Boeroer

The more I read from this guy the more I get the impression that he's a douche. Or drunk. Or both.

Same strategy - just with double bronzers. But doesn't really matter. Sloop is enough to sink all ships on the map.

Helwalker/Streetfighter is quite godly with mortars and stuff like Toxic Strike. Hekwalker/Fury may be good (didn't play that), but usually I think a SC Fury is better for dps due to higher Power Level. Shifted it's not comparable to Helwalker/Streetfighter. Those are not two handed though.

Yes, it is fast. But it's also a ton of attack speed/recovery bonuses.

You need to crit a lot. So stuff like Dance of Death/Enduring Dance is kind of mandatory. Also Razor's Edge for Monk or Devotions + (Dire)Blessing for Contemplative. Then it's not bad. 33% and 25% is an overall chance of ~52% to repeat an attack after you crit. If you crit half of the time it's like a 25% multiplicative dmg boost (comparable with a 25% lash - kind of). If you crit 30% of times it's only 15% and so on. Generally speaking: if you often face low defenses and/or have high ACC then Flurry + Drumming is better. This might be the case if you use a lot of CC and debuffs like Miasma + Shaken and Blind and such and also ACC buffs. It's also great if you are a Sage with Citzal's Spirit Lance. If not then Lightning Strikes is better (unless shock AR is high). It's also a lot more predictable. I think against most bosses Lighting Strikes is the better pick.

1. No. Articulated gives you an actual speed bonus like Frenzy etc. does. So if you can reduce the recovery malus of the Breastplate enough you will be faster than without armor because the speed bonus is higher than the recovery malus. 2. Yes. Both stack. Frenzy gives you an attack speed bonus that reduces animation time and recovery while Heating Up cuts the recovery in half. Heating Up doesn't negate Bleeding Cuts because of double inversion (the way maluses are calculated under the hood). But it helps a lot.

Hi! Like Pernicious Cloud (which I reported the other day) Wall of Many Colors (Wizard) also seems to have 0 PEN with its damaging effects. Thanks for reading - and maybe fixing.

Yeah... so... what does all that have to do with the bug report in the first place?

Right. I'm using it on a high level retaliation barb (Barbaric Retaliation + very low deflection but high AR and dmg reduction). Due to the high dmg output I can hold up the buff most of the time. Usually not towards the end of a battle (if it's a longer one), but then I don't need it that much anyways.

I didn't say that. That implies that ship-to-ship fights are also boring and repetitive. My point was that they are faster and you can get loot earlier (because char level plays no role in ship-to-ship combat). So I think I don't have to come on anything.

It's a lot quicker and easier to get the items if you don't board. Boarding fights are repetitive and boring after a while as well. Ship fights at least are quick (most of the time) and give you the opportunity to gain a lot of XP and items you otherwise can't get (because the enemy crew's level is too high for boarding).

High INT is good with WotEP since you want a big cone - and every millimeter helps to maybe barely scrath that one additional selection cirlce of an enemy (still counts). The rest seems ok as well. As rogue you don't need a lot of MIG and high PER and helps to land an initial debuff (like Secret Horrors - it's so good). One could argue that with a Trickster you might want to raise RES (and maybe take some points from INT/DEX/PER, even CON if you have a fitting party composition): WotEP, enchanted with Offensive Parry + Riposte + high RES + Mirrored Images (and some +deflcetion items) are really nice. The (potentially) double Riposte also generates Focus. Since you are not a shield user and don't have high starting deflection you won't let them miss a lot, but it's still a good way to increase your dps passively, especially when wearing thick armor. Just note that Offensive Parry doesn't do an AoE attack but is a single target attack. Still nice. Also makes the game less of a hassle sice you don't get hit that often. If you don't want to do that it's ok to drop RES I think.

Yes. The burn retaliation of Battle Forged scaled with level in PoE. Why doesn't it scale in Deadfire?

It has, but no worries. Unfortunately the Merciless Hand only works with attack rolls that deal direct damage. But that includes "pulsing" stuff like Chillfog, Wicked Briars, Sacred Immolation... It does not work with any Damage over Time (DoT) effects. Dragon Thrashed is such a DoT ability. Others would be Come Soft Winds, Disintegrate, Shining Beacon and so on. Crits with those effects get +50% duration - and that's where the higher damage comes from then: more ticks. The damage of the ticks does not get altered by crits. Hence the +0.3 from Merciless Hand doesn't get applied. tl; dr: nope.

