Boeroer

Oh. Somebody added a lot of new console commands. Cool!

Right - the fighter I meant wouldn't be a tank - more like a duelist. I imagine putting him in Hand and Key or even Osric's Familiy Armor, giving him Resolution and Munacra Arret first. with Armored Grace and durgan steel the breatplate would be at 5% recovery penalty. Lots of annihilating crits, especially with Disciplined Barrage. He would be more like a great looking dps/offtank. Some spells do get +12 ACC when you wiels a single one handed weapon - why not Whisper of Treason?

Great. You should really write a build for it. I can also imagine that a fighter with Disciplined Barrage and Munacra Arret, Ring of Changing Heart and Spirit Spiral could play that role very well. Did you test if one handed weapon use also boosts the mind control by +12 ACC? Could lead to a nice one handed aristocratic mesmerizing fighter with Resolution or something.

Acutally, I haven't seen that double bash bug so far. But HoF against 6 enemies for example results in 36 bash hits alone. If you debuffed the mobs first then nealry every bash results in a crit which procs the Thrust. With Dragon's Maw Taste of the Hunt gets triggered 9 times in average - giving you quite a bit of endurance and dealing good raw damage over time. Dual sabres might be better for HoF - but those two shields are not bad either and a better choice for HoF than a normal shield. When you want to post that tanky barb build with shouts and stuff then I won't do it. I tried Executioner's Hood + Glittering Gloves + Captain's Hatchet. It all stacks and you don't even need Barbaric Yell any more. BUT: the performace with purgatory is better than with the hatchet. A bit less defense but a lot more damage + healing. It lets you kill mobs faster and after every encounter I tried the test with the sabre came out better. Maybe I can try to convert this guy into something sturdy without shield. Then I can post it without interfering with your shield barb...? Will take weeks until I can post something anyways...

I just tested a speedy defensive riposte rogue build with full bonus against disengagement attacks, escape, with two sabres, then a shield and all the stuff. Two sabres don't work against tough enemies - you get shredded to pieces because of all the grazes in seconds while running past the enemies (in this case Ogres). What does work is a setup with Old Gerun's Wall and Purgatory and a potion of Wizard's Double. The Deflection is so high that you can run around the enemies and won't get hit a lot while triggering ripostes all the time. A good trick is to wear a stag helmet and cast Tanglefoot plus Binding Web before going in. That way you have instant Deathblows with Riposte and the enemies are already debuffed which leads to more crits. But I have to say it's not as powerful as I wished for and also despite the shift+click pathing the micro is horrible. But I also tested Dragon's Maw and Badgradr's Barricade with a full tank barb who uses Heart of Fury and I have to say that is one great tank at higher levels! Jump in, daze, barbaric shout and HoF. The Thrust or Taste of the Hunt will proc like a hundret times (feel like, it's less of course) - the sound snippets of both keep playing long after HoF ends. Other than most other on-hit or on-crit effects those bash procs work correctly with HoF. Maybe I'll post a build after some more testing. This is way better than the above rogue. I have to say riposte is stil not very good - only ok-ish.

Why is that? I think you could have pulled a lot of helpful infos out of this discussion. May be a bit lenghty, but there surely are some good infos around Riposte, shields and the like in it.

Yeah, basically, but it's not that easy. The best thing about Persistence is wounding - because that lifts this bow to the top of the dps list of all ranged weapons. Different guys here did a lot of tests and all came to the same conclusion: when it comes to single target dps, Persistence is the best ranged weapon. So by itself it's already great. The fact that it triggers Predator's Sense makes it even more aweseom for rangers of course. Stormcaller is not the best single target dps weapon (because you can't enchant it with durgan steel and an elemental lash), but has other nice features. First of all the -6 shock DR also works for all team members, which is great. Secondly you need no resources like durgan steel or any other parts to make it superb and unlock it's aweseomeness - this can be a good thing in a party where everybody wants to have durgan steel weapons and armors. And the Returning Storm proc which stuns and damages gets triggered every third shot with a ranger. It's really hard to tell which weapon is better. I like them both a lot. p.s.: a few patches ago, Lenas Er wa the best bow on my opinion. It has the disorienting enchantment which used to stack. With the bow and Twinned Arrows and short recovery, you could shoot your target down to nealy 0 deflection. Then OBS nerfed disorienting so that it doesn't stack any more, making Lenas Er fall behind Persistence and Stormcaller in my opinion. Now it's a nice but not too powerful bow that you get really late...

