MadDemiurg

It is a bug/oversight from devs

In fact, I'm going to design it now just for lulz. Stats: End 12/level, Health 4*End, Deflection 15, Accuracy 25 Starting class ability: Infusion. Accessible through enchant menu. There's a limited amount of infusions per rest, but they last until the next rest. Artificer can use infused items himself, or give to others. Infusions use a separate enchantment cap from normal enchantments (probably better this way) of up to 4 points. 2nd Starting ability: Tinkerer. Artificer can prepare a set of devices per rest. Each device can be used only once, although it is possible to prepare the same device multiple times (kind of like prepared spells in D&D). All devices cost certain amount of points that are drawn from a shared pool, which grows with level. Level progression: L1: Infusion, Tinkerer, Infusion cap - 1 point per item, 4 total, Device cap - 2 points, +1 first level infusion, +1 first level device L2: Device cap - 4 points, +1 first level infusion, +1 first level device L3: Device cap - 6 points, +1 first level infusion, +1 first level device L4: Infusion cap - 2 points per item, 8 total, Device cap - 8 points, +1 first level infusion, +1 first level device L5: Device cap - 8 points, +1 second level infusion, +1 second level device L6: Device cap - 10 points, +1 second level infusion, +1 second level device L7: Infusion cap - 3 points per item, 12 total, Device cap - 12 points, +1 second level infusion, +1 second level device L8: Device cap - 14 points, +1 second level infusion, +1 second level device L9: Device cap - 16 points, +1 third level infusion, +1 third level device L10: Infusion cap - 4 points per item, 16 total, Device cap - 18 points, +1 third level infusion, +1 third level device L11: Device cap - 20 points, +1 third level infusion, +1 third level device L12: Device cap - 22 points, +1 third level infusion, +1 third level device Infusions: Level 1: Proofing - +3DT against selected damage type. 1 point. Shield/Armor Accuracy - +5 accuracy. 1 point. Weapon Minor attribute - +1 to selected attribute. 1 point. Shield/Armor Minor skill - +1 to selected skill. 1 point. Shield/Armor Minor resist - +5 to all saves. 1 point. Shield/Armor Piercing - +3 DT bypass. 1 point. Weapon Interrupting - Increase interrupt rating by one category. 1 point. Weapon. Stability - 20% grazes to hits. 1 point. Weapon. Level 2: Major attribute - +2 to selected attribute. 2 points. Shield/Armor Major skill - +2 to selected skill. 2 points. Shield/Armor Major resist - +10 all saves. 2 points. Shield/Armor Shielding - +10 deflection. 2 points. Shield. Weightless - +20% attack speed. 2 points. Weapon Marking - +10 acc to allies attacking the target. 2 points. Weapon. Rending - +25% damage over time. 2 points. Weapon. Slaying - +25% damage against group as per slaying enchantments. 2 points. Weapon. Level 3: Twin linked - Fires two shots instead of one. Reload speed halved, recovery unaffected. Only ranged weapons that need reload. 4 points, Weapon. Overcharged - Grants permanent lightning shield that deals 20 shock retaliation damage. 4 points. Armor. Vengeful - Grants retaliation. 4 points. Armor. Reflecting - Reflects up to 10 levels of spells up to level 3 per encounter. 4 points. Armor. Living armor - Halves armor recovery penalty and adds 8 Might. 4 points. Armor. Unblockable - Attacks Deflection or Reflex, whatever is lower. 4 points. Weapon. Chromatic - Converts weapon damage to Shock/Frost/Burn/Corrode, attacking the lowest resist. Elemental boosting talents apply. 4 points. Weapon. Telekinetic - Increases range by 4 meters and adds 3 DT bypass. 4 points. Weapon. Devices: Level 1: Concussion grenade - 4 sec stun vs fort in 1.25m aoe. 1 point. Burn grenade - 40 burn damage vs reflex over 10 sec in 2m aoe. 1 point Oil trap - 2m aoe 4 sec prone trap. 1 point Harpoon - 20-40 pierce damage vs deflection on target within 10 m, pulls to the artificer (fort resist). 1 point Level 2: Summon Animat. 2 points Smoke grenade - 3 sec invis and breaks engagement, does not work if only standing member in the party. 2 points Poison gas trap - Trap. 50 raw damage and weaken vs fort over 10 sec in 2m aoe. 2 points. Phosphor grenade - blind for 15 sec in 5m radius vs reflex. 2 points. Level 3: Summon Adra Animat. 4 points. Shock rod. Places a rod that randomly zaps enemies within 10m radius for 60-80 shock damage. 4 points. Distortion Field - +30 to all defenses vs ranged for 10 sec. 4 points. Explosive mine - Trap. 100 burn damage and 6 sec stun vs reflex in 1.25m aoe. 4 points. Class talents: Firearms expert - +10 accuracy with all firearms Infusion expert - +1 infusion/rest Device expert - +4 device points/rest Armorsmith - Ignores 50% of armor recovery penalty If anyone bothers to read through this wall of text I may add more stuff later.

