Climhazzard

I don't know what suppresses Zealous Focus other than Blessing, I'd genuinely like to know, might help me plan my parties better.

Does it really? I'm aware that it gets suppressed by Zealous focus and Blessing, what else? I'm sure it's not suppressed by Devotions of the Faithful, Crowns of the Faithful, or Inspiring Radiance, and unlike Aspirant's Mark (or Blessing for that matter) it doesn't run out and you don't have to cast it.

Yeah, I use the defensive aura when I run a Paladin, but the Paladin version is definitely better when you're using it, in which case Ruffian or Adventurer are your most versatile choices. I think you have 170 focus at level 16, or around that, so at that point 10 extra is pretty useless imho.

Personally I can't play cipher with low or average dex, all average speed spells feel painfully slow when enemies are targeting you, especially the self buffs that can help take off some of the pressure, like psychovampirc shield or borrowed instinct. The only early spell that comes out fast when you really need it to is puppet master. If your cipher is to slow you may end up having to use withdraw on him when he comes under pressure, that's how I feel anyways. As far as versatility goes, I'm surprised people don't recommend gallant focus for accuracy, it effects melee and ranged weapons as well as your spells, and nearby party members. Is it because blessing suppresses it? There's a ton of other spells your priest can spend his time casting instead. To me the most versatile cipher might be an Island Aumuau that has somethng like... Gallant focus Biting whip Draining whip Arms Bearer Quick Switch Two weapon or Two hander Penetrating shot Apprentice sneak attack I like to have veteran's recovery though and there'd be no room for that, I also like to have vulnerable attack when I'm duel wielding. So you'd definitely be giving things up to be more versatile. Still you could use a vast array of weapons if you wanted to, all bows/guns/crossbows as well as your pick of duel wielding or two hander weapons depending on which route you want to go. You'd have 4 weapon sets you can quick switch through for a massive burst of focus at the beginning of the fight too. Also worth noting that you lose a lot of potential accuracy by such a build. If you were on PoTD you'd want more accuracy. Gallant Focus Weapon Focus Marksman Woodelf That would essentially give you 16 more accuracy than your versatile Island Aumuau, but you'd likely just end up using a warbow and maybe 1 gun.

Try this http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85513-class-build-storm-plague-caller/ Since you're using 2 rangers one can do storm and the other plague, it'll be devastating.

I doubt there is a best, but I bet Paladin-Monk-Priest-Wizard could get through fairly easy, everyone would need to be able to handle some melee. Maybe Paladin-Monk-Priest-Druid, would handle trash fights easier but not sure about bosses.

Using NPCs or a full team of your own creation?

All the talents need to be revamped...no more useless talents or talents that don't noticeably change gameplay. In summary get rid of trash talents For sure.... like, mortification of the soul... Developers need to play and tune the game on the highest PoTD difficulty. This is to ensure no challenges are impossible to overcome. (I could not kill Adra Dragon on PoTD)Plenty of people have beat everything on PoTD, there are other difficulties to choose from. Reduce the number of party members to fourWith 6 parties can be more varied, and you can play with 4 if you want. Let us customize companions from the start of the game. Do not give us random stat distribution NPCs to salvage from their miserable attributes (Sorry Pallegina...)Would be kind of nice but the option to make your own companions is in game already. Would like to be able to change the level 1 talent pick though. All classes should have natural regeneration of health, even if some classes have more than others. Natural regeneration should be upgrade-able with talentsThe game balance was largely based around rest management. I like it but I wouldn't mind it being changed one way or the other, eliminating rest management would require large rebalancing of per/rest spell caster classes, some argue that should happen anyways. Also don't forget that there are talents available you can use to recover health. Plan for expansions from the start including the maximum level cap and talents. Scaling an area up because the player's level is too high breaks the flow of the game and really is an odd way to implement an expansionThe content level scaling is definitely a bit awkward. Probably happened because PoE was crowdfunded so they weren't sure if they would be able to do an expansion or not. Players should be rewarded for designing good character builds. Remove the over dependence of classes on gear to be viable. (Forgemaster Gloves I am looking at you)Some builds are certainly item dependent, but not all of them are, you could always play the ascetic monk. Tanks/casters can all get by with no special items, monks only really need the shod in faith boots but they aren't a necessity either. Item design is varied and interesting, it's nice to be able to design characters around them. After a trap is detected, there is no reason for companions to run into them. Bonus against traps should increase upon detectionIt would be really nice if the AI could be set to avoid hostile ground effects, but I could also see it leading to some unexpected chaos when enemies cast a ground effect in the middle of your party. I usually turn the AI off if I find that positioning is very important for my current tactic. A single attribute like Resolve should not dominate when it comes to dialog options. A resolve of 18 in PoE was enough to get the PC through most of the dialog options. Dialog options should be distributed better among the attributesHighly agree. The bounties seemed 'tacked on' to me. the XP gain for those missions did not match overall game balanceEverything about the stronghold was basically tacked on, another issue related to the game being crowdfunded I'm sure. It still had a lot more to it than the stronghold in BG2 though for example. There should be more opportunities for people to gain attribute points through questing. The three in PoE (heritage hill, Council of Stars, Skaen Temple) were not enoughThere's more than 3 for sure... http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Talent But I agree, I like these. I personally like min maxing. i like to see what I can squeeze out of a build. There are those who do not like to play that way and that is fine as well. PoE 2 should pay off for both types of play styleImo the attributes are very well designed, they are all important to every class, any class can easily clear the game with all 13s, or specialize by min/maxing. My biggest hope for PoE 2 is that it's 100x less buggy than PoE 1 has been and still is.

