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Nay, no argument. Just a fruitful discussion. Most of the time nice things develop out of that. See.. now I want to try that firearms-wizard to see how he performs, hehe.

Naa - it's not like a ranged barb at all. A ranged barb takes away THE most important feature of its class, which is carnage, as well as several other that only work in melee or melee distance. It might work, but it will be a huge disadvantage. A wizard's most important feature are his spells. After a few levels it really doesn't matter that much which weapon he uses - if he's using his spells frequently. A melee wizard wouldn't take blast nor implement as well and nobody's calling him gimped, so why should a wizard with a bow or even a firearm be? I consider the bow to be the better choice of course because of Alacrity. But at the end of the day (and the game) he will have manly used his spells to do his magic. Like a melee wizard, too. The approach I posted above merely adds a trick with blunderbusses + Combusting Wounds. So in trash encounters you can even do something useful with a firearm by using only one spell and firing off your multiple-projectile-weapons. Because of up to 4*6*Combusting Wounds the overall damage will be way higher than a paladin's 2 uses of FoD with a blunderbuss and also higher than a ranger's 2 wounding shots. So no big gimpage there I'd say. I played an "Arcane Archer" with a war bow for a whole PoTD playthrough and I couldn't hardly tell the difference in "power" compared to an implement wizard. Mainly because of what I said above. Single target damage is higher while there's no blast. If you combine that with a lot of spells that target single enemies and also gain from Penetrating Shot, you'll have a very potent sniper who can take out single targets very quickly. Overall, it's certainly more powerful than a bow rogue. You can get Borresaine quite early which can lead to stuns when you use debuffs + Eldritch Aim + Merciless Gaze (which you would also do with an implement) and it's good enough until you get Cadebald's Blackbow. It's just a different kind of wizard. Overall, it may not be as powerful as blast+effects, but it's not gimped at all. And it can be fun to play something which is not AS powerful, but still powerful enough and maybe even better in certain situations (like killing single enemies without too many spells). It's less effective than a nice implement + blast of course, esp. since you can get that soulbound scepter so early now. We don't need to argue about that. But it's far, far away from a barb who's using ranged weapons. I mean you also build the Gunslinger chanter with Silver Flash. It's a nice concept and I like it - but it's also risky and I think a full tank with Dragon Thrashed would be easier to play. Following your logic, you shouldn't have even tried it.

As I said: building an arcane archer is possible and viable. There's a reason that one of the summoned weapons of the wizard is a war bow. Implements + blast is the obvious choice, but a wizard with a bow will be better than a druid, monk, fighter, paladin, barb, chanter or priest with a bow. Using Alacrity, Eldritch's Aim, Merciless Gaze, Citzal's Martial Power combined with Binding Web, Chillfog and so on will make him a fast and hard hitting bowman. Firearms, if used with reload, are not so great because a wizard's biggest advantage is attack speed from Alacrity - but it doesn't do anything for reload time. However - with Quick Switch, four blunderbusses, Pen. Shot, Ryonas Vembraces combined with Exposed Vulnerability and Combusting Wounds and focused on Missile Spells and everything else that works with Pen. Shot he will also be good. A Blunderbuss hits 6 times - if you combine that with Combusting Wounds where every hit applies a DoT effect you can see his this is powerful. The combined DR bypass of blunderbuss (4), Pen. Shot (5), Vembraces (3), Exposed Vuln. (5) and maybe Effigy's Resentment: Devil of Caroc (1) will lead to hefty hits with 18 DR bypass which also works with a lot of spells like missiles, Rolling Flame, Crackling Bolt and so on. You can easily build a nice tinkerer themed dwarven wizard around that with a lot of mechanics. Also very viable. A lot is possible. It might not be as effective as using implements with blast, but it will work and will be fun.

Heh? Did this yesterday and had all of them stacked, including Stalwart Defiance. Or maybe I was using Circle of Defense instead of Reinforcing Ex? However, Shielding Flames *should* stack with everything because it's considered a passive. Reinforcing Exh. def. doesn't stack with other non-passive deflection-only buffs, that's true. Will check later if it works as I said. Maybe I used something else than Reinf. Ex. at that point. But even if doesn't all stack - you seldomly need to stack all of those all the time. The timing would be a chore. It's also good to have enough arrows in the quiver to keep deflection of team members high throughout the whole fight. I consider a deflection bonus to be better than healing. So for me the shielbearers are not worse than the wayfarers.

