Shai Hulud

I've played seers quite a bit. They have the highest accuracy potential in the game and good defenses in most situations because of borrowed instinct. The build is different whether you want ranged or melee. Boar is probably the best pet regardless but isn't super important, pick what you like. Bear is also good and has higher armor than boar but less HP and doesn't regen health in combat. If you want melee then you should go stalker / soul blade. Important cipher spells are psychovampiric shield, borrowed instinct, and anything that buffs the pet like Pain Block and Echoing Shield. You don't need direct damage spells as much. You may want whispers of treason but isn't really needed. Mostly you cast psychovampiric shield and borrowed instinct and then beat things to death with a stick, casting soul annihilation to finish things off. For cipher passives, hammering thoughts and iron will are musts, also greater focus, and later the empty soul and echoing horror. Take lingering echoes if you have room. I'd pick starting stats something like 15/9/13/20/18/3 (mig/con/dex/per/int/res). You want borrowed instinct to last as long as possible, and you want psychovampiric shield and borrowed instinct to land as much as possible, hence max PER/INT. You can actually dump resolve because psychovampiric shield gives steadfast (+5 resolve), and borrowed instinct gives an additional +20 all defenses, but if you don't want to dump it you could do something more "balanced" like 12/10/10/20/18/8. You should still max PER and INT though because borrowed instinct is so good you want it up always, and psychovampiric shield is also extremely good and you get that one at level 4. And later you'll want pet buffs like pain block to last as long as possible so it can tank. Take draining whip so you can use soul annihilation more. On ranger side you mostly want +accuracy talents like marked prey and some pet buffs (vicious companion, resilient companion, protective companion, stalker's link if you have room for all those). Concussive Tranquilizer and Evasive roll are also quite useful. Later you'll want survival of the fittest, superior camouflage, uncanny luck, improved critical, and tough if you have room. If you want ranged build then can go either generic ranger / generic cipher or sharpshooter / generic cipher or either / ascendant. With this route you still want spells to buff the pet, but you have options about attacking, can focus on ranged weapon DPS or more on spellcasting (I prefer ranged weapon dps). In this case I'd pick stats something like 14/8/15/20/18/3. You *really* don't need resolve for a ranged seer and you don't need much CON but you don't want to get one-shot so I wouldn't drop it below 6. If you found this helpful I can give more detailed build suggestions if you like, with what to take at various levels, items etc., just tell me the direction you're going (melee/ranged, subclasses etc.)

BPM did improve barbarians and they make fantastic fighters in multiclass builds, like brutes, ravagers, and savages are all really, really good, but this is mostly because of some low to mid level passives (one stands alone, blooded, bloody slaughter, interrupting blows, threatening presence, bloodlust) and just two active abilities (blood storm and stalwart defiance). These abilities allow you to do tons of damage, interrupt on crits, and with potions of enlightenment and high INT and perception / hit to crit you can keep up blood storm and stalwart defiance throughout even the longest fights. The rest of the active abilities, while some are fun (heart of fury, yay!), are pretty superfluous and don't really add anything to the class's utility (besides maybe leap if you can't get a movement power from another class). The tier 8 and tier 9s are especially "meh" and going single class doesn't really add anything to the awesome tier 1 to 7 abilities besides power level, which isn't as important for the barbarian as say a monk. And 33% resource regen on kill is not nearly enough reason to go SC, particularly when you can just take corpse eater and get +3 rage per corpse (though I generally prefer generic barbarian). ---- Got a bit of a rant here. Was playtesting a savage (generic barbarian / generic ranger). Overall it is a ridiculously good build, can stack accuracy + defenses with ranger's beast claw (plus marked prey etc.) and stack damage, action speed, plus good healing with barbarian. Plus 50% interrupts on crit. Build had no problem with any megabosses (minus Hauni O Whe). Doesn't even need armor. Dorudugan was second hardest, but he goes down eventually if you can damage him fast enough while healing yourself. Anyway, I go on to fight HOW, naked because armor breaks stupid fast in that fight. I have like a 60+ roll adjustment against HOW's deflection (accuracy stacks, flanked, cap of the laughingstock) plus power of money, pes, uncanny luck etc. so I am a crit machine, and with savage hunter talent (nice improvement btw) can do decent damage even without full pen. But the pet is actually kind of a problem here because it means more symbiote procs. Killed HOW form but a massive ooze formed from symbiotes in the meantime. I kill the massive ooze and about 50 smaller ones that keep popping up. Then the two gigantic oozes, as soon as one gets to bloodied it starts merging of course, and I can crit these guys like 80% but I only interrupt half the time, either I missed the interrupt on both or one was out of range of the carnage because the bloody things insantly merged back into HOW. Hadn't really lost any resources though, blood storm only has to be cast once in this fight, so could have kept going if I had to but I rage quit. Might try it again later with a ghost heart / barbarian, or just stick the boar in the corner until there's just smaller oozes left. 50% interrupt on crit may not be good enough, even with carnage and maxed INT, which is kind of sad (would be nice if you could see the carnage effect area like in POE1). Howlers sound good theoretically (energized + carnage) but can't reliably crit things. Maybe a wildrhymer could do it with the constant energized...but wildrhymer will have more trouble with Dorudugan. Well, maybe not, that fight might be possible with legendary war bow + overdraw + energized, think that puts you at 18 pen, then use summons to protect myself. The main question is whether that can damage him fast enough. Possibly, with Sure-handed Ila. Would be easy without abydon challenge, just use essence interrupter. Also, I recently discovered generic legendary weapons aren't subject to abydon challenge for some reason. Armor breaks down unique or not, but the generic weapons seem fine. Fists are still often the best choice but when you need ranged the generic legendary war bows are nice. This rant does have a bit of a point. First, really like the barbarian improvements in BPM, though it could probably use a bit more. Second, Blood Storm sometimes gives way too much time for crits. Normally it gives about 3 seconds on a crit but occasionally far more. I haven't found out exactly what triggers it but I had like 20,000 seconds of Blood Storm after about 45m and just the one cast. I saw it jump by over a thousand at certain points. I think it is an interaction between interrupting blows and blood storm. Not really a problem from my POV not to have to cast Blood Storm as much but thought I'd mention it.

