dgray62

Yes, combusting wounds must be on this list. As for soul shock, it's casting time is slow, but you can do nice damage with it if you crit or overpen with it. It's great for psions, for whom the long cast time is no bug deal. As for Mind Blades, my various ascendants have wiped out many a horde with this spell. It's great for ascendants in particular since its cast time is so fast. You can do serious damage with it too, in the range of 40-50 per hit, once you get enough PLs. But cast Phantom Foes first to soften up the foes first.

Among priest spells, interdiction can be nice for reducing the threat from groups of enemies. And for ciphers, soul shock is a great AOE that scales nicely, and mind blades is a fantastic for use against 2 or more enemies; it also scales nicely, adding more jumps as you gain PLs. Antipathetic Field can be great when you have enemies bunched up. And phantom foes is great for debuting deflection and AR to help your attacks land (including mind blades). For chanter invocations, in addition to Thrice, I am also fond of At the Sound of His Voice (paralyze vs. will in a large cone) and White Worms. I didn't use the latter in the past, but it was fixed in the BPM and really hits like a truck in a large, foe only AOE.

It's too bad that Bleak Walkers do not get the option of selecting Spirit of Decay.

Yes, this makes Bleak Walker much better than it initially appears; the 12% lash might seem like not much, but combined with the extra PEN it's great. Can you combine Bleak Walker and Priest of Woedica? If so, Black Flames with those fists would be devastating. Or maybe a priest of woedica/ ascendant using Biting Whip (with CP). You'd have a 50% raw lash plus the 30% damage boost while ascended, which you could prolong indefinitely with Salvation of Time. Add the Sash of Judgement, Hylea's talons and the Pes pet you'll boost your damage by over 100% I think.

If you wield firebrand and cast Flames of Devotion while wearing the RoFF, you get +20 ACC for the attack, +10 from the ring and +10 from FoD. If you have Scion of Flame the attack also gets +1 PEN. If you are a bleak walker, and have Spirit of Decay as well, I'm 99% sure that the entire attack gets +2 PEN, and not just the lashes. This is because FoD has a fire keyword, while Black Flames has both fire and corrode. FoD and Black Flames are really great if you buff them in this manner.

Thanks for uploading this, Elric! Just out of curiosity, what is the reason for the cuttlefish nerf? Was there some bizarre cuttlefish exploit that I failed to notice?

If you want to go melee and don't want to rely on scrolls, you could wield Sun & Moon and Magran's Shield. The shield benefits from the Ring of Focused Flame, as does the fire head of Sun & Moon.

You should check out Not So Clever Hound's Thundercat 2.0 build. It's definitely not weak; you can solo the game on PotD with a well-designed sorcerer.

Amra is really great for barbs, since it gives them basically a second circle of carnage. You can have the slayer's claw in your second weapon set, and when you activate frenzy switch weapons once (for berserker) or twice for everyone else to upgrade to energized.

I think that you can get your rep down to -3 quickly by killing pirates in Delver's Row or the area underneath BEFORE you do any Principi quests. Then you can go to sea, fight the ship they send after you, and then go to Fort Deadlight and start doing their quests to get your rep back up.

If I have a wizard in my party I usually play it as my MC. Otherwise with the AI on they invariably cast a chill fog right over your party.

If you want to go with Kind Wayfarer, you might consider dual wielding. When you use White Flames while dual wielding it procs twice, which gives you double the healing. If you want to do with a 2-handed paladin build I strongly recommend Steel Garrote/trickster or Steel Garrote/Blood mage, in both cases wielding WotEP. This weapon is particularly nice for the Arcane Knight. You can stand around, casting spells while buffed with high deflection. Anyone who attacks you will likely miss, triggering offensive parry. This will passively harm and debuff them while healing you. It's a great deal of fun. For dual wielding, a Kind Wayfarer/skald would be great. Each attack will heal you and your allies while giving you two (or, if you wield Sun & Moon, 3) chances to crit and gain a phrase. And if you wear the Ring of Focused Flame, it will add +10 ACC when you use White Flame, and the fire head on Sun & Moon will also benefit from this with every attack.

While thelee's Umezawa build may not be the fastest possible that's out there, it is a very flexible build that's very fun to play. As you note, the Priest of Wael brings tremendous survivability that complements streetfighter nicely. Barb/streetfighter would be faster, but would likely need healing and support from a party member to stay alive.

They often reflect direct damage, but not from AOE spells. You can take them out with any long range AOE spells. If you have a druid or wizard with you, you can take them out easily.

I generally use smoke veil, mainly because its cost was reduced to one guile in the Balance Polishing mod. It works fine, although I always keep the AI off for my main character, since I like to micromanage. I could see that the AI would pose a problem here.

Yes, the loot bug with essence interrupter is has been fixed. And it was one of my favorite weapons when playing a ranged cipher. It's usually my first weapon, and latter I pair it with the red hand, switching back to it when facing pierce immune foes. You might consider an ascendant/helwalker. Helwalker will give you big boosts in STR and INT, speed, and also and additional +2 PEN from tenacious. The downside of Helwalker is generally fine with a ranged character. You can always activate blade turning if you get mobbed by melee heavies. Or you might consider an ascendant/ranger. This combo has the highest possible ACC in the game I believe, and with high ACC you'll crit a lot, which will help mitigate PEN issues.

