Climhazzard

We should probably wait until the attack recovery on one handers is fixed before we start comparing ciphers to deeply. I definitely think that their cast times are to long, and I mostly used cipher as a multi class to get sweet soul whip damage plus extra weapon penetration. After trying a couple of powers I concluded that 90% of them were worthless with current cast times. Some of them have an effect duration that isn't any longer than their cast/recovery time. Maybe my estimation will change when one handers get the proper recovery values, but most likely I'll still think any spell that has an effect duration the same as it's cast/recovery time is basically worthless.

Have they given any indication about when we'll see the next beta update?

It seems to me that with the exception of Devoted we're going to get enough weapon proficiency's that weapon spells and soulbound weapons really shouldn't need to be universal anyhow. Also take note that soulbound weapons are class restricted... so wouldn't a cool idea be a soulbound weapon for Devoted that transforms into the weapon of your chosen proficiency?

Yeah I had this happen to me once on one of my earlier playthroughs. It looked like the resting menu kept the same foods that I had use before but despite still having those foods in my inventory and them appearing in a few character's slots they did not get healed. This happens to me consistently, I thought it might be a feature, lol.

I think the problem with power level is there are a lot of things it doesn't really affect at all, sneak attack for example, there's really not much downside to multi classing to get sneak attack because you get it at full power no matter what your rogue power level is. I guess it's possible death blows could be one of the aforementioned 16-20 abilities though.

This one is pretty good. Uses disciplined strikes + swift flurry. Surely destined for the nerf bat though.

Considering casters didn't get any talents, I feel like some of the issues with caster's at the moment could be solved with talents. In the same way a fighter get's weapon specializations, why can't a wizard get spell school improvements? "Increased accuracy with evocation spells" or "Evocation spells can graze" or "Evocation spells have a 20% reduced recovery time". Perhaps talents that give concentration in some way or another, like "casting protection spells grants the caster concentration". There are surely tons of less generic ideas that could be used as well. Also, by using talents you can limit what they can do. You don't want hard CC to be able to graze? Then just don't give a talent option for that to happen with CC schools. Order it in a way so they can't just take all of the above, but that they still have room for improvement and specialization.

I would be okay with long cast times if they were accompanied by long effect times but they usually aren't. Having a spell last 10 seconds when it took 6 to cast is stupid.

Leveling up the dudes from scratch makes a pretty big difference too, at least for the wizard and priest.

Classic isn't hard once you understand the systems. Namely penetration and which spells are worth using or not using due to the lack of grazes. Once you have those down you can steamroll quite easy. Knowing how inspirations work helps a lot too. None of it is really easy to get from just picking up the game though. Most likely your first play of the beta is going to be rough, even coming from PoE. I'm assuming the beta wasn't really meant to hold your hand the way a full game might though, so I'm not really worried about it. I expect a few pop up tutorials or something in release explaining inspirations at the least, and hopefully clearer spell descriptions. As for penetration I'm crossing my fingers that it gets a complete overhaul.

Do we even know these are universal weapons in PoE 2?

If no behaviour is selected they will only auto attack.... but once you select aggressive or cautious you can't seem to unset them, lol.

Originally the idea for this came from thinking that a interrupting strikes and enervating blows would be cool in the same build together. But then I noticed the hit to crit conversion on disciplined strikes and just went with fighter/monk for swift flurry procs. I didn't check to see if swift flurry works with carnage though. I too think that making it so swift flurry can't trigger swift flurry again would fix the problem. Wouldn't be to much stronger than lightning strikes normally, and weaker against high deflection opponents when your output counts the most anyways.

Maybe he is punishing himself for killing his comrades?

Any weapons based character that only chose weapon proficiency's of a single damage type.

