Boeroer

I guess in a party Takedown Combo + Call to Slumber + Disintegrate would be a fun combo against tough foes. Or even Takedown Combo, Call to Slumber and Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin.

Yes, Blackbow + Phantom is very nice to have and fun, too. May I ask why you are using the Mask of the Grotto Deep and the Spider Silk Robes? Do they synergize particularly well with something you are using (like poisons)? When prioritizing DEX/Action speed items - wouldn't an armor like High Harbinger's Robes for example be the better choice? And instead of Griffin's Blade maybe Xoti's Sickle or so? What do you think about Blightheart? It would give a 10% corrosive lash to all your direct dmg spells - and the healing effect can be prolonged with Wall of Draining (along with Healing from Hands of Light gloves for example). What's your opinion about Ring of the Marksman when using the Blackbow? It would give you +2 PEN for the bow in combination with Spirit of Decay - and the Phantom +1 PEN. The added accuracy would also be nice to have on yourself and the phantom. For that reason I also use the Helm of the White Void: it would grant you and the phantom +10 ACC with shots of the Blackbow because it comes with terrify and thus even the initial attack roll always gets the +10 ACC. And course +10 ACC for all spells that apply afflictions (like Chillfog etc.).

In the early game you can't - but once you leave the starting area you can go wherever you please and also fight enemies that are weak compared to you. I suggest to go to where the game points you first and do some non-violent quests to gain some levels - then it's easier to find underleveled enemies after. If you also own the DLC "The Forgotten Sanctum": here finally the enemies are of max level - so overleveling isn't possible anymore in these parts. If you follow the main questline instead of doing all the side quests first you can also overlevel more quickly. The main quest line gives a lot of XP. If you complete a step of it (as soon as you can) you will most likely be able to level up more quickly - and then do a lot of the side quests overleveled. An easier way to make sure to make enemies piece of cake is to simply turn down the game difficulty. Less hassle with finding enemies of lower level than you. Another way to make enemies piece of cake is to employ a character build that is very powerful - or even cheesy.

I went with Nomad's Brigandine iirc. But anything with high AR would be good. The Wizard's AR buffs (Spirit Shield or Iron Skin - or even better Llengrath's Safeguard) stack with the Stalker's passive bonus. I picked Nomad's Brigandne because it also leads to +10 melee deflection while having decent AR. The deflection also stacks with the Stalker's passive. And it lets you disengage without regrets.

@crdvis16It takes some time but imo it's not too bad. If you play it with Aloth it's even better because he can get a passive through his quest that reduces the grimoire switching time.

Cool! That's in line with Takedown Combo - its 100% dmg bonus also doesn't go away with pure DoT effects. The ticks get +100% dmg but the effect doesn't get removed after a tick.

I cast self buffs (when necessary), then Draining Touch, then the Phantom right behind the enemy who I will attack as well while the Animal Companion also attacks that foe. Enemy will def. be flanked then. When I hit with Draining Touch it disappears and I start hitting with Willbreaker and may cast a Miasma oDM in between (if the enemy's Will is too high for my Phantom's Draining Touch). As soon as the enemy dies: off to the next one. I usually let the phantom pick the next enemy and then place myself and the AC accordingly. If you are wearing the Helm of the White Void then the Phantom does, too. It gets +12 ACC from one handed attacks and +10 from the Helm (Rymrgand's Influence) because Draining Touch also applies weakened and the whole attack gets +10 ACC because of that. That way the Phantom has pretty cool accuracy with its attacks. And when you bring down Will enough it will crit a lot. Combined with some Takedown Combos the Phantom will deal superb damage (for a Phantom). Or I switch to a defensive setup (for example hatchet & large shield), summon the phantom and send it and the AC to block and tank - while I switch back to another weapon or summon Spirit Lance and cast spells or attack from behind them. As a Geomancer you are pretty versatile. Some spells are quite nice in combination with Takedown Combo (+100% dmg for the next attack). For example Necrotic Lance or Killing Bolt. Those two can also be very nice. Recently played with an SC Wizard Aloth who focused on bows. Also here a phantom is nice because it gets the same bow as you and in some cases that's pretty cool (e.g. Frostseeker or Essence Interrupter). And then at PL 8 you get Caedebald's Blackbow which is very strong because its arrow jumps over 12 meters and terrifies with every hit (targets Fortitude though - but here Helm of the White Void helps, too). With a Phantom you get two of those bows in the field which has serious impact. Cast some Rymrgand spell here and there on top... And of course SC Wizards are super versatile because they have access to so many grimoire spells from the full 9 power levels. I often wear Fleshmender and Giftbearer's Cloth just to get two additional quick slot items for grimoires. Then I don't even learn that many spells but mostly take passives because my spell portfolio is to vast from all the grimoires. Requires a bit of sorting and administration though...

