Boeroer

ROFLMAYONNAISE for "real pen and paper". You're killing me...

There is no balancing reason why the cipher shouldn't be able to cast things like Pain Block or Going Between on himself. Wizards or priests can buff themselves into the sky and go melee, a druid has spiritshift and a few buffs/healings that work on the party AND on himself - only the cipher has this limitations. It's not that those powers are especially powerful if you cast them on yourself or something. There may be some arguments against it if you refer to inner game logic (using the souls of others and whatnot). That may be the reason why all other self buffs of the cipher (like Psychovampiric Shield, Wild Leech and Time Parasite) need an enemy to be cast onto. But one could introduce a talent or ability that allows self buffs without using the souls of others and name and describe it accordingly. Ha - you could even create a power where you could project your soul into enemies (a bit like Thaos can) while your body is left in a kind of stasis. You could then cast your own powers on yourself. That would be funny and would also work around that inner game logic.

ROFL because of "realism".

OK - tested the firearm-wizard with 4 blunderbusses, quick switch, combusting wounds and expose vuln. aaand it's awesome. The best part is that you can use this little trick early. At the time you find your first blunderbusses you'll have lvl 3 spells. Only thing that comes a bit late are the vembraces. But it also works nicely without them. The focus on single targets with a wiz is a fresh approach for me and quite effective - because you never lose the potential to nuke things, but you can also snipe an annoying for in no time if you need to.

It may also be that you have to unequip and reequip the item. Sometimes that also happens with spell chances: won't proc at all until you reequip or even reload.

Fighters are more fun if they can run fast. At least that's my opinion. That way Knockdown is also more useful and more fun. Once you can get Clear Out and Charge the fighter is not as passive anymore and can do a bit AoE damage - but the best part of it is Charge's instant teleport across the battlefield. And they are sturdy enough to run behind enemy lines without dying quickly, even without shield. Nice disruptors!

Mourning Gloves' speed bonus doesn't stack with Frenzy.

Well it does a lot less damage than Battle Forged. Battle Forged scales with level, so at higher levels you can clearly see the difference, esp. because Turning Wheel's +50% bonus works way better with higher base damage - to overcome DR and such. With the Monksterlasher I saw a lot of 100+ hits from it. Scion of Flame does it's part, too. It raises both Battle Forged AND Turning Wheel's damage. With normal retaliation you need high DR bypass (from Ryona's Vembraces, Vuln. Attack, maybe even Effigy's Resentment) to make it worthwhile. And even then it's damage is still a bit whimpy. But you don't have to be at 50% endurance, which is a plus of course. I forgot if Enervating Blows works with retaliation. If it does, it would be a nice plus. You could wear that Lavander thingy and use retaliation to apply both sickened and weakened if you get hit. This will help a lot with Force of Anguish and such things.

Yes - only that Battle Forged does like 20 times more damage at lvl 16.

Hi! v3.03.1047 PX1 PX2 -steam, on Linux: Let's pretend you have a wizard with that soulbound scepter and a fighter with "Take the Hit" in the party. Now, if you dominate an enemy with the soulbound scepter - in my case a troll - then said troll will profit from Take the Hit if he is in the fighter's range. So if you hit the troll while he is dominated, you will hurt your fighter, too. "Ok" you might say, "then don't touch the troll unless dominate wears off", and right you are. Only that Take the Hit still works even if the troll is no longer dominated - meaning you have to switch off Take the Hit or move your fighter out of reach or he will die from raw damage while you try to kill the not-any-more-dominated troll. Maybe I'll upload a savegame later. I have to find a proper situation where you can reproduce this issue without too much fuzz... I can't say if this also happens with other types of enemies or with charmed. It was really obvious with trolls because of their high endurance. I had to put aside the soulbound scepter and take another one for the current playthrough. Now I'm a bit sad...

I could do it - but honestly atm I'm too lazy for all that fuzz, switching branches and stuff. I just hope for the best.

Maybe they also nerf it in a way that the AoE of Torment's Reach no longer triggers on-hit and on-crit effects like barb's carnage does - because that' very powerful, too. Especially with Full Attacks. It doesn't work with Enervating Blows, but with weapons like Godansthunyr or We Toki you can stun- or prone-lock whole groups if your ACC (compared to enemies defenses) is high enough. This also doesn't change much for this build, because it doesn't use such weapons.

Hey, it's Durance. He deserves it. I'm on Linux by the way - so no visible cloaks for me...

By the way: a chanter with Sure Handed Ila and The Champion (stacks) can achieve very high rate of fire, which is good for his proc chance. It's not as bad as many people think

Only wounding and wounding shots are "better" with low INT. Meaning the overall damage is not influenced by INT at all. So with less INT, you deal the damage in a shorter time. All other DoT effects get stronger (deal more damage) with more INT . For example Envenomed Strike, Deep Wounds, DoT spells and so on. So, a ranger with 1 INT may be possible and his wounding damage from Persistence or Wounding Shot will be applied nearly instantly compared to a ranger with 18 INT where it will be applied over several seconds.

A barb tank with Executioner's Hood, Threatening Presence and the things above is nice. A paladin will be even better with Sacred Immolation. A Kind Wayfarer will not stop healing and boosting deflection while it's on. The Black Path is quite meh compared to Strange Mercy.

Give him the ring of thorns or Finreah's Grace from the Doemenels' shop. They both will give you +3 DEX and can be obtained rel. early. The Belt of the Staelgar from the merchant in front of the Vailian Trading Company gives +2 DEX and has a minor Breakout enchantment.

Too bad. Thanks for testing!

Good question. No idea actually. Other things like AoE buffs do work on charmed or dominated foes. So we can't be sure. I guess the answer to this question would also answer the questions "Does the coordinating enchantment work with charmed/dominated enemies" and "Does marking and Coordinated Attacks work with...". Minor Threat is really hard to test - but testing marking and coordinating with charmed enemies should be easy.

Rogues have the highest possible mechanics starting (and end) value, that's why I suggested rogue.

A rogue woul fit best in my opinion. He can scout, search for traps, open the fight with a sneak attack, maybe even a backstab and then retreat to the group. He needs high move speed for this. So either Fast Runner and/or survival bonus and/or Boots of Speed or another item with move speed bonus seem to be important. Else he will get caught while returning to the group.

Really? And a rogue's Cripplng Strike doesn't injure the senews or something like that, it's his soul that drives into enemies' knees and makes them wobble? Who said that by the way?

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.