Boeroer

Here's the thread I was talking of: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/74505-penetrating-shot-spells/?hl=%2Bpenetrating+%2Bshot+%2Bmind+%2Blance&do=findComment&comment=1623449 I don't like Gallant's Focus too much (except when soloing) because it gets supressed by every active ability that raises ACC except Inspiring Radiance and also by Zealous Focus - and it's only +4 and nothing else which is really neglectible at higher levels. Aspirant's Mark for example gives you +8 against deflection and reflex and is a much better choice for the early game in my opinion.

@Loren Tyr, thanks for clearing that up. As I said I wasn't sure. @Nemesis7884: A rule of thumb is that all spells that are ranged and hit a single target (so, no AoE circle and no cone) like Necrotic Lance, Minor Missiles, Thrust of Tattered Veils and so on work with Penetrating Shot (also includes "jumping effects"), AND all spells which AoE has the form of a thicker line, like Rolling Flame, Mind Lance, Crackling Bolt and so on. Those work with Pen. Shot. There may be exceptions to this rule. Fo example it may be that Ghost Blades work despite being an AoE cone (?). There was a thread where we all tested and posted those spells, but I can't find it atm and it's also a bit old. Maybe some things changed. Loren has insight to the code, so mabe (if he has nothing else to do and we send him rauatai cookies) he could make a list of spells which work with it.

Concerning DEX: If you take quick switch and don't reload and also dual wield in melee you don't need a lot of DEX. Dual wielding itself gives you +50% attack speed. And later, with TIme Parasite you will easily hit 0 recovery where DEX doesn't do anything for youzr recovery phase. But don't dump it completely because of spallcasting. Some spells take awfully long when DEX is dumped and you will get interrupted a lot in melee if your RES is also low. With a tank with high RES it's ok, but a relatively squishy dual wielding cipher shoudn't do it in my opinion. I would leave it at 10.

Maybe you still want to take Penetrating Shot: if you like Amplified Thrust, Mind Lance and Mind Blades for example. Those work with Penetrating Shot. Mind Blades without it is pretty meh, but with Penetrating Shot (and also Ryona's Vembraces) it's good for a kind of AoE damage. Those are also really good for Blunderbusses. With Lead Spitter you can have a maximum of 4+5+3+3 = 15 "passive" DR bypass. That's great for most targets. For ones with even more DR you can always cast Body Attunement - because it's also a good spell for prebuffing before you go into melee. I'm not sure anymore but I think the beams also work with Pen Shot.

A good approach is to use an Island Aumaua plus Arms Bearer and Quick Switch (or the Coil of Resourcefulness) and have three guns + a melee setup. With that setup you can either fire three fat shots for lots of focus at the start of an encounter, disable enemies and then finish them off with the melee weapons. Or you can do things like start with gun - fire - CC - switch to melee - kill - switch to gun - fire... abd so on, It's avery versatile and powerful approach but it takes a lot of micro. But ciphers need a lot of micro anyway because you constantly switch from casting to attacking and threrefore the switching doesn't add as much pain as it does for classes like fighters or rangers. What I also did - and which worked pretty well, is to take Stormcaller (weapon focus doesn't matter here because soulbound items work with any weapon focus) with Heart of the Storm, fire a few shots to get focus, buff myself with Psychovampiric Shield and do some CC and then go in with melee weapons which have a shocking lash. This will give you good focus, too. The shocking lash will hit harder because of the -6DR from Stormcaller.

