Boeroer

I played dem all! Haha!

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/literally-unplayable

Ah, thanks!

Hm, the patch notes say nothing about melee:

Look at da barb. Barbaric Blow... and it's even double the cost of FoD.

Slicken was just a one-time prone in PoE and not repeating - so actually the Deadfire version is better, but anyways: You will realize how good a priest is if you did a playthrough with one - and then do a playthrough without one. It's always the same with all those classes that don't do the obvious and are not straightforward. Those need a bit more experience to grasp their value. At first lots of people will say "man class x is sooo bad" - and then later that same class lands on the no1. position for the most powerful class in a forum poll.

Really? On a ranger?

Since I don't shift at all the form doesn't matter.

I guess all AoE weapons will be pretty great with Hunter's Claw (and upgrades) because it stacks per hit - and AoE weapons produce a lot of hits in a short time. I also suspect that blunderbusses and Frostseeker will work nicely because they stack the ACC bonus pretty fast (multi-projectile)?

Exactly.

I told you Blade Feast is great with Sacred Immolation.

The only thing is that you usually don't have additive dmg mods for spells besides MIG and crit (and maybe Overpenetration). So the multiplicative dmg bonus of PL on spells is not that obvious as with enchanted weapons and abilities like Sneak Attack where you can stack dmg mods which then get multiplied with the higher base. If base damage gets raised but you have no additional dmg bonuses there's no difference between additive or multiplicative. So Missile Salvo or Meteor Shower or whatever spell would do the same damage with a multiplicative or an additive dmg boost from PL (with 10 MIG and no crit).

Combat log: Obsidian Animat casts Finger of Nerf

Ranger getting even more ACC is nice. Imagine you want to fight a certain endboss. like a dragon: go grab Hunter's Claw and upgrades, kill some cheapo beetles first, then some tigers, then off to the dragon with a huge pile of ACC and dmg bonuses. Also stacks with Red Hand's bonus on kill I hope? It also is a bit nostalgic: D&D rangers had some "enemy" races with special bonuses. But you couldn't change the race. This approach I like better. It's more tactical and you have to plan ahead a bit.

I think the main problem is that FoD is keyworded with fire (which is good) and that +4 Fire PL then leads to a dmg increase of the physical base dmg of the ability (no increase of the burning lash which would make sense but instead the physical base dmg - which doesn't make too much sense). Only universal PL increase should lead to an increase of physical weapon base dmg with an ability. Elemental PLs should only increase the respective elemental dmg, not the underlying pierce/crush/slash/raw dmg. If an ability somehow deals elemental base dmaage then sure: go ahead and increase its base damage with elemental PLs. For example if you use FIrebrand then +fire PLs shoul increase the base damage, since it's base damage is burn. But not in case of a normal estoc or a glowing axe that still does basic slash damage (not burn). If you'd take Bleak Walker's FoD (which is keyworded with fire and acid) and take another item that also increases corrode PL you would see the base dmg (not the lash damage) rise even more. The mechanics of what influences physical dmg and what influences the elemental (lash) dmg are a bit intermingled here.

That totally depends how you play your monk. For example it can be very good to run around and take out single threats like caster asap with Force of Anguish and Barbaric Blow. In this case fists or Eager Blade or so would be better. If you like to flank a bunch of enemies and like to Torment the heck ot of them then WotEP is unmatched I think (except when using Citzel's but that can't happen on a Monk/Berserker). But hey - nothing prevents you from using both: Giftbearer's Cloth is a nice cloak anyway and you can use fists as backup, Eager Blade as main and WotEP for the situations where you wish to do more AoE dmg/CC. Engolio is crass. Everything that kills (and is of your origin) will trigger Ghost Blades. It's a blast with Blood Thirst (only lvl 19 though). BUT: I did a quick test with some bowling pins (aka cre_dummies) and compared Engolio vs WotEP: The speed at which I can kill them all is higher with the WotEP. Of course that is because they don't move and I can always hit all of them (which is the optimal situation for the WotEP). But it shows that when it comes to AoE dmg the WotEP is great until the endgame on such a character. Maybe also because you have a double chance to apply Blood Frenzy with Torment's Reach? Didn't analyze that in depth. Also the reach is nice for cramped up spaces. But all in all Engolio is maybe better because unlike WotEP it's also a good weapon against single targets. So you spare yourself switching and all (except when meeting pierce immune foes). By the way: Ripple Sponge + Sated Ravenous Soul Hunger are a nice match - combined they give you +3 to all stats. Sadly Ripple Sponge's bonus to INT gets suppressed by Duality:INT.

This is also true for some low lvl spells vs high level spells afaik. Insect Swarm nearly does the same dmg per tick (over a longer time) as Plague of Insects (much bigger AoE though). THis usually is balanced by higer base damage of the high level stuff. So it's quite easy to balance this because every spall has its own base damage which can be tweaked rel. savely without breaking stuff. Problem with weapon based abilites is that you can't increase the base damage (of the weapon) to balance high level abilites with low level abilites that get more PL bonus. You often get an additive dmg bonus. Those usually show less impressive results - even if they go quite high. I somethimes think that some devs or designers still don't fully grasp how different those things behave once you pwergame a bit. Putting some kind of lower but multiplicative bonus like a lash would be a better solution in this case. Another thing is "double" PL scaling with Transcended Suffering: your fists' PEN, ACC and add. dmg bonus scale with PL - as well as the dmg bonus of let's say Stunning Surge.

I play with Linux and sometimes with Windows 10 (different savegames - just for testing). When synch happens I get three (?) different savegame directories on my Linux system. All named slightly different (case sensitive and stuff). Man...

Torment's Reach only procs off of the initial hit it seems. So no AoE² stuff. That works with Spirit Lance but not with WotEP. Still a nice combo since both are cones and you can pretty much deal dual AoE damage + stun with one attack. Torment's Reach cone is much bigger (more length) though.

That's why I repeatedly wonder why Obsidian didn't just take PoE's engine and make a nice, really biiig, separate,standalone expansion for it and call it Deadfire...

I agree. Not to Magic: The Gathering though because I know zilch about that weird stuff. When I play card games it's usually Canasta - and Canasta has no Roflcopter. And the only brilliant thing about it is me playing it. Like a BOSS!

Is there a difference in price?

Your focus is depleted only when you hit single targets. When you hit multiple targets the focus can replenish at the same time and it always worked like that.Ah, ok. I didn't even notice. I don't know if SA+AoE always worked like that though. In backer beta SA + Spirit Lance didn't refill focus (and had different more "chaotic" AoE raw dmg mechanics than today). But there was no WotEP of course.

Yeah. I'm not sure if you can spam SA at all - because you need min 5 focus for the execution. Usually you will have 0 after SA. Or so I believe? Or was that changed lately? I actually never tried to spam it. I always did alternate. Very understanding post by the way, thank you for that!