Kaigen42

Even DR 23 isn't that common, especially if you're talking piercing damage, which both the estoc and the arquebus do. Sky Dragon only has 21 DR, while Skeletal Fighters and Death Knights have 18. If you want enemies with 23+ Piercing DR, you're looking at Adra Animats, the Adra Dragon, and Greater Rain Blights (scourge of PotD parties everywhere). I assume "Close Shooter" is something that was in beta and was later cut. Which is where this little discussion links back into the larger one: durability is such an all or nothing thing that many people, myself included, would rather field ranged DPS, despite their lower damage, because fielding melee DPS requires you to sacrifice their damage potential in some way, whether by wearing armor or using a reach weapon or sacrificing attribute points, or else expend a significant amount of effort micromanaging them in order to ensure they don't get splattered across the battlefield. You can push ranged DPS all the way, while melee DPS has to hold back out of concern for survivability (though I'd still expect the melee DPS to do better in terms of raw damage output).

Ranged weapons do not outdamage melee. Arquebuses have shiny high base damage numbers, but they are much, much slower than melee weapons. Even with the Gunner talent, you can still get in 3 attacks with an Estoc for every Arquebus shot, and the melee combatant can take Savage Attack for an additional damage boost and doesn't have to labor under the reduced critical damage bonus of guns/arbalest. I would go so far as to say that even a character specialized in ranged combat (with the possible exception of the Ranger) could be doing more damage if they switched to a two-handed weapon or dual-wielded. The reason ranged DPS builds are so popular isn't because they're more damaging, it's because the nature of the Defense and Attribute systems means that pushing damage as much as you can severely neglects defenses, and it's easier to keep a glass cannon alive in the backline. Especially since Engagement only stops enemies from moving and won't stop them from pivoting to attack a fragile melee DPS character. Also, a ranged character retains the freedom to actually move, which is important for avoiding battlefield hazards and targeting active abilities. Are guns really much, much slower, or just slower? I doubt it's 3 times, since estoc is already slow, and since most enemies have fairly high DR, higher damage is almost always better. War bow has the same damage and speed as melee two-handers for instance. There was a thread in this sub-forum with detailed analysis, and it proved that guns have the best DPS in most common scenarios. I think there are symmetrical skills to boost both ranged and melee, so no win here either. The only problem with guns is overkill, but you can have a specialized fast shooter to finish off almost-dead targets, while the gunners switch to another one. Even if highly specialized melee could slightly outdamage ranged (which I don't think it can, but for the sake of argument), being able to keep distance is such a huge advantage that it would easily negate that. You can test it yourself. Take two characters with equal dex and no armor, one with an arquebus and one with an estoc. Pause the game and set them to attack at the same time. Unpause and watch as the estoc user gets three, sometimes four attacks inbetween each shot. There are symmetrical skills to boost melee and ranged; Penetrating Shot and Vulnerable Attack are identical for example. But there's no ranged equivalent to Savage Attack's damage bonus. Consider two characters with 20 Might and Superb weapons, for a 75% damage increase. The estoc has an average damage of 17 * 1.75 = 29.75. The arquebus has an average damage of 30 * 1.75 = 52.5. Over the span of time in which the arquebus gets one shot for 52.25 damage, the estoc user gets 3 for 89.25. And the estoc user gets more bonus damage on a crit. Of course, more attacks means more applications of DR, so against sufficiently high DR the arquebus will outperform the estoc, right? Well, if both are using their respective anti-DR modals, DR doesn't come into play until it's higher than 10. At 20 DR, the estoc drops to 59.25 while the arquebus drops 43.5. It isn't until 28 DR that the arquebus pulls ahead. Even on PotD, there are very few enemies with DR that high; you're basically looking at the Adra Dragon and Adra Animats. Now, I agree that the advantage of being able to keep distance is huge. I prefer ranged DPS over melee DPS myself. But there's no ranged build, again, with the possible exception of the Ranger, that can match melee in terms of raw damage output.

I haven't tried this myself, but isn't there an option to have Lady Webb get you into the animancy hearings instead of going through one of the factions? I seem to remember someone talking about that as a failsafe in another thread.

