Boeroer

Yes, dual Bleak Fang with maxed DR bypass is nice. I only loathe the single damage type...

Nothing basically. Killing Kolsc is a viable option. I once killed both... I always kill Readric and the whole castle because: a) he's a prick and because: b) all the gear gives me so much money that I can quickly buy nice uniques and build up my stronghold's defenses so that those annoying raids will stop. And c) because I can.

Whenever somebody wants to have advice on a chanter or barbarian firkraag888 will awake from his slumber down under and rant about them (although he never played them thoroughly - for example to witness Brisk Recitation and realize that you can possibly dish out a tier-1-invocation every 6 seconds with it). Then he will recommend a rogue or a cipher... Paladins and rogues are not melee based classes by the way. All their abilities work in melee as well as ranged - except Reckless Assault. Chanters are fine - especially on PotD where fights are longer and there are a lot more enemies. In solo runs they are especially good. But with a chanter you really have to know the tricks - else the experience can be boring or frustrating. For example Soft Winds and Dragon Thrashed get +12 ACC from one-handed weapon use... But even with a plain old March-of-the-Kamoa chanter (singing a tier-1-song that raises all defenses except deflection by 10 and gives +1 move speed), like Kana starts, you will increase the survivability of the whole party. Via Ancient Memory you can also give everybody a regeneration effect. This alone is pretty useful. Invocations just come on top. But firkraag888 is right that it maybe best just to make him a tuna can with a shield and give him Dragon Thrashed at lvl 9. Pretty one-trick-ponyish, but it's basically the most effective way to play a chanter. Lvl 9 is not high level by the way, 9 of 16 is more mid level I'd say. Comes earlier than Deathblows and Amplified Wave... You can kill Raedric on lvl 4 with a chanter. No other class can do it that easily at this level - and the reason is White Worms. It's LOT of planning, tactics and micro though: You have to pull all enemies to a doorway one by one (or two or four ) and kill them there. Do that with a lot of enemies and don't leave the map, reload or rest! Then, when only Raedric's encounter is left, just shoot some of his buddies from afar and retreat to the pile of corpses. Don't be stealthed! Stealthed chanters don't sing. While you are running back to that pile of corpses on a doorway your chanter already starts building phrases. When you arrive he will most likely have build up 3 phrases. Cast Blessing & Inspiring Radiance and put a Chillfog in front of the doorway. When Raedric & friends gather in front of the door and catch the blind affliction you cast White Worms with buffed ACC and debuffed enemies and everybody in the vicinity should be dead. Combusting Wounds should be very effective here, too. You can place a character in the doorway and cast Withdraw on him so that "none shall pass". Anyway: tackling Readric with 4 level 4 characters on PotD is a bold move. It's very hard. Kolsc is a wussy. :D Speaking of tricks: chanters don't stop chanting when withdrawn. You can place a chanter in the tick of it and cast Withdraw on him - he will still sing and do stuff with his phrases while being untouchable. He will also sing while being prone. You can abuse that by giving him a preservation armor like Blaidh Golan and a preservation shield like Irfin Byrngar's Solace and get +100 to all defenses when prone or stunned. When stunned he will not sing, but when prone he will - while having +100 to all defenses (minus the prone debuff). You can totally crack the game if you have a cipher with Defensive Mindweb, a priest and a chanter with double preservation: cast Defensive Mindweb, then Withdraw on the chanter while he keeps on singing Dragon Thrashed. The whole party will get the defensive stats of the chanter who has +100 to all defenses while he's withdrawn... Edit: my mother tongue is German by the way. I live in Bucharest because of job-related reasons.

Don't know if I understand your question, but if you have Bittercut you should also take Spirit of Decay. It will raise Bittercut's damage by 20% no matter which type of damage is applied, it works with the corrode and the slash damage - no drawbacks like with Savage Attack. It's just a regular 20% boost. Then you should definetly take a corrosive lash for Bittercut as well. The good synergy with Spirit of Decay is that the boosted damage of the saber will lead to more lash damage (since lashes are multiplicative) which itself gets boosted even more (from 25% to 30%) - and all with the same single talent. If you are now using Mith Fyr, too and wield two Bittercuts then each of the two Bittercuts will have a corrosive lash with 30% as well as an additional burning lash from the chant with 25% (I wouldn't pick Scion of Flame in that case).

You would have two 25% lashes on the weapon, not one with 50%. The difference is that each lash has to overcome 1/4 of the burn DR of the enemy. If you (the wielder of the weapon, not the chanter) take Scion of Flame then you would have two 30% burning lashes by the way. That is totally worth it and better than Savage Attack or whatnot.

Now I really want to play a Transmuter/Helwalker... aka Friar Truck. I so hope that you can still use class abilities after casting Citzal's Martial Power like you can with Arcane Assault or Grimoire Slam in PoE1. And I really hope that your weapons don't transform into a generic, useless, two handed club. Would be nice if one could just use Transcendent Suffering (fists) instead...

The dialogue line with 15 INT leads to a Heodan who is not injured. This makes things easier for him. Also, send Calisca towards him while he's running towards her. She wants to intercept the followers with a one-handed Knockdown.

Yes, but as I said: no need to take only 10 INT because of Enduring Flames. The duration got fixed and is no longer dependent on INT. So you can have a huge SI AoE AND deal good damage with Enduring Flames. And don't forget high MIG for pumping Enduring Flames' as well as SI's damage.