I haven't played priests much but I agree I always thought Minor Intercession was pretty weak as it is basically a weaker version of restore plus a super weak suppress affliction. I mean 5 seconds is enough for like one spell. Also the spellcaster classes have no resource regen besides blood mage. I find myself rarely wanting to play druid or priest for this reason. I guess compared to other classes they have more abilities so are more likely to get through fights without running out. --------------- Proposed paladin changes seem reasonable. But I thought light of pure zeal was fire / frost ? Are there any enemies immune to both? I have some additional thoughts and suggestions after reviewing and testing various abilities. Note my testing has been pretty limited compared to e.g. ranger so some of this could be off. Paladin IMO seems too limited in its "party support" role. Would be cool if some of the exhortations could be cast on oneself. Admittedly that part is biased from someone who likes to play solo. Moving on... First the subclasses, Darcozzi Paladini and Bleak Walkers seem especially weak, Kind Wayfarers also weak. Compared to Gilded Enmity or Steel Garrote's returned health on damage, adding a flame shield or some corrode damage to a "meh" ability is still very much "meh". Looking at some of the other abilities, Hands of Light and Greater Lay On Hands seem kind of expensive at 2 zeal. You just get 15s / 10s of courageous / robust respectively. There are very few single upgrade abilities that cost more than the original, I wonder why these are an exception? Even in paladin all the other ability upgrades cost the same amount. Like Hastening Exhortation to Hastening Command goes 15s nimble => 25s nimble, 25s strong, same price, which I know you changed but seems reasonable. Sacred Immolation => Sacred Sacrifice has quintuple duration for same price. I can't think of a good reason Hands of Light and Greater Lay on Hands cost twice as much, this doesn't happen with other heals like heal companion / hardy companion, savage defiance / savage courage, etc. Reinforcing Exhortation duration and especially upgrades seem a bit low at 10s. 15s seems more appropriate for L8 abilities. Glorious Beacon and upgrades duration seems low at 8s for 2 zeal. I mean chill fog lasts 15s and does damage (and is L1), sunbeam also L1 same duration but does damage. Liberating line seems good as is at 1 zeal with reasonable 15s durations. Reviving Line seems fine, ressurrection should be expensive. Hastening line seems good as is. Exalted Focus / Charge / Endurance. Charge upgrade (10% hit to graze) seems a little weak compared to the other two. Abjuration is something I'm never going to take, 3 zeal for single target damage limited to spirits and summons? Granted it destroys lower level spirits/summons but still, spirits and summons usually aren't enough of a problem to warrant spending 3+ zeal on them IMO. Providence seems too strong. At L20 you have typically anywhere from 9 to 16 zeal (possibly even more), giving you 3 to 5 full extra lives without zeal regeneration. My char has 14 with just paladin passives, crusted swordfish and adratic glow. If you're using a Potion of Enlightenment, you can die once every 90 seconds, sustainably (except for the injuries eventually killing you on high dificulties), kind of negating the downside of sacred sacrifice. Compare to fighter's unbreakable / unrelenting, which while free is one / encounter and gives you only 100 health (and some defensive bonuses). Providence seems like it should cost more or you don't come back with full health. Or per encounter like fighter. I do have one complaint where it could be improved though, the ability not removing injuries is really annoying and means you have to chug a ton of luminous adra potions or rest a lot. Sacred Immolation and upgrades, seem fine except when you can't use it because of things resistant to burn. Would be cooler if did like burn/slash or something, but I understand that doesn't really fit thematically. Also the self-damage doesn't show up in the log or above the character. Divine Immolation health upgrade doesn't scale with +health like every other ability. But the self-damage does scale with might and power level. Not sure what the justification for this is given the healing doesn't apply to the paladin. As you seem aware, Divine Retribution seems really busted in a party given summons count as allies. Just as example of said bustedness, if you have one or more chanters you could use divine immolation permanently, it lasts 26s with high int for 2 zeal, you could easily sustain that killing summons and probably have enough left over to heal yourself. Even not in a party charm of bones necklace is basically 10 free zeal per rest. And it isn't a very organic way to get zeal back since it forces you to artificially summon things and kill them or else kill your own party members which is generally not desirable. A better mechanic and one that fits more with the paladin's theme of immolating himself would be similar to what you suggest, zeal every x sec per health loss, though I think it should be tied to losing health, not merely being at low health, otherwise it is easy to make builds that lose some heatlh then sit around in back lines handing out endless exhortations and healing to the party. So it could be +1 zeal per X% of health lost (probably should be near 100 but just a guess) Light of Pure Zeal seems like it should target reflex. Nearly every fire/frost attack in the game targets reflex. All that said, the main thing I would like to see is hands of light / greater lay on hands reduced to 1 zeal and exhortations being self-targetable would be awesome though that is admittedly solo-biased. And I don't really like paladins much so these are just suggestions, won't endlessly debate like with ranger. ------------ I have lots of suggestions for barbarian also, let me know if/when you're ready to open that door.

You're right, the wanderer's marked prey never goes into effect. It shows me casting it, says it hits, additional effects etc., shows on Dorudugan's tooltip, but I don't get the bonus accuracy. The way I created the character was with OpenCharacterCreation then AddExperience 190000, but everything else is normal. I did notice some weird stuff regarding the pet, mostly just that a few abilities he already had (resilient companion, vicious companion, one other I think) but he seemed to work normally in combat. I didn't console in marked prey though, I chose it at character creation in OpenCharacterCreation. Also tried removing it and adding it and still didn't work. But I did the same thing with the SC ranger (picked marked prey at character creation) and it works for him. I guess I should go back to a save before I made the first ranger if I make any ranger / X ? Is there a better way to level up characters? OpenCharacterCreation looked pretty clean. Still, the whole reason I was even looking at the wanderer build was because I was messing around with the SC ranger (that's the one with hunter's fang not beast's claw) and the first time I tried, the hunter's fang bonuses didn't transfer to the bow, then I swapped to another melee weapon and they weren't there either but came back when I used Hunter's Fang again. When I was having trouble reproducing it I loaded the wanderer and that's when I noticed my marked prey issue, but later while testing the wanderer I did see the same thing happen with Beast's Claw, where it goes away on weapon switch and doesn't come back until you use Beast's Claw again. This Hunter's Fang / Beast's Claw issue is very hard to reproduce, though, and I have no idea why it happens some times but not others. Historically it has happened twice in about 30 minutes of testing. Next time I look into this I'll take some video so maybe I can figure that out.

Oh. I thought Sharpened Blade just removed the Corroded Blade and gave the sword normal penetration. If it does give +1 pen compared to other swords (i.e. sharpened blade gives +2pen to how you find it) then I agree that's a pretty good weapon. Also I like Bronlar's Phalanx. I knew you'd know, should have tagged you lol Now I want to go back to my phantoms build. Very interesting to stack engagement items and proc disengagement attacks with terrify.

Okay so there's two separate things. First, beast's claw doesn't stack with marked prey. I have the bear standing off doing nothing in case there was something with stalker's link (there isn't). After you cast marked prey, it shows up in the attack logs as marked prey until you land a beast's claw, then it shows two beast's claws like here. The marked prey bonus is still in effect, but it is mislabeled now. Once the real beast's claw gets to +20, the first one that is a mislabled marked prey disappears. Here you can see there is no marked prey but it shows in Dorudugan's tooltip So that's the first thing, beast's claw seems to replace marked prey once it gets maxed out, and recasting marked prey doesn't bring it back either. The second thing is switching weapons removing the beast's claw effect. This one I could not reproduce in about 10 minutes of trying. But I'm 99% sure I didn't imagine it earlier, so I'd wager there's something funky with the ability. May mess with it more later see if it happens again. Okay this is harder to show in a screenshot but I just loaded the single class ranger, started combat, cast marked prey, shadowed hunters, fired a couple arrows, switched to a generic legendary mace x 2, used hunter's fang, and it instantly went to +10, as you can see below if you squint through the log you see this is the first time I use hunter's fang. I then tried switching to the bow and it correctly shows as +2 from the second strike of hunter's fang hitting. I can't reproduce the issue I had earlier with beast's claw / hunter's fang not transitioning on weapon switch, and the order I did things this time, marked prey still shows up even when I get to +20. Very strange... Just to be sure I loaded the wanderer build again. I attacked several times with one weapon getting a few stacks of beast's claw, then switched to unarmed and it was gone but came back in the correct amount when I used beast's claw again. And when the stack got to 20 marked prey was gone again. Hmm. I may look into this more later but all I can really do is try various orders of doing things and seeing what happens. Definitely not working right though.

