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That's encounter design punishing you for not giving your wizard better defenses/protection in the form of armour, defensive spells or a reserve melee unit to intercept enemies that teleport. If the game didn't provide different scenarios to test your party composition, there would be no challenge. Clearly, combat doesn't only rely on a dedicated sword and board if it's resulting in the consistent KO of your spell casters. For reference, I don't use a specialized defensive fighter; I have a fighter with a mix of decent armour for protection plus attack speed and no perception resolve min/maxing (Eder), sword/shield and two handed set-up plus a barbarian (custom unit) to help hold the line with a melee load-out for a ranger (Sagani) in the back just in case something slips through.

1. I don't think so 2. Crit chance is tied to accuracy. Any attack roll of 100+ is automatically a crit. Right, I keep forgetting that accuracy handles all of that in POE. Well, maybe make per add a +/- modifier to crits regarding damage/interrupts/de-buff duration? Not too sure on the values you would use for that, though.

Does critting on an interrupt increase the effect? Adding crit chance to per could do a lot for both damage and interrupt in that case.

No, no - it does. I just typed DoT instead of "duration". But unless your class is based around AoE or duration-based abilities, it's not really worth it. Warriors, for instance, don't really get anything from Intelligence. Wait, I just re-read your post. So, if I wanted to make a gimmicky fighter build that focuses on buff talents I could? Nice, I know it's sub-optimal but having the choice is cool. I will agree that the talent spread makes min/maxing pretty easy but I don't think the goal was to prevent that, just to make multiple build choices viable for a play-through. So, for example, if I want to roll an intelligent fighter for w.e. reason I get some bonus for doing it without completely gimping the build.

Break down each stat and see what it's good for. Might = almost entirely offense (slash healing) Constitution = survivability Dexterity = helps almost everything you do, therefore has no specialization Perception = survivability - the interrupt bonus provides a bit of soft cc Intelligence = helps almost everything you do, but only if you're a class that has lots of AoE / DoT Resolve = survivability and bit of resistance to soft cc So Con, Per, and Resolve are ONLY helpful if you're getting hit. On anyone who's going to spend 90% of their time not getting hit, they're dump stats. Dex is equally good on everyone, which means it's a non-choice. Intelligence is completely worthless to many classes. All that's left is Might. And all classes want Might anyway. It's almost as bland as Dex. Yeah, I know what they do when broken down. Regarding per, I was thinking you could focus on it if you want to make interrupt-focused builds; maybe not optimal but the choice is there. I'll agree with con and resolve being effectively "tank stats" though; not sure if that will ever change for con specifically since it's tied to endurance/health. What you have regarding intelligence is interesting though. Are you saying that intelligence does not increase positive buff duration (Disciplined Assualt, Frenzy, etc)? That's pretty odd if it doesn't.

In some settings it does, yes. So is that how it works in this setting? Is this medieval fantasy Dragonball? I wouldn't be surprised if might or soul power is the equivalent of ki, hence the incredible feats of strength even though you're not physically imposing.

This. Technically, 5/6 stats are useful for every class. Resolve reduces the chance of an interrupt during spell casting/actions, perception gives increased interrupt chance and reflex, might, int and dex are obviously good. Clearly some stats will be more favourable than others depending on what you plan on doing with a unit (e.g. not putting points into res on your back line since you don't expect them to take hits), but it's up to encounter design to bring out the negatives of different choices. Also, I have to agree with interrupts not being as obvious as they should be. Another feature that could use some tweaking, imo.

They announced that a patch would be incoming this week on Thursday/Friday, how is that inconsiderate? All software has bugs on release, there's no perfect version 1.0.

To note "Might" does denote physical strength in-game. I'm getting the idea that those who defend might in its current form use the 'Chuck Norris' definition of might. When you succeed in a might check such for that crumbling wall, its more like 'Chuck norris doesn't break down walls, they just fall to pieces in his presence'. More like trying to find an abstract way to define Might as soul/physical power in general without clamoring that OE change the attributes to our wishes. Seriously, I wonder why people who want major changes in attributes don't start looking into developing some type of mod. It's not like POE code is inaccessible. Honestly, I don't think it's possible to have a system where all stats are viable for every class build. Outside of tweaking con and maybe per, I don't think there's anything else that can be done. With the current system, at least I get some benefits for doing things like making a perceptive wizard, intelligent fighter, resolute barbarian without completely gimping the build; please don't bring up min/maxing. Things like adding intelligence to fighters in IE games offer no benefits.

Yeah, but there's a cool-down before the new spells can be used. Also, once you prepare spells the ability to swap on the fly may become irrelevant. You can swap grimoires in combat to have access to more spells, but in practice it's not that useful. Just nitpicking, but that's exactly what I said. Carry on

Might of the soul leads to amazing displays of physical strength? Doesn't necessarily mean the character is muscle-bound.