If your monk has high CON, Turning Wheel and Scion of Flame plus Blood Testament Gloves then Fire Godlike is one of the best racial feats acutally at lvl 16. There are not many things that deal more than 100 damage per hit wihtout doing anything but getting slapped.

Ok, if you look at it from a "realistic" angle, a burning sabre maybe could set a target on fire even if the target didn't get scratched, but a gruesome arrowhead wouldn't cause wounding if the arrow doesn't stick. Still very (too) complicated for a game like this. And look how long it takes for the common gamer to find this out - if he even manages to find this out at all. Wounding Shot being handled differently than wounding being handled differently than Deep Wounds being handled differently than all the other DoT effects... and so on... It's a mess.

Yes, with a hireling you can choose another pet when retraining - but not with Sagani. And you can use Swift Aim and then retrain at lvl 13 when you get Twinned Arrows. Before that Swift Aim is totally fine for Stormcaller. Another way is to use Outlander's Frenzy plus Vicious Aim. This will result in +5% (+25%,-20%) speed and a lot more damage per hit because you get +32% damage (+4 MIG, +20% Vicious Aim) and also +20 ACC which leads to a lot more crits. Outlander's Frenzy and Swift Aim don't stack by the way. Just out of curiosity you could even try to use Vicious Aim (more crits = more wounding damage) with Persistence and Swift Aim (more hits = more procs of Returning Storm) with Stormcaller and compare the dps. Should be interesting. At lvl 13 you should use Twinned Arrows instead because it's clearly superior. Using Outlander's Frenzy can result in a shortage of talent points when it comes to the talents that you want to take for the animal companion. As I said I recommend at least Merciless & Vicious & Resilient Companion as well as Predator's Sense (but that's an ability). When all those are active (easily with Stunning Shots or Binding Roots, combined with Persistence or Wounding Shot) the pet's damage is very, very high per hit. Even higher for a wolf (single target) or stag (AoE damage). If you take the Takedown ability for your pet (it's not that bad anymore, in fact it's quite cool) and later Brutal Takedown (talent - adds crush damage which stacks with the normal, already sky high damage of the hit) then the pet becomes even more impressive. But then you will see that you run out of talant points for your shooting. Maybe that you'd have to skip marksman or Pen. Shot then. I focused my persistence based ranger on pet's damage, so I took all the pet's goodies and skipped Marksman and Outlander's Frenzy. I used Persistence as a "wounding marker" for my pet mainly. But of couse it still does great damage. With Stormaller it was the other way round: I wanted to proc Returning Storm as much as possible and keep up the -6 shock DR for my teammates. Just to have a bit of diversity in the two rangers' playstyle. This is not necessarily the best way to do it, but It worked out well and was fun.

So... shouldn't it damage pierce immune foes then? Why does a sabre with a burning lash damage an earth blight which is immune to slash, but Persistence wouldn't damage a flame blight which is immune to pierce? That would mean that burning lash and wounding get calculated before DR, but there was a different kind of handling when it comes to immunities. Man, I really don't want to look into that code. Sounds like a complete mess...

Well you can retrain.

You have to use a bit higher move speed (camping bonus or/and Fast Runner and sugar e.g.). The AI doesn't follow you for long if you have higher move speed. If you have the same or lower, they will follow you forever. The dialogue should get triggered when you walk around the throne. The combat has to end first. Works for me. At last time a few days ago with kiting solo chanter.

