thelee

i don't think special K ever worked. I think it was more like superstition, or people comparing running-for-a-while performance to special-k-fresh-start performance. the original special K post had some truly outlandish claims of performance for a few years ago. I tried it aggressively many times over, except writing down numbers attempting to control conditions and saw basically no uplift. the only thing i can suggest is to periodically quick-save-"exit to main menu" and then reload your game. when the game runs for a while (especially with effects-heavy combats with quick-loads), there's some sort of memory leak that degrades frame rates (i can go from 80ish down to like 30ish) and only exiting to main menu (not just loading) frees up the jank.

i would argue the exact opposite. dots, and druid dots especially, are extremely damage efficient, but require time to hit that efficiency. if you're on a lower difficulty or are so over-leveled for an encounter that it's over in like 10 seconds, the dots don't have time to work their magic. high enemy HP and high difficulty are successful niches, not a downside, for dots. [edit: e.g. a tier 2 autumn's decay will do 50% more base damage than a tier 5 blast of frost, and the damage will scale very generously with intellect unlike with blast of frost. there's a time discount factor for sure, but the point is that if you end the fight in a few casts, autumn's decay can't compare, but in any decently scaled fight, autumn's decay will overperform.] yeah, fortitude is higher, but dots are still extremely effective even when they target fortitude. and AR is higher on potd, sure, but corrode is not a particularly hard damage type, compared to fire or frost. in my last run, my druid was damage king early on almost purely off of autumn's decay [note: which targets reflex], insect swarm, and infestation of maggots. (later on, they were still damage king, but for more cheese-y less dot-y reasons like avenging storm or greater maelstrom) i mean this is literally true about using any ability. outside of a long fight w/ infinite resources, you're making choices. like you suggest, a morningstar alone can easily put many bosses into easy-dotting range. pretty much the only time i didn't bother with dots are megabosses, which are more cheesy/technical encounters.

just to clarify, they are immune to plague of insects (which is not poison keyworded, but is countered by antidote, which functions as the same thing), but they are not immune to insect swarm and infestation of maggots. so they're only immune to bug bites that come in a large (plague-level) quantity.

also another advantage of druid is that a good number of their DoTs do raw damage (insect swarm, infestation, plague of insects), which dodges one of the more annoying issues with other DoTs vs direct damage, PEN issues. (unlike direct damage, crits do not help DoTs with penetration) landing an insect swarm/infestation of maggots on e.g. ironclad constructs is pretty nice. (but what are the bugs/maggots eating??)

i believe the way it works is that the game just extends the duration of the debuff, so it doesn't count as a fresh application. the behavior that you're talking about mostly really works for stacking dots (bleeding cuts, combusting wounds, etc.).

interesting interaction; ironically if they had just used the difficult-to-grok inversions this wouldn't be an issue (the first +100% would cancel out the inversion, and then the rest would work normally). though in practice, could one consider it a balance trade-off for the powerful ability to being able to generate focus by casting deception powers?

i'm surprised druid hasn't got more mention as a dot approach, because druids do butt loads of damage via dots (ignoring cheese*). while druids are pretty exposed to poison/disease immunity, in terms of dots i'd say that the majority of them are not disease/poison keyworded (secretly or not). Insect Swarm and Infestation of Maggots, and IIRC also Touch of Rot & Autumn's Decay are non-disease, non-poison, and using just those alone your druid will do tons of damage in most sitautions. Plague of Insects is the main one that is impacted by disease/poison immunity. (Also depending on how you define "DoT", Wall of Thorns and Venombloom are poison-based). edit: there's also taste of the hunt, but it's single-target. * including cheese, a wizard with combusting wounds and a party full of pulsing effects will do absolute bonkers amounts of damage against anything not fire immune.

oh boy so the way the damage bonuses are implemented are themselves weird. gotta love these edge cases

i suspect they don't stack, but it might be worth testing. a complication with stacking rules is that sometimes the game doesn't consider very similar bonuses as being in the same stacking category. Example: ±x to all defenses vs ±x to deflection (or fortitude, reflex, will). even though the first buffs deflection directly, it will stack with the second because "All defenses" and "±x to deflection" are considered separate categories. at the same time, a similar-looking case where things don't stack. Dagger modal gives you +deflection vs melee, whereas most illusion buffs gives you +deflection, and even though this looks likes a variant of the previous example of a specific buff vs a general buff, the dagger modal is more like "+deflection (but only available against melee weapons)", so it's considered the same category as other deflection bonuses and won't stack. i suspect mouth char is "+% to damage (but only for weapons)" so won't stack with the self-damage boost barbaric smash/blow/etc gives you, but there's an outside chance that it's more like the former where it's more like "+% to weapon damage" vs "+% all damage" that being said, some weapon abilities have innate damage bonuses (shown at the top of the tooltip, e.g. many rogue abilities) and those are innate/passive bonuses and will stack with active sources.

as soon as i saw the name of this build, i immediately knew what weapon it was based on. real underrated weapon; it's not flashy and is super early, but that +5 deflection bonus with a shield is real nice. fun riposte build. do you find that you really need the extra engagements? if you pick up hold the line you have 2, and then you can switch to mob stance instead for recovery time bonus and free attacks.

*slaps forehead* a really obvious non-standard scaler is rogue sneak attack damage. numerically it's the same (+5%) but it's an additive increase, not a multiplicative increase, and is definitely different from how most other abilities scale. IMO for any hypothetical pillars 3, they need to make sure "how this ability benefits from PL scaling" is also included in the auto-generated tooltip.

i think OP's point is that most everything that we could say about berserker self-damage scaling would also influence soft, soft winds chant equivalently. the fact that the self-damage is way more than soft,soft winds is a big tell. i've never played a berserker but i've been told that the self-damage can become substantial (a few people msged me on my gamefaqs guide to tell me that self-damage was a bigger deal than the confusion). it's possible it has custom scaling rules, and would explain why i've been told that. would love someone to confirm (am unable to test right now). some examples of other non-standard power-level scaling: forbidden fist self-damage, psion focus generation, barbarian carnage, etc. the first two definitely use whole numbers per PL (as opposed to percentage) so it's not unprecedented. edit: oops, forbidden fist self-damage scales by ability tier, which is even more nonstandard. sighh...

potions are considered active effects, so won't generally stack, though there are some oddities (interrupt chance and hit->crit, graze->hit, miss->graze stack on independently) in particular, druid's nature's bounty buffs won't stack with similar active effects. pretty redundant with frenzy (aside from perception). though you still get healing.

no i think link is broken by using suppress affliction to supress the debuff on your allies, and then what you're extending is not the buff, but extending Salvation of Time.

unless there's a trick i'm missing, only problem is that the duration is quite short, but yeah in any decent-sized fight you can get an incredible action speed bonus.

i've rolled Tekehu as a main tank as a SC chanter. hatchet modal + shield + that bonus deflection/engagement chant + ancient memory chant + heavy armor. actually worked out pretty decently on potd + upscaled + challenges. unfortunately most of his invocations are useless because his perception and accuracy suck in this setup, but i mostly just used the bonus AR invocation, the "Weather the storm"-esque invocation in elemental fights [very useful in beast of winter], and when i had time, the +5 might/con/res invocation (extra res helps survivability and when upgraded it lasts a super long time in big fights). in very very high level fights, he wouldn't even need to tank; i'd have my casters empower-cast their tier 9 spells and tekehu would then immediately use the invocation that restores a class resource to get another round of tier 9 spells, that would end most big fights on its own. chanter as main tank is probably very odd setup, but worked quite well; an optimized custom chanter would do even better than tekehu. though long after i did that run, someone discovered that sasha's singing scimitar would work great with tekehu's avenging storm invocation, so if i ever did that setup again i would do that. add in to the list: xoti as SC monk. whispers of the wound + her unique subclass => tons of wound generation as you clear out enemy fights. she basically carried my entire party in the endgame. aloth as fighter/rogue was a lot of fun - real evasive and had powerful summoned weapons + sneak attack. i did this really early in my potd playing, if i were to do it again with all the metagame knowledge i have now, i would make a sick riposte build probably. konstanten - not really unique to konstanten, but i made a high AR very slow 2h axe build centered around barbaric retaliation (his high constitution helps). spam dazing shout for tons of damage and to lower enemy PEN, frenzy for lowered deflection, and all the crits enemies were getting off on me caused a lot of instant stalking bleeding wounds debuffs. it was actually wild how rapidly his damage contribution to my party before hitting tier 9 abilities (like 4th) and after tier 9 abilities (i think ended up leaping to 2nd, possibly got to 1st by the end). against Dorudugan, i had him use scordeo's edge until he triggered blade cascade, then i used salvation of time while konstanten sswitched back to his massive axe and watched him add like 80 bleeding modal stack onto dorudugan and cause death within a few tens of seconds; i don't even think brilliant was necessary for extra salvations of time, just a self-empower. (though the huge number of debuffs crashed my game the first time i tried it)

yes. it's a neat and subtly powerful effect. for example, if you have the special axe from SSS, you can turn any might inspiration into energized just by rapidly switching into it repeatedly, and it won't cost you anything. as another example, if you like micromanagement, you can switch into a large shield right after each attack, and back to a normal weapon before your next attack comes up, maximizing your defenses without costing you offense (this is much easier to do consistently on turn-based mode). as another example, for trash fights you can load of 3 out of 4 weapon slots with guns and just switch through them real fast and not worry about reloading before settling on your final slot for the rest of the fight. still another example, load up a couple weapon slots with xbow/arbalest with their modal. if you need to interrupt someone, switching to one of those, fire it off, and switch back to a normal weapon. something to consider is there's an SSS medium armor that gives you -1% recovery time penalty bonus per poitn of athletics. it has increasing returns. with a fighter (who starts off with some athletics), maxed atheltics investment, and some gear with bonus athletics, combined with armored grace, you can have decent protection while also being super fast. (i think i got xoti as a monk up to a -25% armor recovery penalty which pretty much cancels out the medium armor penalty on its own; a fighter with starting athletics and the right background and the chameleon ring [fighters get +1 athletics] should be able to even better, plus also has armored grace)

