MadDemiurg

Fighter is indeed better on offense, Paladin's offensive abilities are just too limited, 2/enc FoD doesn't cut it. I wouldn't put any points into dex on a paladin unless soloing (when soloing it doesn't matter that your dps is subpar compared to class x since it's the only dps you have). Dex is also kinda useful for buff speed, but with 1.06 exhortation recovery removal this is is quite moot.

What other perspective do you feel that they use? If nobody complains we don't need to fix. I feel like high DT enemies are especially vulnerable to it, since the echo relentlessly rolls every second and sometimes with 50+ damage, nobody has that high DT.Ofc there are other too strong abilities, but can you spam them the same way? Most certainly not. DT clearly hurts beams more than any other types of attack, since it fully applies to each tick (unlike DoTs where each tick is only reduced by 25% of DT or single hit abilities where it only applies once). 50+ damage is a bit of an exaggeration, maybe on a lucky crit. Overall it doesn't do that much damage to enemies with 20-30 DT, Granted there are not that many of these. As for spammability - well, chanter's Dragon Trashed does like 160 aoe damage over time passively with good stats and some abilities like rogue's deathblows add a ton of damage passively as well. As I said, yes, it's one of the OP abilities, but there are tons of these in the game.

Is it really a question? Why is <random ability> in PoE so good/bad?. Because balancing is often done in a weird way creating new imbalances with each patch and balance wasn't there in the first place. It's not like Ectopsychic echo is special. It has its limitations like very high DT enemies and there are plenty of other OP spells and abilities.

I don't see how, RES can be "slightly" buffed, I don't think devs are going to introduce any non integer values, so it's either 1 or 2 deflection per point. At 2 it would indeed be OP but still a dump stat for ranged dps. As for CON changes - we've got to see them (if any are planned at all) to jump to any conclusion. Min CON/RES glasscannon would still be perfectly viable because in case of teleporting shades/whatever you can still drop a CC like repulsing seal (which with the supposed PER acc bonuses will crit most of the time) and proceed to dps them to death. You'll also get another layer of soft CC in form of interrupts (with increased accuracy) when maxing PER.

If accuracy bonuses are reintroduced to stats, I think there should be 4 different accuracy bonuses (separately vs def/ref/will/fort, or maybe merge def&ref since they are very similar and both mostly protect vs direct damage), tied to different stats. Having stats giving defense points to only 1 save but having 1 stat increasing accuracy for all types of attacks seems unbalanced. This is too much of a change for any kind of patch tbh, so if anything like this is ever done, it's better to be reserved for a sequel or at least expansion. It would also require more varied attacks, both for players and for monsters, to be balanced. For now, I would prefer things as is. If PER does indeed give accuracy in 1.07, meta will move into min/maxing even more (if that's even possible). I'm also curious if any spiritshift changes are planned, might give the incentive to replay the game if they are implemented nicely.

Same could be said for bonuses to deflection as well right? One thing about taking the deflection bonus off perception is you can no longer pump both resolve and deflection for your tanks, making them a more vulnerable. If you combine that with enemies also getting an accuracy bonus from perception, you should get a hit a lot more. This sort of change should make combat more lethal for both sides of the action, I think this is good, the way the game is currently balanced there are a lot of enemies that have trouble hitting you at all. True, OTOH you would be able to dump PER without getting a deflection penalty, which would allow to max RES and CON. Overall tanks would lose like 10-15 deflection (more with buffs), but gain like 17 stat points to spend elsewhere, CON for instance. So while it would be more difficult to become unhitable (vs physical attacks anyway), it's not like tanks would be significantly less tanky.