There were some excellent hunting bows in POE1 as Kaylon as said. Persistence and Stormcaller, but even Sagani's default Massuk Hunting Bow was interesting since it did pierce/crush. And after The White March with the durgan steel upgrades hunting bows becomes ridiculously good. But yes, hunting bows are still top tier in Deadfire. They have the highest single target DPS potential. And there are some really great ones like Essence Interrupter which does pierce/shock AND raises cannon fodder on kill. In fact I've been trying a ton of builds against Dorudugan solo POTD upscaled (like 40+ builds and counting) and Dorudugan heals so fast that most builds have no chance of defeating him. I've beaten him twice. Once was with a forbidden fist monk and it took me about 60,000 damage to kill him meaning he healed for 50ish. And the other was a devoted/troubadour sending out summons to take the hits while I used the hunting bow modal, Essence Interrupter, and Sure-handed Ila chant to shoot him to death. And that was much faster than the monk. Dorudugan only managed to heal about 10k in that fight. Red Hand is good but limited due to piercing subtype, might out-dps Essence Interrupter in some cases but I'd bet Essence Interrupter does better overall. FrostSeeker is probably better for fights with lots of enemies, but is still limited by doing pierce/slash, only get the freeze damage with the garland's tears. But I still prefer Essence Interrupter because of the summons on kill. War bows have better penetration but mythic Essence Interrupter with tenacious/energized and the crusted swordfish food just chews through enemies replacing them with friendly cannon fodder The -15 accuracy from the modal is not so bad. There are the build mitigations you've suggested (and more, below) but also it is much easier to stack ranged accuracy, damage, and pen with items compared to melee or spells Blackblade's Hood - 5% hit to crit Claim and Refusal - +10% damage High Harbinger's Robe - +10% damage, up to +20% action speed Ring of Prosperity's Fortune - +15% hit to crit Ring of the Marksman - +4 ranged acc, +1 pen Sash of Judgment - +10% damage vs hurt+ enemies Gauntlets of Accuracy - +3 accuracy Sky Dragon Wyrm - +10% damage with ranged, +3 accuracy/deflection/reflex vs distant enemies Some of these items make you a glass cannon, but that's the good thing about ranged builds, as you shouldn't be getting hit much My ranger with hunting bow modal was still shooting 153 accuracy without hunter's claw, and a ranger/devoted helps with accuracy, penetration, and survival, while a ranger/cipher has top tier accuracy and defenses from borrowed instinct. Ciphers also get hammering thoughts for +1 weapon penetration. Devoted/cipher and devoted/troubadour also add a lot of penetration and some accuracy (though not quite as much as ranger). And yeah I haven't tried it but a single class monk would probably be okay, especially in a party. Thunderous blows helps with penetration and razer's edge gives up to +10 accuracy, while enduring dance can give +12 while generating wounds for you. A ranged monk in back line would do tremendous damage. The main problem is generating wounds, I think you'd mostly be reliant on Enduring Dance. Nalpazca would help with generating wounds but helwalkers would do even more damage with the huge might bonus. Might even do okay solo if you can keep up dichotomous soul. The dance gives one wound per 3s, dichotomous soul has about 30s duration with decent INT, thunderous blows a bit less. It might be possible to keep those up with just the dance. Another benefit of monk is you can fall back on long pain fists for when none of pierce/slash/shock work. Not much is immune to crush. Throw in imagined pain and you've a viable build. I wonder if Resonant Touch works with bows. I think it does but haven't tried so unsure. SC monk is already so good with stuff like whispers on the wind and the huge pen bonus their fists get it never really occurred to me to build one for bows.

Excellent Still don't see what you really "lose" it is just a strategic choice whether you want healing then or more intuitive. But your proposal adds up to 90s also so I guess that's fine either way. I was testing Hunter's Fang and noticed the +accuracy and damage don't apply when you switch weapons. You have to attack with hunter's fang again and then the bonuses apply. This is a problem for ranged weapons since you can't use hunter's fang with a ranged weapon equipped. Basically the ability doesn't work in this ranged/melee hybrid scenario. Did some additional testing, while trying to stack as much accuracy as possible noted hunter's fang doesn't seem to stack with marked prey. Maybe that's on purpose but it does make the ability less appealing, particularly since it is reset end of encounter now. --- Also was looking back at rangers in POE1. Was my favorite class after barbarian. Both got nerfed pretty hard. But I saw for instance resilient companion and vicious companion were both nerfed. Resilient when from +3AR => +2AR, vicious went from +3pen =>+2 pen. Twinned Arrows went from an awesome modal to an ability. Had swift/vicious aim modals, both useful but especially swift. Defensive bond was stronger. Stalker's Link is the same but in POE1 only required one ability. Binding Roots lasted 30s instead of 20 and had longer range. Stunning Shots was amazing, went from a mid level ability that stuns on hit/crit to a high level ability that merely interrupts on crit. There were some things that were overpowered, but as often happens when a class is overpowered, it gets overcorrected in sequels. Hmm. I really want to do a POE1 ultimate run with a ranger now. Did one with barbarian. Ah, whatever happened to carnage?

I'm like 99% sure the primary weapon always attacks first on a quick switch. Personally I don't like the Gladiator Sword, does give you a deflection bonus but +5 is pretty meagre bonus to trade the extra damage you'd get from better weapons. Haven't used Whispers much but mostly because the game forces a rest when you create the sword. The offensive parry can be cool with some builds though the base damage of the sword is pretty low. I wonder if that procs on disengagement if you're wearing something that gives immune to disengatement attacks like Nomad's Brigandine...also, that would be a cool sword to use on a shattered pillar monk, cast instruments of pain and you'd get 5x length for the cone attack presumably. Yeah Concelhaut's Draining Touch is really good for Essential Phantoms but it targets will, which is even better because enemy will defenses are usually lower than fortitude. There's also the spell Concelhaut's Draining Missiles from Iron-Clasped Grimoire that siphons with raw damage missiles, and that one targets fortitude. Just had a cool thought with the phantoms, thought summon one with draining touch in main hand, kapana taga in off-hand with modal, but it doesn't seem to apply the modal. Oh wells. You might want to have slot 4 be a shield in the offhand so you can cast draining touch on that one and then essential phantom, that way the phantom has more deflection and always attacks with the draining touch weapon. Or leave off-hand empty for the bonus accuracy.

Dang, I had a whole theoretical build based on sending in exploding phantoms. Was gonna call it "Attack of the Clones!!!" The MC does pretty respectable damage with those items on knockout but we generally want the MC not to die, so it is sad the clones do far less damage. Thanks for looking into it though. Yeah I've found other ways to use items on the clones like vs. Huani O Whe if you have the Finality's Claim ring it reflects acid/disease/frost/wind 25% of the time so HOW does massive self-damage. This is especially true if you have multiple clones like monk with The Dichotomous Souls who I think do get the body items just not the weapons, though I mostly tested Essential Phantoms.

If you're running with 12 might and 8 con you might want it =/ I consider bear's fortitude pretty much obligatory even if I have decent might and con. Only one I usually skip is snake's reflexes because I tend to max perception and have high dex. Predator's Bond sounds good in theory but you have to be able to apply DOTs consistently and even then it isn't a 50% increase of total damage, it's 50% more damage of the base, applied on top of the 93% bonus damage (l20 tusks, bonded fury, vicious) for effectively 25% more damage. So if I'd normally do base damage like a stiletto (8 to 12), then a 10 roll becomes a 24 instead of a 19, and my 3 roll from earlier becomes a 4. If it didn't require the DOT I'd take it, but it's just kinda meh with that requirement. The ability was better in POE1 mostly because the hunting bow Persistence was easy to get and applied Wounding with every shot. ....Why? The long duration intuitive is the main reason to keep up Shadowed Hunters at 3 bond. I don't get what you mean by saying you waste 30s of intuitive? It starts whenever you leave stealth. What is wasted? True Love's Kiss is not an issue. You can already stealth stab megabosses with it. Or you can flee the battle with invisibility, come back, do some damage, flee, etc., with Berath's Challenge off. This is not some new strategy, and if someone wants to play the game in this horrible way, who cares? If anything you should decrease the invisibility duration since you lose it on attack. That is a better way to deal with the true love's kiss "issue" but really this is nothing and nobody is going to use this tactic because it is incredibly tedious compared to the tried and true cheese method of attacking from stealth with TLK. Could also just nerf that aspect of True Love's Kiss. I'm guessing you tried this and couldn't, because I don't know what legitimate reason you'd leave an infinite duration DOT otherwise. Look at the pros and cons of reducing the intuitive buff to 30s. The "pro" of blocking theoretical perma-invisibility is meaningless to nearly everyone and can be addressed through other means (shorter invisibility duration, nerfing TLK). But the con of not being able to keep up intuitive even with potions of enlightenment is pretty serious to this build. And yeah you could add something to "balance" but that doesn't really address the issue. In long fights you will run out of resources, so it doesn't really matter if the new Shadowed Hunters is super awesome once you've run out of bond, since you can't cast it. And with a 30s duration and 3 bond, you will run out in the fights that really matter. I tried to explain this before but apparently wasn't very clear. Being able to maintain a moderate strength buff is much much better than not being able to maintain a super awesome buff. Maybe Bonded Fury can regenerate enough resource to keep it up, but you have to keep the pet alive, and to keep the pet alive, you have to spam heal companion, which at 12s duration costs a lot of bond. And even spamming heal companion there are fights where the pet can get one-shot and without bond regen you won't be able to keep up Shadowed Hunters at 10s / bond. And all this brings me back to the point of "Hmm, ranger/cipher or ranger/troubadour is looking way better than straight ranger" My 2 cents...please leave Shadowed Hunters as is for now. Wow that is really easy but not obvious at all, thanks. Agree. +20% damage is in effect going to be less than a 10% damage boost on any well-built ranger, since it is applied to base damage not total.

