Boeroer

Yes, all of them. A rogue subclass such a Streetfigther and Trickster would also be working well, yes. Streetfigther in Cat form with Cat's Flurry while flanked is incredibly fast. If you employ a pet that heals on kill (for example Cajun) you will also be a bit more sturdy. Would also suggest to cast some healing over time before letting yourself get flanked. Trickster provides a nice deflection bonus that stacks with Moonwell's defense bonuses which makes this combo quite tanky (for a druid/rogue combo that's not focused on tanking). You can cast it first and then switch and go into melee. Barbarian/Shifter can also be nice. You cast some raw damage over time spells (like Plague of Insects and Infestation of Maggots) and then shift on go into melee. Once you have Blood Thirst your kills from the raw DoT spells will also trigger the 0-recovery effect while you are hitting enemies in melee. If you take a Berserker and become confused from Frenzy you can also apply those spells to a bunch of weak party summons (for example the 6 skeletons of a Beckoner) who will quickly die from the ticks, triggering Blood Thirst as well and also triggering healing on kill from a pet like Cajun. The community patch version of the Stag form has a passive "baby" Carnage effect (25% weapon base dmg on an AoE) that stacks with Barbarian Carnage. That is fun to play, too.

The problem you describe applies to the drop traps of Footsteps of the Beast and Pull of Work as well. If you catch too many afflictions in quick succession they will prolong but not expire. Key is high defenses and really short hostile effects. With Clarity of Agony, Mohora Wraps, reduction gear and a truckload of RES you can make it work. I also assume that not every pulse will hit but there will be a lot of misses (good for Imagined Pain) if your defense is high enough. Funnily enough in this case it's beneficial to have really low accuracy and very short duration on the Arcane Archer - bit given the impactfulness of an AA hurling proper Pulls of Eora I think it's not worth it to go down that road just to make the Monk gain wounds faster. But maybe the whole fuss is not worth it. At some point too much micromanagement becomes unfun and even though it's beneficial on paper it will be detrimental to the overall experience. So handle with care. Other source of affliction(s) that can be provided by party members and will not interfere with Pull of Eora: Tanglefoot: only hobbling (not too bad) with short durations and fast pulses. Maybe that got mentioned already? If so then sorry.

If I would dump a stat on a Herald tank who is not supposed to be doing a lot of attack rolls it would be... CON. Because I drop CON on tanks most of times. With powerful healing abilities (Lay on Hands with high MiG and INT) and very good defenses, resistances and hostile effect duration you don't need a lot of health. Negative impact on fortitude is balanced out by max MIG. For more health (if you feel you need it) you can pick Tough and wear an Amulet of Greater Health as well as CON gear. They're some which is good for a tanky herald anyway (see Boots of the Stone, Maker's own Power) and quite high bonuses early (e.g. Girdle of Eoten Con). The next would be PER (bc. not many attack rolls and low reflex will be compensated with Weapon & Shield Style), then DEX (already going to be good enough). The rest would be high or even maxed. Imo it's suboptimal to have a Troubadour Herald and not have passive healing combos (Exalted Endurance, Ancient Memory + Her Courage, Lethandria's Devotion* in a second weapon setup etc.) - and also make dedicated songs against afflictions. With the resistance phrases a Troubadour can remove any affliction completely with those songs and Brisk Recitation in very short time: 3 secs for one tier of affliction. For example Paralyzed will get reduced to stuck when the first phrase lands, Stuck will get reduced to Hobbled when the next phrase lands and so on. You don't really need to pick any resistance abilities if you have those phrases. So better pick such a phrase than an individual resistance passive. Also profits your party members and summons. Nothing's more annoying than summons that are locked in hard CC. However, some protection against mind control is in order since a turned or even confused Herald can really mess things up. So the maxed RES and INT for very high Will defense is already good. Add a passive for even more Will defense and defenses against INT afflictions. Then having a song with Aefyllath + Sure-Handed Ila for the times nobody is in trouble is good, too. Especially nice to have on the early stages of the fight. Imo flexibility is king. )* Cheese possible: Lethandria's Devotion can be abused with switching weapon sets. Each time to switch to a weapon set with Lethandria's Devotion in it you and the party will receive the healing tick. If you make a weapon set A with the shield in it and a weapon set B with a copy of the shield in it you will get the healing tick each time you switch. Switching itself adds recovery time - but the switching itself has no recovery and also works while paused. So you can pause, switch weapon sets manually as often as you like and heal you and the party (if in range) in the process. You can also make an AI script that spams weapon set switching as soon as a party member is near death or so. The Herald will be soft-locked because of the stacked switching animations that will occur multiple times per second and give him jitters - but he will heal everything around him very quickly without any cost.

