Boeroer

Thanks. I just discovered an absolutley awesome thing while letting The Backlash Beldam and Fulmineo fight against Thorfen's group: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83181-nice-item-ability-combinations-what-works-and-what-doesnt/page-2?do=findComment&comment=1750537 Ok, wasn't so awesome, but still nice.

ROFLMAO! I just discovered that Spelltongue + PainLink does some awesome stuff: When you hit the guys that beat you with Spelltongue while you have Pain Link active, then your Pain Link duration will get higher and higher. That might be the case because Spelltongue steals benefical effects from foes. I can't see how my Pain Link is benefical for them, but it works anyways. It's endless Pain Link as long as I keep hitting. Must be a bug... I have to try that with a barbarian who gets Pain Link from a cipher. With his carnage he steals benefical effects from all foes around him. One hit from Spelltongue should increase the duration so much that you can switch to another weapon set and still be pain linked for the rest of the fight. Best part: Pain Link can be casted out of encounter and is basically free.

I'm actually too lazy to install a capturing software and do all the fuzz. I can tell you that I just did the Thorfen bounty solo. I just walked in there, set up Pain Link, drank my potion and let them surround and hit me. I managed to cast Combusting Wounds before I went prone and stunned for about 5 seconds - and when I got up I had 160 focus, lost like 20% of my endurance and the guys that struck me where nearly dead. Then I picked the one with the lowest endurance and cast detonate on him. End of story. The longer I play her solo the more I wish I had taken more spammable aoe dps powers like soul shock or mind blades that work in an area around you (besides Pain Link). Maybe that's a tip for solo players. If you have a party it's totally ok to concentrate on CC and do damage with Amplified Wave. You need a friendly target for that. You can use Tenous Grasp to confuse an enemy and then cast Amplified Wave on him - but that takes a long time and you will get interrupted. But once they lay on the ground it's just "spam the wave". With 160 focus you can cast a lot of amp. waves.

