Crucis

I guess that the entire loss of an equipment slot for character upgrade potential matters a whole HELL of a lot more to me, because I truly loathe godlikes. I hate the loss of the helmet slot. I hate the use of abilities that have to be triggered by low health (hate it on humans too, but at least they don't lose the helmet slot). I hate how ugly most of them are, some disgustingly so. All in all, there's next to nothing that I like about godlikes... which is why I never play them, and probably never will, not even as a merc in my parties. As for Fire GL's burning a hood, what about the rest of their bodies? Are they supposed to wear metal armor all the time? Would their regular clothes burn away? Why only the head? Oh, and BTW, Alexis, it's nice that you're trying to mod PoE. Congrats on the effort. But so long as GL's can't wear helmets and (some) have those ridiculous special abilities that only trigger at low health, I won't be going near any GL characters.

I think that it's true. Sheldbearers exist to protect others, not themselves. It's part of their lore.

It was totally not the point of my post.You said you might define tanking different than me, which to me sounded like you think I might be satisfied with a less effective tank. That's why I brought up soloing, since if you don't kite you have to tank way more hits. But you see, right there, you have pointed out a difference between how you and I define "tanking". You say "you have to tank way more hits". This isn't tanking to me. A "tank" to me isn't something defensive or only defensive. A "tank" character is a heavily armored character who is meant to go into harm's way, using his armor to help protect himself so that he can get into range to use his own offensive abilities. OTOH, some people here define "tank" as a strictly defensive character whose job is (or was in PoE's early days) to get as many characters attacking him, hopefully pointlessly, as possible. Essentially abusing the game's mechanics. This sort of "tank" wouldn't work in a real P&P game because a game master would simply have the enemy be smarter and at some point just ignore the aggro magnet "tank". Now, I'm not saying that this is exactly what you're saying, but some do. Hence, my comments about different definitions of "tank". Edited to cut down on the quote nesting....

Similar story. At least you don't turn into a nearly mindless killing machine of a demon in PoE. And you're not really the spawn of a deity in PoE either. Just some schmoe whose soul has been Awakened and is trying to stop a bad guy. But yes, the parallels are quite strong.

Kaylon, Blades, I guess what it comes down to me is that I really dislike the helmet thing. I'd rather that GL's could wear helmets and if that meant scaling back on their racial abilities, so be it. Also, I honestly don't like racial abilities that trigger based on reduced END. In fact, I hate it with a bloody passion. I don't like the idea of having to play a GL with the aim to get seriously injured just to take advantage of what is supposedly a great ability. Only the Moon GL gets a bit of a pass here, since its special ability is healing! On top of this, there's just about no synergy with these when seriously injured specials with classes whose intention is to AVOID taking damage. Why would anyone want to play a Fire GL ranged wizard? This is why I think that GL's should be always on, not triggered by reduced END (this holds true for the human special ability as well). And they should benefit melee and ranged combatants equally. Blades, I like the idea of Woodskin for Nature GL's. It's very nicely thematic. But IMO it should be a once per encounter spell like ability that only works on themselves, and can be triggered whenever the character chooses, not when seriously injured. Or even simpler, give them the equivalent of barbarian "tough skin" (+2 DR, IIRC) as an emulation of them simply having, well, tougher skin.

