Boeroer

Hmmm - if you'd apply Takedown Combo after TotH got applied the ticks would get +100% dmg on top I guess. Ranger/Druid with Firebrand+Ring of Focused Flame for high ACC and high DoT ticks against strong single enemies? Or Xoti's Sickle? Xoti's Sickle can get up to +60% dmg mod with ~20 Religion and a few kills. I guess this would also influence TotH, right? Respectively Vion-ceth: cast Tanglefoot or Binding Roots on the enemy and then TotH: target should suffer +30% extra damage, correct?

Iirc it's like your wizard took those spells as ability at level-up. The grimoires don't get changed. That would require the saving process to meddle with the contents of the grimoire rather than meddling with the character object. That's worse than having them as unlimited-use ability in the action bar - but still better than loosing them altogether.

Those effects are only per rest though. They used to be per encounter - but it was nerfed.

How does that work? For example Ball Lightning is cast a bit like Crackling Bolt or Chain Ligning iirc. How does it profit from Wildstrike? Is the ability still accessible although you are shifted (which in theory should remove the ability from the action bar since the weapon is replaced by your natural claws/tusks/horns/whatever)?

Imo with an SC Paladin you need a Chanter with Many Lives Pass Bye in the party - or at least some other summons. Divine Retribution then turns the paladin into the class with the best resource restoration and all Exortations can be given to everybody with almost no casting time, you can use Brand Enemy on all enemies and you can also spam Flames of Devotion. For example I am using a SC Kind Wayfarer atm with dual pistols with all the good ranged ACC/reload gear. She just stands in the midst of my backline and spams (Shared) White Flames endlessly which allows her to use the healing version of Sacred Immolation (without loosing net health), too. She's at the same time healing everybody around her as well as dealing great single target dps with pistols and good AoE dmg around her with Immolation. It's like a trap for rushers. They can't win unless they disable her or take her out - which his not easy because she's a freakin Paladin with good defenses and resistances and all... Also Pallegina with Vielo Vodorio is very good with Divine Retribution. The AoE of VV is much bigger than that of Shared Flames and White Flames. The -20% recovery time buff is short, but you can spam it all the time when summons die (if she has Divine Retribution). That can keep your whole party at -20% recovery while dishing out good damage. Also nice: if you have 2 SC paladins they both get +2 Zeal from the same dead summon. Raising an Animal Companions over and over again if you have enough Zeal is easy. The AC pays for itself basically.

The quarterstaff is pretty neat. It's basically a +4 PEN weapon as long as the enemy doesn't have high burn AR and also does dual damage which is nice. I wonder if it's fire-tagged so that all attacks would work with Scion of Flame and Ring of Focused Flame.

Also an SC Monk with Resonant Touch (=raw dmg) in combination with blunderbuss is very useful. The easiest way surely is to use Lover's Embrace with Gouging Strike from stealth or invisibility and Brand Enemy - and then just wait.

Not the Oracle? Also when going to Ukaizo after killing Megabosses and with upscaling the Guardian is a lot worse imo. With some fire stuff, especially Combusting Wounds and reliable interrupts, for example Spear caster + modal or Thrust of Tattered Veils, I find her pretty manageable. Preventing her from casting Llengrath's Safeguard is a key to an easier fight. I usually don't even use the support from the King, Inquisitor etc.

Nope. A dying charmed or dominated foe does not count unfortunately. Only summons and party members (including animal companion).

In my experience Ondra's Wrath (Watershaper's Focus) procs more often with Driving Flight (in addition to the build-in bounce). I guess you left it out because it's only a 5% proc chance? However, together with the AoE and the two bounces it procs very reliably against bigger groups - and it's an AoE, too. It was nerfed though so it doesn't seem to proc itself anymore. It used to until I posted a certain build, ehem... You can also use Avenging Storm with Ondra's Wrath of course. It was overkill when Ondra's Wrath still triggered itself - but nowadays I guess it's worth it. To my knowledge the Long Pain (and the upgrade to The Pain Persists) always was a dual wielded ranged weapon ("ranged fist") and woud not trigger Swift Flurry,HBD or Enervating Blows. Only Instruments of Pain does because it just takes the currently used melee weapon's range and alters it (*6).

