Teioh_White

Marking isn't as useful as it seems; it'll only effect a single hit on the mob, not a free +10 acc to the entire group on each target. It may also have some quirks related to distance like the Paladin passive, i've not tested that myself. Either way, it's one of the least sought after enchants. That said, Endless Paths is still still the best, due to the inability to get an Estoc with Superb+Lash+useful enchant. Speed is one of (if not the) best enchants for a weapon, so it help mitigates the loss of Lash (which is normally better than Speed, actually). And it won't cost any precious Dragon Eyes.

Either the White Spire bought from the Crucible Knights or the Drake's Bell gotten from the first Bounty quest make good mid game Estocs. An issue with both is that neither can made into Superb and still have a Lash on it. Of course, only one character can have their weapon upgraded to Superb, so if someone else was going to use that in a party, it wouldn't be a big deal. Blade of the Endless Paths is the Superb Estoc in the game, but it's has a similar issue in that it can't be given a Lash. The fact it has speed on it, a great enchant, and naturally comes superb, means it'll be better than using either of the other 2 as Exceptional+Lash. The Grey Sleeper I'm not real sure how to weigh. It comes Superb, but has no Lash nor Speed enchant, putting it's base damage a good bit lower. However, it'll do something cool on hit 20% of the time. That could very well be better than the higher average damage of the others. It can't, however, be enchanted with Durgen Steel, so if you were planning on spending some of your very limited Ingots on this weapon, it'll come out worse in that case.

Nah, the Blights replace whatever is in your hand with the Blight weapon wand, so it doesn't matter what weapon, if any, you have equipped when casting it. Which is just a wand that has 22 base damage, has a random element type for it's damage type, hits in a 1.5m radius, and comes with +20 acc.

Yeah, fighter is basically just Bad Monk in this game. The only reason I use Eder is I only use story companions, and I don't go to White March till Act 4.

Haha, yeah, BG was pretty brutal, especially if you're a newbie to IE games. And considering it was one of the first, I imagine that was a lot of us. First time I played it, spent a lot of time reading the manual, thinking about my character, talking to everyone in Candlekeep trying to figure out these weird controls. I was promptly eaten by wolves after taking my first step outside. Quit game and didn't even try again for 4 years, after playing Kotor and deciding to give those old BW games another shot. Really glad I did. I agree on this crafting system being not all that bad in Pillars. It's more about adding some minor modifications to gear we find in the wild, rather than just making gear that massively outweighs any natural gear. NWN 2 weapons and armor were basically pointless to find or buy as early as Act 2 of the main game, which dulls the mood when dungeon crawling.

Spirit lance hits the primary target with 37 base, then fires a 25 base damage AoE from that center. Blights hit everything in the area for 22 base, modified by elemental talents, then each of those targets fire of an 8 base damage, 10 penetration blast from their center. With multiple targets in the AoE, it'll easily far outpace the single higher blast the Lance would do, plus all the benefits of being a ranged wand, rather than a reach pike, plus using a level 3 slot instead of a level 5 slot.

Yeah, Dangerous Implements and Blast both work with Blights. Blast is what really makes the Blights such amazing trash cleaners, as they fire off of each target in the Blight AoE. If you fire off a Blight auto attack, check the log, and it'll show like, 5 hits with the Blight, then 18 or something Blast hits. It pretty much will pressure cook packs of mobs. As for Dangerous Implements, it's only a +.25 mod, so it's only going to add about 5 damage per hit. Not terrible, mind you, but it's easy to miss off an eyeball test. Not a must have talent at all. I'd take elemental damage up, it'll As for Spirit Lance, that's an amazing spell, but it's sorta the single target version of Blight. Blights a way to burn one spell slot and mow down packs of trash, while the Lance, with it's massive damage, acc bonus, and speed (37 base+25 aoe+15 acc with speed) is great for single target. That's not to say only use it on the few bosses or something, but some things like Ogres have hit boxes too big for Blights, and the lance does a great job tearing through those. It does draw from the level 5 spells though, which are a bit more useful, and being near the frontlines can be dangerous unarmored if the battlefield isn't secured, putting you at the whims of the AI playing poorly. (It usually does though). Main issue with Spirit Lance it doesn't come up at all until level 9, when the Wizard gets per encounters. At that point, it doesn't matter a great deal what you're doing, as 7 Slickens will keep any battlefield locked down. Blights at least get Act 2 to shine in.

