Crucis

I guess that I prefer to rely on always-on defenses in a front line tank to ones that only trigger occasionally when hit or when your END drops low enough. Personal taste. I'm not saying that this armor is bad. It just feels much more like the armor of a second liner to me and my playstyle tastes.

ikky, this is clearly a matter of personal taste, but for ME, I'd find your party build too heavy on spellcasters. When (not if, but WHEN) your paladin PC or Eder aren't able to hold the line against the enemy, everyone else seems a bit on the squishy side, except perhaps for Durance, who can be a decent mid line off-tank if built and equipped right. That said, I suppose that you could also build and equip GM (the cipher) or Hiravias (druid) to be strong enough to off-tank. Personally, I'd just feel uncomfortable with such an arcane heavy party. Too much spellcasting micromanagement. Not enough ability when it comes to physical combat. Just for comparison's sake, my own current party is: First Line: Eder (fighter) and Pallegina (paladin) Second Line: Durance (priest) and Kana (Chanter) Third Line: Grieving Mother (cipher) and Alastyr (my Rogue PC) Durance and Kana are both capable as off-tanks. And as a chanter, Kana requires little in the way of micromanagement. Thanks for answer Crucis.... Yeah, you're right... I would equip Durance to be an off tanker in second line.. he will start with gun weapon and when required change to shield + weapon... But.. yeah, he would be alone in second line :/ A ranger don't fix this problem. but the pet can tank 1 or maybe 2 (if it was a bear, right?) And about Rogue... how much squishy they are? No, a Ranger will not really fix a squishy problem. Oh, rangers have the underlying accuracy, deflection, etc per level stat increases of other warrior classes. And they "can" be solid in melee. The problem they face is that to be really, REALLY effective ranged combatants, they want to have high PER and DEX, and wear the lightest armor you feel comfortable using to decrease their recovery time and increase their rate of fire. Rangers are really all about maximizing their firing rate, if they're going to be effective ranged combatants. OTOH (!!!), some have said that you can build a ranger to be a real melee tank, which probably involves having a set of attributes that support tanking better and having equipment for real tanking, starting with heavier armor than a fast firing ranged Ranger would prefer to use. This sort of melee ranger would go heavy on pet talents and melee talents. As for Rogues, my Rogue PC is rather squishy. But he's set up to be mostly a ranged rogue, but isn't afraid to get into melee if necessary. He's not built as a purely melee rogue. My rogue has max INT and PER, with decent MGT and RES (and base CON and INT set at . And he's wearing padded armor. But beyond that, there are probably 2 or 3 types of melee rogues that I can think of. 1. The flanker/sneak attacker. This guy's all about flanking and sneak attacking. Slash and dash. This one probably prefers lighter armors and quicker weapons, but I could be wrong. 2. The behind the lines off-tank: This one prefers to use reach weapons (pikes or quarterstaffs) to stab as stuff while hiding behind the real tanks. This guy can get away with lighter to medium armors because he's relying on the real tanks to cover his arse. 3. The in your face tank: This one probably wears fairly heavy armor, and doesn't bother trying to flank all that often. And probably relies on team mates to create the afflictions that support sneak attacks. The thing to remember about rogues is that their base Deflection starts a lot lower than for Fighters (for example), so they will tend to get hit more often than a fighter would. So it seems to me that the best defense a rogue has is to try as much as possible not to get himself targeted by the enemy. The less the enemy shoots at your rogue, the less the rogue has to worry about getting hit. Hey, this is true for all characters, but front line tanks can hardly expect to not get targeted. It's just part of their job. Which is what kinda worries me about the in your face type of rogue tank.

I don't know. And that's the problem. It's not well explained. I wish that one of the devs would come in here and give us a crystal clear explanation of how this wounding effect REALLY works.

Int increases the length but not the damage of the wound. If I understand you correctly, if the AMOUNT of total damage from wounding damage is fixed, then there's no advantage to having a higher INT when it comes to wounding damage. If anything, it seems like you'd be better off with a lower INT so that you can get that fixed amount of damage more quickly rather than stretched out over a longer period of time. And I have to say that something about that seems really wrong. Having a higher INT should be a positive not a negative for wounding damage. Am I missing something or misunderstanding something here?

