KDubya

I'd assume that detecting stealth would be the same as it works with enemies now. At a certain range the circle fills up yellow and then fills in red after which you are seen. Another possibility would be to start at the limits of visual range. This way there'd be no using stealth at all. Rogue could still go invisible, but they can only do that once and it has a duration. At the start the Rogue goes invisible and you run around for ten seconds to outlast the invisibility or just take the Rogues alpha strike and fight back. I still believe that having really high defenses and a self heal would be really useful in PoE PvP. There won't be Priest buffs or Scrolls of Valor or Potions of Eldritch Aim, all you'd have is your base accuracy and whatever you got from your weapons and equipment. Deflection and defenses would be much higher and would result in more misses and grazes.

It sounds like Rotfingers needs to be fixed then. Everything else has an attack versus a corresponding defense, there should not be an exception to that basic rule. The melee guy would prefer starting at 2 meters instead of at ten If you start out of visual range you could activate stealth which would let you close the distance a bunch before spotted. Again it would depend on how the arena is set up. The Juggernaut build does not really start to take off until you get the Shod in Faith boots and then Modality and Crucible of Suffering for the defenses. I do wish that there was an arena where various builds could be put into combat against each other. Until then the best we have is our Theorycrafting. Concerning the Rogue versus Wizard I think the Rogue would win due to its large offensive burst capability and the Wizards low endurance and need to buff.

It would depend on the geometry of the arena and at what range combat is initiated. Are you at 10 meters or are you at 2? Are you out of visual range and can activate stealth? Are you in combat mode right at the start which would allow buffing or are you out of combat mode until you visually spot one another? Again I'd bring up the Monk's walking around, not optimized gear or talents, 122 Fortitude. Go ahead with Rotfingers, petrify whatever spell or affliction you want, overcoming that is not going to be simple. Remember there is no team stacking debuffs before you land the big crowd control ability. If you spend time trying to debuff, which still has to bypass defenses, it leaves you open to an affliction attack or even just a normal attack. Also the Monk has Crucible of Suffering which boosts defenses by ten after the first attack. A Wizard is godly against the AI but I think you are overstating its potential in PvP. There are not any auto hit Missile strikes like DnD has, everything has to overcome a defense and Wizards have low base accuracy. Plus all defensive buffs need to be cast in combat. In PoE really high defenses are really powerful, and both Rogues and Wizards have no bonuses to defenses that Monks and Paladins innately have. The Wizard has spells and Arcane Veil but they both take time to set up. No one is going to give the Wizard time to buff, and without buffs the Wizard is vulnerable to attacks and at a big disadvantage trying to penetrate high defenses.

The quarterstaff on level 3 of the Endless Paths (need the Sabre for the statue) also has the speed enchantment as well as reach. Works nice on Ciphers who try to stay out of melee range. Another thought is to use Half Mast - Superb, overbearing pole ax and swap to Blade of the Endless Paths for the speed whenever the prone effect is not needed or is immune. Not sure how exactly you get it from the Adra Dragon and it does come really late in the game but it starts with Superb so there is that as a bonus.

I like to use Aloth's leather armor for the larger AoE. Free's up equipment slots for something better than overseeing. I find Second Chance on a squishy character usually just results in the character being KO'd again quickly or even killed forever if they jump back up maimed.

I see 60-70 damage per hit with 95 on a crit, all with deathblows active. With higher DR than Thaos the Monk would be taking less damage, more like 50-60 per hit, 85 on a crit. To get deathblows or even to just get sneak attack bonus you need to get past either a 122 fortitude or a 94 reflex both of which are higher than the Rogues accuracy. Also the Rogue in the screen shots is fully buffed. I'd assume that PvP would be no potions, scrolls, summons, food, resting bonus or prostitutes. There won't be any summons to set up flanking or to take the hits. The Monk will be striking faster with his fists than you will be with sabres and will have near double the endurance. All of this is not considering the monk summoning the Twins or just hitting you once with a Force of Anguish that puts you prone for ten seconds. Even spotting you 200 points of damage to start the fight the Monk just needs one action to summon two 280 endurance monsters that will surround, flank and beat on the Rogue. I don't think it will be as one sided as you seem to imagine it. I brought up the Paladin into the PvP discussion based on the strength of the heals from LoH. Instead of just needing to overcome his 220 or so endurance you also have two 200+ heals. The Paladin would effectively have up to 600 endurance. Factor in his Sacred Immolation burning and he can stand there healing himself while you burn.

