Boeroer

Barb: Barbaric Blow upgrade: get 2 Rage on kill Single class Barb: Blood Surge, get Rage on kill (25% chance). Single class Paladin: get Zeal when allies (including summons) get killed Tactician: interrupt an ability = get Discipline, flank all enemies and don't get flanked yourself: get Brilliant Blood Mage: Blood Sacrifice Items: search wiki for "on kill" and "+1 of each resource" and "Brilliant". There aren't too many though. The Cloak that has "Mind over Matter" and "Living Illusions" - I think it's called Shroud of Phantasm - is your best bet. If you are a Priest or Wizard you can cheese the heck out of it.

Priest of Skaen/Blood Mage sounds great. I don't like the Mind-over-Matter cheese too much, even for solo. That cape is bonkers anyways. I once equipped all the "do x AoE dmg on unconscious" items on myself and added Citzal's Spirit Lance or Draining Touch. When you summon the Living Illusions (and they sometimes cast Essential Phantom themselves) and suddenly have 7+ Citzal's or permanent Draining Touches on the field who do big AoE dmg when they get killed - it wipes most ads. And on top you get Brilliant occasionally. I wish they had nerfed Brilliant as suggested (different ticks for different resources, e.g. longer ticks for spell replenishment etc.) instead of removing it from most abilities and then introducing it on items and as lvl-1 passive on a subclass. *sigh*

It's great in a lot of cases because: a) it's one handed and thus you will get +12 ACC b) it has an average base damage of 28 (from memory), Great Sword only has 21. c) it targets Will instead of Deflection (can be debuffed to the ground with Miasma + clubs' Bewildering Blows or The Willbreaker) d) it weakens the target on hit (for base 15 sec I believe?) e) it drains 20% of damage done as health. That's not too much, but with Assassinate + Backstab it's okish f) you can summon it and then summon an Essential Phantom which will use it until its summoning time is over (Draining Touch will not get removed after a hit) Cons: 1) gets removed after successful attack 2) you have to use a spell slot 3) you have either to pick the ability or carry a grimoire with it 4) You have to summon it (costs time) Of course the biggest downside is that it is gone after a successful attack. I would have liked it better if it had a normal summoning time - shorter than the other summoned weapons though. But most of all it's just fun to use. The screen shakes a bit when you crit with it and the damage numbers after a crit from stealth with all the Assassin's dmg bonuses are cool. With the right equipment I get ~140 crit damage with an auto-attack. With Zandethus Draconic Fury it's over 200. With all that + Crippling Strike I get ~250 - up to 300. Then add Deep Wounds (although it says pierce/crush/slash damage it works with Draining Touch which does corrode damage)... It won't kill the big monsters with those high health pools, but it will take out the squishies reliably. It's just fun to sneak in, kill some casters, become invisible and repeat - before you storm in with the rest of the crew. It's not the usual "moar dps!" apporach but a sneaky one. Also powerful because the enemy can't get you. Takes some time though...

Make a Berserker/Beckoner with Grave Calling right away!

Firearm will only give you reload and no recovery. And yes, recovery penalty from armor will also apply to reloading (unlike PoE1).

Any news from the Systems Design Team? This wasn't addressed in the new beta patch.

+9 ist the number of a lvl-3 phantom I think. At lvl 20 it should have +60 or so? It seems like all summons suffer from this now...

Hi, as title: when you pick the PL 9 ability Empowered Strikes on a Monk and use (empowered) Whispers of the Wind nothing special will happen. No +100 PEN and no +100 ACC. Nor on the first attack neither the following. If I use Stunning Surge (for example) it works. In addition, the other "Empower-Abilites" (+1 PEN, +10 ACC and so on) that you can take at PL 7 also do nothing with Whispers of the Wind. Find a Monk (MC) with those abilities here in my savegame and try it out: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcwpf6g07ik0k5t/Hyleon%20%28f9c897b3-bd46-4c0e-9148-d236ebfea8c2%29%20%28LAX-123ABCDEFG%29%20quicksave.savegame?dl=0

Hi, I'm playing with Aloth. He's lvl 20. When I summon an Essential Phantom it has 34 accuracy: 25 base and +9 from level. That can't be right. Before that it had really high accuracy. I noticed the same with another character I played solo before (Geomancer): loaded up the savegame and the same problem there. I had similar problems with an Ancient whose unique shroom summons would not scale their stats correctly - don't know if that's related. Find my savegame here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcwpf6g07ik0k5t/Hyleon%20%28f9c897b3-bd46-4c0e-9148-d236ebfea8c2%29%20%28LAX-123ABCDEFG%29%20quicksave.savegame?dl=0

They are just there for the challenge and give you nothing special. So that people like OP look a bit silly when ranting about "content [that] can't be accessed by a casual player looking for a complete play through".

I agree

Flagellant's Path can be used as well. It might seem like a melee ability - but it's not. It works perfectly well with guns because it has its owns recovery but omits the reload. So you can do like Stunning Surge --> Flagellanth's Path into the crowd (triggers Full mortar attack on target). This is like having a free "skip recovery after shot" abiliy: supergood (until Whispers comes around). It just drains your Mortification quickly, so watch out.

What I don't get though: Why can you only cast one Wall of Flames/Thorns etc. (a new cast wall will replace the old one) but have multiple Walls of Draining in place? This seems to be an oversight. And once it gets patched...

Argh. Did they nerf that? Because I remember doing so in earlier stages of the game. Sidenote: Why does Driving FLight not work with the Fury's naturel weapon's jump? YOu will still get 1 jump, not two. Stoopid...

Right. That's unintuitive but cool. Also works with Edér if you get his pet feat with Berath's Blessings.

While it's not the most efficient use of spells, I like playing an Assassin/Wizard who uses Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure a lot (for increasing the number of invisibility uses). - sometimes I summon Concelhaut's Draining Touch (has highest melee weapon base damage) - I sneak up and do an Assassination + Backstab + Sneak Attack + Sash of Judgement (+10% dmg) + Pregognition (+25% crit damage) + Hylea's Talons. - Usually I turn invisible because of Slippers of the Assassin + kill Powerful weapons for an Assassin are also Dragon's Dowry and Chromoprismatic Staff. Guns have the huge advantage that you can immediately cast stuff after the assassination while with a melee weapon you'll have to wait for recovery to be done. That's why I would argue that the perfect weapon for a backstabbing assassin is the arquebus. WHile being fun it is totally counterintuitive - and I still don't know why the devs didn't change the mechanics of Backstab from a percentage-based dmg bonus to a flat one (see Soul Annihilation) so that light weapons won't face a disadvantage anymore. Wael knows we've been suggesting that a lot of times now. I guess nobody's reading it... Now I'm thinking about Assassin/Bloodmage because I could use Blood Sacrifice to regain Draining Touches and Brilliant Departure while the Assassination/Backstab + Draining Touch would give me back plenty ot health. Hm... actually that' exactly the char I want to try next.

It is a melee attack. But it is no weapon attack. It has melee range but its own (high) crush base damage. But no idea if that qualifies for Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming. Edit: just tested it: doesn't work.

You are welcome. I took a Wizard with Pull of Eora and a Priest with that Sigil of Rymrgand (or so) with me - just for pulling enemies tightly together for my Monk's mortars.

Don't know how it works internally. But that sounds right. It changed in one of the early patches. In beta those things didn't stack - and suddenly they did.

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?