Boeroer

If I remember correctly only Cipher's Disintegrate prevents the splitting of HoW. All other destroy effects will not prevent that, including Worthy Sacrifice?

The Writ spells all roll vs. Will which is supereasy to bring down (for example by a Wizard/whatever with Miasma) and often is low to begin with. Writ of War + Writ of Sorcery know no immunities and basically reduce all enemies in the AoE to auto-attacks. Writ of Mending is just awesome. A rel. long Enfeeble in an AoE vs. Will that prevents healing, shaves off max health points and gives all effects you put on the enemy +50% duration (including the Writ of Mending itself) is very potent. 2.5m radius is a decent base value, too. Even Writ of Consumption is useful. The ban of consumables is only useful against certain enemies (like certain Ogres, see Torkar) - but it also sickens which is a -10 fortitude debuff - again vs. Will. There are not many abilities that target Will but bring down fortitude. Combine with Writ of Engagement and drop fortitude by another 10 points (bc. staggered) vs. Will. Taking engagement from enemies is very nice, too if you have some characters that profit from moving around freely, but it's just icing on he cake for me. The casting times for those (4.5s) are pretty standard for a lot of priest spells. No many complain about the casting time of Divine Mark or Devotions ftF for example. And yes, in a party. As I said the best subclass for a solo priest is most likely Skaen - just because of Shadowing Beyond alone.

Yes, PoE's Rogue is one of the weakest classes on PotD. The way the difficulty spike is achieved (more monsters with higher endurance/health) makes single target damage dealers less viable than characters who can target AoEs. That's why Rogue plays very well in the lower difficulty tiers with fewer and weaker enemies. There you can kill very quickly as a Rogue and one dead enemy out of 3 has a much bigger effect than one dead enemy out of 10. This is not a Rogue-only problem. A Fighter, played as (sturdy) single target damage dealer, is also a pretty weak pick on PotD difficulty. As is a Ranger who focuses on single target damage. They can still be useful though if you use them with high mobility and a focus on caster-hunting. It can be quite effective to rush and kill enemy casters such as Priests and Wizards asap - even if your Rogue goes down in the process.

Imo the best Priest subclasses (spell-wise) are Woedica, Wael and Skaen (Skean mostly for solo runs though). Xoti's only special stuff is Blessed Harvest - and while that's cool it's not really that impactful imo. Vatnir is nice because his subclass has alternative dmg sources to fire - but so has Berath...

I did Sayuka often enough before going to Poko Kohara and as fas as I remember it all worked normally with Overgrowth etc.

Yeah, I have no idea why that is - maybe it's not intended to work that way and some dev messed up some "if this than that" statement - but I guess we'll never know.

If def. also works during pause.

Depends on the definition of cheese, but I say "no".

Yes, it does. Rotghasts for example are male.

No, switching is always instant. You can switch back and forth as quickly as you can smash a (mouse)button. You can even switch multiple times when the game is paused. All the effects that get triggered by switching to a weapon - see Slayer's Claw or stuff like Lethandria's Devotion or Outworn Buckler - happen immediately every time when you switch to that weapon. So you can upgrade from strong to energized on milliseconds or heal 20 points by switching to Lethandria's Devotion 20 times real fast. You can even use AI to switch multiple times per second when something happens. For example make a script that, as soon as your health is <50% lets you switch to Lethandria's Devotion as fast as possible until your health is higher than 75% again. The char will stutter from all the switching animations but otherwise be fine. So switching is instant and unlimited at all times, even during pause. It only adds a recovery penalty(!). That penalty doesn't stack with itself though. 10 times switching in under a second doesn't mean you get 10 times the recovery penalty. That penalty will just get reset to the fixed "full recovery penalty" every time you switch. After switching 10 times during pause you will suffer the same recovery penalty as if you only switched 1 time. Black Jacket and Quick Switch only lower that recovery penalty (combined they lower it to zero).