I guess one of the things that makes rangers hard to test is how opaque the pets are, like you can't see their armor type or attack speed and apparently some dual-wield and others don't. I couldn't even tell the damage type was pierce/slash. And yeah I was keeping up bonded fury during testing so the boar had vicious and tenacious with the 14 pen. Didn't have merciless or predator's sense but they wouldn't have procced much on Dorudugan anyway. That's another thing though, you have to take SO MANY pet talents to make it just sort of viable that it's usually better to skip them. Lot of builds don't take any of the talents. I like vicious and resilient, but typically don't have space for much else since I consider stalker's link important and that takes two, plus all the abilities I want for the ranger and the generic utility stuff like bear's fortitude. Eh, swift being redundant with Maia and ghost heart...there are lots of redundant abilities but sometimes you still want them. That said swift isn't a huge thing to me so...meh. Robust isn't redundant though since it stacks with other heals. Your buff of heal companion is actually enough to keep the pet alive in most situations though, so I'm relatively satisfied. I was pushing for more healing on bonded fury mostly because that one is available to single class only whereas heal companion isn't. I guess I'm mostly satisfied with these proposed buffs and that's as much as one person can ask. Items my ranger was wearing: high harbinger's robes, mythic essence interrupter, ring of the marksman, ring of prosperity's fortune, rekvu's cloak, gauntlets of accuracy, upright captain's belt, footprints of ahu taka, charm of bones, blackblade's hood. I find this type of super high DPS build optimal for ranger. If the enemy is getting to your back line you've done something wrong so don't really need armor. I'm still skeptical I can't make a 2x legendary stiletto rogue that will outdamage a pet (even a lion) quite a bit but I'll let it be for now Monastic unarmed training for everyone is much appreciated! --- Edit: I still haven't figured out to separate quotes like you did. Probably something simple, but idk how to attribute using the quote tag so I either attribute a big quote or have a bunch of manually separated non-attributed quotes

Ah, so you're wanting a spellcaster that can also tank. I tend to build mage/martial hybrids the other way, mostly casting a few buffs and then whacking things with a stick, vs whacking things with a stick then casting damage / CC spells. I didn't realize the modals could be insta-switched like that. I mean it makes sense, but for some reason the animation on the modal refreshes every time you switch weapons (like turning it off to on) so I assumed it was actually cycling it off/on, but I checked and with quick switch you can in fact insta switch with the modals active which is pretty cool. Your concept of quick switching to debuff fort/reflex/will is good, should be pretty effective and net you effective +25 accuracy when landing crucial spells You probably want a club too, Kapana Taga is the best, does crush/slash and has good melee enchants (+engagement, flanking immunity etc.), and the club modal does -25 will. Or you can stick with a morning star, the willbreaker morning star is really good for debuffs, -3 will on hit stacks 5 times, plus the fortitude debuff modal. But if you're doing black jacket might as well have dedicated club for when you need to quickly debuff will. In that case saru sichr may be preferable. You can get it early and it does a lot of corrode DOT. And I guess yeah sun and moon is pretty dang good for this purpose of debuffing reflex and acting as a stat stick. I tend to prefer Sungrazer or Ball and Chain for the on-crit effects but if you're mostly casting hard to beat sun and moon. I made a black jacket / blood mage with stats 8/14/15/19/18/3, if you don't want to dump resolve that much something like 8/11/13/19/18/8 would also work. Maxing dex isn't as big a concern because you can cast deleterious alacrity for a long lasting action speed boost (about 90s with the first stats). And we don't care a ton for resolve because of llengrath's safeguard and fighter bonuses helping out. Probably want at least some CON so can blood sacrifice, but with hylea's bounty and tough you can have a decent health pool even with middling CON. There are very likely some cool weapon interactions of which I'm unaware. My knowledge in this area is kinda limited. Ones I do know: Bardatto's Luxury's Death and Taxes Hardy inspiration is easily procced on ally unconsciousness and has a long duration. You can proc it with essential/substantial phantoms also, switch to the mace and kill them at near death for the hardy inspiration which lasts around 2 minutes with high int Also you might want one weapon slot with scordeo's edge and/or scordeo's trophy so you can open with that and get some -recovery time (or if lucky proc blade cascade and extend with wall of draining) Griffin's Blade is really nice as a stat stick also. Can dual wield that in the offhand and get +10% damage with spells / 5 will or +10% action speed / 5 reflex, plus steadfast on 50% health once per encounter, in main hand use flail/club. Can dual wield it in multiple slots using "copy" function (little white square in top right of weapon icon). My go to setup would probably be slot 1: sun and moon + griffin's blade (for debuffs and casting) slot 2: kapana taga + griffin's blade (for debuffs and casting) slot 3: saru sichr or willbreaker (for debuffs and damage) slot 4: scordeo's edge + scordeo's trophy or bardatto's luxury or whatever (for buffs and damage) Or if you want to be tankier lethandria's devotion is a really nice medium shield that helps healing also. The large shield Akola's Apex Ward is super good but you have to hunt down a huana vegeance ship (wheneena eel's kiss) to get it, which requires tanking your rep with the huana really early (simplest way is kill everyone in takano's estate then hit the ocean), but it is top tier shield for making you tankier without sacrificing much accuracy due to blood rage effect (+10 accuracy on bloodied). hope this helps

Cool list. Just skimmed, but a few things, you probably skipped some of these intentionally since there are so many weapon effects chromoprismatic QS - elemental induction and entropy shield High Harbinger's Robe also gives +10% damage taken Griffin's Blade is +10% action speed lord darryn's voulge - 10% chance lightning strikes on hit amra - 25% frenzy on kill rannig's wrath - redoublement +1 pen 5s on crit, retreat+10 deflection 5s when crit sash of judgment - +10% damage dealt and taken (against hurt+ enemies or self) furrante's breastplate - +15% self damage taken sanguine greatsword - blood gift, greater blood gift + health on crit shea's war staff - 15% hit to crit with weapons serpent crown +10 accuracy, -10% recovery for 5s when crit slayer's claw - upgrades might inspirations on receiving inspiration (or on weapon switch) There's also the category of -armor recovery (-recovery but only applies towards armor penalty) armored grace abraham pet etc.

