Madscientist

Base duration is 9 seconds, and it stacks with itself. You only see the duration of the longest bleed effect remaining, but they all run for their full duration. I.E. if you attack once per 3 seconds, you'll always have three bleed effects up on the target. **Updated 'cause I was wrong. - If you attack with a blunderbuss, does each bullit cause deep wounds? ( same question for combusting wounds ) - If you see only the one with the longest duration, how do you know that there are several of them at the same time?

suggestion: dual wielding pistols or blunderbuss lets you fire both weapons at once, but then you have to wait reload time mainhand weapon plus reload time offhand weapon before you can do something again. It would still be a speed bonus compared to single wielding, but you have to wait very long before you can do something after shooting. single wielding: shoot, reload, shoot, reload, . . . dual wielding: shoot both at once, reload weapon 1, reload weapon 2, shoot both at once, . . . I you dual wield a pistol/blunderbuss with something else, the reload time will not be reduced by dual wielding for those weapons.

I had the character creation open to create my char and at the same time I had firefox open to write about my vampire build in this forum. gog galaxy was also open. There were some problems. I have windows 10. - When pressing alt+tab while playing the game, sometimes I remained in the game. - Sometimes I switch to a different part of character creation when using alt + tab. Like I am selecting the character pose and when I switch to the forum, write something and then switch back to the game I see the talent tree preview. Or vice versa, it seem to happen with all parts of character creation, but usually the talent tree preview is involved. I have opened and closed the talent tree preview quite a lot for several classes during character creation. So far this did not prevent me from continuing to play, but it does feel wrong somehow.

OK, back to game mechanics. I dicided to go for barbarien/soul blade. I want to bash things in melee. Soul blades can spend their focus for a powerful melee attack and get concentration on kill. They can still cast all spells. With the lower max focus she cannot cast lots of spells in a row, but I want a melee char who uses spells to CC enemies or buff herself when needed, not a caster who uses weapons only to generate focus. I want to use draining weapons to heal myself and axe modal plus blood frenzy to cause bleeding damage. For RP reasons I pretend that the combination of bleeding and draining implies that she drinks their blood. Power gamers will use berserker instead of the standard barbarien, but I am not sure how to deal with confusion. some questions: Do you think such a char is viable? I used ciphers in PoE1 and they were very powerful. But I always used them with ranged weapons ( mostly leadspitter) as backrow casters. I am not sure how well they can cast as melee. I also used barbariens and they were also powerful. Dual wield weapons that cause prone or stunn and have high per and you can CC/interrupt everything around you. But carnage does not cause weapon effects any more and it does not generate focus. I do not know how good good barbarien and cipher work together. - Were draining weapons + savage defiance + athletics enough to keep a barbarien alive in longer fights? - Which speed bonusses stack ( like frenzy, bloodlust and potion )? Does bloodlust stack with itself? Do all those things reduce casting time too? Just to be sure: +X% action speed improves attacking, casting and recovery, not just recovery like in PoE1. - The club modal ( minus will defense ) looks perfect in combination with my domination powers. - I just looked into character creation. A female pale elf with head #3 and the hunched pose looks perfectly like a vampire. Regarding spells, I chose whisper of treason, silent scream (not sure), body attunement ( -5 armor rating for the enemy and +5 for me seems very powerful in the current penetration system), Ringleader, borrowed instincts ( sounds very vampiric but I do not know how good it is) and detonate (not sure). When I look at this the char might not be the worst possible choice for soloing ( I do not intend to solo ) if draining weapons can keep you alive. Edit: I think I skip silent scream and detonate. If I want to spend focus for damaging enemies with raw damage and also hitting everyone around me I have soul annihilation+carnage. This needs much less time then casting a spell. If I use spells only for CC and buffs I do not need to care about spell penetration.

