Boeroer

Depends on difficulty. On PotD a bigger AoE is greatly appreciated. I like do max INT, using a +INT item and a Ring of Overseeing.

Good thing about carbage though: on hit/crit effects and spellchances on weapons work with it. Thinks like disorieting, prone, stun etc. all work as AoE with a barb. Torment's Reach doesn't do that (it's still a great ability).

Could work. I don't know if Marking and Coordinated Attacks can be stacked on one party member - that would be even better. Two "markers" left and right and a crit build (rogue, barb) in the middle who would receive +40 ACC. There's also a wand that has Marking by the way.

Nice idea with the pistol. I never used that. I'm always fond of builds that make good use of items that normally go by the board. What armor and other gear did you use? Boots of Zealous Command I guess? Ring of Overseeing? Archer's gloves could be nice for this guy. Just one question: Last time I tested the marking enchantment and Coordinated Attacks they only affected the nearest party member that targeted the same foe - and not all of them. So the +20 ACC buff only applied to one single ally. Was that changed? That would be great.

Thanks. Yes, it would make more sense in terms of powergaming. I even think that driving flight works with some of the missile spells (barrage and minor) - which would make it even more awesome. But the animal companion just doesn't fit in. And he has no sundering blow of course.

Now that I think of it I guess you're right. Even better that way.

Yes, the Blunderbusses really rock if you can take away all the DR and have all the +dmg mods. Arms Bearer + Armed to the Teeth + Quick Switch would be lots of burst damage. Or you skip Quick Switch and use the Coil of Resourcefulness instead. That would save you one talent point.

So you have three chars with healing capability - I would take the wolf then.

With lvl 5 it's doable I'd say. I would choose wolf or bear. The wolf does more damage (it's noticable) and the bear is more sturdy. It depends what other party members you have. If you have a healer or somebody who can buff the defenses or DR of your pet then I'd choose the wolf. If you don't have the possibility to protect your pet or if you don't want to watch after him all the time I'd choose bear. I used them both in one playthrough (one Persistence Ranger with bear, the other a Stormcaller Ranger with wolf) and they are both good. I personally like the wolf a little better - for no particular reason.

Wife and kids asleep before 12 pm, rain and the sounds of war in Berlin - what a lovely night. May the mule be with you in 2016!

Thanks a lot. - I also would use an Island Aumaua if I wanted to use two or more guns. I just used a dwarf because I never had before. - You could lower INT without causing serious damage to the build I think. If you kill quicker, you don't need the extra duration for your heals or Sundering Blow. - I used a wizard with the rod "Golden Gaze" (two projectiles that each have 5% chance to proc Expose Vulnerabilites) who also cast Combusting Wounds a lot. The two projectiles with each triggering a blast were nice for that - as where the multiple hits from Blunderbuss and Missiles. Remember: every projectile causes 5 additional burn damage when Combusting Wounds is on. It was a great synergy effect. I also had a Druid for lots of DoT effects that also buffed Combusting Wound's damage further - but that had nothng to do with the Engineer.

You need to do at least one of the quests you get when you visit the temple of Woedica. It's Heritage Hill Tower, Cliaban Rilag or BRackenbury Sanatorium. If you did one of them, you will be called by your steward. Lvl 5 is a bit early for Stalwart in the White March. Lvl 6 might work. After the initial fight in Stalwart you can just go west to Russetwood and in the lower half of the map, near the entrance, you can find a wolf that is wounded by a silver arrow - get it. Then go to Durgan's Battery and sneak past all the enemies and climb the tower in the north, east from the Battery. THere you will find the bow. Put them together and you will have Stormcaller. You don't need to fight a lot of mobs to get it. Just sneak in and out. Once you have it, try to upgrade it as soon as possible so it procs Returning Storm. That's not very difficult. Before that you can use Persistence (hunting bow from the Endless Paths lvl 4). It has the very nice wounding enchantment that triggers Predator's Sense - it's a good alternative until you can get Stormcaller.

Yeah, but you should be able to close the cosole with the esc key. Maybe you can do that while trying to access the key bindings?

