KDubya

Is he counting the base 100% damage as well? At 3% per missing endurance you'd get 50% + 150% for +200% damage add in the 100% you do already and you get +300% damage. If he is correct then the description is off as it should read 50% + 150% damage based on endurance loss If he is counting the base 100% damage then it would be 100% + 50% +50% for a total of +200% damage which matches his total of 50% +50*3% = 200% but his math is wrong, its not +3% per missing endurance below 50% it is 100% base + 50% talent + 50% x 1 for =200% damage or +100% added to all your other modifiers like Might, Reckless, Savage Attack, Sneak Attack and Deathblows. This also matches the in game description. The +2% would then make it 100% base +50% + (50% x 1+2) = +300% damage counting the base damage. Your typical Rogue with 20 Might, Reckless, Savage, Superb weapons, Sneak and Deathblows will do 100% (base) + 30% (might) + 20% (Reckless) + 20% (Savage) + 45% (Superb) + 50% Sneak and +50% deathblow for +315% damage including the base damage. You won't be activating Devastating Blow when they are at zero so you'll never see the full bonus. Let's say you use it at 20%. This gets you 50% + 30% for another 80% damage. Your total is 315% + 80% = 395% damage. This is roughly 25% more damage. If you used all three uses one after the other you'd get 11.85 unit damage compared to 9.45 unit damage or slightly less than the damage caused by one more attack. Is that worth an Ability? The booster talent ups the unit damage from 3.95 to 4.55. Using that three times in a row gets you 13.65 unit damage which puts you ahead by a full attack and change. Is that worth the cost of one Ability and one Talent? For sure three hits to kill something is better than four hits but the opportunity to see bigger numbers comes at a steep cost in abilities and talents. Backstab gets you +100%, is usable every time you come out of stealth and doesn't have any per rest or low endurance requirements and it still is a bad choice, but I'd say it is better than Finishing Blow.

You mean Hiravois,Sagani,Kana all of them in heavy armor and shield? Or just Kana with heavy armor and shield? Trying to play with POTD and I'm wondering which armor I should use on my ranger and other characters.For example I wanne to play as Barb as dd with two-handed sword, he have 40 deflection,lvl 5,dont wanne make him tank, but he struggles to stand up if I send him into battle and surrounded by 3 enemies, so maybe beter options to give him shield? Or is it possible to play with bard as dd, just need to have 2 pro tanks on POTD? Is obligatory to have on every character heavy armor and high as possible deflection, no matter what class in POTD? I was pretty unclear in my description. Kana is in heavy armor. Sagani was in padded or the new Superb Hides armor, Hiravois was wearing Aloth's Leather armor for the extra AoE size. I rely on armor and melee toughness to win the fights, with more casters you can either kill everything before they can damage you or CC everything so that they never attack, or some combination of the two. I have four heavy armored melee type plus a pet until I get the Devil who replaced Hiravois. Then I have five heavy armored melee types and a pet with only Sagani providing ranged support and no casters. I do have Kana use and swap out per rest spell enchants on equipment, if needed their are always lore and scrolls. The only reason I rest is if health loss threatens a maiming or worse a maiming followed by a Second Chance resurrection in combat. For me and my playstyle the above team works well but it is definitely not the only way. A typical caster heavy party will have completely different strengths and have difficulty with different encounters than I do. Find out what you enjoy and build a strategy around that.

If the bag of holding effect of the stash bothers you just use and sell only whatever fits in your characters slots. treat everything in the stash as left behind. If you want you could go back through the area and transfer a few items from your stash into your inventory to simulate going back for stuff you left behind, Easily fixed.

Two handed style only affects melee weapon not ranged weapons. It would work, you can beat the game with that build but all you have is auto-attack combined with the micro hell of swapping weapons four times per fight. Specifics: 1.) The Fighter gets you +25% damage from spec and mastery, confident aim is roughly equivalent to +13.5% for a total of +38.5% damage and Armored Grace is close to +6% attack speed. That's pretty much all you get. A.) Ranger - could do the same multi-gun swap scheme plus get benefit from Swift Aim for +20% attack speed and -50% reload speed. Plus get Wounding Shot, plus the Pet. Or even start with Twin Shots until you need to reload and then activate Swift Aim. B.) Rogue - can do the same gun swap trick but also get Deep Wounds, Deathblows and a lot of per encounter special attacks. c.) Cipher - gets +40% damage to weapons with one talent which is more than the fighte gets with two abilities and a talent. Plus you get Cipher powers. A Cipher will end up out damaging your Fighter as a side effect of trying to get more Focus, they're not trying to do damage it just happens and its better than what your Fighter will focus his entire build on. Unless you are trying for the most optimized "non-optimal" build as a personal challenge I just can't see the appeal from a numbers standpoint. The thing that Fighters are best at is taking the "Take the Hit" aura and acting as a secondary endurance source for the rest of the team. All you need is a high constitution, high intellect, high lore and the two health heals.