Haha - as we all do I guess. Another important thing is: don't focus your build on all the high level late game stuff. The game is most difficult in Act I, after the "tutorial" maps of the caravan camp and Cilant Lis. If you can manage that, the rest is also doable. After that it's pretty difficult to completely misskill your charater. The build in this forum are not all minmaxed, some or most are also fitting a special theme and don't sacrifice everything to power. So you can take them as an inspiration, but you don't have to follow them till the last iota. In early levels the differences of the class are pretty obvious because of the different starting values like deflection, endurance and accuracy. Also, some classes' development curve in the early level ups is rather steep, while others' are not. A rogue for example starts with great damage, but during the first levels his performance won't change much. A barb seems to be supersquishy, but after some levels his higher endurance bonuses per level start to make him sturdier. A monk seems to be no good because he can only take a few wounds before going down. He, too, becomes a lot sturdier with every level up because wound costs stay the same, but his endurance pool gets bloated up pretty quickly. And so on. That's also a reason why heavy armor is very effective in the early game. Enemies don't do a lot of damage and the high DR of a plate (12 and higher against most attacks) eats up almost all of the damage while your endiurance pool is small. You can feel a huge difference between plate and no armor. Later on you'll have more endurance and enemies deal more damage than most armors can absorb, making the difference between 12 or 8 DR not so important as in the beginning. This game rewards flexibility: don't stick to a certain weapon or armor all the time. I mean you can do that and it's all doable, but the game will be way easier if you adapt to your enemies. For example if you sneak around and see oozes (deal corrode damage), you should change your preferred hide armor to something with more DR against corrode damage, like scale armor - or even put on a robe. It has the same corrode DR as a hide armor but is 10% faster. Or if you meet pierce immune flame blights you might want to put your war bow with that burning lash into the stash and take a wand. An enemy fighet might wear a mail armor, which is very good against slash damage, but poor against crush: you shoud switch from dual sabres to dual clubs. That makes the fight a lot easier. Things like that. So always have a backup set of armor and weapons for special enemies in the stash and scout before going into combat (if you don't know what's coming next). There's a reason you have 2 weapon sets (and it's not only to switch between ranged and melee). And the most important thing: It's all about accuracy vs. defense. So try to get as high ACC as possible and lower enemies' defenses as much as possible and the game will be easy. And vice versa: try to have high defenses and lower enemies ACC and you won't go down. That's the reason why crowd control, buffs and debuffs in this game are way more important than simple damage output. If you are in doubt whether to use a buff/debuff/cc ability or a damaging one, take the first.

Cool, thanks for the info. By the way I meant other fighter builds besides the ones that already are on the list, including Andrea Colombo's Lady of Pain + variants. And with limited I meant that it's very difficult to put a nice twist or something special "out of the box" to a fighter. No "Spells on Deathblows", "Spelltongue + Carnage", "Battle Forged + Turning Wheel" stuff that makes you think "sweeeet!". Sure, you can build them towards dps, support and tank, with a bit of CC. But it's mostly all single target melee and survivability abiliites. When you try to build a ranged fighter (because he's one of the few classes that can have dmg mods on ranged weapons) you run into the problem that at lvl up there sometimes isn't any ability that contributes to ranged combat at all. You end up taking Critical Defense or something like that because the rest is all melee only. That's a bit sad. Monk had the same problem until OBS introduced The Long Pain. When you look at the build index you get an impression which classes can be build very differently and which can't (without being lame). Only chanters seem to be an exception - I think they can be build in many ways and be successful - no idea why there are only two of them in the list.

I did the one who uses his high ACC and Sundering Blow to alpha-blast tough enemies with minor missiles and a Blunderbuss. He's pretty nice and can tank like a boss because of max regeneration and a large shield. Soloing those ogres is easy for him. But besides that I never had success with any other fighter idea I came up with. They are so limited.

With Spelltongue and Alacrity plus Draining Wall you can prolong your buffs like Arcane Veil and stuff for a long time - enough for most encounters. Spelltongue has no stun, but it steals enemies' buff durations for your own buffs, which is cool against bosses, and it gives you +15% speed (which also works for spells). I tried a mage with all the self-buffs like Eldritch Aim, Lenggraths stuff and whatnot - even Fighting Spirit (human racial) gets prolonged. Veteran's Recovery also. It's a nice weapon for a solo mage.

No - I mean yes, that section was there forever - but there are some new commends which I didn't see the last time I checked.

I tested the fighter with sabre. Nothing for solo, but he did a fine job with Disciplined Barrage + Mind Control and of course he did good damage with his one handed Resolution. On lvl 16 against bounty ogres almost every attack was a crit. The Mind Control spells also all scored crits - but Ogres' will is not too high. Wielding one weapon worked for chanter's offensive chants and I think also for a few invocations - at least it used to do that. Maybe they patched it. I assumed if that works for chanters then it may also work for other classes' spells. But unfortunately, it doesn't work with these mind controls. His ACC with Disciplined Barrage and the inherent +10 from Whisper of Treason was at something like 130 at lvl 16, with Gallant's Focus, but not counting camping bonus. Enough for most enemies I guess. But now, with the one handed thing not working for spells, I would make a tank out of him and take maybe Little Saviour. His maxed INT also buffs the radius of that shield. Might is not very important, but maybe Overbearing guard would be nice in combination with Measured Restraint - to match the looks and style. Noble monocle wearing fencer with a buckler and a fancy breastplate for the win! I guess the paladin version is still better - but I have to come up at least with one additional fighter build which is worthwhile... it's really hard.

