Zwiebelchen

There is so much truth in this. The average message board mostly has people complaining. Because when something goes right, nobody posts about it. That's why gaming communities can be anal at times. So It's safe to say that even less than 20% of the actual gamers think it's "early access".

TO is clearly not a reading guy. In which case nobody should recommend him this game. Move on, there are other games for you.

If so, permanently, or do I have to save with auras off every time?

The DR system in PoE is fine. The problem with percentage based systems is, that they inflate in numbers and don't scale very well with progressing power creep. Integer-based DR can be stacked endlessly, as long as the damage scales accordingly. With percentage-based DR, you will hit a point of diminishing returns eventually. If your endgame armors give 75% DR, what will you do in an upcoming expansion? Increase DR bonuses to 85%? What about epic levels? 95% DR anyone? In order for enemies to deal 100 damage against a 95% DR player, they'd need 2000 base damage. With a point based systems, your unit only needs 100 damage more than you have DR. The system behind PoE was designed from the ground-up to avoid percentage-induced power creep. Deflection and Defenses work the same: Accuracy and Deflection can be stacked endlessly; as only the difference matters, not the actual value. A percentage based evasion stat (like most MMOs have) suffers the same power creep problem as percentage based DR. If we take the most popular MMO as an example (World of Warcraft), then you will see that they changed the way Evasion, Parry and Block worked to a point-based system for exactly this reason. In Vanilla WoW, all evasion, parry and block scores were percentage based. However, the devs recognized the problem of power creep ("We can't give these items more evasion or players would basicly become immune to attacks... but if we don't add more evasion, what is the point in farming new items?") and changed the system in BC. There is also more genius behind a point-based DR: Weapon choices actually matter. In percentage based systems, only DPS is relevant. In point-based systems, DPS is a function of your per-hit damage and enemy DR. Which means that not all weapons are great against all types of armors. Fast weapons yield better DPS against low armored units, whereas slow weapons have an edge against heavily armored units. You can't achieve such an effect with a percentage based system. Everything would have to be equalized. Which is terrible and boring. And just to go sure: Dual wielding is not useless in PoE. Enemy DR scores are pretty moderate in most cases. Stilettos actually deal a fair amount of damage. Only heavily armored units are a problem (and those are rare); in which case you can pop a modal to give you more armor penetration.

You won't get XP because you won't finish his quest. The elemental things have nothing to do with Kana's quest. They open the door on the northeast so you can proceed to level 8.

The 1H style talent is useless. Don't use it. If you use a one-hand weapon without a shield, the resulting accuracy bonus basicly negates the advantage of the talent, unless the enemy has absurdly high deflection (like Thaos or a certain Adra creature). I wish the devs would change this talent to hit-to-crit conversion instead.

Most TCS runs make heavy use of stealth, traps and figurines. So if you want to play "traditional", then I highly recommend having a least one "true tank" in your group. Note that a properly specced wizard actually qualifies as a tank. And Aloth's stat distribution is actually pretty usable here aswell. Equip him with plate armor and a large shield and get arcane veil early for more difficult encounters (his armor is not bound to this character, so feel free to give it your barb or priest/druid). You might still want an offtank in your group, though. Using your chanter as offtank might be the better idea here than using your barbarian. You need at least one heavy hitter, so you can't afford to slap heavy armor on your barbarian just to allow him to take a few hits. Your barbarian should be your glass cannon. For the fourth slot, I'd take either a druid or a priest. You need at least something with healing capabilities, or you will spend most of your money crafting healing scrolls... Druids have much higher offensive potential and you're lacking that, so I'd go with a druid. You'll have a 20% XP advantage over going with a party of 6. So it probably won't take long for Aloth to reach the level at which wizards become really potent tanks. Make sure to disable the autolevel option for companions, or Aloth will end up picking blast at second level. For his first talents, you definitely want 1H+Shield style, Arcane Veil and the +1 melee binding. Also equip him with a weapon that adds another +1 melee binding. You'll mostly use spells for dealing damage later, so anything that boosts weapon damage is a waste of talents. Stay away from cautious attack. It doesn't stack with other deflection buffs. Also remember that when you hire custom-made companions, they will start one level below yours. Minimize the XP gap by getting them shortly after a level up.

This won't change the inverse level progression of chanter power. Encounters at endgame are not larger than encounters in the early game. The scaling of chant/invocation times should happen by level, not by anything related to encounter design.

