Boeroer

I guess Moon Godlike - which is especially impactful in the first half of the game. Something with a head slot starts to become better later in the game when fights take longer (so you spend more time unshifted and can access the bonuses of the helmet). But since the hardest part of the game usually is the early part I'd say Moon Godlike.

I don't know. If you use them for tanking it's pretty good to have two additonal casts for 2 more phantoms in long fights. The substancial phantom casting stuff is indeed a bit annoying at times (I like Arduous Delay of Motion because it targets Will and stacks with all other debuffs, but Necrotic Lance and Minor Missiles are often just a waste of action time - casting can also break engagement the phantom might have via items which is detrimental to tanking) but if it's used as a tank then bigger health pool doesn't hurt I guess. It would have been very exciting if one could pick the 3 spells for the substancial phantom from your own spell portfolio. The opportunities... 😄

These days I give him Effort and enchant it with Hemorrhaging because that also works with all crits, not only weapon crits. If you add Hylea's Talons you can generate ebven more crits per spellcast (because the DoT on the gloves also does a hit roll that can crit). Even before getting Avenging Storm (which procs on Hemorrhaging hit rolls bc. it originates from the weapon) it's cool to cause hobbled or sickened as additional CC effects on the fly while casting Chillfog, Wicked Briars, Tanglefoot and so on. Later add Avenging Storm and of course Maelstrom and he's wiping ads (which are usually more prone to receiving crits) like few other characters. Venombloom is lso excellent with this because it does 3 attack rolls every 3 secs (loads of chances for crit rolls which all trigger Hemorrhaging which in turn triggers Hylea's Talons and Avenging Storm - which when those crit trigger Hemorrhaging again and so on and so loop). Effort + Taste of the Hunt is also a pretty decent combo during mid levels. The combined DoTs melt tough foes pretty nicely (if you can reliably hit).

I somewhat agree. However, the pl7 phantom has better stats iirc (at least more health). But you confused the names. Essential Phantom is the pl4 summon while Substantial Phantom is pl7.

Yes, you are right. It's only auto-leveling companions before you pick them up - sorry. 🥴 I forgot about that limitation since I always wanted to level them manually. But since there is the retraining option you can try things out without too much regret.

Besides (pistols in general and) the early game where single weapon usage is really good bc. of the +12 ACC - which is a huge bonus compared to the overall low ACC/defense numbers at that point of the game - I only used One-Handed Style "seriously" with a Monk/Berserker + Stalker's Patience and the "0 recovery on 20% of crits" enchantment. The combination of Swift Flurry/HBD, Blood Thirst and the enchantment made it a lot of fun and the high ACC (+29 from Enduring Dance + single weapon + spear) also made it very viable against high deflection enemies. In most other cases it just feels lackluster. It may have its uses in edge cases - but that's not enough to make it an attractive alternative for most of players who aren't too fixated on the fine details. It not only lacks broad mechanical impact - it also lacks (a) feature(s) that would make it more attractive. Dual wielding and two handers will always have their fans just because of how "cool" they are. Maybe instead of giving increased crit conversion it would have been interesting to focus on the fact that you have a free hand... which could be used for all sorts of stuff during a fight (grabbing the opponent's weapon shaft, throwing random stuff at opponents, grappling, making offending gestures... ;)). Don't know how that would affect combat mechanically though (in a not too complicated fashion)...

I didn't check this ingame now but from the top of my head I see no way to accomplish this with the conditions that are given.

Having played Tekehu with Effort (pun intended) as an SC Druid - which was great - I also tried an Assassin/Bloodmage + Effort, Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and some pulsing CC spells like Binding Web etc. plus Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak and that was even more impressive imo. Especially because if you also bring a Druid with Entropy all hits will get converted to crits on the enemy with Entropy while the "stacks" of entropy won't get removed (bc. no damage, only CC). With this you can perma-stun whole groups of enemies and very tough single enemies in particular. Of course not the MIG-resistant or -immune enemies, but still...

There is automatic leveling iirc. There should be an option in the game settings menu.

