Boeroer

They are very strong. It's easy to do with Blunderbusses + Powder Burns because you'll Distract yourself (Distracted contains Flanked) with every shot. Besides that it's pretty difficult to get flanked and not get knocked out quickly as a "rogueish" Streetfighter who focuses on offense. But you can do it without too much pain when you build him defensively - meaning high AR and/or wearing a shield and doing a multiclass that gives you more sturdyness (Fighter, Paladin, maybe Chanter). Or combining it with a Priest (either as multiclass or in a party setup) who can cast Barring Death's Door and Salvation of Time on you. That way you can easily trigger Flanked and Bloodied and not die. Escape once the "can't die" buff expires. I personally like the Streetfighter/Paladin Combo. Especially with Goldpact you gain substantial sturdyness despite being flanked. The fat armor will slow you down, but your recovery bonus is huge as well. On top you'll have the higher Sneak Attack damage. I also started a run with a single class Streetfighter and dual mortars (what else) and that is (in my opinion) absolutely great. I play him like a melee guy but without the need to really get flanked (since I use Powder Burns). I use Smoke Veil and Hand Mortar's Blinding Smoke to substitute Persistent Distraction (which doesn't work with ranged weapons). Arterial Strike and Toxic Strike in an AoE are great and Gambit with Mortars is crazy (due to some internal Guile-calculations which go bonkers). One reason why one might want to go single class: Vanishing Strike gives you an invisibility which doesn't break. This means you get Backstabs all the time while it lasts. Not only great with mortars but also melee weapons. BUT: once you are invisible you will lose the flanked status (if you were "really" flanked). Distracted stays. So maybe one can do this once health is below 50%: you will keep the "Heating Up" status but get untouchable while doing speedy Backstabs.

With the current summon bug (lots of summons don't scale properly) you might want to wait for the new 4.1 patch and see if that got fixed. I'm playing a party with two Rangers atm (and two melee guys) and find myself in the situation that I have too many bodies in the front line. So maybe consider only playing ranged or reach chars when you plan to have three animal companions (and additional summons) on the field. Besides that some general thoughts on summons: I find the best summons tend to be the Wizard's Pantoms because they get all your gear (including summoned weapons which will not run out). Unfortunately they can't use any active abilities (including weapon modals) - but two Blackbows on the field instead of one (for example) is pretty nice. Also (as I reported earlier) Concelhaut's Draining Touch doesn't get removed after a hit if a summon uses it. It's the melee weapon with the highest base damage, does corrode damage and targets Will instead of Deflection. Monk's Summons are short-lived but also get your gear except weapons. If you are wearing Effigy's Husk with the enchantment that does raw dmg in an AoE on unconsciousness and send both summons to die they will both trigger that effect - which can be pretty effective. There's also a Cloak of the Falling Star that does this. And I think some other item (Mantle of the Seven Bolts I believe). The Great Sword Effort can also be enchanted to do a Full Attack on K.O. Monk's summons won't get it but Essential/Substantial Phantoms do. As do the Living Illusions from Shroud of the Phantasm... Other nice effects on summons is Wild Growth of the Ancient. It only affects summoned beasts and primordials. I didn't test Maura's Tentacles or Xoti's Vines, but I guess it works on them. What I tried was Chanter's primordials summons (Mushroom) and it worked on them. Making your summons robust and bigger is cool. The animal companions are pretty equal I think. I like Takedown Combo best - if you pair it with a high base dmg attack (like Killing Bolt or Sunlance or so) it can do some serious damage while the enemy is also knocked down. So in my opinion: if you have an animal companion you should also have somebody who can deliver a fat blow. I didn't check what happens with DoT like Disintegration if it gets combined with Takedown Combo. I guess not much...

Afaik Enervating Blows only works with melee weapon attacks. I did the Witch Doctor build in this forum which uses the Long Pain (ranged fists) and even those don't trigger it (because non-melee). Rooting Pain is an AoE attack that neither counts as melee nor as weapon attack. But it can trigger Resonant Touch charges if it does enough dmg (e.g with a crit vs. low crush DR).

Good catch. Maybe it's not that much of a problem since it's a fast cast anyway and only triggers once you become bloodied. But I guess it's not intended.

It's good. Especially with the Staff of Thicket Green. Also the modal helps a bit more with the melee attackers (in combo with the Illusions). I only did console-testing with it though.

To be fair (towards myself ): I mention Morning Star when somebody asks for a good weapon choice for fighter, barb or monk (or Geomancer or Ranger)/how to debuff Fortitude/good two handed weapon. I don't mention Morning Star if somebody wants to know... don't know... which dual wieldig setup his Devoted should pick or something. And I even apologize for mentioning it so often (even though it fits). Same with mortars by the way. Another Edér build I did was "Master of DoTs" where I stacked as many DoT effects as possible: Bleeding Cuts (Battle Axes), Deep Wounds, Arterial Strike, Gouging Strike, Ring the Bell, Toxic Strike. Those do all stack with each other (not necessarily with themselves though). Then I did "Full-Attack+Full-Attack and charged to another enemy while the first one bleeded out (if still alive). Also pretty good against tougher guys with high AR because the raw DoTs keep being... raw... So, not so different from OP's approach. It's pretty fun.