Also a PvP build would be different. With a superb large shield and W&S talent I'd be up to 59+16+12+6 = 93 deflection w/o modality, 101 with it set to deflection. You would not be critting much. Also the damage from the Sabres is going to have an issue getting past the 27 slash DR and then the 322 endurance. The high defenses of the Monk will cause issues trying to land the afflictions in the first place. The Monks Fortitude and Reflex are both higher than the Rogues accuracy. On the flipside the Monk will have no problem hitting, damaging or applying a status effect on the Rogue whose defenses are lower than the Monk's accuracy. A Paladin with a decent Might score at level 13 would probably give a Rogue all they wanted in a fight due to Sacred Immolation and a few LoH. Throw in a couple FoD crits with a stunning or overbearing weapon and the Rogue is in a lot of trouble.

I'd say the Wizard is way ahead of the Cipher. Amplified wave is great BUT you only get to cast one of them and then you need to make a few normal attacks to regenerate focus. Time Parasite is great in that it speeds up your attacks but after using it you are out of focus and need to attack a few times to regenerate focus. A Wizard can bang out an Alacrity, get a 50% speed increase and then bang out four level seven spells and the follow up with four level six, five, four and so on. Nothing will survive being on the receiving end of a Wizard's full unloading of its Grimoire. The only defense is to kill the Wizard. Plus the Wizard can do this in every single battle if they are willing to back track or expend camping supplies. With the Rogue vs Monk deathmatch I'd be betting on the Monk Using my Juggernaut (with equipment but no paladin auras, buffs, food or rest bonuses) I have 322 Endurance, 27 slash DR, 25 pierce DR and 18 crush DR (Armor is merely exceptional, have not upgraded to Superb), Fortitude is 122, Reflex is 94, Will is 76, all of which get increased by 10 from Crucible of Suffering which kicks in after the first status attack. A 64 deflection and an 89 accuracy. Fists are fast speed, 3 DR bypass and are listed as 26 -33 damage. You get first hit with +50% sneak attack, and a blind strike vs Will. Reflex. Even if you get past the defense it is only a -20 -25 debuff to accuracy and deflection. Its not as if your deflection is high enough to cause misses against an 89 accuracy even if I'm blind. Even with a crit how hard is the hit? 100, 150 max? Factor in DR and it is probably less than 100. The point being that I am still alive and now have 10 wounds to spend. I use eight to summon the Twins who have like 280 endurance and the same DR as I do. Now it is three on one and the twins are not blinded and you're out of blinding strikes. Even without the Twins Torment's Reach spam is a full attack at +50% crush, how many of those can your Rogue take? If I took Force of Anguish, for two wounds I'd get a ten+ second prone. The fight would be like the early days of MMA where wrestlers and ground and pound were the kings. The Monk is the wrestler and the Rogue would be the Tae Kwan Do master.

The bard chant that drops frost traps works. Also there is a shield that Azzo sells that has winter's breath enchanted on it that you can buy.

dude seriously, you obviously like paladins and so do I but a paladin does not do more dps then a fighter. Im not replying anymore to this post, People if you are reading it, trust me, a paladin will not do more dps then a fighter I take it that math and reading aren't strong points. One hit that is 50% stronger does less than one hit plus multiple hits in a big AoE.

Maybe the solution is to play on expert mode or at least with the options of not showing dialogue options that you don't qualify for and not showing the reputation effect from dialogue options. That way you won't know what you are missing and you won't know what the effect will be and will need to rely on what sounds best or most in character.