Ok, the basic idea is to create a duelist that runs superfast and can pick off enemies like wizards, priests and all these dangerous folks while completely disabling them with superfast attacks and prones. At the same time he should require almost no micromanagement as monks normally do. This one is an autoattacker drone that works just fine when the AI is on and set up properly. A nice side effect is that he can carry the Ectopsychic Echo of your fellow cipher behind the enemy lines fast, reliable and easily. Zahua can also use this build. =================================== Fulmineo Prondroni =================================== Difficulty: PotD, Version: 2.03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: monk -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Ocean Folk -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Old Vailia - Dissident -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 15 CON: 10 DEX: 18 PER: 15 INT: 11 RES: 9 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: high stealth (nice for stealing and sneakin past enemy lines, rest is up to you) -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities/Talents (!=essential): Enervating Blows Fighting Spirit Flagellant's Path! Force of Aguish! Long Stride! Iron Wheel! Swift Strikes! Transcendent Suffering 4 Turning Wheel Lightning Strikes Two Weapon Style! Vuln. Attack Lesser Wounds Appr. Sneak Attack (or Fast Runner - slightly less dmg, more move speed) Savage Attack Weapon Focus Noble! --------------------------------------------------------------- Items ( * = echantments by me; ! = really important): Weapon set 1: Sword of Daenysis! (accurate, rending, durgan refined*, speed, shocking lash*, except.*), March Steel Dagger! (accurate, durgan refined*, speed, shocking lash*, except.*) OR replace one of them with Spelltongue (accurate, Time Siphon, Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon, except.*, shocking lash*, durgan refined) Weapon set 2: just your fists (or two maces -looks weird, but better ACC) Boots: Boots of Speed! (+3 move speed) Head: Dandy Hat of the Diseased Yak (-1 INT. +2 RES) Armor: Padded armor (durgan refined*, exceptional*, crush-proofed*, a fitting stat bonus like dex+2 or so*) OR Vailian Clothes (exceptional*, crush proofed*, stat bonus +2*) - if you want to spare ingots and gain even more speed. Neck: Finreah's Grace (+3 DEX) Belt: Blunting Belt (+5 pierce/slash DR) Rings: Ring of Protection, Pensiavi mes Rèi (+3 MIG) Hands: Bracers of Deflection, later: Blood Testament Quick slots: healing potions, Sugar --------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, let's zoom in: Speed: To stack as much move speed we take the Boots of Speed (Russetwood - north, in that landslide) and combine that with Long Stride. This way we will get a bonus of +5 move speed - which is hilarous. You can add Fast Runner later for +6 and eat some sugar for +7. He will be so fast that he reaches every enemy on the screen in less than 2 seconds. If the way is blocked, use Flagellant's Path. To stack as much attack speed as possible I maxed DEX (+24%), took Two Weapon Style (+20%) and Swift Strikes (+25%). On top of that we own two weapons that have the speed enchantment... that we boost further with durgan refinement (+35%). This results in zero recovery without any buffs from friends, potions, food, whatever - as long as you have at least one wound for Swift Strikes. That's if you don't use Vuln. Attack and have no armor penalty. But I recommend Vuln. Attack against high DR foes for more damge. Even then the recovery bar is barely visible. If you like you can put on a durgan refined padded armor. It's only +5% recovery penalty. This may let your recovery bar reappear again, but only for a fraction of a second while making you more sturdy. Now your're basically The Flash with a fancy hat and duelist blades. What else? DPS and CC: You're not only fast, you're interrupting like crazy even without interrupting blows. Even if you use Vuln. Attacks, your recovery bar will still not be visible while you gain dps (5 per hit is great). The Sword of Daenysis is rending, so your lightning fast toothpicks have a DR bypass of 8 (right) and 5 (left). You could put on Ryona's Vambraces for another +3 DR bypass if you like, but I highly recomment Blood Testament for the +2% raw lash per wound instead. Turning Wheel buffs your dps with a 5-50% fire lash if you have wounds. I combined this with Lightnig Strikes (how fitting) for +25% shock damage, then added a shocking lash to the weapons for a total of 2*+25% shock damage. Exceptional Weapons give you +30% damage, Apprentice's Sneak Attack another +15% (that's what the Enervating Blows are for if you want - and for Force of Anguish: weakened enemies have lower fortitude, Force of Anguish targets fortitude). Your MIG (with items) will add 24% dmg. With 10 wounds you will have a total dmg bonus of +139%. I know, I just tossed all modifiers into the same pot and stirred, but I'm to fast to disentangle all that 1/4-DR-lash-damge stuff - have to move on. Anyways - it's a lot of damage for such light weapons - especially if you're not fighting superhigh-DR foes. In that case switch to your fists - they do lots of damage per hit and are also pretty fast. Your toothpicks are way better against wizards and the lot though - and look much better. For CC you just use Force of Anguish. You can run from foe to foe and knock them prone. Without recovery time you can prone so many foes in such a short time that soon they will all lie on the floor for more than 10 sec. Even targets with very high fortitude will also go down very soon: because one of your many hits will be a crit -> Enervating Blows will weaken him, lowering his fortitude. Then you use Force of Anguish and he's down. Normally spellcasters and their kind don't have high fortitude defenses. But it's good to know that even the big ones don't stand a chance. Survivability and wound generation: Normal deflection, Iron Wheel, Blunting Belt and an enchanted padded armor (or cloth if you want to spare iron ingots ang have maximum speed) provide enough protection when you need it, but let you gain lots of wounds when you disengage to reach your targets. While you're running around you will get hit and it will hurt, but then Iron Wheel kicks in and you just shrug those hits off. Great ability, that Iron Wheel - love it! And don't ask me about robes - I hate the look of robes on my Fulmineo, madiccho! Every postenago knows that only priests and wizards wear robes without looking like a bazzo. So... you basically set your AI to Disruptor/Aggressive and let him loose. Works like a charm. Flagellant's Path and Force of Anguish should be triggered manually from time to time since the AI is still not very smart - but that's ok, combat is complex and sometimes you just want to touch your handsome little duelist. You can use a moon godlike if you don't want to sip a potion from time to time. That reduces micromanagment even further - but you will lose that lovely hat! Scioderie! Ok, that's it - have fun!

Yeah, they suck at the moment. The idea behind it is great, but the execution is bad. If it worked with recovery it would have been really powerful - maybe too powerful. You would have been unkillable. So I see why that doesn't work. But that you can't even select or target your char any more to sip a potion or get healed is just stupid.

