Nobear

Well I'll be darned. If I'd known this, I might have taken that power. BTW Tactical Meld also works as a pre-combat buff, where your focus refills within about a second.

Yeah, no thanks on that for me. I'd feel like my hand was being held and my intelligence was being insulted. It'd seem like a false choice, and possibly be a false choice. It'd be like one of those tutorials for a cel phone game for kids, where it says "You're a bunny, give yourself carrots!" and you press on the carrots and it says "Good job! Now press here, also exactly where I tell you!" Yes, things like Might affecting spell power are totally not obvious to the beginner and mean this game has a fairly steep learning curve, but I'd still rather have that than have cookie-cutter stats where one and only one stat affects each role and is the obvious no-brainer choice for it.

Dark Elf, please do not mind Alexis. I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first, but the more of his posts I read, the less surprised I'd be if the 13 in his name stood for his age. If it doesn't and he's an adult, I feel some pity for him. I think he is probably not appreciated much in real life and tries to pump up his ego by bragging about accomplishments on Hard (before he very recently started PoTD), speaking from a false sense of authority about things he hasn't actually experienced or tested, and insulting others, so don't take anything he says seriously or personally. My advice to you is the same as before, and I think Boeroer sums it up well. The party you are trying to play it seems is heavily driven by your RP preferences and far from optimal. It doesn't mean it's not possible to beat the game this way, but it would be significantly harder than with a more well-balanced party complete with good CC and all. Your party would be much more viable on Hard. As-is, on PoTD it looks more like the kind of party a veteran of PoTD might try as an added challenge. You're asking for advice, but I don't know what advice you're actually willing to take, and to what extent your attachment to your current party vision may be more important to you. If the latter, I don't see anything wrong with playing on Hard first (and/or not Trial of Iron) since the difficulty jump is so significant.

Did you get this info off the really outdated (and thus inaccurate) wiki again, without bothering to check in-game? I have asked you to please check your facts more carefully before posting them. You attacked someone else in another thread for spreading misinformation, but you are the worst repeat offender of this I have seen on these forums. It's ok to not know something, but you have a false sense of authority over things you haven't actually experienced or checked. I gave you the benefit of the doubt at first, but at this point I'd write you off as a troll, except that I feel an obligation to do some damage control and set the record straight so that new forum members and players aren't misled. You're right about Marking, though. To the OP: My best guess about Touch of Rot is that it was at one time a level 1 druid spell, which was removed since its entry was make in the Wiki. Since I've only played since 1.0.5, this is only a hypothesis that would explain its entry in the notoriously outdated wiki at all. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the spell has been changed since then. Though, if you just want to know what it does, you can always save your game, buy the gloves, equip them, and read the tooltip to help you decide whether to keep them or reload from the save you just did.

DoTs don't ignore DR, they are affected by a % of DR per tick (I've read 25%, I don't know if this a universal %), which is still very significant because each tick of a DoT does relatively little damage.

I agree with this. It's a pity, because it seems like a really interesting idea. In addition, my computer, which is a MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM that's only 1 year old and plays PoE quite playably for the most part, doesn't really play this video acceptably. I was starting to accept the subpar framerate I got at just 1080P, but then starting just before 6 min, big portions of the audio started to drop out, making it impossible to keep following what was being said. IDK if this is just my computer's issue, or if it's a fault of the video itself.

I have two questions from this: 1) How was Defender nerfed? 2) Do effects like Defender, Hold the Line, and Guarding, which increase engagement limit, have any observable effect on the AI now, as far as helping to actually, you know, hold the line?

Wow I didn't know Sickened and Weakened stack, I thought it'd go by the general rule that "similar effects suppress each other." I knew of some exceptions, but there seem to be too many to make it a reliable rule of thumb. This game seems as exception-ridden as the English language sometimes!

Not worth it IMHO. Sounds like a decent suggestion, but personally I'd rather see engagement mechanics and Hold the Line make more of a difference in tanking. I've written about this before, though, and it gained some acceptance among players but no answer from a dev. It's not an either-or thing, though, so I won't try to steal your thread .