Ah OK. Good to know.

Yeah. Although you can give your speedy rogue (or whatever class) a path with shift+click. Usually I did this in a way that he ran in wide circles around the mob. At the start of an encounter, I just shift+clicked around the mob clockwise like a twenty times and then unpaused. Most of the time the rest is like a Benny Hill show.

Yes. Put them into grimoires. You can always edit what spells are in a grimoire, even if it's not your own. You just have to equip it. Then, later, learn from the grimoires again when you retrained. Costs a bit of extra money though. You don't need to keep 50 grimoires. Just put the spells you like and which you don't plan to pick during retraining into one, two or three grimoires. Sell the rest.

This whole (slightly vitriolic) discussion would be obsolete if OBS did it right and bash worked like dual wielding and also got buffed by Two Weapon Style. Still don't get why it doesn't. Now, with the single proc of Thrust instead of two the Barricade got nerfed a lot. Before that I had the feeling that the Barricade was better than any other shield because - as I said - the Full Attack abilities like Blinding and Crippling Strikes and so on worked clearly better, because the Thrust triggered a lot. Normally you could win some fights without using all of your Full Attacks, making the use of auto attacks (which are worse because of bash) obsolete in some fights. Maybe that's why mosspit and I have the impression that Badgradr's Barricade works better than a normal shield: because Riposte and Full Attack abilities add up quite nicely and there are fewer auto attacks than one might think. With a dumped DEX value you would do less attacks overall in one encounter. This would shift dps more towards the Barricade, because the ratio of "done full attacks" to "done auto attacks" in an encounter would be shifted towards full attacks (because encounters aren't endless and your party members will finish the mobs before you get to use auto attacks). With a solo rogue this all would shift towards auto attacks, no matter the DEX, because you would have to kill all enemies by yourself, thus using a tin of auto attacks. If you had a party that kills mobs quickly and you are only the guy that runs around and kills the casters or ranged back liners with a few Full Attacks and dish out Ripostes while getting there, I assume the Barricade would still be better. For a caster hunter it also might be better because of the 10% to 25% reflection. So I think it's not easy to test this in a matter that it comes close to "real" combat. When only doing auto attacks a normal shield wins - when only doing full attacks the Barricade wins. But neither the first nor the last will be the case in a usual encounter.

Right - only exception: when you combine Deep Wounds with AoE pierce/crush/slash damage the can do massive damage. For example take a spell binding of Overbearing Wave or a scroll of Twin Stones or Concussive Missiles: they will apply Deep Wounds to all enemies who get hit by the spell. That can mean up to 20 extra raw damage per spell with high MIG and INT.

This time I'm 100 % sure because Deep Wounds were the base of the Mad Hornet build and I used it a lot: Deep Wounds are better with high INT (and high MIG of course). Other than with wounding where the fixed damage is spread over the time, you get a certain damage per tick (damage gets influenced by MIG) and more ticks with more INT. It doesn't stack as wounding does though. So you could say that high INT isn't better if you hit a target more often (because Deep Wounds gets refreshed anyways) - and that's right. High INT only pays off if you hit once, let the Deep Wounds "bleed" and in the meanwhile turn/run towards another target.

