Jojobobo

I doubt it, I think a solo Rogue will struggle quite a lot by not going defensive or at least overly stealthy. Rogues have no real innate CC, thin defences and low health so I think they're best built as tank characters with higher damage than your average tank for solo rather than going for high damage. On most solo builds, it's also hard end game to not justify the use of Looped Rope.

I wouldn't be playing Pillars if solo play wasn't viable, as I massively lean to playing games solo as a route for extra challenge, but you're right people shouldn't complain that the game doesn't cater for solo play - but I haven't heard anyone complaining about that in a long while. I think the difficulty is fine currently as it is, as for party play you can run greater risk-reward strategies than you can on solo play - in that way I think it's balanced as I don't believe most people want to be playing a game where to manage the highest difficulty every character has to be a tank. The great equaliser as always is Trail of Iron. If PotD Expert with a party isn't enough of a challenge, then ToI helps to rebalance as you can't easily make a single mistake. Expert PotD is balanced because it's not intended to be the highest difficulty, Expert PotD ToI is - and I don't think many people would call that not difficult enough. If someone isn't happy about using ToI to up the difficulty in party play, then that seems more or less as arbitrary as a small number of solo players complaining about things being too difficult for them. I also think it's important to appreciate that one person's difficulty preferences are not representative of the player base as a whole. The game is always going to be too easy for someone, even solo Expert PotD ToI Upscaled, but it would be wrong for a dev to market their difficulty settings at that 0.1% of their fanbase.

I do solo, PotD, Expert and no re-specing (re-specing wasn't included in the base game so I choose to ignore it). I thought about trying for Ironman at some point, but I think you'd have to play so cautiously that it wouldn't feel rewarding for me personally.

According to MaxQuest's great thread on it, the recovery is based on the main hand weapon for a full attack - which is why it's best to have a speed enchantment on your main hand if you're full-attacking frequently (see heading "Full Attack Action").

Cheers! Yeah I'm pretty confident it'll work fine, I'm just about to plough through most of Act III and WM Pt I now, but overall I'm pleased with the results so far. I think I might take Envenomed Strike over Deep Pockets, as I haven't really got the lore to do too much with scrolls anyway and Llengrath's Safeguard can probably take some of the slack from Scrolls of Defence. That'll give the build some more punchiness, with the Defences it's really not hard to run straight to casters to take them out as disengagement attacks don't do a lot.

