Crucis

I agree on the weapon focus point, though I tend to prefer arbalests to arquebusses, because arbalests don't have the embedded accuracy penalty. They might not do quite as much damage as arquebusses, but it's close enough for my taste. And I'll give up that slight difference in damage to get more accuracy and more hits.

I'm not sure if by "custom attributes for NPCs" you mean that you want to the devs to allow players to change Companion attributes or not. Personally, I would oppose that idea. HOWEVER, you do make a very fair point about how the Companion's attributes were not adjusted after the change to how PER is used, and how much more important it is now than it was when PoE was first released. I'm not suggesting that the Companions should be min-maxed. But it does seem like a VERY good idea that the Devs should take another look at the Companions' attributes and tweak them to better function within the "PER affects Accuracy" model.

Actually, if you invest some points on animal companion talents, you can make those pets considerably tougher and nastier. They'll still get knocked out, but not as quickly and not as often. As for a barbarian, like Maneha, what you can do is equip her with reach weapons (particularly good is the Tall Grass pike) and have her stay behind the front line guys, but still do her barbarian thing quite effectively.

Some thoughts in response... 1. The Redeemer is a great weapon, though it is bugged. On occasion, its Divine Mark special effect will proc on its wielder, doing unintended damage to you. For this reason, I tend to unequip the Redeemer when I'm in areas not infested with the undead. And because Eder uses Tidefall, I have Pallegina use the Hours of St Rumbalt greatsword (upgraded) as her backup greatsword when not using the Redeemer. The St Rumbalt greatsword is a hidden gem, because Tidefall is sooooo good that people easily forget about St Rumbalt's GS. And quite frankly, if there are no undead around to slay, an upgraded version of St Rumbalt's is superior to the Redeemer, IMO. (I have Pallegina's St Rumbalt's upgraded to Superb. And it kicks butt!) 2. Also, I prefer Greatswords to Estocs for Pallegina (and in general). IMO, even the best of the estocs, the Blade of the Endless Paths, is inferior to the Tidefall or an upgraded version of St Rumbalt's, largely due to the better special effects on those two GS's. This isn't to say that Estocs are bad. No, if you have enough tanks in your party, it's worth having one of them specializing in Adventurer weapons so that he can use either the BotEP or the Drake's Bell anti-beast (i.e. anti-dragon) estocs. Drake's Bell is a great estoc ... when you're fighting beasts. Otherwise, it's essentially just an estoc with no special effects at all, which makes it too situational for general use. 3. As for your Keldorn like paladin, don't forget to take Aegis of Loyalty!!! That is a GREAT ability for dealing with enemies that like to charm/dominate your party. As for having the paladin himself being immune to charm, I don't recall if there's an item that give you this immunity or not. There's a talent, Mental Fortress, that increases your defense against charm, domination, confusion, Frightened, and Terrified effects.

For the cipher, as long as you don't have a ranger in the party, I'd STRONGLY suggest the stormcaller hunting bow. It may not be quite as special as it is when used by a ranger, but it's still an awesome weapon in a cipher's hands. As for the monk, Reaping Knives is AWESOME on monks and rogues, and when wearing lighter armor so that they can have the fastest recovery and attack speeds possible. Reaping Knives don't hit as hard as the big nasty 2H weapons. But with their raw damage, they are at their best on characters who are attacking as fast as possible to get in as many attacks as possible. Heck, if the situation is really critical, like attacking a dragon or something, you might consider having the monk (or rogue) chug a Haste potion at the same time the cipher's casting the reaping knives spell, to turn your character into a reaping whirlwind of destruction!!!

Twin Sting doesn't appear to fire two bolts. I'm using it right now on my PC rogue, and even fully upgraded, it's underwhelming. KDubya makes a good suggestion about having the Gunner talent (which my rogues doesn't) and using the Chanter reload speed enhancing chant (which I haven't been using, but certainly can, since I do have Kana and he does have that chant in his repertoire). (And I'm thinking about respeccing my Rogue to add the Gunner talent, because I really, really want to give Twin Sting a fair shot.

