mazeltov

Obviously. I doubt the full extent of that became clear until some time after release. Casters of all stripes still have a lot more nerf bat in store, as much as it pains certain forumites to hear that. Exactly how much of the problem will be solved by buffs on the non-caster side is still an open question.

A few likely reasons. First, as a personal point of pride. Balance Man took it upon himself to build a system from scratch because, among other reasons, he thought that "most other games get it wrong," with a title like BG2 set aside for criticism because of its over-the-top elements (much of which is just vintage 2e, to be fair). He also thinks mages (AKA casters) in D&D are too flexible and powerful and wanted to bring them closer to other classes in power level for PoE, a goal reminiscent of what was attempted in 4e. Well, most of these goals are not where they should be. Each patch is inching toward it, but it's not there yet. Another reason is that PoE is a work in progress. Assuming all the planned content gets developed, we've only seen a small portion of the overall work. With a larger pool of testers compared to the backer beta and all content now at those testers' disposal, the feedback for JSaw to use in rebalancing the game and putting it on a stronger footing for future content is better. Balance Man made a comment during development to the effect that "a fun game would be even more fun if it had a better system," implying that to him at least, coherence and balance within game systems leads to more fun, possibly by way of increased challenge or a larger variety of "viable" build options. You're free to disagree with that approach. I'm interested to see where the dev team goes with it.

My first post did say that -40 was a bit excessive. My preference would be for nothing over -30, but a few outliers above that wouldn't be the end of the world. Chain Lightning is -35, which is doable with a standard Mech 10 and a bit of luck in getting a gloves of Mechanics +2 drop. Traps are a moderately powerful free perk that comes along with good Mechanics, a Skill that players are building on one character anyway to reveal Secrets and open locks.

It's not a blind faith. There is cause for optimism, I think. The patches are mostly going in the right direction, and more fundamental changes e.g. to Afflictions as a whole will take longer to work out. Any Obsidian title will have the prime focus on bug fixing for awhile after launch. Plus JSaw literally went off to ride his bicycle in the woods for a month after release. He hath not yet truly begun to balance.

Sure. 'Course the game is already a commercial success with hundreds of thousands sold just on Steam, 90 Metacritic, etc. If the game flopped expansions would not already be in production. A couple of surly forum posters complaining about how their favorite OP builds got nerfed (and will continue to be nerfed) will affect nothing.

Another consideration is that Mechanics is the only way to directly buy Accuracy with Skill points, which is otherwise a tightly controlled modifier. So Mechanics is more about avoiding Accuracy penalties on Traps rather than generating bonuses. Mechanics 10 cancels out the penalty of most Traps with very high level underlying effects, like Gaze of the Adragan Trap and Freezing Pillar Trap. High Mechanics can outstrip the Accuracy penalty of lower level Traps, and classes that set Traps often have high base Accuracy anyway, e.g. Rogue.

Yes and Yes. High Accuracy classes make good Scroll users, for example. Attributes are fairly consistent in the way they influence item use, e.g. Might makes healing potions, Scrolls and Traps more powerful. Talents can interact with usable items in interesting ways, too. I've seen a Rogue's Dirty Fighting Talent proc on a Fan of Flames Scroll.

Fighter tankiness might occasionally come in handy if the character does mid range work with a shotgun, say. Other than that, not much to recommend it. Pretty low maintenance, though.

A bit excessive. Some other Traps based on level six spells are -30, so -40 for Sunlance seems like an outlier. The spell version of Sunlance has a Burn damage portion in addition to the Piercing damage, presumably the Trap version does too.

Maybe it is. That's for Balance Man to decide. The post I responded to rejected the idea that there should be balance at all. Again, a common attitude found on the forums.

A common sentiment on the forums. Go along to get along. Peace, love and harmony. An OP build in every garage, and a buff in every pot. Etc. Luckily, the chief designer of PoE mechanics has a different view. For whatever reason, he thinks that balance is important in a single player game. Since the PoE franchise is already planned to grow into two expansions and a sequel, it behooves Balance Man to try to get the game on as solid a mechanical foundation as he can now, rather than make drastic changes later, after people have had more time to become wedded to their OP classes and abilities. A little bit of butthurt now saves a lot of butthurt later.

Drunken master Monk class ability when. Mod acceptable.

This party reeks of balance. All Human, too? It brings a tear to my eye. Casters are so April 2015. -- The state of bug fixes and whatnot feels good enough to go ahead with my Tanky Flank party from the novelty playthroughs thread. Six tanks, including three Paladins for the satisfaction of using all three Pally auras at the same time and having every party member benefit from them. Following MD's suggestion, I'll be trying a no pause challenge with slo-mo combat speed setting. Should be fun times.

