Boeroer

For Berserker/Skald it's beneficial to use Killers Frozen Stiff + fast melee attacks. The perfect weapon for a Berserker/Skald is Sun & Moon because it has two attack rolls per strike (so two chances for a crit instead of one per weapon strike). Other fast weapons with high ACC (Rapier, Dagger) are also good. The next best is heavier one handed weapons like swords and sabres etc. So Modwyr+Sasha's does work well. Sasha's + Scordeo's Edge with Blade Cascade & Adaptive in one weapon set (slash) and Modwyr + Watcher's Blade (pierce/slash) or Sun & Moon (pierce/slash & crush) would be even better imo, but that's negligible. If you like Modwyr + Sasha's as your preferred option it's okay. Other good option is a Morning Star because Spirit Frenzy + The Long Night's Drink + Morning Star modal + Brute Force provides a lot Fortitude debuff "on the fly" which grants more crits. Especially Saru Sichr is nice here because it does two hit rolls per attack (one for the physical attack, one for the poison DoT). But it's slower than a dual wielding setup of course. Killers Froze Stiff is a nice invocation for a Skald because it's cheap, very impactful because early hard CC and also provides 25% crit conversion which stacks with Berserker's crit conversion, Bloody Slaughter, Barbaric Smash and whatever crit conversion you get on top of that (Uncanny Luck or whatever). So you not only deliver great CC repeatedly but also increase your chances to get phrases from crits. As phrases go I would prefer Aefyllath (stacks nicely with Modwyr's and Sasha's lashes and lashes are always good). If you manage to extend the linger long enough (need a ton of INT) I personally would add Old Siec because it helps with the Berserker's Self damage. But of course it doesn't really matter which of your Chanters is singing which as long as they are in each other's range. Pallegina as Herald: I would concentrate on stacking passive healing and defenses with her - such as Exalted Endurance + Ancient Memory (+maybe Her Courage later on). Also having the resistance phrases is great. They can remove all sorts of afflictions of you switch to them. One phrase will remove one layer of afflictions until nothing is left. As invocations I think summons are most impactful with her. I would still get a heal-per-kill pet because the Berserker's self damage will reach numbers where it can easily kill you if you don't get any healing - even if you are not attacked. Using the Voidward Ring and other damage reduction gear also helps. Abraham is a great pet because it combines attack speed (or better: less recovery penalty for armor) with healing per kill (only 10, but still good). Killers Frozen Stiff doesn't profit from Berserker's Tenacious, so from time to time it's totally worth it to use Her Revenge or so as alternative invocation. Her Tears Falling Like Rain, too. Make sure that you take a very costly invocation at some point during your level-ups - even if you don't plan to use it. Your max phrase counter is determined by the most expensive invocation. And you want to have the biggest pool size possible. If you stick to the cheap invocations only (which would be the intuitive thing to do) your phrase pool will stay small. But if you only take one expensive invocation it's suddenly way bigger. For example at max level I will retrain and pick my favorite invocations like before and then I will also pick "Ancient Instruments of Death". It's a very good summon and always useful - but for a Skald it's also very expensive - so it gives you a big phrase pool. If you crit a lot and gain phrases more quickly than you want to spend them you can now "charge up" more phrases and then unleash a barrage of up to 3 invocations - for example 3 times Her Revenge in a row - and still have a phrase left. Traps are not worth it (selling them is the best use for them imo unless you want to lure enemies with them - they make a lil' sound when set up). Explosives can be good - if you skill a lot of explosives and pick the right bombs for the right enemies. But honestly I think scrolls and potions are better than explosives overall.

Against Blob that doesn't work too well. Imo you want to use Disintegrate against him and that might not work out if you can't get focus reliably I guess. Psion is really cool for Ultimate imo if you can make sure not to get damaged too often (like with mind control, hard CC in general and going invisible/hide/become untargetable).

You can choose Berserker/Troubadour, then summon Ancient Brittle Bones (and later use Many Lives Pass By + Brisk Recitation), Frenzy and hack away at the enemy together with your skeletons. Make sure to pick a pet that does +20 health on kill. If you have Edér+ Breath Blessing "Can I pet him anyway?" then give him Abraham as pet. Go for Bloodlust, Barbaric Smash (only as finisher), Bloody Slaughter, Blood Thirst, Blood Storm and Interrupting Blows (and whatever melee Barbs can pick - like One Stands Alone, Two Weapon Style etc). Use Killers Frozen Stiff as invocation once Many Lives Pass By is running or just hold on to the phrases for Sasha's Scimitar's shocking lash. You can also use Many Lives + Aefyllath for slower skeleton generation and an additional lash, but most of the time Many Lives nonstop will be better. The trick is to kill the skeletons "accidentially" with Carnage while confused. This grants +20 health via pet (or +30 with Edér/Abraham), Bloodlust, Blood Thirst(!) and makes you superhealthy and superfast because recovery will get skipped a lot. Great mob diminisher and squishy hunter. Use Leap to get to the backline of enemies quickly. Can also Threatening Presence or Nomad's Brigandine to be immune to engagement/ disengagement attacks. You need high INT and also maybe some AoE expanders like Ring of Overseeing etc. because while confused your INT goes down and so does your Carnage AoE. You don't want to maneuver too much to get your skeletons into Carnage range, that's too fiddly and annoying. So big AoE it is. However: you can't get too near with party members for long or they will get hurt, too (unless they are really tanky). Anyway: it's a hackfest at some point - and before that it's versatile and useful, too.

