Elric Galad

For pure AoE damages, drake's ambassador is better than any other build. You have to wait lvl 9, then Dragon Trashed will do the job. Just select any buffing chant on first chant slot, then fill your partition will Dragon Trashed. Fire lash chant is superior to Sure Handed, so it's a good pick at lvl 11. Paladin lvl 13+ will help too later on. Pallegina with Sworn ennemy, Wrath of the Five Suns and FoD is one of the best sniper of the game by the way. Then for AoE CC, sure druids are better. But with cipher and Aloth, you should be fine. Zealous Endurance aura and Outworn buckler for Pallegina will greatly help your survavibility. Ituumak has infinite health. With the pet DR talent, lay on hand and reviving Exhortation, you'll have a big pool of endurance to sacrify on each fight that could reduce the necessity to rest. Even if pet dies often, it will do the job, especially on trash fights. Honnestly, I think your party is perfectly balanced as it is.

I'm not saying priest are fun. I'm not saying priest are necessary. I partially agree with the prayer against stuff are not an excellent design. There are too few compromise between being totally immune to a given status and being vulnerable enough to be ****ed by a CC graze. I'm just saying you feel the difference when no priest is around. PotD is mostly about +15 to accuracy and defense. Priest buff can do way more.

You should get an achievement for this ^^ And you may have to use a lot of scrolls (defense, valor, protections against x)

Mmm Boeroer, in 3.03 it would be 75% graze to miss and 50% hit to graze. It would be hard not call it totally OP.

It should work only on reflex. Which version are you playing ? 3.02 ? 3.03 beta ?

I don't know. I supposed it could happen everywhere. I am a paranoid, you know. Wait, you mean I have slaughtered the whole abbey for no reason ? Actually, it is probably the hardest area of the game, save a few fights. EDIT: These stats indeed don't sound natural.

Further Testing : Vulnerable Attack does work with Fighter's charge. Probably work with Flagellant Path too but I'm too lazy to test

I made a hard save before entering every concerned area and treated each one as a mini-Iron man. It worked well, I didn't die once in Craghold, bog or Abbey. All worked fine, except the time I learned in a corridor that Freezing Rake was wall-bouncing spell. My wizard managed to kill half of the antagonists and two third of my party . My remaining chanter and druid had to finish the job themselves. But I planned to resolve the Abbey as peaceful as I could, and I had to change this because I was not sure about buff stacking each time you enter a new area too. So I changed my plans, and basically slaughtered everything the first time and entered each area. Quite annoying.

Barb and Rogue. (And chanter, but that's just a minor stuff)

I would have said Intelligence ^^ And Might is rarely under 14 in my builds.

Kdub, I think that you're being a little over the top when saying that Fighters do nothing for the team. Sure, they may not be the highest DPS characters. OTOH, my experience is that their durability and strong if not spectacular damage output makes a fighter a rock in a party's front line. Also, if you want to try to find ways to minimize or at least reduce your micromanagement of the team, fighters tend to be fairly hands off compared to other front liners, like monks. Mind you, I'm not dissing Paladins when I say this. I like having a paladin around as well, even if I don't expect him or her to be a spectacular damage producer. Fighters are probably the most reliable class in the game, and also have the highest base stats. They're ridiculously tanky at mid levels, even without using a shield. Unbending is ridiculously good and with up to three uses in a single fight (boss fights), the Fighter basically can't be killed. Confident Aim and Disciplined Barrage let them reliably hit even high Deflection monsters, and they have a wide variety of control abilities, most of which are PE rather than PR. Fighters don't have the highest throughput, but they're almost entirely self-sufficient. They don't often need healing, they don't often need ACC buffs, and you can even make them permanently immune to Fear and Terrified if you'd like. Personally, I'm a big fan of a damage-oriented Fighter that uses Defender and Overbearing Protector. You can easily bait the enemy into breaking Engagement by sticking someone squishy nearby, which allows the Fighter to proc incredibly powerful and accurate Disengagement Attacks. Defender (and optionally Hold the Line) just make it even more powerful, though taking Defender means you won't be able to use any other modal abilities at the same time (no Savage Attack, Vulnerable Attack, etc.) Giving Fighters some points in Lore is also really great. It's not a class skill for them, but honestly... skills still aren't very useful except for one mandatory Mechanics class and the required 3 Athletics to remove Fatigue from the game. You aren't out too much by going for 4 or so Lore to be able to use some basic scrolls (particularly buff or CC scrolls.) Fighter is a bit like Hidan in the Akatsuki (a group of powerful ninjas in Naruto's world). He's the "weakest" member of the crew because his "only" power is to be immortal OK, I'm simplifying a bit and agree with your description, but I think it's not totally false. And there's charge too ! It is a bunch of AoE damages Spike.

Honnestly, the problem is that I have no idea about what could be the cause of this ^^ Good luck !