Well it sort of is That's the way I play with Pallegina, placed in second row and holding Aedrin's Wrecker. FoD greatly benefits from slow hard-hitting weapons, while also providing bonus acc. Majority of FoD shots are resulting in a stun or a prone. Coupled with apprentice sneak attack it's a great alpha strike, which also gives +20% attack speed to everyone. And since she stands in the mid-line, it's guaranteed to cover all party members. Following with SE/Wrath of the five suns, deals the next portion of damage, and again higher acc helps to land the next stun/prone. Then use second FoD or Runner's Wounding Shot. And only then, if for some reason the fight is not already over, she can switch to 1h+Outworn Buckler, offtank, and heal/support the party. Another bonus is that when she is not in the front she can easily move around and cast lay on Hands without getting disengagement attacks. That's kind of what I have in mind for my Pally (however I won't be switching to melee weapons much), because this whole melee support thing don't really make much sense to me and only because of that Paladins in this game always seem dispensable to me........you go toe to toe with foe but you don't deal much damage and you can't really tank that well either, have no class talents that provide any mechanics to deal with engagement or close quarter combat, so that don't make sense to me.......that's why I have never played a Paladin before.....now I think a ranged Paladin may do it for me but seems like he won't be as good as priest or a chanter, unless I roll Kind Wayfarer and score killshots.... That's not really true. From Level 13 on you deal massive amounts of damage with Sacred Immolation. Being surrounded by enemies in melee helps your damage output greatly. What gave you the idea paladins don't tank well? They are far superior to any class in tanking. Raven, I'm not sure that I'd say that they "far superior". I will say that they can absolutely hold their own. Of course, you and I may have somewhat different definitions of "tanking". I thought it clear I compared paladin and any other class in the game. As to what I understand by tanking, I solo the game mostly (I dabbled in 3 member parties twice) and I don't like kiting. So I build my pala defensive and tank absolutely eevrything including the dragons. If you compare a fighter to a paladin you will not get close to the same results because his other defenses besides deflection are too low. Also his deflection is slightly less and was significantly less before the latest patch. Also I mentioned Sacred Immolation. Just because of that skill even tho it has nothing to do with tanking (but works best if you are surrounded), the paladin becomes a far better damage dealer than fighter beyond level 13. Which once again if you are solo and have to tank way more, than with a group, is a VERY big deal. I should say that I never, ever solo these games. And I never have less than a full party once I have the characters to fill it out. I see these games as being meant to be played with a PARTY of characters, not as some 3rd person version of a 1st person shooter. No single character in my parties is meant to play the game as anything other than part of the team. Thus, I see things from that "team" perspective.

Well it sort of is That's the way I play with Pallegina, placed in second row and holding Aedrin's Wrecker. FoD greatly benefits from slow hard-hitting weapons, while also providing bonus acc. Majority of FoD shots are resulting in a stun or a prone. Coupled with apprentice sneak attack it's a great alpha strike, which also gives +20% attack speed to everyone. And since she stands in the mid-line, it's guaranteed to cover all party members. Following with SE/Wrath of the five suns, deals the next portion of damage, and again higher acc helps to land the next stun/prone. Then use second FoD or Runner's Wounding Shot. And only then, if for some reason the fight is not already over, she can switch to 1h+Outworn Buckler, offtank, and heal/support the party. Another bonus is that when she is not in the front she can easily move around and cast lay on Hands without getting disengagement attacks. That's kind of what I have in mind for my Pally (however I won't be switching to melee weapons much), because this whole melee support thing don't really make much sense to me and only because of that Paladins in this game always seem dispensable to me........you go toe to toe with foe but you don't deal much damage and you can't really tank that well either, have no class talents that provide any mechanics to deal with engagement or close quarter combat, so that don't make sense to me.......that's why I have never played a Paladin before.....now I think a ranged Paladin may do it for me but seems like he won't be as good as priest or a chanter, unless I roll Kind Wayfarer and score killshots.... That's not really true. From Level 13 on you deal massive amounts of damage with Sacred Immolation. Being surrounded by enemies in melee helps your damage output greatly. What gave you the idea paladins don't tank well? They are far superior to any class in tanking. Raven, I'm not sure that I'd say that they "far superior". I will say that they can absolutely hold their own. Of course, you and I may have somewhat different definitions of "tanking".

A weapon I haven't seen mentioned as being great for an off-tank second line paladin is pikes. Specifically, Tall Grass. You can still do plenty of ranged attacks with arbalests or arquebusses. But you can also use pikes from behind your front liners as well. And the upside here is that they're all Soldier group weapons!

The whole Godlike not being able to use helmets thing annoys me. I don't know how other people use their characters' equipment slots, but for me they're a way for me to give each character items to boost their attributes. And not being able to use the helmet slot means one less equipment slot available for this purpose. And on a different not, while I understand the whole "helmets won't fit on their head" thing, a couple of points. One, I think that this argument was contrived as a way to justify not allowing them to use helmets, as a game balance mechanism. But the "won't fit on their head" argument fails for a number of items that get assigned to the helmet slot. Like hoods. Hoods are just bunch of cloth. It'll fit. Or that monocle. No way does that monocle not "fit". I think that I would have preferred it if GL's in PoE were handled more like this. You picked your body form of GL, and you got the racial attribute bonuses of that body form (i.e. human, elf, dwarf, etc.). But instead of that form's racial special ability, you'd get a special ability in keeping with the variety of GL you've chosen. But unlike how PoE did it, I'd suggest that the GL "racial" benefits be weaker so that they didn't require losing the helmet for balance. And here's some suggestions for racial specials along this model. Note that all of them would be either passive or active (triggered at the player's discretion, not by hitting a percentage of your current END). Fire: the Scion of Fire talent Moon: Maybe Lay on Hands, a healing touch. (If regular Lay on Hands isn't quite good enough, boost it to Greater Lay on Hands.) Once per engagement, I'd think. Death: Bloody Slaughter talent Nature: I think that either the Spirit of Decay talent (corrosion damage) or maybe the Heart of the Storm talent (lightning damage) would be suitable. Anyways, enough of this tangent for now.

