Boeroer

Would be nice if they tweaked difficulty not by raising stats like crazy, but by adapting AI behaviour. At the moment - no matter the difficulty setting - enemies are dumb like pebbles. Like casting Tanglefoot and Calling the World's Maw on themselves all the time, running in circles around my party to reach someone who's standing in the middle, that sort of stuff. It would raise the difficulty a lot if foes with brains (like kith an so on) would have better tactics. Like not breaking up their formation when they see there's no spellcaster, spread if there is, better tactical movement and so on. That would mean a lot of work though. More than just tweaking stats.

Hilarious find! Need to evolve a build around that asap. There's an item with minor spellbind "Pain Link" - forgot which one it was (starting to build...)

No rest for the wicked.

Eh, right. Confused the lore with that of the Redeemer. Which is also not a bad choice of course - especially as backup weapon against vessels. Still THe Hours of St. Rumbalt is somewhat suiting for a faithful, paladinesque fighter. You could choose the clergyman background.

@ Jojobobo: Yes, you are right - there would be a slighty higher chance to get a stun-crit result when you score a weapon crit before (and only then) - but since you will cause stun anyway with any weapon on hit I would then focus on a weapon enchantment that has more to add. Like Wendgär's predatory enchantent for example or Good Friend's coordinating one. Coordinating is a very nice enchantment for a ranger because he wants to attack the same target as his pet anyway (because of stunning shots & stalker's link for example) and then can benefit from +4 ACC and +25% damage all the time. There are not too many things that can boost ranged weapon's damage, so that's nice. Or Twin Sting of course which I find to be very nice - especially the Plague of Insects part. Hehe - you are right with blind and stun - they do kind of stack but it's not very effective. --- A bit of theorycrafting (Slacker83 shouldn't read this if he doesn't want to get too confused ) A Boreal Dwarf with Stunning Shots, Stalker's Link (+10 ACC), Bartender's Ring (+20% dmg to spirit and vessel), Stalker's Torc (+20% dmg), Beast Slayer talent (+25% dmg), Appr. Sneak Attack (+15%), Archer's Gloves(+10%) and Good Friend (+4 ACC / +25% dmg) with kith slaying (+4 ACC / +25% dmg) enchantment will have the following "passive" ACC/dmg bonuses when attacking the same foe as his pet (not including the math for more crits because of stunned, the ACC survival bonuses with 10 survival, Marked Prey or quality enchantments like fine, exeptional etc. - those would add on top of the following): - Primordial: +29 ACC / +70% dmg - Wilder: +29 ACC / +70% dmg - Spirit: +14 ACC / +90% dmg - Vessel: +14 ACC / +90% dmg - Beast: +14 ACC / +95% dmg - Kith: +18 ACC / +95% dmg Now add marked prey, +15 survival (except against kith) and the quality enchantments and do some math with crossbows' base damage and you can see that it's quite awesome. You could also stack +40% bonus against flanked targets with boots and survival, buit it's a bit of a hassle - I like the +ACC from survial more. I think for a ranger Good Friend is even better than Wendgär once it's enchanted to superb. With stunning shots and your sky high ACC you cause crits all the time - you don't even need Wendgär's 10% hit-to-crit conversion I guess. Twin Sting is also very nice because of it's raw damage, the auto-superb enchantment and the two shots without reloading (you shouldn't move between thoise two shots because then it doesn't work). The best thing is of course the Plague on Insects that has a much higher chance than 25% when you use Driving Flight: ~43% instead of 25%. So nearly every second shot will trigger this special version of Plague of Insects - great! @Slacker: Boreal Dwarf as ranger + crossbow is a good combo. Both in terms of power as well as lore and roleplaying. I would take a wolf or stag (let's call it moose in this case ) as animal companion.

It's cool. Your chanter will not even reach 0 recovery with his 40% invocation and durgan steel: 1.4*1.2*1.15 = 1.93. Minus armor penalty of maybe 0.2. Even if you add Gauntlets of Swift Action you could then use Vulnerable Attack without slowdown - nice weapon dps from the back row I'd say. Or give it to the fighty fighter. Knockdown & Clear Out plus quarterstaff fit nicely. I like Clear Out (it's one of the few things on a fighter I like). If your barb is going to get HoF please consider dual wielding (anything) - even if you just switch to that special weapon setup for HoF only and then switch back to your usual weapon(s). It will end most trash encounters at once - you only have to reach as many foes as possible. It also works perfectly well with a weapon & special bash shield like Badragdr's Barricade or Dragon's Maw (playing a barb tank with that setup atm - 0 knockouts so far at lvl 11 by the way). Godhansthunyr + Dragon's Maw also looks very neat.

