Elric Galad

This is not completely true. Paladins are not strictly better at damage dealing and CC. Of course they have a lot of support abilities that makes them overall better. The problem is that Monks are strictly better than fighters at damage dealing and CC while being almost as tanky or maybe more now with iron wheel. There are not enough unique fighter abilities to compensate for this.

The paradox of the barbarian is that all their abilities are between meh and ok while carnage by itself is so great that he fullfills perfect his purpose. The reason is that carnage is only an additive (but negative) damage modifier and accuracy penalty. When you start stacking positive damage modifier and accuracy buff, it compensates for carnage penalties, which means you attack zone with an attack almost as powerful as your main attack. That is the reason why they scale so well. In my last playthrough, my barbarian was my top damage dealer (higher than rogue by a small but relevant margin) while being also more tanky than other damage dealers thanks to crazy endurance and self heal. Basically, abilities you pick are just a bonus. Furthermore, they synergize extremely well with per hit effects like special weapons (tall grass) or interrupts. But once more, this is due to carnage and nothing else (except maybe frenzy).

My party is almost lvl 6 so I have done act I which is said to be very critical, including Raedric Hold. As one of the pet problem was scaling, I have to check it works also at high levels. My pet is a wolf, not bear, I have a Paladin with zealous endurance and Herald shield and I picked the Resilient Companion talent. This information can be interesting to evaluate his defenses. My pet dies about 1/3 in encounters but this is mostly because I often use him as a meat shield (or echopsychic echo anchor). By the time he's dead, the battle is usually almost over. As I said this is a strategy to mitigate party health loss. In difficult battles, I use him as a flanker to keep him alive and he does good damage (8 DR bypass added by the patch). Of course, he is not as resilient as a tank, but this would be totally imbalanced. He's just half of a character after all. By the way, I believe that double shots is also a crazy buff to ranger DPS, especially when compared to rogues.

Did you buy the expansion ? You need it for play dead. For twin shot, you need to be lvl 13... which also requires White March.

You're not totally right : rangers have been fixed and really seem fine now. I'm playing in PotD and pet and ranger are almost as useful as 1 party member, except they are 2. Pet's infinite health is just so sweet in this difficulty setting and they now do a respectable amount of damages. High level abilities of the ranger herself seem to be very good too with stunning shot, double shot and the longest CC spell of the game (binding roots). For now, she's mostly a caster sniper with an arbalest and wounding shots. I believe that chanters need an important rework about how they scale. My point is, people felt paladins weak so they were buffed. Same for the rangers. Both in a very satisfying way IMHO. Therefore, I'm pretty confident for the fighters. My only current fear for balance is that wizard may get per encounter confusion at level 15. Per encounter spells was a kind of Pandora's box...

Yes, my monk on the frontline was meant to spam Force of Anguish and repulsive seal is golden. I also have a druid for CC and I hope my ranger will be a backup CC at high level with binding roots and stunning shot. This is a bit the reason why I didn't take a wizard : their massive CC that shut down an entire battlefield sounded a bit too plain to play for me ^^ Furthermore, the good point with mental binding nerf is that it makes alternate cipher CC spells suddenly more attractive. I'm going to try a bit puppetmaster or tenuous grasp for example ) Mental binding is still viable for team damage focus. -40 deflection, even for 5s is just so nice.

Nope. Yes. Njall has been arguing for quite a lot of time on this thread and others linked to the same topic. Don't come without arguing and expect a long and detailed answer.

You have a couple of choices. The chanter is nice (even if it scales not so well) but apart for your passive chant and an invocation from time to time, you're not going to get a lot of activated abilities. In your case, I think cipher will be perfect. It has a lot of abilities, is very versatile and very fun to play. For RP option, all abilities help but Resolve, Perception and Intelligence are the best. Cipher benefits greatly from Perception and Intellect. But this is not critical as in 2.0, most classes benefits from at least 2 of these 3 stats. Cipher have also lots of unique dialogues specific to their class. Paladin are nice but you're not going to get more than about 5 activated abilities. They are nice to play in a full party, but as your main character you're probably going to like a more active characters. Priests are incredibly versatile spellcasters, they have also specific dialogue option based on their deity. But be aware that are mostly support character : they'll more going to make your party shine than shine by themselves. Furthermore, the priest companion has a very good story and 2 priest in a party is a bit redundant. Basically, for a lot of activated abilities, you'd rather take a spellcaster : wizard, priest, druid, cipher. The other classes are really nice too, they have less options but all cool to have in a party as they have unique playstyle.