The Engineer is an animancer from the Living Lands - born as a boreal dwarf but tempted to discover the secrets of animancy and technology. A workhorse among animancers, the Engineer’s strength lies in his soul-fueled, electrical-driven armor — a technological marvel, crafted personally by the Engineer as his journeyman project. So equipped, the Engineer carrys out any mission involving animancy and technology that he's interested in, from building mighty animats, inventing deadly missiles for his armor to delving into ancient ruins in search of long-forgotten knowledge — sometimes as part of a team of adventurers, but more often than not as an “independent” contractor. The Engineer thinks he will find work and secrets aplenty in the Dyrwood, exploring engwithan ruins for more artifacts or overseeing expeditions. The harsh conditions have forced the Engineer to adapt his methods and equipment. Gone are the leather aprons and tidy toolboxes — replaced by armored plates and massive tools that also work as weapons. Now the Engineer is more soldier than scientist — more warrior than workman. The Engineer's technological expertise lets him imbue his weapons and armor with the power of souls to deliver blasts of energy through devastating melee strikes, or directly from the armor itself while it constantly supports him with a stream of envigoring essence. His gear might be a bit weightier to accommodate all that technology — but "a good, heavy hammer is just the right tool for stubborn bolts ... and stubborn beasts!" That combination of brawn and tech makes the Engineer a formidable front-line combatant — a powerhouse of melee attacks and ranged energy bursts. He may be grumpy and cranky and a randy old devil - but he may also be the guy that pulls your butt out of the fire. =================================== The Engineer =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 2.03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Fighter -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Boreal Dwarf -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Deadfire Archipelago - Labourer -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 15 CON: 10 DEX: 15 PER: 15 INT: 15 RES: 08 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 4, Athl. 5, Lore 8, Mech. 4, Surv. 8 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Weapon & Shield Style ® Weapon Focus Ruffian Weapon Mastery Ruffian Vulnerable Attack Penetrating Shot (!) Prestidigitator's Missiles Rapid Recovery Abilities Hunter's Instincts (a) Constant Recovery (a) Knock Down Confident Aim Armored Grace ® Weapon Spec. Ruffian Critical Defense Unbroken Sundering Blow (!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Blesca's Labour(*Shocking Lash, Durgan Refined) & Old Gerun's Wall (*Durgan Refined) Weapon Set 2: Scon Mica's Roar Boots: Animancer's Boots Head: Liripipe of Thinking or The Pilgrim's Lasting Vigil (then put 8 points into lore) Armor: He Carries Many Scars Neck: Cloak of the Tireless Defender® or Cloak of Minor Missiles® Belt: Belt of Bountiful Healing® or Girdle of the Driving Wave Rings: Ring of Protection, Ring of Deflection Hands: Bracers of All-Consuming Rage Quick slots: Bronze Horn Figurine (summons Animat), Scroll of Missile Barrage/Minoletta's Concussive Missiles/Minoletta's Bounding Missiles and so on, Scroll of Defense --------------------------------------------------------------- Hey there. Here's another one that I liked a lot while I played him. This build is inspired by the engineer class of Torchlight II, where he could be a tanky supporter as well as a sturdy damage dealer. This build combines decent damage with good survivability. To fit the background, he makes use of different kinds of missilies (Prestidigitator's Missiles and diverse scrolls). One of best trick this build has evolves around his ability "Sundering Blow". It's a pity that it comes so late, but nevertheless it opens up some smart maneuvers (with missiles!). But I'll come to that later. Here I go: Defense/Survivability: I wanted to strengthen the fighter's self healing capability as much as I could, so I took Rapid Recovery, put on a regenerating item (first Trollhide Belt, later He Carries Many Scars), bought the Cloak of the Tireless Defender and used a draining weapon that fits the theme and also could be seen as a tool (first Gaun's Share, then later I switched to Blesca's Labor). I didn't max MIG though because I also wanted to have fairly high INT, DEX and PER - so I left it at 15. On top of that, I figured that a Belt of Bountiful Healing would also work together with draining and Constant Recovery - and it indeed does. So that adds up another +15% of healing power. That's like having 20 MIG instead of 15 when it comes to healing. With the Bracers of All-Consuming Rage he's got a a MIG score of 17 which gives +21% to all healing. Resting bonuses, consumables and the like will further boost the self healing. All in all he has a constant, passive recovery rate (I mean without buffs, consumables and stuff) of: (3+1+2+1)*1.36 = 9.52 points of endurance per tick (=every 3 secs). Theoretically. In the game it might be 9 or 10 due to rounding. That's pretty good. And as long as we hit things, we will gain some endurance on top of that from draining. I'd say that's around 6 to 12 points at higher levels. Due to ok INT this whole recovery thing will also last quite long. As good as this healing is - it will not save you if you receive lots of nasty crits all the time while you're trying to save your companions' butts. Since my RES was not very high I went for the large shields, Durgan Refinement/Reinforcement and Critical Defense to prevent that the Engineer receives too many crits. Hits are ok from time to time, as long as you hit you will heal those completely. Grazes are no threat at all since they are eaten away by your recovery. You could also use a smaller shield and put more points into RES and less into PER - I think that will result in the same numbers. Large shields will lower your ACC, but the fighter has a good base ACC and flais are reliable - clubs, even better, have an ACC bonus, but let's talk about that later. I just liked large shields on this character. Old Gerun's Wall is superb and has crit to hit conversion - which makes it a very good defensive weapon. I also went for