Boeroer

Yes, indeed. Unfortunately Wahai Poraga has low base dmg and the dmg bonuses of Chanter/Fighter aren't too high so it's not as devastating as it sounds. Also the description of Wahai Poraga is wrong: it doesn't hit "3 additonal" targets as advertised but only 2 (3 including the initial target). So the number of skeletons getting hit is only 2 at max. And because you seldomly one-shot even your whimpy Many-Lives skeletons with that low dmg per hit you won't see a lot of that. But nevertheless Cleaving Stance offers a lot of "free" additional attacks against the initial target - which suddenly makes the weapon very viable. Without such tricks its dmg output is just bad. But the enchantments are pretty good for a non-shield tank though - so using a fighter to build an "offensive tank" might be a nice idea. Add some cool Huana gear that goes into the same direction (Reckless Brigandine mostly, stacks with the mob stance effect) and you might get a cool Huana Warcaller. If Wahai Poraga did attack the number of targets it claims it does then this would be even more interesting for sure.

Hello! Chanter/Soulblade (the big red button) The chanter can summon multiple skeletons (first with Ancient Brittle Bones and later with Many Lives Pass By) The Soulblade gains +10 max focus and concentration from killing an enemy (or ally, doesn't matter) Usually Ciphers don't generate focus from hitting friedly characters Wahai Poraga acts like a "confused" AoE weapon If you accidentially hit your Skeletons with it s AoE you will generate focus (all Ciphers except Psion)! If you kill your Skeletons with its AoE you will gain +10 max focus and concentration (Soulblade passive)! Echoing Horrors will get triggered every time you kill a Skeleton ( Frighten a bystanding enemy on kill - it's a passive...) If you use Soul Annihilation with it it will apply the full raw damage to the initial target (and some more to the additional ones). So against tough singular foes that usually make generating focus difficult you can harvest focus and also max focus and concentration from your skeletons while hitting the enemy You can collect a huge amount of focus that way and then dump it all into one Soul Annihilation that destroys the tough enemy Skalds can get phrases from crits against skeletons - I used a Troubadour though (faster Many-Lives-skellies) Chanter/Priest (the undying) cast Triumph of the Crusaders use Ancient Brittle Bones and/or Many Lives Pass By attack with Wahai Poraga and gain lots of health every time a skeleton goes down combine with health-on-kill pets for additional healing Chanter/Barbarian (the obvious choice) no need to be a confused Berserker use skellies every AoE-hit of Wahai Poraga triggers Carnage (foe only) accidentially killed Skeletons trigger Bloodlust and Blood Thirst (hack away without much recovery) Blood Storm (additional Frenzy duration on kill) makes it easy to uphold Frenzy endlessly Barbaric Smash: AoE-kills when using Barbaric Smash will not refund the Rage cost. The initial target has to die (booh!) Chanter/Sister of the Reaping Moon (the well of wouds) killing a skeleton grants 3 wounds Chanter/Fighter (clever cleaver) killing a skeleton triggers Cleaving Stance (attacking the enemy again because Cleaving Stance chooses the next enemy as initial target, not a skeleton) What doesn't work: Paladin's Inspiring Triumph and Virtuous Triumph won't trigger (too bad). That's all I found out so far.

Thanks to you, too. You are most welcome. Have fun!

