KDubya

I finally got White March downloaded and continued my highest characters game. He had previously won the game but I went back to a much earlier save where he was still max level. I had skipped a lot of content at the end. This is only on Hard, party is main Estoc Fighter, Eder Sabre & shield, Sagani war bow, Kana hammer & shield, Grieving Mother hunting bow/quarterstaff and Aloth. Only Aloth gets the per encounter spells. Once I hit level 13 Aloth would start every fight with Alacrity for +50% speed, Displaced image for +25 deflection, +20 reflex and 50% hit to graze for both, and the +50 endurance buff. This only takes a few seconds. Then I blast out a few Noxious Bursts and if there is anything still standing throw on a minor blights with all the trimmings and lay waste to everything. On the tougher bounties and Sky Dragon I had to use spells beyond level 3. Level seven spells are sweet, that orb is a great fire and forget and the phantom spell gets some useful spells as well. I understand its fun and that people could just rest anyway, but it trivializes most encounters and makes every non caster look like a chump for not being a caster. The cipher gets one shot, actually she has to attack first to get enough focus for the time parasite (which is pretty cool) and then has to attack enough times to get focus back. Still powerful but feels balanced.

If you are just going to shoot one time at the start of combat for the free sneak attack and then swap to melee you can skip Gunner as you won't be reloading.

If you dump intellect its nice to add the same number into your resolve just to keep the will save neutral. Dialogue, deflection and concentration aren't bad either. That still leaves you with 10s in the other four stats with 18 points to spread. I totally agree with the importance of dex and perception. 10 Might, 10 con, 19 dex, 18 per, 3 int and 18 resolve works well. Less damage at the start but once you start stacking the damage modifiers you won't notice the Might.

The only problem will be with your boredom as the challenge drops to zero. Don't forget that level one staff spell that does more damage than any other melee attack and heals on hit. At higher level you'll be able to go Jedi with the AoE super lance and the martial power spell. Worst case you can always just sleep more

With the current state of the game, are per encounter spells needed? With the new level cap you get level one, two and three as per encounter. The next expansion will get you level four. Before it was determined that Ciphers were unbalanced because they started with enough focus to blast out two of their more powerful attacks at the start of every encounter. Now their focus is knocked back such that they can do one cast of their biggest power and then need to regain focus through attacks. Ciphers seem well balanced now and more of a hybrid caster/weapon user. With a Wizard with level three you get the alacrity of motion spell for a +50% boost to speed and you get it per encounter. With that and then the endurance booster and one of the deflection boosters you quickly have faster speed then anyone, endurance comparable to a melee class and deflection that is as good or better then a defensive class. With that basic set up, which takes about as long as firing off one ranged attack. you can then spam out the rest of your low level spells which are still quite effective, along with your Arcane Assault. Just this is enough to clear most encounters and you still have all of your high level spells available. With level four available in the next expansion you can cast Confusion four times every fight or any of the other powerful level four spells. Prior to getting per encounter spells Wizards were still very effective with just their per encounter Arcane Assault and their amped up implement attacks. They always had their spells in reserve and could choose to abuse the rest mechanics to make their spells all per encounter. Now they don't even need to bother to rest. Increase their casts per day at higher levels if needed, but casters would still be more powerful than anything else without the per encounter mechanic.

I'd re-spec Pellagrina and drop Cautious Attack for Superior Deflection. You lose 3 deflection and gain 20% attack speed. Then at level nine you can grab reinforcing exhortation for the two per encounter long duration +25 deflection buffs. Grab on both Paladins and you have four to spread around enough for both Paladins, Eder and Itumaaak. If I were to drop anyone for the Chanter it'd be Durance. Give Kana a reach weapon, weapon & shield and something ranged and he is versatile and can cover many roles. Set up the fire weapon and the fear chant and they'll overlap so that the fire enchant stays on.

