Boeroer

CP = Community Patch BS/BliSmo = Blinding Smoke AS = Avenging Storm HaMo = Hand Mortar FitH = Fire in the Hole KotF = Keeper of the Flame

The Blood Mage regenerates 1 point of health (base) every 6 secs. Not too low CON (or wearing a Greater Amulet of Health and picking up the Tough passive later on) is advised because Blood Sacrifice may be able to one-shot you with too little health. 10 can be enough imo, but I'm not an avid player of Blood Mages. Watershaper has a really nice spell collection. Besides that Tekehu as SC Watershaper can decide almost all encounters with just one cast of Great Maelstrom. If you're not hitting you are doing something wrong with your buffing & debuffing. If you just start slinging offensive spells with a caster who has no inherent ACC bonuses you will be ineffective. First buff ACC, then debuff enemies defenses with that higher ACC, then deal damage. Takes a bit longer but you won't waste as much spells with misses. The more levels the more spell uses and less often you will run out of spells. If you have a Cipher in the party this problem will go away once you take Ancestor's Memory. The power of the Waterhshaper comes from his powerful foe-only spells (which usually would cause friendly fire). Foe-only Chillfog for example is very good (if your ACC is buffed nicely). As Stormspeaker Tekehu has access to Avenging Storm. Which is great. I played him as Mortar Stormspeaker (Hand Mortar + Blinding Smoke or Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot in the offhand and Sasha's Singing Scimitar in the main hand). Every AoE hit roll will proc a lightning. Blinding Smoke triggers Avenging Storm, too (which is very powerful). I used Sure-Handed Ila to speed up the shooting a lot (-20% reloading time AND -20% recovery time both apply to all reloading weapons). Stacks with the dual wielding and Two-Weapon Style. You can't use Mith Fyr for Tekehu himself because his ocean-godlike's passive will clear all fire effects (hostile or benefical) every few seconds. A neat trick is to use Shash's Singing Scimitar with Refreshing Finale to empower Avenging Storm 1/encounter. Every proc of Avenging Storm counts as empowered spell. Refreshing Finale now grants you 3 phrases for every empowered spell. This means if you shoot with Hand Mortar or Fire in the Hole after empowering Avenging Storm you will get up to 8 phrases with one single shot (and deal big damage, too). More on that here: This means you can unleash so many invocations in no time it's quite insane and only limited to your casting speed, not your phrases. You will swim in phrases. Granted: this comes as late as PL8 - but before that you can still dish out nice shock damage with cheap Dancing Bolts, Her Revenge and whatnot and empower such invocations 1/encounter - which is pretty impactful imo. And even without Avenging Storm the Hand Mortar + Sure Handed Ila still does nice AoE dps in between invocations. You can combine that with the Least Unstable Coil, too. You'll get all 6 tier-3 inspirations because every Avenging Storm proc counts as empowered spell. CHanter's don't need Brilliant so much - but still nice to have all tier-3 inspirations for sure. Stormspeakers have a huge downside though: they cannot use summons. But since you did that already with another character and want to try something else - maybe that's even an advantage for you?

Refreshing resources are huge advantage against megabosses. Monks, Chanters, Tacticians, Bloodmages, Ciphers - that's usually the best picks. Cipher has Disintegration, too - which makes a certain megaboss fight a lot easier. You can get to refreshing resources even with those classes that usually have fixed resources. You'd need a source of Brilliant then (Cipher's Ancestor's Memory, Shroud of the Phantasm, Least Unstable Coil etc) and stuff like Salvation of Time and/or Wall of Draining. Some of those classes also can refresh resources easily with some tricks - for example a SC Berserker can kill his Chanter buddies summons "accidentally" and will gain Rage from Blood Surge - or a SC Paladin can get Zeal when a summon dies (no matter who kills it). You can easily combine both. Other classes might be able to refund resources often enough - like a dual wielding SC Rogue with enough Guile so that Gambit has a 100% hit-to-crit conversion (do not graze though...). But generally speaking the classes I mentioned first have a clear advantage. If you are not against some cheesy tactics you can use the Strand of Favor trick to extend all buffs on you eternally (including Brilliant) which levels this general imbalance.

Yes, it was always like this. I guess you only realize that it's a problem if you a) invest some playtime with WoTEP, b) meticulously try to aim with the cone in order to catch as many enemies as possible (meaning: not much AI use) and c) pay attention to the combat log or the numbers on the screen. I guess during playtesting this combo wasn't too common and also players really have to be bothered by a behavior to report it. For example I knew about this rel. early but maybe didn't think it was worth reporting it - like... subconsciously. I even kind of forgot about it - since I mainly use the WotEP as parrying tool and not as an AoE dmg tool. 🤷‍♂️

All megabosses - besides having absurd stats - have specific "tricks" and it's very hard (I'd say almost impossible) to kill all of them without figuring out what makes them special. So... without any meta-knowledge you are bound to fail. Even the thing that usually always works as long as there's space (use an Assassin and apply Gouging Strike + True Love's Kiss, then retreat and get a coffee) won't work against all megabosses because of those special things they have/do.