For more on the WIP, something I've noticed with the build that the Will defence is a bit of a let down in terms of keeping Wizard's Double up, for a Wizard there is simply no good way to spell buff it solo like there is for Fortitude and Reflex (using Citzal's Martial Power and Llengrath's Displaced Image), and high end food buffs are costly or limited (Dragon Meat stuff and Mind Grubs). So, I set about trying to pump Will high while giving myself good defences in Deflection/Reflex/Fortitude too as a standard defensive mode, without using any really pretty late game items (Maegfolc Skull, Iron Circle, Viettro's Formal Footware or Mantle of the Excavator - though with the latter two I think you can get them much earlier in WM pt II than the former). I will say all of these defences are easily increased further with Llengrath's Safeguard, which automatically activates when you cast it under half health (which you can fish for by holding off on your buffing and gradually wracking up damage - especially with use of Iron Skin to give you fine control of the magnitude of the beating you're getting) to give you an extremely sizeable +20 to each defence - making you practically untouchable. Here's what I came up with: Deflection 10 Base + 10 (20 base Resolve) + 3 (3 Resolve from Company Captain's Cap) + 1 (1 Resolve from Berath's Boon) + 25 (Superb Little Savior) + 6 (Weapon and Shield Style) + 5 (Superior Deflection) + 20 (Boatswain's Uniform) + 45 (level 16) = 125 Then either + 25 from Llengrath's Displaced Image for 150, or if you can maintain it + 40 from Wizard's Double for 165. Reflex 20 Base - 4 (8 base Dexterity) - 2 (9 base Perception) + 4 (2 Dexterity Company Captain's Cap) + 6 (3 Per Lilith's Shawl) + 2 (1 Per Song of the Heavens) + 25 (Superb Little Savior) + 6 (Weapon and Shield Style) + 10 (Snake's Reflexes) + 9 (Ring of Protection) + 45 (level 16) + 16 (8 Dexterity Citzal's Martial Power) + 20 (Llengrath's Displaced Image) = 157 Fortitude 20 Base + 6 (13 base Might) + 8 (14 base Con) + 6 (3 Might Pensiavi mes Rèi) + 2 (1 Might Gift from the Machine) + 4 (2 Con Company Captain's Cap) + 5 (Little Savior) + 10 (Bear's Fortitude) + 9 (Ring of Protection) + 45 (level 16) + 32 (8 Might + Con Citzal's Martial Power) = 147 Will 20 Base + 20 (20 base Resolve) + 8 (14 base Intellect) + 6 (3 Resolve Company Captain's Cap) + 2 (1 Resolve Berath's Boon) + 14 (2 Intellect, 10 Will Noble's Stay resting bonus) + 5 (Little Savior) + 10 (Bull's Will) + 20 (Boatswain's Uniform) + 45 (level 16) = 150 This provides Deflection/Reflex/Fortitude/Will of 165/157/147/150 as standard - with Fortitude buffable into the 150 range with Wit Der Jerky/prostitute resting bonuses/acquisition of better items (Siege Breaker Gauntlets/Iron Circle/Garodh's Chorus and taking Mantle of the Excavator as your neck slot), keeping the build rock solid through tricky areas like Abbey of the Fallen Moon. As mentioned with Llengrath's Safeguard active you can hit 185/177/167/170 easily, making you effectively unassailable for encounters where you use it also (and later making practically immune to status with the Looped Rope), and forgoing the need for Scroll of Defense spam. Noble's Stay lasts for two rests, so while it necessitates a little more back-tracking than a Caed Nua bonus it's not near as bad as lasting for one rest like the Golden Whale. If you're using two Citzal's Martial Power per tough encounter (and you have 4 casts), that means 4 tough encounters with Noble's Stay active factoring a single rest. Also, having played with Drawn in Spring now, it is very nice for the build, playing well into the tank angle by allowing you to outlast your enemies. Hopefully someone is still enjoying these updates, I thought people would enjoy seeing a build develop over time rather than it being dropped out as a finished product. It's sometimes nice to track how and why some changes were made in a final build.

This is awesome. If they make something approaching Fallout or Arcanum in terms of sheer awesomeness, I'll be extremely happy.

