Boeroer

They have half. They are whimpy. michel.montenegro is right: they die more quickly but deal more damage. They also have more CC potential since there are mory bodies on the field. For example skeletons have engagement which stops all rushers. Double Skeletons = twice the engagement slots. There are also some tricks where you profit from killed summons since they count as allies and you get on-kill effects if you kill them yourself. Look at Paladin's abilites or the Grave Calling sabre.

The best Herald (in my opinion) comes with Goldpact Knight/Troubadour. You'll have tremendous staying power while being able to keep up two active phrases OR speed up your invocation frequency by 100%. If you go for Shared Flames and Exalted Endurance (Paladin part) + Ancient Memory only (Troubadour part) and dish out invocations like there is no tomorrow you will have a less boring and very powerful Herald who heals the party passively and gives them armor, gives them a lash for offense, doesn't die and actively casts invocations a lot (which includes summons).

Yes, I didn't mean the concept of Blood Mage isn't cool (it is) - I just wanted to say that it maybe isn't such an OP thing for some people (like me). @Luvsucklonewolf: Honestly I do not see a lot of special synergy between Ancient and Arcane Archer. You could do the same with any rogue or ranger + Druid. If Arcane Archer only could get Caedebald's Blackbow... But I don't see where it would be a gimped combo - so why not? In my opinion an Ancient is best when single classed. Because the beast and plant spells (Insects, Venombloom etc.) scale well with Power Level. Used a Nature Godlike Ancient with Spine of Thicket Green and a Stone of Power (+6 PL to beast and plant spells) and it's pretty awesome even without summons. I can see some synergy with Chanter because Wild Growth can be applied to drakes and spore summons while Mith Fyr can boost the dmg of all summons. Or with Kind Wayfarer: use Inspiring Beacon + Lay on Hands and give them healing and lashes via Shared Flames.

Heyho my busy QA-crowd, we had this problem already a while back - then it got fixed. This time it's back - with a vengeance! All weapon with AoE capabilities (Whispers otEP, Citzal's Spirit Lance, Hand Mortar etc.) suddenly don't apply the effects of certain abilites (Crippling Strike: hobbled, Blinding Strike: blind, Stunning Surge: stun and so on) in an area anymore. Since this was not mentioned in the patch notes (at least I didn't see it) I thought I should bring this to your attention. Also because in this thread where we talk about the problem it was reported that: Certain effects like dmg bonuses from Finishing Blow and lash from Flames of Devotion etc. still work with the AoE attack rolls. Can you give us an info or two whether this is intended or not? Thanks a bunch!

See the post above my latest one. They are loking into it and it wasn't ready for this patch.

Put stuff about turn based mode here: https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/136-beta-feedback-for-turn-based-mode/

There is a special subforum for turn based feedback: https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/136-beta-feedback-for-turn-based-mode/

Well you can still do awesome stuff with Flagellant's Path + Citzal's and so on. And of course for Shattered Pillar it is still the go-to weapon. But Stunning Surge will not AoE stun anymore and it seems (did not excessively test this though) that the refund doesn't happen on AoE crits. Maybe it's a bug. Maybe not. I guess I will post a bug report and see what happens. Since it wasn't in the patch notes... Stuff like FoD lash and DMG bonus of Finishing Blow etc. still work in an AoE by the way. It seems only to affect afflictons mostly (and stuff like DoT from Toxic Strike and other strikes like Arterial etc.). Deep Wounds still works as long as the AoE does pierce/slash/crush.

** My team (What I plan):[Me] GodLike Moon - Herald (Beckoner) Might 18, Intelect 19, other 10 Note: Basically the "Healing Wall" build I saw here on the site, I LIKE a lot of invocations (I like to see volume). Note2: But I'm afraid to do something stupid, because they keep complaining about Backoner and at the same time praising ... My other favorite RPG classes: Druid, Ranger, Priest, (Wizard or Rogue) Note: I have not added Monk since I usually use it as main, never secondary (Helper). And I'm not much of a fan of Barbaro. I wanted them to release 6 slots: / So far I do not know which RPG character I could compare with Cipher, nor do I have any idea of ​​the character's proposal. Was it a "Mesmer"? What is "Wild Growth"? It still exists, how does it work? Is the effect good? What is ACC and Rel? How could this help my team? True, casters (Wizard / Druid / Priest) in the beginning are sad, basically no option. "With a Chanter you need to pick at least one invocation that has the highest possible phrase cost. Your phrase counter will stop at the amount of the most costly invocation you have. If you only pick cheap ones your counter will not go above them which is bad. It can be very beneficial to have a phrase counter of 6 and then dish out two invocations in a row that only cost 3." - Backoner would be good in this case? *Because God is a Morning Star who's dual wielding Hand Mortars. - Did not I understand. Chanter subclasses don't matter when it comes to my above hint. It's the case for all of them. Troubadour is widely considered more powerful than a Beckoner and can also dish out summons very quickly. Beckoner summons twice the amount of summons but they are smaller and have less health. They also cost more. You decide what's best for you. I would say generally for beginners the Troubadour is better since it's less niche/more versatile. That part about the Morning Star was just a little inside-joke.