OK, I thought about a backstory for her: Animancy is wide spread in the valien republics. She hired an animancer who performed some experiments on her and she became a fampyr. Thanks to her power and money she has no problems to get lots of fresh flesh. That means she looks very good, not rotten at all. The ducs really like her because she gets the job done. She is send as a spy to Dyrwood to increase the power of the valiens. In PoE1 she supports animancy, helps the Domoels and the skean cultists, makes the trade deal with the tribes and finally destroys all souls for Rymgard, so that the Dyrwood does not profit from them. She inspires others to do whatever they want, especially if it involves killing people or seeking vengeance. In the deadfire she still supports the valians. She tries to convince others to join her goals by whatever means necessary. If they do not join her, they all die under myterious circumstances.The ducs have investigated the events and came to the following result: All of our enemies have committed suicide when they realized how superior we are. The fact that most of their bodies disappeared and the bodies that have been found are missing most of their flesh is easy to explain: They committed suicide by eating oneself alive. The fact that she visited all of our enemies before their death and the fact that all of their successors support us is a complete coincidence. She is absolutely innocent and all rumors about her are complete nonsense.

The numbers about her victims range from 36 to 650, according to the english wikipedia. The number 650 comes from a witness who saw the number in her diary, but the book was never found and the number was never confirmed. The wiki is full of "citation needed". The only thing thats sure: In the trail she was accused of killing 80 people, she was found guilty and came under house arrest for the rest of her life. But even if we assume the lowest number, torturing and killing 36 people for your personal pleasure is very extreme. Most of the stuff we "know" has been written centuries later. Most likely she did not bath in or drink blood and she did not do it for satanic rituals.

OK, I make a pale elf out of her. It looks better and game mechanics wise almost everything is better than death godlike. EDIT: Regarding puns: She is an impale elf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thorywas a hungarian noblewoman who has killed and tortured several young girls and she became famous as "the blood countess". If she did really torture or kill hundreds of people or if this was a plot to get rid of her is not 100% sure, but at least it makes a good story. Vlad the impaler was the guy from romania. PS: Do we have an impale skill in PoE?

Finally a real vampire ( with V ) has shown up in Eora, or maybe its just another fampyr whose big teeth give her problems to talk properly Anyway, after discussing a bit about undead in PoE I thought about making one myself. This is mostly an RP build, but I would still like to know if it is useful. race: death godlike ( for RP reasons, I guess every other race would be better, especially the ones who give status effect resistance ) background: A noble from the valien republics, sorry hungary cannot be selected alignment: go for the cruel, deceptive ( shady ) and passionat options class: corpse eater/beguiler Undead have to eat flesh to prevent decomposing. Fortunalty we have the corpse eater class wich is a must have in this case. To make things better, barbariens have lots of talents with "blood" in their name. I admit that corpse eater is a bad choice so I could use a berserker ( for max damage ) or a barbarien without subclass ( if I care about my other party members ) and pretend to eat my enemies after the fight is over. Vampires in other games use domination spells and can also drain their enemies stats, so beguiler seems perfect. weapons: Dual wielding axes with bleeding modal on. Use draining axes if you find them, or axes that cause status effects. Best would be an axe with both (draining AND debuff on hit ). barbarien talents: everythinng with blood in their name . So frenzy upgraded to blood frenzy, blooded ( though it will not be there often thanks to my draining weapons, at least I hope so ), 2 weapon style, bloodlust and later threatening presence. A multi class cannot get heart of fury, maybe barbaric blow with cost refund on kill where the death godlike special helps you to finish injured enemies. Leap could be a good way to get in the middle of the action ( vampires can fly in several games ). Savage defience and thick skinned and one stands alone might also be useful. cipher talents: Domination type spells is a must have. You should be able to cause other status effects too in case enemies are resistant to my charm. Berserker would be great here if it means I damage the charmed enemies too, except when hitting charmed enemies can end the effect earlier, then a regular barbarien would be best. Spells that weaken your enemy and buff yourself fit also the vampire theme. There was a long lasting spell that gives you acc and def while weakening the enemy ( borrowed instincts? I am not sure ). This sounds great. Stats: Here I do have problems what to chose. Int is a must have for duration and AoE. But the rest is more difficult. Might is importent for barbarien damage and thus focus creation and draining healing. But none of the deception spells causes damage, so its wasted on the cipher part. Maybe I should select some damaging spells too. For the rest I am completely unsure. How much con do I need to keep myself alive with draining weapons? How much dex do I need for my attacks when I dual wield with axe modal and cast some spells? How much per for hitting things? Is res a complete dumb stat? problems: The synergy between barbarien and beguiler does not seem so big. Barbariens want to go crazy in melee. But except their shouts ( should I learn them? ) and much later threatening presence ( very useful for me ) they cannot cause afflictions. Beguilers need a debuffed enemy to be effective. While some deception powers are fast casts, domination spells are slower so there may be a good chance of being interrupted when you are surrounded by enemies. The increased range of deception spells for beguilers is also completely wasted here. Maybe I should switch beguiler for another cipher. Ascendent may be useful if I get full focus fast. Sould blade gives you concentration when you kill an enemy which might be good here. Do you have any ideas to make her better? I like the idea to make an evil char without being a bleak walker.