One-handing does not give a bonus accuracy to spells. Why black jacket? Black jacket can be interesting with very specific weapons you want to use for some effect and then instantly go back to your damage weapon. I guess that's what you're getting at? For instance I like using Essence Interrupter on enemies about to die to spawn summons, then switch to whatever. Can use Grave Calling to kill vessels. My knowledge of the various weapons is not that extensive unfortunately. I think a devoted / blood mage specialty pike would probably be better overall, but it depends what you're trying to do I guess. Sun and Moon is overrated IMO. Stat priority for a battlemage should be per => int => dex => mig => con => res IMO. I would have con around 10, might 8, and dump res and max the other three. Blood mage has enough defensive buffs dumping res doesn't hurt too much. For something a bit more balanced, can keep might con res all in 8 to 12 range, max per and int, put whatever is left in dex.

Sorry for my flippant tone in my last couple posts. I spent A LOT of time thinking about, testing, and writing out feedback and I got a little frustrated. So I took a break from checking this thread. I agree with @theleeregarding Swift, and I don't think Ishiza being immune to engagement is much of an argument here. Not sure why you nixed Robust for Bonded Fury, at some point you were considering Swift/Energized/Robust. Disagree with thelee that my proposed Bonded Fury is too strong, certainly not the inspirations part. It does make Bonded Fury a must-take talent, but it is going to be like that anyway for the resource regen, and you get four picks for Tier 8 abilities, so I don't see the problem. My only other comment here that I haven't already beaten to death is that pet damages are in fact pretty bad compared to the ranger and really any character. Pet base accuracy is 103 at L20. With Marked Prey and Bonded Fury it is 118. My ranger I'm testing with a mythic hunting bow has accuracy 133, and with marked prey, stalkers link, and various items that jumps to 158. 163 with Swift Hunters. This difference of 40/45 means the ranger will graze/hit/crit vs miss/graze/hit vastly more often. The boar penetration is okay at 14 (with vicious) but the damage type is piercing which is overall the worst in the game. A mixed damage type would help a lot in output. Not sure about damage type for all the others, haven't tested all the pets. Ranger has similar penetration with hunting bows but has mixed damage types. The damage roll is also much lower with the pet. Base damage is quite a bit lower (how much depends on weapon, but even with hunting bow the boar base damage is lower), and the modifiers are lower. With bonded fury, vicious, and 60% tusk scaling my boar gets +93% damage with normal pen, which isn't bad but my base 12 might ranger has +137% damage. So combining the lower base and lower modifiers the end result is pretty low. Ranger also benefits from items like hit to crit with power of money, blackblade hood etc Attack speed is also worse. Hard to tell exactly, but the boar seems to attack about once per 4 to 5 seconds (if it's really fast like a stiletto, then 3.5, but I've tried timing and seems more like 4.5). My 15 dex ranger attacks once per 2.4 seconds with hunting bow modal, once per 3.3 without. If we have dex inspirations or things like Sure-handed ila being chanted the difference is higher. There is no way an endgame rogue dual-wielding legendary stilettos does similar damage. Rogue gets dirty fighting, sneak attacks, death blows etc. But even ignoring that, dual-wielding stilettos with two-weapon-fighting I get one attack per 1.7s with base dex 15 and blackblade's hood (what I was wearing anyway). Plus higher accuracy and damage modifiers hit to crit etc. I think the base character should do a lot more damage than the pet (4 times as much seems fine), but in practice it is much higher, like 10x+ except in the easiest fights. In the toughest fights the difference is extreme. Vs Dorudugan for instance I'm getting 3 damage on a hit with the pet and 60ish on a hit with the ranger, and since the ranger hits/crits more and attacks faster the damage output is more like 50x higher. And given the pet will die vs Dorudugan, ranger/pet ratio shifts even higher. This is an extreme scenario since the pet always underpens vs Dorudugan, but it is not so uncommon that tougher enemies have high pierce AR, and bows have pierce/slash or pierce/shock etc. so ranger has some options to do better pen, or switch to melee weapons and so forth. Pet DPS may look okay on paper but you add up all these little differences in practice and it's really bad. Worse than even one chanter summon usually. To me the problem can be summed up like this: Pets don't have enough combat utility to justify risking them in fights where they're likely to die. So one can solve this problem by making using them less risky and/or improving their combat utility to justify said risks. Preferably both. --------------- By the way, I've mentioned this before but pet (actual pet) party wide buffs don't work on a lot of the pets for summons or animal companion, like animancy cat doesn't give the bonuses to many summons, and sky dragon wyrm doesn't give any of the bonuses to the boar. Oh and how much armor malus do pets get? Not sure why they have any honestly since they don't wear armor.

Of course it's his mod and he can do what he wants. Just don't present arbitrary decisions as logical when it suits, right? Personally I'm kind of tired of repeating what to me seem very obvious points just to see them ignored and misconstrued. But I never said either of those strawmen. First, for a given role there exists at least one alternative multiclass that is better at that role than the single class ranger. Therefore little reason to pick single class ranger. So the clas should be improved. And I've given many suggestions to improve it. Second, I think bonded fury with the proposed changes at 1 bond is stronger than it needs to be. Not "completely unbalanced".

Totally missing the point, bypassing the meat of the post, and I actually said blood sacrifice has a health cost so why are you pointing that out like it is enlightening? The recovery time of bonded fury is probably the least significant thing I mentioned but since it is the only point you've addressed-- There are many abilities you can click mindlessly, via scripting. It doesn't detract from the gaming experience that you'd always want them up. That you think it is "mindless" to activate a 60s net resource ability when it ends but "not mindless" to activate a 60s net resource ability with a 3s recovery on cast is just absurd. It is going to be mindless and scriptable either way and you are just trying to rationalize costless resource gain. You apparently saw some reason to remove the recovery from bonded fury and shadowed hunters. Now you're reversing on bonded fury cuz logic but not shadowed hunters cuz reasons. I think no recovery makes more sense for these types of abilities regardless of original implementation but whether they have it or not is ultimately quite arbitrary, and I'm sure you'll do what you want regardless.