The value of Implements to a wizard is going to depend on how you view the resting system. If you basically see no reason not to rest as much as you please, they'll be useless to you. Of course, the game itself will all be very easy at that point, so really, do whatever is the most fun for you if you make that call, and have a Blast. (but not the talent Blast. That'll still be bad.) Implements by themselves aren't really worth much for anyone, wizards included. Blast is the one trick they get over the rest, and while it's nice enough early on, late game it'll still be hitting for single digits. Not the best use of a talent point when Wizard can actually get good use out the Elemental talents. However, as mentioned, you don't take those talents to support Implements, but to support Blights. For a spell slot, Blights will give a massive value of AoE damage, so they're ideal for conserving spell slots. And the Blights count as an Implement, so all those Talents you spend to help the Implement will pay dividends when you whip the Blight out. Often for a tough fight, a single AoE CC spell followed by a Blight is enough to burn the numbers down to a reasonable amount, depending on how many can get caught in the Blight AoE. It also makes Blast a decent Talent choice now, because a blight isn't like a normal implement shot with a blast, it basically shoots an AoE centered on a target. Each target in that AoE range will then fire a Blast off, so if you're hitting tightly clustered targets, just flinging Blights can out weigh chucking Fireballs and sometimes even Flame cones, at of course a much lesser spell cost. (Fireball base is 30 damage, Flame cone is 36, a Blight is 22+Blast hits). And even though the talents won't help a Wizards other spells, until about 2/3 of the way through the game, a Wizard is going to spend a fair bit of time auto attacking, same as every single other class in the game, so still getting benefits to that is hardly useless. It's not like those fights are just free wins, at the least Health is going to be burning off, and better auto attacks help a bit. Still, most of these talents are to support the unique Wizard ability that is Blight. (Under heavy rest restrictions, it's often my health running out before my spells, leaving me to hide the low health members out of combat, while the wizard ends 2-3 encounters going Nova with remaining spells). There really isn't much offensive opportunity cost to supporting the Blights, as we have 7 talents, and spending 3 of those on elemental talents helps the Blight as well, leaving 4 talents to pump up the Blights, and dinky Implements when not casting anything. Of course, all of this matters less and less as the Wizard gain levels and gets per encounters, which increasingly lets the wizard go Nova on a per encounter basis. Which renders the spell saving of the Blights pretty obsolete, and relegates it to situational AoE. (As with Blast, if it's hitting 5-6 targets, it'll get a lot of bonus damage.) tl;dr Yeah, might as well use Implements for wizard. Early on, they're okay trash AoE. Mid game, they support Blight shennigens. Late game, weapons don't matter, Wizards will blow everything up with per encounters.

I also wondered how good this amulet really is. Neck is likely the one equipment slot with the most log jam in the entire game, so it would be nice to know exactly what this is contributing. Is it just +10 against spells from NPC vancian casters? Does it effect...well, I guess in spell-like abilities? If it works on many attacks in the game, it'd certainly be one of the better necks in the game, even with the stiff competition. Or, at least a great neck for any class like Monk or Paladin which already is decent at making saves. Otherwise, the neck competition is fierce. There's already must have class specifics for Chanter and Cipher there, so those two are out. Maybe Ranger as well, if Stalker's Torque was ever fixed. Beyond that there are nice DR giving cloaks if taking that mitigation approach for a tank, +3 to your DPS stat of choice, or even freeing up a ring or hand slot for protection/deflection. Not to mention WM added 3 new great cloaks to compete for that one slot.

Chanter right now is carried pretty heavily by it's Flame Lash incantation. Giving the other 5 members 25% damage boost post mods is almost worth the cost of admission alone. Chanters add on to that one other Chant, which isn't quite as good as it'll come out 8 seconds later, and none of the other chants have that 'Wow' factor of the Flame Lash chant. Next chanters add a generic body that can do whatever, with the only constraint really being it has to have high Int. Other than that, can slap on Plate and a Shield, and have someone to seal the edge, put a ranged weapon for a little pew pew, whatever gives a little contribution. Probably the best person to use all those scrolls one finds lying around, as the only other thing they have to speed actions on is auto attacking, so that's sorta a plus. The Invocations are currently the Chanters smallest contribution, which is a bit sad, seeing as it's one of their unique mechanics. The issue is A.) they take forever to come out and B.) Need a good 20 seconds or to get value (nice summons or group buffs), means the number of fights a Chanter both gets to use an Invocation, and the fight has enough time left in it the Invocation will do something, are pretty rare. Most of the time, the Chanter will just be stunning some trash at the end of fight for easier clean up time. Though, that is only really end game. Early game, Invocations are quite powerful, and Act 1 Chanter is likely one of the strongest classes in the game. Pumping out Specters every 12 seconds is pretty powerful alone in those smaller encounters of early game, and no one else really has cool toys yet. Chanters toys just really don't evolve well with the times. It starts getting bad in Act 2 chanter, where unless it's a ranged heavy party, they lose ground fast. Act 3 and 4 Chanter it's all good, as Flame Lash is amazing, but just shows how much the class leans on just one ability.