So after my minor tantrum when I thought the build would be entirely bugged more or less, I thought I'd update this WIP it seems like the bug is (currently) entirely isolated to Flesh Constructs. That's certainly something I can live with, I'm sure there'll be more examples of weird auto-hitting attacks but for the most part they seem absent in the game. I guess I shouldn't be so frustrated, but this is the worst game I've played out of a laundry list of extremely buggy games where bugs have interfered with me completing the game (usually as is the case for Pillars, they have broken the difficulty in some way). I'm not entirely sure why Divine Mark seemed to dispel it once, nothing else seemed to be responsible for the dispel (no other hits in the combat log) and yet on future Divine Marks they haven't been a problem - a truly random bug I guess. Something I have noticed is with the Company Captain's Cap you can dispel it yourself given the Cap's current bug of targeting you with Confuse - a very mild annoyance but fortunately pretty rare. Anyway... onto more of the current meat of the WIP rather than bitching/moaning. I've come to realise it's pretty important to retain items in the mid-game that ward against certain effects - e.g. I just bought the Hand and Key after having sold it in a hope to better maintain my defences against the Fampyr Charm effect in level 8 of the Endless Paths (bearing in mind that Rings of Deflection and Protection still give you good defences, and you benefit more from defence against specific status attacks in order to keep your Wizard's Double intact for longer). While the Looped Rope will eventually have more or less all your bases covered, it's a long time before you get it so it's best to keep a lot of stuff with you. Further, while the Helmsman's Uniform is used to bolster Fortitude as the standard armor on the build, you can flit between the other pirate armor as a need arises (for example principally most encounters only target Reflex and Deflection primarily, so going to the other pirate armor to gain more Reflex is situationally a better option). Lastly Llengrath's Safeguard + Llengrath's Displaced Image essentially provide massive defences. While late game you'll want Wizard's Double plus a Scroll of Defence for +60 Deflection, most of the game you'll be running around with +40 from per encounter Wizard's Double. In encounters that are a little tougher and you anticipate keeping Wizard's Double up will be a problem, Llengrath's Safeguard + Displaced Image achieve 45 (yes you have to be below 50% Endurance for Safeguard to proc, but once it does you're extremely hard to hit with massive DR so it's not a problem), and this can be used throughout the game to prevent you relying on Scrolls of Defence. Depending on the encounter, I'm usually keeping Wizard's Double up either for a full fight with mainly Deflection/Reflex targeting groups, or half a fight otherwise - but you can cast it again if you really feel a need (most of the time I'm spamming Eldritch Aim and Chillfog). I will say Ironskin is very powerful on the build (with it taking 10 hits or crits, rather than just 1 for Wizard's Double), and I haven't had it dispel on me yet. The extra DR with the high defences really make you pretty hard to take down. The build is still sorely missing Drawn in Spring (there's been fights against Trolls where they won't deal me more than 20 Endurance in a fight, but because the Might and Accuracy of the build isn't top tier they'll take 5 minutes or so to take down without using your other spells), but at least I'm too far away now. That primarily, and Looped Rope secondarily (a lot of enemies that target a non-Deflection/Reflex defence are usually doing so to inflict a status) will really kick the build up a notch I feel. It'll probably be a while before another WIP post, I'll probably only update on significant boss encounters, acquiring more of the signature equipment, or if the build does seem to be more buggy than first thought (jury's still a little out on that one, but more than likely stupid auto-hitting bugs are a rarity).

Ugh, as another update it looks like Wizard's Double may be bugged so that some misses targeting other defences can break it (I've reported it with a corroborating screenshot). If it's a far-reaching bug than the USP of the build is thoroughly down the toilet, so I'll keep my eyes peeled - hopefully it's an oddly specific problem bug that usually isn't the case. It seems like I've barely played this game and not encountered some sort of specific bug which has made me give up on a build, having run into the Fire Godlike permanent Battle-Forged DR bug early, then the Bash bug on a Barbarian where it would trigger several times through Carnage, then the Confident Aim bug when Fighters were doing a stack more damage then they should have been, and now probably this. If Deadfire doesn't shape up in this regard I'll probably boycott future Obsidian games. It's a bit of a slap around the face to still feel like a beta tester this late on after a game's release, having wasted something like 80+ hours on playthroughs that I've ended prematurely because of issues exactly like this. EDIT: AoEs of spells targeting other defences seem to behave normally (no Wizard's Double dispel on miss/graze, dispel on hit/crit). Hopefully something about how Flesh Construct Knock Downs are put together accounts for this bug (some part of it is auto-hitting and isn't mentioned in the combat log), and it is a very specific issue. If I see it elsewhere I'll mention it in this thread and where I've bug reported. EDIT 2: Divine Mark also dispels on a graze. EDIT 3: Or seemingly it doesn't, I'm really not sure anymore.

