Climhazzard

I just don't get why he would think it's ok to leave deflection on resolve and give it spell power. Really wizards and priests can use shields like everyone else, they'll be the new tanks, especially with stuff like arcane veil.

The way the math works out for a cipher, you can max Int (necessary), Per (necessary due to hit/miss changes), and then past that whatever points you add in one place, you have to take away from somewhere else -- if you want more Resolve, you have to drop Con, etc. Ciphers have to do weapon damage to gain focus. You can effectively shave . . . four or so at most . . points off Con IF you're willing to play ranged instead of frontline. So you can put those four points into one of either Might, Dex, or Resolve. Currently, the general build is to also cut resolve by about six to seven points, and put what you gain from cutting Res and Con into Might and Dex, because that helps casting speed and weapon and spell damage. Next patch, you'll basically have to choose between doing either weapon damage or spell damage .. . . except that isn't a choice because without weapon damage you'll never get the focus to do spell anything. On the other hand, if you don't pump resolve, your powers won't be effective no matter how much weapon focus you gather. I don't know how to build a cipher under the new system. Maybe just dump Dex and do everything like you're moving through molasses? Alternatively the answer might be to just drop all damage-based Cipher powers and play the class as a pure buffer/debuffer. You'd probably want to dump resolve and not use damage based powers. As of now the damage based powers aren't really worth using anyways. In fact most cipher powers aren't. But if they were I would probably still dump damage based powers in order to be more effective.

Won't strength just become a dump stat instead? Or rather, my priest would have to choose between the rather lame damage dual wielding scepters was doing for her or boosting her healing power... which would you choose?

We won't really know until we see how much each boosts damage. But even if they each boost damage double what might does now hybrids will still have a significantly lower damage boost potential than non hybrids.

So we're nerfing hybrid builds and giving spellcasters a huge deflection boost over melee builds? That makes sense.... Losing my faith here....

I wonder what they're going to do when they realize one of the caster classes is still useful.....

Ravager will be fun since they'll have so many crit effects, Berserker has a high crit conversion, and clarity of mind cures the downside to Berserker. Blood Frenzy, interrupting strikes, swift flurry, and enervating blows. I'm still leaning more towards Devoted for my monk multi class though. Primarily due to disciplined strikes. The main reason for this is that if you miss the main target with Torment's reach it doesn't do it's aoe at all, it will if you graze though. The miss>graze conversion (once fixed) will give you a lot of CC potential with raised torment. Most likely I would use shattered pillar so I could keep gaining wounds even if my targets were stunned, and I would have a healthy dose of intelligence for larger/longer CC potential, not to mention AoE damage with torment and rooting pain. Stat spread probably with a lot of 15s. 15-9-15-15-15-9 Or perhaps with base perception because of disciplined strikes... Side note: Tenacious blows+Devoted may lead to a lot of overpenetration damage. Side side note: Don't knock rogues to much, since confounding blind will be a great boss killer as long as perception afflictions will work.

If you make a full attack have more hits it will make it'll make light weapons a lot better for applying CC. Stunning blows for example. Of course dual wielding is already better for applying CC with full attacks than using 2 handers. But in this case fast weapons would be even better for doing so.

Can't be much worse than plus 100% recovery.... if you were using a two hander and wearing perhaps medium armor you'd have a 10 second recovery. It's like your dude has to stop after every swing to gasp for breath for 9 seconds.

Spell penetration is just badly balanced at the moment. Spells should penetrate against everything except for the mobs that are resistant to their damage type, rather than penetrating against nothing except for the mobs that are weak to their damage type. As for the original topic, I agree with the person who said you can't pause>unpause>repause the game fast enough to properly control the positions of your characters and enemies because everything is moving so fast.

Wow so it wasn't working as intended, nice to know... though now fighter will be by far the best multi class choice in the game for everyone who isn't a buffer or summoner.

Resolve is certainly easy to dump. But so is any stat your current build doesn't need, like perception on a buffer. High deflection is still important for tanks. Case in point. I've run the beta on PotD twice so far with 2 different tank builds. One was a shield bearer beckoner and the other was an unbroken beckoner. They both had 15 resolve but the shield bearer had considerably more deflection than the unbroken. There's really only one mob in the beta you need a real tank for on PotD, that's the Terror or whatever it's called right outside the starting town (I'm at work atm so forgive me if I don't remember the name correctly). While they both had enough armor via buffs to surpass his penetration, and they both used large shields with "the wall" active, the Fighter was getting absolutely shredded by crit's that surpassed his armor while the Paladin was fine because he wasn't getting hit by crits, or at least not nearly so often. So at the least tank builds are still going to want high resolve. Front liners in general are going to at least want average resolve. Everyone else can dump it I guess but I'm pretty sure low defense attracts the attention of certain enemies so don't dump it unless you have an alternative form of defense such as arcane veil. Anyways, I think the stats are basically fine as is.

