Boeroer

Nice! I seldomly use drugs and food (most of the time only when going solo or when trying out weird/difficult party comp.) - so I'm not too familiar with all that stuff. Maybe this is also the case with many other players - so nobody (or only few) found this combo until now.

It's no bug. It's done on purpose, you can see it in the code. Why else would they introduce a seperate category of DoT effect if not on purpose? I don't say it's good though.

Yes, it's special to wounding as enchantment (Persistence, Drwan in Spring, Tidefall) and also Wounding Shot. INT influences the diration, but not the damage. It only gets spread out. It is indeed stupid, but it is as it is. So, basically with 10 INT you could have 10 dmg over 5 sec. With 20 INT you would have 10 dmg over 7,5 sec (made the numbers up just to illustrate). It's not superbad to have high INT, it just takes a biut longer for the whole damage to apply. IN certain cases this might even be better to have a longer DoT effect (for Predator's Sense and Cleansing Flame for example - playing a berathian priest with Tidefall, Cleansing Flame and tons of INT atm and it's great). However, with very low INT (you can reach a value of 1 with items I guess?) the DoT of wouding gets applied very quickly (roughly 2.5 sec) which is generally better. Most other DoTs work "correctly" with INT, meaning that you get more damage ticks and therefore more damage with higher INT. Those are Deep Wounds, Envenomed Strike, I think all of the DoT spells (there may be excaptions) and so on. Those are two different categories of DoT effects. I recall there are three categories of DoT effects (in the code), but I forgot what the third was...

My comments about Pen. Shot and Vicious Aim were made with either Persistence (wounding) or Stormcaller (spell chance/shock DR debuff) in mind. With other bows it might be a bit different. But in my opinion a bow ranger should aim for one of those bows. Persistence for the best single target DPS and Stormcaller for good DPS, nice (kind of) AoE CC and DR debuff. Both are obtainable quite easily and early for such good weapons.

If you use Persistence, then lower INT is actually a good thing because of wounding. it's damage gets buffed by MIG, but not INT. INT only stretches out the time over which the damage gets applied in this case. Same with Wounding Shot's bonus damage. But if you want to use Outlander's Frenzy and outer stuff like Binding Roots you don't want to dump it I guess. Persistence has the highest single target DPS of all bows by the way because of wounding. Outlander's Frenzy can be used to counter Vicious Aim's speed penalty. With both you will have +5% speed, +10 ACC and +20% DMG and +3 MIG (which will lead to additional +9% dmg). Swift Aim and Outl. Frenzy's speed bonus don't stack. Also note that neither Vicious nor Swift Aim work with Twinned Arrows. Those all all modals and only one of them can be active. Outlander's Frenzy takes some time to cast - time in which you can't shoot. If you let enemies come into range after initializing combat this dosn't matter so much. Before reaching lvl 13 (Twinned Arrows), I would recommend Swift Aim (+ Driving Flight) if you use Stormcaller - you want to proc Returning Storm as often as possible. Persistence works really well with Outl. Frenzy + Vicious Aim. Wounding profits hrealy from high MIG and dmg mods. Vicious Aim also works with some spells like all the Missile scrolls and so on. Apprentice Sneak Attack is a good choice. With Binding Roots, Wounding Shot and later Stunning Shots it will be triggered all the time. Also note that Marked Prey works in a very special way with multi-projectile attacks like Blunderbusses, Golden Gaze, Missile scrolls and so on: the first projectile gets +20% DMG, the second +40%, the third +60%and so on. Don't know if it's also the case when using Twinned Arrows. With Persistence and also Stormcaller Pen. Shot is of no use. As Loren Tyr showed in a nice graphic, there's only a certain sweet spot where Pen. Shot is paying off. It's not worth a talent point. Wounding gets calculated before DR and is raw damage - so the extra 5 DR bypass aren't needed - the speed loss is too severe. And with Stormcaller you will already have an automatic 6DR debuff and you want to shot as fast as possible. So I strongly don't recommend Pen. Shot as long as you're not using things like Blunderbusses or missile spells. If you want to deal a lot of damage with your pet, take either Wolf or Stag. Wolf has the highest base damage which works very well with all the DMG boosts like Predator's Sense and all, making his attacks the most devastating against single targets. When you use Hiravias or Kana Rua who can apply a lot of AoE DoT effects, then use Stag. It's carnage is now 1/encounter. With AoE DoT and carnage + Predator's Sense + Vicious + Merciless Companion and so on the stag is great. For tanking the bear is still nice. The DR bonus scales with level. If you buff the antelope's defenses further it's quite sturdy. But real tanking with pets is not possible anyway if tou don't provide support with defense buffs. Continous Healing with pets is great (Consec. Ground, Moonwell and so on). They have no health issues. A really, really good combo is Triumph of the Crusader (priest) plus a DPS pet like wolf or stag: as soon as the pet kills an enemy (which happens a lot when fully skilled and all DMG mods are on) it gets healed completely. And since it has no health this can go on and on and on...