Honnestly, the duration is ok and balanced now but I really miss the fast casting. About 4s of casting and recovery for about 5s of effect (when it succeeds) is a bit disappointing. But I play a melee cipher now and Ectopsychic is probably even more crazy than mental binding was. The problem is that I don't have a wizard in my party and I miss a bit of crowd control... ^^

Lenas Er hunting bow. -5 all defenses per shot. Stunning per shot. Double shot. That's what I'm planning for my ranger.

Mental Binding has been nerferd to the ground in 2.0 (or maybe in 2.01 ?) Average Casting time instead of fast. 4.0s Base Duration. So it's no more a no-brainer focus spender.

You should try Field Triage and Bind Wound in 2.0. They have been greatly improved. Field Triage is self target and restore 40% of your endurance. Bind wounds restore 20% of an ally's endurance. They are also improved by both Might and Intelligence of the caster, because they have a duration (Health is restored in about 9s). This is not stated on the tooltip but I tested it yesterday. I tried it with Durance and seems to restore around 30% of an ally's health. And Durance stats are not really optimal for this... As casters tends to have great Might, Intelligence, and not so many critical talent, I think Bind Wounds is a really good utility talent for them. For frontliners, Field triage can be nice too, but is less flexible and frontliners are usually more in needs of talents.

Single Player Games does not require the same level of balance as MMO. Single Player Games does require classes to be balanced OR complementary enough so that you want to play any class or ability that looks fun without feeling gimped.

Good point. Might even be worth taking the Interrupting Blows talent for +15 interrupt since the effect doesn't mention only applying to attacks; I assume it also works for spells despite the name of the talent. (This needs to be tested). EDIT: Nope, doesn't seem to work. Are you sure about interrupting blow not applying to spells ? I tested it once with a druid and it seemed to work. No, I am not sure. I only had time for a few short tests with a wizard and was at the time unsure how to interpret the results where grazes and crits were concerned; My tentative conclusion at the time was that it didn't seem to work, but I didn't feel confident enough to state so categorically. I haven't taken the time to investigate it more closely since then, mainly because I got 4th level spells after which setting up continuous interruption of enemy casters via Wall of Fire became trivial for my Per 18 (16+Torc) wizard. OK, so I tested it again this morning with Hiravias. I tested 3 spells : Dancing Bolt, Firebug and Insect Swarm to cover 3 out of 4 defenses. My Hiravias has 15 Interruption base value, 30 with the talent. I tested by checking the Interruption values in the Battle Log. Without the talent, Hiravias got consistently 15 Interrupt in the log for all 3 spells, and 40 for critical hits. With the talent, Hiravias got consistently 29 Interrput in the log for all 3 spells, and 55 for critical hits. Therefore, I can say that Interrupt blows add consistently 14 Interrupt to Hit and 15 Interrupt to Critical Hits. I have no clue about the +14 instead of +15 for regular hits but I had the same problem with Durance so it's probably true. In conclusion, I think Interrupt Blows do work with spells (except of course spells without Interrupt duration indicated in the tooltip).

I agree with your description of other classes. However, I think the central theme of the fighter is pretty clear : They are Tanks in armor, through their defensive abilities and Armored Grace. They control battlefield around them, using extra engagement, guardian stance, into the fray and various Knock Down. They deal consistent damages, especially to ennemies with high defense (mostly Confident Aim, but their new DR Debuff strike is also part of this theme). This theme could be developped a bit more indeed. The point is that their abilities are numerically not so great. Apart for a couple of them, I didn't rate many of their abilities more than 5/10. Not because their abilities are bad but because they are WEAK. They do have all the tools but they are made of paper. The only thing fighter could be missing after defender nerf is something that mitigate health loss during trash encounters. Vigorous defense would be a good candidate if it stacked with "now per encounter Circle of Protection" (I believe Health loss mitigation is more important for trash encounters. For boss encounters, you probably want more endurance loss mitigation).

Good point. Might even be worth taking the Interrupting Blows talent for +15 interrupt since the effect doesn't mention only applying to attacks; I assume it also works for spells despite the name of the talent. (This needs to be tested). EDIT: Nope, doesn't seem to work. Are you sure about interrupting blow not applying to spells ? I tested it once with a druid and it seemed to work. I did test again today with Durance. Divine mark got +14 (why not +15, we'll never know) for interrupt after respecing with the talent. I tried also with iconic projection, I had a good interrupt value. I did not respec to compare, though. Also the spreadsheet shows a buffed interrupt value that does not seem specific to attack. So my hypothesis is that interrupt works with spells (as long as they have an interrupt value). Unless it is only on some spells ?

