Boeroer

But does the blinding effect of that special silver blunderbuss work in an AoE with Powder Burn? That would make it really good.

That is if you hit the dragon - he then spawns all the ghosts. At least on PoTD - don't know about other difficulty settings.

No, not sure - but did you see that screenshot I posted above? I mean one monk not only hits all of my guys with Force of Anguish, but he does so like 10 times with one strike? Doesn't seem to be intended.

I really hate Sabra Marie in fights against trash mobs.

No, you can get them if you heal the Alpine Dragon's soul. It's a dialogue option and you need at least 17 RES for that option to unlock. If you can't stack that much RES on your main character then I'm afraid you will have to kill the dragon in order to get those vambraces. Deep Wounds works with every form of crush/perce/slash damage you deal. That includes scrolls and spells from items with Spell Binding. So if you hit the enemy with a spell that has a big AoE and deals one of that damage types they will all get Deep Wounds (like Concussive Missiles or Twin Stones from scrolls or Vile Thorns from Bittercut, Overwhelming Wave from the White Crest and maybe some other items that I can't remember now). If you have high MIG and INT that means +20 raw damage. You can build a really nice rogue/wizard-apprentice that way. You just have to pile up scrolls and items with spells that do either crush or perce or slash damage. If you apply Deep Wounds more than once ona target the duration just adds. So it's clever to hit one foe after another and don't focus on one enemy. That's easy with a bow or something. It's also good if you are a superslow hitting rogue - like a tanky kind of rogue.

That's a bug with that AoE Force of Anguish. I also had this with the monks in Crägholt Bluffs.

Druid tank with Returning and Relentless Storm. My favorite. And chanters, too. A fighter can be very tanky and still do great DPS at the same time. Boost his self healing as much as possible and get him Armored Grace, Vigorous Defense and so on while also taking all the damage/ACC related talents and you will get a superb frontliner who doesn't go down easily and does very good single target DPS. Blade of the Endless Paths is my tip for that setup. Bittercut & Shield is also nice.

Not finished reading yet?

Hiravias is actually my favorite official companion. His dialogues are weird and inappropriate and funny. And he's an awesome light tank powerhouse. His combo of Aspirant's Mark, Returning & Relentless Storm decide encounter like Concelhaut and Adra Dragon alone. I also like Kana because he sounds like Kermit the Frog.

The are using Flagellant's Path I think - not just painless teleporting.

Exactly

In my experience it makes no difference if you use the official companions or hired ones - I mean in difficulty. Official companions are of the same level as you which makes a huge difference at the beginning until mid game. Hirelings may be a bit more optimized but I hardly notice. Just playing with official companions only and it's as easy as it was with hirelings. I would even say it's easier but that also depends what builds you are using and what party composition. On the other hand: if you don't like the chitchat and have no need for the little extra XP their quests may give you then you lose absolutely nothing when you don't use them.

You mean Force of Fury or Heart of Anguish?

Maybe 10 is the maximum - but even then it's a lot of raw damage.

Unless you load your gun with them?

Hehe - I'm trying to reproduce that but had no luck so far. I have the idea that Force of Anguish interferes with the 30pt-damage-shield-chant of my chanters. Don't know it that's right, I'll see...

Valiant Weapons: no, because retaliation does not use your weapons, it's an autohit pierce attack. Resonant Touch: I hope so. I'm just evolving a build around that. But I couldn't try it out yet. But it will be very difficult to reach that 10 damage with it that triggers resonant touch. What works: MIG, Vulnerable Attack, Ryona's Vambraces, Savage Attack, One Stands Alone and all other melee damage mods like sneak attack and so on. It also triggers Deep Wounds which is kind of awesome.

For 3.0 you may want to also put points into survival. The +10 (or even +15) helps a lot when you try to hit with your chants and invocations (ans scrolls/spells). Some for +DR. Ancient Memory & Beloved Spirit is now also worth a look. I'm playing two of those guys at the moment and the combined healing is great.

I'm just playing him with that exact build. Together with my MC who uses the same build. Works like a charm. lvl 13 now... The Dragon Thrashed times two is the bestest trashmob cleaner ever. Although that build is not a 100% tank only build. It's a good tank (not like a pure paladin tank, but good) while dealing lots of damage. Oh, and since 2.03 Ancient Memory and Beloved Spirits became better. I didn't use them in that build, but now you can!

There also has to be a bug with monks: watch this: That's from one monk who did one attack with Force of Anguish... I won despite that cheesefest but what's happening there?