Yeah, it is a nice setup indeed. With the Helm of the White Void and some ACC gear like Ring of the Marksman, gloves etc. even the phantom has respectable accuracy. The Wizard can ramp that up with Eldritch Aim + WoD and then Citzal's Martial Power ot really nice levels. I like that this is an effective setup for a high level wizard that needs very little micro after the initial phase of combat and can even be done by AI easily without making a mess. Yes, Taste of the Hunt with (melee) AoE weapons is indeed very good and fun. The healing only procs for the initial target, but the very strong DoT gets applied to all enemies on the AoE (you hit). Due to it being PL2 it has good scaling, too, but I still struggle a bit with accuracy because Martial Power ia no option. --- Also Spiritshift with a Sorcerer can be cool if you use Wall of Draining and all the self buffs + later Zandethu's Draconic Fury (spell from unique grimoire). Lots of lashes, terrify and great defense. And long lasting shifts as well. Fassina has a cat form if I'm not mistaken so the active speed buff of the shifted cat can be prolonged, too.

I don't oppose a little healing for Blood Surge though. It's thematically and mechanically fitting and I don't think it would make it too strong (unless when used with skeletons, but that's an edge case with a lil' grated cheese on top).

As I showed with the Serafen case, it is also viable without using skeletons. Keep an eye on the Rage counter. Even if Blood Surge only procs once - that means an additional Driving Roar (only costs 1 Rage unless Corpse Eater) which in turn has the chance to produce 1 or more Rage, should it kill). I found it was more important than Prestige for sure. It is beneficial of course if the Driving Roar character is the main damage dealer but if others chime in to "soften up" the enemies first (preferably something with long range AoE capabilities I think). The Barb wants to do the killing blows (or -Roars in this case) - also because of Blood Thirst. If the Barbarian is a Berserker and doesn't want a +20 health on kill pet like Cajux then somebody in the party (can be the Berserker) should run with Abraham or another pet with +10 health on kill as party-wide effect. Or have a healer stand ready. Self damage from Berserker Frenzy is no joke at the highest levels.

Yes, but I guess those still use actual weapons (your fists)? They count as equipped weapons and have base damage for auto-attacks and so on. It's just a suspection though. I also suspect that CP's Inner Death wouldn't proc Carnage (using console to add Carnage to an SC Monk of course - just for testing purposes). It's tagged as melee weapon attack but it uses no actual weapon. And Carnage might search for an actual weapon in order to find out its base damage?

SSS and FS were pretty easy for me with a SC Monk using dual mortars as main weapons. It's rel. easy to clear mobs with this and still good against bosses if you switch to weapons that are better suited against boss foes. You give the Monk AoE gear, Enduring Dance, Lightning Strikes and most importantly Resonant Touch and Whispers of the Wind. You enchant Hand Mortar with Blinding Smoke (it triggers Resonant Touch in addition to blunderbuss modal "Powder Burns" and the normal attack) and Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot. You wear Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak, Ring of the Marksman, Acina's Tricorn or Heaven's Cacophony, Aloth's Armor, Ring of Overseeing, Charm of Bones, Loki pet. Also use Turning Wheel (with CP mod) or keep it at Duality of Mortal Presence: INT (without CP mod). In tough encounters use Avenging Storm from Heaven's Cacophony or use a scroll of Avenging Storm (needs investment in Arcana of course). Mirke could do the job although her INT is pretty low. Or an adventurer of course. What was als very useful against the though nuts as well as mobs was an Arcane Archer/Troubadour with Sure-Handed Ila + Aefyllath, maxed Arcana and Spearcaster (+modal) as main weapon against single foes and Watershaper's Focus against big mobs. Great ACC, great reloading speed, constant interrupting with the arbalest modal. Later you can use their Champion invocation + Brisk Recitation and an offensive chant such as Thick Grew Their Tonge and your pulsing imbue shots (Web + Eora) to mass-interrupt enemies on all crits from chant and shot.

It is. Too bad, thanks for testing. No it also works with abilities - that ability just needs to be executed with a melee weapon (and at least hit and have base damage I presume, else Carnage can't calculate its own fraction of dmg based on that weapon base dmg). Maybe FF doesn't work because it's not done with an equipped weapon or so?