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. Independantly from the solution developers could choose, I think it's good to try to write a consensus on 2.0 abilities level of Power. So let's go ! I'm going to edit my previous post after that. For skills, you're totally right. I think the 3 skills Fighter get a +1 are actually good for frontliner, BUT the fact that they are spread is not very good indeed. A perfect 10/10 would have been something like +2 Lore and +1 Survival . I think current fighters' skills deserve a 7/10, not more. But that's not so important I think ^^ I agree about defender. It's useful, unique, but not poweful. It's an ability that is not really better that a talent and as Njall said, abilities should be more powerful than talents, especially when they are linked to a class special strength. In its current form, I'd give it 4/10, not more. A bonus to disengagement attack is a very nice idea. As AI chooses to disengage based your accuracy, I think +10 accuracy to disengagement attacks is what could make the skill interesting. For confident aim, well, we seem to agree about 7/10, but there is a little mathemathical error in your evaluation. For Normal speed 1 hander, for example : their range is 11-16 (except saber). With +20% min damage, it is 13,2-16 damage range => 14.6 average +10% damage on 11-16 is 14,85 So it's an effective +8%, not 10%. Max damage counts slightly more than minimal damage to calculate average damage. But that's not a big difference, of course ^^ Sorry for the nerdiness. Guardian is not good, anyway, I'd change it to 2/10 to make an average. Unbending : I think I like this skill's concept so I'm probably too optimistic about it. Nevertheless, it has some potential. With good intelligence, it can last more than 20s. If you regenerate health from another source (like LoH) Unbending will also mitigate damage to the endurance you're regenerating. Therefore it can actually mitigate more than half of your maximum endurance. IMHO, it really has some potential for ultimate damage tanking. Hey, it can be 50% incoming endurance mitigation for 45s +intelligence mod for a boss fight. That's not so bad for me. BUT it indeed lacks duration, or per encounter uses, and does not mitigate health loss so I'd give it 3/10 because it is not convenient at all. Unbroken : I basically agree with what you said. If it could stack (and scale ?), I would give it something like 9/10. 7/10 for me sounds good in a party game where second chance item can benefit to other party members. Weapon Specialization : Sure, deflecting assault is better (It's a really good ability, I would rank it 9/10), but you can also compare it to barbarian's One Stand Alone or Blooded which have quite annoying conditions for their +20% damage. +15% damage that also works with ranged weapons is not so bad, and stengthen Fighter speciality for reliable consistant damage dealing. It's okayish, so 5/10 would be more accurate than 6/10. Weapon Mastery : A bit the same as Specialization. Bitting Whip is a bit OP, and is a bid out of comparison from other talents. Better to compare it with 2Handed Style (that doesn't work with ranged and is less tactically flexible) or the new Sneak Attack talent which is conditional. Both are +15%, but are conditional. Weapon Mastery is not great but okayish. 5/10 still seems fine to me. Let's compare Specialization and Mastery to Rogue's "Hit to Crit" ability and talent. These 2 are not so good mathematically speaking. But they add to Rogue's playstyle so they are still OK in a Rogue Build. Specialization and Mastery are not for me Fighter biggest issue IMHO. A bit of "Graze to Hit" added to Specialization and Mastery would be nice, though. "Graze to Hit" could be a very nice trademark for the supposed reliable fighters. For the "Other Guy" final comment : During my last playthrough, I played a bit badly against Thaos and the fight ended with my party wiped and Eder alone to face him. And Eder won. And Eder was the hero of the day, not just the other Guy. Epic feeling ^^. Good old times...

Devotion of the faithful seems to affect my spellcasting, even if description is misleading. I recently tested it. Unless I'm mistaken ??? Or does it depend on spell ?

Tested. They don't stack.

It also sounds like cafein. Get a lot of survival, and make him an activity boosting consumable addict.

For sure blessing does not stack, but that's not the point od the topic. Apart reckless assault and borrowed instinct, I don't know other abilities that does not stack with devotion's accuracy bonus. I am akways glad to learn by the way ^^. For might bonus and debuff, there are lots of things that don't stack but the accuracy bonus is so great by itself that I don't find it too bad apart maybe frenzy bonus...

It does stack with a lot of things including blessing and zealous focus. Really one of the most powerful spells of the game... But the funniest part is for White March Part 2. When priest would be level 15 they'll probably get level 4 spells per encounter... Allowing per encounter spells was a good idea but getting 1 per encounter tier every 2 levels was really opening pandora's box. Spells has always been a powerful but rare ressource. If they are not rare anymore...