Hello! In my opinion beginners should bring a Priest. They are just too impactful to pass, especially in the early game where you might hit some walls. They add more accuracy (via Priest buffs) which is very useful. Their healing is useful, too. One of the best talents of the Priest is "Inspiring Radiance" which turns the 1-per-encounter Holy Radiance of the Priest into a short +10-ACC buff which stacks with everything. Early in the game this makes a big difference - and even later its ability to stack with other ACC buffs makes it keep its usefulness. Most experienced players might agree that the Priest is the most potent class of Pillars of Eternity if you don't play solo but with a party. In general all "per-rest"-casters (Wizard, Druid, Priest) are the most potent classes after the early game. They mean a bit more micromanagement though - I mean as soon as you let them cast spells. Chanters are good, but in the lower difficulties they are also pretty slow. They are much better for Path of the Damned difficulty where fights take a lot longer - in my opinion. Once you get to level 9 though 3 Chanters will absolutely wreck everything because they will have access to "The Dragon Thrashed" - and that is incredibly powerful. By the way: offensive chants get an accuracy bonus of +12 if you only use a single one-handed weapon in your main hand. It's a little bug - normally only your weapon attacks should get +12 ACC from one-handed usage. But for some reason offensive chants do as well. Keep that in mind if your affensive chants do miss you enemies a lot. Paladins are good tanks - but 3 of them is maybe overkill on the tanky side. A Fighter can also be a good tank, has more engagement slots - and most importantly has better starting values (accuracy, deflection etc.) so the early game becomes more easy with a Fighter. Maybe I would switch one Paladin for one Fighter. Fighters are also low on micromanagement. The most potent powers Chiphers have are ones that can be used for Mind Control (charm, dominate). The powers you mentioned are good as well - but you will have the most success if you also employ charms and dominations (see Whisper of Treason, Puppet Master etc.). If you combine Mind Control with the Chanters' summons you'll have a much easier time later in the game when there's more and beefier enemies. Skills: Survival is very good because it grants you all-stacking accuracy vs. all sorts non-kith enemies. And accuracy is extremely important. Attribute points aren't very crucial - but for everything with an Area of Effect (AoE) INT is very useful because its effects on the AoE size scale very well with high INT numbers. Since it's the radius of hte AOE that gets boosted the actual area scales exponentially with INT. DEX is a very useful stat in general. DEX is the only thing that no only lowers your recovery or reload times but also the animation/action times. All other speed effects only affect the recovery or reloading times. Only DEX makes your actions faster, too. PER is very useful for the early game but not so much later on. CON is generally viewed as dump stat. If you have high defenses (Paladin, Fighter etc.) you won't get hit too often so you don't need very high CON/endurance/health - and if you are not in the frontline you won't get hit a lot even with low defenses so you also don't need a lot of CON. However - CON affects the Fortitude defense which gets tested a lot in the later game - so you don't want to dump it either for tanks imo (you cn, but then you need to raise your Fortitude defense otherwise). This isn't so crucial anymore if you have a Priest - because a Priest has prayers that make you immune to a variety of hostile effects. RES raises deflection. All defenses have increasing returns: every additional point of defense has more impact than the one before that. Since deflection is the most attacked defenses it can make sense to maximize RES on tanks who also wear shields and already have high deflection (see Paladins and Fighter). It also helps to prevent interrupts which can be nasty. A RES-3 character, if attacked by a bunch of enemies, might get interrupt-locked and die without being able to do anything. This won't happen to a character with high RES. MIG is not as impactful on damage-dealing as one might think - at least for weapon attacks. For damaging spells it can be important (because not much else raises spell damage) and it's also very good for your healing powers. But in general I wouldn't put too much focus on it. Cheers!

Hello @The Guildmaster! How do I deactivate 2-factor auth when I cannot access my athenticator app? Or how do I add another device/authenticator? I can use recovery codes to log in, but I cannot use them for disabling 2-factor auth - or to add new devices. For that I need a code from the authenticator... which is not accessible for me atm. My phone broke down and I set up a new one. I'm in a situation now where I only can use recovery codes to log in - since Obsidian doesn't let me remove or add 2-factor-auth options. Any ideas?

"Mother Sharp Rock" please

Hm, I had no such problems - and I did durganize Spelltongue with that build. I did this with game version 2.0, so pre 3. And @Raven Darkholmeplayed it past 3.06 iirc and didn't report anything like that. I'm pretty sure he durganized the weapon, but it may be best to ask him directly (basically done with tagging ;)).

But then you could just as well pick a Barbarian with no subclass. All the advantages and disadvantages of the Berserker are tied to Frenzy. If a Berserker doesn't pick Frenzy he's exactly like a vanilla Barbarian.

Actually, with high CON and a bit of DR as described above, I use it 100% of times (vanilla version) at lvl 20 still. True, but don't forget that besides the Confusion you will always have concealed health which is a serious drawback for all unexperienced players, too. As I said I'm totally fine with the self damage personally - but I think it scales too steeply for "normal" players. Starting higher and scaling less aggressively might not be a bad suggestion I think.

What do you mean? The Berserker's self damage from Blood Frenzy is not different from the Spirit Frenzy or non-upgraded Frenzy self damage. The Berserker's Frenzy base damage is actually fine imo (most players don't have a probem with it in the early game) - it just scales steeply which is very noticably at higher levels. This is fine if you raise CON and don't drop it. Then your health pool can grow in a somewhat similar fashion as the self damage rises. I did so with my latest Helwalker/Berserker build where I even maxed CON. Even with the "synergy" of Berserker's self damage + Helwalker's <=50% damage bonus (which grants you tons and tons of wounds) I had almost zero problems with knocking myself out. I didn't even pick Savage Defiance. But I used Voidward Ring and Death's Maw to get some Damage Reduction. I'm sure that helped, too. Anyway I was pretty surprised myself that the build was so relatively sturdy. With a pet that heals on kill (see Abraham for example) and a somewhat decent healer in the party this can become a no-problem imo. But maybe the scaling could be a bit less aggressive. After all it is pretty steep and climbs more quickly than the average Barb's health pool can keep up. You have to relaly know your stuff in order to not getting frustrated at higher levels. Maybe a passive that lowers the self damage could be introduced or something like that. Making it an option...? A bit like Fighter's upgraded Constant Recovery passive.

