Boeroer

You may have accidentally triggered auto-leveling in the game options. If that's not the case then it's a bug.

Okay, thanks.

When I use Eyestrike on several enemies who already suffer from an appropriate afflicton I usually get more focus back than I spend - so in this case it seems to be working "as advertised". I didn't use Phantom Foes though.

Wasn't Flagellant's Path changed? The description now says it only does a Full Attack at the target and minor crush damage in between? Or is that not correct? I didn't test it since 1.1.

Hi, I would make a high INT offensive fighter with Disciplined Barrage, Two Handed Style, Savage Attack, Weapon Focus (whatever backup weapon you want to use), Scion of Flame, Weapon Spec and Mastery and pick up Forgemaster Gloves & Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer (gives you 6 times Firebrand per rest). The ACC boost comes from the paladin and the Fighter can pair that with his Barrage - to generate a lot of crits (also when using Knockdown). Firebrand does tremendous damage on crit. For sturdyness I would go high MIG (also good for Firebrand) and skill survival really high so that I can get the healing bonus and also use the Robe of the Tireless Defender, Rapid Recovery and a Belt of Bountiful Healing. He will destroy any single target the paladin marks for him. This works even better if the fighter is the MC and takes the Doemenel route and get "Merciless Hand" and later sides with the Dyrwoodan Looters in Twin Elms and gets "Dungeon Delver". Add a priest with Inspiring Radiance and Devotions for even more crits. For crowd control something like a cipher or wizard is better than a low dmg tank. Tanks who do low dmg but have very high defenses will be ignored by most enemies as long there are more "valuable" targets. A fighter with Take the Hit doesn't work well with Mind Control (like the Ploi has) because Take the Hit is bugged when it comes to charmed/dominated enemies: If they get attacked your fighte will also get their damage (because thy have flipped alliance and now work for you) - but it will not go away after they flip back - that makes them really hard to kill without killing your fighter as well.

actually in my opinion it's bad. other revive are much better. you cant be saying it's not bad because you can cast barring's death door. what if there's no priest in the party? player's fault? . of course it's just my opinion. i have barring death's door but i didnt use it for this actually . i use chanter's revive though. splitting resurrection to other classes is a good thing so that said class will not be a dependent class which promotes varied party composition . Eh? Read again what I wrote. I didn't say it's not bad. I just tried to find a way to make it work in the OP's situation. The ability is not well implemented. It should just substract half of your max health (if that's lower than 300). That would make more sense. But it doesn't so I just named some options that came into my head.

I have never seen this actually working. The stealth recovery bonus does work with bows and melee weapons but any weapon requiring a reload doesn't seem to benefit from it. I use an Arterial Strike from stealth with a pistol and then a Gouging Strike that follows almost immediately. Works like a charm. The stealth bonus also applies to reloading.

It has 10 bonus accuracy and interrupts on graze. It's easy to interrupt an enemy caster with it.

What class? Because some can buff themselves with a resolve inspiration/direct buff. I don't know if this can be carries over to the stat check though...

Maybe if you have a priest, cast Barring Death's Door on the character you plan to get revived? Eh... I mean after he got revived. Time it so that the health loss falls into the timespan of Barring Death's Door. But I guess you didn't pick that spell, right? I don't know what else to do besides raising your characters max health. Raising CON (with Nature's Vigor/Balm, Prayer for the Body, ), items, putting on Amulets etc. with +x to max health (they do stack)... Reviving Exhortation will raise your ally with 300 health (max) - so losing 150 isn't that bad then.