A rogue with a pike does really good, with Tall Grass does even better. For me I'd dump intellect and put in resolve. then go 15 might, 18 dex and 15 perception, 10 con, 3 int and 17 resolve. Without dumping you could go with the same but have resolve and intellect both 10. The pike lets him attack from safety. You can't set up your own flanking but you also don't get splatted when the enemy turns around and whacks you. Reckless Assault is the cornerstone of the build, huge accuracy buff and good damage. Since you are not running around behind the enemy lines you can skip the escape or shadowing beyond abilities. This lets you concentrate on damage, accuracy and hit>crit talents. Deep Wounds resets every hit so a low intellect does not hinder unless you want to hit everyone and let the poison tick but I prefer to pick one guy and kill him and then kill the next. I prefer crippling over blinding strike since it gets you two uses per encounter instead of one. Blind is more useful than hobbling though so it really doesn't matter. For race I like island Amaumau for the extra weapon slot. I can have a pike, an arbalest/arquebus, and a war hammer & shield or another arbalest/arquebus. 1.) Crippling Strike - I like the two uses 2.) Soldier Focus - I like the accuracy, the earlier the better 3.) Reckless Assault - The basis for the build 4.) Two handed weapon style - more damage 5.) Deep wounds - raw damage 6.) Savage Attack - more damage 7.) Dirty Fighting - hit>crit 8.) Vulnerable Attack - anything 10 or more DR 9.) Evasion - you have a good reflex, even better if you end up taking weapon & shield 10.)Superior Deflection* 11.) Deathblows - lots more damage 12.) the +5 deflection for reckless assault talent* 13.) no experience yet with high level rogue abilities 14.) Weapon & Shield style - can go tanky if needed* If you went with the int dump > resolve your deflection is not that bad. With a few talents and a good shield you're where a Fighter w/o a shield would be but you hit harder due to sneak attack bonus. Gives you the option of running around the end and setting up your own flanking situations when needed. Soldier focus gets you the pike for reach and the heavy hitting arbalest/arquebus for the alpha strike. You could instead go with Peasant for the quarterstaff for reach, spear & shield and the hunting bow for ranged. Not as big of an alpha strike but you could quickly shoot everyone with deep wounds and then set in with the quarterstaff.

Make a cipher piker or quarterstaffer. Now that ciphers are knocked back to the middle of the pack they're a lot more interesting.

Why would screwing around with ammo make a difference other than to be tedious? Especially for a rod, I mean what is the ammo for a magic rod, wand or scepter? Unlimited ammo and the unlimited stash are two of the best convenience type changes that they could have made. The fact that Wizards can auto attack very well with talents that add AoE, DR penetration and a +25% damage buff, plus use two per encounter useful Arcane Assaults that are AoE, dazzle and do raw damage makes me question why they get per encounter spells at all?

Fixing it for the enemies as well would be good. If I charm or dominate one enemy, they should attack my enemies but the enemies should not focus fire and kill their friend. That would tone down CC some and add a lot of realism. The threat from domination type effects should be my dominated character attacking my team, not my team changing targets to kill the dominated guy.

For things like this I use my Fight Club to test out different builds. Works best with a high level so you can higher higher level mercs. Also not recommended for Trial of Iron, best to save before hand and then revert back when you go back to your real game. The combat is all conducted out of combat so there are some quirks. Your endurance will regen constantly so the only thing that matters is accumulated health loss. This has the side benefit of extending combat, a few crits or misses would make a difference when you are dealing with only 200 endurance but with 1500 or so health it tends to average out pretty well. Activated abilities won't be able to be used. All attacks from a Rogue will get sneak attack bonuses. 1.) Free up four character slots for mercs 2.) Hire two identical "Targets" these will stand there and get attacked. High con will give a larger health pool to test against. Monks might be better than Barbarians as their base deflection is higher so you can simulate more challenging enemies. By taking deflection talents, shield use and armor worn you can simulate various DR and deflection values. 3.) Hire your two test subjects. I like to keep everything the same except for what I want to test. If I want to test dual wield vs two hander I'd make identical guys that took only those different talents. If the two builds are wildly different you won't know where the difference came from. 4.) Have your test subjects attack their own target. It helps to set the speed to fast for this. 5.) Review the results, change another variable and go again. Based on tests like this I've come to really like the DR penetration talent. Even with Estocs with their natural DR penetration the talent is better to have once the DR goes past 10 or so.

If you are just having the Paladin be a mob collector for AoE CC and then nukes would it be better to just use a Ranger and have the pet do the same thing? Worse case you'd need two Rangers for two pets to collect the mob.

