Starthief

Of course hardcore players are going to be more thorough in doing side content. Are you serious? The terms "casual" and "hardcore" are vague, mean different things to different people, and have different implications for different kinds of games. As generalizations go, they're not as useful as you might think, and layering another level of generalizations on top of them is very questionable. It's not hard at all to imagine people who just aren't into game mechanics but love story, who don't want to miss anything, and therefore will explore as much as possible. Or maybe they're just very methodical and want to uncover the whole map. That doesn't make them hardcore. I spend a fair amount of time on the forums -- partially as something to do in dead time at work. I've put some thought into game mechanics, have explored the game world fairly thoroughly (and was disappointed to find that finishing the main quest prevented me from continuing the Endless Paths and further exploration), am playing a second time with a custom party, am considering a solo or duo run... and have no interest in hard or POTD modes. I don't consider myself either hardcore or casual, frankly.

It should recover 25% of the target's health or so. Then it'd be worth taking.

If the numbers I've seen are right -- and maybe they're not -- a full attack cycle with dual fast weapons is 44 frames and with average it's 66. The base damage of spears is 11 to 16, and rapiers is 9 to 13. In damage per frame, that means spears are .16 to .24, and rapiers are .2 to .29. But this is against 0 DR and with no penetration; against DR spears will start looking better, and I'm too lazy to bother with the math to find the breakeven point. My personal thought is the whole point of dual wielding is to attack as quickly as possible, so might as well go for the fastest available weapons.

I just have my butler read it to me, because moving my eyes back and forth takes too much energy.

Balance contributes to fun. See all the threads about how the game is too easy (or alternately, too hard). Those are people who would have more fun if the balance was different.

Assuming your party consists of tanks and ranged, sure. (Although there's one particular fight where the beginning is scripted, and my first party got creamed four times in a row trying to hold a choke point. As soon as I switched to rushing the casters instead, it went very smoothly.) In my second playthrough I'm using five meleers and a druid. I try to avoid choke points in most fights. I lock down enemies with my two tanks, take out priority and opportunity targets with my rogue, engage the rest with pikes, and keep the druid on floating support duty. It's going so much smoother than my first run did.

Ugh no. A lot of classes have very good front-loaded abilities -- and some classes don't really have much else. There'd be no reason that every fighter, paladin, and cipher wouldn't have a level of chanter. And no reason to ever roll a pure chanter. There'd be no reason that every rogue and monk wouldn't have a level of barbarian, and not much reason to roll a pure barbarian. Wizards, priests and druids can stay pure for spell spamming -- or they can pick up a cipher level to start spamming earlier while still keeping their versatility, and a barbarian level so their AOE spells become mega-AOE with carnage... (Rangers... I'm leaving them out, but I already don't believe there's a reason to use them. A chanter-barbarian-ranger would be a big step up of course.) It's just not a good idea with the way PoE is designed.

The melee rogue I added to my current party as an afterthought is a ridiculous single-target killer and is my most fun and active character right now. He's also the only one to have been one-shotted in combat, but I was taking a risk both with his glass-cannon build and the tactics I was using in that fight. I send everyone else except him to attack, then I run him around the back and flank and he starts yelling enthusiastically and scoring brain-exploding criticals with his sabres. Ranged rogues probably do more consistent, steady damage and are a lot less interesting; you just keep them at the back and let them shoot stuff.

Many Hands, One Rhythm (monk passive, requires unarmed): The monk hinders the attack and defense of an enemy he is flanking. All allies have +5 accuracy against the target, and the target has -5 accuracy. When any ally scores a critical hit against the target, the monk's recovery timer is reset and can attack immediately. Disarm (monk per-encounter): 4 second interrupt and -10 deflection penalty if the enemy is attacking or reloading a weapon. Voice Projection (chanter passive): chants increase spell preparation time 1.3x for all enemies. Press The Attack (fighter per-encounter): if the target is not prone or flanked, this pushes the target away from the fighter, breaking its engagements with other party members. The fighter automatically follows. You'll Have To Go Through Me (fighter passive, requires melee weapon): the fighter's engagement range is increased to 1.25x his normal reach. Eye For An Eye (barbarian passive): when the Barbarian receives a critical hit, he deals critical damage to his attacker. Did I Break Your Concentration? (barbarian per-encounter): the next attack has double the interrupt time against enemies attacking with a weapon, or triple the interrupt time against enemies casting spells. Flashbomb (rogue per-encounter): blind all enemies and allies near the rogue for 2 seconds. Wild Affinity (druid passive): increases the druid's melee accuracy by +5 while shifted. Ever Wild (druid passive): the Druid shapeshifts immediately at the start of combat and remains shifted for 1.5x the normal duration. Per-encounter shift is still available.

I used a pistol on my main Cipher for quite some time, until I picked up Grieving Mother and gave her a blunderbuss. I noticed after the first shot she gained *slightly* more focus than my main. Whether this woud balance over a longer fight I don't know, because longer fights were rare and I generally was too busy using focus (and managing other characters) to worry about differences in focus gain. After a while I gave my main a blunderbuss too, and did not notice any major difference in effectiveness.

Paladins could use some better scaling on their powers. But overall, if I'm going to have two tanks, I'd prefer to have a fighter and a paladin than two of either. And a Kind Wayfarer on the second line with a pike is also pretty useful.

If Ciphers started with 0 focus, they'd have the same slow ramp-up that people don't like with Chanters and Monks and it'd contribute to all classes feeling the same. If I were going to tweak anything, it'd be to reduce their focus gain, so they have initial burst but less sustain. For all that people think Cipher is OP, I think it's simply fast. My first party was fighter tank, paladin offtank, and chanter, rogue and two ciphers for ranged damage. Heavy burst and heavier CC. My second party is fighter and paladin as tank, chanter and paladin as second-line pike wielders with a bit of survivability, druid as support and melee glass cannon dagger rogue who comes in after the tanks are engaged and breaks everyone's damage records. The first party cleaned up the easier fights very quickly. The second party is much more effective on more challenging encounters, though.

I'd expect the Crucible Knights to have pretty high standards. In fact one of my minor issues with this game, like many others, is the extent that strangers are willing to trust you and bring you into their secret plots with startling ease sometimes. "Well, foreigner, I don't know who you are, you barged into my house armed to the teeth and killed my bodyguard on the way in, you need a bath, I dislike your entire race, and I'm part of a very secretive and paranoid cult. Here's the combination to my safe and my daughter's hand in marriage!"

That was actually what I liked about her story. Typical Paladins are zealots who charge forward doing their god's work until it kills them; everything is black and white to them. Pallegina wants to do the right thing and likes a good fight, but has to make her own tough decisions because Hylea is intentionally withholding her guidance. (Though of course, the game gives you influence over what she does, unlike most of the other characters whose possibly wrong decisions are already behind them.) Moral ambiguity is kind of a major theme in this game IMHO.

I voted for Grieving Mother, but it was a hard decision. I also really like Eder. He reminds me of Captain Mal from Firefly in a way, and he's so matter-of-fact about his god getting blown up. And Pallegina, especially when she gets to meet Hylea and they have words. And Kana -- of all of them he's probably the one I'd want to hang around with the most.