Phyriel

Stop with that "unplayable" bull**** already... I finished poe 1 on potd with party, solo and ultimate run... I see no true difference in "difficulty" versus poe 1, both games were very easy once you learned game mechanics, because poe 2 have easier mechanics you just learn it instantly, there is no learning curve but that's about it. Sure Sawyer wanna tune this and this is very good but I feel you will all end up disappointed if you expect any challenge. If you got any brain and gonna min/max meta builds you will faceroll everything no matter how he tunes it, just like we did in poe 1. PoE is just easy game, deal with it. PoE 1 was equally easy and if you think otherwise u were just bad at the game. Maybe try to solo poe 2 in its current state using niche non min/maxed rpg build instead of throwing ****? I'm srsly getting annoyed already as you got to be XXX person saying same **** "I'm sad panda cause game is easy". I bet you copy pasted some build from "Most OP char builds that survived from beta" and now you're disappointed huh?

That's not entirely true ;p however in poe 1 broken builds/ideas are not apparent to newcomers as much as in poe 2 P.S mod move this to general discussion please.

WIth Blessings of Bereth you can start with main char wizard at level 4, extra gold,+2 all stats and vendor that sells gloves with +2 power level to evocation spells in Port Maje. Mix that with Infuse with Vital Essence Nature Godlike for another +2 power levels and you are probably highest damage dealer at level 4. Chillfog ticking for 37 damage in big aoe that also blinds? I would understand if you called that imbalanced but weak or worst? Nah, you just haven't found enough game breaking **** that make wizard strong. I just hinted you one above. I'm sure there are more.

To OP, dude its isometric rpg. Those games were always imbalanced unless modded to oblivion with ultimate hardcore mods (that with enough dedication you made trivial anyway with some specific class combos). I agree that things are easier to a bigger spectrum of classes than in PoE 1. It seems that PoE 2 took directly opposite approach than in PoE 1, they began with tuning making everything closer to trivial. In PoE 1 after release things were too hard due to broken mechanics and bugs. In time they fixed most bugs mechanics and by doing that opened a way for players to make content trivial because encounters are impossible to balance vs everything that players come up with. I mean the only way you can make game hard is to tune encounters to such a degree that its barely possible with full party. But then you'll kill off solo play and thats equally ****ty for tons of folks out there.

I wouldn't go Evoker for solo. U loose transmutation and conjuration spells this way. You loose Chillfog and Arcane veil right off the bat in early game and they are probably the biggest tools to get you anywhere early. Without Arcane Veil you will probably drop instantly vs alpha strikes in some scripted fights that get you surrounded at start of combat without letting you ambush enemies with empowered fireball (like in Nekataka for example). If you want to go Evoker badly for some RNG oomph then I think you must multiclass it with some assassin or sth that let you get out of combat, smoke bomb -> invis etc.

Yeah, I never play casters in RPGs for this reason. Never met system where they are balanced. They are either garbage or overpowered. Hence why I stick to melee or some semi-casters. In my party playthrough I ditched out Aloth because of that. Empowered Fireball- BUM! Great combat, thank you. Yea pretty much In PoE 1 I played so many times with wizard both solo and party that I'd say it was even stronger in right hands because you could cast with jedi speed at times. That being said in PoE 1 you needed to nail self buffs rotations/priorities before you could unleash all your destruction, so far in PoE 2 you only put on Hardened Veil for concentration and deflection against alpha strikes and toss empowered fireball in the biggest crowd. The only real danger so far were guys with veil piercing arquebuses but you can 1 shot them from stealth as first targets so... Don't let me discourage you tho. I love casters for their eventual frailty when you get cought with your pants down but its so hard to get cought in that state by rather limited AI that you end up somewhat OP if you use a bit of brain. One thing for certain PoE 2 animations and spell effects pretty much force me to play wizard atleast once;P