Personally, I never made a martial character in PoE that didn't have weapon focus, so I can't really say that I support adding weapon focus to a general talent pool. Especially in it's current form where it works for every proficient weapon.

Isn't Aware Tier 2 Perception Inspiration, Intuitive Tier 3 Inspiration. If something Aware work but Intuitive not, it must be a bug. I think it's probably intended because a 100% miss to graze chance would be very powerful for many abilities. Of course this would have the consequence of making a tier 2 inspiration better than a tier 3 inspiration, so I don't know...

Btw, I know disciplined strikes is being highly rated right now. But when I was trying to figure out how to make the best skald I noticed that intuitive does not give offensive invocations any chance to graze at all, let alone a 100% chance to graze. However aware from disciplined barrage and dire blessing did give offensive invocations a chance to graze, the problem is that it's overwritten by intuitive which will cancel your chance to graze. So for a PotD skald you might as well give up on your chance to crit with that stuff and focus on hitting period, and for that dire blessing is your best bet and there was really no reason to go fighter besides dual wield spec and devoted bonuses. The accuracy bonus from fighter stance is suppressed by devotions for the faithful too. I guess my point is that if intuitive doesn't work for invocations, what else doesn't it work for?

Yeah single class nature godlike monk is pretty strong right now after level 7. We're kind of assuming based on PoE fist balance that fists will remain fast, but we don't really know if they're meant to be fast or not in deadfire, if not there's a good chance they end up being weaker than normal weapons. The benefits of nature godlike will likely taper off towards endgame too.

Rather than nerfed, I'm pretty sure it's just broken.

Torment's reach works for a shifted shapeshifter, and I'm assuming by extension that raised torment will as well, which is pretty strong.

Would definitely be nice if they were displayed in character creation. Also there needs to be more cultural skills that improve stealth as it's pretty hard to pass stealth checks sometimes. Like... why doesn't hunter provide stealth? I think dissident is the only one that does, make hunter have it too, makes a lot more sense than mechanics or alchemy.

Mid tier ability, pommel strike! End game ability, pommel throw!

They certainly are a boring class... still. Though a good option for multi classing I wouldn't make a single class fighter atm for anything. I'm not really going to jump the gun on judging them until we see all skills that will be available up to level 20 though.

The problem with using Stunning Blow is that it uses mortifications not wounds. The more you use it the less Swift/Lightning Strikes you'll have available. Replacing prone with an affliction with a duration like dazed would be a great idea. It could be done for Knockdown as well, then give Mule Kick the upgraded affliction plus the 1.5 seconds in the air or whatever. Well, a pure monk would have plenty of uses for both in later levels. Ofc there might be better stuff to use mortification's on by then. Most likely you'd use raised torment against fodder and stunning blow for tougher targets since it would hit twice while dual wielding improving the chances of it working, like when you want to CC bosses. Even if you didn't take stunning blow there really still isn't much use for force of anguish as it is now, you'd just use raised torment for everything as rooting pain would take care of your interrupts. It's even worse for fighters, making a mediocre ability even more mediocre. Kind of sucks for fighters since they have **** for active abilities as it is. I guess if the game is going to go to level 20 there's probably still a lot more abilities to be revealed though so perhaps they'll only be boring in early levels.

No prone currently has a duration, they are basically just interrupts now. I'm pretty sure they removed prone due to the new afflictions system. This is a massive nerf to force of anguish though, and considering that rooting pain is better at interrupting it's rather pointless to take force of anguish. As a monk you'll want to get and use stunning blow instead since it's now a full attack it's your best chance to CC something and actually has a duration. IMO prone abilities ought to be aoe now to make up for the loss of duration, or perhaps give an affliction in place of prone, such as shaken or dazed. Prone probably still rolls against fortitude so dazed or staggered make the most sense. This means monks don't have anything to spend wounds on for like 5 levels though, stupid.

My suggestion is to add Deep Pockets, Arms Bearer, Quick Switch, and Field Triage (have it remove one injury from one character or maybe even all?) to the Weapon Proficiency choices starting at level four. All of these add flavor but no real power creep issues arise from this. I'd also change Island Aumaua back to what they had before with the extra weapon slot. I could get behind something like this... I really want to have quick switch and arms bearer on basically all my characters so I can swap for appropriate damage types and also use large shields to prevent my characters from moving if I need to.

A ravager will probably be a really good build even after they fix swift flurry, there's a lot of synergy. Clarity of mind cancels the downside of berserk, you'd just use it in your party buffing stage. Interrupting blows, swift flurry, enervating blows, and bloody frenzy, all proc effects off crits therefore benefiting tremendously from berserk. Barbarian's have buffs like savage defiance and thick skinned that will be really good for staying alive, not to mention unflinching and a ton of damage buffs. Basically it's a match made in heaven.