KDubya

I always think of a name that William Shatner (Captain Kirk from Star Trek) could enunciate as only he can - You ..... Klingon ....Bastards ...... You Murdered ..... My Son!!! Something like Saurok , Kurok, Vulkar, Vishnaar, Kharg. basically two hard syllables. Then add "The Merciless" or "The Swift" or something like that. Dwarves get something like "Stone Cleaver" All together you get Vulkar Stonecleaver, Kharg The Merciless, Vishnaar The Swift, Saurok The Cruel, Korik The just

They can leave Defender at +2 engagement and -5 deflection and change Wary Defender to +10 deflection, reflex, will and fortitude. This would make the total +5 deflection and +10 defenses, the same as a Paladin's base Faith and Conviction. Another thought is to give defender a bonus to disengagement attacks, +5 Accuracy and +20% damage or something like that. It'd keep Fighters from ramping up their deflection but give them a purpose as a dis-engager counter attacker. And make Defender not exclusive from other modals, at least let it be active with Savage Attack if Cautious Attack is too much.

First here is what I consider tanking - The ability to establish and enforce a melee engagement zone which is separate from your ranged attackers. I'm not up on the differences between a tank, an off tank, a DPS tank, or a DPS. 1.) To be able to establish the zone or frontline you need to be in melee combat. 2,) To be able to maintain the zone or frontline you need to be able to survive long enough for the enemy to die. For this you need a combination of mitigation - endurance, DR, healing, regen, crit>hit conversions, hit>graze conversions - and avoidance - hard CC (stun, paralyze, prone) , deflection, will, reflex, and fortitude. Damage that you can avoid is the best as there is a minimum of 20% bleed through that will eventually drop you. 3.) To be able to enforce the zone or frontline you need to have enough accuracy to hit the targets and enough damage to make the enemies afraid to disengage for fear of getting hit with a hard disengagement attack. Additional engagements can let you hold additional enemies. A Paladin (main character is better since Faith and Conviction doesn't scale with NPC) with F&C, good Might, sword and shield style, superior deflection (only 3 less deflection than cautious attack and doesn't get the -20% attack rate) will have the best deflection and defenses. Add in NPC paladin for dual auras - accuracy and the DR one - and the ability to cast reinforcing exhortations for +25 deflection on each other as well as two lay on hands uses each. Throw in hold the line (jury is still out on whether additional engagements are worth anything) and these two can hold at least four enemies and be able to handle them while also being able to assist the team with multiple auras and exhortations. With a ring and a good shield you'll have about 100 deflection, drop a reinforcing exhortation and you get 125+ which will be noticeable. Add in a ranger and their pet and you get an accurate, consistent single target damage dealer and a disposable tank. Pets are better now and with two paladins around the pet should be able to stay vertical. These three will be able to maintain a frontline and survive, and are able to self support their actions leaving the other 3 characters up to you. Have one be another melee spec'd for damage (Eder dual wielding sabres can work) and you should have no problem maintaining a front while your other three can focus fire and apply CC safely from range.