Besides the Reaping Knives (which make no sense when cast on oneself anyway in my opinion) Rogue + Cipher is actually pretty awesome. That's because you start the game with a +70% dmg bonus and can go to +90% in a few levels. That's pretty cool. Especially Assassin/Soulblade is pretty spectacular if you combine it with Backstab. You can one-shot the first victim out of stealth pretty easily and get a ton of focus for your Soul Annihilation - which usually one-shots the next enemy, then use Smoke Cloud and repeat. Perfect Assassin in my opinion. Detonate works with Assassination by the way. Does the damage of soul annihilation depend only on your focus or does it also depend on your base damage? You said you fight like this: stealth -> backstab -> soul annihilation -> invisibility -> backstab Would it be useful to use soul annihilation from invisibility or is this just overkill and using both things ( backstab and SA ) after another is better?

If you play a perma stoned priest of Wael, you should talk like the malkavians in VtM: Bloodlines. In that case I might even consider playing such a char, it was very funny.

Monks are very good in causing damage and being tanky. I do not know the high level talents, but if there is one that increases your armor with every wound and also one which adds lash damage for every wound ( those did exist in PoE1) I would take a single class nalpazca nature godlike. - Why Nalpazca? Shattered pillars have less wounds, helwalkers take more damage which is not my idea of tank, normal monks and helwalkers need to take damage to get wounds which is also not my idea of tank. Nazpalca generate wounds when under the influence of drugs. Keep the wounds for their beneficial talents and do not spam abilities, but use them to keep buffs up ( thunderous blows, blade turning ) - Why single class nature godlike? Monk fists scale with power level, so single class is better. Nature godlike gives a bonus to power level when under the influence of an inspiration and fortuanatly monks can ( and should ) give themselves a lasting dex inspiration that can and should be upgraded. - Nalpazca should have alchemy skill for maximum drug effect. This is also good when using potions like speed bonus, attack and defense bonus and healing. - Fist are dual wielding, so get the two-weapon-style-talent. Use dual swords as second weapon set ( fists do crush damage, swords do slash/pierce damage). If you want to attack things in the distance, use the long pain. - Regarding stats and what armor to use, ask somebody else, like Boeroer.

Every other class can use drugs too so I see no advantage of a mage slayer over every other class. Not being able to use potions or scrolls is bad and mage slayer halves also the duration of your frenzy. If you want to multi class a Nalpazca with a barbarien I would use a berserker. You hit really hard, the self damage during frenzy could add more wounds ( I am not sure ) and you have a good RP reason why you are confused when you fight. Getting stoned, taking some big weapons and then running amok is something you should not try in real life. PS: When writing this I remember something. Does anybody know the german crime movie "Tatort: Im Schmerz geboren"? ( No idea if it was translated to english. Great mix of Tarentino and Shakespeare ) To cause as much chaos and death as possible, the bad guy hires some criminals, gives everyone a gun and LSD and sends them in the middle of a town to rob a bank.

I am used to it People create a topic and then everybody discusses something else. Anyway, I like unusual games and I like unusual chars in games. OK, PoE is not PST or MotB, so no floating skulls or bear god here, at least not as party member. The pet was nice. So I thought an undead party member was one of the better ideas that make sense in this game world. OK, the devil of Caroc was the most unusual party member in PoE1 but I never used her because she seemed like one of the most uninteresting ones.