Oh. Somebody added a lot of new console commands. Cool!

Right - the fighter I meant wouldn't be a tank - more like a duelist. I imagine putting him in Hand and Key or even Osric's Familiy Armor, giving him Resolution and Munacra Arret first. with Armored Grace and durgan steel the breatplate would be at 5% recovery penalty. Lots of annihilating crits, especially with Disciplined Barrage. He would be more like a great looking dps/offtank. Some spells do get +12 ACC when you wiels a single one handed weapon - why not Whisper of Treason?

Great. You should really write a build for it. I can also imagine that a fighter with Disciplined Barrage and Munacra Arret, Ring of Changing Heart and Spirit Spiral could play that role very well. Did you test if one handed weapon use also boosts the mind control by +12 ACC? Could lead to a nice one handed aristocratic mesmerizing fighter with Resolution or something.

Acutally, I haven't seen that double bash bug so far. But HoF against 6 enemies for example results in 36 bash hits alone. If you debuffed the mobs first then nealry every bash results in a crit which procs the Thrust. With Dragon's Maw Taste of the Hunt gets triggered 9 times in average - giving you quite a bit of endurance and dealing good raw damage over time. Dual sabres might be better for HoF - but those two shields are not bad either and a better choice for HoF than a normal shield. When you want to post that tanky barb build with shouts and stuff then I won't do it. I tried Executioner's Hood + Glittering Gloves + Captain's Hatchet. It all stacks and you don't even need Barbaric Yell any more. BUT: the performace with purgatory is better than with the hatchet. A bit less defense but a lot more damage + healing. It lets you kill mobs faster and after every encounter I tried the test with the sabre came out better. Maybe I can try to convert this guy into something sturdy without shield. Then I can post it without interfering with your shield barb...? Will take weeks until I can post something anyways...

I just tested a speedy defensive riposte rogue build with full bonus against disengagement attacks, escape, with two sabres, then a shield and all the stuff. Two sabres don't work against tough enemies - you get shredded to pieces because of all the grazes in seconds while running past the enemies (in this case Ogres). What does work is a setup with Old Gerun's Wall and Purgatory and a potion of Wizard's Double. The Deflection is so high that you can run around the enemies and won't get hit a lot while triggering ripostes all the time. A good trick is to wear a stag helmet and cast Tanglefoot plus Binding Web before going in. That way you have instant Deathblows with Riposte and the enemies are already debuffed which leads to more crits. But I have to say it's not as powerful as I wished for and also despite the shift+click pathing the micro is horrible. But I also tested Dragon's Maw and Badgradr's Barricade with a full tank barb who uses Heart of Fury and I have to say that is one great tank at higher levels! Jump in, daze, barbaric shout and HoF. The Thrust or Taste of the Hunt will proc like a hundret times (feel like, it's less of course) - the sound snippets of both keep playing long after HoF ends. Other than most other on-hit or on-crit effects those bash procs work correctly with HoF. Maybe I'll post a build after some more testing. This is way better than the above rogue. I have to say riposte is stil not very good - only ok-ish.

Why is that? I think you could have pulled a lot of helpful infos out of this discussion. May be a bit lenghty, but there surely are some good infos around Riposte, shields and the like in it.

