Boeroer

I think it's fine. There are lots of ways to escape engagement and I didn't intentionally use Spirit Frenzy as anti-engagement tool so far. More as fortitude debuffing tool. There are many other ways to escape engagement (first of all hard CC) so I never saw the appeal to use Spirit Frenzy for that specifically. Spirit Frenzy is one reason why I think Barb/Chanters are awesome & fun debuffers (Barb/Druids, too). And it also kind of makes sense that a brutish bard burps out phrases so horrible that enemies get staggered. I mean we have Dazing Shout, invocations that stun and paralyze and so on. Why shouldn't AoE effects that don't deal physical damage stagger foes with "Spirit" Frenzy? I mean it's about the spirit, not crush/pierce/slash/raw.

I checked the scripting tool but I couldn't find as condition. You maybe can achieve what you want with setting up two Marked Prey actions. The first one is for the start of combat and will have a very long cooldown (to make sure it only gets used once). The second one might also have a cooldown (but just a rel. short one, like 10 secs or so) but it will have a condition that makes sure that only one enemy at a time gets marked. For example you could use your Animal Companion's attack as condition (If Animal Companion attacks, cast Marked Prey). Anyway - as soon as you get Marked for the Hunt this problem should be solved. Marked for the Hunt will jump to a nearby enemy once the first one is dead. So you just need to set up Marked for the Hunt for the start of combat (give a 500 sec or so cooldown) and set up auto-attacks prioritized by Marked Prey. The Mark will jump top the next foe after death and the Ranger will attack that foe because of the prio. Until you get there I suggest using your Animal Companion as condition I guess. Too bad there are no conditions that take the whole encounter into account. Something like "If there is no marked enemy left, apply Marked Enemy".

Those are all matters of taste and not objective criteria of quality. I also like the darker mood better and I also am a fan of per-rest casting and 6 party members - but claiming that PoE is the better game than Deadfire just based on those things is wrong. It's just the game I like a bit better because of those things. From game mechanics/RPG rules point of view, PoE is bad in comparison. Nearly all systems of PoE are objectively worse than Deadfire's because their workings are inconsistent, unpredictable and obscure while communicated poorly. It also has some technical issues that were improved on in Deadfire (loading times for example, no accumulating summons in memory, capes-physics for all platforms etc.). That is objectively wrong. Besides that: PoE has a lot less maps (and portraits and general content).

Afaik players are very happy with the way Spirit Frenzy and Blood Frenzy (and Blood Storm) work. I know that I am. At the same time it's not really an overpowered mechanic since Barbarians aren't considered a particularly powerful class in the first place. What's fun about the current Spirit Frenzy/Blood Frenzy implementation is that it opens up so many interesting synergies. Would you implement the changes how you describe them you would kill those synergies and make the use cases of Barbs more narrow. Currently, due to Spirit Frenzy, Barbs can be more than dumb damage dealers. They can be nice debuffers, too. So your change would take away options - but at the same time nothing interesting/fun would be added. I personally would just alter Spirit Tornado so that the stagger works like with Spirit Frenzy. It's also way less complicated. Also no change to description needed. Sometimes a more "realistic(TM)" approach isn't he better game mechanic. This is such a case imo.

Spearcaster also has extremely high accuracy - if your Arcana is high. And the modal of arbalests is underrated. With enough reloading speed you can pin easily keep a single enemy down with Spearcaster. Watershaper's Focus pays its additional jump with base damage: compared to other rods it has low base damage. But yes, the jump is very nice for Arcane Archers.

If I understood you correctly your goal is to cast Marked Prey on a single target (and nobody else) and then attack that marked target with auto-attacks, right?

Yes, especially because it's an ambush you can't talk yourself out of. And what leads to that encounter is all easy-peasy non-combat stuff.

I often play without scaling. Even then Talfor is harder than most other encounters at that level. I wonder if Eamund the Fox in Dunnage is also borked or just intentionally difficult.

Watershaper's Focus with Blast (the modal) should have slower recovery than Spearcaster (especially with Gunner). And I would use Blast because Ondra's Wrath also procs off of Blast hits. If you cast Imbue:Work from stealth as opener (as I most often did) you can follow up with another shot almost immediately (because Stealth grants -80% recovery time).

Interesting. Which files contain those settings?

Lots of corners not cut.