Generally speaking two handers are best as soon as you encounter high DR foes while dual wielding is better against "softer" targets. But yes: Full Attacks cry for a dual wielding setup with heavy one handed weapons (maces, sabres and so on). Buy the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer at Anslög's Compass and later get Forgemaster Gloves in Crucible Keep - you will have 6 uses of Firebrand per rest. Firebrand is a flaming great sword with very hig high base damage. Carnage will do a lot of damage that way, too. Use a Barbarian - as soon as you get Blood Thirst this build wrecks every encounter with mobs and ads. Tidefall is the weapon with the highest potential dps in the game because its wounding lash stacks with itself. It also scales with MIG. So use a character with very high MIG and lowish INT (Tidefalls' wounding lash just gets strechted over several ticks - the higher the INT the longer the duration of the lash - but the smaller the individual ticks. Short duration = fewer but higher ticks, longer duration = more but lower ticks). A Rogue works well but a Barbarian does as well - because Carnage will also apply the draining of Tidefall to enemies in an AoE which helps to stay alive. Another thing is to use a melee Ranger with a Wolf and use Tidefall's wounding damage (ove time) to unlock the wolf's "Predator's Sense" at all times. Add the other damaging abilites for the Animal Companion. Since the animal's base(!) damage scales with level it soon will hit like a truck. And your dps will be good too because of Swift Aim, high MIG and good DEX etc. Use Tall Grass, Hours of Saint Rumbalt or the Temperacl and give it to a Barbarian. The prone or stun on crit also works with Carnage. You can prone or stun whole groups with this. Use Half Mast and later the Blade of the Endless Paths with a Darcozzi Paladin and combine them with Coordinated Attacks and Zealous Focus. The Darcozzi can give +10 ACC to an individual (stacks with everything), then +10 ACC again (Coordinated Attacks), then +10 from the marking weapon (Half Mast or Blade of the Endless Paths) and finally the points from Zealous Focus. Any other party member he joins in a fight against an enemy and who is nearest to him can get over 30 bonus accuracy that way - which is extremely good. It's easy to even hit and crit dragons reliably with such a Paladin in the party. It's more like enabling a fellow party member, the Paladin will do okay but not tremendous damage by himself - but it's still extremely helpful. ALl those ACC bonuses stack with a Priest's Inspiring Radiance (+10) and Devotions spell (+20). So a Priest and such a Paladin can give a party member more than +60 bonus accuracy. A good two hander for a Cipher is Justice. It has a "secret" additional crushing lash that adds to any lash you put on it. Lashes generate focus, too. Ciphers don't have Full Attacks but Time Parasite which is a way to get to 0 recovery with a Two Hander. And the little additional lash gives focus faster. Often overlooked but works quite well. Also Justice comes pretty early.

Another nice combo is Goldpact Knight/Shifter. In Bear form you can have tremendous armor without any recovery penalty (good at the start of the fight in order to withstand initial heat), you'll have healing while shifted, Eternal Devotion stacks with Wildstrike and even the Ring of Focused Flame (as all items except armor and weapon) works in shifted form, too - so accuracy with FoD while shifted is nice as well. If you pick a Bleak Walker and take Scion of Flame (Paladin or Druid tree) and Spirit of Decay (Druid tree) your FoD attacks will get additional +2 PEN, which is pretty cool.

Helwalker/Shifter with max MIG and INT and a healing pet puts out enormous raw damage over time with the Boar form. For a Shifter the raw wouding DoT of the Boar form has base duration that is as long as the whole spiritshift duration (most likely an oversight). Prolong it with Turning Wheel and you can hit several enemies after another while shifted and they will suffer very long lasting raw damage over time. Also works with a Forbidden Fist who has the advantage of an alternative dmg attacks while shifted (crush) which also enfeebles which prolongs the Boar's DoT by 50% on top of the INT from Turning Wheel. Iirc Forbidden Fist attack also profits from Wildstrike lashes.

