Boeroer

What I forgot: if you want to use Stormcaller you might want to take Heart of the Storm (I would want it). It will provide +20% damage to the bow AND the Returning Storm it procs. Also: make sure that the party members have some shock based attacks if possible. Since Stormcaller lowers shock DR this is one of the best ways to overcome enemies' DR. For example the druid has some really nice shock spells. Put shocking lashes onto your weapons and so on.

As for the rest of your party: there are builds in this forum for every one of them. Just search for [CLASS BUILD] or have a look at the build index. It's the thread right on top. It's up to date.

Vicious Aim and Twinned Arrows don't work together. I would skip Vicious Aim. Takedown is a nice ability for the animal companion. 2 knockdowns per encounter can save your sorry a**. If you combine it with Brutal Takedown and crit a foe with it who's already suffering from wounding and an affliction you not not only knock him down but also do crazy amounts of damage. Then there is Marked Prey and Binding Roots. Binding Roots is 5 per rest and lasts like forever. In tough encounters like bounties you put 5 melee foes on the bench for the whole fight with that. You should also get Penetrating Shot and Marksman. You max. level will be 16 - so there's some more room for additional talents/abilities. You don't need to put all points into mechanics. 10 is enough. Rest should go into survival, which ist really powerful now. I would aim for 10 points in order to get +15 ACC camping bonus against certain races. Leftover points you can put in mechanics again if you really want. Why Island Aumaua? For the additional weapon slot? If you have Stormcaller you don't ever want to use another weapon. That's my experience. Optimal choice would be Hearth Orlan or Wood Elf. But if you really like Island Aumaua it's totally OK of course.

That's not true. Actually, 20% of "Speed" is exactly "S".

And people say I devoted my life to this game...

You can also use Asp. Mark in the early game with the wizard and then retrain after lvl 9. Maybe you don't need Asp. Mark at higher levels at all because it gets suppressed by a lot of things later on. My experience with Aps. Mark is that it's a) awesome, because you can have a good AoE debuff with great duration, range and area per encounter - and very early b) best used on classes who have higher ACC anyway. A ranger for example has 30 start ACC. If he also has like 15 PER his Aspirant's Mark will hit wit an ACC of 45 right at level 1 - those often results in crits which prolong the duration more than higher INT would. c) best uesd on melee chars who don't do much useful stuff at the start of an encounter otherwise (like melee rogues, fighters or monks) INT is useful for Asp. Mark, that's true. But it's base duration and area are also good enough with only 10 INT. For me it's the reliability that counts. This gets less important hat higher levels for sure - because the "flat" ACC bonus from class kind of diminishes after some levels. Also: once you have Stormcaller you may want to shoot right from the start in order to trigger Returning Storm asap. You could also give Asp. Mark to the Tall Grass Paladin. Once he got buffed by the other pal the mark should hit everything. Do as you like. Your "everyencounter" opening strategy is surely great. Concerning barb with Tall Grass: it's surely a great setup - especially with your marking paladin who raises ACC a lot. But I don't think that Marking and Coordinating works with carnage - only with the initial target of the barb. Here a hearth orlan rogue with "all in" hit-to-crit conversion might be best for dps. It's a matter of taste I guess. Two paladins also have great synergy effects. And since you only have two melee guys in the group a barb or rogue won't probably be not tanky enough. A paladin with a pike can still be sturdy.

Your opening strategy is good. I'd do it the same way. Makes most encounters easy. The only thing I'd do differently is giving Aspirant's Mark to a char with high ACC so it always lands. I use rogues, fighters, rangers or monks for that. So ranger in your case. While the ranger is casting Asp. Mark the wizard will cast Arcane Assault. This not only does good damage but also dazes. Because later your wizard will have Spell Mastery (e.g Chill Fog) and then you will likely use that at the start of an encounter and not Asp. Mark.

What makes the wolf really good is his higher base damage. So damage bonuses (from Predator's Sense, Merciless Companion and so on) work even better with him. Does Itumaak also have this feature?