Here is where I'd disagree: Skills being spread out is bad the way the skill system works. Each additional free point at start saves you an exponential amount of skills at the highest level. If you need level 10 in a skill the last level costs 9 skill points. If you have 1 free one you save the 9 points, two free points saves you 9+8=17 skill points. One person needs mechanics at least level 10, everyone needs athletics 3 or 4, 3 or 4 in stealth is useful, beyond that lore is the best to get high for scrolls unless you eat a lot of food in which case a high survival could be good. Constant recovery - have it scale to be roughly twice as strong as current and it would still not be as useful as lay on hands or savage defiance. You give Defender high marks, 7/10 but say it needs to be backed by real tanking abilities. Defender can't be active when cautious attack is active. The only other tanking ability is weapon and shield style but that precludes using the more damaging two handed or dual wielding set ups. All it gets you is +2 engagements for -5 deflection. Taking hold the line would get you +1 engagement for no malus and let you take cautious attack or savage attack modals if you wanted. I'd give it 5/10 at best Confident Aim gets you +20% minimum damage = +10% average damage and the 20% graze to hit which for deflection=accuracy would convert 7 out of 35 grazes to hit which do +50% damage or 3.5% extra damage on average which increases the harder it is to hit. At accuracy= deflection +50 (0-65 miss) your damage increase would be effectively 35% more damage (35 grazes at -50% damage become 28 grazes at -50% and 7 hits at +0%) Actually 7/10 sounds pretty good. Guardian is pure trash. has anyone ever taken it? Only good for a meatsack punching bag and chanters and paladins can be so much more effective at this then a fighter, not that building for a punching bag is a good idea anymore anyway. A Paladin gets useful Auras that benefit himself as well as not having a huge malus. 1/10 Unbending is only 3 per rest, lasts 15 seconds at base and stops 50% of the damage. Make that once per encounter and it would be something. I've never used this so maybe I am missing the awesome sauce here. EDIT - Let's say you have 200 endurance and in the tough fight you take 200 damage over 15 seconds and die. Instead you activate Unbending and heal back 100 endurance and are left with 100 endurance remaining. That is weaker than a comparable level lay on hands which would heal more over a shorter period of time, can be used on anyone and gets two per encounter. The barbarian's Savage Defiance aloso heals more over a shorter period of time and can be used once per encounter. I'd give it a 2/10 Unbroken is a great ability but it is only available at level 11, can be replaced with any second chance item, does not stack with second chance and how often are you getting knocked out in the first place? Make this the default fighter ability instead of the crappy regen. Weapon specialty - make this a talent instead of an ability and increase damage or add accuracy. A rogue's reckless assault gets 20% damage, +8 accuracy and a malus of -8 deflection. A mere +15% that is restricted to a single weapon group pales in comparison. Weapon mastery only gets you +10% damage and only if you take the weapon specialty and only affects the one group. needs to be increased with accuracy or more damage to be competitive. Ciphers get a +20% talent that works with every weapon. Fighter are the "Other Guys" of PoE. Eder will still have a place in the party since he is a great character and is good enough as a supporting actor in a team of six but a fighter as a main character just doesn't have the star appeal to be the lead.

If you send a companion back to your stronghold do they rest while there? As in you have Aloth, use up his spells and then send him to the stronghold for someone else and then swap at some later time? I'd think that people with a lot of per encounter abilities would be best. Here is my theorycraft team: 1.) Main Paladin Kind Wayfarer for the heal on kill. Go for on kill effects and use a reach weapon, get accuracy aura 2.) Pellegrina give her shield, deflection talents and the armor increasing aura 3a.) Monk in heavy armor with shield on switch when you need to tank. 3b) Eder in heavy armor, shield and sabre 4.) Sagani for ranged damage and the re-usable, expendable Ituumak, who with two paladins with two lay on hands should survive more often then not. 5.) Grieving Mother - ciphers get all per encounter stuff 6a.) Rotating NPC - grab the NPCs to do their quests and then change for the next 6b.) Ranger for another disposable tank who does not get tired or suffer health attrition. Every fight the pet is ready to die again without complaint. 6c.) Cipher for more per encounter greatness. On any level below PotD it should be do-able. take athletics on everyone, don't dump con. Try and have the ranger pets take the beatings.

The old Defender and Wary Defender were good, perhaps even great but not OP. It took an ability and a talent, had a big malus of -20% attack speed, +2 engagements,+15 deflection and +10 reflex, will and fortitude. It also kept you from using Savage attack, and Cautious Attack modals. Compare that to a Paladin's Faith and Conviction and Hold the Line. You get +8 deflection, +16 will, reflex and fortitude, and +1 engagements. There are no malus effects and you can also run any other modal that you want to. That gave you -7 deflection, +6 will, +6 reflex, +6 fortitude, +20% attack speed and -1 engagement. The comparison between the two was pretty even with the Paladin probably being ahead due to being able to also run other modals. Now Defender 2.0 and Wary defender gets you +2 engagement, -5 deflection, +5 reflex, +5 will and +5 fortitude. The Paladin still gets the same as before and in comparison gets +13 deflection, +11 reflex, +11 will, +11 fortitude and -1 engagement. Plus the paladin can run any other modal that he wants. The Paladin is way ahead of the Defender 2.0 The Fighter regen is pretty minimal, at best it is less than half as strong as the Paladin's Lay on Hands (which scales with level) which also gets you the healing over 5 seconds instead of over 90. Let's see 3 endurance every 3 seconds for 90 seconds (90 endurance healed in total) or 100+ endurance over five seconds and you can do it twice and to anyone not just you. If you need healing it is better to get all your healing at once rather than spread out over 90 seconds, the fight might end sooner or you might get KO'd before you get all your regen. With a two clicks of Lay on Hands a Paladin would have been able to regain more than twice as much endurance as the Fighter, all the while with better deflection and defenses from Faith and Conviction, plus all the other team friendly Paladin stuff. In your example the Fighter's contribution to the team was that you did not need to heal him with someone else and that he survived so that the rest of the team could kill the enemy. A Paladin who only used Lay on Hands on himself would have done just as well or better and would have made the team stronger as well. A monk with some healing support would have been able to put down CC, AoE damage and general mayhem. If a Fighter's ability to withstand damage is to be reduced to the current levels then he needs to get an offensive buff so that he has a purpose. 1.) Change weapon specialty from +15% damage to +5 Accuracy and +15% damage. Or make it +20% damage. 2.) Change weapon mastery from +10% damage to +5 accuracy and +15% damage. Or make it +20% damage. 3.) Change Clear Out to per encounter instead of per rest. 4.) Allow Defender modal to be active at the same time as Savage Attack and Cautious Attack. 5.) Have the passive regen scale with level.

