Boeroer

swift flurry, heartbeat drumming all have been severely nerfed. i'm not even sure why are they not being outright removed.Because they were crazily overpowered and led to an endless crit-chain with the right weapons. Now it's 33% on crit with Swift Flurry (which makes it less good than Lightning Strikes with a normal build but better with the correct build) and 25% with Heartbeat Drumming. If both are on you'll have a chance of ~50% that a crit will trigger an additional attack. Which is pretty good.I never tried if it works with Inner Death + Empowered Strikes. That would be crazy single target gambling.

Those are special blunderbusses though. There are only two of them ("Hand Mortar" and "Fire in the Hole") and for both you have to take Serafen and complete his quest (which can be done very early and easily).

I was using Watershaper's Focus (has its own jump) + Driving Flight + Wild Barrage which means 1) initial hit + 2) own jump + 3) Driving Flight + 4)&5) Wild Barrage. Last time I checked Imbue spells triggered with every jump and that's in line with the statements from the designer of the Arcane Archer. Pull of Eora has a decent foe-only area if you INT is decent. You can use Bindig Roots to first root enemies in place and then Pull of Eora to pack them tightly together for even better nuking (use Spellshaping with your casters to raise PL and still hit all tightly packed enemies. @TheMetaphysician: Ha, you are right - I forgot the initial hits and only doubled the jumps with Twinned Shot.

Even better: why bother to waste an ability point on a spell as a multiclass wizard at all?

Sure - if you can replenish spell uses with Blood Sacrifice I order to cast Wall oD over an over you don't need Brilliant. I was just thinking about another Tactician multiclass that could do the same Unbending trick. Priest with Salvation + Searing Seal for example?

Oops, sorry. Yes, that makes a lot more sense. I edited my post to not confuse people. A last attempt to save my sorry a$s: what happens if you trigger Unbending multiple times manually? Does it stack as well?

I like Single Priest because it's most effective as supporter because the key abilites come earlier. And because it's no hassle. Also Symbol of Eothas is pretty great. As is Spark the Souls (especially if you have a Beckoner in the party - holy moly...) Helwalker/Priest is also no big hassle but more squishy. AoE is bigger and healing/dmg as well. But support suffers a bit because you get the cool stuff a lot later. Ascendant/Priest is powerful especially in terms of offense/CC with spamming cipher powers for no focus - but it's also a bit hectical to time and manage all this. For the most relaxed playthrough I would choose Priest. But some people don't like to only support as MC. They want to deal damage. In that case I would pick Helwalker/Priest of Eothas I guess. Shining Beacon +10 MIG and +10 INT is pretty great. And Salvation of Time +10 INT +10 MIG makes healings over time really powerful. Also buffs will last a long long time. With Devotions and +10 INT you usually not only buff your party but also reach a lot of enemies with the additional debuff. And so on. Stats are ok if you don't walk the front line.

It drains 1 second of benefical effects from the enemy and gives you +1 sec of benefical effects for you per tick. Unbending is kind of special since it can be stacked with itself. So each time you trigger Unbending creates a short instance of an "healing over time" effect everytime you get damaged. So: every hit = one additional instance. With Wall of Draining you can make it so that the Unbending instances don't end (if you hit/crit with it often enough). Usually this is limited by your Discipline: you can't trigger Unbending so often because it's expensive. In this case however the Tactician Fighter gains Discipline with his Brilliant Inspiration that is triggered by the Chillfog on Belranga. This means he can trigger Unbending a lot of times with endless Discipline while he can cast Wall of Draining over and over again because also his spell uses get refilled by Brilliant. This is an endless loop: Wall of Draining makes it so that Unbending never ends and Brilliant makes it so that you can stack more and more Unbending instances AND cast more and more Walls of Draining. You wouldn't even need Blood Mage - but it's convient as a fallback in cases where Brilliant doesn't come up. Edit: stroke some nonsense.

Hm... a lot?

Yes, also Vigorous Defense (+20 to all) stacks with Mirrored Image (+30 to deflection). Vigorous Defense does not stack with Llengrath Saveguard (both +20 to all).

Driving Flight doubles nothing. It just adds one additional jump to a projectile. If you use Watershaper's Focus with Wild Barrage you get 1 initial attack and 3 jumps. With Driving Flight you get 4 jumps. Twinned Shot doubles that to 8 - and that means with Blast you get 8 AoE shots out of one attack. If you can hit 4 enemies you will generate 24 hit rolls. With Frostseeker you have 2 jumps from Wild Barrage and +1 from Driving Flight. So 6 with Twinned Shot. Since you have 3 projectiles you will generate 18 hits. If you do a crit you will most likely generate more crits than with Watershaper's Focus.

It won't influence your auto-attacks. Only attack rolls that determine if an affliction hits. Brute Force only checks which defense is lower (Deflection or Fortitude) - it doesn't apply an afflicton.

You can do that. It means less deflection which can be a problem in the early game as a frontline wizard but shouldn't be that noticable later on.

Yes: Avenging Storm and Great Maelstrom. And of course you still have the other druid spells. Put Spine of Thicket Green into your second slot and cast some nasty Beast spells like Plague of Insects and so on.

Blast does trigger Avenging Storm on all enemies it hits. Watershaper's Focus with Twinned Shot + Driving Flight is cool (6 Blasts with one shot) but I can't say if it's better than Frostseeker as soon as you can reliably crit with it. Also check out St. Omaku's Mercy. It has an enchantment that omits recovery on every second crit. With Twinned Shot and Driving Flight and all that accuracy this happens fairly often.