Yes, one ranger with Persistence, the other with Stormcaller. 1.: Persistence: lvl 4 Endless Paths, southwest of the map on a dead body. Stormcaller: WM, Russetwood. After entering the Russetwood map, sneak southwest until you find a wounded wolf. Get the silver arrow that sticks in his flank. You can heal the wolf with enough survival or special spells like charm beast or just put him out of his misery. Then go to Durgan's Battery map and sneak to the northeast of the battery and climb up the watchtower (the battery lies in the norhwest of the map, the watchtower lies east of it). On th top of the watchtower you will find the bow. Arrow and bow will automatically merge and form Stormcaller. You can then bind it you your ranger and start to upgrade it (shouldn't take too long - it's already exceptional and does -6 shock DR on hit). As I said with this ranger you can use war bows first because Stormcaller works with any weapon focus. The 20 INT on your second ranger is maybe better for Stormcaller than for Persistence. The -6 shock DR debuff will last longer. I would also take Binding Roots with that ranger because those will last for a very long time with 20 INT. The shock DR debuff of Stormcaller will help your druid enormously if he uses shock spells (which he should). Relentless and Returning Storm are a great tandem and will stunlock most enemies in range while doing good damage. 2.: Both bows work fine with Twinned Arrows, Stunning Shots & Driving Flight. The rest is plain old ranged skilling. Marksman, Penetrating Shot, such things. Swift Aim doesn't work with Twinned Arrows so you could think about taking Outlander's Frenzy for more damage and attack speed. I would always take Merciless, Vicious and Resilient Companion plus Predator's Sense. I would take wolf and Stag companion, never the lion - and never two of the same because you'll confuse them all the time. Wolf is the best single target dps animal companion (he is running faster, hits faster than a bear or a lion and has 2 more base damage which means all the damage mods from merciless/vicious companion and predator's sense work even better). The stag has a 40sec carnage attack mode which it can be triggered 1/encounter. Your druid can do DoT AoE spells (Plague of Insects for example) which will trigger Predator's Sense for all the carnage targets - very powerful! The lion's roar only causes frighten (not terrify) which is quite lame and also misses a lot. The duration and AoE is also bad (the duration and AoE is determined by the pet's INT - and as you might guess a lion's INT isn't too high...). Wolf and Stag are better. The bear is not bad for a bit of tanking, but he hits very slowly.

That may be. But what does work is running around the mob with high speed and lots of deflection. Even without riposte this can be very effective. Most of the time the enemies try to follow you and totally forget to attack your party and don't use spells or things like that. It's a bit like abusing the KI. Did it once with a speedy paladin and it worked. And when you can squeeze in some ripostes and Deep Wounds for damage... why not?

Well, my trick works without kiting & fighting, and class or build don't matter - so I win.

Two rangers and their bows. There are few topics/questions that are that clear for me. 100% Persistence + Stormcaller. There are no better weapons for two bow rangers. Seriously. War bows can't compete with those. One big advantage is that you can get both quite early if you want. The parts of Stormcaller can be obtained via scouting/sneaking - no combat necessary. Persistence is the ranged weapon with the highest DPS because of it's wounding which works as a raw lash and gets calculated before DR - so this weapon is even good against high DR foes. It also triggers Predator's Sense. Stormcaller's Returning Storm gets triggered every third shot with Twinned Arrows and Driving Flight. It's base damage also works with Heart of the Storm and has a DR bypass of 11 if you use Penetrating Shot. With Stormcaller you can even use Weapon Focus Adventurer first and use war bows until you get Stormcaller (has universal weapon focus). I think most people here will agree that those are the best weapons for rangers. Edit: Twin Sting is nice as an addition but comes really late. It's also not bad for a cipher, because you can shoot two times without reloading.

Why not put on clothing? Looks less stupid and has the same stats (as long as you don't enchant it).

Yeah, that's why I wanted to add Cape of Withdrawal, Fast Runner and Graceful Retreat for +32 deflection while disengaging. Did you try that as well? Hahaha - I just realized that Escape lets you move without any engangement while you also have the +25 deflection bonus - thus obliterating my plan to provoke disengagement attacks, dammit.. So potions or scrolls have to buff your deflection - or a party member like a paladin with Reinforcing Exhortation or something.Hm, when you use Spelltonge and Riposte gets triggered a lot then maybe that rogue could prolong the deflection buffs throughout the whole encouter... ? @Loren Tyr, have a look into the code and tell us what ACC bonus and how much bonus damage disengagement attacks have please.