mazeltov

I was running with the fact that he mentioned his Gina was already using it. Many people probably feel the same way. On the other hand, lots of people have complained on the forums that Paladin is a "boring, low maintenance auto attack class," implying those people want more opportunities to micromanage. Working with the rest of the party to set up carefully timed last hits is an alternative, more active way to play the class.

Au contraire. Others in the party set up the kill, then your Pally swoops in and claims the prize. Re: Gina, she already has ZFocus, which is good, so probably best to just use that since another Aura would cost a talent slot. For certain types of parties that run risky melee characters, ZCharge is pretty good, at double the radius of other Auras, a ton of movespeed and +15 Disengage. Combo with a cape of Withdrawal for +30 vs Disengage and suddenly dudes can move around the fight. Out of the talents you listed, pick Reviving Exhort.

Bonus level: No pathing abuse No kiting abuse a.k.a. line-of-sight abuse No doorway abuse No dropping combat No "invulnerability" abuse e.g. Withdrawal No Moonlikes No Blunderbusses No Stun Among other things, the rest restriction makes Field Triage and Wound Binding useful picks. Also makes Athletics over 3 useful. Protip: Wound Binding/Field Triage scales with Might.

Drop the Cipher Only rest upon looting a Camping Supplies No figurines No summons No consumables No Petrify, Paralyze, Confuse, Charm, Dominate, Stuck, or Prone (single target Prone is okay; Charm can be used in response to being Charmed) No "Prone on Crit" weapons No Retaliate gear No use of bugged talents or abilities (requires significant metagame knowledge) No fun allowed. Final destination.

Oh yeah, Clericzilla. Balance Man put the kibosh on that. Which is not to say that the game is anywhere near balanced, of course; some classes just got more hits from the balance bat than others. Now that I think about it, any class can feel like a 20th level druid by using Maelstrom scrolls. Maelstrom is basically Storm of Vengeance from D&D. I crafted half a dozen for Kana to use in the last two endgame zones.

A 9th level spell? This first installment of PoE is a low-mid level campaign (not that that stopped the devs from giving casters game-breakingly powerful spells like mass Petrify, mass Paralyze, mass Confusion...). Priests do get a number of powerful Burn damage spells, especially the higher level ones. They're one of the few classes I think it makes sense to give Scion of Flames.

1.04 fix confirmed. Interrupters rejoice! I.B. appears to still be broken.

I just tried the Phrase again while attacking some villagers in The Black Hound, and can't replicate your success (they stay at 78 Concentration with the Phrase debuff applied). Thank you for testing it. Can you try Expose Vulnerabilities and Insect Swarm/Plague?

I'd take it. Wouldn't make that much difference either way. If it worked by improving the total roll by 15%, then an average roll of 92 would still get something like 14 points from I.B.. Low rolls would be penalized more by the talent. Rolling high is already way overkill, so at least with +15 integer low rolls would be helped by the talent. Though, as I suggested above, it's not that fixed I.B. would be overkill, but that the Interrupt mechanic itself is already overkill if specifically built for.

Paladin in any D&Desque CRPG. Tank and face all in one (good thing Charisma Resolve is still the conversation stat). And in this game, Charisma Resolve gives you armor class too! Eder was looking pretty jealous of the 150 passive Deflection my Pally was pulling by endgame. 'Course, he was built as tank/dps hybrid

I already posted it. Take 24 Perception as the baseline for a dedicated Interrupter (starting 20, item/armor enchant +2, Charred Barrel rest +2). 42 Interrupt rating base, add 15 for fixed I.B.., 57 base Interrupt. Cast Miasma (-30 Concentration, -20 Deflection, -20 Reflex, -40 Will) on an Ogre Druid -> Concentration drops to 57. From this point on, with a regular hit you can Interrupt that druid 100% of the time, even on a roll of 1.