GM will work. Stats are not very important for this build. CON and RES shouldn't be too low because you're supposed to walk into the fray and get hit a lot. I only took high PER because I wanted my powers to hit as often as possible, but you can absolutely use a value that's lower. Retaliation itself (from the items like Supper Plate and so on) always hits, never crits or grazes or misses. It's an autohit, so PER/ACC is irrelevant - same with Flame Shield I guess. If Pain Link hits, its aoe retaliation damage or chance to be applied is also not influenced by PER or ACC and also MIG soes nothing for it. So GM is totally fine. The good thing about this build (and the fact that you don't need to min-max your stats) is that you don't have to wait for all the good retaliation gear that comes fairly late (e.g Coat of Ill Payment) to be a good melee cipher. You can always play her the normal way and use a potion or the mantle (if you find it early) for the retaliation effect. You can use a good small shield and a sabre for solid focus build until you get all the fancy retaliation stuff. You could dump DEX and PER and max out MIG, CON and RES - but it's not needed. The build would only be fun to play when you have all the gear and that's not the way I like to plan my builds. Of course you could always retrain from normal stats to min-max stats when you got your good stuff - but I also don't like to retrain a lot. It breaks immersion. I always keep in mind that you might want to use this builds with the official companions. So I try to avoid min-maxing stats. Like your Lady of Pain works with Eder (although he lacks a bit of MIG and can't get the special. story related talents - but it works ok). My incoming monk build also works with Zahua by the way. Although it's a bit hilarious to put Zahua into Vailian clothes, let him use Rapier and Dagger and toss him the Dandy Hat of the Diseased Yak. :D The retaliation items that you can get quite early are Sura's Supper Plate and Garod's Chorus (if you don't want to be godlike) - and you don't need the Coat of Ill Payment then. Put on a plate and a blunting belt and you're perfectly dressed for the spanking party. Sometimes, when you push your Stronghold's prestige, you will be offered Hiro's Mantle early. That's also nice. But you cant't use the Mantle of Wreathing Flame then and will have to rely on the potions if you need extra focus. The only thing with this build is: if nobody hits you in melee you don't get focus. That's another reason why I didn't drop DEX and why I use a sabre like Bittercut: you can always go and just hit people with it to gain focus. The corrode damage plus Vuln. Attack and Ryona's Vambraces will result in a lot of focus just after one sucessful hit. Or you use a second weapon set for Stormcaller (if you don't use a ranger) or a Blunderbuss like Lead Spitter. Lead Spitter with Ryona's V. has 10 DR bypass without Penetr. Shot. With Carow Golan you will have a lot of focus after just one shot. I have to say this is one of the most powerful builds I experienced so far. And it is fun to play throughout the whole game. It's also good for solo I think.

It works. Every tick of the triggers CW. Also works with wounding weapons like Tidefall, Drawn in Spring and so on. Same with chanter's lvl1 and lvl3 dot phrases. Barb with Tidefall and a Ring of Searing Flames is a nice Combo. Well, it used to work. Maybe the dot thing got nerfed. However, it's difficult to add up as many hits per second on a group of enemies like the Backlash Beldam does.

Ok, come on - do it, do it!

Ok, regarding my cipher build and the skill/item combos that I mentioned: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83186-class-build-the-backlash-beldam-melee-multiretaliation-cipher-tank/

No I don't. Good question. Maybe it's the same problem. I may do some tests tomorrow.

