Lightzy

Fan of flame is more powerfuly damagingl than any other level 1 skill in the game and most level 2-3 etc skills. Slicken is beyond unbalanced, equally (and terrifyingly) effective against low and high level enemies

Front line - highest armor back line - naked Win! All of the in-between armors are completely useless. If you play right your back liners are never hit anyway. Just run in with the armored melees and gobble up those 'engagements' And haha! I also tried an all-moongod party like that, it was very silly and broke the game. It was quite literally impossible to go under a certain HP threshold, because of everyone healing each other all the time, including priest just for kicks.

Why is it a "blunder"? "some fights would be less painful to deal with if spells such as Armor of Faith, or Circle of Protection, could be cast prior to combat." Yep, that certainly would make the game much easier. Spell durations are short in this game, and the number of spells per rest is limited, as it should be. Being unable to use spells to increase survivability and/or damage for the initial 15-20 seconds of any fight while you get it under control, is usually a sound tactic. With that tactic no longer available, you have to spend precious time casting supportive spells after the fight has already started. It doesn't help that most spells have a short radius, forcing your party to clump together rather than get into good positions. There is also the whole logical side to it, which, as I initially wrote, I won't get into since we are dealing with magic. You just listed a bunch of reasons why no precasting makes the game harder. But you haven't listed any reasons why it makes the game worse. His point is that it's worse because it cuts out all of the tactics from the game. In a better designed game the game would be balanced around the ability of the player to buff the party before combat. Somewhat higher base difficulty. It would be balanced around the ability of the player to place characters strategically around the battlefield, which is now impossible as buffs can be cast only after combat is initiated and only in a small radius (as in, everyone clumped together). In short if you want to use buffs you need to forego tactical planning. It's quite inelegant design. Much better would have been to make buffs always available and apply to the whole party when still out of combat, but when already in combat require AOE targetting.

Ooooh, okay, so that's how balance works. When you're balancing a first level spell against a third level one, the third level one should be inferior to compensate for being potentially more difficult to cast without catching your party members in it. I'm afraid most ppl didn't understand the joke Sir. The thing is, this game is build so much around the principle of "make everything a valid choice" that it just breaks apart in almost every place. Equipment, spells, skills, stats, it all barely held together by the missguided hardline "make everything valid" approach. Sad, but whatever.

I don't think people are complaining because they don't agree to something different. They're complaining because the system is unintuitive and badly balanced. Schwartzenneger everything (need might on every build) makes it so that most conversation options take into account that your character can pick up a fridge, and you're short-changed on other stats because they're all useless in comparison. Because you only have so many stat points to distribute, if you want to make a good mage for dealing damage, or a good ranger for dealing damage, or a good fighter for dealing damage, they'll all get the same might conversation options, while you would reasonably expect the ranger to benefit most from dex/perception, the warrior to benefit most from might, and the mage to benefit most from int, everyone benefits most from might. The system just doesn't make sense and is poorly balanced. Nobody complained about the system of D:OS, because it was good. This one isn't. that's all there is to it really. I accept that it's 'refreshingly different', but it's not good

After playing a bit more I can say with certainty that the best use of armor with this weird system is as follows: All front line guys = best protection armor available, slow as snails All back-line guys = naked for high DPS

It's written by Josh, designer of PoE. In any case, the items in this game are bland by choice, which is what the article shows. and it's done this way in order to make "everything valid", exactly how you make everything bland and boring, instead of valid. better luck next time with your reading skills though, sir

Read this post, it's by the game's designer: http://kotaku.com/how-to-balance-an-rpg-1625516832 it goes into detail about how to make an RPG bland and unrewarding I'm not sure why you would go this way but there you go.

I've noticed there was something I disliked straight away, seeing as I had no reason at all to change any of my starting equipment even after 5 hours of playing, seeing as there simply wasn't anything better, but only "different", but after playing more, and reading this: http://kotaku.com/how-to-balance-an-rpg-1625516832 (which is very nicely written by the way and very astute), I'm pretty sure I had it right. Such efforts have gone into making everything "work out", making everything "viable", that the game is incredibly bland for an RPG. If you had considered human psychology instead of math charts, you would have not designed it this way. Such efforts have gone into allowing players to "maintain their clothing style in the game" that everything is mechanically bland and samey, because of the missguided effort to keep it all mechanically viable as well. The whole fun of an RPG is those supposed 'game changers' that you find. That special stuff that far outclasses what you have and which is so significant that it changes the way you approach combat from the moment you find it onwards (for example, having had a fighter with a greatsword, and suddenly finding a longsword that is so good that you switch to using sword and shield, changing the way you play. these things are the stuff of great RPG mechanics), or the knowledge that there's something which outclasses your current equipment and which you just cannot afford yet. The way this game is set up, and correct me if I'm wrong, as I admit I haven't played it completely through, this doesn't really happen. It's seems to be all blandy bland same, but scaling ever upwards to become the same bland but with bigger numbers VS bigger number enemies. Really, who told you I WANT padded armor to remain a "viable option" later into the game? Why is this more fun or interesting AT ALL? Most RPGs took the much more fun way, which is NOT TO MAKE EVERYTHING VIABLE, but rather have you progress and change instead of keep the same crap you like aesthetically forever and just upgrade it with +1, +2, +3 and so on. Not that it's relevant so much, but in reality, as in those RPGs, the choice of crappy padded armor was in almost all cases BECAUSE YOU WERE VERY POOR or unimportant enough that nobody cares about equipping you well. And of course you would have much preferred to get that more pricey leather armor, or chainmail if you could. AND THIS IS WHAT MAKES RPGS FUN TOO. The anticipation for improvement. Knowing there's something much better to get, and saving up for when you can finally get it. Finding stuff which is SO MUCH BETTER than what you have. It's basic really. Even the numbers game doesn't really make any difference. Great, so I have spear which is slightly more accurate and mace which defeats some damage reduction. End result? pretty much the same. Either I hit slightly more for slightly less damage or hit slightly less for slightly more damage. In either case it's not really enough for me to exchange weapons even if it puts me at 0.1% of disadvantage, because that's pretty much how it's set up, in order to not "interrupt the player's choice of stylized outfitting". So far, I find this to be poorly considered