plate armor because of the theme. Fighters get Armored Grace and can further lower the armor penalty with Durgan Steel. A plate only has a penalty of 15% after that. Let's be honest: that's just awesome. He Carries Many Scars seemed to be the best choice because it not only is regenerating my endurace but also gets better if you drop under 25% health. That can be an issue if you face Ogre Druids and friends. The Plague of Insects will not knock you out because you heal all the time, but your health will go down as well - and no healing will prevent that. It's nice that you get extra DR if your health is low. This makes standard attacks even less dangerous for you. If all goes wrong, the Engineer still has Unbroken to revive him. This did not happen often - I remember that it kicked in when I was soloing the Nalrend Bounty (just for the sake of soloing). I just walked in and started clubbing. At some point all the Plagues of Insects overwhelmed me. Then I got revived and finished it... or them. I have to say as long as the constant recovery is working you're nearly unkillable. Exceptions: if you get hit by heavy CC (Lagufaeth, Banshees) and dragons. Offense: While the guy is really a roly-poly I also wanted him to do some serious damage. Fast hitting, accurate weapons with draining are ok, but against high DR foes they stink a bit, even with all the dmg bonuses the fighter can accumulate. Punching and kicking beetles forever might be fun, but it's not good for our terminated self-healing which runs out if a fight takes too long. What he lacked to this point is some serious burst damage to take out dangerous foes quickly. Since he's a Engineer he should have invented some artillery to do that. Luckily there's lots of different missile scrolls. We'l pretend that's his ammo for his armor. And there are items with spell bindings like Animancer's Boots (oh, that fits nicely). On top, we can take Prestidigitator's Missiles! Crap you say? Wait - they don't do too much damage and it's 2/rest - but Josh announced that this will be changed to per-encounter... another advantage is that they do crush/corrode damage. That can be really useful against annoying foes that have immunities (blights for example). And it just fits the theme so well that I took it. If your enemy has zero DR, they are actually quite nice. All missile spells are great if your foes that have low DR. Same goes for the Blunderbuss that I chose for my second weapon slot. So my next mission was to find a way to lower DR. Sundering Blow came to mind. It's perfect to lower DR on a single foe for quite a long time and you have 2 uses per encounter. Before that I had to use a Wizard or Cipher to lower the DR of foes a bit. If you absolutely don't like to use Prestidigitator's Missiles then you could use an Island Aumaua with Quick Switch and another Blunderbuss instead. I think this would be even more powerful. Anyway - I wanted to stick to the theme. Sundering Blow will lower the DR by 8 points. This is great but most of the time not enough to completely get rid of the DR. So I also picked Penetrating Shot. This works not only with the Blunderbuss, but with all missile spells too. So now we could hit a foe with a Sunderng Blow and then shoot him with a Blunderbuss and missiles that have 5 DR from Penetrating Shot. You will bypass 13 DR with this. Missile Barrage has another 3 DR bypass. If you encounter a foe with 16 DR and use this setup, he will get hit from your Blunderbuss and a Missile Barrage as if he had no DR at all. That's a ton of damage. You could push this further with a wizard and a cipher or Ryona's Vembraces (+3 DR bypass), but I didn't feel the need to do so. THe good thing about all these different missile spells is the fact that they all apply different damage. It's either pierce,crush,slash or corrode - so you're very flexible. As a Blunderbuss a chose Scon Mica's Roar above Lead Spitter. Only recently mosspit pointed out that the disorienting enchantment of this Blunderbusse's 6 projectiles stacks (http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83526-the-darcozzi-forward-observer-could-use-some-input/?do=findComment&comment=1761930) - it causes -30 to all defenses when all shots hit. It's true and this is just too good to let it pass. So against tough enemies I do it like so: Sundering Blow, switch to Blunderbuss, fire (for tons of damage), then unleash a Missile Barrage for even more damage because most of the 9 missiles will crit. Most of the time that's it for the enemy (if he's not an Ogre Matron or something meaty like that). If not, I use Knockdown and finish him off with the club or another missile. From time to time I will also use scrolls of Jolting Touch or Crackling Bolt just for the sake of diversity. THe Animancer's Boots also have Jolting Touch, so I will use that up first before I will waste scrolls. Against the common mobs I don't use scrolls - Instead I put on a cloak of Minor Missiles instead of the Cloak of the Tireless Defender. I found two of them in my last playthrough. That's 6 spells per rest, 8 if you count Prestidigitator's Missiles and 11 if you count Jolting Touch from the Animancers Boots. The Engineer is like a little wizard. If all spells and scrolls are used up and there's still somebody standing, his standard damage with the club is still good. Blesca's Labor is very good for this setup because it has ACC+5 since it's a club, it's superb and has the Coordinating enchantment which gives you another +4 ACC if you team up against a foe. Because of this you don't realize you're fighting with a large shield. ACC was over 90 at lvl 14 - that's good enough. If you don't feel the need for more ACC and draining you can also go for a sabre, war hammer or a mace or something like that - the good thing about clubs is that you can imagine that some tools like wrenches etc. may be used as clubs AND they are also in the same weapon group as the Blunderbuss. Summons: He's an animancer and an engineer - he's summoning an Animat for sure. If he would have been the main char, I also would have used the tiny animat pet - but he wasn't. I used it nevertheless. Great - again lots of text, sorry for that. Have fun and a Happy New Year to you all! Hope your wishes come true - as long as they don't involve me being punched or slapped or something like that...

