cctobias

Unless I'm missing something, there's not much of a puzzle to it. On a related note, can you actually do anything with that Xorip(?) thing that starts a conversation with you? None of the options seem to really matter. Well I was trying to be vague At the very least you need to equip something and while it does not actually matter there is a correspondance between symbols if you pay attention. Honestly the first time I did it I thought it was for open a door at the end of the corridor and had no idea it diarmed stuff. Although from another thread about xp I guess you can disarm them for xp. You must need 3 mechanics because I always failed.

I don't think the checkboard traps are disarmable though. May this is just a practical matter, under normal conditions you can't get to level 2 there and if you were a rogue you could have 3 in mechanics, I have tried with two and that fails maybe 3 works but I suspect not. You can interact with them but you fail. There is a puzzle solution for them that disarms them.

I am currently trying similar with: Mig 17 Con 10 dex 3 per 20 int 8 res 20 I don't think the con is worth so much given poor base and the main point is to not take hits at all. You can only have one summon and the high might helps with the damage invocations like the triple lightning level 1 chant. I put points into int mainly get certain cone aoe invocation to hit a second row. I don't think high int has nearly as much value as the high might and I budgeted this to have essentiall the same defenses when you consier +10 will +10 fort chant and the shield talent + reflex you can base starting at level 2 with sield talent and nothing else secondary defeense above 40 with medium shield each is about 1-2 points of each other. 8 Int seems to be just enough to hit what you need. 18 probably lets you get to a 3rd "row" of mobs (like if you put yourself in a corner and they form ranks), but that is way too many points and since you aren't really spitting out that many invocations and right now my plan is to summon first, I don't see the value. But at 3 int it is enough to actually not be able to hit a thrid rank with the lightning cone. So I opted for 8 int instead of pumping some con. Seems to me as a solo super tanky guy either defense work or they don't and if they don't con won't save you. I am trying it currently on Hard, not that far in though but while not incredibly fast he is a pure beast. Early on Reny just destroys things. I graze alot with the lightning invo but if Icould get 3 hits its a rather nice amount of damage for someone so tanky, Reny is better, but once he is out its a good second.

Nope. You're throwing points away for no reason. I don't believe backstab works on guns. Melee only, last I checked. But popping out of stealth with blinding strike and penetrating shots with a blunderbuss is hilariously effective on a lot of targets. It does work with guns (and ranged weapons in general). It works, but only within 2m. I would assume this is the source of confusion but tooltips does explain this. Also I think people are perhaps not fully accounting that stealth is time based. So you should line up your backstab from far away and make a beeline directly for the target, not position close slowly and then do it. You should be moving before you trigger the pie chart at your feet.

I hope so. My custom druid 'only' has a 16 Int, and the difference in AoE between her and Hivaris is massive. She can burn out entire encounters without touching the party and he has a tiny silver of additional AoE that isn't worth squat. It honestly means he can't hit several enemies every time he casts a spell, at least not with also hitting the party. Grieving Mother's poor intellect makes ciphers seem pretty mediocre because her paralyze and dominate don't last at all. Eder can be made to be a good tank from fighter abilities and talents, but if he were actually built for it, it would have made a huge difference in a couple fights. A crystal spider grazed him, and got a lucky petrify, which allowed his bigger buddy to do 120 damage, taking him out of the fight. If he'd had 10-15 more points of deflection, that wouldn't have happened. The comparison very much depends on the role and the stat. Is there a huge difference between 17 and 18 int? No. There is a huge difference between 10 and 18 and it does matter. For defenses/accuracy though there can be a huge this is not a matter of "think" or opinion its just a mathematical fact that at the high even just few points of deflection or Fortitude can make a literally gigantic difference. Some people see a statement like Voss has here where he states 10-15 more etc. and to them they are think oh he is just being anal retentive its just a few points. No those few points have a huge effective difference because the defense mechanics are exponential and not linear. When it comes to tanking and defense this not a matter of opinion, at the high end of the spectrum every point of deflection, fort etc is gigantic. Now for stuff like Int yes this is a matter of degrees. 15 can be fine. A Cipher with 10 int does in fact suck but a cipher with 16 instead of 18, meh whatever. This is not true for tanking even that small difference can be huge but for int its just 10% difference. Its not pure min maxed but its not even close to cutting sizes in half. Now there is a non linear effect with AoE since you are not increasing the area by a linear amount but all in all as far as effect its somewhat marginal in the above example.