Why do you think that?

As I edited above. They are both active, yes. But Swift Aim's speed boost (reduces recovery) does stack with Sure Handed Ila because the first is a universal speed buff and the second is ranged only. Same reason why Alacrity works with Sure Handed Ila. However - the reload speed buffs are the same kind and therefore don't stack. I did a quick test yesterday with an elven ranger and a chanter plus Forgiveness and all the stuff I said above. It is indeed so that your shots have no recovery and the reloading phase is rather short. But the damage output is still not comparable to any bow.

Together with a chanter's Sure Handed Ila you would get from 150 to 53. That's only a third and pretty nuts. If you have such a short reload phase it also makes sense so lower recovery. With a durganized speedy pistol like Forgiveness, Gauntlets of Swift Action, Swift Aim and Sure-Handed Ila your recovery would be at zero (if I did no misstake - and you could use Penetrating Shot without slowdown). So your reload would be 53 and your recovery 0 - with a DR bypass of 11. Isn't that sweet? I assume it's also nice with any other speedy ranged weapon that has to reload (Hold-Wall and Wendgär). Edit: just checked: Sure Handed Ila's Reload buff gets suppressed either by Gunner or Swift Aim. Attack Speed buff works though.

Yes - dual wielding Steadfast + another weapon together with that on kill effect is not optimal if you want to proc Champion's Boon often. But a tanky rogue with shield could be nice for this. Maybe this could be a setup that would make Riposte suck less.

But isn't Steadfast's Champion's Boon AoE? I think it's a very good enchantment if you try to steal kills anyway (for whatever reason). Imagine you casting Champion's Boon for free and thus boosting all your friends' MIG around you by 10. It's the only way to boost a chanter's The Dragon Thrashed for example. And I don't think it's hard to kill for a rogue with Steadfast. Sure, only 25% is a bit meh - but on the other hand the healing and the chances for paladins are quite underwhelming. The worst part is that you have to kill with Steadfast itself - so dual wielding or bash are bad for you. What I wanted yo ask: does it count if your monk kills foes with the crush AoE of Torment's Reach? Edit: Ah! I totally forgot about Sunlance. I thought paladins also got healing when getting hit. Sunlance is of course the best enchantment on it. Too bad paladins can't have carnage.

Also happens to me all the time. I think it's because encounters get too easy and you character progression stops.

Don't think so. It's just easier. You have to put some thoughts into your builds though, that's true. And by the way: I have a full time job and three kids. I just don't sleep that much - that's all.

That explains exactly and in great detail what I mean. Thanks! And don't forget that you can put the points you spared into other stats which can raise your dps. Be it higher damage per hit or not being interrupted or doing more crits or keeping up your buffs/rebuffs for a longer duration.

On a fighter/chanter/wizard it can be really good. Most of the time the will defense is lower than deflection. And if you also play with a Brute Force Barb (which requires the same debuffs to be effective - most of the time weakened an sickened - and some of the wizard's and preist's stuff that lowers RES or INT directly) it's a nice synergy. Also: on a druid tank (as I sucessfully played one) it's nice to trigger a healing spell from time to time. Not gamechanging, but nice to have. I used a hatchet nevertheless in the end because I never ever used my weapon to attack. However - i think it's best on Monk, Rogue, Cipher, since Champion's Boon in kill is so great and all of those classes tend to kill a lot.

That's not true - if we talk about a whole party. I played a lot of parties without fighters, monks and paladins and so on but used repurposed casters, chanters and so on. And what it does is making the game more easy to be honest. Casters are just better at adapting to every situation because they have a much higher variety of speciall effects they can let loose. A tanky wizard for example can have similar defenses to a fighter () but do a lot more damage at the same time. One of the most easy playthroughs (I think I mentioned that before) was with a party of a chanter, druid, rogue and priest frontline and a wizard plus ranger in the back ranks. Priest and rogue were sturdy but let the two others engage first. I mean a priest alone makes every playthrough more easy if you don't sit on your spells.

