mazeltov

Deathlike Bleaker M 19 C 10 D 15 P 6 I 18 R 10 1 FoD 2 T.B.P. 3 Zealous Focus/Charge 4 Intense Flames 5 Inspiring Triumph 6 W.F.: Soldier 7 Rev. Exhort 8 R.R. Field 9 Reinforcing Exhort or LoH etc. I actually use Zealous Charge because my party has a couple of non-standard melee who need the extra speed and Disengage potential. All scroll production is funneled to this character, so he has a nice repertoire of damage/heal/support spells to use and they really benefit from the caster stat spread. I use Estocs for the aesthetics (they're still pretty nice with 19 Mig though, and there's an early one that can cast Blizzard), but weapons from the Soldier group are probably better for securing last-hits in a larger variety of circumstances. Of course powerful scroll spells are great for killing blows in many situations, too. If and when the bug(s) with Scion of Flames Grom mentioned get fixed, it might be worth substituting that in. Probably in Intense Flames' place. Edit: Thought I should add that classes like Fighter are generally better at using scrolls than full casters due to having higher base Accuracy (which is further improved by the Accuracy bonus the scroll spell receives).

Some claim that Paladin is a boring, low maintenance auto attack class. Turn on an Aura and stand on the front line whacking away with melee weapons until a party member needs a revive. However, Paladins built to secure killing blows are actually quite micro intensive, in that the player has to constantly monitor enemy health (especially on Expert mode, where floating health bars are not shown), and use careful timing of attacks and abilities. And not just the Paladin; this playstyle also encourages micromanaging the rest of the party in order to set up Pally combos. -- Black Path is centered on the Paladin as well. For the build I'm using that's not much of an issue, because it has high Int, Mig, and Dex to empower the casting of damage/healing scroll spells, as well as go for fast, strong killing blows with weapons. High Int synergizes especially well because it will affect all of: activated buff duration passive last-hit effect(s) radius and duration aura radius scroll spell radius/cone/duration Black Path has a 7.5m radius when starting 18 Int. Massive by PoE radius standards. A position just behind the front line works best, in that both auras and last-hit procs will project toward either side of the battle, while the Paladin focuses on killing blows. My Bleaker will probably hover around the front line with an Estoc most of the time, and use reach/ranged/scrolls in trickier situations. I'm digging how the standardized attribute system enables these types of off-beat builds, which, if not optimal, are at least viable and fun. A semi-tanky Death Knight caster ganksman with a slew of freebie on-kill support effects? Yes!

Read on another site that Balance Man is on vacay. I don't have high hopes for substantive patches (beyond much-appreciated bug fixes, of course) until he's had several weeks to digest the post-release situation.

Even Flames of Devotion, which most consider to be a generic damage skill, is better viewed in my opinion as another way to reinforce Paladins' supporty nature. Instead of using the ability to open a fight, for example, hold onto it until an enemy unit is low enough on health that the extra damage from FoD will ensure a last hit on it, ideally proccing a bunch of supporty effects as a result. The Bleak Walker Pally I'm using right now should be able to proc both Fear on all enemies and bonus Defenses for all allies within a large radius on every killing blow (please great JSaw above let Deathlike passive work on ~25% End and below instead 10% and below...). A Kind Wayfarer pally using the same strategy is even more impressive.

Sure, I've supported elsewhere a +1/e FoD talent analogous to the one Fighter gets for Knockdown. If players want to burn (no pun intended) even more talents to squeeze extra juice out of an ability that seems intentionally designed to be sort of lackluster and rather situational (to get its fullest effect), then by all means. If my suggestion to add F&C Deflection bonus as Accuracy for FoD was accepted, then the ability would scale with story progression as well.

Have NPC Paladins' Faith and Conviction increase automatically across levels, like Monk unarmed bonuses. Maybe an extra point at 3-6-9-12, so that the ability would steadily increase in power, but not become as good as a faithfully roleplayed PC's F&C would become. With respect to FoD, it's mostly okay the way it is. The ability is not meant to turn Paladins into DPS powerhouses, but instead feels closer in flavor to Smite Evil from D&D. That is, an ability which can be used a handful of times and only shines against certain enemy types. In this game, FoD shines against critters with low Burn resist, of which there are many, including the nasty Shadow/Shade family. Sure any mook with 2 Lore using Fan of Flames scrolls kills those 100 times better, but that's a problem with other game systems, not FoD. One nice, subtle buff would be to give the current F&C Deflection bonus as an Accuracy bonus to FoD (or make that an extra perk of Intense Flames), to help those two precious swings per encounter hit their mark.

Soloists are of zero concern in any balance discussion. Either the solo achievements were a joke by the devs, or, my own pet theory, Josh's way to bait out the cheesers so he can find the cheese and quash it in future patches.

A creature who gets Flesh to Stone'd in D&D (3.5) actually gets damage reduction, rather than a massive damage vulnerability. I think Petrify would be an interesting affliction as a long duration, typically single-target complete disable that also caused the victim to lose aggro (not just Engagement) against nearby mobs. So it would still be "the tank killer" against players, in the sense that mobs would leave the harmless statue alone and hunt down other party members. Sort of like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere. Being a top tier disable, it would have some innate resistance to being cleansed off (I think it already has wonky interaction with cleanses).

I was expecting someone to pop in here and claim 13 Lore and 11 Athletics and so on is just being ahead of the curve for the expansion.

