Clerith

Hmhm, I must have been confused, I recognized your name and seen the belt on a few builds. My bad. I tend to get Penetrating Strikes, then you have cheap 1 resource spam attack from both Rogue and Fighter sides. But with the build's high penetration, perhaps getting Mule Kick over Penetrating Strikes is better... I think slightly better of the idea now. I did notice that you didn't upgrade Crippling Strikes. I was expressing my approval of the idea, and how its upgrades are kinda bad. My apologies if I was unclear.

Waist: Gwyn’s Bridal Garter I always wonder about this in your builds. Otherwise? Looks like a well written, very solid build. If you have a party, I'd perhaps argue against picking Knockdown and Mule Kick, since someone else could do the interrupting, and it's not like wizards can survive against you in melee for long. You can almost perma juggle some tough enemies, however. It's a personal choice, I've never like it on straight fighters, though love it with Spirit Lance, but well, aoe. For Fighter/Rogue I also pick Crippling Strikes and Escape and never upgrade them. Escape is simple, since the upgrades make it cost way too much Guile and you don't need the stealth, but Crippling Strikes is often upgraded. However, if you just wait a few levels, you can get the distraction from a passive, and the bleed of the other upgrade is weak, and does nothing if the enemy's not moving, and since you can only attack in melee range... yeah, it feels useless. So why not just save the point for something good.

Yeah, Monk fists crush skeletons, it's one of the many, many reasons Wizard/Monk is so good - you don't get the Devoted penalty for switching to a non-pike, you just whip out the fists (or any weapons) to deal with pierce immune. I used fists, was no problem. In fact, I mained fists until I got Spirit Lance. You can even spec both two-handed style and two-weapon fighting if you want, or respec later. Shattered Pillar was nerfed a lot, you don't get Wounds from skills now. You have to use a rhythm of skill - auto-attack - skill - auto-attack. It's still good enough to be broken, mind you. But for now, just pick your favorite Monk subclass. Nalpazca is amazing if you don't mind taking drugs every fight, though this build (Wiz buffs and Monk drugs) gets shut down HARD by Arcane Dampener, Shattered Pillar is less spammy but still good, and Helwalker is good extra damage, the extra damage taken isn't that bad with the amazing Wiz self-buffs.

I'm playing a Wizard/Fighter(Devoted) right now, and I've beaten the game with a Wizard/Monk(Shattered Pillar), both Spirit Lance builds. It's my favorite weapon in the game, and extremely strong if you build around it. Edit: No subclass Wizard, Enchanter sucks compared to base Wizard. The only Wizard subclass worth thinking about is Evoker, and that's for a blaster Wiz. Monk is the stronger build, and has insane synergy Spirit Lance, aoe attacks proccing another aoe attack, aoe stun, all the usual Monk bonuses. Fighter version is still extremely solid and broken, just feels slightly less overpowered than the Monk. I personally like the flavor of Fighter more, blame Scathach for that one... The only real flaws of the Spirit Lance is the annoying summoning time and the pierce only damage. Have a backup plan for undead. But the pros more than make up for it.

Enchanter Wizard (Citzal's Spirit Lance?) makes your Soul Annihilation AoE, so I can recommend Wizard/Soulblade. Helwalker makes you take more damage, which combined with Cipher, makes you squishy. I recommend a ranged playstyle for this, Helwalker/Ascendant is very strong. Shapeshifter... you can't cast spells while Shifted, and you want melee steroids, which Cipher doesn't have that much. I can't really recommend this. If you're asking those actual combinations, Wizard/Monk is super strong while Wizard/Druid is meh, you have a lot of good defensive buffs from Wiz but are kinda lacking in damage.

If you have a theme build in mind, you should go for it. They're fun and rp-y. A melee Cipher with a mix of damage and toughness that focuses on bending minds. The charm type Cipher actually works quite well with melee builds, since charms are quite short ranged. Whispers of Treason is great, Ringleader is good, Puppetmaster is meh. Charming enemies is slower than just blowing them up, but it is a very safe way of playing. Honestly, aoe charming that enemy firing squad? Feels good man. To build Focus, you need to do damage. For that, dual wield is best. And if you want to be tanky while dual wielding and one of your classes is a squishy caster, I'll still recommend Paladin or Fighter. Paladin is especially potent early in PotD, since your best things, Flames of Devotion and Faith and Conviction are lv1 skills. Since you want to use your Focus to charm things, the subclass is a little tricky. For Soulblade, you generally want to dump all Focus with your Soul Annihilation melee attack. For Ascended, you want to get to full focus ASAP, then spam Cipher spells for 20 seconds. For simply starting with a charm, them going to melee, them charming again... default Cipher might be best? I can't believe I'm saying that. Though arguably you could just play Ascendant like a normal Cipher, enjoy a MUCH higher Focus pool, much higher Focus gain on hit, higher Focus at battle start, at the cost of lower power level. For charms... power level is nice, but not super important. Actually, you know what? I'd play it like a regular Cipher, but still pick Ascendant.