I've had some luck with Strange Mercy on PotD with a high might, high perception, high resolve Two hander Paladin. In fights with lots of enemies, like xaurips, he'll end up killing two or three each fight which is not bad to get a few AoE heals of 24 endurance each. Now my group is melee heavy with Eder, Pellegrina, my pally, Itumaak and Kana all being melee with Aloth and Sagani providing ranged fire support. I have enough front to establish and control most encounters. Each melee handles their own enemy with the ranged and Kana with a reach weapon trying to pile on one target at a time after any dangerous casters are dealt with. It is not a bad pick at level 2 or 4. At low levels getting one or two +24 heals in a fight can make a big difference, especially if you are running without a priest. At higher level it is probably worthwhile to spec out of it as +24 wont matter much when you have 200., but then again at high levels you end up with extra talents that you can waste once the essentials are covered.

I always try to stick in my weapon group. Estocs are great if you are taking the Adventurer focus, not as good if you are taking a different focus. I like accuracy so I always pick a focus. On a Fighter I grab the specialization and mastery as well. Sabres do well for Eder as he starts with Ruffian and most have him go weapon and shield. He does pretty well with taking mainly offensive talents like Savage Attack and Vulnerable Strike along with Weapon and Shield Style. Don't take Defender, re-spec if you need to. In general having Vulnerable Strikes pays off in most cases. It is especially needed with fast weapons.

You can drop your resolve to an eight and then have human and your start culture bring it back to a ten. You don't need to leave it at a twelve unless you want to. Really only an issue if you were trying to dump it to a three.

The problem with people saying that Wizards, or Rangers are trash is that they are wrong. It's math. It has nothing to do with play styles or opinions. With proper knowledge of the game and decent tactics you can beat the game with the equivalent of six random guys of the street. I use a Chanter in my melee heavy groups because my melee team is durable but doesn't nuke the world in the first few seconds so enough time goes by to get some invocations off, well that and kana is an interesting character. But efficiency wise pretty much anyone except a Fighter would help the team more. As the levels increase there is less reasons to want the chanter. His good abilities take longer to activate while casters get more and more abilities that activate instantly and even allow unlimited use per encounter without the shame of needing to rest. A buffed up ranger pet might be a better tank than a Fighter is now, or at least good enough for long enough and they pop back up ready to go after every encounter. No forced health attrition rests needed.

For a max alpha with FoD I like an Arquebus or Arbalest, just don't bother with reloading just draw aim and fire. Works great in the first seconds of the fight or hold it in reserve for when you want to drop someone behind the melee frontline. For me the biggest problem with Ravenwing and maces in general is that the rest of the weapons in the group are not very good. Fast weak weapons are terrible against DR unless you're a Rogue with +240% damage boosts in effect and implements look retarded on anyone but a wizard. Put maces in the Knight group and Soldier has some real competition. Personally, I'd like it if the dropped one or even two of the weapon groups and distributed their weapons to the others.

Anther great thing about the Soldier focus is that you get the arquebus, a hard hitting weapon with prone on crit, and the arquebus, the hardest hitting weapon. Start with either and a FoD at the start of the battle and someone's getting rocked. Or save it for later when you want to drop that priest that shows up later in the engagement. You won't be bothering to reload, just one shot per battle but with the +20 accuracy and the +50% flame damage it will be a hard one. One of my top choices for races is the Island Amaumau for the free extra weapon slot. War hammer and shield, pike and an arquebus and you are ready for anything. One reason I prefer going with two handers is due to the limited number of weapons and the way you can't use the same weapon in two different slots. With my two hander set up I just need one good two hander and one good one hander with a shield. Talent wise you'd want the two hander for the damage boost, maybe even grab weapon and shield for the big boost when swapping, but probably better to grab Superior Deflection as it'd work all the time, is only one deflection lower than Weapon and Shield Style but does miss out on the +20 or so reflex boost. A dual wielder needs two good one hand weapons and another good one hander to use with a shield. I find I just run out of enough good weapons. Now if you could have your best weapon be used with a shield or with another weapon that'd bring it down to only needing two good weapons. This would help a lot with single weapon use as well since you could go single weapon for the big accuracy boost and add in a shield or another weapon as you choose.

