Boeroer

In 3.02 it still surpresses each other - same in the 3.03 beta I think (didn't test that, but nobody said otherwise and it's not in the patch notes). You can add retaliation to Binding Rope XOR Lavender Wreath with Sura's Supper Plate - since it's a weapon it's retaliation enchantment stacks with the rest.

For a ranged caster however or a guy who wants to reload his gun as fast as possible, DEX is still a great stat. It's also not as bad for a chanter as everyone thinks. It reduces the recovery time after an invocation was used a lot. This can be very important, because you will stop singing chants for quite some time after an invocation. Pick up your singing quickly can be crucial. It's also good for using scrolls quickly or drinking postions. A potion of Alacrity or a healing potion is of no use if you can't sip it quickly enough while getting interrupted.

You can build a solid front line rogue with a shield (preferably with bash), go for max deflection and a high crit chance and use Riposte. It used to be bad, but now it's good. Your deflection will never be as high as with fighters, chanters, paladins or monks, but it's good enough to receive a lot of grazes instead of hits, which is great for Riposte now because it triggers on 30% of grazes and 20% of misses with a Full Attack (hence the bash). Heavy armor is recommended - later on you can use medium armor or even light one (depends on other frontliners who might also take some heat). It works quite well - and if you want to have more flexibility it's also not bad to take quick switch and use a dual wielding setup (without Two Weapon Style) when you're not targeted and want to use your special Full Attacks like BLinding Strike and quickly switch to the shield when you get hit more often. It works, it's flexible and powerful enough while removing the need to constantly watch out for your rogue who would get smashed otherwise. Later on, go for Badgradr's Barricade (bashing shield which triggers Thrust of Tattered Veils every time the bash crits - that works with Deathblows) plus Godansthunyr war hammer. You can retraint then and remove Quick Switch because you will hardly need the dual weapon setup any more (but Quick Switch can still be nice for shooting stuff at the start of the combat. Penetrating Shot also works with Thrust of Tattered Veils by the way without slowing you down in melee - so maybe you want to take that, too). You will most likely stun and then trigger Thrust with every Riposte and every special Full Attack as well as with your normal attacks. It's a very balanced and powerful setup: sturdy enough to be a light tank and enough damage to be a great single target dps and an ok kind of passive AoE dps guy (via Riposte). To increase your defenses and crit chances you can late on use the Executionier's Hood (frightens = -10 ACC for your foes in an AoE), use Glittering Gauntlets (daze on hit - ACC debuff doesn't stack with Frightened) and Binding Rope (retaliate with stuck affliction - stacks with stunned from Godansthunyr I think - lots of crits will follow). There's another way to generate a lot of Ripostes with this build: stack as much defense against disengagement attacks as possible (cape or boots or armor enchantment +15, Fast Runner +5, Graceful Retreat +12 - even get a chanter who sings the 2nd level chant "Fow runs and leaps": +10) and you will have a +42 deflection bonus against disengagement attacks. Then run around the enemies all the time to provoke disengagement attacks (don't do that against foes with very high ACC). This way you can totally dump DEX, take Vulnerable Attack, Cautious Attack, put on the thickest armor - your attack rate doesn't matter. What matters is your defelction and your chance to trigger Ripostes. Some healing over time like Veteran's Recovery helps here. You will only do damage while Riposting disengagement attacks, but also will stuck a lot of enemies who hit you so that they can't reach your party members. Most of the enemies are dumb and want to follow you while you run past them - so you're like a living CC effect, preventing them to move towards your squishier fellows. It's like attacking while moving. It's quite fun and it works but also requires a lot of micromanagement.

It used to be great - now it's just meh.

It's very, very old. Like a kazillion patches old. No, it doesn't work like that any more. I now does wimpy damage now and uses a hit roll like any other weapon attack - but it also can cause afflictions like I mentioned above and also profits from things like Turning Wheel and Deathblows now - but still not worth it in my opinion.

Yes, it's weaker - but it saves you one ability point.

Retaliation's base damage is very low. Even crits with it are weak. To make it a bit useful, you have to pile up DR bypass and get all melee dmg bonuses you can or it will be totally useless against enemies with higher DR. So don't rely on it unless you can add some cool stuff like Enervating Blows (weaken) or Glittering Gauntlets (daze). It also gets suppressed if you wear any other form of "retaliation" like from Binding Rope (retaliate with stuck affliction) or Lavender Wreath (sicken). Only excpetion is the retatliation from Sura's Supper Plate because it's a weapon and those stack with everything. And it doesn't work with carnage.

I also experience this in the midst of combat from time to time: sometimes I use one Knockdown out of two and still have two Knockdowns left - especially when I get hit a lot.

Hehe - that's all nice - but Jojobobo asked about UnBROKEN, not Unbending. I don't know if you get 100 or 50% and I don't know if the amount of endurance you get after resurrection is influenced by MIG or other healing mods like camping bonus or items with +25% healing received and/or 15% healing done. But if I'd have to guess then I'd say it does. But since you can substitute this easily with an item I never bothered to take this ability - so I can't speak out of experience. Unbroken is the same thing as Second Chance on items. But they don't stack. So when you go down your Second Chance AND Unbroken charge will be gone - but you only got resurrected once obviously.