Still OP. Though at this point that has less to do with Ciphers and more to do with the ability of casters to blanket the battlefield with overpowered CC and overpowered Afflictions. Blind is gobsmackingly powerful, for example, and it's an entry-level debuff. Once the two items mentioned above are addressed Ciphers along with other casters will be closer to being admitted into the promised land of balance. Interestingly, Cipher will likely remain more balanced than Vancian casters in the long run, because I doubt Rest spam will ever really be dealt with, instead the devs made a decision to paper over the issue with the Camping Supplies system, and call it a day.

It is, irrespective of any solo play anecdotes. The amount of Reflex the Talent gives is criminal. Into the balance can it goes.

Woody and Moonie will get what's coming to them.

Moonlikes make a lot of things moot. Their racial in its current overpowered state makes the race a cheese option; I never use Moonlikes. After they get their inevitable nerf, maybe. Oh, it'll 'work' on PotD too. Working, to me, is being able to roll through content. Whether a given party setup takes 15 seconds to roll through content, or 20 or 30 seconds is all the same to me, as long as the content gets cleared. A self-consciously subpar novelty build should not be taken as a comment on the DPS viability of Paladins. Most of the Talents in a novelty build specifically designed to play to the weak points of a class will be wasted. Good point on IT though. Might as well switch that out for Righteous Soul at 11. Assuming Enduring Flames has the greatly reduced function you mention, Bleak Walker might be the better option.

An interesting thought experiment at least, and it is playing against type. The way I would do it: Goldpact Dwarf/Mowmow M 21 D 18 C 10 P 10 I 7 R 12 1 FoD 2 Weapon Focus: Estoc 3 LoH (large self heal w/ 21 Mig) 4 2H Style 5 Sworn Enemy 6 Intense Flames 7 ZFocus 8 Enduring Flames 9 Liberating Exhort (self cleanse) 10 Greater LoH 11 Inspiring Triumph (he inspires himself after every kill for +7 Defenses) 12 Critical Focus So active abilities would be: FoD +75% damage +50% DoT 2/e Greater LoH 1/e Liberating Exhort 2/e Sworn Enemy 3/r Sworn Enemy is kind of a bummer as a per rest ability. Rather it was 1/e. Against high Deflection enemies, it would probably be best to let another party member hit them with a -Deflection debuff before using FoD, to ensure it connects. Dwarf would cap out at 17 Dex, so maybe an extra point in Res to help avoid random Interrupts.

The lengths people will go to... Most of the patch notes dealing with ability changes don't list specific numbers, changes to formulas, etc. A vague change is announced, and players often have to go in and find the hard numbers themselves. But because a change was announced, that change cannot then be called stealthy. Just because you don't agree with the change, or found out upon testing that your preconceived notions about what the change would or should entail turned out to be wrong, does not make the change stealthy. In this case a change you claimed is a stealth nerf is neither stealthy, nor a nerf. It's a fix to the functionality of an ability that was found to be working improperly by the devs. Not only was it not nerfed, it was actually buffed, due to its also non-stealthily announced cast speed increase. In the end the only non-'balance feelings' beef left is with the ingame description, perceived to not match the actual effects. Could it use a percent sign after the +20, or an "x1.2 damage" construction or whatever as some other abilities use, for clarity? Sure it could.

Maybe it didn't warrant it from an overall balance perspective. But the fact is that the ability was changed to reflect its intended functionality, and documented as such, not stealth nerfed as you claimed in the link to your tests.

Priests do have a special synergy for Interrupt builds toward the lategame, with a couple of spells that add huge Perception bonuses. -- Testing, testing... - party buffs work on ACs, including Chanter's Burn damage thingy - Burn damage thingy works on Monk's Unarmed attacks, too

When an attack connects on a target in the midst of performing an action, an Interrupt roll is also made: d100 + Interrupt vs target's Concentration score. If the Concentration score is beaten, an Interrupt occurs with a duration determined by the weapon or spell that connected. A Crit on the attack that triggered the Interrupt add 25 to the Interrupt roll, while a Graze subtracts 25 from it. A regular Hit uses the character's normal Interrupt rating.

Concentration is 75 at Resolve 10, and shifts up or down by three points for every higher or lower Resolve point. Interrupt is 0 at Perception 10, and shifts up or down by three points for every higher or lower Perception point. The Ranger in the picture has low Perception and Resolve (AC Attributes are being shown).

More like fixed it. The change to MP is noted in the patch's Items, Spells, and Abilities section.

Based on the AC's Perception. Different ACs have different stats e.g. Antelope Per 15 vs. Lion Per 11. A mixed animal approach might be amusing, using Lion's roar to reduce Concentrations by 6 and Stag to proc .5 second Interrupts in an AoE (Stag gets an ability similar to Barb Carnage).