You can take a look at the following, more detailed build. It uses the same principle of stacked "marking" but instead of a Darcozzi it's a Shieldbearer. That's only because of the theme, you can simply use a Darcozzi instead. In addition it adds some mind control capabilities later which can come in handy. It has enough info I think so that you can deduce your own "Marking Paladin" build: Then there is the follow-up to this Forward Observer idea (by somebody else) which uses a ranged marking weapon instead of a melee one: I'm sure there's also usable info in there. One last thing: Marking (+10ACC) stacks with Coordinated Attacks (+10ACC), both stack with Inspiring Liberation (Darcozzi talent, +10ACC) - +30 all-stackable accuracy overall. Meaning they will all stack with the usual accuracy buffs (see Zealous Focus or some Priest buffs like Blessing and/or Devotions for the Faithful for example). That is superb accuracy support for one of your teammates. But two marking weapons, wielded by different people, will not stack their accuracy benefits on a teammember (but they can be used to support two different team members or each other). I'd say usually one "marking character" in the party is enough - otherwise it becomes a micromanagement mess imo. There is one setup where you can stack two marking weapons and their acc bonus on the same person though: if you dual wield Shame or Glory (sword - you need to pick the right faction in Defiance Bay!) with Cladhaliath (spear - has to be enchanted in a scripted process properly, follow the link for the correct options) you can stack both Marking enchantments on one teammember. All other marking weapons are two-handed ones. If you use that sword and spear you can still add Coordinated Attacks etc. on top like before. This can lead to +40 all-stackable accuracy for one teammember which is the equivalent of 13 additional character levels (in terms of accuracy)! +30 or even +40 ACC is very useful against tough singular foes (like bosses such as dragons etc.) because it makes landing disables a lot easier which cancel the offensive threat and usually also debuff the enemy.

Hi! Given that you're new to the game I will assume you're playing with a full party and most likely with the official companions? I would recommend that since they add a lot of flavor to the game. One upside of the Psion/Troubadour is its great versatility. It can do support, debuffing, CC (I count summons as CC mostly) and deal damage - even healing and reviving. Whatever you need. And then its resources never run out - which is its best selling point imo. What you find fun to play might depend on your preferences and also your party composition. If you're playing solo your build needs to look differently than the one that is supposed to go with a party.I'm not a super big fan of summons in general (because of the usually very long casting time and the added micromanagement and the additional bodies crowding my space). So in my first run with a Psion/Troubadour with a party of official companions I went with a combo of CC+damage and used Killers Frozen Stiff + Soul Shock most of the time. Both are cheap so you can cast non-stop almost and still have enough resources for the occasional big spell - but in another run I tried to combine summoning with massive mind control and build the party around that. For example I had a Swashbuckler tank with Riposte and a club+modal as well as an Assassin/Wizard who would prep. the enemies with Miasma of Dull Mindedness for my Whisper of Treason, Puppet Master or Ringleader. Combining summons with mind control is very impactful and almost too effective. You basically create a small army for you while reducing the number of enemies. Beware enemies that are immune to intellect afflictions though - mind control is not working with them. But summons always do work. I don't know a situation where they won't help. That's why I avoid them sometimes... I can also totally see a build that completely focuses on summons, support and healing that wouldn't need any accuracy at all. That's just some examples of different approaches for a Psion/Troubadour. For a party run I personally like to go with a small shield and some defensive abilities. This takes heat away from you because enemy AI is looking for weaknesses such as low deflection, low health, low armor and so on. If your party can present something more squishy then you are rel. safe from getting attacked so much that it hurts your focus generation (Psions stop generating focus if they get damaged). At the same time a small shield doesn't hurt your offensive casting at all. Main weapon doesn't matter much but I liked the Gladiator Sword because it gives you extra +5 deflection with a shield - and since it doesn't get used much in melee it's offensive limitations don't matter. Later stuff like Sasha's Singing Scimitar might be what you are looking for. A lot later it might be the Weyc's Wand and so on... What all my Psion/Troubadours had so far is a ton of INT and lots of PER. Especially the cone-shaped invocations profit from high INT enormously because their AoE will grow on a way that you don't have to get too close in oder to make them impactful. Killers Froze Stiff for example has a great base AoE already which grows a lot with lots of INT. If you then combine Lingerig Echoes with the longer durations bc. of high INT you get quite long CC effects, too. And of course your summons will last longer etc. I like high PER in a party with official companions because none of them has very high PER - but you need that to discover difficult traps and secrets. In addition it helps with hitting stuff (accuracy) which is always good for somebody who does CC or deals damage. For a pure summons/support build you wouldn't need PER though. Here high MIG (healing) and DEX (casting time) would be better. High DEX is always good by the way. Makes everything feel more smooth, especially casting. Cheers and good fun hopefully!

