Emerwyn

I actually hadn't read your solution. I tried it and it worked, thanks for the tip.

Unfortunate to see no reply at all on this, because I have I think the same issue in one of my characters. I'm not sure what it is, but I have two flash white icons in the buff/debuff bar showing 20 Raw Damage debuffs. I don't know what's causing it, but I can't find any way to remove it and I don't know if it's affecting my character in any way either (doesn't look like it)

I understand a lot of patches have come and gone. I suppose at some point down the line the Accuracy and Damage of spiritshift forms was buffed, and right now Cat Spiritshift is godly. At level 12+ it completely shreds through high Deflection enemies, 50+ damage hits with 100+ Accuracy scores that are only on par with my Rogue. I don't know how the attack speed boost compares to other spiritshift abilities, but really, the kitty cat is a shredding machine. While it's true that a druid's main potential is in spellcasting, the Cat spiritshift provides a tool that can be reused every encounter (very valuable for those of us who play in difficulties with a limited number of rests) and that if well used is absolutely devastating.

I know it's a bit late, but I just now got to play the expansion (waited to have the two parts together to play it all in one go). I'm playing Path of the Damned, level 12 party with Paladin (Tank), Fighter (2 handed weapon offtank/damage dealer), Rogue (Killing Machine), Priest (healer/support), Druid (support, spell damage), Wizard (AoE damage/CC). What worked for me was triggering the encounter with my party sheltered in the lower right corner of the area (used my rogue to start the fight and had her zoom back with the rest of the party as everything turned hostile). Then it's matter of AoE'ing the living crap out of every add while I kept juggling the Dragon's attention with figurine summons until the dragon was left alone. At that point sent my tank in front of it and kept the damage fighter in one side and the rogue in the other, with the three spellcasters (priest, druid, wizard) tucked in some corner within spell range but away from dragon breaths or tail sweeps (important to keep your melee also safe from tail sweeps, as in, don't have them stand behind the dragon or they'll get decimated in an instant). With my own buffs and some debuffs (debuffs are hard to hit in Path of the Damned Difficulty, but grazes should be enough if you've got the timing) You'll come to a position where you can petrify the dragon briefly, preferible using Gaze of the Adragan from the Wizard repertoire. At this point the dragon should be "softened" from taking all kinds of AoE damage while clearing the adds, so it's matter of using a few high damage abilities to finish the job. Druid's Sunlance, Rogue's Finishing Blows, or anything that hits hard really. Petrify status is really broken in this game, think I hit a 110ish damage Sunlance and couple of 90+ Finishing Blows with my Rogue, so it's really just matter of making the most out of those few seconds that petrification will last (assuming you get a Graze, if you get a hit then you've got more than enough time). List of buff spells that helped: Prayer Against Fear (crucial, keep it up at all times on all your party or you won't get anywhere) Blessing (+ Accuracy, damage) Dire Blessing (hits to crits) Devotions for the Faithful (+Accuracy and Might for allies, -Accuracy and Might for foes) Shields for the Faithful (+Deflection, mainly for the moments where you'll have the tank standing in front of the dragon, which shouldn't be too long anyway) Crowns for the Faithful (Overpowered Spell, just get it up on all the party) As for offensive spells, just AoE the mobs down, if possible using Fire or Raw damage spells such as Fireball and Plague of Insects, and try to make sure that each spell at least grazes the dragon to soften it towards the final phase of the fight. Hope this helps people who need a hand taking down this beastie. By the way, you can talk your way out of the fight in which case you get just some Vambraces which are decent but I couldn't find a main party member to wear them. If you kill the dragon, you'll get also get some Unique War Bow and Small Shield which are actually pretty good for different character builds. Those additional items are in the dragon's nest by the top left corner of the area. My rogue could also sniff out a "hidden" corpse under the ice with some White Forge iron bars for upgrading stuff.

Brigandine offers different DRs than plate armour, even if its base DR is lower. In addition, this could be similar to how Half Plate and Full Plale work in DnD. Half Plate offers less protection, but has higher penalties than Full Plate, why? The answer is because a Half Plate is a bunch of plates thrown together to be somewhat protective, while Full Plates are always custom made to perfectly suit the one purchasing it. The great difference was in the price (in standard DnD a Half Plate cost 600 gold pieces and a full plate 1500 gold pieces).