Steampunk style artificer, that is able to temporarily infuse weapons and armor with extra enchantments going above the enchantment cap, including new unique ones, with supplementary per rest grenades, traps and construct summons.

The thing I don't like about these builds is that you need 4 blunderbusses, preferably good ones. Even the basic ones are expensive, and you're not going to have 4 lead spitters or 4 superb ones.

Personally I think that permanent immunities are a bad design, since make effect based abilities too situational, which is especially painful for classes that have to learn these abilities. Adding too many immunities usually ends in dumb dps dominance over CC and any smarter tactics. I think there are better ways of introducing challenge and variety. Temporary immunities that need to be dispelled are welcome though (but technically priest +50 resist spells are almost immunities, so just add enemies (smartly) using them to the game)

Cipher is a stronger class than monk atm. That been said, you can't fairly compare the two based on resource only, since monk has much better stats in return for weaker abilities. Making cipher start at 0 focus would make him suck compared to wizards/druids/priests, since they can open up fights with their hard cc spells and damage spells without any issues. Per rest nature of the spells doesn't really matter all that much. That would also be a horrible change from gameplay perspective. People complain about chanters a lot since they can't contribute anything in short fights. That would put Cipher in the same boat. It's funny to see people still complaining about mind blades. They were pretty mediocre before patch, were nerfed for no good reason and continue to be mediocre. Mental binding needs to be toned down, but not too radical. Moving it up a level and/or removing aoe stuck should do. OTOH its higher level alternative (Silent scream) can use an upgrade to aoe CC. Cipher has a lot of garbage spells that need a buff. The biggest offenders are imo L6 spells. Even though they are lategame, they're bit too much. Amplified wave should get a duration nerf. 15 sec aoe prone is ridiculous. Same for Mind Plague. I hope devs won't do anything as radical as removing starting focus though, since it would easily ruin the class. The balance is not THAT horrible so that it needs complete overhaul.

Health as a per rest resource gets brought up in nearly every game with a per rest mechanic, but it's not really the same. For starters, health is a single value, rather than a collection of abilities with different effects. Second, health has a very clear optimization strategy: lose as little health as possible. Also, the idea that you can use Stealth to gauge the difficulty of a battle before it begins and, thus, properly plan out your spell uses is somewhat erogenous. You can figure out the difficulty of the next battle, sure, but you also need to know the difficulty and number of every other battle you'll encounter before you rest. Maybe you'll face a really hard battle soon, so you should stockpile for it. Maybe you'll just face a bunch of small battles, so you should toss a few spells at each. Maybe this is the hard battle, despite it being easier than other hard battles. You have no way of knowing and that makes proper planning impossible. What you are doing is gambling. Think you're getting it backwards. You NEED to rest when your resources run out. If you've saved all your spells but your tanks are at 0 health your savings were worthless. You don't know the next battles. But if you see that in this battle you either need to use spells or you'll end up with half of your party down to red health you use them. There's no point in conservation if your party is half dead. Likewise, if you can take 0 damage without casting any spells there's no point in casting any. Spells are a tool to minimise health loss. A party without spellcasters would run out of health and have to rest after x encounters. A party with spellcasters would run out of health after y encounters (presumably y < x), but can increase that number spending spells. By properly accessing difficulty of each encounter you can usually identify how many spells you need - if you overspend you burn out faster, if you underspend you end up with conserved spells and weakened party. That's the tricky part. You're correct that you don't know WHAT spells you'll need later for the optimal strategy, but given how all PoE spellcasting is spontaneous this is less of an issue, although since you have limited # of spells per level still an issue somewhat. If PoE used D&D psionic-like spellcasting with fixed # of spell points per rest it wouldn't be an issue at all. Scouting ahead helps with accessing whether you need to rest now or you can take the next encounter.

Well, you can cast withdraw on the petrified char of just CC all the attackers so technically it does allow you to save the character.

My orlan had 18 might, 15 con, with bears fortitude was unable to dodge petrify even if they rolled a ****ty low number. Its the combination of it being hard to dodge, having a long duration and making you die in 1-3 hits that makes it broken Hard to dodge is not the property of petrify spells though, they have normal accuracy. It's more about mobs using it having high accuracy.

As for petrify overall though, I do think that high level debuffs do need some extra oomph, but probably it is too strong, maybe it just should reduce DT to zero instead of multiplying damage by 4.

Yeah, but with say paralyse you debuff reflex by 40 + 2*(target's dex) and with miasma of dull mindedness you can debuff will by 40. Overall fort debuffs are less common and not as strong. I didn't notice the no save part on plague though, that's nice.

Actually fortitude is the worst defence to target on average if you look through the bestiary. Fortitude is also the hardest resist to debuff by far. Druids get reflex based petrify though (it is much shorter, but you don't really need much time with it).

Male or female? Think name works better for female, but whatever you like really. Male if you don't want to pick yourself.

