Boeroer

You can always sip a potion of Infuse with VItal Essence at the start of tougher fights. It helps a lot to counter the health loss between resting. But still this is not suitable as a main tank. You would have to come up with some neat trick to make a rogue the main tank I guess (which I didn't figure out yet). The combination of low deflection and low endurance/health is indeed a hinderance.

I wouldn't bother with firearms at all, so... I would never dump PER - but I have no problem with dumped DEX. But your examples only cover the clichée builds (and makes heavy use of retraining). The fighter solo run that somebody posted way back was all about regeneration and attack speed. No shield, not very high defenses, but maximum regeneration and attack speed. He used Spelltongue to prolong his buffs and healing (even used that trick for Wound Binding so it heals you up completely). He didn't need DEX too much because of his speedy dual wieldung setup, but he wanted maxed CON, MIG and INT. And he couldn't have maxed PER then I guess. He did a successful solo run (even said it was pretty easy) and had fun. So that's what I mean when I say that PER>any other stat is not the universal truth. However, it's true most of the time.

Is Shot on the Run worth it if you want to use that tactic more often?

Your phantom doesn't get Minor Blights just because you have it (at least this was the case some patches ago). It gets your other items with the passive buffs on it, but no spell binding whatsoever. Even rings don't work anymore. What they get is spell holding - so Sanguine Plate, Shod-in-Faith an so on will work. Also retaliation items work. You can put on Binding Rope and your duplicate will cause stuck when hit. Actually - the Essential and Substancial Phantom can make great spell holding decoys and heal the entire frontline with Consecrated Ground (can you cast withdraw on them? That would be so awesome). All the items that do something on x% endurance or unconciousness like Coloroed Coat or the Martyr amulet work with them. Essential Phantom as spell mastery plus Shod-in-Faith plus Belt of Bountiful Healing + St. Borragias Tears can withstand a lot of punishment. If you put on the Colored Coat, Band of Union and the martyr amulet you can just cast your phantom in the front line and let it die - you will cast Instill Doubt + Wicked Briars and get +30% attack speed in an AoE fpr 30 secs once per encounter + up to 6 times per rest if you want. But what doesn't translate to your duplicate are your weapons. It alsways spawns with it's own shocking wand. But I think that Heart of the Storm works with that weapon. But I'm not 100% sure. Hard to test that...

I wouldn't put him in the postion of a main tank or anything like that. But I played a Godansthunyr + Badgradr's Barricade Devil of Caroc and she was absolutely great. One of the best* rogues I played so far. She was in the front line but didn't engage first, so she didn't receive the main heat, but you didn't have to watch out all the time for her. She did great damage (also because of the shield's spell striking for sure which was kind of guarantieed once the target wa stunned by Godansthunyr or debuffed otherwise) because she seldomly went down and didn't have to position herself all the time but could just start hitting. I never had any health issues with her at all. Back then (3.0) Riposte was still crap, so I didn't take it, but now I would use it. Her deflection was high enough to receive a lot of grazes instead of hits, and her DR was high enough to make sure those grazes only did MIN damage most of the time. However, I also playtested this disenganging riposte build a was talking about - thas one might run into health problems because he receives a lot of grazes. But you can alsways stop running around the mob an retreat and play him as an offtank until nest rest. edit: *) by "best" I don't mean best dps or whatever, but the best overall experience, including micro, fun, style and so on.

That would be too powerful. It used to be that way - and everybody fetched a blunderbuss and applied Envenomed Strike six times. However - there is still a nice effect with Minor Blights (by the way: I still wonder what Major Blights might look like): Because of the multiple hits there is a much higher chance of applying the optimal duration of Envenomed Strike - because a graze or hit might get overwritten by a hit or crit. At least I suppose it works like that.

:D

Yes, I also tried it in the meantime. But what does work is Citzal's Spirit Lance. It's relatively big "blast" AoE leads to a whole bunch of poisoned enemies. :D Envenomed Strike + Wizard: I look at it as an additional AoE poison spell which does 100 raw damage and has 3 uses per rest. Way better than the lame bonus spell talents, isn't it?

Hey, I'm powergaming all the time and seldomly have a priest. ...although they really make things easier.

That pretty much always works. There are also two items with spell binding: alacrity (1/rest) in the game. You can use those charges first and then use potions if you couldn't rest.

That's a shame. But what about driving flight? It works with Stunning Shots - so maybe also with Envenomed Strike? In theory you could poison 3 enemies with twinned arrows. Sometimes the driving flight targets two different enemies.

No, but normally the bounty guys don't have stellar defenses. Dragons on the other side have, and it's difficult to even graze them at mid levels. So that's a situation in which I also would favour PER above anything else. Not so much in mob fights. But since dragons are only a tiny part of the game I wouldn't say that what works best against them works best in every situation. However - I don't think we truly disagree. I (for example) agree that PER has more impact than DEX in general. But I wouldn't say this is correct for every char or situation. It all comes down to your build(s). A ranger who uses reloading weapons (and doesn't switch) will probably be bad with 3 DEX 20 PER but maybe not so much with 3 PER and 20 DEX (again: higher levels). A melee rogue with 20 PER and 3 RES can be a really bad DPS guy because he dies too often to do enough damage throughout a fight. With 3 PER and 20 RES he might do more damage in an encounter. So what has more impact? I think you can't answer that question with naming a stat. You have to look at a lot of circumstances. What would an offensive fighter build that focuses on max regeneration be worth with maxed PER but dumped MIG and INT? What would an interrupting barb do with 20 DEX and 3 PER? DEX is not important for melee dual wielders, but for gunners or casters it can be. Especially if they can buff their own ACC but not their speed (wizards are lucky cause they can do both ). I mean stuff like that. The whole system is too complex.