if you want power creep, make xoti single-class monk, get ajumaat's stalking cloak, and spam whispers of the wind in fights (backed up by dance of death for wound regen). she'll be a one-woman fighting machine. she can basically bring down one of the megabosses by herself without much effort (hauane o whe). [her monk subclass is a bit meh but is actually really useful in this setup because each kill will give you a burst of wounds to help instantly funnel more whispers of the wind] if you want ascendant to go full Goku, get Salvation of Time on a priest. It requires a bit of paying attention, but once you get ascended, spam salvation of time on your cipher a few times and just toss out all your top damage and shred spells (death by 1000 cuts + a multi-hit shred power like mental blades or antipathetic field, tons of amplified wave [or silent scream or mind wave for more death by 1000 cuts synergy]). make sure you have real good dexterity and try resting with rum or rymsjogga lager for extra speed.

Do we have the emergence of some new anti-Dorudugan tech here... It's pretty easy to lower Dorudugan's reflex defense (flail plus the ever-useful arkemyr's wondrous torment), plus shock is its lowest defense. on a SC priest with a scroll of avenging storm (and maybe a potion of perfect aim, depending on whose attack roll is used), would you be able to pelt out enough shock damage with spark the souls and effort with a party of 5 to wipe it out before avenging storm wears off?

yeah i completely forgot that OP was a berserker. in that case, you're mostly just getting baseline CON from frenzy with possibility of upside.

since you ruled out some other monk subclasses, my suggestion is maybe the con overlap isn't a big deal. iron wheel should still give you an AR bonus, regardless of con stacking, which is extremely handy. you can think of the con overlap this way: at low wounds, frenzy gives you a baseline con bonus at high wounds, you still get a net gain over frenzy via iron wheel (up to +5) in situations where there are CON afflictions going around, iron wheel keeps granting you con bonuses, even though frenzy will keep losing its CON inspiration so while it doesn't sound synergistic, it's also not really an anti-synergy either. that being said: the might bonus from the helwalker subclass is passive, so will stack with frenzy. you can easily max out might to 35 with helwalker + barb. the duality modal is weird because it really feels like a passive ability, but it's on the left side of the ability tree, so it doesn't stack with similar bonuses. same thing happens with paladin auras and fighter stances.

interesting. that means even the partial PEN bonuses from scaling can be useful, so long as the enemy has partial AR or you have .75 PEN. i thought the game just truncated everything.

this is roughly what i would recommend. i posted a build here that's hella fun, uses the energized invocation, and has a focus in explosives: unfortunately, even on story mode you won't be able to get away with doing *only* explosives or even a majority, but you can focus on it and get good utility out of it. interestingly, the cinder bomb is particularly useful for many reasons, but one of them is that the initial explosion automatically interrupts, no hit roll. so even if you suck at explosives, throwing a cinder bomb in the middle of a fight can be really useful because it'll mass interrupt a bunch of foes. obv if you do invest in explosives, actually hitting with the blind and the debuff is useful, and it also scales other bombs real well (implosion, frost, and shock are the ones that i use with high level explosion)

careful: bellower power level bonus only applies to chanter invocations (not even chanter chants). it didn't seem clear that you understood this distinction. a few abilities have their projectile counts fixed at a hard number and don't scale. Thrice Was She Wronged is one of them. it is still very good for a bellower because the bonus PL can help with penetration (on top of the accuracy and damage). eld nary benefits hugely from empowerment and bellower, but only for bellower in turn-based mode. In RTWP, the bellower buff doesn't last long enough (and the bounce is so slow) that you actually lose the buff and the bonus PL before you even get to the best part of the extra PL (the extra bounces). pretty sure this is also fixed. at this point a bellower gets some nice damage and PEN and acc bonuses, so missing out on extra projectiles isn't bad (+25% dmg, +1.25 PEN, +5 ACC) in terms of damage invocations, white wurms is also very good. it will. one of my fun late game tricks was, with sasha's singing scimitar enchanted with full phrases, was to get to 3 phrases somehow (starting off with far from defeated which grants +3 phrases is one way) and empower "her revenge" to get at least +17 PL invocation (+8 from all the ability tiers you unlocked above tier 1, +1 from prestige, +5 from empower, +3 from bellower) and then you get refreshed up to full phrase count to do another invocation (sometimes i'd do "her revenge" again just because of how fast it is and its repeat hits) with +7 PL from phrase count.

what a neat build, i never though to try make those on-death effects worthwhile. I believe it's Shroud of the Phantasm, which is great for other reasons as well.