I have been messing around with chanter and the OP seems mostly accurate. It may be a UI bug but I have a low int tank chanter (trying to solo with it) and chants seem to be not affected at all including the linger. You may only have one summon at a time. If you have Reny out then summon Skeletons Reny goes away. Can anyone comment on the higher up summons. Reny is pretty nice for early levels I didn't realize he stuns and has sneak attack and 60 deflection is nothing to sneeze at. Since you can only have one summon at a time and each level has two how do they compare? Two ogres sound like they would do a lot of damage. IMO Reny is much better than the skeletons at damage, but a long long margin. Stat wise Int seems to be only particularly important for invocations which behave basically like any spell/power for it. If you plan on mostly summoning you can go pretty low int. If you want to be an invocation focused chanter then you basically want to do lvl 1 chants only. IMO the chants need to be rebalanced to take this into account. Lvl 3 chants are literally cutting into your Invocation output by cutting your rate by 50% but I would not call them twice as powerful really. Dex seems like a rather poor stat for chanters unless you are really melee focused. Might seems really important since invocation output is so throttled you want it to hit as hard as possible when you do. Same goes for accuracy.

I make no claims towards this being the best but this is what I would use for cipher: Race wood elf purely for the racial ability and dex. You might as well be ranged and the extra accuracy puts a cipher closer to Rogue etc. Stats (I may have this slight wrong numbes wise): might: 19(+1 from culture) con: 3 Dex: 19 per:3 (put leftover points) Int: 18 (alternately put culter point here) resolve: 3 its a toss up between int and might, they are basically equivalent do this to taste, you might as well put extra points in per for interrupt as ranged you should hopefully not need concetration and the Con bonuses are not that bad on a class with low Vitality already. Powers (for starters not gonna do full list ): Eyestrike no matter what. I usually take Soul shock works great with a good tank. The charm is good and tenuous grasp is ok. I am unsure about the beam. You definitely want the Mental Bind paralyze+ aoe stuck at level 2 powers. Talents: Biting whip (good damage increase and you are like 50/50 between powers and weapon for damage) draining whip (use a blunderbus with this to get massive focus) Other talents to your choice, poissibly the ranged ones, If you feel good on accuracy take Savage attack (remember the Wood Elf part? that offsets the savage attack -5 accuracy so you can choose between more accuracy or extra x1.2 damage and get into rogue territory damage ). Note probably turn if off when casting non-damaging debuffs (eyestrike) DO NOT TAKE MAX FOCUS TALENT (+10 max focus may sound good but it sucks don't take it)

Stealth is useful in general for positioning and scouting. But high stealth seems to be mostly useful for rogues mostly due to backstab. Backstab is pretty powerful when done right so this is non-trivial. I am not really sure whether to you high stealth for stealing, you can probably do a lot with a medium amount and smart positioning. For the most part there is little reason not to put 1 or 2 points in all skill for all characters, it is only for high skill levels it matters much and that is where stacking skill bonuses +2 or higher really gets important. I made my rogue as a character with +2 in mechanics and +2 in stealth. I don't really know if that will work out ok. Even though rogues are the best mechanics they are also the only class that actually pretty much needs high stealth and both are things that want to get real high. Its probably ok but really I think from an optimality perspective you should never make your rogue your mechanic and that the skill bonuses are misleading in this way. Especially since there is no stealth/mechanic background. If you want a rogue with +2 stealth he will not have +3 mechanics and some other custom adventurer can get +2 mechancis via background. That way each guy has more room for medium levels of survival and athletics, which all characters can benefit from.