HOW is real. easy with Disintegrate. If it dies while Disintegrate is active it will not split and the fight is over. Doru can be done with endless summons, even if it takes ages. Maybe Troubadour/Psion is the way to go, but I haven't tried BPM for such things so I can't be sure. But a Troubadour/Psion can also use an Arbalest+modal or Crossbow+modal with good speed (thanks to Sure-Handed Ila's double reduction for reloading weapons) and that would help against merging, too (if the Disintegrate fails for example).

Then you haven't understood how to "properly abuse" Bounding Boots. If you cancel the leap action before landing, it won't deplete a per/rest use - but you will still land at the target location (without the noise and the dazing effect) and have 0 recovery. This makes solo runs a lot easier because you can sneak everywhere without any points in stealth and cover a lot of ground in an instant. You can loot all containers even if guards stand next to them because if you jump in from stealth the detection will only start once you truly land. But if you cancel in the air (while the target circle is already showing up at the destination) and immediately clock on the container you can loot without getting detected. There's also enough time to jump back out again (unless you toich the guard, that will break stealth immediately). It also allows to flee from all sorts of problems at any time, even of you are stuck or otherwise can't run away (disengagement, blocked path etc.). Very useful to reach the backline, kill some threats, jump to another high prio target and so on. Unlimited tikes per encounter. Is is less reliable in Ultimate runs because you cannot pause the game which help a lot with the timing (when to cancel). But even with the slowest combat setting one can manage with some practice (without pause). But it's def. a lot more hassle so I guess that's why it isn't that popular. Anyway, for me cheese is to use something to your advantage which the developers clearly didn't foresee and intend. True Love's Kiss, Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy all work as designed and thus cannot be considered cheese. They can be very potent with the right setup and in the right situations, but at least you buy that potency with a lot of idle time. Same with sending summons from a save space. Takes forever but will surely lead to success (unless the enemy needs some special treatment: see Huani OW for example). Stuff like prolonging buffs indefinitely with Strand of Favor etc. - that's extremely cheesy in my book. Stealing free spells with Grimoire Imprint: also extr. cheesy. Using Bounding Boots as I described: cheesy, but not as wild as the stuff above. Endless DoTs: not cheesy. Just imbalanced if solo and combined with invisibility. A very long duration (that would suffice for any encounter with a full party but run out in very long solo fights) instead of and endless one might have been better. Bit it's still is no abuse of an unintended effect. With the same line of argumentation I would also say that Salvation of Time + Brilliant or Blood Mage + Wall of Draining are not really cheese. Just like endless DoTs and endless summons they are just too imbalanced for some situations (mostly solo runs imo).

For a normal party run I consider the Devil of Caroc Breastplate to be way, way more important than any temporary consumable effect - and if you like to play a generally benevolent person - like most players do - you can't go wrong with the benevolent pre-set background imo. PS: DoC Breastplate + Helm of the Falcon --> one of the best looking combos imo - and also one of the best combos in terms of protection vs. attack speed (with a two handed weapon).

Of course not, at least for me. As Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy, True Love's Kiss works exactly as intended by the developer. It's not a weird side effect that can be used to your advantage which the designer didn't see coming (see Strand of Favor etc al., endless use of Bounding Boots, persistent Draining Touch, stacking Beast's Claw into heaven by save/reload, stacking food bonuses with save/reload, permanently stealing free spells with Grimoire Imprint and so on and so forth). Imo there's no difference in the level of "cheesyness" between applying a nerverending DoT and then hide vs. hiding and then sending a neverending stream of damage (summons). In both cases it's just having a source of damage that won't run dry while staying untouchable at the same time. 🤷‍♂️

