Boeroer

There's a cheesy way to kill the Adra Dragon: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82620-an-easy-and-reliable-way-to-kill-the-adra-dragon-even-with-low-level-parties/?hl=%2Bkill+%2Bthe+%2Badra+%2Bdragon

I'm a little sleep deprived - but I'm also glad that you like my idea. But honestly: I also would like to see a unique whip (flail) in WM part II. Aaaaand I have a name for it: "The Gay Weeper"...

Your're right about the 3 wounding shots. Also works with a Paladin's FoD. Sounds all good. You can get that vicious club "Dîal Ewn Dibita" quite early. It does bonus damage when you flank and stuff. That will be most of the time. Until you get Blesca's Labour that might be a good choice. Or you go for Weapon Focus Soldier and shoot with arbalests/arquebuses (ouch!) and swing a hammer. Shatterstar is really nice. Annihilation is always good for a high PER char and the additional engagement slot may result in some nice diseng. attacks. I would like to see you post that build if you like it and when it's polished. Sounds fun!

A whip would be so nice. Why don't we get whips in PoE? Could be handled as flails. I want a whip for my soul whip! With a shocking lash! But not a whimpy one! A whopping soul whippin whip with a withering lash - sounds fair. New build coming: Whiplash! Of course. And meet his enemy Iron Man (basically a monk with Iron Wheel in plate and with Iron Skin Potions). And then comes the priest who casts Ironic Projection...

Just use another sabre. Purgatory would be nice - I mean the name alone fits like chalk and cheese.

I'm so sorry - still had a resting bonus from the stronghold when I looked up the stats (+3 PER). I corrected that. Now you see that the Grieving Mother can indeed adapt this build without problems. No wonder she's grieving - all that spanking she gets. Made the same mistake while posting Fulmineo - damn. Embarrassing... No - my Bittercut is glowing green and dripping green stuff - but I put on a corrosive lash, maybe that's why? Buit when combat starts and soul whip is activated it all gets violett/green... urgs. Maybe you accidentially equipped your secret weapon Buttercut? That has a burning lash as far as I remember. Cuts through butter like a hot knife... through butter...? I'm using Ubuntu by the way - some things look different for me. E.g. I can't see capes.

I honestly don't know if Swift Aim works with shield bashes. It might. When you execute a bash, there is a special icon of the shield in your recovery bar - so it's not considered a normal melee attack but a special attack - maybe that's why two wepon style doesn't work. Badgradr's Barricade - or it's Thrust of Tattered Veils - profits from Penetrating shot (who knows why). Maybe an island aumaua melee ranger with Quick Switch, Penetrating Shot, a Blunderbuss (Lead Spitter), a Pistol (Fellstroke) and Blesca's Labour (nice one) plus Badgradr's Barricade would be really nice. Opens up with two quick devastating wounding shots and switches to tank mode when the enemy reaches him and his pet. Then does his hit/crit thing. Edit: But I also still like the idea that he automatically wounds the foes for his pet with the "Drawn in Spring" dagger.

You can try that, sounds solid. I didn't need Interrupting Blows because he hits so fast that the enemy is basically stunlocked without it. And he uses Force of Anguish a lot - no need for Interrupts. The Mosquito has draining - so that might be nice. I wanted to go for maximum speed - an there are only two weapons in the game that have speed, are one handed and use the same weapon focus - and that's Sword of Daenysis and the March Steel Dagger. I evolved the whole concept and style around these weapons.

You can skip it. I didn't have it in my first iteration and took the duplicates instead. But then I wanted to do something different and not take the obvious abilites. And it's just frustrating for your superfast friend when you can't get past an enemy line - like in doorways or other narrow places. Then Flagellant's Path is golden. You can dash through the pack and then you storm the field from behind (where all the casters are). It's also nice if you need to escape quickly if you're getting too many hits. And it does nice aoe damage. You can use Torment's Reach instead - but that's a lot of microing and I wanted to avoid that. And it just fits - thematically I mean.

Thanks a lot. I also think that a Stormcaller ranger and a Spiritshifting Druid (Wildstrike shock) make a great team (a monk with lightning strikes also gets an invitation ). Not only because of all the crazy dps, cc and all that stuff, but also because of the background, the lore and style. I like it when the builds also cover style. I was thinking about an unarmed (Novice's Suffering) but tanky druid with Sandals of the Forgotten Friar (which boost unarmed base damage a bit). I know that Novice's Suffering doesn't work for spiritshift weapons, but when your Spiritshift expires you can still do some nice damage. And maybe the sandals also boost the spiritshift weapons - have to test that.