I was thinking about how it would be to play with an undead char. I backed the game, but I did not have enough money to create an NPC. Anyway, I thought about having the following char: Somebody wants to make himself undead to "live" forever. He knew that undead have to eat flesh to avoid decomposing, so he became a corpse eater as training for being undead. Together with some others he entered some ruins to perform a ritual that makes him an undead. Finally he achieved his goal but not in the expected way. As they explore the ruin, the path to the exit collapses behind them and only he gets killed while all others survive. But his soul does not leave his body and so he becomes a fampyr. There is no exit and no food around, but he "survives" by eating his former companions. When the party of the watcher explores the ruin, they open a collapsed passage and find him as the only "survivor". When you give the right answers he may join your party and he finds out that being undead has also other side effects than the hunger for flesh. Alternatively, the watcher is the undead. He gets killed when Eothas destroys Caed Nua but he continues his journey as fampyr with the corpse eater class ( single or multi class). So after thinking of this story, I was thinking about the racial features of an undead: ( those are my personal ideas for such a "race") - minus 2 points constitution: being rotten does not fit well to being healthy - minus 2 points perception: being rotten does not help you to see better - immunity against constitution afflictions - you are a vessel, not a kith - once per encounter you can frighten all nearby enemies (you look like a normal person, but for this spell you show them your undead nature.) So what other things could we know about undead: I think mostly about sentient and somewhat sane creatures, such as fampyrs and liches. Undead "people" are more interesting than mindless skelletons. - So they need to eat flesh to stay sane. But can they eat normal food as well and do they benefit from doing so? - Do they need to breath or sleep? They can talk and how can you talk without breathing? - Do they get damaged by healing? ( I do not think so. Its a dead body with a soul that keeps it "alive", not some negative energy ) - When they fall in battle and you cast resurrect, do they become alive? ( I do not think so. They will stand up as undead. ) - What other traits could undead have? I think especially about how being undead affects their mind and behaviour. - Is the term "undead" used in the PoE universe at all? We know the term vessel for things that have a soul but are not alive in the usual sense. But I think there is a big difference between a construct ( like the devil of caroc) and an undead like Icanthia in heritage hill.

As written by Boeroer, if you mult class monk with chanter and you want to fight in melee, you should take skald because they create phreses on melee crits. Nalpazca gain wounds automatically when under the influence of drugs, but they lose wounds automatically if they are not on drugs. So your usefullness depends on your access to drugs and I do not know how easy you can get in the full game. If you go that way you should defenitely take alchemy skill because it increases the power of drugs ( and potions ) a lot. I have read that you gain wounds automatically so fast that you can have blade turning on most of the time. This would be good for a melee char which means skald would be your best choice again. Did somebody test if reflected attacks can increase the phrases of a skald? Personally I will not play a Nalpazca because I dislike having a char who needs consumables all the time to be effective, but you can play whatever you want.

The devs have confirmed that they changed how int influences AoE. In PoE1 int changed the radius. This way the area increased to much because the radius enters as square. In PoE2 int changes the area. But the info "spell x hits 75m² ( 50base + 50%)" is hard to understand for the player. So they calculate the area but they show the radius because you want to know if your aura hits a target that is 4m away from you. This leads to the confusing numbers you have shown, but at the moment I do not know how to present it better.

You should think about something: When I got PoE1 I also bought the guidebook. Over time there were tons of patches and two big expansions (white march 1+2). So much of the stuff in the book will be wrong sooner than later. PoE2 will get tons of patches and and some expansions too. If they did already print the book, several things will be wrong at release probably. I have backed the game and I get the game + book + some other things (all digitally), but I would not believe everything in it. The wiki for PoE1 is also outdated in some points and its hard to tell which parts are correct and which are not. If you want to be sure about game mechanics and class abilities, look in this forum and ask the experts, like Boeroer and MaxQuest. Anyway, I prefer a relatively bugfree and balanced game with a wrong guidebook over a buggy hell of a game with a guidebook that describes all bugs correctly. Dear devs, please give the game as many patches as you want. Just try to fix more bugs than introducing new ones.