Instrument of Boundless Rage is just too expensive for what it does. Driving Roar/Dazing Shout deal great damage in big AoEs and either knock down/back+interrupt or cause daze+engagement+3 for only 1 Rage. I haven't tried BPM's version of it.

It can deal great damage when used as finisher as Barbaric Smash in combo with Bloody Slaughter - and then it also is for free (I mean costs no Rage). Best to use with a dual wielding setup with high dmg per hit (love it on Barb/Rogues instead of Finishing Blow and Barb/Wizards with Draining Touch). Because of the first strike doesn't kill there's always the second one. Also as single class Barb you may pay 0 Rage for Barbaric Smash while getting +1 Rage from Blood Surge from time to time. Which is cool imo. I really like SC Barb... Recently really come to appreciate "+20 health on kill"-pets (even mix it up with +10 per kill pet for party when Edér is around) in combo with a SC Berserker. Concentrate on hunting squishies with a Driving Roar, upgraded Leap and Babaric Smashes while not going down from your own Frenzy so easily.

I guess you could also just charm/dominate enemies to cancel cowardice. It wouldn't be a huge problem to circumvent it in normal encounters, but I fear in prolonged fights, especially against solo bosses (see Megabosses) it might be difficult to do so (how many Withdraw scrolls can one carry? You may struggle to dominate bosses reliably). Also, as most other Ciphers, Beguilers don't get focus from hitting (with weapon or deception spell) charmed/dominated enemies which makes the Debonaire/Beguiler combo anti-synergistic against single, tough foes. On those cases Psion would be a better pick. In theory he could keep enemies charmed or dominated and cast (critical) Disintegrate on them while still getting focus. Beguiler will become focus-starved quickly. I think there's a reason why the only x/Cipher Ultimate run I recall was with a Psion (but maybe I just forgot the others, can't rule that out).

That depends. The upside of high INT is more potent healing via Lay on Hands and longer duration on Clarity of Agony, enfeebled, Eternal or Shared Devotion, bigger Aura AoE etc. With maxed RES, Clarity and some -x% hostile effect duration gear the duration of the curse with high INT or with low INT isn't that much of a difference due to the double inversion math that's going on with reductions (malus). You can get to under 2 secs curse duration even with maxed INT. And with 2 MIG the curse won't do a lot of damage so before getting to max "-x% hostile effect duration" you might be able to stack two of them without too much hassle, too. I played several FF combos with maxed INT (and RES) and the curse duration wasn't much of an issue after some levels. Dropping DEX a bit and/or putting on fat armor and/or not using dual wielding but shield instead so that your recovery isn't shorter than the curse can help to not accidentially kill yourself while spamming FF ability. However, dumped MIG and CON is a bit weird. Since Fortitude is the most important defense against later game afflictions this might bite you in the rear at some point. But you can always switch to Duality of Mortal Presence: CON to ramp up the Fortitude I guess and combine it with Crucible of Suffering. Might suffice in a party, even as fronliner.

Right. Barbaric Blow executes a Full Attack - and those mentioned bonuses are for that Full Attack and nothing else. Iirc in PoE1 the ability Heart of Fury gave a short-lived 20% damage bonus for following attacks, too. But there's nothing like that for Barbs in Deadfire.

I guess one can make it work, but imo it's not a super good solo combo because of the shortcomings of a solo Debonaire (see cowardice etc.) which you'd have to circumvent.

Don't know the last two - but the first two are still viable.

I guess one of the main reasons why people don't mix Bloodmage with Forbidden Fist too much is that vanilla, Helwalker or Nalpasca Monks would gain wounds from Blood Sacrifice (which is a nice synergy) while Forbidden Fist (and Shattered Pillar) do not. Besides that it should work well - as most Sages do. Enfeebled + any afflictions should be a nice combo.

Okay. Players often enough accidentally post a Deadfire question in PoE's subforum and then wonder why nobody answers. You mentioned Deadfire in your post so I just wanted to make sure. 👍🏻 The majority of builds that were used in PoE's Ultimate challenge in the past are not outdated because the game didn't change since they were used. If you have a specific build in mind we can check if seems viable or if it has some major flaws. But compared to Deadfire, PoE's Ultimate is rel. forgiving. One can do it with non-perfect builds als well. For example I tried one with an all-offense Barbarian and only was stopped by a bug shortly before the end of the game. Afaik all the Wizard builds here are still perfectly fine. Paladins should be, too. There's also a cipher run if I remember correctly which should also still be good.