That is correct. The pulls don't have a seperate attack roll and thus can't turned into misses by the immunity of the belt. The belt is still useful when walking into a Pull of Eora with a Forbidden Fist. You really don't want to get ragdolled around - and as was said Imagined Pain can still get you a wound when the attack roll of Pull of Eora misses. The very short slowing effect will give you a wound + healing when it expires. The only thing you suffer from is -25% stride which is bearable. I think Pull of Eora + Forbidden Fist is a good combo. To cramp even more Pulls into a given time and place you can use an Arcane Archer with either Fire in the Hole or Watershaper's Focus + Driving Flight and fire into a tight group of 3+ enemies. You will produce 3 Pulls that will work in parallel and all of those pulses might miss the FF (wound) - and if not the expiring effect will give wound + healing. And only for the price of -25% stride. It's a win-win situation imo. You mean with a scroll? If I understood OP correctly the Pull of Eora should come from a party member so there wouldn't be such an interplay?

Fun lil' synergy with Berserker/Forbidden Fist: Use the Footsteps of the Beast (boots) while confused from Frenzy and run around. If you step into your own frost traps (which the boots will drop with every step) you will get hobbled for a very short amount of time. High RES etc. of course reduces that time even more. This leads to a lot of wounds and healing while simply running around. You can also use Imagined Pain with Nomad's Brigandine. It has an enchantment that makes you immune to disengagement attacks. This simply means that all disengagement attacks will still be triggered, but they will all miss automatically, triggering Imagined Pain. You can run to enemies, let them engage you, break engagement and get wounds in the process. Imagined Pain also works very well with Keeper of the Flame + Saint's War Armor + Whispers of the Wind. The AoE of the flail has friendly fire and will even hit you. But it targers reflex and the Saint's War Armor can make you immune to Reflex attacks. When you use Whispers of the Wind you will be invisible, so the only attacks against you wll be the AoE hits from Keeper of the Flame. And since WotW is an AoE attack (sort of) itself you will generate a lot of self-hits which will all miss bc. ouf the armor, giving you wounds in the process. This makes it possible to spam WotW non-stop.

I always had good results with a Fighter/something + large shield. The modal of the shield offers excellent protection against ranged attacks and of course the usual benefits for deflection and reflex. Fighter offers the engagement that helps to glue attackers to the tank and some nice defensive abilities and healing. A Paladin/Fighter may be the most "hands-off" tank there is. Preferably Unbroken/Goldpact because it combines excellent armor with great defenses and engagement as well as healing. A nice thing about a Crusader is that later in the game, should your armor outgrow enemies' penetration and make you very tanky on its own, combined with your party's healing and Unbending, you can retrain the Crusader towards a more offense-focused direction and still tank well. But I also use Eder as a Swashbuckler as my main tank often enough (to be honest I do that most of times). It is a bit more difficult in the early stages because he has no early class-related deflection bonuses (like a Trickster would have) - but after a few levels it's already working very well. Later on the combination of large shield modal + Adept Evasion makes him almost impervious to even my own casters' friendly fire AoE spells. The early advantage of using a Fighter/Rogue (generally an Unbroken/Trickster would be the best choice for a tank) with a large shield is that you can still move while the large shield modal is active - with the help of Escape. Riposte is also a nice touch on a tank imo. I recently made a very enjoyable main tank who was also quite good at offense with an Unbroken/Streetfighter (end gear: Bronlar's Phalanx + Gladiator's Sword for the true Gladiator looks... As I said before: Swashbuckler tanks need a bit more attention in the early game but work well for me a bit later on. Herald also works well as main tank who doesn't need attention, but there's less engagement available, so you will have to invest more thought into it (e.g. using a Shieldbearer and a spear+modal for 3 engagement - which is a good start and works right off the shelf). Using a Stalker with either a Paladin or Fighter can also lead to a good tank. And you will even have an additional body to keep enemies off your party members. A Stalker's Bear will have excellent armor (with Resilient Companion) and will not go down so easily - not enough to do the main tanking for you but good enough for being an additional off-tank. --- In general, the combination of receiving a lot of grazes instead of hits with having higher armor than the enemies' penetration leads to a huge amount of damage reduction. Damage penalties like from grazes and underpenetration are very impactful (for the "why" see here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions ). Large shield modal offers another source of damage reduction. That's why gunshots - which can otherwise be a low level tank's demise if there's enough enemy rangers or rogues with arquebuses etc. - can be laughed at of you have a large shield and the modal on. There are many ways to build a functioning tank, but most of them require some attention. As I said: I think the most uncomplicated one is a Crusader. Some might say it's also the most boring one.

