Boeroer

Actually I think you should go ranger/rogue and use Wounding Shot + Arterial Strike + Deep Wounds with Battle Axes. I tried it the day before yesterday and all the DoTs stack. It's very powerful with high MIG and INT. Cre_dummies and cre_tigers die so quickly despite their high health... You can even summon a wolf as Ghost Heart or be a Stalker with a wolf. As far as I know know vampires can call/control wolves and so on. At least Bram Stoker's Darcula could. And somebody has to eat all the leftovers... Also Predator's Sense + DoTs, you know. Blood Frenzy is not so good in my opinion. Another thing that would be possible is Soft Winds (causes DoT and drains endurance) and later maybe Old Siec as phrases. There's even a weakening chant which seems to fit.

As I said: how do you know it will be useful for the next encounter? Do you sneak up and then change armor after inspecting the enemy? What if you haven't met those before. This all sounds rather meh.

I think it doesn't stack with Wyrwood Ring or Rymrgand's Mantle. If you don't use those then sure. Heldrik's Coat is good anyway. I mainly took the White Crest because of the looks. I think Overbearing Wave can save the day - but so can Breakout Sturdy.

You can surely use other armor. The Golden Scales are only here for their optics. In this case hide armor would look best I guess? Or, after looking at the image behind the link: a monk's outfit with a red cape maybe? Aumaua can have blue stripes in their face. This build uses a (or two) special bashing shields for proc effects with Carnage and Heart of Fury. You can use any other (bashing) shield that looks cool for you and this will not gimp your tankyness, but you might want to switch to a dual weapon set just for Heart of Fury and then switch back. For example use a medium round shield that looks a bit celtic (search for Scath Gwannek) with a spear (Cladhaliath is cool with a barb when using stunning and vicious) and switch to dual battle axes for the Heart of Swipe. You can also just skip that and live with the fact that Heart of Fury does less damage with a normal shield or a shield that has no special proc on bash.

No no, just a cooldown for the modal - so you can't switch it on/off/on all the time. No recovery or so for other actions.

Yes, there are certain encounters/enemies where putting on a light/medium/heavy armor would make total sense. But first of all a new players can't know what's coming and you can't change armor during battle. And secondly: do you want to change armors all the time in the first place? I hate that. And so for me it's either "stack the heck out of AR" or "go with 0 recovery penalty". In PoE every type of armor made some sense because DR always got substracted from incoming damage. In Deadfire it may be that you suffer a recovery penalty while your AR doesn't help at all.

The complete game of Deadfire is realeased on May 8th and you pay once, not thrice. If you want some additional stuff you buy the (rel. cheap) DLCs or back them. If you don't want to - also fine. You'll still have a complete game that you can play and that you backed or bought. All that "everything was better in the old days" talk aboit DLCs/Expansions without actual data or experience is moot. If you think the DLCs are crappy and overpriced after they came out and had a chance to be inspected: hand me an admitting form for the Club of Repelled and P*ssed-off Gentlemen. Until then it's just baseless ranting and speculating.

No, Old Siec was simply a 15% draining chant in PoE. Not healing over time. Don't know if it's a new chant or if Old Siec got renewed (to New Siec, he he he...).

Min-maxed in what terms? Spell damage? Melee damage? Good dps but also good survivability via min-maxing? For a druid focused solely on melee dps it's either cat (higher attack speed) or boar (wounding damage). The cat is better against low to mid DR foes while the boar excels against high DR. A good balance between melee dps, spell damage, CC duration and survivability is a boar druid with maxed MIG and INT (using healing bonuses and regeneration effects like Vet. Recovery and the boar's innate regeneration, his healing spells and so on. Also boar's wounding damage scales with MIG. For spelldamage/CC there may be special builds, but I know none of them. It would be a pretty straightforward thing though. For melee dps with he druid you want to make sure you have the following talents/abilities: - Weapon Focus Peasant - Two Weapon Style - Wildstrike and Greater Wildstrike (preferably shock because of Storm spells) - Heart of the Storm (or another talent that matches your Wildstrike and most used spells - Merciless Hand & Dungeon Delver - Avenging Storm Of course stuff like Savage Attack and Apprentice's Sneak Attack are also fine. Eve Outlander's Frenzy works well. Gallant's Focus can be good if you don't have other universal ACC buffs like Zealous Focus, Blessing etc. in your party. Returning and Relentless Storm make sure you land a lot of crits because everybody is stunned. Nature's Terror is also very good in combo with melee combat. And most importantly: the Wildstrike Belt. This one adds a flat 10% to your two Wildstrike lashes. So Wildstrike gets +10 and Greater Wildstrike gets +10 as well. In combination with Heart of the Storm (increases both lashes by 25% and all your Storm spells as well) this is very powerful. It's a must-have for every shifter. There are two of those belts in the game: one can be bought from Cartugo in front of the Vailian trading post in Ondra's Gift and the other one from the ogre merchant in Russetwood who appears at the entrance of the cave when you don't kill Ogres inside the cave (being a Sneaky Pete).

And you thought putting out some insults would lift your mood?

Would a change-of-address order be an option? I for my part wonder why I never get those backer emails.

They change instantly, but there is a cooldown.

