KDubya

For defensive builds the weapon and shield style is the better choice. It comes at the cost of not taking dual wield with it's inherent double approximate +33% attack speed and an additional +20% attack speed, or using two handed style which gets you much higher base damage, possibly reach or increased DR penetration and a 15% damage increase. Single weapon gets an inherent +12 accuracy and the graze>hit can further increase your accuracy. It looks like a balanced choice to me as the style choices are all good. I think the single weapon style is intended to work with the shield style. At the cost of another talent and the loss of the +12 accuracy, you can use the graze>hit, the defense bonus and a shield. Edit - fixed the mistaken dual wield statement, thanks peddoelm for catching that.

If Perception increased accuracy then every character would max it first. Hitting, or not, is more important than more powerful or faster attacks. It would greatly diminish the amount of different viable character builds. The wood elf racial is fine, a small situational accuracy buff is not overpowered. The moon godlike ability, on the other hand, should be changed from an AoE to self only heal, possibly to per rest instead of per encounter.

Interrupts are nice to get but not worth going all out to try to maximize. They are like jimmies, or sprinkles, on an ice cream cone, nice to have but if they were left off you still have ice cream. If your character would naturally have a high perception then they are a nice bonus. Any frontline melee that is trying for a large deflection will have a good perception and thus a good interrupt. Ranged rogues, rangers and casters can juggle stats and add perception at the cost of resolve (and lower will saves). A barbarian would be stat starved to go for an above average perception and would be the last character I'd try for a lot of interrupts unless the AoE of carnage leads to a large increase in interrupts. Ability wise there'd be better choices than the increased interruption talent until maybe the last few levels, while it would have the most benefit at the early levels. On top of that the uniques, like mosquito, are miles ahead of standard weapons and would greatly limit your weapon choices. At early levels I try to get a weapon focus for the accuracy and then grab a weapon style at level 6. More interrupt chance is not better than increased damage via two handed or faster attack via dual wield.

My front line just doesn't take damage? That is a much larger problem with AI, and combat mechanics. If you design a super-tank that through stacking skills, attributes and equipment achieves near unhittable defense, and then combine that with abusing the AI mechanic of the enemy bunching around instead of disengaging and going after your backline, you will have in effect broken the game. If that is your playstyle then a ranger is useless for you, in fact anything other than a super-tank and a team of ranged glass cannons would be useless for you. To fix that they'd have to: 1.) Have monsters disengage from your non-damaging super-tank, eat a disengagement attack and then mob your glass cannons. 2.) Have more monsters have a teleport ability to get past your super-tank and hit the glass cannons. 3.) Give monsters an ability to teleport your backline into melee range like the high level fighter ability can. 4.) Give monsters an alternate ranged weapon set and have them focus fire down your backline. 5.) Players could self regulate and not use builds and tactics that trivialize encounters. Since, I believe, that someone has soloed the game with every class on PotD, the tools are in the game to overcome all challenges posed by the AI if the player goes all out to win, even without using a full party. Based on this the only sure way to address the problems are option 5 and self regulate.

The pet gets you a disposable per encounter damage sponge. Send it in first to take the alpha strike, use it as a focus for AoE attacks. If the pet is still alive at the end of the fight you are not using it right Even when the pet dies your ranger with vicious aim and higher base accuracy is still as accurate as a ranged rogue and has higher base endurance and deflection to survive any ranged attacks that target your backline. All of the damage that the pet soaks up is damage that your frontline does not need to endure, it reduces the attrition style losses to health that forces rests and risks perma death (if playing without maimed). For my playstyle I like to have a ranger in the party. I like per encounter, steady state type groups that are heavy on durable melee that can dish out damage while outlasting the enemy rather than a massive nuke fest with five glass cannons and one super-tank. For me the ranger dishes out dependable, accurate ranged damage and gives you a disposable suicide soldier that bounces back fresh every fight.

