Boeroer

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.

No. I just tested it in game. No effect. The weapon has do deal base burn damage it seems. Lashes have no effect. The only weapons I know of that do this are Firebrand, Kalakoth's Minor Blights (the burn version) and Dragon's Dowry. The last one is an exception because it only deals pierce base dmg. But I guess this was done because it's all about dragon fire and such. Essence Interrupter works with Heart of the Storm though (+1 PEN). If you are a Bleak Walker/Wizard (or Druid or Priest) and use it you can even get it to +3 PEN and +10 ACC when using FoD: Heart of the Storm (Essence Interruptor +1 PEN) + Scion of Flame (FoD +1 PEN) + Spirit of Decay (FoD Bleak Walker +1 PEN) + Ring of Focused Flame (which will work with FoD attacks because they are keyworded with burn/fire).

I build him as tanky Swashbuckler in my recent playthrough. The goal was to make him 5-6 engagement slots and make him really sticky (Defender Stance + Kapana Taga + Reckless Brigandine + Overbearing Guard - Refreshing Defense and so on) and debuff enemies automatically (Persistant Distraction) while doing okish damage (for a tank that is - with Sneak and later Deathblows). It was also my goal to be able to bombard him with wizard nukes (which mostly target reflex) - so I gave him Cadhu Scalth and raised Althletics and Metaphysics. With "The Wall" modal most of those spells won't do much. THen I also gave him Adept Evasion. I just unstealthed with him first, waited till the enemies gathered around him, cast Pull of Eora and Miasma on Edér's Head and then bombard him (and his surroundings). Kapana Taga with modal helped to land Miasma on tougher enemies. I think I never saw an enemy break engagement. Maybe it happened, but it must have been so few that I can't remember. That way he's not the most defensive tank, but a great mixture of "sticky tank" and a bit of damage. Oh, and I gave him Pernicious Cloud in the end. That contributed a lot to his damage output. But beware: it's friendly fire and has a huge AoE.

Yes, but in case of the Dracolich you only need to land that one Combusting Wound cast and the rest is missiles and tiny hits from Walls etc. So it's totally worth it to debuff Fortitude for that one cast. Makes the whole fight a cakewalk (with a party). You don't have to target fortitude all the time. Only when it counts. Megabosses I exclude as you said. They do favor classes without Power Pools and fixed spell uses because the fights will last forever. I find the design of the Mega Boss battles underwhelming. I would have liked them to be more like Titan Souls encounters.

I would like to see new faces when it comes to party members. Cameos of Aloth, Edér and so on are fine, but please give us new, "fresh" companions - I mean if you're going to make PoE3 in the first place.

If you have summons out that "tank" or block for you you can switch to a single handed weapon set. For whatever reason offensive chants (Soft Winds, Dragon Thrashed) gain +12 ACC from that (like the weapon attacks do). It seems to be an oversight that never got fixed. Pretty handy though. You can then live with lower PER and still hit stuff good enough (with chants).

I tested it one minute before posting: two grazes for 15 secs each and suddenly I had ~30 secs on the dragon. I wasn't expecting that. I also checked if I hit the second time instead of graze - but no. Originally I just wanted to check how good/bad the duration with 30 INT on the Dracolich would be. Don't know if that's intended behavior. Afaik the "weird" DoT mechanics (less INT = higher dps) got fixed through the board. Yes, as I said: Disintegration doesn't do enormous dps. I would prefer Amplified Wave any time. But against certain tough enemies with high AR (Dracolich with Llengrath's Safeguard on is a pain) it's nice - if you are ascended. With any other cipher it's too expensive for my taste - so I skip it. To be honest I don't use it at all in "real" playthroughs. I debuff Fortitude in every encounter by the way. There are too many good abilites that target it - so debuffing fort. is usually one of my top priorities. That's why I'm a big fan of Morning Stars.

You can edit your post if you're not satisfied.

There's a bug report in the tech support forum that says that Firgyst (Black Isle Bastards) no longer drops Kapana Taga when boarding (drops normally when sinking the ship). It seems to be a bug and I guess it's related to your experience. I never board but always sink ships and I always get all the loot.

I'll quote myself: See, I quoted myself.

1 Power Level increases base damage by 5% while Griffin's Blade only gives you +10% additive dmg bonus. So +2 PL is already better in any case. +1 depends on how much other dmg bonuses (MIG, crit etc.) you can put together.

Helwalker with +10 INT is destined for hand mortars. Seriously. I know I say that often but it's just the best pick. ALso because of Stunning Surge + AoE = always a crit in there for refund. Against single targets you can summon Long Pain or switch to Fury form or switch to normal blunderbusses or pistols. What I want to try next is a mid/melee range single class Fury with blunderbusses/hand mortars. The goal is Avenging Storm + multihits of course.

You forgot two things: Power Level scaling and enemies' RES. If the enemy has high RES it's a lot less than 30 secs even with 30 INT. Still good in my opinion though. For example on Neriscyrlas it lasts 15 secs with 30 INT on a graze. And nothing stops you from casting it onto the boss again and again onve you are ascended (besides getting killed or interrupted/hard CC'd of course). The durations stack. So two grazes cumulate to 30 secs again. Plenty damage for a "non-mega" boss. Also because it's raw - and most bosses have very high AR on PotD which is annoying. (In case of Neriscyrlas however it's less effective than using Combusting Wounds)

No so much with Helwalker because the +10 INT does help. Which other single target spell is there for a cipher? And you can also cast a fine Miasma onto a boss in advance (together with a Body Blow to land the Disentegration in the first place). I'm not speaking about Mega Bosses. Those have so much health that it doesn't matter that much how much damage per ability use you do - as long as you can survive long enough to whittle them down with whatever suits you.

Hi! Pick up a fighter with Clear Out or Clean Sweep, use Whipers ofthe Endless Paths or Citzal's Spirit Lance. Attack any enemy witgh Clear Out: This also works if it's only one enemy. It truly is an endless loop. If it helps: Clear the Path also does too much damage, but here the loop stops. Clean Sweep is broken in the same way as Clear Out.

I would maybe just scale self damage with Powel Level and not MIG. Same with durations of other self-induced harmful effects (like Berserker's Confusion for example). That should do the trick. Scales properly with Power Level so it doesn't become meaningless - but removes the counterintuitive effect of "raising a stat does you harm".