You aren't doing yourself any favor by calling Sagani "useless". She's beastly in the right party. In truth, all of the Companions can shine, if you know how to get the most out of them and play them to their strengths. As for your party and Zahua, I think that the problem you're having is, in part, a case of weak party composition. If you feel that you're forced to play Zahua as a second liner using reach weapons, you're far from getting the most out of him as a monk. It might help us discuss this issue more effectively if you'd post which companions you do have in your party alongside your Rogue PC. An maybe give us an idea how you use those companions. In my second play through, I used a monk PC. And at some point in the game, I was finding it difficult to keep her from getting trashed too quickly. So what I did was move her to the second line, and gave her a hunting bow as an alternate weapon. A bow, you (and others) say? Sure. Part of it was RP reasons, with hunting bow being a peasant weapon. But also, I had her start out many battles fighting at range for a short time, while allowing the battle to develop. And once things got going, I'd have her switch to fists and start flanking or fly into the enemy's rear and go after the enemy spellcasters. Going 1v1 against enemy spellcasters didn't always generate wounds, but even with no wounds, a monk can usually solo an enemy mage with considerable ease. And for what it's worth, my monk was never in any armor heavier than light. I'll also say that I completely managed my monk, as I do with all my characters. I don't trust the AI to do what I want done, when and how I want it done.

Actually,as I saw suggested in another post and just now witnessed for myself, the Alpine Dragon doesn't block its adds. Its adds actually block the dragon from getting to you. So what you can do is ignore the blocking adds and just spam spells and ranged attacks at the Alpine Dragon (it's vulnerable to fire, so I had Durance spam away with his pillars of fire!).

I sure hope so myself. I never went after the Alpine Dragon during the WM1 part of the campaign. And I'm hoping that it'll be there waiting for me now that I'm starting WM2.

Braven, is wound binding literally healing 40% of the character's base health? That is, if a character had 1000 Health (when fully healthy), does it add 400 points of health to whatever your current remaining health is?

Balthazar, I think that calling them "totally useless" is just useless hyperbole. No matter what, they're not "totally useless". They may not be worth the cost of a talent point, but that's not the same thing as "totally useless". There are a number of talents that people undoubtedly deem not worth the cost. I suspect that Field Triage and Wound Binding are two of them.

Seeing as how ottffsse's battle mage has Arcane Veil and Hardened Veil, I'm curious. Do people really, REALLY think that they're worth 2 talent points? The reason I ask is because you have to expend 2 talent points for an ability that you'll only be able to use twice per rest, NOT twice per encounter. I'm not doubting their capability when used in combat. I've used them with Aloth all the time in past parties. However, in thinking about it more deeply, having to spend TWO precious talent points on an ability that you can only use twice per rest seems overly costly for the benefit. What do other people here think? Worth the cost or not?

yeah its true and but I am a prostitute for that might bonus though. btw update: not sure it's optimal but is certainly funny: I tried the following variation and it works as well: bound steadfast to her, gave her lvl 1 spellmastery arcadys dazling lights, lvl 2 miasma of dull mindedness, equipped executioner hood, main hand steadfast, offhand spelltongue. light/ zero recovery robes (durganized gwisk glas works well) + gauntlets of swift action is zero recovery under DAoM with vulnerable attack on. poor eyeless were dying, did not even bother to turn on arcane veil most of the time in fights. Ya know, this is another minor gripe I have, i.e. tying a character attribute bonus to where one comes from. It's along the same line as my gripes about racial abilities (which I discuss here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84132-i-think-characters-should-get-a-couple-of-free-talents-at-the-start/?p=1784750 ). That is, it's just another way that hard set racial or background abilities constrain good role playing at character creation. In your case here, you have what should be a Vailian battlemage who because you want that additional point of Might, you end up choosing a homeland that has the attribute bonus you want rather than the homeland that fits the character from an RP perspective. Now, I suppose that some people could turn this around and say that one should come up with a RP background that fits the character's game stats. But that's not how I've ever really built a character. I come up with the character and only then fit the in game stats to what I've imagined. So, IMO, it would be (or would have been) nice if the character generation process was/had been designed with this in mind. That is, don't use fixed abilities or attribute bonuses that are tied to specifics that would limit a player's ability to come up with a character and then use the the character generation process to build it without feeling that they're being limited.

ottffsse, this character looks really nice. Love the custom portrait. But one thing gets me a little. Given her name, this character sounds like she should be Vailian. Yeah, I know, a super minor nit to pick.

