Madscientist

How powerful is a ranger, especially when multi classed? Most talents make the pet more powerful, plus some talents for ranged weapons. So class X + ranger = a weaker class X with a pet. RP wise I could imagine a ranger/beckoner as a coward who hides behind a wall of creatures while shooting ranged weapons.

Rogues can learn persistant distraction. This way they will always cause sneak attack when using a melee weapon. No multi class needed. I do not think that enemies can get immune to flanked. If death attack still requires 2 statusses that enable SA, then a rogue/barbarien or rogue/chanter could have permanent passive death attack when using a melee weapon, but only at max level. I think death attack was PL7.

Have you used Minsc + Lilarcor (the talking sword) combo? It was hilarious. I doubt there will be anybody as good a comic relief as Minsc in POE2, but just so you know there will be a talking weapon. So crazy stuff is not totally out of the picture. Yes, Minsc must use Lilarcor. Finally he found someone to talk to who has the same intellectual level as himself ( or the lack thereof ).

Ocarina of time was the best game for N64. I never finished majoras mask because you have to replay the same 3 day again and again. I did not know which things reset and which do not so I repeated useless tasks while I forgot importent ones. Groundhog day was a nice movie, but as main concept for a game it is not so great. Bloodlines is one of the games with the best atmosphere ever. What did they do to make the game very dark without getting depressive? It was not extremely googfy too, except when you play as malkavian which you should do at least once.

PoE1 felt really depressive sometimes. Soulless children and mad cultists everywhere, the first town greets you with a tree full of hanged people and so on. It is hard to get darker than this. I do not mind a dark setting. I really liked Vampires: Bloodlines with the impending doom atmosphere. But PoE was not just dark, it felt depressing. The PoE2 beta felt more normal, in a good way. Some places looked really nice. It was not goofy, it was just not so much depressive as PoE1. But we have not seen much of the game, especially regarding the main story which is about a giant statue that destroys your home and almost kills you. by the way: I do not mind completely insane games. The mind reading feature of Divinity 2 ( NOT D:OS2 ) was fantastic, plus some other things in the game like the attack of the power rangers. Undertale, Monkey island, the Edna and Harvey adventures and many other games are also completely nuts and I love them. And I cannot play BG2 without Minsc in my party. He is just great: "Go for the eyes Boo! Butt kicking for goodness!" But I do not want PoE2 to be full of such crazy stuff.

Regarding obsidian and saving problems, I just remember another annoying bug. When playing FA:NV the save file got bigger and bigger as you play and at some point the game would freeze if you save or load or enter a new map ( because auto save ). I downloaded a file that is supposed to fix this, but it does not work. In order to play without problems you have to start a new game every now and then, create a new ( small ) save, then load your old game and overwrite the new save file to continue with a smaller save file. I got the complete edition from steam, so its not just a release problem. Sorry, its some time since I played it and I am not 100% sure about the details, but you had to start a new game sometimes to prevent the old game from freezing.

Well, at least they fixed it fast in PoE1. BG2 still has the bug that regenerating enemies stack their regeneration on reload. I played BGT ( BG1 + BG2 + ToB as one game ) and I saved and loaded a few times on the werewolf island. When I finally met the boss he was fully healed a nanosecond after every hit. This was the only time I had to use a console command ( kill the boss ) to finish a game. BG1 had another loading bug. When you reload on some maps groups of enemies will respawn. Especially when you killed some but not all enemies of a group before saving and reloading. With some bad luck, the whole map could be crowded with goblins and wolfs. ( maybe they wanted it that way to stop people from pulling enemies one after another and saving before each try. I admit that I did this quite a lot. But I guess it is a bug.) There are other games with other strange bugs on loading. In PST the hit chance of the main char got worse while playing the game but I do not know why, dying fixed this. It seems to be a very frequent problem in games. PS: Is there a way to fix those problems in BG1+2 or did the EEs solve this?

I played PoE1 at realease day and I had to quit after some time. I was a victim of the infinite stat stacking bug. Every time you loaded your game all bonusses from equipment stacked with itself so I had insanely high stats and defensis and no enemy could touch me. This "god mode" was so boring that I quit. There were tons of other bugs too. I played the game again with version 1.02 and I could finish it without facing game breacking bugs, but I did report tons of bugs there and also in later versions. Well, playing PoE version 3+ feels like a completely different game, it has gotten much better. I was not a backer for PoE1. But the PoE2 beta was playable from the first version on. I did find tons of bugs but none of them prevented me from finishing the beta ( except being stuck in combat twice and the bug with saving on the world map, but those got fixed). The beta has gotten better with every update so maybe I can dare to play at release. Of course, the beta is only a very small part of the game and there will be tons of bugs in the other areas because thousands of players will find more things than a few devs. I will start playing another game now and when I finished this I will start PoE2. Next question is if I should play it in german or english. The translation was terrible sometimes, but without people like me posting all that nonsense there would not be the very good translation mod we have now. I like to play the GOTY ULTIMATE FINAL COMPLETE EDITION of a game and I do not mind playing old games, but I do not think I can wait that long in case of PoE2.