I am not sure you really need that much Con. Yes I know it seems like a no brainer tank stat, but the thing is that defenses get stronger and stronger per point and Con's % increase does not. So getting defenses as high as possible is worthwhile. It can concievably be worth fairly large sacrifice to get just a few points in a defense when you have high defense (conversely at low defense its barely worth any sacrifices). On the other hand Con's bonuses (since might give fort as well) are a linearly increasing thing and difference between 16 and 18 Con is not that big of a deal. It may be worth taking point out of Con and either a) putting them into Str to get some other benefit and mainting the same Fort (I think is somewhat questionable as you probably do crap damage no matter what) b) going, probably into Int, to trade some Fort for Will saves. Option (B) serves multiple purposes -Shield talent gives reflex so its less important -raising int will make your debuffs last longer which can be nice -having higher will works with the Orlan racial better On the other hand perhaps having higher Fort is better some annoying and common things like knockdown to prone are Fort. Probably its doesn't matter that much. But its something to consider.

For the custom specifically: Rogue is the highest straight up kill em immediately: - Sneak attack x1.5 - BackStab x2 -Reckless assault x1.2 Back stab is only from sealth or invis and invis is two per rest but backstab is in total x2.7 or more damage. So a rogue that is micro managed properly can take something out of the encounter basically immediately from stealth. For really important fight you can take out 1 or 2 more if you take the invus talent. For normal attack rogue is capable x1.7 damage as long as you make sure to debuff things and the normal companion are perfectly cpable of this Also there is no Rogue companion. The other option which is also very good is Cipher they are somewhat less damage with less capability to instantly take out via killing but more versatile good at range and can still disable things via other means. Cipher is probably second highest damage since: -Soul whip is x1.2 - Biting whip is x1.2 - they can enhance offense or debuff defense very easily So a cipher is normal at x1.4 which is pretty good and if they took savage attack if they had weapon with good +accuracy you could add some more. Additionally they some nice AOE damage, a killer AOE paralyze, various other things to cause chaos and they even have a nice heal. These are the two min/max custom options I would suggest. They are roughly equivalent but play fairly different. They are both roughly capable of taking multiple foes out of the fight either by kill or other means. They both do very good basic attack damage, with the rogue being better, but the cipher has other goodies and being perfectly fine as pure ranged (rogue needs 2m on backstab can use ranged, blunderbus, but to really take stuff out needs to get close). Cipher can also buff your fighter, but so can a lot of other things and there is a cipher companion as well. The companions are quite bad though.

Yeah I suspect it might just be too little damage and that even if it works it may be rather mind numbing. The reason to go Int as dump is basically to ignore everything but melee and summons. If you are repeating same phrase over and over then Int does literally nothing for you. So you one buff and summons. Focus all equipment and talents to defense, large shield, shield talents etc. You will probably take the +10 Fort, Will buff I would think so that you can get paladin like defenses. Class deflection is same as pally/fighter. This would basically utterly depend on two things: -Can you make a chanter so tough defense wise that he can stand there long enough against anything. -Are the summons good enough. The phantom is ok in early levels. The drake may be pretty good later on. But I rather doubt they can take a dragon even if you keep resummoning. I may be wrong though. On the other hand if they draw aggro it may over time work out quite well. This is where the mind numbing would come in If you are really tough AND the summons take a lot of the damage, you might be able to peck away at things for ever.

