Boeroer

It only increases the minimum damage your weapons rolls. So, a weapon with 10-15 damage does 12-15 with Confident Aim.

Wound Binding is more powerful, but requires a talent. A Potion of Infuse with Vital Essence is cheap. That was my main point.

As I said: Finishing Blow doesn't seem to work with Backstab and Deathblows. I got ridiculously low damage numbers when I tried that. Maybe they fixed it - it was some patches ago.

I mean maybe it can be useful to have a lot of engagement slots when you are a fighter and use Overbearing Guard or something like that. But I never had a lot of success with that special build. For the rest of all chars I think it's save to totally ignore your engagement slots. Maybe there are players with other experiences.

It's way better than the Wound Binding and Field Triage talents. Because there's a potion with it. It's a super handy spell for squishy 3 CON blaster wizards who use Dangerous Implement and have 0 recovery.

I never pay any attention to engagement and I'd say I'm doing fine.

I'm usually lvl 5 or 6 when I start with bounties I think. I did a lot of playthroughs and a lot of different party compositions are viable. Things like six rogues might be very very tough, but also doable without a lot of consumables. But generally speaking the more per-rest casters you have the easier the bounties are because you can just spam everything you have in quick succession.

For 1:: That's why monks have a much bigger health pool (with the same CON) than fighters or paladins. If you balance it right you will not rest much mroe often than with other frontliners. A little bit more CON does add a lot of health because the base health is already high and CON adds +5% per point.

Maybe you won't. Guns deal less crit damage than other weapons. I think that Firebrand (has Annihilation) with Scion of Flame should result in higher crits. Sure, it lacks the lash and you can't enchant it to legendary, but it comes with damaging III (like superb) and works with Scion of Flame. Plus: +15% from Two Weapon Style and +20% from Reckless Assault. Ok, that's not so much, but it still adds some damage.

Well, some bounties are not so tough, but others can be mean. Especially the Dweller is horrible if your level is too low: no chokepoints, he's a fast runner (so kiting is difficult) and so on. But bounties like Clyde or those guys at the Esternwood Cemetary are quite easy. The WM bounties can be especially tough. It all comes down to buffing yourself and debuffing the enemy. This is where you can see what proper use of your abilities and a good party synergy can do. For all bounties where you can use chokepoints Chillfog and similar spells that debuff and/or do damage periodically are a good way to win. But it's all doable. I usually build the Warden's Lodge as soon as possible and go for the first bounty as soon as possible - because the XP you gain and also the loot is great.

Yeah, but it's a bit of a waste because Swift Strikes don't stack with Frenzy - so I prefer to give this armor to a party member who has no own speed buff - like rogues or paladins or fighters.

We have to determine if we mean damage per attack (also counting AoE damage) or single target damage rolls only. Things like Direballs from a rogue, Torment's Reach from a dual wielding monk or Heart of Fury from a dual wielding barb can deal a lot of damage per attack, but not necessarily per hit. Do DoT spells/abilities also count? A chanter with the burning lash on, Secret of Rime and Seven Nights can deal ridicoulous damage when he manages to hit a lot of foes - most of them with three bolts each. Highest AoE damage can be achieved with Combusting Wounds + White Worms I think. You only need to pile up a lot of bodies in front of a chokepoint, cast Combusting Wounds on the incoming crowd an cast White Worms and BOOM - everything is dead - including your headphones. Whenever I have a chanter Raedric gets one-shotted. Same with Concelhaut and friends... But I guess you mean single target non-DoT hits... I once tried out Backstab-Deathblow-crits with Firebrand and all the +crit damage weapons and talents as well as Scion of Flame. I can't remember the numbers though, but is was impressive. I tried to combine this with Finishing Blow, but it didn't work: I got 2 damage - yeah, 2! WTF? If this worked it would be the highest single crit ysou could score I guess. A Bleak Walker with all the FoD talents, including Scion of FLame and Spirit of Decay, shooting with a Blunderbuss against 0 DR could deal very high crits, too. But I think a rogue with a spell that has very high base damage could rule them all. +200% damage (without MIG and elemental booster talent) on a crit with a high damage spell is hard to overcome.