Paladin/Cipher is tanky enough to solo the game by the way once they buff their defenses via borrowed instinct and the defensives from Paladin or Fighter - same with Fighter/Cipher I think Barbarian/Cipher or monk/cipher provide enough defensives in an off tank role while being offensively better - it depends - I assume his Priest/Chanter will provide enough overall party healing to keep a melee Witch or Transcendent up and doing damage. People's skill, experience, min/maxing and plain effort to play optimally differs wildly. Optimally? You're right. However, Paladin and Fighter are the easy and simple solutions. Something like a Barbarian, that offers great offensive melee bonuses, but suffers serious Deflection penalties, is a little harder to make work in a tanky role, especially early. The OP said he's playing on PotD. Barbarian, that gets constantly crit on PotD, is best paired with another martial class imo. It's fine with Cipher when Cipher gets all the good buffs, but definitely squishy at first. For a PotD off-tank, I'd take an actually tanky class.

Cipher? Offtank? You need to multiclass into something with defensive bonuses. That means either Fighter or Paladin. And for all Ciphers, a martial multiclass for Full Attacks (superior Focus generation) is recommended, yeah. Doing damage via spells doesn't get you Focus. I'd personally choose Paladin. Your defensives are passive, you bring aoe buffs and heals to the party, and you get a cheap and early good full attack in Flames of Devotion. Edit: though if you're playing on lower difficulty, slapping on some heavier armor or shield will make you tanky enough to hold your own in melee.

(Still waiting for the official BoW update and the patch changes) I haven't made a Druid build yet, and this is honestly on the top of my list. I've gotten enough of pure caster Druid with Tekehu. Speaking of Druids, I have two questions. Do you ever go into your Storm Blight form? You have a lot of powerful gear that you rely on, so my guess is not, unless you've already exhausted all your spellbinds and storm spells and decide to cast other elemental spells instead of meleeing. And for those who have played the build, how does it compare to a straight up Druid? From what I see, even for a caster, Druid is much more suitable to multiclassing, since unlike a Wizard, its high tier spells suck. Especially tiers 7 and 8 are pretty horrible imo. Great Maelstorm is good, but Wizard has better. I imagine it's the usual case of slower spell progression which is a little annoying, but Druids in my experience tend to be low level-ended with their useful spells, so it shouldn't be utterly terrible. And well, the screenshots show how effective the build is.

I have no idea if Fury's extra elemental penetration works with Firebrand. My first guess is no. I don't think I've seen it discussed anywhere. You should probably check with a hired adventurer real quick before deciding on a build :D Also, Killer's Gloves' +10% crit dmg is a mere +10% additive dmg when you crit, when you're already rolling in ... +100% and more additive damage. It'll probably end up being like ~4% more damage... basic Accuracy gloves should be better, if you don't want any of the str gloves.

Yes. They scale with character level, not class level. 5 = fine. 10 = exceptional. 15 = superb. 20 = legendary. They have the default attack speed, recovery, damage range and penetration of their weapon type. That goes for all summoned weapons. Then they have their unique thing. Firebrand's thing is that is does fire, and it can get +1 pen from Scion of Flame. Not quite as extravagant as in PoE1, sadly.

I also always keep him as a single class wizard. No subclass single class wizards are great, for a stealth wizard or melee wizard you'd really rather have a rogue/fighter subclass.

^ Indeed, the DLC introduced a weapon that scales with Religion skill. Also, Religion is a surprisingly nice conversation skill.

Yeah. I've also done three completionist runs (as far as I know), and I sometimed reload the world map random loot locations like 10-20 times until I get something good, but I've never gotten these bracers. It's probably a high level random loot location, when I don't bother anymore.

Crusader should probably be a main tank build, Fighter stances + active defenses + Paladin's passive defenses + the resist all afflictions passives. Though I guess it could also be a really tanky dual wield dps. Spam FoD with the fire accuracy ring, and use Fighter resources for mobility and buffs. Honestly, that's still good melee damage, and better than any pure Paladin or Fighter build.

I STRONGLY recommend multiclassing Paladin, everything good is at lower levels, Paladin's high level abilities are mostly underwhelming.

5% chance on hit only, not crit or graze? Wow, it's nowadays kinda bad.

Legendary. That's pretty much it for me.

...Say, if an armor reads "Armor Rating 7", that means it has that armor rating of 7 against EVERY type of damage, elemental included. Then there are the weak points, usually one physical and one elemental, which are lowered below that 7. Your breastplate has a default armor rating of 9. With +2 from the ring, 11.

This bug is still in the game. Infuriating, almost made me quit that playthrough. Removing the belt fixed it. There's still some loose aura toggle sounds when you load into an area, but at least the constant ****ing smashing is gone now.

The permanent attribute point should go somewhere else than Might - may I suggest Perception? This is supposed to be a Barbarian/Fighter, but what is the Rogue doing in the title and mentioned in the post? Knockdown is a waste of a talent point imo, unless you go AoE Mule Kick somehow. As for weapon opinions... well, you get +4 pen from Devoted/Berserker, so pen won't really be an issue. In the base game, only some elementals are immune to slash, right? As usual, sabres or swords seem the best.

Since Graze reduces both the damage and duration by 50%, wouldn't it be exactly the same dps as a regular Hit if it worked like old PoE dots? Or do I just fail at math...

Yes. Many enemies have much higher Fortitude than Deflection, to the point of almost ridiculousness. @OP, to be sure, check the combat log if you landed the spell and how much damage it's doing per tick.

... Oh that's right, she does. I completely forgot about that. Yeah, she dies. Plus I think it's kind of funny going in to the Archmage DLC having already killed two of them. Twice, in the case of Concelhaut. Remember to keep a separate save file where you murder Arkemyr too, just to see if there's any reactivity to that. The Archmage DLC is something I'm looking forward to very, very much, hehehe.

Llengrath sends assassins to kill you. It's only fair to respond in kind.