What do you mean exactly? Do implements as wands, scepters and rods also count as "ranged" for you? Because that's what 99% of all ranged wizards would use because of blast. Other than that, you can of course use other ranged weapons like bows, too. In fact with one of the last spell levels you can summon Cadebald's Blackbow, which is a nice war bow with high corrode damage (spirit of decay works) and included driving flight. So you can be an arcane archer. With Alacrity, Eldritch Aim and Merciless Gaze plus Citzals Martial Power this works quite well - especially with Persistence as your main weapon (high MIG + wounding = great raw damage). But to be honest implements with blast will be superior to this. But it's absolutely viable. Played one of those in one of my playthroughs on PoTD and it worked well.

I once had a tree chick. It refused to lay eggs into those nice little nests I made for my chickens, like all the other chickens would do. Instead, it flew clumsily onto a branch of the nearest tree and lay an egg from here. Every day I had to clean up the mess under that tree. I guess that tree chick was awakened, too. Was probably a dove in its previous live. Ooops - sorry for being super offtopic...

I guess it behaves like the "universal" 3 DR bypass that Ryona's Vembraces give you. Those work with all targeted attacks but not with AoE effects (here I mean circles and cones). BUT it works with every spell that has a long narrow AoE that isn't a cone. For example it will apply to Minor Missiles or Rolling Flame or Mind Lance and Necrotic Lance's initial damage and so on, but it doesn't work with Blast, Fireball, Sacred Immolation - such things. I guess - didn't test it though. But I would be surprised if it worked differently.

The difference between a priest hireling and a mc priest when it comes to the healing power and damage done to vessels via Holy Radiance is also enormous if you choose your dialogue options carefully. So I say priest. It's also kind of nice from a rp perspective that a priest discovers that the gods are artificial beings. edit: oops, forgot "Holy Radiance"...

Shieldbearers are great if you need deflection for your party - and which party doesn't need that? If you manage to kill things with him and also take Inspiring Triumph you can boost deflection of you party by +19 when you kill an enemy with FoD - and Lay on Hands + Reinforcing Exhortation will give a single friend +35 deflection ON TOP. So, one guy could have +54 deflection and the rest of the gang +19. I like shieldbearers. Most abilites of the paladin work in melee as well as ranged. I even think all of them. There's no melee-only ability for paladins. Two handers also work. The only thing is that you can't use that awesome buckler then which you can buy very early in Gilded Vale.

Cladhaliath with marking and coordinating + Coordinated Attacks + Outworn Buckler is nice for a Shieldbearer. And both weapons are green - looks good on a nature godlike.

You can do that with a spear, too: Cladhaliath can be created with the marking enchanment. That would be buffing + spear. And it's green, too.

Then you should use The Long Pain: works with Force of Anguish AND from afar! Punch them to the end of the screen and keep hitting them. Poor enemies. And if they get up again - push them a little further.

Yeah, the phantoms are very strong in the early game. But until lvl 4 you need 12 seconds of chanting before you can call one.

Nope, not for sure. As I said once I had 56 MIG because all leechings went to MIG at that time. Guess I was lucky. I think there's no hard limit. It's hard to keep up a lot of them at the same time. You need a lot of speed, ACC for crits , a lot of INT for duration and also tons of focus. I tried to use Time Parasite plus Reaping Knives on a team mate and it worked quite well - but even then I wasn't able to stack more than two leechings on one stat because the damn thing would always choose a different stat. I guess it doesn't work if you cast it all onto one foe. You have to cast it on different foes. At least that was my impression. Maybe that is the "stacking rule". But to be honest I didn't even try that. I always chose a different target.

Yes - you will have a button for spiritshift all the time that you won't use. But the combinataion of those spells with good tankyness and equipment make up for that. But Spiritshift is also very potent. You just can't use any equipment while shifted.

It's great if you get pummeled too hard or if you need a short break for rebuffing. I like it.

Ach, no - apparently I'm not too lazy

I'm too lazy to do a screenhot.

