Boeroer

Players tend to value character synergy over party synergy. Which is a mistake imo when it comes to "power". For example it feels cool to use a club + modal in the offhand to lower Will by 25 points so that I can hit better with my Draining Touch in the right hand. Or I use a Morning Star + modal to lower Fortitude in order to land my Brute Force attacks better. But this all could be done faster and more reliably with two different party members. Like a Black Jacket who switches from club + flail setup to morning star setup and lowers three defenses - while two other chars focus on the Draining Touch and Brute Force game. Spares a ton of time. Character-contained synergies might be cooler, but they are not necessarily more effective than party synergies. Most of times the party synergy has way better action economy for example, it can have better impact bc. of deeper specialisation and higher power level, too. I also support @theleestatement that often a multiclass can't give your party a better advantage than two SC chars. Sure, if you want to fill your party with a certain set of roles or combos you might lose a spot. But that assumes that a SC char cannot fulfill different roles at all - which is not correct in most cases. Meaning that you don't necessarily lose a spot when picking two SC over a MC if the SCs aren't one-trick ponies. What they lack in versatility they can often balance out with better action economy (e.g. using Druid & Priest to buff up the party in half the time a Druid/Priest can), higher PL and earlier access to higher tiers as well as access to the most powerful abilities while also being able to either specialize more (e.g. letting the Druid do the healing and maximize MIG while the Priest only does buffing and can drop MIG entirely). I played a run with Troubadour/Psion and one with SC Psion and a SC Troubadour in the party - aside from making it more difficult to fill the roles (but manageable) it didn't make my run more difficult. I'd say it was even more effective. There might be one downside though: I think multiclass characters are more interesting and fun to play. SC Psion was dope (especially with Shared Nightmare + Ringleader, jeez) but essentially a little boring. Psion/Troub was very fun. Like an SC Fighter with a Morning Star and Clear the Path + an SC Barb with Driving Roar are a devastating combo late game, but a Brute is just more fun to play even still. At least to me. Of course the situation is vastly different with a solo character. And of course there are a lot of synergies that only work with multiclasses - especially when only effects are involved that target your char alone (see Wizard self buffs for example) I just wanted to point out that using two SC instead of two multiclasses doesn't mean that you really lose a spot in the party. You may lose some efficiency in one role (e.g. dealing dmg) but you might balance that out with better action economy and more efficient role fulfillment (e.g. buffing).

I'm playing a Shattered Pillar/Soulblade right now and it's pretty awesome because you fill up two resource pools with one instance of damage. I think a CP Shattered Pillar is competetive with other Monk subclasses because it's back at 10 wounds. Imo it doesn't need more. On top of non-ability-damage you can still gain wounds from Dance of Death, Mortification of the Soul, Parting Sorrow, Imagined Pain and Xoti's Lantern (on kill). To me the best thing is that Offensive Parry (WotEP) generates both wounds for Shattered Pillars as well as Focus. And of course the cone attack helps gathering wounds more quickly if you can hit several foes at once. Also Rooting Pain is quite cool to use as an offensive helper, triggering and doing damage/interrupting while you are attacking. While Swift Flurry procs do not generate wounds, Lightning Strike lashes do (when on non-ability attacks). Getting wounds from ability dmg was def. too strong. You could spam WotW non-stop for example. With high quality weapons/fists and Lightning Strikes + Turning Wheel and maybe some other dmg bonuses on top you don't need a lot of auto-attacks to gain lots of wounds. Iirc they do not. Only Offensiv Parry does this. I did some tests a while ago but I don't remember 100% what the outcome was. Maybe I can find the post again...

That's really weird and I never heard about this before. On PC you can keep your saves - I don't know how the XBox does it.

They work with Lighting Strikes though. Hand Mortar's Blinding Smoke generates Resonant Touch instances (lots of them) against multiple enemies. If you use a flail + modal and Hand Mortar then the lower ACC doesn't matter much because the -25 Reflex debuff helps the AoE hit rolls which target reflex (and proc Blinding Smoke cones which also target Reflex). There are already two mortar nerfs in the Community Patch: one removes Avenging Storm from Blinding Smoke and the other one limits the maximum stack of Resonant Touches (which you would easily breach with just one WotW if more than 2 enemies are present and rel. near each other). Because that was OP - at least in the vast majority of the ecounters. I also don't call for further nerfs though. It's PL 9 so the majority of the game lies behind that charcter already - and it's a lot of fun imo. Keeper of the Flame + Saint's War Armor + Imagined Pain is indeed very good.

