Boeroer

Yes, there's a fine arbalest for example that you can get without a fight.

You don't need wounds for it. It is not an active skill like Knockdown or Force of Anguish. It's a defensive modal with two options: You can either buff deflection (option 1) or the rest of the defenses (fortitude, reflex and will, option 2). It's always on, no resources needed. It's an ability, not a talent.

Yes, Pen. Shot is wrong. Do you mean dual wielding or two weapon style? Dual wielding (using two weapons) still is 1.5 (it's not in the list), but Two Weapon Style is "only" 1.2 and comes on top.

If I got it right he wants to use Stormcaller with the chanter. It's a nice combo if you don't want to give it to a ranger or a cipher. Chants would be Sure Handed Ila (also helps the monk) and another chant. Could be something short in order to speed up the phrase count, could be burning lash.

Ah great. Explains why it's so good against high DR targets.

For the Witch Doctor I like female boreal dwarf because the Maegfolc Skulls doesn't look so ugly on them. It's quite small on a female dwarf's head. And boreal dwarf is one of the best races in my opinion. In combination with the hater talents that I used with the Witch Doctor it's the best option in my opinion. Coastal Aumaua would also be ok. Hearth Orlan for Riptide is a good choice - if you attack as a team you will cnstantly have 10% hit/crit conversion. For switching cipher I would surely go for Island Aumua. One more gunshot is worth a lot. Wood elf ranged chanter is good. Your paladin doesn't need to be the MC in order to gain benefits from Faith and Conviction. It will scale with level if he's not the MC. It's not that much of a difference at later levels. And hirelings don't suffer from the wrong disposition of the MC - so with a hireling pala you would be on the safe side. Talents like Gift from the Machine and so on may be better suited for the Lady of Pain or the Witch Doctor. The Witch Doctor likes a lot of MIG as does the Lady of Pain.

Combusting Wounds + Alacrity + Expose proc + two projectiles with Blast is nice.

Yes. And its color is also a difficult thing. It looks kinda stupid with the most outfits. Tidefall just looks like a badass sword. This glowing dagger looks too fancy on most chars for my taste.

That is absolutely right. If it looks crappy I don't use it. One reason why I don't use Drawn in Spring too often... The White Crest armor + helmet + White Spire look so good together and are also good items by themselves. I love that combo.

Bear is just weak. Antelope is better. But for me it's wolf or stag for the win. Great damage if you know how to use them. Pets are no good at tanking in my opinion - unless you can provide constant healing - then they are god mode tanks because they have no health and defenses + DR don't matter that much. Another reason to think about the Kind Wayfarer paladin + somebody like Riptide who uses Shod-in-Faith plus a chanter with Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits. Durgan Steel shortness is another reason why the Witch Doctor can be great. He uses his fists and as soon as he has two wounds you want to summon The Long Pain (lvl 7 ability). It's so good and you don't need durgan steel. I'm really confused that so few people use this ability with a monk. One of the most powerful things in the game in my opinion. Another nice setup for a melee ranger + pet is Tidefall + high survival in order to get max flanking bonus damage. Since you can always engage and flank together with your pet, you'll get all bonuses all the time: Appr. Sneak Attack, Predator's Sense, Merciless Companion, flanking bonus (up to +60% with camping bonus + item), Stalker's Link, Stalker's Torc. You and your pet combined will do tremendous single target damage.

As I said: I'm not sure about that. Tidefall is great on a barb as well because of the carnage-draining. Drawn in Spring is kinda meh for a barb in my opinion. Not that it's weak - it just doesn't fit. Only my personal preference.

As far as I know the damage of wounding is based on the weapon damage minus DR (?) while elemental lashes are based on the weapon damage before DR. But don't quote me on that. When you reach 0 recovery Tidefall is better in terms of DPS. But with Drawn in Spring it's way easier to reach 0 recovery - even with a shield. Persistence, Drawn in Spring and Tidefall are indeed the top dps weapons for their style (two handed, one handed, bows). Maybe Bittercut+Spirit of Decay is still competing with Drawn in Spring even after the sabre nerf. Blade otEP can also be better if you have trouble reaching 0 recovery. Generally speaking wounding is the best enchantment for DPS. And the side effect that it triggers Predator's Sense is also great. But as others said damage isn't necessarily the most important thing. CC and disables generally are more important in my opinion than pure damage if you can process then reliably. It all comes down to your chars, yourparty comp. and how you play.

If you add Deep Wounds with high MIG it's a nice effect. The Mad Hornet build I did in my early days was using as many raw DoTs as possible with Persistence which also has wounding.

