Boeroer

You can simply use St. Ydwen's Redeemer and destroy them quite easily. You don't even need to bind it. The vessel destruction also works without binding. You only need to have at least the same level as the Eyeless, so don't go there underleveled if you want to use the Redeemer. Another way is to use Tidefall or Drawn in Spring since the wounding even works if your physical damage roll is 0 due to immunity (wounding dmaage gets calculated pre DR and immunites). You can add Blood Testament Gloves' raw damage lash to that, too. Those should also do damage with Battle Forged and other retaliation effects if you have some wounds. Blood Testament's raw lash works with all forms of retaliation (except Rooting Pain).

That's because it's very hard to reach defensive values that make enemies miss you all the time. Have a look at the accuracy vs. defense mechanic: Attack Resolution You can see that you need a very big gap between enemies' accuracy and your defense to achieve only misses. With 120 fortitude the enemy can still graze you theoretically if they only have 36 accuracy (which they usually don't ). And if the enemies' special attacks even graze then the affliction will affect you, but it will be 50% shorter. That's the reason why Fenwalkers are so good. The -50% duration from graze, paired with the -3 second means that if you get afflicted at all it's a very, very short duration that's left.

Exactly. And they knew that (if you followed the answer of Cdiaz in the bug forum). I really don't get why they decided to go with char level. Multiclass chars can make up for power level shortage with a variety of good synergy effects, like Summoned Weapons + Lightning Strikes/Swift Flurry/Flames of Devotion/+PEN from chosen weapon/Sneak Attack and whatnot. Just think about a faith attuned Great Sword of Berath + Lightning Strikes: +attack speed + 60% corrosive lash + 50% shocking lash... ouch! A single class char could then have the advantage of higher power level scaling. Sounds totally fair to me. Then they could rebuff the summoned weapons a bit without having a guilty conscience when looking at multiclass powergamers.

I'll put 100$ on Edér being interested in an homosexual relationship. Who's in?

Jojobobo, do you think you can keep up those truly impressive numbers during the whole fight when soloing? I played a melee solo wizard in an ultimate attempt (given my unpatient nature I failed in WM II in a random encounter of course ) and while the self buffing (and the awesome summoned weapons) are truely great I often had problems to uphold the high defenses during longer bounty fights (for example the WMII bounties have some guys with very high deflection + reflex defenses that are hard to hit reliably and take some time to pin down). What do you think? Granted: in a party this wouldn't be an issue at all and make this guy a very effective tank. What I always like about non-paladin and non-fighter tanks is that they not only withstand most things that get thrown at them but also can contribute in some/several other ways. Wizards can do so much cool stuf during a fight even if you skill them completely for defense.

There's a ring that gives you immunity to stuck (Wyrwood Ring, but if you're doing a "pure" solo run you can't get it since it's from a stronghold adventure) and the stag helmet that also makes you immune (Fire Godlikes can't wear helmets though) as well as several items that give you +25 defense against it (Wayfarer's Hide, Orlan's Bramble Ring, Tempered Helm (again: FIre Godlike, so no)) or +20 and 3 secs reduced affliction time (Fenwalkers) which is even better in my opinion. This can cause grazes of stuck to be very short or even get omitted entirely. Then you should use potions of protection (very powerful against all afflictions) or even better: Scroll of Prayer against Restraint which will make you immune. You need 6 lore for that. Against Sirens it's also crucial to avoid getting paralyzed which can be done with the same items, but you need a Scroll of Prayer against Imprisonment (lore 10) to become entirely immune. I feel that most of the time a high fort defense (that you'll have with this build) + Fenwalkers is enough to deal with those afflictions and thus you don't necessarily need the lore.

Yes, with rogue's Full Attacks a bashing shield is better than a normal one because you can "prepare" the victim with the first strike (which is the offhand's bash) and then your main hand follows with the more hefty hit which already gets Sneak Attack or even Deathblow bonus. Badgradr's Barricade is great with a rogue. ToTV on Deathblows does tremendous damage (most of the time the Thrust also crits which means +150% damage, even more if you have Merciless Hand and so on - can be boosted up to +200% on crit) and also with Cladhaliath (or other stunning/proning weapons) and decent INT you can score crits + Deathblows all the time with just one Blinding Strike while being very tanky (for a rogue). I used a similar setup with the Devil of Caroc but used Godansthunyr instead of Cladhaliath - mostly because of the looks of the hammer which matches the body of the construct. It was a great offtank-dps setup. So I can totally recommend this build.