You can get the Sky Dragon Wurmling in several ways: 1. Don't kill the Sky Dragon in PoE. This is easy: just let it live there in the nest and don't attack it. 2. If you still want to attack the Sky Dragon, make sure you kill the Sky Dragon Wurm, too. This should also lead to the Sky Dragon Wurm pet appearing in PoE2. 3. Create a custom history. 4. Use a console command in PoE2 to set one or both of those variables. I think it's hard NOT to get the Sky Dragon Wurm pet - because most people playing PoE either do not kill the Dragon+Wurm and let them live in peace, or if they do attack them, they kill the Wurm as well as the Dragons. Both will unlock the pet in PoE2. Besides that there are two other wurm pets that you can pick up no matter your PoE history: Desert Wurm, Obsidian Wurm

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Hello, Durance is one of the first companions you can recruit, that is in Act I on the map Magran's Fork, at the crossroads (which gave the map its name), near the statue of Magran. If you come near he will speak to you ("Saw you in the flames!") - which should catch your attention and make you click on him. So in order to miss him you must have given that place a wide berth or accidentially missed him and his little talk. Afaik you can still recruit him at the same spot if you haven't spoken to him before. But on the other hand I never waited until act III for that, so maybe he's gone by then, not 100% sure, sorry.

@ChaospreadI don't have that problem, but I read it helps if you use <shift>+<enter> instead of just <enter> to end a paraphraph - maybe worth a try.

Ah! I nearly always use Shift+Enter. That might explain why I seldomly encounter these problems.

Imo they are fine for PotD. Custom adventurers will be better in the long run for sure, but at the early stages of the game (which are the most tricky for a lot of players) the official companions have the advantage of one additional level (adventurers start with your level -1). Also, custom adventurers are a little boring compared to the OCs, since they have 0 banter, dialogue, quests etc. Just the usual barks when you command them to do something etc. Imo Xoti is fine as SC Priest, at least for me. I'm not a big fan of her Monk subclass (unless you build around some of her special passives) and want to get access to the good Priest buffs asap, so that's why I use her as SC Priest 90% of times. Getting stuff live Devotions for the Faithful Earl can make a bug difference in party performance for example. You shouldn't try to tank with your animal companion, usually it doesn't have the defenses or armor to withstand a lot of punishment. A Stalker's Bear with Resilient Companion at 4m distance is the best armor you can get and it makes the bear a lot tougher, but it's still not a good tank. Instead use Sporelings (did you pick the Ancient, don't remember, sorry) for tanking (if you have no other solid tank). With Wild Growth they become very tough (it lasts forever theoretically and practically it's over when when the summons disappear (from damage or bc. they expire). If you didn't pick the Ancient then this is pretty useless advice obviously. Other low tier summons of the Druid are not good at this, so better use a main tank like Edér or a custom adventurer or so. The Animal Companion has the advantage of not getting injured if it drops. So with sufficient resources you can revive it indefinitely. Still it's better to use it as "marker" and flanker in not-so crowded spots. Keep it by your side (stealthed if possible) when the combat starts and only send it in once the enemies settled on their opponents. Later on, with more healing options, buffs, abilities and revives it can become more reliable - or used as cheap decoy to lead enemies away. If it dies you just revive. This is often less "action-economically" expensive than a summon and it stacks with your summons. I find ACs very useful mostly, but it needs some experience to figure them out I guess. Anyway: don't use it as main tank or so (at least that would be my advice). But if this character generally isn't fun then maybe it's not worth trying, but maybe it would be better to start anew with something more "frontloaded", meaning it performs better right from the start of the game and doesn't need a certain char level to suddenly become fun to play.

Hi! Major changes: nope. The features are identical mostly as far as I remember. But the loading times will be long if you don't have an SSD (does every PS5 have that?) because the backgrounds of the levels are huge hand-"painted", prerendered files so that may take some time to process (compared to a fast PC with an SSD). Also I hear that there are some new bugs after porting it ot consoles and those didn't really get fixed. I think it's nothing gamebreaking, but there were complaints (while the PC version is rel. free of nasty bugs).