@Elric Galad I'll try to explain better why pet needs better durability and healing. 1) It is very hard to keep up both shadowed hunter and bonded fury and more important the pet can't tank while invisible so shadowed hunters while a nice ability is not a substitute here 2) Not the most important issue, but the most obvious, thematically ranger class is both the ranger and the pet, and the class distinguishes itself from others more when the pet can actually stay alive and be useful in combat, which is why I also suggested buffing other combat abilities for the pet (level scaling the L1 pet talents, giving the pet tier 3 inspirations with bonded fury, could possibly give accuracy / pen bonuses on pet abilities etc) 3) Ranger has no defensive abilities or healing abilities besides shadowed hunter (use of which depends on pet being alive), and you usually don't want to stick him in heavy armor, so it is important to keep enemies away from the ranger. Having a pet that can actually engage enemies without dying allows the ranger to do his thing with maximum bonuses. 4) Ranger loses a huge number of bonuses and abilities if the pet dies, which it usually will in boss fights. This is REALLY, REALLY BAD, even with vengeful grief. And despite what you've said even in well-built parties the pet WILL die in some engagements if used in combat (e.g., Dorudugan can one-shot him). Things you lose if this happens bonded grief: -10 accuracy, -2 might, -2 resolve stalker's link: -10 accuracy distraction training: effective -10 accuracy against affected enemies for your entire party shadowed hunter: lose intuitive, plus this ability is the ONLY way the ranger can heal besides potions/scrolls marksman: -5 accuracy if you can't maintain 4m+ distance, which is much easier with pet alive pet abilities: most important is takedown combo, but also furious call etc stalker bonus: -1AR, -5 deflection hearth orlan: lose minor threat for -10 hit to crit (applies mostly to solo) multiclass abilities: lose many MC abilities that require an ally, e.g. seer echoing shield, tactical meld (applies mostly to solo) Indirect attribute losses: If the pet is dead, the ranger needs to compensate stats in his build that could otherwise be dumped. A ranged ranger can have stats like 11/7/18/18/18/3, because we don't expect to be hit much, but with pet dead we want higher resolve and con so you don't die instantly, meaning you may have to sacrifice accuracy, attack speed, and/or ability duration Basically the ranger tends to fall apart when the pet dies, and the effect is worse the higher the difficulty / challenges / fewer companions. Not proposing the pet be an invulnerable tank but it needs some help so it doesn't get killed so much from 1 to 3 hits. Stated all tier 3 more for simplicity, but courageous isn't useless. Tested some against Dorudugan and boar gets interrupted even with resolute, and prones are quite bad. Brilliant is useless but not as if it is harmful. Somewhat disagree about intuitive, since keeping up shadowed hunters and bonded fury both might not be possible given the large bond cost. But I'd be happy with like energized/robust/swift/aware/resolute/acute I was just guessing on the X% bond on crit. Though with high INT bonded fury does last 60+ seconds, and most pets attack roughly once per 5 seconds, so on average would return 1ish bond (less with misses). How much bond do you want returned? 2 is too much since the ability costs 2. 1 seems reasonable, so my guess was a bit too low after accounting for misses, but adjust it to whatever returns on average 1 bond IMO. On hit/crit rather than crit is fine, doesn't really matter as long as the expected value of bond regeneration is the same. What I don't like - costing 1 bond with your proposed rate of bond regen makes SC ranger an infinite bond class, which is OP. I did some testing with Dorudugan to get conservative hit/crit rates for the pet. At L20, base boar accuracy is 103. With bonded fury and marked prey (don't think stalker's link applies to pet, though it should IMO), boar has accuracy 118. Dorudugan has deflection 147 on POTD upscaled. So the attack roll has a -29 adjustment. You hit on a 79+ and graze on a 54 with half grazes converted to hits. P(graze) = P(not miss) - P(hit+)= (1-.54) - (1-.79) = .46 - .21 = .25, P(hit+) = .21+.25*.5 = .335 So with aware or intuitive the boar hits/crits Dorudugan with probability .335. If the boar attacks 12 times over the shadowed fury duration (roughly one attack per 5 seconds, 60 seconds), and returns bond with probability .3 on hit/crit, then the boar returns 12*.3*.335 = 1.2 bond This is against DORUDUGAN. And he still returns more bond than the ability costs. I also don't like having tier 2 inspirations on the pet which are quite weak. I would prefer the effects of Bonded Fury be stronger (tier 3 inspirations or at least tier 3 physical inspirations) so it isn't just a resource farming thing. This is more impactful than making the ability cheaper IMO. Yes, there is an easy solution here in not making Bonded Fury provide more bond than it costs. Be realistic, this ability is going to be used constantly if it provides net resource gain. While I don't see this in itself as a problem, since there are many abilities so good we want them up always (e.g. cipher's borrowed instinct), having a recovery or not is not going to make any difference in how often the player uses it. Blood Sacrifice (in vanilla) costs no resources and has no recovery. There may be others. Not really the point though as I don't think Bonded Fury should cost 0 bond effective. You can remove the recovery. You have in fact done so. And yes there are buffs that require activation time, but there are more that do not, particularly with martial abilities like this (frenzy, disciplined strikes, every wizard martial buff, etc.). It makes more sense that these types of abilities with very short animation have no recovery time. It does have a cast time of .5, it isn't zero. There are many many wizard buffs with a cast time of .4 and no recovery, and other martial buffs with instant cast and no recovery. The cast of .5 is appropriate, 0 recovery is appropriate. Net bond gain without cost (unlike blood sacrifice which has large costs to health) isn't, and it won't be balanced by adding a 3s recovery. Fair enough, and...fair enough, I should have said *additional*. Although Tier 9s are harder picks than Tier 8 since you only get 3. Shadowed Hunters is also pretty expensive, particularly if we almost always have up Bonded Fury. I'm just thinking of things to incentivize using the pet in combat and make certain abilities better. Having a 15% pet damage returned to ranger (and pet?) would be a cool addition to Bonded Fury IMO. Yeah it benefits melee rangers more but even ranged ones get hit. And it wouldn't be so strong healing that the ranger could tank. You could alternatively attach it to Shadowed Hunters or maybe Distraction Training but thematically seems to go better with bonded fury. I've spoken enough about why to buff pet healing and combat (e.g. level scaling with resilient/vicious companion). And admittedly this does benefit solo more than a party with tanks, but it does benefit both, and there is no reason you can't buff the pet and buff bond regen and damages etc.? They're hardly exclusive. Basically this is a very large improvement to the class in solo, a major improvement for parties with 1 or no tanks, and a minor improvement for parties with multiple tanks. Even in parties with tanks, though, using the pet for combat is useful for the accuracy buff it provides the ranger. Fair enough, though it is the nature of things you'll get more (and usually better) input from fanatics like me who've played thousands of hours experimenting with many builds. Yeah I could have been more clear here, and admittedly this is a bit of a tangent. I was generalizing about the cost of attack abilities vs buff/healing abilities. Heart Seeker isn't the best example since you made its debuff permanent. My point was using resources on abilities that give passive buffs is usually preferable to spending the resources on attack abilities. E.g. with potion of enlightenment, for a barbarian we can keep up stalwart defiance or we can use the roars (not both). Can also look at Shadowed Hunters, which provides moderate healing, invisibility to take potions, escape engagement etc., plus intuitive for a really long time (120s with high INT). Much, much better than three twinned arrows or one whirling strikes. In general I'd rather spend bond on something like this that provides huge buffs while allowing attacks for two minutes vs one big attack. Heart Seeker may be the most powerful attack of the game, it may even be an exception to this rule, just saying with enemies that require 10000+ damage dealt (or solo sometimes vastly more) sustaining buffs for normal attacks is higher priority than using special attacks. And you may sometimes have enough bond to use Heart Seeker and sustain buffs but it is a risk in long fights relying on potions of enlightenment (or worse, not having it) where you may run out of bond trying to sustain passives where if you used heart seeker first you have 4 less max bond (probably 5 after marked prey which is pretty much obligatory). Heart Seeker could be an exception I haven't tested it enough to see if the -30% max health is worth starting a long fight with 4 less bond. Well I'm trying to give suggestions on how to make SC ranger better. In general, and this is in theme with my previous paragraph, making attack abilities better is going to be much less impactful than making buff abilities better. The changes you made to shadowed hunter for example are far more impactful than the change to twinned arrows. Why I'm focusing mostly on Bonded Fury. Shadowed Hunters is good as is except would be nice if it could be decoupled from pet being alive. Could reduce Shadowed Hunters to 2 bond, though I think 3 is fine given the long duration. To summarize: My proposal for Bonded Fury: Cast .5s, 0 recovery, Energized, Robust, Swift, Intuitive, Courageous, Acute, 15% of pet damage returned as health to ranger (and pet?), 30% bond return on pet hit/crit for 30s, cost 2 bond (if cost 1 bond need to adjust bond return downwards) (Can remove or reduce Intuitive/Courageous/Acute if they bother you so much, first three are most important, though harder to crit for interrupts without intuitive) And (but less important than above) some kind of power level adjustment for pet abilities. I don't know enough about how it scales to be real helpful, but like have better damage scaling at high level with Vicious/Merciless Companion, and more armor and/or health for Resilient Companion, as is the pet can be one-shot by some enemies which is problematic And Hardy Companion => provide 10+ health per 3s for 15s, hardy for 15s (this one may be a lost cause, but one can hope) Stalker's Link => accuracy bonus applies to pet also

Nice compilation but I thought this stuff was known. I've played a howler a decent amount. Wasn't using Wahai Poroga. Does bad damage and breaks in like 5 seconds. In vanilla this tactic is pretty good just using fists, but blood thirst was kinda nerfed in BPM, or it is bugged, not sure, but I don't always get zero recovery after proccing it. Usually I don't actually. Most of the time blood thirst seems to do nothing. In theory you can chant the skellies as a berserker / troubadour, attack skellies, then attack enemy (or just hit enemy with carnage attacks), use offensive invocations on enemies without recovery, etc. And berserker can maintain massive healing in BPM with potions of enlightenment. Wear voidward with a moon godlike to cut the health damage by half. You can keep up blood storm and stalwart defiance with max INT. But due to blood thirst not working right and the build being pretty goofy I eventually just abandoned it. Amra is also a good weapon to use on skellies because you'll always crit triggering the 33% carnage effect, also always kill due to higher base damage and 1/4 kills you trigger Frenzy without the deflection penalty, not too hard to keep up.

