Boeroer

I like it only because of Sasha's Singing Scimitar.

Although I was one of the more vocal critics of the ship combat I actually came to like it after some time. Simply because it's so much faster than boarding and you can take super overleveled enemies (and their loot) quite easily. You need some upgrades though. By lvl 7 or 8 all non-member ships where done last playthrough. And all I needed was a Voyager with Palm Sails, Long Guns in the front and a flamethrower in the rear.

Good point. I guess...? It's enough to trigger One Stands Alone...

Hehe. The thing that bothers me most is that rel. long summoning time. If you have a party that "prepares" at the start of every fight it is no problem, but it's not a nice setup for rushing into battle. For stuff like Combusting Wounds and everything else that requires to overcome fortitude you can use weakening stuff. I even had a Troubadour with that weakening chant and -2 MIG, a Warlock with Sprit Frenzy (causes Staggered -5 MIG in an AoE with spells) and Brute Force and a single Black Jacket "debuffer" with Willbreaker and Clear Out (and also flails and clubs and pike). It is so beneficial and makes the game so much easier to reduce fortitude in an AoE because every second enemy and its dog have 100+ fortitude and the best spells go against it. And this combo of characters does that job awesomely well: -25 from Body Blows, -10 from weakened, -10 from Staggered...

There are some enemies that can't engage (often beasts - e.g. tigers) at all.

Good question. It used to be 60% (or minus 40% in other words) but I have no idea if that is still the case. Double inversion of dmg malus results in a pretty nasty dmg drop. For afflictions and on-hit/crit effects it's very nice of course.

Terrifying worked to trigger disengagement attacks. Thus an Unbroken/Wizard was pretty great. It got patched because it was too powerful. "Is useless for players"... meh. Biased hyperbole I'd say. I recently played an Unbroken/Trickster and it's hot. Enemies will leave engagement if disengagement poses no threat. As Unbroken with good dmg per hit your disengagement attacks will be a threat. Thus once-engaged enemies will stick to you. Which is great for a tank. See the +10PEN on your disengagement attacks as "glue" and not as a dmg tool. Add up engagement slots bit don't use Defender Stance but Mob Stance. Passive +1 AR is great. Stacks with everything. At the same time the Trickster part adds defenses and dmg potential as well as engagement and causes Persistent Distraction on all engaged targets which triggers Deathblows and Sneak Attack. Riposte with Akola's Apex Ward (adds another Riposte) will make sure you hit passively often enough. Now you are a tank whose disengagement attacks are crazily powerful (+10 PEN, Sneak Attack, Deathblows, improved ACC and dmg on disengagement anyways) but who also hits pretty fast with constant Sneak Attacks + Deathblows (Mob Stance + Reckless Brigandine works pretty well) while also doing Ripostes with Sneak + Deathblows and suddenly enemies want to leave because every kill also triggers Cleave. While doing so they get pulverized if you also took the passive for more disengagement damage. It's a nice combo. Great tanking (which includes being sticky) as well as great offense. And it wouldn't work as well without Unbroken. Reflex malus and lower stride don't matter much once you trigger the Wall modal.

*Missing String*s mostly

It takes quite some time, yes. I mean the self buffs + monk are still nice of course. If you want to use a reach weapon from the beginning (like Concelhaut's Staff) it's also a cool setup. You won't get hit that much in melee with a reach weapon so you can afford to wear lighter armor. The staff also drains which makes for some good healing support. And Alacrity can give you speed (moving speed and attack speed) and a consistent source for wounds. As a Helwalker you'll get more dmg with every wound and thus more wounds and so on. Watch out! Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon is your friend! But still cool (especially later with the enormous +INT-induced AoE of the Lance). Now in the beta patch Eldtrich Aim got buffed to fast cast - so my only issue with the Sage (poor ACC at the beginning of the game) might be gone as well. So all in all it's a nice combo to play. But yeah - the real power spike is once you get Spirit Lance and that takes some time. By the way: a wizard can make a cool duplicate of himself which does great single target dmg: cast Concelhaut's Draining Touch (it summons a fist-like weapon for your main hand which will dissolve after you hit something with it). Now summon Essential Phantom. It will have all your gear including Draining Touch. But on the Phantom it will not go away after a hit. It will stay until the phantom leaves and provides great damage and also draining for the phantom. That way you can have a cool "unarmed" monk-like summon rel. early. Hope this wasn't fixed. I made a bug report long ago but got no answer.

Can't speak for the others, but I don't insist on anything. I'm just correcting false statements. Superb + Driving Flight is not damage*4. Mortars are super good with the right setup and you can use them very early if you want. That's all correct and a reason why they are so popular. But it's still better to argue with correct data. Sugar-coating numbers is most likely spoiling your (otherwise sound) line of reasoning. No offense meant.

