Boeroer

You should name him Missy Elliot.

If a bow fighter floats your boat... The difference in damage compared to a rogue who shoots at targets with afflictions will be visible. Fighter can stack +40% damage with 2 talents and 1 ability plus the multiplicative boost from Confident Aim - let's say +50% with 2 talents and 2 abilites then - while the rogue does this with one affliction and 0 talent/ability points. And later the rogue can take Deathblows and will do +150% - the fighter will not get near this and all his great abilites will not work ranged (Charge for example). Maybe it would be best if you give your rogue more CON and Veteran's Recovery - and give him a bit thicker armor. That should be enough to keep him alive.

With a wizard you have to take Blast and Penetrating Blast. Then use Kalakoth's Minor Blights. It's a very powerful summoned implement because it hits in an AoE where every enemy who gets hit triggers another Blast then. This results in a ton of small hits. If you use this with Combusting Wounds it's even more powerful. Also: on-crit-effects like stunning or overbearing - or spell-chance effects (like on the Golden Gaze or Gyrd Háewanes Sténes) work with Blast! That means that if you hit 5 foes with the implement shot + the blast, you have 5 chances to trigger the special effect. If you have a rod that stuns then you can cause AoE stun with Blast (if you crit with it). Priest with implement is meh. Priests just lack proper talents, abilites or spells to be really good with them.

Yes, druids have nice AoE spells that do both: CC and damage at the same time. Look at Sunbeam, Blizzard, Returning Storm, Calling the World's Maw, Overwhelming Wave, Wicked Briars, Embrace the Earth-Talon, Relentless Storm, Venombloom and Tornado. Plague of Insects is also very powerful. Sadly, the best spells of the druid are all in lvl 4 and 5. Some other levels are a bit meh. They also have one of the best summoned weapons in the game: Rot Skulls. It's so good that it's worth it to retrain once you get this and build the druid around implement use. Play him like an implement wizard then. Very low micro and lots of AoE power then without the need to cast many spells.

Boost accuracy. That's it. The more accuracy the more crits. But besides rogues and rangers there are no classes with high starting accuracy that are good with a war bow. Fighters with Disciplined Barrage can have good hit/crit ratios, as can monks - but both are pretty meh with a bow compared to their melee prowess. Monks have The Long Pain though which is ranged and crazy awesome: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87160-class-build-the-witch-doctor-mid-ranged-dps-monk-disabler/ You can build a fighter with Disciplined Barrage, Confident Aim, Weapon Spec and Mastery, Into the Fray (used as ranged attack, is independent from weapon), Armored Grace and Clear Out (also works with ranged weapons like Into the Fray) - but he will also only do single target damage like the rogue. A bit less even, but he will be sturdier of course. Nothing great though. A wizard with war bow works ok if he uses Eldritch Aim and Merciless Gaze a lot and later aims for Cadebald's Blackbow (very powerful summoned bow) - but he will be nowhere near a rogue in terms of crits. And honestly wizards are just better with implements (or blunderbuss). A chanter will be able to fire very fast, but he will have nothing to boost his accuracy (which isn't too good to begin with). Cipher with war bow is nice, but the stuff that lets you crit a lot (Tactical Meld, Borrowed Instincts) will come quite late and you will be using your powers a lot for CC, not the bow. So, nothing obvious. For Borresaine the best options are rogue and ranger. Don't really get why you loathe the ranger so much - he's less micro than any caster.

I like to spam Nature's Terror and use a Ring of Searing Flames - that's actually pretty funny. Most of the time one storm is enough for me to stun most enemies - but I can imagine it's satisfying to get three or four going. But I fear my speakers will combust.

You don't need to realy "pull" with one character. You can also just unstealth in a rel. safe distance (encounter will start) and let the enemy run towards your group. Never run towards the enemy group, let them do the movement. Moving is basically time you can't spend for something else.

I don't know. I spam Chillfogs and Shadowflames quite a bit actually, but I never spam Relentless Storms.

That's debatable. Sunbeam, Relentless Storm, Plague of Insects, Wicked Briars, Venombloom, Rot Skulls and others are very powerful. Even Tanglefoot is awesome just because of its sheer size. There's a reason why enemy druids annoy me way more than enemy wizards I guess. :D

Then he will be superslow (bad for casting and attack speed) and get knocked out because of health issues all the time. Health can only be healed via resting, special talents (not worth it) and potion (too expensive in early game). Shapeshifting means melee, and you do exactly 0 dps in melee if you are unconscious or dead all the time.

Release time is somewhere in Q1 2018 (which means end of March, right? ) - so I guess it's way too early for beta access.

This is a very low-micro approach (for a druid): https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83775-class-build-batsht-crazy-disabling-druid-tank/ He doesn't use shapeshifting but instead he uses weaoon & shield and concentrates on tanking and casting. It works very well - also because druids have ok starting deflection (for casters). That build is very slow though. You can do something similar but with more DEX and a small shield. Arwen uses a kind of sabre/blade with one edge (in the movies) if I remember correctly. So sabre + small shield would be good and look nice, although you will not use the weapon a lot. Dagger, sword an rapier would be other option. There's that sword "Whispers of Yenwood" which you can find in an urn in Caed Nua (throne room). It will give you +2 CON (stacks with everything because enchantentments on weapons don't get suppressed). That could be a nice weapon for you since it gives you something even though you will not attack with it a lot. Also it's spirit-slaying which fits her history with the Nazgul you know.