Yes, but it is the way shonen heroes upgrade themselves ^^

Ok, let's go for Fighter's abilities review then ! Please note that this review is with party game in mind, and all this is only my own opinion ^^. Miscellaneous : Base stats 9/10 : fighters have great accuracy, deflection, endurance and health. They are second only to monks for base stats. Skills 7/10 : Well spread. The best part is +1 Lore which is great for martial classes. Constant Recovery 2/10 : One of the lamest base traits. Compare it to carnage or "faith and conviction" and cry. At least, it is not situational. Abilities : Knock Down 5/10 : An OK Tier 1 ability. Not comparable to casters CC, but never useless. Disciplined Barrage 3/10 : weak, a bit short and stacks poorly with buffs. Defender 7/10 : Even in 2.0, it is still an unique ability. But now, it has to be supported by real tanking abilities. EDITED : It is also not more powerful than a talent, now. Following the reaction of other people on this thread, I lower it to 4/10. Confident Aim 7/10 : Reliable DPS, specially efficient against ennemies with high defense, which is a bit unique. Guardian 3/10 : Why not for a little support. But not on par with Paladin's aura, and stacks poorly. Accuracy loss is a bit a problem for DPS. EDITED : KDubya convinced me to lower it to 2/10. Weapon Specialization 6/10 : Good, but other martial classes have better. EDITED : KDubya convinced me to lower it to 5/10. Vigorous Defense 5/10 : Not bad, but it stacks poorly with Circle of Protection. Without a priest, it deserves a better grade. Into the Fray 5/10 : Very funny concept, good synergy with engagements bonus, but it lacks a bit raw power for an ability of this level. Unbending 6/10 : An interesting skill, has the potential to cut half of the damages during big fights with instant casting. Stacks with everything. I think this is a good design for a per rest skill, due its epicness (per rest skills should be epic fight skills). A few more seconds for long term mitigation could still be nice. EDITED : Not convenient, usually less powerful than a good old Lay on Hand. In spite of its possible potential, I'm finally going to give it a 3/10. Clear Out 2/10 : Poor man's slicken. Fighter is not a wizard and this skill was developped to prove it. Knock Out is forgiveable because it is a Lvl 1 ability, and is spammable. This one is a skill with few uses that is as good as a lvl 1 wizard spell. Not situational at least : that saves this skill from a merciless 1/10. Armored Grace 5/10 : Armored Grace works also when your armor is a robe. Weird. Mathematically inferior to other fighter DPS passive (due to recovery being only about 60% of attack time) but works with various other action like scroll reading. Critical defense 4/10 : A good tank should not receives critical hits too often anyway. Stacks well, and probably works on build with low deflection. Works also against spells (I think). Not very impressive, but not bad. Unbroken 7/10 : second chance on steroids. Save Adra armor for your other tank. A good skills that would have been better, once more, if it stacked. I didn't test White March abilities, but they don't sound as good as other martials'. DR reduction strike sounds good, but now Wizards can do this 4x per encounter with AoE. Trying to imitate casters is not the best way for martial classes... Damage redirection sounds like a false good idea : Tanking is meant to redirect blows from characters with low defenses to characters with high defenses. This skills basically enables ennemies to strike a warrior as if he has the defense of a light armored rogue... Please Obsidian, redirect a percentage of blows, not damages ! Talents : Bonus Knock Down 3/10 : Not that much necessary. Fighters, like all martial classes, are talent hungry. This does not sound like a great pick. Sure, Knock Down is OK, but more than 2 times per encounter is a bit situational. Wary defender 4/10 : Not incredibly good anymore but still OK. It's like a good old +1 to all saves from D&D. Good if you pick Defender. Rapid Recovery 1/10 : This is able to cure the wounds from 1 single fly of the ogre druid swarm. Weapon Mastery 5/10 : Not bad. Not great. So my conclusion is : Fighters have a lot of very average abilities, with a few ones a bit above average. The good part is that many of them are passive, and therefore easy to stack. That means they don't need a lot of change. But they really really miss gamechanging abilities. Once more, this is only my opinion. Hey Obsidian, your game is really great ! This is because its mechanics are so great that I'm so interested in complaining ^^

By the way, I think there is still a kind of drug that adds a fixed amount of focus. But I don't care : my next PC will be a pale elf cipher with a 2h blade. I guess this choice has something to do with my pseudonym being Elric ^^