I don't know... All I see is a dwarf.

(in Kana's voice) "Hello? Hellohooo?"

Beautiful! (If I ever decide to complete my paused crpg project I will def. hire you. ) I really wonder why it wasn't done like this in the first place. All those slightly different recovery values now! What for? I agree that summoning weapons should take a short amount of time. Comparable to self buffs (basically summoning a weapon IS a self buff), so 0.5 seems like a good value.

- double post, sorry - ...stupid phone...

There are currently six "types" of summoned weapons in the beta: - Kalakoth's Minor Blights - Firebrand - Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff - Citzal's Spirit Lance - Priests' faith attuned weapons - The Long Pain Except the Long Pain all summoned weapons got nerfed in terms of base damage. In PoE1 they all had higher base damage than their mundane versions. In Deadfire they have not. Priests' weapons all get a +60% corrosive lash at lvl 6 which is very good. I guess the lashes will get altered in later stages of the beta to fit to the deity. Citzal's Spirit Lance's AoE effect now works like Carnage did in PoE: it works with on-hit effects like Swift Flurry or Lightning Strikes and also generates focus. That is more powerful than in PoE1. The same is true for Minor Blights. They are awesome with Swift Flurry for example. The rest of the weapons have the same effects than in PoE1 I think. Combined with the lower base damage it means that Firebrand for example is not better than a usual great sword. It just does burn damage instead of pierce damage. The weapon that remains nearly the same is the Long Pain I guess. In PoE1 those weapons didn't scale with your char level (exception: Long Pain). In Deadfire they do. They don't scale with power level, but with char level. The worst thing is that the summoning process now takes a whopping 6 seconds and they can only be summoned in combat. This means you lose a LOT of combat time before you can actually join the fight, which is a shame. Other self buffs are usually instant or fast casts, but weapons take ages to summon. All in all summoned weapons feel nerfed. Mostly because of casting time. In the case of Firebrand obviously because it does nothing special except doing burn damage while it costs you one spell use and 6 seconds of casting time. Parasitic Staff "only" drains health but besides that is a normal quarterstaff. Its awesomeness in PoE1 stemmed from the fact that it came exceptional and with high base damage which was very powerful at lvl 1. Later on it wasn't that useful any more. Now it's okish at lvl1 if you want to cast around for 6 secs - and stays okish until the end because it scales. I liked the old approach better.

Parasitic Staff and Firebrand don't generate more focus than normal weapons of the same quality because they have the same base damage as their mundane counterparts. That is different from PoE1 where they all had higher base damage. Priests' faith attuned weapons do generate more focus because the powerful lashes also contribute to focus gain. But you will have to summon the weapon which takes 6 seconds - in which you could have attacked with non-summoned ones. So it depends how long the fight lasts if this is beneficial or not. Citzal's Spirit Lance does generate a ton of focus because the AoE damage also contributes to focus gain and has a very weird AoE behaviour with Soul Annihilation as I already described above in an earlier post. I think it's bugged and I reported it in the bug section but got no reaction.

A bashing shield doesn't give you the 50% recovery bonus that dual wielding will give you (at least that was still the situation when I played a shield rogue at PoE version 3.04). That's the main reason why bashing shields usually lower your dps compared to a normal shield (because bashing does way less damage than most weapons and you simply alternate between bash and weapon attack with speed gain. Bashing has low recovery so it speeds you up a bit compared to a single weapon, but the bashing damage usually is so low that it will ruin your overall dps). Exceptions a Full Attacks obviously (also, bash has quite high ACC and works well with applying blind/hobbled and so on. Bash gets +1 ACC per char level because it's considered to be an ability) and special bashing shields that apply some nice effect when they hit/crit, namely Badgradr's Barricade (Thrust of Tattered Veils on crit, works with Deathblows) and Dragon's Maw (which can't be soulboud by a rogue).

Holy cow outta hell! Where did you get that awesomest Krampus sweater, Katrina? I desperately want one of those!

Yeah... good old tradition of OBS to screw things up even more with a patch.

Crit damage usually is +25% in Deadfire (not +50% like in PoE1). So, something's not right with Assassinate: either description or implementation. In the first iteration of the beta it didn't work at all with ranged weapons while it did with melee ones if I recall correctly. Maybe this fix now wasn't done properly. You'd also want to add Backstab when using an assassin and maybe some dev got confused with all those dmg mods out of stealth...

The raw DoT doesn't stack?