I also find it very useful. Even the per rest part is nice. Most of the time you don't need it because your Constant Recovery is enough. But in really long battles you can trigger it 3 times in a row - which makes you a nasty pain in the a** for every enemy.

Only indirectly: speed helps you to interrupt more, not DEX. PER however directly helps you to interrupt more. On the other hand - if you'r planning to go into the fray (like with One Stands Alone and such) your DPS will profit enormously from high RES (also indirectly - it's more concentration that counts). Catching interrupts can slow you down a lot more than low DEX would. THis also depends on the type of enemy you're facing. Here also DEX can help: shorter actions/attacks are more likely to be finished before they get interrupted. A 3-DEX guy with low RES won't ever manage to sip a potion in the middle of a mob with high PER. You can work aroundthis with the Belt of Chimes, Holy Meditation or Spirit Shield - but more RES is always better. So RES can have a huge impact on your DPS.

Wait... what do you mean exactly? Of course it always affects the values with the same percentage. But what counts are the flat numbers. If you have two values that are effected by DEX and take one of them away (by reducing it to zero) - the effects of DEX will be lower overall. What I mean: if you have 100 seconds of recovery and 50 seconds of attack animation (exemplare numbers - with 10 DEX), there's a delay between two attacks of 150 secs. Now - if you reduced recovery by 100% (with dual wielding, durgan steel, frenzy or whatever) then the delay between your attacks will be 50. Now - if you reduce DEX to 3 it will only have an effect on your attack animation, not recovery. It will slow your attack animation down to roughly 60. So you're only 10 seconds slower. If you didn't reduce your recovery at all you would've been at 180 instead of 150. Now you're at 60 instead of 50. raising DEX would give you three times more benefit if you had normals recovery. In reality it's even more drastical because the ratio "recovery:animation" is usually higher than 2:1. If you put the points from DEX into MIG and PER, you will cause more damage per hit (better against any enemy that has DR), will hit/crit more often (=more dps) and also interrupt more. BUT all actions besides attacking will be very slow - which is bad sometimes.

By the way: Turning Wheel and Enervating Blows now work with retaliation. Lightning Strikes doesn't. Enervating Blows, Sura's Supper Plate and that Lavender thingy or Binding Rope make a great retaliation debuff: apply sickened/stuck and weakened when getting hit is quite nice. Enemies' will and fortitude will drop a lot. Good synergy with Force of Anguish: lots of prone-crits.

However - if you have already reached zero recovery DEX does nothing for your recovery time any more. Then it only shortens your attack animation. That can be a bit of a difference, but it's not so crucial any more. I made a DEX-3-Fighter with dual Gaun's Share and zero recovery. He casts his scrolls really slowly and needs forever to gulp a potion - but his attacks are very fast. Not as fast as if he had 10 or 20 DEX, but DEX hasn't this huge effect on his weapon attacks any more. You gain more dps if you just dump DEX and put it all into PER and MIG (and INT - for longer prones, Constant Recovery and stuff).

Sure. Blood Thirst gets triggered when you kill an enemy. It doesn't matter how you kill him. Scrolls, spells from items, weapon attacks - it all works. St. Ydwen's Redeemer on vessels with Blood Thirst is really great. What I'm not 100% sure of is if it also triggers if you kill somebody with an DoT effect like wounding (Tidefall or Drawn in Spring) or Insect Swarm or something like that.

The best thing about Iron Wheel is (in my opinion), that it's like adjusting DR during the fight: when you need wounds fast, you have low DR and gain wounds quickly. When you're full with wounds you'll have high DR - which lets you live longer. It' better to wear lighter armor then. Not only will you profit from this "first wounds fast, then lower damage" mechanic, but your speed will also be much higher. In my opinion it's one of the best monk's abilities - if he doesn't plan to spend his wounds asap. But even then it can be great if you get CC'd. While you are paralyzed and can't do anything - your Iron Wheel will keep you alive. Great Synergy with any kind of healing over time.