Boeroer

Teleportancimation? Sounds like a Red Hot Chilly Peppers song though... I never heard of the Grey Lands either. Maybe it's a secret land for the elderly?

Dual wielding is not 100% dps. That would mean that you'll get +100% action speed. But you only get +30%. Also speed modifiers don't get added but multiplied which means that 30% + 15% don't add up to 45%. You can look up the mechanics of action speed and recovery time in the pinned thread above by @MaxQuest. But you are still right that one handed weapon usage is inferior - at least over the course of a playthrough (generally speaking, there are exceptions like pistol + modal). In the early game it's quite good though. But it quickly falls behind. Don't know what you mean with "warrior class" when using Backstab as example (from Rogue class) - but generally you are right that those additive bonus dmg abilities do most for heavy hitters if you also look as resource costs. However, most dmg bonuses are of passive nature (MIG, weapon quality, Sneak Attack, Deathblows, Weapon Spec & Mastery and so on) and thus don't need any resources. So the dmg per hit doesn't matter (but dps). Most of the dmg bonuses on active abilities are simply there to balance out the missing Power Level bonus of low level abilites vs. high level abilites. Every damaging ability gains +5% multiplicative dmg with every Power Level. So low level abilites (which are used with weapons) will scale better than high level ones. To compensate for that the high level ones often get a +x% additive dmg bonus. This is not the optimal solution since it favors heavy hitters - as you said - but I guess it was the easiest solution. But still: those dmg bonuses on active abilities don't make up a big part of your overall dmg bonuses. Most are passive. So it's not too bad. There are some nasty ones though: Backstab is an especially bad case because it's a very high dmg bonus and usually only works very limited times per encounter. Same as Takedown Combo (+100% dmg) by the way or Lion's Sprint (here it's accuracy and not dmg). They are limited in use and thus you want to Max out the dmg per hit. This implementation favours stuff like arquebus and such and thus is completely unintuitive to use for somebody who associates Backstabs with daggers and such. Who really starts the game and realizes that Backstabs are best done with guns and two handers? That's why the Community Patch (see my signature) replaced the percentage-based additive dmg bonus on Backstab with a flat raw dmg bonus. So it doesn't matter which weapon you use. I do recommend that mod. It's conservative (no op stuff, even some nerfs) but fixes some issues with suboptimal or illogical game mechanics.

You meant "pointless". Have a nice Christmas y'all!

Never said you were telling bull****. Improve your reading comprehension. I said that thelees's observation might be wrong and a mistake but that a) it's forgivable and certain assumptions and (non)experiences might easily lead to such a mistake and b) your reaction to this mistake is exaggerated and silly. Strong emphasize on b. You can be right about something and not be a complete douche about it. Also helps to sell your point.

First of all he didn't even say you were wrong but simply wanted to point out that he didn't mean the movies primarily but the merchandise. Then he made a wrong statement to emphasize this - but maybe only partially wrong. Because even though there might have been James Bond merchandise: I never saw it in shops and no friend of mine had any of it. But later on everybody ran around with Star Wars action figures. It was omnipresent. Soeven while there was James Bond merchandise it wasn't very obvious, at least to him or me. I also doubt that it was very successful. So... missing the fact that there was James Bond merchandise maybe a forgivable thing. Anyway, point is: he wasn't even trying to prove you wrong, he just wanted to emphasize his point of view. Secondly: even if he would have said that you're wrong your reaction would still be over the top. You reacted as if he insulted you personally - like if you are the inventor of James Bond merchandise himself. Didn't come across as mature (speaking of "kids these days").

No idea. But why are you so very pissy about it?

Depends. If you plan to take Heart of the Storm (maybe you'd also want to use Animancer's Boots) then a shocking lash. If not you can take what you want to be more flexible. Although shock is one of the least resisted/immune dmg types iirc. I personally would take shock and simply switch to another stiletto as soon as I'd meet a resistant enemy - instead of trying to cover more different dmg types.

Isn't that a lvl 8 quest (officially)? I always tackle it before lvl 13 and never had any problems. So I'd say lvl 13 is absolutely fine...? Just take out the totems first (they summon blights). Coral Naga Archers and Warriors have rel. low Will so INT and RES afflictions work well. Unique loot is indeed the same. The peaceful option is a lot less hassle obviously but you'll miss some "normal" loot.

Totally. Bloodmage or non-subclass. Depends if you really like to empower spells from invisibility/stealth (non-subclass) or like to regain resources during encouter (Bloodmage). But... nobody mentioned Evoker in the first place... but it sounded as if sombody did so I was feverishly searching for the passage I overlooked... Edit: Until I found it in the title!