Thanks a lot for testing. With low(er) MIG it may well be that BotEP is better, too. High MIG is great for wounding, low MIG is bad for it. The BotEP doesn't depend on it so much because of DR bypass and speed. So maybe this rule of thumb can be applied: chars with high MIG should prefer Tidefall, chars with low MIG BotEP. And somebody should also test how Firebrand performs compared to those two in terms of DPS. I also find Hours of St. Rumbalt to be a very good DPS/CC weapon. Annihilation plus Overbearing is a great combination. As is Tall Grass's Predatory + Overbearing + reach. Attack speed is not necessarily the most important thing for DPS when you fight high DR foes. But it also helps a lot with CC effects like Force of Anguish: with enough wounds, it's supereasy to punch several foes to the ground in quick secession because of your short recovery. With a 2h this is not possible. The chance that you get interrupted is higher and it's not about damage when you use FoA. You want to disable. That's one reason why I think 2h should deal a bit more damage or do more crits in order to balance out the faster appliance of status effects with dual wielding or even weapon+durg. shield. Or they should have way higher interrupt values than one handed weapons. Something that resembles the impact/force when you get hit by such a big weapon.

For party play, she's awesome. Vessel immunities can be "abused" to gain big advantages. I also don't get the Wood Elf thing. Riposte is only worth it if you combine it with a shield and Escape in my opinion. Else your deflection isn't high enough to produce grazes and misses reliably. Also works OK when you stack defenses against disengagement attacks (up to +32 passive) - maybe then you can do without a shield.

The comparison between Monksterlasher and the semi Lady of Pain can't be done properly when you don't let the monk gain wounds of course. You would have to get in with the monk first to get fair results in a playthrough - the fighter doesn't need to get hit in order to do damage. Or, even better, do a certain encounter with the fighter and then again with the monk - as I did (also with the LoP). Until today I couldn't build a fighter who can beat the difficult bounties solo without cheesing or kiting and without spamming scrolls. I can do that with several monk builds. Monksterlasher's dual Bittercuts - although being nice with Spirit of Decay - are a bit special and unrealistic though. But even with fists every monk who's build with some sense and Torment's Reach should do more DPS than a fighter. AoE damage is key here. I also think (no proof though) that Tidefall does more DPS than The BotEP with the stellar MIG the LoP normally has. Wounding gets calculated with the damage you do before DR gets subtracted and is also influenced by MIG (the MIG bonus applies to the +25% raw damage). So, with high MIG even +5DR bypass and speed of the BotEP might not be enough to outdamage wounding of Tidefall. Plus: every time you meet pierce resistant or even immune enemies the Blade's DPS will go down. But maybe I'm wrong here. Bit since every calc showed that Persistence rules over any other bow when it comes to DPS I guess with Great Swords it's not that different. We should use the same build, optimize it for dual wielding and then again for 2h and then do some ingame tests.

If it doesn't proc at all (sometimes happens with spell chance items), try to unequip and reequip. That can help. If not, try to reequip, save and reload.

I would like it if they did a bit more damage. Maybe Two Handed Style could be buffed a bit to 20% instead of 15% and/or they could add a small hit to crit conversion. I like Great Swords because of the great uniques they have and also because of the two damage types.

Yeah - back then it was only about building a monk who needs a lot less micro than the usual Torment's Reach spammer (hence the "droni" = drone in the name) and about stacking move and attack speed. It's def. not the most powerful monk build, but it's a lot of fun because of the absurdly high move speed and the hefty push/prone effect. It's great for picking off single targets, but not so much for AoE damage. This build works quite well on it's own with AI settings.

Same with Aggrandizing Radiance and most other talents that add some special effect to an ability.

Priest + chanter + cipher's Defensive Mindweb. Crazy high defenses for everybody while the untouchable chanter totem roasts its surroundings.

But Unlabored Blade with a durganized Spelltongue has nearly the same speed as durg. Sword of Daenysis + durg. March Steel Dagger: Unlabored Blade: 20% speed enchant + 15% stolen (Spelltongue, works universally) Spelltongue: 15% durg. + 15% stolen So no need for mighty Alacrity in my opinion.

I think that Eldryn's Jacket (also padded) might be a nice fit for this monk. You get hit a lot as a monk anyways so dishing out some blindness for protection and easier crits from time to time might be nice.

