Crucis

Boeroer, I thought that I'd read (or misread, as the case may be) that only Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina would be in PoE2. Personally, I could do without Durance as the companion Priest in PoE2, but will LOVE having Pallegina in it as she's my favorite companion.

A penalty for using a ranged weapon in melee? I don't know for certain, but I don't remember there being one. But I could be wrong on that.

As I recall, barbarians aren't all that well suited to dealing with single very tough enemies. Their overall skills are aimed more towards dealing with mobs of enemies. For dealing with something like dragons, a bow armed ranger is a good option, particularly for keeping up a constant stream of damage. Rogues are also good vs. single tough opponents, and perhaps with rifles. When you see the enemy is below 50% start using the Rogue's death blows with a rifle and sooner or later you'll get a massively damaging hit on the big bad. As for Pallegina and Zahua, I like both of them, each in their own way. Pallegina may not be the biggest, baddest front liner, but she's always been more than capable of holding her own. And having her as a backup healer in tough battles has come in handy quite often. And Zahua is just fun to play, once you get a handle on how to use monks decently. In fact, having Zahua and a cipher in a very high level party is just plain nasty when the cipher can cast Reaping Knives on Zahua.

When you have a lightly armored ranger or other back liners, it's often helpful to have them have a weapon and shield option for self defense to get some additional deflection from the shield. As for run away vs stand your ground, I suppose that it depends on the situation. Sometimes it can be helpful to stand your ground so that a team mate doesn't have to chase down the enemy, which he might have to do, if you try to disengage and run away. Maybe let one of your front liners engage this enemy to draw its attention and THEN have the back liner disengage. Also, if possible, perhaps you could have a spell caster cast a spell that would temporarily hold or stun or whatever the enemy so that your engaged backliner can more safely retreat without risk.

The thing to always keep in mind is that 2H weapons are better than 1H weapons when it comes to overcoming higher DR's. So while 1H's may have higher DPS, if you're not getting past some enemy's DR's, all that potential DPS may go to waste if you're not doing actual damage.

There are a few times where your background will open up a dialog option that might not otherwise exist. Not as many as I think most would have preferred, but I think that this was a case of limited development time/resources more than anything else.

I've always been a fan of Rangers in the old IE games and I'm still a fan of rangers, though I'm not particularly a fan of the animal companions. I will freely admit that the pets are a LOT better since they were buffed. At the same time, I wish that pets were a level 1 option, so that if you wanted to play a pet-less ranger, you could do so. Also, I've never particularly been a fan of Fighters in previous IE games as they seemed a bit bland. However, I love playing fighters in PoE. Lastly, I was also always a big fan of paladins in the old IE games, but I just can't get into them in PoE. This isn't to say that they can't be built and played productively. I just don't like how they were designed as "leaders" and so forth. I long for the old holy warrior style of paladin.

That's actually a plus, if chanter is not your main character. As they require less 'supervision'. This is so true. Having some characters in a party that require less supervision, less micromanagement, means that you can pay more attention to those members of the party that will benefit from greater supervision.

For what it's worth, this doesn't seem like a topic that can be properly discussed in a non-spoilers forum. It's a worthy enough topic, but any really worth discussion of it would seem to me to be drowning in spoilers. Would it be possible for a mod to move it into the Stories forum, I suppose?