Hi! I would use Swift Strikes first because in the early game the foes are not that numerous but hard and you will have to split and pull some enemies (if you don't want to skip fights) - and more attack speed for a certain time seems to be more useful than the Torment's Reach cone. Especially because you can't line up multiple enemies for the cone like in a party without high move speed. For a solo Long Pain build that uses Torment's Reach you need high move speed (Long Stride and/or /Boots of Speed and/or /Fast Runner) - then you can run away, the enemy will follow in a line/cone and you can turn around and nuke them with Torment's Reach like crazy. THat is very powerful. But without the move speed and also Long Pain it's not as effective as it can be. But even on a single target its 50% lash and the Full Attack are great... so... hard choice, but I'd still stick to Swift Strikes as first pick I guess. Stats look good. Weapon Focus as first is not bad. But since this is a solo build I would maybe choose Veteran's Recovery as first choice. You have to avoid hard CC at all costs. Since you can run around and avoid too many hits while attacking from range with the Long Pain, hard CC will totally screw you up. So I recommend stuff like Fenwalkers, Blaidh Golan etc. which work really well with Clarity of Agony to make sure afflcitions only last for a very short time. If you combine it with Crucible of Suffering you can combine very short afflcitions with an additional defense boost. This would also stack with Duality of Mortal Presence. High fortitude is your best friend. Getting paralyzed/petrified/stunned/prone can mean knockout - and all of those target fortitude in most cases. For a solo build one can also consider to use Weapon & Shield Style and switch on Duality(Deflection) insteat of (other defenses) at the start of battles. COmbine this with Aila Braccia. All voley from ranged enemies (this includes all single target spells that target deflection) will get turned into miusses and reflected back to the attacker. THis can make encounters such as Lagufaeth and Thaos a LOT easier. After the initial shots at you you could summon Long Pain and start punching. Just an idea though. Hope you have fun!

I also like Evasive Fire a lot. Its base damage is good, it's superfast - and paired with the very long range mobility component it's great - especially since it only costs 1 Bond.

No. But you have to level up the soulbing first so that the owner spawns. Then it works like before.

Not that situational - I use it in every fight at least once. For example: if you open with it from stealth its recovery is nearly zero because the stealth speed bonus of 85% applies. So you can stun several enemies for 4 sec (base) and attack immediately after. Even if it's not that useful for you during encounters it would be still pretty great as combat opener (obviously not for Assassins ). But even if it would be very situational or only good for very special builds (which I don't think): the initial question was if it's "totally useless" now - and I'd say it's far from that. It's actually still pretty good.

You can use the WotEP with Run-Through for the initial Backstab and then switch to daggers. Also an Assassination with arquebus (+modal) is good - since it has no recovery but only reload you can immediately escape and switch to daggers then. Also a DoT - build with True Lover's Kiss, Mask of the Grotto Deep and Pukestabber or Marux Amanth is cool. Attack with the Dagger from stealth with Gouging Strike and deliver several DoTs at once, then vanish an let the enemy bleed to death. It's not the most OP thing but it's powerful enough, a very safe way to kill enemies and it's also fun (at least for me).

At the moment I like a melee Stalker/Streetfighter with focus on DoT stacking very much. Dual Battle Axes (with modal Bleeding Cuts), Wounding Shot, Gouging Strike, Ring the Bell, Deep Wounds and Arterial Strike as opener with an arquebus. This melts single foes like crazy. Bleeding Cuts all stack and due to all the Full Attacks (which also apply DoTs that can stack) the longer recovery time because of Bleeding Cuts is not that bad. For the future I'm planning to get both unique spears that deal DoT damage without lowering attack speed. I want to test if that's better or not. One can add Mask of the Grotto Deep for even more DoT damage from stealth (which I always use to deliver one Arterial Strike from arquebus with a fast second Gouging Strike because the 85% speed from stealth applies to the reload of the arquebus after the initiating shot). I also tried this concept with a swashbuckler and used Arterial Strike more in combo with Charge and Escape - and that's also nice. Hit them and zip around while they try to follow and bleed to death... I can imagine the same "DoT" concept would work with Rogue/Paladin, Rogue/Chanter and Rogue/Barbarian or even Rogue/Wizard or Rogue/Druid (Taste of the Hunt, Boar Form with woundind damage perhaps). Stacking DoTs is powerful and all the floating numbers above enemies heads are satisfying.

No. Not really. There are several unique armors which are nice for monks, but nothing that screams "monk's garnment!". The only thing that I can remember that has a monk vibe because of the "Blood and Pain" theme is the "Bloody Links" mail armor. But that can also be seen as a barbarian-themed thing. Edit: I think in terms of style Aloth's leather armor looks really neat on monks. Also the enchantment can be cool for stuff like Torment's Reach. It's AoE buff stacks with rings of Overseeing and INT.