To be more precise: reloading weapons have zero recovery time but instead have reloading time. This is important because you can't skip recovery time (cancel recovery,do something else, resume) but you can do that with reload. That means that reloading weapons lead to increased reactivity which can be crucial to casters. Or when you switch weapons. They usually are also slower to reload than recovery is. So you trade reactivity for weapon attack speed. Usually all attack speed and recovery time bonuses also apply to reload (Frenzy, Streetfighter's Heating Up etc.). But there are a few (Gunner for example) that only affect reload and not recovery. There are some tricks where you can skip reload: mostly it's Full Attacks that work with reloading weapons but have their own recovery. That recovery will overwrite the reload and you can fire again and again without reloading (but with recovery). Example: Heart of Fury, Flagellant's Path, Whirling Strikes (works with guns etc. if you have a melee weapon on offhand), Whispers of the Wind... That also means you can do "shot which would reload" --> "ability which uses its own recovery" (1-n times) --> "shot which would reload" an only then you would have to reload. Example: Stunning Surge into Flagellant's Path into Stunning Surge would give you three attacks without any reload in between. Who would want to use fists? Seriously? Since they scale with Power Level instead of class level a lot of people should use them. Free mythic weapons with fast attack speed but the base damage of heavy one handers - why not? Also every Devoted who picks a non-crush weapon should use them as backup since the proficiency is for free.

Don't fall for the "Herald is god" blah.* I mean unless you like to have boring, passive party members. Your initial idea about going with Wizard/Priest and Druid was totally fine. A herald can be very useful, but in my opinion it's boring to use too many of them. What a herald can do for your party and all summons is quite nice though: they can combine Shared Flames (Upgrade of Flames of Devotion) and combine it with the chant "Mith Fyr" and the Zealous Focus aura. Both will stack and give all party members +30% (afaik) burning lash for their weapon attacks. Then he could switch to "survival mode" and deliver bonus armor and healing with Ancient Memory and Exalted Endurance. Both can be done parallel with two Heralds, true - but as I said that's also quite boring since it's very passive. Paladins can't buff as good as Priests, Paladins can't heal as good as Druids (except single allies) nor can they deal that amount of damage nor can they do CC as well nor can they summon anything. So the statement "Paladins can do everything better" is utter nonsense. It's misleading and totally subjective. They can do SOME things better than others. But what a crappy class it would be if that wasn't the case, right? The most powerful summon overall is upgraded Ancient Weapons, not the Dragon. But the dragon is more impressive. Also the dragon (and drakes and spore) can be affected by Wild Growth (Ancient Druid ability) which is fun to use. It makes your beast/primordial summons bigger, gives them more armor and heals them. Priests can be very helpful since the can provide a ACC of +15 for the whole party rel. early and also can prolong all positive effects (how short they may be) with Salvation if Time. This can be very powerful. All casters (Wizard/Druid/Priest) start a bit weaker because they simply lack spell uses in the lower levels. But that gets better with each level. Wizard's and Priest's summoned weapons are not like the Chanter's. They will summon them into their hands and fight with them. With a Chanter you need to pick at least one invocation that has the highest possible phrase cost. Your phrase counter will stop at the amount of the most costly invocation you have. If you only pick cheap ones your counter will not go above them which is bad. It can be very beneficial to have a phrase counter of 6 and then dish out two invocations in a row that only cost 3. *Because God is a Morning Star who's dual wielding Hand Mortars.

For more penetration of your summons use animancy cat.

Maybe - we already had this "bug" some time ago, at least with rogue's strikes. It got fixed back then. Not unusual for an Obsidian patch to bring up old bugs.

Bounces of Fire in the Hole: nope.

What I meant is: if you like to do the full buff cirlce on a wizard (Infuse, Alacrity, Spirit Shield and so on) your Blood Sacrifice becomes unpredictible. I found that rather annoying. If every spell level had its own Blood Sacrifice - that would be something.

