Boeroer

Yes, it can be a very spectacular chain reaction. But it doesn't occur too frequently so it's a bit unreliable. Ranger with Whirling Strikes and Driving Flight has the best chances of triggerng it. Twinned Shot also works well.

Yes, it needs quite some investmet in Arcana though to be able to cast it from scroll.

Subclass: Imo Steel Garrote is better than Bleak Walker in this case. With Spirit Frenzy you'll stagger automatically and thus the life drain of the Steel Garrote is always active basically, countering the self damage of the Berserker "on the fly" without the need to stop hitting. Even Kind Wayfarer would be better in my book (also heals himself with Flames of Devotion). The bit of extra damage for Flames and Devotion is not that important in a triple crown run imo, especially since Zeal is rather limited. --- Self Damage/damage mitigation: Voidward and other sources of dmg reduction (e.g. Death's Maw) are a good idea. A Paladin/Berserker can reach pretty great AR with the several passives and inspirations (Thick Skinned, Stoic Steel, Inspired Defenses, Hardy...) - Zealous Endurance won't stack with Hardy - but the self heal from Exalted Endurance might still be worth it (never tried though). And he can always counter self damage with Lay on Hands - which is neat. Fanatic also usually reaches very high Fortitude (+20 from Tenacious/Hardy and more from the Paladin's Faith and Devotion and whatnot) besides having access to good defense passives in the first place. Inspiring Triumph (+12 to all defenses) also applies to the Fanatic himself by the way. A Fanatic with the Berserker can achieve near immunity to most afflictions because the Paladin has several resistance passives and the Berserker has Unflinching which - in combnation with self damage and healing, can remove afflictions entirely. This can be important in TC runs because often it's the hard CC that will screw you. --- Friendly Fire: Confusion is bad with AoE dmg or debuffs if you are near party members (Carnage, Sacred Immolation, Inpired Beacon etc.). And auras (e.g. Exalted Endurance) and other kind of passive effects (Inspired Defenses) are especially bad because they will also apply to enemies. You could circumvent that with really low INT - but... meh. It is easy for a Fanatic to eliminate Berserker confusion though - because the Paladin can get a resistance against INT afflictions as passive ability. That will remove confusion from your character altogether at all times. You can also spare the point (or avoid confusion early) and either use Svef (drug), Luminous Lobster (food) or wear Devil of Caroc Breastplate (nice anyway) with the "Mechanical Mind" enchantment. You could also use swords and get Modwyr . It makes you not only resistant but completely immune to INT afflictions. If you want to be more free with your consumables and items just pick the passive then. You can always counter confusion with any INT inspiration. So for example a Priest can cast Prayer for the Spirit on the confused Fanatic to remove the confusion.

No, a single class Monk. Avenging Storm is from the helmet "Heaven's Cacophony" or from scrolls. But it's also OP without it. That's just icing on the cake.

It's a mortar monk. Whispers of the Wind (Full Attack on everybody in range) combined with mortars (3 AoE blast with every Full Attack). Then add Avenging Storm... Blinding Smoke (Hand Mortar enchantment) also triggers Avenging Storm although it doesn't do damage. And if there's still enemies alive they will have dozens of Resonant Touches and will insta-die if you activate Resonant Touch. It's best with maxed INT and when the enemies stand near each other - but it's also very good if the enemies are more scattered. Against single targets you can switch to normal blunderbusses or summon the Long Pain fists. It's one of the most potent combinations (for party play) I know. Works against mobs and bosses alike (with the help of Belt of Magran's Chosen which adds a few more weak enemies which in this case is very benefical). Resonant Touch + AoE * AoE is just very, very effective.

Beckoner has the highest damage output (via summons) of all chanter's because his summons are not weaker offensively but only have less health (and size). Also the durations are shorter and he pays +1 phrases (which is stupid tbh). That means he has a harder time to keep summons on the field at all times. But when they are there they dish out twice the damage and engage or block twice the enemies/space. Ancient Brittle Bones for example can become a total wall of engaging skeletons that are not tanky but stop all enemies through engagement (if you didn't opt out of that in the game options or brought the pet "Grog"). I personally would pick Troubadour because the versatility is just awesome and there are no other subclasses that can have such an easy time to keep summons on the field without a gap. Bellower is also nice because the summons get longer durations through PL bonuses - but I always feel the PL bonus is a bit wasted (better for damaging invocations imo). And the reduced chant AoE makes it harder to passively buff your summons and party members. Wurms and Drakes are okay when you get access to them (actually Wurms are quite awesome at first) but they don't scale well offensively so you will need to pick the dragon later on (and maybe retrain then to use the ability points for something else than the now weak summons you formerly used). The second Drake that follows the death if the first one scales better and is good. So - both summon types are viable at the times you get them. No problem with a "Dragon Master" or something like that. JIst make sure you can somehow harm fire-immune or -resistant enemies, too.

