MadDemiurg

Add to the OP: -Swift strike with anything that has AOE or multiple projectiles (should really only have a chance to proc once) -Empowered meteor strike -Quite possibly charge - basically heart of fury for half cost available a lot earlier

Solo you can run out, at least early on. Veil is 12 sec base now btw. You switch to displaced image after you've run out of these though. Their deflection bonus doesn't stack. In a party, most encounters are over under 12 seconds if you play an alpha strike party :D.

Nature godlike rogue/monk is probably the highest sustained single target dps. But tbh that doesn't count for much with current balance when you have broken abilities that oneshot the whole screen.

Priest + chanter - strong all around support. You can live without priest PL8 & 9. You get summons, heals, buffs, you name it. With upgraded bride something something invocation you get brilliant inspiration which restores spells (tested). At which point you can rek everything with unlimited shining beacons and cleansing flames as well as running prevent death on self 24/7, but it comes pretty late. Still your personal summon army with priest spells is nice. Priest of Berath/Troubadour for Necromancer RP (brisk recitation for the skeleton summon chant gives you a new skeleton every 3 sec), but priest of Wael is better. Chanter + cipher - Cipher benefits from having allies to cast spells on, can be a decent buid for solo cipher. Troubadour or Beckoner/Ascendant. Drop your summons, build up focus, spam amplified wave. Refresh summons as needed. In a party I'd rather have time parasite for my cipher though. Druid + cipher - idk, not much synergy. Shapeshift can be decent for building focus. Druid + priest - you don't need this many spells and they all have long cast times. You can go priest of Wael for instabuffs but then again you could just go wizard. Out of these, priest + chanter is the best. Would even say quite broken at PL7.

Pure wizard seems viable, bit hard at the beginning but should be faceroll towards the end with empower cheese. Chanter of pretty much any configuration, they all seem OP. Troubadour, Beckoner, multiclass skald. Fighter + whatever, cleave and charge are as OP as it gets. Fighter + paladin is the most zzzzz option, huge constant self heal with constant recovery and healing aura upgrade, as well as a ton of defenses and pretty much immunity to most dangerous afflictions.

His math is without the damage bonus from power level and might (and no empower).

Isn't that like every melee class in the game, lol. You can afford to use stuff like body attunement and borrowed instinct too, it can be useful. Generally the idea is aoe weapon attacks maxing out your focus and SA proccing more aoe attacks due to oneshots. Charge can easily allow you to get to 200+ focus with draining whip in 1 cast (don't bother with biting whip for measly 10%), then SA to finish something off, then cleave and your focus is full again. Full attacks is nice and all, but your offhand doesn't hit for 190 raw damage. And yes, duals are still better for SA unless you somehow managed to get big recovery bonuses elsewhere.

Well consider the math. Before applying empower: Meteor Shower 36-58 + 12 burn damage per 1 second for 4 seconds = 36-58 + 48 = 84-106 total Highest damage level 7 spell: Delayed Fireball, 65-95 With +30% sneak attack, +50% deathblows, +50% assassinate (assuming crit) for +130% damage: 65-95 * 2.3 = 149.5-218.5 Note this is underestimating actual Sneak Attack damage, because it scales with level up from minimum 30%. The +25 accuracy and + penetration from Assassinate also make it more likely to crit and overpenetrate. (Granted, it needs to crit to get the damage bonus.) Even if we don't include deathblows and keep sneak attack at its minimum 30%, sneak attack + assassinate Delayed Fireball yields a minimum 117 damage. Or do you mean that empower increases the duration of the DoT? Your math is right except meteors have multiple projectiles and easily hit same target 10 times :D.

SA does a lot more damage than FoD or Barbaric blow if you have high alpha and high focus gain. Offhand damage is pretty negligible compared to what it does, so it doesn't even matter if it's full or primary that much.

Monk has great burst with Swift Flurry- I hit many times 5 attacks in go and Torment Reach + Rooting Pain can generate a lot of focus. But if you wait for a lot of focus to do that over 200 SA I will already kill all enemies from basic attacks and torment reach. I sometimes hit over 200 from Swift Flurry crit (few attacks) so... Figher can generale enough focus for 200+ SA with one charge, no need to wait.

I would build transcendent as a caster with ascendant, +10 int monks can give is very nice. Should take off pretty nicely at higher levels where you actually get cipher spells that don't suck. Soulblade needs some high burst damage to insta max out focus, e.g. charge + cleave. Then SA will be hitting well over 200. Monk doesn't work for this.

Wizard's ability procs every 1 sec instead of every 3 so probably gonna stack with combusting wounds nicely if it triggers them.

To be fair, reaching max focus with draining whip is pretty trivial for ascended at which point you spam everything for free, but yeah, it doesn't compare to oneshoting stuff on sight.

Devotions always affected spell accuracy. Melee accuracy = touch spell accuracy, ranged accuracy = rest of the spells in PoE1. Also leave priests alone please, they barely have any useful spells left :D. I haven't tested it but if the tornado spell from chanter applies all 13 jumps to a single target lf no other candidates around like some other spells it's an easy contender for max 1 hit KO with inner death. Death from 1000 cuts + disintegrate would likely oneshot anything too with high might and int, but not sure if that's gamebreaking or just very powerful.