I don't see the problem with engagement and dis-engagement attacks. I've always viewed kiting as an exploit of the AI. If kiting is to be allowed by the players have the AI do it back. That would make for some pissed off gamers when any intelligent enemy drops a tangle foot to slow you down and then proceeds to shoot you as you try to close the distance. Maybe a magic wand can recharge while you are running but it makes little sense that you can reload a crossbow or a firearm while running away. If you are in a melee fight, turning to run away should get you killed or at least hit hard, which is what the system is set up to simulate. Can you exploit it as shown in the video with multiple team members engaging a single enemy who is then manipulated into moving and triggering multiple dis-engagement attacks? Sure you can, lots of things can be exploited. It doesn't mean that you need to exploit them. If you feel the need to exploit everything that can be exploited then this is probably not a good game for you. Better AI would have every intelligent enemy have a ranged weapon on switch, preferably a hard hitting firearm. The opening move would be to focus fire on one of your team, preferably the weakest or most threatening, or in other words your Wizard. This is what my team does, "shoot the guy in the dress holding a Grimoire" is a winning tactic. Implementing this would make gameplay much less enjoyable as every battle would start with your Casters getting focus fired and killed. If you had a 'running endurance' pool it'd either force you to pump it up to be able to chase down kiters or you'd just be able to be kited that much more effectively when you get tired. This is not a RTS game but a team RPG. In Warhammer 40K having your guys kite (think it was called dancing or something like that, been a few years) melee or shorter ranged/slower enemies was part of the skill set. Here they assume that players will self regulate based upon whatever they feel is in character. The game lets me have unlimited rests without any real consequences. I can choose to cast every single spell I have every single fight and then rest and do it again. The game is not balanced for this as it assumes that I am not role playing a narcoleptic who needs to sleep 20+ hours per day.

Lower Fort save = more crits? The Barbarian's Brute Force ability targets the lower of Fortitude or Deflection, so lowering Fortitude by 40 will effectively give you a huge boost to accuracy and cause more of your attacks to be criticals. Using a weapon that has a stun or prone on crit will then be activated more often as well as the affliction attack itself will benefit from the lowered Fortitude. The Barbarian's Carnage will apply the same stun or prone on crit to anyone that also suffers a crit from the carnage attack. Together this can result in basically any enemy within a few meters of your Barbarian being knocked prone or stunned and kept that way until they are killed. The stun or prone also makes it easier to hit them in the first place and will also increase the chance to cause criticals.

I can't take anyone's opinion seriously who advocates taking Defender. It makes you easier to be hit. There is not a build out there for a Fighter that gets better when it gets hit. Pretty much anything a Fighter can do, a Monk will do better. Give them the same equipment and the Monk will be faster and do more damage, plus have more health, better CC, longer knockdowns and AoE attacks, not to mention a twin summon that are absolute monsters. Sacred Immolation hits a big area as hard as a two handed weapon, lasts for 30+ seconds and heals in the same huge area. This ability gained at level 13 will make your Paladin do more damage than your Fighter. At the same level 13 your Fighter can take Sundering Blows which does less damage than the first level Flames of Devotion that a Paladin gets. Your Fighter will always hit one target harder than your Paladin, but your Paladin will also be burning that one target plus anyone else in the area for damage equivalent to a two handed weapon. Prior to getting Sacred Immolation a Paladin will bring much much more to the team than a Fighter possibly can. If people could change Eder's class to anything besides Fighter they would. If you want to help the team while being 'tanky' you get a Paladin or Chanter, if you want to do damage and be durable you'd make a Monk or a tanky shield Rogue. With the new AI you can't even claim less micro as a reason for going Fighter The huge intellect Paladin you guy's are advocating has longer duration heals, longer duration buffs and bigger auras. No one is saying dump intellect but keeping it at base 10 is a viable build with tradeoffs. Once your aura is big enough to cover what you want it to cover any extra intellect is wasted. You don't need to cover anyone who stays six meters away from the battle, have them come closer and the smaller aura can include them as well. Maybe you need to make something other than wood elves. The buffs like reinforcing exhortation have a long duration at base, like 25 seconds or something. Increasing that to 40 seconds is nice but not needed. Lay on hands heals for a huge amount over time, Given a choice I'd rather have a high Might for more healing over a shorter period rather than less healing over a longer period. I'm guessing that your paladin builds are hatchet & shield, 3 dex aura bots, maybe 3 perception as well. Sure enough that build can't damage or hit enemies. A Paladin with balanced stats using a two hander on PotD has good enough defenses, good enough heals and does good enough damage. My PotD Kind Wayfarer with Tidefall is leading my team with damage done and for biggest hit.