As if not dumping might would do anything to improve the damage output. Oh, there's a definite impact. My 18 Might Fighter did twice as much damage as my 2 Might Paladin in my PotD run. Of course, that Fighter was still doing only a quarter of the damage of my actual DPS specialists, so it's certainly not anything magnificent.

It also bears noting that Vigorous Defense doesn't stack with any defense buffing spells. If your Priest likes to drop Circle of Protection for those short fights, the Fighter's edge largely disappears. Ranged weapons do not outdamage melee. Arquebuses have shiny high base damage numbers, but they are much, much slower than melee weapons. Even with the Gunner talent, you can still get in 3 attacks with an Estoc for every Arquebus shot, and the melee combatant can take Savage Attack for an additional damage boost and doesn't have to labor under the reduced critical damage bonus of guns/arbalest. I would go so far as to say that even a character specialized in ranged combat (with the possible exception of the Ranger) could be doing more damage if they switched to a two-handed weapon or dual-wielded. The reason ranged DPS builds are so popular isn't because they're more damaging, it's because the nature of the Defense and Attribute systems means that pushing damage as much as you can severely neglects defenses, and it's easier to keep a glass cannon alive in the backline. Especially since Engagement only stops enemies from moving and won't stop them from pivoting to attack a fragile melee DPS character. Also, a ranged character retains the freedom to actually move, which is important for avoiding battlefield hazards and targeting active abilities.

According to the Google spreadsheet that's buried somewhere in this thread, Scepters and Wands have identical speed: 30 frames of attack animation, 54 frames of recovery. The Rod has a 46 frame attack animation with 80 frames of recovery. So Rods are about 50% slower than than Scepters/Wands. Or to put it another way: With identical Dexterity and Recovery factors, you can get three Wand/Scepter attacks for every two Rod attacks.

I don't know about Icewind Dale, but I know that in the BG series, the only reason that warriors could "hold" a frontline was because the AI was too stupid to realize there was literally nothing stopping it from waltzing past them and attacking your squishier characters. In that respect, PoE is a great successor to the IE legacy.

Fair enough. The point I'm trying to make is that one shouldn't assume that just because your build is ranged focused, that you will be more effective shooting rather than switching to melee weapons. Likewise, you shouldn't assume that because there is no additional penalty for shooting someone in melee range, that it is just as effective as switching to melee weapons. You have already accepted a damage penalty just by choosing to use ranged weapons in favor of melee. It's a good tradeoff with a lot of benefits, but if an enemy is in melee range, you're not getting any of the benefits of using a ranged weapon, so you might as well switch to a melee weapon for better damage. Now, the spike damage of swapping between firearms might be sufficient to put down the enemy that's in your face, but I wouldn't bet on it with only two weapon slots, even on normal difficulty.

Even a Hunting Bow fires slower than you can swing a pair of sabers. Ranged weapons aren't designed to deal as much damage as melee weapons; that's the price you pay for attacking with relative safety. And the thing about the ranged rogue is that, with the exception of Penetrating Shot, anything you get that makes your ranged weapons more damaging also makes your melee attacks more damaging, and anything else that exclusively applies to your ranged attacks either doesn't work in melee range (Marksman) or only tries to make them less slow (Gunner) If you're willing to make the investment to get three or four weapon slots, maybe, but on PotD difficulty I don't see two shots, even from a Rogue, being a reliable way to put down someone who gets into melee with you.

It's an interesting idea, though if you bumped them all the way up to 0.5s, they'd be better than morning stars, so it would probably be better to put them somewhere around 0.45s so that you don't end up obviating one weapon while trying to make another more useful.

The drawback to shooting in melee is that you could be doing so much more damage with melee weapons. A ranged focus rogue, even with the Gunner talent and not having Two Weapon Style, can still get in four or five sabre attacks dual-wielding in the time it takes them to recover, reload, and shoot their pistol again. Even without any melee boosting talents or abilities, you're still going to out damage the rogue who stands there shooting in point blank range. The fact that you might be able to slow down your enemy's attacks through interrupts is just a side benefit (incidentally, the lower interrupt rating of fast weapons is almost perfectly compensated for by their increased attack speed).