Those guides are out of date with 2.0. For example your wizard wants might as high as possible since it is pretty much the only thing that affects spell power. Perception affects accuracy so it will want to be high. Intellect affects your area of AoE spells as well as duration so you want this high. Dexterity affects how many actions you can perform in a given time and more actions are better so you want this high. Resolve could be kept low but at the risk of being interrupted frequently and is a good one to think about dumping. Constitution now has 5% per point so a 3 con used to be -21% but now is -35%, dumping to a 6 con gets -20% but only gains you 4 stat points instead of the old 7. Also, with the new AI and the enemies decision to more frequently attack your casters, dumping con has a much bigger downside. Now you can't have all the stats you want maxed and have to make some choices. If might only affected melee then every caster would dump it to 3 every single time. The ability to hold the attention of enemies depends on being able to dish out damage so your example of a warrior will need might just as much as any other stat. Even intellect now affects the duration of a fighter's regen so no more limited consequence to dump it, you now pay a heavier price which along with other recent changes makes one question their purpose. Paladins, barbarians and monks all have need of intellect. There really aren't much for dump stats anymore

I'm with Njall, Fighters were my favorite, most played class. Most of my posts on the forums were about fighters telling how you could design for a decent damage output in a durable form. Before 2.0 you could get a two hander or dual wielding fighter with all the damage boosters, defender and wary defender. You'd be around 100-110 deflection with items, have a good single target damage output and could stand in the front and fight with minimal oversight. If things went bad and all your casters got dropped a lone fighter could still weather the storm, self rez if needed and carry the day. Now enemy accuracy is increased slightly due to perception, your own deflection has been reduced by 5+ (perception), 20 from defender (went from +15 to -5) and items look to be one lower (ring of deflection was 10 is now 9). All together Fighters lose 26+ deflection, others lose only 6+, and others can take cautious attack to gain another 8 to get 28 more deflection then a fighter trying to serve a similar purpose of multiple engagement slots and melee durability. Your prototypical offensive defender build now has increased accuracy from perception, +20% attack speed (new defender malus) but has 26+ less deflection. He now is at the forefront with 74 - 84 deflection with items. You say 'well he can just take the vigorous defense talent and get 20 deflection' First he could have done that in the past and gotten to 120-130 levels for nigh invulnerability, now it would just get him close to what he had before except now it requires another ability and requires to have a decent intellect in order to have even a passable duration. At 100 deflection you were still getting hit, it's just that you were able to take those hits while hitting back. Now without vigorous defense you'll be taking a real beating that can be reduced for a short period of time but you'll still be getting hit. If you drop trying to have an offensive output you can instead make a meatsack punching bag. High con, resolve and intellect for extra endurance, deflection and duration abilities. Equip a shield, take cautious attack, hold the line, vigorous defense and similar abilities maybe even take guardian . You'll have no offense and will serve no purpose other than being a distraction to enemies who'll gladly eat a weak disengagement attack and rush past you. This might be the new role for a Fighter (maybe we can change the name to Victim) except a Paladin could do that role much better and make the entire team better with auras, heals, buffs and other good things.