Of course not. Only Power Level does. If it would alter base damage it would be a multiplicative dmg bonus and very strong. But it is only an additive dmg bonus like Two Handed Style or Sneak Attack. Edit: Oh sorry lorddarkflare - I overlooked your post.

I don't think there's a problem with posting basic or "cookie cutter" builds, as long as it makes good decisions for that type of build. When a new player is trying to find a build that they'd like to play, a basic build is going to be more useful to them than a concept build that requires some weird interaction between a specific skill and a specific piece of equipment that they can't get until well into the game. Some of the builds that have been posted require an interaction like that, and are built entirely around it, so they don't discuss how to play that build in a general sense. And some of those builds are no longer functional because the equipment no longer functions in that way or the skill has been patched to work differently. There have been a lot of builds that sounded interesting, but I ended up not trying them because they are based around something that sounds like it'll be patched soon. A basic build can help a new player, or an experienced player who hasn't tried a particular class before, learn how to use that class in an effective way (e.g., by helping them not pick useless abilities), and then they can grow their knowledge from there. I agree 100% @Mocker22: sure, 40.5 is not that much less than 45. It's still great. Just wanted to clear that up because it's the most common misconception in these forums. Also because the game does a bad job (again) at explaining those mechanics. I agree that Uncanny Luck is pretty lucklaster.

Yes, you can surely use it as backup-weapon.

Sould Blade can apply the raw damage of Soul Annihilation an an AoE with Citzal's Sprit Lance. Since you really don't want to miss with Soul Annihilation a single handed rapier with modal on is quite nice (lots of ACC bonus). Rännig's Wrath is great for this (since it has extra-extra ACC). If you use Black Jacket/Soulblade you can build up focus with a dual wielding setup (for example dual mortars) or a two hander, switch to single rapier to deliver a Soul Annihilation hit (or crit), switch back to something else and so on. Switching with Black Jacket + Quick Switch is quite fun since it's nearly instant. It also takes away the boredom.

Driving Flight reduces the damage quite a bit though. Also superb doesn't do anything to base damage.

Actually you attack at 10.8 m range with Citzal's Spirit Lance + Instruments of Pain. It's a reach weapon and thus has a base range of 1.8 meters. 1.8m * 6 = 10.5m. Lance + Heartbeat+Swift Flurry is better than Driving Flicht + Mortars. Every AoE hit has the chance to proc Swift FLurry or Hearbeat Drumming or both. On average this results in many more additional attacks (with the original AoE damage) than with Driving Flight (1 for Hand Mortar, 2 for Fire in the Hole). Also the damage of the mortarts is lower and gets even reduced further by Driving Flight. Nalpasca/Berserker is an awesome combo by the way. Due to self damage of Frenzy (which doesn't cancel Dance of Death), Enduring Dance and drugs the wounds fly in more quickly than I can spend them. I use Savage Defiance right after Frenzy to counter the high self damage at higher levels.

Nope, you have 40.5% hit to crit conversion. Conversion chances don't add up. They go together mutiplicatively: 0.7*0.85-1 = -0.405 or 40.5%

Also due to Powder Burns' rather low damage and PEN I guess.

Hm, I wouldn't use Firebrand on a monk with Long Pain at all I guess. Since the monk has kind of unlimited Full Attacks I would like to keep dual wielding.

Actually the difference between Exceptional and Damaging III is pretty neglectible. You shouldn't be too disappointed. Wounding does profit from crits and increased crit damage. Not directly though. Wounding works like a lash: 25% of the whole dmg (including crits, MIG bonus and so on) PRE DR will be the wounding damage. This will get affected by MIG. And then it gets spread over some ticks. So doing a crit will also boost your wounding damage (indirectly).

Eh? Unbroken: +1 engagement, +10 Penetration on disengagement attacks, Shield Mastery (+1 AR while wearing a shield), -10% stride, -15 reflex. That's 5(!) changes to the vanilla class. And not really minor ones. It's the fighter subclass that gets altered the most.

Lack of alternatives. No one else makes games like these anymore (though I heard some are coming). Yeah... "The Pizza is so bad! The Salami is rotten, the sauce is too salty and the cheese is rancid. But I have to eat it because I only have tasty burgers as alternative..." Another explanation would be that they are exaggerating and simply love to complain - while they secretly don't think it's so bad after all.

Haha - the Cog of Cohh is an item of Coohcarnage: https://www.youtube.com/user/CohhCarnage

Wait... recent buff? I missed that. What is it?

I didn't say the item was laughable. I said 1% proc chance is laughable. Take away "Mind over Matter" and the usefulness of the cape wouldn't suffer much. It's not that being Brilliant for a short time will turn you into an invincible combatant. It's nice to have +5 INT, +1 PL and get some resource points back (what by the way is only useful for certain classes that have non-replenishable resources in the first place), but it's not nice if you can not control it at all an if it might happen thrice per playthrough (hyperbole). A better approach would be to make the proc chance higher and tune down the other enchantments if the overall power of the cape would be too high then.