First Saru Sichr, then the Willbreaker. It also lowers Will on hit which is good for several good chanter invocations because they target Will (see Ben Fidel's Neck and Killers Froze Stiff etc.). Yes, although the PEN bonus is way more important than the damage bonus. I wouldn't max Survival for that alone. Yes - but there are a lot better AoE weapons for Whispers of the Wind because WotEP has a cone that you can't aim manually during the execution of WotW... and thus it often gets targeted in directions where nobody stands. Better options are the two hand mortars (especially with Blindin Smoke - counts as weapon attack and causes Resonant Touches - and Chain Shot - additional bounce of the AoE of the mortar whichg is also great for Resonant Touch), Keeper of the Flame is very good in combination with Saint's War Armor and Imagined Pain (endless wounds with no received damage). Also Watershaper's Focus with modal (Blast) and Ondra's Wrath is very nice. Mohora Tanga in the offhand and a mortar or Keeper of the Flame in the main hand is also a very good combo if you pick Swiuft Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming. The Red FLag DoT can trigger a main hand attack with Swift Flurry - because alls attacks from Swift FLurry and Heartbeat Drumming will be executed with the main hand weapon, even if it got triggered by an offhand weapon attack.

The synergy isn't jawdropping in terms of the mechanics of Battle Forged I think, but thematically it fits very well. If you combine the Firebrand Great Sword (from Forgemaster Gloves and/or Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer) with any weapon focus, Two Handed Style, FoD, Intense Flames and Scion of Flame you will not only get more fire theme goodness but also pretty monstrous FoD-damage. Little synergy with Battle-Forged: the flame shield of the Darcozzi Paladin stacks with Battle Forge iirc.

Nope, they won't stack unfortunately. Animal Companion will replace druid summons and vice versa. So Stalker is def. a better pick than Ghost Heart imo - if you want to use any of the druid's summons.

My confession is that I never really used that shield - although I mostly play with the companions (not with the sidekicks that much).

Ah yes, you are right. I totally forgot about that to be honest.

Yes, I optimized a Ranger/Monk for it - and it became unplayable at some point (except vs. bosses) because my game crashed so much. So maybe not optimizing it is the way to go.

Mohora Tanga with single handed use (and style) and some ACC gear and crit conversion, combined with Boltcatchers or Hylea's Talons and also Ring of Molded Flesh is very good with a SC Druid who uses Avenging Storm, too. I also like the combo of a Druid with any class that grants easy access to accuracy (Monk & Ranger mostly, Helwalker specifically because of the nice MIG boost on top of the INT boost) because accuracy is the only thing a Druid is lacking sometimes - especially because some of the cool spells go agaist Fortitude and that is often quite high on the bigger and tougher enemies. I played a Stalker/Ancient recently and was pleasantly surprised about how good he was. Not only great accuracy vs. singular and multiple targets, but also 2 good summons (Sporelings) + Animal Companion in combination with healing and revival (AC don't get injuries so using revival multiple times is cool).

Yes, Tyranny also had a nice system with the spell building - but afair it wasn't combining spells/spell effects that where already cast on the ground (or in the air or onto enemies) into greater spell effects. In DA:O you didn't craft a spell from differnet effects and then cast that new spell - but you cast spell 1, then somebody else or you cast spell 2 (and 3 eventually) on the same spot (or enemy) and the effects would "hook into other" and create a new, much more powerful effect. Like you could cast some sigils on the floor which weren't too powerful by themselves - but if you cast two of them on on top of the other suddenly a new sigil would form that was the best CC effect in the game iirc. But the general approach of Tyranny on how to "craft" spells from different effects was nice, yeah. What totally killed it for me though was the cooldown mechanic then. "Cannot concentrate on a few spells, must create a ton of spells to prevent downtime..." - gahh! Well - I ranted about that multiple times now so I will let it rest today.