Yep. You'll get the option to scale up when you enter Act III of the main story line, and you'll also get the option to scale up when you re-enter the WM for the WM2 storyline. But for now, you're stuck with the reduced difficulty. Honestly, level 6 is really, really pushing it for WM1. Finding the Stormcaller bow isn't all that difficult. Without overly spoiling it for you, it's found in 2 parts which will automatically combine when you have both. The first part is super easy to find. The second part by itself isn't hard to "find", but it *IS* hard to get to because its location requires you to go through some rather tough enemies, which your party may or may not be strong enough to defeat at this point.

ikky, this is clearly a matter of personal taste, but for ME, I'd find your party build too heavy on spellcasters. When (not if, but WHEN) your paladin PC or Eder aren't able to hold the line against the enemy, everyone else seems a bit on the squishy side, except perhaps for Durance, who can be a decent mid line off-tank if built and equipped right. That said, I suppose that you could also build and equip GM (the cipher) or Hiravias (druid) to be strong enough to off-tank. Personally, I'd just feel uncomfortable with such an arcane heavy party. Too much spellcasting micromanagement. Not enough ability when it comes to physical combat. Just for comparison's sake, my own current party is: First Line: Eder (fighter) and Pallegina (paladin) Second Line: Durance (priest) and Kana (Chanter) Third Line: Grieving Mother (cipher) and Alastyr (my Rogue PC) Durance and Kana are both capable as off-tanks. And as a chanter, Kana requires little in the way of micromanagement.

A few comments in reply... 1. Thanks for your reply, which was a lot more on point than Boeroer's. (Though I appreciate that he took the time to reply, I just wish that it'd been more on point.) 2. As an FYI, I've played 3 parties through to the end of vanilla PoE prior to this. This party is my first since before WM1 was released, so all the WM1 and WM2 content is new to me. 3. Regarding GM and enemies who are largely immune to her normal abilities, yes that's something to think about. Thus far, it hasn't be that much of a problem, particularly since she got Stormcaller (and even more so since she got Stormcaller fully upgraded), because she could just sit back and spam arrows all over the place. But there is something to be said for a more traditional arcane spellcaster, i.e. a wizard, who might be less limited in this regard, though at the expense of being a somewhat less capable non-arcane combatant when not casting spells. 4. Regarding Mahena, the next concern is this. Should she be on the front line and move Pallegina into the Kana's second line spot? Or have Mahena take Kana's second line spot and work behind Eder and Pallegina? I'm leaning towards thinking that Mahena would be best (at least for me) working from the second line, largely using Tall Grass, and dualed axes for her in close weapons. Of course, I could put Pallegina in the second line and have her using Tall Grass (she does have the Soldier focus, so it'd work out for her). Part of me thinks that Mahena would be more deadly using Tall Grass combined with her normal carnage attacks, and knocking lots of enemies on their butts than sticking her in the front line. Anyways, thanks for the suggestions, ottffsse. At the moment, I'm thinking about replacing Kana with Mahena, and replacing GM with Aloth.

I guess that it's a matter of play style and taste. If you're choosing slightly lighter armor over plate, then you're doing so to increase your offense at the expense of defense. I guess that I'd rather that my front liners be as tough as possible, avoid as many hits as possible and to resist as much of the damage of the hits that still occur as possible. It's not that I see these front liners like the 100% uber-defensive from the early days of PoE where you might see some players with low INTs and MGTs so that they could max out their PER and RES scores when both of those counted towards DEFL. I prefer maximized durability with good offense over maximized offense with "good enough" durability. But anyways, whatever floats your boat...

Ah, yes, another greenish armor. Yeah, it'd probably look nice. Honestly though, I would be concerned that it wouldn't be enough armor for a front liner. I have Eder and Pallegina set up in my current party with the best plate available to be my front liners and soak up damage. And I worry that that particular soulbound breastplate would be better suited to a second line character.