Fight some and check the hit calculations. +6-8 points of deflection won't help you. I have found that deflection scales well. 5 points of deflection is valuable - and as it continues to reduce the damage you take by reducing (or eliminating) the hits you take, you never stop wanting more. I've found the exact opposite. Characters built to be deflection tanks take almost zero damage during fights. Characters with a couple extra points from stats? Waste of time/resources. Pallegina with a high base deflection from class, a large shield, a deflection ring, and a couple extra points from per/res items on top of her stat bonuses from resolve/perception is a fairly poor tank, because I didn't get her until level 8. She takes a fair amount of damage from casual fights even with a deflection of 81. My real tanks, built to purpose? If they take more than 4-6 points of damage from lucky grazes over a casual fight, I either got bad results from the RNG, or screwed up in some fashion. My damage dealers range at about 40-50 deflection. My main (ranger) and my custom druid, , both with 10s in all defensive stats, both have 41 deflection. Aloth, with his 17 Per and 14 Res? A grand 42. Sagani, with 18 per? 49. Woo. Those attribute points on the companions are absolutely wasted. This is correct. Mathematically the D20, D100, whatever D you like systems work in such a way that each successive point gets stronger and stronger. If we take d20 (because it has smaller numbers for the example) then when AC is at +10 you have a 50/50 chance and adding +1 changes it to 55% from 50%. Going from +18 to +19 also adds 5% from 90% to 95%. The trick is that the "effective health" increase from +18 to +19 is double and the "effective health" increase from +10 to +11 is not nearly so much. At 50% miss rate 100 health becomes 200 effective health. (Because only every other swing hits so you operate similar to someone who has no defense but higher health on average) At 55% miss rate 100 health becomes 222 effective health. Thus +1 AC = 22 more health. At 90% 100 health becomes 1000 effective health at 95% 100 health becomes 2000 effective health thus +1 AC = 1000 more health. So the graph is an upward sloping exponential curve. At a rather modest extreme(since I started at 50% and not 10%) +1 AC can literally be 40 times stronger. So if you just put those data points into Excel and make a simple graph you can see why characters that have one tank stat and not the other really are radically weaker. We are not talking a 20% difference between them. We are talking a probably about 200% difference due to the nature the D# opposing stats system and the way bonuses are done in them. Bonuses are always +(an integer) but the value of the integer is not constant or static. It can do literally 10x or more the effect for one character versus the other. So keep this in mind. This thread is about far more than just "munchkin" stuff. A 50/50 fighter is not an OK tank. Compared to a fighter/pally with shield talents and full optimal investment in tanking stats that 50/50 fighter might wind up literally 5-10x worse in effective health To have a suboptimal kind of ok tankish guy you probably would need something like 75% invesment to be half as good. This might seem weird but the trend is not linear so that is the way it is. Now obviously 50% is better than 0%. But if you are going with a fighter that has 50% you might as well just get all 6 people to 50% and not have any real tank. That one fighter at 95% can take 10x the damage of the other fighter. He is literally two entire parties Vitality summations worse than that other fighter who may actually have considerably higher defense than your nuker wearing no shield and just clothing. No one is saying the companions should be completely min maxed, but I think some people may be underestimating just how huge the gap really is for certain roles. Note this is defense specific the might +damage and int duration/aoe should not be as dramatic.

I absolutely do not think all spells should be per encounter. Per encounter is tactical. Per rest is strategic by doing this you will remove a significant amount of strategery from the game. However I will concede that Druids/Wizard/Priest (maybe not Druid since they have spiritshift) need more things do on a per encounter basis before they get 1st and second level spell at per encounter. Make no mistake a level 11 wizard is pretty darn strong. 4 per encounter slicken is close to insanely good. But the early level wizard can't do jack except blast and arcane assault. Additionally Blast is "attack" based and wizard have abyssmal accuracy. For AA the daze is nice and the damage is ok. But its not enough to make up for the lack of interesting things to do. Blast can be at least enough to not make the wizard a tag-a-long of occasional use. Basically they need one or two talents/abilities that can be subbed out or added to blast. Maybe something that can give one more encounter thing(i.e. branch away from normal attacks) and something to boost accuracy on blast or something. At level 11 though wizard have 8 per encounter casts, so it flips around completely.

If I were you I would seriously make an effort to disconnect the words used for the stats from any sort actual meaning besides their actual functions. You are literally going to run into a plethora of problems if you try to RP off the stats. I suggest making a tanky chanter with high resolves/perception and take a background with a bonus to mechanics. Chanter seems in line with the con-artist. Resolve is a tanking skill and it will let you lie. In your mind just refer to it as "Attribute #6" so you don't get confused.

