Boeroer

If he uses Brisk Recitation he has no linger time - but I get where you are going. 24 damage every 3 secs in a big AoE is pretty nice.

Sadly not. Rangers' ranged abilities are pretty nice though. Wounding Shot and Accurate Wounding Shot are neat for example. For a ranged rogue I would use rogue/wizard and use Kalakoth's Minor Blights with Arterial Strike and then AoE Sneak Attacks.

They lowered the damage of all guns (or raised the damage of other weapons). Also blunderbusses no longer have 6 pellets but only 5. The modal for arquebuses is a lot better than for blunderbuss or pistol (in my opinion) tough.

It's good. What's also good is Paladin/Ranger with dual blunderbuss or pistol because of lots of Full Attacks (FoD + Wounding Shot). Also Blunderbuss + Ranger/Monk is kind of bonkers with Driving Flight and Swift Flurry.

In Deadfire it's just like a regular quarterstaff but with draining. Only thing it does is heal you a bit with each hit you score. There will most likely be a better unique staff than this. In PoE it had draining and 20-30 (!) base damage while a normal quarterstaff had 14-20. That's what made it so good...

His German is ok (and fluent) but not perfect.

It's heavily bugged. Instead of raising reload *speed* it raises reload *time*. Once it works like it's supposed to it should be great.

There are few chars that can crit as often as Edér with Disciplined Barrage. Maybe the item is broken. Fulvano's Blunderbuss also doesn't charm in my game. And in one playthrough the Sabre of the Seas wouldn't proc Overbearing Wave (now it does).

Sometimes you need to save, quit the game and reload for those problems to disappear. It sometimes happens that the spellbinds don't show up in the bar after equipping the item.

Funnily, if you stun with the thunder invocation (tier 1) while holding the Flinger it also counts. Made upgrading it a lot easier...

They are all at one merchant in the Anlög's Compass map. Just go there and have a look at his sortiment. The best ones in my opinion are the Company Captain's Hat and the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer. Not necessarily on the same character though. Bugs: Fulvano's Blunderbuss doesn't seem to proc charm as its description says. The Spike Flinger gets slower and slower with every upgrade instead of speeding up reloads.

Actually most PoE builds are not pointless without special items. They are just optimized with certain items. There are some builds that rely on a special item(s) (e.g. Bilestomper), but the majority of them function pretty well without. That's exactly what most build descriptions in PoE's subforum are about.Most of them are flexible as well - the author describes the "trick" or the basic idea behind the build. If you don't deviate too much from that basic idea you can alter the build quite a bit and it will still work well. Builds that don't rely on items at all can be druids (Spiritshift), umarmed characters (Transcendent or Novice's Suffering) or melee wizards who use summoned weapons. Basically all casters can be build without any special equipment. The think is that most of those builds are pretty straightforward and don't need a lot of creativity - so why should they be posted? So naturally it's the weirdo-yet-powerful builds that often get posted.

Another good option is to use the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer Belt + Forgemaster GLoves and use Firebrand as main weapon. It's perfect for FoD strikes and also works very well with Runner's Wounding Shot. Make sure to pick Intense Flames + Scion of Flame as well als Two Handed Style and Savage Attack. Also make sure to choose the Doemenel faction for the Merciless Hand talent. Firebrand is the strongest weapon choice in the early to late game and stays to be viable in the late game whee it need zero resources like Sky Dragon Eyes or Durgan Steel. With that lowish INT Tidefall is also a good option. With a Two Hander I'd always recommend Runner's Wounding for an offensive Paladin.

With Curse of the Blackened Sight.

I just realize that the vessels are called (Ancient) Death Guards and not Death Knights... :oops:

Not really. The whole Form is meh to be honest. They could have done a better job with it. Also the casting time is totally douchy.

Well, Dark Knight is not occupied. By the way: one can use the console to add a Death Knight's plate armor to the inventory. It's not really cheating - it just looks cooler than normal plate but doesn't do anything special.

I'm really tired of that. Zahua is a very powerful companion. With fists or with estoc or dual hammers and whatnot, it doesn't matter much. He also is one of the few companions who can get a unique talent or ability (n this case "Anitlei" which is a stackable attack speed bonus). Since OP doesn't want to take neither Sagani nor Kana this also doesn't matter much, but both are absolutely viable picks for PotD. Devil of Caroc has construct immunities (mind control, sickened, poison, disease) which make her more useful than other rogues in general. Drawback is her fixed breastplate, but you can enchant it. Manehas's stats are as high as those of any other companion (78 total). She starts with Barbaric Yell instead of Frenzy which can be a bummer for certain build ideas. All companions are viable for PotD. It mostly depends on preference and playstyle if they work well for you or not.

There is no such modal in the beta. Since we are not the developers nobody here knows if they included such a modal into the game yet. But I doubt it.

What JerekKruger said, plus: Form of the Fearsome Brute will remove any weapon and give you a (scaling) ogre club. Like Spiritshift will give you natural weapons, the Ogre's natural weapon is the club or something...

At least in the beta. Granted, draining is more powerful in Deadfire than it was in PoE because there's only endurance (renamed to health) now. Healing in general is more powerful because of the new health mechanics and so is draining. Because of that I guess that a scaling quarterstaff with draining is ok for a lvl 1 spell. It's nothing spectacular or brutal though because I suspect you can find something better during the game - which will make the Draining Staff pretty pointless (no problem if retraining is still possible).

Let's make sure that we do something awesome as forum collective once Josh hits 20 years in the industry next year. We should open a thread like "Josh, it's a surprise for your 20th anniversary in the game industry - don't read!" and discuss what to do.

Doesn't it suffer a bit from Finishing Blows Syndrome? Sure, you're doing a lot of damage, but you're doing it to an enemy who doesn't need a lot of damage to kill.If you want to build around on-kill effects (see Barbaric Blow's Upgrade -I also assume there will be items with on-kill effects as well as in PoE) it can be decent.Bloody Slaughter was raised from 10% endurance (PoE) to 25% health (Deadfire). Because it's a passive I find that it's a good ability now. Finishing Blow uses Guile and competes with Crippling Strike/Blinding Strike and so on for Guile - so I find it less appealing. Barring Death's Door and the Kind Wayfarer-stuff (forgot the name) can be pretty cool with a Death Godlike and/or Blooded and/or Streetfighter. Also stuff like Wizard's Double or Blade Turning can be used to stop health loss once you reached bloodied status (50% health). You can also tell the AI to heal you automatically once you hit certain levels of endurance.

Any wizard with rod+Blast or Kaloth's Minor Blights in combo with rogue is great: summon the Blights and apply Confounding Blind in an AoE and then use missile or other multiple-hit spells to debuff deflection like crazy or cause Arterial Strike in an AoE and then force enemies to move (Repulsive Visage, Pull of Eora etc.). An Assassin/wizard can do ridiculous crit damage out of stealth and also out of invisibility (needs fix). Also the PEN bonus of Assassination is very helpful. There are not many other PEN buffs for spells. Backstab, Sneak Attack and so on are not good for spells, but you can cause afflictions in an AoE (be it via spell or Blast/Blights) and then do Sneak-Attack-AoE damage via Blast/Blights. Blights is the better option since it can be used with dual wielding speed and the damage is higher. Spirit Lance is the same as Blights - just melee and you can't use neither dual wielding speed nor single weapon ACC bonus. But Crippling Strike and so on also work in an AoE with the Lance.