Rogues are easy to solo due to their ability to go invisible, and for a solo run assassin is the natural class to pick, since you get the amazing boost to attacks made from stealth. There have been many builds posted, such as Not So Clever Hound's Soul Sniper build. You will likely want to use an arquebus for a ranged assassin. Assassin/blood mage is great too. The assassin bonus does apply to spells provided that they are fast acting like fireball. They don't apply to spells with long delays (like delayed fireball), and the bonus will only apply to the first pulse I believe for pulsing spells like Chillfog.

You are right that there are many ways to debuff FORT. The problem is that many of the tougher foes (particularly on PotD) have sky high FORT. Even so, if you debuff them and have ways to raise your ACC druids still have a important role to play when fighting them. Mention should be made of Taste of the Hunt, which is an amazing spell that is somewhat undervalued I think. You just have to land the primary attack via deflection, which is much easier to debuff. It heals you, and does a devastating raw DoT. It's single target unless you are using a multi-hit weapon like Whispers of the Endless Paths. If you attack with that weapon, the DoT will apply to everyone in the cone who is hit. And a FF shifter is tons of fun. You can cast your DoTs, shift, and then run around enfeebling everyone and extending the DoTs. Plus, in the boar form you'll apply a new DoT. Sadly you cannot cast Taste of the Hunt while shifted if playing a shifter, although you can if you play a different druid subclass.

Oops! I meant to say celebrant but said contemplative by mistake. I'll correct that. I also like playing contemplatives. As for MuT, I almost always get it when I play non monk classes that can use it. For my celebrant, I used it primarily in the early game. Not much need to use it later when your focus becomes almost entirely spell casting.

I guess it's understandable that they'd be immune to bug bites!

Yes, inspired by thelee's Firedancer build (which was very fun to play), I tried playing a Bellower/Priest of Magran, which I also enjoyed for reasons I explained above. As for how they compare, helwalker monks add a lot to any caster MC, and they have fists as a default weapon which is also very nice. When I played the contemplative celebrant, however, I took Monastic Unarmed Training at lvl 2, since it is such a great ability. But what I particularly like about the contemplative celebrant is the nice synergy with Sasha's Singing Scimitar, least unstable coil and the Weyc items, giving you huge boosts that you can extend indefinitely with SoT. Basically, the way I played it was having SSS and Weyc's wand in one weapon set, which I'd use for empowering an invocation at the start of battle. Then I'd switch to Magran's Axe and Marux Amanth, for the fire PL boost and the nice 10% chance to repeat priest spells, and start casting. You can also use Sun and Moon, but I don't like it quite as much for this build due to the weird day and night alteration between fire and cold PL boosts. While you don't get the coil and the Weyc's items until late game, you can get SSS very early (lvl 7 or so), and you can get Marux Amanth once you level up a bit in Neketaka, and then you'll be ready to tackle Hasango and also go get the Magran Axe as well as Sungrazer (which also is a fantastic weapon IMO). By that time you're ready to go get the coil, and eventually, the wand. So I'd likely start off wielding SSS with Marux Amanth in the offhand. Once I get the axe, I'll switch to SSS and a shield (Magran's perhaps!) as the starting weapon set, with the shield to help protect against opening volleys, with Magran's axe and Marux Amanth in the second set. When I get the Weyc wand (making sure to bind it to chanter, not priest, for the nice +3 PL boost), I replace the shield with it in weapon set 1.

If you are interested in specializing in summons, then troubadour or beckoner are definitely the way to go. If you want more of a melee approach (say, with Berath and the great sword) you might consider skald. But for a pure caster I prefer bellower (particularly bellower/magran with the BPM, as I like the selection of spells Magran priests get with this mod). Here you would cast powerful invocations when you have the phrases, and cast priest spells while you are building up phrases. Since priest spells are somewhat slow, you can really just cast invocations and spells non stop. I really like how impactful Her Revenge and Her Tears are with the bellower's extra PLs. The lightning and cold damage invocations also nicely complement the priest's spell arsenal, which is very much weighted toward fire spells.

Psion's focus gain increases with PL. It starts out somewhat slow but gets faster as you go along. You can boost it with abilities, items, food and potions that boost PL. A troubadour/psion with brisk recitation on can pretty much spam low level powers like soul shock (which scales nicely with PL and has a large AOE radius), and just alternate casting cipher powers and chanter invocations. It's fun if you are interested in playing a pure caster with great flexibility and utility. You'll have in your tool belt summons, damaging powers, CC and healing and buffs for your allies.

Another possibility is soul blade/trickster. Both rogue and cipher have some great DoT abilities, and also have some great defensive buffs to keep you alive as well.

For a pure caster I would go with SC psion, for the nice PL 8 and 9 abilities as well as faster PL progression, and hence faster regeneration of focus. I am also fond of the psion/troubador and psion/bloodmage MC combos. For the latter two, you can just alternate between casting cipher powers and invocations or spells. The psion/troubador combo is particularly nice for all of the summons you can invoke to keep melee at bay, and you can strengthen the summons with both your chants and cipher powers.