The wizards with 3 constitution and resolve while wearing a dress should expect to get wrecked when something looks their way. If the enemies were all super predictable the game would get a little boring imo, they are already plenty predictable as is. And with the current design absolute min/maxing is a little less desirable than it was when the game was first released. Also every class has built in mechanics to take the heat off when they get attention, as well as an extra weapon slot for a hatchet/buckler. Wizards have tons of OP defensive spells, Druids can shapeshift, Rangers have a pet, Priests can shift to a heavier shield and cast consecrated ground. Just use them, along with some CC, and you'll be fine.

Lol Druid spell design is like... should I open with a relentless storm or should I open with a ... relentless storm, I guess an overwhelming wave might be a good alternative, but mostly everything pales in comparison. Except the tornado spell, such fun. Wizards are really good though, especially on PoTD since they can self buff their own accuracy with Eldritch aim which is a level 1 spell. Level 2 spells have an AoE stuck, AoE blind, AoE health drain. Level 3 spells have an AoE slow, AoE DR/Deflection debuff, self haste, minor blights. Level 4 confusion spell is a life saver. The list goes on, you just have to know what works best for various spell levels, and since their accuracy buff stacks with priest accuracy buffs they are more likely to be able to CC bosses than any other class.

Maybe it's sexier? Or it just saves resources.

Probably want to consider ways to easily enable deathblows, stunning shots seems a given, stun on crit weapons, spells that cause weaken such as this wizard spell... http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Ryngrim%27s_Enervating_Terror If it's allowed I'd level up lore on the rogue too to give him some extra oomph.

Just get the shod in faith boots for your monk, level up survival for +healing, wear something like Maneha's scale armor for even more +healing, then put him on point, turn his AI on, and let him blow stuff up with Torment's reach until you feel like micromanaging him (usually when his wounds fill up). Monk doesn't have to be complex, and he can be very strong, more so when heavily managed like every class. But after using relentless storm (druid), basically locking down every enemy on the screen, then shape shifting to do more melee damage than your melee classes, you probably won't think monk is the best class, but I do think he fills front liner and enemy backline disrupter roles better than any caster classes.

I use that party setup but I like to have Kana as my 3rd melee instead of Eder. Toss on some heavy plate armor, a shield, hold the line, shield specialization, and he's a tank, but he can sit there melting enemies with his fire aura, make your healing awesome with his mercy aura, or summon ogres to smash your enemies. Also if you like items that proc on crit received for your monk you should consider the shod in faith boots if you can still get them. Very good healing for your monk and surrounding allies. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Shod-in-Faith

Vampyr's and enemy Monks do their absolute best to beeline right to your squishiest character, ranged enemies tend to do this as well. Everything else usually just targets the first guy they laid eyes on, and occasionally will go for your squishier characters if they're free from engagement. This is from the perspective of someone who absolutely never uses hatchet/large shield min/maxed tank characters, usually a beefy melee dps (monk/barb), and a couple of guys/gals with a medium shield and an extra engagement slot (paladin/chanter). I like to stealth around in fast game mode and only unstealth my tankier members right at the start of an encounter so they receive all the initial enemy hate.