Firstly, +5 accuracy in PoE is not the same as +1 attack bonus in D&D. in D&D +1 AB means +5% to hit chance and that's it (well it also affects critical rolls, but not as much as it does in POE). In POE it directly converts hits to crits and also converts grazes to hits, something missing in D&D entirely. So it's more valuable than 1 AB. And 1 AB is a pretty decent bonus in D&D, spell & weapon focus feats were well worth it in NWN games (there's much more broken stuff in tabletop though). Plus, items bonuses are overall pretty shabby in POE. Let's say you would use +2might and +1con gauntlets instead. That's +6% damage and +3% health. +5 accuracy is clearly better. The fact that you don't need accuracy bonuses to beat the game is because the game is very easy. Accuracy bonuses are very powerful, and it becomes more apparent if you solo or artificially raise difficulty in some other way. As for maxing PER on everyone - well, what else would you max (at least in a party, where someone else can tank)? For ranged DPS RES and CON can be dumped, that gives you like 3 maxed stats and like 14-15 points in a 4th one. So INT, PER, MIG, DEX. Autoattack classes like Rogues would go with lower INT (or even dump it), at least in a party. That gives max PER, MIG and DEX. CC casters would go for lower MIG with max DEX, PER and INT. DPS casters would go max DEX, PER AND MIG with lower INT or with max MIG PER INT and lower DEX for DoTs. 36 MIG is actually not that great, since damage bonuses are additive and on a dps class you probably already have quite a few. It also costs nothing if you can't hit. DPS increase from accuracy, damage bonuses and attack speed are all multiplicative in relation to each other btw, so maxing all of them gives you progressively more. And 36 INT Petrify doesn't do anything if it doesn't hit. Accuracy is much more important than any duration bonuses you might have. All in all, accuracy and defenses are probably the most important stats (they are also the ones that scale with levels). Higher level enemies are often differentiated by higher defenses and accuracy and are harder to deal with because of how difficult it is to land hits on them and how easy they can hit you. Giving yet another way to boost accuracy would make most of the game encounters beatable much earlier.

Full creature rebalance is a ton of work. And most creatures already have ridiculously high fortitude scores compared to everything else, so raising it even more would be weird. My guess that the only change that would happen if this is implemented is that all creatures that had some PER modifier (positive or negative) would get a corresponding deflection and accuracy change. To keep things in check, creatures should get like +10-15 to all saves and +15-20 deflection, but to be fair this is unlikely to happen, and the only thing it would change is that every ranged dps and spellcaster would now max PER, while tanks would now dump it and do even less damage than they did. Melee dps would be in a really weird place stat wise in this case.

Actually gauntlets of accuracy are a very powerful item, although the game is easy enough so you don't have to fish for them. And I would always pick either a priest or a paladin in an optimal party for accuracy boost (Bless and ZF don't stack). Priest more likely since he has a lot of other good stuff, but possibly both with PC paladin doubling up as a tank. You would also be able to get much more than +10 accuracy from PER, more like 20+ with buffs and items. I think you can get like 36 PER or maybe more, I don't remember all rest bonuses. Accuracy is also more important than damage since all non damaging effects also benefit from it. Stacking accuracy to reliably land powerful CC is actually the easiest way to beat "tough" encounters. Currently if you min/max and use debuffs you still can miss with petrify vs Adra Dragon for instance. With a new source of accuracy that grants 20+ extra you will be guaranteed to at least graze without even using all possible modifiers.

If PER governs accuracy in 1.07 it will turn from "tank only" stat to "everyone but tanks" stat. I don't see how that's any better. I would max PER on EVERY character to the point I would pick +1 per as a standard background, especially spellcasters, since accuracy is the most important stat for CC. The standard 2nd line party dps build would have minimal RES and CON with all other points in PER, MIG, DEX and INT, 1 of these stats a few points short of max depending on the class. Tanks would now go for max RES and CON + whatever. Solo builds would be a bit different although max PER spellcasters would become standard issue, probably at the cost of some DEX & RES. Also, PER would become a dumpstat for pure tanks.

(Shameless self promotion) You may find some info in this thread helpful.

You don't really need to go to Raedric's before Caed Nua if you can get by without animat and even then if you have the preorder ring you can get the necessary 5000 cp without visiting Raedric's if you sell it to Heodan.

Jolting touch + carnage is definitely bugged, because I don't think carnage is supposed to work with spells (but jolting touch is coded as a melee attack and so it works with carnage), however it's nowhere near as it was now with OSA fix and Jolting touch damage fix (barb could easily do 100+ damage per hit with it in 1.04). I do believe it should be fixed, however barb needs some boosts to compensate. Many barb abilities are quite weak, and the class is extremely one dimensional with no other options than aoe melee. It's probably the weakest class in 1 on 1 fights and has no ranged options at all.

It shouldn't stack, so multiple druids mostly ensure that it will hit everyone and are more likely to refresh it. Will powers are generally more effective vs ogres so I'd probably use mind plague on them with a level 11+ cipher. It has much longer duration than amplified wave prone as well. The main options to tank it is to either have extremely high fort, use suppress affliction/liberation exhortation, use arcane reflection or have huge health pool and a lot of heals.

Well, I didn't suggested altering class stats in any way. It's more about fixing skill related design inconsistencies and limiting accuracy buffs stacking, which is currently a bit over the top imo.

Think it's procedure, as in "trigger procedure". Not sure though.