I like the spell-striking effects. It adds a bit of variety to what the player can create themselves and makes for cool effects in game. St. Ydwen's Redeemer could simply have the overbearing property and a crushing lash, but to my mind it's a lot cooler when a Fighter wielding it periodically summons a pillar that does crushing damage and knocks enemies down. Obviously that's just a matter of personal taste though. I will agree that most of the WM1 ones were a bit underwhelming. Stormcaller is cool, particularly in the hands of a Ranger, and the Redeemer is great against vessels obviously, but the Greenstone Staff is fairly meh and I've hardly ever used Nightshroud. The upgrade process is sometimes annoying I'll agree, though I quite like having to go through it to unlock new properties of the weapon. Jerek, what I prefer is reliability. And those spell-striking effects that only occur something like 5%, 10%, or a little higher are just not reliable. Beyond that, it's not that there's 1-3 weapons with an occasion spell striking weapon, every frickin' soulbound weapon is drowned in them. It's like the developers of the soulbound weapons found a new toy and just HAD to attach spell effects to every frickin' soulbound weapon they developed. It's downright annoying. The Redeemer isn't horrible vs non-vessels. It's just outclassed by Tidefall and, IMO, St Rumbalts, because those 2 great swords have RELIABLE and productive effects rather than unreliable effects. As for the Greenstone Staff, for wizards, IMO it's just plain stinks. Maybe it's just me having a certain stereotype of wizards' staffs, but IMO, a wizard's staff should be less about the staff itself as a physical weapon and more about the staff as a focus for a number of bound cast-able spells. Think BG2's Staff of the Magi, though it wouldn't need to be quite that OP. Another problem to me with the Greenstone Staff is that is requires the wizard to ignore his spellcasting, ignore using what is likely a more potent magical implement, and ignore using what would almost certainly be more powerful weapons the wizard's own spells can summon, and use a staff in melee to get said staff upgraded. IMO that's just a plain dumb design for a wizard's staff. As for druids and the GS Staff, I'll take a pass on this because I'm just not conversant with druids. As for monks and the GS Staff, staffs just don't seem like monk weapons, as designed in this game. In what IMO would be a more rational design, quarter staffs would NOT be reach weapons and they'd be fast, 2H blunt weapons that may not do as much damage as, say, heavier metal blunt weapons like maces or morning stars. And this style of Qstaff would seem to be an excellent monk weapon. It's also worth noting that soulbound weapons don't HAVE to be bound to a character to be used. They only need to be bound if you want to upgrade it. And IIRC, I think that out of class characters may be able to use SB weapons they might not be able to bind. For example, the SB isn't a horrible mace by any stretch. It's just lacking compared to other SB weapons. If you didn't SB it and just used it in its raw state, it's still an Exception mace with a blinding effect. Ditto, the Twin Sting xbow is still a pretty good looking xbow even unbound. Regarding The Redeemer, I've made it well known that I think that it's ridiculously OP vs vessels but against non-vessels it's pretty decent, though not in Tidefall's class. I wish that The Redeemer had been made as a non-SB weapon and was created as being sort of a "Holy Avenger" of PoE. Note that I don't mean that it should have taken on the classic properties of BG2's, IWD2's, or D&D's Holy Avengers. I mean more in terms of flavor and theme rather than in the details. Visually, The Redeemer is wonderful. A wonderful shining great sword. What might have made it really interesting is if it was a special kind of SB weapon that maybe was "created" in the instant you bound it to a soul and the sword took on different properties based on the order to which the paladin belonged. Well, anyways, I've rambled on long enough.

Honestly, I found the whole Ondra dropping a small moon on Eora thing utterly laughable. This isn't about doubting or questioning her power to do it (not looking for any sort of religious argument here). It's about the idea that you could drop a "small moon" on a planet and not kill every friggin' living thing on said planet, not to mention risking the destruction of said planet as well. I mean, really, supposedly the dinosaurs were all wiped out due to a mere comet strike. And we're talking about a "small moon" here. A "small moon" wouldn't just wipe out a city or a small country. It'd almost certainly wipe out all life on the planet and quite possibly the planet itself. Before these devs start thinking about dropping moons on players again, they might want to talk to someone knowledgeable on such things about the effects of doing so would have.

This is untrue, at least not directly. The existing format of time measurements can be dated back to the ancient Egyptians. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-time-division-days-hours-minutes/ As for why Eora uses a 27 hour day, I assume that it's just a case of this being a fantasy setting and the writers just wanted to make Eora different from Earth in this respect. It's no different from any other sci-fi oir fantasy setting on a non-Earth planet. You can't assume that every planet inhabited by humans is going to have a rotational period that's really close to 24 hours. That's just not a realistic assumption. I will say that arguably it might be easier on the players if Eora was a 24 hours to a day setting just so that the players didn't have to make any mental conversions in the process of playing the game.

Ratsneve, this is normal. You need to advance the main plot line further. After a certain event, the storms flooding Stormwall Gorge will end and you'll be able to gain access to the areas on the other side of that river. It's a similar plot device that was used to prevent you from going beyond Caed Nua until after you've dealt with Maerwald.

