Boeroer

Eh? What has this to do with Flames of Devotion? I meant you will have altering defenses pre combat and even during combat.

No, he will not. Because of: - the ranger doesn't need to run to his target and thus doesn't lose dps while moving (or doing Shadow Step or Escape) - will have +100% "real" damage (not base! - this is way better than Deathblows) via Twinned Arrows all the time without the need for afflictions - he will have perma-stun which leads to a lot of crits as well (usually rangers have the same hit/crit ratio as rogues by the end of the game ) - he will have Driving Flight (2 * 60% "real" - not base - damage with Twinned Arrows) - he will have +10 accuracy and +20% damage via Stalker's Link and Stalker's Torc (a bit like Reckless Assault but without drawbacks) - he will not get disabled or killed that often because he doesn't have to run around and get near melees and/or catch disengagement attacks in order to reach the enemies. And on top of that comes the pet that can crit around 80-100 dmg if you can utilize Predator's Sense (which you should - easy with Wounding Shot or Env. Strike or Persistence). A rogue most of the time can't dish out that much damage in a given time because he simply can't stack that many multipliying damage bonuses. He only has additive ones. Even with Sneak + Deathblows he's not close. He has the advantage of attack speed if the ranger has not yet reached 0 recovery, but the fact that he has to move a lot in order to apply damage negates this advantage. I presume you never played a high level ranger?

Remember that Frenzy from Sanguine Plate will lower your deflection by 10 and raise fortitude by 16.

You know the stats are not THAT more powerful on PoTD.

Whatever your theory is, you can't deny the numbers (which are of course not meaningless once you have a decent amount of samples - I agree than 10/10 is not decent though, but I didn't have more time). Since I don't know how the belt was implemented the best way to determine its usefulness is to test it in combat. While 10/10 is a very small sample and doesn't prove anything it already is in line with what I thought and experienced. The average difference was near 17 points dmg per crit - against an ogre. That doesn't fit into your presumption that dragons or the most damaging spells would do 10-15 less. It totally fits with -27% though - and that's plausible if the ogre is programmed in a way that he's only doing base damage and doesn't have a lot of dmg mods - like most non-kith enemies have (I guess). As I said, I think against kith enemies who attack with weapons and have different dmg mods this belt might be useless - but since those usually don't hit that awfully hard... but against other enemies I presume the belt will work the same as against the ogre. If you get disabled you are open for crits - then this belt is better than a Blunting Belt or a belt with +3 CON (also because you can get bonus CON from another item). If you have a build that is out for getting crits (in order to trigger Frenzy or Shod-in-Faith or whatever spell holding) - then this belt is better. In those cases the Blunting Belt would save you 5 dmg per crit (in this case zero because ogres do crush damage, but hey ). The CON belt would give you 15% more of your base endurance which would be something like 30-40 points or so if you are >lvl 10 I guess. Also not very overwhelming. Especially because Girdle of Mortal Protection and bonus CON are not mutually exclusive. So I don't understand the numbers you were posting when talking about dragons or the most damaging spells when against a simple ogre the difference is already that obvious (but no offense!). By the way: I tested it first in the tavern with a ranger's wolf attacking the character. So in my mind there should only be base damage + crit damage involved (wolf has 10 MIG). Here I did more samples (20/20) and the difference was nearly zero. So I assumed it only works in combat. Don't know what happened there.

I did a quick test with a single leftover Ogre from that bounty in ELmshore and that's the conclusion after 10 received crits with and 10 without Girdle of Mortal Protection: without Gridle oMP: average crit damage roll was 75.05 per crit with Girdle oMP: average crit damage roll was 58.60 per crit (this was nor much more than the average hit roll - maybe around 10 percent but I didn't log that properly since I focused on crits) This comes close to the numbers I used above (percentage wise) which is ok with only 10 crits each. I think the girdle only works in combat because when you test it in a tavern on your own party members it does nothing. Or/and it may also depend on whether your opponent's damage is mainly base damage (have no special weapons and/or dmg bonuses but mainly flat base damage). Basically everything that is not "kith who does weapon attacks". But I didn't test that theory. Maybe the girdle is less effective against let's say kith rogues - but it is very good against everything that does crits with high base damage (wing slams, bites, claws, spells, you name it). But as I said I didn't test that. I only experienced a decent increase of survivability on my "crit me please" builds every time I put on that belt. An now those short testings with the Ogre can at least explain a bit why. So needless to say that around 16 less damage per crit is better than a Blunting Belt or a +3 CON belt - if you catch a lot of crits. THe higher the spike damage the more benefical is the girlde in comparison to the other two belts (sorry Kaylon ).