So, this build uses the known fact that retaliation generates focus. There are some builds that use Sura's Supper Plate and another retaliation item for double retaliation. I used that tactic and tried to stack as many retaliating effects as possible. I tried a lot of skills and items for that. Turns out that you can stack up to 6(!) different retaliation effects when you get hit/crit in melee combat. Three of them generate (tons of) focus while the others are for dealing damage only. This cipher is quite tanky because of high deflection and DR. Grieving Mother can be used for this build. So here it is: =================================== The Backlash Beldam =================================== Difficulty: PotD, Version: 2.03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: cipher -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Fire Godlike -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 14 CON: 10 DEX: 10 PER: 15 INT: 15 RES: 14 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: boost survival a bit, the rest is up to you -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities/Powers (that matter, rest as you like): Battle Forged Soul Whip Antipathetic Echo Psychovampiric Shield Ectopsychic Echo Pain Link Body Attunement Mind Lance Borrowed Instinct Amplified Wave Time Parasite -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents: Biting Whip Draining Whip Weapon and Shield Style Savage Attack Vulnerable Attack Apprentice's Sneak Attack Veteran's Recovery or Scion of Flame or Spirit of Decay --------------------------------------------------------------- Items: Weapons: Bittercut (exceptional, durgan refined, corrosive or burning lash) & Sura's Supper Plate (durgan refined, exceptional) Armor: Coat of Ill Payment (durgan refined, crush proofed) Arms: Ryona's Vambraces Rings: Orlan's Bramble Ring, Ring of Searing Flames Belt: Sentinel's Girdle or Maegfolk Might or Trollhide Belt Boots: Echoing Misery Neck: Mantle of Wreathing Flame Quick Slots: Carow Golan, Potion of Flame shield --------------------------------------------------------------- So... this way you stack the following retaliation effects (*f=focus generation, *dm=melee dmg mods like savage attack etc. work. Ryona's Vambraces 3DR bypass included): - Battle Forged *dm - Sura's Supper Plate *fg, *dm - Coat of Ill Payment *fg, *dm - Wreathing Flame *fg, *dm OR - Flame shield *fg, *dm (supresses each other) - Pain Link - Ray of Pain (kind of retaliation) You see that we can have 3 retaliations at the same time that generate focus when we get hit in melee combat. All of them are affecte by +% damage modifiers and also DR bypass from Vuln. Attack and Ryona's Vambraces - so they all negate 8 DR of the target. Now let's say that you get hit by three enemies, each one grazes you (happens a lot because of your high deflection) for 2 or 3 damage. You will receive focus from 9 retaliation hits. While the normal retaliation has not very high damage output (like Wreathing Flame, both are quite weak) the Flame Shield from the potion deals solid damage. Anyways you will get good focus while casting or just standing around. It also works if you are prone, paralyzed, stunned and so on. After two seconds of combat (when you are surrounded by enemies) your focus will jump from 40 (at lvl 14) to 100, two seconds later you will have reached your maximum focus of 160. And you had to do nothing for it. You can now use your powers while regaining focus. You will lose a bit of endurance, but since your DR is very high and you mainly get grazes, that's really negligible. That's why I added Veteran's Recovery and a Tollhide Belt. It's enough to counter the loss of endurance most of the time. In tough fights the Battle Forged kicks in and does a lot of burn damage, but doesn't generate focus. But you could also use a moon godlike if you want powerful aoe healing instead. Now if you add Pain link to the mix it gets interesting in terms of "doing good dps while hanging around". While you're casting your cipher powers, foes not only get hit by (focus generating) retaliations, but also suffer 25% of the damage they do to you - and that's aoe damage, not single target damage. Sometimes also Ray of Pain from the boots kicks in. All these little injuries start to add up pretty fast, you can watch your foes losing endurance while you get focus. If you want a total focus overflow, eat some Carow Golan. That means +4 per *fg-retaliation or with other words you will gain +12 focus for each hit you will receive. If three guys hit you it's +36 focus on top just with Carow Golan. You will hit maximum focus before you can even use a power if you get attacked by a mob. But that's not all. Let's also use these retaliation effects that don't generate focus. Use your Ring of Searing Flames and cast Combusting Wounds on your surrondings. It does 5 burn damage each time the target gets hit by something. Since we have 4 to 5 (with Battle Forged) reliable sources of retaliation (I don't count Ray of Pain) - one of them is aoe - each time we get hit the foes not only suffer from our retaliation damage, but also get burned for >30 damage from combusting wounds. That's why Pain Link's aoe damage is great although it doesn't do anything for our focus: every time an enemy hits us for some damage, all enemies around us receive 25% of that damage. The damage itself is not superhigh, but every time it triggers Combusting Wounds. So one hit from an enemy means several hits for him, they all trigger Comb. Wounds, but it also means that his friends get hit by Pain Link plus Comb. Wounds. They kill themselves quickly. The mob melts like ice in the sun. You need some consumables and per-rest abilities to go really crazy, but even without this the build is working perfectly well without them in normal encounters. If you want you can use up your charges of Wreathing Flame (three per rest, there's more than one mantle in the game) and then use Potions of Flame Shield. I think you willl always have enough charges and/or potions. Carow Golan can be bought, but the insane focus gain that it provides is only needed in very tough fights with very high DR foes. Ok, had fun - hope you too! Good night!

@Andrea: Also: the damage of Bittercut plus corrosive lash is not considered as one source but two - as if you had a lash on a slashing sabre. It says "30 corrode + 7,5 corrode". I also think you have to bypass the corrode DR two times (100% and 25%) which is stupid. That sometimes leads to another stupidity: the game will use the slash damage instead of corrode if the corrode DR is (even slightly) higher than the slash DR. So either Spirit of Decay doesn't work or the game doesn't calculate the +20% bonus when diciding which damage type to use. A little bit bugged at the moment. Best would be: add Bittercut's corrosive base damage and the lash (=125% base damage), then *1.20 because of Spirit of Decay. Same with Firebrand and burning lash (from chanter) plus Scion of Flame. Stupid lash mechanics...