On a high int/might druid it deals 400+ damage over its duration. I don't think ogres have very high int, but it should hit pretty hard for them anyway. Also, mobs have unlimited spell casts. Confusion is indeed one of the best options for dealing with enemies like these in my experience.

Procs is a slang term for triggering some conditional ability. I think it comes from online games. Proper English verb is indeed "triggers", however "procs" is used much more often in context of gaming discussions.

Well, using level 1 invocation at level 5 with my suggestion leaves 1 spare point that can be used later, but I agree that it's not ideal. Adding starting points to the counter only fixes the problem when the battle doesn't last for more than one invocation, although that's often the case. Adding some "cost reduction" ability on a timer seems unnecessarily complicated. C and 2) indeed look the best out of your suggestions, however I'm more inclined towards increasing phrase counter gain rather than reducing invocation costs, since if level 1 invocation costs 1 point it doesn't leave any room for reducing costs when hypothetical level 4+ invocations are available. I don't agree that it's not OP without changes to the invocations though. Being able to respawn even a weak summon every 4 sec gives too many free meatshields and CC invocations like aoe stun remain relevant even at high levels, so lower level ones will need a duration nerf.

Spellstriking is not that OP on its own, it's spellstriking + carnage that's a bit broken. Although it's far less broken after jolting touch items damage fix. Basically jolting touch procs on every target in the carnage range and then jumps to 2 additional targets, so it's carnage_targets_num * 3 hits.

Wiz can become completely immune to phantoms for ~30 sec by level 4 with veil + wizard double (about 150 deflection needed), so animat is not really needed or only needed as a safety measure, Most effective spells are Concelhaut's draining siphon (good vs low fort), Ray of Fire and Fan of Flames. Plus you can just avoid the fight with Animat and some stealth (after exiting stealth due to dialog just pull phantoms with animat and run to the exit yourself).

Imo the the original design intention was: To keep lower level chants relevant at higher levels To make lower level invocations competitive with higher level invocations Which kinda makes sense. However the way it was implemented caused a lot of issues outlined above. Basically, invocations have some sort of "reverse scaling" as they become more and more difficult to cast at higher levels, unlike all other casters who can actually use more of their abilities (ciphers by increasing damage they deal and other casters by getting more/per encounter spells). What can be done to fix the situation while satisfying the two items above? Well, first of all i think the following rule should be taken as a basis: At any given character level, the highest level invocation available should take the same fixed time to charge using the same method. Meaning that if at level 1 level 1 invocation takes 12 seconds to charge with level 1 chants then at level 12 a level 3 invocation should take the same 12 seconds to charge. Battles do not become longer at higher levels and this fixes the main flaw of scaling imo. To satisfy item #2 then, low level invocations should actually become FASTER to charge with level instead. How to: at levels 5 and 9 chanters gain +1 to phrase counter per phrase chanted. 1st level invocations still take 3 phrases to cast. Cost of level 2 invocations goes up to 6 phrases and level 3 to 9 phrases. The choice between higher level invocations and higher level chants is also a bit controversial since you basically have to chose one or the other, but is more balance related (if both are extremely powerful one or the other is ok, if not that fun), I do think however that progression can be tuned down a bit at least (+1 sec to chant duration instead of +2 per level). Alternatively, to keep lower level chants viable without forcing the player to chose linger duration can be improved with level for the lower level chants. Basically any top level chant has 4 sec duration and 0 linger (only 1 active). For each level before current max the chant receives +2 sec to linger duration. Any of these changes would be a huge buff to the chanters however, and require rebalancing of invocations and chants. In particular, summon invocations, as lower level ones will become incredibly spammable. My suggestion would be to either make all summons 1/encounter, add cooldown to summon invocations or even add a global cooldown on all invocations after any has been used (this will hurt low level invocations however as they will force more cooldowns, so I'm more inclined towards individual cooldowns on invocations).

Cipher's ranged weapon dps is comparable to a ranger or ranged rogue pre level 11 tbh and it converts into even more dps or CC through focus gain. I tend to give ciphers the most damaging weapons available. That been said, Cloudpiercer is not that great for ciphers as Jolting Touch procs do not generate any focus. Rending is nice though as it translates into smth like 1 focus per hit. As for spellswords, I've managed to solo Adra Dragon + ads on PotD with a melee wizard using mostly spirit lance so you can say they are quite decent.

Wait, what? Cautious attack is not suppressed by displaced image afaik. It is. Why won't you test it yourself before doing any statements?

Just tested decay/rot skull and they do not seem to stack in 1.06 for me, so one of our games is definitely bugged. Using rot skull on summons is indeed quite devious tactic but they can only last for so long.