I don't use Pain Link much (dare I say "never"?), so this might be false, but since Pain Link doesn't seem to do raw dmg, maybe it has the same PEN value as the original attack and has to go through AR again? Could it be that the dmg of Pain Link underpenetrates due to the high AR of D.? Also, if the calculation is done like "let's "substract" 70% of the dmg in order to retain 30%" then - if the usual double inversion mechanics with maluses get applied - the remaining dmg portion would be way smaller (see Underpenetration, Grazes and dmg reduction in general). Just two random ideas that came to my mind to explain the low numbers. You can defeat D. without massive cheese with Lover's Embrace from Stealth and then hiding. I don't think BPM nerfed that. It takes many hours though - but you can just go elsewhere and return later. Make sure to make yourself immune to pulling (fitting helmet or belt) to not accidentially get pulled out of hiding. Also D. hitting himself with fire attacks repeatedly prolongs things a lot as you suspected.

Yes, although I think the Rogue class is one of the weakest (or let's say most unfun) for PotD difficulty I really like the Devil of Caroc as a companion. She was the one I gave Badgradr's Barricade and Godansthunyr to (the first time I tried that combo out), but she was also fun with Tall Grass. Her immunities can be exploited with some friendly-fire AoE spells (mostly from Wizard iirc) where you can place her in the front line to bait enemies and then shower them with spells which won't affect the Devil. I once made a "team of two" for that purpose: Devil oC & Bilestomper, one of the builds I posted here in the forums back then.

No problem. Tagging is a good practice imo. Especially since I usually don't look into this subforum frequently. I didn't mod much myself so I can't say what the problem is. @Elric Galad, @Noqn - any ideas?

Yes, I agree. I think Ghost Heart is neat in special cases, but I generally prefer the normal animal companion. It "stacks" with summons, it cannot suffer injuries so you can revive it infinite times and it's a good bait/decoy right at the start of the battle that doesn't need any action time or resource. I'm just a bit mad still that Ancient's Wild Growth doesn't work with Animal Companions. That would have been so cool...

Immune to engagement: It means that enemies cannot engage the (Ghost) Boar. The Boar can engage just fine once he gets an engagement slot (with the help of the right abilities - animal companions don't start with an engagement slot).

Hehe, define "old". I'm 46.

We could tag one of the devs from the community realm who are always happy to help, like for example @Shyla? If that doesn't help then maybe try to hit @jesawyer on Twitter (in a nice way ;)): He's not active here on the forums anymore but he is very active over there. I often see him answering reasonable questions, especially when it's about the Ultimate. But his feed and notifications are quite crowded I guess (he has a lot of followers) so there might be a chance he misses it. The chance could be even higher if you try it on Tumblr, he's anwering there very frequently and posts the answers on Twitter, too - but I have no experience with that platform: https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer

Getting the Fear Ward takes some levels. Same with Spirit Frenzy. Before those the upsides of a Furyshaper aren't that obvious and you might think "well... why did I take a Furyshaper in rhe first place?" But once all the pieces of the "synergy-puzzle" fall into place I think it is a very rewarding combo. It doesn't take much fiddling to lower enemies' Will and Fortitude completely into the ground and disabling them hard before hitting them - and this is not only making things easy for you but for the whole party, too. Imo if one thinks at some point in the early game "well this doesn't feel spectacular" it just needs a few more levels. The Fear Ward, if used right - like... debuffing Will of enemies beforehand with RES-/INT-afflictions, Willbreaker, clubs, spells (Miasma of Dull-Mindedness from a buddy wizard is your very best fried by the way!) is a devastating tool to have combined with all the other goodies. Once it works you can (if you want to) also build your party a bit around the effects of the main character - like giving a melee damage dealer more engagments to profit more from the terrified enemies breaking engagement, favoring spells that target Will (see several chanter invocations, priests' offensive spells, Cipher stuff etc.) and Fortitude (lots of Wizard and Druid spells) and so on.

If it's mainly about retaliation I think not much beats a Fire Godlike's Battle Forged at high levels since it scales so well. All the other retaliations don't. I think the low health of priests could make this concept challenging, especially because you need to receive at least a graze in order to retaliate (contrary to riposte). That's why I wouldn't drop CON. I guess you know this but similar forms of retaliation don't stack unless they are from a passive (Battle Forged) or a weapon (see Sura's Supper Plate). So for example it's either armor, helm or cape (see Hiro's Mantle) + Sura's. How about Swanddling Sheet and Binding Rope? They kind of retaliate, too. Iirc they do have stacking issues with normal retaliation though - but I am not 100% sure anymore.