Boeroer

I tried Firebrand with a Bleak Walker/Druid. I just switched on Savage Attack all the time when doing FoD. I got +3 PEN for FOD and +20 ACC with the ring (+10 ring, +10 FoD) which lead to nice FoD damage - but you also have to use your spells. Firebrand alone is not good enough to play a "great sword melee only" druid. The Druid brings not much to the table when it comes to great sword fighting (except maybe Taste of the Hunt). The weapon itself is ok now, the problem is that only druids can summon it.

That's only a short-lived Knockdown. Bring Low will put your target to the ground for 7sec (base). But of course Ball and Chain is a nice weapon, too. It's also a light weapon by the way, so that kind of contradicts you initial statement that you'd rather not use light weapons with rogues.

Whirling Strikes works almost the same as HoF - without Carnage, but with raw DoT. It's def. a great ability. And using one melee weapon and one ranged is smart. I knew that stuff like Riposte works that way, but I didn't test this on Whirling Strikes actually, so good point. I think the best thing would be to use Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot and Driving Flight. THat would mean 1 AoE attack + 2 AoE jumps per shot. This will generate plenty of hits (33% more than with Minor Blights). They will do a bit less damage per hit than Blights, but you will have a lot more hits and once you use Avenging Storm it's the number of hits that matter, not so much the dmg per hit. Still, Whispers of the Wind or HoF with Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole on a crowd is better than Whirling Strikes (even if you can pull it off with one melee and one AoE ranged weapon equipped, you will always miss that there's no reliable AoE on your melee weapon). And it's also more versatile because you can still use it effectively with lets say pistols, fists or sabres when enemies are not forming a tight group. A Ranger is screwed then (if he wants to use Whirling Strikes - same with a Barb). Also Whispers of the Wind is great with Swift Flurry + Hearbeat Drumming + Wahai Poraga if enemies stand near each other. There will be a lot of additional crit procs that will be AoE attacks as well that will have a chance to proc an additional attack and so on. Still one of the most powerful combos against mobs.

That is two questions.

I would like it if they licensed PoE to Subset Games and let them make a "Faster than Hylea" or "Into the Wheel". It would be the fusion of the games I like most these days. And it would be a win-win situation: Obsidian gets money for the license and Subset Games produces another game with few bugs, great gameplay, very little budget and rel. big sales numbers...

I tried a Black Jacket/Berserker with "only" three weapon sets but with 0 switching recovery yesterday - the idea is to deal Body Blows with a Morning Star (in orde to "abuse" Brute Force) and to use the primary attacks with it, switch to a weapon & shield setup for recovery or when I get pummeled too hard and switch to a dual wielding setup for Barbaric Blow/Penetrating Strike. It gives you a lot of advantages - but is surely is very tedious to manage. I didn't find a good AI setting for this kind of behaviour yet (that didn't totally bug out). If I could it would be quite a good composition.

Oh, the last part is good to know, thanks. I mean the first part as well, but I already knew that, sooo...

Not universally true. If you focus on DoT attacks then the base damage is not that important. Most DoT's don't care for weapon damage and applying the DoTs faster is more beneficial than doing a bit more damage. Besides the raw damage it applies Rust's Poignard also has a 30% chance to prone a target for 7 sec (base) on crit. That is very powerful when it comes to Deadfire enchantments. It also has nice upgrade options, one of them giving you +35% damage against the proned target and another one that gives all your actions +3% speed bonus on hit (stacks up to +15%). I played Edér as my DoT-guy with Battle Axes first and it was good - but even though the axes' modal is pretty good Rust's Poignard + Marux Amanth killed enemies faster AND had a chance of hard CC as well.

It's actually 1 per encounter, not per rest.

Black Jacket gives you an additional weapon slot right from the start AND a faster switching recovery. It's not zero though. You can then take a fourth weapon set via Arms Bearer (fighter ability) if you like and also pick Quick Switch to reduce switching recovery to zero. A non-Black Jacket Fighter can only have three sets with Arms Bearer and can not reach zero switching recovery. That's waht you pay for with the loss of Constant Recovery. A Black Jacket can switch sets with no additional recovery if he takes Quick Switch as well. That means he can switch to an offensive set right before attacking and then immediately switch back to a defensive setup right after the attack. THis allows for maximum offense while executing the attack and maximum defense when recovering from the attack. Imagine a Black Jacket/Bleak Walker: 1st set dual sabres for FoD, 2nd set hatchet + small shield with Binding Block. Switch to sabres, do FoD and immediately switch to shield, waiting for recovery to pass, likely binding an attack for +15 ACC, switch to dual sabre and do another FoD with +15 ACC, swtich back to shield and so on. In theory this is a much bigger advantage than having Constant Recovery.

I don't think that losing Constant Recovery is such a bad thing. There are so many sources of healing that it's easy to circumvent that disadvantage. It's way more difficult to speed up switching. Now, with the AI allowing for automatic switching it's also less of a tedium to do so.

I used it with a Swashbuckler Edér - together with Marux Amanth - and it's really nice.

Yes, it does. But the range of HoF itself is an AoE that is centered around you - so the range doesn't help, you have to get near. Monk's Whispers is "better" in that regard.

Sounds like a reasonable attitude for a confident writer. Also that dialogue (that I never experienced first-hand) is not very exciting, but why is it supposed to be "the worst"? Because it triggers your inner "SJW MAKE ME GO CAPS-LOCK!!1eleven!!" or something?

Whirling Strikes doesn't work with ranged weapons. Checked yesterday. The ability greys out as soon as you switch to ranged weapons. It's pretty great with Wahaī Pōraga though (even though that got nerfed). Monk's Whispers of the Wind does work with ranged weapons though. Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole are great if enemies stand near each other. If not (the ability jumps up to 10 meters) then something else with more damage per hit is better.

Wahaī Pōraga got fixed now. It's not that powerful with HoF anymore. The most broken thing with HoF now is Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole.

Just role a sage and use Spirit Lance. 30+ points of damage per attack roll is no problem and you can expect to get 5 wounds with one auto-attack if you hit several enemies at once. Also there's Dance of Death/The Dance continues.

Wouldn't it be better to cast Tactical Barrage first and Frenzy second? Because Tactical Barrage will last longer when you cast it "unconfused" or in other words: with +4 INT. The result should be the same: confusion and smart cancel each other out.

Ok, now after my vacation I went through the subforum and tried to find all builds that got posted while I was away (and whose authors didn't poked me directly). I also find some that I missed before. It was a lot of editing - but as a result, I added quite a number of builds to the list. Please let me know if I missed any. Thanks!

I added it.

Arquebus. Modal + Asassinate will give you +45 accuracy which will most likely result in a crit which then will give you the bonus damage. Since the arquebus has nice base damage also Backstab will be good. Since guns don't have recovery you can sneak near, shoot and immediately escape. As you said: the second pistol shot will not get any bonus from Assassinate. Also no problem to use both: assassinate from stealth and then switch to dual pistols for all the full attacks you might have.

Well, it also has a kill on tick enchantment. That would be pretty cool if it would tick more often. Not every 12(!) seconds.

Oh, it got nerfed. Didn't know that.

I wouldn't be surprised it she's 15... We know that all 15 year olds are insane.

If going with the official companions/sidekicks it's benefical to give your MC a very high Perception score. Perception detects traps and secrets in Deadfire, and none of the companions has a Percepton score that is so high that you can reliably find all secrets/traps.