mazeltov

I find them underwhelming and typically sell companion uniques immediately for an early game cash infusion. Durance's staff could be useful for dealing with shadow type enemies in Act I, but a few strategically timed Fan of Flames spells/scrolls works better for me.

When you mouse over a character in your party its target has four pulsing red wedges under its feet. Likewise, when mousing over an enemy in combat, its target (one of your characters) has four pulsing green wedges under its feet.

I thought he was suggesting a monkish Rogue who takes Novice's Suffering to boost unarmed effectiveness. Trying to combine some of the fun suggestions made so far, how about using a pistol to deal an opening Backstab, then switching to enhanced fists for flanking attacks? Have to be within 2m to get a ranged Backstab (is that possible with high Stealth?), so this sort of tries to make use of the pistol's poor range while keeping its flavor.

The more muted, somber lines fit well with the bleak and brutal (grimdark?) setting. There are moments of levity, particularly during party banter, but generally I'm satisfied with the more subdued tone.

1) Wizards (which can be built for melee) have a lot of interactivity in terms of influencing the enemy side of the fight, whether through damage, CC, or debuffs, and due to immunities and varying damage resistances the Wizard's approach to different fights can change up quite a bit. 2) Eder and Durance would be in there, due to the deep ties they have with the past events and lore of the game's local setting (Dyrwood).

I think you're right that it was a concession to players, the good kind, that streamlines secondary processes so that gameplay is focused more on primary features: combat, dialogue, exploration, etc. And contrary to being a poorly worked system, the new stash is robust and feature rich in comparison to the inventory systems that came before. It's also consistent with the trajectory of inventory management design, as that design evolved throughout the IE games. The trend was toward ease of use and better organization. By the time of the most recent IE example, IWD2, there were bags of gem holding, scroll holding, bags of regular holding. The various types of bags were available relatively early in the game (BoH by Shaengarn Bridge?), though the player still had to go through and play a minigame of sorting each item type into its associated container: the perfect blend of immersion and mindless tedium, of immersion through mindless tedium ("I can really imagine myself in the shoes of this character sorting gems and scrolls and daggers into appropriate bags.")? Not in my view. PoE takes the design trend one step further, pushing "bag acquisition" from early in the game right to the very beginning. And instead of hand sorting items into particular containers, due to advances in modern game design the characters in the party manage to sort loot into discrete piles on their own. If the argument is "the right to carry 50 longswords back to town should be earned, not given," I'm not buying it. Most nonmagical gear (read: early game gear) in PoE is worth little compared to the high costs of purchases, even huge piles of such gear. So there's no balance issue, or even really a character progression issue, since the point of hauling loot back to town is about converting that loot into magic items which make the party stronger. By the time large amounts of high value items begin dropping, you're at the point in the game that bags of holding or the equivalent would begin appearing in other games.

If only people were more consistent about the abstractions that they allow themselves to be unimmersed by. Rationalizing fast loot management is beyond the pale, but recovering from grievous wounds (severe Health damage) after eight hours of camping seems to get a pass. Handwaved for the sake of smooth gameplay, as it were. I could be really jarred by the recuperative miracles of PoE camping, if I chose to be. Or dozens of other examples. Inventory management where it really matters is still in PoE: equipped items, quick slots, weapon sets, etc. Extended inventory management is vastly streamlined and improved over the previous IE standard of "click and drag hundreds of items into bags of holding."

Was it immersive in the IE games for a character to be able to haul around a half dozen greatwords, several polearms, a few arbalests and multiple suits of armor, as it were in their backpack, and still enjoy full range of motion and combat effectiveness as long as a weight value based on their Strength score wasn't exceeded?

That was how I immediately rationalized it, and haven't thought about it since. Perfectly immersive in the D&D fantasy space that PoE inhabits. Most D&D-like games incorporate bags of holding as an anti "inventory tetris" mechanism. And bless the devs for it. I even appreciate little touches like having Shift-click send items directly into the stash of holding, instead of clicking and dragging. And selling directly to a merchant from the stash? Praise Eothas. A small amount of abstraction for the sake of a large reduction in drudgery is worth it. Area loot? Hallelujah.

Yeah, we gamed out Interrupts pretty hard last year. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77638-interrupt-build/ It took several patches after release for Obs to get Interrupting Blows working properly. With that fixed and Per adding to Acc now, Interrupters are in a better spot than ever.

