Boeroer

It's only advantage is when you execute Full Attacks - especially if the bash can proc an effect like with Dragon's Maw and Badgradr's Barricade. For primary Attacke it doesn't matter and for auto attacks it normaly lowers your damage output compared to a normal shield. Bash is good for monks with shields: Torment's Reach is a Full Attack and the cone AoE damage is a seperate thing which is not determined by the somewhat whimpy bash damage.

But that's a good thing, right? One more argument for Maneha I guess. But I don't need many auto attacks once I got HoF, hehe...

Cool. My fighter with Take the Hit also uses Defender and Overbearing Guard. But he lurks in the back row with a pike instead and normally doesn't get hit by enemies lot - he only soaks up damage for his friedns. If you're using Defender with Edér: Take the Hit works together with Defender - they don't cancel each other.

Yepp, it's very sad. But since the self heal is good enough, you can take those two talent points and do something useful with them until OBS fixes this bug (and introduces some new ones of course).

Maneha 100%. That's because Taste of the Hunt works correctly with carnage and also Heart of Fury and Vengeful Defeat. When you do a HoF attack against 6 enemies you will generate 36 hits with Dragon's Maw, 25% of them will trigger Taste of the Hunt - that is 9 times Taste of the Hunt on avarage - healing you and also doing good raw damage. Also: Savage Defiance 1/encounter when endurance drops below 50% is great. If you took Savage Defiance as a talent you will have two very strong self heals 2/encounter. If you decide differently: Badgradr's Barricade also works with carnage and - more importantly - with HoF and Vengeful Defeat. If you have a priest you could think about giving Spelltongue to Maneha. Priest casts Shields & Crowns for the Faithful on her (+50 deflection, +6 INT and so on) and she does HoF with Spelltongue + Dragon's Maw then: results in great damage that will end most trahmob fights + unbelievable long durations for all the buffs on her, including Shields + Crowns. Another really nice late game weapon for her will be that hatchet that causes Fatigue on hit (also with carnage). Also give her Glittering Gauntlets for carnage-dazing. With yell, fatigue and dazing she will stack a -30 ACC debuff on all foes she hits. It's aweseome (tested it on bounties: awesome tank with good offensive potential). On a fighter bash is not so great because he only has Knockdown as Full Attack - besides that bash will most likely lower his dps - because that's what bash normally does with auto attacks. The fear aura is nice of course, but if you play Maneha as tank she should use Barbaric Yell anyway. And you can always put on the Executionier's Hood which is very nice and also has a fear aura - plus some other nice stuff. You can get it before Dragon's Maw I think. For me a fighter with not too low INT is better off with Little Savior. If you add a paladin with Outworn Buckler this would be an awesome tanking frontline: +10 to all defenses from the two small shields, -30 to enemies' ACC from frightened, fatigue and daze. Somebody also could wear the Redfield shield for another -3 ACC aura. I also did test a fighter with powerful self heal + Take the Hit. It's actually not as bad as I thought. Actually it's quite great. The self healing from Constant Recovery and stuff, combined with healing bonus from camping and very high deflection lowers overall party damage a lot while the fighter can balance things out with Unbending if he needs to. I will have to test how chanters' 30pt damage shield and Take the Hit work together...

Watch out guys! Ancient Memory and Beloved Spirits is still bugged. It turns off once you cast your first invocation and won't turn back on. This is no problem for chanters who only chant The Dragon Thrashed - but for this build it's quite bad because it uses invocations and is dependend on the healing. It works in the first 10-15 secs of combat (when usually you suffer the most) and so it's not a complete waste, but it surely is not working as intended. So decide for yourself if it's worth taking. Most likely you will be better off with two other (defensive) talents atm. Just use postions (Regeneration) or scrolls (Moon Well) instead. I didn't realize it because the tremendous self healing of Veteran's Recovery + all the healing mods of >100% masked the fact that it turned off after some time.

It's the secret ORBUG* modifier! It's related to not so secret OUCHWHIP** I guess. )* Obsidian's random buff for unarmed damage glitch )** Obsidian unknowingly creating (an unbelievable buggy mess of stinking) horsecrap (every frickin' time) when introducing patches

It's really really sad that two nice guys in this forum manage to fix a bug so quickly which is in the game for more than a year - and OBS can't. Come on, OBS, seriously? I didn't realize that this bug is there because I mainly use tanky, passive chanters who only chant "The Dragon Thrashed" all the time and don't use invocations at all. Ok, cool, for those chanters this bug is no problem - but for any other chanter it's very bad. I don't get it why this isn't fixed.

That would have been... superawesome.