I'm sure you can see into people's souls too and work out what they think, right? Saying "people who backed the game must love it because they are deluded" is just as pointless as saying "people who criticise the game are just trolling". Neither have any basis in logic or reality. There were reviews also up within minutes of people giving the game a zero, for example because it has "old graphics" or whatever else. There's a lot of stupid people saying nonsensical things from every spectrum. Again, it's funny that you're doing exactly what the OP is cautioning against - assuming everybody is a troll. And here again, a backer rushing to the defense of their "precious." There's a reason that Steam is forcing the people on there to disclose that they have been PAID for their opinions. Maybe you aren't aware of whats called astroturfing? Hiring shills to pretend to be real customers and give fake reviews, and now also to post in social media sites in order to control opinions. I'm not going to argue with you because I really don't care, I know how things work now I've seen many times, and the gaming industry can get away with it easily because their main demographic is children. A lot of the beta period involved backers cursing out the developers for specific design decisions, and even now there are backers who do not like the end product. Any review that doesn't give details on why something is good or bad beyond the scope "because I said so" should be ignored, positive or negative. If a negative review has good reasoning behind it then it's as legitimate as anything else.

Well, it sounds like you may want to wait for the addition of AI scripts if possible. I can understand preferring a specific style of play, but the base game was never intended to be "hands-free".

I think the idea regarding difficulty was that main content wouldn't necessarily be very hard, but the sub quests would be challenging. The major Skaen temple fight is a good example.

Well yeah, I did fear as soon as they announced their intentions that the desire to create a game that's a cross between Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale (going by what was in the early promo material) might result in an awkward situation like this where the parts don't fit too well. Having said that, if you regard the old IE games as ones that were primarily tactical combat rather than role-playing (or even as games where the tactical combat was as important an aspect as the role-playing), that's fine and all, but I daresay it's not the definitive way to characterize those games. Torment, for instance - it had a nominal amount of combat by necessity, but if I were to call it a "squad-based tactical combat game with elements of role-playing" I'd just sound silly. It's kind of sort of true for Icewind Dale and it sequel (though even then I know quite a few people who breezed through on easy mode because they didn't really care about the combat and just liked the quests and writing). Have you ever played BG or BG2? Those games are a mix of Torment and IWD in terms of gameplay, and POE is best compared to them. BG series is also considered to be among the best CRPG series ever created. You don't have to like it, but POE was pitched as being a spiritual successor to games like BG. Nothing wrong with personal preference.

Yeah, but there's a cool-down before the new spells can be used. Also, once you prepare spells the ability to swap on the fly may become irrelevant.

Choose passive abilities on level-up, avoid classes that require a lot of micro-management, such as Rogue, Ranger and Cipher. As stated above it is a squad-based tactical combat game, but the dev team included options in the event that you want to be more passive during combat. Just be prepared to adjust your tactics and strategies to take advantage of your party setup.

Slicken >>>>>>> Web, Thrust of Tattered veil >>> the second level spell lance, Ice AoE > Fireball. It's not just one spell, lvl1 spells are probably the best ones till you are really high level. Slicken > Web seems like a preference tbh, since Web is actually different. Depending on what you want to do, it's not surprising that some spells will be rated higher than others. For example, I don't think Ice AoE > Fireball based on the range and aoe differences, I don't think Thrust > Lance based on damage, etc. The only real issue with the spells that I've found (imo) is FoF damage and the way some wizard self buffs work. Everything else just comes down to situation and preference.

Confusion is a level two spell and is damn good. I just think that Fan of Flames needs to be nerfed (switch damage with Fireball), I can understand that positioning is an issue but it's a level 1 spell.

POE and BG2, EE for the ease-of-use mods that come bundled with the game or vanilla if you don't mind implement those mods yourself. I'm not a huge fan of BG1.

Pretty sure that if you have a paladin with a lower stealth score than a ranger (for example), if you both move forward the Paladin will be seen first and alert the enemy to your entire party. I don't think there will ever be a mod that turns stealth into "invisibility" like it is in the IE games. Also, stealth is already tied to an attribute (Stealth). Just think of a Paladin with plate armour and a high stealth score as being skilled enough to sneak around while compensating for the negative effects of the armour?

Removing pre-buffing and rest spam is only a good thing. Not everything PoE does is perfect and you may not agree with some of the design decisions, but BG combat is not perfect and has issues as well (hiding in plain sight during battles as if invisible, armour making you harder to hit as opposed to reducing damage, save or die spells, etc). I will agree that some Wizard spells need to be re-tooled (Fan of Flames damage, Fireball damage, Wizard's Double and spells that are permanent until you're hit, etc).

Sounds like you should play a Cipher, OP. All of their abilities are per encounter.

I had the same issue, just complete a battle and it should be removed at the end.

I think this is the most reasonable suggestion regarding attribute tweaks. There would be modifications to the three weakest attributes without changing the function of the spread, the only major change would need to be con and dex IMO. Accuracy should not be tied to any stats, as that would be a no-brainer pump attribute. Armour speed reduction (con) would need to be separate from general action speed (dex), keep interrupt on per (duration on int makes it useful for many classes already). No flat integer increases though, percentage works fine when combined with the classes (e.g Durance has high endurance\hp for a priest, but he's not going to have more than an above average fighter).