Boeroer

Well - the lightest armors actually don't have a recovery penalty - so it would be stupid to not wear them. Especially because there may be other benefits than simply more AR but also enchantments like stats bonuses and so on. I think we will see some cool light armors that have some nice fesatures so it makes total sense to wear them.

Lightning Strikes cost 1 "Mortification" (fixed class resource of monks besides wounds - you'll have 5 mortification at lvl 9 for example) and will speed your attacks up for roughly ten seconds. It also adds a 30% shocking lash to your attacks. That means: if you do 50 crush damage it would add (50*0.3 =) 15 shock damage. Eternal Devotion is an upgrade of Flames of Devotion. Usually Flames of Devotions costs 1 Zeal and will add a rel. high burning lash to a single (full) attack. With Eternal Devotion you will get a lasting 20% burning lash on your weapons which lasts for about 20 seconds. You can combine Lightning Strikes with Eternal Devotion of you have a Monk/Paladin, meaning you can have +30% shocking lash + 20% burning lash during longer periods of time - which is powerful. Inspired Defenses is an ability of the paladin that gives him bonuses against certain afflictions. Zealous Endurance is an aura the paladin can choose to emit, It gives the party +1 armor.

It depends on your position and playstyle. If you want to stay in the front line and smack stuf without flinching you should put on heavy armor, regardless of your class. Light armor is for characters who can handle it. Maybe they are operating from range und thus don't get hit that often or they are so mobile that they can avoid getting hit in melee too much. Actually light armor is good for nobody. Better to wear nothing than light amor. The damage you receive will be roughly the same...

That is true. After an invocation you will have a recovery phase. During that phase there's no chaning and also no Ancient Memory/Beloved Spirits. Heavy armor and bad DEX prolong that phase. That's why I never use invocations when playing the usual Dragon-Thrashed turtle in PoE. I don't think that this changed in Deadfire - but the recovery times of invocations seem to be shorter in general in Deadfire. Ancient Memory/Beloved Spirits in PoE was basically endless: as long as you chanted it was working. It was only interrupted by invocations (or afflictions that made you stop chanting, like paralyze for example). In Deadfire it's not a passive addition to any chant like in PoE but instead it is a chant itself now. So you have to decide if you want Dragon Thrashed OR Ancient Memory for example. But it's more powerful in Deadfire than in PoE. Constant Recovery has a duration (influenced by INT). It's the same in PoE and Deadfire. After 45 sec (base) it's gone. But it doesn't get interrupted by anything.

He is correct with every answer. Especially when I read about the "monk/crush immune enemy complaint" I would like to bite into the tabletop.

Well Barbs have some other cool stuff now. I also thought that Carnage was too dominant in PoE (despite being a barb lover). The whole class was solely circling around Carnage (and Heart of Fury) and not much else. I think the effect is too weak in Deadfire at the moment, but it's hard to say. Maybe there will be some nice abilites that alter/buff Carnage a bit. What I don't get though: they changed Carnage so that they won't have all those problems with procs anymore. But at the same time they changed Blast (into something that works like Carnage on PoE) and made it a modal so that everybody can use it with a rod. Now a rogue can do Blinding Strike in an AoE, monks can stun enemies in an AoE and trigger Swift Flurry like crazy with the multiple hit rolls, Paladins can do Flames of Devotions with Blast and so on. Same with Citzal's Spirit Lance and also Minor Blights (AoE now works like PoE's Carnage did). Why?

Depends on the languages I'd say. Try not to mix up names in !Xóõ...

EXPLAAAAAIN!?!Those are different Polish cities. I guess people from Stargard don't like it if you tell them they are in Starograd. It's like telling a guy from Düsseldorf that Kölsch tastes better than Altbier... There's also a German place called Stargard by the way. We also have a lot of places called Neuenkirchen and Neukirchen (both basically meaning "New Church"). Not exactly all Bobs and Phillips here...

1 for active skills (contains Athletics/Stealth/Arcane/Alchemy and so on) and 1 for the passive skills. There is no cost progression like in PoE. So, getting from 0 to 1 costs 1 point and getting from 9 to 10 also only costs 1 point.

I thought you played the beta yourself?

Yes. For PoE I could have turned the argument around and say: "but don't you think that is a bad decision? Letting soulbounds dictate how Carnage works? They should change the proc chance instead of making Carnage useless." So that has two sides. Carnage is the integral part of a whole class. Changing the mechanics of Carnage when introducing soulbounds would have changed (and maybe broken) the class. So I guess they went with the easier way that is most likely causing less troubles. And there's not only Carnage, there's Torment's Reach, Blast and Driving Flight/Twinned Arrows, too. The best solution would have been to give dedicated proc chances for each class. But that might have been too much work. Now in Deadfire Carnage doesn't proc anything anymore. But Minor Blights/Blast/Driving Flight and Citzal's Spirit Lance do. So if there will be a soulbound rod or non-weapon items with on-hit proc chances (a bit like Glittering Gauntlets for example) there will be the same problems again.

He meant Dyrford. Edit: eh, he already said that. Missed some posts, sorry. Edit2: Bob and Phillip is easy. But try to remember Nizhnevartovsk and Dnjepropetrovsk...