I wouldn't say "never". If you have some means of regaining Discipline (for example by being a Tactician or having a Cipher or whatever) then Clear the Path with Cleaving Stance can be very potent (especially with weapons that have or can trigger a AoE component) while its broad + very long AoE is not reliant on INT (unlike Clear Out). But getting there is harder as a SC Fighter - and quite frankly it's also rel. boring to get there. The fighter tree has it's most exiting active and pasive abilites pre PL 8 imo and works better as MC than as SC. But being able to use Clear the Path often is def. decent damage potential (and also impactful CC on top). Cean Sweep, too (needs high INT to be great though). I just wish it could be combined with some other cool PL8/9 stuff from the Fighter tree. Like... Chopping Wood doesn't even work properly with Clear Out + upgrades. Compare that with a combo of Barb or Monk with Fighter and how fun it can be to combine all those passives and actives. *sigh*

Yes, this is the key to maximize the impact of a tank (+engagement) imo. If you then deploy lots of hard CC (from stealth) onto the enemies who surround your tank you'll also prevent most escapes into the backline and such. My go-to strategy with a party mostly is: stealth, send tank in, unstealth tank, buff the party (mostly ACC, buffing doesn't break stealth), use hard CC and debuffs (breaks stealth), finally deal damage. Enemies who don't gt affected by CC will still be bound by engagement. Fortunately those who resist CC are often not the ones who tend to rush your backline.

Monks are the strongest martial class imo, they are great as multiclass as well as single class in all sorts of roles and combos (not even in martial ones). Overall it's just a very well rounded and effective set of subclasses. I mean...

The Dragon does great anti-mob damage if you use its active abilities. The dragons auto-attacks are very weak, but the abilities get scaled up tremendously because of the creature's (power) level. Animated weapons only do (great) single target damage. So... the dragon's not only a meatwall imo. A Beckoner with two dragons (which are less tanky of course and don't last as long) can wipe serious mob encounters away while still having reasonable tanking abilities (also because there's two of them). If you want to be more flexible with single targets/mobs you can also pick 4 Ancient Weapons (or 8 with a Beckoner) which is better than 3 (6). Also last longer bc of Power Level (unless you are a Chanter/Monk with Duality oMP's +10 INT). The (small) problem with a multiclass summoner is that most Chanter's summons don't scale very well (unless you use @Elric Galad's mod). At least offensively they don't. So at some point they become too weak. Fortunately Animated Weapons do scale well overall so it's correct that you can do well with them as MC. However - the "road of summoning" will be harder because the MC summoner will pick/upgrade better summon abilites a lot later than a single class summoner can. There's not much "self-contained" multiclass synergy with summons imo. It's more advantageous to get the better summons asap. Summoning supprt is best done by somebody else then (party member). Another appeal might be that you can get Eld Nary's Curse which is so much better than the non-upgraded version. Of course then you couldn't concentrate on summoning only but would need to be a summoner/damage dealer hybrid (who needs PER and MIG, too).

The summoning animation itself has a pretty log duration in general (6 secs etc.). Imo DEX is important to have as a summoner because of that. You really don't want to get interrupted while summoning and the smaller the window the better. What you don't need at all when focusing on summons are MIG and PER (and to a lesser extend also CON and RES). For summoning the key stats are INT (summons' duration) and DEX (summoning speed). This is also true for buffing support which also only needs INT and DEX. So a summoner/buffer can in max out INT and DEX and distrubute the rest how feels best. If you also want to do healing (MIG), CC (PER), deal damage (PER & MIG) or even be in the frontline (CON & RES) that's a different story of course.

I find it hard to justify picking a SC Fighter. The highest power level abilities are just not good enough. Clean Sweep/Clear the Path are great - but as Eric already said: Clear Out is sufficient and available for multiclasses. The rest is just... boring and a little weak, too.

That last part is the real gem.

You know what's even better than the dragon summon? The dragon summon with Wild Growth (from a fellow Ancient Druid).

Konstanten is a lot of fun imo if you a) crit with him frequently (because he has such a contagious laugh during battle) - should be a goal anyway bc. of Skald. b) bring Fassina as well (really nice interaction between the two) c) do Seeker, Slayer, Survivor (he turns from Sidekick into Companion so to speak) If you don't want to do melee with him (recommend Willbreaker again ;)) I'd suggest Blightheart as weapon. The combination of low cost offensive invocations (e.g. only 2 points for "Her Revenge") with Blood Thirst and the arquebus' "phrase on kill" which triggers on every kill - spells included - on top of your normal phrase generation lets you dish out offensive invocations very quickly which is fun: This is a Berserker/Skald who also kills his skeletons - but the principle is the same with Konstanten + Blightheart (without the skeletons) : cast damage and get phrases for kills (instead of melee crits).