Does this only work for chanter summons or does it also work for summoned weapons, items that summon creatures and other things? by the way: Did your summons from spells or items depend on your level in PoE1 or did they have fixed stats?

I thought about playing an assassin/wizard. With a full party of companions. Enter stealth, start combat with an empowered fireball or something similar, get invisible and repeat while your companions engage the enemies. When you run out of invisibility, stay in the back row, cast combusting wounds and dual wield blunderbuss. Just stay away from the enemy when you cannot get invisible. I am not sure about stats, skills and talents, but tons of things will change anyway before I play it because my first char will be a kind wayfarer paladin, most likely multi classed with chanter.

some more questions: - do the weapon styles work with all weapons (melee + ranged)? Like 2h style when using bows. I think in PoE1 it was for melee weapons only, but I am not sure. - Which of these things work with what? + cleaving stance: does it work only with the enemy you attack with your weapon or also with other things? The description says " kills with a melee weapon". Does it include things like carnage, leap, torments reach and other full/primary attacks that may hit more than one target. + deep wounds: same as above. I was thinking about an assassin/mage for a later playthrough. I will work with summoned weapons ( except blights because no physical damage I guess) + shattered pillars wound generation: same as above I think you do not gain anythink if you have max wounds, so you have to spamm abilities to spam rooting pain - What is the difference between invisible and stealth? Do you get rogue ( especially assassin ) bonusses from both? Can you get tetected when you are invisible and does your stealth skill influence this? Will stealing from invisibility always succeed? EDIT: Just to be sure: Deep faith increases the defense bonusses of paladins from 10 to 12, so you get 2 more defenses. It does not increase them by another 12 points. Thats it for now, maybe I find new questions later.

You said that you prefer naked + healing over heavy armor because healing is not limited anymore. Well, casters have only 2 spells per spell level and if you face several enemies who deal full damage you will take a lot of damage. If you do not take so much damage you can use your resouces for something else instead of healing (e.g. paladin FoD instead of LoH) I think I will put my front liners in heavy armor.

- Where do you have the high level talents from? The beta goes only up to power level 5. - About monk: I will take the shattered pillar if I make a monk. Other monks have to get hit to cause wounds. I dislike getting hit in general. Shattered Pillars can spam torments reach all the time ( with some buffs you cause always at least 3 wounds). This way you also spam rooting pain, damaging and interrupting all enemies around you. Spamming AoE while interrupting everything around you sounds fine to me (barbariens did this in PoE1). Maybe another monks that collects wounds for other effects ( like the monksterlasher build for PoE1) is better power gaming wise, but a shattered pillar spamming torments reach and rooting pain should be good enough if you do not play PotD and have a full party.

Impressive Looks like all questions from this this tread have been answered

I have not played beta version 4 yet and I cannot do it this week, but those are my impressions from beta version 3: - moon godlike: It had a base healing of 10 health and it did not scale with level, so it was almost useless. If it scales with level ( I think it did in PoE1) it might be very useful. - nature godlike: very useful for chars that scale well with power level and can give themselves an inspiration. Evocation mages (tons of missles), monk fists or druid claws seem like good candidates, among others. Unfortuanatly the game does not tell you what an additional power level would do for an ability. Its also bad that you do not know what empower does exactly do for an ability. - death and fire godlike plus some other things mentioned above. Sorry, but I did never play a char that required me to have low health to be very effective. My personal opinion is that I am doing something wrong if my chars take lots of damage in a battle. So I always try to minimize the damage taken and I use healing to keep my chars at high health. This means I will never play a steetfighter because I dislike being flanked and bloodied. Maybe such chars can be very effective, but its not my playstyle, I do not have them and I cannot comment on how useful they are.

I have to agree with Boeroer, most builds that were posted have been optimized by using specific gear but they are still very good if you have a different weapon or armor. Since most builds have been posted for PotD and maybe even solo or other challenges, most builds will still be very good if you play a lower difficulty or PotD with a full party if you keep the general concept and change some stats, talents or items. What would be the alternative to creating builds that depend on items with unique abilities? Should they make the effect of stats so strong that you are completely doomed if you chose the wrong stats and no equipment in the world can help you then? Welcome to DnD where mages or priests with low int or wis cannot cast spells and fighters with low str cannot equip their weapon or armor.

What were your intentions for changing the damage vs DR system from PoE1 to the penetration vs AR system of PoE2? I like almost all other changes from PoE1 to 2, especially multiclassing, more exploration and more personality for companions. But the damage system was easy to understand and I saw no reason to change it. Why did you change it completely instead of making some minor changes similat to Tyranny or DA:O? EDIT: OK, in the other thread I just saw Joshs last something awful post, though I did not understand the arguments. - Q: When should I change weapons? PoE1 answer: When you do minimum damage most of the time. PoE2 answer: When you underpenetrate most of the time. Both systems seem quite clear to me. - Armor is almost useless when fighting dragons in PoE1. Well, since I assume dragons and other strong enemies have a very high penetration, armor will be completely useless instead of almost useless.