You cannot spam spells from stealth. Your stealth gets removed as soon as you hit somebody. However, you can go invisible several times per encounter... Generally Wizard+Rogue is a good combo because the Rogue's strike abilites work with AoE weapons and the Wizard has some nice ones (Kalakoth's Minor Blights, Spirit Lance etc.). Casting high dmg AoE spells from stealth/invisibility works nicely. Spells with high base damage work best with the additive dmg bonus of Assassinate. Good thing is that there's a unique spell in Arkemyr's Grimoire named Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure. It creats an invisibility that will NOT break if you cast CC that does no damage the enemy (while the usual invisibility will break on every hit roll). That means you can cast a lot of nasty CC spells and stay invisible and all of them get +25 accuracy. Another thing is that all hazard spells (like all Wall spells) will not break invisibility even though they deal dmg. So if you cast a Wall of Draining you can stay invisible 100% of times as long as you don't cast a damaging spell. Or you cast a Wall of Flame or a Wall of Many Colors from that invisibility and deal damage. You can only have 1 wall spell active at the same time.

Nothing's really overpowered in PoE over the course of a playthrough. The game's balanced too well and all the really gamebreaking stuff was patched. But there are some builds that are better for certain roles than others. It also depends if solo or party play. For party play Priest is the most powerful class there is - and I think most "experts" here would agree with this. Not only because of their awesome support abilities (prayers alone) but also because they can become superb nukers after some levels and are good healers. They only lack CC - but that's easy to come by in a party. It's even so that more than one Priest isn't redundant like one might think. Because Inspiring Radiance stacks with itself you can go with 6 Priests, cast 6 Inspiring Radiances (and 1 Devotions) and then nuke everything with +60 (+80) accuracy. In solo runs survivability trumps damage dealing. There are only few exceptions (like Heart of Fury which theoretically is capable to one-shot even the toughest bounties) but even then it's not reliable. While you can annihilate trash mobs just fine with a very good damage dealer you can't do the same against dragons or enemies with nasty CC (Adragans, Lagufaeth etc). You will just die before you can win. I mean if you don't want to rely on cheese, massive use of consumables or kiting. That's why Paladins are pretty good solo characters because their passive defense boosts mean you can prolong a fight for a very long time without really getting hurt while they whittle down enemy after enemy. Boring, but very effective. Works against everything. But whatever build you choose you can never steamroll a solo playthrough on PotD difficulty.

Nope

Sturdy Riposte rogue with Badgradr's Barricade is really good. Thrust of Tattered Veils (unlimited procs per encouter off of bash-crits) benefits from Deathblows (not Sneak Attack), so that's +100% dmg.

ALso, if you flank your enemy will suffer from -10 deflection which also helps a lot with crits (and with Sneak Attack).

The Long Pain is one of the best weapons in PoE. The single target dps is quite insane.

I guess it only has to connect once to verify your copy and afer that you could play offline. Just a guess though. On PC you don't have to be connected in order to play.

In general: everything that is attached to your character, has a duration and gives you any sort of positive effect (buff, summoned item or healing etc.) it's a benefical effect. Note that some cipher "buffs" are not attached to you but to the enemy (like Wild Leech or Time Parasite) and thus are not a benefical effect on you but a hostile effect on the enemy. You benefit of course, but in terms of mechanics (like with Salvation of Time) they work differently.

Yes, it mostly is a hard fight (both: Gorecci Str. and Digsite) because you don't have many options. Digsite is noticably easier with somebody who can mind control (Charm Beasts or Whisper of Treason). Especially at the digsite the beasts have low Will defenses and can easily be charmed, tanking for you.

Agree. Hiravias has a great Spiritshift form (Stelgaer) which is awesome for dps. At high levels (with Avenging Storm active and maxed Wildstrike + Wildstrike Belt) he can do more single target dps than a Rogue (while shifted) while at the same time do massive AoE-CC and- dmg with Relentless Storm and Plague of Insects and the like. Also great fun to play. Only thing is: if you have a lot of micromanagement-intense characters like monks and shifting druids it can become too much. So I often put in a chanter or paladin or something into the mix who usually can function well without lots of micromanagement.

Yes, monk is a very well rounded package: sturdy, great AoE dmg, good single target dmg, speed, replenishablke resources (so more fun abilities to use per encounter) and so on. But actually the most fun I had with a Monk was a melee/ranged hybrid one (although that might not be what the OP was looking for) :

Ok, lower but still in the "decent" category.

Oops, I didn't realize that that might be unclear. Yes, you can upgrade the quality enchtantments. Also Damaging II with Exceptional and so on. But while you can replace quality enchatments with better quality you can't really revert enchantments in general. E.g. if you put a burning lash on a weapon it will always stay there.

Yes

Same protagonist but 5 years after PoE. Another place (on another continent) but same world.

Oh, I didn't realize that the healing scaled so well with Religion, given that it only starts at 10. That's cool then. You are right by the way: Rooting Pain is quite nice on Xoti IF you can manage to kill often (also when you combine it with Endurung Dance and Hylea's Talons or Furrante's Breastplate or Voidwheel or even Keeper of the Flame - although KotF will remove Endurnig Dance and also give you Resonant Touches if you are an SC Monk).