Some thoughts on lightly armored monks and the role of chanters as well. Lightly armored monks: One item that hasn't been mentioned above that could be very useful is the Blunting Belt. It's an easy (and very early in the game) way to pick up +5 DR slashing, +5 DR piercing without the benefit of any actual armor. Secondly, IMO, this entire question points out what I feel is a significant failing in PoE. I'm of the opinion that there should be a converse relationship between the weight of armor and its DR and its affect on the wearer's DEFL. Put another way, I think that heavier armors (i.e. the higher the DR's, not counting enchantments) should reduce the wearer's DEFL rating. Thus, heavily armored characters would be placing more of a premium on resisting damage taken than on avoiding being hit in the first place, whereas lightly armored characters would be placing more of a premium on hit avoidance than on damage resistance. It seems to me that the advantage to this relationship would be that it would give people a reason for some characters to prefer lighter armors (or even medium armors) over heavy armors. They could role play the characters that they see as wanting to dodging incoming blows rather than resisting them. And it would make the lightly armored monk or rogue, or even barbarian much more viable. Third. When it comes to monks and armor, yes you need to generate wounds. But what a good monk player needs to do is find the right balance of having just enough DR to generate the wounds you need without taking so much damage that your monk becomes too squishy. Fourth. For whatever (little) it's worth, I think that monks in PoE (and in D&D) are really just martial artists, whether it's explicitly said or not. IMO, real world "monks" who put on heavy armor and fight like soldiers are really more fighters or perhaps clerics (PoE priests) than they are monks in the way game presents them. Regarding the role of Chanters: Above, Braven said: "the chanters role is just to survive as long as possible since their powers are benefit from longer combat durations and the best ones don't use accuracy at all (the creature summoning spells)." I completely disagree with this. A chanter who is just standing around doing nothing else but chanting away and occasionally casting an invocation is about as boring as I can imagine. There's absolutely no reason why a really good chanter can't be a great 2nd line off-tank. That's how I'm playing Kana in my current party, and he's excellent in the role. I have him using Adventurer weapons, mostly warbow and flail, and occasionally an Estoc. And he can hang back and provide respectable ranged support, or fight in melee when needed. I prefer having him go shield and weapon so that I can pump up his DEFL since I prefer not putting him in heavy plate armor if I can avoid it. Admittedly he's not as durable as a high DR plate wearing warrior like Eder or Pallegina, but most of the time, he's durable enough for his role. And he's a heck of a lot more interesting to play than a singing potted plant of a chanter.

One of the things that's a darned shame is that the Argwes Adra armor looks OUTSTANDING on Pallegina. It matches her greenish head feathers so well, and it's a shame that she can't wear the matching helmet (though that would hide the feathers, of course). Regardless, I ended up switching armors between Eder and Pallegina, giving Eder the Argwes armor and giving Pallegina that White Crest armor, just so that Eder could wear the very useful helmet. Honestly though, Pallegina doesn't look half as nice in the white crest armor as she did in the green Argwes Adra armor.