Yeees - but Cutthoat Cosmo is lowering your armor penalty - it's not giving you an recovery bonus, am I right? Ach wait - now I got it. Cosmo reduces armor penalty so that the leather's enchantment is higher than your actual armor penalty. I made a mistake and thought that the enchantment of the leather was also lowering recovery penalty (like Armored Grace) instead of giving you an actual recovery bonus. :oops: Ok, then what's the math when you use the Devil of Caroc's Breastplate? If I recall correctly it has a 20% recovery bonus but has +40% penalty. Cosmo reduces the penalty of thicker armors by a greater margin than light ones'...?

Back to Charge: I now use it on a Devoted/Berserker AND Edér (Swashbuckler) and it's far from useless. It's not a no-brainer anymore, but I find myself using it a lot. It also stuns the target by the way, not only the ones in between. I even adapted my playstyle because of it: I will shoot some Arterial Strikes from far away at several enemies (usually because of the stealth speed buff you can fire two Arterial Strikes in very quick succession) and then retreat a bit. The enemies will run towards me and form a line, they will get damaged severely because the move (slowly because of the hobbled affliction), I will charge the last one in the line with both characters (after I placed an Ectopsychic Echo on one of them) and usually all enemies are stunned - that helps a lot with the beam damage and I now can mangle them from two sides while they are stunned. Usually the drop like flies without hitting back once. Sure, they would be already dead if Charge still did a Full Attack on everybody - but I think we agree that that was just too powerful. Now it's still fun and useful - just not so OP anymore.

I don't have to point out that it's not generally awesome and brilliant. Because for me it is awesome and brilliant. It's certainly not awesome and brilliant for everybody - like it's certainly not stupid for everybody. And of course this is a matter of opinion and taste - and thus it's always good to say and write exactly that and not make general statements about stuff that is not hard facts. Am I obliged to object if I agree that something is awesome - even if the original poster was generalizing? I don't think so. I don't need to rationalize my opinion. I told you it's only my opinion - like I told you that your "stupid" statement is exactly the same: only your opinion. And that including items for certain builds is not stupid (in general) because it adds replay value for me. Then I merely gave examples why I think it adds replay value because you asked for them. Then you tried to invalidate those examples that show why I like those items with some talk about marketing and whatever - stuff that in no way connects with my reasons to like it. It's like: Marty McRant: "Gnah! Fruits taste so bad! I hate fruit and it is bad and evil!" Peter O'Reason: "I don't think fruit in general tastes bad. I like several types of fruit." Marty McRant: "Well name some!" Peter O'Reason: "Apples, oranges and bananas." Marty McRant: "But you only like those because you ate them your whole life and got used to it!" Peter O'Reason: "I don't care why I like those - I like them, I think they taste great". Marty McRant: "Bah - don't try to rationalize your opinion! Fruits taste bad because only a fraction of people like fruits!" Yeah, ok. If you want to go on with that then be my guest. It's just so that I have to leave now because I have to make some builds around items and have fun while I'm doing it. See you!

Does it work if you let somebody else initiate combat while you stay stealthed - and then attack?

What's the name of that build? Surely you don't want me to post it as "The solo 1.1 PotD Thaumaturge"...? Edit: For now I put it in as "Effigy's Bombardement". Just as a nod to PoE's "Effigy's Resentment" - because it's a Priest of Skaen paired with a Wizard and you use most of your wizard spells in the videos for nuking/bombarding the enemy. If you want another name just tell me, I will edit it then.

Are you sure that it's not capped? Even in PoE you couldn't reduce armor penalty below zero so that it (theoretically) would become a speed bonus.

I didn't say that it's brilliant or awesome. I said that it is not stupid and adds a lot of replay value for me. You are answering my post with a quote of somebody else whom I didn't refer to.

That's because combat didn't start yet when you initiate it with an attack from stealth I guess? For me personally AoE stuff like hand mortar, freezy bow, WotEP or the Wakinukitiki Pollaxe are for my rogues because I can apply Arterial Strike and such in an AoE. Combined with Escape or high move speed this can be very powerful. Also Run-Through from the WotEP, combined with Sneak & Backstab is (even without being an Assassin) almost always a one-shot. And if not, over 5 seconds of prone follow. Frostseeker is particularly crazy in my opinion with Confounding Blind. With good attack speed you can reduce an bunch of enemies' deflection a lot just by firing at them with the bow. I guess it all depends on the way you play your rogue.