Boeroer

I think the main point is to avoid the high self dmg of the Berseker. It can make you quite squishy and knocked out chars don't deal damage.

That's also very nice. Ball and Chain would also be nice against anything that is restistant/immune to dex afflictions (once Grave Calling is fixed which obviously has its own, seperate form of paralyze which doesn't really get lowered by resistance despite saying so ). Awesome multiclass for a complete boss lockdown by the way. But I need the Morning Star to lower Fortitude for Takedown Combo and Will for the Phantom+Draining Touch. Ich think few people know how robust and great an Essential Phantom can be. ACC is nice (especially with a scaling, one handed weapon like Draining Touch). Also Draining Toch applies weaken on hit (another -10 Fortitude). Anyways it was just an example how a (multi)class can be very powerful despite its lacking popularity. It's the build that counts, not the classes (at least in Deadfire).

What? 20 Accuracy for your Combusting Wounds. I don't see how you wouldn't go for that .Well I don't see that many Geomancer builds around. It's even better if you combine it with The Willbreaker and Body Blows + Accurate Wounding Shot. +40 ACC make it easy to land. Then apply all your fortitude stuff like CW (also profits from Ring of Focused Flame). That means you CW has a "virtual" ACC bonus of +55. Or do a Takedown combo (+100% dmg for your next attack) and follow up with a mean single target spell like Killing Bolt. At the same time have an Essential Phantom that got Concelhaut's Draining Touch from you (which won't get removed after a hit on a Phantom and targets Will instead of Deflection which also gets lowered by Willbreaker). Concelhaut's Draining Touch has very high base damage and also works very well with Takedown Combo - and Miasma of Dull-Mindedness of course. Dropping the Will defense of a Dracolich by half and then having a Phantom pummeling it with corrode crits is kind of fun. While it stands in a Wall of Flames, piling up Combusting Wounds of course. Style points for adding some Minor Missiles.

No. Because they get the attack speed bonus from Dual Wieldig and Two Weapon Speed. They didn't get that in PoE and that was the reason for them being worse than a non-bashing shield in most cases.

While I generally like concepts that leave well-trodden paths I can't see which high dmg bonuses you will get from Fighter and Barbarian that "balance out" the low MIG. There's Blooded, One Stands Alone (+45%, conditional) and Weapon Mastery (+15%). And those don't come early. Don't forget that dmg maluses are calculated with double inversion which means that as soon as you have a dmg bonus in your calculation your -21% from MIG turns into a value of effective -32%. That's rather harsh. Same with healing but also with self damage of course. I mean I'm sure it's totally viable at some point, but is it a good approach right from the start? On a Helwalker maybe... Blood Frenzy's raw DoT will be lower. Bleeding Cuts as well I suspect. Carnage will suffer a lot since it scales with MIG and Power Level. The bonus you'll get through PL will be eaten up immediately. The already low Constant Recovery from Black Jacket will be diminished further (no problem in his case though). The biggest advantage might indeed be the lower self dmg which can really reach annoying numbers at higher levels. And because of this I'd say instead of using Voidward (or in addition) it could be smart to lower MIG that much in the late game because then also legendary enchantments can indeed dwarf the dmg malus. But the early game might be a huge pain. Good thing that Black Jacket makes the game somewhat easier by being able to immediately switch to the perfect setup. Rogue bonuses are somewhat overrated. Even if you stack +500% dmg bonus on a Scout you might end up with numbers that are somewhat disappointing considering all the effort you put in. It's "only" base weapon dmg *6 after all. On the other hand very high attack speed (multiplicative), decent dmg bonuses and more than +35% lash (multiplicative) can bring you there. That's why Streetfighter/<something with lashes> is usually so powerful. And in the late game -21% from MIG won't matter much to weapon dmg (but to Carnage and raw DoTs). But the early game... phew. Also being able to prevent underpenetration (Black Jacket) itself can mean a huge damagse increase. Underpenetration is more severe the higher it gets due to double inversion. If you can switch to a penetrating weapon instead of suffering -3 underpenetration you can gain up to +300% (additive) dmg.

People always forget the single classes (besides Wizard). Those not only get some key abilites a lot earlier but also get some gamebreaking abilites at high levels: SC Monk can be one of the greater dps classes in the endgame: Barbarian with stacked AR (Platinated Plate + Bronze Juggernaut+ Thick Skin) and Barbaric Retaliation + Bleeding Cuts wrecks everything that hits him in seconds as well: There is no best class. There's only a good build for a certain purpose. For example I would consider a Rogue/Soulblade with WotEP to be a better dps build than the barb above. However - when getting surrounded the barb surely is the better pick because the cone attack of the WotEP doesn't work very well when surrounded while Barbaric Retaliation is not as effective if you attack from the flanks. I even did a Geomancer as single target dps guy - and although most people don't think much of a Geomancer in general I can easily solo the Dracolich without any consumalbles with it...

And me. Besides one or two dialogues where you can get items earlier (don't have to kill to get them) you don't miss anything "marterial" if you skip dialogue options.

Great stuff! Thanks for the numbers especially. The mentioned quirk works also fine when stealing stuff from chests etc. or opening doors you are not allowed to open by the way. What also works is to stealth where you can't be seen and leap right besides the "victim" and steal or pickpocket. Can be done with Bounding Boots or Leap from Barb.

Most of the time enemies are strong against two of pierce/crush/slash and weaker against one of the group. Sometimes a lot weaker.