After all the discussion I don't see any real solution. Especially at this point in the game. You can't un-ring the bell. Back in Beta maybe the whole system could have been changed but you can't take away a big shiny like per encounter spells which would not solve the problem any way. Take away per encounter: 1.) Forces you to either not use spells and use auto attacks or long lasting blights - Not Fun. Can still be quite effective but fails on the Fun scale. 2.) You use spells the same you just need to rest more - Backtracking to Inns again is not Fun. Doesn't change the power out put at all, in fact with more frequent resting you can let loose with the big guns more often. 4.) Change the number or rate at which you gain per encounter spells - Lots of work for no real change. If it stops you from casting it becomes un-Fun, if it forces more rests it is un-Fun. 3.) Leave per encounter as is - it is fun to use spells, being forced to rest more or go back to Inns is not fun. Best choice. Option: Rebalance individual spells 1.) Lots of work to look at every spell and also all the synergy effects of multiple spells and abilities acting together. Making the sum of the parts greater then their individual sums is the great appeal of a party based game. Maybe someone can start an individual thread to discuss any specific offending spells. 2.) Leave spells alone as they currently are, fix any broken or obvious bugs. - Best choice. Option - Drop all Vancian Casters with their per day spells and go to a focus based system to power everything. 1.) Dream for PoE2. Might be difficult since it is now expected to be the same for PoE2. The time to make a big sweeping change like this would have been in the Beta. Maybe it is too bold or innovative to throw away the crutches of following past games. Bottom line nothing is going to change and at this point I don't think it'd be a good idea to change anything anyway. You just can't balance a quadratic class, other than to make them required like BG2 did with mages being needed to fight mages.

Every attack resets the Deep Wounds so there is only ever just one DoT in effect and the damage per tick is the same. It also means that a 3 intellect repeatedly hitting the same target will get as much out of Deep Wounds as a 20 intellect repeatedly hitting the same target will. A 20 intellect Deep Wounds guy will do better hitting everyone once to set the DoT and have his high intellect keep the DoT lasting for a long time.

The summoned twins do not spawn with copies of the weapons you wield, just fists. My Zahua twins did not each have TideFall or the Greenstone Staff. They still did great but you can't get extra on hit spell effects or extra casts of spells from weapons and shields that way. You do get to use per day spells that are on your equipment. Some Warding Gaze or something like that on a belt was available to the twins. Second Chance from armor also looked to work, have not seen Frenzy from Sanguine Plate or the Shod in Faith boots activate on the twins yet. I need to try with the armor that has the stunning wave and electrical spell to see if that works, try rings as well.

It is the only reach weapon that has the speed enchant. If you don't need or want an effect on crit and just want maximum damage while having the safety of reach that Quarterstaff is all you got. For a Barbarian you want things with on hit or on crit status effects for Carnage mayhem, Rogues get better hit>crit which makes Tall Grass so nice, plus the status effects help them get Deathblows. If all you want is fast damage output, like a Cipher, the speed Quarterstaff is great for the safety of reach. You have Amplified Wave to fuel, why care about an on crit prone? But I agree that thematically a prone inducing Quarterstaff just fits.

Ive also read that WM mooks have an ability to vault over a frontliner, knock them prone, and land near a backliner for facemelting. So I'm curious about something. Lets say your in a bottleneck and you have your tank up front, maybe the offtank behind them, then the rest all in a line down a hallway. Can the mook vault all of your party members at the same time, knocking them all prone on the way to the backliner? Or can they only vault one party member at a time? Do you mean Flagellant's Path? It has a range of only 2m, and I don't recall Zahua knocking anyone prone or my guys being knocked prone by it. The rogue also has a similar abilty that let's you trick-switch position with an enemy, potentially landing in the face of your backliner. That's why traps are useful. And the more you bottleneck the more you should use them. I think he is talking about the barbarians using Dragon Leap. Flagellant's Path has a 10 meter range hitting and de-buffing defenses of everything in the way.