Unfortunately Battle Forged is crap in Deadfire. But maybe I can try. By the way here's Vanishing Mortars: An important factor is to enchant Hand Mortar with Blinding Smmoke and put it into the main hand to unlock Deathblows asap. Or you use Smoke Grenade or Pernicous Cloud. The clou with Vanishing Strikes is that the invisibility it brings does not break on attack(!). That means Assassinate and Backstabs (if near enough) all the time. And you won't get attacked and can plan all shots very carefully without getting bothered. Being a Glass Cannon is no risk. Works equally well with a Streetfighter (because of Powder Burns). Damage with Vanishing Strike is nearly the same (less PEN on Poweder Burns but more direct damage due to Heating Up). But of course you'll get more mileage out of Streetfigther/mortars before getting Vanishing Strikes due to higher attack speed and more Sneak Attack dmg. Also: Gambit with mortars is broken. You get bonus damage per remaining Guile. Gambit refunds Guile on crit. With mortars you crit a LOT in an AoE. But the refund is capped at 4 max. But internally, during the attack, it seems that your "inner" Guile counter raises like crazy and only after the attack the regain is cut to 4. Taht means that all the AoE attacks profit from immense dmg bonus due to "internal Guile". I saw numbers like +260% dmg bonus just from Gambit. Only possible with mortars. But Vanishing Strikes is also very nice with melee weapons like Battle Axes + Assassin + Backstab. Remember: the invisibility doesn't break, so the DoT problem (ticks make you visible) does not exist here.

Not to forget "He hagrode them with Driving Echoes".

Why dual battle axes in general? Just for the weapon modal?Yes. It is very strong once you can skip recovery. Which a barb can do with two things: Blood Thirst and more importantly Barbaric Retaliation. If you combine the thickest armor (Patinated Plate + Thick Skinned + Blunting Belt etc.) and Bleeding Cuts you will be very slow. But Barbaric Retaliation doesn't care and dishes out those bleeding full attacks like there's no tomorrow. Will will kill stuff. Which triggers Blood Thirst... And so on.

Does this (Skewer: Fires a bolt through multiple targets) trigger the imbued spells multiple times? Nope

Or... you just don't finish the quest. They will be standing there until the Wheel breaks apart. Nobody moves - nobody gets hurt.

Hehe. Next may be a gif of a single class rogue with mortars and Vanishing Strike. My my... Same league as Helmortar.

Also Clear Out and its upgrades target Fortitude as well. So you will not only debuff in an AoE with Clear Out/Clean Sweep/Clear the Path but also those abilities will directly profit from it on the next attack. You can do a lot of AoE dmg with that. Hence Morning Star is one of the best picks for single class fighter in my opinion.

I think that the highest damage would come from Persistence if you would use Champion's Boon on yourself or cast Minor Avatar in combination with Aggrandizing Radiance (stacks with everything). Persistence's wounding damage grows with MIG. That means it does 25% raw dmg with 10 MIG but 40% with 30 MIG. And that lash is a multiplicative dmg boost. And of course the physical dmg also gets boosted by MIG. So the lash profits twice: from the higher physical dmg and then again from its own boosted dmg. It also works very well against pierce resistant or even immune enemies since the lash is calculated on pre-DR dmg. Add a burning lash and Scion of Flame (useful for a priest anyway) and put Durgan Steel on it and I think you have the perfect weapon for this kind of priest.

Awesome. Can't wait. Maybe I'll even restart my current playthrough as turn based.

You are most welcome.

Mine is Combusting Wounds + Minor Missiles. With high PL it's so reliable (auto-hit) and you'll have so many projectiles. You only have to debuff fortitude once for the CW to hit. THe rest is "I don't care". I mean besides the obvious Wall of Flames and stuff. This just doesn't work very well on enemies with very high burn DR.

It's def. not faster than just sinking the ship. That doesn't take 5 minutes. And even with the best Paladin/Chanter you can't board and win fights against lvl-15 or 16 crews if you are lvl 5. But you can sink them - because char level has no effect on ship combat.

I always use it. One of the best spells in the game for me.

Maybe. But I guarantee you can learn to sink any ship with the starting sloop faster than to reload and fight the same boarding fight 10 times. Because naval combat is very easy and allows to sink ships way above your level once you know what you are doing. And it's not much that you have to learn. 5 to 8 basic points maybe.

Yes, that it the same as with Essential Phantom and Sporelings and some other summons. They don't scale correctly atm.

Why on earth didn't you just sink them to get the loot instead of reloading 10 times?

You can do the same with a one handed pistol by the way: gain +12 ACC and 20% hit to crit, then use the modal to suffer 15 ACC but half your reloading time. All in all it's "only" a loss of 3 ACC and a big gain in speed and crit conversion. Especially if you have a pistol that you want to attack/hit with a lot (see Opening Barrage of Scordeo's Trophy or Bullet Time of Eccea's Arcane Blaster): sometimes you don't want to alternate between dual pistols but hit with one exclusively. The modal gives you higher speed than dual wielding + two weapon style - which means dps doesn't drop compared to these - while you can make sure your weapon procs occur more often. I find this actually better than hunting bow + modal (which is also fine in some situations of course). Also because you can always skip reloading which makes a gun user more reactive. Drawback is the single damage type (not when using Eccea's Arcane Blaster though) and the shorter range. I mean when I compare generic pistols to generic hunting bows. Unique weapons are a different thing, depends on the enchantments.