Wizard's Double is supposedly broken by hits or crits targeting any defence, but below is a screen shot of it breaking on a Fortitude graze (EDIT: And on a miss too, see below). As it's an extremely early Wizard spell and has been in the game since v1.0, it's pretty bad that something on this fundamental level could have been bugged for so long. I'll update with more instances of the bug as I find them, hopefully it's a weird fluke. You can see from the combat log Wizard's Double was cast and then it has been dispelled (with neither the physical Double visible nor the symbol next to the character portrait). Update. This happens on a Fortitude miss too, making the spell largely worthless if this is broadly applicable. There's zero chance of a graze against Deflection on that part of the Knock Down, so literally nothing in this instance should have broken Wizard's Double. EDIT: Seems to work fine on at least some AoEs (spider web AoEs that target Fort don't dispel Wizard's Double on miss/graze, but will on hit/crit). Here's to hoping this is an extremely isolated issue. EDIT 2: Divine Mark also procs the bug. My guess would be these spells have an auto-hit component somewhere along the line. This isn't great as it makes several WIzard spells that are dispelled by a hit or gradually dispelled (Iron Skin, Mirrored Image) quite a lot less effective. Image below:

Expanding on my WIP, just got per encounter Wizard's Double and... it's good! Currently at level 9 with it active I'm hitting 140 Deflection. I just went through Teir Nowneth, and comparing it to a Dargul's accuracy we get (I love that the roll is high and it's still a miss): This 83 deficit means that the Dargul has a 2% chance to graze me, and a 98% chance to miss. The Dargul scored a lucky paralysis against me (I think they roll against Reflex), and what I then got was: Even while paralysed, he only had a 7% chance to hit me, 3.5% if I'd had Llengrath's Displaced Image active - and he didn't manage it. To put it another way for emphasis: with one of the worst possible Deflection debuffs in the entire game, an enemy still didn't succeed in hitting me. A huge advantage of it being per encounter is also that now I'm free to use the infamous Eldritch Aim + Combusting Wounds + Chillfog + Essential Phantom + Arcane Assault combo to shear through enemies, all the while with huge Deflection. Other combos I've been using to great effect are Eldritch Aim + Curse of the Blackened Sight + Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer Torrent of Flame, as well as Eldritch Aim + Curse of the Blackened Sight + Deleterious Alacrity of Motion + Firebrand. With the latter, the Blind accuracy drop means I can still maintain Wizard's Double easily enough while pounding away with Eldritch Aim Firebrand on their sucky debuffed Deflection. While (as has been stated a lot) a hit against any defence can disable Wizard's Double, as of next level (level 10) I'll have at least 100 in each defence and 140+ Deflection. When you couple this to accuracy debuffs like Curse of the Blackened Sight and Ryngrim's Enervating Terror, scoring a hit against these defences really isn't that trivial, and even if they do break Wizard's Double once then it's easy to spare another level 1 cast to try for another. With regards to Confident Aim converting Grazes into Hits, while I've experienced this once or twice it's important to remember if I have even 50 Deflection in excess of Accuracy then the fighter will still only have a 35% chance to Graze and so a 7% chance to hit - close to 1/20 grazes resulting in a hit. If my Deflection excess is even higher, this chance for Graze to Hit conversion dries up pretty rapidly. Before getting Wizard's Double per encounter, I'll say using it Act I with high Deflection is a godsend. Phantoms could not stun-lock me, as they weren't hitting often enough to get their stuns in, and when they did their durations were short with the high Fortitude from the Helmsman's Uniform. Using Eldritch Aim + Curse of the Blackened Sight + Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer Torrent of Flame, the Caed Nua throne room was easy - no need for any Stealth. While Act II isn't the best barometer for difficulty, so far the build seems to be fairing extremely well. It's worth remembering that there's a fair few sections of the game that are melee heavy with few spellcasters, so I think giving enemies this much trouble to even manage a hit is pretty ridiculous. I think when I pick up Drawn in Spring (which I'll probably try for pretty soon) the build will start to become much more of a monster, as after dropping a load of spells on enemies' heads the Wounding lash should polish off the rest pretty easily.