I think you meant to post in the Deadfire Stories subforum - this is the Pillars of Eternity (1) Stories subforum.

Yes, and since the items give +3 engagement, the Phantom will have those 3 eng. slots, too - letting it dish out disengagement attacks as well (which target Will instead of deflection because Draining Touch just does that).

Willbreaker! In a party that plays around with terrify I really like to give him a club (+modal) and Cadhu Scalth and use him like a tank. I love to use Miasma with him, put Kapana Taga in the offhand and Reckless Brigandine as armor and then summon Concelhaut's Drainng Touch + a Phantom. I will have 3 engagement slots and deal devastating disengagement attacks against terrified enemies with Draining Touch. Later I like to use The Blackbow (and a phantom with the Blackbow), too. Tekehu is a nice addition. And Cipher is cool (maybe a Psion/something) because lots of their spells target the Will defense. A combination of terrifying some enemies + charming/dominating the rest messes up almost all enemy groups very thoroughly.

It doesn't cause an interrupt on itself. It only removes concentration completely (no matter how many stacks an enemy has). So you need some weapon or ability to actually cause the interrupt. But if you are energized (Their Champion) it can interrupt if it crits - like any other attacks roll that results in a crit.

Yes. Barbaric Retaliation also works with dual mortars.

Never thought about using the spiderlings as source for Adra Ban (because I seldomly have a problem with Adra Ban scarcity) - good point! Wouldn't it be even easier to just bring a potion of invisibility for the guy who triggers the combat and then use a Chanter hireling who sends summon wave after summon wave (like Ancient Instruments of Death) from a hiding place around the rocks (could be the same character)? I don't need more to defeat Belranga - and it always involves a truckload of dead spiderlings in the process because the summons can't realy harm Belranga a lot until a ton of spiderlings died before. It's possible to do rel. early, too.

You will not land crits a lot, so everything that does interrupt on crit is of little use. Thick Grew Their Tongues is good to remove Concentration all at once. It targets Will though so you have to make sure Will gets debuffed. I use a club+modal. You can back it up with either Miasma of Dull-Mindedness or Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment. This drops Will by 45 points which makes it a lot easier for Thick Grew Their Tongues to finally hit. Then use a weapon/ability that doesn't interrupt on crit but on hit or even graze. Don't spam it if you don't have unlimited uses (see Mule Kick, Crippling Strike etc.) but only use it once the Dragon starts to cast something nasty. I however recommend to use weapons/abilites where you don't have to watch your resources, like Force of Anguish (Monk - a Morning Star helps to land this) or even better a crossbow/arbalest with modal turned on. Those modals allow to interrupt or even prone (which is interrupt+knocking over) on hit and it's not too hard to reliably land hits on the dragon. It's best to use two or more characters with crossbow/arbalest + modals and just keep shooting. If you are fast enough, especially with arbalests, the dragon will constantly be on the ground and get interrupted, too. Reliable interrupts at an incredibly fast rate with an arbalest is the main reason why I recommend Troubadour/Arcane Archer so often. Sure-Handed Ila + Gunner makes reloading a breeze, Thick Grew removes concentration, max Arcana + Spearcaster + Marksman and so on leads to insane accuracy and thus you will kock down (and keep it down) alost every enemy very reliably with 0 ressource costs. Add some summons for the enemy to attack instead of your party members. But it also works very well if you give anybody with decent accuracy a crossbow or arbalest and let them shoot. Of course this is not optimized, but you use two or even three party members it's extremely effective against a single boss, too.

What often lets me hesitate when combining Furyshaper with Chanter is the "collision" of summoning abilities. But then... Skald seems to be the best choice imo because a Skald usually doesn't use Chanter summons a lot since they are quite expensive - and at the same time the offensive invocastions (esp. the low level ones) are so cheap.

It still works.

Haha... good question. That was 2 years ago and I'm in my mid forties... : 😵

Found it:

I did a thread or somewhat lenghty post(?) about that stuff some time ago (I guess way over a year ago) that showcased this a bit with evervating blows. This might make CON afflictions nastier than one would expect. They might help you bring down an enemies' HP more quickly because of this behavior. I'll try to find the old post where I did some tests and link it here.