I think the changelog for the newest beta says that every char gets the unarmed profiency automatically. That means devoted would have 2 profiencies. I am not sure what this means if you multi class devoted with unarmed monks, shifted druids and maybe some other things ( mage transformation?). Should devoted NOT get unarmed profiency for free, they can chose between unarmed or any other weapon at character creation and then they put all "natural weapons" in the unarmed category?

7 companions + sidekicks are enough for me. There will be expansions for the game ( like white march for PoE1 ) and it is likely that new companions come together with them, like WM did.

Before the last patch I decided that my main char should be a kind wayfarer/beckoner Now beckoners have still twice as many summons, they cost less phrases but they still have less health. But now they also have reduced duration. I think 1/3 less than normal chanters, like 12sec -> 8sec. Is it still viable when you cannot have summons all the time? The easiest summon costs 2 phrases ( = 12 sec chanting ). On top of the 12 sec comes the recovery after the initial cast and the casting time of the following cast.

The descriptions for some chants are really confusing, especially those who give you buffs. It says 6 seconds phrase + x seconds linger and it creates a buff for 10 seconds. Assuming you sing the same chant all the time: Do you get the buff every 6 seconds and it lasts for 10 seconds ( linger has no effect at all ) Do you get the buff every 3 seconds during your phrase and linger time ? something different?

In PoE1 each char could take each generic passive talents and now we have the same. ( generic = not class specific ) I am really happy with the changes to talents and I can definitely live with the fact that most classes get the same passive talents. Whats more importent: Can we finally see the talent tree any time in the game, not just at level up?

I have looked into character chreation: Beckoner chanters have increased summon number but decreased summon duration. This is true for all spells except the spell that summons skelletons. The base spell has 12 sec base duration for all chanters but the upgrade has 8 sec for beckoners and 12 sec for all others. Does the upgrade reduce the duration for beckoners or is the description of the base spell wrong? I tested only the talent tree preview in character creation, I did not create such a char. PS: The new character creation is much better than the old one, mostly because of adding passive talents. There are still some missing strings in some talent descriptions but otherwise its fine.

very nice some known bugs are not mentioned in the long list above: - do several on crit or on kill effects still stack with itself to allow a huge amount of hits? ( some combinations of cleaving stance, monk attack spped upgrade (name forgotten), blast, citadels spirit lance and such stuff. - Do monk fist bonusses no longer disappear after reload?

OK, now we come to a point where we talk about consequentalism vs deontologism. (I hope those are the correct terms, my philosophical english is not perfect.) This means does it mean the intentions of your actions are more importent or are the results of your action more importent. I am a consequentalist, meaning I think that the results are most importent. " The road to hell is paved with good intentions." You can never be sure if your actions turn out the way you want them to be. And most people do not consider themselves evil. Even most terrorists or dictators think that they are doing their stuff for a greater good. I really love the games from MCA because he turns everything upside down. In PST we meet nice demons and evil angels, discuss a lot with zombies and have epic battles against rats. In MotB we save the world from ourselves. KotoR2 shows that both jedi and sith are extreme ideologies that are doomed to fail in the end. Another great game that turns everything upside down is untertale. I have also backed two games that are in developement now: GLITCHED is a game where the char becomes aware that he is a character in a computer game and he can talk with you, the player. It has an alignment system that asks what is your mayor goal ( seek knowledge, gain power, live in harmony with others, . . . ) Virgo VS the Zodiac is an RPG set in the realm of astrology. The davs said that they got bored by the fact that in most games the main char just reacts to something that somebody else does, usually the bad guy. In PoE1 Thaos does something and you are forced to stop him. In PoE2 Eothas does something and you go after him. So the devs decided that the main char is the vailian, soomebody who starts something on her own. So you start with an over zealous, self rightous bitch who thinks that the world is a total mess and things would be much better when everybody sees things her way. So she starts her crusade to give some people a good beating, or "purge some heretics" as she would say. I really love those unusual games. But I admit that there must also be some normal games so that the unusual games are unusual compared to something. regarding good and evil: At the moment I play Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2. At some point the main char is kidnapped by the bad guys and in order to proceed you have to talk to them. There it is shown that those are people too. They have friends and family they care about and they have goals that are very importent for them. They have a backstory and from their point of view their actions make perfect sense. It is shown that your enemies are not insane monsters, but people who have a clear goal. The problem is that your group and theirs have different goals which leads to a conflict that will often lead to violence during the story. In some sense, both groups respect each other even though they are enemies. In too many games it is just the the is the bad guy who does evil things because he is evil and you have to stop him because you are the chosen hero.