Boeroer

Drake's Ambassador is most likely the better pick since it "starts its magic" way earlier.

Deadfire has different mechanics than PoE so most builds won't work the way they used to. You will have to recreate your character anyway - only your choices you made during PoE will get transported to Deadfire.

Scordeo's Edge has the enchantment "Blade Cascade" which sets recovery to zero for 5 secs (base). If you combine it with Salvation of Time (Priest) you will have some time with crazy fast attacks.

Try dual mortars with Whispers of the Wind and Resonant Touch:

That would be quite bad if it didn't give you some bonus in return. Because having two bodies is a big advantage and the class is balanced around that. If you remove it by spending an ability point you should get some decent buff. Honestly I really think so many people think Rangers are bad because their either totally forget the animal companion or don't know how to use it properly.

If you use Savage Defiance every time you Frenzy you won't die. Of course that's expensive. The self damage really is the most off-putting part of Berserker.

I played a Stalker/Wizard Geomancer. One of the best chars so far. Not single class of course, but at least half of it is Ranger. My animal companion didn't die too often. You can't use it for tanking but flanking. And this one didn't even use they usual "key" abilities like Driving Flight or Marksman - because melee.

Sure. The Brute though? Not. Pikes only lower deflection by 10 - I don't think you want to pick Pikes over Morning Star... Besides that I don't know any modal or ability that automatically lowers deflection by 25 (or 35 with Spirit Frenzy), let alone without the use of resources. Lowering Deflection (with the use of resources) also does nothing for your Mule Kicks and also doesn't help your party members to land fortitude spells which are often the most effective ones. And besides all that: who said that debuffig deflection and debuffing fortitude is mutually exclusive? You as a Brute have the Morning Star to lower Fort for yourself and Fort (and Will) for your buddies. Let the other guys take care of Reflex & Deflection (and Will). Maybe they can even add some CON afflictions to lower Fort by -45...

but it's missing out the fort debuffs. now i have to pick a no subclass fighter. i feel that the penalty of devoted outweighs the benefits. anyway regarding stats, is a 10 CON fine?You need to bear in mind that many enemies have extremely high Fortitude saves, and thus debuffing their Fort as a method of attacking them with Brute Force isn't as optimal as you might think. The Morningstar modal also comes with a hefty damage penalty, so it's not for 'free'. Brute Force is definitely nice, but isn't the end of the world if you choose to go for a Devoted instead. I've made that very same decision with my next Watcher. As for the Voulge, it's a nice weapon but in my opinion it is better served on a hybrid caster-fighter such as Fate Testarossa. It's minus 25 fort which in most cases lowers fort below deflection. In the cases where it's not you automatically will attack deflection. But besides Brute Force (which comes late and is a nice plus): it makes landing Mule Kicks a lot easier (which has +10 ACC). Thus means you will attack with Mule Kicks with the equivalent of +35 ACC. And that's what makes it so good. Combine it with Staggered (e.g. Spirit Frenzy) and we are already talking about -35 fortitude (eq. of +45 ACC with Mule Kicks). All done sort of "passively" while simply swinging your weapon. It's pretty awesome and totally worth the -25% dmg. Also helps your spellcasters a lot who want to land those nasty spells that target Fortitude (Combusting Wounds etcpp.).

He heals fully 100% damage gets converted to healing. Oh wow. I just did a quick test with him and obviously didn't notice. I just thought they simply copy-pasted that ability. Which is 10%.

Alchemy used to increase the effects of potions, poisons (including poison spells) and drugs dramatically. It was ridiculously overpowered. Then it got tuned down as shown above. Nalpasca gives a +10 Power Level bonus to drugs (not positions nor poisons). Like Alchemy also does - but for drugs only. Alchemy- and Nalpasca-PLs improve the duration and potency of drugs and weaken the crash. If you skill Alchemy high enough as Nalpasca your crashes will deminish until theyreach zero... and then give you bonuses instead. Too bad a crash on a Nalpasca still means it will prevent healing and drain wounds. So it's not really cheesable. Boosting drugs by 10 PL just by taking a subclass is quite cool. But the crash is way more severe than with other classes.