Well, if you're soloing, it has a really long cast time and probably not worth it over attacking a few extra times. But even for solo it can be useful if you have high int and some abilities with high alpha e.g. beacon + torrent of flame x2 when surrounded. Nice combo for tanky pala/wizard.

Paladin +40% beacon should work too and it's aoe. And afair mark does as well.

PL7 spells with crits from wizard/assasin will outdamage same spells at PL9 from pure wizard... But PL 8 & 9 have some nice damage spells e.g. meteors. Some fun combos: Devoted/soulblade: charge + soul anihilation + cleave + repeat Berserker/wizard: citzals lance with carnage and bloodthirst is fun, good returns on int invested and durable with wiz buffs Paladin/wizard: the tankiest bastard in the game until buffs run out Paladin/priest of Wael: more or less the same Devoted/skald: aoe paralyze + charge with a ton of crits + repeat Evoker/assassin: smoke veil - stealth - nuke. In the end, pure wizard might be better though

You give too much credit to playtesters. Higher level abilities weren't even available in backer beta. I wouldn't be surprised if they've put an extra zero and didn't test it altogether.

So can anyone explain the OP build and how he achieves that? Inner death has +500% damage (not OP at all) on crit and fairly high base dmg. Empower increases the base damage further. With the passive for +100 acc and pen it always crits and always achieves overpen for 1.3 multiplier. Finally, turning wheel adds 5% multiplicative fire lash per wound and dance generates wounds for free. And yeah, it's probably a hellwalker for +1 might per wound on top. The obvious nerfs are reducing the +500% crit damage to something reasonable and nerfing the crap out of +100 acc/pen on empowered abilities cause that's just silly. Ok... I try to follow, so he empowered Inner Death or his base attacks? What gives that passive +100 acc and pen? Is it also achievable with Shattered Pillar? You can't empower base attacks, only abilities. By "base damage" i mean unmodified damage of inner death. There's a PL9 Monk passive giving +100 acc and pen to all empowered abilities. Shattered pillar would do less damage because his might would be lower due to lack of +1 might/wound. He'll still do a ****load of damage though.

So can anyone explain the OP build and how he achieves that? Inner death has +500% damage (not OP at all) on crit and fairly high base dmg. Empower increases the base damage further. With the passive for +100 acc and pen it always crits and always achieves overpen for 1.3 multiplier. Finally, turning wheel adds 5% multiplicative fire lash per wound and dance generates wounds for free. And yeah, it's probably a hellwalker for +1 might per wound on top. The obvious nerfs are reducing the +500% crit damage to something reasonable and nerfing the crap out of +100 acc/pen on empowered abilities cause that's just silly.

Let me guess, empowered inner death and that that +100 accuracy +100 pen on empowered attacks passive (obviously not broken at all). Also turning wheel with + fire damage and enduring dance to generate wounds as seen in the logs. @SaruNi This is obviously completely broken and you're not making any sense.

Well, as far as I can tell, one difference from PoE1 is that recovery bonuses are multiplicative which makes higher recovery reduction styles inherently better with armor. Another difference is that DR is not a flat value anymore, which devalues heavy hitting weapons significantly. Whatever the nerf for DW was, it's still significantly ahead in terms of dps in the current state and allows to get better survivability with less dps loss as well, so apparently it was not enough. That's not even getting into full attack spam cheese, cause dw dps just skyrockets here. Unless higher levels offer other significant sources of recovery reduction DW would likely stay ahead for the whole game. And if they do, it's still a crappy way to balance things, all styles should be viable at all levels. The next thing to look out for are -50% recovery modals, they're OP too if you manage to get enough accuracy. Basically compared to 1h, DW trades 12 accuracy and 20% hit to crit for -44% recovery. -recovery hunting bow and pistol modals trade 15 acc for -50% recovery. You can single wield a pistol to get similar effects to dualwielding minus the full attack cheese. Hunting bow has +5 acc, so if you're playing a high acc build you could probably take -10 acc for almost double attack speed. If you don't want dw nerfs you'll have to buff pretty much everything else to bring it in line with dw. Which is more work and would make the game even easier. But PotD is in dire need of monster buffing as is.

Tbh I think it's DW that's OP. Shields seem nerfed due to shield modals. With modals, you do have great survivability, but your dps is horrible. Basically, shields are a mage item, dual hatchets are the way to go otherwise. 1h was always quite niche.

@ dunehunter I don't think flat armor recovery penalty would work on its own. Med 1h and 2h have the same recovery. The problem with the armor penalty is that DW + style cuts it nearly in half, so regardless of whether it's flat or not DW would pull ahead. Now if DW recovery reduction only applied to your base recovery and did not reduce the armor penalty, that would push DW to be more of a light armor style and allow 2h to pull ahead in heavy armor. Currently DW is the heavy armor option and 2h needs the lightest armor (where it's still not great) which feels plain wrong.

Nah, I don't think it's because of that. 50% chance to trigger an extra attack was bit too strong on high crit builds as is (Nerfing evoker to just 15% was pretty weird tho). Potentially infinite chain procing is obviously broken though, on super high hp/immune targets it could potentially even crash the game depending on how it's coded. But even currently you'll still need an alternative approach for killing isolated high armor enemies.