Hehe The ranger with twin arrows, stunning shots and driving flight is really (I mean really really) good when you give him Stormcaller. Since it's special attack (Returning Storm) triggers on 10% of all hits and crits, you want to generate as much hits per attack as possible. Driving Flight lets all arrows punch through the first enemy and travels to the next - in a not to narrow arc. And it covers a longer distance than I thought it would. So when you fire at the nearest enemy, he will get hit twice, then the two arrows will travel to the next enemy and also hit twice. So the chances to trigger Returning Storm with four hits from one shot are a lot higher than with a single arrow that stucks (before: 10%, with skills: 35%). After two shots (8 hits) it's about 56% (if I'm not screwing up the math - I hate math). After three shots ~70%, after four shots it's 80% and so on. There were times when Returning Storm triggered two times from one shot. And we know how awesome Returning Storm is: it does lots of aoe shock damage and stuns in an aoe. On top of that you have the shock DR reduction of stormcaller that also applies to all enemies that were hit with one shot - and it lasts long enough that you can refresh it over and over with your fast bow. Once again: Ryonas Vambraces are your friends if you want to damage the really hefty dudes with tons of DR (pierce AND shock DR - Stormcaller can do both). Shock damage will have 11 DR bypass (14 with Ryona's V.) - remember that Returning Storm also does shock damage - pierce damage (in case of immunities or high shock DR) will have 5 DR (8 with Ryona's). Then come the stunning shots: when you hit the enemy that your pet is engaging the enemy gets stunned. And if that's not enough: after the latest improvements to the animal companions they do tons of damage (when properly skilled - more than the LoP per hit - although they hit quite slowly) while being sturdy enough to tank two foes at once. They can bring down even the best armored foes. So - I think a stormcaller ranger is one of the most powerful builds there is atm. A bow ranger without that bow is also good, but not that good. I also tried a bow ranger with Persistence (wounding), to automatically trigger Predator's Sense. It worked perfectly well - but the stormcaller guy stole the show. By the way: a tanky melee ranger with Drawn in Spring (wounding) and a shield plus a dps wolf will be my next build after I finsh the other...3? that are in the pipeline. There's an ability that gives a bonus when the ranger is engaged in melee - that would be always. Maybe he also gets Badgradr's Barricade.

Before that it's just a regular, sturdy melee cipher build. Nothing special to be honest.

Yes, but in some battles the sacr. imm. runs out after a while - and there are still enemies alive. Then it gets very tedious to kill them all manually with your crappy melee dps. By the way - two Paladins with Sacred Immolation are even better - they heal each other's raw damage (they suffer from their own immolation) with the other immolation. That's a win-win-situation.

Yep - it's only visible by the red numbers that pop out of the enemies' heads.

Yeah - the Wizard may actually use the Bagradr's Barricade build that I'm still working on (but also works great with rogue and melee ranger) - parallel to my skean priest/rogue "flick-of-the-wrist" dual stiletto build. LoP I'm using right now and she's really a hard hitter without going down. I tried to use Defender for more diseng. attacks but man that's totally crap - you can't even use it together with Savage Attack. So now she's traditional as intended. Still: a properly skilled ranger with Stormcaller is one of the most powerful builds - without being too creative. Too bad that there are only 6 slots in the roster. Xaurip Warchief: "Man... Cal the Silent boss sir - do us a favour and live up to your name! How are we supposed to fight that crazy ubermensch party? I'm goin' home watching dyrwoodian football..."

Yeah that's sad. I also just discovered that you can't cast Amplified Wave on a charmed or confused foe. Spelltongue's effect that I described above is only working when the enemies are buffed in some way. So it works great against all kinds of enemies that use any type of benefical effect that shows up in the list when you hover your mouse over them. Said barb would not only stealing time for his buffs, but also takes it away from the enemy. When they run out of buffs you also will not "timesteal" any more. But most of the time their buddies just refresh the buffs - so funny. So this spelltongue-barb would be best against mobs that get buffed (bounty quests, xaurips, lagufarts, ogres with chanters and so on). And if he meets other folk, he just sticks to tradition and crushes them with his dual maces. ;-)

My perfect party takes shape... :D

No, it's different: Spelltongue steals time from the enemy for ALL my active benefical effects. I just tried it with Time Parasite, Pain Link and others. You can prebuff like hell before encounter and then use Spelltonge to prolong all the durations at once. When you have very fast attack speed (like my monk has) it's enough timestealing that you will never run out of these buffs. When you are a barb then it's even better. Because of carnage+timestealing all the buffs that are active will get prolonged forever as long as you keep hitting the enemy with Spelltonge (and fast enough). The best use of this would be a barb with fast attack speed and a priest and/or cipher for buffing him with all they can. Then he starts to fight and the buffs will never expire as long as he's hitting. That's great and I think it is intended. I always thought Spelltongue is ok because of his attack speed stealing - but this is way better. Think of it: A barb with pain block, pain link, dire blessing... you name it - and it's on forever. Well for the whole fight. Rolling a barb now... When it works as intended, then it will only steal time for me if the target has any benefical effect. I discovered this during the Torfen bounty where all the priests are buffing anything with a heartbeat... p.s.: Buttercut? Tehehehe!

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.