Raven Darkholme

I can't really think of a single bad class in Poe1. Fighters and rogues are arguably worse than other classes, but they have dw perma cc shenanigans going for them which are just very strong. Chanters, Priest and Wizards can be a matter of opinion what's better, personally I think Priests and wizards are just slightly more versatile than Chanters but there is also not much you can do wrong with chanters, while with the casters you might mess up your spell management or smth (not really)

Yes, priest is also one of the if not the strongest solo class in Poe1, because of how absurdly you can buff their stats (if it wasn't for brilliant sot combo you could say poe2 ruined priest with inspirations compared to how buffs worked in poe 1)

Solo you can get to PL 8 without even fighting a single enemy, ofc with party it takes longer thatn that but still, you should be able to hold off on all difficult fights and the dlcs till then.

You can't judge a single class by their earlygame, singleclass is all about PL 8 and 9.

If by "stupid good" you mean all the easy content of the game, than I totally agree, but megabosses are very tough without SoT or WoD. Example Dorudugan, you can't get brilliant via knockup (mind affliction immunity), you either have to use invis cheese (I'm mostly talking solo btw because I'm sure there is many ways to make it work with a party) or flank him for real. (Phantome foes is pretty bad on him btw because of his massive res). But getting brilliant is one thing, actually surviving AND killing him is another. One of the real big dealbreakers vs doru is scordeos + either sod or wot, make it even crazier with scordeos + bleeding cut. Sure if you wear the armor with enemy healing reduction aura, he won't fullheal of his fire, which is pretty big and if you wear cloak heals you for fire damage that also helps. Not saying a fight with just brilliant is impossible I'd be one of the first to try it, I'm just trying to outline how much more broken the extension of duration is (especially wod since it doesn't even NEED brilliant) than the resource regen of brilliant. At the end of the day both mechanics are super broken and not ok in their current state, but brilliant neither makes you immortal, nor does it give you anywhere comparable damage to what scordeos/bleeding cut does. (bleeding is still quite nice without scordeos, but against doru being slow and mortal, especially if he reduces your max hp you can get surprised quite easy and die, unless you kite him all day with a chanter, but then again doesn't really have anything to do with brilliant.) edit: one could make it very clear by having a wot character fight doru without using brilliant and having a brilliant user fight him without sot or wod. (spoiler first fight would take 10 mins, 2nd one an hour)

Well in that regard brilliant is also only broken because of SoT. A tactician without SoT is nice, but not more op than some other classes (pretty sure a monk is stronger, some chanter combos are pretty insane) As to WoD brilliant only adds convenience and is completely unneccessary, i keep repeating this because anyone who really tried to play a bm without brilliant, especially a fighter/bm will soon find out you try to get brilliant only because you don't want to press that blood sacrifice button. What I'm trying to say is brilliant would be a LOT less broken with nerfed SOT AND WOD. Infnite loops of healing would be gone via unbending and infinite bdd and final stand would be a lot more obnoxious to keep up. (keep in mind you also have to recast sot every 20 secs, brilliant gives you 3 resources in that time but you might want to spend resources for other stuff too, I've run out of resources with brilliant and sot in its current state already) For most of the game it would still be broken but for megabosses it would start to be annoying compared to the current state, while once again with resource regen gone completely idk how you even solo them on potd, maybe even some party comps would suffer. (monkless ones mostly i'd wager)

Should I also explain "why chanter?"

Removing resource regen is a lazy solution. (That would also turn part of the game into a consumable spamfest, at least for solo play, see poe1) I really like the SoT change @Elric Galad made, if WoD got something similar, infinite loops would be gone.

I'm not sure if I 100% understand WHY this works, but I can tell you how it works and why i THINK it works. You might remember from the Ultimate thread that people used this to not get interrupted while casting, you hover the mouse over delay turn and then press the hotkey for ending your turn, somehow the game assigns you the initiative you would get if you actually delayed your turn. (which is at the end of the current turn) Now if at the start of the fight you actually delay a turn AND all enemies are in the range they wanna stay in to attack you (this is important, enemies moving around will break the glitch), from now on your initiative will stay at the end of the turn unless you do something to change it (moving around oneself is one of these things and obviously doing a non cast full round action is another). Now if your initiative is at the end of the turn you cannot delay the turn further and the button will actually be greyed out, but if you cast your spell and instead of simply ending your turn hover the mouse over the delay button while ending the turn via hotkey, you will immediately cast your spell and immediately get another turn. As shown this can be an almost endless loop in which time actually stops, you can have so many dots on the ground that the game will lag more and more (didn't realise that in my first recording thats why it got laggier and laggier), so you have to be careful to only cast one chill fog etc. Eventually the loop will break. don't ask me why, haven't figured that out yet, and as you saw at the end of the video I also haven't figured out how to reenable it perfectly (one enemy kept their turn the others still lost it tho). edit: btw if one was to cast ground dots endlessly the loop seems less likely to break, the game just becomes unplayable after a while and dots only apply their first tick not for the next rounds cuz time is frozen, if with a lot of dots on the ground you intentionally stop the loop the enemies will take all the damage of the non passed turns at once, which is especially hilarious with combusting wounds.