With a base 10 intellect the aura covers 4 meters which is plenty big enough to cover all the melee on the team. With your "minimum 16 intellect" you'd have 5.44 meters. Its bigger but I have 6 stat points that I placed in Might to have +18% damage and heals. Tanky Rogues are great. maybe your squishy Rogue can do more damage but when you get KO'd your not doing much. A tanky Rogue will out damage a DPS Fighter AND have better defenses. Back to DPS Paladins - 1.) Base intellect (10) gets you a 4 meter aura that is enough to cover your entire melee frontline 2.) Faith and Conviction gets you huge bonuses to your defense and deflection. This lets you shrug off many enemy CC attacks and lets you skip a shield and use big two handers without sacrificing your deflection. 3.) A high Might score will increase all your heals, weapon damage and Sacred Immolation. So you can still serve the group with big LoH heals. 4.) Doing bigger damage with weapons will discourage enemies from dis-engaging you, thus letting you 'tank' the enemy better. 5.) Flame of Devotion alpha strike with a high might and an arquebus does a lot of damage with a huge accuracy. 6.) Sacred Immolation is a great ability that lasts pretty much the whole battle, is centered on you and follows you around, does good damage to all enemies around you and heals your team. Having a high Might score will greatly enhance this, as will Scion of Flames. It even keeps working when you are paralyzed. Once you get this the Paladin is a powerhouse. 7.) A Paladin that does damage is fun. Who wants a non-offensive aura bot that is effective only because the AI is not smart enough to ignore? 8.) Any Paladin brings more to the team than any Fighter possibly can.

From a roleplaying standpoint I don't like to have the same character choosing the high intellect and the high resolve dialogue choices. I look at the high intellect as being like a lawyer, looking for a loophole or a clever trick with words to get what you want. I look at Resolve as being the type of grounded individual who makes the hard choice and does the right thing, not the easy thing. I have a roleplaying problem having a character that both looks for the loophole easy way as well as being capable of choosing the right way. Based on the above it is easy for me to design and roleplay. Trying to get all possible dialogue options is just going to lead to frustration and sub-optimal builds.

With a 10 intellect my aura covers the entire frontline melee which is most of my team, which is all I need. Definitely not worthless. The heals are all affected by Might as well as intellect so the duration is lower but they are stronger. I did not include any damage analysis from FoD since it is only for two attacks, it is nice for those two attacks though. Vulnerable attack does more damage per second once the enemy DR is above five, test it out yourself. It is a set and forget ability. What talents are you taking that increase your damage beyond the ones I used for the Fighter? What is your Fighter build? How well does your low con, low deflection, low defenses work out for you on PotD? Prior to Sacred immolation a Fighter will out damage a Paladin, while a Paladin will have much higher defenses and deflection. Also the benefit to a team is much greater with a Paladin. If all you want is a single target damager that has some survivability you'd be better with a tanky Rogue rather than an offensive Fighter. Tanky Rogue Might 13 Con 10 Dex 18 Per 15 Int 4 - minimum with food and a +2 item to keep a target permanently prone with We toki Res 18 Talent weapon and shield, savage attack, deep wounds, reckless assault, the two hit>crits, Evasion, vulnerable attack, superior deflection, lesser reckless penalty, deathblows Damage = +9% might, +20% savage, +20% reckless = +49% w/o sneak, +99% w/sneak, +149% w/deathblows all with +20% hit>crit defenses with large shield - +3 Fortitude, + 35 Reflex (+13 + 6 + 16), +2 Will, + 32 deflection (+8 -8 +6 + 5 +5 +16) The tanky Rogue can handle all the mechanics and is durable enough to flank to set up its own sneak attacks w/o needing to babysit. With a little help from the team it can frequently get deathblows.

The summoned level one staff and the summoned level five lance are the best melee weapons for a wizard to use. Especially at level nine when level one spells become per encounter. Prior to that a reach weapon like a pike or staff helps with survivability. If you are also going to go with blights then Adventurer focus has wands in it along with Estocs, Poleax and flails. None are reach weapons but all are good. Flail and shield would help a lot with deflection at low levels before you can summon the staff for free.