You guys lost me with the X math and the Abracadabra Y'all have convinced me that the Durgan Steel is not shafting two handed weapons, or at least no more than dual wield Vs Two hander goes which is pretty well balanced considering DR. But it still is not good for two handers when it comes to the three Sky Dragon eyes you can get which let you upgrade one two hander or three one handers. Considering that some of the really good one handers are already Superb, it is harder on the two hander especially ranged.

Sometimes they despawn after combat ends and sometimes they don't. For extra fun you can hit them with a reinforcing exhortation to make them tankier It does cost 8 wounds which is a lot and the enemy likes to use it as well. An extra 8 DR from Iron Wheel while spending wounds on the normal Torments and Flagellant's would be very good as well. So many good options and ways to build a Monk. Here is a question I have: Are you limited to only ten wounds at a time? I've never seen more than that on the counter. With regards to the Fighter, I've moved on. Monks, Paladins, even Tanky Rogues in armor with shields (Devil) are more appealing by far. I still need to roll a barbarian but I see no reason to think that they won't be awesome and a lot of fun. The Fighter Sundering Blow is nice, sort of like the Paladin's Flames of Devotion except it is not a first level ability but its level 13 final super awesome power

Got to thirteenth level and trying out the twin summons. All I can say is WOW!! These guys are great. They don't seem to have a duration either, not sure if that is a bug. On PotD, at 13th level on Monk, 12th for the rest of the team and went to Craigholdt. Summoned the twins and sent them off to do some damage on their own. Came up on that Ogre and he was alone. The twins were able to whoop his ass all alone. Best of all my Second Chance ability from my armor works with the twins. With my high con they each had like 280 endurance and I think the same huge DR. I can't wait to see how Zahua clones wielding Durgan enhanced Tide Fall will do. I'd even think about shooting my guy in the head to activate these Duplicates of Death. I can't see any reason not to take this ability at level thirteen. Too bad they can't get their own wounds to power Flagellant's or to summon their own duplicates. It'd be like the Wizard's Apprentice with the brooms

It looks to be centered on the target. Either way it is very nice when it procs. I've only used the Ranger, no experience with the Chanter or the Cipher proc. If you are taking the Ranger along with you and you can't use the bow with your main, I can't see a reason not to have Sagani use it.

You need to work them like SapientNode does OR you can give them a reach weapon like Tall Grass OR you can give them a weapon and shield and heavier armor and use them as a more damaging damage spec'd Fighter. Devil of Caroc works well for the last type. Ranged damage I'd say is always going to be better with a Ranger. Rangers will be faster with the big slow firing weapons due to Swift Aim, more accurate and harder hitting with bows due to Vicious Shot, or just more DPS from Twin Shot. Plus you get the pet as a disposable summon. Plus Rangers can use Stormcaller. Maybe you could make something out of the fast firing Superb rod that prones on crit with Dangerous Implements in order to set up your own sneak attacks but that seems pretty gimmicky and is just a better auto-attack bot.

May I note in passing that I just love how you attempt to turn the current state of affairs: "There is a limited supply of Durgan Steel. Everybody benefits greatly from using Durgan steel on their armour, non-casters benefit greatly from Durgan steel on their weapons, casters don't use their weapons, they use spells, so don't benefit from Durgan steel on their weapons as it doesn't affect their spells. Thus, if a non-caster and a caster want to benefit the same, it costs them 1 Durgan steel for armour. However, if the non-caster wants to benefit even more in everything he does than is available to the caster, he can do that be spending an additional 1-2 Durgan steel on weapons/shield" into: "Again casters get better treatment!" That's some seriously flawed logic at work. The cost is the same but the benefit is not. Two handed weapons get +15% attack speed, +0.3 to crit miltiplier and 20% hit>crit for the cost of two units. A weapon and shield user, using the same two units of material gets +30% attack speed, +0.3 crit multiplier, 20% hit>crit, 10% ranged reflection and 15% of incoming hits>grazes. It would not have to be double or anything but better it should be. Instead of +15% speed make it +20% or +25%. Melee is always gear dependent, casters are not, especially Wizards. A naked Wizard is not very much weaker than a fully equipped one, that comparison with melee classes is laughable. Even a Monk relies on his armor to keep him alive in combat. Just imagine the whining here if Durgan Steel was only able to enhance steel weapons and armor, you know since it is Durgan Steel and not Durgan threads, or Durgan leather or even Durgan wood. If it only worked on scale, mail, breastplates, brigndine or plate there'd be ten threads a day asking about why the mage hate. A caster heavy party of four with two tank types can all get Durgan enhanced armor for six units and the two tanks can get two more each for either a two handed, two single weapons or a weapon and shield. A melee heavy party of four with two caster types can also choose to enhance everyone's armor but is then left with leaving two of the four unenhanced. I don't mind having to make the above difficult decision as to where to spend limited resources but a caster heavy party does not have to make any limiting resource decision at all.