If the Wizard is not at the top of the PoE classes I don't know what is. I think that if all spell casters did not get per encounter level one, two and three that they would still be at the top of the PoE world compared to non-casters. I can't understand why the devs felt that they needed to throw balance out the window and give per encounter spells. Getting level one and two were bad enough, now you get level three as per encounter. What happens with White March part 2 when you get level four per encounter spells? How does a Cipher compare to that with their one cast and then need to get more focus? How can anything possibly be balanced when you can cast at least sixteen spells per encounter plus have the higher level spells available per rest if needed. I mean you could already cast every spell per encounter if you wanted to abuse the rest mechanic, now you don't even need to do that. Wizards would still be appealing to play without making them into god-mode.

Why does Defender 2.0 need a malus? It already is exclusive to all other modals, why pile on with a deflection malus as well? If all it did was give you +2 engagements, without the deflection malus it would still be a bad choice just due to not being able to use any other modal. Does it need a malus since access to Wary Defender is earth-shatteringly good? Wary Defender is a measly +5 to reflex, will and fortitude. Better to grab one of the general +10 defensive talents that are themselves poor choices. What abilities have malus? 1.) Reckless Assault gets you a big +20% damage, really big +8 accuracy at a cost of -8 deflection. 2.) Swift Aim - gets you +20% firing rate, +50% reload at a cost of -7 accuracy. 3.) Vicious Aim - gets you +10 accuracy, +20% damage and -20% firing rate. All of these are really great and really powerful. How does Defender 2.0 measure up to these?

You might want to take Strange mercy at an early opportunity. At low level the +24 endurance heal is more noticeable and appreciated. Plus if you find it totally lackluster at high levels you can re-spec and get something else. If you are not going with a FoD alpha strike with an arquebus you might get better use out of the Sword and Shepherd talent which gets you a mini AoE heal when you use FoD. That would let you control the heal aspect instead of the more difficult to control heal from the on-kill effect. If you bring Pellegrina along with you you'll have two auras, four lay on hands and other Paladin goodies. The only issue I'm having with my Kind Wayfarer is identifying the Passionate responses. Benevolent is easy, avoiding Deceptive is easy. In my normal runs I end up with a few Cruel and Aggressive, in fact pretty much all over the board.

Woops double post

I hate to break it to you, but PoE wizards are already D&D sorcerers as is, with the minor caveat that PoE wizards get less known spells per level than D&D sorcerers but have the ability to switch their known spells thanks to the grimoires. In fact, PoE priests and druids are also D&D sorcerers, but with all the advantages (the ability to cast any combination of spells of any level as long as they have the necessary resources) and none of the drawbacks (their spell selection isn't limited). As someone who doesn't like that wizards can select new spells on level up, I can see a very simple solution to that problem My ideas for wizards : - Make spells per-encounter at an earlier level but graduate their progression. For example, start with one 1st-level spell slot which becomes per-encounter at level 6 and go from there. - I like the metamagic proposed by the OP. - I'm absolutely opposed to the idea of making every spell of a certain level known by the wizard available to him once he is high-level enough! Plus, I don't think this is realiitically going to happen, Adam and Josh apparently believe that priests and druids have way too many abilities available for each encounter, this would just create the same thing for wizards. If you feel that your Wizard is lacking compared to a Priest or a Druid just use one of them instead. In pretty much every system I've ever seen Priests and Druids get all the spells at level up since they come from nature or the gods. Wizards get their spells from scrolls or in this game from grimoires. If you did not allow Wizards to pick spells at level up they'd have to find them in the grimoires of their slain enemies. Killing that first one with only your starting level one spells would be tough. It'd be murder on a new player. And what do you gain for all this hardship? The ability for Wizard players to be able to re-spec to their heart's content by saving them some coppers? Wizards are not lacking for power so there is not a reason to expand upon their per encounter spells. You can currently use all of your spells every encounter, you just have to rest more. It's a single player game, no one will know that your Wizard is narcoleptic and needs to sleep 20 hours per day Its not as if your forum signature states how often you rest to shame you online Before people would complain about Ciphers and their casting. Now ciphers don't have enough starting focus to cast their top end powers to start a fight If they end up missing too much or not being able to do enough damage they can't cast at all. They look to be balanced and challenging now. At level 13 your Cipher can let loose with one Amplified Wave and then needs to start attacking to get focus to do anything else, while a Wizard can let loose with level 1, 2 or 3 as often as they want and still have the four casts of level 4, 5, 6 and 7 on a per rest basis. On metamagic making spells more powerful I have to say NO. Wizard spells are powerful now, why do they need to be made more powerful beyond what is currently available via the +20% element talents and Alacrity of Motion (which is per encounter at level 13 for an effectively permanent 50% speed boost) If the plan is to reduce spells in power such that with the new metamagic they are as effective as current spells I'd have to ask why bother? I'd rate Wizards as the current King of PoE, no reason to give them more. In fact there should perhaps be discussion concerning the way per encounter spells are gained and what it bodes for the future.