To have a little earlier game example of this:

I'm not sure if you are ignoring me intentionally, but in case you don't one more time: Wall of draining by itself is more op than brilliant by itself. Brilliant is only op coupled with other stuff like SoT or wall or if it is up infinitely via Tactician (this is a lot less op than wall without brilliant tho.) Wall + anything that makes you invincible is enough to win any fight with a bloodmage cause all you need is press blood sacrifice, brilliant only makes fights easier and is onviously very op in the early game before one even gets the wall, but your point about brilliant is wrong, the only thing op by itself is wall, SoT is useless without brilliant and brilliant without duration extenders has a lot less options (still viable but calling something only true op if it is in fact less op is just a wrong definition.) I have never played this game with a party (but I'm sure at least with a smaller party you can make tactician still work) but there is quite a few tactician combos that can solo megabosses without duration extenders. On the ultimate it is a different story but on a normal solo potd upscaled game tactician + anything is very good. Lets not forget how op it is to just turn on Berath's challenge use any char with invis and get brilliant, or use all the weird tb mechanics, or use something like gouging strike, but apart from the obvious cheeses there is a lot more creative stuff you can do. I totally stand by your point of the duration extenders being more op than brilliant, just saying that brillian from tactician is in its own league and very strong. (and obv bugged)

Not entirely true, brilliant with infinite duration on the tactician is insanely strong and doesn't even need wall or SoT to be up infinitely, especially with the bug where you get it from invis, but even without that bug. Wall of draining by itself is stronger than brilliant by itself tho, sot on the other hand "needs" brilliant to be op.

Ye I agree. Well only prolonging unbending will actually increase the heal up to the point where you heal thousands per tick so it's not exactly the same when soloing a megaboss on the Ultimate, a paladin/bm will just die eventually IF the only means of healing is gloh, but ofc you are right it is enough for blood sacrifice and would be enough for time stop cheese in tb.

Yes, removing brilliant would not be a smart and too simple solution to the problem, I like your approach to SoT, maybe something similar can be done with draining wall? You don't need to hit self for draining wall abuse at all, you don't even need brilliant for draining wall abuse, all you need is either a fighter, priest or a simple potion of the final stand, that is what makes wall stronger in theory than brilliant (but weaker than Sot + brilliant).

Ye wall of draining on BM is as broken as brilliant and with fighter can be completely played without brilliant if one is smart with their resources (I personally sometimes don't think ahead so I end up having to use it). But let's be real Ultimate would not be possible without brilliant, unless you play like a chanter/ranger and do all fights entirely with summons. (not even sure if they can touch mega ukaizo)

Ye vela is the deal breaker, you have to keep her completely out of fights instead of just soting her with a priest, which is just so much more work.

Ok, this is straight up not caused by Arcane dampener, something screwy is going on with tb and hazards. Watching an eothen burn to death on a flamewall while it's my turn rn. Trying to figure out what exactly causes it right now.

If you can't flee from combat, yes. (Otherwise it will trigger and immediately end combat)

Grats man, glad you made it.

Tactician/Bloodmage is the most fun of the op classes for me personally, but in the ultimate it is annoying to keep Vela alive with it (possible but annoying). The cool thing about Tac/BM is, it's as immortal as a priest multi but doesn't require any crazy preparations before a fight to get brilliant or whatever. You go in pop Unbending and Wall of draining, the heal gets prolonged by the wall which doesn't only apply to the duration of the buff, but every single heal tick getting triggered by dmg and those stack with each other, so eventually you heal thousands of dmg per second. 90% of the fights will be very easy and also since you are a mage you can be very creative about what you do. You don't even need brilliant, cuz usually by the point you run out of abilities your regen is so sky high you can just spam blood sacrifice. If against some bosses regen is not enough like giant spooder megaboss, you can also prolong potions of the final stand with walls and can't die if you get injured more than once. Fights like fire drake are a joke it will never summon a single summon, your knockup gives you brilliant and will interrupt it. Getting brilliant with chill fog or summons is easy most of the times if you really feel like you need it. There is a handful of exceptions where fights will need preparations or pre planning a strategy. Most notable one is Dorudugan where it can be hard to get the wall to hit. Just consumables will make this a lot easier especially miss to graze conversion, also positioning can help, him walking on the wall gives rapid ticks and pushing him away can help too. On the bright side getting brilliant is very easy vs him with summons and it just isn't a very hard fight overall. Dispels from enemy casters are another issue but can be easily ducked with brilliant departure. Ofc this class is a lot less fun if not soloing.

Oh good to know that terrain plays a role. In ship combat the highest engagement I've gotten is 8 now, which is already 1 less than I have engagement slots atm, kinda sad but ofc confirms what you guys said.

The main problem with getting Tactician brilliant with persistent distraction is extreme inconsistency in flanking range: