Boeroer

Barbarian can tank well enough if you don't focus on stellar deflection (but not dropping it either) but try to stack AC. Underpenetration, combined with even more reduced dmg received (Cadhu Scalth for example) and the enormous health pool of a Barb can make you sturdy as hell. Just don't pick Berserker. I played a dumped-deflection but stacked AR Furyshaper with focus on Blood Ward and Barbaric Retaliation with Battle Axes (Bleeding Cuts) as offtank (not main tank at all) and at some point I could just jump into everything (at higher levels though) because the life draining is so strong. Thick skinned and the other defensive stuff is mandatory. So is Savage Defiance of course. Leap does daze enemies which can be very helpful. Regeneration items might help as well. The Dazing Shout is especially great for a tanking Barb. But it's for SC Barb's only. Nevertheless it's absolutely great because it not only causes -4 PEN on enemies but also deals a great deal of damage in a huge AoE. It turns a slow hitting guy into a great AoE CC/damage dealer as soon as Blood Thirst and Blood Surge trigger - and as a Furyshaper with Blood Ward it also heals you a lot (especially if you took Blood Storm which will put a DoT on all crits from Dazing Shout - and Blood Ward even drains life from DoT ticks. But Spirit Tornado is also good). I think this could work well with a more definitive weapon setup and high RES as well. But I didn't play that yet. Multiclass Barb's can't have Dazing Shout, but they can still profit from the +3 engagement of Barbaric Shout. If you want to tank with a Witch you'd not only need to stack up some defenses and AR but also reduce enemies ACC - or even better: disable them completely. Again I would suggest a Furyshaper because the Fear Ward is just incredible if you have some means to lower Will defenses (Cipher has and Barbaric Shout is also shaking enemies). A Furyshaper/Beguiler can shout and bind several foes, then summon the Ward and then spam several CC spells that will control the enemies (and fill up focus). Furyshapers have bad Will but Ciphers have very high Will and can pick a unique Will boost passive. Since interrupts will mess up your casting I would use Rekvu's Fractured Casque with an injury like Acute Rash or Serious Burn (let your party caster knock you out with some acid or fire spell out of combat). Or pile up some Concentration instead. Cipher spells that help controlling the enemies and preventing them from attacking/hitting you and your friends are stuff like Eyestrike, Secret Horrors and such. Ringleader is great leader on. Borrowed Instincts and Body Attunement are no-brainers. Here the "tanking" part doesn't come from the highest defenses but more from controlling and disabling the enemies. If you shower them with Secret Horrors, Phantom Foes, Mental Bindings and such while the Fear Ward constantly hammers against their Will defenses you can "tank" (in the sense of preventing enemies to attack your party) very well if you combine that with a good deal of sturdyness. If you use something like Cadhu Scalth (it's just the best tanking shield imo) you should focus on PER to make up for the -8 ACC. MIG isn't that important. DEX and RES are though. So yeah - Furyshaper/Beguiler would be my pick. With Cadu Scalth and Kapana Taga I guess (lower Will by 25 with the modal so the Ward can kick in). Thick armor. Instead of Rekvu's Fractured Casque (still my favorite) I can imagine the White Witch Mask being useful. Reckless Brigandine would complete a Witch in Huana-Mataru style. But other items would work, too. I didn't try it myself and I can imagine it wouldn't work as a tank in the early levels, but after some time it should hold up well in most fights as well as wrecking enemies' tactics. Maybe bring a dedicated tank in the first few levels and then change or retrain. If you have a Priest in the party the FuryShaper will laugh his ass off: you can withdraw the wards but they will keep working, making them invincible. So please pick Withdraw.

My personal favorite would be Ixamitl and then the Living Lands. I really liked the parts of GoT that handled the eastern parts of the world (Dothraki stuff especially) and I somehow get those vibes from Ixamitl. Don't think it's grogs' favorite setting though...?

Care to elaborate (like what's SEC, what exactly happened, when and why)?

