MountainTiger

Mechanically, throwing weapons could work as quickslot items. While I like Boeroer's idea, it seems to blend with using guns to provide bursts of ranged damage before closing to melee. In quickslots, they could provide a few weaker ranged attacks/encounter without competing for weapon slots, which would provide more differentiation.

Disposition gated items would be problematic with NPCs. Garodh's Chorus and Cladhaliath both did something like it, though, with different versions depending on your choices as you acquire the pieces. More items like those would be cool. Another possibility would be Paladin and Priest-only soulbounds that develop differently depending on your order/god.

I thought Dragon Age: Origins got ammo right: you never ran out of basic arrows/bolts, but you could also load consumable specialty versions.

I'm just too impatient to prepare a battlefield

What talents and buffs do you have on the Druid? I'm not sure exactly what AndreaColombo had on for the shot at the bottom of this post, but his numbers are way closer to what I get on endgame Druids.

I would tier the classes: Tier 1: Vancian casters (Priest, Druid, Wizard) - All of these classes are very versatile, and the spell mechanics mean they can do far more in bursts for tough fights than any other classes. Tier 2: Multi-role support (Paladin, Chanter, Cipher) - Paladins have great defensive abilities and can put out impressive bursts of damage, Ciphers have a good mix of DPS and CC, and chanters with Dragon Thrashed do AOE damage like no other class while being free to fill other roles with their actions and invocations. All of these classes suffer compared to the casters by being balanced around passives, per-encounter abilities, and resources generated inside combat instead of per-rest abilities, meaning that their bursts tend to be less impressive and/or come later in fights. Tier 3: Good DPSers (Ranger, Monk, Barbarian, Fighter) - Mostly useful for dealing damage, but with enough utility to not feel bad to have along: Rangers bring an extra frontliner, Fighters are great natural tanks, Barbarians give AOE damage/debuffs, Monks are tanky and have a good variety of abilities. Tier 4: Rogues - Way too specialized on single targets and lack the Fighter's survivability. My number 1 hope for POE2 is that Rogues get some love; they're the only class that I really don't like having in my party because of how little they do outside of single-target DPS.

In Tyranny, I was weirded out by throwing weapons not requiring ammunition stacks. This is dumb given that I prefer abstracting away ammunition for launchers, but for some reason I have a different reaction to this with javelins than with bows.

The important question is: who are those people who actually use traps?

Considering what you've done between your escape and arrival, I don't think that many people would be eager to cross you.

Have you ever tried a barbarian along those lines? I found mine to be a decent character.

I got the shop in my most recent playthrough, and I'm 90% certain that I killed some ogres in the cave.

It's been a long time since I used the staff at all, but I'm pretty sure the Petrify is single target. That's why Torment's Reach allowing spellchances to proc matters (obviously, if each one were AOE it would be even better, since that would allow just one proc to disable multiple enemies). I assume that an on-crit stun or prone would be more powerful, since they allow stacking accuracy buffs, deflection debuffs, and hit->crit conversion to achieve really consistent procs (the stunning-disorienting combo should be good on a monk, I imagine) and those afflictions are perfectly good ways of disabling enemies. I've done that before with a barbarian, though, so trying the more exotic route seems like fun.

That sounds more powerful, but I just really want to find a use for the Staff, since petrify effects are so rare

I hadn't really thought about on-hit/crit effects with Torment's Reach before, but now that I am I'm tempted to run a Greenstone Staff/Grey Sleeper monk to take advantage of nearly at-will AOE petrifies and paralyzes.

For the first few levels, the healing from a couple points in athletics can be pretty useful; it just doesn't scale well at all as you level up.

I'm weakly in favor of eliminating the casting time restrictions altogether; I'm strongly in favor of getting things like the Druid's storms out of the no casting outside of combat rules. It makes no sense that I can start a fight by throwing a normal attack spell at an enemy but have to wait for the official "in combat" flag to flip before I can throw up those spells (presumably because they're internally implemented as buffs).

IE nostalgia was a selling point for Pillars So PoE must do all of the mistakes that IE games did? More "one person's mistake is another person's beloved feature." Enormously OP wizards were a pretty prominent part of gameplay in the IE games, especially BG 2; it makes sense that, for a lot of people, nostalgia for the IE games includes nostalgia for mages wiping the floor with every other class.

IE nostalgia was a selling point for Pillars

For tooltips, "X damage over Y seconds" seems fine. What would be nice would be to also have a more detailed in-game description of the details of DoTs (tick rates, the impact of INT, etc) available for people who want fuller information without either manually testing the mechanics themselves or rooting around online for someone else's test results. Presumably Obsidian has design notes somewhere about how the different types of DoTs are supposed to work for their own reference; writing those up as in-game documentation would be a bit of work but should not be an overwhelming task.

I also don't find BG's ambush mechanics enjoyable or a meaningful limit on resting; camping supplies were a better mechanic to discourage resting after every fight than ambushes, which tended to be easily defeated anyway. Lingering stronghold resting bonuses + survival bonuses were also a good mechanic to positively encourage resting. Ultimately, a lot of players are willing to go through the tedious process of running out of the dungeon, returning to town/stronghold, resting, and returning in order to get more rests. If you want to eliminate this as an option, you have to either prevent the player from leaving the dungeon or make the travel time matter (e.g. by updating quest statuses or by respawning the dungeon). I think there is room for more of both of these than were present in PoE 1 (only Cilant Lis and Sun in Shadow didn't have the option to backtrack for unlimited free rests, and I believe no quests could be failed based on taking too much in-game time), but I understand that they are likely to be unpopular with a lot of players.

I've been wondering if there is something clever to be done with a Stormcaller chanter, but it just seems like a suboptimal use of both the weapon and the chanter. Could do a lot of work kiting, I guess, but that's never been my style.

At this point, carnage gaining acc/level should probably be considered working as intended (whether or not it was intended at release ). I hadn't noticed it, but it does further explain why barbs improve so much over the course of the game (and why carnage to spread on-crit effects is so good).

Honestly, I feel like an experienced RPG player is more likely to grab things like Slicken or Chill Fog over pure damage spells due to understanding how powerful debuffs and disables can be (certainly the Baldur's Gate games in particular taught me this lesson). Damage is fine, but my first instinct is always to prefer CC to damage when picking up a new game. My main complaint about Wizards is that I never really feel compelled to hotswap grimoires: 4 spells per level are enough to more or less cover my bases. I've thought about having a few more specialized grimoires on hand to hit different defenses, but I never feel like there are enough relevant spells to make it worthwhile. It isn't clear how much this is a game balance issue and how much it is me settling into a set of favored spells, though.

The rapiers definitely seem like a good option. Strike Hard and Godansthunyr are another nice pair: they have the disorienting+stunning combination of the spears. You lose the accuracy bonus from the spears, but you gain a Might bonus, a speed weapon, and the best of two damage types. In both of those cases, having a speed weapon in one hand makes Vulnerable Attack really attractive.

I definitely lifted some ideas from some of your posts on the topic. Also, the template I missed the Hood this time through, but that's a great suggestion. Barbaric Yell was useful early, but I pretty much stopped using it by the middle levels. As an aura, though, Frightened has a lot to offer.