Priests in PoE almost certainly don't receive their powers from their deity. The power was inside you all along, yo. This has been adequately explained. You don't like the explanation, but that doesn't make it wrong, and your continued insistence that this is so and that the game's internals MUST CONFORM TO YOUR WILL is ... stupid? Insane? How about "arrogant"?

There are some keys to successful dragon hunting. (Some might say cheese.) 1. Learn the dragon hunting skill from Falanroed as part of the Adra Dragon "hunt". It reduces any dragon's defenses for a shortish but useful period of time. 2. Paralyze spell scrolls. It may seem cheesy, but dragons are so incredibly powerful with their breath attacks that can just about nuke an entire party, I'd call it the proverbial case of "fighting fire with fire". 2a. If you have a high enough level wizzy, Gaze of the Adragan for more paralyzing. A paralyzed dragon hurts no one. 3. Watch the dragon's DR's and immunities closely and use weapons, spells, chants, whatever that target the weak areas.

Some thoughts... 1. I'm hesitant to use the Durgan steel on any item that would require 2 instances of it to upgrade, due to that cost. 2. I'm not sure that it's worth Durganizing the Outworn Buckler. Oh, not because it wouldn't be worth it, per se. But because USING the buckler would force the paladin into using one handed weapons. Now, maybe some pally's are just built for 1H weapon/shield fighting. But that decision also prevents a pally from using any of the very good 2H options late in the game, like the Abydon's Hammer or Tidefall or the Redeemer, among others. I upgraded the St Rumbalts great sword to superb for Pallegina to use when there's no spirits or vessels around for the Redeemer. The Superb version of St Rumbalts is outstanding because IMO its special effects aren't wasted on spells that you have to cast or only get triggered once per encounter. OTOH, I see the Redeemer as a bit of a "one trick pony". It's great for slaying vessels (and the Eyeless are vessels and can be slain by the Redeemer, which was oh-so-nice). But other than vessels, the Redeemer seems like sort of a meh superb great sword (if that's not sort of a contradiction). 3. Don't forget that green plate armor, Argwes Adra. Probably my favorite plate armor in the game. And it comes with Second Chance, which seems to me to trump other high grade plate armors' special benefits. 4. I like the look of the Golden Scales armor and it's a Superb armor when stock. But overall, it's not all that special, because IMO, its special effects are rather meh. OTOH, I have a fondness for the Kerdhed Pames leather armor because it comes with a +3 RES bonus, which is nothing to be sneezed at, even if it is on leather armor. EDIT: 4a. The Saint's Armor is actually a good candidate for serious upgrading, in large part due to its having Second Chance, which is a very, very nice special ability, at least IMO. The only down side is that it's not particularly good looking. Oddly enough, it looks somewhat similar to the Raven's armor which is also scale. But where the Raven armor looks nicely thematic in black, the Saint's armor just looks a little boring in black.

Minsc: probably the best fit would be a fighter with the cross class barbarian baby Frenzy talent. And good suggestion on Jan Jansen. Make him an Orlan cipher with strong mechanics skills and probably the baby sneak attack. He is a tinker after all. Merchant background? A tinkerer would probably be a more apt description for him.