I thought about my testing and identified a few problems. I was having them shoot each other so interrupts and prone on crit were playing a part in the damage calculation and while wearing plate the armor influences bows more than arbalests, or at least that is what I read. So I came up with a new plan (All was done in a tavern out of combat using level 11 mercs, so only health loss counted): 1.) Create two identical Rangers giving one Vicious Aim and Penetrating Shot and the other gets Swift Aim, the add on talent to swift aim and gunner. The Vicious Aim guy actually ends up one talent ahead which could be used on Vicious Animal or something similar. I gave the Rangers padded armor and a Fine version of their weapon. For stats I gave them 19 in dex and 19 perception with 10 might. 2.) Create two identical targets. I used Barbarians they had 1248 health. I tested in plate 18 DR and Fine robes at 5 DR. 3.) Have the targets stand far enough away to activate marksmen and the wood elf ability 4.) At the same time have each Ranger pick a target and start shooting until the target dies from health loss. Then count the number of additional shots needed for the other weapon to kill its target. Results - I did not do many tests, as it takes a while to inflict enough health damage. Based on this I'd assume that individual streaks of good or bad luck would average out. Targets in plate Warbow with Penetrating and Vicious Vs Arbalest with Swift Aim - The War bow won by ten shots (it took ten additional shots from the Arbalest after the WarBow dropped its target) Targets in Fine Robe Warbow with penetrating and Vicious Vs Arbalest with Swift Aim - The War bow won by nine shots Targets in Fine Robe Warbow with Vicious (turned penetrating off) Vs Arbalest with Swift Aim - The war bow won by four shots Made a hunting bow Vicious to test against the warbow Targets in Fine Robes Warbow Vs Hunting both with Vicious and Penetrating - Hunting bow won by ten shots Targets in Plate Warbow Vs Hunting both with Vicious and Penetrating - Warbow won by twenty-five shots Then tried a warbow Vicious vs warbow swift aim with target in plate and both with Penetrating Shot - warbow vicious won by twenty-three shots Conclusions - 1.) Hunting bows don't hit hard enough to get past DR 2.) Penetrating Shot does better DPS even against low DR like 5 3.) Warbow with Vicious does better than warbow with Swift Aim 4.) Warbow with Vicious and penetrating shot does better than Arbalest with Swift Aim plus has an additional talent. I've got Sagani using the Hold the Wall Arbalest at the moment since it is the best ranged I have available. When I can afford Borresaine or get Cloud Piercer, I might re-spec into Vicious and war bows.

I feel your pain on the bandwidth. (I have GoG version and use a lap top) I live in rural Thailand where I get high speed only for a limited total bandwidth and then get basically dial up speed for the rest of the month. The Thai internet provider just doesn't offer other packages or plans. There used to be a single phone line at a pay phone in the village but that has been abandoned due to the prevalence of cell phones which only require towers and not physical wire connections. The worst is when the download glitches part way and you need to re-start from the beginning. The main 2.0 patch at 1.2 GB wouldn't complete, even when letting it chug along over night, so after five days of fail, I had to wait till the beginning of the month to get it which used up a fair bit of my bandwidth. Throw in two failed attempts on getting the White March and my bandwidth was gone for the month sometime around 1600 on the first day of the month Luckily I go to Lao tomorrow so I'll have high speed at the hotel.