I've been tinkering with different builds proposed on these boards as viable solo potd and even tho I like many builds so far I really should've gone with my first gut feeling and just roll single class wizard without a subclass. With that cheap Bereth Blessing that give you some cash and spawn a vendor in Port Maje you get gloves that give +2 power level for evocation spells, pair it with nature godlike +2 power levels after infuse with vital essence (level 2 hp buff spell) and its just mad damage with fireballs and missiles spells. Empowered versions just 1 shot things or whole encounters (if its just 3-4 enemies). I'm level 5 in this pirate fort that you get quest for right after you sail from Port Maje and dude its just riddiculous how things just evaporate. I'll probably stop this playthrough right now tho and focus on my full party with 2h berserker/bleakwalker using story characters to have for fun with dialogs and stuff. I'll probably leave wizard solo for when they fix difficulty.

About people, yet again I guess I'll repeat after Boeroer again... maybe with enough repeating you will understand it... subjective:P about devs doing it this way? It laid foundation for them to balance the game easier, that's about it. You totally skip the RPG element of how classes feel and play, wizard that just reload his full repertoire every fight feels against generic class fantasy that's my main point. I agree with you tho that with per rest if you choose to exploit it and overkill everything by using your best **** each fight is stupid, I was playing differently aka saving as much as possible (not because of anxiety or avoiding resting but because it made me immersed into wizard class more) I had that choice u know? with per encounter once potd gets tuned you'll end up with meta gaming and everyone will play their wizards the same meta way which is kinda meh imo. P.s Not to mention that sooner or later people will exploit reseting combat one way or another and getting their spells reset.

Or maybe contrary to what I said this is true, people being overwhelmed by being just a part of a bigger world right from the get go. I like that approach also, makes you feel small and try hard to work your way up from the undertow.

I don't know. What people are you referring to? I never heard amassed voice flaming on PoE story, I always thought it was generally praised and appreciated duh? Anyway i'll try to dig with you assuming what you said is actually true. First thing that comes to my mind is maybe a setting? Its being semi-realistic middle age sort of fantasy and maybe by not being hyper fantasy it makes people expect a novel of Tolkien proportions? It's just a wild guess tho. For me some plot twists in poe 1 were breath taking, mostly in vanilla game, dlcs were more d&d fashioned stories.

So why wouldn't you use those spells even knowing you'd have to rest anyway? Your complaint makes no sense. Because of the age-old question of "what if I need it for the next fight?". I use spells myself a little more but I know that "resource anxiety" pretty well and suffer it especially when dealing with consumable items and finite ammunition, so I can sympathize. Either way I'm happy with either the first Pillars system which offered some per-encounter abilities for spellcasters to use alongside the per-rest spells, or the Deadfire per-encounter system now that I've tried it - both are good fun for me and feel good without incentivating the above attitude necessarily. So its the issue with not knowing the game very much than anything else. I like the systems that reward experienced players on their next playthroughs. Anyway as I said in above post... even if you run out of resources resting was super easy and even in rare occasions where you couldn't rest there were no obstacles to just leave the zone and go resupply/rest at the inn somewhere. I get it some folks find it inconvenient having to resupply in an rpg game (lawd have mercy over that theme park mmo generation) but its a classic rpg game for christ sake, you're not supposed to be this dragon ball killing machine that can go 24/7 without a rest, never slowing down or... thinking for that matter (god forbid having to think in a game nowadays) /rant.