Was just looking through chanter chants looking for synergies, I can see some but I was thinking they could use a few more. A few good ones are... Level 3 +10 deflection overlapping level 2 frightened. Level 5 100% to healing recieved overlapping level 4 15% of damage restored as endurance. Level 2 Fear/terrified protection overlapping level 1 will/fortitude buff. I'm not sure how much intelligence is need to make them overlap, especially the 2nd one, but i can see uses for them. I feel like more chants ought to be designed like this to synergize with other chants in various ways. So you don't just stick to using one fire damage aura by itself. And if you did use it, it wouldn't be by itself, maybe it would be with another chant that lowers enemy damage resistance. Invocations could use some work, some feel pretty cool, like the cone paralyze that covers most of the screen, while others feel entirely to situational considering that you rarely have the resource to use them on demand. Back to the OP, I don't really mind how the game is designed around per encounter/per rest management, with classes being stronger at one or the other. But it needs to be well balanced... Like my monk has some questionable per rest abilities such as mortification of the soul and clarity of agony, these aren't even the worst examples of bad per rest abilities on an essentially per encounter class, meanwhile wizards/priests/druids can pick mastery spells to be per encounter from their large selection of very useful per rest abilities.... /shrug. I don't think they should try re-inventing the wheel, PoE works very well the way it is, and they'd have more time to design levels, story, etc, I just think they need to polish it some, make it shiny...

Pretty much all or most of the guides in the top stickied thread are up to date. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85492-the-obsidian-boards-build-list-last-modified-20-jul-16/ Priest, Wizard, and Druid are generally the best classes, but also require the most micromanagement. So if you plan on using a 6 man party I recommend using builds that don't always require a lot of micromanagement. Support priest, shapeshift druid, wand/blast wizard, etc. Shapeshifter druid for example can wreck per encounter with shapeshift, but when the going gets tough he can easily go full spellcaster to tip the balance with his powerful spells.

If you've done the lich and have a wizard you should have the spell Concelhaut's Crushing Doom, I've found it can stunlock pretty much anything at least on hard difficulty, even dragons since the prone uses a reflex save. Pre buffs before using it would be something like Eldritch aim, Devotions of the Faithful, and Prayer against Fear (use a scroll for Prayer for faster prebuffing if you want). I think I recall the blind debuff may have been an issue in that fight too, not sure, but you may want to prepare a countermeasure for that too. If you can successfully cast it at the beginning of the fight, you should have enough time to clear out the adds so that you can focus on the dragon. I also tend to use characters as decoys to buy time for pre buffing, which I resurrect later in the battle if they get taken out.

I think some of the quest related spells you can find for Wizard might be OP. With Concelhaut's Hammer I could lock down any boss playing on hard, I stunlocked 2 dragons simultaneously. But I redid the last dragon fight a couple of times for fun and figured out how to stunlock them with my monk too via longpain+force of anguish. So overall the game is feeling fairly balanced right now. Though I haven't messed around with any good endgame fighter/rogue/barb builds, a lot of their builds are very item dependent so I steer away from using them early game and never go back by endgame because I get used to using my party the way it is.

Iron wheel synergizes incredibly well with monk mechanics. You can run him on point and the enemy alpha strike will immediately put him at 10 wounds, at that point he'll be very tanky due to iron wheel. With items like shod in faith and hunter's mail, he'll be back to full endurance by the time aggro spreads out and he'll then be able to go to town on everything in sight. I especially like using flagellant's path and long pain, so he can be everywhere and hit everywhere. Props to the developer that thought of iron wheel. Highly recommend it to monks that want to fight neck deep in their enemies. Healing, DR, and "other" defenses (reflexes, fortitude, will), are the best defenses for a monk; and iron wheel gives the monk as much DR as he needs to survive, or as little as he needs to accumulate more wounds.

You don't even need high intelligence for this bug to happen, my monk has 10 intelligence and wrecked the Head Vampyr and his minions on the bridge around floor 8 of the Endless paths in about 2 uses of Torment's Reach. I get the feeling this bug isn't just happening with Torment's Reach, for example Iconic projection hits multiple times, and I think other things are too. It makes me feel bad for playing my monk when Torment's Reach propagates like that because it's so strong when it does.

The trap is based on the level 6 wizard spell death ring which has a chance to kill instantly, it's only a chance though. The area of effect is very large.

I can't view them either.

I like the way the Berathian priest robes look on my cipher. I like how they look on my monk too but they weren't sturdy enough for my PotD run..

On my PotD playthrough I got 3 different braces of speed... no bracers with accuracy or puissant melee.