A few points. I'm not a big fan of the Soulbound weapons. I think that between the initial PoE release and WM1/2, the devs who created weapons fell head over heels in love with binding spells to weapons, whether as straight up spell bindings or as spell-striking bindings. Honestly, I think that soulbound weapons are too dependent on these effects to make them look good. There aren't enough nice, simple, straight forward effects. Beyond this, too many of the soulbound weapons are just plain mediocre even when fully upgraded. And having them so limited by class doesn't help any either. I kind of wish that they hadn't done soulbound weapons in the first place, and instead just created these weapons as regular Exceptional or better weapons without all the soulbound bells and whistles, and often annoying upgrade process.

I don't disagree with anything you've said above. People just need to be slightly wary when fighting enemies that charm, dominate, or confuse because if one of your party gets affected, the Dragon Slashed chant will start affecting them, so you need to be ready to consider switching chants for a short time if this happens so that you don't slash and burn down a friendly.

I've never had trouble with that Magran bounty. The one that I find incredibly tough is that pirate band you have to fight near Dyrford village. That one's a real difficult one, or at least it has been for me.

Don't even have to be scrolls, KDubya. Just have Aloth fire on a Confusion spell of his own. That by itself is usually a game changer. One thing to consider though is that in high level battles, the enemies often have very high Will defenses and most may make their saves. That said, one Confused enemy is often just enough to throw a monkey wrench into the works for a little while. If you want to really hit them hard with will based spells, find a Will debuffing spell and nail them with that, then hit them with another Confusion, or possibly have GM charm or dominate a number of enemies. Charm, Dominate, and Confusion spells are devastating to an enemy when you can turn their strength against them, and get them attacking each other.

I'm not entirely sure that I can agree with this statement. The fact is that if you want to make your pet awesome, you need to take 3 (IIRC) of the pet related in-class talents, i.e. Resilient Companion, Vicious Companion, and Merciless Companion. That only leaves you 5 out of the max of 8 talent points to work with. And that sort of seems like "gimping" to me. Now, I'm not saying that you can't have a competent Ranger. But compared to other classes, it's going to be a little more difficult to make your ranger into a well rounded combatant when you're short 3 talent points. Maybe even more so if you're looking to build a good melee ranged, and particularly one who isn't wearing heavier armor. It seems to me that wearing heavy armor (like you do in your melee ranger build - not a criticism, BTW), aside from being against the stereotype, is a bit of a counter for not having been able to take talents like weapon+shield style or superior deflection. But if one wanted to play a leather wearing ranger, you're going to be at a bit of a disadvantage without those 3 extra talent points. OTOH, I think that ranged rangers aren't in quite as tough a situation. I think they'll be able to be entirely competent ranged combatants, but I think that their weakness will be that they'll be rather lacking when it comes to melee, due to the loss of those 3 talent points to their pet. I still wish longingly that animal companions were an optional thing, perhaps taken as a level 1 class ability, so that those who would like to play pet-less rangers could do so. You don't need quite that many talents because you don't need any of the defensive ones. You want to be crit in order to activate items like shod in faith boots and sanguine frenzy. Also, lower deflection encourages enemies to target you over your pet. That said, I would be ranged early on while getting pet talents and wait until the key melee equipment is obtained before giving up the bow/gun. The non-pet melee ones I would take are: veterans recovery, two-handed weapon style, appr. sneak attack, weapon focus, and savage attack. Another good one is the -8 deflection AOE one since it helps your pet's bad accuracy. However, since it takes an action that could be binding roots (-20 deflection or CC), I found it not really worth it. Optionally it could be taken instead of weapon focus if playing solo, if you have high INT. Braven, I just don't play this way. Even on the character I have wearing the Shod in Faith boots (regardless of class), I want to have that character have a high DEFL. I prefer to minimize how often my characters get hit, not maximize how often they get crit'd just for the sake of triggering the SiF boots or the Sanguine armor, which I never, EVER use (on any character), because I hate the Frenzy ability's not allowing you to see your END status. Losing the ability to see the character's END status just isn't worth the upsides of Frenzy to me. And for that matter, I have no interest in putting heavy armor on a Ranger for RP reasons. The heaviest armor I could see any ranger of mine wearing would be scale (like the Scales of the Raven, but not the Golden Scales), and more likely leather.