With a Helwalker/Troubadour you can build a Dragon Thrashed guy. Not as tanky though because Helwalker makes it a bit squishy. But if you build him tanky with high AR and good defenses it's manageable. With Helwalker's high MIG and INT bonuses you can achieve decent Dragon-Thrashed damage I guess. You could put in some Soft Winds of Death to deal some raw dmasge while healing which would counter the Helwalker squishyness. Unfortunately Dragon Thrashed is not half as good in Deadfire as it was in PoE. But with the +10 INT from the Monk you can catch a lot of enemies.

It's also very good if you use Arterial Strike. Multiple shot enemies tend to run towards you...

Troubadour + Helwalker + Lightning Strikes + Turning Wheel + Mith Fyr + Sure Handed Ila + Night's Revenge + dual mortars provides excellent damage due to MIG + triple lashes as well as decent debuff (AoE Weakened) and CC (Stunning Surge and Killers Froze Stiff). Play it as a mid-ranged guy and also use Flagellant's Path. The advantage of guns is that you can skip reloading at any time to cast an invocation to save the day. Besides that Sure Handed Ila + Lightning Strikes will give you fast reload. The advantage of mortars in particular is that the +10 INT from Turning Wheel will give you a huge AoE. Another apporach might be Skald/Nalpasca with Swift Flurry, Heartbeat Drumming using Ngati's Tusk and Instruments of Pain. The Pike has some crit conversion that can be used in addition to Killers Froze Stiff and with Instruments of Pain you get a range of 10.8 meters with the Pike. Alternative Weapon would be Quarterstaff. The modal of the Pike lowers enemies' delflection by 10 which is great, too. Mith Fyr + Turning Wheel again does good damage. Dance of Death will grant you +12 accuracy (Enduring Dance at least) and together with Nalpasca's drugs will ensure that you will get a constant stream of wounds. Use Raised Torment's Reach + Killers to stun + paralyze foes. Alternative weapon with normal range: Karabörü. Does stuff on crit and can be obtained early. Another option: Amra. Afaik its Carnage-like ability can crit and that might work with the Skald's passive.

After "Rogues are the best class" and "Wizards are useless" in PoE forums this is the crassest misjudgement I read so far (at least from a mechanical point of view). Grimoires allow Wizards to skip all spells at lvl-up (and only take passives - or in case of multiclass: take only actives from the second class) and still be able to cast spells as if he had learned them. How on Earth and Eora is that almost useless? It's THE biggest complaint of players when they compare Priests and Druids with Wizards: that the Wizard has those omnipotent Grimoires. This is so outrageous that I'm about to summon Gromnir!

If you know where to get the ingredients you can upgrade it early: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Devil_of_Caroc_Breastplate Check under Upgrades: Mechanical Mind. If you click on the ingredients they will tell you where to aquire them. No need to fight if you don't want to. Everything from the list can be bought. Not to forget that the Breastplate also gives you +2 Rage, +10% attack speed and either +2 AR when bloodied or regeneration on crit. The last one can be pretty decent for a Berserker + Whispers since it counters the self damage. If you took Blooded as passive and plan to become bloddied often then +2 AR is also good.

It may be that a benevolent Priest of Eothas wouldn't want to use that mace anyway...

Hm... if not using DoC's Breastplate but Whispers otEP: how to deal with confusion? It will shrink your cone, it will shorten your Savage Defiance, Bloodlust 'n stuff, it will make you hit your peeps... Using consumables in every encounter is kind of meh - and switching to Modwyr when casting Frenzy works but is tedious. That's why DoC's is kind of mandatory on a Berseker for me (if not Berserker/Nalpasca, Berserker/Paladin or Berserker with Modwyr).

1) Kind of kills the idea, yes. Not completely, but partially. The basic idea is to use Frenzy/Bloodlust and later Blood Thirst to shorten (or even omit) recovery while ascended (= casting with no focus). You will still have high casting speed but you will run out of focus quickly and have to fall back to dealing weapon damage. It still kind of works, but the best thing about this build is not going to happen. 2) Hand mortar(s), Watershaper's Focus with Blast, the Red Hand

Soul Blade regenerates focus with Soul Annihilation when you use Whispers of the Endless Paths! It also applies raw damage to all the AoE hits. So my recommendation is to max INT and use the Whispers mainly. If you pick up Savage Defiance and do not try to tank you will be fine with the self damage. Devil of Caroc's Breastplate is kind of mandatory when not using Modwyr - and then use Helm of the Falcon because a) it's great with two Handers and b) it fits beautifully to the breastplate. Berserker/Soulblade with WotEP goes through the roof once you have Blood Thirst...

Mirke as Shadowdancer (Monk/Streetfighter) can be great with blunderbusses as well. Doesn't need to be mortars. Xefa's and Kitchen Stove are nice. Aloth as Battlemage with Citzal's + Mule Kick and later Clear Out is doing very well, too. Clear Out + Citzal means number-of-enemies * number-of-enemies hits and does tremendous damage for only 2 Discipline. And of course he still has his usual nuke spells. Use Essential Phantom to produce two guys with Spirit Lances. Bonus style points when wearing Devil of Caroc + Helm of the Falcon. But it's also highly efficient to wear Rekvu's Fractured Casque , cast Nectoric Lance on himself to get a rel. minor injury and then be immune to your own Slicken. Zandethus' Draconic Fury (form that unique grimoire) is also awesome with a Battlemage. Tekehu can be a single class Watershaper using either Lord Darryn's Voulge and Deltro's Armor to boost his Powel Levels with shock through the roof and go melee with lots of storms stuff - or use the Watershaper's Focus to boost his Water/Freeze PLs and be ranged. Take everything that boosts PLs further. In addition to that he has a Foe-only Chillfog which is just awesome. Also works as Theurge with the melee approach. Everytime you wait for phrases to build up for your next shock invocation you can cast a druidic shock spell. You're casting shocking spells all the time basically. Best thing about him relaly is that he's got so many foe-only spells.