OK, I just noticed that I've maxed out my party and I'm only at the start of WM2, having only cleared the Stalwart Mines. My party consists of: Eder and Pallegina: my two front line combatants. Durance and Kana: my mid-line support troops. They do whatever's needed in any given engagement. Both are capable and effective when fighting in melee or at range. Grieving Mother and my Rogue PC, Alastyr: My back liners. GM is my primary arcane spellaster, and her primary weapon is Stormcaller. And my Rogue is a mixed ranged/melee rogue, who is currently in the process of upgrading Twin Sting (though the weapon doesn't impress me much; Persistence even un-upgraded seems better). This party, though lacking in really heavy duty arcane firepower, has been quite effective, particularly with Kana's high level chant that burns pretty much anything that gets inside his chant range. Moving on to the reason for this post: What I'm seeking here is opinions on whether I should stick with this party as is to the end, or consider bringing in other Companions and switch things up, for the heck of it. About the only Companion that I'd consider a no-go here is Devil and that's only because I don't want to gimp my party trying to make use of a second rogue. I could see Mahena, Zahua, or Sagani easily taking Kana's slot. I suppose that Hiravias or Aloth could as well, though that would probably make the party more arcane oriented than I'd prefer. I could also see Hiravias replacing Durance, or Aloth replacing GM. I could be "interesting" putting Sagani in the party, since GM already uses the Stormcaller bow, and I don't really want to unbind it and have to go through the entire process of upgrading it for Sagani's sake. Also, adding Sagani to a party that already has GM and my Rogue as ranged combatants may be a bit too much ranged, though I suppose that Sagani could move to the 2nd back line slot and have my Rogue move up to the 2nd line and engage in melee more often. Also, Mahena looks appealing. I tried her earlier, but found her too squishy ... but that may have been more the fault of my not really have a good grasp on how to play PoE barbarians. The real question might then be, should Mahena move to the front line and move Pallegina to the second line, or have Mahena work from the second line, perhaps using the Tall Grass pike to wreak havoc on the enemy that way? Anyways, what do you guys think? Stick with what got me this far, or switch things up, since I'm already maxed out anyways, with all that XP still to be earned going to waste? For what it's worth, equipping any of these other companions shouldn't be an issue, since I've kept just about every unique items in the game in my stash, except for most of the pistols and blunderbusses. (Don't like dealing with their short range.) Thoughts? Opinions? Comments?

We get it already! You don't like rangers and prefer spellcasters to guys with physical ranged weapons. Enough already! But IMO, you're wrong to say that Storm Caller doesn't justify selecting a rangers because all you do is use a bow. That's YOUR opinion. Other people disagree. And you should say so a LOT more clearly, like starting the sentence with "IMO". I personally prefer a playstyle that isn't nearly so arcane heavy. I prefer to have as few spellcasters as I can get away with, because that's how *I* prefer to play! And that's ALL the justification I need to play a ranger, with or without Stormcaller!!!

When I first played PoE, that Ogre bounty fight and the Ogres/Ogre Druids on the 3rd level of the Endless Paths were among the toughest fights I had, UNTIL ... I learned that the key to taking down Ogres easily was mind control/affecting spells that targeted Will, such as Confusion, Charm, or Dominate. Anything that will get the Ogres fighting each other. Remember to have your party NOT target the Ogre you're about to charm. (Don't want to charm him and then void the spell in the next instant because you hit him with a stray arrow.) And don't target the charmed Ogre after he's charmed, at least until he's the only Ogre left to deal with. Ogres fighting Ogres mean that they're working for you. Even the ones you don't charm, if they're pounding on charmed ones, they're still working for you, when you think about it. Ogres fighting ogres is a no lose situation!

Yeah, maybe Pallegina's attributes aren't perfectly optimized, but her character more than makes up for that, IMO. And while not optimized, her attributes do seem balanced enough that she can fill a number of different roles: frontline tank, off tank, etc. And I love her accent!!! I just wish that her personal quest was a little more involved.

Yeah, I still find Azurro to be extremely annoying. Why the heck can't he just show up to the SH with his entire inventory and stay there? As for Wyrmwull, I'd be tempted to buy it if I thought that it would prevent him from trying to sell another copy of it. But to be honest, I don't think that it would.

I think that the higher the Stronghold's security rating is, the lower the portion of taxes gets stolen by thieves. In addition to that, the SH's security and prestige ratings affect the game's conclusion "story". As for the gold from taxes, I wouldn't say that it's meaningless. Sure, the income from any one instance of tax payment seems low, but when it gets totaled up over the long haul, I suspect that it more than pays for the upgrades to the SH and pays for the hirelings ... particularly when you consider the fact that WM1 and 2 increase the campaign length, this increasing the number of tax payments, whereas the SH upgrades are a fixed amount. That is, once fully upgraded, there aren't any additional costs to its infrastructure. And for the most part, most of the tax income is profit (once you factor in paying for the hirelings). As for the hirelings, I always try to pick ones who will provide a balance between security and prestige.

