Boeroer

Of course you can - but then you won't get +12 ACC AND the shield's accuracy malus (if medium or large) will get applied to your chants. So in case of a large shield you'd have a difference of 20 ACC compared to a single weapon in the main hand (and nothing in the offhand).

Hehe - good luck!

Especially not after such a short period of time. Most people don't know (yet) what's really good. They just take what they think is good or just sounds cool - because there hasn't been enough time to really determine what's great and what not - apart from the obious game breakers of course.

Maybe the lash now scales as well?

If you have a priest with Barring Death's Door in the party or a Shield bearer with Lay on Hands then a Berserker/Streetfighter is pretty cool. After the "he can't go down" phase you have to heal though - so timing is crucial.

Apparently they are. Have not tested personally though.No they are not. Carnage does not transfer modal "afflictions" like Body Blows etc. What works is Charge (pre 1.1) and Clear Out (plus upgrades). Those are the only two abilities I could find that apply Body Blows (morning star modal) in an AoE. At least that's with game version 1.0.2 Heart of Fury (and I assume the Ranger T8 ability)? Pretty sure HoF was working for me, but my 1.1 Barb doesn't have it quite yet to confirm. Ah,yes. HoF also works. I didn't take it into account because you can't have it as multiclass character (playing a brute with a morning star atm). So I forgot about it. I guess the monk's level-10 ability where he flies (or jumps) around doing full attacks will also work. As well as Flagellant's Path (which I also forgot, Jeez!).

Without taking into account that crits improve your overall PEN by 50%.

Yeas, it feels like that, but that's because the physical damage you do with your weapon's Primary Attack (when executing Soul Annihilation) generates focus - which will then be immediately dumped into the raw damage of Soul Annihilation. The raw damage itself is not multiplicative but only gets calculated based on the focus you have after the physical damage had its hit roll. It's kind of unintuitive. That's the reason why you should not wait with Soul Annihilation until your focus is full - because then you will waste the focus that is being generated during Soul Annihilation itself. When you have Draining Whip you can usually use Soul Annihilation all the time (as long as you have 5 focus min) because you will generate a lot of focus with Soul Annihilation itself before dumping it into the raw damage. However: That was the case in beta3. But I don't think they changed the mechanics at release or even in 1.1.

Yes, it's just a UI bug. At least I could pick it at lvl-up when I played around with the beta branch - if I remember correctly.

Attack animation + recovery time = attack cycle. Your attack animation also takes some time. I guess that's what you are encountering?

Apparently they are. Have not tested personally though. No they are not. Carnage does not transfer modal "afflictions" like Body Blows etc. What works is Charge (pre 1.1) and Clear Out (plus upgrades). Those are the only two abilities I could find that apply Body Blows (morning star modal) in an AoE. At least that's with game version 1.0.2

Just take six priests with six times Inspiring Radiance. PotD = smashed. Cast damaging spells like Pillar of <Whatever> and Shining Beacon with over +90 accuracy for everybody at some point. +60 acc right from lvl 1 on. You will obliterate everything on PotD. First with weapons, later with spells. 6 times Inspiring Radiance = +60 (yes, it stacks with itself) + Devotions = +80 + Blessing = +85 + Crowns = +91.

Best Race might be Moon Godlike because gear doesn't work while shifted anyway, but godlike racial bonuses do. I used a boreal dwarf for my playthrough though. It is possible so solo PotD with almost anything - we even had somebody in this forum who did a complete playtrough with a lvl-1 character ("Noober"). I did an Ultimate run with a Barbarian with 3 RES and 3 DEX - wasn't too hard (but I died from a Battle-Forged/Second Whind bug at lvl 16 in Noonfrost on the way to Thaos - after killing all bounties and dragons). So - a shifting druid should be possible as well (and easier than a barb). With casters it's tougher at the beginning but easier later on - due to the "scaling" of per-rest spell casting (few spells at low levels, a ton at high levels). Druid is a bit easier in the early game than let's say priest, because Spiritshift is quite effective right from the start. You will most likely need high move speed for kiting and pulling. A shifted druid (and druids in general) are not Masters of defense and can't tank all the enemies in an encounter. They have awesome CC and dmg spells, but sometimes you will have to flee. You will need to buff your accuracy somehow against bosses (scrolls for example) because that's what druids lack a bit.

Yes. And every other universal accuracy bonus like Blessing, Gauntlets of Accuracy and so on. What also helps (and this might be a bug/oversight) is a single one handed weapon. This will give your offensive chants (at least Dragon Thrashed) +12 ACC. The one handed style does nothing though.