PoE is clearly superior to PoE. PoE plays in an obsolete genre which golden days are past. This genre was made famous by far better games that were released in a time where this genre was called for, but times have changed, and evolved. Only the obsessive need for some people to relive past times does not warrant the existence of this game. In the other hand PoE feels fresh and innovative within the framework set by its predecessors and does not fail to amaze players that are both new to the genre and hardened veterans.

Yeah as much as I love difficult gameplay and I went for PotD difficulty myself, someone with a disease or any kind of handicap also has a full right to enjoy the game and finish it whole. Besides using cheats, I'm not sure what else can help in this case, though.

My main character was a Greatsword medium-armored Fighter. Constant 50+ damage hits that use the lowest DR of the enemy is just so powerful in PotD difficulty. I'm actually the contrary, I don't see the reach in some polearms advantageous enough to warrant using them.

Context aside, for me PoE will always be Pillars of Eternity, based on the principle that Path of Exile is a crap P2W pseudo-mmo that nobody plays.

It's a crazy world. Not too long ago everyone got to see in every noon news of the world how two guys shot down a policeman in France, he was already bleeding out in the street from previous shots, raising one hand begging for mercy. And just bam, dead in the head. It was fine that every kid of the world got to see that. But man, if the terrorist had said "fu*k" I bet the TV news would have been all *beeeep* to disguise the swearing. Don't let the children hear taboo words. The cold blood assault rifle murdering, that's alright though. I feel the same about the people who want to disguise a few words in a game where all you do from beginning to end is murdering things, whether it's in the name of a god or for your own profit. Because all the murdering, raping, abusing drugs or knowingly sending kids and mental handicapped patients of a sanitarium to their deaths, that's fine. Buuuut dude, someone saying "fu*k"? That's where I draw the line of what's acceptable. Great principles and moralities to live by.

Good one OP. While you are at it, mod out all the bleeding and dismembering that happens in every combat, along with the quests where you purposely send people (oftentimes innocents) to their cruel death or you are given the option to execute them yourself, also mod out the undead raising, like, well you at times fight vampires, ghouls, zombies, skelletons... and all those profanities. Furthermore, mod out the pagan gods in the game, and make the Church of Christ to be the only religion of the game. And force everyone to play Ned Flanders as their main character. Then I'll be safe to show the game to my children. Even if the game is rated as "M" to make it clear that they shouldn't be playing it in the first place.

I was doing all bounties and side quests and I hit level 12 well before Twin Elms. But what's the alternative, avoiding game content purposely? They don't even need to lower the XP you get, just increase the damn challenge. Could get all those level 9 creatures to be level 12 with appropriate Accuracy and Defence stats and the problem just fixes itself. I don't mind a bit of horizontal progression as long as the combat keeps fun and skills/spells/loot keep relevant.

The issue is really that you get to level 12 too easily and too fast, and the game's encounters are capped at level 9. Couple of boss fights are level 10, and one very optional very specific boss fight is level 12, and that's it. You can't balance a game around a level 9 cap when the party will reach level 12 before reaching the half point of the game's crit path. That has been the single biggest mistake that they've made. If every encounter after Dyrwood village was level 11-12, with appropriately scaling Accuracies and defensive stats everything would have been mostly fine. But even the Sky Dragon sits at a poor level 10. My party autoattacked it to death without any real need to use spells in PotD difficulty. Honestly, from that point and on I had to force myself to finish the game because I had lost my enjoyment.

Wait just a second there. If youre gonna hoard traps for the entire game and blow the final boss with 30 traps that's, 1) your choice, 2) it doesn't come without a price (as you'd be restraining from using traps the whole game). PS Anyone with half a brain should know that Hoard what? There's a vendor in the keep that sells Fireball traps for like 500 gold each. I don't know you, but I ended the game with over 200k gold excess. And that's spending **** tons of gold on potions waiting for that grand difficult fight that never came, bought about every unique merchant item and didn't sell any items that I found and was named different than "Fine something" just for collection's sake, seeing I didn't need gold at all. It was all in PotD difficulty, too. I can't imagine how ridiculous it must be in lower difficulty settings. You could probably beat the entire game just with trap stacking exploits, if it was allowed.

I got Lightning talent for my druid and Fire/Frost talents for my Wizard. They work with spells, and they're overpowered. Basically free +20% damage to all your most important spells, which also helps to get over DR's increasing the effective damage by much more than 20% (sometimes by 100%+). These talents are one of the things that make the endgame so easy. I mean, Adra Dragon has 40 fire DR? Cool, here comes a 90 damage Fan of Flames. FWWWOSH. 50 damage in your face. And that was a level 1 spell. Imagine the level 5-6 ones.