I don't think so. It's possible but not very likely imo. If PoE disappointed so many players in whatever way (that it explains the drastic drop in sales from over 1 million to 200K at release) there would have been some indication. But there was no substantial one. Complaints about bugs etc. are common and in case of PoE not extraordinary. I read nearly nothing about complicated or weird mechanics. The only thing that sometimes came up was about the non-traditional functions of attributes (MIG for spell dmg and INT for Carnage radius and so on). Besides that Obsidian addressed all points of criticism which came up more frequently (visually messy combat, loading times and so on) in Deadfire. They even did a survey and tried to learn from it. And they communicated that during the fig campaign, so players of PoE who had some pet peeves could have known that those got fixed (but maybe some already left and never looked back). One thing that was getting some criticism when Deadfire was announced was the party reduction to 5 members. Not really related to mechanics but something that could have repelled some players (not a ton but still). Sidekicks also got some flame. But was that enough? Maybe it's just a hodgepodge of several smaller reasons that lead to the poor sales numbers at release - and there isn't THE major reason. Would explain why even Obsidian is absolutely clueless.

Then PoE would also fall under the same category as Deadfire. Its rules are less systemic and thus even more convoluted. Yet it sold quite well.

Cool

Hehe - I indeed do not like gatekeeping. But at the same time I don't really care whether others agree with my gaming preferences or not. I wouldn't call myself a lover of Skyrim - but I had fun with it. I played it on a PS2 on a big screen though and not on PC. Maybe I would think differently if I played it on PC (which wasn't possible at the time it came out because I use Linux - and there was no Steam Proton yet)? Who knows... Good post by the way, doesn't matter how long it is.

I read the whole post (difficult not to since that statement came at the end). Still can't find the causal connection.

Engagement/Disengagement has a lot more impact than it had in PoE. One of my favorite tanks is still an Unbroken/Trickster with large shield who has about 5-6 engagement slots. A Crusader is very tough from the start and gets Lay on Hands + Constant Recovery + Unbending as well as multiple resistances. For most parties that's tanky enough without a shield - but you'll have to use thick armor. Pet + Armored Grace help to counter the recovery malus. Enemies severely underpenetrating you is one of the best things for your survival. If you can combine it with more dmg mitigating effects (like food - see rice etc.) you can keep incoming dmg really low. Stuff like focused gunfire can still hurt, so switching to a large shield setup during such occasions is a good idea. But against most opponents you can go with a two hander or a dual weapon setup. Another idea could be to stack some retaliation. You can stack Flame Shields of Darcozzi and Magran's Blessing. Magran's Blessing also is a bashing shield as @thelee suggested (not small though). You could also take Brand Enemy. It's cheap and it has no recovery. So in theory you could spend most of your Zeal with putting Brand Enemy on most of the enemies and leave the rest for healing. Maybe one or two for Eternal Devotion (works with the Fire Shields as well). Brand Enemy is a slow death but inevitable (can't miss, has no duration). Except against fire immune enemies obviously. The fire shields + brand stack up decently enough. You can then add some other retaliation effects (there's not too many though). Late-game shenanigans: If you have a SC Furyshaper in the party then Brand Enemy (as any DoT) will heal you with every tick once the FuryShaper casts Blood Ward... So putting multiple Brand Enemies out will give you a never-ending trickle of healing (as long as there's a Blood Ward - which lasts a really long time).

I can confirm that. He wrote about it not too long ago.

I think that was done because players (smartly) put a weapon + slow modal (like +2 PEN or Bleeding Cuts) into their main hand and then something fast (dagger or such) into the offhand - then did only Full Attacks. With Bleeding Cuts that's a special kind of cheese since it's damage increase is very high (also because the DoT instances stack) and is only balanced somewhat by the horrendous recovery malus - which was circumvented entirely with the "old" Full Attack implementation. I frequently suggested to use Battle Axes that way and was recently surprised that it doesn't work anymore.

That might be. Does stuff like Missile Salvo also get +2 ACC per PL?

Was still about a great sword build though. So it has its place in this thread.

In PoE1 the stacking of seals (and traps) was fixed as well at some point iirc. You can "stack" any pulsing spell that has a long enough duration and is castable out of combat from stealth as long as you don't hit any enemy - see Chillfog for example or Wicked Briars. It's not exclusive to symbol of XY spells. Walls can't be stacked by a single char though (like seals). But you have to prevent that enemies get lured into the AoE by the noise of impact or stealth will break. I don't think it's overly powerful cheese in a normal playthrough (party setup I mean) because it's rel. tedious to manage. Abilities shouldn't be balanced around solo performance imo. +2 ACC per PL on Storm of Holy Fire: explains why I intuitively use it as often as I can. It always has great impact (as long as enemies aren't very resistant/immune). Since it's not too high-level this has some noticable effect later on. I think it's ok because the spell (like some others like Missile Salvo) has no foe-only area no matter your INT and can't be shaped with Spell Shaping. Both is annoying as hell if I am with a party - and balances out the higher ACC for me.