Right. There are also other lashes that also profit from this. Like Turning Wheel (up to 50% burning lash or 65% with Scion of Flame), Flames of Devotion, the chanter's burning lash chant, monk's Lighning Strikes which also work like a lash (you can use shock enchanted weapons AND Lightning Strikes, you will then have two 25% shocking lashes - sadly not a single one with 50% - which will both profit from Heart of the Storm - so you will have two shocking lashed of 30% each), Bleak Walkers' Remeber Rhakan Field and so on. Also note that the sabre Bittercut (corrode/slash), the soulbound bow Stormcaller (shock/pierce) and all summoned weapons which primarily do elemental damage like Cadebald's Blackbow (corrode/pierce), Firebrand (burn), Kalakoth's Minor Blights (burn/shock/corrode/freeze) and so on profit from those talents. Their base damage gets boosted by 20% - EVEN if they hit with the second damage type like pierce! What lash is the most efficient? That totally depends. If you look at it from the perspective of "which is the least resisted elemental damage" then maybe corrode or shock. Freeze micht be the least effective because a lot of enemies in WM I & II are resistant or immmune to it - as well as many annoying spirits. But when you have a character who already uses lashes of a certain kind like the paladin with FoD or the monk with Turning Wheel then you might want to also use a burning lash on your weapon and take Scion of Flame to get the most out of it. Or you have a character in the party who uses Stormcaller - preferably a ranger: Then you might want to give your other characters_ weapons shocking lashes because Stormcaller lowers shock DR by 6. When you combine this with Expose Vulnerabilities (Wizard spell or spellchance of the rod "The Golden Gaze") you will lower enemies's shock DR by 11 - which is absolutely awesome because of the way how lashes work against DR (e.g. a 25% shocking lash has to overcome 25% of enemies shock DR by default).

Ah, ok. Good to know. Big thanks for testing!

Do you assume this or did you test it? Because when I last saw it both on one enemy none of them was grey (=suppressed . But maybe the acc debuff gets suppressed. I'm not sure as I said.

Of course you can do that. I always favour ACC over damage in the early and mid game. So Savage Attack comes always a bit later for me (if I use it at all).

A nice combination for a fighter is the Sanguine Plate (gives you Frenzy = 33% Attack Speed buff, more than Swift Aim) AND Armored Grace and some speed enchanted weapon(s) like the Blade of the Endless Paths. With Durgan Steel you armor will only have a 15% penalty. You will gain 33% from Frenzy, can add Durgan Steel to your speedy weapon for another 20% and 15%, then 15% from Gauntlets of Swift Action and you are not far away from zero recovery with a two handed weapon with the thickest armor type there is.

Flames of Devotion has an ACC bonus of +20. That can compensate for the relatively low ACC paladins have. But that's only 2/encounter. Besides that, paladins' ACC is not very good, but OK. It gets better with Zealous Focus, which gives you +6 ACC like a Weapon Focus would. Of course you could stack those. edit: typos - stupid german autocorrection on my smartphone...

A dual hatchet setup with a barb who has this thing as well as the Yell or the Executioner's Hood and also Dragon Leap can stack +10 deflection and -30 to enemies' ACC - even -40 with the Shout. That because Fatigue, Frightened and Dazed stack - as far as I know. Fatigue stacks with everything. I'm not 100% sure about Frightened + Dazed. If they do it nets you +40 or +50 to your deflection and +30/40 to you other defenses. Pretty nice.

Cool, thanks.

I seriously have no idea. I also found it in the files while testing builds. I didn't finish WMII that often so maybe I missed that hatchet. Could be that OBS forgot to place it in the game like the +4 INT ring (they fixed this). If nobody knows where to get it we should write a bug report before it's too late.

what the new hatchet? havet head of it It's called "Captain Viccilos Anger" and you can get in in WMII. It causes Minor Fatigue for 6 secs on hit/crit. And if I remember correctly it alreay comes superb.

What is 'DAOM'? Deletrious Alacrity of Motion

I played NWN with all expansions and I also played NWN2 (only vanilla). But I didn't do a lot of builds then. I just tried some classes and ideas and then played the game once. I didn't feel like playing them more than once. Can't say why. I liked the NMW expansions a lot. Diablo II and Torchligh II however saw a lot of builds from me. I played Diablo III for a few hours and found it's character system to be utter crap. What I also did when I was still studying was playing Pen & Paper RPGs (mainly the german flagship "The Dark Eye") and doing an awful lot of powergamer's builds - much to the dismay of my fellow players.

ROFL Sadly I don't have a dual wielding cipher. Might change that - just in case. I accidentially linked to a thread three days ago where a guy asked about a good way to solo with a cipher. Also worth a read - but nothing about dual wielding and stuff. Edit: if this was YouTube all that building might finally pay off.

It doesn't get touched by the character's FoD related talents. Same as Frenzy from Sanguine Plate and Greater Frenzy and Wild strike Belt of the barb. A talent that does work with it is Scion of Flame. But stilettos' damage is too low to make this +50% damage from time to time worthwhile. Weapons like Unlabored Blade and Drawn in Spring are better. By the way: I wonder why there are wounding weapons in the game but no poisoning ones. They would also do +25% DoT but with poison - or cause some minor debuff (like glittering gloves or that new hatchet or all those disorienting weapons).

Sorry, I had to edit my post because the link in it was wrong.

Hi! You might want to have a look at this thread from a few days ago: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87433-melee-cypher-build/ The guy who openend it wanted nearly the same thing. There are some good infos in that thread and it's not too long. tl;dr: dual wielding sabres is good. At the beginning heavy armor is recommended, later on you can switch to medium or light armor. Using sabres or swords and taking the according weapon focus talent (ruffian or knight) for more ACC interferes a bit with any kind of bow (peasant or adventurer). But crossbows also use weapon focus: knight like swords. The ranged weapons in the ruffian focus group are pistols and blunderbusses. Edit: posted the wrong link - now it's the correct one. Sorry for the confusion!