When we look at the people´s faith we should consider one thing: Most people do not know the truth about the gods. The leaden key did a good job to hide the origins of the gods and spread the faith into them. So basically most people believe what the leaden key wants them to believe, even though most people do not know that the leaden key exists. Also most members of the leaden key do not know what they are doing and why. The game could also be calles "Pillars of Ignorance". Most people do whatever they do because of "tradition" and they do not know where this tradition comes from and what it is good for. Those who question those traditions are called heretics and they get lots of problems which may include getting killed. The people who invented those traditions do it to keep people dumb and increase their own power. The leaden key fights everyone who wants to investigate gods, especially animancers. The hand occult changes historical records and there may be other organisations who do similar things.

regarding voice overs: It is nice to have, but it is not the main selling point to me. In some games it felt strange when there was a dialogue and some of the characters were voiced and others were not. I assume that the main character will not be voiced because you can create millions of possible chars. Well, many games such as DA:O did this and I think it will not be a problem.

Do the claws of a shifted druid scale with player level or with power level? I know that monk fists scale with power level, but I am not sure about shapeshift. If claws scale with power level, a single class nature godlike would be best. If claws scale with character level, it would be best to multiclass a shifter with a martial class to hit enemies harder. Learning spells slower and missing the high level spells is not a big problem because you cannot cast while shifted and it makes little sense to play a shifter if you are not shifted most of the time.

My 2 cents about this: I do not care if the second game is a direct successor of the first or not because there are good ( and also bad ) examples for both types. I will tell some good ones. Yesterday I have finished Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2. Its the second part of the cold steel arc and you would not understand much of the story if you did not play part 1 because part 1 presents you all characters and starts the story and part 2 starts exactly where part 1 ends. Both games ( and also all Trails in the Sky games ) are great, but you have to play them in the right order to understand anything. The Final Fantasy series are now 15 games ( actually even more ) and most of these games have nothing to do with each other, only the combat system and some other things evolved over time. So there is no problem with boht concepts. Lets look at western games: I have played BG2 before BG1 and I had no problem with it. The game starts whith you being kidnapped by the bad guy, you escape and go after him. Its nice to know what happened in BG1 but it was not neccessary to play BG1 before BG2 to know whats going on. Same goes for PoE2. A giant statue becomes alive, crushes you and your home and you go after it. Thats enough reason for a story of its own. The story of PoE1 is not neccessary to understand it. Players need only to know 2 concepts to understand the world: What is the cycle of souls and what is a watcher. That knowledge should be enough to understand and enjoy PoE2 because it is in another part of the world, you face a new problem and the old problem was solved at the end of PoE1.

OK, so you mean dex is not so importent for a chanter? As my first main char I wanted to use a kind wayfarer/beckoner with stats: mig 16, con 10, dex 16, int 18, per 10, res 8. I want to play on normal or hard, not PotD and I don´t want to dump stats. I thought that I should have some dex because casting times of summons are long compared to offensive invocations. I am not sure about the stats, only int is very importent for summon duration, AoE of your auras and chants and linger time. I think most damage will be done by your summons if you buff them well and their damage does not depend on your stats, only on your level.

Yes, I mean the upgrade of sneak attack. In Final Fantasy 7, deathblows is an attack where you either miss or crit. I never used it. Sneak attack is always applied when you have the conditions in all games I have played. I want an ability that increases the damage of all attacks, not an "all or nothing attack". Every time I hear "deathblows" I think of an all or nothing attack. Thats why I called the upgrade of sneak attack "death attack". I know this makes no sense. Having played tons of RPGs can give you a lot of experience, but it can also confuse you if different games use the same word for different abilities or they use a different word for the same ability.

The trickster is already a kind of rogue/illusionist. If I want protective magic with a rogue, I would use a rogue/wizard. A trickster may be useful to make a melee char more tankier, like a fighter/trickster or paladin/trickster. Personally I like the rogue of PoE2. In PoE1 the best stuff was per rest, like invisibility+backstab or finishing blow. Now you can use those things more often. Now there is one question for me: Should I use my guile for invisibility+backstab ( probaly the best for 2h weapons ) or should I spam full attacks ( crippling strikes gives extra penetration, probably the best when dual wielding)