Antipathetic Field is great, but you have to be careful with it, as it is sometimes hard to read whose hit boxes the beam is passing through, so you sometimes end up hurting your people even though it doesn't look like the beam is touching them. You also have to be careful if the enemy you target with it moves on you and alters the path of the beam. Enemy archers make good anchor points, as they tend not to move. AF carries a buff to beam damage as well, so it can be fun to combine it with Ectopsychic Echo or a scroll of Ray of Fire. Just don't get the beams mixed up. I often take Whispers of Treason and skip the higher level Dominate power, because what I mainly want out of the power is an enemy not attacking me and other enemies distracted by attacking it. The fact that Charmed carries a defense debuff means that I can count on my enemies severely damaging the charmed one for me. Dominate preserves the enemy's damage dealing capability, so it's handy if you want to suborn a nasty enemy for the purposes of cutting up their own allies, but it also costs twice as much Focus. Mindwave shines against enemies with really high DR, like Shades. I don't use it much apart from that once I get level 2 powers, most of which have better damage dealing potential.

Dulcanale (pistol) has Annihilating to make up for the reduced crit modifier and Rending for extra DR bypass, so I wouldn't be surprised if it outperforms Arquebuses anyway.

You could make a case for bows being better against enemies with ~12 DR or less, depending on how many damage bonuses you can stack and how often you crit, except that the Blunderbuss exists, and the Blunderbuss is devastating against low DR targets (though if any weapon suffers from overkill...). Since DR tends to be really low or really high, there aren't many enemies in the middle ground between low DR targets the Blunderbuss will annihilate and high DR targets that Pistols/Arquebuses perform better against. Pistols and Blunderbusses are even on the same Weapon Focus talent (along with two of the best damaging melee weapons).

I've been thinking about party composition lately, and abilities that certain classes get that are difficult to replicate without that class. For my PotD run, I had a party of Fighter, Paladin, Paladin, Cipher, Ranger, Druid using respecced companions for the banter and interjections. For the most part, this group did fine, but there were certain fights where I really wanted a Wizard or Priest around, prompting this thread idea. My thoughts so far: Priest - Status Effect suppression. You can replicate the lower level spells with scrolls, but you can't make scrolls of Prayer Against Imprisonment or Prayer Against Treachery, and nothing else comes close to provide the strong protection against those effects. For fights against groups of Cean Gwyla, Vithracks, and Fampyrs, those are spells you really want to have around. Wizard - AoE hard CC. There are some fights where you really want a whole group of enemies to not be able to do anything right now. I'm thinking in particular of the fights against swarms of Druid-casting enemies like Pwgras, Feral Druids, and the Nalrend the Wise fight. If you give them even a few seconds, they'll blanket your party. Other classes can provide effective single target CC, but even a Cipher struggles to lock down multiple enemies for any length of time. Thankfully, you can replicate this to an extent with Scrolls of Paralysis and Confusion, but you need a Wizard if you want to be able to spam freely. What other examples have people come across? Are there other vital abilities that are hard to come by unless you take a certain class along?

A Paladin who is the PC gets bonuses to his defenses from having the right dispositions (from conversation choices) depending on his order. The difference between the base Faith and Conviction, which is all a hireling will ever get, and the maxed Faith and Conviction that the PC can get is +6 Deflection, +12 Fort/Ref/Will. If you really don't want to have a Priest, you might be able to get by with potion chugging. Your tanks won't have any super important active abilities that would get in the way of gulping down potions. You can craft potions even in the field from ingredients that you can gather or buy in quantity, so it should work. I haven't tried it because I have a thing about using consumables even when they're readily available, but the game showers you with so much money and ingredients that it shouldn't put a damper on your resources. Just prioritize getting the Botanical Garden and Curio Shop up when you get the Stronghold so you have an extra supply. Edit: You can even mimic the Priest's AoE heals with scrolls, provided you have a character with decent Lore and a high Might score (now if only you could make Prayer Against Treachery scrolls).