Hi - don't know how deep your knowledge is, so I will go into depth: Basically - if you want to interrupt as much as possible, you need the highest PER you can get and also attack pretty fast. A PER score of 17 will lead to an interrupt value of 21. If you put PER to 21, it will be 33. That's 30% more. Interrupting Blows adds +15 (like 5 points of PER without the ACC boost). So you will be at 48. But that'S still not enough to land guaranteed interrupts. The base concentration at RES 10 is 75. You have to overcome concentration with this roll: rollDie(1-100) + 48 > 75. The chances against foes with normal RES are ok, but not overwehleming although you put all you have into PER. Every point of PER counts now. So you will have to watch out for stuff (items, resting, food, talents) that give you a bonus to PER. Champion's Boon (+10 PER = +30 Interrupt) and Crowns for the Faithful (+6 PER, +25 RES) are great for this! At the same time you want to lower concentration. That can be done by you (as you said: Threatening Presence is a way to reduce concentration a bit) or by party members. There are some spells or other abilites that reduce concentration directly or indirectly (= -RES). Some are: Expose Vulnerabilites (awesome for a barb, lowers concentration and DR), Miasma of Dull Mindedness (-6 RES means -18 concentration - but the AoE is damn small), Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (it'S just one foe at a time, but it lasts very long and is good against tough enemies), Painful Interdiction (this stacks with your Threatening Presence - you can use Brute Force then), the lvl-1-Chanter's phrase that reduces concentration by 10 (huge range, no ressources needed). Then there's a new item, a ploeaxe, that has an aura that causes -30 concentration. That's superawesome - but it's too slow to be you own weapon. However it would be the perfect support weapon for you. Put it on a chanter abd let him sing that "stumbling over words"-phrase and your foes will suffer from -40 concentration. That alone guarantees you 100% interrupt chance against "normal" enemies. For the tougher ones you just can use the things I listed above. With those combined you can interrupt every enemy in the game 100% of the time - you just have to make sure that those debuffs hit. If they don't, your sky high PER (with Champion' Boon and stuff) is still enough to interrupt even the toughest enemy for a good amount of time. So, my party composition would be: - hearth or wild orlan barb from the White that Wends with 21 PER and high DEX. RES shouldn't bee too low because if you get interrupted you can't interrupt others. Iterrupting Blows, Two Weapon Style, Brute Force, One Stands Alone - Chanter with that chant (and later that poleaxe) - Priest with Painful Interdiction - Wizard with Blast and The Golden Gaze as weapon as well as the spell I mentioned above - The rest is up to you - a cipher would fit in because he also profits a lot from Threatening Presence + Painful Interdiction. A monk also loves the low fort and will defenses For you weapons: you said you want to interrupt and also stun. Well there's just one two combos in this game that fit to this: 1: dual wielding the Vile Loner's Lance and Cladhaliath. The Vile Loner's Lance has a very long Interrupt of 1 sec (instead of 0.5) and Cladhaliath can be made so that it causes stun on crit. Vile Loner's Lance also causes -5 defenses on hit - fits perfectly well with the stun-on-crit. Altough this is a nice combo, it looks kind of weird - if you have no problem with that, I would recommend those - because you can get them early. 2.: Then there's Shatterstar (or was it Strike Hard? can't remember) plus Godansthunyr. Those are also great: both have long interrupts (1 sec and 0.75) and other nice enchantments. +1 MIG and stun on crit for example. And the best part: it looks good on a barb! But Godansthunyr comes pretty late. Another good item for a interrupting barb is Mosquito. That rapier causes interrupts that last for 0.75 and is fast. On top it drains endurance whcih is always cool with carnage. You could combine that with the March Steel Dagger in order to speed up your attack even more - but I think it's not your kind of style for a barb. You want to attack as fast as you can, so try to stack lots of speed modifiers: Frenzy, Gauntlets of Swift Action, Durgan Refinement on armor and weapons. You can reach 0 recovery with dual wieding and a light armor like padded or hide or even durgan reinforced heavier stuff (but then you can't use Vulnerable Attack): Frenzy (1.33) * Durgan Refinement weapon 1 (1.15) * Durgan Refinement weapon two (1.15) * Gauntlets (1.15) + Two Weapon Style = 2.22. At 2 you have no recovery - so there's room for either 20% armor-penalty or Vulnerable Attack. I like Vulnerable Attack - so I'd go for the durgan reinforced monk's outfit perhaps (=0% recovery penalty) and pump survival for +2 extra DR and wear a Blunting Belt and drink some potions of Iron Skin in tough fights. There's also the Helwax Mold: that tiem (from a stronghold quest) lets you duplicate any non-soulbound item. So it would be nice to clone the Vile Loner's Lance or Godansthunyr or whatever weapon you like best for this. Or even that strange poleaxe I mentioned. I don't know if it's aura stacks - but if it does, it would be superaweseome. I think that's all I have to say... edit: oh, forgot: if this is set up properly (high INT is also important) it creates a perma-interrupt-lock in an AoE. No foe is immune to interrupts and they also happen on grazes. It's superpowerful even if you don't use ALL the stuff I mentioned above. Just don't get disabled. Suppress Affliction of Liberating Exhortation are your best friends. Ah, and Frighten (chanter phrase or barbs yell) and Terrify (spell, invocation or shout) also lower concentration a bit - as well as keeping you alive by lowering enemies' ACC. edit2: I just hope the chanter's chant and that poleaxe aura stack - I couldn't test it myself yet, sorry.

This Silver Whatever Blunderbuss is good.

edit: nvm

Dex also makes you reloading faster. So I wouldn't say it's useless on a gunner who reloads often. It's the only way to speed up reloading besides the chant, Gunner and Swift Aim.

Huh? If the afflictions stack then all things that they do should stack. But even if not: -1 CON and -1 MIG is not that important.