Boeroer

Yes. It's a new bug with unique items that can occur. Hopefully will be fixed soon.

Your Herald has a focus pool? Foxy...

Since imps seem to keep on evolving as long as they can absorb arcane knowledge and stuff a really powerful, smart and old Nemnok would easily be a nice main antagonist. At least for a DLC.

Nemnok would have been a great main antagonist. All the hints and fluff around him (books that talk about the nature of imps and the like). A shame he was "wasted" in a side quest.

Helwalker is nice if you plan to avoid getting hit too often. You can't play him as a sturdy frontliner unless you pair him with some class that can heal or gives him very high defenses (like Kind Wayfarer - so good combo I think). For me it's the perfect subclass for a caster/monk multiclass or even a single class ranged monk. Shattered Pillar got nerfed too hard. If they'd take awya the wound restriction (5 max instead of 10) it might be ok though.

Hehehe.

I guess you mean NOT micro heavy? Anyway, if you want her to contribute to party's dps then use Magran's Favor and Sun & Moon with FoD, use Mith Fyr chant and Shared Flames as FoD upgrade. This will give your whole party a big burning lash which is great. Magran's Favor and Sun & Moon will pump your burn Power Level by +4 which is great with FoD damage. I personally like the passive healing route better where you build her tanky with weapon & shield and simpley use Ancient Memory + Exalted Endurance to heal the whole party passively while you can heal single targets with Lay on Hands etc.

Devotions + Blessing + Body Blows + Combusting Wounds and a Wall of Flame did the job quite nicely for me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have the strong feeling that firkraag888/master guardian/no1fanboy/Teclis23 opened up a new forum account.

Best thing about the single class monk with dual mortars is Empowered Strikes - and that the AoE hit rolls all trigger a Resonant Touch. So even if you don't use Avenging Storm a group of enemies will have tons of stacks of Resonant Touch after an attack - you then just stomp on the ground and they all fall apart. I will do a quick playthrough with this guy and maybe write a build. It's so much fun to test, jeez (vid without Avenging Storm or Empower): If you wonder why they all get stunnend: I use the Stalking Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak that stuns and does more dmg from stealth. But it also works from invisibility. Whispers of the Wind turns you invisible... great synergy. And here with Empower (adds +1 jump for every 2 PL as well as +100 ACC and +100 PEN with Empowered Strikes: And finally with Avenging Storm (no Empower): As you can see Avenging Storm isn't THAT crucial to the build. It helps of course... But I guess most enemies that come in groups don't have enough HP to really feel the difference. I forgot Lightning Strikes in this case by the way. And it's always best to use Whispers of the Wind with 10 Wounds so that 5 are left for Turning Wheel.

It triggers a low dmg lightning strike on the attacker every time you get hit AND it triggers the same strike every time you hit an enemy with a weapon (for every hit roll). In this case you'll produce a ton of hit rolls because HoF is AoE and every AoE attack from HoF triggers another AoE attack from the mortars. In case of Fire in the Hole it's even 2 AoE attacks because it jumps 1 time. All in all you'll produce so many attack rolls that your graphics card will burn up because of all the lightning that's raining down. But the combo is also great without Avenging Storm. You can also combine it with a Wizard's Combusting Wounds for great dmg or a rogue's Confounding Blind in order to bring deflection down a lot in a second.

I just tested a single class monk with dual mortars and it's actually even better than single class barb.

Oh, I forgot: Barbaric Retaliation (Full Attack when receiving a crit) also works with mortars and other ranged weapons. That alone can be a reason to pick Single Class Barbarian. Drop RES to 3, cast Frenzy and get flanked and you'll catch crits like crazy (-27 deflection). And you'll retaliate with AoE Full Attacks every time. It's lots of fun. Trigger Frenzy, cast Avenging Storm, open with a Barbaric Blow from range, don't wait for reload but jump right into the group (HoF doesn't care if your weapons are reloaded and you even don't have to reload afterwards but can spam the next one). Sure, this isn't really a fighting style that most would call "ranged", but it's the mist powerful setup with ranged weapons I know of. It's also nice that you can use it very early because both mortarts can be picked up early and Barbaric Blow + Frenzy + Bloodlust + mortars is already nice. Another plus is that a SC barb with this setuo also works perfectly well with melee weapons - so you are very flexible. Another nice thing: Spirit Tornado lowers enemies fortitude by -10 points. If you took Brute Force you will crit more often on average. This works nicely with Frostseeker + Secret of Rime (if you like that better than mortars). I did some tests now with that bow instead of mortars and the result is only a tiny bit less powerful in terms of dmg but sour survivability is better because terrified enemies won't hit you (takes away the joy of retaliation though). Another weapon which you can pick up rel. early. Watershaper's Focus also works well, but after its nerf it's not as powerful anymore and is not as good as mortars and Frostseeker.