If you make your fighter with max might and dex, use two handed weapons, take weapon spec, focus and mastery, and armored grace you'll out put consistent accurate heavy hitting around 40 damage per hit at a fairly fast rate. With defender and wary defender modal you can tank up when needed, turning it off when not. Throw in the critical defense that converts crits to hits to increase survivability and the self rez and you get a sturdy frontliner that will kill mobs while being durable. Only fighters can take weapon spec and mastery for +25% damage with the entire weapon group, and armored grace for -16% armor penalty, roughly equivalent to 5 extra dex as far as action speed goes. A fighter with soldier weapon group can alpha strike with a arbalest or arquebus as hard as a ranger or cipher can and then switch to melee while requiriring minmal support. Melee rogues can output bigger damage but are fragile, needing to flank or utilize reach weapons from safety. Barbs are similar in their fragility as their deflection is terrible and they depend on killing quicker than they themselves get dropped. Fighters can take the hits, survive and still output good damage.

With the new starting focus at early levels worst case you'd have to shoot once and then start casting. This does not sound like a problem. Before, at higher levels, you could blast out enough that a typical trash encounter would be nuked before you'd ever have to generate focus. Difficult fights always required that you generate focus. The new lower starting focus will just mean that in trash fights you might need to generate focus. I am not sure how the change from focus per hit to % based will affect focus generation. If it makes something other than blunderbuss effective that would be nice. Ciphers will still be the masters of outputting their best spells in every encounter without needing to hold back for some future tough fight. They will still be the best support for setting up a rogue for sneak attacks. The increased endurance and health combined with the new % based focus generation might open up more opportunity for melee ciphers.

True enough as far as it goes. None of the story companions I recruited are optimized for damage, and my dialogue-y tank/support Paladin main certainly wasn't. What the picture does is put the lie to the main contention of the original post, that "Gone are the good old days of BG and IWD where Fighters could give as good as they got. Now tanks just sit on the front line tieing up the enemies while the other classes have all the fine." Eder tanked more enemies, and simultaneously did more damage than (giving 300+% better than he got), any other member of my party, a party that probably resembles the parties of lots of other people who just picked up the game and played through it without being in thrall to an optimization fetish. Eder also had lots of fine fun while on his tear of tanky, protective destruction. The problem is with your PC Paladin. They can stand in front as a punching bag but can't do much else. Fighters, on the other hand, can make ass kicking durable frontline warriors. Follow these simple steps for ass kicking front liners who can tank "good enough for long enough" 1.) Max might - more damage and more passive endurance regen 2.)Dump intellect - you only have to have one duration based ability, knockdown and at 3 intellect 3.3 seconds is as good as 5 seconds when it gets you 7 stat points. 3.) Place at least as many points you dumped from intellect here to balance out your will. Also gets you concentration, deflection and dialogue options. 4.) Set Con to 8 or leave at 10. 5.)Split remaining points between dex and per. I prefer to max dex for more actions. 6.) Defender and Wary defender are your ticket to durability. +15 deflection and +10 all saves is great. 7.) Use a shield until you get defender, then choose two handed or dual wield. 8.)Pick a weapon group and stick to it. the three talents get you +6 accuracy, +25% damage with the whole group. You can swap to weapon and shield if you really need deflection, you get a good ranged weapon in the group for the first shot, most groups have a two hander in case you need the increased damage per hit for DR. This gives you strategic flexibility. If you get too wounded you can stay in the rear and fire ranged support instead of forcing a team rest. 9.)Start all combat with a ranged volley, swap to melee weapon as horde approaches. 10.) Wear the heaviest armor you can get, DR is what keeps you alive. 11.) Take armored grace for -16% armor reduction. Faster attacks are better 12.) Critical Defense will change crits to hits and hits to graze. Your deflection will be somewhere 80-110 so you will get hit, this will help a lot. 13.) Take the self rez ability at level 11 14.) (should have been #1) Have at least two frontliners to contain the horde, I like three on PotD. These can be chanter, paladin, monk, anyone who can wear heavy armor and take some hits. Three guys can form a wall and keep your backline safe. With this approach fights will last longer than a one agro-magnet and five nuker approach but will not have the catastrophic team wipe capacity that a glass cannon approach is susceptible to. The longer fights allow for better use of passive regen from fighters and chanters, and also makes good use of chanter abilities that take time to ramp up.

Where are all your written in stone laws for rogues and rangers? How do you see rogues better with bows and rangers better with guns? A rogue gets two talent/abilities that get you 20% hit to crit, that is it A ranger with vicious shot and stalker link gets +20 accuracy. If a rogue accuracy = deflection you get the following: Rogue 15% miss, 35% graze, 40% hit, 10% crit (20% of 50% hit rate is 10%) Ranger gets 0% miss, 30% graze, 50% hit, 20% crit. If ranger accuracy = deflection you get the following: Rogue 35% miss, 35% graze, 24% hit, 6% crit Ranger 15% miss, 35% graze, 50% hit Rogues are all about the sneak attack bonus, they do not have a better critical rate than a ranger. As the first "captain obvious" poster here the OP asked a specific question about two specific weapons. The answer may be obvious to you but since the OP was asking I'd assume that it was not obvious to him.