Right - maybe having two options is better with ToI. But even if you look for more defense then Inspiring Triumph might be worth it. Especially with Sacred Immolation it's very nice. The buff seldomly wears off then because you tend to kill an enemy every now and then even without FoD.

Revive you have with Durance or scrolls, he also has Prayer against Treachery at lvl 9 (or 11) - so what for do you need Reviving Exhirtation, Aegis and Righteous Soul? If he's killing stuff regularly you could pick Inspiring Triumph. It's defense bonus stacks with everything like Durance's Circle of Protection. Together they can give the party a defensive bonus of +27 (including Outworn Buckler) that stacks with everything else. If you want to improve his FoD a lot you could pick Intense Flames and Scion of Flame. The later boosts an intense FoD's burning lash damage from 75% to 90%, boosts the weapon lash from 25% to 30% (lets you deal more burning damage than initial damage actually) and is great for Immolation, too. I did both with my current paladin (Shieldbearer) and added Shielding Flames and Shielding Touch (also stack with everything) as well as Reinforcing Exhortation and it's great.

Stunning Shots work with Driving Flight. I'm not so sure about on-crit effects of weapons. After you get Stunning Shots all the on-crit effects on weapons like overbearing or stunning are obsolete though. Silver Flash is an exception because blind stacks with stunned. Boreal Dwarves are good as DPS guys. +15 ACC against two creature groups is nice. As I said in another thread, you can combine that with the Bartender's Ring and Beast Slayer (and/or Cloak of the Frozen Hunt) plus a kith slaying enchantment on your weapon to improve your damage quite a bit against any kind of creature. Edit: thanks Loren for the data. I now remember that arbalests were slower than pistols and blunderbusses, not arquebuses. Those are still the slowest. Sorry - I seldomly reload those things but use Quick Switch and/or the Coil so I seldomly experience reloading with guns.

I think arbalests are even slower than arquebuses, despite the ingame description. Vicious Aim causes 20% attack speed penalty as well as 20% reload penalty. Don't fully understand your question. Speed penalties always hurt - it's just not that noticeable since reload normally takes longer than attack+recovery. But you will be slower nonetheless. As Loren Tyr said, with Swift Aim, Gunner and good DEX you can fire with crossbows at a good speed. Swift Aim not only speeds up the recovery, but also the reload phase a lot. The reload phase with a crossbow is very short then.

Wendgär is without doubt the best non-soulbound crossbow. And you don't have to kill the dragon, you can also pick the easy road an help him escape.

However, an arbalest is always overbearing - meaning is causes prone on crit. It's not too powerful because of the long reload phase of course. You can't chain-prone stuff like with an overbearig melee weapon. I think arbalests have the longest reload phase of all weapons by the way and crossbows the shortest...? The first unique crossbow you can get is "Good Friend" and I think it's in the Endless Paths at lvl 8 (yeah, quite late I have to admit). It's not bad for rangers because it has +4 ACC and +25% damage when you and a team mate - preferably that should be your animal companion - attack the same target, which you should always do because of Stalker's Link and Stunning Shots. It may also be that using Vicious Aim, despite the longer reload, is resulting in more dps because of the increased damage and lot more crits. You can counter the reload malus with Gunner and lots of DEX. Yeah, maybe that's even better than Swift Aim. One should make a chart...

Crossbows have no reduced crit damage - so they're not bad for any class that wants to stay ranged and rolls a lot of crits - like rangers and rogues. There's a nice soulbound crossbow named Twin Sting that shoots two times without reloading. It is bindable to ranger, cipher and rogue. Ranger's special enchantments with it are the best in my opinion. But there are two other nice unique crossbows, too (both in the Endless Paths by the way). I personally would use crossbows with a ranger. With Swift Aim, Gunner and a lot of DEX it's not that slow anymore. edit: oops, Ben No.3 was faster with the Twin Sting thing.

A few points of deflection make no difference. Since you are using no shield you will get hit anyways, some points in RES will not change that a lot. Lower concentration can be countered with potions and items. With more INT however you can have longer knockdowns, more staying power because things like Constant Recovery and Consecrated Ground as well as Unbending last longer, Sundering Blow last longer, Into the Fray has a longer range and so on. Disciplined Barrage is such a great ability for a dps fighter - +20 ACC is huge and gives you a lot of dps. You want to keep that bonus up as long as possible with high INT. You could even trade some MIG for INT just because of Disciplined Barrage. You'd be better off in terms of dps. In my opinion will is the least important defense (and fortitude the most important). But even with more INT instead of RES you don't change the will defense. The Tempered Helmet I mentioned also helps a lot against mind control. And when you face opponents who use mind control a lot: eat some snowcap and you're good to gow. No need to raise your will defense a lot.