Yeah, basically, but it's not that easy. The best thing about Persistence is wounding - because that lifts this bow to the top of the dps list of all ranged weapons. Different guys here did a lot of tests and all came to the same conclusion: when it comes to single target dps, Persistence is the best ranged weapon. So by itself it's already great. The fact that it triggers Predator's Sense makes it even more aweseom for rangers of course. Stormcaller is not the best single target dps weapon (because you can't enchant it with durgan steel and an elemental lash), but has other nice features. First of all the -6 shock DR also works for all team members, which is great. Secondly you need no resources like durgan steel or any other parts to make it superb and unlock it's aweseomeness - this can be a good thing in a party where everybody wants to have durgan steel weapons and armors. And the Returning Storm proc which stuns and damages gets triggered every third shot with a ranger. It's really hard to tell which weapon is better. I like them both a lot. p.s.: a few patches ago, Lenas Er wa the best bow on my opinion. It has the disorienting enchantment which used to stack. With the bow and Twinned Arrows and short recovery, you could shoot your target down to nealy 0 deflection. Then OBS nerfed disorienting so that it doesn't stack any more, making Lenas Er fall behind Persistence and Stormcaller in my opinion. Now it's a nice but not too powerful bow that you get really late...

If your monk has high CON, Turning Wheel and Scion of Flame plus Blood Testament Gloves then Fire Godlike is one of the best racial feats acutally at lvl 16. There are not many things that deal more than 100 damage per hit wihtout doing anything but getting slapped.

Ok, if you look at it from a "realistic" angle, a burning sabre maybe could set a target on fire even if the target didn't get scratched, but a gruesome arrowhead wouldn't cause wounding if the arrow doesn't stick. Still very (too) complicated for a game like this. And look how long it takes for the common gamer to find this out - if he even manages to find this out at all. Wounding Shot being handled differently than wounding being handled differently than Deep Wounds being handled differently than all the other DoT effects... and so on... It's a mess.

Yes, with a hireling you can choose another pet when retraining - but not with Sagani. And you can use Swift Aim and then retrain at lvl 13 when you get Twinned Arrows. Before that Swift Aim is totally fine for Stormcaller. Another way is to use Outlander's Frenzy plus Vicious Aim. This will result in +5% (+25%,-20%) speed and a lot more damage per hit because you get +32% damage (+4 MIG, +20% Vicious Aim) and also +20 ACC which leads to a lot more crits. Outlander's Frenzy and Swift Aim don't stack by the way. Just out of curiosity you could even try to use Vicious Aim (more crits = more wounding damage) with Persistence and Swift Aim (more hits = more procs of Returning Storm) with Stormcaller and compare the dps. Should be interesting. At lvl 13 you should use Twinned Arrows instead because it's clearly superior. Using Outlander's Frenzy can result in a shortage of talent points when it comes to the talents that you want to take for the animal companion. As I said I recommend at least Merciless & Vicious & Resilient Companion as well as Predator's Sense (but that's an ability). When all those are active (easily with Stunning Shots or Binding Roots, combined with Persistence or Wounding Shot) the pet's damage is very, very high per hit. Even higher for a wolf (single target) or stag (AoE damage). If you take the Takedown ability for your pet (it's not that bad anymore, in fact it's quite cool) and later Brutal Takedown (talent - adds crush damage which stacks with the normal, already sky high damage of the hit) then the pet becomes even more impressive. But then you will see that you run out of talant points for your shooting. Maybe that you'd have to skip marksman or Pen. Shot then. I focused my persistence based ranger on pet's damage, so I took all the pet's goodies and skipped Marksman and Outlander's Frenzy. I used Persistence as a "wounding marker" for my pet mainly. But of couse it still does great damage. With Stormaller it was the other way round: I wanted to proc Returning Storm as much as possible and keep up the -6 shock DR for my teammates. Just to have a bit of diversity in the two rangers' playstyle. This is not necessarily the best way to do it, but It worked out well and was fun.

So... shouldn't it damage pierce immune foes then? Why does a sabre with a burning lash damage an earth blight which is immune to slash, but Persistence wouldn't damage a flame blight which is immune to pierce? That would mean that burning lash and wounding get calculated before DR, but there was a different kind of handling when it comes to immunities. Man, I really don't want to look into that code. Sounds like a complete mess...

Well you can retrain.

You have to use a bit higher move speed (camping bonus or/and Fast Runner and sugar e.g.). The AI doesn't follow you for long if you have higher move speed. If you have the same or lower, they will follow you forever. The dialogue should get triggered when you walk around the throne. The combat has to end first. Works for me. At last time a few days ago with kiting solo chanter.

Ah OK. Good to know.