Sure - although it's a bit overkill to add Alacrity to dual wielding and Two Weapon Style. You will be already near 0 recovery with dual wielding + Two Weapon Style + Swift Strikes with a padded armor. No need to add another big bonus like +50%. I'd leave that armor for other chars most of the time who don't have easy or early access to speed bonuses and will profit a lot from the 50% speed and movement boost in tough encounters - like priests, druids or ciphers (or a Stormcaller ranger with Twinned Arrows or Vicious Aim if lower than lvl 13). Especially with durgan steel and the two speed enchanted weapons you already get so fast that you can wear armor and use Vulnerable Attack without any speed loss. Of course this only counts towards weapon attacks. But a monk most of the time does use his weapons - most of his special awesomenesses are connected to his attacks, not spells and such. Alacrity is really good for casters, because it's a huge universal speed buff and not only works for weapon attacks which you can already buff with dual wielding and stuff. The lore and additional move speed is nice though.

Making it a great spell.

Yes, Veteran's Recovery gets influenced by MIG and also INT. All the +x% healing buffs also work with it (survival bonus, Fulvano's Amulett, Belt of Bountiful Healing, Maneha's Armor, chanter's Mercy and Kindness).

What always stacks are debuffs that lower a certain defense plus another debuff that lowers a certain stat directly (which also lowers a defense indirectly). Let's say there's a spell which lowers deflection by 10. When you cast some other spell which lowers RES by 6 those two will stack and the deflection of the target will get debuffed by 16. Also, the blind affliction seems to stack with a lot of other afflictions. A graphic of afflictions surpressing each other would be nice...

Thumbs up for this. Why don't you guys at OBS hire Loren Tyr as a consultant and pay him for solving all the bug problems on that endless list of yours? You can even name him "The Mend-a-list" or so...

Guns are at the bottom of the list when it comes to damage per second. They are top at damage per hit, but not per second. Obviously you didn't take into account that Sweet Winds only takes 2 seconds at lvl 16 to complete. So after 2 sec you stack another Sweet Wind on top, after 4 secs it's three of them. It depends in your INT how many you can stack, but it adds up to a great endurance drain per second in a very big AoE. And the second thing is: it's raw damage! After 10 seconds (at lvl 16) you can use Seven Nights to substitute the damage of Sweet Winds. Or after 8 you can use Killers Froze stiff for perma-paralyze. Every 6 seconds you could use White Worms. It's absolutely devastating if you already have bodies piled up where you are defending a chokepoint. Can't see how this is worse than a pistol - even if we speak about dps only (which is not very meaningful as Jojobobo said). I have a chanter build who uses Sweet Winds as his main chant. He soloed every PotD bounty with rel. ease but is also superb with a party. Look for "Chillfog" in the build index. You can't judge a class just by looking at the wiki. I mean you can, but then your judgement will be awfully wrong.

Why are you using cheats? You can always retrain at an inn - or did you mean the console? That one I used excessively without breaking anything so far. I also think it's a corrupted savegame.

For the first play through I would def. use the official companions. Then you don't need to bother with the question which hirelings to take. There's one companion of every class - so you don't miss one. For the MC I personally like priest or paladin because they can gain certain bonuses by picking the right dialogue choices. But that doesn't matter too much.

Brisk Recitation is not only great for invocation users - it also increases the damage of Come, Sweet Winds of Death and The Dragon Thrashed because you can stack more of them. It's also very good for the 30pt damage shield because it stacks indirectly: one shield surpresses the other, so you will never have more than 30pts as a shield, but once the first shield wears of because of hits the suppressed one takes it's place with fresh 30 pts. It can be very powerful if you stack enough of those. It gets totally ridiculous if you have more than one tanky chanter and stack several 30pts shields plus Come Sweet Winds and use Seven Nights every now and then. You will vaporize everything, including Crägholt Bluffs, without loosing a lot of health. Did it with three chanters and no rests until I reached Concelhaut. With high DEX and Brisk Recitation you can also perma-paralyze mobs while hurting them with Come SweetvWinds a Jojobobo said. Your phrase counter will be full again before the paralyze effect wears off (if it didn't graze). @hwrd: how comes that you don't know about all the new talents and abilities? They get displayed on the char sheet. Does that mean you judged the chanter class by looking at the wiki and not by playing it? No wonder you think they are not good. Actually it's one of the most powerful classes in my opinion (if you put spell spamming if wiz/druid/priest aside). Their mechanics are just too slow for anything below PotD. They really shine on PoTD and esp. solo PotD - just my opinion. Few rests and easy to play while micro is also quite low for such power levels.

Brisk Recitation is great. Don't want to miss it. And it's also the name of a famous german pomade: "Brisk - Halt ohne Fettglanz!"* - the biggest lie in the history of advertisement. )* good hold without looking greasy