Sorry for delayed response. Looks like I missed a lot of discussion, can't address everything said but have a few comments. First I like the idea of buffing heal companion to more like savage defiance, though since this is a low level pick it does nothing to address making SC rangers preferable, which is why I think you need a better healing buff on Bonded Fury. Like could do hardy companion => robust companion and add more healing on bonded fury, alternatively hardy companion gives heal 10+health per 3s for 15s, hardy, and bonded fury gives robust for stacking. Have you tried changing Bonded Fury to give all tier 3 inspirations? Then playtested it a bit? I think that would be enough to make SC ranger competitive. And it sounds overpowered because "all tier 3" but it's on the pet so it really isn't. It will still be worse at combat than any properly built character including companions by a ward margin, and keeping it up requires most of your bond. I'm honestly not that familiar with most of the SC bond regeneration, though I know distraction training doesn't really work as is. And I'm pretty sure adding pet on-crit resource regen will not work in the encounters you need it to work without intuitive. So here is a proposal for bonded fury 2 bond, gives all tier 3 inspirations for 30 seconds, 50% chance return bond on pet crit Keep it .5s cast, 0 recovery. If you add recovery you are really going in the wrong direction with SC ranger. Besides, it is a passive buff, not like an attack ability, doesn't make sense to have a recovery. The 50% chance is just an educated guess, would have to playtest it. But the on-crit bond return is really only going to work with intuitive except in easy encounters. Intuitive + Energized will give the pet some combat utility so it can do some interrupts, swift some mobility, and robust some tankiness. It still won't do a lot of damage but it will be useful at least. Alternatively the on-hit/crit seems all right. I think making the pet better at combat is what can make SC ranger something you'd actually want to pick, as the pet is really the identifying hallmark for the ranger. Or if you don't like robust since it isn't stackable, 2 bond, gives intuitive, energized, swift, brilliant, courageous, hardy, +10 (or more) health per 3s for 30s, 50% chance return bond on pet crit I don't think having Bonded Fury pseudo-mandatory is that big a deal. You basically get four L8 picks (2 at 16, 1 at 17, 1 at 18) and there are five L8 choices. And I'd think most builds probably wouldn't pick both twinned shots and whirling strikes. Or if they wanted to, less pet-focused builds could skip Vengeful Grief (or Great Souls). I like the Vengeful Grief 25% action speed buff, though could just make it an enhanced fury on pet death which is similar effect and matches the description of the ability better (fury with tenacious / nimble or whatever) Having some kind of healing available to the ranger himself would also be cool, not strictly necessary but could make melee rangers better. Like add to bonded fury a "ranger receives 15% of pet damage dealt as healing". -------------------- I know you think I'm basing all these suggestions on solo play but I'm not. Solo is what initially made me notice how bad SC ranger is compared to MC, but the same holds in parties, and I've played with parties quite a lot, though recently more focused on solo. The SC shortcomings just aren't as noticeable in parties because you have other characters to pick up the slack. But the fact a build can do okay in parties doesn't mean anything by itself. I could make the worst build possible and it would still do okay in well-built parties because if this is a game where some classes can solo (and it is), then you really only need one truly well-built party member and the rest can just stand there getting murdered. I know that's an extreme comparison but you probably get my point. For role comparison, I did mention a ranged crit build centered on stunning shots for CC is the only real reason to consider a SC ranger. Though even a ranged CC build has good (better imo) alternatives like ranger / monk (instruments of pain, stunning surge) or ranger / chanter, ranger / cipher, both of which don't have this specific method of single target CC but have arguably better ones available like mental binding, thunder rolled like waves on black seas etc., in addition to other resources like better healing, summons, etc. For ranged DPS, ranger/cipher is better, ranger/chanter (sure-handed ila + energized + summons), probably also ranger / rogue and ranger / fighter For melee striker, ranger/cipher is better, ranger/barbarian is better, ranger/fighter, ranger/wizard, ranger/monk, probably ranger/priest and ranger/rogue (haven't played rogues that much outside of parties) For offtank, ranger/cipher, ranger/fighter, ranger/barbarian, ranger/paladin, ranger/monk, ranger/wizard, ranger/priest all better For tank, no combinations are ideal but same listed above are better Parties or solo, there is presently very little reason to pick a SC ranger over something else. And I didn't even mention the combinations without ranger, like SC monk, monk/fighter, monk/barbarian which are way better at striker, offtank, and tank roles, or devoted/troubadour which is better at ranged dps. (And I may be arguably off on some specific comparison because I haven't played every single one of these, not the point, the point being there is virtually always a better choice) -------------- And I know you like Heart Seeker, and *maybe* in a party that is a good enough reason to have a SC ranger, at least in encounters where enemies heal a lot, but generally I think you are better suited by something else. My perspective is this: anything that requires 4 bond is just going to be really expensive in the hard encounters (megabosses, DLC bosses) where you will run out of resources very quickly if you use the active abilities, hence active abilities becomes less important than things like stacking accuracy to hit with normal attacks or stacking deflection and healing to tank or CCing the enemy. Potions of enlightenment address resource loss somewhat, so that you can still use *some* abilities that require limited resources, but I've found you can sustain at most one 12s/bond duration ability (with max INT and INT inspiration). You can sustain multiple abilites in some cases if the durations are longer and/or there is resource return or ability to extend the ability (like blood storm on crit). Generally it is much better to use your resources on long duration passive abilities you can sustain (like hardy companion / bonded fury / shadowed hunters, or swift flurry with monk, or blood storm + stalwart defiance for barb) than using on twinned arrows or whirling strikers or whatever. This probably isn't true in easy encounters, but it is the hardest encounters that function as gates for builds and therefore it is important to make sure a build has a chance of surviving the toughest encounters, moreso than how it performs fighting mooks.

Bonded Fury costs an appropriate amount of bond for its duration. It just needs to be *stronger*. Changing it to 1 bond and doing nothing else...I'm still skipping it. Seriously, you could give the pet ALL tier 3 inspirations and it will still be much worse at combat than any companion. But the ability would be worth taking because some of the tier 3 inspirations improve survivability and utility of the pet (robust, swift, energized) where the tier 2s really don't. Sure, nimble is fun but how many disengagement attacks can a pet take? The point of buffing SC ranger is to make it attractive vs. multiclassing for a given role (striker, offtank, ranged dps, etc.), right? If you want I can explain why and how any given role is better suited by a multiclassed ranger than SC. The SC pet is too dependent on resources from other classes to fulfill its role. You have basically said as much. You wouldn't need to spam moonwell and nature's balm on a seer, and the seer has many other regenerating abilities far better than L8+ ranger abilities. And I don't know what difficulty or circumstance you were playing with the druid, but a single class ranger's pet cannot both engage in combat and survive a large number of encounters on high difficulties without dedicated healing from other characters, and generally the pet is not worth expending those resources, so you often end up keeping the pet out of combat, making it more of a burden than a class feature. Who cares what the class resource is called? They're just themed words picked after switching all class resources to per-encounter from POE1. But if you really think the name "bond" is that significant, maybe "bonded fury" should apply to both ranger and pet? (Actually that would be OP but maybe you see my point of attaching too much emphasis on names) The problem with attaching resource regen to the pet is the pet sucks in combat and dies faster than everything else. If the pet's combat abilities or survival are significantly improved then it's fine. But whatever method is chosen to proc bond regen, it has to actually work...like distraction training requires enemies to attack the pet and miss, so the pet needs to tank (and be missed, despite its bad deflection) for bond regen. By comparison fighter's discipline regen works well because fighters have the tools to take damage and survive. Wall of flashing steel works well because rogue can crit. Having specific ability on-crit resource return is also a good idea, particularly for twinned arrows and whirling blades. Even at 1 bond twinned arrows isn't worth using in tough encounters that require many thousands of damage dealt. It was a modal in POE1 and wasn't particularly broken. Given heart seeker is permanent I suppose it makes sense to switch it to per encounter. The thing I keep hammering and that is more important than any other consideration is changing one of the abilities to give the pet robust (hardy companion or bonded fury) over 15s per bond, or a similar (or better) level of healing over that duration. That change by itself makes SC Ranger much more viable on high difficulties because so many buffs and abilities depend on pet survival.

