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Exactly. Brisk Recitation for maximum phrase point generation. This build is about the invocations mostly, not the effect of the phrases. The Pindown Poet build is the opposite: there it's more about the phrases and less about the invocations. But that may be a bit different for you. Which phrases are good with the Ceaseless Siren depends a bit on what your party composition is. For example: for a party that doesn't have many resistances and not too great defenses it can be very good to pick the 3 resistance chants and sing them with Brisk Recitation. Switch to the one that fits the current enemies (for example if you get frightened/terrified or weakened a lot you'd switch to the phrase "One Dozen Stood" with Brisk Recitation - which would convert terrified-->frightened with the first hit and 3 secs later turn frightened-->shaken and then 3 sec later shaken-->nothing). Very good setup to get your party affliction-free withouzt fuzz. I personally didn't want to spend any ability points for special phrases - except for Many Lives later - but instead I wanted to use the points somewhere else. But it can make sense to pick some phrases if the party lacks something: The Long Night's Drink is a good debuffing phrase, Ancient Memory can be great for a party that leacks healing - or Mercy & Kindness if you use Pain Block a lot (it's a great single target healing spell imo). Yes, partly. Usually at level-up I pick something - and if I don't end up using it I will retrain and remove it. Amplified Wave was such an ability. How I played the Ceaseless Siren in my case (versatile CC and summons, not that much damage dealing) I rarely had use for Amplified Wave. Other party members filled the role of damage dealing way better - and Amplified Wave doesn't provide long-lasting CC. When lots of my enemies are already mind controlled, paralyzed and/or engaged by summons etc. already I rarely saw the need for Amplified Wave. To me it's often better to keep the disables up and do strong CC - while my party members do the damaging part (who were way better at it in this case). Soul Shock and Disintegrate where there to still have options for AoE or single target damage should I need it. And yes, I think Soul Shock's damage/focus cost ratio is pretty good (and shock dmg is a nice alternative dmg type). I could also spare an ability point that way. But if you feel you could profit from using Amplified Wave I would pick it. It's a nice spell in general. Sometimes it just doesn't fit though like in my case. This only becomes apparent when you play imo. Hard to predict what works best. Luckily there's retraining - so a bit of experimenting comes with little risk.

Hi, Critical hits with timed hostile effects (including afflictions but also DoT effects etc.) will cause +25% duration. Overpenetration does nothing for duration. If the spell has an attack roll (accuracy vs. defense) it can critically hit (there are some minor exceptions, e.g. Carnage which can never crit, only hit). CC spells with no damage still do an attack roll - so they can critically hit (+25% duration). If the spell has a PEN-value it can overpenetrate. Should be only spells that deal non-raw damage. Raw damage spells have no PEN value and thus cannot under- or overpenetrate. Many spells that have multiple effects and will have more than one attack roll: one for the damage, one for the affliction. In case of Venombloom (Druid spell) for example: AoE: 8-12 Raw | Accuracy vs. Deflection per 3.0 sec (first attack roll for damage - can crit, but no PEN bc. raw dmg) If successful: Weakened for 8.0 sec | Accuracy vs. Fortitude per 3.0 sec (second attack roll for weaken - can crit, but no PEN bc. no damage) Target: Frightened for 8.0 sec | Accuracy vs. Will (third attack roll for frighten - can crit, but no PEN bc. no damage) Overpenetration: no effect on duration. Crits: +25% duration - usually those abilities like Crippling Strike also do two separate attack rolls: one for the damage and if that at least grazes, a second one for the affliction component. You can see that in the description of the ability. It will say something like Target: Full Attack (that's the normal weapon attack you do, your weapon accuracy vs. enemies' deflection) If successful: Hobbled for 15.0 sec | Accuracy vs. Fortitude If the ability has PEN value it's for the damage part. Crippling Strike uses the PEN of your weapons and has an additional +2 PEN. THis value doesn't matter for the hobbling roll. Sometimes the affliction component does no attack roll but is an auto-hit (no graze, no crit). That is the case with Shadow Step's paralyze effect (Rogue's upgrade for Escape). But this is very rare. Usually it's two separate rolls: one for the damage and one for the affliction (or whatever additional effect a weapon ability might provide)

Thank you. But I'm not the only one - you're all still here, answering, helping, sharing weird ideas, offering free & cool mods and so on. Great community really, especially all you guys of the enduring inner circle.

Huha, I updated the post with a video link. Also here:

Hello, updated the post with a video link. You can also find it here:

Hey, I added the video link to the post. You can also find it here:

"Dicksite"

Hey, I added the video link to the build post. You can also find it here:

I added the link to the YouTube video to the build post. Here it is again:

Yeah, that would also be a viable way to implement it I think. But on the other hand the potential joy of building up a collection of grimoires would be gone (or at least it would ne mechanically meaningless).