This is highly subjective. I like 4 per-rest spells better than 2 per encounter - because it's more powerful when you need the power - and in trash fights I need no spells. So I would be cautious with the random facepalms. So per-rest having more power when you need it, then auto attacking 80% of the rest of trash/combat, especially with full per-rest classes like mage/druid/priest, is better gameplay and what you'd prefer? You don't need spells for trash? Wut. Maybe if you're playing normal difficulty or otherwise casually. This isn't an mmo, there is no "trash" If you only need spells and most abilities for boss fights only, there's a (balance) problem. If you like that style of gameplay, you have an even bigger problem. So don't mind me if i /facepalm away I don't quite understand your complaint here. I finished poe 1 multiple times on potd, also solo as a wizard. There are "trash" fights, Boeroer probably refers to many fights that require you to use just chillfog + combustive wounds + per encounter blasts only or sth like that. There are tons of trivial fights like that and once you're at max level you can easily clear like 4 groups of enemies using lower level spells and still having high level spells left for a boss "in the last room". In a way poe 1 with more but per rest resources was giving much more power to the player because you could easily just choose to use your your best spells every god damn fight and just spam resting which was making game trivial. With per encounter system you will always use your best tools first practically in every fight, using weaker spells just for clean up/funzies... its taking away a lot from diversity and tactical management of resources, even tho resting in poe 1 was soooo easy... you had supplies at like 90% of the vendors in the game tons of supplies in dungeon chests, barrels etc... you could sleep pretty much everywhere except Defiance Bay but you had 3 inns across what? 5 city zones, hardly anything hard or inconvenient and even in a number of maps where you couldn't rest you were always able leave a map to rest, resupply and come back without any consequences whatsoever. I take it you find it inconvenient having to resupply now and then after failing to manage your resources adequately to the encounters... not to mention its an rpg game and being a wizard that can cast 24/7 per encounter spells without having to rest at all is a bit more /facepalm than your /facepalm away so yeah /derp. Have a good day buddy.

So why wouldn't you use those spells even knowing you'd have to rest anyway? Your complaint makes no sense.

Just going thru potd semi speed run using 6 druids... Holy **** this is nasty. It required a bit of micromanagement early game although all fights vs beasts were freebie due to charm and paralyze versus beasts. Now my party is level 9 and I gotta say... SIX relentless storms + returning storms + nature's terror mixed with 6 plague of insects while under form of the delemgan and moonwell is a bit too much for this game to handle I don't micromanage anything at this point its just using 1 guy to cast form of delemgan and moonwell at start of the fight and others just get relentless storms + returning storms up and it all blows up. Most of the time I don't even use plague of insects, I just use aggressive AI and after those spells are up I turn them into boars and let AI ravage on perma stunned enemies. I'm gonna respec 3 of those droods into ranged will Rot Skulls at next spell level. P.S so much fun:P

I'm thinking about playing death knight archetype Devoted + Bereth/Skean Priest as second class. Sounds good?

Obviously you wouldn't be able to multiclass everything. Yes I agree about bg2 multiclassing but as I said it worked there just fine because you had environment that reacted to that in a rewarding way. About classes being same or different (some worse). That's the design flaw of the environment, if we had world that have you include a "weak" class in your party because at some point this weak class is vital to get through some scripted encounters or you name it then it would be acceptable but as it stands and from what I've seen from beta videos and fights its kinda flat in that regard. PoE2 imo should've expanded on optional content like endless paths in PoE1 and this content should promote certain classes via mechanics of it or RP elements, like I dunno some traps that require some rogue specific talent for traps or mage tower that have some puzzles that only mage can solve. I know I know its binary af and raise question "is that really fun?". Well no per se... but its vital to include other critera of choice except combat prowess. If combat is your only critera you are tunneled to end up with obviously better choices and obviously worse choices according to numbers... or you have to make everything flat and equal.

