Boeroer

Another thing about Second Wind/athletics: If you have a Fire Godlike then don't use Second Wind (or the watcher abilities) when you are under 50% endurance! You will hit yourself with Battle Forged. At higher levels this is suicide. It's obviously a bug.

Both would be cool. Why not both?

I'd like them to give rogues a few spoons of codliver oil and some anabolics.

They are all three very nice and viable weapons. I would choose the one which "feels" the nicest and is in line with my character and role concept. If you like BotEP and its speed (which is indeed impressive, especially if paired with Durgan Steel and maybe also Gauntlets of Swift Action) then you should take it. And a fighter who can provide Marking (+10 ACC) for an ally is also nice.

I thought I posted the following styles already, but I can't find them. So here I go again:

With athletics it's debateable: I personally would never put points into athletics when I can put them into survival. It's because Second Wind is a slow cast, it has a long recovery phase, it heals for a small amount of endurance only and doesn't scale with level. It's ok at the beginning of the game, but falls off quickly. There is a use though: if you have a character with very low INT, a lot of MIG and no other self healing capabilities (and you are really annoyed by potions or don't want to use consumables) then it can be good to use athletics. I just don't get why OBS decided for linear progression. If you don't plan to use a scroll with a character (or don't want to use scrolls at all) you can complety skip lore. If you want to use scrolls, scythesong's absolutely right. Stealth can be good for Backstab-Rogues or scouts or characters who want to steal stuff unseen - even characters with good (ranged) opening strikes can profit from it because out-of-combat per-encounter abilites/spells (like Flames of Devotion) will be reset to their uses if you manage to fire and hit before you get detected and combat starts. For all others it's completely useless. Mechanics, as scythesong said, is all or nothing. 10 is ok for most cases, but 12+ is more convenient in the high-level areas, because there will be some traps and chests that need it.

Antipathetic Field can be a reload trigger if the enemy you targeted moves unexpectedly and the beam hits your party. So watch out! Ectopsychic Echo is lot safer to use since it's foe only.

Ach dammit - I meant "Tidefall (with LOW INT)" - sorry! But you already figured it out. No, with a fighter I consider INT to be very useful - so I wouldn't lower it and I also wouldn't take Tidefall I guess (unless I do a very special type of fighter with no Disciplined Barrage and other stuff that profits from INT). I was just talking about Tidefall's dps potential in general and didn't meant it as a recommendation for your fighter. BotEP should be great.

@Fluffle: I can't send stuff from my paypal-address. It's just an alias that leads to my "real" email address. How do we want to solve that? Of course the email I would send you would be originated from the the same domain... since I have my own and it's my family name. So that might not be too hard to figure out. What do you say?

^ I completely agree. Lore is needed for casting scrolls. So, if you want your Edér to be able to cast a Fireball every now and then or to use a Prayer against Fear, he'll need a bit of lore.

Tidefall (with high low INT) might be the number one dps two hander (I'm pretty sure it is). You have to realize that the wounding damage is calculated before DR and then gets applied as raw damage. This enchantment is a lot stronger than elemental lashes. Not only because of the raw damage, but also because high MIG buffs the wounding damage even more (this is special and doesn't work with the usual lashes). So, it adds a second lash that totally circumvents DR. And if you INT is really low then the complete wounding damage gets applied very quickly (under 5 secs) and it stacks, too. I'm playing a high-MIG-rogue with 1 INT + Tidefall + Backstab at the moment and I have to say the damage is so good (even with grazes) that it's jawdropping. At the same time the draining numbers are so good that this guy is almost sturdy even without any other self healing. I reached 1 INT by dumoing it to 3 and then putting on the Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection (+2 MIG, +2 CON, -2 INT, -2 RES). Now I have 1 INT and 1 RES and a reeeally crappy will defense. Sparing Sky Dragon Eyes is a good point. Since BotEP comes superb this is an advantage. If you nuke everything into the ground with Shadowflame then you certainly don't need prone.

I like the BotEP, but I would never trade my Hours of St. Rumbalt for it (if I have a class/build which is capable of having high ACC, decent INT and is not too slow). Here are my reasons: - two damage types: huge advantage over any weapon with single damage type - prone chaining: after the first crit your target will most likely suffer from prone, lowering its deflection even more, which leads to a higher crit chance. - survivability: prone enemies don't hit you or others - very high crit damage: it has Annihilation, which will give your crits +50% damage (additional to the usual +50%). Add the Merciless Hand (+30%), Durgan Steel (+30%), Dungeon Delver (+10%) and Azalin's Helmet (+10%). Your crit damage bonus will be +180%. Combined with the high base damage those crits are devastating. - the higher the level, the more crits: as shown, crits with Rumbalt are better than crits with BotEP. The more you advance in the game the easier it is to score crits. - great enchantment composition: Annihilation and overbearing is a great combo as shown above. And Accurate III is quite cool because it gives you a lot of ACC early, but you can still remove it and put on better quality like superb and so on. So Accurate III doesn't block enchament points like Marking of the BotEP does. BotEP has Marking, which can be a very strong enchantment, but it doesn't do anything for your own dps but takes away enchantment points that you could invest otherwise. So, for me it's a nice weapon for a paladin with Coordinated Attacks for example or any other support char who also wants to deal good damage, but the composition of enchantments and the single weapon damage type doesn't seem to be too great for a dedicated dps guy - even though it has speed. To be honest, I would even take Tidefall before I would consider BotEP for my two handed dps guy. Especially if my INT is lowish but my MIG is high.

Bad luck. I once had the same with shimmering cloaks or rings of searing flames.

Yes - if you want to use Blast as a DPS tool. Imagine you hit four enemies at once with Blast and now, with Penetrating Blast, you'll have 5 more DR bypass. That's like +20 damage per shot. And it has no drawbacks. It's not a blast effect on its own. Penetrating Blast just modifies the normal Blast.

Great! I hope there are still amulets and cloaks with spell bindings (like Amulet of Summer Solstice and Shimmering Cloak).

Me too.

What's that? Amulet plus cloak? Two belts? One of those might be the trinket, but there still is either two belts or two neck items.

What is your question, young padawan?

Living Lahands!

A child of the wheel.

Rogues have Coordinated Positioning which can be what you guys were talking about. Just make a shorter range version talent for everyone and it's done.

Very good feature! Thumbs up for me™.

It is possible. As far as I know race and class don't matter. Only your cultural background determines which "profession" you can choose. Only culture which doesn't let you pick aristocrat should be the Living Lands.

That would be funny - but I hope you don't imply that Black Flag is Heavy Metal.

It's a pity that Rymrgand's Mantle doesn't heal your self inflicted freeze damage like from Chillfog. This would be so cool combined with healing mods and Infuse with Vital Essence. Like Sacred Immolation but with blind and lvl 4.