Because it lets you use an empowered invocation in every encounter (if you enchant it properly). It turns Empower from x/Rest to 1/Encounter AND gives you back 3 phrase points when doing so. You can pair it with Scordeo's Edge and stack quite ridiculous amounts of accuracy (it says it's capped but still isn't). Also Scordeo's can trigger Blade Cascade which is pretty awesome as well. I think that is the best setup if you want empowered invoations. Else Grave Calling + Scordeo's would be nice. Grave Calling it self does good dmg, but in addition as a Berserker you will kill your own skeletal summons while Confused. Grave Calling will proc a foe-only Chillfog each time you kill one of your own skeletons. It's a very powerful combo but even more so on Berserker/Beckoner. Should also work with Hel Beckoning, Noxious Burst and summoned Phantoms (although they take forever to be summoned). Or Grave Calling + Sasha's or whatever combo. It's all good. Besides that and speaking about non-uniques: for generating many crits you want a light dual weapon setup that has +5 to ACC. Like daggers, clubs and rapiers. Clubs have another synergy for a Skald: they can lower Will by 25 which maes it very easy to land Killer Froze Stiff. That invocation will paralyze and that will lead to a 25% hit-to-crit conversion which helps the Skald again. So uniques aside a club + dagger, rapier or another club would be best. Also Monastic Unarmed Training can be good: it's fast and it has higher base damage (which is good for Carnage) and its ACC can scale pretty high with Power Level (works well if you have some means of raising PL through gear or/and ability).

1. Yes 2. Yes

Summon a Shade and then kill it with Hel Beckoning to cast Noxious Burst.

Sure

Because ACC of scrolls is not determined by the character's ACC?

This all looks very promising guys. If they intended to put it in anyways they will not really oppose this campaign I guess? Hooray for the Deadfire Evil Party Playthrough! I mean even more evil. I mean the latest beta patch is already awesome. If they manage to put this is as well in the future... It doesn't bear contemplating! Edit: also add Priest of Rhymrgand please.

Maybe they should have shrunken down the proficiencies to sword, axe, mace, club, rapier, dagger, sabre, spear, hammer and flail and make two- and one handed versions of it as well as some special versions (stilettos would be daggers but with pierce instead of slash and higher PEN but lower base dmg, estocs the same with swords and so on). Pikes would be two handed spears... Special modals seem to be no problem. Look at that modal of Eccea's Arcane Blaster etc.

I guess you mean PER? High PEN comes from Thunderous Blows and enchantments. I dumped CON and RES and took highish DEX, PER and MIG (the classic dps stats) and maxed INT. I use Duality:INT, Aloth's Armor, two Rings of Overseeing and Loki as pet. This gives me an enormous AoE size (the radius more than doubled). This is important to get that multihit-train rolling. A wizard with Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights, Combusting Wounds, Miamsma and Pull of Eora is a perfect addition. I only took Two Weapon Style and no melee abilities. The most important stuff is Enduring Dance, Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, Stunning Surge and Flagellant's Path before getting Resonant Touch and Whispers of the Wind which admittedly come quite late. But Stunning Surge and Flagellant's Path are already worth it. FPath does a Full Attack and skips reloading entirely (you can spam it as long as you have Mortification. Stunning Surge lets you regain Mortification easily if you can hit several enemies at once. My backup weapons are the Long Pain. As soon as the number of enemies got depleted to a small amount I will summon it (it's a fast cast with not too harsh recovery). For a single class ranged Monk I think there's nothing better when it comes to single targets. Scales awesomely well with Power Level to better numbers than even mythic equipment. Monks have ok health and defenses so the dropped CON and RES don't hurt as much as with squishier classes. Still squishy of course, but manageable. I used an amulet of health in the early game which works very well until its flat bonus gets too insignificant compared to your base health pool. Ring of the Marksman is nice of course. And since I don't like consumables but I do like Avenging Storm - so Heaven's Cacophony was a must. If you like scrolls you can skip that and take the hat that gives you +5 ranged ACC and 10% reload bonus (just forgot the name - weird). My current playthrough with this comes to an end. It has been great fun and I guess I will post a detailed build description soon.

Add the new "unarmed" armor from SSS for flavour and a bit more dmg.

I'm pretty sure it's totally possible and not a big hassle to share the characters without steam. Like with mods: if you know where to put it it's just a matter of copy & paste I guess.

One handed morning stars? So... maces basically?

Since defection has increasing returns and paladins can get nice deflection it doesn't need to be dump stat for paladins. And on top there is the shorter afflicton time. There are some nice items that raise deflection besides shields - so you don't even need to use a shield to get respectable deflection values. For example there's a Breastplate that gives you deflection based on you Intimidation skill. Pretty cool for Bleak Walkers. Another one (Nomad's Brigandine) gives you +5 deflection if you are near allies. Since all item bonuses stack in Deadfire (unlike PoE) you can be defensive and still use a Great Sword, Estoc, two hammers or whatever.

With good RES, Lone Wolf and Clarity of Agony you can pretty much remove every afflicton (including self damage of Berserker Frenzy, Sacred Immolation or Alacrity) - so RES can have its uses. But it's still the stat that gets dumped most - followed by CON. That is because most people favor offense over defense I think.

What Eothas spell do you mean? Actually she automatically gets the PL09 spell at PL8 automatically if I'm not mistaken. Besides that: her lvl-1-spell is pretty great and scales very nicely with MIG and Power Level. And the rest doesn't differ much from all the other priests.

The differences between DEX/PER/MIG are not that big. And here it's only about dps. MIG is also useful for healing, PER is useful for finding traps and secrets and so on. I think the usefulness of stats is pretty balance except RES which is often still a dumpstat.

Sanguine Plate and Shod-in-Faith kind of always go to a barb. If you lower RES I guess they can also work fine on a monk. If you plan to receive crits often I would raise CON.