Do you want to try the Ultimate for Pillars of Eternity or Deadfire?

"Burping Pain"

Ach, you are right. I briefly forgot that it's not accessible to MC fighters. It only came to me because I played several Berserker/Monks and you can't really use Rooting Pain unless you can cancel the confusion reliably.

I thought that it was a tiny bit faster than normal while I tested it and just counted the seconds - but that just may have been my imagination. It's a bit difficult to watch the recovery bar while running around - and frankly I forgot to slow the game down but did the test at the highest game speed (which wasn't the smartest thing to do, heh). But as I said it seemed absolutely negligible. So I think +100% -50% is correct. +50%-50% would lead to a much more visible difference I assume.

Tactician/Monk can crit himself with Rooting Pain while confused. But it will interrupt you, too - so you may want to become immune to interrupts (with Rekvu's Fractured Casque for example). Yes, good catch. It's a known trick to use Saint's War Armor + Keeper of the Flame + Imagined Pain and then spam Whispers of the Wind non-stop.

Yes, it works (Cipher/Forbidden Fist can reach very long durations that way by combining +10 INT, Enfeebled and Lingering Echoes). Should stack with Lasting Empower.

Yes, exactly. As I tried to lay out in my previous posts. Yes, fair. Would maybe prevent this to feel like a nerf. Precisely. They will not change against the immune guys, stay great alternative weapons to the "normal" ones should you meet enemies who are immune or very resistant to pierce, slash or crush damage and vice versa. And with +2 PEN they will be better than before against generally/universally high AR foes and should stay to be the preferred option in most encounters - like before. At least I guess so. Also some of those weapons (see Dragon's Dowry, Thundercrack) only have single type dmg to begin with. They would need no PEN adjustment but just a simple shift from physical dmg (such as pierce) to elemental damage (such as burn). No nerf basically (on the contrary you get a good alternative dmg weapon) but circumvents the immunity/keyword confusion. Clearly advocating.

? I suggested a solution where any attack that is keyworded with an element only is allowed to deal that elemental dmg and no alternative. Would I give Dragon's Dowry, Firebrand and Sunlance (etc.) the keyword Fire and make them deal only burn damage and no alternative dmg - how might this create a problem with Flame Nagas and such?

While Balance-wise it's not so important I just find this (exemplary) situation extremely weird: - (Made up) enemy "Electric Amoeba" is immune to shock dmg but has slash AR of 0. - Player attacks with a weapon that can do slash OR shock damage (we assume that a character uses the dmg type that works better on an enemy - that's how we "rationalize" the workings of dual dmg weapons, right?). - Enemy just laughs at the slash because it happens to come from a weapon that's also doing electric damage, as a treat. - Player very confused. -- Especially because all those keywords on weapon ate invisible so it's hard to grasp for the player why it doesn't work.

Table is cool. But - and forgive me if I'm dense - does adding a secondary "fitting" elemental damage type to a weapon fix the probem that enemies who are immune to a elemetnl keyword will also not get harmed by a weapon that has an alternative dmg source (like pierce for example)? atm it just seems that it just makes the weapon dmg more plausible (which is nice, too of course). If that immunity issue can't be solved with alternative dmg because the keyword-immunity blocks everything - wouldn't it then make sense to give all those weapons just the same single dmg type as the keyword (for example Essence Interrupter and Thundercrack only do shock dmg), give weapons which will lose a dmg type (see here Essence Interrupter) a +1 PEN bonus and be done with it? Then at least the behaviour with immunities vs. keywords would make sense and players wouldn't have to ask "why tf doesnt my bow deal pierce damage if he enemy is only immune to shock dmg?" To pick up that table: Weapon Keyword Vanilla Dmg Suggested Dmg Dragon’s Dowry Fire Pierce Burn Sun And Moon (Sun) Fire Crush Burn Sun And Moon (Moon) Frost Crush Freeze Animancer Bow Electricity Pierce/Shock Shock Thundercrack Pistol Electricity Pierce Shock Lord Darryn’s Voulge Electricity Slash/Shock Shock Grave Calling Frost Slash Freeze Hel Beckoning Acid Slash/Pierce Corrode Frostseeker Frost Pierce/Slash Freeze Frostfall Frost Crush/Freeze Freeze Firebrand Fire Burn/Pierce Burn Caedebald’s Blackbow Acid Corrode Corrode It's only about the immunity question. If that can be solved otherwise then please ignore my blabber.

It profits from all dmg bonuses that your normal weapon attacks do (Sneak Attack, Weapon Quality and so on) and it can raise the dmg output considerably. If you mix Rushed Reload (and maybe some other speed bonuses) with One Handed Style and the Imbued Ammunition modal the speed is still good while the ACC stays good, too. My preferred pistol with one-handed pistol builds. Also because of Imbued Ammunition.

I don't. But if you run around a lot while shooting it is worth taking it imo. If you are only moving occasionally (for example to get away from enemies or get into firing range) I don't think it's worth it.

No, only proper weapon hits.