Stacking pen gives a disproportionate effect over anything else at this time. When you get to the threshold 1 pen = 70% damage. How much pen would you have to overshoot an enemies armor before pen = might? 23.... and that's assuming you never reach the 30% bonus for doubling the opponent's armor rating. Well, I'm sure I made some bad assumption or anything, but that's 70/3, 3 being the damage percentage might gives. Let's make the effect of pen more gradual and see if we can get it a little closer. Say... 25% damage loss per point of pen under an enemies armor rating, no bonus for going over. Now, 3 points of pen at the threshold = 75% damage. 1 pen = 25%. You would need to overshoot an enemies armor rating by around 8 points before pen=might, still high. Next, 1 pen=15%, you need 5 points of pen over an enemies armor rating before pen=might. Even that seems a little unreasonable but what happens if you go lower? Armor becomes useless. Can you even fix the value of penetration without making armor useless? I don't feel like you can, spells like expose vulnerabilities would still be better than fireball if pen was valued between 15-25% per point. I'll be okay with a system with a value of around 15-25% per point of pen, with no benefit for going over armor rating.... but at this point I don't think there's any way for me to believe it's possible to make this better than or as good as DR was. With the exception of really high damage stuff like dragons, but they'd probably have a disproportionately high pen anyways which would make the whole thing pointless. Besides to me relying on armor to reduce damage from a dragon doesn't make sense at all, he ought to be able to crush you and your armor like a tin can, please avoid.

It doesn't work to well against enemies with high deflection, but you can use confounding blind from the rogue to fix that issue against anything you really want dead.

Here's another one for good measure. Also while fighting the Xaurips I found swift flurry can proc off of cleave hits for some real mayhem.

Well... swift flurry procs that crit are able to proc additional swift flurry hits, so that's an issue. Additionally, disciplined strikes with Hearth Orlan give's you a 60% hit to crit conversion which is what enables this to happen. Something to consider anyhow. I'd like to note I was using dual spears which are the only one handed weapon set at 3.0 recovery and my watcher still did 10x more damage in this fight then the next best which was the rogue using dual stilettos.

Hearth Orlan fighter multi class using disciplined strikes would be pretty great for crit effect builds like monk for example with enervating blows and swift flurry. Intuitive inspiration might get nerfed I guess. I'm assuming death godlike doesn't just do +20% damage all the time... how does it actually function? Is it a execution buff like it was in PoE? (I mean does it only activate against low hp enemies).

Apparently one handed weapons all have the wrong recovery speed value, "fast" instead of "average", so probably best to wait until later builds to judge it.

Is that really excessive accuracy? At level 6 a multi class monk with transcendant suffering only has 2 more accuracy than a fine weapon gives and there are exceptional weapons in game (you can find at least 2 as well as a soulbound weapon).

Pretty sure it's so dragging a priest around to heal after battles isn't a party requirement.

At the moment fists aren't as good as other one handed weapon options anyways. They're a single damage type yet do less damage at the same speed. One handed weapons are all to fast at the moment though so maybe when we get a build that fixes one handed weapons fists will hopefully stay at the current speed and become a good option comparatively. My original estimate was a bit off though because lightning strikes is pretty good for every class. I think my main problem with force of anguish and torment's reach was just whiffing (didn't know grazes were gone) but I haven't retested it yet and probably won't until the next beta version is released.

Some good ones I've found so far for monk. Barb: Would go Orlan to focus on crit. Enervating blows, interrupting blows, swift flurry, all proc on crit. Barbaric blow has an increased crit chance as well. Cipher: Biting whip = +40% weapon damage. Hammering thoughts for extra penetration. Shapeshifter: Monk abilities work while shifted. Shifted lightning strikes is strong. Devoted: Probably the best melee multi class option atm. Once we can only pick a single proficiency I'll probably settle on swords because they have 2 damage types and good base damage. Priest: Skaen or Wael. Even low level priest spells are good. Skaen would be a good damage dealer, Wael gets arcane veil at level 1. Rogue: Once you get persistent distraction this will be one of the best options, it gives you consistent 50% damage with sneak attack and makes enemies easier to hit. You won't need to whiff abilities to try to enable sneak attack or maneuver around to flank enemies.