No - as I said you can do both. There's nothing wrong with a ranger who uses quick switch to fire his guns quickly and then uses a hunting bow to finish the job. I doesn't really matter if DEX is 18 or 15 or if INT is 12 or 15. You don't need to minmax stats to build a good ranger. But if I should name a certain ranger build "best", then I would say it's the Stormcaller ranger with min CON and RES, max MIG, DEX and PER and rest in INT. Wear no armor (or don't suffer from recovery penalty, to be precise), take Driving Flight, Stunning Shots and Twinned Arrows to maximize proc chance for Returning Storm and build your pet into a DPS machine with Predator's Sense, Merciless Companion, Vicious Companion and Resilient Companion. This is one of the most impressive chars I ever played. It's high DPS combined with good CC and not too much micromanagement. It's all about the bow, but that's OK. You can then build the rest of the party around the fact that Stormcaller lowers shock DR by 6.

Wounding Shot, -30 to all defenses from Disorienting (Scon Mica's Roar), Wounding from Persistence, Binding Roots, all scroll related buffs or DoT spells, Stunning Shots, Combusting Wounds from Ring of Searing Flames, Consecrated Ground from Shod-in-Faith and so on. DEX is more important for bow rangers for sure. For gun rangers with quick switch it's not so important. Here high INT can be more useful - depending on your gear and tactics. For melee rangers it also depends.

Shod in Faith do trigger CG when you get a crit hit. Every time. So you will have two CGs at the same time that heal you quicker. It stacks. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Frenzy however does not stack and so the second one is wasted. But this mechanic is known and it's OK for me. You can work around that: switch to shield once you got a crit so that it's more unlikely that you get a second one while Frenzy is up.

Whoa! I didn't know that. Thanks for that info. Still learning new stuff.

Depends on the weapon choice. For a bow DEX > INT.

Maybe her defenses are not good enough for a PotD solo playthrough. I can't say. I tried the Nalrend bounty with her alone and also the Thorfen bounty - and it worked. But that doesn't mean that she could do a whole solo playthrough. Instead of dual wielding stilettos one could try stiletto plus small shield. With a durgan refined shield the attack speed wouldn't suffer much while your deflection and reflex would be higher.

Right! I have the exact same wish: That they make it a modal ability and remove spellcasting while shifted.

I used a rogue with Badgradr's Barricade which has bash and limitless spell strikings of Thrust of Tattered Veils when you crit. This shield profits from high crit chance and you will still have high defenses. There's a bug though: Two Weapon Style doesn't apply to bash - but it's in the bug database and should be fixed soon.

Ah, OK. Now I got it.

Maybe the key binding is messed up? Did you take a look at the game options?

I can't find it anymore. Can somebody else remember? It featured killing the adra dragon solo on PotD.