Boeroer

Then why not use the Spiritual Greatsword that a Priest of Berath can summon? It totally fits the theme of course - and with Lightning Strikes and the Spiritual Great Sword you'd have two elemental lashes on your blade which is good (multiplicative dmg bonuses). And if you feel that it's not so hard to stay alive after all you could still use Turning Wheel (instead of Iron Wheel) which would add another lash to the weapon, leaving you at +15% shock, +20% burn (at 10 wounds) and up to 30% corrode iirc. That's +65% multiplicative dmg which is a great dmg bonus, especially when combined with +30% dmg from the higher MIG. If you feel that he's too squishy you can still use Iron Wheel. I would still use a backup weapon - Effort is good if you enchant it with Hemorrhaging. Because the sicken/hobble effect even works with ypur spells - and the wounding enchantment is good, too. Another fitting two handed weapon is Engoliero do Espirs (Berath-themed). Blade Feast also works with spells (kills from spells I mean). Voidwheel is also nice, but a bit of a suicidal tendency as Helwalker. Twin Eels fits 100% of course, but it would come a bit later. Its heal on kill also works with spells and all sorts of damage you deal.

The phrase Many Lives Pass by generates skeletons that don't scale so they are supereasy to kill. Because of that a Troubadour+Brisk Recitation (a skeleton every 3 secs) is actually better than a Beckoner for such a Chilling Grave build (once you get Many Lives Pass By that is).

Totally normal und useful to tag users imo.

Most "do x on y" weapon effects do that. Since they originate from the weapon they count as attacks from that weapon. Def. less stressfull for the hardware but still OP I fear. Yes, since the Chillfog hit rolls count as weapon attacks they also not only count for the number of stacks but also paralyze enemies themselves.

Berserker/Beckoner with Grave Calling is pretty bonkers. Have Modwyr in the second weapon slot. Frenzy (confused), kill a skeleton with the sabre --> procs a Chillfog which counts as weapn attack which kills the other skeletons --> they all proc Chillfogs and so on... switch to Modwyr and back to get rid of the confusion and then walz in (else you will die). Usually the fight is over in seconds. But it may fry your graphics card because of the multiple chillfogs all pusing at once...

Or you play a Berserker/Fury, bind it to the Druid class and still be able to have Static Thunder with the Barb's Carnage. That is actually a pretty fun combo if you have a good healer becaus your elemental spells can get tremendous penetration. I obtained it several times when being underleveled but I don't recall the exact level. Those fampyrs are pretty hard to beat though. It may be quite easy with a solo Assassin/Paladin using Lover's Embrace + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy. You could just bring an Assassin/Paladin hireling for that purpose and then dump him afterwards. Once Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy can be picked it shouldn't be too hard to sneak to individual fampyrs, deliver a Gouding Strike with Lover's Embrace from stealth, follow up with Brand Enemy and use Smoke Veil to retreat out of sight and wait until one fampyr is dead. Repeat until all are dead. The Assassin's ACC bonus from stealth (+25 ACC) as well as the single handed usage of the Dagger (+17 ACC) should help to reliably hit them. You could already try at lvl 4 I guess without Gouging Strike but with Flames of Devotion + Ring of Focused FLames + Lover's Embrace. ACC should be comparable but the process will take a bit longer because lot less damage over time. And you will be having bad stealth which might make it difficult to approach the fampyrs without being seen. When it's strictly about crits maybe Necklace of the Harvest Moon or Precogntion for the neck slot. For a Berserker a Ring of Greater Regeneration isn't bad. By the way I would use a pet that heals on kill. Some do +20 health on kill for you only and some do +10 health on kill for the whole party. Abraham is such a pet for example. It can help to manage the Berserker's self damage better. For long fights against high-defense foes it's especially interesting. But even in short fights it's good because the marking effect works right after your first crit and helps to crit even more. It's mostly everything skeletal and also some spirits (flame blight). It's one of the most common immunities unfortunately. Pierce-resistant foes (ones with very high pierce armor) are usually not a problem because Devoted + Berserker + Estoc leads to pretty ridiculous penetration. There may be some foes like Steelclad constructs taht have higher AR than you have PEN - but not really that many. But against the pierce-immune targets you should either use your fists + Monastic Unarmed Training (no drawback, but you need to invest an extra ability point) or a backup weapon, preferably with crush damage (like Quarterstaff or Morning Star). You will have reduced accuracy with that weapon but it still helps... and you don't have to pick up Monastic Unarmed Training.

