Boeroer

If you can, get Hiro's Mantle from Azurro. He will show up in your stronghold from time to time to sell stuff. You need high prestige (crown symbol) for him to show up early and often. Hiro's Mantle not only has retaliation, but also bonuses to DR, which is great for any melee character. Combine that with Sura's Supper Plate, a unique buckler. The retaliation on that shield stacks with the retaliation of armour or Hiro's Mantle. If you eat Carow Golan (= +4 focus on hit) you will at least get 8 focus when you get beaten without doing something. Vulnarable Attack, Savage Attack, high might, draining and biting whip and everything that effects melee damage also works on retaliation. So you will get a lot more than 8 focus when you retaliate. And since Retaliation always hits and has nothing to do with your weapon, you don't need to worry about your normal melee damage output, your DEX or your ACC. You don't even need to attack with weapons to gain focus this way. Together with heavy armour and some DR rising spells, you can just spam your powers all the time and run around the mobs while casting Ectopsychic Echo or whatever. Just keep in mind that you can't get these items very early.

To get access to Twin Elms one must leave Stormwall Gorge at the lower right or southeast of the map. Then you can go to the Elmshore map and from there you can reach Heartsong which is part of Twin Elms.

Did you go to southeast of Stormwall Gorge and from there to Elmshore first. You can only access Twin Elms via Elmshore.

Level 4 is quite early - if you play on PotD. On easy it should be doable. Just start the fight and run back to the next narrow door. Block that opening with Edér who has to pump his deflection with a shield. The rest shoots a lot or slings spells. That should do the trick.

Raw damage helps a lot. You can get that from Envenomed Strike, Deep Wounds, some cipher powers like Mind Wave and so on. There are also some spells/powers that reduce DR. Body Attunement is one of them. And/or you can use burst damage from firearms. Genereally it's a good idea to do a lot CC (cause prone, stun, paralyze, confusion, charming and so on) so that you can buy time and reduce defenses so that you can crit more often and don't get hit a lot. Best tactic (as always) might be to search for a chokepoint and buff your doorman's defenses like crazy while stacking acc on your damage dealers. Then use CC and tank/shoot like crazy. Another winner might be ectopsychic echo. Even though most of it's damage will be eaten up by DR, a little bit always gets through. DR never eliminates damage completely. You just have to hit a lot. And that is easily done with some CC plus Ectopsychic Echo. You could also try some weapons with anti vessel enchantments. That's all that comes to my mind at tje moment.

No idea - but if trancendent suffering scales as it used to, then you should get +16 acc and something like +60% damage at lvl 14? The wiki is a crappy soirce as usual.

I read somewhere that they make surprisingly good tanks, even on PotD. Somebody also said that a ranger with quick switch Arbalests or Arquebuses and Hold Wall (has speed mod) as the last weapon in row plus swift aim is pretty deadly. You can add the Chanter's reload chant on top of that. And the new multiclass rogue talent of course, if you use your animal companion for flanking.

Erm... it's not the real world date - it's the date in the game. You can look it up when you hold your mouse over this watch like symbol right from your character portraits. Where you also can trigger game speed.

Ah, you're right. Do that!

Can't confirm the question concerning marking since I always used to backup my tank with an offtank that attacks the same target.

Yeah. It's better in all numbers except deflection. It gives you +5 to all defenses (stacks with bonuses from rings or capes and so on) and is only 3 points below in defl.

I also can't find anything useful. The wiki is sooo outdated (like always).

Did you go to Stormwall Gorge after Thaos killed the Duc?

Sounds if you don't use some tactics after all. Especially in Raedric's Hold and The Endless Paths you can use chokepoints a lot. You just need one or two characters with very high defenses that block the door and some damage dealers that use spells, reach weapons or ranged weapons who stand behind them and kill the bad guys. Especially Act I is more difficult than the rest of the game.

Confirmed bug. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.

Right. I always use the Little Saviour (I don't use paladins a lot, so the Outworn Buckler is no option gor me) on my main tank. Last time he also used Cladingelingdong (the spear from "the bronze beneath the lake" quest). I enchanted it with marking and Coordinating. So together with Mob Justice from the Dozens, Coordinating and the inherent acc bonus of spears I got +13 acc on my main tank and also provided +10 acc to the next ally that attacked the same target as well as +5 to all defenses around him (Herald). Nice setup for a tank, I thought. In that situation I was happy that the accuracy was not crippled by a large shield. One could also consider fully upgraded Larder Door for builds that profit from full attacks that apply some afflictions.

You've got a little more accuracy and a little less deflection. Not a problem for melee ciphers I would presume. With the new "multiclass" talent from the rogue class it's maybe even better.

There are guys here that did triple crown solo with a melee cipher. So I would think it's very viable. One trick is to use heavy armour and retaliation, since retaliation from battle-forged, shield and armour/neck stack. Together with the meal that gives +2 focus per hit you will always have plenty of focus.

Maybe Lead Spitter with Vul. Shot, a lash, the corresponding +elemental damage talent and all I mentioned above would be truly devastating for the first "Backstab" shot - even without deathblows. Combine it with Envenomed Strike. Ah... the possibilities are endless.

Forgot the special talents that add %crit damage like the one from doemenels and from the trespassers in Twin Elms. On top of that you could add rabbit fur gloves or that helm taht does +10% crit damage. Should be another +30%.

It's cool if you have high stealth and some kind of +movement enchant or ability plus a high damage ranged weapon. You can quickly reach the 2m radius while still undetected, fire a high damage shot and run away or switch to melee. If you use Shadowing Beyond or individual stealth, you might be able to trigger Sneak Attack, Deathblows and Backstab: Apply two afflictions with rotfinger gloves or other CC from companions, then cast Shadowing Beyond and attack/attack with indiv. stealth still on. That should trigger all of them I think and would be a damage modifier of 250% without any other ability/talent. Eventually you can add crit (+50% or even +100% with annihilation items), reckless assault and savage assault. That would result in 340% or 390%. Superb weapon: 380/430. Then perhaps some lashes on top or Finishing Blow... Finishing Blow should do enormous damage I can't even think of.

Does not count at the moment. I think it's a bug.

Yeah? What does it do? Because I just decided to use Hours of St. Rumbalt (Annihilation, Overbearing) with my rogue instead of Estocs (White Spire or Blade of the Endless Paths).

Every character can have one summon at a time. Skeletons or whisps or wurms or ogres count as one summon. If you summoned skeletons with a char and then thus char tries to summon a phantom, the skeletons will just go "poof".

I used four ciphers during my last PotD run in 1.06. Weapon choice: Blunderbuss/Pistol, Crossbow, Arbalest, Warbow. Not much of a difference in focus generarion. And they were all awesome. Ciphers are still number one - for me at least. Mental Binding is so cheap and so powerful. Ectopsychic Echo is so damaging and Amplified Wave is just uber. Easiest Potd run ever (including perma-paralyzed adra dragon thanks to Tactical Meld, Borrowed Instinct and Mental Binding). Thaos was finished in round about 15 sec. Ciphers are still awesome.