Lokithecat

The rapid fire (glitch, bug... idk) makes just firing faster than screwing around with multiple weapon sets, and is less micro intensive than switching weapon sets. See the Bleak Huntress build for description.

If you start the fight with Vaporous, and burn off low level defense buffs (say 1 lvl 1 2 3 4) and then swapped to a different grimoire, would you be at full spells? Like, is the bonus cast the first, or last spell?

I could be wrong, but if you were 100% guaranteed to crit every attack, then the 1/3 chance at free hit would be the same damage as the 1/3 more damage from lightning... assuming you're rolling 'average' on the proc, and your enemies are not particularly resistant to a damage type. That said, there are gimmick builds which try to exploit the free 'full attack' by using an offhand that has an exceptional chance to crit. (Check out the builds section on the Burn Baby Votary for an extreme example of chained effects).

Tanking is normally balancing two things. 1) Holding Aggro; whether its a matter of positioning, threat, or engage, being the person targeted consistently in a fight is what it boils down too. 2) Surviving; whether you soak through armor mitigating the damage, have a high armor to avoid the damage, or outhealing (or being flat out unkillable). With intelligent party build, you could still get by easily with a Paladin tank that only 'innately' has 1 engage. Shields, Weapons, Gear and stances can push that number high enough to lock down the majority of any encounter, the rest of the party should be able to mop up any that exceed that. With intelligent positioning many melee enemies will choose to stand and beat on the first target available, even if that character can't 'lock' them in with engagement. Also, engagement isn't some sort of magical taunt effect, its just a penalty of a free hit if you leave, to encourage people to stay and fight.

Fighter is more (MMO terms) an Off tank, designed to hold swarms of meh enemies, while Paladin is more a Main tank, less about the crowd and better(ish?) against a big boss. Given the amount of support spells (Cipher, Druid) you can easily buff even a Barbarian to be a great Offtank. Mages make better Main then they do Offs.

There are quite a few, many which don't work properly on custom. I've read that if you want the 2h sword, you need to choose that you did not forge the sword. Aloth is more amusing, if you choose that he accepted Ilemyr (or w/e her name was). Gift of the Machine doesn't work off Custom (unless you have to reach a certain point in the story to turn it on, my custom is still early). I sacrificed someone through Custom, didn't work (see above). Woedica should be a +1 Power level, if you did the souls her way, didn't work (see above). Devil Breastplate, Spare Haramke, so she's torn apart by angry villagers, and made into armor. Theres a dragon pet you can find, if you spared the Dragon.

Use the Shimmer Scale Shield, Warped Scales is Immunity to Gaze attacks.

Why the Deadlight ring? Bonus is for enemies engaged with you... and it feels like you'll never get engaged. Also, might want to pick up Maias armor for the reload haste. Can hire her and then kick her out of goroup after stripping her, maybe you can kill or steal it if you can't pick her up for RP reasons.

If you're planning on abusing a massive game breaking bug which wipes out everything, then it probably doesn't matter what your race or Might are.

I received the boon, from not busting up the machine, didn't notice anything specifically on the character sheet. However, when I found a dragon, and decided to stomp it in Fire Giant land, there was a bit before the fight talking about how Galawain was helping me in that fight. Not certain what his help amounted to.

As Druid he's got a unique Rod, which is really decent, adds Power level to Water / Frost? ​I went pure Druid with him, I'm sure any works fine. By the time he can self Brilliance with Chanter, having 'infinite' refilling pools is kinda meh, since why are things alive long enough for you to need that?

But it's bugged and gives resistance not only to harmful spells but also beneficial ones, like healing Not a bug, its Spell Resistance, not Spell Resistance to Hostile Spells. Besides, making Xoti Evil for the +Damage% for the party (Which scales off Religion) is a better choice anyway. As for the SR, always read the description on it, if it doesn't say that it effects Hostile Spells, then it will function the same way as the Mage Slayer weakness, and attempt to block all spells.

A lot of the most useful stuff has scaling effects, based on skills. The history one is the Giftbearers Cloak (iirc), which ups your resistances. Theres a Shield that gives you deflection for Atheletics, a Spear with + %Stealth damage when Flanking, another with + Damage based off Survival, +Accuracy Arbalest with Arcana, +Speed and Damage Quarterstaff with Metaphysics. Seems like they aren't that well thought out, as a build focusing on a specific skill can really stomp the combat side (and retraining isn't that expensive if you find something cool later on).

I ran one Tank: Heavy, Cleric: Light (until I found the Medium that gave entire group +2 Armor, switched to that), Everyone else Light. Early game, used much heavier on everyone, by mid game the enemies damage wasn't enough that going above 15% recovery just seemed silly. That said, it felt like there were more 'worthwhile' armors in the Light category, even before you compared Armor, and Recovery. I probably would have used more Robes, but only found 2, and they were pretty junky. The really good 15% stuff is only a few points lower Armor than the 50%, and usually has better effects. As long as its sufficient to prevent Overpenetration its enough. Enemies seem to (mid and later) do either so much damage, that a few points of armor is meaningless, or low enough damage that you don't care if you get hit for 3 points more, since you have the HP pool to last until you can get healing in place. When you're exploding everything in a couple hits, armor is almost an after thought. Also, ignored deflection on everyone but the tank, who was all about using a Tower shield, usually with the Wall modal up. Eder Swashbuckler tank, Berserker Helwalker MC, Xoth Priest, Aloth Wizard, Maia Ranger/Wizard, with a pet that gave all melee attacks interrupt (maybe that helped not taking damage, idk.)

