dgray62

If you multiclass with a Helwalker monk, which is a good choice for ranged builds particularly, you'll get a big boost to STR and INT, and the +10 STR with full wounds stacks with the +5 STR from thunderous blows. That's a nice 45% boost to damage from STR alone. A blunderbuss wielding Helwalker/rogue is tornado of destruction.

Paladin/wizard, particularly the Steel garrote/blood mage wielding Whispers of the Endless Paths with the Offensive Parry upgrade, is, as Boeroer has often recommended, an amazingly tanky caster. The damage output with weapons is rather meh in my opinion with this build. But the beauty of it is that you can continually cast spells using blood sacrifice. Enemies will engage you in melee, but they'll often miss since your deflection will be so high, proccing Offensive Parry, which will daze them, so that subsequent procs will heal you. Between that and the healing from exalted endurance you won't have problem regenerating health and can cast all day long. This is the build to chose if you want to be a tanky caster. Fighter/wizard, of which tactician/bloodmage is my favorite, is probably the ideal build if you want to specialize in summoned weapons, especially Citzal's Spirit Lance, which attacks in an AOE. It's incredible with Clear Out and Mule Kick. Here you'll want to take mainly fighter offensive and defensive abilities, and switch grimoires for the buff spells you'll want to cast prior and during the battle. So this is a build if you want to primarily engage in melee with arcane boosts. A third option is monk/wizard. Here you might try Helwalker/vanilla wizard, or Helwalker/blood mage which is dangerous, but manageable if you are careful not to use blood sacrifice with a lot of wounds. A helwalker sage with 10 wounds will have +10 STR and INT, which will really boost spell casting, You can spam spells or use summoned weapons. It's a very flexible multiclass but much squishier, since you lack the good sources of healing that the arcane knight and battlemage enjoy. (edited to add the sage option)

It increases constant recovery by 75%? That's great, thanks!

What exactly does Rapid Recovery do. How much does it actually boost the healing of Constant recovery. The in game description is very vague, I believe.

Haplok, if you do this, please let us know how this build compares in real time vs. turn based.

Based on what Haplok has reported, it sounds like an assassin spell blade, like the bellower, is better in turn based that real time. It seems that invisibility is much more problematic in real time.

I've been playing Eder as a swashbuckler on PotD lately. He is very tanky if you use a shield as noted above and also invest in the fighter defensive talents. Sneak attack gives him a great damage bonus. I usually only get a few rogue abilities, escape, riposte, persistent distraction, deep wounds and deathblows, mainly. He's very sturdy and rarely falls in combat, even against the PotD hordes. I usually give him a large shield as my MC is usually a monk multiclass; there are many great large shields in the game, including one that you can get quite early under Neketaka. The fighter abilities help him overcome the large shield accuracy malus, and the shield gives him great defense, particularly against ranged attacks due to the modal. Escape and charge give him mobility with the modal on.

Thanks for the tips, Boeroer and Haplok. Based on your comments above, Boeroer, I can see that you have tried an assassin mindstalker. How did that work out? Did you use the beguiler subclass or something else?

Thanks, Thelee. I'll check out your faq.

Thanks for the advice, Boeroer. I like the idea of debuffing from invisibility, and then nuking.

I was thinking of trying a run as an assassin bloodmage. I was wondering which spells tend to reliably get the assassinate bonus when cast from stealth. I understand that DoT spells do not, and even spells with a slight delay between casting and the spell hitting, such as fireball, often don't get the bonus. I play in real time; I gather that things are quite different in turn based.

You might consider a tactician/wizard (vanilla) or tactician/bloodmage in a party. You'll be able to spam chillfogs, and with the help of a companion cipher's phantom foes you'll get brilliant often. Later, you'll have really powerful health regeneration from unbending/unbending trunk, which becomes crazy if you hit foes with a wall of draining, and have the cap of the laughing stock on a nearby tank.

Chilling Grave and Grave Bound are interconnected. As you note you have to stack 10 hits to be able to paralyze with crits by Grave Calling. But If you have procced chillfog by killing a vessel with Grave Calling, crits with the weapon itself AND crits with chillfog will paralyze foes. This feature makes the weapon very OP, although it takes some work to set this up, unless you're fighting vessels, in which case it should happen easily so long as you can crit reliably. Upgrading Grave Calling to mythical will increase the chance for this to happen.

Thanks, Haplock. I'll use Tuotilos Palm shield except when I want to transform skellies into chill fog clouds, in which case I'll replace it with a blunderbuss per your earlier recommendation.

Thanks for the suggestion, Haplok. I wonder if this would be a good approach for a soulblade transcendent, since most monk abilities are primary attacks, as is soul annihilation?

A barbarian/monk wielding LDV produces frequent static thunder AOE explosions. It's a very satisfying build. Most people will go with the berserker subclass to get the frenzy hit to crit conversion, which helps land static thunder. But you'll need healing from party members to offset the raw damage from berserker frenzy.

Thanks, Boeroer. So unless you wield only Grave Calling, you might have to kill several skeletons to get Grave Calling to proc, right?

I hadn't realized that Grave Calling was such a powerful weapon. I think I might try a new PoTD run focusing on it. Might a fanatic (berserker/kind wayfayer) dual wielding grave calling and magran's favor (for a fire and ice effect) be a good build for this? FoD while frenzied would crit a lot, and white flames exalted endurance would help keep the character alive. I'd have a troubadour companion summon skellies to get some chill fogs up. Does this sound like a good approach? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I've been playing a SC Furyshaper with LDV, and it hits like a truck. And once you get Blood Ward you don't have to worry about healing anymore.

I find an ascendent MC, spamming mind blades while ascended, is a great way to deal with the hordes at the dig site, and auto-attacking with essence interrupter is an easy way to ascend. If you turn in the easy Port Maje quests without companions you'll be level 4 before going to Gorecchi Street and the dig site. But of course you could start at level 4 with Berath's Blessings.

Thanks, I'll try this approach.

If you're restricting yourself to Maje Island the weapon would have to Essence Interrupter.

Thanks, thelee. I'll try the cool down. Three seconds would definitely be sufficient timing to avoid stacking the curse.

I am playing a forbidden fist/beguiler transcendent, and was wondering if there was any way to program the AI to apply the forbidden fist curse whenever it expires. I see that one of the options is to apply it whenever one does not have an affliction. But this probably isn't right, since the curse is not technically an affliction I believe. Does anyone know how to do this? I ideally want to apply it whenever the curse expires to maximize wounds, but do not want to apply it before it expires, since that is very dangerous.

That's true., thanks for the suggestion. It's easy to get it very early, as you note. +2 fire PL during the day is probably better than the 10% chance to repeat priest spells.