The funky thing is that with my current party, led by a rogue PC, I didn't pick a weapon focus for my Rogue PC until I decided to respec him once I'd reached the level cap. And even now, I'm uncomfortable with my choice. Mostly because I tend to flip around his weapons a lot. I don't have this problem so much with the rest of my party, even including the "reserves". Cripes, when I was going through the monk abbey, I ended up going through 3 different ranged weapons to figure out which would work best against those nasty monks and their non-monk brothers. First I was using Persistence, but it didn't seem to have the punch against the more heavily armored dudes. Then I tried using Borresaine, and while its punch was better and I like the occasional stuns, I changed again after I re-added Kana to the party. And I went back to using Twin Sting, since Kana would be chanting the reloading speed chant. And that got me all the punch I could ask for. And when he was forced into melee, for a while I was dual wielding Vent Pick and Bleak Fang. But the damage just seemed so weak (though it's a fun combo), and the lack of a shield made him much to easy to hit. I ended up using the Superb club and the Little Savior small shield for his weapons to get through the abbey's fights, if I couldn't run away and fight at range. Maybe this is an unconscious RP decision on my part. Or maybe it's just that I haven't settled on the right weapons for my Rogue PC.

I just whipped out my old BG2 strategy guide to look at its Companion NPCs. I'd forget that there were 16 of them, FFS!!! So much fertile ground for a BG2 themed party! Aside from the ones mentioned by the OP: Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Keldorn, and Anomen You also have: Aerie (Elven priest/wizard multiclass) Rather than trying to split the difference, maybe play her as a cipher. Nalia (human thief/wizard dual class, almost entirely a wizard) Nalia's thieving skills were so low that she barely qualifies as a thief/wizard dual class. Probably best as a pure wizard Yoshimo (human thief) straight up rogue. Probably should be more of a true "thief" than a swashbuckler. Korgan (Dwarven Berzerker) Maybe play as a fighter but with the barbarian baby frenzy talent Viconia (Drow priest) Probably should be a pale elven priest Jan Jansen (thief/wizard multiclass) Tough choice. Maybe just pick whichever one suits your needs. Or play as a wizard who goes heavy on Mechanics. Valygar (human ranger, stalker kit) Probably a ranger, probably one who goes heavy on stealth. And perhaps picks talents aimed at being played as a balanced melee/ranged character. The downside here is that as a ranger, you're stuck with the pet, who if you don't want getting KO'd all the time, you need to spend talent point on to tough it up. All in all, ranger or not in BG2, it might be easier to play Valygar as a PoE fighter who just invests a lot in stealth to play up the stalker angle. Haer Dalis (Tiefling bard), I suppose he should be a godlike, probably moon GL as that seems the most human looking. Or perhaps a nature GL. (Fire and Death GL's don't seem right for this one.) And obviously a Chanter. Edwin (human wizard) a pure wizard Cernd (human druid) ... wait, isn't he already in PoE? Anyways, a straight up human druid. Mazzy (halfling fighter) And Mazzy sorta kinda feels like she's already in the game as Sagani. Otherwise, Definitely Hearth Orlan. And I could see her as either a fighter who likes bows a lot. Or even a paladin (she very much had the heart of a paladin), since in BG2 the only reason she isn't really a paladin is due to race restrictions from the old D&D rules. But even as a paladin, Mazzy would probably mostly prefer to be a ranged pally. as for the OP's first five: Imoen (human thief/mage dual class) Probably a wizard with good mechanics skills. Jaheira (half elf fighter/druid multiclass): probably best as druid, either human or wood elf (whichever floats your boat). Fighter with the druid baby talent? Druid with the Veteran's Recovery talent? Minsc (human "ranger"): I'd see him as more of a Fighter who picks the barbarian baby frenzy talent. But I suppose you could do the same as a ranger as well. Keldown (human paladin, Inquisitor kit): Probably a shieldbearer or a kind wayfarer pally. As an Inquisitor, he should pick paladin class talents and abilities like Deprive the Unworthy. On the flip side, Inquisitors in BG2 weren't allowed to use Lay on Hands, which would stink big time for a PoE pally. (I'd personally probably just ignore that little limitation.) Anomen (Human Fighter/cleric dual class): Probably a priest, who should take the Veteran's Recovery cross class talent. And perhaps be built and played in such a way that made him feel more like a well armored "battle cleric" than a more pure caster priest hiding in way in back. As for his deity, IMO it would either be Eothas or Magran. Eothas if you want to play him as the nicer "Sir Anomen". Or Magran, if you want to play him as the not so nice Anomen.

In BG rangers were very different to PoE tho. Even tho you can play rangers melee, in PoE you pretty much should use them ranged. In BG it was the other way around, except for the archer subclass (which sucked hard, lol) I'm fully aware of the differences. It's just that nothing about Minsc ever struck me as saying "I'm a ranger". He really did seem like just a fighter (berzerker kit) to me.