Miss to graze is a powerful conversion. More impactful than graze to hit. In case of a miss, you do nothing. If it gets converted to a graze you turn nothing to something which is... not displayable in percentages. If you convert a graze to a hit or a hit to a crit you "only" turn a certain effect into a better one - but you don't turn nothing into something. Miss to graze allows to apply debuffs or other hostile effects to enemies that you otherwise wouldn't even be able to graze (e.g. starting Belranga). The highest miss to graze conversion on a weapon is on the Sanguine Great Sword (30%), followed by Willbreaker (25%) - both are second-tier enchantments. Meanwhile every boring flail gets 30% graze-to-hit. Gautlets of Reliability have 15% miss-to-graze, of Greater Reliability: 25%. With food or potion you can get another 25%. So tl;dr: 30% for Confident Aim as a passive seems high. But I like the idea in general. What I also liked was the added MIN base damage in PoE that Confident Aim gave. It was kind of special. If it would be possible I would like a general (less complicated) raise of base damage rolls with a proficient weapon. I don't know. 5% or so? Example: sword does 13-19 base dmg - with Conficent Aim (and weapon proficiency) it would do 14-20. A 5% multiplicative dmg bonus instead of raining base damage directly would do the same... Alternatively a +5 ACC bonus would mean a lot more players would pick it I think.

Ahhhh! That explains a lot.

Cool! Dang! I knew it worked like Essential Phantom - but I didn't realize that it's controllable. I guess they copied the early version of the Essential Phantom to start with Watery Double. The release versions of Essential and Substancial Phantom were controllable, too - but nerfed to non-controllable later on.

Blood Thirst has a a duration but gets remove prematurely if you use an action during that time. How is the trigger implemented that removes Blood Thirst (noo need to look it up if you don't know it from the top of your head, I'm just curious)? Right about Takedown Combo, forgot that it is placed on the enemy. Anyway: 1 sec duration seems like a good solution if the 1 sec is also mentioned in the description.

Eh sorry, I meant Sunless Grasp, not Freezing Rake.

Then why does Freezing Rake work but Jolting Touch doesn't? They don't seem to have different timespans between launch and impact. Maybe the difference is so subtle that it's not noticeable... Sulance: the lance comes from above and maybe the animation is quick enough so the hit roll still happens in time after launch. I wonder if similar spells than don't originate from the caster but from above the target (and are fast enough - Sunbeam maybe?) work the same? 1 sec is an easy fix and def. an improvement - but what about stuff like Bounding Missiles, Mind Blades, Missile Barrage, Mind Lance, Eld Nary etc.? Some (the first few) of their multiple attack rolls will fall into the 1 sec duration, some later will not. Still a bit confusing, isn't it? How do bonuses like Blood Thirst or Takedown Combo get removed (for comparison)?

Did run a few tests because the last time I even picked Lion's Sprint was ages ago. I remembered that the ACC bonus didn't work well and not with spells I tried back then, but I also had the impression that it really didn't work at all - but was not completey sure about that anymore. So I made a level 20 Barb/Wizard/Cipher/Druid with the console in order to test some different types of attacks rolls (with no other active ACC buffs) and tested some actions: Essence Interrupter, auto attack: no bonus Essence Interrupter, Barbaric Blow: no bonus Mace, auto attack: +15 ACC Mace, Barbaric Blow: +15 ACC Mace, Tast of the Hunt: +15 ACC Concelhaut's Draining Touch, Barbaric Blow: +15 ACC Necrotic Lance: no bonus Minoletta's Bounding Missiles: no bonus Fireball: no bonus Jolting Touch: no bonus Grimoire Slam: +15 ACC Kalakoth's Sunless Grasp: +15 ACC Disintegrate: no bonus Miasma of Dull-Mindedness: no bonus Sunlance: +15 ACC While using ranged weapons or spells: distance to the target makes no difference (like with Backstab for example). First I thought it's melee-only - because the spells that got the +15 ACC bonus have no visible range and are basically melee "touch" spells. But then Sunlance happened... But then I remembered that Sunlance also works with Monk's Instruments of Pain (giving the spell *6 range) - same as the other spells above that count as "melee" spells and work with Lion's Sprint: they all work with Intruments of Pain, too. So I'm sure SUnlance is just accidentially labeled as melee spell. And all abilities that work with Instruments of Pain will also work with Lion's Sprint. So my conclusion is the Lion's Sprint only gets applied to attacks that are labeled as "melee" (not melee weapon, weapon tag not needed). So even if there's no filter on the actual Lion's Sprint ability: somwhere it gets filtered. Don't ask me where... Is it maybe so that the restriction is put on the base ability Wild Sprint and Lion's Sprint inherits that restriction or something? Just taking wild guesses here... I used the CP but not the BPM.

