Boeroer

I also find it useful when I use it on enemy healers/buffers.

You have to be dazed or confused to think Dazed is as useless as Confused.

Hi - thanks. I will be flying home today evening. Once I boot up my computer I will add the new builds. It's so tedious to edit rich text on the phone. Thanks for your patience!

Actually AC in D&D increases the equivalent of deflection, it doesn't reduce it per se. There is no DR from (normal) armor. This I find a bit meh because it's obviously easier to hit somebody who's wearing armor. It's just not so easy to hurt them. But a crit-to-hit conversion or a hit-to-graze conversion is ok. Your ability to connect with the enemy will not suffer (actually it will be even easier if deflection gets reduced) - but the quality of your hits will suffer if you glance off of armor.

Sure it would. But to quote a famous German soccer player:

Yes, I'm sure that it works that way. It gives you additional power levels if you invest in alchemy. Why? Seriously, I have no idea. I guess it happens unintentionally because of keyword issues. Poisons are supposed to scale with Alchemy - maybe certain druid spells and poisons/potions share the same keywords.

That's why having a dual wielding setup with speed bonuses is better for a paladin who wants to heal quickly. If you like to auto-attack stuff with a two hander in heavy armor it will take like 5 seconds until you can cast LoH. In PoE you could use Quick Switch to skip that recovery - doesn't work anymore with Deadfire.

Yes, that's why Druids have Plague of Insects, Infestation of Maggots, Insect Swarm etc. which scale with Alchemy like crazy - so you can kill everything with one cast. It's obviously more lame than +3 AR. They also have those laughable Lifegivers who can only cast healing spells with +7 PL so nobody can die. Lame I say!

Yes, that's true. Druids are really awesome, but lack accuracy. In a party you wouldn't notice but when soloing it can be an issue. With a solo barb you can overcome this problem at certain levels because the accuracy of Carnage + Accurate Carnage starts to surpass your normal accuracy at lvl 6. That's because Carnage, although suffering a malus of -10, counts as an ability and those get +1 ACC per char level. At lvl 16 your Carnage has +10 accuracy compared tough your normal accuracy. You can auto-attack the enemy with the lowest deflection and hit tougher ones with Carnage. Solo druids have no tool (besides consumables) to boost their accuracy - but plenty of tools to lower enemies' defenses.

Or it's just an oversight and all the sarcasm is totally wasted. That would be a real shame...

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.