Sometimes happens with all items with spell chance. Unequip, save, reload, equip, leave map, come back. Sometimes that helps.

It's a nice belt if you get crit a lot. Like when you have a character with low deflection and Sanguine Plate who looses another 10 deflection with Frenzy. Then the belt spares you more endurance and health than a Blunting Belt or a +3 CON item. For the usual tank it's useless. By the way the numbers above I totally made up just for simpler examples. 300 "base" endurance is pretty high. And 100/150 damage, too.

Also note that reach weapons have no advantage when it comes to engagement. The longer reach doesn't lead to engagement over longer distances like I thought. Reach weapons have the same engagement distance like every other melee weapon.

That depends on your level and on your foes. In the early game +5 DR is quite powerful and will be more useful than +3 CON. +3 CON leads to +15% (* 1.15) endurace which means something like 50 enduracne to 58 in lvl 1. That's only 8 more. So he can eat 8 more damage. If the character gets hit more than once the Blunting Belt was better. Later on +3 CON is better most of the time. Imagine 300 endurance * 1.15 = 345 endurance. 45 more. So he would have to be hit more than 9 times and no sooner the Blunting Belt would be better. Now add the fact that CON also raises your fortitude and that the Blunting Belt only raises slash and pierce DR. So my advice would be: Blunting Belt first, then later +3 CON belt. However, there is another belt that can help you to survive spike damage if you have low defenses: Girle of Mortal Protection. It reduces critical hit damage by 27%. If normal damage would be 100 and critical damage would be 150, then with a Girdle of Mortal Protection you will only receive 150 * 0.73 = 110. So basically you spare yourself 40 damage. Pretty neat.

Ondra can make you (and even other gods) forget things. Maybe she slapped herself on the forehead accidentially after you met in WM II?

Fenwalkers are nice.

We will have the beta. I will try out a lot of potentially OP stuff for myself and I guess a lot of players will do that, too. So maybe after the beta the most OP combos will get fixed. Remember barb with Carnage + Jolting Toch from Azureith's Stiletto? Back in the days the spell strikings had no limit. Every crit triggered a Jolting Touch which got multiplied by Carnage. Enemy groups just got annihilated. Ciphers' Draining Whip gave +3 (?) focus per hit, same with Carow Gholan. Devs forgot that blunderbusses do 6 hits with one shot, making it the no. 1 OP weapon for ciphers. Total focus overflow... Similar stuff will happen in Deadfire I guess.

You an add them via console. They won't have banter and dialogue but besides that they will work just fine.

WM II bounties are tougher.

They are ok-ish.

Maybe there will be a trigger like there is now for auto-pause: right before the combat starts but it's not yet encounter-time. In this case switching would be done without any recovery.

If you stand very near to enemies you can hit them with three spikes of Seven Nights at once. This kills most enemies at once if you crit. So it's also neat against powerful single targets (if you can manage to lower their fortitude first). If the place is really crowded with enemies it does a ridiculous amount of damage if you get the positioning right (like in the Battle of Yenwood Field or those Elmshore Ogres or Lagufaeth hordes).

The "Destroy Vessel" proc chance of 25% per hit works without any soul binding or leveling of the weapon. It's starting with that feature. Anyone can use it.

Since they promised that we get some kind of AI scripting like in Dragon Age: Origins (and they also showed some UI for it) I'm pretty confident that we can make some awesome scripts for things like "if encounter starts switch to set 1 -> attack (fire gun) -> switch to set 3 -> fire gun -> switch to set 2 -> defensive mode" or something like that.

No, it procs when you do a critical hit on the ememy - pretty common for rogues.