There are 3 answers to this question 1. Why on earth would you build a paladin with low resolve? He is front line, he is melee, he is your tank. You will just be wasting ability points on other attributes that will not enhance the paladins strengths. You will build a weak paladin (especially on POTD) 2. A dps fighter will wipe the floor with a paladin, they can dump int and they have access to abilities to choose from at level up greatly increase dps. Alll melee classes will out dps a paladin. If you wanted a dps tank build a fighter 3. So the paladins strengths are tanking and buffs, you should build to enhance these qualities. Fighters are pretty much trash, bad abilities and do nothing to help the team. Your DPS fighter will probably have something like this: Might 18 Con 10 Dex 15 Per 15 Int 3 Res 17 - to balance out the low will from dumped intellect Talents - Weapon spec, focus, mastery, confident aim, vigorous defense, armored grace, sundering blow, two handed style, savage attack, and vulnerable attack. Damage will be +24% Might, +15% spec, +10% mastery, +20% savage attack +13.5% Confident aim (+20 minimum, plus the graze to hit roughly equal to 13.5%), +15% two handed style = +97.5% with +15 -20 +16 = +11% speed increase Defenses will be +8 Fortitude, +10 Reflex, and +0 Will, +7 deflection. All increased by +20 for like 10 seconds when Vigorous defense is activated. A Paladin (using my PotD Kind Wayfarer) Might 18 Con 10 Dex 10 Per 15 Int 10 Res 15 Talents - weapon focus, savage attack, vulnerable attack, flames of devotion, Lay on Hands, accuracy aura, sacred immolation, liberating exhortation, reinforcing exhortation, strange mercies, deep faith, scion of flames, two handed style. Damage will be +24% might, +15% two handed style, +20% savage attack = +59% damage at -20% speed plus the AoE burn from Sacred Immolation defenses will be +35 Fortitude (+8 +27), +37 Reflex (+10 +27), +32 Will (+5 +27), +18 (+5 +13) deflection team benefits of accuracy aura, lay on hands, liberating and reinforcing exhortations and AoE heal from Sacred Immolation The Fighter swings 31% faster and 38.5% harder against one target. Unit damage would be 1.11*1.97 = 2.19 Paladin would be 0.8*1.59 = 1.272 weapon + 1.44 (scion of flames and Might) Sacred Immolation for 2.71. Each additional target would further the gap. With Sacred Immolation (base damage same as two handed weapon) the Paladin will out damage against just one enemy, and be much more defensive and help the team. No reason to even bother comparing a Monk to a Fighter, they are not even in the same league. If there were PvP Monks would be banned. A single summoned Twin could give a Fighter a hard fight, two would woop his ass, two plus the Monk himself could hold the Fighter down and sodomize him

If there were PVP they'd be banned

They are quite powerful, actually that is a huge understatement. They are fracking godly They spawn with like 284 endurance with Zahua which I believe is adjusted by your base Constitution. They get any spell effects that are on equipment other than weapons. I've never had them de-spawn before the battle was over so I don't think they have a set duration. They appear to have the same DR as the Monk that spawned them. I believe I even saw one get back up from a Second Chance item (ring of wonder) but I think that might have been the only time I ever had one get KO'd. With two Monks on the team, spawning four of these monsters is stupidly powerful but balanced in that the enemy Monks can do the same to you.

The Sanguine Plate Frenzy doesn't stack with Swift Strikes, but the +25% lightning lash does work. I'd try and get intellect up to eight at least, with some food or an item you'd be back to ten and the duration on Swift Strikes would be long enough to be worthwhile. If you are really good about eating your fish casserole and wear a +2 item you could leave it at six and buff to ten. Also the intellect will make the cone on Torment's big enough to catch a few enemies each time rather than just one. You could go with the following for stats: Might 18 Con 16 Dex 14 Per 15 Int 6 Res 9 The +25% damage from Lightning Strikes is really nice to have, as well as the +25% attack speed. But I agree with you that they are not worth it if you are going with a 3 intellect. For me I'd drop the dex or the perception and bring everything up to ten. Less attack speed or accuracy but more survivable and better Will saves.

Once you can get the Paladin you'll have a stronger frontline, the Ranger pet works pretty good as well. I'd look to higher a merc to help out up front until you replace with the Paladin. This would let you have the merc, Eder and Kana form a line to hold the enemy while your Rogue can flank. Or if your Rogue is a Reach weapon type, the three guys up front will let you stand behind and attack from safety. The Rogues I use are either Pike users (Tall Grass) or large shield tanky rogues like Devil. I don't have the micro to keep a more squishy type Rogue alive.

Who else is on your team besides Eder? Who is standing up front with Eder to fight in melee?

Defender is a terrible ability. It lowers your deflection by 5 and make you easier to be hit. Extra engagements are worthless, again not worth the ability point spent. Building three strong melee frontliners IS party survivability, I'm not suggesting a less survivable party but a much more survivable party structure. Also with three melee there won't be five enemies attacking one guy, it'll be two or three instead. If the enemy is running past Eder to engage what you call weaker party members the problem is your party as well as how you built Eder. Another option is to have heavy CC and lockdown the enemy every fight with a Wizard or Cipher.