Soulblade with Sun&Moon/Tuotilo's Palm or Sun&Moon/Magran's Blessing is a good combo for a Soulblade/Kind Wayfarer. With Flames of Devotion you will get two healing procs (1 from Sun&Moon and another one from the shield bash). With Soul Annihilation you will profit from the uniqueness of Sun & Moon: the first flail head will apply Soul Annihilation's raw damage, the secons will already regenerate focus. So you can spam Soul Annihilation all the time if you wish. The good thing here is that Soul Annihilation is a primary attack so you won't use the weak bash of the shield. Still the bonuses of Two Weapon Style and Dual Wielding still get applied - so your attack speed with Soul Annihilation will be great. And should you or the party need some healing you use a litte White Flames for two healing procs. That the bash does not do exceptional damage is negligible because it's about the healing in this case. For the dmg output you use Soul Annihilation.

The Frenzy on Amra (like the Frenzy of Lover's Embrace) stacks with other action speed bonuses, including the original Frenzy. Amra with 25+ MIG, Bleeding Cuts and Riven Gore is extremely good with a confused Berserker/Troubadour chanting Many Lives Pass By.

The good thing about Wael is that the Priests gets some of the self buffs Wizards get. If you use a Bloodmage/Priest you don't really need those imo. Still a good subclass. Priest of Woedica has the Writ spells which can be very useful. I think Crusader + Herald is totally fine. Crusader can be retrained towards damage output a bit more at higher levels and still be very tanky.

Skald can only get 1 phrase back from an action. Afaik the number of enemies hit isn't relevant. I know of no way to generate more than 1 phrase per action. However, it is more likely to get 1 phrase back because multiple crits will each have the 50% chance to do so. With Charge I think you get no phrase at all because it doesn't do weapon attack rolls. Skald only gets back phrases from melee weapon crits. Tactician might get back more than 1 discipline - afaik here the actual number of interrupted abilities determines the outcome. By the way: Tactician doesn't gain 1 discipline when he simply lands an interrupting attack on an enemy. The enemy has to execute an ability/spell by the time the interrupt attack lands so that the ability/spell is really interrupted and lost. If that happens you get 1 discipline.

I only mentioned WoEP because I think it's one of the most enjoyable weapons with a Steel Garrote which makes it worthwhile compared to a Kind Wayfarer with a dual wieding setup. If you count Estocs as well then there are several good two handed swords. Engoliero do Espirs is extremely powerful with Blade Feast because it procs on any kill (not just weapon kill). Voidwheel is very good in general, Twin Eels is great if you can kill-steal a lot (any kill works), Effort has Hemorrhaging which procs from any crit you do (not just weapon crits) which in turn counts as weapon attack (you can do some wild things with this), Blade of the Endless Paths is also very good. The modal of Great Swords is not so great compare to other modals - but it can be worthwhile when you fight enemies with low defenses and/or gain some extra ACC to compensate for the modal's loss. For example a Paladin using Flames of Devotion and Ring of Focused Flames gains +20 accuracy for the FoD strike - which more than offsets the modal and grants you +30% damage. That's nice in combination with the multiplicative lash damage of FoD.

I personally would multiclass with Monk. The INT bonus of Duality of Mortal Presence and the accuracy bonus from Enduring Dance are very good for a caster. Thunderous Blows, too. +10 MIG via Helwalker can be nice, too. But your main focus is to let him stay alive and cast, so maybe a Helwalker is not the best option (although you have plenty of healing on the party and +10 MIG also leads to +20 Fortitude and a lot more healing power besides the damage, which is good to have). Another plus in Megaboss fights is to have resources that will refresh. In tandem with endless healing (Herald for example) a Monk will have the potential for infinite wound generation. Keep in mind monks also have The Dichotomous Soul which is a nice summon an is paid in wounds. Like a Chanter a Monk can call forth summons over and over again without the use of Brilliant. Also stuff like Blade Turning + Salvation of Time is pretty useful. Another alternative - since you don't have a Wizard - might be to multiclass with Bloodmage. Wall of Draining + self buffs and healing over time + stuff like Mask of the Weyc + Magnificent Escape is very useful at the end of the game since you become untouchable by anything that targets deflection. A Bloodmage, like a Monk and Chanter, can call summons (tentacles, phantoms etc.) over and over again with the help of healing + Blood Sacrifice - which is very useful in all encounters. He can also turn invisible over and over again with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and buff the party from invisibility - and even CC spells without damage (and also Wall spells) will not break the invisibility. As long as you don't cause damage you can stay invisible for a long time with Wall of Draining and 1 use of A's Brilliant Departure. Use of Blood Sacrifice ends the invisibility though.