I was using bows for both so I did not have to factor in reload speed, also wanted to keep it apples to apples. I like vicious shot for warbows or hunting bows as the extra damage helps punch through DR and the accuracy boost is nice, plus they fire fast and average speed so a slight slowdown is not too bad. Guns are slow enough they do not need to be slowed further. I like quick shot and the follow on accuracy boost for the slower arbalest or gun ranger but I do not fully understand the math behind the increased reload and firing rates. I love guns for fire once then switch to another weapon. I've a Amaumau pirate rogue that starts with two hot switch pistols then draws steel and goes to work. Reloading is painfully slow.

I have the GoG version so there are no achievements for me. From what I read at Nexus using the IE mod does not turn off steam achievements the way "Iroll20s" does.

It would give clubs a purpose and would make sense. When the interrupting talent gets fixed interrupting builds will be more interesting and effective. The dagger would also make sense as a pierce/slash weapon.

What you want to do is get the IE mod off of Nexus. Prior to install find which file it changes and make a copy of that and keep it somewhere else. This way you can always copy the original file back in and remove the mod. Especially important with GoG version as it will check your PoE version and will not recognize the IE mod. You then have to paste back in the original file, get the GoG patch and then re-install IE mod, possibly needing an updated version. This will give you access to the console in game where you can un-level your companions and even change their class if you want to. Another console lets you assign gods and paladin orders and you can even change their stats to however you want them. With this mod you can customize the companions as you see fit as well as experience their in party banter and personal quests.

It depends on what you are shooting. Low DR is better with the blunderbuss, High DR is better with the pistol.

At range it is a lot closer between ranger and rogue, whose best abilities are in melee. Using war bows a ranger with vicious aim gets +10 accuracy, +20% damage, and 0.8 fire rate, driving flight for a possible 60% damage attack to another target, a stun on hit or crit, stalkers link for +10 accuracy with you and pet on same target. This is four talent/abilities. A rogue gets +50% from sneak, another +50% when upgraded to deathblows and dirty fighting gets 20% hit to crit. and deep wounds for a 4 raw damage DoT. This is four talent/abilities If rogue accuracy = enemy deflection, 20 might Rogue misses 15%, Grazes 35%, 40% hit and 10% crit (20% of 50% is 10%). Unit damage would be 0.15x0.0 + 0.35x0.50 + 0.4x1 + 0.1x1.5 = 0.65, factor in might for 0.65x(1+0.3) = 0.845 Sneak attack adds 50% 0.65 x (1+ 0.3 + 0.5) = 1.17 Deathblows 0.65 x (1 + 0.3 + 1) = 1.495 Ranger has +20 accuracy (10 from vicious, 10 from stalker) Ranger misses 0% Grazes 30%, hits 50%, crits 20% Unit damage would be 0.3x0.5 + 0.5x1 + 0.2x1.5 = 0.95 factor in the reduced fire rate = 0.76 factor in the +20% damage due to vicious and the might you get 0.76 x(1 + 0.2 + 0.3) = 1.14 Without sneak attacks the ranger will hit more often and harder. With sneak attacks the rogue leads slightly, with deathblows it pulls ahead. How does one count the possible extra hit from driving flight, or the utility of stun locking one target, not to mention a disposable pet that soaks up hits, engagements and can knockdown, flank and cause damage. I think a ranger brings more to the team than a ranged rogue,