Basically the title: tested them nearly all now: if it's rogue's strikes or monk's stunning surge or whatever - the effect will only get applied to the initial target, not the AoE. Bye bye my beloved Soul Blade with Whispers and Mortar Monk. First they take away Turning Wheel from you and now also Stunning Surge... *sigh* Well at least Flagellanth's Path is still pretty awesome with mortars.

If he has enough healing - sure. But first of all that limits the Blood Mage to a one-trick pony (only cast that one spell to make sure that spell level gets replenished - never do the full buff cycle) and secondly: I have never had an encounter at high levels where I ran out of spells with a Wizard when I was with a party. Except Megabosses maybe. I really like to use Empower, especially with the special talents which you can pick. Then there are several items with empower features. You lose all that when picking a Blood Mage. For me it's not worth it. But I guess that highly depends on how you like to play your Wizards.

Yes. They also count for Bloodlust and Blood Thirst if the killer is your own Barb. Or for Virtous Triumph or Inspiring Triumph if the killer is a Paladin.

I proposed some months ago that a single class paladin, paired with a Berserker/Beckoner (the good old Grave Calling guy) would not only get insane Zeal refund but would also profit from those watcher-only necklaces from SSS that give you +1 MIG and RES per downed ally (up to +4). And there are some other items that do something on "ally down". You can spam Immolation because it's rel. easy to counter it with Lay on Hands while the summons die. I like it best to just spam FoD left and right. With fire PL bonus, general PL bonus (Prestige and so on) and decent enchantments FoD does serious damage. And with my beloved mortars it works in an AoE. I wish there were more mortars in Deadfire, seriously... When I kill an enemy Virtous Triumph can kick in and give me even more Zeal. And you kill a lot with permanent FoD shots. A Votary cannot get Devine Retribution.

Afaik it never did, even in PoE.

You cannot use Twinned Shot with an Imbue Shot. Both are active attack abilities. But the inherent jump of WSfocus and Driving Flight + Death Ring is indeed pretty bonkers. But I found out something different while playing my current MC (Arcane Archer/Bleak Walker with Spearcaster): Eternal Flame's 10% burning lash applied to the Imbue spells (Fireball and Missiles) which is cool. Also the accuracy with Imbue-Fireballs and FoD is enormous. I'm lvl 8 and have so much ACC with FoD and Imbue-shots that nearly everything is crit. It plays really well. I'm also playing a Bloodmage atm. - and in my party Blood Sacrifice is not that useful (in my opinion): Takes too long, is too random, is too painful on low levels (when I need it the most) and I totally miss my Empower ability. Especially as a multiclass char. Solo: sure, then it's great. But in a party? I don't know. Not bad - but also not so super as everybody's saying.

Huh? Did I miss that in the patch notes? Even if the forbidden fist ability is fixed: the wound generation is so slow (even with tricks like stepping into your own Tanglefoot or Bindig Web all the time) that it's no good compared to the other monks. You might say that a tank forbidden-fist-monk could generate wounds without the need to take damage - but a tank monk can't use Enduring Death reliably. Also Nalpasca gains 1 wound every 3 secs just by sniffing Coral Dust and stuff. AND from damage - AND from Dance of Death. Forbidden Fist needs to be a really great ability to balance that weird wound generation out. Also the healing on "afflicton expired" is funny at best. You can cheese around with Pull of Eora and Footsteps of the Beast+Confused, but I don't think a class should be only viable when using 1-2 gimmcks.

Hehe - taking it to the limits. If you have the Chillfog Enchantment it will trigger a Chillfog and summon a creature. I didn't test either but I believe (based in the bahavior those weapons showso far) that the imp enchantment will indeed produce one imp and one other creature then. In case of Ancient Brittle Bones you would then get 1 imp + 1 creature +2 skeletons.

Loot will still drop even if there's no body. "Destroy" usually just means that a target dies no matter the health it has(see Red Hand on vessels or Death Ring or Finger of Death on "Near Death" enemies).

It's not my idea. It's from this build: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103683-class-build-lord-of-the-imps/ Using Essence Interrupter is another way to produce sturdier summons from weak skeletons by the way. You "mark" one skeleton and it produces a summon - while the skeleton splits into two other skeletons (Ancient Brittle Bones) which you can also mark and kill: 3 summons in the field. Also works with Grave Calling + imps. Only that the sabre has to deliver the killing blow while with the Essence Interrupter you only have to mark the creature with a crit. You can produce three summons from one single skeleton. Best is to pick a Troubadour though (in the long run). Although the summons are tougher and less you will dish out a skeleton every 3 secs (instead of 6) with "Many Lives Pass By" which you can kill then. The army grows very quickly... Beckoner starts more steeply though.