Well, an optimised 6 man party is going to be boring for you :D. You'll need a bunch of weirdos to make it fun. Ok, suggestion 1: Name: Mercy Race: Death Godlike Class: Paladin (Kind Wayfarer) Stats: High Might, Dex, Int, low Con, Perception, average Resolve

Tbh I quite like the per rest mechanic. It has a lot of balancing issues, but there are plenty of games that do not use it, so it is nice to play one that does for a change. It is much better than let's say Dragon Age Inquisition MMOified crap. I do see a potential snowball problem with per encounter spells once the level cap is raised though. Also, with this system resting should not be free as it is now. There should be zones you can't backtrack from, and 0 cp inns should not exist (or should give you big penalties after rest). Right now it's too exploitable. What people seem to miss is that in PoE all classes have a per rest resource - health. So spending your spells is much more straightforward than hypothesising about the next encounters you might face - you spend spells to make encounters easier and minimise health loss. If your health is low you MUST rest. So if you're running with full spells and your tanks have red health you're doing it wrong. If you're running empty and your tanks are at full health you are also probably doing it wrong, although it depends. Rationing spells requires you to properly access the difficulty of each encounter (with stealth it's possible even before jumping into combat), which is a skill a lot of players don't seem to have, hence the complaints.

Wizard is overall more important than cipher for a party from my experience. Useful spells(for party build): L1: Chill Fog, Slicken, Fan of Flames, Eldrich Aim L2: Ray of fire, Bulwark against elements, Bewildering Spectacle, Miasma of Feeblemindedness. Other mentions: Curse of Blackened Sight, Merciless Gaze L3: Deleterious Aclaricity of Motion, Fireball, Minor Blights, Displaced Image L4: Essential Phantom, Confusion, Iron skin, Wall of Fire. Situationally: Spell reflection one L5: Torrent of flame, Bitter morning, Frost Burst, Safeguard, Call to Slumber, Malignant Cloud (lots of good ones here, pick the one more suitable for your playstyle) L6: Martial Power, Piercing burst, Gaze of Agradan, Chain Lightning Levels 1-4 (approx) cipher is flat out better cause wizards has very few spells. Levels 5-8 wizard is better for big fights because his spells have more impact, cipher is better for regular fights Levels 9-10 wizard is just better, cause level 1 is now per encounter and high level spells get very powerful for big fights Levels 11-12 Tbh both are OP. Cipher L6 is very strong, but so is wizard's, plus per encounter L2 spells.

Carrow Golan or whatever it's called is a god mode for cipher.

That doesn't show that dw is good, only that petrify is good. You don't need dw to make it good.

Reckless Assault is melee only (so no marksman). But really Cipher with tactical meld and borrowed instinct has +40 accuracy. Even though his base is 5 lower than max no one else has buffs like that. Ranger with vicious aim and stalkers link gets +20 and has high base (30). Stuff like weapon enchants, marksman etc is universal.

Tbh I don't think that extra spells are all that, esp level 1 & 2. With rings you can get 6 level 1 and 6 level 2 spells. It's enough, you don't need 7 I think (You likely won't even be able to cast them all) . Veil is +45 deflection instantly with upgrade. I don't "melee" in a sense of poking smth with a pointy stick much but I often cast at point blank range. I think torrent of flame and level 6 close range aoe spells will be great for this build. I'm also thinking of taking Spirit Lance for lulz (it looks cool).

#1 Cipher with buffs #2 Ranger

Well, it's pretty vanilla tbh. Int max, Per/Res/Con 10, Might/Dex - rest 50/50. You technically don't need Per, but your reflex will suck if you transfer it to Res (at least until you get W&S style). For talents i'm thinking Veil, Hardened Veil, W&S style, Deep pockets, Scion of Flame, Secrets of Rime. I think Fast runner can be skipped, cause you have spells for that. I'm only level 6 with it though. Was finishing my cipher solo.

I've played with a pale elf wizard with hardened veil solo a bit. Was quite durable in my book. Per rest deflection you can always get back if you really need it, can be tedious to backtrack though. +10 cold/fire resist with bulwark makes you more or less immune to these elements. Also, for this particular fight, torrent of flame should be pretty great. I've been toying with elf for some time now. Well, yes spells are too per rest. What I meant was its another cast during battle and they tend to happen fast. Neat idea about fire/cold resist. Damn it. Another restart? Well, veil has "instant" speed, so it doesn't really take any significant amount of time. Also, judging by your screenshot you probably still don't have ring of selonan, which you can pick pretty much for free when you get to defiance bay (travel to Pearlwood bluff). 6 level 3 spells really helps. Basically aclaricity + up to 5 fireballs (fast spells are great) is one of the heaviest damage sequeces in a very short time

I've played with a pale elf wizard with hardened veil solo a bit. Was quite durable in my book. Per rest deflection you can always get back if you really need it, can be tedious to backtrack though. +10 cold/fire resist with bulwark makes you more or less immune to these elements. Also, for this particular fight, torrent of flame should be pretty great.

Resolve > Perception for a Cipher since Concentration > Interrupt. I've tried to make interrupt builds work in general, but didn't have much luck with it. OTOH, concentration is always useful.