Indeed, I'm playing on very fast. I have an odd case of having both slow reactions and chronic impatience... Not exactly the best combination, but I'm managing somehow.

As for the equipment, here's a full list:

Primary weapon set: Chakram of the Sun, Chakram of the Sun
Secondary weapon set: Arcadion Judgement, Golden Shield of Pelaron
Head: Crown of Dockma'Ar
Torso: Falcon Cape
Arms: Sage's Winding of the Gryphon with Epic Primal Magma (fire damage completion bonus)
Feet: Völva's Hardened Wraps
Rings: Star Stone, Seal of Hephaestus
Amulet: Polaris
Artifact: Tongue of Flame (poison resistance completion bonus)

This has been quite unchanged for a while. Only now have a few contestants emerged.
One is Gambanteinn, which seemed overall perfect. On average a pretty hefty +50% bonus to elemental damages, +2 to rune, recharge reduction. Overall it turned out to be way inferior to Tongue of Flame, ironically; the more modest bonus to elemental damages is easily offset by the percentile bonus to intelligence, decent flat burn damage, and increased utility (poison resistance, increased energy).
Now, however, one of my Fafnir runs rewarded me with a Corselet of Freyja. That looks... amazing. Like Battlemage Robe on steroids. It provides some pierce resistance, which has been one of the few aspects in which I found this character lacking (it is true that Energy Armor protects against pierce, but having -100% resistance to it seems a bad choice overall), bumps poison resistance nearly to maximum, comes with an elemental damage bonus, immense defensive ability bonus, and bonus to all skills. Sadly, I'd need to get another +1 to at least rune before equipping it, though, and would lose a little movement and casting speed (attack speed is maxed even without Falcon Cape's bonus). Oh well, I'll try to see what else I find.

To be fair, the way the fight against Fafnir is set up really favors my character. I've mostly been concentrating on dishing out damage as fast as I could, and defenses were secondary. Fafnir starts off lying on the ground, and it takes him a while to stand up; it's not a long window of opporunity to attack him without retaliation, but as you can see, it proves just enough.

Seal of Fate with maxed Aftershock ruins his resistances. Then I pop an Eruption and a Volcanic Orb, and get in close; by that time the Seal of Fate just explodes, and I Thunder Strike. Polaris gives a 20% chance of greatly reduced resistances - something that is very likely to go off with fourteen projectiles. From there he drops like a fly.

Fafnir time!

I was hardly surprised when I actually found Fafnir in Fafnir's Cave on Legendary. That's how far I went so far; it's an amazing farming spot, something that Act V sorely needed (Surtr himself is pretty good once you've finished the chapter, but his drops seemed rather lackluster on Normal and Epic, and while I unlocked Primrose's Passage, hardly anything seems to drop there that's not an Easter egg).

He seems the most dangerous bonus boss so far, but I feel that it might be so due to unfamiliarity and technical difficulties. Namely, his hitbox is so large that I often end up shooting at him even when I'm trying to step aside. I don't know what damage type his red-black maelstrom attack deals. I have Energy Armor for physical, pierce and bleeding, and have otherwise decent-to-great resistances all around, except for poison (though that is also positive), yet I die from just merely touching it so quickly that usually I don't even have the time to activate Stone Form. I doubt it's poison, as that is usually color-coded for our convenience. Is it life leech, maybe? That sounds reasonable to me.

I figured that the best strategy, ironically, is to simply rush him head-on after putting a Seal of Fate under him. His bites are just as lethal, but I can use Stone Form properly, and after it ends, Thunder Strike with yet another Stone Form. Usually I don't need more than two or three cycles (though I also soften him up and charge my Rune Weapon as he stands up). And still die pretty often, but oh well. I'm sure it'll get better with practice.

Once he dropped a ring (it wasn't in his orb - which is, by the way, named Majestic Chest for some reason - but he dropped it on dying), called Andvaranaut. Aside from pretty odd effects, it has a +50% experience - can you imagine equipping two of those and a Sacrificial Necklace for quests? Sounds crazy. I guess I know what I'll do for the rest of my characters.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but actually I'm fairly certain about this.

As far as I know, the DPS rating on the character screen doesn't take skills into account, including LMB skills. Just as putting points into Onslaught wouldn't increase your DPS, nor would Marksmanship.