I built Sagani into a speedy bow using interrupter.. and it's effective (on normal). I use a hunting bow on her and gave her interrupt talents/equipment. I also build a might based ranger that uses a War Bow instead of a hunting bow, and while she does more damage, she doesn't stop nearly as many spells in progress. Do you think this is what Sagani's character concept was, as a interruptor? It could be, I dunno, Guild Wars Ranger are high quality interruptors its not unheard of. But if i feel that if the answer to the above question is "Yes" then if you let Sagani into your party at level 10 she should have the interrupt talent chosen as part of her leveling scheme and I will bet you a penny she doesn't. Note: shipping costs for that penny are not included. Do you find it strange that the item with a higher interrupt value is worse as interrupting? How much value does single target interrupts really have, given kill times of heavy hitters and prevalence of groups?

For soloing has anyone tried making an absolutely, completely tank oriented Chanter (to the point of completely dumping Int) that basically get 3 quick phrases out that boost some defenses and then use a summon invocation? I think you can even possibly make one with OK might and still max out PER and Resolve. I am not sure if this would work great but although it sounds a little slow, a solo try is not gonna kill fast unless they use a lot of AOE. The summons are "permanent" and have no AOE size. You can get a summon out fairly fast and the phantom seems decently tough and does OK damage. You can basically summon a phantom once per 12 sec using level phrase so once you get going you can probably keep stuff coming forever as long as you don't die and they should take some heat off you as well. You can do it it right away from level 1 on as your basic strategy and you have some freedom to get a second non-summon invocation. I am not sure how the summons work as far as limits. I know resummoning the phantom will get rid of previous phantom. Not sure if this is per Invocation or if there is a hard 1 summon limit. If you can get multiple summons going this might be nice. Even with one that you can do forever it might be a possible iron man strategy, I dunno. The basic idea is that for summon none of the normal caster attributes matter at all. The only thing that matter is doing phrases as fast as possible and that is fixed. Do one level 1 phrase over and over (or alternate if you like). Phrases are not affected by any speed stuff either. So you could summon exactly the same in Plate Armor as in clothes. Plus if you are going super tanky plate armor then you might as well ignore dex and could go max Per, max Resolve and some combo of Con/might to taste such that you can hit for at least ok melee damage and still have ok Vitality and Fortitude. Then the only thing you care about Int/resolve for is to have adequate secondary defenses and can probably dump them.