Literally any effect used on the character in the hat has a chance to Confuse the caster (whether it's you - in which case the hat eventually makes you immune - or your party). In all likeliness it's a bug, but possibly they wanted to balance the cost of the hefty mixed attribute bonuses the hat gives. I guess it's a little weird seeing as there's no "cost" for using the rather beastly belt. I find Confuse a little annoying anyway, as somehow it seems to heal enemies a little when it's used for reasons I'm not sure about. When casting Confuse it's okay as the blanket effect is well worth it as a distraction, but a 10% chance to Confuse an enemy is usually a little more trouble than it's worth. Even if they don't fix the hat, it's good early game (particularly with something like Hermit's Hat to make your primary buffer immune to Confuse) however maybe it should be sold off towards late game.

It unlocks fine on my end, possibly try a different form of ranged damage other than bow fire (e.g. spell damage).

Yeah it definitely works like that. The trouble is, receiving crits to trigger Shod-in-Faith Consecrated Grounfs doesn't fit well with a defensive build. I guess currently it would be a way to shore up a low-defence class'defences (e.g. a Wild Orlan Barbarian), but it's also something that would be fairly natural to patch out if they were going to.

Sounds good! I'm playing that tanky WIzard currently so I won't be able to solo something like this concurrently, but if anyone else wanted to run with the idea have at it! Speaking of the items, one weird interaction I've noticed is that the bug that allows the Company Captain's Cap to target the player with Confuse (even which the hat itself makes the player immune to Confuse) will trigger a Wild Orlan's Defiant Resolve. Not really overpowered or ridiculous in anyway (and likely something Obsidian will patch out sooner or later) but for the time being it's pretty neat when it occasionally does happen.

Yeah it is only on the secondary rolls, it just had it dispelled by a Reflex targeting bolt from a Will-O-Wisp. Still, not having to worry about secondary rolls is something - a lot of enemies seem to have attacks target Deflection and then have an annoying secondary effect that targets a difference defence, so it's definitely a plus that these don't break Wizard's Double.

How recently has it been tested that Wizard's Double is dispelled by other attack rolls (i.e. those targeting Reflex/Fort/Will)? Because I got hit by the Prone vs. Fortitude part of a wolf attack and Wizard's Double didn't get dispelled. I suppose it could be because it's a roll on top of a roll (the wolf needs to at least graze for the Prone part to proc), and not an attack which is primarily targeting a non-Deflection defence. I'll find out through play I guess whether other rolls dispell it, but it's at least good to know that rolls from other rolls (all the Rogue strikes, that sort of thing) don't appear to break it on hits/crits.

With this build currently I've not taken on Magran's Faithful - I've only just started! I prefer with solo builds to play the entire game, as if the build can't progress at any point then it's a little meaningless whether or not they can do one of the high end encounters anyway. It's naturally a bit of a time waste to warp there through console and spawn all the items too when you know sooner or later you'll deal with it during a playthrough. I did do it with the Chanter, all dragons and bounties solo PotD. It was problematic as the Chanter's starting Deflection was low (when you start Blinding people it's not so much of a problem, but that initial point was rough), but with the high Dex it wasn't hard to very fast cast defensive buffs and dropping a figurine let it take the aggro while I got better positioning. When I had the group down to a single melee guy, I just kited him and let Dragon Thrashed do its job.

Well nothing is perfect, and at some point you have to draw a line in the sand and move on as a developer. I'm now happy enough for the game to be left as it is (even if some of the 3.07 items don't work properly) because it feels mostly there. I was extremely annoyed when the devs were looking to not bother fixing Confident Aim for Fighters, as it was more or less on the critical path in terms of taking an ability for a Fighter (there would be only two other options at level 3 - and it was certainly one of the better options). Fortunately after enough bitching and moaning, Obsidian saw sense - but as a player it's not very pleasant to have to cajole a game's company into that situation. Dragon Thrashed definitely needs a nerf - I smashed through PotD solo with a Chanter that had defences way lower (and I mean way lower) than was recommended just because I was regularly blinding people to optimise Dragon Thrashed. However, it also meant I could PotD solo the game only using guns, which was extremely cool so I'm not so sure! Certainly for party play, it's a little much. Personally, I think it was a bit silly for them to introduce items into the game in 3.07 that weren't properly tested. There's certain items that must be notoriously overused (Shod-in-Faith for example) that would have shown in a minute or two there was a problem with something like the Company Captain's Cap. It made what should have been a slam dunk for Obsidian (supporting a game way the point that's obligatory, which is great) into something that is now quite bitter-sweet - and overall I'm sure they could have avoided these mistakes.