I don't really care that much about multiclassing tbh. If it ends up sucking big time I won't cry as I find it more as a forced feature to make PoE2 look like it expanded on the first game. If they make it work then its all good but I doubt they will. I'd care for multiclasses if it actually had some flair to it but the way it looks from videos (i don't have beta) its just that you play your main class but make it a bit more versatile by mixing it with mechanics of different class which is cool but I doubt game will provide environment challenging enough to actually require that much versatility from a full party. It's certainly appealing for my solo play urges and from RP stand point of view it's also great but I don't find it making or breaking the game. I'd love idea of multi classing for casters that if you mix caster classes you get unique spells that are fused together like you can use a mage buff but because you're also a bit of cipher as a second class it can for example proc as an rng effect a lesser version of regular cipher spell or if you're a second class with a priest you can use a mage spell that is mixed with some lesser immunity buff (but instead getting immunity you get +defensive rolls). If that was the idea behind multiclassing i'd be hyped for it but as it stands you just play two classes that are weaker but its beneficial in some cases because gained mechanic of 2nd class outshines pure bonuses from levels. Blah that's so dull. It was ok in Baldurs Gate as it opened up options for certain encounters for classes that otherwise couldn't do anything solo, because for ex. enemies were totally immune to spells for example and you could only damage them with +5 weapon or some **** and you actually needed to mix a class that can wield a weapon type of +5 weapon that u were able to find in that stage of the game. That kind of versatility requirement is absent in PoE encounters as they are less rock paper scissors That being said I think versatility should come at price of being less powerful in your main role. So yea I generally think single class should be more powerful in what they do than a multiclass... that seems obvious to me. Its just a matter of question how valuable gained versatility will be or better said how required it will be at times. If game won't have encounters that require your party to be much more versatile than it would be with single classes (because of scripted encounters that for example make some of your party unavailable for some time) then I think multiclassing will be only beneficial for selected classes and diminished to pure RP choices for others but I'm fine with that I mean... even from RP stand point of view some multi classes don't make sense if you go for pure power... like if you're a wizard your power are your spells and being a bit of a bar brawler at the side won't make you better at killing dragons... bah if your bar brawls cost your brain a potential to comprehend most sophisticated spells then I'd say you made some questionable choices in life as a character. But hey atleast you can take a hit! It would obviously change if mixing a caster with a rogue would give you unique mechanics like something as easy as cast faster for example? or with a monk? making your spells stronger as you take damage promoting this idea of a mage that doesn't use deflection and "you can't hit me for ****" spells but instead wants to take damage and balances between life and death and then and only then he's at the peak of power. Honestly I think multiclassing will end up being wasted potential due to lack of this creative approach that'd introduce unique mechanics that would be hard to put on paper against raw numbers of single class... and thus tempting and playable.

That's interesting what you're saying in a sense that it made me think... I actually finished game solo on potd with multiple classes (only the ones that doesn't require skipping/splitpulling content) and with multiple parties. Each time I'd say it was overall easier for me to finish the game solo than with a party and that's a fundamental observation to be had I think. Because in solo you build to be self sufficient, tanky enough to be able to deal enough damage to kill before you get killed but with party you build a machine, if one gear cease to function (gets one shoted as you got careless, lazy or else) the whole machine collapses because members of the party depend on each other much more than a solo char. Ofc nothing stops you from building 6 chars same as you'd build them for solo but then I'd say you're just stretching boundaries of what game is supposed to be way too much and I'd risk saying that providing challenge for people that are willing to be bordering cheating/exploiting is not a thing game should aim to be.

Its a hard topic, guess I'd need to see full game to make my mind, when I think back to poe 1 wizard i guess it would be harder to finish all the hardest end game fights without highest level spells, but then being able to specialize into evocation and have double spell procs paired with lets say priest multiclass for some immunity spells? Its really hard to judge at this point. On paper it seems weak to give up highest level spells just for something that you can probably cover more or less with scrolls and potions but what do I know, I don't have beta so... I see some value in having "bad" choices in character progression, having everything equally useful at all times kinda kills the learning curve of the game. I wish tho that bad choices were more "masked" aka temp you to pick them more by giving you something like small, even minimal % chance to proc something actually good etc. Otherwise if you have a good, optimal choice that gives you +X acuracy +X damage +Xspeed against something that is obviously useless or nearly useless or at best super niche then you kinda tunnel people into picking those good talents.