Yeah the companions are pretty bad. I personally like making my whole party from scratch like in the old Might and Magic or Bard's Tale games, but I am ok with pre-made companions when I know what they were made for ahead of time and there is enough choice to make some kind of interesting party. This is a party based game. The combat is meant to be interesting due to the interactions between your characters. There should be certain things available; a competent tank, a good AOE damage guy, a good debuffer, a good striker, maybe one or two generalists, etc. Do these need to be min/maxed? No but they need to be competent. Is it necessary that they are all be particularly competent on Normal difficulty? Probably not, I have a suspicion that a pure tank pure summoner Chanter can, eventually, solo or very closely solo most of the game on Easy. So said build can probably do normal with bad companions. But is this is not the issue. The issue is that incompetent and poorly made companions limit they ways you can play the core of the game which is party based interactions. These companions are mostly incompetent except for the Chanter. Some of them make one attempt to go in one direction and then completely sabotage that with another thing. Grieving mother takes Biting whip going down the Nuker route and then has crap might and negates that. Every single companion is either just crap or is a generalist. There aren't any that are reasonably good at a role and some of them seem to have meant to be one role or another and then just got their legs cut out from under them. I don't expect Aloth to be able to be an amazing Nuker. But either Aloth or Grieving Mother or Sagani should be like 70% towards a good Nuker. None of them are. One is OK at best at Nuking and two are terrible at Nuking. Even worse all three of these could have been, instead, a debuffer style of build. But they are all are mediocre at best at that as well. Sagani is not even a generalist, she is just bad. She is incompetent at everything. Let me ask you something does this utter incompetence fit with the way her character is written? I think most of will say it does not. This very jarring from a story perspective. Let us take Sagani as a specific example. As others in the thread mentioned it appears like her stats are based upon RP idea of what perception is and not what perception does in POE. I mean in a general RPG context if someone said "Hey I wanna make a high perception ranger, a scouting/shooty type guys should have good perception right?", my reply would be "Yes that seems to make sense and for most RPGS perception is usually a decent stat for a scout/shooty type". Perception is, weirdly, a terrible stat for a Ranger. Maybe, just maybe, if interrupts were worth using there might be some kind of argument. Or if she came with the Talent for interrupts it might possibly make some kind of sense. Instead we have a stat that does nothing for her striking. Perception, for whatever reason, is a tanking stat and even its non-passive defense portion; interrupt is defensive. Even worse Rangers are extremely hard to make into a tank, not impossible and do have some engagement advantages, but extremely tricky and she is clearly not made for that. The interrupt line of things, well she is clearly not made for that either and even if she was, and just speaking purely practically here, that build is not very good as far as I can tell from in game testing. So why do we have literally half her stat allocation completely wasted? I dunno there are only two reasons I can think of, both already mentioned here, either this was done because of accuracy and then not updated or its for RP reasons that rangers should be perceptive because that is a ranger characteristic. You want these terrible mechanic disadvantages due to RP reasons? Fine make the stat actually line up then. Sagani is literally crippled compared to even a decently made Ranger. Stat are strong in POE and more than half of hers are a complete waste. Don't call the people who are pointing out facts "munchkins". There is a bit of a "pee on my foot and tell me its raining" effect going on here. I don't mean to cast any aspersions here. But things are just not lining up between how these guys were made and what they should be doing. Possibly for multiple reasons. I am fine with RPers wanting a ranger to have high perception, but when perception's current implementation has very little value for 90% of ranger builds this winds being well, frankly, just dumb. Form follows function not the other way around. All serious RPs who are good at RP stuff should probably be very dedicated to this idea. If anything the RP-focused people should be MORE upset because Sagani is crippled even though she has a stat that makes RP sense. Why is she penalised for having stats that most long time RPG players would say based on the words used should make sense for a Ranger? You see what is happening here? Even people inclined towards RP-focused playthrough will discard Sagani even though from an RP perspective her stat do make some sense but from a gameplay perspective she is terrible at doing what she is. This is the worst possible case for RP. If your character is supposed to be something but acts entirely like something else in function then it is impossible to actually RP that in any sort of believable manner. In a table top game with real people and a creative player this could perhaps be turned into something rather amusing. But make no mistake in the current context its a rather serious issue. It doesn't "ruin" but it is a very serious mark against the game. It seriously detracts from the core features of party play AND the soundness of the RP itself. There is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem going on. And personally I don't particularly mind that perception won't fit the stereotypes of most RPGs. But this is clearly causing some major SNAFU here. Wires are obviously getting crossed here both mechanic and conceptually. I hope that mods can address this. But there are also just some mechanics that don't work that well. Conceptually a high resolve priest makes some sense in that it gives high concetration and therefore they should be able to cast spell when put under duress. Considering the priest comapanian takes the pseudonym Durance this makes sense from an RP perspective. But from a game mechanics perspective this just does not have high value unless you built your priest in a very very particular way that he is not made. Essentially you need to make a tank that is completely min/maxed in certain ways to make up for the inherent problems of the class (bad vitality, poor deflection and accuracy). In order for the way Durance is built to have much value he NEEDS to be getting hit a lot. If he is getting hit a lot he NEEDS to either be tanking OR you are playing like crap. Durance is not built for tanking. So in order to get value out of his stat spread you LITERALLY HAVE TO PLAY POORLY. Just like Sagani he has a HUGE amount of his stat budget dedicated to this concept, but the concept itself is not just executed poorly, its executed just plain wrong. It doesn't work. He has a concept, the concept is OK, maybe not the way I want to build a priest but its OK. That concept's implementation simply doesn't work. How do I RP something that doesn't work? Without a DM I can't. Therefore this is a major problem with a core of the game.