No really bugged, but implemened a bit weirdly so that visual cone AoE indicator can be misleading. It shows you the cone where it would be if you really hit the enemy in that particular angle you aimed for. But once the "real" attack and the AoE proc happens the cone will be aligned in a way that its center line would be a straigt line from your char's center point to the target center point. And this might place the cone AoE a bit differently than the indicator showed when you were choosing the target (clicking slightly left or right to the center point of the initial target to make the indicator "hit" the other enemies behind it). Unlike other cone attacks such as invocations, the cone of the WotEP is not bound to the ground but to the enemy you pick. And once you picked that enemy as target the game will use the center of that enemy's circle as anchor point, not where you clicked. But the visual cone indicator used the point where you clicked. 🤷‍♂️ It's not a great implementation of course - but I guess nobody really noticed before (and long after) release. Some cone-shaped cipher powers that have to have an enemy as initial target have the same "problem". But often there the cone indicator gets "centered" once you picked your target iirc. WotEP's cone indicator doesn't do this unfortunately. Clear Out/Clear the Path would have the same problem as well - but they have no indicator VFX in the first place so you won't get deceived. I made a quick drawing to explain it a bit better: The best solution to not "trick yourself" with the cone indicator is to pick your target right in the middle of its circle (see red X in the bottom pic). Moving a bit left and right just to bring the indicator to touch other enemies (see red X in the upper pic) won't work. Instead, if you need the cone to move a little bit to the left and right, just move your character accordingly. This might be a problem with disengagement attacks - another reason why I recommend Nomad's Brigandine (immunity to disengagement attacks) when you use WotEP - not only when you enchant it with Offensive Parry (but mostly).

Complicated because what scenario. But in general I'd say there's not much that tops the combined dmg bonuses of a Marauder. Maybe if you take a Devoted and average the damage over several attacks (not only the one from stealth/invisibility) and use Clear Out - because the initial target of Clear Out gets hit twice. Which is a 100% multiplicative boost for the action. But in general I'd say it's difficult to pile up so many dmg bonuses (for more than one attack I mean) as a flanked & bloodied Berserker/Streetfighter Marauder, especially when using Barbaric Blow with a dual weapon setup and Blooded + Bloody Slaughter. You have to crit though to make it really good. And of course you'll also get knocked out a lot... I have played some Brutes in the past and they are just more reliable. Especially on PotD where higher ACC and even graze-to-hit is more important. Marauders start strong right away with the damage output though so I think they are more fun for most people. My current Brute + Amra is top of the food chain when it comes to melee damage so far (not counting Grave Calling stuff) and he's not too squishy - but that's because I cheese a bit with skeletons summons to trigger all the on-kill goodies such as Multi-Cleaving and Blood Thirst and so on. Without summons he would just be an ordinary Brute with more sturdyness but less dmg output as a Marauder. And the skelly-trick would also work with a Berserker/Rogue no problem (no cleave though which is kind of the trick).

Why is that? In the vanilla game it's seriously flawed. Using any mods perhaps?

If it would be dead you wouldn't have gotten answers for all of the topics you created during the last weeks, would you? 😏

Unfortunately I have read nothing about that here in the forums recently.

First of all: I think it has some value if the weapon doesn't come late game. Stuff like Engoliero do Espirs with Blade Feast is very good for a Brute for example, but it comes so late(ish) that I consider that a major drawback. So I prefer stuff that can be obtained earlier than that. I would say the two best options are either Amra (in combination with Riven Gore, confusion and weak summons like Many Lived Pass Bye skeletons) or the Willbreaker (Spirit Frenzy + Body Blows + Brute Force). The Morning Star also has decent PEN and two damage types. Before getting Willbreaker one can use Saru Sichr. If you have Ancient Brittle Bones and later Many Lives in the party then Amra is def. more devastating. Riven Gore + Cleaving Stance will chain-kill all skeletons around you on the spot, triggering Carnage and additional Riven Gore procs and kill the real enemies, too. Meanwhile all other on-kill effects besides Cleaving Stances also work with killed summons: +20 health per kill from a pet, Blood Thirst, Bloodlust and so on. But Riven Gore might also instakill party members who get too close to the Brute (meaning: removed from party because really dead/destroyed). Many Lives gives a steady stream of summons without having to micromanage anything. Willbreaker is most universally useful and would be my no. 1 pick if I hadn't (or didn't want to (ab)use) party summons I think. You can also get rid of the confusion without any drawback. For Amra-mayhem you must keep the confusion. Other nice options are Sungrazer (bit late-ish, too but potent AoE on crit-kill), Stalker's Patience (very early if enough money, 20% chance to omit recovery on crit and also on kill via Blood Thirst). I would use both either as single weapon (one handed style), with shield or with a ranged weapon in the offhand (two weapon style). Oops - I forgot Lord Darryn's Voulge. This is also really nice with a Brute. Dual damage, one of that shock, Lightning Strikes more often than not and AoE potential. 👍 I won't recommend Grave Calling (Chilling Grave) with skeleton summons - although it's the most potent combination for anything with Berserker. Just because the stacked VFX of multiple chillfogs makes it kind of unplayable (horrid fps drops and sometimes crashes for me, too).