I definitely don't think monks should be nerfed, melee is already 2nd class compared to casters, no reason to beat on one of the good ones. Paladins have a lot of advantages over fighters. Faith and Conviction get them better deflection and defenses, lay on hands gets them better healing, the auras get them group buffs and the various exhortations gets them a lot of utility for the team. Fighter will have higher accuracy and have more single target damage but have no way to make the team better. If engagements are beneficial and required, then a fighter with wary defender will have +2 engagements with -5 deflection and +5 defences. A paladin, or anyone else, can take hold the line and cautious attack or weapon and shield style and get +1 engagement and either +8 deflection and -20% attack speed or use a shield and get +6 deflection and add the shield to reflex. This extra engagement is what fighters can get that others can't , or at least without using specific weapons. A gun is good for one shot, after that you need to grab a melee weapon and engage or else the enemies might run past you. A fighter can shoot first thing and get to add +25% damage if he has both spec and mastery and the group includes a gun. A paladin can have a gun on switch for a brutal flame attack. Both are really useful but it is still just one attack. Try a monk that uses fist and shield and wears plate, take weapon and shield style and get great deflection and reflex defense while still having a fast speed fist that can get swift strikes and lightning strikes for +20% speed and a +25% lash. Durable, tanky and can dish out the pain with AoE attacks, rooting pain, and some great CC skills.

even at 3 int constant recovery still lasts 58 seconds and most battles dont last that long in anything that isnt Potd and there you will be tossing out more Aoe heals anyway since engagement doesnt 100% lockdown anymore so yeah its a nerf but its still perfectly fine to dump int ( if you really wanted a frontliner which poops green healing numbers you would go paladin anyway buffed lay on hands are ridicioulous) I've been playing around with the retrainer and merc hiring at level 12/11 to see different builds. I guess I never realized how bad constant recovery was, I always assumed it was per second so a 20 might got you 4 endurance per second regen. Sounded pretty strong Now that I can see that that is over a 3 second period it gets a lot weaker, factor in a duration based on intellect and it gets even worse. Compare it to Lay on Hands and I want to cry. Let's see regen (at base levels) 3 endurance over 3 seconds for 90 seconds (90 endurance in total) OR heal anyone 109 endurance over 5 seconds (109 endurance in total) oh yeah I can do that twice. The barbarian self heal is a lot better as well. Can't quite understand why Fighter had to get beat down so much by the dev's. Trading -5 deflection for -20% attack speed is fine but why change wary defender from +10 to everything to only +5 for reflex, will and fortitude? The level 13 abilities also look pretty bad for a fighter. While everyone else got some real cool stuff, Fighter gets to take all the damage for the team and die while barbarians get super giant leaps of bad assery, paladins get to call in an airstrike, monks get twin duplicates of death and casters get level 3 spells per encounter. Not sure how this all passed a review. The plus side is that now I think Eder's stats are fine the way they are, it used to bug me that he had wasted points in intellect and constitution but now they look to be good choices or at least as good as the next.

I was finally able to complete the download for the 2.0 patch, still working on getting the DLC. Constant Recovery is now influenced by intellect???????? WOW Dumping intellect on a fighter is now a very bad move, no longer a trade off of one bad duration ability and avoiding any time based abilities to gain seven stat points. Doing so now gimps your endurance regen which is one of the few benefits that you get. Maxing Might before was an easy decision as it boosted your endurance regen, now nothing is a good idea to drop below 10. I need to rethink everything I've ever thought about fighters and how to use the effectively.

If your monk is not receiving any wounds he is still dual wield attacking at +20% attack speed with fists that do average speed weapon damage at the speed of fast weapons. His auto attacks with fists will do more damage then enchanted weapons unless the weapons have lashes and slaying enchantments. I don't see the point of wasting talents to take a bad self damaging talent for use of a bad weapon (implements) just to obtain a wound. If you really want a wound on your monk just hit him with an AoE spell with friendly fire.

With only Confident Aim adding to damage (+10% average from the +20% minimum) and no bonus from might you damage output is pretty negligible. Do you find that you can still hold the attention of the two enemies that you have engagement slots for? I'd think that the new AI would determine that you can not hurt them and would just eat a non-threatening disengagement attack and go past you if they physically can.