It profits twice from MIG because MIG influences the weapon damage (wounding damage, like lashes, will get calculated based on your damage roll) AND MIG also buffs the wounding "lash" itself because it's a DoT effect. This is unique. Elemental lashes and wounding don't influence each other. Elemental lashes have to overcome 1/4 DR, wounding is raw damage. No DR involved as Jerek said

Yes, because it comes so late. You can get Tidefall and Hours of St. Rumbalt so early. It's always a hard time for me to decide between Hours and Tidefall. A fighter with maxed ACC is great for Hours, while a fighter with maxed MIG is great for Tidefall. If you have both it's really hard. Especially because Hours also has annihilation. Constant knockdowns with +50% base damage against high priority targets is great. I guess it comes down to your INT: if it is low then Tidefall (wounding damage gets applied more quickly) - if it's high then Hours (prone lasts longer).

Instead of Prondroni use the Witch Doctor monk. He can be played in melee but also ranged with a lot of fun. You can't bind Stormcaller to a rogue, only chanter, cipher and ranger. A chanter with Sure Handed Ila and The Champion (stacks) can achieve tremendous rate of fire and will proc the stunning cone more often than one might think. Before getting the Champion you can use Outlander's Frenzy. But such a chanter is not suited well for The Dragon Thrashed. He will alter between Sure Handed Ila and maybe the first lvl chant that gives Reflex + move speed. He will use summons to help with distractions and support with AoE regeneration and invocations while firing his bow. Sure Handed Ila will also speed up the monk with his flying fists. If you want to try a ranger with max pet damage, use either a melee one with Tidefall (see Riptide & the Pit Fright build) or with Persistence hunting bow. Wounding will constantly trigger Predator's Sense for your wolf (pet with the highest single target dps). The Riptide build is well suited for offtanking by the way. If you have no priest and don't want to use potions of Spirit Shield to avoid interrupts, you can spend some more points for resolve. Any cipher will do. If you like a bit more micro but supergood focus flow at the start of a battle, use an Island Aumaua with Arms Bearer and Quick switch + four arquebuses. You can fire right away and have a ton of focus at the start of the battle. If you want no vancian casters but still a bit of nice casting then try a spellslinging rogue. Basically you optimize him for spell bind items and scrolls: high MIG,INT,DEX and PER. Then try to get your hands on any item with a spell binding: the Sun Touched Mail, Amulet of Summer Solstice (both 3 Sunbeams per rest), the Flames of Fair Rhian (3 fireballs per rest, siphon knowledge from Maerwald after slaying him), Scath Gwannek (Winter Wind), Bittercut (Vile Thorns), Ring of Searing Flames, Swaddling Sheet,the White Crest armor and so on. He can still weild sabres and stuff for melee, being a "full" rogue. I made a theme build with the Sorcerer's Apprentice build (it's focused on Missiles though, but as an inspiration). The basic trick is that Deathblows work with spells. This makes fireballs and such really powerful (double damage). The rogue's high ACC and hit/crit conversion is also great with spells. Deep Wounds works in an AoE with all spells that do pierce, crush or slash damage. To things like Twin Stones, Overbearing Wave and stuff will cause Deep Wounds in a big AoE. A paladin with Zealous Focus seems to be a good option. If you want a challenge try the Darcozzi Commendatory: he is mainly ranged and uses Zealus Focus, the marking pistol and Coordinated Attacks and Inspiring Exhortation to buff a ally's ACC by +36. Another very nice and unusual build for paladins is the damaging healbot, a Kind Wayfarer skilled for melee killing. He uses as many on-kill-effects as he can get (Executioner's Hood, Strange Mercy, Inspiring Triumph and so on). Every time he uses FoD or kills somebody he will heal the whole party. Best synergy is with a monn godlike. This guy and the Riptide ranger together with the chanter's regeneration can make sure your party's endurance is always full.

Marking is not bugged. You have to use the marking weapon with Ploi, not the Lady. Then, when Ploi and the Lady attack the same target, the Lady will get +20 ACC. +10 from Cladhaliath and +10 from Coordinated Attacks (Ploi's ability). I meant +10 ACC for the Lady, not Cladhaliath as a weapon. If you want to see if marking works, you have to look at the combat log and whatch the ACC with which the Lady does her hit rolls: it should be 20 higher than her usual value that is listed on the char sheet. There is no other visual indicator! If you want to buff the pet's damage, then I would strongly recommend Tidefall for the Lady. She can do Knockdown which triggers Merciless Companion, but she will also cause wounding with Tidefall which will trigger Predator's Sense (+50% damage) on the pet - which is way stronger than Merciless Companion. Hours of St. Rumbalt is a nice alternative. The question about proc chance of overbearing shows that you don't know how it works (which is totally OK because the game does a poor job of describing such things): Overbearing and stunning enchantments *always* proc when you do a critical hit. There is no chance like on The Grey Sleeper or other weapons which have a spell chance of 10% or 5% per hit. Those are two different things. Spell chance will trigger with this certain chance - and every hit (and also crit) has the chance of 10% or 5% or whatever the description says, to proc the effect. But Overbearing and stunning only proc on crit, but here it's on *every* crit. When you hit nothing happens, you have to crit. Therefore, Hours of St. Rumbalt will proc a prone attack every time you deal a crit! With Disciplined Barrage and a priest with Devotions of the Faithful fighters crit a lot. Add a marking paladin to their side like Ploi, the fighter will have additional +20 ACC and will most likely crit with nearly every strike causing prone every time.

