Boeroer

If you want you can try Fury/Bleak Walker with Scion of Flame, Spirit of Decay and Heart of the Storm. Choose Wildstrike Freeze. Your FoD strikes while shifted will deal 4 different damage types and will have +3 PEN. Your elemental spells will have +2 PEN (except freeze which will oy have +1). It's not OP but for me it was fun.

Where's MaxQuest when you need him?

No. Both are a active modals and actives don't stack. Warrior Stance's ACC bonus supresses Exhalted Focus' ACC bonus. You have to pick another stance or another zealous aura to prevent this.

Actually flails are among the best dps weapons for auto-attacks in PoE (crush resistant/immune foes aside). Mainly because they are fast (and the fast weapons have better dps in general) and because there are two very good unique ones (Starcaller - stunning, spell striking, Unforgiven - speed) that both have an inherent 10% burning lash on top of any normal 25% elemental lash you can put on.

Meant to be hard or not - I agree the mechanics of PEN vs AR are wonky and tedious to play around and no fun at all. A criticism of PoE's flat DR was that it felt mushy and didn't scale well with higher levels. In my option a simple, percentage base damage reduction like the OP suggests would have been better. An additional mechanic that I saw in Tyranny (and that was pretty much the only thing I liked about Tyranny as a general idea) was the conversion of enemies' attacks to a lesser tier. For example a crit-to-hit conversion or a hit-to-graze conversion (not graze-to-miss). That can resemble situations where you hit the enemy but glance off the armor. At the same time armor should not lower attack speed too much but stride and deflection.

Edge of Reason had Draining. We Toki was causing prone.

Yes, it procs Frenzy upgrades but that's it. AoE size in general got nerfed compared to PoE. INT will now enlarge the actual area with its bonus, NOT the radius like it was in PoE. This lead to exponential growth of AoE sizes in PoE - that's gone in Deadfire. For example if your circular area of effect is 50 square meters and you get 10% bonus it's now 55 square meters. In PoE you had a radius of 4 meters (roughly 50 square meters) and 10% would lead to a radius of 4.4 meters. This would lead to an area of about 61 square meters. With of INT this really got out of hand (in his example: 75% bonus from 25 INT would lead to from 50 to 87.5 square meters in Deadfire and from 50 to 154 in PoE). In Deadfire the percentage bonus per point of INT is higher, but it applies differently and thus has less impact.

Spelltongue + Barb = https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83388-class-build-the-leech-barbarian-time-bandit-tank/

The Larder Door only has Bash - which is a low dmg offhand attack without any special effect that does not profit from dual wield speed bonus nor Two Weapon Style. It actually reduces your auto attacks' dps.

Count me in - I've said my piece and I think it was understandable enough if one doesn't choose to be pigheaded. Bye.

The unique AoE Pollaxe also works like WotEP when it comes to applying afflictons like Stunning Blows or Crippling Strike or whatever in an AoE. It also has reduced base damage like the WotEP. It also still works with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming. I use it on Xoti. My goal is to use it with Instruments of Pain. I'm curious if that will work as I expect.

Large Shield is awesome against anything that targets reflex - like Dragon Breaths for example. Combine it with other DR gear (like the helmet that reduces damage based on how many corpses lay around you) and you'll get very little damage even if your defenses are not the best. It doesn't mean you have to use it all the time. There's a reason you have more than one weapon set.

Does anybody know if Backstab scales with PL now? Or was it really a hard nerf from 150% to 100% and that's it? I'm asking because Sneak Attack now scales with PL - so maybe...?

It is, I agree. Not so much for me because it works like on PoE - but that's not really a proof of quality when it comes to consistent stacking rules...

I guess. But Borrowed Instinct should not stack with Llengrath's Safeguard. That is really a good example where the stacking rules need rework or a lot more explanation.

That's because Llengrath's Safeguard adresses another "value" than deflection-only buffs. Like in PoE +X to all defenses is in another group than +X to deflection (code wise) and thus slips through. So it's not only Llengrath's Safeguard - but everything that addresses +X to Y(all) universally will stack with +X to Y(1) and Y(2). It's not intuitive and silly and either needs to be mentioned/explained right in the tooltip or needs to go.

A crit will increase the overall damage of Dragon Thrashed. For example if you'd normally apply ~60 damage with a hit you would apply ~80 with a crit. And of course it helps a lot if you want to eliminate misses. So, the overall dps rises with +12 accuracy. The question is if this is good enough to justify the loss of tankyness. If you have a priest and want to abuse the withdraw + chanting synergy I'd def. use a single weapon. You can also spec for shield use and just switch to a single one-handed weapon as soon as you don't get attacked. The bonus will apply immediately. You can switch back to shield as soon you get attacked again. The gain in deflection and reflex is also immediate.

If Offensive Parry is now reduced to single target damage that's one of the hardest punches for the Blade.

Deep Wounds does not benefit from low INT. The opposite is true. What would profit from low INT is wounding - so basically using Drawn in Spring, Tidefall, Acuan Giamas or Persistence. But since Deep Wounds gets reapplied with every hit and only prolongs the duration then (and does not stack damage like wounding) it doesn't matter much if you INT is low as long as you keep hitting the same single foe repeatedly. Low PER on an offensive rogue is indeed a bad idea. It not only lowers your accuracy but also leads to less interrupts on the enemy - those can be lifesavers for a dual wielding rogue who stands toe-to-toe with a single enemy.

Same as in the other thread you opened in the other subforum.

It works on auto attacks and weapon based abilities as long as you dual wield. Not on abilities that don't use your weapons.

Do you though? Because last time I took Mule Kick it didn't replace Knock Down (pre 1.1).

Firstly that was not my sentence. I just added my personal impression to the discussion. Now if you take that "any" very literary, it is indeed a hyperbolic statement. But this is a forum discussion, not a juristic text. People talk that way, you know. And dying three times on PotD is not really what I would call challenge. But as you insist, here is my non-hyperbolic attempt: In my experience as a self defined average player the game clearly failed to provide an appropriate challenge on the difficulty settings normal and above, apart from very few fights, given the assumption, that players an all difficulty levels but story mode are expected to fail from time to time. You can quote that, nitpicker. Dude. *HE* admitted that it was in fact extreme hyperbole and then proceeded to rephrase with more realistic statements. So...**** you, basically? Like...you don't matter in that conversation. That was an example of hyperbolic statements, not something *being attributed to you*. And my point was, and remains, that hyperbole to an extreme degree creates lack of meaning because at a certain point it ceases to connect with the reality of the situation. Not, like.."nitpicking". Your half-assed attempt to be annoyingly specific as a joke at my expense to create the impression that I'm some kind of obsessively specific jackass just makes me concerned about your comprehension. Are you okay? Like...I'm worried about you. Your executive function doesn't seem to be working well. If you'd just left out the personal attacks (especially the silly last part done in master guardian style) you'd have achieved more. Without you'd have a clear point I could agree to - now that is heavily obscured by an impression that you might have problems with anger management or something.

For me it doesn't use Backstab in an AoE, only on the initial target. Other stuff works in an AoE though.

That's not entirely correct. In PoE it did work with melee only abilities - for example Force of Anguish and Torment's Reach which are strictly melee there. Even with Knock Down (via girdle). I guess if you'd say "passive" melee abilities you'd be right.