Contemplative Xoti

[Boeroer]

@Madhofd: You're missing everything.

The advantages of Hand Mortar + Fire in the Hole:

• AoE weapons: they deal their damage in a rather big area of effect
• all CC or DoT abilites (except Wounding Shot) get applied in the whole AoE. Example: Rogue's Toxic Strike poisons every enemy who gets hit by the AoE.
• dual damage: they deal pierce/slash instead of only pierce dmg (normal blunderbuss). This is important against pierce-resistant/-immune foes.
• targets Reflex instead of Deflection. Reflex is very easy to debuff. 
• Hand Mortar an be enchanted with Blinding Smoke. Blinding Smoke triggers a ton of hit rolls (that distract but don't damage). Although no damage is dealt, every such hit roll will triggere Avenging Storm (from scroll or Heaven's Cacophony)
• Fire in th Hole can be enchanted with Chain Shot which lets the projectile jump (like Ranger's Driving Flight). The AoE also jumps. As a Scout you can stack Driving Flight with Chain Shot and have three AoEs with only one shot. Hand Mortar will even trigger more Blinding Smokes with Driving Flight. 

In my case (why I was talking about above) the Monk's very good ability Whispers of the Wind becomes outright ridiculous with hand mortars because you basically get 2* Powder Burns * AoE * (AoE+AoE+AoE) * x Blinding Strikes hit rolls:

 

So basically it's all about AoE attacks.

A Scout is also a nice option. I don't have  a vid with dual mortars but a Scout with Watershaper's Focus which leads to a similar effect (just with a Rod + Blast instead of blunderbusses - obvisouly for a Streetfighter bluderbusses are better). You can totally carry two normal blunderbusses for single targets and hand mortars for big packs of enemies. It's important to cramp enemies together if you want tot use oE weapons effectively. You ca do that from stealth with a luring spell such as Dazzling Lights, with setting traps (makes sounds) or Sparkcrackers etc. You can also achieve the same with a tank or a spell like Pull of Eora.
 

 

In general: AoE weapons work better on higher difficulties because then there are more enemies. At lower difficulties you'll have less enemies which makes AoE weapons less effective. Also at lower difficulties you won't have that many PEN issues with resistent enemies (see pierce/slash dmg).

Edited December 28, 2019 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Gods the new forum is so ****ty when it comes to bb-tags. It messes them up 100%. I can't fix the nested spoiler tags above. Hope you can still understand what I was trying to say. You have to click "reveal hidden contents" (of two tags) to see everything.

In my case I can't use the overbearing fun-inducing power of hand mortars with Xoti because they are ranged weapons and ranged weapons won't trigger her +3-wound-on-kill passive.

Edited December 28, 2019 by Boeroer