Then Durance still has 1 Athletics at level 12 (Kana still has 0!). They'd still get winded after two encounters, like noobs fresh out of Cilant Lis. I thought the devs were trying to discourage rest spamming It's like the companion builds were designed by a junior art dev who never bothered to go past level four in game: "Bloody Slaughter sounds like a fun talent. Stick that on a couple on them." Meanwhile BS only procs around 10% Endurance, meaning there's rarely a window to even be able to use it. Or, when handed a cheat sheet stating Aloth was the "Loreful" companion, an intern set his Lore to increase to 13, without a second thought. Someone might respond: "they probably didn't care how the companion builds developed after level X because most players would have picked them up by then already and taken over their builds." Yeah, but would it have been that hard for Josh to take 15 minutes out of his day to write up coherent builds for the companions?

The list in question is in the last post of page 15. It gives the full level twelve builds for some companions, with their dev picked talents. Amusing to say the least. In the actual game, I recruited Eder at level two and built him into a very effective tanky 2H'er. He actually blew out the rest of my party for total damage and enemies tanked by the time all was said and done. 67% overall crit rate using The Hours of St. Rumbalt from level seven or so.

Good. My suggestions were based around Hard. It's also the best setting for a first playthrough, in my opinion.

Suppose it depends on game difficulty setting, but you should be able to do the first few zones at level 5. There is some nice gear designed for the early-mid portion of the game there that would lose value if you waited longer. Around zone 8-10 there is a significant difficulty spike, such that I had to slow down from auto-attacking through every fight and start to consider new approaches. Level 9 critters start showing up in these zones as well, and most critters top out at level 9 in PoE. So, for the remaining zones, critter strength stays about same but the encounters become more complex and about testing your ability to deal with various status afflictions. A good strategy might be to do a few Endless Paths zones every few levels starting at party level 4-5, eventually finishing it toward the end game around party level 10-12. The loot dropped at the end of the dungeon is appropriate for 12th level characters.

Reading through the list, I thought Eder was going to shape up to be a half-decent tank. But then: no Weapon and Shield Style, no Wary Defender. THAT Field Triage pick on Kana. Aloth's wand spam build looks interesting at least. Heard rumblings in various places about the wander build, though I'm sure Aloth is missing several key ingredients.

Dat Cruel/Agg playthrough with friend, friend, hero, defender, champion, hero, hero, friend, etc. reputations How did you like the "evil" dialogues and NPC reactions? Did they feel as rich and/or well-written as the dialogue responses on other playthroughs?

That is the point, yes. More reliable, predictable damage, and better performance when Accuracy is under duress. Had I known OHS works with shields, I probably would have taken it for my main tank and used the excellent draining flail found in Eothas' Temple rather than use a dinky hatchet the entire game. More Graze conversions in that case would mean more damage, and because more damage, more drain. Certainly would have been better in spell damage situations, where a little extra Deflection isn't as useful. And what's the deal with foisting the duelist (fencer?) archetype onto either using a single 1H weapon, or the OHS talent. A classical RPG duelist archetype is at least as much about defense as offense, and defense is not what 1H was designed for in PoE. Players trying to fulfill their duelist fantasy would better spend their energy trying to stack Deflection (really, really, really stack it) on a Rogue, for the Riposte talent, as others have mentioned. Even in that case, the Riposte talent is offensive in nature, while all the defensive work is still being done by Deflection.

Aaaand OHS works with a shield (but not a Bash shield, which apparently counts as an offhand weapon). Also stacks with W&S style. Two styles at the same time, man. This talent is almost criminal. About time to start calling for nerfs, actually.

In an ideal scenario, it would be best to just stack Accuracy to the moon and forget about Graze-to-Hit (or Hit-to-Crit, for that matter). Practically speaking, there are only so many sources of Accuracy to be stacked, so GtH is a way to juice more damage out of the same amount of Accuracy. There are also a number of afflictions which penalize Accuracy, some very heavily, allowing GtH to shine even more in situations where those afflictions are applied.

It has come to my attention that flails have an innate 30% Graze conversion, and on a Fast attack speed weapon? So that's 80% conversion with one talent and one class ability. Eight zero. The higher enemy Deflection goes, the better Graze-to-Hit gets (PotD called). Every conversion that procs is +50% damage and duration. A 1H flail Fighter will be cranking out a steadier stream of hits than ZZ Top. Good thing the devs were listening... to their own good sense when they designed this great talent.

Monks have something similar to an enchant system already, in that their Unarmed strikes increase in Accuracy and damage every few levels automagically through the Transcendent Suffering ability. I wouldn't be surprised if in the expansion some kind of glyph or tattoo system were introduced to give Unarmed strikes more options. E.g. "Glyph of the Rising Dragon: the Monk deals +25% Burn damage with his primary Unarmed weapon."

Stag and Wolf use Piercing as well. Their weapon icons look like claws, but are actually horns and teeth, respectively.

In my opinion the best thing about spiritshift is that the 8-10 DR it provides doesn't have a recovery penalty. Since Druids are best used as casters, even while shifted, this is a fairly strong "free" defensive buff. Burst survivability is the way I understand the ability as currently implemented. With that in mind, Stag form also grants +7 to all Defenses while shifted. Even these benefits decrease in value over time though because eventually the Druid will be wearing so much good equipment in humanoid form that the opportunity cost of losing all the gear bonuses while shifted outweighs the benefits.

Let's change a talent so that Accuracy becomes the most important stat to stack for both offense and defense. Hope the devs are listening.

The point of smallish conversion bonuses is to stack them. Fighters can get 70% Graze conversion easily, which becomes noticeable on enemies with high Deflection. Pally aura with 5% Hit-to-Crit conversion? How pathetic is that lol! Not so pathetic when added to 50% cobbled together from other sources.

Hard difficulty? Your setup should be able to roll through the game no problem... if not steamroll through. One point of concern might be controlling aggro on the largest packs with only one tank, but all the CC at your disposal should be able to handle the extra adds.