Boeroer

My wizard has 3 Con and 3 Res, he's using Tall Grass and does melee damage when he's not throwing spells. So he is leveled like a Spellsword and uses heavy Armour and Arcane Veil plus some other buffs if he get's targeted. In tough fights he uses Spirit Lance and his buddy Essential Phantom with Firebrand gloves and lots oft other spell Holding items. Then they make a real nice tanking & spanking team. But honestly after Crägholt (sounds like crack whore...) everything is pretty easy peasy and most of the time he does Slicken and Chill Fog at the moment. So long story short: it's absolutely doable in PotD. I don't have a real tank though and that's why mobs don't run towards my "backline" to reach him all the time. If they do, they get shredded along the way by the rest oft the party that all have cc-weapons or spells like stunning morning stars or overbearing greatswords or a nice repulsing seal. And nobody is a real squishy. Easiest playthrough ever by the way. Fights take a little bit longer but you seldomly have this "oh crap" moment like before when your tank went down and everything got messy. I even found Crägholt not to be extremely tough at lvl 11. The hardest fight I've had so far was the apprentice with the animated weapons. They are immune to every CC attempt and throw spells like a boss while hacking away... curse them! And praise the good old pulling taktics.

AS I said: I'm using a monk with robes and Iron Wheel and he's tanky AND a whirlwind of death.

Yup. Several times.

If you have a cipher, I recommend Mabec's Morning Star or other weapons that stun and are fast enough to strike a second time while the enemy is stunned. So the war hammer that you get at the sky drangon's place would be nice or the flail that also does spell striking: Minolettas Missiles. Or your custom crafted Cladhadingelingdong spear. That's also nice together with the +10% sneak attack damage enchantment (vicious).

If you save all your wounds for Iron Wheel, how do you spam out Torment's Reach or Flagellent's Path? You'd be stuck just auto attacking, with one wound used for Swift Strikes & Lightning Strikes. Plate gets you 7 DR more than robes at the cost of 22% attack speed (plate is -33% and robes are -11%), have a small shield on switch and you can grab another +26 deflection and +26 reflex whenever you need more defense. The cloak does sound nice though, haven't got into White march yet, just the siege at Cragholdt. I haven't such problems. First time I get hit I usually have 7 to 10 wounds. Iron Wheel and Turning Wheel get boosted and I receive less damage and wounds. Then I start using Torment's Reach till all wounds are gone and I receive wounds faster again. Since I'm a moon godlike, normally I'm back at full endurance. Then it starts all over. Iron Wheel has a great mechanic: it prevents you from getting knocked out when you got hit a lot and wears off when you need new wounds. That's way better than heavy armour. Now my monk can do some tanking while still dishing out lots of DPS - even when he's only autoattacking. Sometimes I use Force of Anguish, the enemy flies away and my monk rushes after him. Then I forget about them until I realise there are no enemies left because my monk autoattacked them all to death while I was microing my wizard...

I didn't experiene such problems with 2.01 - BUT: now Azzurro always sells me stuff more than once. For example I now got Hiro's Mantle... four times! And that superb medium shield with winter wind two times. Two Rimecutters and so on. So maybe there is something wrong with Azzuro's code atm.

You can add a priest with painful interdiction and use threatening presence and brute force. That way enemies suffer -30 will and fortitude which, combined with the things said above, kind of results in +60 ACC. Also great synergy effects with ciphers and mental binding (targets will) and amplified wave (fort).

Also: When you get Iron Wheel, you don't need a lot of DR any more.

I used the robe that you can buy at the merchant in Stalwart. It casts Displaced Image on you when you get a crit. That worked great. You can combine it with the cape of the Master Mystic that has +12 defl. and casts invisibility on you at the same time. Stylish AND powerful.

Did two PotD runs without priests - no problem at all. Best thing about a priest for me is the Painful & Empowered Interdiction, especially if you have ciphers and barbs in your party.

I had the same on my rogue. It's a bug that is related to the Cloak of Master Mystic - or the "spell holding: invisibility" enchantment, to be more precise. Sometimes the invisibility effect won't wear off until you save/reload. It happens now and then. I even thought about getting the Backstab talent for such occasions - +100% damage while invisible... nice!

