Boeroer

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.

??? You simply sneak to a group of enemies and do a Stunning Surge or Flagellant's Path with mortars and you are ascended. Skip reloading and immediately start an ascended Amplified Wave or something. Besides that dual mortars are not that much slower compared to a Hunting Bow with modal - due to 30% from dual wielding and 15% from two weapon style. It's not 50% recovery time, but it's not very slow either. Plus you can skip reload and immediately do a Flagellant's Path again. It's like skipping recovery entirely between Stunning Surge and Flagellant's Path. Tons and tons of focus and often all enemies in range are already dead. You can't build focus faster than that with a Helwalker/Ascended (if there are several enemies). If you want to take out casters in he back line - that's fine. But it is neither the fastest way to build focus nor is it the best way to shut down casters. If you want to do both with one character then it's fine of course.

Mortars' damage type (for the AoE) is pierce/slash. On average that's as useful as having pierce/shock. Enduring Dance gives you +12 ACC. Hunting Bow Modal substracts 15. You end up at -3. Add the inherent +5 for all Hunting Bows and you have +2. But if you'd just turn off the modal against high defense enemies you'd have +17 ACC. And that will most certainly lead to more damage against a foe with high defenses. Against normal enemies the modal is nice - but here I argue that dual mortars would lead to a much faster ascension (usually one Full Attack from my tests from stealth). Remember that one of the mortars has a build-in jump that nearly doubles the damage per shot if the enemies stand near each other. Doesn't matter though. If you like to stick to the bow (which is indeed nice) that's totally fine. Mortar everything is kind of boring. But they are so damn effective...

You can also add a single class Furyshaper. Afaik his blood ward stacks with Old Siec...

If you didn't use Clarity and your 35 INT comes from items instead, why did you write ? However - I still think with +10 INT you will be better off using mortars most of the time (also because you can skip reloading and start casting powers immediately once ascended): The AoE grows exceptionally big and makes you hit a lot of enemies. Even with low PEN you will generate focus faster than with Essence Interrupter (by the way: mortar and hunting bow have the same base PEN). Against single foes the bow is the better pick of course because dual damage and higher base. But then you wouldn't want to trigger the modal. Edit: removed brainfart about Crippling Strike.

Not really. That is not correct. There is no druid subclass that is suited better for dealing damage with beast and plant spells (Plague of Insects, Venombloom and many others) than the Ancient. Combine with Spine of Thicket Green and Nature Godlike (both fit beautifully) and you'll have an awesome damage dealer who can also heal well and do good CC. That is not correct either. Theo only thing that works on kith only is the charm. The other bonuses (e.g. 100% hit to crit chance against charmed enemies) always work. If you multiclass with let's say a Wizard and have a Cipher or Chanter in he party you can AoE-charm enemies and then do a friendly fire AoE on all charmed enemies with the Debonaire. You will get all crits. That's pretty nice actually since casters tend to have PEN issues and crits solve most of these issues. Also make sure you take crit damage bonus stuff. You've to build around it though. But it's a subclass after all. It's ok if it is niche. Forbidden Fist is even weaker than Shattered Pillar - and that's something. Furyshaper is good. The wards are very helpful. The frenzy ward stacks its speed with everything (making you that fastest Barbarian/caster there is) and the fear ward is very powerful as CC effect. Priest of Woedica is great. Check out the unique spells! Also the summoned fists used to scale with level AND Monastic Unarmed Training. I don't know how/if that got fixed/nerfed. Psion is indeed a bit meh. If they'd remove the part "focus generation stops when gets hit" it would be decent.

You can cast Champion's Boon on yourself as well.

I wouldn't say that Rogues have no eye-popping high level powers. Vanishing Strike and Gamit for example are very, very good. You could give Edér two hand mortars (yeah, again those things, I know) and do this (single class rogue):

No, they don't stack. So no 35 INT for your Monk. At least not because of Turning Wheel + Clarity of Mind. But it's possible to reach 34 rel. easily with items (headger +2 INT + amulet +2 INT) and Turning Wheel. I don't think OP really played this character but mostly theorycrafted it. Which is fine. But some minor flaws in your build idea only become visible when you actually play a build (a bit longer). So they don't stack BUT: Clarity of Mind will always give you +5 INT even if your wound count drops below 5. Kind of a backup. So Turning Wheel and Clarity of Mind are not completely redundant. The change from Turning Wheel to melee only is stupid. I understand that they wanted to remove it from spells etc. But why are ranged weaons now excluded? Long Pain is a monk ability which can't profit from Turning Wheel now...

The quest is done pretty shicily, but I don't get too annoyed by such things. It's meh,yeah - but everybody is allowed to have a bad day or two, even designers.