Some comments in reply. 1. I wouldn't mind seeing racial talents removed entirely. Why? Because IMO the current racial talents pigeon hole each race/subrace into specific classes. For example, if you're going to play any sort of ranged character, who wouldn't want the Wood Elven racial ability? Admittedly, this could end up homogenizing the races. But from my RP perspective, I'd rather that the races were homogenized so that every race looked equally playable for any class, than what we have with the current situation. Also, I just don't like some of the racial abilities. Some are very, very good. So good that it's nearly impossible to not want to play that race for certain classes. And some racial abilities seem so weak that it's hard to justify playing that race for anything other than RP reasons. Alternatively, I suppose that there could be a menu of racial talents that could be available to each race/subrace that would provide for some more variety when it came to character creation. Frankly, with the exception of the godlike racials, all of the existing racial abilities look more like learned skills/behaviors rather than anything really "racial". Come to think of it, if someone wanted to get really, really wonky, here's an idea. There are these homeland and job backgrounds in the game. I could see having a specific talent for each homeland/job background, or one for homeland and one for job. This would really put some "bite" into which your background choices. Of course, this all starts getting a little complex. But it does make for interesting discussion fodder. 2. The idea of picking a Utility talent every 4th level sounds pretty good to me, though I'm not sure that the elemental damage talents should really be "utility" talents. They seem a lot more like offensive talents to me. "Utility" talents seem more like fast running, quicker weapon switching, extra weapon slots (I wish that all characters started with THREE slots rather than two), extra consumable slots, healing talents, etc. Heck, if something like this were implemented, I'd think that it should be possible to come up with some additional "utility talent" options to vary the choices.

Sorry for the mild thread necro, but I'm going back thru old threads for reasons of my own, and hit this one ... For what it's worth, Field Triage and Wound Binding heal HEALTH, not END. Thus, as I read it, other than resting, they are the only way to recover lost HEALTH, which might have some value, particularly at higher difficulties if you've run out of camping supplies and have a character on extremely low health. I don't know if this talent is usable outside of combat. And I've never taken either of them. But I won't say that they're totally useless. Just rather situational.

A chanter is OK for casting stuff immediately. It just has to be spells he's casting from scrolls, not his own invocations. One of the very best scroll spells to cast on a dragon is Paralysis. If you can paralyze a dragon, and keep him paralyzed, you can take it down fairly easily. Beyond that, it helps to know which of your spells will debuff which defenses. And also target a dragon's weakest DR's with the right spells and weapons. If you see a dragon that's weak against fire damage, by all means start spamming fire spells at that bad boy!

Honestly, Andrea, there are a number of other armors that I think look better than Sanguine Plate. Of course, it's all personal taste. I really like the green Angwes Adrea plate a LOT, particularly on Pallegina. The White Swan armor is pretty cool. Ditto for the Autumn Fire scale mail. The Golden Scales armor is really nice too.

I suppose I could, Andrea, but I'm content to use Rimecutter and one of the other very good axes.

Oh, no, I do not have 2 Rimecutters. Only the one. But I have the other 2 axes you mentioned.

I have all of those Axes. Like I said, I've sold hardly any of the unique items, except perhaps for the crappiest ones. For what it's worth, I've already built Maneha up as with the Soldier focus, but have only done a single battle with her (the bounty against the followers of Magran.... that was one damned tough battle!!!). So I can easily just reload my pre-Maneha save and rebuild her for duali wielding battleaxes. As for armor, I have her in the Golden Scales, though I suppose I could put her in something heavier. I do have options. Coat of Ill Payment, Sanguine Plate, He Carries Many Scars plate are three of the better ones, I suppose.

OK, I've built Maneha. And because my party was max out to level 16, she also was allowed to go straight to level 16. But my question here is this: Tidefall or a Superb-upgraded (plus a corrode lash) version of Hours of St Rumbalt? Eder currently uses Tidefall, but I could give him the other one. Actually, Pallegina uses StRumbalt in place of the Redeemer when there are no undead enemies around, but I'm flexible. And either way, it'll probably be Maneha's secondary weapon, with Tall Grass being the primary. Alternately, I suppose I could also reload the pre-Maneha save I made and rebuild her (i.e. pick Knight instead of Soldier for her weapon focus) as a dual wielder using Axes. I have no one using axes right now, and they're just laying around collecting dust. Or sabers for that matter, though battleaxes seem more fitting for a big, burly barbarian.

If you have afflicted a whole bunch of enemies, can a barbarian using apprentice sneak attack get it to trigger on all of the afflicted enemies his carnage hits? Damn, that would be a significant upgrade in damage (+15%), if you could proc sneak attack on multiple targets with a carnage attack!

Actually, these stats are wrong for Maneha, when she first joins your party. They are (copied directly from the game): 18 MGT 15 CON 9 DEX 12 PER 13 INT 11 RES

I would STRONGLY suggest not using an Estoc in conjuncture with stilettos, because both are piercing weapons. One of the worst situations you can find yourself in is to have a character with only weapons equipped of a single damage type ... and then run into monsters with that are immune to that damage type! So if you're going to use stilettos, have a slashing or crushing weapon as the secondary weapon. Or a dual damage type weapon, like swords (which are slash/pierce). And frankly this is true for any character of any class.