Very not true if your weapon attacks fast.. (like faster than every 3 seconds.. Or is not a blunderbuss ..Or you don't switch target after every attack) It doesn't stack with itself from multiple applications, it resets duration .. here's a blunder buss shot 2 graze/2 hit/ 2crit ( penetrating shot would've added 4*6 =24 damage strait up on weapon hit ) //blunderbuss pellet shots damage to health after armor DR +0 ms |Health Damage 0.979370 +5 ms |Health Damage 2.161896 +4 ms |Health Damage 1.174561 +6 ms |Health Damage 2.117401 +3 ms |Health Damage 2.148376 +5 ms |Health Damage 2.186310 // deep wound DOT +61 ms |Health Damage 3.810822 +2994 ms |Health Damage 3.810822 +3013 ms |Health Damage 3.810822 +3019 ms |Health Damage 3.810822 +2958 ms |Health Damage 3.684784 3.81 * 5 = 19.05 total bleed damage. . Faster you attack target - much bigger win for penetrating shot .. Now if blunderbuss could've hit multiple targets .. benefit would've still been minor . What weapon speed would benefit equally/more from deep wounds compared to the DR bypass talents with -20% attack factored in? If a fast speed attacks before the poison has ticked, is a average speed slow enough for the poison to tick in between swings or only slow weapons?

For a rogue you can dump intellect and one for one place the points in resolve. This will keep your will save neutral at worst. Rogues do not have any AoE and very few duration abilities so a low intellect does not adversely affect them other than the will save. Con might not add much for endurance but a good fortitude save is nice to have. A higher perception will add 3/pt to interrupt roll but a crit will add 25. A barbarian has the additional burden compared to a rogue of wanting a high intellect for the AoE carnage. That would leave perception to be dumped and resolve to be left neutral at best in order to not exacerbate incoming interrupts.

Would you consider Deep Wounds a replacement for the talent that bypasses 4 DR at the cost of -20% attack rate? Without doing or knowing the exact math here - Guy with deep wounds hit with weapon .... poison tick 4 damage ..... hit with weapon ..... poison tick for 4 damage Guy with DR bypass ....... hit with weapon with 4DR bypass ....... hit with weapon with 4DR bypass Also how soon does the first poison tick fire off? Is it immediately? Do off hand weapons apply it as well?

Thanks everyone for the advice. I'll be going for the dirty fighting, hit to crit is always useful. I dumped intellect as the rogue does not have any AoE and very few duration based disables. Placed those points into resolve to balance out the will save and concentration to avoid interrupts. I started with crippling instead of blinding strike for the extra use per encounter. Both add the same extra damage, both set up follow on sneak attacks. Blind is better than hobbled but two is better than one.

On PotD, just hit level 5. Build is a Pirate theme. Race = Island Amaumau, Deadfire Archipelago Raider Might 20 Con 8 Dex 19 Per 10 Int 3 Res 18 Talents - Crippling Strike, Reckless Assault, Savage Attack, Ruffian focus Wielding sabre one handed for the accuracy boost, two weapon switches have fine arbalest for initial volleys, will change to pistol when I find any. Wearing leather armor. Team is two hander fighter, Kana, Monk all three in full plate on the frontline. Cipher and Durance in back, Pirate shoots twice then runs around flank and starts in with sword. Cleared some of Raedric's hold to get plate, cleared Stronghold, top floor of endless (spiders) and one room of Xaurip on level one. Had to abandon here due to too many xaurip, too high deflection and too many stuns. On the way to Big City. What talents would be better to take at level five: 1.) Escape - Currently I have no ability to get out of a bad melee other than killing the guy or getting a paralyze from the cipher. My deaths occur when either teleporters hit the rear, the frontline gets dropped or the horde spills around. Being per encounter sounds better than per rest. Is the range affected by a low intellect? Four meters sounds useful, if in my case it becomes 2.1 meters it would not be very useful. 2.) Dirty Fighting - 10% hit to crit is not bad, opens up another 10% in the general talents. 3.) Deep Wounds - lists 13 raw damage for 6.5 seconds, reduced from ten due to my low intellect. How useful is this? Does it stack, as in if I get 3 hits in every 6 seconds it'd be doing 3x13 = 39 raw damage every 6 seconds or so? That would be like a 33% damage increase, maybe more if I dual wielded stillettos. Or is it only able to hit for 13 damage and each new hit just resets the timer? 4.) Blinding Strike - once per encounter, lasts 6.5 seconds blind and 1.25 x damage. I think the blind would break engagement if it hit, could this serve as a form of escape? Thanks for any thoughts and ideas on this.

I've got the same issue with Aloth and the level one lightning spell. I think it happened when I queued the spell and then was paralyzed/petrified. While Aloth was disable my team won the combat and he was freed from the status effect but was unable to complete the queued spell as he was no longer in combat.

