Kaylon

You try to find obscure advantages for empowering melee attacks while carefully avoiding to compare them to what an empowered spell can do. Your argument that it can help sometimes is truly laughable when you look at what difference it makes for spells... The fan of flames example was very obvious because a simple spell, available to any class, from the lowest lvl scroll, is more effective than your "strong" empowered attack - it has nothing to do with class balance. And by the way a wizard can become as tanky as a paladin if not more, melee and also nuke everything - I don't see the balance here. I can understand you don't want casters nerfed, but at least stop talking about balance because it's obvious you don't want it.

I'm also surprised they didn't nerf the duality bonuses to 5 (like any inspiration), considering the other changes. For a tank or a ranged character the kelwalker is probably one of the best choices for multi.

Yes, you can consider Empower being basically a caster ability. This is not totally right. Empower does boost even weapon-based martial abilities, ~ 50% to the base damage (so it is multiplicative with other bonuses). People just notice spells a lot more because there are degenerate cases where empowering a damage spell is basically super overpowered (Minoletta's Crushing Missiles is my go-to autowin button on POTD, but e.g. Josh Sawyer pointed out how broken high-PL spells can be when empowered [imho in part because in "normal" gameplay, they never really get much PL-based scaling because they are already high-level, such as meteor shower or cleansing flame, so empowering them puts them way over the top]). But there are also martial abilities that can be really good when empowered. The special two-handed whispers of the endless paths great sword, when used on an empowered flames of devotion can be really good (boosted base damage, boosted flames damage, boosted penetration, boosted accuracy [increased chance for crit for even more damage], and then again for the whispers of the endless paths' aoe effect). Similarly, while there are plenty of martial abilities that are underwhelming when empowered, there are plenty of spells where empowering them is really underwhelming. Try empowering Confusion or Repulsing Seal or Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff. Yes, in theory it can be used for melee too, however it's useless most of the time. Doing 50% more damage to a single target is maybe good for an assassin once in a while, otherwise it makes no difference in a fight. The only utility for melee is to replenish their resources from time to time and not for damage, but for buffs/heals. Whispers of the endless paths is a joke now - even empowered with the laughable 20% lash is not even close to a simple fan of flames. No, ALL empowered martial abilities are underwhelming compared to what is available to casters. The fact that are also a few spells which don't benefit too much from empower is irrelevant - even if there's only a single spell which can make a big difference in a fight it's more than enough.

Yes we could but at the end the conclusion is apparent: 20 bonus acc is much better than for example +50% bonus elemental damage most of the time due to how it works especially on classes like rogue which has alot of bonus damage. When you factor in on hit procs from weapons and abilities and being able to actually deal damage on higher armored enemies due to pen on crit, it's a no brainer. Also spells are affected by it in much better way because having +60 accuracy on whisper of treason after 3 sec in combat is extremely valuable. All of those benefits that acc offers are exponentially better on POTD. 50% elemental damage increases your dps by a flat 50% always superior to 20acc, that's a no brainer. Like I already said, procs are mostly irrelevant, unless you can provide an example because personally I don't see one. Also the first thing you should do is to debuff enemy's armor or pick a weapon which can penetrate it - if you expect criticals to compensate your lack of penetration then you do something wrong. Yes, for spells, accuracy is more important (because there are fewer ways to increase their dps) but the topic was about ranged dps...

I think you can change the subclass using the console (setsubclass).

All modals were considered active buffs since PoE1, nothing new...

There's no penetration reduction due to grazes. Over-penetration doesn't happen most of the time, your penetration should be higher than enemy's armor by at least 33% which rarely happens vs enemies of your level. You can I suppose add 0.15 to the criticals bonus (if we consider it happens half of the time and we don't have blunted criticals...) The only way to go over 50% hits is through graze to hit conversion, it has nothing to do with accuracy. Yes, there are a few procs on crits, most of the time ccs/debuffs (which can also be resisted) and from time to time more powerful spells with a very small chance to trigger. But if you have a weapon with a devastating proc in mind we can do a more in depth analysis.

I got the buff from the pool just by drinking from it... Sometimes I was polymorphed, sometimes I got a buff...

It doesn't work like that... I will consider the average situation where your accuracy equal to the enemy's deflection. That means your attacks will be: 15%misses, 35% grazes and 50%hits. If you add 20 accuracy it will become: 30% grazes, 50% hits and 20% crits. In the first scenario your average damage would be: base dmg * (.35 * (0.5 + dmg bonuses) + .5 * (1 + dmg bonuses)) = base dmg * (0.675 + 0.85 * dmg bonuses) In the second scenario your average damage would be: base dmg * (.3 * (0.5 + dmg bonuses) + .5 * (1 + dmg bonuses) + .2 * (1.25 + dmg bonuses)) = base dmg * (0.9 + dmg bonuses) In the case of a ranger/cipher how much dmg bonuses you can have? 60% from weapon, 20% soul whip and maybe 30% from might ie 110%. If we compare the two scenarios the dps increase will be: (0.9 + 1.1) / (0.675 + 0.85 * 1.1) = 2/1.61 = 1.24 That means only a 24% dps increase from +20 accuracy...