Thanks for that spot, you've saved me a lot of misery if I had got to the stage of taking the Talent (given my no respec-ing rule). I'll definitely take Deep Pockets now over Cautious Attack. While it's a bit of a shame I can't hit some of the nice round numbers that I was originally desiring (180 Deflection for example), as the Deflection is tending towards the extreme end of what is possible in the first place, in doesn't matter too much (apart from upsetting my adoration of nice round numbers). I'll make an edit at the top of the OP to read the discussion, as I'm not going to keep the OP updated if I'm going to make a class build (hopefully and eventually). I will say first of all the difference between Llengrath's Displaced Image and Wizard's Double is only 15 Deflection (both stipulated as per encounter). So, before addressing anything else, I thought I'd make specific mention that if Wizard's Double does go down it really isn't the end of the world. If Wizard's Double can be on around half of the time during play (which I really think it has a good chance to be, if not way more so, but I don't to give way to rampant conjecture) then that's good enough for me. I'm fully aware of the graze to hit conversion and flanking. Graze to hit conversion is unavoidable, however the build has per encounter Fleet Feet - so I'm really not worried about Flanking when positioning to minimise this for the game's most notorious encounters is already well established and I doubt most mobs will easily get past the defences. Additionally, per encounter I'll have 4 or 5 separate opportunities to cast Wizard's Double if I use my per rest uses (and depending on whether I need my Fleet Feet - bearing in mind I can achieve similar through Survival rest bonuses based on the needs of a particular encounter), so even if it falters once or twice I can just cast it again (and it's extremely fast cast). I wasn't aware of the Forge Guardian's having auto-hit retaliation (I would have thought enemy auto-hit retaliation would have been patched out of the game when player auto-retaliation was), but even so that's one encounter in a crap load. With regards to Magran's Faithful, I've solo-ed the game PotD Expert before so I think I'd be able to manage them again (even if Dragon Thrashed and Blinding people was immensely powerful and the reason for my success). Besides, beyond Drawn in Spring tanking Wizards do happen to have other offensive spells you know The whole point of making an unusual build is having a weird hypothesis and then testing it. I realise that Wizard's Double can fail quite easily if you don't prepare, but naturally the idea here is to assess when all other defences are very high to what extent can it be maintained and help a Wizard have naturally higher defences in excess of other classes. I think that's an interesting question to ask.

I think it's a little crazy that Long Pain does so much damage. Caedebald's Blackbow only does slightly more damage, and it's a 8th level Wizard spell. I think if the devs were to go with one last rebalance of the game (which I doubt they will now), they should really nerf monks. They're so strong (with their Wound lashes applying to so many Retaliation effects to a ridiculous degree) that to an extent you could consider all other classes a little irrelevant. From what I'm reading for the PoE2 multiclass system, it seems like Shattered Pillar or Hellwalker monks are pretty big deal for multiclassing - so it seems like their mechanics still haven't quite got the right spin on them (it is of course in beta still though, so maybe it'll get worked out).

