Boeroer

Oops - I missed that line with the gloves and ring. I guess the flanking bonus works with the same spells which also work with Penetrating Shot: direct damaging spells that you target on a single enemy, not AoE spells. But it's only a guess.

You forgot the gloves which give you +10% spell damage. With the bartender's Ring you can add +20% damage against vessels and spirits. And a chanter could add a burning lash to a lot of your spells, too. Nope, I never build my wizards like this. Maybe because they are already nuking everything into the ground without optimized spell damage. Or mabye it's because I like the summoned weapons of a wizard too much - so I don't entirely focus on the damaging spells. Funnily though I did exactly this with a solo priest (because he can use champion's boon by himself and so on) - and I have to say it's a lot of fun to see those high damage numbers. So I suppose it will be the same with a wizard. I really don't know if the hater talents work properly with all spells though. DoT's don't work, but I suppose the spells that do direct damage will.

That would be new to me. As far as I know it summons an exceptional staff with +8 ACC. There are summoned weapons which scale with level (Long Pain for example) but I don't think the wizard's weapons do this. Once you can cast Citzal's Spirit Lance you can throw away Tidefall.

Dammit - I never realized that Marked Prey did this. After all this time...

Sure, for a fighter with a single weapon or a 2hander it doesn't matter. For a dual wielding char it's a bit sad that they overlooked that item. It's a great belt for wizards who use Spirit Lance by the way: combines Knockdown with AoE.

They must have changed that. When I played that build it didn't take a lot of time to summon The Long Pain. Not longer than casting Parasitic Staff or Spirit Lance.

Girdle of the Driving Wave gives you one Knockdown per encounter. BUT that special Knockdown is a clone of the old Knockdown ability and did not get updated when they buffed Knockdown and so it's still not a full attack despite me reporting that long time ago.

It should do better dmg than Concelhaut's Staff. It has wounding and can have a lash. Both alone (and combined) will do more damage than the staff which can't be enchanted. But the staff has higher base damage and therefore also drains more endurance for you. It also works better with Savage Attack and other DMG mods for that reason, but still Tidefall should do more damage. Tidefall's wounding makes it one of the best DPS weapons, but wounding damage doesn't drain endurance. And it doesn't feel that powerful if you have high INT, because then the wounding dmg gets spread out over a long period of time. If you have low INT, it behaves more like an elemental lash. The staff is exceptional (+8 ACC), the great sword is superb (+12). So the sword should give you more ACC. If you have weapon focus soldier that is.

Mountains Dwarf's "Hale and Hardy" is very useful. I used it with the Bilestomper build and (besides the nice side effect that yoi can stand in your own poison/disease AoE) things like Galvino's Hut and all the Lagufaeths became a lot easier. A lot of paralyzing and sickening or weakening attacks seem to be based on poison/disease. And lots of vessels and primordials have poison/disease attacks. Death Guards can be found at Crägholt Bluffs (around the entrance of the tower, north of the map), inside Crägholt Tower (cave in the east) and also level 8 of the Endless Paths (guarding the throne of the fampyr who wears Argwe's Adra). As far as I remember they didn't do any poison/disease attacks. They have something called Finger of Death though. Not sure what that is.

Marked Prey used to be a lash. I don't think it still is. Never used it though.

Well you could start with the abilities/talents/spells of the party. There the description says whether it's poison or not. For enemies' stuff it's a lot more difficult, that's true.

Only weapons with wounding are Drawn in Spring (dagger), Tidefall (great sword), Acuan Giamas (morning star) and Persistence. And also Boar Tusks (unarmed), but that's not for rangers. You can still inflict DoT with Wounding Shot and Envenomed Strike. And there are items with spell bindings - like Rotfinger Gloves with Touch of Rot for example. Maybe it's AoE works with stag's carnage + Predator's Sense.

Why? Does shift + click in order to create queues not work with Torment's Reach?

Yes I do. Stormcaller procs more often with Driving Flight and Twinned Arrows. Driving Flight lets you hit two enemies with one arrow while Twinned Arrow lets you hit one enemy with two arrows. Both work together - so you will generate four hits with one shot: Two Arrows will fly towards the initiual target and both will hit another enemy that stands behind the initial target. All hits that occur will not only count towards the proc chance but will also trigger Stunning Shots and cause the shock DR reduction as well. So basically you will rise the proc chance from 10% per shot to ~35% per shot if there's more than one enemy in range. With Stormcaller, you want to fire fast (you can take Outlander's Frenzy to compensate the loss of Swift Aim which doesn't work with Twinned Arrows) plus Gauntlets of Swift Action AND use Driving Flight and Twinned Arrows. Those abilitites also work with other ranged spell chance items lite The Golden Gaze by the way. Spell chances as well as on-crit effects work with most AoE or multiple-hit abilities: Torment's Reach (monk) will hit multiple enemies and influence proc chance as well as Carnage (barbarian), Blast & Citzal's Spirit Lance (wizard), Driving Flight and Twinned Arrow (ranger). Maybe there's more that I can't remember right now. Sadly, Clear Out and Charge (fighter) don't work like that.