Yes, Stalker's Patience also has the potentially exciting enchantment to skip recovery on 20% of crits. This can also trigger from disengagement attacks. So it can happen that you do a "passive" disengagement attack which might crit and set your current recovery to 0 - so you can strike immediately again. Riposte can do the same - so this actually happens often enough to be fun imo. Add Mob Stance in order to strike immediately after a killing blow and to become faster when engaging more enemies. With Hold the Line, Shield, Unbroken Passive, spear modal and Persistent Distraction you will already have 5 engagement slots even without Guardian Stance. More than that isn't practical imo. I was playing an Unbroken/Streetfighter recently to emphasize on the offense (when surrounded) a bit more and it was a lot better than I thought it would be, even with the seemingly very defensive Gladiator Sword/Bronlar's Phalanx setup I chose. Initially I wanted Devoted/Streetfighter but you can't have sword AND shield proficiency as a Devoted (which sucks) so I went with Unbroken.

The terrify/disengagment thing does work, it's just not 100% reliable because the movement of enemies when terrified is erratic. So sometimes the just move laterally or donÄt move at all and thus they won't trigger disengagement attacks. But if they do it's quite the dmg. Especially if you get Deathblows + Overbearing Guard at some point. The +10 PEN leads to overpenetration pretty regularly (especially with crits which are common, too because disengagement attacks get a big ACC bonus in general) so that you will get the +30% dmg bonus very often, too. Unbroken also get +1 engagement which can be cool because you can afford to pick Warrior or Mob Stance and still get a decent amount of engagement slots even without Guardian Stance. Kapana Taga + Cadhu Scalth is a nice tank setup but it isn't very exciting offensively to be honest, not even with Rogue as second class. Because disengagement attacks are a one-time attacks with no animation and recovery you will get the most out of them with heavier hitting weapons, not light, fast ones like clubs. In other words: it's the dmg per hit that matters, not the dps. Battle Axes + modal can be nice, Swords, maces, spears, esp. Stalker's Patience (also +engagement with the modal) but also two handers (although then you can't use a shield which means you won't get the +1 AR which is pretty nice). Amra with 25 MIG is nice, too because (as I said above) the disengagement attacks will have very high ACC which leads to crits often, triggering Amra's Riven/Wanton Gore.

Geomancer Stalkers can become quite sturdy (bc. self buffs + Stalker passive) - and the high accuracy bonuses make it more easy to land all sorts of spells on enemies. If a party member casts either Champion's Boon (Priest) or Tactical Meld (Cipher) on your animal companion it can engage up to 4 enemies which also gives you the bonus accuracy from Stalker's Link against every one of them - useful for the Lance's AoE hits and spells in general. Unfortunately AoE weapons like Spirit Lance don't work well with Wounding Shot (meaning the wounding effect doesn't get applied to enemies in the area of effect, only the initial target. But Concussive Shot/Tranquilizer does work with the weapon's AoE; that means lots of interrupts and buff-stripping in an AoE. Also Hunter's Claw/Fang etc. work with the AoE iirc, giving you multiple stacks of ACC/dmg or deflection bonus per strike (if you hit multiple enemies with the AoE). As @dgray62said, the Essential Phantom can be useful in all sorts of ways.

Well, I can see a Soulblade who mainly uses ranged weapons to gain focus from rel. safety and use it for shred spells (because especially at low levels they are really cheap) - and maybe only use SA once an enemy appears in front of them or so. With this approach a Single Class Soulblade even makes sense because of Reaping Knives and also Time Parasite and also Shared Nightmare (bigger AoEs). When killing fast the Soulblade can reach high max focus (+10 per kill iirc) and then could spam fast, cheap, large shred spells. So maybe that (or something similar where SA isn't your most-used ability) is a fun way to play a Soulblade (no idea, never tried that). But if I'm doing a melee SA anyway it just feels ineffective to me to use Shred spells instead of just virtually cutting an enemy in half with SA.