dunehunter

After played both PoE and Deadfire for many years and come back to review two games, I also prefer PoE's class feature + generic talent pool system than Deadfire's no generic talent pool. With it all classes feels more flexible and can cover more roles. You can build a tank Rogue, a dps Paladin in PoE. In Deadfire this is more restricted because developers moved only a few generic talents to each classes and you have to choose among these. Otherwise you have to multiclass to get access to more talents.

Also I prefer to have Silver Hand as my 2nd weaponset for my Bleakwalker. Because when dealing with these low DR high hp pool enemies Silver Hand is the best weapon. You can potentially do more than 350 +150 = 500 damage with FoD if it luckly triggers Divine Mark. Because if Divine Mark is triggered by FoD it will get accuracy bonus from it, make it very likely to crit. For bosses it's also not bad to shoot with Silver Hand before you use FoD with bittercut because Silverhand can blind, plus chance to divine mark, thats -20~25 deflection, makes your FoD easier to crit.

I'm testing this myself and firstly I thought this got fixed because my Enduring Flames last 10 sec, then I realize that's because My Goldpact has INT of 5, and Enduring Flames has duration of 10, it is firstly reduce by INT by 30% -> 7 seconds, then critical hit increase it's duration by x1.5 so it ends up being 10.5 seconds. So I was confused by this 10.5 seconds earlier and thought it's patched. Based on MaxQuest's formula here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91903-question-about-dots-and-hots/#comment-1893595 Fixed DoT's total damage is only affected by Might, not hit_quality_modifier, however duration is affected by hit_quality_modifier... And this results in a stupid conclusion, Crit on Enduring Flames increase it's total duration, which leads to more ticks being eaten by DR lol. In some extreme case, for example you have 20 INT, if you crit on FoD and Enduring Flames will last 22.5 seconds. Although your FoD damage is increased by 50%, but that's additive bonus so not actually x1.5 more damage, it's way less than that if you have other additive damage bonus. But Enduring Flames takes so long to tick that it's per tick damage might be completely eaten by DR in this case.... NOTE: I also found the Solitary gauntlet fits a low INT build very well, as it's actually an aura to check if there's any allies nearby. This aura is reduced by INT So a dumbest character can stand beside an ally and still benefit from the solitary buff. From what I read, it increase your MIN damage by 25%, so potentially increase average damage by 10%. This is a multiplier on average DPS, not additive so very powerful.

Black Path is generally considered an below average talent in power. And Bleakwalker usually doesn't have enough talents to pick it. You pick Intense Flame, Remember Rakhan Field, Scion of Flame, Spirit of Decay, Two Weapon Style, that's already 5 talents and only 3 left. Apprentice Sneak Attack, Weapon Focus, Savage Attack, Deep Faith are all very competitive with the left 3 slots so there's no room for Black Path.

Hmm this seems to be a bug only occurs in saves from old version of game, starting a new game and the ability works as intended.

This is tested in an unmodded game, and when I use Envenomed Strike, no extra fortitude check is made, and no poison damage is triggered. Game version is 3.7.0.1318.

So I'm testing a bit about afflictions and found that Boots of Stability gives +45 defense against the Knockdown ability. It seems the +15 push defense is also added against knockdown, make it very potent item when fighting monks.

Bit off topic, but I'm curious about if Flanking Bonus works on Sacred Immolation? Tested and it works with SI, I guess all bonus that works on spell will works on SI since it's a spell-like ability.

It's always like that, Liberating Exhortation can be used on self, the rest exhortation cannot be casted on self.

Darcozzi Paladin's Liberating Exhortation grants +10 accuracy if you take Inspiring Liberation, and it stacks with itself. So you can cast them on yourself twice at the begining of combat to get +20 ACC for around 40 seconds. Which is great boost to FoD(more crit) and Sacred Immolation. An optimized build focusing on SI would be Darcozzi Paladin, max MIGHT/PER/INT, double cast Liberating Exhortation on self then activate SI, you will have very powerful SI that crit's a lot. Combine it with feats like Beast Hunter, and etc that grant bonus damage, The Merciless Hand that grants +crit damage and its way better than paladin focus on auto attacks.

I think one need to understand that Paladin is not a good auto attacker, since it has no passive ability that boost it's attacking power. The only dps ability paladin has is FoD and Sacred Immolation. And both are not affected by DEX(you can argure that DEX makes FoD animation faster but that's really small impact imo). The best stats to boost FoD/SI is Might and PER, follow by INT. If you are playing in a team, INT is not that important since battle usually ends before your SI ends. Therefore you can priorty stats like this MIG/PER >> INT > CON/DEX/RES imho. So CON and RES are best bet to dump if you really wanna make them auto attack better.

I was planning to use your dumbest paladin build, too bad to find this has been fixed. So dumping INT still works if I doesn't pick much abilities that's affected by INT, but not as spicy as before. Enduring Flames takes 10 seconds to do full damage is too slow.

I'm curious about a 2hander goldpact build so I tested this, both Enduring Flames's DoT and Tidefall's Lash has fixed duration now.

The DoT duration got fixed from around 2017, so no matter how low your INT is, it won't affect DoT duration anymore.

Pardon but combat is much harder in 3rd person? I think it’s much easier to dodge incoming attacks from side and back in 3rd person like witch 3. For shooting I agree 1st person is better but for melee it’s terrible.