Hi, I'm experiencing the following thing: When I turn on (Swift) Lighning Strikes, it does shock damage but my bonus damage from Turning Wheel will not apply - if I don't trigger Swift Strikes, I do that burn damage (but obviously no additional shock damage). Is this supposed to work like that or is it a bug? Or am I stupid? I studied the combat log a dozen times now and i'm pretty sure it's like I mentioned above. Iron Wheel and Turning Wheel do work together - in my case. I will get a bonus to DR and +5% burn damage per wound. I only have a problem combining shock and burn damage.

Carnage uses the DR bypass of your primary attack. So things like rending and vulnarable attack also apply to carnage. To be honest: everything does. Also draining and afflictions, making draining and wounding weapons so valuable for a Barb. That's why barbs love Tidefall: superb, wounding, draining and early to get.

The ACC bonus from weapon focus also applies to carnage. I think the carnage attacks have -10 ACC compared to your primary attack. Accurate carnage will lower that malus to -5. That's good enough. I'm using a barb in PotD and I'm doing Crägholt at the moment and my carnage like always hits. Try to get some gloves of accuracy and a superb weapon asap and max your PER, then you don't need anybody or anything to debuff the foes deflection.

Of course.

What? Without twin arrows I had a chance of x% to cause an affliction. With twin arrows I have two chances. Two is two times one - so it's double!

There are lots oft ways to play a good rogue. I tried dual wielding sabres with Resolution & Purgatory (+++), dual wielding battle axes with Edge of Reason & We Toki (++), wielding Hours of Saint Rumbalt & Tall Grass (+++). When you have companions that can cause afflictions for you then I would say there's nothing more powerful (DPS wise) than dual sabres. And there are four very good sabres in the game. My favourite one at the moment is Bittercut because it's damage is slash/corrode. You then can dump int like it was said in the post above. But if you want to cause afflictions by yourself with a special attack and a weapon enchantment like on Hours of St. Rumbalt or Tall Grass then you shouldn't dump int because these afflictions don't last very long and your opponent will shrug them off before you can hit the next time. With a fair int value this rogue becomes very powerful though: most enemies don't get up again because you are stun- or pronelocking them while doing tons of damage. Plus: you don't need a lot oft deflection because they don't hit you when they sit on their bottoms.

I also have a monk like you mentioned above. Exactly these talents/abilities. I combined it with the new shoes that give +2 flat unarmed damage, the robe that casts displaced image on getting a crit and the gloves that do +2% raw damage per wound. I added Force of Anguish because then my rogue with boots of speed runs after the prone targets an finishes them The monk is superpowerful. He's not going down easily and dishes out tons of damage. When I get the two duplicates for him he will be absolutely devastating. Only bad thing is that you constantly have to pause and klick the "turning wheel" button...

I think it's good for taking out one or two casters if you're willing to improve it and skip other abilities/talents for it. I'm playing PotD with my "underwhelming" FoD Bleak Walker and he's not to far behind my rogue, barb and wizard concerning overall damage dealt. You have to pick your targets carefully though.

The thread opener asked for FoD, not other skills.

Other question: do both arrows have the chance to proc special enchantments like prone/stun/confuse? That would be very useful because it would double the chance of causing an affliction.

I used that talent together with the hand and key armour (enchantment "loyal") and some other buffs and +will items (can't remember exactly) plus the +will talent on my priest because of this stupid mushrooms and fampyrs and I had the impression that it worked well. Lots of stacking though.

That's right - Tall Grass procs a little more often because of +10% crit chance. But Hours of St. Rumbalt has +0.5 on crit modifier. I'm using both on my rogue and can't say which is better. Against low defl. targets I would say Rumbalt wins. All these new weapons that proc X on 10% of hits/crits are not so great for rogues who crit half of the time - but they are great for chars that hit fast/often but don't tend to crit a lot. For example a barb hits a lot with carnage but doensn't crit that much. The grey sleeper on my hogh DEX high INT barb is so great because he's hitting three/four/five enemies with one blow which procs pretty often then. Too bad Nightshroud is not for barbs. Maybe it can be cool for a priest of berath that does melee combat (with Aggr. Radiance and buffs and so on).

So why don't you just do save/reload then and see yourself without any risk?

Ah... and by the way: Bittercut is a great sabre for Bleak Walkers because it does 100% corrode damage plus Rakhan Field 25% plus a corrosive lash 25% giving you a weapon that does 150% corrode + 75% burn damage. It's great against most high DR foes because most of the time they have one or two low elemental DR values.