I'm not being selfish, I'm taking into account the majority opinion about multiplayer on these forums, which happens to be in line with my own. You're also clearly not a developer if you think adding any kind of multiplayer at all would be easy: even a badly-done multiplayer, let alone a decent one. Just like you can't speak with authority on PoTD strategy if you've only played Hard, there's no way you could possibly appreciate the difficulty of developing something as major as multiplayer without being a developer yourself. This does not just apply to you, but to anybody in your position. I myself have little more than a layman's appreciation of the difficulty in software development, but the little programming experience I have, combined with conversations with a good friend of mine who's a successful developer himself, suggest to me that the time and resources necessary would be far greater than you are assuming they'd be. If software development were fast and easy, everyone would do it (except maybe a few rebellious souls), because it does pay well. If you understand everything that goes into coordinating data in packets to be sent and received for any internet or LAN application, making sure all the appropriate pieces of information are synchronized all the time for all parties, programming new interfaces and/or modifying current ones, not to mention balance changes to make a game designed for single player balanced instead (or in addition) for multiplayer, and issues I am probably not even aware of, then you are qualified to make a ballpark estimate of how long such a feature might take to implement, and how expensive it would be. You apparently have some gaming cred, but it is painfully obvious that you have no development cred, and are not qualified to say what should be easy or hard to develop. The devs have already said no, which suggests to me that they would consider it too time consuming or expensive. Therefore, it would actually take away from the single player experience, by diverting resources away from it. In the real world, in a company with limited resources, there simply aren't enough for everything, so yes it would take away from my experience, and the kinds of single-player experiences that most people on these forums tend to state a preference for.

Yeah, actually I'm doing this too: saving superb weapon and armor/shield enchants for the expansion, and seeing what it brings and whether I can make good use of it with any new gear. No guarantees, but it's worth a shot IMHO. And about the strategy you just described, it does sound like a good idea worth at least trying on PoTD. I'll be interested to know if it works for you when you get around to it. Actually, if it weren't for you I wouldn't have known that the armor enchants don't currently work, so thanks for that!

We are not working with GoG on achievement inclusion. I can look into this a bit, though. I would really appreciate that, and one of the goals I've read stated by a dev before is feature and build parity across distributions and platforms. I can accept waiting a few days longer on GoG, but having achievements tracked by the game tends to give games higher replay value for me, as silly as that might sound to some. I'm a completionist and it'd mean a lot to me. From what I understand, a dev would have to coordinate with GoG to have achievements included on their Galaxy client, which is still in Beta last I checked, but it seems like as good a time as any to start the process for future versions. Thanks!

Link Thanks, and wow, retraining is officially coming! Thank you Obsidian!! Looking forward to seeing how it's implemented. My top choice would be to have it be very costly so it's not something you could do willy-nilly, but serve as a system that makes a moderate degree of RP sense and will allow for (still costly) respecs in future expansions too.

Nice, now to wait for GoG... lol. Well I've finally beat the game now (on PoTD) and still looking forward to solo PoTD run(s), so I'm ready but I guess I can wait . BTW Any word on whether Obsidian is working with GoG on implementing achievements for future versions? I'd love to have that feature.

I would certainly not be opposed to something interesting to make Survival more useful. I think Con granting 5% (I'd still like to see that link ) is really all it needs. It's already somewhat useful for tanking (especially soloing), moreso for the Fortitude than the endurance boost, but 5% would bring the endurance effect to meaningful enough values without going too far.

The best advice I could give you I've already written for someone else with similar concerns here. He was mostly interested in casters, but the advice I gave him could be just as useful no matter what class(es) you tend to enjoy most. As others have pointed out, with a party of six, you don't have to choose one class! But the link I gave might be worth reading for more specific advice, which it sounds like you might want to feel more confident in your choices. Best to you!