Is one handed style supposed to work with a shield in the off hand? and if so why does it not work with fist and shield? In game if I equip a one handed weapon in the combat log I occasionally see info stating that a graze was converted to a hit due to one handed style. It is working as intended. If I then add a shield to my off hand I get the same combat log messages stating that a graze has been converted to a hit due to one handed style. Makes sense as I am using a single one handed weapon, not dual wielding or using a two hander. If I also take the weapon and shield talent I can have both talents working at the same time - one handed style and weapon and shield style, With weapons everything works fine, assuming that the two styles are supposed to be able to work together in which case a note in their talent descriptions would be nice to inform people. With a monk using a fist and shield works with the weapon and shield talent. The increased speed ability from dual wielding talent applies to a monk and their fists. A monk using a weapon alone, or with a shield, gets both the single handed weapon effect and the weapon and shield effect as it should be. A monk using a fist and shield does not benefit from the single weapon style. Is this as intended?

At first level your stats have a massive effect on your build while at higher levels your talents and abilities define how well you do. At first level con 18 compared to con 10 or even 8 is huge. At level ten the difference is much smaller. At level one Might is the only damage add, at high levels it is only one of many. Testing without any armor also skews the results to favor fire godlikes as they'd be the only ones who get any DR which is required for any chance of survival in melee. Monks do well because as they generate wounds they get more damage output that is an AoE with a debuff. Try it with brigandine at DR 10 or whatever it is. A moon godlike with 10 DR plus three heals will do better than a fire god at 10 DR that goes to 14 DR. Better yet try it with the bears who hit a lot harder than wolves. Your winning stats have max damage, max hit points, and max deflection with minimum dex and int. The reason is at first level your accuracy is bad so you need luck to hit, better to get lucky with a big swing than to try and get lucky multiple times with weak swings but faster. With no armor your only defense is hit points and deflection, if you minimize the number of times you get hit combined with the ability to take more hits is going to be a winner. Monk fists do average speed weapon damage at the speed of fast weapons, you need weapons with lash to slightly out do monk fists. I don't think that the winning tactic at level one is going to get you very far into the game trying to solo PotD. I have a party on PotD as I have never tried to solo. If I were to I'd use the companions through the tutorial until I got to the machine and the cutscene with Thanos.

My experience on PotD, level 4 now at Caed Nua with a rogue: Build is melee focused Pirate theme using sabre in one hand for the +12 accuracy, Amaumau for the extra weapon, will be pair of pistols or blunderbuss to start the show then run around flank and engage with sabre from behind. As stated above melee does good damage with reckless, and savage attack with easily achieved sneak attack status effect from team that has a cipher. Damage add is +30% might +20% reckless +20% savage for +70% damage and +120% sneak attack, ranged damage is +30% and +80% sneak attack/initial volley. He also gets +21 accuracy in melee from ruffian, reckless, savage (-5) and using only one weapon. To achieve this the rogue needs three talent/abilities. A two hander rogue would be getting +85% damage, +135% sneak and +9 accuracy. At higher levels you can add in deathblows for another +50% Compared to a damage spec fighter (both are single target so it is apples to apples) who get +30% might, +25% weapon spec & mastery, Two handed style +15% for a total of +70% damage while using defender modal at a cost of 0.8 attack speed, +90% if you went savage modal instead. Both would also get you +55% ranged damage. The accuracy buff here is only +6 and in the case of savage only +1. The tanking version with wary defender needs six talent/abilities, the savage needs five talent/abilities, seven if you wanted both mutually exclusive modals to switch back and forth. The rogue outputs more damage with less talent investment and more accuracy at the cost of less endurance, much less deflection and requiring micro to properly position and apply status effects. The saved talents can be used to further add damage via the poison DoT, increase survivability or whatever suits you. Keeping the targets sneak attack susceptabel is the whole reason to go for a rogue. If you are not going to do that then better to roll with damage spec'd fighters or monks. I find a melee rogue to be a fun, high risk/reward class. In my team he leads in damage, 2nd is the monk, tied for 3rd is the fighter and cipher, last are chanter and priest. If I wanted a ranged archer/gunner type I'd go ranger instead of rogue, they look to be more fun as a ranged rogue looks pretty boring without the need to run around in melee at great risk for great reward.

Two weapon style does work with fists. It also has the same/similar language concerning holding a weapon in each hand. If two weapon style is supposed to work with fists then one handed style should as well.