Eh? Against high AR enemies you'll have plenty of PEN (+4 from Tenacious and Devoted and +1 compared to normal battle axes). Against a bit of underpenetration Bleeding Cuts does help. Bleeding Cuts is also very good against tough single enemies. There aren't a lot of tough enemies that are immune to slash damage. Why would one struggle with fists (having taken Monastic Unarmed Training of course) in those rel. rare cases? Anyway: LD's Voulge is also great for this class combo. Dual dmg - with one of them being shock - is useful. If one knows where to get it then it's obtainable very early and it's even free. The upgrading process is pretty easy, too and costs no resources which is an advantage. You cannot upgrade it to the quality levels you could enchant Amra to though (or other unique weapons). But I think that's just a rel. minor drawback. I like it even better on Berserker/Monk or Devoted/Monk though because a multiple occurance of Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming often has pretty spectacular chain reaction effects. Another nice weapon for crit builds with Berserker/Devoted is the Willbreaker. With Brute Force + Body Blows you will potentially generate more crits (and also when using Clear Out and Mule Kick), it has a crit conversion, potential DoT and dual damage as well as good base PEN - and the fortitude debuff is very useful for your whole party most of times. Since it's not obtainable super early (but not too late either) one can use the nice Saru Sichr from Arkemyr's basement until one can get the Willbreaker. Saru Sichr's DoT is pretty funky and more potent than it seems (it stacks with itself like Bleeding Cuts and has the same trigger mechanic on hit which makes Bleeding Cuts so effective) - but it doesn't work against poison-immune enemies. I often use both at the same time in a party because they are so useful to me. I also like the Blade of the Endless Paths in its Deadfire iteration. The combination of raising accuracy and deflection debuff leads to a lot of crits, too. Of course pierce-only damage - although ultra high PEN - comes with a price...

I don't want to convince you to play Helwalker/Priest, Devoted/Priest is fine. I just wanted to say: one can mitigate the "glasscannon" aspect of Helwalker in two ways: a) use your wounds frequently when you think you're receiving too much dmg. Stuff like Blade Turning and Thunderous Blows etc. are good for this. Use Enlightened Agony to still get enhanced INT (and lower hostile effects, too) b) use Iron Wheel and keep the wounds. When doing it right the higher CON and the higher AR will more than offset the higher damage you receive. Get bonus INT via Enlightened Agony. This combo also gives you an absurdly high fortitude defense when at 10 wounds - which is awesome imo. Especially in combination with Enlightened Agony you will only get affected by most nasty disables shortly (if at all).

Yes, it would. Also cool in combination with the least unstable coil because Storm of Holy Fire counts as multiple spell procs, too. So you'll become Brilliant almost certainly.

When going Berserker/Devoted I would look at Amra (two handed Battle Axe). The combination of Carnage + Amra's Riven Gore + Blood Thirst + Cleaving Stance is excellent. You'd need 25 MIG though. Sanguine Great Sword is not bad and so is Effort - but they come rather late. Amra is obtaniable quite early. If you have a Chanter with skeleton summons then this combo is even better because a confused Berserker/Devoted will also kill skeletons with Carnage/Riven Gore which will proc Cleaving and Blood Thirst. Just don't go near him because Rive Gore can outright kill (destroy) your party members if they have less than 50 HP left. A build the does land a bit less crits maybe - but attacks faster and thus generates more crits in a given time AND does tremendous crit damage - is Streetfighter/Berserker. But it's a lot squishier than Berserker/Devoted.

It's great. But I don't know if a Streetfighter/Berserker doesn't do higher dps all in all? A Barbaric Smash crit while on the Edge is pretty common and has a very high amount of dmg bonuses. The combo hits a lot faster than Soulblade and has nice stacking raw DoTs that get applied on the fly (Deep Wounds + Blood Frenzy). Of course squishy as hell and a lot less versatile. But also fun imo. It's "living on the edge" after all. Streetfighter/Soulblade somehow plays more fiddly for me. Don't know why. Maybe because I also feel compelled to use the other spells of he Cipher and not only use the focus for SA. Big plus for the Soulblade is having a refillable resource of course. And the dmg per hit can be a lot higher with Soulblade bc. of Soul Annihilation - which is also very good against overleveled enemies with thick armor like Steelclads.

That is indeed such a good feature. Not related to explosives, but that's something that cinder bomb shares with Thrust of Tattered Veils (Wiz tier 1). Good thing with both is: you don't need to build your character around them at all. They are easy to get and scaling etc. doesn't matter for them. You can just have them for really cheap (using a Grimoire or via crafting etc.). And still they can have great impact in certain fights where you are so much worse off without a reliable way to interrupt.

