Boeroer

Come on! Do it!

Backstab is not a special attack. It's just bonus damage thst applies to all attacks you do if they meet the correct preconditions. Backstab applies to all attacks that come from stealth or invisibility. If you do a full attack from stealth, let's say a Blinding Strike, during the first hit you will unstealth and be visible - Backstab damage will only apply to this first hit. If you could stay invisible you would do Backstabs all the time. This was possible with the Cloak of the Master Mystic due to a bug. So tl;dr: no, just one attack. An Estoc isn't the best weapon though: it's an arquebus (fired from 2m distance or less) or (even better) Firebrand. Preferably while the target suffers from 2 afflictions (sneak + deathblows), has low endurance and you crit with a finishing blow. That will kill everything.

Well that got nerfed anyway.

Against bosses or tough buggers Stalker's Link is still great. You can also lower PER a lot if you take it. Also stunning shots only works with the animal companion. Too bad there's no ranged weapon that does direct AoE damage (maybe WMII ). That, stunning shots and stag carnage could be so good.

Great - thanks for the test. That's good news. Maybe they also altered the behaving of Pilferer's Grip then (which would make them way more powerful). Yes - Quick Switch is a lot of micro. With a hotkey command one can reduce that a bit but it still requires you to pay a lot of attention to that quick-switch-guy.

Don't know why they chose the complicated way - but if the buffs are good and the cipher changes from "spam meh powers" to "punktually cast wow powers" and the overall "power level" stays the same then it's OK for me. But it's a bit silly to increase focus cost and then increase focus generation, or not? Result is that the low level spells get even more spammable while the high level powers get better but cast not so often - but maybe that's exactly what they want to achieve.

You will be having an easy time at the beginning because of "Come, Soft Winds of Death". Then it gets a bit tedious until you reach chant level 3 with "the Dragon Slashed". After that it's quite easy. And you will always be able to call summons (like 12 Ogres at once) or unleash things like a huge paralyze cone or stun or pure damage from time to time.

Even then: no weapon. But I asked the same thing once: if the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar work with Spirit Shift. They do not. But a stag companion build for damage with all the according talents/abilities and a druid (for AoE DoT effects to trigger Predator's Sense) could be devastating. IF the carnage works with these skills.

If you're good and if you really know what you're doing you can beat the first bounties at lvl 5/6 (PotD). No chance for the bounties in the WM however. They are supertough even if you kicked the Ogres' butts through Stalwart before.

When it hits low DR foes it even generates more focus than it costs. Mind Blades could be good if they worked with Penetrating Shot and Ryona's Vembraces. Do they? In combination with Expose Vulnerabilities it could still be useful...? I once had 6 ciphers and Mind Blades was good if you could cast it six times at once.

Yes. All damaging chants stack. Ancient Memory plus Beloved Spirits stacks. The more chanters the better. Six of them, build tanky with high MIG and INT with "the Dragon Slashed" murder everything around them in 10 secs while getting healed big time.

You could do that before. Items were stored in your chest in Card Nua even if you were in Twin Elms or elsewhere.

How did they nerf Mind Blades? It already got nerfed in 1.6 or 2.0. Even less damage? Does Amplified Thrust (not Wave) still generate it's own focus? That used to be a nice effect and wasn't too powerful because it's single target only and you're not able to pick a special foe.

Tactical Meld was so good because it basically cost no focus. You could cast it before starting the encounter - your focus would be resetted when encounter starts. They nerfed that and it's OK. The other good thing was/is that you don't need to overcome any defense since you cast it on an ally. But the power is way too costly for only +20 ACC now.

The easiest way would have been: nerf Echo, Amplified Wave and Tactical Meld and leave the rest as it was. The nerfing of the cipher drugs is enough to reduce focus gain. Carow Gloan was really powerful - now it's just crap. I will never use it - don't know about others, but I think it's not worth it. +20% focus gain (that gets suppressed by items enchantment) and -4 INT. Who wants to take that?

Because the best cipher spells were also severely nerfed AND they nerfed cipher drugs at the same time. That's why. Plus: The huge change in focus cost just makes nearly all powers above lvl 3 pretty useless. Can't say that about wizards, priests and druids.

Nice! And also nice template. I had a similar idea with a quick switching Island Aumaua with arquebuses+FoD and a Kind Wayfarer who heals and buffs defenses. But I never played with that and never put it on paper. Cool that you did. Two questions: It is still the case that Inspiring Triumph stacks with Shielding Touch, but not Shielding Flames (or was it the other way round? One of those did not stack with the others, can't remember which). Torm51 wrote a bug report before 3.0 beta came out - maybe they fixed this? It doesn't matter of course if they don't overlap all the time. Remember that Pilferer's Grip's 10% armor recovery bonus did not stack with durgan reinforcement's bonus (sadly). This was also reported to Aarik and he put it in the bug database - don't know if they want to change this or if they already did.

Per encounter spells at lvl 9/11/13 were way too powerful. And the bonus spell talents were meaningless because of that. It all makes more sense now. But I agree that spell mastery should also improve the mastered spell in some way - be it duration, damage or whatever.

Very cool find! One of the best things about 3.0 beta I experienced/heard of.

@Dr. H.: Just like that. @EricGalad: I did a lot of Riposte related tests and I think even in the best case it's not very good. 20% of misses is just too low. 50% would be ok. The best case is high deflection, a heavily debuffed mob with two afflictions and gimped ACC and a hard hitting weapon. Retaliation Items are great however. All the +melee dmg mods (even sneak and deathblows) and Vulnerable Attack work with it and also Deep Wounds(!). Ryona's Vembraces, too (8 DR bypass in total). With Garodh's Chorus and Sura's Supper Plate you can stack two retaliations and have a pretty good frontliner who does good damage even while getting hit. Torm51 used Reinforcing Exhortation on his Devil a lot and said it works great.

She's a good frontliner with a shield and a sabre. Still great damage - combined with good survivability.

I had a pretty good time when I used my druid as a tank. I think that approach also works for Hiravas. Look up the "Batsh!t Crazy" build. It's quite simple and not too weird. Eder would work quite well as Engineer I guess. With the new Constant Recovery his regeneration in the first 45 seconds of combat will be stellar. You could even try to switch the shield for a sabre dual wielding approach - Knock Down is a full attack now. Sundering Blow + Penetrating Shot + Lead Spitter and all the Ruffian specs is devastating. DR bypass of 20 - your Blunderbuss will hit so hard...

Yes. If this was not the case INT would be pretty useless for any AoE. The description could be more correct. But then it would also be more complicated and perhaps confusing for people who take no interest in math.

Also works of course. But it lasts much shorter and only provides half of the speed (+25% instead of +50%). It gives you some bonus MIG but doesn't boost your move speed. And hopefully it becomes 1/encounter as all the other cross class talents.

Ah, OK. Seems that I just didn't play a ranger with a chanter for quite some time.