With a fighter spec;d for damage, intellect is the only stat that can be dumped. You want might as high as possible for both damage and for the passive healing. With the new changes to deflection and enemy AI you will take more damage now so dumping constitution is a bad idea and adding points is better now that it is 5% per point. Dexterity is always useful for anyone wanting to output a lot of damage. Perception is the most useful in my opinion now that it affects accuracy. Missing is bad for damage and the tougher the enemy the more important accuracy becomes. Resolve is the only way to add to deflection and is more valuable now that many sources of deflection have been reduced. Concentration to avoid interrupts is also useful for a melee combatant who will be getting hit. Intellect is the only stat that a fighter can dump. It only affects the first abilities taken at level one, either the duration of the knockdown or the duration of the +10 accuracy buff. Every other duration based ability can be avoided without adversely affecting the build. Having a 10 intellect gets you a 5 second knockdown instead of 3.3 seconds but the seven stat points placed in resolve instead get you the same will save, +7 deflection and +21 concentration, both of which are more useful for a melee fighter. Every other class needs intellect, or at least not dumping it , except for possibly rogues and rangers. Being able to reallocate seven stat points into resolve is one of the few advantages that fighters have compared to Paladins, Monks and Barbarians. ********* Just got the 2.0 update and realized that Constant Recovery is now affected by Intellect ******** Forget everything I ever wrote about dumping intellect as being a good idea for a fighter. On my max might min intellect fighter constant recovery now heals 4 endurance every 3 seconds for 58.5 seconds or 76 points in 19 ticks as opposed to the normal 3 end per 3 seconds for 90 seconds if all were tens. Or the 4 end per tick for 90 if you did not dump intellect would get you 120 endurance in 30 ticks. I suppose it would only come into play if a fight lasted longer than 58 seconds. In trash engagements it would not matter but hard fights can last a fair bit of time especially if you go with a melee heavy slow and steady gameplay style .

Also there are no negative impacts of having a 3 for any of the abilities. You never catch the flu due to having a 3 con, or fall down stairs from a 3 dex, or be illiterate from a 3 intellect, having negative effects would have been cool but are not in the game. So if you dump your intellect to a 3 no one thinks you're an idiot, other than perhaps you

I'm not going to load up your save game - first because I am still trying to download the damn 1+ GB 2.0 patch and second since I'm too lazy:) What I will give is some advice on Monks - 1.) Treat as a durable melee combatant not a rogue like flanker - by this I mean get some heavy armor like plate, have all stats 10+ and fairly balanced between might, constitution, perception, and resolve. Grab dual wielding for +20% attack speed, swift strikes for another +20% attack speed and the lightning lash that adds +25% electricity lash to all your attacks. Have a fist+shield on one weapon slot for when you need more deflection and a quarterstaff for a reaching weapon on the other slot or dual spears. This uses one ability and two talents plus one wound to get your attack speed boosted by +40% with a 25% electricity lash. 2.) Use AoE abilities like Torment's reach and rooting pain. Keep your speed boosted with swift strikes and spend your wounds on the AoE cone attack of Tormen't Reach trying to line up to hit multiple enemies. Whenever you receive a wound rooting pain will dish out a retaliatory AoE attack. 3.) Use mobility to attack the weaker caster enemies. Flagellents Path gets you an awesome teleport+AoE attack along the line between you and your target for 3 wounds. Start off at the frontline, get your speed up, drop a cone attack and then zoom across the battlefield to hit the backline while disrupting their entire frontline. You're not a frontline tank who will stay in one place, once you get 3 wounds you can rush into the backline. You'll need others to stay at the front because once you rush their backline their frontline may decide to go after you backline instead of chasing after the monk. Using lighter armor would get you faster actions but at the cost of greatly increased damage. This would get you wounds faster but might become too much. Play around with it and see if you need the heavy plate for maximum DR or if leather or padded is enough protection.

Does anyone know the different frame rates for the weapons? I've always been told that fists act as fast as fast weapons but do the base damage of average speed weapons. You'd need to take the weapon speeds into account to get a true comparison.

