MadDemiurg

I use confusion on the 2nd level, it's not as good as 4th level one, but still nice. Blindness is not bad either. Infuse with vital essence is a great defensive buff.

I would use 2 tank paladins (for both DR and acc auras), 1 shieldbearer, 2nd not sure, 1-2 dps barbs, 1 chanter and a priest (priest is so good with physical damage party it's silly not to take him). In case of 1 barb not sure about the 6th guy. Can be a cipher or a druid if you like these. If you are inclined to take both, chanter is probably the most dispensable here, but you'll have 3 range then (priest, druid, cipher). I believe priest will be fine with low might as an offtank or with quarterstaff as a backiine melee though.

I believe there was a mention of caster spells becoming "at will" at very high levels. You just don't achieve these levels here. So my prediction @ level 19: level 1-2 - at will, level 3-6 - per encounter, level 7-10 - per rest. Looks like casters are only starting to open up their potential in current PoE.

Initially, yes. Later on, when barbs learn to attack and debuff fort, I think they get an upper hand.

I don't feel like wizards are lackluster either, mainly because there are many crappy spells and 4 seem enough for each level atm. That might change with balancing. Still, the extra hassle they go through when learning spells and lower stats need to be compensated somehow I think. It's just that they don't matter that much currently because as I said you can pick most of the useful spells anyway and stats don't matter that much when enemies can't touch you anyway.

For priest, Magran is decent for +10 arquebus accuracy. Wael can be also used for quaterstaff/rod i suppose, but looks much worse overall. Skaen is not that bad either, but his weapons are bad. If Skaen was getting pretty much any ranged weapon it would be an auto pick. For Paladin, +10 deflection for party when using flames is not bad for shieldbearers. Darcozzi +10 accuracy on liberating exhortation is quite good. I suppose Kind Wayfarers can be used as some weird type of healers, they don't scale well though.

Tbh if you're taking two ranged rogues, ciphers are almost strictly better. Some case can be made for melee rogue because of reckless assault, but at range rogue single target benefits are minimal and require additional preconditions while lacking all the cc and aoe. You also severely lack aoe with this setup.

That party contradicts your forum name. It should be called "Min Damage".

Tactical meld, eldrich aim (potion), some priest buffs. There's +15 acc aoe scroll. Zealous focus should work too. Then pretty much any save can be debuffed. So you pick the lowest defense and work from there.

I think spell and weapon accuracy should have different base. Ciphers should have higher weapon accuracy and lower spell accuracy than wizards. Otherwise it's hard to balance. Sunbeam is still a pretty great druid cc, although I agree that wizards have better cc on levels 1-2. I still don't think their spell list is inherently superior to other casters.

Thing is, druids and priests aren't much worse in CC. For instance, druids have L1 blind that does solid damage with very long duration, wave that prones enemies for 15 sec, stunlocking lighting storms and even pertification on level 5 (one level earlier that wiz, although it is much shorter). So I don't see how wizard spell list is superior to druids. Both have very good spells. So imo wizards should be somehow compensated for the hassle they go through. As for accuracy - ciphers actually have better spell accuracy already, since they have higher base accuracy. What I'm suggesting for wizards is adding some small static accuracy bonus for spells only, rather than just base accuracy as one of the options. Imo this is in line with game mechanics. Cipher is not that OP tbh, his spells are weaker overall than dedicated casters and he can't nova as much. It's just that he can spam them in all encounters and doubles as a good physical damage dealer. Wizards and druids still have bigger impact on hard fights in my experience. Tbh making each book hold up to 4 per encounter spells with the ability to have up to 6 additional books in your quick slots would be too much. You can make them at will at that point. Per encounter spells earlier seems like a popular suggestion. Making arcane veil per encounter would be nice, but I think it would have to be 1./encounter then. Otherwise wizard would get ridiculously tanky. I'd rather have separate talents for a melee wizard rather than blast.

How casters should be balanced with non caster classes is a separate topic. Vancian style magic is hard to balance in general, because it's either OP or useless usually. I'm all for the OP tbh since fighters and the like with their uninspired per encounter abilities are boring anyway. This is more about balancing wizards with other casters.