Thought I'd mention that Crits add 25 to the Interrupt roll (Grazes subtract 25). So Perception not only increases the Interrupt rating directly, but also makes them more reliable by raising Accuracy. Any of the usual Acc increasers or Deflection lowerers will help, as will Graze-to-Hit or Hit-to-Crit conversion, etc.

Judging from the very painful experience of trying to rush Devil of Caroc on PotD with only story companions, I'd say that a very strong AoE component is a must. An encounter that had maybe seven mobs on Hard had what seemed like twice that many on PotD, and between inflated enemy stats and underwhelming story companion scores, it was kind of a nightmare. Aloth and Hirvais(sp) can be specced into decent AoE'ers with some item/food etc. babysitting. Maneha, the new Barb companion, has a decent Mig at 18, but any character with decent Mig/Int can help with AoE by using scrolls strategically. Provided Lore is invested in, of course. Another way to compensate for weak companions is to outlevel the content a bit. With custom characters that would probably be overkill, but it seems fair when using Obsidian premades.

Yeah, if rather small. Reason #214 to build Intellect on Pallies. Solid buff for damagers on the frontline, and it'll proc twice over two uses of FoD.

Almost a year after release and major balance changes keep on coming. Attempting to hit a sweet spot between caster and noncaster power while still resting on a Vancian framework was always doomed to failure IMO. Gave it a nice shot by trying to incorporate 4th Edition principles, but the gap just couldn't be bridged. Add in the hot mess that is Cipher... Hopefully JSaw puts out a personal mod for PoE sometime after official patches have stopped, like he did with New Vegas. Optional balance changes that don't need to be compromised for general consumption.

High durability in general, melee over ranged, and priority on per-Encounter over per-Rest abilities (Aspirant's Mark is such a good talent that I dropped Hirvais(sp) after seeing it in action). So some mix of Paladins, Fighters, and Rogues (with lots of +Disengagement), maybe a Priest on PotD (Interdiction + Inspiring Radiance is so good as a per-Encounter combo).

IMO the best way to use Defender has always been with a tanky DPS setup, because coupled with high damage you win either way. Either up to three enemy melee mobs get locked down, which is a win, or they Disengage and suffer free big hits, which is also a win. I remember using Eder with a balanced damage/defense setup shortly after release with that unique greatsword which Prones on Crit. It had much the same effect as the new ability you mention. If an enemy Disengaged, not only did they provoke a big 2H hit but very likely suffered several seconds of hard CC as well.

Healers. Wondered why a Xaurip Champion took 30 seconds of focus fire from my party without going down. Then I realized they're basically small lizard Pallies that spam LoH on themselves and friends. Oh and a Xaurip priest was apparently laying down healing waves on its frontline all the meanwhile. That feel when you almost have a tough enemy beaten only to see its health jump from one to three pips due to a healing effect...

There are extra talents as well...they will add +5% to the new aura effects. Care to elaborate? I haven't read anything about these new Talents. Are there now two additional Talents for ZFocus? Anything new for ZCharge?

Support, support, support. Even +20 FoD Accuracy is a support buff in the Paladin context. Good stuff. Though, I'm surprised the extra Aura effects were rolled directly into them instead of split off into separate Talents a la Crit Focus.

That's every build I've seen proposed. Basically DPS builds but with a significant amount of "free" (have to buy Perception) ministuns tacked onto the attack actions. An alternative method to generate soft CC. Encounters can't be cleared with soft CC alone, or hard CC alone for that matter.

Good updates. Particularly useful to hear how this variant of Interrupt build fares toward the late game. Other Interrupt builds that incorporate Concentration reducers (e.g. -30 from Wizard spell, -10 or -20 from Druid spells) would be able to control extreme outliers like UD Raedric better. Late game Priests fully realize their synergy with Interrupt builds, with spells that provide either +30 Interrupt rating for a single character or +18 Interrupt rating for the group.

Coat of Ill Payment looks good. The Plates are alright. My party wouldn't be caught Unconscious in some of those psychedelic armored t-shirts, though. I think Ixamitl Clothing looks cute on females, with those little red and white shoes. Since the original post mentions equipment in general, it would be interesting to hear of attractive weapons, capes/cloaks (are there any?) etc.

Another testament to the failure of the Rest system to meaningfully restrict caster power.

Not sure if this is 1.05 specific, but casters now get a pop up window notifying them when their low level spells become per encounter.

Yes, perhaps a modest radius increase tacked onto Aura-enhancing class Talents. Currently only ZFocus has such a Talent (Critical Focus), but the others Auras should have one too.