MadDemiurg

Mind blades was so so before nerf (+5 vs deflection and stops bouncing after 1st miss with lesss damage and more cost than soul shock) and right now is plain garbage. It was only good against highly dispersed enemy groups anyway. As for melee cipher, it is totally legit, but you have to build for it. Otherwise you can stick to reach weapon and still be pretty solid.

Pretty much. Well, for party ironman you get a lot more room for errors and bad rng, so its possible to minimise the chance of fail to almost nonexistent (but it is still there, you would just have to roll say 50 zeroes in a row as a rough illustration, while the enemy rolls 50 100s, which is unlikely but possible). However in solo all it can take is one bad roll. There's little room for error or bad luck.

Thing is, there are fights you can't escape because you need, well, actually win them. And if enemy has even like 1% chance of say paralyzing you and it succeeds you're screwed. So there's no tactic that works 100% reliably on PotD solo. You're still at mercy of luck to certain extent, not matter how much you prepare. As I said, I'm not arguing that combat reset is not in the spirit of Ironman though. As for soloing with wizards or other casters with per rest spells- I think its very doable, more so than most martial classes. For PotD solo you'll want to abuse as much as you can, so your /rest spells become /encounter essentially.

Ive gotten as far as halfway through act 2 with a legit three crowns... then i died and had to start over again... god that was depressing I died at the start of act 2 in a random fight. I didn't use two parallel playthroughs tactic though. I don't think I'm doing it again. Not because it's impossible, I'm just not masochistic enough.

Actually I think they did a much better job on making all status useful than most systems, D&D included. From RP perspective it admittedly doesn't make a lot of sense though. But imo gameplay > lore.

I do agree with combat reset killing the point of Ironman, but I don't believe anyone has done a 100% legit triple crown solo run by its true definition. Like the Taos fight, you need the trap to hit for a lot of suggester tactics that are based around it. Guess what? Even with max mechanics it can miss. There are other places like that throughout the game where you still need luck. If you multiply the chances of you succeeding in every such instance I believe the end result is quite low. And I don't think many people have the stomach or time to run it multiple times. I also don't think abusing bad pathing AI is legit.

You're not using auto attacks though, you're using minor blights, which is one of the better damaging spells. You're not taking it for auto attacks.

Tbh I don't think there's a build/tactics that can do triple crown solo without relying on luck. You can optimise your success %, but it would never be 100, and probably much muсh less than that. This is due to very rng heavy nature of the game, and the fact that only a couple of bad rolls can ruin your day (so you can't rely on them averaging out to some plausible average). So it would likely require more than 1 try to do it. If the game was more like chess that would increase ironman appeal to me.

Who knows, maybe OP is switching between 1h and W+S, flexibility is important too.

As I said, you'll never know. And for the final fight - you absolutely need to land some hard disable, which is all luck based, unless you get super high accuracy with it, and I'm not sure it's possible, didn't do the math yet.

If you're casting haste spell you will be paying in endurance anyway. And you can use the +50 hp spell to fuel it (it's currently coded in a way it can actually restore health btw). You can also be a moon godlike for a bigger pool. Since you can toggle dangerous implements it's definitely viable choice for the fights where you want to do as much damage as possible. Health is a resource just like your spells. The question is, is it worth a talent slot.

Actually wizard with minor blights, his haste spell and elemental talents puts rogue, ranger and pretty much any other class to shame when it comes to sustained ranged dps in a given encounter. Blast is contributing to the build not that much though, but dangerous implements can be useful.

Thing is, PotD ironman solo is still luck reliant due to everything having rolls (no no save you die spells makes me sad ), and there are cases when you absolutely need that petrify trap to work. Maaaybe you can have enough accuracy to eliminate rng fails, but I'm not sure. Otherwise it can ruin your whole run without being able to reset the combat with exit.

1 tank, 2 aoe casters (2x wiz or 2x druid or wiz+ druid), rest doesn't matter that much. End bigger fights in 2-3 rounds. for mopping up trash encounters can pick smth more sustainable like cipher. Priest is a good efficiency multiplier. So 2x aoe/cc casters, priest, cipher, tank and... maybe a 2nd tank just in case. Or a 2nd cipher. Or another wiz/druid for 1 round wins. Whatever.

You'll never know unless they record the whole run . Even then video can be just edited. So you'll never know unless they stream the whole run .

On a side note, infuse with vital essence can actually permanently restore your health (probably a bug). So basically once you hit level 11 you can restore 200-250 health per fight provided you don't take more damage. It's probably the only thing in the game that does it. I wonder if that makes a case for a tank(y) wizard at high levels.

Gotta ask why you think you need a helmet? None I found are particularly amazing. And you still can avoid fight in Woedica's temple with a godlike.

I'm more interested in how much does the radiance scale with reputations and do upgrades scale as well (even +1 acc per reputation point on inspiring radiance would be great).

