngati's Tusk from time to time in order to bring down all defenses, including deflection - in an auto-hit-AoE by 10 or more - and one disadvantage was that the wearer also loses those 10 points of deflection. Beneficial auras that do not work on the wearer that come to mind are the stealth/RES one from that split cape right at the harbor in Queen's Berth (forgot the name of the cape) and the +1 AR one from the Last Defense tower shield found in Crookspur. --- I do not know about Effigy's Husk and its immunity issues. I have little experience with it bc. I rarely use it. --- I believe it is written somewhere in the export-char UI or the import-char UI that you can export/import your chars including items, but it's not very obvious unfortunately.

Sometimes I just hire an exported adventurer with a non-enchanted Ngati's Tusk from a former playthrough. It's very expensive to do so but it allows to get the item very early. In this case it doesn't even feel cheesy because you a) have to pay a huge amount for it and b) its best enchantment scales with Survival, so it isn't OP at all when you get it early and c) the exported char cannot come from a cheated game because that would flag your current game as cheated, too. For Antlers I just spam the wait function at Cuitzl's (and buy all the rare creature parts that may come up, like Vithrak Brains and so on, too). --- Some afflictions from unique abilities of enemies may not be coded properly so they might circumvent immunities. But it's rare.

Test (hello bracket test). Hm, brackets seem to work fine for me. I didn't experience any problems until the one above - it didn't even let me post the first sentence (when I cut the rest for testing purposes). I even pasted the text into some very basic text editor and removed all rich text features and possible tags and whatnot - didn't help at all. As if the text I typed somehow offended the forum, hehe. Very weird. I just hope this was a one-time occurancy only.

Unfortunaltey conversions don't stack like that. In code there will be a list of conversion abilities with their percentages - and the game will loop through that list after the initial hit - to see if any of those conversion chances might trigger. If one triggers the loop is ended with a hit-to-crit conversion. If none triggers there will be no conversion. Because of that the overall chance of conversion is not simply an addition of the individual chances. Instead they will stack multiplicatively and not additively, but not in favor of the player. It's easiest to calculate the overall chance by multiplying the chances NOT to convert: Dirty Fighting --> 0.1 chance to convert --> 0.9 chance NOT to convert. Vicious Fighting --> 0.1 ctc --> 0.9 ntc. Predatory --> 0.9 ntc Gravestep --> 0.75 ntc Durgan-Refined --> 0.8 ntc Bloody Slaugher --> 0.8 ntc 0.9*0.9*0.9*0.75*0.8*0.8 = 0.3499 or ~0.35 chance NOT to convert- substract from 1 and you get the chance to convert: 1-3.5 = 0.65 or 65% overall conversion chance. You can never reach 100% with this approach. Each additional conversion will have lower and lower absolute impact on the overall conversion rate. This is why stacking them at all costs doesn't yield the best results. In some fights the additional ACC is still good in the later game though. It depends on your ACC vs. the enemies defense. Usually high-defense bosses are cases where single handed weapon might yield better results than dual wielding (or two handers) just because you prevent misses and maybe even grazes. But for a Rogue who has several Full Attacks it's almost always better to have two strikes instead of one. Let's determine the difference in conversion rate between a Full Attack with two overbearing weapons compared to a Full Attck with a singe Overbearing weapon: Accuracy aside, the only difference in conversion is the 15% from Single Weapon Style. If ye take the exampl from above: dual wielding: 0.9*0.9*0.9*0.75*0.8*0.8 = ~0.35 ntc for both attacks --> 0.35 * 0.35 = 1.2255 --> ~88% crit conversion chance with at least one of both weapons. single weapon: 0.9*0.9*0.9*0.75*0.8*0.8*0.85 = ~0.3 ntc for the single attack -> ~70% crit conversion chance with tha one weapon. Of course the additional 12 ACC will help with landing crits, too - but overall it's less impactful than having the additional chance from a second weapon - which not only might deal additional damage and add more CC time, but also can apply an affliction which will already count towards Sneak Attack and Deathblows for the second strike. Also, with an overbearing weapon + a stunning weapon (e.g. We Toki + Godansthunyr) you might unlock Deathblows just with auto-attacks, which can't be done with a single weapon (although there is some problem with stunning weapons not counting for SneakAttack/Deathblows because the stun affliction is not implemented properly as an affliction iirc, needs testing). That's why single weapon style is perceived to be the weakest option of all styles in PoE by most (after the early game where the +12 ACC bonus, compared to the general low ACC and defense numbers, has a huge impact and makes "not missing" a lot easier). Of course later there are edge cases, for example when your ACC is just high enough (e.g. from the +12 from single weapon use) so that you cannot miss,graze or even hit anymore and so on. And also classes that don't have Full Attacks don't suffer so much from it (see Cipher). But a Rogue with many of the per-encounter Full Attacks unfortunatley does. So you picked the most difficult setup with one of the weakest classes for PotD. But as long as it works and is fun to play it's awesome of course. And it's cool to see someone actually doing this from start until the end of the game.

For solo it's indeed a bit different because Rogue has access to Shadowing Beyond which makes so many difficult encounters a lot easier to deal with. Kill a single enemy, go invisible which stops the combat, repeat. Or just skip the combat altogether because fighting doesn't give a lot of XP anyways.

Hm... the forum doesn't let me post the following text for whatever reason. I keep getting messages like "this request is blocked" (followed by an bunch of letters and numbers after sending it): and I also can't just make a dummy post and then edit the text in (will say that the post is too old for that...???) - so I'll just post a screenshot, sorry. @Gorthany idea why that is? Did I accidentially trigger some anti-something mechanic of the forum or so? Maybe there is some hidden characters that mess the foum up (I typed the text on my android phone).

You can look into the game_s object folder (<game folder>/PillarsOfEternity_Data/assetbundles/prefabs/objectbundle) to find all the items' names. This one should be "plate_armor_death_guard.unity3d" - so the command is: "AddItem Plate_Armor_Death_Guard 1" I tried it out just to be sure and it works.

Hi! For both spells the duration will not change (it is determined when you cast the spell). Relentless Storm is a pulsing spell while Insect Plage is a Damage over Time (DoT) spell that has so called "ticks"- both behave differently: Relentless Storm when you lose the bonus PL: the pulses of the storm all do individual attack rolls vs. the enemies' defense, so they will lose ACC and damage bonus from the lost PLs immediately. If you regain the bonus PL (for example ending the Spiritshift) they will regain the bonus damage and accuracy. Insect Plage when you lose the bonus PL: the ticks will lose the bonus damage. But since the spell only does one attack roll at casting time and then applies the "status effect: damage over time" the loss of the PL bonus will have no effect on the accuracy. If you regan the PLs the damage per tick will go up again. Tl;dr: Relentless Storm will lose daamage & accuracy per pulse, Insect Plague will only lose damage per tick. Spells that only do one attack roll at casting time and then apply a CC effect with a duration (see Nature's Mark or Sunbeam for example) will not suffer from the PL loss at all.