Did you watch the video? In this case it is. The combination of (Powder Burns AoE+Mortar AoE)*HoF AoE which generates so many hit rolls which will all trigger Avenging Storm is what makes this combo so powerful. Just grab the Ring of the Marksman and use a Berseker and PEN issues will not occur. In case of Berseker you would like to use Caroc's Breastplate or switch to Modwyr (and back to guns) once you want to cast Frenzy. Else you would kill yourself. I mean - if you take Vengeful defeat this can also work very well - you'd add another HoF on knockout and most like kill everthing around. But most people don't like to go down at all, so... You can always switch to dual Battle Axes for HoF to apply Bleeding Cuts x2 on all enemies in range - for example if you meet pierce-immune foes. Or use Watershaper's Focus or Frostseeker in that case if you want stick to ranged weapons. Multiclass is overrated. I mean it's great of course, but people think it's better than single classes in general which is not the case. For example every offensive ability scales its base dmg with Power Level: +5% base dmg per PL. That's a mulipicative dmg boost. Compare Flames of Devotion on a lvl 20 SC Paladin with Prestige (10 PL) with FoD from a lvl 20 multi Paladin (7 PL) and you can see the difference if you examine the dmg roll in the combat log. Or do the same with a SC Rogue where it's even more visible because his additive dmg bonuses combine nicely with the higehr base dmg. Carnage also scales with PL by the way - here it doesn't matter though because ranged weapons don't trigger it. This is a "hidden" bonus of martial Single Classes which comes on top of the other advantages that single class chars have over multiclass chars (earlier access to high PL tiers, exclusive access to PL 8 and 9 abilites). There fore I don't think that Devoted/something is especially powerful. In this case: what could a Berseker/Devoted provide for a ranged build which would outweigh the power of HoF with mortars? I didn't test it but I guess that SC Monk with Whispers of the Wind would be even better as long as there are not more than 6 foes in range - since the AoE is more flexible and mobs don't have to stand so tight in order to get the most out of it. But since its jumps are limited HoF will be better as soon as you can cramp a lot of enemies onto one spot (Dazzling Lights, Sparkcrackers + Leap).

I did some more testing with Carnage and a SC Corpse Eater and Carnage seems to scale further with the PL bonuses of Forbidden Fleh Pie (+2PL), Wellspring of Life (+1PL when frenzied), Prestige (+1 PL) and Power Surge (+1 PL). At lvl 20 and the mentioned abilites Carnage does over 100% of the weapon base dmg roll as raw dmg. I did futher testing with Amra to do "double Carnage", but the MIG/crit-induced "Gore-Carnage" of it doesn't seem to scale (except the slash-PEN scales with quality enchantment). While my original Carnage's dmg climbed up with PL the one of Amra always stayed the same. Since it also has to overcome slash PEN I'd say it's pretty weak overall. It does stack with normal Carnage meaning that you'll hit the enemies with two attack rolls (1 raw, 1 slash) once you crit. The enchantment that instakills foes who are under 50 health it very nice though if combined with Blood Thirst. Because of PEN/AR issues and the non-scaling I'd say that enchantment is better than the one which gives you 33% instead of 25%. Dual fists with Monastic UT also worked pretty well despite the fact that Corpse Eater food doesn't boost it. I figured that the high PL with which it scales, the high base dmg (for such a fast weapon) and the attack speed might be good for Carnage's dmg output.

It also "only" had a -34% dmg modifier and besides that wasn't restricted to weapon base damage like in Deadfire. It was like a normal additional attack roll with a dmg malus and a malus to ACC. THe rest was equal to your initial weapon attack. Another plus of PoE's Carnage was that it counted as ability - and all offensive abilites in PoE get +1 ACC per char level, Carnage included. It started with -10 ACC, but as soon as you took Accurate Carnage and reached lvl 5 your Carnage's accuracy was equal to your normal weapon accuracy and then got stronger and stronger with every level. At lvl 16 (and Accurate Carnage) you had +11 ACC. In Deadfire Carnage can't even crit with it... The PL scaling means that a single class Corpse Eater might get most dmg out of it because of the +PL food.

That is correct.

But you can use other abilities? Thanks for the info!

That fight is not hard. You are just underleveled. Why don't you do some side quests in the city (there are tons from all sorts of bystanders) and then come back?

Is the transformation the same as with Spiritshift or Form of the Fearsome Brute (you retain all items except weapons and armor) or not?

Then stuff like FoD wouldn't scale with PL as well (no tooltip-window on increased dmg) - but it does. 5% base dmg per Power Level. This could also be the case with Unbending - but I don't know if it's the case or not.

Accurate Wounding Shots are a bit bugged: the +ACC only counts for the initial hit but not the hobbling. So I never take it.

Yes, there is. Just look at your recovery bar after taking a shot and then move around. It will slow down considerably until you stop again. That talent helps. It's especially good for ranged solo players or if you like to kite in general. Or use Escape to move around. That has no recovery and no recovery penalty. Another option is to take stuff which buffs movement speed (Fast Runner, Boots of Speed). Your recovery will still be slowed down while running, but you will reach your destination a lot faster and thus the recovery penalty becomes neglectible.

You seem to have missed the clear warning of your steward - who told you that the Torn Bannermen are too strong for you. That stuff is late game content but most people miss that because it's a) on the way to WM (geographically) and b) the warning comes last... and the modern player doesn't seem to like reading stuff until the end. With the Sanatorium you seemed to have followed the critical path without doing any side quests. This usually leads to a situation where you are a bit underleveled. I'm still surprised that you could do stuff like Maerwald and oozes + trolls in the sewer but die in the Sanatorium. That fight isn't considered to be particularly hard. You're past the point where most people complain that the game is too hard (Maerwald). But maybe the situation just wasn't optimal for you (e.g. no resting before or stuff like that). It's kind of difficult to balance XP gain of the critical path and thr side content in an rpg (that's not railroaded). It gets too easy if you do all side quests or too hard if you do none. But not taking the player by the hand all the time but letting him explore a semi-opeen world might lead to some encounters that are too hard for you - but it's also less boring in my opinion. But when I look at Skyrim, Dark Souls and the like it seems lots of recent games did the old-school thing...

That would be PoE1.