? What do I miss? You don't lose anything because you will keep Smoke Veil with its invisibiliy and gain a second ability that handels the upgrade. Lower teier abilites usually only get replaced by their upgrades if they do the same as the base ability AND some bonus on top for the same price. If Smoke Veil gets replaced by its upgrades then that's a bug. By the way Pernicious Cloud (a possible upgrade of Smoke Veil) is very good. The only problem is the current bug that gives it 0 PEN. But this has been confirmed to be fixed in the next patch.

Hi! There is the Trial of Iron expert setting in PoE and Deadfire that only does one single auto-save and prevents reloading (except of course when you quit and come back later). If you die the savegame gets deleted automatically. If you play both games with ToI on you'll basically have your challenge.

Same with Linux. I think it's because of different naming of folders. Win doesn't care for upper/lower case while Mac/Linux do. The savegames are there, but in a different folder that's named just a tad differently. You can copy and paste them into the one the game's actually using in your platform. Still needs a fix.

Zilch so far.

This is pretty bad and needs a bump.

I also still have it.

When you're using FoD with dual wielding while in stealth/invisible, does the off-hand attack benefit from back stab or assassin's unique ability? I vaguely remember the first attack with your main-hand clears the invisible/stealth status. But I'm not sure. Backstab only applies to the first attack because it breaks stealth. The second one (bash in this case) will be done without Backstab bonus. The only exception is Vanishing Strikes - because it makes you invisible right again after the first attack so the second one can benefit again (and make you invisible as well).

Further testing: Flame Shield from wizard doesn't trigger Avenging Storm. Ragged Cloak's raw ret. doesn't trigger Av. Storm. Nothing but Magran's Blessing seems to so far. But Fire Shield + Flame Shield stack. That's kind of nice in combo with Combusting Wounds. So I guess a Fire Godlike Wizard/something with Magran's Blessing and Flame Shield etc. + Patinated Plate + Combusting Wounds and not too much deflection (rets don't get triggered on graze) could be cool. Wait.. it seems that Piercing Sigil suppresses Fire Shield and Flame Shield. Arrrgh! Edit: Ha! If you cast Piercing Sigil first (with a different weapon set) and then switch to Magran's Blessing and then cast Flame Shield you can keep up all of the retaliations. Weird. But cool. Edit2: Tested it with a crazy high AR SC wizard and actually it's pretty great. Some heavy armored Wizard/something Fire Godlike based on ret can work (with the help of Combusting Wounds).

Did a quick test: The Fire Shield of Magran's Blessing does trigger Avenging Storm. Battle Forged does NOT. So usually when this is up it means that an attacks will get hit four times when he hits you (assuming you don't miss with the retaliations): - normal Avenging Storm retaliation - Fire Shield ret. - Avenging Storm triggered by the Fire Shield ret. attack - Battle Forged And Battle Forged still doesn't scale... So it's still complete crap. Excuse my French. No I would like to test other forms of retalations and check if they work with Avenging Storm. Then I would maybe build something sick around retalations + Heaven's Cacophony or scrolls of Avenging Storm (although I hate scrolls, so maybe Cacophony). Maybe a Wizard with Combusting Wounds and all those retalation spells (Flame Shield, Zandethu's Drconic Fury, Minoletta's Piercing Sigil, Cloak of Death). But I suspect Avenging Storm only works with the shield and not with spell indiced rets. But I'll see...

Magran has no sward as far as I know. You mean Magran's Favor the battle axe I presume. All those burn retaliations are a) no lashes but direct base damage b) don't scale with char nor Power Level At least if that didn't get changed in the latest patch (didn't read about that, but who knows?). That makes them ok in the early game and extremely ugh later on. You can upgrade Magran's Blessing's Fire Shield to Greater Fire Shield but it's still not good. Purifying Flame is nice though. On the other hand Flames of Devotion does profit from Power Levels. +5% base damage per PL. Burn-only Fire PLs do count! So the best setup for FoD is Magran's Favor + Sun and Moon. They can give you +4 Fire PL which will increase your FoD strikes by +20% (multiplicative). That is pretty awesome. My pick would be Streetfighter/Goldpact because you would be sturdy but would also dish out a lot of damage with FoD: raised base dmg * (1 + 1.qualityEnchantmentBonus + 1.MIGbonus + 1.SneakAttackBonus) * lash dmg is pretty sick. THe burn retaliations would come as a bonus. I did not check if those effects trigger Avenging Storm. Hm...

I'm playing a char with Frostseeker for over three weeks now and it def. was pierce/slash before 3.1. But I also remember that it used to be freeze/pierce at release. As I said I suspect it got changed because they were implementing Scion of Flame, Secret of Rime etc. properly and maybe they though that Frostseeker would be too good with Secret of Rime's +1 PEN?