What (or who) is BW?

Yes, it's not super useful against very good singular foes on PotD. But it's great against mobs. The better choice than a Trickster is a Bloodmage imo - because you can later extend the effects of Mask of the Weyc and The Magnificent Escape Cape with Wall of Draining and stack up absurd deflection numbers (over 200 easily). On top of that you can also get endless healing from Lay on Hands + Wall of Draining erc. This allows for life drain with parries while casting spells and using Blood Sacrifice. At that point it's also good against bosses (if there are enough ads to make Wall of Draining work, you can create your own with Belt of Margran's Chosen). But with singular tough foes it's often best to just switch to another weapon - while Whispers of the Endless Paths is the most fun choice against the crowds in my opinion. --- Carnage does not work with Steel Garrote's life drain. It is not universal like Old Siec chant or Blood Ward but needs a melee weapon attack. Carnage (technically) is not a weapon attack but works like a spell so that doesn't work. Spirit Frenzy does work. It works on everything you do that does a hit roll (spells, chants, weapon attacks, whatever).

For Steel Garrote the most fun weapon to experience the draining is Whispers of the Endless Paths with Offensive Parry in my opinion. Offensive Parry applies dazed (affliction) and the damage it does will drain life. Since it has no recovery and triggers on 100% of misses it can be great fun to stand in an enemy mob and dish out parries that also heal you while the enemies miss you. And the entirety of the cone attack will draw life, too.

Sun & Moon does not proc White Flames Healing twice. Dual wielding does (each weapon strikes, doing one heal each), but not Sun & Moon alone despite its two attack rolls. You can test this when using Sun & Moon one-handed and execute White Flames: only one heal. It seems that the attack action/animation triggers the heal, not the attack rolls themselves.

Frostseeker only procs one healing from White Flames. Multiprojectile/attack roll weapons like Blunderbuss, Frostseeker or Sun & Moon for example don't provide additional procs. Driving Flight does not provide an additonal healing proc. The only way I know of from the top of my head to get more than one proc of White Flames' healing is to dual wield and execute a Full Attack (both weapon strike = two procs of healing). There was a thread once that explored the possibilities - and maybe there was some obsucure way to proc more heals... but if there was I forgot about it. Anyway: Frostseeker + Driving Flight procs just one healing. I tested it ingame right now just to be sure. No. That's because Spirit Frenzy adds a second attack roll for the staggering which piggybacks on your auto-attack. The auto-attack itself is unchanged und thus doesn't profit - but the attack roll of Spirit Frenzy which staggers does profit. In order for the auto-attacks to profit from the Helm your original weapon attack itself must come with an affliction or affliction roll. For example a weapon like Concelhaut' Draining Touch or Caedebald's Blackbow will profit from the Helm. Iirc a Forbidden Fist attack also does. DoTs only provide a single attack roll at the beginning at most (in case of self damage ther is none), the rest are ticks with no rolls. Refreshing Defense needs hit rolls to get triggered. Pulsing spells like Chillfog or Wall spells etc. which repeat an attack roll every few seconds will work, DoT effects won't (besides the initial hit roll if there is any). The best way to use Rfreshing Defene is to get grazed with -3 underpenetration a lot. So basically high but not too high defense and as high of AR as you can get. No. Carnage can be seen as a spell effect. The only things that come to mind that work with Carnage are effects on enemy that trigger on hit (see Combusting Wounds or Recall Agony and such) and also Spirit Frenzy (applies staggered to Carnage hits) and stacks of Lord Darryn's Voulge's Static Thunder. What also works is some universal draining effects like the Old Siec chant and Blood Ward (Furyshaper). Carnage cannot crit, so effects that happen on crit (see Blood Frenzy) are out in the first place.

Imo useful flexibility beats specialized powerplay most of times.

It does, bit it doesn't properly scale with level in the unmodified game iirc - so it becomes a bit moot after some levels.

Yeah: cool weapon choice. The dagger modal doesn't stack with other active deflection buffs, but it's basically cost-free. Combined with Crucible of Suffering and spamming FF you will have truly awesome defenses by not hampering your offense at all.

Tuotilo's Palm is also a very good item. Its enchantments for unarmed attacks also apply to Forbidden Fist attacks. It works with Two Weapon Style and gives up to +10 to Deflection and Reflex - which is huge. Yet - if you are spamming FF attacks you won't be executing the rel. weak shield bash (which is nice).