Dead Man Stands works this (stupid) way: when your char reaches 0 endurance you don't fall down but keep standing. But you can't select the char anymore as if he were unconcious. I think when you have AI on he keeps attacking but I'm not sure. Sad thing is you can't do anything in this 3 seconds since you can't select him anymore. Direct healing spells like Lay on Hands also don't work because you can't target the guy. Maybe Aoe healing works, didn't test. After 3 seconds you fall to the ground. Then it's like always: second chance will be activated after you drop. So does Vengeful Defeat. I think Unbroken triggers before you fall - but that doesn't matter since it would trigger with or without the boots. Could have been nice boots - atm they are just even more caustic than bilestompers.

If that is that case, I would flag it as a bug. Of course - but I'm not 100% sure it doesn't work.

Yeah - I use that tactic too. But I added a small detail for extra... "Oompf". Got 160 Focus (=max) in under 2 seconds last time. And Fulmineo Prondroni is our best buddy for your Ectopsychic Echo: +6 Move Speed and Falgellanth's Path is just perfect for this. Did you know that Antipathetic Field also boosts your Ectopsychic Echo's Damage? All beam damage gets +20% as long as the Antipathetic Field is up. Aaand the Badgradr's Barricade build also works great with a spellsword wizard (Eldritch Aim and Merciless Gaze for the crits). When you get Alacrity per encounter it gets totally crazy. Doesn't crit that much when not buffed and lacks the dps of deathblows and so on. But you are even more tanky and you can cast fat (debuff) spells, so... A priest with self buffing also works, but rogue and wizard are more fun. I also figured that a melee ranger with this shield might be great. With all his +acc talents/abilites he will crit quite often and he has a mate for flanking. Use Drawn in Spring to apply the wounding dot effect for your wolf's Predators Sense. The two of you will be a great "tank, flank and spank" team with lots of Deflection and great dps. Also good: melee rangers don't need too many skills - rest makes your animal companion happy. Will test that as well...

It seems that Spirit of Decay doesn't work for Bittercut's base corrode damage, but I may be mistaken. I will have to test this again. I thought that Scion of Flame worked for Firebrand, or didn't it? Will post separate topics with the detailed builds of the melee cipher "The Backlash Beldam" and monk "Fulmineo Prondroni" and put the links here. Don't want to spam this thread too much. I would love to hear some nice tricks from the other rulebenders here. Doesn't need to be overpowered - I also like very stylish and fun to play builds or combinations. That's why Fulmineo is not moon godlike and wears the dandy hat of the diseased yak. Godlikes can't wear cool hats!

Man - I just wrote a whole lot of text about druids, ciphers and monks - and then my browser crashed all of a sudden. All work for nothing dammit! Now I have no time to write it all again. I will do it later. All I can say: the ideas concerning druids were interesting but not overpowered. Basically an unarmed druid "monkstyle" with Sandals of the Forgotten Friar and Novice's Suffering and another druid who's quite tanky. With blights for more tanking (immunities) and focus on corrode damage (Bittercut plus corrosive lash plus Black Santuary plus Spirit of Decay and so on). But I just discovered and tested a cipher build that is abolutely awesome. It just an improvement to an existing melee retaliation build, but a great one. I just say these things as a teaser: 6(!) times retaliation (3 of them generating focus) for hundrets of focus in seconds... plus Combusting Wounds for the win. ) This one is really overpowered. I don't know where to put all the focus... Stay tuned! And my autoattacker dualist monk on speed "Fulmineo Prondroni" is refined and polished now. Lots of fun, very effective. Maaan... stupid browser!