PoE's grimoire system was easily exploitable because you could edit grimoires learn spells from grimoires, even the unique ones retrain characters which leads to a situation where you would write several grimories wit all you spells you learned so far, retrain and pick spells at level up that you didn't know already. Then alter a grimore to put the new spells in and so on. At the end you'll have all spells there are and all it costs is some money. All the spells but no grimore needed anymore. Not that I hated that, but I guess that was not the dev's intention. Hence the new grimoire system in Deafire: you cannot learn spells from grimoires but instead you can cast them directly out of the grimoire. Which isn't as exploitable but still feels "wizard-ish" I think. I agree though that being able to awrite a grimoire would feel nice. Not alter grimoires of other wizards (maybe those are magically "fixed" or locked) - but at least alter (or create) your own grimoire. Sure, it would be a more powerful mechanic than having to collect and curate a whole bunch of grimoires to get your favorite spell selection without having to pick them all at level up - but not gamebreaking I think. One could write down a collection of your favorite spells (or your favorite backup spells) which would feel cool and which would mitigate the need for multiple ones (maybe only the ones with unique spells, which is what most players are doing anyway). To counterbalance the mechanical advantage this would give wizards over other casters I would make it so that rewriting one's grimoire (or creating a new one) required pricy/rare ingredients which may also be used to enchant items. That way you would think twice about "wasting" grimoire ressources maybe. Don't know, just an idea.

They are ludicrous and silly. That's my opinion.

The list is a Google spreadsheet. I don't have the link anymore but you can google it with "woke games pillars recommended" iirc. I just saw it because Josh lol'ed about it on Twitter. I believe it's from those people who did that silly "woke game detector" channel on steam.

Well, it surely wasn't me who composed that ludicrous list.

I do not. I have three daughters and want them to play games like Deadfire and PoE, having fun and feeling seen by devs - without getting the impression that those games are catering to the hegemonic masculinity of some vocal gamors™. I had no problem whatsoever with women depicted as leaders, pirate captains, thugs, even gods - in fact I didn't even notice. When there's a strong female, the strong male counterpart isn't far away and vice versa: Castrol & Alvari, Furrante/Aldeys, Hazanui/Atsura and so on. Which was fair and cool imo. Is that different from our own history and current society? Sure. Does that make me uncomfortable? Absolutely not. Do I think that sales numbers had anything to do with this (in 2018)? Come on... Btw:

I didn't even know how Soulcalibur plays... had to google that.

I love those (sometimes silly) vindications of seemingly unfitting class combos. I really do... Makes me want to play one actually.

INT has an effect on Carnage. It changes the AoE size: Konstanten about to attack Edér (with 15 INT): Konstanten with 5 INT: You can use a mod mafe by @Noqn to add an AoE indicator to Carnage so that its AoE size becomes visible: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/448 It doesn't change Carnage, it just adds the visual indicator. Sneak damage has no effect indeed. Carnage is implemented like a spell basically. Cannot crit, too (that's why Blood Frenzy doesn't work with it, only Spirit Frenzy). But it scales with Power Level.

I loaded your save game and Twin Stones is broken. When I reload it briefly works (two lines appear an can get moved around me) and then it gets stuck in a fixed angle and I cannot release the spell. When I cast seomthing else the AoE indicator adds more lines. It doesn't get fixed like it used to with my druid savegame. AI can still cast the spell normally though! I made a test AI behaviour and let it cast Twin Stones on enemy sight. It does that without problems, while it shows more and more weird/fixed indicator lines which don't correlate with the direction the two stones are actually flying (see green lines by me in the screenshot below). Sometimes the charater gets those casting hickups (see combat log - were you have to cancel the action manually and then it works):

Nope. I started the game and loaded a save: Twin Stones was buggy. I quit the game, looked for files but didn't alter anything (and didn't close Steam either). Started the game gain and the spell was fixed. Just like that. I'm currently at music school with one of my kids. Will try to download your savegame later when I'm back home.