I guess the comparison between Shea's War Staff/Sun & Moon was about how they fare for a Skald (who can get phrases on critical hits)? I think nothing beats Sun & Moon when it's about melee crits per strike.

You can. The power of grenades scales with the explosive skill. It's not terribly effective but it can be a good additional source of dmg and CC. Just keep in mind that explosives are consumables - so throwing bombs left and right non-stop can be expensive.

Wall of Draining (a tier-7 Wizard spell) works nearly the same in Deadfire. But there is no weapon like Spelltongue.

Haha - all good. Just glad you could fix this. Have fun!

Yes, the Weyc's stuff is pretty cool. Also because you can be a Chanter/Druid or /Wizard or /Priest and empower a cool non-chanter spells in some fights - and then get the empwoer points all back with the Scimitar if you empower an invocation in the next fight. I think they introduced some of the DLC items that focus on empower because that "per-rest" mechanic was mostly unused in the vanilla game (unless you has Sasha's Singing Scimitar as a Chanter maybe).

Hi! Could you post a screenshot of your AI settings? Or maybe describe the settings you use? I created a very simple behavior and it works like one would expect: It is possible that you don't have enough wounds to execute FF? It only costs 0 wounds if you don't have its curse on you. If you have one stack of the curse it will cost 1 wound, then 2 wounds and so on. If you don't have enough wounds the AI will most likely use auto-attacks if you haven't se up some other abilites that don't use wounds (for example Stunning Blow or so). Or maybe you created a special AI behaviour in the editor - but you didn't really put it in the list of behaviours so it isn't actually used when you turn on AI? It has to be inserted here: Are you on PC or console?

Guys, forgive me, I'm tired. My brain tranformed "phrases" into "empower points" everytime I read it - and I totally missed the point OP and the following posters were making from the start. Jeez! Since it's about phrases all of a sudden : Iirc @Elric Galadreported this behaviour of empowered Avenging Storm + Tekehu some months ago. I think he got it from a reddit user or so?

An Arcane Knight - Steel Garrote/Bloodmage - with Citzal's Parasitic Staff (summoned weapon from spell tier 1) is pretty cool. Later you can use the Chromoprismatic Staff, too. The staff itself drains life from enemies for you with every hit and the Steel Garrote has a passive that does this as well (if the enemy has an affliction which is easy to achieve with a Wizard in general). So you will heal quite a bit just by hitting enemies. It's also fun to use the Essential Phantom spell in order to get two quarterstaff wielders on the field. The Arcane Knight also makes good use of higher Resolve - it can be a very sturdy class and is working well in the front lines. And you can always cast spells, too. A Berserker/Streetfighter with Chromoprismatic Staff can be quite fun to play from behind the front line in rel. safety because his attack speed can be so nice - and also it's cool to cause Carnage from the backline. But he can go down very quickly due to the self damage he receives from Frenzy - it's a glasscannon basically. The opposite of the Arcane Kight.

I don't really understand. How many Empower Points do you need to refund during an encounter? Du to the multiple procs you usually you only need one empowered Her Revenge to refund all the empower power points you spend before + the one from the empowered Her Revenge. That's normally 4 at max, isn't it? And you can't empower more than once during an encounter*. So I fail to see the huge advantage of Avenging Storm (in this "refunding" case, not in general)? Unless you mean against single foes - then it is an advantage because Her Revenge will not refund all points (if you spend a lot of them in previous encounters). But even then you could also use the notorious confusion + skeleton combo. *) except empowering a seal spell out of combat and then again during combat - but that's pretty lame because hazard and all that.

That already works with Her Revenge. If you hit enough foes with an Empowered Her Revenge you will get a refund for all formerly spend Empower Points. This means you don't have to be Tekehu.

Unbroken/Shieldbearer is def. effective enough for PotD. Whether it's fun to play for you or not I cannot say. Crusaders (Fighter/Paladin) are sturdy and do ok weapon damage. They can hold the line/tank very well and ger a hell lot of resistances. They are not very flashy though.

Effort comes with Lacerating. When you enchant it with Hemorrhaging you upgrade the Lacerating enchantment.

Spiritshift goes into the "modal" area of the ability bar - and that area seems to accept "None" and 0 as values. Also modals have no counter but just that green light as indicator that it's on (or off). Hey wait, next idea: what about spells that are stolen with Imprint spells. They have kind of what you need: They go on a separate place in the action bar (besides the spells but not into the per-encounter bar), and they can be used without limit (although they display a "1" at the bottom)?