Hi, I had an idea the other day that a nature or fire godlike barbarian with all the "under 50% endurance" abilities/talents and Vengeful Defeat might be effective in terms of dps, but hard to manage with all the revives and so on. So i figured that I could abuse Dead Man Stands (boots) + Veteran's Recovery. These boots delay unconciousness for 3 sec. So if you drop to 0 endurance you will still stand for 3 seconds. It has no charges and works every time you hit 0 endurance. The description says it's possible to get healed in this time. So I guessed that Veteran's Recovery (that ticks every 3 seconds) would be enough to raise your endurance to 2 or 3 so that this KO-timer would get reset over and over and you would basically be unkillable (health loss aside). Not only that - the description of Vengeful Defeat says it triggers at 0 endurance. So I believed I found the ultimate barb-build: No resolve or constitution needed. Just make a pure glass cannon, jump into the fray and let them hit you, and when you drop to 0 endurance - *boom* - Vengeful Defeat triggers. Then Veteran's Recovery would kick in, you don't get KO'ed, you get hit and - *boom* - Vengeful Defeat. I made a barb and gave him all the items that do something special when you hit 50% endurance (basically +10 ACC and +30% dmg): Ritezzi's Thorn, a custom crafted Cladhaliath, Ryona's Buckle and so on. Long story short: Doesn't work. Obviously Obsidian discovered this exploit before I did and made it so that when you hit 0 endurance with Dead Man Stands on, all your active abilities just shut down. So Veteran's Recovery will not work. Also: Vengeful defeat doesn't trigger on 0 endurance, but on unconciousness when you drop on the floor. The damage of Vengeful Defeat then is absolutely crazy because of all the damage and ACC bonuses - but it's just a one hit wonder (tehehe). So bye-bye overpowered masochist barb build. Of course you can still use second chance items, a Paladin with Reviving Exhortation, a Priest and a chanter to revive the barb and repeat that - but it's a lot of microing and not much fun. On the other hand I just made a tanky rogue with Badgradr's Barricade. I didn't think much of it and just gave it a try - but it turns out to be a fantastic build: Deflection above 100 (that makes Riposte worthwhile against mobs) and very solid dps. Not the dual-sabre kind of dps, but still very high. And he can be in the front lines too. Another good thing about him is his aburd high reflex defense above 140. Everything that targets reflex doesn't touch him most of the time. And when it does, Adept Evasion kicks in. On top of that, he has a 30% chance to reflect all ranged attacks (spells also) back to the shooter/caster (durgan refined Barricade plus Golden Scales). I just use this guy to murder spellcasters. If they use reflex-based spells they are dead. They either get beaten or kill themselves. The core of this build is the medium shield Badgradr's Barricade that casts Thrust of Tattered Veils (ToTV) on critical hit with the bash. Rogues (especially Hearth Orlan ones) can crit a lot. While the bash itself has a very low damage output, the ToTV's damage is solid. Best things about it: all the universal damage modifiers of the rogue like sneak attack, deathblows, deep wounds etc. also apply to this. Plus- and that's quite funny - Penetrating Shot works with it. At first I thought that's stupid. But now I think that's quite good: you can activate Penetrating Shot, which gives +5DR bypass to ToTV, but it doesn't slow you down because you're in melee. It's a bit expensive to get +5 DR bypass just for your left handed crits - but on the other hand it has no downside (besides losing a skillpoint). I combined this shield with sabers first - but when I got the Forgotten Tear of the Beloved flail (and later a durgan refined Starcaller) I retrained for flails and also used One-Handed Style. That way you have a 60% (80% on Starcaller) graze-to-hit conversion. You will almost never do a graze which is quite ok for dps against high deflection foes. ANd the Starcaller itself is awesome with the spell striking and stunning. But any good one-handed weapon will do. The Vile Loner's Lance for example is also a nice item with -5 defl. on hit, making it even more likely to crit with the bash to trigger ToTV. So, which nice combinations did you discover? Which worked as you expected and which didn't?

Pathfinding is horrible. Sometimes two chars meet in battle and both decide to turn, let's say, left - then they both run side by side like if they decided to take a walk in the park - hand in hand. Romantic... and stupid too.