That's right. Esp. when going solo. It's also a very nice tactic for solo barbs by the way. Eh... what did I write above? I meant Llengrath's Warding Staff and not Blunt Wisdom, sorry. Corrected that.

You can have both. Firebrand in your wizard's hand AND the burning lash from a chanter both get buffed by 20%. So it's a double effect. Bigger lash numbers from higher weapon damage and again higher lash numbers from +20% lash damage. And Scion of Flame is also good for all your fire spells of course. But as I said: the lance is better. Firebrand and Concelhaut's Staff are on par. Firebrand has a bit more damage because of damaging III, the staff has better ACC because of being exceptional. Reach and draining help to survive with the staff while the annihilation of Firebrand can lead to very high crits. With SCion of Flame and the burning lash chant Firebrand does better damage. Thing is you need to "sacrifice" an item slot for the gloves and the button for summoning Firebrand is not where your other spells are - this can be inconvenient.

No, the chanter adds invocations, too - which you will be able to put out faster and faster while you gain levels. For example: at lvl 16 a tier-1 phrase will take only 2 seconds. That means that you can use a tier-1-invocation every 6 seconds (recovery aside). A tier-2-invocation can be put out every 8 seconds. The tier-2-invocation "At the Sound of her Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff" has a base duration of 8 seconds. I guess you can see where this is going: Even before lvl 16 you could perma-paralyze whole groups of enemies. Just pump your DEX, PER, INT and reduce recovery and you will have a very active chanter who will run around to find the best position to place his paralyzing cone but needs no resources at all to CC whole groups. Of course: if you use wizards or druids to nuke every enemy in 6 seconds (and then rest) this will not happen.

I wouldn't max out RES - but that's just me. For me it's ok to loose a few points of deflection and will and a little bit of concentration because those can be buffed more easily than fortitude. Raising fortitude is possible of course, but it's harder. And the other thing: if you get grazed instead of missed by a normal hit that targets deflection it's not that bad. You get damaged a bit and that's it. No after effects. But if you chatch a graze from a disable like stun, paralyze or petrify that's nearly as bad as a hit - because then your other defenses will drop immensely and that can mean game over for you because all the hits that follow do harm you a lot more. On hard this may make no big difference, no idea. Although: In a party with a chanter who uses The Dragon Thrashed it's not bad if he has a lot of will defense - so in this case it's also a good approach to use 18 INT and 18 RES. Getting burned by your own chant is not so cool.

Yes, 20% seems to be a little bit low. I think it's the good uniques that you can get in early, mid and late game that make sabres worthwhile - even now. But it's true that generic hammers and swords now seem to be better than a generic sabre because they have two damage types. It has been a good feat and now it's even better in comparison to 20% bonus damage. Don't forget Danulya.

High CON (and MIG) lead to high fortitude. You can't even sing a song if you're disabled (prone and Withdraw aside) - and most afflictions that completely disable you target fortitude. That's one reason. The other is that with high CON, high DR AND all the self healing things you listed you can eat a lot more grazes and that can be essential in tough fights. But I consider high fortitude to be the more important outcome. If you are Fire Godlike you also might want very high CON - because 50% of let's say 300 endurance is the same as 150 endurace if you have dumped CON. You can retaliate with fire and still have the same endurance as someone with low CON. But it's obviously a very special situation...

Not too bad. But against bounties, dragons and other tough encounters it's way easier to tank with a shield and let your spells do the damaging part. Like the Bilestomper build or the ice variant, it's very easy to play those tanks who can stand in their own hazard field without bothering. It doesn't need a lot of offensive spells, too. So, if I wanted to go full tank with a wizard I wouldn't summon any weapon on a regular basis - except in the early game of course, because the staff is so good then you just can't skip it. For a more hybrid and flexible approach with a lot of melee damage your strategy surely works very well. Normal enemies can't touch you a lot if you buff up - even if you're using the staff or the lance. And you can spare some spells because the lance only requires one spell use but deals damage like a fireball with every hit. I don't say one of those variants is better than the other - just different playstyles, that's all. One have to decide what he likes better. The later is more active though and maybe more fun if you like positioning and hitting things with weapons.