Boeroer

No, it doesn't. In PoE Devotions does not stack with itself and it also doesn't stack with Borrowed Instincts. The only ACC bonuses that stack with themselves in PoE are Inspiring Radiance and Inspiring Exhortation. Both were considered passives and thus stacked with everything. Both are gone in Deadfire. PoE's Devotions stacked with stuff like Zealous Focus or Blessing because those were universal ACC buffs while Devotions "only" raised melee and ranged ACC. The stacking rules of Deadfire are rel. simple compared to PoE (besides bugs/oversights): all passives stack, actives only stack if they don't address the same value. An inspiration from a spell like Blessing raises PER, not ACC directly und thus stacks with Devotions which raises ACC. Two PER inspirations don't stack - two active ACC buffs (like from spells) shouldn't stack either.

Yes, you are right. I checked ingame and it "secretly" prolongs summoning duration. Secretly because you can't hover over the duration for a tooltip that explains the composition - but once you set INT to 30 or 40 via console you can see that the duration clearly raises. It also gets influenced by something else, because I get a duration of 8.8 instead of 8 with 10 INT. With 30 INT I get 17.6 (8.8 * 2). That's kind of weird.

I would also be happy if I could just skip that stuff and simply board the enemy ship. Doesn't matter if the fight is a lot harder then.

Invocation recovery pauses chanting at least till now - haven't tested in beta 4). Without chanting you get no phrases on your counter. Without phrases no new summons. Since when does INT prolong summons' duration? Is that new?

Somebody did it again!

DEX is not really a dump stat as Beckoner because you can't keep up summons all the time if your casting time and recovery get prolonged too much (durations of summons is reduced for Beckoners).

In my experience the skeletons do better damage than the wurms and also do engage (with disengagement attacks). They also split in two once they die. So I keep them up all the time, poke the enemy with my pike + modal in order to lower deflection by -10 so that the skellies can hit better. I usually send them all on one enemy who usually collapses after a few seconds. Worms have the advantage of ranged combat though - no movement required. If you are tanky they are good, too. The Ogres are also good but look so ridiculously tiny with a Beckoner that I never use them. I couldn't test drakes properly yet because they were heavily bugged in beta 3. My stats were fairly balanced. I need MIG for FoD and healing for example. PER is not that important though. FoD has +20 ACC and healing needs no ACC. I guess White Flames could be nice to heal your summons without switching to healing phrases or using Lay on Hands.

As far as I know Devotions and Borrowed Instinct do not stack. So no ACC +40. I would leave Devotions and Borrowed Instinct as is because that makes them stackable with PER inspirations. Stacking ACC is already more difficult than in PoE (no Inspiring Radiance, no Inspiring Exhortation, no marking or Coordinated Attacks so far). It's good to have some buffs that don't use stat based inspirations but directly boost ACC. Wild Leech is a bad joke.

Right. A fighter (who's all about Discipline and effectiveness) could be played as an open-minded warrior when it comes to new technology on the battlefield. Especially a Black Jacket (get 4 slots and quick-switch arquebuses) or Devoted (get additional +2 PEN with a gun of your choice).

It doesn't bother me - I just find it amusing. "Ouh... a poll!" *votes* "What's it about?" "Huh? How am I supposed to know?"

If you have problems with procs, then try to unequip, save, quit game, load savegame again and reequip. Sometimes that helps.

Skaen can not use Tidefall to its full potential like a breathing priest can. However, you could use Firebrand with Skaen (six uses per rest with belt+gloves, Firebrand also works with Prey on the Weak and any weapon focus) and also have a great melee priest.

Yes. It's one of the best dmg bonuses for Firebrand. +20% of base damage (which is 20-30, so 5 bonus damage with every strike), no drawback (like Savage Attack's ACC maluses - which I would also pick). With Scion, Two Handed Style, Savage Attack, One Stands Alone and Damaging III you already have +120% on base damage (=55 average dmg with hit, with an avg. crit 87.5, including Merciless Hand). Add MIG from Frenzy, maybe even Blooded and you can see where this is going. However, a superb Rumbalt with durgan steel is as good. It's the early to mid game where jaws drop with Firebrand to be honest (because of the unexpected high numbers per hit). The damage per hit is higher with Firebrand, but the crit rate and speed of Rumbalt are higher. Still, the combo Blood Thirst + Firebrand stays to be great even in the late game. Blood Thirst does mitigate the drawbacks of Firebrand: that you can't enchant it with durgan steel for speed.

Get the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer, also Forgemaster's Gloves, pick Two Handed Style and every other damage boost, pick Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst and watch your jaw drop once you summoned Firebrand and hit once/twice. Seriously: jaws will drop. Other weapons with the same tactic: Hours of St. Rumbalt, Tidefall (if you don't like Firebrand for some incomprehensible reason). Jaws will not drop though.

You can, but that would be cheating. It also turns off steam achievements. There's an item in the game that you can gain via stronghold adventure: the Helwax Mold (quest: "The Waxmaker"). It lets you clone one non-soulbound item with any enchantments on it. That way you can have two legendary Bittercut with all the nice enchantments but don't have to enchant twice and use your precious Kraken Eyes/Durgan Steel twice. I personally would clone Little Savior anytime (if I have at least two shield users in the party), but stuff like Bittercut or Drawn in Spring is also nice to have twice.