Here is my take on the new talents: F The priest one seems really weak and is limited to only vessels. Better to just take the increased damage vs vessel talent, that at least would work with every attack rather than once per rest. C- The rogue +15% for sneak attack pales in comparison to the +50% that rogues get. You'd want to take any of the other damage enhancing talents first like Savage Attack or two handed/dual wield as they all add at least as much damage and are not limited in their application. Even then something like interrupting blows or just a useful utility talent would probably be more useful. F The Druid AoE minor debuff limited to two per rest. Weak and limited in its uses. C+ The cipher charm talent at least is per encounter. The five second delay cuts out use as an alpha strike and the slow speed further gimps the talent, but it is a hard CC that has +10 accuracy so it should hit most times and crit occasionally. B- The paladin aura would be useful in a party where you did not have a priest. It would be useful on a tanky chanter type as they'd have high intellect to give it a good area and don't have much general talents that are necessary. A tanky chanter's job is to not die quickly so that he can sing and summon, this aura would help him buff the party even more. Maybe a caster might have a free general talent to drop on this as well. Melee is usually pretty tight on general talents and/or short on intellect. D The monk ability would only be useful for a spirit shift druid. Maybe on low levels you could make fist fighter or barbarian but they'd be gimped compared to a normal build. D The barbarian frenzy would rate higher but it is once per rest. If you rest after every fight then maybe this is useful. D- The chanter skeleton summon at least is per encounter, but it does need 15 seconds to use and only gets you worthless skeletons who will get one shotted at higher levels. Better to just use a figurine and get something powerful when you need it. B The Ranger wounding shot is once per encounter, hobbles the target and applies an 80% DoT. Use on an opening alpha strike with an arquebus and you can put a hurt on something to start. F The fighter passive regen is way too low. Even the full version that the fighter gets is pretty lackluster. All in all they are pretty poor. Not sure why they have to make them so weak and limited. Even if they were the full blown version of the ability it would not be too much. If you could have the full +6 accuracy aura the Paladin's version would still be better since it can take the hit to crit augmenter.

So you think that there is a direct correlation between the number of engagements and the number of enemies that get stuck to the guy best suited to handle their attention. If so then tanking - the ability to maintain the focus of the enemy melee combatants - is greatly influenced by the number of engagement slots that one has. This makes Defender 2.0 a better choice than I had previously thought.

Fampyr are one of those enemies in 1.06 that would try to get to the backline casters so I'm not sure that they are a good indicator now in 2.0 as it sounds like they are doing their normal smarter than the average bear attack behavior. Did you take Defender and Wary Defender on Eder? How many engagements does Eder have? I am trying to see if there is a relationship between the six dargul's sticking with Eder and his number of engagements. If Eder only had the one base engagement would he still have held the attention of the six darguls?

I am still trying to download the 2.0 patch let alone the DLC, rural Thailand has poor internet speed and dependability so I am stuck theorycrafting. Prior to 2.0 additional engagements were worthless. Enemies mobbed the first things they saw and stayed on them until something died. 1.) Do enemies that exceed the number of engagements of the frontline continue past and attack the ranged casters? 2.) Or do they still just mob around the frontline? 3.) Does the enemy factor in the danger of a disengagement attack and if it is negligible, take the hit and run towards the softer targets in the rear? As in a 3 might hatchet and shield meat sack with no offensive damage will be ignored? The reason for my curiosity is concerning the new Defender 2.0. Before Defender was great for the extra defense, with Wary Defender you got +15 deflection and +10 reflex, will and fortitude, plus two worthless additional engagements and a -20% attack speed malus. If the new enemy AI still just mobs around the front then only deflection matters and a fighter is better off with cautious attack or replace with a Paladin. If enemies that are not engaged slide past, then the frontline needs to have as many engagements in order to contain the enemies. If enemies also calculate the danger from disengagement attacks and will choose to take the hit if it is weak then a proper front line fighter needs both engagements and offensive firepower. It is in this role that a 2.0 Defender might find his purpose. The closest comparison would be to a fighter that took Confident Aim instead of Defender, and Hold the Line instead of Wary Defender. The Defender would have +2 engagements, +5 Defenses and -5 deflection compared to +20% minimum damage (= +10% average damage), 20% graze to hit (~= +3.5% damage) and +1 engagement. The Confident Aim fighter looks to be much stronger unless the one additional engagement is worth a lot more than I think it is, (I used Confident Aim as that is the only other ability available at level 3 for a Fighter) The Non-Defender can take Savage Attack for another 20% damage modal or take Cautious Attack modal for an additional +8 deflection with a -20% attack malus. The Defender can't take either due to modal stacking limitations. If a Fighter is better off with General Talents how will they compare to a Paladin who can take the same General Talents in addition to the Paladin only cool stuff like Auras and Faith and Conviction? Or a monk who can output a whole lot more damage as well as AoE, better crowd control and awesome battlefield movement? The more I run the numbers the worse Defender 2.0 looks to be, and the worse Fighters in general appear to be.