It doesn't work for me when I try it with spells.

"Killing your own skeletons" aside, I think on-kill (and also on-crit) effects that lead to more offensive output are kind of "win more" effects and probably not very effective. But I think they can add a lot of fun - and imo playing a game is all about fun, so I like them.

A Barb with Brute Force can make some high-deflection targets pretty easy to hit imo. Besides that I value action speed a lot so Barb comes up frequently when I think about caster combos.

Using Bark String (pet, -20% DEX affl. duration) in addition to Clarity of Agony (-50% hostile effect duration), min INT (3 base + evtl. +2 B's Blessing -4 Confused - might as well wear Ring of Mule's Wit, -45% duration), max RES (like -45% at 25 RES), Strand of Favor (-10%), Outworn Buckler (-5%), Cabalist's Gambeson (-10%) and on top Mohorā Wraps (-30%) as food should make it possible to reduce the Hobbled effect so much that a Berserker/FF could gain tons of wounds/healing from running into their own frost drop traps without having to switch weapon sets like crazy? Or still not short enough? I remember a vid (when FF came out) where somebody did make a Berserker/FF with Footsteps of the Beast and figuratively drowned in wounds. I don't recall him using every trick in the book to reduce hostile effect duration - just running back and forth a bit in/out of the drop traps was enough.

Right! Sorry, I somehow messed that up with +50% PEN.

Yes, and also that they stack with stuff like Bewildering Blows. Miasma + Bewilderung Blows lowers enemies' Will by 65 points (no immunity). Interestingly Caedebald's Blackbow targets Fortitude instead of Deflection (with the corrode damage) - so lowering enemies' Fortitude is also quite benefical in order to get to the terrifying part (which targets Will). The terrify effect also gets the accuracy bonus from the weapon scaling which is nice. Debuffing the Will defense on top of that makes crits pretty common then (+50% +25% terrify duration).

By the way: You can stack both the +30% dmg effect from the Chanter's Charm and the Debonaire's inspiration on a party member (or enemy). It's just a bit annoying that the Chanter's variant doesn't last very long (could be way less annoying with a Bellower's PL bonus maybe).

The Battle-Forged retaliation is a passive and stacks with everything. The Fire Shield from Magran's Blessing is an automatic item effect and thus also stacks with everything (except itself). Both then will stack with Flame Shield from Wizard xor Darcozzi's Lay on Hands Minor Flame Shield (which are actives and do not stack with other active retaliation effects). I didn't try the Bubbling Chalice - it's from an item so it might stack. But sometimes abilities that appear on the action bar and are activated manually by yourelf get trated as an active ability and won't stack with similar stuff (e.g. Wizard's Flame Shield) so you can never know but must test it.

Afaik only Disintegrate prevents the split nowadays.

I do not think that was known - I never read about this before. Cool!

You mean that if you use the shield in two weapon sets (one original shield and one a simple reference copy) you can get Flame Shield twice if you switch from weapon set 1 to 2?

Since Priests in PoE/Deadfire don't get their powers directly from the gods I think they are more free to disagree with certain takes of the gods during the course of the game - as long and their core dispositions still align (Eothas: Honest & Benevolent, Berath: Stoic/Rational and so on). I don't think that's very hard to do. Two extreme examples are actually two official Priest companions in both games (Durance and Vatnir). They both don't agree with large prts of what their good do/did but still share some core values - so they are still believable priests of their deity.

Brand Enemy and Death in Life are auto-hits (they do no hit rolls). They will not reduce the number of hits Entropy can take - but they won't profit from it either I guess?

The crossbow is an exception. Its basic enchantment is faulty (but in a benefical way).