Cattlehunter

Between fan of flames, rolling flame, fireball, minoletta's concussive missiles, along with all the other aoe damage spells, self-buffs to damage, and arcane assault twice per encounter, I doubt any other class comes close to providing as much damage as a wizard is able to bring, never mind the debuffs. For normal run-of-the-mill packs, you just do a spell or two (if you need to use any at all; he still provides good damage with just his arbalest) on top of a couple of uses of arcane assault, and for harder packs, like bosses, you just chain those fireballs into the horde of enemies and watch everything die. I'm playing through path of the damned now, with a min/maxed party (after the travesty that was the story companions through hard), only resting when my team becomes fatigued or they run out of health, and I almost never find myself without wizard spells to cast (unless I've ran out of resting supplies, anyway, and all my people are just hobbling along on their last breath just as much as the wizard is). The wizard is still almost twice as much damage done as anybody else in the party, though he also holds the peculiar prestige of being the person who has gotten knocked out most frequently (at 8 times vs. 2 times for #2 on that ranking). Sure, he does, uh, a little bit of friendly fire now and then. I mean, those rolling fires are hard to aim! But that's what the priest is there for, right? I'm not sure why so many people consider wizards weak (at least until very lategame). Do you guys not use rolling fire early-mid game? 2-3 casts of that spell clears out entire packs by itself early-game. In small rooms, one cast can be enough to kill half the things there (though, granted, sometimes it kills you as well in that situation). Throw in a couple of uses of arcane assault to that and everything is going to be dead.

Yeah, this is the problem with the lack of a global reputation. If you butchered all of bergost in BG (or even just a few random people there), almost everyone who sees you (or at least guards) will try to kill you, as they definitely should considering how you're a crazy mass-murderer. In PoE, nobody seems to care much outside of the region where you do your slaughtering, which quickly becomes implausible as your innocents kill-count racks up into the triple-didgits.

The game's narrative assumes that our character is really unhappy about having become a watcher, and uses this as the primary motivating factor in its behaviour... but I don't understand why. Let me explain my character first, so that the question makes sense. My character came to dyrwood to settle. Though he was apparently unaware of the hollowborn curse (which is pretty implausible; everybody would be real concerned about something like that), or he didn't care (which doesn't make much sense in context of him being a settler), or he thinks he can solve it somehow. Anyway, he came to dyrwood to settle, find a wife, and create a family. Obviously, he can't do this with the curse still running rampant and almost everyone being born hollowborns. So it's in my character's interest to find some way to resolve this issue. Maybe some random farmer, or whatever, wouldn't put that particular problem on their to-do list, but the PC is apparently the sort of man who is perfectly willing to go on a terrifying and nigh impossible quests to save the world (or at least the region's newborn's souls), so for him it makes sense that he would want as much help as he can get in performing that quest. So, my character wants to end waiden's legacy, in order to be able to settle the region as his dialogue explains that he does, and he's the sort of man who won't shrink away even from a mission that dangerous and unlikely to succeed. This is his primary concern. Throw some good old human decency in there for good measure - him being worried about the well-being of all the people in dyrwood and the effect the curse is having on them - my guy was a (not cruel, but benevolent) paladin after all, and it becomes pretty clear that the main character wants to be a watcher! Or, at least mine did. Being one allows him the tools to actually help solve, or even completely solve, this massive problem that both the region and he himself has. It's GOOD for him, and it's GOOD for the region! I don't think that this character is an implausible one, considering the early dialogue supports these motivations. Yet the story does not recognize this? Every dialogue option regarding my character's motivation is either him wanting to get rid of the affliction of having become a watcher, or him wanting to stop Thanos because of how giant a **** Thanos is. No mention of wanting to end waidwen's legacy, which seems like just sort of an afterthought in context of the character's motivation, if it enters into them at all. Add to that ho the gameplay rewards the player for being a watcher, granting us powerful defensive and offensive boons in-combat, incidentally contradicting all the fretting our companions are doing about how being a watcher is afflicting us negatively. If I'm so burdened by it, why is it making me stronger? What's the term I've been hearing people use to describe this? "Ludonarrative dissonance"? This appears to me as some fairly severe ludonarrative dissonance (man, that's a mouthful) right here. Anyway, to get to my point, I just don't see why my character is is unhappy about having become a watcher. It not only gives him the tools to uncover the real cause behind waiden's legacy, but at the same time makes him more powerful, thus making him more likely to succeed. He should be thrilled about this! Maybe after he ended the legacy somehow, he would be real concerned about getting rid of the visions (hard to maintain a healthy family if your mind is slowly crumbling), but up to then it's possibly the best thing that could've happened to him after he came to the region.

Aloth sucks, but wizards themselves don't suck. Get a max might&int one and spam those CC and aoe damage spells. For easier fights, just throw out a spell or two then use the per-encounter book ability (whatever it's called), and for harder fights spam every spell they have access to as rapidly as possible. After I finished the game on hard, my wizard had done more than twice as much damage as anybody else in my party, along with providing great CC, though my party didn't have any druids so I don't know if one would've done more damage if I had brought one along.

Tank paladin, control wizard, or some kind of buff/summoner chanter seem like the best bets to me.

Isn't there a whole class of enemy that's almost all 9-12 year old children animated by the souls of animals? I've killed like dozens of those. Would be annoying if the game made them invulnerable.

It literally had no duration, just 8 raw damage ticking until the character dies (and gets maimed in my case). http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/537392605681390333/A0EE86411046D146EE6B36239AD6424FC7F603AC/

Reached it with a lvl 9 party too. No idea how to beat that thing at that level. I assume we're meant to come back way into the final act or something? It is a bit jarring. I blasted through everything leading up to the dragon without much difficulty, but the dragon itself is just, I don't even know, I can't even get past the first 10 seconds of the fight reliably. It literally oneshots my tank, who normally doesn't even take damage from anything, and I can't even pre-buff him with potions and stuff because it just instantly wing buffets him or something right at the start of the fight for 200+ crushing damage. Even when he does survive the first attack, there's the stupid breath that does UNLISTED damage which just kills everything in front of the dragon outright as far as I can tell. After half an hour of trying various tactics, I just gave up and went back to the main questline. Would be really interesting to hear how anyone who defeated her managed to do so.