I had Sagani in my last party from the instant I met her. And Ittumak was an absolute BEAST in combat. It seemed like every time I looked around, that wily white fox was nailing someone for 70-80-90+ damage!!! If you want to get the most out of an animal companion, just think of them as being like a melee rogue. Just have your casters cast afflicting and DoT spells on the enemy, and watch the pet just tear through them. And have your ranger make constant use of Wounding Shot (2/encounter) to enable the pet's Predator's Sense +50% damage. It really isn't difficult at all to set up the conditions that allow pets to increase their damage output.

I'm not entirely sure that I can agree with this statement. The fact is that if you want to make your pet awesome, you need to take 3 (IIRC) of the pet related in-class talents, i.e. Resilient Companion, Vicious Companion, and Merciless Companion. That only leaves you 5 out of the max of 8 talent points to work with. And that sort of seems like "gimping" to me. Now, I'm not saying that you can't have a competent Ranger. But compared to other classes, it's going to be a little more difficult to make your ranger into a well rounded combatant when you're short 3 talent points. Maybe even more so if you're looking to build a good melee ranged, and particularly one who isn't wearing heavier armor. It seems to me that wearing heavy armor (like you do in your melee ranger build - not a criticism, BTW), aside from being against the stereotype, is a bit of a counter for not having been able to take talents like weapon+shield style or superior deflection. But if one wanted to play a leather wearing ranger, you're going to be at a bit of a disadvantage without those 3 extra talent points. OTOH, I think that ranged rangers aren't in quite as tough a situation. I think they'll be able to be entirely competent ranged combatants, but I think that their weakness will be that they'll be rather lacking when it comes to melee, due to the loss of those 3 talent points to their pet. I still wish longingly that animal companions were an optional thing, perhaps taken as a level 1 class ability, so that those who would like to play pet-less rangers could do so.

Oh, there are. There most certainly are. Actually, after a very bad first encounter with them, I ended up finding them not all that difficult, though I will admit that perhaps I've been going into WM1/2 at a higher level than some do, meaning that my party has higher saves than others might, which can matter against their paralyzing blowgun darts.

I don't know how much of Durance's quest is rest driven as opposed to event driven. I do know that the concluding dialog of his quest only comes after a specific event. I don't know if he has to be in the party or not at the time, however. Logically, it would seem that he should need to be, but one never knows. As for GM's quest, I don't recall anything about it being at all event driven, though I suppose that there may be some events that have to take place to advance her quest, even if logically they don't really seem tied to it.

Interesting. I suppose that it's possible that the devs designing those two weapons thought that the speed enchantment sounded nice for such slow weapons, without considering the matter a little more deeply. Frankly, there are a few enchantments that I think are kind of lame. Valiant, for one. I mean really, an enchantment that only kicks in when your END is below 50%? I never use "valiant" weapons because I this enchantment so much. Also, I'm kinda not a fan of spells being bound to weapons (i.e. the ones you have to cast yourself, not spell-striking ones), with the exception of staffs. Then again, I'm not a fan of bound spells on most items, because I rarely remember to use them. Maybe it was a desire to get away from the paradigm of the mage staff, but I feel like there's a SEVERE lack of really good mage staffs in PoE. The only one that comes to mind is only available rather late, and really isn't all that impressive, particularly considering how late in the game it's available. Of course, I suppose that since there are a number of good wizard spells that provide excellent magical melee weapons, a mage staff may seem a bit unnecessary. Sigh. Oh well.

I suspect that a great many of those people do it because that's how they feel paladins should have been in the first place, rather than the leader/support class that the devs foisted on the players. Paladins may have "many other strengths", but I suspect that those are strengths that many players would give up in a heartbeat for a more offensively oriented paladin class. Oh, some of their abilities are nice enough, but it seems to me that if you really want a support second line support character that can do these things, a priest can do them just as well, even if he has to do them a little differently. I think that a lot of players would rather that the paladin class was a class of "holy warriors" (I use that term loosely...) than what they are today. And that's why I think you see a lot of players trying to play them that way, regardless of how the class is designed.

What's there to be "fair" about? There are only 2 unique crossbows (not counting the soulbound xbow that's limited to only 3 classes if you want to soulbind it), 2 unique arbalests, and 2 unique arquebuses (not counting the named yet generic one sold by a certain vendor of named, but generic weapons) in the entire game! At least blunderbuses got a 3rd unique one in WM. But arbalests and arquebuses got jack. That's not all. Let's face it. Arbalests and arquebuses got the shaft. And to a lesser degree, so did crossbows. Even hunting bows got a little shafted.