He already has W.F.: Soldier; give him a pike and have him poke from behind the tanks. When adds spill around the tank line, have Aloth and GM CC them before they gib your ultra-squishy Barb. His high Endurance and self-regen talent should be enough to survive most incidental AoE damage. "Distance is the only armor I require." - Gilden Silveric

Maybe. I don't know how the fixed talent would work either, but I guessed that it would add a flat +15 to the Interrupt roll, in the way Accuracy increases to-hit rolls. Then I "converted" the -10 applied from a typical Concentration reducer spell into a bonus to the Interrupt roll, on the understanding that +10 on one side or -10 on the other side is basically the same thing, since the results are compared directly. I wonder who wins ties?

The nice thing about mixing Wizard and Barb Interrupters is that the Wizard can bully low Reflex mobs while the Barb bullies low Fortitude ones. Both classes also have inherent attack speed steroids.

Even in their broken state, Interrupts have the potential to be devastating. Here's a sampling of Concentrations for some of the most hated/feared monsters: Shade: 87 Spectre: 93 Ogre: 84 Ogre Druid: 87 Fampyr: 81 A few monsters approach 100. The important thing is that these Concentration levels are very exploitable, even without Interrupting Blows or direct Concentration decreasing effects. Take the figures above and shave off 30 points for a Miasma graze. Consider a Blast Wizard, who, on at least an implement graze, triggers a full Blast attack vs. Reflex across a range of 1.25-2.25m or so, depending on Intellect. Each and every one of those Blast attacks that at least grazes rolls to Interrupt. A Wizard with 25 Perception (which can be relatively easily maintained after reaching Defiance Bay) averages 95 on (hit) Interrupt rolls, again, compared to the figures above -30. Carnage works in a similar way. This is rather terrifying when scaled up with multiple users and fast attacks. Add +25 to typical Interrupt ratings if and when bug fixes go through. Not to be a Debbie Downer here, but it might be overkill.

I hope so too, Duncan. They need a good laugh after a stressful period of development.

Level 1 Minoletta's Minor Missiles scrolls deal 75 average damage before DR to a single target at 18-19 Might. Fast cast, and with a massive 15m range. The scroll version is significantly more powerful than the Wizard version, probably because the devs thought that was balanced by the "scarcity" of ingredients. Stag's Horn at level 3 does a nice spike of single target damage, too. Probably equivalent to an Arquebus+FoD hit/crit.

Testing, one, two Spells that claim to directly reduce enemy Concentration do not work. Tested the Chanter Phrase, Expose Vulnerabilities, and an Insect Swarm scroll. Target's Concentration remained the same with or without the effect applied. Resolve reduction on the other hand does work. However, attribute scores cannot go lower than one, limiting the usefulness of -Res against some enemies. Against a town guard, for example, Miasma only lowered Concentration by 27, meaning the guard had Resolve 10 and the spell only drained nine. (Incidentally, I noticed Defenses can go into negatives, and actually add to the attacker's hit roll). With Interrupting Blows presumably bugged, and direct attacks on Concentration not working, manipulating Res and Per, and going for crits (+25 to the roll) appear to be the only ways of influencing Interrupt attempts. Concentration scores were the same on both Hard and PotD for Pasca at The Black Hound. Resolve 10 yields 75 Concentration score. Meanwhile Interrupt rating starts at zero (Perception 10) and works its way up from there.

Das it mane. Just checked in game, and wand Blasts individually check for Interrupts, raising the specter of a mass wander carpet-bombing Interrupt build extravaganza. Really only one of the Wizards in such a group needs high Int (for debuff radius and duration) the others will be self-buffing and wanding, having sacrificed Int for Per. How about that +1 Per +1 Dex Wood Elf stat spread? Also the 3rd level Wiz spell Expose Vulnerabilities inflicts -5 DR, -10 Deflection, -10 Concentration (direct Concentration reduction), and it's foe AoE! Could any spell be be more tailor-made for an Imma-let-you-finish Interrupting wander? Oh, and I forgot to mention in my reference post above that Insect Swarm is craftable as a scroll. For a PotD trial run of this, I'm contemplating 2 Chanter tanks and either 4 Wizards, or 3 Wizards and a Priest. Priest Accuracy buffs are always helpful, and later on +10 and +6 Per spells put a nice capstone on the build. If a fight runs long, the Chanters can summon Odin and Bahamut to finish off any stragglers. One interesting question will be whether enemy Concentrations are inflated 50% on PotD, like their Defenses. Edit: Don't want to overdo it sacrificing Int on the wanders, though, since Blast radius is also tied to it.

