guildwriter

Assuming you're playing with Assassin/Wizard: I'd say plain Wizard is best. Unless you really want to RP. Empower is +5 PL which can be huge for spells. The unlimited resources are nice if you're prepared to babysit the Assassin but that sounds like it'd get old after awhile. YMMV. Arkymyr's Brilliant Departure is a unique spell that is acquired by finishing the Bekarna's Observatory quest or murdering Arkymyr for his grimoire. Confuses all targets on cast around the caster and then teleports the caster to a location and makes them invisible. It has some unique properties to it and it does not behave like either stealth or invisibility. Example: DoT damage breaks it, but casting non damaging affliction spells and buffs does not break the stealth. Stealth or invisibility does not break on DoT damage anymore. Arquebus is the preferred tool of the ranged assassin for maximum alpha strike and the reload instead of recovery. Effectively you can double shot out of stealth with no time inbetween shots aside from the animation time. Dragon's Dowry is the best, though I would keep a non lash weapon around because of the new immunity rules (a weapon with a elemental lash will count all of it's damage as that element, meaning that if the enemy is fire immune and you have a fire lash on your weapon, all damage will be resisted as it's all counted as "fire"). Bows are good too though so it all depends on what you want. I've solo'd a good chunk of PotD upscaled with an Assassin/Evoker so it's a combo that works well. The Accuracy and Pen bonus from stealth is really nice for spells.

No kind of stealth that assassin or skaen has access to breaks on DoT damage. What will break stealth or invisibility are spells that tick over time like chill fog or shining beacon. Every time a spell calculates a hit will cause stealth or invisibility to break. DoTs like the battle axe modal have already calculated their hit so they're fine. I wouldn't worry too much about +Poison PL. My testing has been that +Poison barely affects any abilities at all aside from actual Poisons, and usually not enough to justify the investment. I don't think Alchemy gives a PL bonus to any abilities now.

The only reason to invest any money in buying other ships is for achievements or personal satisfaction. I've beaten every enemy ship with the starting sloop and a set of Royal Bronzers and some minor ship upgrades from the Bardatto/Valera quest line. Make a trip to Sayuka or Port Maje and just buy tons of ale/rice wine and rice and you're set. It's so hard to get your crew to mutiny that you practically have to force it so don't worry about morale too much. Money gets a lot easier once you're past the midgame and the game just throws exceptional and superb trash gear at you. Also investing in some sneak and mechanics to steal unique gear helps a lot as well. If you feel like you want to hoard cash, just board every ship. Sinking nets you less items than boarding. High level ships are money pinatas. Enchanting though is a huge money sink. Keep in mind that certain fights and items in the game will give you free upgrades from exceptional->superb and superb->legendary.

Content wise he's one of the places where Obsidian really succeeded. The entire Fort Deadlight quest area is probably my favorite one in the entire game. I can say I get no small amount of pleasure when it comes time to make him into a buffet for seagulls.

There are only three selections when using spell shaping: smaller, normal, and larger. You don't get a PL bonus per meter shrunk or anything like that (that would be a little strong and give an outsized benefit to int).

I would consider building someone who does significant and consistent amounts of single target damage. You have a lot of group damage and control, so that's the only coverage I'd say is missing. It's not a massive deal though. Could convert the Skaen/Assassin into a Skaen/Streetfighter and have BDD and Salvation of Time along with a Death Godlike for extra hilarity. Druid doesn't benefit from Poison PLs so you can change out those pieces. Aciana's Tricorn or Helm of the White Void are good for +Accuracy as both influence either all spells or all spells that make Body/Mind affliction checks. Armor can be Aloth's for additional AoE range but there are plenty of options that could work here. For the Zealot consider using Oathbreakers as a crit backstab using a 2h battleaxe with the modal on does a LOT of damage over time. It's my other preferred option to the Chromoprismatic. Also consider a morningstar like The Willbreaker for the modal to make landing Fort checks easier. Then you can abuse CW with your wizard and blunderbuss cipher and things will melt. Or more consistently land Disintegration. Consider Wintertide Bulwark for the Unbroken Trickster as it provides a stacking deflection bonus and a freeze damage on miss chance (25%) along with graze to miss when afflicted. Akola's is great though so can't really go wrong there. Just some thoughts.

So assuming equal Might and Intellect for both classes: (I used a wiki for the attribute numbers, not sure if they are still correct) A SC Ancient Druid gets +2PL over the MC. That amounts to +10% Damage, +10% Duration, +1 Pen, and +2 Accuracy. A MC Ancient/Helwalker gets +10 Might and +10 Intellect. That amounts to +30% Damage, +50% duration, and +100% to Area of Effect size. If the MC can land the DoT and doesn't need to worry about Pen, their damage will blow the SC out of the water. The thing is that this is a narrow evaluation of the two classes and doesn't count other factors like other spells you might use or access to PL 8 and 9 for Druid which has some good stuff in there.