The only bashing shields are Tuotilo's Palm, Magran's Blessing and The Best Defense (SSS). They count as offhand-weapon and shield. Visible because they have attack properties as part of their enchtantments. "Normal shields" only have defensive properties. Ha, they are not off. My inbox was full (again). This happens quite often because the forum doesn't notify me when the inbox is full. I'll delete some older messages... Edit: accidentially deleted all messages. Jeez, I'm too tired. Ah well... At least there's room for new ones now.

Confusion + Blood Thirst + Cleaving Stance + Riven Gore against skeletons is a deadly, deadly combination. SC Berserker would also work well (and can get plenty of Rage back via skeleton kills + Blood Surge). But the Berserker/Devoted kills a lot faster due to the "skeleton-kill-chain" that is triggered by confused Cleaving Stance + skeletons. Doesn't need to be Devoted tbh - any Fighter would do. But Tenacious + Devoted stacks to +4 PEN which is pretty sweet I think. Especially since Amra is slash-only and you meed quite a few slash resistant foes.

It should count. I guess you mean mortars (have AoE) and not normal blunderbusses (don't have AoE)? And then (confused) Berserker and not Barbarian (because mortar AoE has no friendly fire as long as not confused)? A confused Berserker/Rogue who's firing a Gouging Strike into his party will apply Gouging Strike to everybody in the AoE. Powder Burns (blunderbuss modal) doesn't transport any ability/weapon effects such as Gouging Strike. It's "only" a spell-like AoE that comes on top of the weapon attack.

I really like Witches. Pick Spirit Frenzy (not Spirit Tornado!) and give him the Willbreaker Morning Star (use the modal). Its hits lower fortitude by 25 (once, no stacking) and Will by 3 (stacks per hit). Use Secret Horrors, it's just great. That way you will have applied Staggered (Spirit Frenzy), Frightened and Sickened (Secret Horrors). Even without hitting the enemy with the Morning Star yet you lowered the enemies fortitude by 20 and the Will by 10 with just one spell. Now attack with the Morning Star - the targeted enemy will get -25 fortitude and a Will debuff on top (-45 fortitude!). Not only is this cool for your party, but also with Brute Force it will be very easy to hit enemies (who didn't start with astronomical fortitude). Resolve afflictions work well in combo with the Willbreaker. Also charming/dominating works well with a witch in general (can try to shake enemies with a yell to lower Will right a the start of battle - also here Staggered from Spirit Tornado gets applied). Wild Mind can be very annoying. But imo it's less dramatic as some other players make it seem. It's unpredictable and that doesn't sit well with most players who like to have full control. From time to time I enjoy a little chaos so I'm fine with it. Though I would't be in an Ironman run I assume.

Apologies for the "stupid" - I don't meant it, it's just the quote.

Yes, bashing shields profit from Two Weapon Tyle AND Weapon and Shield Style. The main reason for "shield for monk" is Tuotilo's Palm - because it's very good for Monks specifically.

Alchemy lets the drugs last a lot longer. Nalpasca gets addtional Power Level for drugs on top, too. Also Alchemy makes stuff like healing potions supereffective so it's not a bad skill to raise.

Animancer's Energy Blade would only be a backup weapon - for when you meet enemies who are immune to slash damage (and thus Scordeo's Edge would do 0 damage). A lash is a multiplicative damage bonus that sometimes is part of unique weapons' enchantments. Like here (see "+20% Damage dealt as Burn" etc.) : Edit: finally @theleemanaged to backstab me.

It's not mandatory to have or be a Druid. It's just a nice little gimmick. Forbidden Fist works just fine without Tanglefoot. You could also get a resistance against DEX afflictions (several items) and do the same with Binding Web (Wizard or Arcane Archer) - but that's also not mandatory. Forbidden Fists can generate enough wounds by themselves.

If you go with max RES for a Forbidden Fist and also use -x% to hostile effects duration items + -food it's no problem at all. The Forbidden Fist curse will be secs and the healing you get once a hostile effec expires will be higher than the self damage you suffered. Also: Clarity of Agony and Crucible of Suffering... As Forbidden Fist you don't need many attack abilities besides Forbidden Fist itself. It's very strong. Small trick: if you have a Druid in the party the Forbidden Fist can get a lot of wounds in shirt time - when running through the Druid's Tanglefoot.