I had a hunch there would be an entry in the urban dictionary

Still think melee Geomancer with Morning Star (both Willbreaker as well as Saru Sichr are useful for multiple reasons) was a fun and overall potent build from start to finish (I did a solo run with it). Both defensively as well as offensively quite capable and also versatile. I often used Willbreaker with the Morning Star modal: it lowers enemies' fortitude by 25, making it easier for the Animal Companion to apply Takedown Combo - and it also lowers enemies' Will, making it easier to land Miasma of DUll-Mindedness which lowers Will into the ground and then it's very easy for the Essential Phantom to crit with Concelhaut's Draining Touch (it targets Will instead of Deflection). Draining Touch weakens the enemy which makes it again easier to land Takedown Combo - and so on and so forth. Stalker's passives in combination with Wizard's self buffs make the char very sturdy. One can't use Ghost Heart because it would remove the Phantom. One can also use Saru Sichr on the char and the Phantom. The strong poison DoT stacks completely and unlocks Predator's Sense of the animal companion. Tough enemies aren't very tough anymore once they got hit by a few DoTs from Saru Sichr with Accurate Wounding Shot.

By the way: you cannot stack Beza's AR malus with the help of a phantom (if anybody had that idea ;)). It seems that only effects that have a certain amount (or unlimited amount) of stacks can be "exploited" with a (or several) phantom(s).

Hm... you can do -1 AR with any mace on graze. Not stackable maybe, but doing something on graze is often more appealing than doing something better on crit - to me at least.

Don't know why it works for anything else but invocations but I found out that indeed Her Revenge will refund +1 Empower Points per spell instance. Like with the Least Unstable Coil some spells/invocations are implemented in a way that every attack roll counts as a separate spell. Her Revenge is one of them. Tekehu's Avenging Storm will most likely work the same. This is pretty cool since it means you can play as sombody who uses Empower with one class in every fight (e.g. Wizard/Chanter empowering some nasty Wizard spells) and then get it all back in another fight using Her Revenge... wild... That this wasn't discovered before...? At least I never read about it. I guess most players who use Sasha's Singing Scimitar only ever empowered invocations?

I used Killers Frozen Stiff for the test. Will try again with Her Revenge... a bit later (so cozy in bed right now and the lazy kids refuse to make coffee).

I guess the devs didn't think about this and accidentially implemented a refund to max instead just +1? Edit: I tried with a Ranger/Troubadour and first empowered a Ranger ability (3 empower points to 2) and then empowered an invocation in the next fight which got me down to 1 and back up to 2. So I couldn't reproduce it with that character. Maybe it's a special Forbidden-Fist glitch? Or it's a problem with specific invocations maybe. Or one of the enchantments causes this. Or maybe one of the passives that boost empower (do you have one?).

No - phantoms get exactly the stuff you have. Always a 1:1 copy with all enchantments etc. With Tarn's Respite you can stack either the action speed malus or the deflection malus to 20 with the help of a phantom. Or even more if you recast the phantom.

Rod of the Deep Hunter's "Crushing Depths" has a stack limit of 5. So it's only -5 deflection (and +15% recovery time) for each phantom or Living Ilusion. But it works on hit (not only crit) so that's cool.