These are good suggestions, however I think both can be applied to all casters (would be weird if not) and it won't change the disparity between them. I also think that the if buffs that can last more than 1 encounter are introduced they should have their duration changed to x encounters rather than x seconds so that you don't have to run across the map like crazy trying to collect as many mobs as possible. Or maybe have their duration suspended in between combats.

Agreed. Spell/ability accuracy also needs to increase with spell/ability level. Pretty much like DC in d&d. it's quite ridiculous how lower level stuff remains OP throughout the whole game imo (It shouldn't become obsolete either but it's weird when level 4 spell is worse than a level 2 one)

Ok, so there's a lot of debate around whether wizards are any good or not. Personally I think they're still pretty great since they have a good spell list with a fair number of good unique spells and the ability to nova in important fights puts them in the top tier with other casters. The one problem I have with them however is that there's a lot more hassle with them for no obvious reason: They have lower base stats than druids/priests (other two caster classes with the same resource system I'll use as a baseline) They don't get all the spells immediately, and need to spend money and loot grimoires to get more. This is weird for a supposedly most flexible spellcaster Even when they learn all the spells, they can't access all of them in combat without switching grimoires that inflicts downtime ...and there's no obvious reason why it should be so. In terms of lower base survivability, yes they get defensive spells that help to alleviate that, but they eat into their per rest/per encounter limits. In terms of flexibility their spell list isn't more flexible than druid or priest: Priests have - party buffs, debuffs, some aoe, some single target spells, heals, cc Druids have - heals, some party buffs, defuffs, aoe, cc, some single target spells, summons Wizards have - aoe, cc, debuffs, single target spells, self buffs, summons (or more exactly a summon, although it's quite good) This doesn't look more flexible at all. Wizard spell list is still great, but not inherently superior to druid or priest. I think wizards should be somehow rewarded for going through all this hassle compared to other casters. Possible options: Give wizards +1 spell usage per level (so start at 3/rest and go up to 5). This will make self buffs more useful since it will add more slots to cast them and will make up for stat difference Give wizards increased accuracy with spells - this will make them better casters and again will make up for extra squishiness Let wizards pick 1 spell per level from other spell lists - druid and priest. This will make up for the hassle with grimoires and make wizard the more flexible class indeed. Might be too OP though, potential spell combos need to be analyzed. I'm not suggesting all 3, that would be super OP. 1 of the 3 options will do in my opinion. Imo 1st option is the easiest and the safest. So what do you think?

How does it gimp you? I suppose 2 talents are a sizable investment but you don't have many good talents to begin with.But I don't see a need for a nerf here either, it's situaltionally quite useful but not broken in any way. And wiz is still a top tier class in my book, the nerfs weren't as bad as people make it out plus a lot of spells got their range buffed which is nice.

Higher level deflection buffs (levels 3 and 5) work for the whole duration and veil is 15 seconds with high int. This can be useful in harder fights to get into the fray to cast some of the spells that require trickier positioning or for the "oh **** moments". You actually do not need that all that often, 2/rest seems fine.

Well, they would probably raise level cap in the upcoming expansion and blights will become per encounter at level 13 Chill fog wasn't nerfed all that hard btw. If you have a pale elf tank he likely won't notice it.

Btw martial prowess adds another 24% attack speed via dex, along with awesome might and acc bonuses, you will be stuck with blights for the duration though. But 200% attack speed with up to 55 acc bonus on attacks and like 50% bonus damage from might ain't half bad.

It's 1/encounter so it's kinda gimmick.

It sould work with blights though - since technically it's a weapon

Top melee weapon is 25 ish base damage outside elemental enchants though so you'll need +60% damage bonus to do 40 vs 0 DR and most enemies have at least 10 later on, in which case you'll need +100%. Not that easy for a lot of classes to come by. Ranged usually shows bigger numbers with the arbalest/firearms.

...that raises the obvious question. Does the level 3 fire/slash damage dealing chant stack? I think it should. It looks like a damage spell rather than a debuff/dot, although the description suggests that it's DoT. But it looks like a damage wave incoming every 8 seconds. Worth testing.

With hight might you can rely on endurance drain song, summons, retaliation and fire rain song later on to do the damage. However I haven't played the class solo, so maybe dex will help you to get through starting levels. It definitely seems redundant with higher level chants and better gear though.

Nope they do not. Dex is a dump stat regardless of your chanter build.