You can always do the first quest that a faction gives you without locking yourself in with that faction. Those are: - get Osric's Family Breastplate (Dozens) - get the research papers for the Forge Knights (Crucible Knights) - get the Heart of the White March (Doemenel) Only when doing those quests you get access to the shop of that faction. In case of Dozens and Crucible Knights those contain some good items, so make sure you do all three quests. On case of Doemenel you'll have to do a second one (punish Kolfec). This one has no effect on faction lockout as well. After that initial quest Wenan, Commander Clyver and Daddy Doemenel will want to give you a second quest. It's that one that will bind you to the faction. Actually it's only that one quest and the work for the faction is already finished. So you don't miss a lot. There are no other quests that are for a specific faction only. The quest around Heritage Hill (missing sentry) has no effect on faction lockout. So, again: just avoid to pick the quest from Wenan, Commander Clyver or Daddy Doemenel. The rest is safe. You don't need to tiptoe around other quests in Defiance Bay.

Only time will tell. Depends on how many other melee guys you have.

Combusting Wounds + Heart of Fury: this makes a big difference with tough, numerous foes (bounties, abbey and so on). CW + Expose Vulnerabilities + Blunderbuss CW + Expose Vulnerabilities + Wall of Flame ...and so on. The Backlash Beldam build used CW + multiretaliation + Pain Link which was effective as well. With Battle Forged, Flame Shield, Supper Plate and another retaliation item plus Pain Link you can stack 5 hits and thus 5 instances of CW on everybody who hits you. I once played an Island Aumaua Wizard with 4 blunderbusses (+Quick Switch). It's impressive single target damage.

I wouldn't go below 10 with PER. Instead of Fast Runner I would probably use Interdiction & Painful Interdiction - or Scion of Flame + Bonus 4th level spell - or Bear's Fortitude + Body Control.

I think that hide armor is really ugly in Deadfire - at least in the beta.

Erm... that Japanese original is actually of American origin.

In Germany they were also called TM "Hero" Turtles. At some point they changed that - maybe they realized how stupid that initial change was. Anyway - us Germans have a long and painful history of altering the titles of movies and TV-shows "for the "better".

For Novice's Suffering you don't need a lot of PER because grazes do nearly the same damage as crits - since the 50% malus/bonus only affect the whimpy 5-8 base damage. But your powers might want some bonus accuracy. But on the other hand: those get some bonuses anyways, also the +1/level as extra.

I think so. Anyways - I will build Durance into a feisty puncher now for my final playthrough for exporting to Deadfire. Last chance to try it out.

Yes. But I always think Wild Leech is an unpredictable waste of precious focus. It also stacks with itself by the way - just cast it on different enemies. I mean you can always use a priest to raise somebody else's MIG of course. It's not necessarily the priest who has to pick Novice's Suffering. I just like the idea because priests don't have damage bonuses or good base accuracy anyways. Using those disadvantages and kind of circumventing them seems like fun.

Issues not really. Sounds like a solid plan. Only thing though: the "trick" about priest + Tidefall is that wounding scales with MIG - and there's no other class that can achieve such high MIG scores as a priest. Also the woundig works with Cleansing Flame. Those were the two ideas that started the whole build. The other "weapon" that scales with MIG is Novice's Suffering. Its damage bonus and also the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar will get added to fists' base damage and then multiplied with the MIG bonus. I always wanted to try such a priest but never did. If you manage to reach 40 MIG (21 starting, +4 item, +2 Aggrandizing Radiance, +10 Champion's Boon, +1 Gift from the Machine, +1 Blood Pool Edér or Maneha, +1 Galawain's Boon) you'll get +90% multiplicative unarmed damage which would mean 5-8 (base) +2 (Sandals) +15 (NS at lvl 16) = 42-48 per punch (39-44 per graze, 45-52 per crit). And that would be without any damage bonus talent. Since those don't work well with fists anyway could totally focus on speed and defensive or spell boosting talents. You'd also spare a lot of enchanting resources. Mine would be a brawling mountain dwarf of course. Magran seems fitting.

Well, even a Barbarian doesn't have as much endurance and health as a ranger - because everybody keeps forgetting that the Ranger class comes with two characters. One of them doesn't even have a health pool (or in other words: an endless health pool) which can be a big advantage. If you really don't want to use the pet (which is a mistake) you can still park it in front of your ranger. That way he can take more hits than any barbarian. Anyway I do think that neither endurance nor health have a big impact on the quality of a ranged character. Concerning crits: If we look at the starting values of the Ranger vs. the Barbarian we can see that the ranger starts with an advantage of 5 ACC (30 vs. 25). This gap will never go away. Actually it will only get worse. The Barbarian has no ability that raises his accuracy while the ranger has Vicious Aim (+10) and Stalker's Link (+10). If you want to score crits then a Ranger with +25 accuracy (over the Barb) is the better pick. Everything the barb can bring to ranged combat is Frenzy, Barbaric Blow (works with ranged weapons), Bloodlust, Blood Thirst and Echoing Shout. Barbaric Blow's special Carnage effect is wasted on a ranged weapon, but at least the hit-to-crit conversion works. So mainly it's about attack speed buffs. +6 MIG (or in other words: +18% additive damage) for 12 seconds is negligible. The speed gain is nice, but it's rather short.

I used a pike with modal to lower enemies' defenses from behind my summons, so yes: weapon damage was not the main focus. When doing FoD I switched the modal off. Stats were high INT, RES, DEX (to bring down summoning time and recovery) rest fairly balanced, didn't dump anything I believe. I didn't tank in plate because this slows down recovery after invocations too much for my taste. Ancient Memory gets influenced by RES, yes. So instead of 1 point per sec you can have 1.4 or so. I never tested: does White Flames (from the Kind Wayfarer) procs twice when you use a dual wielding setup? Because if it does I would consider putting on plate and go into the front line with dual weapons.