But it's just two shots at the start of the fight. Happens in seconds. After that it's pure tanking. Not that much micromanagement. THe start of the fight is loaded with micro anyway (casting buffs, doing positioning and so on).

Stormcaller is always useful. It's better on a ranger but also good on a chanter. So if you don't have a ranger you can give it to the chanter or a cipher. It has a build-in DR reduction of 6. With Penetrating Shots you'll overcome 11 DR easily. That alone is great. You don't have a lot of invocations because you use long(er) phrases like Drgon Thrashed. And you haven't experienced the effect of Brisk Recitation yet (starting from lvl 4 and the +10% faster chanting every 4 levels). If you are lvl 16 for example and only use tier-1 phrases you'll get a phrase point every 2 seconds. That means that you could cast Killers Froze Stiff (which is a very powerful invocation) every 8 seconds (!) (not counting recovery after using the invocation). To keep recovery short I recommended max DEX and low armor (and also gear/talents that speeds you up like Gauntlets of Swift Action, Outlander's Frenzy and so on). The invocation itself has a base duration of 8 seconds. With 20 INT it will last 12 seconds, with a crit even 16 seconds. So after the first 8 seconds of combat you should be able to perma-paralyze most enemies you hit with the really big cone.

Because they are not good for sustained use - like doing auto-attacks all day for example. Damage per second (dps) is indeed bad if you want to shoot with reloading and your fights are long (like on PotD). Guns are awfully slow and hence the value "damage per second" is not very high. But they hit like trucks. Damage per hit is the highest and their base damage is the highest. Because of that they work very well with any damage bonus. So they are always number one choice if you have abilites wich give you a high damage boost but are limited to 1 or 2 per encounter - like Flames of Devotion, Wounding Shot/Runner's Wounding Shot and so on. With those abilites you can't do sustained damage but only spike damage - because their uses per encounter are so limited. Not 5 FoD per encounter but only 2. So they work very well with guns. One or two shots with an arquebus, done with maxed Flames of Devotion (and maybe with a crit, too), will deal a ton of damage while two strikes with a dagger with FoD for example is just slapping with a wet (albeit hot) noodle in comparison. Guns are the best choice with those abilities. That's why this build uses maxed FoD damage with 2 switching arquebuses. My switching is fast enough because of the special belt I used - so I don't need Qucik Switch as a talent. Edit: @JerekKruger: exactly.

This is true for auto-attacks and when your shield only has bash and nothing else. But when you do the typical rogue strikes (Crippling Strike and so on) you will have Full Attacks. That means your offhand strikes first (in this case bash) and applies the affliction - and the main hand follows and can already deliver a Sneak Attack and maybe even Deathblow. Same advantage as with dual wielding + strikes. And then Badgradr's Barricade has an unlimited amount of procs of Thrust of Tattered Veils on crit. With this feature the bash becomes quite potent - also because that spell works with Deathblows. Imagine you have a stunnung main weapon and Badgradr's Barricade and do a Blinding Strike: bash does apply blind (maybe even crits and procs a normal Thrust of Tattered Veils), stunning weapon gets Sneak Attack bonus and will most likely crit as well because blinding is a strong debuff, so the target is blinded and stunned. Then again the bash follows and will most likely crit, triggering Thrust of Tatteres Veils on Deathblows. Usually this one is also a crit. Thrust of Tattered Veils with +150% damage (or even +100% if you have Merciless Hand and stuff). This will kill most enemies at once. It's a great way to build a sturdy, even tanky rogue who still deals great damage and has not so much issues with health or endurance loss because his deflection is high (at least for a rogue). A dual wielding rogue might deal more dps on paper, but he has to wait until the tanks engage, he has to be babysitted and so on (except if he has regenration and/or draining - but then you have to watch health). The rogue with Badgr. Barricade can just engage as a ordinary fighter or whatnot, hacking right away and start dealing damage while the usual rogue still waits for the best flanking position to open up. So in the end I guess the overall damage done is not that much different. Of course Badgradr's Barricade is not an early game item. Sadly... but for starters any bashing shield will do fine if combined with strike abilites.