Ooops, sorry. Shame on me. I saw there are only two lonely chanter builds - I didn't realise they're both mine.

So... Monksterlasher monk, Chillfog chanter and Sorcerer's Apprentice rogue still waiting for a ticket.

The chanter's lash affects more than just weapons - it also affects spells. At least it used to.

No, I meant: It could be that applying CW as a DoT effect makes it easier to prevent it from triggering itself (because it doesn't get triggered by DoT ticks) - but since it used to work with DoT effects a lot of patches ago, that can't be the main reason why they chose that path. Whatever - it's very complicated.

It would really be nice if those special effects with Savage Attack, Vulnerable Attack, Slayer enchantment and so on were optional. I also dislike them. Sometimes they mess up my style concept really bad - and who knows from behind which pillar the next dyrwooden style police officer emerges...

...which is a certainty.

But it used to work with DoT effects. So lazyness can't be the reason.

Ok. All clear now. It would have been better (meaning less complicated) if CW just added X flat burn damage on every hit or even added a +25% burning lash to every hit like the chanter's phrase. Why this whole DoT fuzz?

Yeah, Torment's Reach with a on-crit weapon like Cladhaliath or Godansthunyr is awesome. Even better than barb with carnage, because you get fast Full Attacks all the time. The first one stuns, the second one crits (and causes Apprentices Sneak Attack and Weakened, if you have Enervating Blows), setting up Deathblows quickly for you fellow wizard/rogue who casts Direballs then. By the way: instead of fists + Torment's Reach you can use the Long Pain - works the same, just from 10m away. It's even better: you don't have to reposition. Just hit-hit-hit

Old guys like me don't need a lot of sleep anyway.

Yeah, solo runs with ciphers would be a lot more fun then.

I agree. 15 is enough for nearly all conversations. You'll get rings, belts, amulets and other items which can boost those to 17, later even 18 or 19. And there's restnig bonuses from Caed Nua, too (+3). However, I like my chanters with max INT, because their chant AoE base (and also some cone-invocations' AoE) is so big that every point of INT is visible. You don't need 15 CON either when you're not tanking alone (which I wouldn't reccomend - like Kaylon said). In my experience a chanter with Veteran's Recovery and Ancient Memory can tank alone, but you'll need more CON then because low health might become an issue in the early game. If you want a chanter who uses invocations a lot I wouldn't dump DEX, because the recovery phase after an invocation will be very long then. You can't even chant in that phase. So, chain-paralyzing with "Killers froze stiff" is not possible with 3 DEX. However, it's totally ok to dump DEX if you want to use damaging chants most of the time (like The Dragon Thrashed). I want to point out that the invocation "White Worms" on lvl 1 can be superpowerful if you turn off the "gib" option in the game options so that bodies don't explode (I think that option is stupid anyways). It helps enormously in the early game. You just have to use chokepoints and lure every enemy of a map to that chokepoint (you can also use multiple ones if it becomes too tedious to lure them all through the whole map). Once there are more than 5 bodies piled up it really gets easy to clear a whole map with this. Just lure them all onto that pile of bodies. Once they are there, your phrase couter has reached 3 and you can use White Worms. As long as you don't reload the damage will increase and oncrease until it's very easy to one-shot Raedric and his whole bunch of friends. One of the easiest ways to clear the castle at an early level and take all that loot.

No, despite the fact that it shows a suppressed status, in fact the all stack like the Dragon Trashed and so on. All those CW burn DoT get accumulated. Well, that's what I understand after reading all this. I had the very best experience with multi retaliation + Pain Link + CW on a cipher. Very sad that retaliation doesn't produce focus anymore