I admit I had to giggle hysterically about this.

I don't know if this is supposed to be a direct response to me or just a general statement, because I never implied anything of the sort. I've already played as a Berserker/Ranger and was going to wait until the Arcane Archer issues were patched to play one. I was only asking if the problem was significant enough to not bother with them until after it gets fixed, that's all. If the class is currently functioning worse than intended, then it is weaker than it's supposed to be. And FWIW, I am a firm believer that subclasses should be stronger than the vanilla forms: for specific builds with very specific uses. Otherwise, there's no point in having so many options if they are all the same for all builds in the end anyway, and min/maxing wouldn't even really be a thing. But just generally stronger period? Nah. Just a general statement since so many people complain that Arcane Archer is bad. Which it isn't.

So you trigger Wild Barrage with Kitchen Stove and then switch to Watershaper Focus? And the effect carries over? I thought it was only with Kitchen Stove, who knew? Cool. It used to. Hope it still does.

Hm, there are no new patch notes.

Twinned Shot with Driving Flight + Watershaper's Focus + Blast + Heaven's Cacophony (Avenging Storm) is pretty bonkers. Add Wild Barrage for even more bonkeritis. Also works well with mortars and Frostseeker. Arcane Archer with the Watershaper's Focus, Driving Flight, Wild Barrage and Death Ring (up to 5 procs per shot) is also very good.

You didn't understand. First you want to get bloodied. So you need to get damaged. If you get damaged, you can't just stop getting damaged as soon as you get bloodied. Hence my question how you plan to switch between "bring me down to bloodied" mode to "I stay at bloodied without dropping further" mode. That's why I said that one could start with INT instead of Iron Wheel. Of course it doesn't do much - except it lets you have lower AR and health so that you can get near death quickly - and then switch on Iron Wheel to immediately get +10 Con (and thus +50% of max health back) and +3 AR. Wouldn't that be a rel. low micro solution? Else you would have to use targeted healing from other party members - or it might take too long to get bloodied.

I was under impression that they have 0.7s/4.0s base attack/recovery in Deadfire, no? They got a substantial speed buff with a patch some time ago. But I don't know the actual numbers. Only that they attack faster than before. And Lion attacks even faster because that's his thing in Deadfire. Looking at the absolute numbers they still might be slower than in PoE - but you have to take into account that the combat speed as a whole was tuned down a lot. So... maybe I should have said "attack faster than in PoE compared to global combat speed" or something.

You should rename the thread (in the support forum). "Question" might get overlooked by QA. Rename it to "[bUG <game version>] Arcana Archer: Imbue spells don't scale properly with Power Levels" or something like that.

Hello my friends from QA! Any news on this? According to Nick all Imbue spells should scale like their wizardly counterparts. But they don't - yet. Will there be a fix?

You should bump it. Or wait, I will...

Can't say. Never played a Brute solo. But I guess it's ok.

Animal Companions hit much faster than in PoE though.

How do you switch from "getting bloodied" to "stay at bloodied" without getting knocked out too quickly? Besides the wound buildup that works for you automatically. Switching from INT to CON after getting bloodied maybe?

The spells' ACC and damage do scale. Only PEN doesn't. It's an oversight and I hope it gets fixed soon. Nick Carver stated that all Imbue-spells should scale like their normal counterparts. For CC imbues PEN doesn't matter at all. Doing 3 Pull of Eora or Bindig Web with one shot and combining it with Binding Roots is a very powerful powerful CC effect. Of course you can go Geomancer. Why not. You can even do Wizard/Arcane Archer. The only real downside of the Arcane Archer compared to a vanilla one is the ACC penalty with normal weapons. If you circumvent that: how can the Arcane Archer be worse than the vanilla one? I think people still believe that subclasses have to be more powerful than the vanilla ones and are somehow disappointed if they are only slightly - or not obviously.