Boeroer

Uhhh - good catch, that didn't cross my mind before.

Yes, with every steps you drop a new instance of an healing over time AoE. Those also work when you are stationary (they must, otherwise party members would have to move to profit, too), but new instances only get created when you move.

Nope. It's a bit weird: the initial target can be attacked from ~7m distance (1.2 reach*6), but funnily enough the cone will stay close to you and not change at all. Some spells which are tagged melee do work with Instruments of Pain and give them 6 times their range. At this point I only remember Sunlance - but there were more. Maybe a Cipher spell was among them. I tested it all myself - but my old dried-up brain forgot most of it. Shared Nightmare does enlarge the cone though. But it's not accessible to multiclass Ciphers. This changed several times during the patching cycle but I believe they can? But Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming only procs the rel. weak single target attack, not the additional cone. Also Swift Flurry/HBD don't generate focus. Offensive Parry however does generate focus (just saying). It also procs Swift Flurry/HBD. Which is a pretty cool feature for a Soul blade because it means he can gather focus while being in recovery just by getting missed by melee enemies. It works and is strong if you can terrify enemies often enough - but it's not 100% reliable because the movement of terrified enemies is random. Sometimes they just crouch down, sometimes they just crawl around you. They have to actually leave the break the engagement by walking away too far, yes. But that's a very short distance so it happens often enough. Sometimes they leave, catch a disengagement attack and come right back and leave again to catch another. The best Fighter subclass for this combo would be the Unbroken. Especially later with Deathblows and Overbearing Guard the disengagement attacks become superbrutal. Of course best done with a high-dmg per hit weapon (so, basically two handers - although that prevents you from using one of the Unbroken passives that work with a shield). I don't think this can work too well as a main tank. First of all it would lack engagement. Then the Quarterstaff modal doesn't stack with active deflection buffs and it doesn't work against ranged attacks. Gunshots etc. from enemy rangers and rogues are one of the biggest problems imo (see Boarding fights). You will be slower than with a shield setup so your defenses and your dps will be worse than with a weapon & shield setup. Relying on hitting and dealing damage and then draining health to stay sturdy can be tricky. One hard-CC or a slowdown (Disoriented, Blind) or even an enemy with very thick armor which you can't penetrate well and the survivability will go down severely. Maybe one can make it work with the right party composition. But a good off-tank it would be I think. I did a run with an Unbroken/Streetfighter as main tank - and that totally works and is a nice mix of defense and offense. I mean when we talk about Streetfighter as an ingredient for a tank. But this guy had a large shield and didn't rely on bloodied to speed up. Just got flanked a lot because: main tank.

Yes, or Outworn Buckler.

When I tested Okura's Kettle years ago it never worked as advertised. It simply did nothing. Maybe it got patched but I doubt it.

Ahh... the downsides of almost never using AI! 😄

Yes, I tested it a few times afterwards. You have to walk in one direction, maybe go back a little to catch a trap hit and then stop until the hobble expires (no walk, no trap). Often it's also enough to just run into one direction if your speed is good and INT isn't enormous (seems to enlarge the AoE of the traps, no idea). With enough hostile effect duration reduction that hobble is quickly over. Then walk into one again. I wasn't clear about the details. It's not like you are getting a wound from every drop trap with every step be cause the duration will refresh. It's just a convenient, resource- and action-time-free way of creating bearable and short afflictions on your own. However, all those little movements can be tedious.

No, I registered here when PoE came out and then I pretty much stopped playing PoE once Deadfire's beta came out. Two or three little runs after that maybe. But I ran it a couple of thousand hours (according to Steam) and also discussed a lot about its mechanics and character ideas here in the PoE forums back in the day. Also wrote a lot of builds (see the build list here in the sorum) - that's why most of the mechanics are still present to me. Some details might be lost though or get mixed up with Deadfire stuff.

Iirc an animal companion counts as party member. I have no idea if Ghost Heart's animal companion is an exception because it's a summoned spirit. I didn't play Ghost Hearts much... Good thing is that non-ghost heart animal companion can be revived without limit because they don't suffer injuries.