Speaking of potentially good SF/HBD weapons: I'm not at my desk right now - shouldn't Concelhaut's Draining Touch be a good one? It also weakens on touch and I guess that's a separate roll? But does it count as weapon attack roll, too? Besides that it targets Will instead of Deflection so it's extremely easy to debuff for a Wizard with Miasma + somebody with a club and a Wizard has access to a little crit conversion with Merciless Gaze and later also accuracy with Martial Power. I guess it stands or falls with the nature of the weaken roll (if there is any in the first place). --- Also: Llengrath's Warding Staff. It hobbles vs. Fortitude and also pushes back (don't know if that's another roll, guess it's autohit though).

You can do both of course. But as I said : when I build around Driving Roar the Barb becomes a ranged character mostly and then Retaliation doesn't add a lot of value.

? Sharpshooter's passive should only work for ranged attack rolls. Do the enchantments like Red Flag Fyling count as such?

My first Impulse would also be Stalker. But on the other hand I would build a pretty offensive character and might not need the AR and deflection bonus a lot. And Stalker somewhat does hinder mobility: using Evasive Roll will most likely give you Grief bc. >4m away from your animal companion - unless you are willing to pay for Master's Call (both at level up and in Bond). But mobility is important if you are often one-shooting weaker enemies who might be scattered across the battlefield. If you want to shock the enemies' backline with such a Monk/Ranger it's difficult to bring your AC to the backline as well, especially if it's a big one like the Bear (unless you use Master's/Furious Call at some point where it might be a cool combo to evade behind enemy lines and then play homing bowling ball with the AC). So this makes me reconsider Ghost Heart again. You can summon the ac right behind the enemies you want to attack and losing the ac is no big deal. But I really, really don't like that you can't combine summons + AC. I guess Sharpshooter's passive doesn't work with the important weapon enchantments. If not then vanilla Ranger seems like a reasonable option this time?

I think it has something to do with the forum. I didn't put that many hours into any game before as I did with PoE and Deadfire - and I played more when I was young, you know, Pools of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale and also Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Day of the Tentacle, Roger Wilco and all that stuff. Many, many hours, too - just not that focused on one or two games alone. And always together with at least one friend, sitting on front of one computer. Almost never alone. Then I had a sick Diablo II phase during my time at the university (again with friends and cousins and stuff, doing LAN parties and whatnot) and years after that I (this time alone) played the heck out of FTL while I enjoyed parental leave and the child turned out to be some hibernating species (at least during the first months) - but the hours I put into those and the timespan over which I would return to the games over and over again weren't even close to the Pillars games. I think if you're a bit more involved in this forum and users constentinely (höhö) come up with new tricks and cool findings - or even cool themes and character concepts - or if you just get inspired by some stories or brainstorms - that brings you back to the game all the time - I mean if you like it in general. Without talking about the two game so much (here) I seriously doubt that I would have put so many hours in. A bit like what's going on with multiplayer games I suppose, just more decoupled. Since I don't like multiplayer games much (or better: the interaction between players in multiplayer games) this seems to be the best (or worst?) amalgamation of playing and interacting with other players for my dinosaur brain.

When you are fighting numerous enemies and have Blood Thirst you will run out of Rage pretty quickly. And precisely because Driving Roar is so cheap Blood Surge is good with it. Because 1 refund means 1 additional roar. And you can get more than 1 refund from one roar (if you kill numerous weakling with it for example). Getting a Rage point every now and then is nice. When building around Driving Roar I don't pick Retaliation because it becomes a ranged char basically. It's different with Dazing Shout though. But to be honestly I find it mandatory because I mostly use Driving Roar with a Berserker in combination with skellies - and their death counts for Blood Surge, too (not only Bloodlust and Blood Thirst). That combo gives you unlimited Rage because plenty of reliable kills. But even without that stuff it's good. Like on Serafen. Look at this test I did with him (especially the rage counter):

I personally would not combine Monk with Ghost Heart because then you cannot use Dichotomous Soul and Animal Companion at the same time.

Since you cannot stack conversion to 100% but can stack accuracy so that 100% of rolls become crits I think bonus ACC is preferrable to bonus conversion. Mob cleaning is easy if you only need one strike to kill each mob member... Also: Raised Torment?

Yeah, Hunter of Hunters with maxed Survival (Ngati's Tusk), MIG + CON affliction + Body Blows in the party somewhere and it should be good. Or bad - how you look at it.