Sad news for the monk: Spell Binding items do no longer work with his duplicates. Bye-bye free Alacrity. But besides that: just tested the Prone Drone monk with the setup I mentioned above. Added Fast Runner at lvl 14 for a hilarious move speed bonus of 6. For dps it would be better to take Apprentice's Sneak Attack though, but this is more fun to watch. With a durgan refined robe, durgan refined dual wielding speedy weapons (Sword o Daenysis + March Steel Dagger) and Swift Strikes on there's no recovery bar anymore - even when I use Vuln. Attack. The puny damage of the rapier/dagger got pimped by Turning Wheel, Lightning Strikes, Savage Attack, lashes and superior enchantment. Together with Ryona's Vembraces he has 11 DR bypass for the Sword of Daenysis (rending) and 8 for the Dagger. I just solo'd Nalrend the Wise and hit him for 20 to 60 points of damage every half second or so. That's better than I expected. As I said: no recovery bar visible (without any potions and food and spells). It's just *pierce*slash*pierce*slash*. :D If you turn the AI on and let him use Force of Anguish and Swift Strikes aggressively you can just fire and forget him. He runs around, prones enemies and tiggles them with his speedy toothpicks. Moon Godlike, Iron Wheel and Blunting Belt plus crush-proofed Gwisk Glas for survival. If he goes 1:1 the enemy is perma-interrupted. Very nice auto attacker - needs nearly no microing. Love it! Maybe I will use another race so that I can wear the Dandy Hat of the Diseased Yak together with some vailian cloth outfit to spare the durgan ingots and to make him really look like a noble duelist with rapier and dagger. Style is important! So now I have companion number one for my own Lady of Pain. Excuse me, I have to test the next idea...

A small shield from the Alpine Dragon's den. You get Sabra Marie and Black Sanctuary. It casts Warding Seal 2 times per encounter when you get a crit in your face. Maybe a char that totally delves in getting crits (spell holding)/dealing crits (spell striking) would be interesting: jolting touch stiletto plus black sanctuary - when all charges are gone switch to Bleak Fang stiletto and Badgradr's Barricade. Together with Sanguine Plate and Shod-in-Faith and Cloak of the Master Mystic and so on. Might be fun. This cries for monk since you need high ACC as well as good health. Does carnage still do this crazy things with jolting touch?

My next playthrough will also be with this build (well, 95% of this build. I want to try out Rapid Recovery plus Cloak of the Tireless Defender plus Trollhide Belt instead of Shod-in-faith for a steady +6? end/3sec base and see how that goes). Now that the engagement and disengagement radius is even bigger, I might also go for Defender. Last playthrough my two animal companions were wrecking stuff with diseng. attacks. Then I want to try out a dual stiletto painful interdiction skaen priest as main. Rogue with spells that is. Then my "Prone Drone" auto attacker swashbuckler monk I tested the other day (dual wielding durgan refined Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger and Angio's Gambeson. Uses Force of Ang. and Boots of Speed together with Long Stride). He has +25+20+20+15 = +80% Attack Speed by design without other buffs and can use the Alacrity from the gambeson for his two elemental thugs that use their fists and get +50% Attack Speed for free that way. He's not a superoverpowered DPSer but it's so much fun to watch him go zip zig zag and proning and piercing things without microing. Then I want to use a build that uses Badgrad's Barricade that I'm testing atm. Not sure which class I will use. I also want to try a combination of stormcaller (shock DR reduction) and Black Sanctuary tank (Warding Seal on getting a crit). That's what I need the shod-in-faith for. The seal's shock damage might be nice together with the DR reduction. Also not sure which class(es) I want to use for this. A Druid Tank? Or maybe I'll try an unarmed druid with Novice's Suffering and Skandals of the Forgotten Friar. Does anybody know if the +2 unarmed damage bonus of the sandals also applies to Spiritshift weapons? I know Novice's Suffering doesn't.

Another thing with this shield: it has a 10% chance of reflecting ranged attacks - and the description says it also works against spells. With durgan steel you can add another 10% of reflection. That's quite good. If it works against spells like necrotic lance and so on it would be very funny to see these stupid skeletal wizards nuke themselves from time to time.

You mean Turning Wheel? That's the same bug as pre 2.02, when lighning strikes would override Turning Wheel all the time. Maybe this bash thing slipped through when they fixed that issue. Thanks for testing. Maybe this shield is more fun when you don't use it on PotD - not enough crits there if you aren't a rogue (+hearth orlan). Or you have to stack a lot of ACC with Zealous Focus, Inspiring Radiance and Gauntlets of Accuracy and so on. Maybe I'll try a build after my current playthrough. @Kasajal: I tried a six rogues party once and with it a tanky rogue build with riposte. I have to say it's a wasted talent - at least on PotD. Your deflection is never high enough to let most enemies miss a lot - and this whole riposte stuff happens only when they miss. Instead they graze a lot and that gives you nothing. Ripostes are rare and do nothing special. To make it worthwhile it should happen more often (like 50%, not 20%) or it also should work with grazes. Whatever - it's not worth the skill point.

Quick update: doesn't generate focus. (