Only the two Druid insect spells and the Chanter Phrase target Concentration directly, everything else works through Resolve reduction. While most critters in the Bestiary have 10 or more Resolve, a few have less. In the latter case something like Miasma wouldn't grant the full -30 (unless attributes can be taken into negatives and continue to accrue penalties). This is balanced out by some of the more annoying enemies having 14 or more Resolve, so multiple sources of Resolve reduction would be useful in those cases (unless there's some weird reverse Suppression system where a larger stat debuff Supresses a smaller one). Amusingly, even though I converted Resolve reductions into Concentration penalties, I didn't do the symmetrical thing and list Perception bonuses as equivalent Interrupt ratings. At any rate, it's -3 Concentration for Resolve reduction and +3 Interrupt for Perception increase, per point.

Well, yeah, that's how most of the abilities I listed do it. Comparatively few target Concentration directly.

Resources for players tinkering with Interrupt builds: Con = Concentration Afflictions that reduce Con: Sickened -3 Con Frightened -6 Con Terrified -12 Con Wizard Miasma of DM: -30 Con AoE, 2nd level spell Ark. Wondrous Torment: -30 Con, chain effect, 5th level spell Druid Insect Swarm: -10 Con Foe AoE, 2nd level spell Plague of Insects: -20 Con Foe AoE, 5th level spell Bear form fear roar: 2/r Chanter Thick Grew Their...: -10 Con Foe AoE, 1st level Phrase The Bride Caught...: +5 Per friendly AoE, 3rd level Invocation Priest Champion's Boon: +10 Per single target, 5th level spell Crowns for the Faithful: +6 Per friendly AoE, 6th level spell Barbarian Barb Yell: Frightened Foe AoE Barb Shout: Terrified Foe AoE Sicken Aura Cipher Psychovampiric Shield: -30 Con single target, 2nd(?) level spell Ranger Lion companion fear roar: 1/e Lilith's Shawl: +3 Per Charred Barrel rest: +2 Per several foods: +1 Per probably a brothel buff for the main character -- In short, Miasma, Druid, Chanter, Frighten and Terrify. There are probably 20 ways to Frighten in the game, far fewer ways to Terrify.

Fighter has a number of damage focused class talents. I've got a swashbucklery Fighter right now on PotD using Disciplined Barrage, Confident Aim, Weapon Specialization, Weapon Mastery, and Knockdown, all from the class list. I agree with the rest of your commentary.

Tweaks: Zealous Endurance: 3m (from 2.5) Zealous Focus: 3m (from 2.5) Faith and Conviction: automatically improves with character level for NPC Paladins (with lower cap than PC Paladins can achieve) Intense Flames: in addition to normal effect, Flames of Devotion gains a bonus to Accuracy based on current Faith and Conviction rating Graceful Retreat: +20 vs Disengage attacks (from +12) Fast Runner: +10 vs Disengage attacks (from +5) Fort, Ref, Will Defense Talents: +15 (from +10) Affliction Resistance Talents: +20 (from +10), and consolidate them into two talents, one resisting seven mental Afflictions, the other 8 physical ones New Talents: Tenacity: Zealous Endurance grants +1 Engagement slot for the Paladin while active Evasive Maneuvers: Zealous Charge grants +10 Reflex Defense

Trying to run a high Per Barb currently to proc Carnage Interrupts, and that was a key part of the strategy. There are a number of (usually magical) effects that reduce Concentration, but hey those are probably broken too. Regarding weapon choice, Morningstars technically have the highest Interrupt rating, but I don't think it's worth fighting the bad pathing in this game in order to get close, so for something on the squishy side like Barb I say reach weapons are better.