Don't think that was the devs' reasoning. All two handed summoned melee weapons I can think of (Firebrand, Parasitic Staff, Spirit Lance) have 30 base damage (which is way higher than a normal weapon of the same kind). Firebrand is the only one which can be used by another class though. I guess they just wanted to give everybody the chance to wield a cool flaming sword. A fully enchanted and durganized Great Sword like Tidefall or Hours of St. Rumbalt usually does more dps - mainly because it will be faster. And the lash and better accuracy and dmg mod will balance out the lower base dmg. At lower levels however, Firebrand is just awesome. Drawn in Spring (dagger), Persistence (hunting bow), Acuan Giamas (morning star) and Boar Tusks (Spiritshifted Druid) do the same. Stacking means in this case that with every hit there will be a new independent instance of the wounding applied - while the old one still ticks for damage until it's over. They get overlaid. So you can apply multiple "parallel" damage over time effects. The outcome is the same as if the tick damage increased. It does. All on hit/crit efftects of melee weapon translate to Carnage. No idea, I never used consumables except in Ultimate runs. ☺️ Fighter is a rel. weak class in the later levels, at least on PotD difficulty. Charge is very good, but it's again best with a dual wielding setup. It is complicated. The general rule is that passives stack with everything. Talents that upgrade abilities (like Inspiring Radiance for example but also Inspired Liberation etc.) are considered passive (don't ask me why). Then anything from the weapon slots stacks with everything. So a Marking enchantment stacks its ACC with everything. All active buffs however suppress each other if they address the same stat. Blessing and Zealous Focus (both considered active effects) will suppress each other (the higher prevails). But now Devotions for the Faithful doesn't technically give an universal acc bonus but only to melee and range. And that's enough that the game considers it an effect that won't suppress a universal acc bonus like Blessing. I believe Tactical Meld (Cipher) also stacks with everything because it's implemented like Marking (but not 100% sure anymore). Sorry - I forgot that Justice comes with a 25% crushing lash on it. Thus you can't put a burning or other elemental lash on it. But it has an additional, secondary 10% crushing lash on it. You can see it besides the dmg value in the weapon description iirc. So it has a 25% crushing lash and a 10% crushing lash. Lashes have to overcome enemies' DR (armor) separately, but only 1/4th of it. So the 10% lash can somethimes get nullified by thick armor. So it's good to lower enemies' DR value. DR bypass doesn't work for lashes. So only lowering enemies' DR benefits lash damage and high dmg per hit, too. Yes, they also get Time Parasite which can speed you up like crazy if you hit enough first. Also Borrowed Instincts. A Cipher can deal a lot more weapon dps than for example a Fighter can. But once his focus is full Soul Whip (+40% dmg) turns off. So you have to use some focus from time to time to keep the 40% dmg bonus. I guess a Rogue with Tidefall, maxed MIG, high DEX, low INT. Add Runner's Wounding Shot to the usual Rogue strikes (Crippling, Blinding etc.). Could also do Backstabs from stealth and wear the Cape of the Master Mystic to become invisible after a received crit for another Backstab.

👏👏👏 For PoE3 @Constentin Lévineshould really really be in the beta-test group. I thought I found lots of broken stuff - but this guy really brings me to bed and tucks me in. 😁

I think so. 😁 But of course the complete "hands off" status is only achieved at the higher levels because of Divine Retribution.

Durance was written by Chris Avellone. He's not working at Obsidian anymore and I don't recall a thread or post where this was addressed (could have missed it of course). Maybe there's some place on the Internet where he said something about this. All I find is memes.

I once made a single class Kind Wayfarer with dual pistols (Scordeo's Trophy + Eccea's Arcane Blaster) who used all the reloading bonuses he could get. You can hit the reloading floor (can't go faster) rel. early then. This included a Troubadour in the party who sung Many Lives Pass By with Brisk Recitation. There was also a confused Berserker/Devoted who used Amra's Riven Gore and Carnage to accitentially kill those skeletons around him while attacking the enemies. This triggered Blood Thirst and cleaves from Mob Stance which turned him into an human-sized Blender. Devine Retribution of the SC Paladin also triggers when your parties' summons die - and the skeletons died faster than the Troubadour could summon them, providing an endless stream of Zeal for the Kind Wayfarer whom I simply set to AI and let him fire White Flames nonstop. He not only kept the whole party at high health but also did rely decent single target damage with those very fast pistol shots + lash. So - one of the best healers I ever had was a SC Paladin. Also one of the most boring ones to play because I didn't even have to touch him.

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.