If you're confident you'll almost always be within 7m of the pet then no. But 7m isn't a large distance and even with a melee build you may sometimes want to use ranged weapons, or if you have a party you may sometimes have the pet near other characters while you're meleeing enemies somewhere else. Basically there is a bit less micromanagement and more flexibility with generic, but yeah stalker is better if you always stay close to the pet.

Agree with most of this. Bonded Fury sounds strong on paper and if applied to the Ranger it would be great, but the pet is so bad at combat that giving him tier 2 inspirations is not enough to meaningfully change anything. Pet still has fairly low AR with Hardy. Concentration barely matters so who cares about resolute. Nimble is very meh since you want the pet to tank usually vs running around and it isn't immune to engagement anyway. Aware is okay but shadowed hunter intuitive overrides, acute is meaningless, and even with tenacious pet penetration is not good enough to do damage. The pet inspirations that would make the biggest difference are robust (by far) then maybe energized (could make pet useful in combat for slight interrupt procs assuming it can crit things and not die), then swift so you can quickly move it around to block enemies. Intuitive also okay but shadowed hunter is probably a better ability. Brilliant and courageous aren't important for pet. Honestly you could give the pet all tier 3 inspirations and I think it wouldn't be unbalanced because you're making a bad-at-combat pet less bad at combat but still much worse than your companions. Keeping the pet alive is critical for many useful Ranger abilities (takedown combo, shadowed hunter, etc.) and passives, plus the resource regen from distraction training, plus just the functionality of letting the pet tank. I do agree a lot of the abilities cost too much bond to want to use so some kind of bond regen would be very useful, maybe like 15% on crit bond return. Putting the resource regen on bonded fury is problematic because it only works if you can keep the pet alive which you probably can't in tough encounters. Another thought is a damage to health ability for SC rangers like bleak walkers have, could add this to bonded fury. But buffing the pet is the most essential aspect to buffing the Ranger. Which is why a seer is much better than a SC Ranger. The seer can keep the pet alive with pain block and gets to keep all the Ranger bonus accuracy buffs. SC Ranger needs a way to keep the pet alive. I think changing hardy companion to robust companion would be sufficient, but if you wanted this to be something available to SC rangers only, then altering l8 Bonded Fury to all tier 3s would probably be the best choice (or at least hardy => robust). Vengeful grief has a very steep price in activating it so it would make more sense to provide stronger buffs (but not so strong you'd prefer the pet dead). Something like adding a frenzy effect in addition to tenacious and nimble (makes more sense with description saying the Ranger is enraged). So you lose a lot of accuracy and abilities but gain attack speed, movement, damage (and lose some deflection). If vengeful grief were made very strong it would be better as a long duration but not permanent buff IMO. SC needs some things so you don't automatically want to multiclass. Comlare to what you gain through various MC and try to compensate with L8+ abilities. For example MC to fighter gives unbending + more accuracy buffs, MC to cipher gives pain block, pain link, more accuracy and defense, much better tanking with tactical meld, etc. MC to priest helps keep pet alive plus lots of buffs. Really every multiclass option provides big benefits to either the Ranger or pet (usually both) at very little cost. The easiest way to make SC attractive would be buffing bonded fury and vengeful grief as I've outlined, so bonded fury gives at least robust and some resource regen, and vengeful grief so losing the pet isn't as catastrophic. Shadowed Hunter is good as is except not being able to use it if pet dies which can be addressed by making it easier to keep the pet alive and/or not making casting contingent on the pet being alive. I haven't used twinned arrows or whirling strikes that much, mostly because they're expensive in battles that last a long time (most tough encounters), so they could benefit a lot by returning some bond on crit (like stunning surge or gambit) Stunning shots seems fine and is one of the only real reasons you might prefer a SC Ranger vs MC on very specific builds (ranged crit), melee builds would do better with Ranger / barbarian for interrupt on crit much cheaper, plus frenzy stalwart defiance etc. A final thought about pet survivability is adding an ability that auto revives the pet with full health and buffs say once / encounter like fighters unbreakable To summarize 1) Increase survivability for the pet with at minimum a robust inspiration on bonded fury 2) Decrease costs of losing the pet by buffing vengeful grief 3) Add bond renewal mechanisms not dependent on pet (on crit seems most appropriate for ranger) to make active abilities more attractive Edit: also, not sure how the power level scaling works for the pet but possibly could the low level abilities like resilient companion be scaled to give a lot more armor (or pen or damage) at high levels? Particularly l8 and l9 to make SC more attractive

Belranga is easy period but yeah. That build looks really really broken but fun. WOTW not as spammable BPM (9 wounds) but if imagined pain procs that much could still be spammed a lot in battles with many enemies (like belranga). Getting that flail is a little out of the way but probably doable. Seems like this would work best on a shattered pillar though since WOTW doesn't proc wounds (besides the imagined pain). I haven't tried a shattered pillar, maybe the threshold is too low. Well HOW was indeed pretty easy with the Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak. I did remove the WOTW nerf though. Would be quite a bit harder requiring 9 wounds since the massive black oozes start merging on hurt and the lower ones immediately. But possibly doable. Also trashed my armor but that doesn't really matter. Don't heal fast enough to do this whole fight naked I don't think. Would be very easy with transcendent though. Ring of Finality's Claim + Summon Duplicates and HOW does a lot of self-damage. Could actually do it from stealth but would take a while. Then when health gets low, bam, disintegrate. But...I think transcendent has more trouble with Dorudugan than SC monk with HOW. Besides soul annihilation the cipher spells are mostly useless vs Dorudugan since he has high defenses and 50 resolve, so it is very hard to keep up borrowed defenses or psychovampiric shield. This game with BPM in general is much easier with tanky builds just punching things...because the "unbalanced" things like wall of draining and blood sacrifice were nerfed to hell, and fighters/barbarians massively buffed. Monk was slightly nerfed in certain abilities (WOTW, dichotomous soul cost more wounds) but also transcendent suffering reworked (or might be like this in vanilla, not sure) so at PL9 FF has +32 accuracy and +180% damage, and at PL10 it is like +37 / +195% damage, with penetration 16.8, 18.8 with tenacious, 20.8 with tenacious and crusted swordfish. And you can get PL10 pretty easily, just need two of nature's godlike, crusted swordfish, or power surge from stone of power. FF in particular seems way better than other monks since FF attack gets +50% damage from curse and +55% damage from monk power level, oh, and it heals you while generating wounds. But blood sacrifice was apparently unbalanced enough to need a 6 second -100% healing debuff and 3 second recovery... FF attack is just so so much better than mythic weapons, there is no weapon that even comes close to that outside of some weird interactions like scordeo + flail you mentioned, and hardly anything is immune to crushing ---edit just read all that about getting PL20 (or higher with bellower), sounds nuts. I couldn't get it over 10 but I didn't try a lot of those things. Imagine you'd need strand of favor to keep it that high though.