Hold on folks, I'm getting confused here. Please step back and define "balance" for me. Because what I can gather from people touching balance vs difficulty setting is that balance is a freedom to derp around doing stupid **** with their chars, playing in unthoughtful way expecting it will all work just good enough to enjoy the story? Are we seriously devolving, as rpg fans into this community that values laid back experience more than some semi-intellectual dig that these games used to provide? I mean sure its all imbalanced once you figure it out but atleast figuring it out part used to be something that provided gaming experience for months if not years (including mods) P.S there are many rpg ways to seperate solo vs party play balance... like you could implement a system in which chars develop passive perks (some being negative perks) depending on party composition and what not... like solo char becoming paranoid because it have no one to lean on and must be constantly aware of every threat, this could be reflected in negative saving throws, lower charisma whatever, it could also proc randomly to spice things up. You could have multiple of those, like say after XX hours of playing as solo char you become "self sufficient" and get +deflection. In contrary a char in party develops perks that reflect being in a party, eg, mage being constantly protected by his tanks get overconfident and get -deflection but he casts faster because he's attention is focused on spell alone, he trusts his party will protect him at all times like they always do. These are just a few, you could make tons more to reflect some class interaction like barbarian feeling weird around pious and orderly priests or paladins and vice versa. Possibilities are endless and I honestly have no idea why PoE 2 tries to focus on this feature heavy aspect of multiclassing and naval combat while they still have a pretty much untapped source of nice and rpg friendly ways to deepen their game. I liked in poe 1 that you had different passives for choosing sides, ending quests in different ways etc, I hoped they'd expand on this.

I don't get that part with balancing game around tcs players... what's supposed to balance the game for players of all kinds is difficulty slider itself. If they design a game in which on one difficulty one build is complete boredom because its borderline op and makes your game trivial but on tcs is just enough to cut through then I'd say they designed a game poorly and it has nothing to do with prioritizing tcs or casuals... There are multiple design layers that can bring balance, first and the one people focus on here mostly atm is how you can build your char, but its a bit pointless doing that in a bubble, ofc you gonna end up with some obvious choices this way. You need to be placed in the world and tested against full game, while "obvious choices" build might be walk in a park in first half of the game it might end up being not versatile enough for high end where enemies debuff you to the ground and you will actually need resolve and saving throws (considered bad stat and bad talents) just to stay alive to do any job. While character building should stay free from changes that come from difficulty slider but enemies should get stronger, smarter and come in bigger numbers as you move difficulty slider higher, this is pretty much the only thing you can do in a game environment to make it challenging, sure it comes at the cost of some character building freedom, especially for TCS but its not quite as bad as you describe (thinking back to poe1 that is), it mostly means you can't derp around picking random talents without any synergy in mind but then if you want to have a freedom to do so in normal difficulty and remain viable then I don't see why game shouldn't punish you for that... lets promote being smart and creative for a bit shall we? Then final step of balancing difficulty is limitting resources, in poe1 u had health/endurance system mixed with per rest abilities and only 2 camping supplies on potd (+ some in chests, barrels etc). As much as it was just some annoying system that forced way too many loading screens for those that chose to just ignore this as intended handicap and just used all of their spells every fight and would just travel back to town to resupply every 3-4 packs of enemies... for most people it actually worked by forcing them to try to get through fights using just as much resources as it was needed to finish the dungeon/zone in one go before heading back to town. To sum it up: -I don't think every character building choice HAVE to be equal, there is importance in having bad skills, bad choices as its the only way to actually introduce players to some meaningful learning curve... but it can't be as bad as skill A = +10000 to overpower skill B = its easier to spot a flowers on the side of the road. Bad skills actually have to tempt you somehow to pick them, even tho you don't understand why its sub optimal to pick them yet. That understanding should come though exploring the full content. -Enemies must be tweaked to force you to think about your char building choices, I don't think easy difficulty should promote being all over the place with your char tbh (aka full freedom... derp) -Limiting resources is extremely important and i'm concerned here with now having all spells abilities per encounter that people are just too good at finding strong synergies, op builds in general and without any limiting factors that we had keeping poe1 "sort of" in check we will end up with multiple blatantly OP ways to play the game that will be just too hard to pass but we'll kind of have to force ourselves not to play those setups as they'll make the game trivial. P.S maybe its inevitable for the game like this to be trivial... thinking back to poe 1 I found it challenging only as long as I didn't understand it (go figure heh). Once I understood how the game plays I pretty much had to play solo because no matter what I did to handicap myself in party (without being too crazy on putting my party on a wheel chairs) it got just way too easy to be enjoyable (except for when I made a party of 6 druids and just played for fun with six avenging, returning storms kek)