Feels like Obsidian is playing it too safe these days. A lot of the subclass design for the new DLC reminds me of the Deck of Many Things items: some interesting bonuses with hefty penalties that make the overall benefits situational but more often marginal at best. And I'm not saying that subclasses have to be a straight upgrade. More that the bonuses often are not strong enough to create an alternate attractive playstyle.

You're speaking my language brother. There's so much that could be done to enhance the stealth gameplay in this game. I tried to make dual dagger work on my Assassin/Skaen but it was just too painful. I've been trying to make Tactician/Assassin work but the implementation is super finicky and there are a lot of other issues. Like all high level rogues having slippery mind and thus being immune to distracted meaning the only way to flank them is with another person.

Part of the problem is any benefit they give to us will be mirrored as well on the NPC side as well. So if they increase backstab damage with level, enemy rogues will scale as well with backstab. As there are no stealth cancel or detection abilities, rogues would get super cancerous fast. Can you imagine what a full rogue fight all with shadowing beyond and eliminating blow would look like? Still I wish my backstabs didn't feel so damn ineffective.

As far as I know, yeah. Hopefully the DLC adds some interesting items like BoW. SSS items are pretty zzz. Items that enable new and creative approaches to the game without doing wildly OP things like recursive effects are best. There are a lot of abilities that should have scaling benefits. SSS is really showing the weaknesses of Assassin/Skaen right now. Bloated health pools, impossible to reset combat, enemies that magically know where you are and follow you despite being stealthed, and so on. With backstabs being so ineffective I need to resort to some really cheesy tactics to clear fights (drop gouging on everything using Dragon's Dowry and spam Withdraw scrolls).

As far as I can tell it seems like +Poison PL and Alchemy no longer affect Druid spells. So the Ancient +PL bonus is significant. Specifically because of the multiplicative esque effect the +PL bonus to damage offers. Which is especially important if you plan on going with a DoT build. Another thing to remember about Animist is that it does get more summon spells than other Druid classes as Summon Sporlings is a unique spell. There's also the giant growth esque spell, but honestly I feel like it needs a bit of a boost or at least some method of scaling with PL beyond duration. As far as solo I see the following classes as options: Tactician - You do have Sunbeam to cause mass flanked, but the issue is that the spell's range is tiny. And it's the only option. Brilliant Tactician is also slightly bugged. Also Refreshing Defenses will override Moonwell. So unlimited resources, but more than several downsides and difficult to pull off. Trickster - Mirrored will stack with Moonwell. Can get really high defenses esp. with sword and board. Limited resources but honestly that should be enough for most content as we have a lot of efficient DoTs. (Pernicious, Insect Swarm, Plague of Maggots, Venombloom, etc). Also covers the heal hole. Get Blackened or Plainated Plate and go for it or Gipon for the stacking Deflection and flanked immunity. Pretty sure we can either achieve the unhittable cap or tickle it under certain circumstances with this build. Goldpact or Woedican Paladin - So Armor stacking speaks for itself. Combined with the Woodskin or Form of the Demlegan, ranged enemies are going to cry (different types of armor bonuses so should stack) allowing you to use Spine of Thicket Green with the modal with impunity. Woedican Paladin is fun for this build as hitting afflicted targets as a Woedican Paladin heals them for a percentage of damage dealt. I'd say a larger issue for a solo Druid build is accuracy.

Question. Does immunity to flanked mean that you don't have to worry about your character being flanked? Meaning if I'm flanked through enemy positioning or have distracted but I have an item with immunity to flanked is Brilliant Tactician supposed to proc? Cause right now it seems like it doesn't work if you are technically flanked even if you are immune to flanked.

I will say I'm having a hell of a time getting Brilliant Tactician to proc. It seems like if you are immune to flanked through something like Gipon but are technically flanked because of enemy positioning or Distracted or some other perception affliction, then Brilliant Tactician doesn't proc. It doesn't feel like it's supposed to be intended but I can't be sure.

Yeah especially if you board high end ships and wipe them out you can get massive amounts of superb gear that can be sold en masse for 5 figures worth of gold (boarding gives more items to sell than sinking ships). Don't have exact numbers but it wasn't uncommon for me to have 200-300k+ once I started entering mid-late game level fights. If you don't spend money on ship combat related things that does leave a lot of money open for equipment upgrades.

Don't worry. Once you start fighting groups that drop superb gear you'll be drowning in money.

Gief Adra Ban.

Debonaire Hit to Crit Interesting Weapons List: Would be fun for Essence Interrupter. Charmed dude about to die? Transmogrify their soul into a new allied body! Magistrate's Cudgel will now instant kill lower level charmed enemies 100% Lord Darryln's Volgue has a guaranteed way to drop stacks now. Oathbreaker's Edge can setup Found Guilty for sure. Add Clear Out for hilarity. Glacierbane will always clear beneficials Seeker's Fang and be a Cipher to always be able to land the Focus based DoT. Not exhaustive but all interesting I think for their own reasons.