As a tank you need both good defenses (to avoid criticals which bypass your armor and also reduce damage because more misses/grazes) and armor (to greatly reduce the damage). The resolve should be maxed because it increases both will and deflection (negative effect reduction is a bonus). Might should be maxed too - it increases fortitude and the healing bonus (which increases your regeneration). The unbroken starts with -15reflex penalty which is later compensated by the shield bonus, however you have to invest in dex/per to keep your reflex at the same level with the other defenses - I recommend max perception because it helps landing hits/abilities. A good stat distribution for a tank is: 18mig/5con/5dex/18per/5int/18res (without the racial/culture bonuses).

The best dps ranged character is the dual pistols chanter/rogue, by a large margin... You'll have eventually all the possible buffs from chanter, recovery+reload speed chant, burn lash chant, crowd control, armor debuff, pets and all the passive dmg bonuses from the rogue, invisibility, etc... Pick Maia's armor, the hat with bonus to reload speed, ring of the marksman, the speed gloves, the pet with 10% ranged dmg and all items with +dex you can find and with pistols modal you can easily go under 2s attack (even after the patch I think). A monk(helwalker)/rogue can achieve slightly better dps but he's very squishy...

Items increasing area of effect work too (you can stack the bonus from Aloth's armor with the one from a ring).

You can't pledge to Woedica, but I saw the option to not pledge at all (was it even possible?)

There's the necklace of power which gives +2 PL (if it wasn't nerfed), +1 from food and +1 from Woedica's Power and +3 from Death's Usher.

Sorry but that list makes absolutely no sense. On what are based your rankings? DPS, survivability, burst damage, melee, ranged, solo, party, end game? Also what's the difference between top tiers and low tiers? And are we talking about builds or classes here, because if a class performs well only because of an item it should be mentioned.

It seems the +1 penetration from the Devil of Caroc effigy works only when attacking from stealth/invisibility...

It was hitting twice only vs the main target. I don't know if it was a bug or not but if it stays like that it will become garbage vs single targets.

The invisibility breaks if you do damage, but it could be interesting for a backstabbing rogue...

Keeping the same damage as in PoE1 I think is ok - you can even name your mod PoE1 Dragon Trashed

The best are Rakhan Field Boots which allow to teleport to an enemy and do a full attack once per encounter - huge for assassins who can backstab instantly from stealth at the start of a fight. Don't know how they're obtained however.

If you don't have high accuracy/hit to crit and especially an attack doing multiple hits, then it's better to get lightning strikes...

Yeah, it's a very solid build with no weaknesses and great damage.

For the quest "Dirty Laundry" you have to talk to the spy upstairs in the Luminous Bathhouse. By saying that you are ready the game fades out and you are naked down in the bath and have to talk to two new NPCs. This transistion removes all resting bonuses. Its part of the VTC faction quest line and I think you can do this after "Storms of Poko Kohara" ... destroying the adra pillar or not doesn't matter. I'm not sure if its needed to do Hasango main quest too. I stumbled upon it pretty late, as I did the quests late in the game when I was already Level 20. But it should be possible to do this quest and forge the swords early and then start stacking resting bonuses. other things to mention: 1) wounds I did my "no rest" run as a solo Warcaller, who only invested skills in Athletics/Mechanics (50:50) and History. Having Berath's Blessing, Hylea's Bounty and Irwenas Bonus (+5 to class skills, +3 to other skills), collecting all Training buffs, using items/pets with skill bonuses and skill boosting consumables help a lot with skill checks for preventing wounds. But on one island there was a forest map encouter with a cave behind it (which is needed to clear the island for naming it). There you need high Sneak or Survival skill (at least higher than I could reach with item bonuses), so I took the wound for failing it (-5 Fortitude defense, -3 corrosive AR). To prevent this you need to invest in Survival/Sneak skill. Or you plan to get it (its not a bad wound), because there are items that give bonuses when you have a wound (like interrupt immunity). 2) sigils Getting the Wardstones is crucial, because without resting you can not clear curses. You can find Wardstones for Atrophy/Darkness/Nightmares by searching ruins. Just save and load until you get them - i got all three while still being on Maje. The wardstone for Mortality can be gotten at Nemnoks lair and I think one other location. If you don't have a wardstone try using Dragon's Dowry - with this weapon you can kill most sigils while staying out of their range, as they are immune to piercing damage but not fire damage. The Luminous Adra potion clears wounds and gives +2 to all skills until rest (so wounds shouldn't be a problem), don't know if the skill bonus stacks with the oils however. The cursed totems can be destroyed from stealth with a ranged weapon (some are immune to slash/thrust so you need to have always a scepter in your stash), so Wardstones aren't really required.

Then a graze nullifies 100% dmg bonus, while a severe under-penetration nullifies 300% damage bonus...

Have you also used Voidward? I suppose you need 3+ enemies who take full damage to be able to heal completely...