That's obviously not the case when pairing the Barbarian with a class that has good ranged abilities (like Ranger). The only ability that the Barb will have to pick and which he will not be able to utilize is Carnage - and unlike in PoE, Deadfire's Carnage is not very impactful anyway. Everything else will either work with a ranged weapon such as Frostseeker - or you simply don't need to pick it (like One Stands Alone or Interrupting Blows). Frenzy, Bloodlust, Bloody Slaughter, Blood Thirst, Spirit Frenzy and Blood Frenzy all work beautifully with a war bow at range. Barbaric Smash is a great finisher with Frostseeker, too (only "wasting" the Carnage part). Leap is great for a ranged character. Pair the Mage Slayer with a Ranger and you'll have a great spell disruptor. It's not what I would recommend every time - but it's an effective way to play a different Mage Slayer - and it's fun. If you use Effort/Hemorrhaging you can obviously do both: engage in melee and still apply spell disruption in an AoE (with shouts or any other class combo's abilities, for example a Troubadour's chant every 3 secs. So it's just your regular melee Mage Slayer with a little AoE twist which raises its usefulness towards mobs. If you use Instruments of Pain you can also use all your melee prowess but still be able to quickly take on casters at range - even over 10m if you decide to use a reach weapon such as Wicked Beast for example, which would also be a multihit weapon which would vastly improve your Swift Flurry procs, too; shutting down casters very quickly if not outright killing them. Deadfire can reward you for thinking outside the box. That also includes the barbarian class: a ranged Berserker/Streetfighter with Essence Interrupter is one of the strongest hirelings you can build for the early game (for helping you at the digsite for example). Of course you can play a great melee-only striker Barb (that's the assumed primary role anyway), too. But you are not forced to in terms of effectiveness. For an effective and thematically coherent strict melee Mage Slayer I would pick a Mage Slayer/Monk with Swift Flurry - and I wouldn't use Wahai Poraga but Sun & Moon + Mohora Tanga. A Full Attack from Stunning Surge would not only stun the enemy (= no casting for the foreseeable future) but also have a high chance of refund (3 attack rolls for potential crit right away), would apply three stacks of spell disruption right away (also 3* Carnage with huge AoE size due to Turning Wheel), if Mohora Tanga crits and applies Red Flag Flying it's even 4 stacks of spell disruption with the first attack. Then maximum chance for crit chains via Swift Flurry/HbD (because Sun and Moon's dual heads and Red Flag Flying potentially triggering Swift Flurry and itself(! loop over loop). Would be devastating against any foe but especially against single casters in the back rows. Drawback - can shut down your game if you get too lucky with Red Flag Flying (too many loop iterations and the game just closes itself). If I would want to totally exploit the Mage Slayer spell disruption I'd pick Effort + Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak and roll a Mage Slayer/Blood Mage with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and then cast pulsing, non-damaging spells such as Binding Web, Slicken and/or Pull of Eora - after I used Spirit Frenzy. The invisibility will not get lifted as long as I don't deal damage, Effort's Hemorrhaging will piggyback on all crits I do (like from spell pulses), Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak's stun, Spirit Frenzy's stagger and my spell disruption would piggyback on Hemorrhaging again. I could stay invisible for the whole time A's Br. Departure lasts, casting debuffs and at the same time apply stun and spell disruption with those spells. And the stagger from frenzy as well as the stun from the cloak can trigger Hemorrhaging - which can trigger the stun ad stagger again (loop). I would immediately shut down all mobs with stuns except the ones which I cannot crit reliably (mostly bosses). Those may take a few secs longer. After the invisibility ends everybody (who's not superdefender_200) in AoE range would have 100% spell disruption, too. This loop doesn't shut the game down fortunately. The only things that suck are the thematic clash (I mean a wizard who's violently opposing arcane magic, eh...) and that the invisibility sometimes doesn't take bc. of my own friend-or-foe spell resistance. But as a Blood Male I could repeat the spell as often as I wanted (if enough health). Another minor drawback is that Blood Sacrifice lifts the invisibility, too (bc. deals damage). I wouldn't play it though because Mage Slayer/Wizard just feels so wrong. PS: nothing to do with Mage Slayer but Effort/Stalking Cloak: one can play a wizard/whatever with the great sword and the cloak, using Brilliant Departure + cc spell and have a friendly SC Druid with Entropy jn the party. Entropy only loses it's 3 "converting stacks" of 100% hit-to-crit if the converted roll deals direct damage. CC rolls don't substract from it. So the wizard could uphold an endless stun cycle on almost any enemy if the druid casts Entropy on them first. Entropy has no duration so it will stay on the enemy forever as long as you don't deal direct damage (pure DoTs like Insect Swarm or Disintegrate don't count as direct damage!). So as long a the wizard stays invisible his Hemorrhaging/stun combo will loop on the enemy because all hits will be crits. The occasional graze can be overriden with multiple attack rolls (pulses, spirit Frenzy piggybacks and so on). This can be used to stunlock an enemy for a long, long time. It doesn't lock MIG resistant/immune enemies - or ones with absurd defenses though (see Belranga right out the gates). Again: this loop doesn't shut down the game. It can create annoying sound effects though.

Whoa! Restarted the game, loaded my save game again that had the botched AoE indicator and suddenly that's fixed and works like before. What is this witchcraft?