That does make some sense. Follows the same principle as Brilliant Escape as what counts as a stealth breaking hit and what doesn't.

I really want to see their code base now. This is beyond weird. That being said, I do remember when I tested with Dirty Fighting on my first Debonaire test he did convert on hit practically every time. But I wasn't sure if it was Dirty Fighting mucking up things (it was a low number of hits and ranged attacks only) so I got rid of it.

That's strange. I cast ringleader with a different cipher and then cast fireball on the group that got converted with a Debonaire/Wizard. Every charm broke but it was a mix of crit, hit, and graze (didn't count the dominated). I did see instances of conversion, but it was "[]" and didn't see the Debonaire tag at all. Maybe I'll give it another go around. I didn't take Dirty Fighting specifically to avoid that noise. Also them keeping the charmed effect is really strange. Every time I tested it the charm broke period on graze, hit, crit no matter what. Maybe they patched the beta since I last tested? I do know my Steam has been dling updates constantly ever since I switched on the beta.

Unsure if that's the case for the Spine as I think most +PL boosting has been nerfed down to +2 across the board. The reason why I'd use the pike is to have the pierce hole covered as well as having the +resto stat buff on the spine. Also Wicked Beast has some other abilities that I think could be useful and more offensive oriented than the staff. Also I like poking things. And being special because no one uses that weapon. It wouldn't surprise me if Poison didn't affect Pernicious, but it hasn't been uncommon for Obsidian to fail to keyword things correctly. One way or another I need to do a lot of testing to see what does or does not work. And I need to see if I can make Assassin/Tactician work for infinite restealth backstabs. Yes I like Assassins.

Circle of Protection will not work with Llengrath's Safeguard as both are active effects of the same type (+Defense to All). Kathrynn Vonn Kiliann the Cat sold in Serpent's Crown gives +1 Int, +5 will. +10 from the will save perk IIRC you need a Will of about 195 to resist arcane dampener. So those should easily put you over the top. Especially if you aren't counting +Resolve or +Int inspirations. I've been playing with an Ancient/Assassin build in my head that focuses on spreading DoTs everywhere. With the +2 to Beast PL from the Wicked Beast Pike and the +Poison PL from Grottos and Spider Silk and what not, it could be potent. Not sure if Pernicious is keyworded to Poison, will have to do some testing. Taste of the Hunt is also interesting as it behaves like a melee ability despite being a spell. By that I mean the DoT benefits from the damage bonus of the weapon. I've seen 75 damage over 15 seconds which pretty fast acting for a DoT. Can use the +Plant staff as well for Wall of Thorns and you have plenty of summons for meatshields that come from Plants and Beasts thanks to the special sporeling summon you get at level one. Can even super size them with the summon buff that you get. That being said from a solo perspective one of the big problems with a DoT focused build is that Paladin/Priest/Druid groups are complete and utter cancer. Especially at high levels. The VTC and Huana vengeance boarding fights are good examples of this. If they don't just spam LoH and other heals to negate your damage, they then cast Withdraw or Beetle Shell and soak it anyways. And that's ignoring the Circle of Protections and the Shields for the Faithful and 200+ Sunlance crits. The extra cherry on top is that all high level Paladin NPCs have Righteous Soul and thus have immunity to poison but it doesn't show on the tooltip. There's nothing quite as tilting as Toxic Striking someone and seeing the immunity message pop up. Theoretically though if you layer enough DoTs on everyone you can overload their healing. Problem is surviving to actually get the casts off without abusing things like Withdraw scrolls and the like. Will have to think on it some more. +3 PL to Plague of Insects is hard to ignore though. Combined with the new boost to Pernicious Cloud I can see this build wreaking Havoc. Will have to do some tests.

The "Bonnie and Clyde" duo practically writes itself if that worked. It really is a shame that it doesn't work that way.

Cowardice seems to get removed by anything with a green circle whether that's an animal companion or a summon. As far as I can tell pets do nothing. Tested the Hit to Crit bonus and here is what I found. Tested spell crits using Necrotic Lance and Fireball using a Debonair/Wizard and a Arcane Archer/Cipher As far as I can tell it only works on targets affected by Rougish Charm. Doesn't trigger off of targets affected by Ringleader. The Hit to Crit bonus doesn't work on spells that are targeted or AoE. Doesn't work on charmed or dominated targets either. Just doesn't apply period. Really going to have to disagree that the Hit to Crit (at least in this form) has any real merit. While it may be guaranteed, it requires a lot of setup and frankly most abilities it's not worth going through this much trouble to guarantee a crit. Especially when the ability in question can backfire. And it's Kith only remember. I feel more confident in saying this subclass needs some tuning. I think it has great flavor and fits the setting well. The mechanics are sub par though and I think it needs a second look. As it is right now the class is effectively a trap choice.