That seems rather childish to want to return the DLC for that reason. Completing the game sets many things into motion as detailed in the ending slides. It would take a lot of development time to accurately portray the impacts of your decisions throughout the game world in order to allow you to continue on. Having no recognition of completing the main quest would be an order of magnitude more immersion breaking than having to load the 'past the point of no return' save and go do the expansion material. Fallout New Vegas was handled in a similar manner. The completion of the main quest is so world changing that it can't be portrayed correctly without a massive outlay of resources that most people would not even make use of. Most people would go back and re-do the game from the start using the new 2.0 abilities and experience the DLC in the normal game flow. Games that have main quests that actually have a big impact on the world end after the completion of that quest. Games that have main quests that do not have any effect on the world let you continue on forever. Skyrim's main quest had no impact on the world, no one notices or cares, completing the main quest or totally ignoring it did not make a difference. Much like all of the quests in Skyrim - become the harbinger of the Companions and they still call you welp and send you on missions to kill a bear in someone's house. There would be a lot of work in order to handle all of the possible permutations of your choices in order to accurately portray them. In the main city you can ally with one of three groups all of which will behave differently based on choices made during the missions, plus the decisions made during the Animancy trial will also change the actions of all of the factions. Roughly that'd be 3 main endings X2 for choices made in the faction's missions X4 for the level of animancy allowed for a total of approximately 24 different scenarios that would all require different voice acting and artwork. Of which 23/24's of the work would be wasted due to it representing actions and choices not taken by you. Or they could have the end not change a thing which would be really immersion breaking. Why go through all the trouble and danger of saving the world if no one notices? I much prefer that the completion of the main quest actually means something and if that requires me to load a save from prior to the final battle that is fine with me.

It all depends on the DT of the enemy. *(The actual effect of the -20% speed penalty is affects reload speed differently than attack speed but I am simplifying the effect due to not knowing how to accurately model the effect. The basic principle will remain but the specifics will be different) If your bow does 25 damage and the enemy has 15 DT- without penetrating shot you do 25-15 = 10 damage, with penetrating you do 25-(15-5) = 15 damage but 20% slower =>> 15*0.8 = 12 damage when equalized for the slower speed. If you had an arquebus doing 50 damage against 15 DT you'd have 50-15=35 damage without and 50-(15-5)=40 damage with, factor in the speed and you have 40*0.8= 32 damage. In this case it is better not to use penetrating shot. It would also depend on what other talent you take instead of penetrating shot. For me I'd look to take penetrating shot if I were planning to use a hunting bow, or blunderbuss. For a warbow it'd be a strong maybe. For other firearms or the crossbows it could be skipped as their damage per shot is much larger and has an easier time getting past high DT

I think that your first set of stats includes resting or equipment buffs. I think when you create a new character everything is a 10 and you get to add 18 points for a total of 78. Your first set totals up to 88 which is 10 points too high. The second set totals to 75, if you add the +2 for race and the +1 for culture you get to 78 total.

Those 2 points in Per aren't really going to do much. I'd put them in Might if I were you. The +2 per caption would get you +2 accuracy, +2 reflex and +6 interrupt compared to might getting you +6% damage and +2 fortitude. At deflection=accuracy 0-15 miss 16-50 graze 0.35*0.5 = 0.175 51-100 hit 0.50*1 = 0.5 Total 0.675 unit damage 0-13 miss 14-48 graze 0.35*0.5 = 0.175 49-98 hit 0.5*1 = 0.5 99-100 crit 0.02*1.5 = 0.03 Total = 0.705 unit damage With a mundane weapon and no damage talents the 16 might guy does (1 + 0.18 )*0.675 = 0.7965 unit damage The 14 might guy does (1+0.12)*0.705 = 0.7896 unit damage The guy with more might does more damage. Now add in an exceptional weapon at +45% damage 16 might does (1+0.18+0.45)*0.675 = 1.10025 unit damage 14 might does (1+0.12+0.45)*0.705 = 1.10685 unit damage The guy with more accuracy does more damage. The accuracy will help more against tougher foes. The more additional sources of damage you have the less important that might is. Going with 12 might and 14 perception would not be a bad option either and would open up some dialogues as well.