Yes, the advantage is mostly about flexibility (when using the spiritual weapons). Still: if you don't plan to use a lot of Full Attacks there's no real drawback either. I personally would have liked two or even three variants of spiritual weapons per Priest subclass - in line with PoE's weapon options for Priests (Magran: Arquebus/Sword, Berath: Mace/Great Sword, Eothas: Flail/Morning Star, Wael: Quarterstaff/Rod and so on). Would have been easy to implement. But that's not the case so... 🤷‍♂️

Shining Beacon in combination with Miasma of Dull-Mindedness:

Fixed it! 😛

It's suboptimal if you have any class combo that grants you Full Attacks (like Priest/Rogue or so) which you wanted to use. Because with a hybrid weapon setup only one weapon will be used fot those Full Attacks (which is a shame). If you only get Primary Attack abilies and/or auto attacks then the hybrid setup has no drawbacks: you still get the speed bonus of dual wielding and two weapon style, even if you only attack with one of the weapons. The advantage is that you can attack all sorts of enemies on the battlefield without moving but can still use melee features (like engagement). And you can use melee-only and ranged-only attacks, too. If you get a lot of accuracy bonuses (like Aware + Devotions and so on) you can use the pistol's modal and combine it with dual wielding/two weapon style which leads to fantastic reloading speed for the pistol. Something like Magran/Ranger can be nice where you use the sword for Hunter's Claw to gain more ACC for example and the pistol with Gunner and Driving Flight for high speed ranged stuff then.

Mostly lots of cheese is involved. I never tried because I (almost) never use the Blackened Plate - but I guess you can sneak in solo (park the rest of the party on the ship) with the help of Smoke Veil/Potion of Invis./Bounding Boots and only kill the quartermaster + ads with Lover's Embrace/Gouging Strike/Brand Enemy. As an Assassin this should be possible pretty early if I don't forget some major obstacle. But in a Triple Crown run I still wouldn't try that I guess. One misstep and you're done. Easier to export the plate with a character and import that char with items in a new game.

If you kill One-Eyed Prim then Two-Eyed Prim will take over after that (you can see that if you kill One-Eyed Prim earlier). And iirc you can't kill Two-Eyed Prim. I never tried but I saw Josh's talk about faction leadres where he explained how the game handles the killing of faction heads. Two-Eyed Prim is intentionally silly of course.

You cannot take out all leaders of a faction.

There were steam achievements for PoE. In Deadfire "Berath's Blessings" points are the new in-game achievement system. Don't know if there's still achievements on Steam (never actually bothered to look at those). I guess not? If you used the console with IRoll20s then you won't get BB points etc.

Large Shield + modal

I just remembered Cloak of the Theocrat as random (sort of unique) loot.

I think Chanter is a solid pick. But the first seconds of combat are a bit tricky because you will only be able to call summons once the combat starts. That means the enemies will rush to you before the summons are out. An animal companion might help to keep them busy until summons are there. So maybe Chanter/Ranger? Not Ghost Heart because you cannot have chanter summons and ghost animal companion at the same time. But Arcane Archer/Troubadour with Essence Interrupter sounds like a ranged build that might be able to solo quite well and be very versatile.

I think the Dragon Pendant is indeed the only equippable item with enchantments that's random loot. Never thought about it - but now I tried to remember some other such items but couldn't come up with anything. 🤷‍♂️

Summons and Mind Control (charm/dominate which is basically like getting a summon while taking away an enemy) are very impactful - especially if your ressources are basically endless and you can recast that stuff over and over again. Summons/controlled enemies take heat away from you, help control the battlefield and also can deal damage. I have no brilliant idea how I would change them in order to make them more balanced. In this case I think there's a fine line between "feels too good" and "feels boring/useless".

It used to be too easy at release so they tuned it up several notches afterwards.