Is this only a beta DL?

Does anyone else get indecisive when it comes to what items to upgrade with rare ingredients? Like dragon scales or eyes, or Durgar steel? The ingredients for upgrading to exceptional, primarily vithrack brains, are easy enough to come by. But sky dragon eyes, adra dragon scales, kraken eyes, and refined durgan steel are extremely limited. Not to mention the single instance of the Hellwax mold. On top of that, 2H weapons require 2 instances of the rare ingredient whereas 1H weapons only require 1, which only makes the decision that much more difficult. What do you guys do with your rare ingredient upgrades? What decisions have you made when it comes to upgrades?

Sounds like an amusing idea. Add the right portraits to top it off. One minor gripe. It always struck me as odd that Minsc was a ranger, when he seemed a lot more like a "berzerker" Fighter kit (from BG2) or a Barbarian. Nothing about him said "I really am a ranger to me". Of course, if I was playing a BG2 themed party, I probably wouldn't even include Minsc, but that's just me. Another thing just occurred to me. If you wanted to play a BG2 themed party, maybe consider having the characters limited to the weapons they'd have been limited to in BG2, within reason.

Oh come on. Would you say that the designers of D&D's Forgotten Realms setting were trying to shove their personal beliefs down peoples' throats when they have a polytheistic religious structure? Or do you only make this claim when PoE's designers do something a little different and say that the deities in PoE's polytheistic religious structure turned out to have been actually created by the people of an ancient civilization? It sounds to me that there may be some hypocrisy here.

Aloth is easily the best DPS among pre-TWM companions; plus he now has access to all those ridiculously overpowered talents that were handed out to Wizards because of all the whining. Pallegina is a decent tank, and no matter what people say, tanks are still useful. You just can't stack all mobs on one tank anymore, so you need two primary tanks + one emergency off-tank to keep your backline relatively safe. Works like a charm. 1. The "harm" is that it's time and money wasted to develop something. Time and money that could be put to better use. 2. IMO, Pallegina is entire functional as is. As I said in a previous post, I have no problem with the idea that perhaps the devs should re-examine the Companions' stats in light of the "Perception now affects Accuracy" change, back in patch 2.0 (IIRC). Some of the Companions are lacking in that area. But overall, I think that people make much too big a deal about this. Equipment and talents/abilities matter a lot more than less than perfectly optimized attributes in PoE.

Something else you can use the fox for is if you have a cipher in the party, have the fox running around behind enemy lines and target it with one of those beam spells that ciphers use. This way, you don't have to risk a normal character. Of course, if one has a monk (say, Zahua) in the party with a cipher, monks are quite fast runners and you could so the same thing. Oh wait.... would that make a monk and/or Sagani (well, her fox) useful? Oh the humanity!

This is now the second thread that you've ranted about how useless Zahua is.....and now throw Sagani into the mix too? Both are considered too be extremely powerful. Zahua is a very good tank that has good dps capabilities as well, and rangers are simply beasts. From the moment you get Sagani she can be dealing extreme dps which continues to get better and better. Clearly this is a problem of you building and/or playing your characters horribly bad. Stop ranting about things you don't understand and try to learn. If you have nothing constructive to offer, mind your business and don't reply on my thread. Deal? Your snark and condescension are more useless than Sagani. Dude, it's NOT "your" thread. Once you post it, anyone can say that they want, preferably on topic. And IMO Mocker is very much on topic. And probably quite correct that if you think that Zahua and Sagani are "useless", maybe YOU are the problem and not them.

I haven't seen any new robes thus far in WM2, but I haven't completed it yet either, so there may be some later.

Right now, I'm having one heck of a time against the WM2 bounty group led by Brynlod. They keep kicking my party around, battle after battle. I think that I'm going to have to head back to Caed Nua and grab GM again. It seems like the most effective spells against these guys have been mind control ones, getting to fight each other. I think that Kana's gonna get benched, if only for a little bit. (Note, I ended up not replacing Kana with Maneha, but did replace GM with a custom Mage. I didn't feel like listening to Aloth.) Update: After replacing Kana with GM, I was able to beat Brynlod's pirate band and collect the bounty. It was a very tough fight, but heavy use of Confusion and cipher spells did the trick. There really nothing quite like getting the bad guys to start turning on each other and doing your work for you.