If you want maximum damage with Dragon Thrashed you need maxed MIG and INT. maxed PER would be the next preferable stat because cirts add +50% duration which is a 50% multiplicative damage boost compared to the usual +50% base damage crits normally do. DEX isn't used at all for chanting and it's also not necessary for anything else this special chanter does, so it's the dump stat here. You don't really need/don't want to use any invocations when focusing on that phrase because invocations disrupt the chanting. But of course you can get away with more DEX and less of the other stats if you want.

Stalker is basically my Riptide & The Pit Fright build in PoE.

You mean a Fighter/Wizard or Goldpact/Wizard I presume?

You are able to pick different abilites on every level. You don't get them automatically. So two fighter/wizards can look and play very differently. That's how I guess.

Erm, I meant SI for Sacred Immolation. But I always type SA (maybe for SAcred Immmolation?). Can't say why, there's a kink in my brain or something.

My strategy: always dump RES.

Ghost Heart Lodge only has a pet that he can summon. So if you don't summon it you'll have no pet. Novice's Suffering didn't work with Druid's natural weapons in PoE1 - on purpose. I don't think this will be different in Deadfire. However, an Ascetic (Shapeshifter/Shattered Pillar) can combine Natural DR + Iron Wheel and Wildstrike + Turning Wheel. With a Shattered Pillar it should be easy to reach your wound cap very quickly with the help of Wildstrike. If the boar still has wounding damage this will be great. Also, Helwalker/Assassin seems to be a nice synergy with wound gaining.

Autumn's Decay will actually trigger one instance of CW because it has an instant damage part and an additional DoT part - if I remember correctly. The initial hit will trigger one instance of CW. But yes, Touch of Rot will do nothing with CW. Chillfog, Wicked Briars, Venom Bloom, Sacred Immolation, Symbol of Whomever and so on will trigger CW with every "pulse". The powerful thing about most DoT spells/abilites is that their damage can be boosted twofoldly: with MIG (boosting damage additively) and INT (boosting damage multiplicatively). Also, in case of a crit you will not add a mere +50% to base damage, but instead you add +50% duration which is more powerful (because it's multiplicative).

I think this one was a good decision. Better to take a step back and rethink than trying to fix a system that is way too complex to take out all pitfalls in a reasonable amount of time and that's too complicated so that even the own designers don't get it right. I also can't see why you would only get half of the power. 7 out of 9 is not 50% - and also people tend to forget that certain synergies can be OP no matter the power level. Like if you could combine Soul Whip with Carnage and so on. The rogue is a good example in PoE 1 how high level abilites do nothing for your power.

I'm on a 2012 laptop and it takes roughly 30 secs for me to load savegames. Transitions maybe half the time.

Lovely. That will work. Just keep in mind: you will be superslow when it comes to anything other than singing phrases. So yes, you can totally forget about weapon damage and concentrate on positioning yourself perfectly well or blocking paths of enemies who want to reach your backline and so on. Some people even take Hold the line and pick up a guarding weapon (+2 engagement slots). That way you can stop up to 3 enemies who want to run past you - briefly, but better than nothing. Getting engaged stops movement and that can buy time for you. Other pick weapons with spell bindings so that they can cast a spell here and there. I did this with the following (old) build: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83491-class-build-the-drakes-ambassador-searing-mesmerizing-chanter-tank/ What you can also do to make your game a bit more "active" is to get a weapon with marking (sword Shame or Glory, spear Cladhaliath) and flank enemies for one of your melee dps guys. He will then get the equivalent of +20 ACC (-10 deflection from flanking, +10 ACC from marking). That would be single ally support mostly but it may be more insteresting than just standing around. But standing around is not a problem - because you combine support (AoE passive healing), tankyness (great regeneration, high DR and decent deflection/reflex) with very high passive AoE damage from lvl 9 on. Lvl 1 - 8 are a bit less exciting of course. Soft Winds doesn't do as much damage. But it's nice to speed up the phrase counter a bit and to cast some invocations here and there (you can totally stop doing this when you have Dragon Thrashed - casting invocations will disrupt your singing and thus stop your damage-dealing).

We talked about those weird DoTs a couple of months ago. I just looked it up again and according to Kaylon: So you will not have to worry about SA with gimped INT. High INT is also not too bad with Runner's Wounding Shot and/or Tidefall. Because it's all raw damage the DR is no issue and thus the longer timespan where the DoT is applied over more and smaller ticks is not a problem. The overall raw damage stays the same, it just takes a bit longer to apply it completely (few seconds). You don't lose overall damage - you just lose a bit of dps (damage per second). So enemies die a few seconds later - that's the worst thing that will happen. Longer wounding duration can also have benefits - for example if you try to time Cleasing Flame + wounding on the same target or when you have a pet with Predator's Sense in the party.

Yes, good spread for that. But dual Bittercut is a bit of a waste for a chanter to be honest. No synergy with Spirit of Decay whatsoever. But if this is your whish I can't stop you. If you're going to use the Mith Fyr phrase then take a look at "The Flames of Faîr Rhîan". It's a sabre that gives you 3 Fireballs per Rest. Because Mith Fyr also puts lashes on spells - it's powerful because of that.

And because you know that you don't test them out...?

Ah, ok. For a second I thought that you thought that you have to kill them in order to get their gear. Can't say how many times I smacked Durance to death because he was offending me with his gargling "Come to pray at the statue!"-nonsense.

In Path of the Damned difficulty, encounters have many more enemies. Enemies also get +15 Accuracy and +15 to all Defenses. They can use abilities/spells on PotD which they don't use on lower difficulty levels. Afaik DR is not changed.

I think this decision will lead to less patches. I really want to try a Shapeshifter/Shattered Pillar with Wildstrike Burn and Turning Wheel. >+100% burning lash on those claws/tusks/horns seems to be... awesomest? Also Lightning Strikes on top I guess...