There are several abilities and effects that have such an excessive particle spam, that they reduce framerate of machines way beyond optimum hardware recommendations for PoE. I have a highend PC and still suffer from a severe FPS drop when the constructs in crucible keep use that shiny blue spark spell. Also, the fog effect in Sun in Shadows heavily drops FPS for me - and I have a stable max FPS in all other situations. It's clear that it's an excess of particles, not the hardware that is to blame.

Yeah check out IE mod, it allows adjusting to PotD difficulty. It's actually a giant step upwards in difficulty, so chances are you will find it enjoyable.

Btw, this works both ways: you can also enchant the Disappointer with "fine" or "precise" to remove the quality malus and get a decent early game gun.

Chargadin is actually one of the few viable playstyles of Paladins in 1.05 imho: Use the paladin to rush behind enemy lines, then have your cipher cast Ectopsychic Echo on him for mass AoE damage.

As I said, it's not only about the summons getting into play too late. It's about stronger skills having a longer duration and higher requirements in general, making the class slower and slower with rising level. Ciphers have a similar concept, in which higher level abilities require more focus. However, there is one big difference between Ciphers and Chanters: Ciphers actually scale in focus generation with level, as with rising level, you will gain access to better weapons, dealing more damage, generating more focus. Chanters are stuck with the default duration of phrases with no level-scaling at all.

No other class in this game is derailed as much by the presence of another as the Paladin. Chanter abilities, for example, stack with most of the priest buffs. And there isn't even that much of a difference between offensive and defensive potential between Chanter and Paladin, if we disregard Faith and Conviction, which, mind you, only applies to the PC.

Currently, chanters are one of the worst scaling classes in PoE. So much that I consider them semi-broken as of now. Let me get this straight: I love the idea of the Chanter class, being more or less a low-maintenance passive second-row damage dealer with some tanking and buffing potential, that has the power to throw in the big guns after a longer amount of time. As PoE is very micro-heavy, Chanters are a nice change of pace and a great addition to the party, especially if you don't like extensive rest and pause spamming. However, there are three fundamental flaws in the design of the Chanter class, that will prevent them from keeping up with the progression of other classes (they are great at the beginning of the game, though): 1) highlevel phrases have a longer duration than lowlevel phrases 2) highlevel invocations require more phrases than lowlevel phrases 3) all phrases are mutual exclusive. Granted, phrases have a linger time, which allows having two phrases active at the same time, but that's about it. So what does all that combined mean for the class? - If you want to use your higher level phrases, you take longer to accumulate phrase stacks - If you want to use your higher level invocations, you need more phrase stacks - half of your level ups will just increase your spell variety, it will not allow you to use more spells. Given that the average battle in PoE takes roughly the same amount of time at the beginning of the game and the end of the game (with some exceptions), it becomes clear that Chanters are pretty much stuck at a zero-progression state. Most of your highlevel invocations are almost never used, as battles are simply not long enough for them to come into play. You are more or less forced to decide between using highlevel phrases, ditching invocations or using invocations, using only a single phrase to build up stacks fast. No other class has to make as much compromises in their gameplay as Chanters. So, possible solutions to fix this should adress primarily the increased time it takes to reach and use highlevel phrases/invocations. Here's some solutions for this issue; which are not mutual exclusive and can pretty much be mixed and matched to taste: 1) Phrases don't extend in duration with level. There is already enough of a tradeoff by using higher level phrases: that you can't use lowlevel phrases at the same time and that you need to level to get access to this phrase. 2) Invocations always require 3 stacks, regardless of invocation level; really, there is no need to extend the passivity of this class even further, especially since average battle length does not change throughout the game. 3) My personal favorite: let invocations not consume phrase stacks. Instead, limit the invocations to 1 cast per encounter per invocation level and increase the phrase requirement for progressing invocations. So reaching 3 stacks will allow you to cast a level 1 invocation once. Reaching 5 stacks will allow you to use a level 2 invocation or another level 1 invocation, etc. This will make sure that "older" invocations don't become useless once you get access to the newer ones, while still maintaining that "growing stronger" feel of the class. Obviously, as you reach the current maximum of phrases, you should switch to use long-duration phrases, as there's not much more to gain from stacking up more phrases. 4) As the character rises in level, make the duration of phrases go down and increase the linger time by the same amount; this will allow the Chanter to use more phrases at the same time or use stronger phrases without artifically extending the time needed to reach the required amount of stacks of an invocation.

