Boeroer

No, you spoke about different things.

The modal of the Morning Star is def. worth it: - Barbs get Brute Force - Fighters' Mulke Kick targets Fortitude - Monks' Force of Anguish targets Fortitude Helwalker's increased damage is an issue. With Constant Recovery and later Unbending it becomes manageable though. A nice combo can be Devoted/Berserker if you get the Devil of Caroc Breastplate to remove Confusion entirely and then aim for the Sanguine Great Sword to counter the self damage of the Barb or use a Morning Star and counter the self damage with Savage Defiance, Constant Recovery and Unbending. The modal of great swords only works for the weapon attacks with the great sword itself. Actually it's a pretty bad modal. If you lower your MIG by 10 points and push PER by 10 (just in theory now) and use the modal you would do the same weapon damage as with unaltered stats. But your healings would be worse (because of low MIG) as would be you non-weapon damage and your accuracy with non-weapon attacks would be higher. Also your Fortitude would be lower but your reflex higher. All in all I wouldn't recommend it at all.

One weapon slot: Morning Star. Force of Anguish and Mule Kick target Fortitude.

I did indeed a melee Geomancer with Stalker/Wizard (no subclass). And it was able to solo the BoW Dracolich without any consumables fairly easily because of the very high ACC, high AR and single target dmg.

One nice multiclass with priest was Assassin/Skaen. If I had to multiclass a Priest of Eothas I would maybe pick Helwalker because the +MIG and +INT will be great for healing, nuking as well as support duration. At the same time he could do good melee dmg. I didn't try out spiritual weapons (faith attuned flail) with Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes yet, but the lashes should add up nicely.

If you like to use Takedown Combo (+100% base damage bonus for the next attack that hits the enemy - only costs 1 Bond) you need a way to lower Fortitude (because that's what Takedown Combo rolls against). That's why I played a melee Geomancer with a Morning Star. The Animal Companion can then put Takedown Combo onto your enemy and you can cast a high dmg,single target spell on that enemy - for example Killing Bolt. You will do double base dmg * Power Level bonus then. On top comes all the Animal Companion stuff like Stalker's Link, Predator's Sense and so on. On-kill effects will not trigger on you if your AC kills something.

My experience with single class priests in Deadfire - I don't multiclass them anymore since I think they make the party better when they are single classed. Stuff like Devotions and Salvation of Time (amongst other spells) are so crucial to my parties' performances that I want them ASAP. And because my last PoE run that I took over to Deadfire was a Priest of Eothas.

I would do single class Priest of Eothas despite all the catcalls.

Just tested ingame: it's two weapons now (dual wielding) like all the other spiritshift weapons. Base damage is 8-13 shock, base PEN is 8 (can be raised by +1 with Heart of the Storm), attack base speed is 0.5 sec, recovery 4 sec. And it jumps one time. Range is 10 m + 4m jump. Jump's damage malus is 20%. Bear as comparison: Base damage is 13-19 slash, base PEN is 9, attack base speed is 0.5 sec, recovery 4 sec. No jumps, melee range. All in all it's comparable I think. Take into account that a ranged character with 10 m range won't lose dps from running around to reach enemies so much. With Wildstrike and Heart of the Storm I got nice numbers.

I agree that raising AR on enemies on PotD is not the best decision that was made. I keep saying so since beta because of the reason Dunehunter posted: narrows down choices (classes, abilites, weapons - items in general). In PoE's PotD difficulty enemies didn't get additional DR but "only" defenses (besides adding more enemies and tougher creatures, too). Boosting enemies' damage output would be fine. Healing is very strong in Deadfire anyways - and usually PotD players know how to stack enouch healing sources so that they are nigh unkillable. Or giving enemies more abilites to play with.

Amen

Who doesn't?

Afaik the Fury was changed from 2-handed to one-handed in a patch, wasn't it?

How high are Dordugan's Fortitude and Will again?

I believe that is correct.

Whew. You really have to calm down a bit. Why this aggressiveness? You can say what you want about Kaylon, but he a) has more experience than most forum users when it comes to solo play b) never made statements that weren't based on some solid reasoning and/or testing. Even if you don't believe him: why that escalation?

Nothing

That's not what he meant. Dunehunter was here testing stuff extensively in the beta phase, finding and reporting bugs etc. It's also not correct. Ranged weapons are supposed to work as soon as you are near enough (2m). And usually they do. Arquebuses did have a problem where they wouldn't work with Backstab even if you were in the range of 2m. I thought that got fixed. Maybe not completely?

It works for me - like before. Were you invisible when trying to take whiteleaf maybe?

Bye!

And yet you don't know how to make it work? Buff ACC, debuff defenses and then nuke (if you must). It's a party game. If casters would you do auto-hits with big, high damage AoE spells while mundane classes could only hack at single targets and miss/graze occasionally... would neither be balanced nor fair. Casters are in a good spot. No need for crutches.

Rofl

Nick Carver said that: - AoE weapons are not supposed to trigger multiple Imbue-spells (see mortars or blast) - multiprojectile weapons like Blunderbuss and Frostseeker are not supposed to trigger multiple Imbue-spells - and that jumps (including Driving Flight) are indeed supposed to trigger multiple Imbue-spells. I know that because I got a response to several beta-patch reports I posted while testing Arcane Archer. So I don't expect any more changes on that front. Just a fix of the spell scaling.

Don't forget that Boar form still does wounding damage.

Sadly I think even in those cases a troubadour using brisk recitation and Many Lives would get more mileage out of the combo in a prolonged fight. The point is that Beckoner's skeletons are so squishy that you can kill them a lot faster. Edit: realized later that the Many Lives skeletons are even more squishy, so... point taken.