Why all the hate for the two handed weapons? It gives the same benefit, its not as if it is a stronger enchant or anything, it just takes twice as much. The same with Durgan Steel. If I use Durgan Steel on Tall Grass pike it uses two ingots, if I use Durgan steel on We Toki axe it uses one. Both get the same enchantment. I can even spend another Durgan steel on my shield and get another speed boost for my attacks, as well as the defensive boost from the enhanced shield as well. The rare resource needed for Superb enchants work the same way. I could maybe see the reasoning to charge double for ranged weapons, which are also two handed, but even then their damage per second is less than melee weapons to start with so I don't think that even ranged weapons should be hit up with double cost enchanting. With at best ten available ingots the double cost is quite large, even worse with the really limited number of Sky Dragon eyes. I think there are only like three of them so you can do one two handed weapon or three one handed weapons. Exceptional materials are all vender sold so you can use them anywhere. The limitations on Superb enchantments and on double charging for two handed weapons just seem like part of the general piling on that non-casters have to endure. For Durgan steel a caster needs just one to speed up his recovery time on his armor or robe. He doesn't use weapons since he casts spells. A cipher or ranger, even a chanter will be using Stormcaller which can't be enhanced further. Melee would like to also enhance their armor as well as their weapon and/or shield which ends up costing three Durgan steel per melee. So again casters get better treatment

What does and does not stack has always been wonky. Reckless Assault (modal) + Savage Attack (modal) + Vulnerable Attack (modal) all work and all are offensive. Defender (modal) does not work with anything whether defensive or offensive. Duality of Mortal Presence (modal) does not work with Cautious Attack (modal) but does work fine with Savage Attack (modal)

Why is she worse than other Rogues? Make a Rogue with the same stats and place them in plate mail to get comparable DR. Her armor speed reduction is only 40% instead of the 50% from plate. She is not a dress wearing glass cannon, give her Weapon and Shield style, the retaliate buckler and a good Sabre with Fellbore for an alpha strike and she kick's ass. Disease immunity might not be that great but there is a lot of poison around. Compared to broken super cheese that is Moon Godlike's AoE heal three times per encounter, everything is weak. And what is bad about Zahua other than the drugged up tribal schtick? With heavy armor and fists or weapons he does great. I've got him in the Sanguine Plate, Shod in Faith boots and Durgan enhanced Tide Fall greatsword and he is a monster.

You get the first +50% all the time. The rest depends on how much endurance the target has. At 50% endurance you don't add anything beyond the base +50%. At 30% endurance you add +20% damage to the base +50%. At 5% Endurance you add +45% to the base +50% for 95% total. I'm not sure what the booster talent does. The +2% did not make any sense to me. The ability itself is pretty bad so I never though to even think about the booster for it. Per encounter it'd maybe be worth looking at but per rest puts it in the garbage heap. As a Rogue you already are at +200 - 300% damage add so another 50-100% is not much.

What ability do you skip in order to take Long Stride? Torment's Reach and Swift Strikes are cornerstone picks, Duality and Crucible of Suffering are what lets you shrug off the CC attacks, or at least make them graze which is good enough. That leaves level five and Turning Wheel which adds a bunch of damage. Get eight wounds hit back with a Torment's that adds +35% damage in a burning lash, hit another Torment's and you hit for +30% damage and so on. Running around is just going to trigger a lot of disengagement attacks and if you are not running around what good is Long Stride? Level eleven is not that late in the game now with a level fourteen cap. With Flagellant's Path your movement IS an attack. It even works when you get stuck which is really useful in Durgan's Battery. With my two heavy Monks I start combat engaging and stopping the onrushing melee enemies. Once I get a few wounds I can start using Flagellant's Path to zip across the battlefield damaging everyone in the way. Enemies that were engaged with the monks run after them setting up a return Flagellant's Path through their line. Enemy mages make this all possible by hitting one of the Monks with their big damage spell, usually some sort of missile strike, which just fuels the Flagellant's Path that hastens their death. If they don't strike at the Monks, the Monks will chew up their melee and then go after the mages and archers, if they do strike the Monks it just gives them wounds to power up the Flagellant's Path that brings the Monk right up in their grill. It even debuffs their defenses making it more easy to hit them. Why just move when you can attack AoE in a line?