Not exactly. I guess 2.03 - but don't pin me down to that. It's not in the patch notes. It's even better to take Spirit of Decay for Bittercut and put a corrosive lash onto it. This not only boosts the sabre's base damage by 20% but also the corr. lash, meaning that it will do 30% lash damage instead of 25% (25 * 1.2 = 30. So you will profit two times from that talent.

I told you bear sucks.

It works. For a long time now. All weapons which do elemental damage only (e.g. Firebrand) or preferably do elemental damage plus physical damage (like Stormcaller or Bittercut) get +20% base weapon damage mod (like Savage Attack does, but without the ACC malus of course) from the fitting talent. It doesn't matter which damage type gets applied in the end. Stormcaller for example will do +20% damage if you take Heart of the Storm. It doesn't matter if it does shock or pierce damage when it hits an enemy. It's always +20% with Heart of the Storm. Note that it doesn't work with weapons which preferably do physical damage plus elemental damage - like Durance's Staff. It has crush/burn and therefore doesn't work with Scion of Flame. If it would have burn/crush instead it would work.

Easy enough without potions. Dual wielding, any ability that speeds you up (Frenzy, Swift Aim, Swift Strikes, Alacrity, Time Siphon) and speed enchantment or durgan steel plus Gauntlets of Swift Action and you're already under 0 recovery. Although with potions it's a lot easier of course. And you don't necessarily have to consume potions of Alacrity. THere's also the potion of power which is much much cheaper and also speeds you up. Or even Svef. From all this talking about DR reduction and attack speed I now am inspired to try a melee mage with dual Bleak Fang and max DR bypass plus Expose Vulnerabilities and Alacrity. 0 Recovery with 3+3+3+1+5+5 = 20 DR bypass sounds quite nice and fancy. It's good that you can pick multiple Spell Masteries from one spell level...

The higher the base damage and the more dmg mods you can add to that (or multiply with that), the less Vulnerable Attack or Penetrating Shot will do for your dps (or even lower it). And lashes don't work with DR bypass - that's a bad thing for fast weapons with low dmg but high DR bypass. Of course it's best if you can have both, high DMG per hit and high DR bypass, like with an estoc.

My Engineer build made use of stacking DR bypass. As does the Sorcerer's Apprentice. So I did make at least two builds that use stacking DR bypass. Penetrating Shot works with all spells that target single enemies and do direct damage and also with those who have not a cone or circle as AoE, but a straight line, like Mind Lance, Rolling Flame and even the weird shaped Twin Stones. Actually, nothing works with cone- and circle-shaped AoE effects except things that are specially made for it, like Penetrating Blast for Blast, and things that lower DR directly, like Expose Vulnerabilities, Hel Hyraf and so on. Nope, also not Ryona's Vambraces nor Effigy's Resentment: Devil of Caroc. Lashes are another thing: Pen. Shot and Vuln. Attack as well as Vambraces and stuf don't apply to lashes. The things that profit the most from high DR bypass are multi projectile attacks like blunderbusses and missiles of all sorts, like Missile Barrage for example. So, a Pallegina build that uses blunderbuss, Wrath of the Five Suns and all kinds of missiles would work best with Pen. Shot, Ryona's Vambraces and ER: Devil of Caroc. If you have a Wizard with Expose Vulnerabilities in the party: even better.

I have a question: melee or ranged rogue? Because this makes a huge difference. A melee rogue with dumped CON will be really frustrating because he will get knocked out very quickly in combat. A ranged rogue with dumped CON would be OK.

Yes, but while Munacra Arrest and Spirit Spiral give you 3 Whisper of Treasons/rest each with +10 ACC, the Ring of changing Heart's dominate spell (2/rest) has no ACC bonus at all. But it's faster. With Whisper it's much easier to crit and the resulting debuffs is great, while dominate only flips the alliance.

Min INT on a barb is usually a bad idea. Especially if you want to use the best barbarian ability of all, Heart of Fury. Usually I'd go for low RES and DEX and high MIG, PER and INT. I have done a six barb party back in the days when disorienting and interfering debuffs stacked - it still wasn't too much fun. This party composition lacks ACC buffs, nowadays also debuffs and CC - and those are the most important things in PoE. While one barb can be a lot of fun, six are not really for me. Not even five or four. Once you hit lvl 11 and pick HoF and use it with the right weapons and talents/abilities one barb usually is enough and more HoFs would be overkill. One priest with five barbs would def. be more powerful than six barbs. Barbs need ACC buffs and also disabled or debuffed foes to be awesome and the priest can provide both. Besides that he can give your barbs a great INT bonus, letting you hit a lot more enemies with carnage.

Mind Control is one of the most powerful things. It not only disables an enemy but also lets him work for you while the other foes are distracted and try to kill him. And because of the hefty debuffs of charming the controlled enemy gets targeted instantly. High ACC is superuseful because with a crit you can charm for more than 20 secs with Whisper of Treason if your INT is good. That's why Munacra Arret and Spirit Spiral are such awesome items: you can use them with classes that allow for very high ACC like fighters with Disciplined Barrage or Paladins with Sworn Enemy + Zealous Focus. Or ciphers with Borrowed Instinct and/or Tactical Meld. And nearly all dragons can be charmed, too.

Cool. Does this also work with Wild Leech? I mean not that it's useful - I'm just curious. A assume that Pain Block still can't be cast in yourself, right?