cactot

Do we know if cleave aoe range is impacted by weapon reach? If so staff/Pike may be the best option for the significant reach improvement.

I have been doing a few tests to see what works and what doesn't in the release version of the game. Feel free to contribute or suggest other potentially strong combos to test. Test 1: Armor Crusader (Unbroken / any paladin) Confirmed that shield mastery from unbroken, zealous endurance, and inspired defenses (+2 to armor after being attacked) all stack. (for a total of +4 against the attack type from inspired defense) Robust does not stack with zealous endurance, but stacks with the other two. Test 2: Brawling Shields Confirmed that with a brawling shield, you can simultaneously benefit from both weapon and shield style, and two weapon style (netting you -15% recovery and +6 deflection/reflex). Test 3: Weapons that scale (accuracy for example) based on a skill (like arcana/religion) Accuracy went up +1 per arcana in my test. -5% damage taken went to -15% damage taken at half health and ~10% at 1/4 health. Test 4: Transcendent suffering + brawling shield Shield gets both +damage and +accuracy from transcendent suffering! Looks like it is considered "unarmed". Test 5: Tekehu animal form Damage: 13-19 base damage, 0.5/4.0 timing, 9 pen Scaling at level 10/power level 4: +30% damage, +8 accuracy, +2 pen (compared to monk at that same level/power: 14-19 damage, 35%, 10 acc, +3 pen) Armor: 10 at level 10 (8 + 1 every 4 levels) Test 6: Rooting pain damage/penetration/accuracy Crushing damage, 8.5 penetration (no idea how that is calculated or if it changes as you level) Seems to have an unexplained -10 accuracy malus, and an "ability level" bonus (+6 at level 10/PL4). Does NOT benefit from transcendent suffering.

I had a background generated that I was pretty sure was going to have Pallegina be a Kind Wayfarer (I had her disobey her masters), but instead when I got her she was still the Canc Suloias subclass. FYI, It turns out that Wrath of the 5 Suns is pretty garbage, it does about half the damage of flames of devotion for twice the Zeal cost, and cannot be upgraded with Sworn Rival to refund any of the cost upon kill.

Max might, rest wherever you like in dex/con/per/int, depending on whether you want durability, speed, accuracy or ability duration. As a single class? Yes, easily. Helwalker *needs* multiclassing, as it is too fragile to survive in melee as a single class, and cannot stay out of melee easily until The Long Pain becomes available. The above-mentioned kind wayfarer + helwalker combo is one way to offset the fragility.

The monk+devoted, at least in beta effectively gets two weapons, since fist proficiency comes automatically.

Just FYI, Zealous Aura and Barbaric Shout will be problematic before you get Mental Fortress at level 10. Shout will apply a strong debuff your allies in a huge radius, and all of the aura abilities will buff your enemies instead of your team. It might be worth picking something else at those levels, and paying for a re-spec some time at or after level 10.

I agree, this combo looks like it would be solid. If I were to go shattered pillar, I would combine it with plain barb and use a greatsword with no armor. Just chain skyward kick and thunderous blows constantly, with modal you would have +100% damage bonus, so you should be able to generate at least 4 wounds per attack (assuming you can free that many up before each strike). That's 5 interrupts on your target and 4 AOE interrupts per attack, as well as +16-32*(might bonus) extra damage combined with the carnage damage. You would probably have to re-activate thunderous blows before every attack to optimize it (since I think that is their only instant-cast wound consuming ability), otherwise you would only get as many procs as skyward kick takes wounds to activate. The biggest reason to go berserker (over no-subclass or corpse-eater) is because the hit-to-crit amplifies the effectiveness of drumming heartbeat and swift flurry, which would be optimal for sustained single target damage (particularly if you use turning wheel with a non-shattered pillar build for the +25% extra lash bonus). Honestly, you would be hard pressed to make a character that sucks with any combination of barbarian, fighter and monk. They are pretty idiot proof.

It entirely depends if those spells get invocation style casting times (0.5 sec cast time, 4.5 sec recovery). Chain lightning at 0.5s cast time would be excellent.

Berserker or just the base class. If Berserker get svef for early on so you don't murder your team, and make sure you pick up clarity of agony and enlightened agony later on. Int, con, dex and per are all important, so don't dump any of them. I will be putting the most of my leftover attributes in int and dex, with a couple in per and con (and will take a few out of res).

Don't do berserker + any type of chanter. The phrases you sing will buff enemies and hurt allies. Otherwise fighter or barbaian should be fine combos with chanters.

You can get 10 int on any non-shattered pillar Monk

Thanks Boeroer!

Absolutely, unbroken isn't really necessary to be a good tank. Guardian stance + concelhauts parasitic quarterstaff and you should be sticky (enemies will be afraid to disengage) and durable (healing from summoned weapon, +deflection spells, spirit shield). You can even use the staff modal for an extra 20 deflection, for a total of +50 with mirrored image or +70 with arcane veil. If you just focus on quick casting self-buffs, rescue spells for your allies (like dimensional shift) and so forth, I would argue that he has a higher potential as a pure tank than Eder does.