I'd take Bittercut because of the two damage types. It also has 2 spells of Vile Thorns which is has no recovery when you cast it. You can quickly cast those two in very quick succession when things go south. Don't ask me why there's no recovery. I just recently discovered this while testing dual Bittercuts on a monk.

As I said before: higher ACC from PER is useful in the early game, but that usefulness diminishes at higher levels. I also didn't mention the paladin when I talked about classes or builds which can do with lower PER. Paladins have not so good base ACC so especially in the early game the effects of high PER are very good. I mean 3 to 20 PER means a difference of 17 ACC - with a somewhat crappy base. Of course it's powerful when you start the game. But as I said: a ranger with flanking and Stalker's Link has a higher ACC with his auto attacks in the early game with 3 PER than a paladin with 20 PER. I still wouldn't recommend 3 PER - but you can go with 10 and be happy. Some stats - when you combine them with certain items - can be more important than PER. For example I only recently soloed some WM bounties with a dual wielding monk with Veteran's Recovery & Shod-in-Faith. I maxed MIG, CON and INT, dumped DEX to 4 and left PER at 10 and he did great. Then I leveled the stats towards max PER and he couldn't do it anymore because he died too quickly while his DPS couldn't balance this by killing the foes more quickly. This is the late game of course where 10 ACC don't matter as much as in the early game. You have more debuffs, more ACC buffs and you ACC has leveled with you. 10 ACC take up much less percentage of your overall ACC then. Against dragons (where you need every bit of ACC you can get) it is a different case...

Yeah - Blast is like carnage. It's like a barbarian inside a wizard - with 10 DR bypass... If Envenomed Strike works - does Runner's Wounding Shot, too? And what about Glittering Gauntlets? Do they daze in an AoE with Blast?

No, phantoms don't get active abilities - only exceptions are rings. At least that was the case some time ago (2.03 when I last checked I guess). Concerning Powder Burns: It's worth a try.

(Scrolls + Spell Bind + Spell Strinking + Spell Chance + Spell Holding + Potion of Flame Shield) * Deathblows says it all.

ROFL - I just tried to test it and thought "WTF - am I stupid?"

What about Torment's Reach?

A melee ranger for example doesn't need high PER if he flanks with his pet (+10), uses Stalker's Link (+10). He has 30 ACC from the start and can afford to have low PER and will still not suck at offense. Same with characters who use fists: +18 at lvl 16 without any ressources. You can afford to have a bit lower PER. Especially since crits with fists don't work like they should. Or a fighter with Disciplined Barrage. Or a ranged wood elf... although those normally dump CON and RES. That doesn't mean that higher PER wouldn't be good, but sometimes - for special builds - you have to make the hard choices.

Hi! I wonder: since when does Envenomed Strike work with Blast? I just tried it out with a blasting wizard who uses Rot Skulls (from Father's Teeth) + Envenomed Strike. Result: all enemies in the area of the blast got poisoned from Envenomed Strike. And they also suffered from the corrode DoT of Rot Skulls, but that is the normal behavior. However - those two DoT "posionous" effects did stack and took down Nalrend's band after some seconds. I then went on and tried it with a normal implement and then with Kalakoth's Minor Blights. In every case blast works with Envenomed Strike - which is pretty powerful I think.

Ah - you're right. I think some construct in Galvino's Place has it, now I remember. Thanks!

Me too!

Hi! While toying around with my new monk build I found the spell striking "Kalakoth's Sunless Grasp" in the game objects folder. I guess it is supposed to work like Jolting Touch on Azureith's Stiletto and Cloudpiercer - but I never found a weapon that has Kalakoth's Sunless Grasp as a spell striking. Is this just a game object that is not used yet or is there a weapon which has this? If yes: which and where is it? Thanks in advance!

Ah, I see. Nice. Yes, weapon enchantments always stack with everything, so the two heraldic shields are a great combination. When you install all the patches you can get an item named "The Helwax Mold" from a stronghold quest named "The Wax Maker" - it lets you duplicate an non-soulbound item of your choice. You can fully enchant Little Savior and then duplicate it and give it to another guy. Then you'll have +15 to all defenses. If somebody stuns you or you're going prone there's also that medium shield that you can get from the Drake in the Endless Paths at lvl 5. It gives you +50 to all defenses when you are stunned or prone ("Preservation"). It also stacks with other items that have this enchantment - like Ring of Thorns, Blaidh Golan armor and so on. It means that you'll have +100 to all defenses when you get stunned or prone. It's immensely helpful to survive enemies who tend to do this to you - like Ogres and also dragons. You can even switch to that shield once you got afflicted - you don't have to use it all the time. By the way: ...really made my day. I just imagined your monk running around with some prostitutes on his back and shoulders.