I installed the linux version of the beta today and tried some more casters. Did a Nature Godlike single class Evoker and used an empowered version of Minoletta's Concussive Missiles. At least that cast was VERY powerful (12 projectiles each causing an AoE explosion). It's a 3-sec cast and thus doesn't feel awfully slow. But once you touch the 6-sec spells (see Fireball) it becomes tedious business. The balance between melee and casting got better since the weapons' recovery times got fixed, but casting still feels sluggish and is no fun.

No. PotD is too easy for a full party if you did some playthroughs before. It's because you have good meta-knowledge (you know where to expect which enemies and you know what they are vulnerable to and so on) and usually you know the game's mechanics in and out after some runs. So you can always choose a very effctive approach for each encounter. You will know that accuracy + hard CC is the most important thing in this game and trivializes most encounters. This makes most of the game very easy even on PotD. Only exception is the early game where you don't have a lot of resources - which also isn't very hard but more difficult than Act II + following.

The setup that gets you the best dps curve troughtout the game (if you want to stick to one "style" and types of weapons and don't like to retrain) is to use a dual wielding approach with rapier + dagger (Weapon Focus Noble) and get the Sword of Daenysis (Defiance Bay, Ondra's Gift, Salty Mast, Club of Ref. and Prest. Gentlemen, merchant Vincent Dwellier) and the March Steel Dagger (Defiance Bay, Copperlane, quest item if you don't give the dagger to Gordy but instead keep it during the quest "Something Secret", it's a supereasy quest). That is because you will reach 0 recovery very early and fast, light weapons are the best dps option for rogues. Those weapons have the highest dps by far against 0 DR because they are so fast (speed is a multiplicative damage influence instead of MIG which is only additive) but have trouble to punch through DR. This can be solved with any form of DR bypass and also with lots of dmg bonuses. Rogues have great dmg bonuses and that helps with overcoming DR. Also, you can use Vulnerable Attack without speed loss at some point because those weapons I mentioned are not only fast because they are light, but also because they both have the speed enchantment. Try out the speed calc with the PoE Attack Speed Calculator by MaxQuest. If you choose rapier + dagger and click "Has Speed" for both and also add Two Weapon Style you can play around with different armors and stuff to see how and when you can reach 0 recovery. Later you can replace March Steel Dagger with Drawn in Spring because that is the weapon with the highest dps in the game - and it's a dagger, too. Sword of Daenysis will remain the best dps option until the nd if you enchant it EXCEPT if you duplicate Drawn in Spring with the Helwax Mold (item from a stronghold quest which lets you clone one non-soulbound item). This is true for auto-attacks. If you pile a lot of Full-Attack strike abilities (Crippling Strike, Blinding Strike and so on) so that you seldomly do auto-attacks then sabres (here: Bittercut is the most potent choice) might be the best weapon for your rogue. The advantages of both variants is that it's not only powerful but totally fits rogues when it comes to style. I personally prefer war hammers on rogues, but I have to admit it doesn't feel very rogueish. If you want to make your rogue more sturdy you can raise CON, MIG and INT and pick Veteran's recovery as first talent. Also use a thick(er) armor at the start of the game This makes a huge difference. Knocked out rogues can't do dps, so...

Right. But basically it works like in PoE1. It didn't stack the effect. Only thing is that now every kill triggers it while in PoE1 only every second kill (was supposed) to trigger it. It stacked with all other speed buffs though. Still the case?

Even if they want to achieve more "tactical depth" (who needs that anyways?) - with longer casting times vs. interrupts - and thus can't shorten the castin times a lot, they could still go and make the damn effects more powerful. Casting Whisper of Treason for (what feels like) ages in order to charm one enemy for mere 10 seconds is just a biting whiplash in every cipher's face. Casting a lenghty fireball that might get interrupted or has to be retargeted all the time because enemies run around like headless chicken during 6 seconds and then doing nearly the same damage as you would do with an attack of a rod + blast is just meeeehhh!

No it doesn't make a lot of sense and should be changed to dual wielding (like dual wands). I just wanted to say that in this case the two-handed approach wouldn't hurt this special subclass very much if it could only deliver a good casting experience. You wouldn't attack with your natural weapons a lot anyways i you could instead deliver some good elemental nukes + CC.

Well the Fury is supposed to be an offensive caster subclass. You get some bonuses on your offensive elemental spells and also a kind of "escape" ability that's not a spell. Sadly all offensive casters are (still) bad with the current beta build - a few whimpy bonuses don't help that.