Right... since the Blood Mage is there I never used something else - so I always forget what specialized wizard subclass loses access to which schools.

They all have no proficiency afair. Tested Minor Blights, Cobra Strike, Rot Skulls, Ogre Fists (Form of the Fearsome Brute) and Draining Touch quite some time ago. Maybe something changed since then but I don't think so. Don't recall how Woedica's claws/fists work after the nerf (they used to work with unarmed profiency when they still worked with Monastic uT/Transcendent Suff.). Cool find with the Reaping Knives! Too bad Devoted's +2 PEN does nothing for them.

That's right.

There were no changes made in the year 2021.

Woodskin/Form of the Delemgan is great in combination with the Lance of the Midwood Stag, too (+2 Power Level for all your spells - only when not shifted of course).

It's imo even more fun if you equip some engagement items (like Reckless Brigandine and Kapana Taga) and then let your Essential Phantom get some disengagement attacks on the same enemies, too. It doesn't have your abilities but disengagement attacks have pretty good bonuses anyway. If you use Kapana Taga in the offhand and summon Draining Touch in the main hand for the phantom it does pretty awesome dmg on disengagement attacks (for a summon I mean). You could switch to another weapon setup after summoning. Of course that's a lot of casting for that little bit of added disengagement fun. But I always enjoyed it to tank and lower my enemies' Will defense with Kapana Taga (+modal) and Miasma oDM for my phantom which attacked them with Draining Touch (which targets Will instead of deflection). And once the enemies get terrified both of us would land nice diseng. attacks occasionally. The Phantom also follows terrified enemies and re-engages automatically.

Can't remember which Spiritshift form Fassina gets...

Well, as Sorcereress you can buff up with some stuff, especially Zandethu's Draconic Fury - and then also use healing over time spells and keep them all alive with Wall of Draining (most often for the whole encounter). This is also true for Spiritshift: it will most likely not end. So basically you can use the Wizard side for fast, endless self buffs and then the Druid side for endless healing and then go into melee with your natural weapons. Lots of casting every time, but nearly unkillable if the Wall is placed right - and the buffing etc. can be automated via script.

I think Death Ring is very powerful with 3 jumps. Not only is it foe only and has a big base AoE (5m radius) but also the destroy-on-near-death part happens a lot when you trigger three of them at once. Still... when I have to decide how to spend my Bond I almost always prefer Imbue:Eora since three long-lasting "implosion spheres" with very high ACC just do have more impact for me - at least if you can open the fight with them and trap all enemies in them. Since Imbue:Eora is obtainable as multiclass I think it's no a bad idea to multiclass Arcane Archers. I did AA/Helwalker with dual mortars, AA/Paladin with Spearcaster and SC Arcane Archer with Watershaper's Focus and they were all pretty great.

They also somewhat scale without mods, but one thing that doesn't scale is the penetration. Community Patch adds a fix that scales the imbue penetration with the Arcana Skill. So more Arcana not only leads to bonus ACC but also bonus PEN. Then that whole thing scales kind of like normal spells would.

Ah! I haven't tested this. But from my experience one of those two three things will happen: a) The chant's hit roll gets the bonus ACC and then the bonus effect gets removed. b) The chant doesn't profit but the bonus effect still gets removed c) The chant doesn't profit and the bonus effect remains untouched. I've seen all three behaviors with Lion's Sprint but never did I see: d) an ability (here: chant) profits from Lion's Sprint acc bonus but the effect doesn't get removed. But maybe it works like that - as I said I didn't test that specific setup (at least not that I can remember).

I don't understand. How can it be useful for a chant if that chant is not doing a hit roll (= being offensive)? Lion's Sprint es pretty borked imo. I didn't find a good rule of thumb in which cases the ACC bonus works and in which it doesn't. I just stopped using it because it seems to be implemented pretty weirdly... If it had more impact (or if Barb would have refreshing resources so that spending 1 Rage wasn't a big deal) I guess I might have investigated further, but as is it didn't seem worthwhile to me.

we'll have to wait until @pasakorn's answering post gets approved by a mod.

But... the prolonged duration of a hostile effect shortens again once enfeebled runs out, doesn't it (unlike Strand of Favor stuff)? It may be that you can time it right so something is still left so that you can prolong it again, but afaik that's not really a worthwhile endeavor. On the other hand I didn't test this a lot so please feel free to correct me if that's not the case.