There's an important exception: buffs. Onslaught will increase your displayed DPS if you use it, as it puts a buff on you, which increases your physical damage (also I haven't tested this, but I assume that it increases all physical damage you deal, including things like War Wind, but possibly even things like Volcanic Orb or Eruption - I simply speculate this based on how it states that it increases physical damage you deal, but doesn't imply any restrictions on it).

Marksmanship, on the other hand, applies no buff to the player; it only modifies the attack itself. You won't see any change in the DPS, no matter whether you use it or not.

Edit: Increasing projectile speed has another, possibly much more important effect, at least for bows and thrown weapons: it increases range. I never noticed it before, and bows have a pretty tremendous range on their own, but thrown weapons benefit a lot from it. After I stopped playing my Dragon Hunter (at least temporarily) and went back to my Stonespeaker, I noticed how much closer I needed to be to enemies to actually deal damage to them.

I guess it feels a little bit cheap to fight Cerberus in the doorway, but I guess it's not actually cheating.

As for the Melinoes, I agree about max Energy Armor, but unfortunately since I have -100% pierce resistance, even the nearly 7000 hit points don't last as long as I'd like them to. Guardian Stones is a bit limited by its huge cooldown, but otherwise I agree.

Tauceti, thanks for the suggestion; I'm actually running around with +4 to Rune (Falcon Cape, Crown of Dockma'Ar, Völva's Foot Wraps) and +5 to Earth (Crown of Dockma'Ar and two Chakrams of the Sun). While I switch weapons for casting Energy Armor, none of the bonus to Rune comes from weapons, so it's fine; and with my equipment, switching to secondary (Arcadion Judgement and Golden Shield of Pelaron) lets me cast that maximum level Energy Armor for a measly 600 energy, which I personally find satisfying. Come to think of it, I think it's what helped me take down Hades so quickly, too. Ironically, his minions, most notably the Melinoe but the Machae as well, take it down much faster than he does.

I'd say the Core Dweller is pretty good in legendary. Don't forget that the Energy Armor I don't leave home without applies to it, too, and with it, it can withstand quite the punishment. Not when a pack of Machae or, again, Melinoe swoop down on it, but usually it doesn't need to. If the enemies are focusing on the Core Dweller, it's doing its job and giving you the time to completely destroy everything in sight; and if they don't then, well, things aren't good for you, but the Core Dweller isn't going to die, either. To be honest, I haven't been counting, but I think that throughout entire Legendary Act IV, I think I could count on one hand how many times the Core Dweller died (excluding the main character dying, because that'd require a few more hands). And that's only with one point invested in each of its skills (admittedly with the +5 to Earth from equipment). At the end of the act, however (around the end of Elysium) I decided to put a few more skill points into the base skill and Metamorphosis because I was a bit overleveled and didn't really know what to do with my skill points anymore.

Edit: Forgot to say. I died a lot with this character, but I think it's not the character's fault. I'm usually a rather reckless and hasty player, and as a result never make any pretenses of trying to play without dying. In fact, it was only recently, in Legendary Act IV that I figured out that I could use Stone Form basically indefinitely; when I did, I stopped dying except for a select few cases. I'm sure that with better playing, the number of deaths could probably be minimized, though probably not eliminated; my Stonespeaker is a glass cannon, after all.

That's where I'm at a loss, Tauceti. There are just so many skills to spend points on!

Apparently, past me decided that Onslaught and the Dual Wield tree were first priorities, but that was before Rune was even a thing. And now my Warfare mastery is maxed, so I decided to get the important skills maxed in there, and then move on to Rune. What I'm planning to do is spending one more level's skill points on Warfare (to finish Dual Wield, as well as to put a point or two into Ardor), then start climbing up the Rune mastery. I plan to put one point each in the skills I consider useful (Unleash, Frightening Power, and actually surprisingly little else for the time being), reach 24 points, and then start maxing Reckless Offense and Runeword: Burn. After that... we'll see.

I imagine I'll use throwing weapons against bosses that warrant it (Porcus the Ketos comes to mind), but I'd really like to avoid them taking over the whole character, as they did with the Stonespeaker, even if that was warranted, as Rune and Earth in themselves aren't quite sturdy enough to stand up to enemies in melee.

