Boeroer

You can buy them in a lot of places, they are quite cheap and you find enough of them. You can even craft them by yourself (wasn't possible in PoE). In the beginning you might want to budget with drugs and only use them when you must, but after Port Maje you can use them at the beginning of every fight. I don't use them for the easy fights though - because why bother. Nalpascas get +10 Power Level with drugs - that means they last a lot longer and are better. Alchemy does the same. So you want high Alchemy as well. How did we get from "cipher as offtank" to Nalpasca though?

It does not do DoT. Instead it pulses with freeze damage which has to overcome freeze AR every time. So the damage usually isn't that good. The blinding is very good for a lvl1-spell though.

The Lance has pierce damage, but the Blast has crush. So if you encounter pierce immune or resistant foes you can just switch targets - if there are any of course. Lance + Stunning Surge + Swift Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming ist just bonkers, I agree. Add some Merciless Gaze and at some point Martial Power for the additional ACC and mobs are just gone. For Nalpascas there is the Soul Void amulet. It gives you a White Leaf trip after each rest and is perfect to reduce "real" drug consumption. I never ran out of drugs with this one because a good part after rest is covered by the amulet. You can get it quite early. Nalpasca gets +1 wound per 6 seconds from drugs, 2 wounds per 6 seconds from Dance of Death and the usual wounds when getting damaged. So using Alacrity is a great way to inflict wounds on yourself with a Sage (doesn't end Dance of Death). The self damage of Alacrity scales with PL and MIG -> more wounds per cast the higher you level. I'm using a similar setup with a Nalpasca/Berserker (same abilites except Alacrity is Berseker Frenzy here) and I get wounds faster than I can spam them with Torment's Reach. It's quite hilarious. Unless you face wizards with Arcane Dampener Nalpasca is the no.1 monk for me right now. Helwalker is also nice, but the increased damage, paired with self damage leads to so many knockouts on my part that it's only good for chars that attack from afar (for me). Shattered Pillar comes last in my opinion - but with the Lance he's quite great as well because mortification is not altered for him and getting 5 wounds is a matter of one auto-attack if there are enough enemies.

How one can simply ignore math and video evidence is beyond me. But then: voting for Trump and being anti-vaxxer also is. So I have to accept that there are people out there who have a totally different perception of (virtual) reality than I have. However - we already went through this twice: with the "rogue vs. druid" and "rogue vs. ranger" debates in the PoE forums long time ago. Where you wouldn't accept that a rogue does not "vastly out-dps" a druid or ranger - despite detailed explanations from mutiple forum members that were based on math, in game data and common sense. So I guess also in this case further arguing is futile. The points were made, people can reread it and decide who backed their claims better. I (and others here) don't think the Red Hand deserves a nerf besides the obvious bugfixes that messes up its dmg bonus and its Knockback. You think it's the best weapon in the game (accompanied by the inevitable hyperbolic adverbs) and therefore needs a nerf. Let's just leave it there...

Yes, it exists in both games.

You surely can't just run into the hall and do a Leroy Jenkins.

Of course. Once you reach 100% miss every added point does nothing. The most impactful point (mathematically) is the one that gets you to 100%. @Teclis23: if I would be ranting your cheeks would turn red.

They don't.

This is nonsense. Both parts of the sentence actually. Stormcaller is decent because of dual damage types and DR reduction - but not the best ranged weapon for a cipher. It lacks a lash and also Durgan Steel which leads to suboptimal focus gain. It is very good nonetheless because it requires zero resources to be decent. Afaik the best ranged weapon for a cipher (when it comes to focus generation) is the warbow "The Rain of Godagh Field". Enchanted with a lash of your choice and with Durgan Steel it is fairly easy to reach 0 recovery with Time Parasite with it because it has the speed enchantment. With Gauntlets of Swift Action you can even use Penetrating Shot with this weapon and wear durganized Scale armor without having any recovery time. The "normal" weapon damage will generate focus just fine. Only the wounding lash will not. In terms of dps those weapons are superior, but not in terms of focus generation (they generate focus like a normal weapon without Wounding).

Dual wield is better than two-handers, but you're overstating the problem. -The talent gives a 15% recovery speed bonus, not a 20% boost. -Only some one handers are faster than two handers if you're not dual wielding, and not by 80%. Slow one handers like swords, battle axes and sabers are the same speed as two handers, at a base 4 second recovery. Fast one handers have a 3 second recovery. Your other points are correct. And there's another one that you didn't mention, which is that all other things being equal, hitting really fast, but for low damage per hit is always better than hitting very slowly, but for very high damage per hit. First, attacking quickly lets you adjust more quickly to what's happening in combat. Say you're a paladin fighting on the front line -- if your time between attacks is short, you can use lay on hands on a badly injured ally quickly. If you're a fighter, fast recovery time makes interrupt powers like knockdown more useful as well since you can react to dangerous enemy moves faster. Second, hitting hard but slow is more likely to waste damage on overkill. For example, if you hit for 100 damage every 10 seconds and attack an enemy with 20 hp left, you waste 80 damage. A character that hits for 10 damage every second, though it has the same dps on paper, is actually going to do more damage typically over the course of a fight. But, in spite of that, dual wield would be close enough to two handers to be acceptable if it weren't for full attacks. The fact that there are so many ways for weapon damage builds to deal nearly double damage when dual wielding, but almost no benefits on any skill tree exist for any other weapon styles really makes dual wield the clearly superior choice. Note that according to Josh Sawyer on the Something Awful forums, obsidian is aware of this and they're experimenting with a solution to making full attacks less insane with dual wielding. You think a one handed sword is the same speed as a great Sword? Na man your dreaming? Anyone got the speed stats for these two weapons handy? Why don't you just look them up in the game? It's in there and visible if you check the tooltip of your equipped weapons. Heavy one handers like swords, battle axes and maces have the same attack speed and recovery as all two handers. By the way this hasn't changed since the release of PoE 1.