Thank you so much! And yes exactly! Currently the early part of the game is a real pain, especially Caed Nua with the main room filled with Phantoms (I honestly think they should rework it by the way). After that, all the part where you can farm XP thanks to small quests in he Bay is actually quite easy. Still the last chapter is a challenge, and the last boss is honestly super hard. I probably reload more than 200 times (normal + PotD mode) to finally find some small rifts in the IA and to kill it. And I have no idea how you could do it with something else than a Rogue for now. It's quite doable with most classes if it's not ironman I think, Rogue might be the best class to minimize the risk for ironman though. For instance, with wizard you can just cast your level 6 petrify spell (which you use in form of trap) directly and if it lands you basically win. Problem is if it doesn't land. But if it's not ironman you have the magic load button . Or maybe you can buff your accuracy to be high enough for a guaranteed graze at least (graze would still be like 10-15 sec). Didn't do the math.

Deflection barb is going to be pretty subpar though, since they start with 10 and have like 1 talent that temporarily increases it. Imo retaliation barb has better chances at killing all the opposition than deflection barb tanking for long enough.

You still cast reasonably fast in plate with 10 dex and you have enough focus (if you don't - use focus food I've mentioned). You also generate more focus than a dps "caster" cipher on average. Plus some longer lasting ray spells you just cast and enjoy the carnage. What else do you need for a caster cipher? For higher acc you can tactical meld with summons solo, it's not as good as with party because it's not free, but you still will be able to land spells quite reliably. Also, mind plague does horrible horrible things. You're a somewhat less tanky than a rogue when you miss with your drains and CC (cc is also a form of tanking). Potions of eldrich accuracy are not that difficult to come by later on for harder fights though, plus if you cast your buffs successfully it just goes through the roof.

Tbh for rangers to be awesome predator's sense (or whatever the talent for +50% dmg vs enemies under DoT is called) should be tweaked to work on the ranger himself and not only the companion. Then rangers easily will be the top ranged weapon dps class (which they should be).

Things paladin needs imo (for different possible roles): Talent for +1 use of flames of devotion when downing an enemy. (or some other way of doing more stable dps during the fight, but this one works quite well I think) Lay of Hands scaing Some +engagement slot talent, maybe as others suggested give it to DR aura. Also it's unfair how much better PC paladin is compared to mercs. Smth should be done with it too (mercs gaining reputation with level or sharing PC reputation?).

Tested a tanky variation of the build. It's about the same solo viability as rogue when it has to fight stuff, honestly. It actually took me longer to kill things, though this is using moon godlike. Deep Wounds TBH is a bigger deal than you'd think on PotD. Cipher has some strong combat abilities but they're so heavily reliant on: 1 beating will saves. 2 not being CCed. Rogue's durability overall was higher due to adept evasion - in spite of cipher's higher base deflect. Cipher couldn't keep all drain buffs up all the time so much of the stats boosts were pretty temporary. The focus generation from retal is nice but still found myself running dry + with a low dex build and heavy armor it takes a long time to cast and enemies can sometimes disrupt. Cipher just doesn't dramatically change the way you play solo vs. rogue. It's still going to be reliant on having move speed buffed, dragging enemies, using particular items at key points, etc. etc. I think it's just way easier to go the shadowing beyond route still. The cipher is so much more potent that you'd want to slog through tons of combat with it. It'd add a dramatic amount of play-time necessary to complete a solo run I think. Fair enough. I still would say dropping both per and dex is making this character too vulnerable to reflex targeting stuff, which is what many high damage spells in the game are. If it takes you long time to kill stuff with cipher, you're not using his spells properly tbh. As a pure melee, yes it's about as good as rogue without shadowing beyond. If you use stuff like mind lance, antipathetic field, ectopsychic echo, ring leader, amplified wave (with summons) you kill/disable stuff very fast. Cipher can also target all defenses in the game, rogue mostly deflection. This is a big deal if you learn the bestiary. If you use borrowed instinct you're pretty much guaranteed a crit with mind lance afterwards for instance. And if opponent has high will, you can use your fort or ref stuff. Deep wound's just don't compare imo. Tbh they don't compare to being able to attack for 140% damage constantly, unless you opponent has like 30+dr (in which case spells are still better), Heavy armor does not make you cast longer - only longer recovery, so you don't risk disrupt with it. Low dex as I said I'm not sure, running myself with 10, otherwise it might be hard to spend focus fast enough. For hard fights I use +4 focus on hit food, it kinda supercharges you. And yes, skipping most of the stuff with shadowing beyond might be faster, but personally I find it unsatisfying if I skip too much combat. matter of taste I guess.

Well, PoE is supposed to be about versatility and classes being able to fill multiple roles. I came up with the idea to use retaliation on a cipher when trying to make a cipher tank work. I agree that retaliation is broken atm, but if I was the game designer, I would probably give cipher some talent to generate focus on enemy misses (regardless of targeted save and range), values would have to be tuned accordingly to be balanced. It won't help the "standard" dps cipher build, since misses (and attacks) vs him should be quite rare, but it would open up an alternative way to play. Currently retaliation is the best way to make tanky cipher work, cause his resource generation is tied to damage (or at least number of hits) he deals too much.