Shadowing Beyond nowadays also immediately breaks if you have some stuff like Gouging Strike/Bleeding Cuts/Poison Dipped/True Love's Kiss etc. going. I don't mean on appliance but also later if you re-use SB after the initial attack. I think I remember that this was a complaint after release and got changed - but it seems to have been reverted to its crappy state? Afair Smoke Veil does not break if you use it after applying those DoTs. I knew that ACC/PEN values etc. get updated all the time. Also see healing over time with Livehuber over the course of their shifting cycle and such things. I thought that was common knowledge (but what is in this game ;)). @thelee: did you also try and compare Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure? It doesn't break at all as long as you don't damage enemies (or use Walls - I guess hazards are somehow their own "character instance" which also explains their behavior with certain other buffs/debuffs etc.). It seems that there are not two similar invisibility effects in the game. Stealth, Shadowing Beyond, Smoke Veil, Vanishing Strike, Arkemyr's BD all use their own stuff. I suspect the original code got copied and then altered individually by different devs for each ability. Like every ability in the game that got reused (see Wizard spells which can be cast by Priest of Magran etc.) is indeed a copy and not a reference to some basic effect.

It was an Offensive Parry&Riposte Steel Garrote/Trickster. The only construct that heals from burn damage is Dorudugan (the megaboss). The other Iron-/Steelclads are only immune. Flame Naga will heal from burn damage though.

Do you mean seal spells or symbol spells?

That only shows that the effects of Conduit (sometimes, but you have to cheese) and Blade Cascade (always) are too powerful - like Brilliant. Giving players superpotent but ultrashort effects and then allowing flat prolonging isn't overly smart in the first place if you want to achieve balance. Either do not deliver very strong effects in the first place or don't allow flat prolonging. On the other side: "abusing" SoT in order to extend very short potent stuff like Blade Cascade can be fun and interesting. I still don't think SoT is the problem. Blade Cascade is just too good. It would have needed a counter and not a duration. Conduit would have needed a cap. Or simply a fixed lash. Using BDD in order to survive 300pt shock damage is the cheesy part - not casting SoT afterwards imo. Casting of SoT itself takes some time away from the duration already. Besides that: shouldn't SoT only add 10 seconds? At least that's the number I'm referring to. Anything else is either a bug or wrong description.

Yes, then it's time to switch weapons to something that works better against single enemies.

Are you soloing? I wouldn't recommend to play that solo (in a strict way). Against enemies with ranged and spell damage a large shield with modal works wonders until they stop spamming that stuff. I believe even Minor Missiles suffer the high dmg malus from "The Wall". You should have plenty of weapon proficiency points for stuff like that. Usually Minor Missiles shouldn't overpenetrate. They can't crit so your corrode/crush DR must be quite low...? As I wrote elsewhere: such a setup is nice and fun against lots of melee attackers - but not very good against ranged ones (or spellcasters). That's why I wouldn't do it solo - and if I would I wouldn't stick to that setup too slavishly.

I repeat myself but I think both PoE's and Deadfire's biggest flaw is the weak explanations and tooltips.

Well, mechanically it makes sense and it actually works out quite well (as long as you don't want to know what exactly is going on). The problems are that a) it's hard to explain, b) it's unusual, c) it's complicated and unintuitive, d) neither the game nor the devs ever even tried to explain what's going on but left players wondering how the tooltip calculations would make any sense mathematically and e) designers didn't seem to fully understand what the programmers concocted there either.

I forgot that the +1 PL from Tactical Barrage also will raise the self damage from Berserker's Frenzy - oopsy.

The confusion would actually remove any INT inspiration completely (not downgrade it by one tier). Inspiration vs. Affliction always goes *pouf* - nothing left, no matter the tiers. So yes, your PL bonus would be cone, also +5 INT. You could simply cast Tactical Barrage again though (has no recovery and no casting time). The second time there wouldn't be a confusion to counter it and that would only cost one additional Discipline (which is easy enough to regain as a Tactician imo). But as I said: +17.5% crit conversion is also good. And Devil of Caroc has four good reasons to be worn besides the resistance to INT afflictions: a) it looks fantastic with the Helm of the Falcon and b) it gives +2 Discipline/+2 Rage and c) with a pet like Abraham and Armored Grace it's even faster than being naked iirc (or nearly as fast - don't remember the actual numbers) due to its own action speed bonus. and d) it can give +2 AR when bloodied - or healing on dealing crits which both is great for a Berserker. It's a tough decision...