Boeroer

Yes, so far he does that job exceptionally well. I broke with the habit of using tanks in PoE. Maybe I have to return to that concept in Deadfire. Unbroken/Troubadour is a great tanking combo as well. At least he does something else while tanking the heck out of everything. I also discovered that the chanting pause after invocations is not affected by DEX, recovery of the invocation or armor penalties in Deadfire. it's alsways a fix 2 to 3 secs pause, nothing more. Good for armored tanks. Did you try if an Unbroken + shield and pistol/scepter/wand/blunderbuss has any engagement slots? I was thinking about Minor Blights + Shield with an Unbroken tank. But I guess using ranged weapons disables engagement completely? Edit: to answer my own question - like in PoE, using a ranged weapon completely removes any engagment.

In beta1 you could multiclass with a wizard and use Ryngrim's Minced-Meat-Face to scare away enemies. That triggered Disengagement Attacks and was so powerful that it was nerfed immediately in beta2. Unbroken/Wizard was one of the strongest things I tried so far because of that. Now being frightened/terrified makes you immune to engagement it seems. Nowadays I know of no other way to force disengagement. Pushing/kicking/reloacating via ability (Knock DOwn, FoA, Pull of Eora...) seems to cancel engagement as well. Even when I place some bait next to the Unbroken (unarmored wizard with 3 RES and 3 CON) most enemies I tested (Lagufaeth, Tigers, townspeople) won't leave me as long as they are engaged. It seems the threat level of an Unbroken in engagement is too high? Don't know... I mean +100% dmg combined with 10 PEN is hefty. If you find a way to force disengagement please report!

You can try Soft Winds as the only chant (stacks with itself). It drains health for you nowadays and is very powerful atm. It will balance out the hefty damage that a Helwalker at 10 wounds will receive (with the big bonus the healing gets from the high MIG). Also Killers Froze Stiff + Swift Flurry is good. You shouldget new phrases in no time. You can try out that combo with Torment's Reach. Maybe the cone attack also triggers Swift Flurry? I didn't test it yet. Duality of Mortal Presence (INT) will be you best ability once you can get it in the "real game". YOu can test it by adding it with the console. It will give your Helwalker +10 INT when havoing 10 wounds - in addition to the 10 MIG. The linger time of the chants will expand like crazy and everything with an AoE and duration will expand, too. Also Dragon Thrashed and Soft Winds profit from the high INT and MIG. And of course your chants' AoE.

Ok, now I sat down and tried a chanter/wizard in order to find out what pauses his chants. Did lower DEX to 1, than raised it to 30 and so on. Also used weapon and shield modals that affect recovery and switched armor types. This is what I found out: 1) Chanting speed is not affected by DEX and/or recovery. It is only affected by Troubadour's Brisk Recitation. 2) Invocation cast times are affected by DEX and universal speed buffs (from abilites such as Frenzy or drugs or potions), not armor or weapon modals or dual wiedling or styles. 3) The general recovery after an invocation (you can't attack) is affected by armor, DEX and also speed buffs - but not weapon modals. 4) unlike PoE, the special chanting pause after casting an invocation is not affected by DEX, armor penalty or whatever. It's always the same: round about 2 or 3 seconds pause after an invocation happen. You stop chanting as soon as the invocation goes off and after 2 to 3(?) seconds you resume. When I set DEX to 1 it had no effect on the pause. When I raised it to 30 it had no effect. When I used an invocation with a long recovery or one with a short recovery - it had no effect on the chanting pause. It seems to be a entirely fixed amount of time. Hooray for turtles then! I learned something new today. 5) Casting an invocation (or anything else like spells) does not pause chanting. When the casting animation is done (and as soon as the invocation goes off) the pause happens. 6) Chanting only has that special pause after an invocation. Every other ability I tested (spells, FoD and so on) don't cause that pause. You can cast Fireballs without interrupting your chants. It's like Mongolian Throat Singing. What a mess. Hope that helps.

If you're that far you don't need lower difficulty I think. The game gets easier and easier because usually you outlevel most enemies.

The Berserker/Devoted would have +2 PEN from Devoted and +2 from sabre modal. Even +2 from Tenacious if he's a Berserker. I can't see a lot of armor that can't be penetrated with that. Anyway: a ranger with arquebus can pierce very well. Not because he has great PEN per se (also true ), but because Accurate Wounding Shot has +20 ACC and the arquebus modal has +20 ACC as well. As a Sharpshooter you can add +2 PEN from near and even more ACC from afar. Crits give you 1.5 times PEN - and it's very hard to not crit with such a setup. And then there's the war bow with the modal that gives +2 PEN. Another alternative is a Sharpshooter with dual scepters + modal. +4 PEN is cool. Great for woundig shots as well. Add +2 with yet another Devoted multiclass part. That would also balance out the self damage from scepters with Constant Recovery.