You can - for example - send somebody scouting and pulling the enemy. Preferably this guy has a bit higher move speed, but it also works without that. He pulls the enemies to the rest of the party. In this time you can do plenty of buffing. Never just run into a group of enemies and start fighting. Let the enemies run towards you. They can't do anything while they run - while you can prepare for the fight. It even works if you stop at bow or gun range and open the fight with some shots.

I told you (or somebody else) Threatening Presence vs. Psychic Backlash is a bad idea. One should be able to turn it off like a modal. Same will happen with Redfield or Executioner's Hood I suppose. But you can at least unequip those.

I guess they really wanted to do a word play with "Gold Packed Paladin"...

A really nice shapeshift druid who is also very sturdy is: Boreal Dwarf or Moon Godlike colonist from a culture you get +2 to colonist and not +1 RES. MIG: 16 CON: 16 DEX: 10 PER: 16 INT: 16 RES: 03 Aim for survival 12 (you will get +2 from armor, so the result is 14), rest of the skill points can go to athletics. Then use healing bonus (+60%!) or accuracy bonus (+18) or flanking bonus (+20%) when camping - according to the enemies you will face. - Boar form (has wounding and that's incredible as well as regeneration which stacks with Veteran's Recovery and gets boosted by healing bonuses from survival - no crappy per rest ability). Talents: - Veteran's Recovery - Wildstrike Shock - Greater Wildstrike Shock - Weapon Focus Peasant - Two Weapon Style - Heart of the Storm - Savage Attack - Apprentice's Sneak Attack - Merciless Hand (Doemenel): +30% crit dmg - Gift from the Machine: +1 to MIG and stuff - Effigy's Resentment (Edér or Maneha): +1 MIG and stuff - Dungeon Delver: +10% crit dmg - Galawain's Boon: +1 MIG Important items: - Sanguine Plate - Shod-in-Faith boots - Wildstrike Belt - Lost Periapt of the Winding Path The trick is to cast Form of the Delemgan and a storm spell (later also Avenging Storm) run into battle, catch a crit that triggers Consecrated Ground and Frenzy from the items and then shift into boar. The MIG of Frenzy will work very well with wounding of your tusks, obliterating everything with one or two swings (woundig gets buffed by MIG) and your healings will also be more powerful and the higher CON helps to minimize health loss and to boost fortitude. The armor penalty is gone while shifted. Consecrated Ground (up to three times in 1 encounter) will heal you alongside your stacked recovery so you don't need to waste time with casting spells like Moonwell. After you switch back you will still have good regeneration. Retreat with hatchet + shield and cast something if necessary or use dual wielding hatchets for attacking. It's fun!

At least it doesn't rust...

Good. I'd take Veteran's Recovery and Savage Defiance to counter the rel. low CON and he shouldn't be squishy. I did my ultimate attempt with a max MIG, nearly max PER, max CON (because of Battle Forged) and max INT build with only 3 DEX (not needed for HoF at all) and it worked well, too.

Yes. A ranged caster like wizard with implement is rel. straightforward and doesn't need a build description. In this forum you will most likely find tricky, funny or special builds which are viable nonetheless. Some of them are especially powerful. Some of them are "only" more fun to play than the generic xy classbuild. Wizards with summoned weapons for example are both: fun and powerful. You basically spare a lot of spells (you only need one or two casts - weapon and a buff or debuff to be effective in a fight). And the weapons are really good. Wizard with weapon and shield has some nice synergies on the defensive side: shield, Arcane Veil and Wizard's Double and such things stack pretty nicely.

Hehe - Firebrand is nice. It's also great on a cipher and a backstab-roue.

Lore is only useful if you plan to use scrolls. That skill is for nothing else. Now it depends which scrolls you want to use with a character. If it's mostly defensive scrolls you can take anybody with high INT who is not a caster (because those already have spells and usually don't need scrolls). For example a barbarian, a fighter, a paladin, a monk, a chanter or whatever. If you also want to utilize offensive scrolls (CC or damage) I would give lore to a character with high INT, high accuracy and high MIG (in case of damaging scrolls). Something like a fighter, rogue or monk. Actually rogues are really great for this beause Deathblows (lvl 11) which does +100% damage on targets with two afflictions also works with spells (= spells do double damage). Additionally, spells which deal crush, pierce or slash damage also work with Deep Wounds (Twin Stones, Concussive Missiles, Bounding Missiles and so on). This makes the rogue the no.1 offensive scroll (and spell binding items) user. Usually one character with lore is enough. I give him all the scrolls and let him loose if things get tough. There are some items in the game which will give you +2 lore. This is neat because you only hae to give 8 lore and still be at 10 where you can use the strongest offensive scroll and spare some skillpoints for something else like survival. I consider survival to be one of the best skills. the camping bonuses are really good. For example +10 accuracy that early in the game (with only 4 skill points) is hard to beat.

Barbs have Carnage - they hit in an AoE with every auto-attack they do. Besides that: Chillfog, Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon - and try Combusting Wounds with Chillfog and also Combusting Wounds with a barb's carnage area. It's great.

Huh? What's that? A companion. She is a Barbarian. Ah, ok. That's what I may do. I hope she has reasonable stats. Can I retrain non-custom NPCs? Yes, but not their 1st level choice and not their stats.

In a party a barb with a pike using Heart of Fury is also good. He can place the centre of HoF better than a dual wielder and eventually reach one or two more enemies which may boost the overall damage further than a second swing might do (because of the exponential growth of hits with every additional enemy) - in some cases.

I would recommend a pike barb and a paladin with Outworn Buckler. Barbs and reach weapons go well together.