It's not in the beta and I can't remember a video where a party member does a bash. So I don't know. But creatures with a bashing animation like above may be a hint.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome healing. Also the new PL5 passive that lets you do +15% healing (forgot the name) stacks with all the PL and MIG bonuses.

I meant Sacred Immolation, not Dragon Thrashed. SI is not a DoT but a pulsing effect that does a seperate hit roll every time a pulse occurs. It works with hater talents, Merciless Hand et al. and also Scion of Flame. Draong Thrashed works with none of them.

Hm, something is wrong there. Lifegivers get +5 PL for Rejuventation spells when shifted ("Living Surge") - on top of the +2 PL they generally get for all Rejuvenation spells. They suffer -5 PL once shifting ends though. Wellspring of Live is a passive (as well as the Lifegiver passive) and thus its +2 PL stack with the above. For example: Moonwell does 8 base healing per tick. At lvl 9 it has +30% (+1PL from level, +2 PL from Livegiver passive), once you shift it has +80% (+5 PL Living Surge) and if you trigger Willspring of Life it does +100% (+2PL).

Some things have changed in the meantime. Some abilities got their power levels swapped. For example Charge (Fighter) is now PL 5.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire-beta-released-coming-may-8th.119184/page-159#post-5503802

One question though: why don't you shift with a lifegiver before casting rejuvenation spells?

For pure dps? Both.

Will maybe test later this evening. Stay tuned.

I get two parallel DT instances on enemies - for real. They show up below each other in the enemies' tooltips. But you are also right: one of those gets prolonged rather than a third one is added. However - that they don't show up on the enemies' tooltip doesn't mean that the damage doesn't stack. Deep Wounds also only shows once, Bleeding Cut the same - but they stack nonetheless. I haven't really logged the damage of DT so far. I only tested several setups with it against Lagufaeth, Dummies and Tigers just in order to get an impression and how it "feels". So I maybe wrong here.

Yes, it makes a huge difference. +50% recovery makes you deal 1/3 less damage (quite oversimplified, but still).

Little add-on

I agree. The only drawback is that you'll have to pick a lot of "non-necromantic" abilites because there aren't that many in the chanter's ability tree that you can spend all your points on them. With a bit of imagination it might be ok though. However: Chanter + Wizard is a pretty fun combo and viable. But you will miss the following chanter abilites when multiclassing: PL 8 Unlock - The Wind's Razored Nails Ripping Through Flesh PL 8 Unlock - I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world PL 8 Unlock - With all your Strength, Slay the Beast! PL 8 Unlock - The Foul Thing PL 8 Unlock - The Foul Thing Beckoner PL 8 Unlock - As the Song Reached Its Creshendo PL 8 Unlock - And with a furious thrust, drover her dagger into his heart PL 9 Unlock - Did sing a song of carnage Fair PL 9 Unlock - Did sing a song Beckoner PL 9 Unlock - His heart did fill with the light of the Dawn! PL 9 Unlock - The Great Wyrm Flew O'er the Mountains PL 9 Unlock - The Great Wyrm Beckoner PL 9 Unlock - The Arrow Sings Between the Dragon's Scales PL 9 Unlock - And sip from the Marrow The bold one sounds like something nice for a necromancer. Here I post the ones from Wizard up to PL 7 (accessible by multiclass) that sound like they would/could (loosely) fit a necromancer - and also the ones one misses when not using a single class wizard (PL8 and above): PL 1 Unlock - Ghost Blades PL 1 Unlock - Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff PL 1 Unlock - Kalakoth's Sunless Grasp PL 1 Unlock - Spirit Shield PL 1 Unlock - Eldritch Aim PL 1 Unlock - Thrust of Tattered Veils PL 1 Unlock - Chill Fog PL 2 Unlock - Necrotic Lance PL 2 Unlock - Merciless Gaze PL 2 Unlock - Infuse with Vital Essence PL 2 Unlock - Concelhaut's Draining Missiles PL 2 Unlock - Curse of Blackened Sight PL 2 Unlock - Miasma of Dull-Mindedness PL 2 Unlock - Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon PL 2 Unlock - Fetid Caress PL 3 Unlock - Ninagauth's Death Ray PL 3 Unlock - Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage PL 3 Unlock - Noxious Burst PL 3 Unlock - Arduous Delay of Motion PL 3 Unlock - Concelhaut's Draining Touch PL 4 Unlock - Essential Phantom PL 4 Unlock - Maura's Writhing Tentacles PL 4 Unlock - Ninagauth's Shadowflame PL 5 Unlock - Malignant Cloud PL 5 Unlock - Call to Slumber PL 5 Unlock - Ryngrim's Enervating Terror PL 5 Unlock - Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring PL 6 Unlock - Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar PL 6 Unlock - Death Ring PL 7 Unlock - Substantial Phantom PL 7 Unlock - Concelhaut's Crushing Doom PL 7 Unlock - Wall of Draining PL 7 Unlock - Ninagauth's Killing Bolt PL 8 Unlock - Kalakoth's Freezing Rake PL 8 Unlock - Wilting Wind PL 9 Unlock - Petrification PL 9 Unlock - Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin PL 9 Unlock - Cloak of Death