I tested it right before posting (to be 100% sure). It only works for ranger + animal companion. Since Soul Ignition targets fortitude a ranger/cipher with Marked Prey, Stalker's Link, Survival of the Fittest, Ring of Focused Flame and Body Blows (morning star) should work nicely. Equivalent of 65 bonus accuracy... I guess Borrowed Instinct and Tactical Meld also stack?

I went to that northern island and killed some Ettins and then some Flame Nagas. I have a full party (Edér as Swashbuckler, Aloth as Spellblade, Xoti as Priest and a custom Nalpasca/Berserker with the working title "Bruise Mee" whom I'm playtesting as well).

Marked Prey/Marked for the Hunt only works for the ranger and his animal companion.

Faith and Conviction is a passive that scales without the use of further ability points. Therefore there can't be any diminishing returns - returns for what? You don't invest anything so there's no return in the first place. You are not spending one single ability point. Sure, it starts high, giving you a flat defense bonus, and the scaling doesn't continue at that pace - but that would be crazily overpowered. Because every single added point of defense does more for your survival than the one before. +12 at the start of the game is as useful and powerful as +12 at the end of the game. And the higher your defenses are the more useful every additional point of defense is. It's math. Since your defenses, compared to enemies' accuracy, are most likely higher in the end game than in the early game. Thus the +12 has even more impact than before without any scaling. The starting bonus of Faith and Conviction can never diminish (unless you lower the numbers). And now every point of scaling it receives impacts even more - it's kind of a dual increasing impact without spending a single additional point of whatever. Claiming that Faith and Conviction in its current form has "diminishing returns" shows that you didn't fully grasp the mechanics and math of attack resolution. If Sneak Attack would stay at 30% and not scale - that would be an example of diminishing impact because added MIG, other abilities and enchantments will lower the overall contribution of Sneak Attack to damage (percentage-wise).

I would like them to tune back the increased AR in PotD. It shifts the balance heavily to high PEN weapons and PEN abilities and items which limits viable character builds. Let them have more health, defenses, accuracy, abilities, scripting and AI - but don't touch PEN and AR. It totally messes up class and item balance.

Almost worth missing out on those power levels eh? Add the ring of the elements or whatever it is called and a Geomancer, for example, will get a whopping +20 accuracy bonus with Chill Fog, Fireball and every other elemental spell. But only Survival of the Fittest works on all enemies you target with a Fireball etc. Stalker's Link only works on the enemy you attack with the pet and Marked Prey ony on the one you marked - I mean you can mark several enemies of course, but I don't know it that's worth it. I wonder how Soul Ignition works if you use Ring of Focused Flame, Marked Prey, Stalker's Link and Survival otF on the enemy (+40 ACC). Is this also one of the powers where lower INT and a graze are better ( )?

Like with the Paladin in PoE, a Ranger/Cipher can be an awesome charmer in Deadfire. Some accuracy bonuses (Marked Prey, Stalker's Link, Survival of the Fittest) work with single target spells like Whisper of Treason, making a crit-charm verly likely. Also Takedown Combo + those acc buffs + a single target damage spell like Sunlance, Killing Bolt, Divine Mark, Pillar of Faith and so on do really hurt. +125% damage on a high base damage attack is paying off nicely. I actually never tested how DoTs like Disintegrate behave with that damage bonus of Takedown Combo.

Buuuump!

Bump bump bumpedy bump

This is either a very weird bug - or a facepalm.

A defense bonus stays potent during the whole game. It can't get weaker unless you substract. Every point of defense has increasing returns. So if it's "incredibly strong" in the early game it stays being incredibly strong until the end of the game. Blood Thirst is not doing -50% recovery on kill but removes recovery completely for the next action. Rangers get Whirling Strikes and Twin Shots at PL 8 which both are pretty good. I suspect the deflection debuff of Distracting Training stacks. So if you boost your Animal Companion's defenses that could be pretty awesome, but I didn't test it.

So far so good. Still playing it as MC. Got all Rekvu stuff at lvl 8, now at lvl 10. Once I'm done with that playtrough I will post a build description.

Arrr! Again that stupid bug. It's so annoying. Thanks for notifying me!

Epic bug report by the way.

I think in this case it's especially frustrating because with PoE 1 those "physical" rewards were handled very well and backers assumed this would also be the case with Deadfire - and why shouldn't they?