Regarding the Rooting Pain ability for monk, the description says that it activates each time you get a wound. Can anyone verify whether it activates once per wound, or once per instance of gaining wounds? Example: Monk has no wounds currently, and takes 50 damage in one shot. Does this cause rooting pain to activate 5 times instantly, or does it activate only once?

You can always use the free talent point on something else other than thunderous blows, there are plenty of good actives and passives to take instead.

It has the highest potential damage (because of the might bonus passive), but you are going to be *extremely* vulnerable while doing so. The damage taken malus from helwalker wound stacks is no joke. Barbarians and non-Helwalker monks are also good options, as they have action speed bonuses for faster casting, and can self-buff might with little expenditure. They will also be FAR more durable than the helwalker. In any case nature godlike is the best option, as they have the easy-to-activate +2 power level passive. Fighter/rogue/ranger don't have much in the way of synergy with casters, unless you are going to play them as melee/ranged fighters. Note: DO NOT use berserker subclass if you go barbarian, your buffs and heals will help the enemy, and your damage skills will hurt your allies.

My understanding is that action speed should impact cast times as well as recovery times, while recovery is only recovery times (duh ;p). That makes it so action speed is much more important for casters, as they have long casting and recovery times. While they are of close to equivalent benefit for melee classes and (non summoning) chanters, who have short cast/attack times, and long recovery times.

Probably not, tenacious and hardy give +2 instead of +4 to AR/pen, and eternal devotion gives half the benefit it used to. It would still be a real strong combo, but I'd wager that a devoted berzerker would probably top the melee damage scales. They'd have +4 pen and 47.5% hit to crit, so they would over penetrate on most of their attacks. Carnage and mob stance would create a cascade of dead enemies the moment one died. They would pose an *extreme* threat to your party though. Devoted + Monk (nalpazca for maximum potential, shattered for convenient ability spam) or Devoted + street fighter, should be close in effectiveness while being much less dangerous to your party, at the cost of coming online a little more slowly.

That is a very good question. I suspect they don't, and the actual speed bonus will be 40 (25% from frenzy, 15% from the dex boost from swift strikes). I assume bloodlust stacks (since it is technically a passive). Regardless, it seems like it should still be a solid combo even without those two stacking.

Devoted gets fist proficiency for free, so devoted monks effectively have two devotions. Not sure about summoned and soulbound, but I assume it would depend whether the weapon type matches their devotion.

Right now I am considering berzerker + nalpazca, since svef sounds like it would remove the confusion from berzerker. If that doesn't work, enlightened agony has an int inspiration to offset confused. The hit to crit from berzerker should make a nice synergy with the flurry abilities from Monk. Wound generation will be a bit slower than shattered pillar (though the self-harm from berzerker should help with that), but you can get a lot more lash/duration or health/armor from the wheel abilities, which would let you take better advantage of the barbarian skills. I think standard barbarian + shattered pillar would go great as well. Skip the two skill points on enlightened agony and pick up Savage defiance for the heal over time + armor buff, and thunderous blows can give you the pen you would otherwise get from berzerker. It might even be worth going for a two hander, as you will basically be able to replace auto attacks with torments reach (and skyward kick when you get it), which is primary attack only. If you can get high enough accuracy to be use the greatsword modal, each strike should generate 3-5 wounds (assuming you have lesser wounds). If the wording of the ability is correct, rooting pain should do an instance of the AOE for each wound. If that is the case, you should be able to strip a ton of layers of concentration with each strike, while also doing significant additional aoe damage (which may in turn generate extra wounds?). It seems like the biggest challenge with that build would be to spend your wounds fast enough that you have more wounds to gain with each strike (to activate rooting pain). Refresh thunderous blows after each attack maybe?

but that is the problem - nervring something because of one op combo making other combos to weak in the process Paladins are still quite strong both single and multi class. What combo is going to be "to weak" because it lost 10% off the enduring flame lash?

In the beta "Ancient Memory" and all other chants last 6 seconds + linger time without "Brisk Recitation" and only 3 seconds with "Brisk Recitation". I don't know why the tooltip shows 10 seconds ... its not true, so just ignore it. Thanks for the info, but that is super confusing. I wonder if the mechanical behavior in beta was incorrect (and it should match the tooltips) or if the tool tips were (and still are) wrong.

Most of the chants seem to have a fixed duration of either 6 seconds (like One Dozen Stood: https://i.imgur.com/IjXTrME.png)or 10 seconds (like Ancient Memory: https://i.imgur.com/3SkX6sF.png). Are phrases with longer effect duration impacted differently by the brisk recitation modal, or do they both immediately terminate as soon as the next phrase starts?

Below 50% hp or flanked: -50% recovery, +50% sneak attack damage. Below 50% hp AND flanked: The above bonuses, +100% crit damage. If you're getting into the thick of things and using full plate, absolutely go Streetfighter. I thought the numbers were -20% recovery and +20% damage. Did it change for the release build? If so that is crazy string unless they massively increased the non-flanked penalty too.