Horrifying solution for PoTD difficulty. Leave all mechanics as is, give any 'major' encounter one of the broken builds from build forums, and enough scripting to use it aggressively / properly, and watch the tears roll in.

I went Ran/Wiz on my first playthrough, figured that the Wiz side would have a bunch of 'emergency' defense buffs for if anything closed, and the ability to summon a Weapon, that could take advantage of the +Ranged gear that she had, if I wanted to stay in melee when something closed. Never really used any of that, she's just to effective at blowing things up from range with w/ever you give her. Arbalests are fun, the prone Modal is really effective, Arq's are good the mid game ones will have +1 target jump effects, which can be good for on hit effects. I'd probably go /Rog if I ran with her again, my Rog/Fig tank gets me loads of 'flanked' enemies for +Damage, and there are loads of good 'on hit' effects that the rogue can use at range. She'd have a scary amount of oh **** options, with Rangers + Rogues both having 'teleport' out of combat (Rangers is better for the free attack, leaving you more Guile to spend on offense). Rogue seems like it would have the largest amount of useful 'dirty' tricks, i.e. on hit effects, so you'd be able to focus entirely on shooting people, instead of trying to juggle between casting and shooting. The Blight lash (or summoned bow) aren't comparable to the +cool stuff you can do as a ranged Rogue, especially with all the multiple enemies hit at once tricks you can pull off.

Monk, would be fine, even Helwalker, for jumping your DPS up. Helwalker might be difficult, especially as a tank, early game, but by end game you're trying to go out of your way to wound them as its so easy to kill everything too quickly to generate much wounds. As for the 'Shattered r best' I still don't see it. Even chaining their Skyward (as suggested) you're doing 50% (25 v 50 for Turning, 30 for Hel Might Wounds) less damage and attacking slower than a fully wounded Helwalker. Admittedly its pretty easy to max (35) your might, for most characters with drugs, and if you plan on doing that then Helwalker loses a lot of its appeal. If you could (this might be possible) have 100% uptime with Blade Turn, as a Shattered, then I might seriously look at a build around that; but most of the pro Shattered stuff doesn't seem to suggest that. No other monk would want to (or be able to) spend Wounds in a fashion that makes them immune to most damage, and not run out of Wounds. With the 'I'm unkillable' paladin nonsense, there is no reason to worry about taking extra damage as a Helwalker (and the +10 Int from monk = longer durations). You could take a (minor) recovery hit, and wear enough armor that it doesn't matter if you're getting beaten up (probably not a solo build for high difficulty). ​As with most builds, you'll only ever struggle in the beginning / mid parts of the game, by the half point you just rofl stomp anyway.

While a monk / druid does lose a lot of the cool factor of monk (kickass unarmed) everything else works fine. A Shifter / Helwalker would be interesting, and the scaling of the animal weapons would be comparable to that of monk unarmed. You'd gain self buffs to the monk side, as well as the perks of the form you chose (DR, Attack speed, or whichever you chose) and self healing. The druid side gets a lot more 'activated' attacks while shifted, you could even spread around your talents, and a pile of Elemental Damage Lash onto your attacks. The Fury Druid you could intentionally self wound with a variety of spells (Touch of Decay for eg. will catch you in the area when you hit someone with it) and the (up to) 30% bonus damage from Helwalker wounds could make even a Caster style druid more offensive, with a variety of knockbacks (and blade turning) from monk side if something closes and you don't want to fight it hand to hand.

While Mage Slayer does have some quirks that make it especially good at killing mages, mages (backline casters in general) are easy to kill. With everyone and their dog having a way to deal with casting (interrupts are powerful, prone casters are useless, etc...) the weaknesses aren't worth specializing into the subclass.

The one attempt I made for a ranger, was a Ghost Heart, so I didn't even have to bother with the pet. With Maia I didn't even bother putting the bird into combat most times, they were just too awkward to manage. They didn't seem worth the work to involve them in fights.

If the 1 ability (Starting) characters have the capacity to be the 'worlds best' in that particular job... how dull it would be that you have them all off the bat. Besides, even with a 2 / 2 guy, they still do great. Needing to get 4* is pretty meaningless, and having to do some hunting for them is fine.

Unless you're soloing it will be easier to meet the criteria (and safer). You'll have more opportunities for it to go off.

Fampyr's are the worst for 'save' encounters, but even if you tank your resists, you can get by with a gaze immunity shield. The only problem with dumping your stats, the beginning of the game can be painful. Even generally speaking, with a normal, or good build even; the beginning is the hardest part. Once you have more talents, and gear, you can blow past most the content in a non focussed build.

If the summoned weapons are Universal, there might be build gimmicks that can shine with it... that said very niche, and wouldn't be some OP thing, more a neat gimmick.

It could be an interesting solo style character, massive CC / Debuffs, fire off some random guns (something that hits + Jumps / has pellets / area damage) for quick focus, then charm the cripples to fight each other... might have to be on a 'lower' difficulty so the spells stick. Otherwise, just using the Wiz for the defense buffs (which are incredible) only requires a few levels of wizard, for the basics. Druid / Cipher might be more interesting if you wanted the same sort of theme, and would have more options for playstyles, with a Shifter + Whip as an easy way to get Focus while still being able to use offensive and buff spells. Actually now that I think of it, that might be interesting, with all the Lash elemental damage in Shifted form, the Whip effect would up the base (and the lash) by a decent amount. Not certain Fury + Soul Blade would work, but every other combo should be fine. Plus the Cipher spells feel kinda similar to a lot of the wiz stuff, so this might end up giving you more options spell wise also.