On the other hand you don't lose much spell power if you spec for Spiritshift. A shocking boar druid with focus on self heals (Veteran's Recovery, healing spells, high MIG and INT) can be very sturdy, wreck stuff in melee (also against high DR targets) with Wildstrike + Avenging Storm, be a great CCer and will still able to cast other devastating spells (like Plague of Insects). High MIG and INT are good for (self) healing, Dot effects (boar tusks, spells like Plague oI) and AoE damaging spells in general.

I see you put out some build posts recently. Which I like. While they are all very well thought through (as always ) I would think that we wait with putting them into the build list until they are tested more and leave the stage of "first draft" and reach a "proof of concept" level, what do you think? Since I might forget about this it would be great if you could remind me once you think the build is ready. Would be a shame if they drown in the current forum... current.

Yeah that would be nice. I would like to play a Priest of Berath/Bleak Walker so I can combine FoD and Spiritual Great Sword - I don't care if my Faith & Conviction and my Holy Shmoly Radiance will suffer. I would like not only a mod (although highly appreciated) but I'd also like to see that this somewhat silly restriction gets removed from the main game entirely. Place a warning instead - that will suffice. Or even better: reintroduce "Untroubled Faith" et al.

Haha... good one. Well as I said: different types could have different effects (if you want to make things more complex). Look at "Ring the Bell" and such. You could give two handers a might affliction on crit when backstabbing or more PEN for the physical damage, a dexterity affliction or an additional DoT for light weapons, you name it. But first of all I would prefer a simple solution that is easy to implement, easy to balance and removes the nonsense of "Ha! My two handed sledge hammer is perfect for backstabs!".

I agree - despite me wanting to use the gamepedia wiki I find myself browsing through the fextralife one - because there I can access the information a lot easier and faster (although the info on gamepedia has better quality overall).

I suggested this easy solution several times now: Instead of giving Backstab a percentage-based bonus of 100% (or 150% or whatever) it should get a flat damage bonus (maybe raw damage). Basically like Soul Annihilation (without the focus part). This way you would decouple the dmg bonus from weapon base damage. This would mean that every weapon type would be viable. With such a flat bonus it would also be easier to include Power Level scaling. This would also prevent that certain multiclass combos (Flames of Devotion + Backstab = multiplicative lash dmg which gets boosted by Backstab = one-shotting stuff all the time) are too strong. No need to nerf FoD further. Stuff that works like Soul Annihilation (flat dmg bonus as raw) just adds to the FoD damage and doesn't get multiplied. The amount of flat bonus can be easily found out by using the average base damage of all weapon types - for starters. That is the same as 100% weapon base damage - just averaged over all types. And if you want you could still give different dmg numbers for different types of weapons. I don't understand why this hasn't been the preferred implementation in the first place...

I'm using Aloth as a Spellblade with the WotEP - and when he casts Infuse wVE first the cone isn't so small. I can imagine that a high-INT monk with Duality(INT) can hit 4 or more people with it easily.

Yes. It works like a normal cone-shaped AoE (like invocations often have).

Hm, must be a copy & paste error. Sometimes the forum really wants to annoy me. With such a lengthy post and a lot of edits I encounter a lot of hickups lately when saving my edited post. Not too long ago all URLs got removed after saving or the list got cropped. Maybe that this left some errors (I'm like Obsidian: introducing new bugs with every patch ). I will fix this asap, thanks for notifying me. Edit: fixed

Ha - I like it! With Berath's Blessing you can unlock a merchant in the first town that sells a belt that will fill your quickslots with 4 random potions. Potions scale (like crazy) with Alchemy and the odds are good that you will get a healing potion (among other really useful potions) every now and then. Maybe also a Lifegiver/Helwalker would fulfil this concept. He'd have no Flame Shield, but Moon's Lightl with +9 (+8 version 1.1) Power Level (+2 class + 5 shifting + 2 Wellspring) heals ~30 points every 3 secs with decent MIG for a long, long time. Moonwell is even better. If you combine it with the Dawnstars' Blessing and so on this is - in my opinion - more reliable than Triumph otC and you can add nice stuff like Nature's Terror (instead of Flame Shield). Ok, then you wouldn't prove anything for the priest class, hehe. What Do you think?

Blade Turning will not result in a melee miss on you but will redirect 100% of melee attacks to bystanders. Since there's no miss, Riposte will not get triggered. This was tested in the beta though - but I don't think it has changed.