I see. That surprises me, since I found Kana's Chanter skills very helpful to the group. It's true that every chanter I ever tried to play took until the end of the battle to get chants or invocations going, but Kana's seemed to work instantly. Battle starts, his big baritone booms out (I love alliteration =), and the party is instantly hit with a very useful buff. Since my party started performing in battle noticeably better after Kana tagged along, I found him very useful on top of being likable. Oh well, I guess my experience was different from others'. The general problem with chanters is, that they don't scale very well. They are great at the beginning of the game, because of the summon phantom spell. Granted, you won't have the phantom until building up three phrases, but it's strong enough to still make a difference. However, as the game progresses and the party rises in level, chanters become weaker and weaker. And while the phrases actually become more powerful, they also take longer to perform. The next issue is with invocations requiring more and more phrases as you progress in level. A level 1 invocation takes 3 phrases, a level 2 invocation takes 4 phrases, etc. So basicly, you have to decide between using weak and short phrases to build up invocation stacks fast or you decide to use long and strong phrases and suffer from basicly never using invocations at all. Both is clearly not optimal. And even if you decide to ditch powerful phrases and stack fast, you still have the problem that you need more and more phrases to get to the more powerful invocations out. While all other characters get bigger/better/faster/stronger with progressing level, the chanter actually gets weaker in comparison. Chanters clearly need an overhaul. They are great at low levels, but they simply can not keep up with the rest of the party on the long run.

Yeah some effects are extremely particle heavy. I have had several spells that dropped my game to 3-4 FPS for several seconds (then back up to max). A certain lightning attack from will'o'wisps, if I remember right?

Honestly, I think that one needs to take at least one accuracy enhancing talent, whether it's a weapon focus or marksman. I agree and have suggested the same thing, i.e. taking Marksman over a WF for a character that's going to be almost entirely focused on ranged combat, because it wouldn't feel like you've been limited to a single WF group's weapons. And regarding ciphers, since you need to get hits to generate focus points, you need accuracy to get those hits, so IMO picking Marksman or a WF seems rather necessary to me. I also like taking the in-class talent that increases the amount of focus you get from the damage you do, since that increases the speed that you gain focus. You are saying this like marksman and weapon focus don't stack. I see no reason not to pick both.

Yeah, bond of duty is another story. Completely outclassed by the level 2 priest spell Suppress Affliction, which does the same, but in a big AoE. The only upside of bond of duty is that it is per-encounter. But it's not like you fight mages and druids every single battle so that hardly matters.

It's not about the gods being real, it's about the gods not being actual gods, but basicly huge piles of soul-essence created by the engwithians initially to give life a purpose. So basicly, the gods are real. But they aren't gods. They are neither omnipresent nor are they impeccable. They are simply as flawed as the humans that created them. And that is the whole point of the plot twist in Act IV: It raises the question that, if the gods were created by men and men designed them just to bring a purpose to life, aren't you, if you follow a god, more or less like following a mindless machine? This is the main reason why Durance totally loses his mind when you bring him to Act IV. It basicly rendered all his past life meaningless. He is a mass murderer for building and detonating the godhammer. But he always justified it by following the orders of a greater god. Turns out it wasn't a god, but only a huge pile of souls created by some long dead animancers. So he was more or less supporting a genocide for the sake of some dead people.

Damn, why are all voice actresses always totally hot? Ah, "Astrid" from Skyrim. She did one of the PC voices as well, I think. I don't know why, but voice actresses are always smokingly hot. Does it come with the job?

Yeah I'm a sucker for weird. I'm pretty sure I'd make hot steaming mind-love to GM if the game allowed me. :D ... Wait, that sounded just wrong on so many levels. For crazy problematic sidekicks, I'd vote for HK-47 in the KOTOR series. Genocidal killer droids ftw...

Yeah, that's kind of the downside of using a warbow; the other weapons in the same focus category are rather lame for ciphers. The only melee option in the adventurer focus group that is worth it are flails. Which are more or less weapons for low accuracy characters, so not particulary interesting for ciphers. Starcaller/Unforgiven dual wielding could be an interesting option once the speed mod is fixed, though. Also, looks badass. But when you use a warbow, you pretty much won't need a pike for meleeing anyway. I've found them to be comparable in focus generation anyway. Instead, I used a weapon with spell hold on my second slot. There is a quarterstaff with spellhold: fireball that is perfect for this. However, let's not forget weapon focus: peasant, which has both quarterstaves as reach weapons and hunting bows. Persistence is actually a solid choice once you can replace the damaging 3 enchant with exceptional.

Wait, what? Cautious attack is not suppressed by displaced image afaik. It is. Why won't you test it yourself before doing any statements? Yeah, according to this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/79252-info-synergy-of-abilities-v1/ it really doesn't. Nice to know. One less point to invest into. It's not like melee wizards have plenty of talent points to spend anyway, so that's not even a bad thing.

Wait, what? Cautious attack is not suppressed by displaced image afaik.