It's one of the few DoT effects where the overall damage is not altered by INT. INT only determines how long it takes to apply the damage. So, as MaxQuest said: low INT is somewhat better than high. Other DoTs like this that come to my mind are (Runner's) Wounding Shot and Enduring Flames.

That's the main reason why Drawn in Spring is one of the top DPS weapons, I think the best when you clone it: it's very fast, has higher ACC than most other weapons AND works great against high DR targets because of wounding. The rest of the fast weapons (flails for example) are quite weak when it comes to damage - because a lot of foes have fairly high DR values which eat away too much of the somewhat whimpy damage. Stilettos are a bit better because of 3 DR bypass - but that's a value that is fix and doesn't profit from dmg mods, crits etc. Higher base damage is better against DR most of the time. By the way: one handed weapons with average speed have the same animation and recovery time as two handers. Only difference is that you can dual wield them and get +50% speed. Don't ask me why the one is called average and the other slow.

Rogue + Hours of St. Rumbalt did better than a dual battleaxe rogue in the same playthrough when I had two rogues in the party. Annihilation and the higher base damage, paired with the prone on crit and ACC III (which is great that early) is a good combination of enchantments - also in terms of damage. It has two damage types by the way. The chain-prone also helps with survivability - better than interrupts which will also occur, but less often. I don't think that this weapon causes a lot less DPS than dual sabres or battle axes - eapecially if you look at high DR targets and take resistances/immunities against slash into account. And it's an alternative way to trigger Deathblows often and efficiently (it doesn't cost you any per rest spells) as asked in the title. Tall Grass is maybe better if you want to avoid getting hit at all and attack from behind your front line. This allows for a more glassy build.

Blunderbuss could be really cool if Body Attunement from two different ciphers stacked (does it?). When using a blunderbuss, don't forget to bring your Ring of Searing Flames (or use the wizard, he can also cast Expose Vulnerabilities).

So, was he maimed before or did you turn off maiming in the game options?

They are good at dealing damage with a weapon and at casting spells. This makes them attractive I guess. For me, the best part of the cipher are his mind control spells. Those can trivialize even the hardest encounters if you have somebody who can raise your ACC high enough (priest and/or paladin). A fighter can also be good - if you play him as a disruptor who quickly kills casters behind the enemy lines he can be very effective and also a lot of fun. He can both be hard to kill and deal a lot of single target damage and CC.

In my experience, chanter and monk are WAY more powerful than a ranger and can easily compete with a barb. I also thingk that wizards are stronger than ciphers by far. But this is of course all influenced by one's playstyle. I have no problem with resting, there are limitless camping supplies. And it's not the casters why I rest often - I like to combine high self heals with offensive skilling in order to get sturdy but also damaging chars. So most of the time I have to rest because of health (if I don't want to gulp down potions of Infuse oVE all the time. This obviously makes vancian casters very strong. When you can handle normal encounters without using all your spells (use summoned weapons or per encounter abilites instead and so on) then all your spells can go into those encounters which are very hard - which makes them easy. I don't like to play with more than 3 casters anymore because it becomes too easy, even with upscaled content and whatnot. So for me, the power levels would be (starting with the strongest, special reasons in brackets): - wizard - priest, druid - cipher (mind control), chanter (The Dragon Thrashed) - paladin, barbarian (HoF), monk (Torment's Reach, The Long Pain) - ranger (Stormcaller, having a pet that has no health pool), fighter (Charge) - nothing - still nothing - Concelhaut's Skull... in a block of concrete at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (makes funnny noises) - rogue (looks funny when he falls on his face) This is also based on my experience while soloing. But "power" also includes things like support, buffing, cc and all that suff, not just damage or survivability. But there are some exceptions. Special builds can turn a class upside down - like a rogue specialized on slinging spells, which can be powerful and great fun. So this order is not strict for me. And it's more based on a feeling (gathered during countless playthroughs, all PoTD) than on facts.

Hours of St. Rumbalt is the better weapon. Because you can't enchant the Grey Sleeper it's inferior to unique weapons which you can enchant with a lash and even more important: with durgan steel. The only class which can make good use of the Grey Sleeper is the barbarian in my opinion. Another good alternative would be the Blade of the Endless Paths (estoc) or Drake's Bell (estoc). White Spire is also nice. The two hander with the best dps on a high MIG character is Tidefall. If you're looking for max. damage, take that. By the way: why don't you use a marking weapon with Ploi? You're skipping +10 ACC on your Lady of Pain. Very good with Hours of St. Rumbalt.