In terms of damage? I don't think so, except maybe with Cloudpiercer's combination of Rending and Spellbound Jolting Touch. Get your accuracy up enough to crit regularly and those jolts could go a long way. Otherwise, bows are a little better at delivering CC, since with the faster attack rate you have more uptime on stuff like Stunning Shots or Stun on Crit weapons like Borresaine.

Paladin can provide supplemental healing through Lay on Hands, but doesn't have enough broad healing to replace a Priest. On my PotD run I got sufficient healing out of a Paladin + Druid, but I don't know how well you'd take a Dwarven Druid if you don't like a Dwarven Priest. And there's no substitute for the Priest's powerful debuff protection for some fights. If you do run a Paladin tank, though, it should be your PC, as that'll be the only way to improve its Faith and Conviction bonuses to defense.

Bear in mind that for the time being the Interrupting Blows is broken and does nothing. Don't forget Plague of Insects, which has a big Concentration debuff and a DoT effect.

I wish they had more customization in general. Right now all you can do is pick the fur color.

Kaylon mentions taking Bear's Fortitude, so that's probably here the extra 10 is coming from. Sword and Shield Style is a pretty big Reflex boost if you keep up with enhancing your shield's quality. My Paladin had minimum Dexterity and maximum Intellect and Resolve and Reflex and Will were dead even. In the case of Orlans, it helps that you can crank Perception so high to make up for the missing Dexterity. Remember that S&S itself adds 6 to the shield's deflection, and that plus the quality modifier stacks with the shield's base deflection to transfer over to Reflex. Even with a small shield like the Outworn Buckler, that can easily be 8 (shield) + 8 (exceptional) + 6 (S&S) = 22 Reflex, not counting the extra bump from the Herald quality.

I guess I just don't see why stacking or lack thereof is such a sticking point. Yes, Zealous Endurance and Armor of Faith are redundant, but that just improves the Priest's action economy. Instead of opening with Armor of Faith to minimize damage, I can start off with Blessing or Interdiction or any number of other useful spells, and that's helpful regardless of the length of the fight. Zealous Focus doesn't quite play as nicely, since you likely still want the damage bonus from Blessing, but that just means you don't take that aura if you have a Priest in the party. Much like your Fighter doesn't need Vigorous Defense in you have a Priest because it doesn't stack with Circle of Protection. Party composition informing individual builds is not necessarily a bad thing.

The nice thing about the Barbarian is that they can potentially inflict any of the status effects that indirectly debuff Concentration, and Threatening Presence even does it passively. Frenzy also gives a notable attack speed increase, which is helpful for an interrupt build to maximize the number of interrupts you can fit into the enemy's recovery period. And of course, Carnage lets you tag multiple enemies with each attack for interrupts. If you can get those status effects easily from other party members, though, their utility decreases, and as KDubya points out you have to make some sacrifices in their stats if you want a high Perception. Monk looks interesting not just for Rooting Pain, but also for Swift Strikes and Flagellant's Path. Swift Strikes gives you a nice attack speed increase (though I hear it's a little glitchy) and Flagellant's Path could be useful for breaking through enemy lines to interrupt those casters. Not to mention that Monk can provide some hard CC, which is handy since, as has been pointed out numerous times, you're not going to stunlock an enemy with interrupts. Don't forget that the Priest gets some significant stat buffs later on, which can pump up your party's Perception for better interrupt chances.

Well, you'll have a high Will defense already, and in my experience the Paladin tank doesn't get targeted much by Charms or Dominates. In my case, they'd rather go after my Cipher or Druid. That said, it's not like Reinforcing Exhortation is the bee's knees, so if you want to grab Righteous Soul instead as insurance, I think that's a viable pick.

I'm glad someone else appreciates the damaging repertoire on the Druid, though I prefer mine with much higher Dexterity. On my PotD run, one of my favorite tactics once I hit level 9+ was opening combat by spamming Winter Wind from between and slightly behind my tanks. So much damage for a first level spell (especially with Secrets of the Rime), and that push effect keeps knocking them back so they run forwards into the next one. Hail Storm isn't bad either, for when you need to cause pain over a truly massive area. I was lucky enough to find a Ring of Overseer for my Druid.