Because it does not give you as much benefit as high might (damage), perception (accuracy!!!) + interrupt and intelligence (duration of buffs and cc area of effect of debuff and spells). And you cast delirious alacrity of motion on yourself anyways first thing in any big battle and later once you get spell mastery of it once every encounter. That being said Dex should not be negative. Perception is the most important Stat for wizard as you want to land that cc debuff on a tough target. At level 12 my wizards accuracy by default without buffs is sitting at 94. She did all the major cc in the game alpine dragon = petrified, radiant spore = petrified etc. Yeah, whether it's spellcasters or warriors, all the Might in the world means nothing if you can't hit anything. It's why I went out of my way to run with a very high PER on my current party's Rogue PC. And when it comes to deciding which items to equip, I've been prioritizing PER items on all of my characters.

I'm going to sound ignorant here, but what is "Wrath of the Five Suns"? I have Pallegina in my current party (all at level 15), and it doesn't ring a bell. EDIT: I have WM1 and WM2 installed...

I'm playing a Rogue PC right now who only has an INT of 8. And while that can be a little limiting at times, he has a super high PER and a moderate RES, and I haven't had any real troubles doing what I wanted to do in dialogs. IMO, the problem with building characters to get all the best dialog options is that you end up with a character is really hobbled in combat. I think that it's better to maybe pick one of the primary talking attributes (PER, INT, or RES) pump it up. Of course, some classes place a very high importance in one of those attributes, so pumping up that one is already going to be a no-brainer. Also, during the course of the game, you'll be able to pick up stat-enhancing items that you can use to either boost weaker stats or already strong stats. With my PC Rogue, I've cared more about boosting PER and then RES than worrying much about INT, because I haven't found INT to be as important to my Rogue's combat performance.

Aegis of Loyalty all by itself is VERY useful in that fight. My Rogue PC got charmed a couple of times in that fight, and Pallegina uncharmed him within moments. Aegis of Loyalty is an outstandingly useful ability that I should have taken earlier than I did.

Or just put a timer on the entire game's main quest.

If you've gone to the White March and resolved Stalwart's Ogre problem peacefully, the Ogre clan will be an ally of yours as well. You can also get Captain Emory (the bad guy's personal guard) and her people on your side at Yenwood as well.

Camping supplies ARE limited. There isn't an infinite supply of them. But your ability to rest at inns is unlimited (in the case of those few inns where you're charged 0 gold for a cheap room) or mildly limited by your supply of gold to pay for a room. I like the idea that you can only carry a limited amount of camping supplies. But if one is truly willing to head back to an inn to rest up on a regular basis, you're only "limited" by your amount of gold and your patience. I think about the only way that the game could truly, truly limit resting would be to put a time limit on the main quest. That is, say that you have (for example) 90 days to stop the bad guy's plans. Do as many of the side quests as you think you can manage in that period of time. And rest as much as you think you can manage, but if you don't stop the bad guy's plans in that fixed period of time, you lose. Of course, it's like that this would be HIGHLY unpopular because there are a lot of players who truly enjoy being completionists, and playing every single quest. I suppose that the devs could tweak the completion time to be high enough to do everything, so long as you were fairly efficient in your use of rests, i.e. not resting after every single friggin' battle. However, I really don't think that this is nearly as big a deal as some of you make it out to be. IMHO the people who are complaining the loudest are the powergamers who want to play their OP as heII minmaxed spell caster builds (and of course then complain that the game is too easy; don't forget that) and flush out their supply of spells every friggin' battle, and then rest after every friggin' battle. Rinse and repeat as necessary. IMO, that's not the way the game's meant to be played, and I have no problem with the devs structuring the game in such a way that effectively tells you so.

I thought it was when you first enter Defiance Bay, because that's when a cutscene movie plays. Just like a cutscene movie plays at the start of act 3... I suppose that it's possible to look at it that way. It just seems to me that taking Caed Nua and opening up the route to Defiance Bay and a big chunk of the rest of the map is an important, seminal moment in the story line as well. Maybe it should have had a cut scene of its own?