Like any other rogue basically. The build I had the most fun with: Since you are near Durgan's Battery and thus in reach of Badgradr's Barricade you can skill her towards bashing shield rogue with stunning/overbearing main hand weapon. Badgradr's Barricade procs Thrust of Tattered Veils on crits (unlimited per encounter) and that works with Deathblows. With the disabling main hand weapon (like Godansthunyr, Starcaller, Cladhaliath or We Toki) you can trigger Deathblows with one single strike: choose Blinding or Crippling Strike, the bash will come first. Blind will get applied and if you already crit the shield will proc ToTV. Then comes the main hand which will most likely crit as well because of the blind enemy, causing stun or prone. Next bash with crit will already trigger Deathblows with ToTV which is very deadly. At the same time this setup makes a rogue quite sturdy (while not losing a lot of dps). This is a good synergy with the devil who has several immunities like mind control, sickened and others as well as against all poison and disease attacks. That combo makes her a good offtanking or "behind the lines" skirmisher. Your druid/wizard can even bombard her with friendly-fire poison/diseases spells like Noxious Burst or Malignant Cloud while she's fending off a group of enemies and she won't feel anything. Great synergy. If you want to make her even more sturdy give her Veteran's Recovery. Give her Weapon & Shield style as well and use Escape if you want and "dive" into battle with +25 deflection. Riposte works quite well with this setup as well. Another nice thing is Adept Evasion which lets her tank even dragons' Wing Slams for some time and makes her shrug off most non-poison/disease AoE attacks. Besides that, every other build direction also works, like dual sabre and whatnot. Fun fact: since the Devil is immune to poison and disease, the malus of Bittercut (or even dual Bittercut = double the malus) does nothing on her.

I was speaking about PoE and that you'll have to use it properly. There, it scales with level and works with several damage bonuses via item/talent/ability: - MIG - crit (+50% base damage) - Merciless Hand (+30% base damage) - Dungeon Delver (+10% damage) - Scion of Flame (+20% base damage) - Turning Wheel (+60% burning lash with Scion of Flame and 10 wounds - whch you will have when you're at 50% endurance) - Gauntlets of Puissant Melee (+10% base damage) - Ryona's Vambraces (+3 DR bypass) - Blood Testament Gloves (+20% raw lash) - Sneak Attack/Apprentice's Sneak Attack (+50%/+15% base damage) - Deathblows (+100% base damage) - Blooded (+25% base damage) - One Stands Alone (+20% base damage) - Vulnerable Attack (+5 DR bypass) - Savage Attack (+20% base damage) If you build around it a bit with a monk you can exceed 100 burn damage on hit easily and 200 on crit - depends on enemies' burn DR of course. Barbs don't reach such high numbers, but the synergy between Battle Forged and Bloodlust/Blood Thirst is very good. A PoE Rogue deals enormous damage with Battle Forge at higher levels, too - due to Sneak + Deathblows + lots of crits - but he can't stay at 50% endurance for long and his health suffers so much more than that of monks/barbs. In Deadfire I had not much success to make Battle Forged worthwhile yet. But we can only go to lvl 9, so maybe it gets better at higher levels and more synergies unfold. Also maybe the new Scion of Flame works with it.

I think machine + pool is not enough to get you to 2 cruel. But even if: as Jerek said it will only affect the healing and vessel-damage of Holy Radiance a bit.

Just put some proper elemental keywords onto some fitting abilities and the problem is solved. For example: why does Noxious Burst does corrode damage but has no Acid keyword? Bleak Walker's FoD has the Fire, Acid keywords and gets +2 PEN (tested!): +1 from Scion and +1 from Spirit of Decay. While that's cool, it shows the pitfalls of this system (which overall is good. I like keywords...).

Another major bummer. This has to be an oversight or a huge chunk of these talents' appeal is out the window. I didn't test it. Just a guess.

DOTs were only surprising because of a bug. They were boosted by ele talents by design which is not suprising at all. Eh? DoTs don't profit from elemental talents in PoE. Nor do they from crit damage bonus like Merciless Hand or hater talents like Wilder Hunter. If that's intended or not is still a mystery.

Cool - because of that I guess I never encountered that problem. Because I thought that I already removed/added abilities in a reloaded game of beta 4 but wasn't 100% sure anymore. I use tab with the console excessively. Thanks for testing - I'm still in bed.

Maybe it changes with every summoning? Would be a nice touch. Spiritual rod with Blast + Monk's Lightning Strikes or Paladin's FoD is AoE ouchness.

Skaen will have some "unique" abilities/spells at higher levels. Stuff like Baby Sneak Attack got removed because of multiclassing. Since it would be passive it would stack with Sneak Attack. I guess that was not desired.

Huh? I didn't encounter that yet. Good to know. Did you use tab to cycle through character names? Maybe that can solve the disambiguation?