Deadfire Archipelago = pirates. The barb companion you can have is also from there - and guess what: she used to be a raider (aka pirates who pillage on land ). For a pirate you should use Deadfire Archipelago and raider. Since you don't want to minmax anyway, the bonus point from culture doesn't really matter. By the way - later on you can get headgear that looks like a pirate's headscarf. It gives you +2 survival which is not too bad there's better headgear, but +2 survival can be really handy to reach certain levels of camping bonuses (for example bonus healing or ACC bonus) earlier in the game and with less skill points. If you want how it looks like, take a peak into the build "The Immortal Martyr" in the list. He wears that headscarf thing.

Way too much kiting. Solo PotD runs are difficult enough - at least against bounty groups and such.

Right - also Carnage's ACC malus and the barb's low starting ACC may be reason why it works quite well.

Hm... How about a druidic brawler? Deflection is not too bad, ACC is not good, he can use Spiritshift but even after it runs out he can still pack a punch. Taste of the Hunt may be OK with fists.

Or Rhymrgand - because of Aurochs/Stag carnage. That would be so cool. Carnage on a priest - even a weaker one would be great.

Well - low ACC seems to be no problem because grazes/hits/crits don't make a big difference. Wizard or priest brawler anyone?

Concerning dwarves: boreal dwarf for an offensive approach, mountain dwarf for a defensive one. Some people say that the racial feat of mountain dwarves is weak, but I don't think so. Actually there are a lot of enemies who use attacks that are either disease or poison. Those attacks (like poison clouds of iron constructs, attacks of several other vessels, oozes' ranged attacks, wood beetle poison and so on, several corrode and raw damage spells) can be pretty nasty. It's a good thing to have higher defenses against them. Having +15 ACC against primordial and wilder foes is also nice. Some of the toughest mobs are wilder/primordial (ogres, lagufaeth, adragans, delemgans and so on). Lore wise I think that hammers belong to mountain dwarves.

Yeah - but monk's fists seem to have higher base damage (10-15) than normal ones...?

And you could look for a potion of Fleet Feet or craft it. Although for this fight it's of no use because you can only drink it after combat starts.

You will have to use aggressive and cruel answers a lot with a Bleak Walker. Keep that in mind. The additional corrosive lash talent for FoD is ok. With the rigjt weapon it can add a lot of damage. And if you find the sabre Bittercut in Russetwood/WM, you'll have one of the best weapons in the game (in my opinion). You can even take Scion of Flame AND Spirit of Decay then. Take a look into my monk build "Monksterlasher" why. Also works with a piratesque Bleak Walker.

Then use sugar - and movement speed bonus from camping. You only need 3 survival for that if I recall correctly. That should give you +3 movement speed.

Basically it's just the Monksterlasher as a paladin with Firebrand instead of Bittercut and without Spirit of Decay.

I don't know if Novice's Suffering and Transcendent Suffering are handled differently. Maybe you're right - but I think the monk gets so many lashes because things like Savage Attack are ineffective. Maybe Loren Tyr can clear this up with a glimpse into the code. Edit: edited after you edited.

@Livegood118: Nono - lashes are a totally different topic. Lashes' damage is calculated with the damage you roll before it hits DR. Here every #dmg mod and stuff will be included. We're only talking about all the abilities and talents that add +x% to the weapons base damage. Those are things like Savage Attack or Reckless Assault and stuff likethat. Those +20% will be calculated with the unarmaed daage without Novice's Suffering bonus. So it's like 5 to 8 base damage * 1.2 + Novice Suffering instead of (5 to 8 base + Novice's Suffering) * 1.2 So those talents (Savage Attack and all that +x% damage stuff) are quite useless for anybody who uses fists. @Dr <3: Yeah, lashes are the best for this I guess. Maybe that's the main reason the monk gets lashes and no damage mods like fighters or rogues. Lashes work perfectly well with this mechanic. Maybe a paladin would do good damage with FoD fists...

It can still be good to use weapons from different weapon focus groups. You can use Gallant's Focus instead of weapon focus. It's only 2 ACC difference and works for every weapon.

As I said: since it's both in the same weapon group, you can use pistols for enemies with high DR and blunderbusses for enemies with low DR. But sadly sou will not know how many DR the enemy has before the combat starts - because it's your first run. A save choice would be Weapon Focus Soldier with arbalests, arquebuses (both great for FoD shots, arbalests also knock down the enemy when you crit - with FoD and Sworn Enemy this happens often) and war hammers. Those do damage like maces, but without the DR reduction. Instead they have two damage types (crush or pierce) which I - personally - like better than 3 DR bypass. The hammer will roll damage agsinst the DR that is weaker. In a lot of cases the difference is higher than 3, making it better than 3 DR bypass. It's also very convinient if you meet enemies who are immune to pierce, crush or slash damage. Also, dual wielding hammers looks better than dual wielding maces - but less good than dual wielding stilettos or sabres.