Bosses so far have been pushovers. In fact, for the first time throughout my whole Titan Quest career, I entered the chamber with Aktaios, charged at him, and killed him without even having to move around. Once I put the standard down, things die ridiculously fast. I'm sure that's going to change, though.

Alright, I'm back with yet one more of these threads.

An item I found relatively recently has once again ignited my interest in the Berserker.

I've said a few things about what I imagined would be interesting about it in the other topic (see here: https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=169.msg3578#msg3578 - hopefully I did the linking right), but I'll reiterate quickly (maybe in a little more organized form.

- Astounding number of melee procs, not to mention that, as far as I could see with my Stonespeaker, the individual hits from Reckless Offense's multi-attack can themselves trigger Runeword: Burn (not sure about the dual-wielding ones, though - will have to test).
- War Wind and Thunder Strike both provide useful area attacks that help close the distance to ranged attackers as well.
- Ludicrous amounts of offensive ability from Weapon Training and Runeword: Feather.
- Battle Standard, Guardian Stones, Ancestral Horn... Now that sounds like something to try (later).
- Battle Rage and Sacred Rage (not that there's so much synergy between them in particular, just so much rage).

The thing that put me off from the Berserker for a long time was having to decide between going with strength and Onslaught or intelligence and Rune Weapon. While the intelligence route was tempting due to being more novel and unconventional, as well as good for having a built-in attack damage converted to health, it has its drawbacks - Hew doesn't do much on its own, the enormous offensive ability doesn't help much as elemental damage doesn't crit, Crushing Blow again doesn't do much (I don't know how powerful Crushing Blow is, anyway, but it sure is fun early in the game), Triumph is a bit less powerful... So overall, strength seemed the better choice anyway, but Berserker's Mantle convinced me completely.

Rather conveniently, I had a Warrior in the middle of Normal Egypt, developed towards strength (obviously) but without a secondary mastery (as I started that character before Ragnarök and didn't know what to choose). So... Berserking time!

Past me apparently decided that Onslaught and the Dual Wield tree were the most important to max out first, so I decided to continue that (went into Rune anyway, to get the shiny new Berserker title as well as Rune of Life - mainly for the movement speed, but the percentile increase to Strength is also good - Sacred Rage, and Thunder Strike). I have a point each in most Warfare skills, though, except for the horns (I should invest in them soon, though).

War Wind and Thunder Strike on the same character is evil. Use War Wind to close the distance in a blink of the eye, attack everyone around, and then use Thunder Strike to attack everyone around again. Playing on the highest speed option (I'm impatient) is really satisfying as pretty much every hit I land now is a critical; being surrounded pretty much means that yellow numbers float up from basically every enemy in melee range. Good stuff.

However, the reason why I started this thread is a little different.

I'm in Act III now, and usually when I enter a new act, I try a few items from my vault that look interesting. Weapons are usually less so in Normal, as Quicksilver Bludgeon stands out so much from the rest that I generally tend to end up using it far into Act IV and more. Not this time, however.

As I looked around, I had a pair of a Yin and a Yang, neatly next to each other. At the first glance, I never thought they'd be more than a pair of gimmick weapons, probably for Spellbreakers, but... sure, why not. (I really like how they're done, thematically, anyway.) Especially since I had Imperial Bracers and Imperial Greaves lying about, too.

I underestimated them. DPS increased by nearly two hundred compared to the Quicksilver Bludgeon + Marduk's Rage setup I'd been using before, and unless I'm fighting undead or constructs, the health bar doesn't really go below full (which renders Sacred Rage a little useless right now). I wanted to say that while I don't have critical hits for about 1000 damage anymore like I did with Quicksilver Bludgeon, around the end of today's session I had a few 1100-1200 crits (I assume Battle Rage and Crushing Blow did that).

Fun times. If you're like me and overlooked Yin and Yang, give them a try!

I'll keep playing with the Berserker, probably... Or one of my other characters. Either.

In fact, I have been ignoring Thunder Strike, yes. I have a point in it, as well as a point in Unleash, but I haven't really been using it, and the reason for that is simply that I don't need to. Everything goes down like crazy. I'm only in Act III normal now but I'm tempted to capture a gameplay video already. This character seriously wrecks pretty much anything already.