You get a Ranger's Stunning Shot at level eleven so it's not that late. Give Sagani and Itumaak a try now in 2.0, they are much improved. Give Sagani Stormcaller and she is beastly. Her high perception pretty much gets her an extra 10 accuracy so when Itumaak dies she is about as accurate as she was back in 1.06 when the pet was alive. The pet is a lot sturdier and hits for 60+ damage, give him the knockdown talent and he is as good as a Fighter The Stormcaller has a -6 lightning DR debuff that lasts for a 9+ seconds. If your team had lightning lashes on their weapons they'd benefit greatly from this due to how lashes work. And the 10% chance to cast Returning Storm on hit or crit is just crazy good and it can activate many times per battle. For a good Quarterstaff there is Durance's at the start, free burning lash at a time when you can't enchant it yourself due to low level or lack of ingredients. Slap on a Fine enchantment and it'll carry you till you find better. Helps a bunch with the shades in the temple. The next good, and probably the best one available is Llawran's Stick from the secret area on level three of Endless Paths that needs the Sabre to open. It comes with +20% attack speed and Fine, nothing else on it so you could add a lash and run it all the way up with Superb and the Durgan Steel for a pretty decent fast attacking reach weapon, the only one that comes with the speed enchant. I use it on Kana as another option besides his W&S or bow, but leave it at exceptional with a lash on it. Kana doesn't get many crits so those weapons would be a waste. If you had two barbarians on the team one could have the CC via dual wielding We Toki and Starcaller flail or Mabec's and the other could use the Quarterstaff for faster attacks with reach. The good thing being that speed always works and does not need a crit. I think only the Estoc from the Endless Paths has speed and it can't fit a lash on it due to having marking. Another thought is to use it on a Cipher, with the +50% speed boost from Time Parasite you could go Jedi with +85% attack speed that has reach to allow you to stay safer behind the line. Even a Monk with Swift Strikes could get it up to +45% speed as soon as you get it and then +60% with Durgan.

I started at level 9 PotD and took the upgrade difficulty option, so was between 9 and 11 for the fish people fights. They were tough but not game breakers or anything. Team was Monk, Zahua, Pellagrina and Kana all in heavy armor, with Sagani and Hiravois (replaced with Devil). The low armored range guys got dropped quickly but the heavy armored guys could carry the day. The Paladin aura also helped with converting hits to grazes. Paladins and Monks both have abilities that help with defenses so if I gat afflicted it was usually just a graze and the high endurance and high DR was enough to protect even when paralyzed. A less squishy party will do a lot better with these guys. If you can avoid crits and convert some hits to grazes then the grazes don't last that long. With really high DR getting hit while paralyzed can still be doing only minimum damage, the enemies fast and weak attacks help make big DR more important.

Upgrade her armor to at least exceptional, slap on a +2 attribute, slash or pierce proof for another +4 (like all armor enhancing a DR that is boosted by the base armor boosts your enchantment as well), and then use Durgan steel on her to drop armor penalty to only 25% but protects like plate. Between her heavy armor and high resolve she was made for tanking. Give her a shield and a reinforcing exhortation and she is around 115 deflection which is decidedly not squishy. For further enhancement durgan steel her shield and weapon for another +30% attack speed buff. From a math standpoint she does fine as long as you embrace her strengths, which is tankyness. From a role play and voice acting standpoint she is a definite keeper.

What if instead of a certain number of chants needed to cast an invocation it was instead just a period of time? You could fill that time period with whatever combination of chants that you want. Lower level chants would still be useful in that you can tuck them inside the linger duration of the later chants. Using your more powerful chants would not limit your invocation casting. Add a talent to increase chant linger. Add a talent to reduce time needed to cast an invocation. Then you just need to balance the time needed, it doesn't have to be linear either. Let the cast at 10 seconds for level one, 19 seconds for level two, 27 seconds for level three, 33 seconds for level four and 39 seconds for level five invocations. Or whatever sounds good. If this has been suggested before I missed it.

Rangers do get Stunning Shots which stun on a hit or a crit. Works nice with hunting bows.