Thank you very much for the info! And yes, I guess Relentless Storm's stun is more useful than its damage. I didn't start using Hiravias in my party until level 11, and I realized how good druids were and how he'd probably make a better contribution to my party than Kana, since most of my ranged were now spamming spells more than auto attacking, so the Sure-Handed Ila chant was seeing less use. So TBH I did not even give all the higher-level druid spells a good look until I fought Thaos, where I used Relentless Storm for the first and only time so far lol. What I really liked about it is its large range and the fact it keeps going while Hiravias can do other things, so I find it to be a nice boost given that. With the lightning talent, it might not do a lot of damage still, but against enemies who don't have too high DR, I figured at least a little would get through, though I can't say I double-checked this. That said, I still like the lightning talent for the level 1 lightning spell that has a decent area and does NOT do friendly fire, which makes it a nuke I can very easily spam to decent effect in a wide range of situations. And yes, I do also use Sunbeam and love it, and Blizzard to further debuff, and Burst of Summer Flame to spam if enough enemies are close enough together to make it more effective than the level 1 lightning one.

Really? I'll have to check that out, thanks for the heads up. I hope this has been reported and the devs are aware of it?

There's a lot of discussion I've apparently missed. Do you happen to have a link for this?

I like this post except for the multiplayer thing. I say please focus on more great single-player content instead, and smoothing out the remaining bugs and rough edges. Most players of PoE seem to agree with this, at least of the ones that take polls on these forums.

Link please.

Can you link something about DoT spells being bugged and not affected by elemental damage talents? I'm not aware of this, if it's true. That said, even operating under the assumption that DoT spells would work as intended, Spirit of Decay was the one elemental talent I did NOT take for my druid. His most common spells are Tanglefoot and Nature's Mark (debuffs, no damage), then the level 1 shock and fire spells, then the level 2 frost and fire spells. And for hard fights, Relentless Storm as well. I like those spells better than any of the corrode ones, whether they work as intended or not.

That's pretty cool. Trust me, PoTD is much more challenging than Hard, given that enemy stats change to the point that some of the same strategies just won't work like they did on Hard. But hey it's a good personal victory, and good luck to your future endeavors! Now what's this about armor enchants not working? They work for me. Also, about what to do with those Adra Dragon scales, you know this game was balanced for a full party. It lets you solo, but you can't expect each class to have use for every item in the game. Those scales could be used to enchant other armor and/or shield(s) that aren't superb yet. What shield are you using? Note that some people also prefer to enchant some plain-old clothing, because it doesn't incur any recovery penalties, allowing them to cast/attack as fast as possible. Yeah I'm with you that I'd generally prefer the Second Chance on that unique robe (and how cool it looks), but to each his own.

IIRC Raven you play on PoTD and don't find it particularly difficult, but for most players PoTD is enough of a challenge. So Blades of Vanatar, if you're disappointed by how easy Hard is, the first thing I'd recommend is to try PoTD. It's the only difficulty where it's not just the number (and sometimes type) of enemies that is different, but all of their stats. With strong enemies like the Adra Dragon, what this means is that those same spells you land easily on Hard won't land so reliably on PoTD, because enemies will have higher defenses. This means you'll need to tweak your strategy, e.g. to buff and debuff more so your spells/abilities will actually land. The enemies will also hit harder. The Adra Dragon will still be about the only enemy in the game that can kill a well-built max-level tank (unless you're playing stupid), but she can. Her breath can also kill anyone who isn't very far away, and well-positioned relative to your tank (or, perhaps ideally, tanks, one on each side). Yes there are videos of people soloing her on PoTD, but for most players it would be a challenging fight on PoTD even with a full party. The fight will actually require pretty deliberate strategy either way.

The only net advantage is the added challenge, which in other words is a deliberately chosen disadvantage, if you're thinking of an advantage as something that would make life easier for you. It is very possible to reach the level cap with six. On my completionist PoTD run with six, I reached the level cap early into Act 3 (of 4 acts). Granted, Act 4 is a relatively short endgame act, but this still leaves room for saving all the toughest fights in the game for max level. You could certainly save all the lower levels of Od Nua for max level, which are totally optional content, but have some good loot and story, and end in what's generally considered the single toughest fight in this game. Od Nua doesn't grant much XP for the amount of content it has, but the bounties you can unlock as a stronghold upgrade do. These also include some pretty tough fights, which would be ideal to do at level 10 or 11.