I'd rather they just do away with them entirely, tighten the resting restrictions on PotD, and just allow unlimited resting on difficulties below PotD. Not that loose resting systems is PoE's creation, it hasn't been implemented well in any IE game that I can think of. Or ditch a resting system for some other resource system, but that'd be something for a fresh game and system, not this one.

It would be nice if the game was stable enough I could play the game on Trials of Iron without suffering game wrecking bugs. Most of the issues can be dealt with only losing a zone or two worth of progress with the rolling auto saves, at least. But as mentioned above, it's nice it gets so much work done it. The comparison to Dragon Age games is apt, those get barely any patches done, and often have abilities that will never be fixed. Here, there's at least hope it'll get to plateau eventually.

I also agree that casters are hardly useless pre lvl 9. My Wizard was easily the MVP before he reached per encounters, even with the heavy rest restrictions I play under. (No resting at inn or buying supplies, only resting off found supplies.) The per encounters just moved him from MVP to a one man show. It's not just that the Wizard lead in damage, either, it was the key use of spells made fights go easier, unlike say a Barbarian, who gets crazy damage numbers, but won't change the outcome of a tough fight. This is mostly because early on, there are less fights and less mobs per fight, so even one Chill Fog will have a huge effect on the fight, and the ability to spam some AoE's to end a tough encounter is priceless. For example, probably the first map one does, Magran's Crossing, has 4 'trash' fights, and 3 real fights. The wizard will just do what everyone else does on the trash fights, and on the real fights, he'll end them. On the issue of casters being auto-attack wastes of space, auto attacking is what characters pretty much spend the vast majority of time doing in these games. Which is fine, this some multi player game where you control just one character, you have the team. It's fine if some characters aren't always doing something every battle; you have 6 you're doing things with.

As far as balance is concerned, it's a good change. Casters will still be amazing and better, of course, but at least I can't just stun lock and AoE an entire group every encoutner with one character anymore. Also, on a personal note, fun to think of what spell to shove inthe per encounter slots. I imagine Wizzy will want to put haste in the 3 slot, which will still give them some comfy margins. Priest could do both blessings with a repulse seal.

I've never really tried to 'parse' the difference between a Rogue and a Ranger in raw DPS, but the eyeball test (i've taken both through PotD) would give it to a Dual Wield Saber rogue. Straight up ranged v. ranged, if we're not counting the pet? I'd give it to Rogue, outside of Stormcaller. With Stormcaller (which rogue can't use), ranger will be getting 4 chances to proc per attack, and that just adds up fast. The pet makes it hard to figure out. End game, it'll crit for over 100 a hit, but off the top of my head I couldn't tell you it's Acc or attack speed.

Yeah, that ability makes Monk just Nutso comopared to how it used to be. Just having the Twins would be enough, but being able to essentially make every per-rest per-encouter, just puts it over the top. And it doubles the uses! Paladin's is sorta like that, just a gamechanger level 13 move. I mean, even Fighter gets something awesome, like a short term....DR debuff...thing. Oh, right. Fighter. Well....it sure keeps the self esteem of the remaining jobs high!

I still don't see a compelling argument there can't a higher difficulty that enforces stricter/different rules than the base game, such as Mass Effect 2. Other than, of course, it's not worth a devs a time. Which I'd agree with. If folks don't like more tuned gameplay, as the current gameplay is more fun for them, great! The easier difficulties are there for that. Fun is rough though, as it's very subjective and difficult to get a consensus on. Balanced gameplay is something different people can come to a rough consensus on though, and encourages discussions about a single player game, rather than something we play once or twice then gush to each other about on a board.