Quite possibly, however I'm dithering as always do with builds! For one thing, I like my builds to be geared towards solo play, and even with only being able to be grazed by that Raedric's Hold guard I still only just survived at level 3 after a few tries (on the restarted character, naturally) - so less CON would make that scenario pretty grim. I think it's pretty important for the build to be able to handle the stealth route of Raedric's Keep on day 4 on the month (something like 6 days in I think), because it nets you both Gloves of Manipulation and Boots and Stealth. Boots of Stealth as I'm sure you know let you tackle Caed Nua at 3 Stealth investment, which is the only way this build can hit the third stage Survival accuracy bonuses. I guess you could level up even higher and then just wait until the fourth day of the following month - but no one wants to meta-game to that extent! I will say that, given that guard has constant recovery and I had no healing, it's pretty great to out-tank him without use of the Bronze Horn Figurine. However, you can easily take Bewildering Spectacle to deal with this guard (if you lure him round the corner, Confuse him and when he's in the "wander" stage you can quite easily sneak in). It's just that I think Curse of the Blacked Sight is such a natural fit for the high Deflection that I really wanted to take it, and then the rest fitted quite well (Combusting Wounds was also taken at level 3 for the natural Eldritch Aim + Combusting Wounds + Chill Fog combo, Infuse With Vital Essence to be learnt at level 4 to increase time between rests as it effectively heals health like Wound Binding, and Bulwark will be learnt from Maerwald). So, it's a bit of an awkward fit, possibly it could replace Infuse, but it's literally for a few very early encounters whereas Infuse stays useful all game. However however, personally I kind of like builds which lean away from min-maxing and yet still manage to achieve something interesting. I know you're not suggesting minimising Con, but polarising the attributes to a greater extent certainly leans a little into that. It's nice when you can make a character with middle ground stats, and I think one of the real charms of Pillars is you can do that without feeling too punished for it a lot of the time - you don't have to make some sort of character who has the muscles of He-Man yet he would die if he so much as caught a cold. However however however, Citzal's Martial Power makes CON slightly irrelevant anyway - particularly on the time scale of a normal encounter with kith. This build is going to have borderline 3 minutes of increased CON from Citzal's Martial Power, and for the tough encounters with dragons all the defences are going to be through the roof anyway, so it likely isn't so important. I think I'll leave it as it is currently, and make the recommendation that in party play you should use 17 MIG 10 CON - it will certainly help out with the Wounding on Drawn in Spring, and will pump up spells in general for when you don't want to go straight into Citzal's (probably the best way to play the build in boss level encounters would be to cast all your offensive spells off the bat, and then hunker down and go into full defensive mode with Citzal's Martial Power and Drawn in Spring). It's certainly always good to have a think about these things!

Hmmm, thinking about Fulvano's Blunderbuss, I bet that Charm chance (5%) is per pellet hit or crit - not per shot hit or crit. That's how Silver Flash works with Divine Mark, meaning that the chance for it is higher than you'd expect. If I remember high school statistics correctly P(at least one Charm) = 1 - P(all Charms miss). If we assume all the 6 pellets of the Blunderbuss hit or crit, then P(at least one Charm) = 1 - (0.95^6) = 26.5% Charm chance. Not sure how useful it would be, seeing as guns are painfully slow to reload, but it is pretty neat. Might form the basis of a Swift Aim Charm Ranger perhaps (you wouldn't even need high Might, just max Dex, Per and Int and let the frequent Charms and hungry pet do the work for you).

I have standards, damnit!

So I started playing the build, and I thought I'd share my level 3 Deflection... This means that the guard up the vines at Raedric's Keep has zero chance of hitting my character - only grazes and misses - and unlike Arcane Veil there's no duration associated with your increased Deflection. Keeping in my a lot of early enemies only target Deflection, this means your character more or less can't be killed when you have Wizard's Double on. Something I did notice was that unfortunately the Helmsman's Uniform can't be attribute enchanted (the +Def and +Fort already count as attribute enchantments giving it weirdly 2/1 enchantments for that category). This is quite easily rectified by shifting a point from Dex/Per into Int (to maintain a 160 Will for 200 against fear vs. Llengrath's dragons), but my strict policy of no-respecing looks like it's going to be restart for me, that'll teach me not to do thorough research beforehand! I guess of the plus side, it means even more DR for the build, as that's pretty much the only enchantment you can stick on the armor apart from proofing. If I do end up playing the build all the way through, I'll do a full Class Build for it, but I thought some of you would be interested in the WIP.