Okay I said that Sisyfo's Stone with its enchantment Futility isn't that good. But I know combined with Blinded, Arduous Delay of Motion, Thundercrack's Charged Field and Ball and Chain's Crushing Yoke and that's significantly slowing down enemies. Good thing is that none of those have to crit to work and there's no immunity to them (except Blinded of course). In tandem with a phantom you can stack a lot of Chrushing Yokes and Futilities and the Charged Field has not even an attack roll (like some other auras). Maybe that's a concept that could be fun and make sense for the necklace. I never really used it before because the effect wasn't really noticable if it's the only source of slowdown.

löl... I just discovered that if your phantom reached 5 stacks you can simply resummon one and open yet another stack of 5 ... and so on. Works with Willbreaker's will debuff, too. Why didn't I think of this before?

It is very good imo. I value the speed and ACC bonuses higher than the deflection debuff though. You can even use it on a Phantom - and stack the debuff up to 10 instances and not only 5. But generally I thinkt that enemies that receive crits easily don't need further deflection malus that badly and enemies that would need a deflection malus are not that easy to crit in the first place - so to me it sounds better than it actually is. What I didn't try: using a Debonaire with the Blade and another, high ACC party member who charms (maybe Psion/Ranger or so). The Debonaire would get 100% crit conversion vs. the charmed enemy which would mean the deflection debuff would get stacked quickly while the blade also accumulates its ACC bonus. On the other hand a lot of the toughest foes who would need that treatment are resistant or immune to INT afflictions, so... Anyway: very good weapon. Too bad I don't like Estocs too much (it's not rational). Although... an Arcane Knight with Ring of Focused Flame, Eternal Devotion, Zealous Aura, Merciless Gaze... could be cool in reminiscence of my old PoE Marking Paladin days... hm...

They stack in a multiplicative manner. Think about it like this: If you have multiple sources of crit conversion they will get rolled one after the other - until a conversion happens or until all sources got rolled. This is basically how it's done in code. You can calculate the overall chance of stacked conversions rel. easily by multiplying the chances NOT to convert (CNC) - and then substract them from 1 like so: Berserker (0.3) + Dirty Fighting (0.1) + One Handed Style (0.15) --> 0.7(CNC)*0.9(CNC)*0.85(CNC) = 0.5355(CNC) --> 1 - 0.5355(CNC) = 0.4645 --> ~46% crit conversion chance overall Afaik there is no suppression when it comes to conversions since the stacking isn't linear and you can't reach 100% via stacking - so no need to limit it.

Can't say. I neither used the Coil for a suicide char or phantom nor did I test combinations with Cape of the Falling Star excessively, sorry.

I guess he meant unreachable without getting spotted (when not having good stealth). Since you can leap out of combat you can start the leap out of stealth, land right besides the chest and loot it while your stealth is still up.

One of the most underrated items is maybe The Magnificent Escape Cape imo - at least when you are a Wizard or Priest. Its Escape does +50 deflection like the original Escape. But unlick the original it stacks with everything except Escape itself. And as a Wizard/Priest you can prolong it with Wall of Draining/Salvation of Time. It's quite fun to use it with a Streetfighter/Wizard to get to 50% health and then "Escape" + buff up like crazy and stay there at blooded status but in rel. safety. Also nice for humans (Fightng Spirit) and Barbs (Blooded). Maybe also Death Godlikes - but I didn't try that. Same is true for Mask of the Weyc (stacks with everything else but Arcane Veil itself) - but that's a late-late game item so I don't consider it often. I really like the Upright Captain's Belt because immunity to push & pull effects is so great to have for your tank if you make heavy use of Pull of Eora or other similar effects.

To answer the question "Do phantoms get your abilities like Vengeful Defeat?" No, they don't. However they receive all your items (Dichotomous Soul all items except weapons). This includes summoned items you are carrying while summoning the phantom. A special case is Concenhaut's Draining Touch - because on a Phantom it will not go away after a hit but stay as long as the phantom lasts. It would also get Whispers of the Endless Paths and stuff like Bracers of Greater Deflection, your armor (for example Nomad's Brigandine with its deflection bonus) - and its base deflection isn't bad either. While it would not get Riposte (because character ability) it will have Offensive Parry (if you enchanted WotEP with it). Basically the phantom gets a 1:1 copy of your gear with all enchantments etc. It's not clear which on-death effects suppress each other. For me Efford worked well in combin. with Effigy's Husk and the Mantle of the Seven Bolts - but not with Cape of the Falling Star.

That's how my left knee looked when I had a sports injury roughly 20 years ago.