I'm actually pretty fine with the crafting in this game. It's just enough to add a little flavor to an item (what color do you want it to glow?), without completely rendering any found loot pointless, as NNW 2 and DA: I did.. On of the gameplay features of IE games is the exploration, and that edge is seriously dulled when crafting has consumed whatever goodies one finds in the woods. With different gameplay, it's fine, but PoE is trying very hard to be a very IE game.

Fine with it here, would much rather have a PoE 2. PoE has a ton of issues, which I'm hoping would be worked out with a second, perhaps better funded, go at it.

Yeah, you're right it does stack, went and tested it with my old Barb playthrough in Sun and Shadow. Sickened gave it minus 14 Fort, and Weakened tacked -27 on top of that for a total fort loss of 41 (minus whatever their natural fort had over deflection, which is about 9 normally). Which is really nice, but still only about 12 seconds per encounter. Good to stack stack with radiance to really get some free aoe pain going at the start of a fight right as the first wave bunches up on the frontline, but 12 seconds isn't that long the harder fights. And i wouldn't get too exicted and call it better than casters, haha, they'll do nutty things even on a per encounter basis at end game. That barb playthrough I used the Hours instead of Marbec with the same set up, so prone isntead of stun. It really was more just double'n down on Barbs strength rather than opening new doors. That is, killing trash mobs at melee range. He still struggled with any of the harder fights without caster support, as barbs can't do much about status effects.

I really hated that War Bow that confused on Crit. Maybe if I was micro'n the ranger to shoot things in the back, it'd work great, but for me it just seemed to turn something that would still die right away because everyone already had attacks queued on it, or it just get its char model in the way when I'd rather folks have just killed it in one more attack round. Stormcaller just did crazy things, and in a rangers hands, gets 4 chances to proc per shot, making it really fun to use. On topic for flails, it has one with a speed mod, one of the best mods (though not quite as good for fast weapons) and another with draining. Can pair the two together with some plate mail and any of the phys classes and have a decent fire and forget front line character. It wouldn't be the most min/max'd thing, but it'd get the job done if you like the idea of spinning lots of balls overhead.

I'm not sure if Barbs Sicken effect Stacks with a Weakened effect, I seem to remember it not doing so back in april when I checked. Beyond that, most enemies already have 10 or so more Fort than Deflection, so Brute Force really not a huge boost to acc. Plus the whole, Interdiction last a about 12 seconds or so once per encounter, so won't be a huge portion of a fight. Priest can help open up a nice alpha with Radiance+Interdiction, just wish the AI could handle that at the least. Of course, once an enemy gets stunned once, it's deflection goes in the crapper, leading to easier stuns to stun lock them, so maybe that's what you were noticing. (Though, off the top of my head, I don't know if the Stun goes 100% after a crit, or if it then has to pass a seperate for check). Barbs do though get a lot of use out of even crit-proc weapons. Even though they have a min 28% less chance to crit than a Rogue would, they're likely getting 3-4 chances to proc on something per swing. And of course, they get to apply that basically 1 sec interrupt stun with the morning star to everything, just for landing a hit, which is really nice. (I mean, any caster can do more crazy stuff to that same group of people per encounter, but the phys classes have to take what they can get).

Really? I thought MCA's two character's were the really only above average writing in the game. They had an issue with not connecting well at all with the rest of the story, but conversations where them were the only time the writing ever made me perk up and take notice. I actually don't know how much of an impact he had on the rest of the lore or plot beyond those two. I get the impression it wasn't very much, and if he works on another project, I hope it's with more control over the end product, rather than just writing a few pages of the novel.

Dex can be pretty great for anyone, really. It primarly competes with might as the two DPS booster stats, and if you have to choose between them, a good way to see is look at what your average damage is doing over the course of a fight. If you're average damage(post DR+Lash) is doing more than your weapon/spells base damage, you want dex. If it's doing less than the base, you want might. Also, that's just for damage, and casters have a number of non damage spells which might does nothing for, but dex still helps. There's the issue of limited spells, of course, but the further you go in the game the more that ceases to be an issue, and the end, it'll be a non factor. Or if you don't mind resting, of course.

Wizard will be the best, at this and really anything else, with the only downside being micro+essentially setting the difficulty lower. If you don't want to micro, then Ranger's the best choice. High damage+mild tanking all in one, with limited need for any button input. Rangers Aoe damage is rather limited till endgame though, but with a Stormcaller it manages to be mediocre.