I'm personally a big fan of Wael. Yeah, Skaen gives you a baby sneak attack, but I think people may underestimate how good reach weapons can be; (Wael's incomprehensible revelation talent gives you +10 quarterstaff and rods). Skaenites might do more damage, but a priest of Wael can do that damage safely. Just stand behind someone with good engagement (fighter, or some other melee fighter with hold the line) with a good quarterstaff (hint: steal Durance's; Gromnir is right, it's pretty good, one of the better quarterstaffs in the game), maybe put up that Holy Power aura (+3 might, +7 resolve in a tiny area including your priest) and you can do alright early on (and buff your tank in the process). Sneak Attack applies to ranged attacks as well as melee ones, however. You won't have that +10 ACC, which will hurt early on, but the extra damage will outweigh the ACC in most cases later In order to get +10 ranged attack with Skaen priest, you can use the soulbound scepter. You might get it quite early.

About everything that scales in this game scale on Lvl 1 + 3x. From transcendant suffering to Brisk recitation and Ranger's pet.

In my experience, playing without a priest is a bit like scaling up the difficulty level

The last sentence confuses me. I can only fulfill your powergaming perspective by soloing with a priest? :D Sorry the confusion. I meant : if you're powergaming, you should have a priest in your party. Unless you're powergaming solo, then you might not have a priest.

Well, perception is indeed really good at low level on classes with natural average Acc. Once your priest dings level 7, perception is nice but not critical anymore. And if you don't have a priest in your party, and you don't play solo, you shouldn't even speak about powergaming in the first place !

I don't think the guy who posted is from Obsidian. He's not Sking but Skirge ^^ For sure it is really annoying for people on GoG.

What I found really memorable in PoE : - The Tree with Hanged corpses - The encounters with Lurker, Pwgra and Wild druids in Engwithan ruins. When nature feels actually dangerous. - Stalwart, the remote settlement and its lovely music (including bard at the tavern). - The whole Abbey of the Fallen moon with amnesic monk, Maneha subquest, conversation with Ondra. Probably the best part (and hardest...). - The moment Sagani told me she has been the mother of five. - Durance scream when he realized Magran has betrayed him. As a whole, it was a bit inferior to all old IE games when it comes to memorable scene, except IWD1. Music is very good, but only Stalwart tune was memorable for me.

Yup. That's a better version of what I said about Acc addind around 2% Damages and being worse than Might. About being "Fast enough" with no recovery and investing in Mig instead of Dex... I guess it's where it's interesting to speak about the classes. As I said above, Rogue DPS is never "too high" and he/she has already so much damages modifiers than investing in Mig seems a poor choice. So for Dex... On the opposite, paladins have limited special attacks and damage modifiers, and they have healings and Immolation so Mig is far better. Etc... So my per class Dex : Wiz : 10 Druid : 10 Priest : 13+ Chanter : 10 or Dump Cipher : 15+ Ranger : 15+ Pal : 10 Fighter : 13+ Barbarian :13+, more for interrupt or proc build Rogue : 19+ Monk : 10+ (because of limited wounds and suffering benefits more from Mig) (I don't like to min max too much) As you see, it is far from my favorite stats but it is good as it is.

For sure, you'll get diminushing return for stacking Dex itself My point was that Dex is as interesting when you have no recovery as when you have some. It will be exactly the same DPS multiplier in both cases. And yes, when I wrote it I knew I was neglecting a bit inter action delays.

You're not getting diminushing return by stacking Dex and recovery because Dex is a multiplicative factor for DPS. You would get diminushing return if they weare additive. For Per... I doubt it is stricly better. Per is like... 2% additive Damages per point (it depends a lot on situation) ? Worse than Might. It is only valuable to avoid misses or for crit builds. But as long as you have a priest to buff Acc, it will be important but not so critical. There are builds for which Per is far better than Dex of course (crowd controllers) and a few for which Per is irrelevant (like a buffer/healer).

You're not getting diminushing return by stacking Dex and recovery because Dex is a multiplicative factor for DPS. You would get diminushing return if they weare additive. For Per... I doubt it is stricly better. Per is like... 2% additive Damages per point (it depends a lot on situation) ? Worse than might. It is only valuable to avoid misses or for crit build. But as long as you have a priest to buff Acc, it will be important but not so critical. There are builds for which Per is far better than Dex of course (crowd controllers) and a few for which Per is irrelevant (like a buffer/healer).

Even if it's not false I don't get the point of comparing non-mutually exclusive stuff. Also it depends on how much Dex you compare. 10 Dex is better than speed gauntlet of course. 5 Dex may not be, unless you already have no recovery. Dex vs Mig vs Per is the real question here. I tend to raise Dex for Characters who already have big damage modifiers such as Rogue or Cipher. For fighter, I tend to balance Dex and Mig. For Buffing priest, Dex is the second best stats after Int. Mig might be raised for healing or damage so Dex and Mig could be balanced. For a versatile character, Dex is good because it applies to every action, from weapon swing to CC or buffs. Its drawback is limited ressources...

Dex makes you act (1+ (3% × Dex)) faster, with few exceptions (mostly movement). It is obviously useful and quite straightforward. So it's more DPS, more buffs, more CC. The most interesting is for DPS as it is basically ANOTHER MULTIPLICATIVE FACTOR that stacks with everything. Its interest might be more limited for characters with limited ressource. But that's its only limit.