Depends - what do you need 16 RES for? Just because paladins should have high RES or do you want to have it because of dialogue options? I personally would perhaps go for 15 MIG, DEX, PER and INT and put the rest evenly at CON and RES. But that doesn't mean that's a great decision.

Read that post behind the link - then shake your head and read it again!

If he uses Dangerous Implements and drops below 50% endurance, he gets +3 Might, +2 Constitution, +2 Dexterity which stack with everything else. So, for example with Outlander's Frenzy he could have +6 MIG, +5 CON and +2 DEX. But that requires a lot of implement attacks even if he has only 3 CON. The highest benefit would be the looks. Wood Elf of Mountain Dwarf would be better. Wood Elf because of higher ACC and Maintain Dwarf because you can pick Sanctifier, Ghost Hunter and Beast Slayer and have all creatures (besides kith) covered with enhanced damage or ACC. If you put on the Bartender's Ring you can even skip Sanctifier and Ghost Hunter. Last time I took a wood elf, put on the Bartender's Ring and took Beast Slayer, Primal Bane and Wilder Hunter. The enhanced damage (also works with spells) worked nicely. I also put on Archer's Gloves as well as Cloak of the Frozen Hunt for additional 10% spell and ranged damage. With implements I then had 25+25(or 20)+10 = +60% (or +55%) damage bonus against everything but kith (who don't have that much endurance anyway). That's quite nice with the high base damage of Rot Skulls.

Another good thing about the boar is that he has no 1/rest ability but his bonuses are passive. Less fuzz. Yeah, the bear's roar is really really lame. They should have given him scaling DR bonuses or... overbearing. So that he causes prone on crit. That would fit. Err - that rhymed, sorry.

If you want him to be more paladin-like, you would need to put more INT into him. This would also be good for Constant Recovery and the AoE of Gallant's Focus as well as the duration of Knockdown, Into the Fray and Sundering Blow (if you want to take that). I'm playtesting a support fighter at the moment and he has max INT because he uses "Take the Hit" and "Clear Out" and also Gallant's Focus. I have to say Take the Hit surprises me. It's superawesome if your fighter is sturdy enough and not the main tank but a second row supporter. It also is kind of an ability that you could expect for a paladin. Clear Out is also very nice. It's only 2 per rest but I can't say how many times this saved my fighter's little hairy orlan booty. With high INT the AoE is huge enough to disable 5 or more (normal sized) foes and send them across the screen. Combined with Knockdown he's a great CC guy (for a fighter) and makes good use of Apprentices Sneak Attack. He uses Tall Grass from second row though, not great swords or estocs. As a wannabe paladin, I would strongly recommend the great sword The Hours of St. Rumbalt. It's lore is that it's a paladin's weapon, and it has Overbearing (prone on crit) and Annihilation (+0.5 crit damage multipl.) and comes with Accuracy III (+12) enchantment. Combined with the fighter's high base ACC, high PER and Disciplined Barrage (a must for a dps fighter in my opinion) you will crit very often, resulting in very high crit damage and knocking the target down. Another plus are it's two damage types (which pikes and estocs lack). The Blade of the Endless Paths is also a nice weapon for such a theme, because it has Marking and can be used to support a fellow team member with +10 ACC. But overall I find the great sword to be the better choice. A front row fighter with 2H and only 8 CON will need strong self healing capabilitites or go down quickly. So I also recommend Rapid Recovery (scales with level) and a Belt of Bountiful Healing or Fulvano's Amulet for +25% healing. I would also raise surviuval up to 14 if possible (and if you don't wanmt to go for lore), for another +60% healing bonus. You are also very flexible with a +15 ACC bonus against certain enemies then. If you then take Unbending you become unkillable in tough encounters except when health starts to runs out. Unbending used to be superstrong - they patched it in the latest version and I can't say how strong it is now, but I killed an enemy fighter yesterday who had this and it still took forever to kill him. I wouldn't take Unbroken because it's nearly the same as Second Chance on an item, but you have to use an ability point for it (and it's per encounter of course). Second Chance and Unbroken don't work together. If you go down, both will be triggered for no special effect other that both charges are gone. If you go down every encounter (and are no barb with Vengeful Defeat or have a paladin with Behold the Nartyr with you), you are doing something wrong I'd say. And once you get up you will be knocked down again immediately.So I'd skip that ability. In a party you might have scrolls, paladins, priests or chanters anyway who can revive. My goal would be to not go down at all. A good combo of armor and boots would be Sanguine Plate + Shod in Faith. Your deflection will not be too good (no shield) and you will receive a crit from time to time. With high MIG and INT the Consecrated Ground will heal your allies and you (especially with that healing bonus of yours) a lot while Frenzy will last longer with high INT and will add +4 MIG and +4 CON as well as +33% speed. That's way better than the gambeson in my opinion. You can combine that with a Tempered Helm (it's +3 MIG and stuff now stacks with everything after your first kill). It looks good with the Sang. Plate and has awesome bonuses against mind control and some of the most nasty afflictions as paralyze and so on - you can skipt those talents then. If you choose any other item with +3 MIG you can pump your MIG bonuses from items to +10 MIG (Frenzy + Temp. Helm + another +3 item) after you got a crit and killed someone. That's pretty nice. An alternative to Sanguine Plate would be Outlander's Frenzy - but I don't think you can spare the talent point. With Armored Grace and durganized Sanguine Plate you will already be fast. Frenzy, then put on Gauntlets of Swift Action, durganize the great sword and you'll have a attack speed bonus of 1.72 with only 0.15 malus from the plate - resulting in 1.57 speed bonus which is good for a 2 handed fighter ((2 meaning 0 recovery, 1 is normal speed)). And then your high DEX will speed you up further. If you would reach 0 recovery then DEX bonuses wouldn't do a lot anymore for your attack speed. DEX is applied after all the attack speed calc is done - and you can't reduce 0 recovery further with DEX. With the Blade otEP you would indeed have nearly 0 recovery in plate - and DEX wouldn't do a lot for your attack speed anymore. Another reason why I like the great sowerd better in this case. Of course all this speed stuff is late game talk. Before it comes to durgan steel and stuff like that high DEX will do you good. With a 2hander's high base damage you want to take every bonus dmg talent/ability that you get. So Savage Attack, Two Handed Style, Weapon Spec. and Weapon Mastery are great, also Appr. Sneak attack (with an overbearing weapon it's even a must I'd say). If you want to wear the Bartender's Ring (+20% damage to spirits and vessel) and take a boreal dwarf (+15 ACC to wilder and primordial) and then squeeze in Beast Slayer and make your great sword kith-slaying (don't know if that fits into the 14 enchantment points if you also want to put a lash on it and make it superb?) you would do a lot af extra damage against every kind of enemy: +20% to vessels and spirits, +25% to beasts (including dragons), +15 ACC (= more crits) against WIlder and Primordial and +5 ACC and +25% damage against kith. Nice for dps. Combine that with all the dmg mods above and you'll do a lot of damage per hit. But I fear that there are not enough talent points for all of this. Ok, enough from me I guess... need ice cubes, my fingertips are burning...

Yes, high MIG and high weapon damage per hit (from savage attack for example) are great for wounding. The more damage per hit and the more MIG the better. If you would cast Champion's Boon on both you would see that the boar's damage will improve more than the cat's. The cat is better off with more DEX for a lot of speed - which fits nicely with fast spellcasting and Interrupting Blows of course. Nice to see that they both work and that you (as a powergamer) are not forced to always take cat form. Thanks for testing!

To be honest I never tested the Wildstrike Belt with anything else than Wildstrike burn. But I would be surprised if it would "adapt" to your wildstrike choice. But maybe. For a solo druid the scepter is ok if you kite with boots of speed when unshifted anyways. But it's a bit of a hassle. I would never use it in a party for that purpose. The tusks do 20% raw damage instead of 25% like wounding - but besides that they work exactly the same - meaning that this wounding also profits from high MIG as Presistence's, Tidefall's and Drawn in Spring's wounding does. So it should be great. Can't say if it's better than faster claws from cat's form (dps wise), but for example Persistence's dps beats any other bow (speed enchanted or not) just because of wounding - so I guess it can't be too bad. I was pretty satisfied with the performance. Also with the sturdiness of the combined regeneration effects - just looked up an old savegame: I had 16 endurance/3 sec regeneration at lvl 10. I also did a hit (not crit) with 42 pierce damage (against 1 DR - so basically nothing) which resulted in 11 raw damage (with 18 MIG) from the tusks (which stacks). Elemental lash damage was ~30 with Scion of Flame and Wildstrike Burn + Belt. That's like ~70% and not the expected 66%, but who (besides Loren Tyr) knows what's going on there with the belt and how it's bonus is applied. 42 is close to my average damage of ~39. So we can saythat on average I did around 42+30+11 = 83 damage with a normal hit at lvl 10 and MIG 18 with this dude. Maybe the faster cat attacks are better (esp. with Avenging Storm, where speed is key), but this is def. not bad. If I used Envenomed Strike here and there and also Taste of the Hunt (those are not considered spells but attacks and therefore don't slow me down with my 4 DEX but are as fast as my other hits) the mobs got decimated pretty quickly. It would surely get better in terms of dps when I didn't dump DEX, but I wanted high CON. I also considered taking Novice's Suffering plus Sandals and play that druid as an unarmed brawler - so that it doesn't matter too much if he's shifted or not, he would just keep on hitting - but I didn't so that because I had no talent point to spare. If Taste of the Hunt and Envenomed Strike were full attacks I might have done it.

You need survivability if you want to survive some mob hits while you are spiritshifted. You can't kite all the time if you want to deal a lot of damage when shifted because it doesn't last very long. So besides survivability and some oomph you also need a lot of INT. You can get a second use of Spiritshift if you use the soulbound scepter you get from Chancelor Warrin. For druids it restores one spiritshift use per encounter. So you can go in shifted and when it ends kita a bit and fie with the sceptre until you get a second use - then go back in. Last druid I played with shifting was a boar with Veteran's Recovery and again survival 14 for max self healing. He only had 4 DEX but MIG and INT were maxed an CON was also high. Low DEX is bad for casting of course, but not so bad when shifted because of dual wielding and Two Weapon Style. I also put on Sanguine Plate and Shod-in-Faith. I would catch a crit and then shift - Frenzy and Consecrated ground still on. It spared me the talent for Outlander's Frenzy... The boar has a regeneration effect on it's own which is not too strong (comparable to the Cloak of the Tireless Defender) but adds to Veteran's Recovery - but the Boar Tusk wounding is very good with high MIG - like the wounding enchantment. It works quite nicely with Envenomed Strike, too and also with Taste of the Hunt. You can hit every foe around you once and watch them die slowly from the DoT. I add Avenging Storm and Nature's Terror and of course Returning and Relentless Storm. Garden of Life is very good as I said once there's at least one dead enemy on the ground. The rest is spells of course - Plague of Insects is very strong with high PER and Interrupting Blows. I went spretty smooth - but I didn't try the dragons and also didn't finish the playthrough. So I can't say anything about that. Stag carnage may also be nice for tough bounty fights - although it's only 1/rest. The highest damage for your shapeshifting attacks (per hit) you get when you use boar and take Wildstrike Burn + Wildstrike Belt + Scion of Flame by the way. You will have a 66% burning lash that way (and of course wounding on top). But all the great shock spells (like Avenging Storm) of the druid always lead me to Heart of the Storm. You'll only have +54% wildstrike shocking lash instead of 66% burn though. Maybe one could squeeze in both? I mean also good for the spells - Firebug, Boiling Spray and stuff are also worth buffing...

Yes, I also noticed that draining isn't influenced by healing mods. That kind of stupid and not consistent behaviour, but well... They fixed the Tempered Helm (and maybe some other items which do things on kill or other special circumstances) in one of the latest patches. Now it indeed stacks with everything. My solo priest of Berath now casts his Shining Beacons with Abydon's Hammer in hand and gets nearly 50 MIG and over 20 INT - and then switches to Tidefall. His wounding damage is otherwordly - but takes some time. His Envenomed Strikes plus wounding plus Cleansing Flame however even kill dragons. Very good that I can't die as long as I cast Triumph of the Crusaders + Shining Beacon on the mobs that surround him and as long I have some health left.

1.: I didn't test that, can't say. Never use them... 2.: Yes, they stack. The -6 shock DR is a debuff that is attached to the target (and also works for your team mates) and the +5 DR bypass of Pen. Shot is attached to your attack. Ryona's Vembraces (+3 DR bypass) and Effigy's Resentment (Devil of Caroc, +1 DR bypass) also stack. You can reach 15 DR bypass with Stormcaller that way. 3.: Yes, they stack with everything.

Besides Dangerous Implement you can use Marksman and Penetrating Shot - although the later is a waste in my opinion. You want to have high ACC with the initial crushing shot so that the corrode AoE-splash happens. The AoE is quite big with enough INT so an Envenomed Strike with Rot Skulls can hit a lot of foes. Runner's Wounding SHot is also an option, but it only works with the initial target, not the AoE. But because of the high base damage of Rot Skulls it's still not bad. Rot Skulls itself is great. The corrode DoT stacks. It's easy to kill the whole group of ogres in front of Nalred's Cave with it in no time. Of course it's of not much use against poison/disease immune enemies. But you always have your spells... Don't know if they patched Avenging Storm with retaliation. That would really be sad. Used to be a lot of fun.