What was the solo play opening thing in poe 1 for wizard was a lot of fast cast self buffs that you pretty much had to put on yourself each fight, majority of the difficulty in hard encounters was actually getting to buff yourself up in time and surviving before getting 1 shoted by 10 enemies using their alpha strikes on you. Killing stuff wasn't hard, pretty much all of early game on my potd solo wiz was dominated by chillfog, combusting wounds and rest was just a filler, buffing up, debuffing when needed etc, once I had my fight placed with buffs up, enemies sitting in places i want them in chillfog etc I felt I had enough to overkill them three times over. Was this fun? Certainly at times, especially for the first time after struggling with full party (messing up micro leading to some synergies party was based on to collapse etc) but I can easily see how this is broken design, who finished a potd wizard solo run know what I'm talking about. The were absolute powerhouse, bordering cheating as soon as in mid act 2. But design was the only thing working facing enemies we were given, alpha striking torn bannerman or the likes. Maybe in PoE 2 we will have less encounters that pretty much 1 shot you in a split second so maybe having less casting speed is still viable by overhauling encounters... because these things are pretty much tied together in my eyes. I really don't require being dragon ball level fast caster pausing game each 0.2 second to cast another spell if enemies actually allow me to make things slower, heck, more time to enjoy animations and effects as far as I'm concerned. I just hope it ends up being possible one way or another because I always was a fan of soloing with caster.

> I’m a back beta tester what does that mean? I mean we play the backer beta and we all help test the game right? but I just mean I have access to backer beta and I don’t agree the comment he made about multclass a. It would be nice if you disagreed by actually facing the opposing arguments with some numbers, facts etc. The guy you disagreed with was just summarizing video by Nerd Commando which was quite in-depth review of the current state of the beta. So what are you precisely disagreeing with? or rather what argument would you bring to the table to face some facts that were shown in the video. I watched that thing in full and he actually show in game, as a fact, the things you disagree with...

I think you haven't tried using Kalakoth's Freezing Rake on a group of Torn Bannerman that you just landed a Gaze of Adragan on, fast huge aoe that hits for 250-300+ in one hit on probably one of the strongest human opponents in the game. Still petrify from opened up this combo which makes you right in a way that debuff is strong here but then if you had no way to deal massive damage quick in big aoe to cash out on short petrify (even if it lands its often like 2-3 sec on some targets)

Thats unfortunate, I really enjoyed soloing as wizard in PoE 1. But I can't say I'm surpriced as after I finished poe1 with solo wizard on potd I went on and thought "hmm so 1 wizard was possible, it was challenging at times but I turned out to be insanely powerful later so lets try 6 wizards for some crazy fireworks" and well... game just exploded with how easy it was so if I were to think about party balance then I'd say its a good change in PoE 2. Would be kewl tho to have an option to go solo even if it was very hard. But then there is a difference in "fun" factor that comes from challenge if the challenge is purely mechanical hassle of slow casting and high interrupt or if the challenge is "I'm alone with limited resources for big chunk of the game". I liked that in PoE 1 solo that u had tools to get thru early mid game but u needed to use those tools exactly how u're supposed to, including placement, efficiency of spell area of effect and so on... later it turned into murdering hardest groups of enemies like Torn Bannerman in 2 freezing rakes but oh well... thats why you play the game right? To get that sense of achievement at some point. P.S maybe that's why I played solo with different classes mostly in the end... because party difficulty became way too easy for me due to its imbalance so yea... maybe they are making the right choice there. But then again if they trade caster solo viability to get a better party balance and we will end up with OP solo melee classes as a result then they wouldn't achieve much in party balance regard would they? I mean they sort of would as even if you roll a party of 6 OP solo classes u're still environmentally handicapped in narrow corridors and door ways where you can't utilize 6 melees. It was different with 6 op casters where you build one as door blocker and 5 nukers that shoot aoe pure death on alacrity of motion so fast that you can't even manage that in real time ;p