I honestly don't know. In the beta - when I use an Unbroken - foes seldomly leave my engagement. So the upgrade didn't really do anything. And you are right: with several engagement slots improvements you will end up with more slots than enemies can fill. You could also use a spear + modal and/or Hold the Line and then pick Cleaving Stance or Warrior Stance for the additional deflection instead. I'm undecided... But it may be that we'll see small, swarming enemies in the future. Smaller enemies can fill up more engagement slots. Then Guardian Stance might be perfect. Who knows?

I liked the casting system of PoE. Per-rest or not. It all has its pros and cons. "Vancian" or per/rest is definitely more powerful for players who have meta-knowledge about the game. For new players it's not so nice (tendency to hoard spells and not use them all until the next rest). After all the recent tweaks the Deadfire one is also ok for me now. If casting times are too short then interrupts lose meaning. If they are too long it plays like tar. Atm it's in a good balance I'd say.

I tried it and it's absolutely solid. I took the hardest hitting one hander I know of (sabre), omitting PEN because the disengagement attacks will have +100% damage and PEN anyways. Engagement slots, defenses and AR are stellar. You can also collect a lot of resistances.

Oh oh oh oh...

I guess they wanted to prevent ACC stacking which made the game too easy for "experts". Inspiring Radiance is also gone.

@MadScientist: all good. I wasn't sure if there is a new high level ability with that name (was too lazy to look it up).

I agree to all of that.

Great! I'll have to bookmark that...

Don't forget Marksman (low lvl ranger passive).

Sadly Dragon Thrashed is more like Dragon Trash in the beta. But besides that: yeah it's a nice combo.

See above, I edited. It's especially good with a paladin. At least in the beta.

It's gone. But all chars start with the same accuracy, so it's not needed anymore. In exchange the priests now have really strong summoned weapons (you have to pick that spell though) that match the talents of PoE. A priest of Berath can now summon a scaling great sword with a 50% corrosive lash, Wael summons a scaling rod with 50% shocking lash and so on. They are very powerful. If you want to be a martial priest this works even better than in PoE (because of those awesome weapons). For example multiclass a monk with Priest of Wael and pick Lightning Strikes and get a rod with +80% shocking lash - also translates to the AoE of the Blast modal (or did the last time I tried). Very sweet. Or a Priest of Eothas + Kind Wayfarer who gets a flail with + 80% burning lash when doing FoD.

there is a functional exception. spells which can be cast before combat but which have a long enough duration to remain in effect following repopulation may be empowered for what amounts to two empowers per combat. for example, a priestly seal spell has an incredibly long duration and may be cast and empowered outside of combat. wait a few seconds before beginning combat and the per encounter empowering will have refreshed... and you will also have your X level ability available for use. regardless, it is possible to have a single character benefit from multiple empowers during a single combat encounter, but the exceptions is limited... and a bit exploitive. HA! Good Fun! ps full disclosure: am gonna confess, have used pre combat empowered warding seal more than once when fighting the greater blights. follow up short thereafter with a second combat encounter use o' empower... pillar o' faith dropped on blights clustered by a wizard's empowered pull of eora. Ouh - good catch. I didn't know that. It's so gimmicky - I like it! Technically it's still 1/encounter though because casting "out of encounter" is not casting "per encounter". But yeah - it's an exception. Sorry!

Both good questions. I didn't look at that extensively but I think casting the invocation doesn't stop chanting. I'm pretty sure. I believe only invocations' recovery pauses chanting. Weapon recovery and martial ability recovery (such as FoD, Wounding Shots and so on) does not pause it. I'm not 100% sure about spells though (for example from multiclassing with a wizard or so). Will test when I'm at home...

Those accuracy talents are gone in Deadfire...

Haha - nope. That one ist just too expensive. No discussion needed.

What happens if you deactivate AI first and then try to retarget?

Yeah, it seems to be broken. I saw it being used in one of the latest streams though - so I guess this bug was already fixed in the actual game build.

What do you think: which other non-weapon melee attacks are there? Maybe stuff like Jolting Touch and such? Concelhaut's Draining Touch is now a summoned weapon that disappears after one attack (it's not so bad actually) so that doesn't count as non-weapon melee attack I guess. Retaliation?