Boeroer

Concerning Lethandria's Devotion don't forget this behavior (in case you don't already use it): If you switch from the shield directly to a copy of the shield (e.g. weapon set 1: sabre + L's Devotion, weapon set 2: axe + L's Devotion copy) you'll instantly get one tick of healing. You can set up a script (like I did above) that switches all the time once you don't need to attack (so switching recovery malus doesn't matter). Maybe you can use that behavior to your advantage.

The human trait is actually pretty good. The bonuses stack with everything. Pale Elves have freeze and burn resistance. Makes it more useful than freeze only. Prepare to sneak a lot to avoid early fights and get XP from quests you can resolve peacefully. Caed Nua will also be difficult. I can't say how early you will be able to solo the Temple of Eothas. But it's going to be tough as nails if you don't have some good spells at hand - so you'll need a few levels under the belt. As I said Priest is difficult at the beginning and gets easier and easier with every level. Quite the opposite to fighter for example.

Unmodded Forbidden Fist (without mods) is indeed a spell-like ability like Powerotti said. It doesn't generate focus and afaik it doesn't trigger Swift Flurry or Heartbeat Drumming at all(?). At least I could never proc them with FF when I tested it. And I never experienced the behaviour mentioned above (Bleeding Cuts etc.) in the unmodded game. The Community Patch simply added the "weapon" tag to the Forbidden Fist ability (not "melee" afaik because it already was tagged as melee- but not as weapon attack). It now can generate focus and also triggers Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming. However, like Powerotti also already said, you cannot use weapons with the Forbidden Fist ability and thus no AoE whatsoever. Monk's "Inner Death" has the same probems by the way and I believe it was untouched by the Community Patch (we didn't notice this before the patch went live).

You can get more portraits online e.g. here: http://www.jasonseow.com/poeportraits Moon Godlike is especially helpful in the early game. Later you might miss the helmet slot though. But it's a viable choice. Only problem with the Silver Tide Healing + Priest is that Priests have low health. So while you won't get knocked out from low endurance (because Moon Godlike's Silver Tide heals you up) you can run out of health pretty quickly. So bring potions of Infuse with Vital Essence to counter the health loss.

Chanter+Priest+Cipher, needs two preservation items on the Chanter, one shield and one other: Chanter: chants Dragon Thrashed Priest: casts Withdraw on Chanter --> Chanter doesn't stop chanting and gets +100 to all defenses because Withdraw counts as stun effect Cipher: casts Defensive Mindweb --> everybody gets the Chanter's ridiculous defenses Barbarian+Chanter with Firebrand and Blood Thirst on the Barb Chanter: summons Skeletons, sends them to the front line Barbarian: summons Firebrand, hits Skeletons who stand near enemies --> Skeleton will get killed, Carnage damages enemies, Blood Thirst gets triggered also works with Barb alone if he takes Rymers' Summons as talent Barbarian+Wizard Wizard: casts Combusting Wounds Barbarian (need high INT): triggers Heart of Fury while dual-wielding --> creating tons of hits which all apply Combusting Wounds also works with Barb alone if he uses a Ring of Searing Flames Island Aumaua Wizard with Quick Switch and Coil of Resourcefulness equip 4 blunderbusses and suse Penetrating Shot cast Combusting Wounds fire all four blunderbusses on enemies with Combusting Wounds (applying 6 instances with each shot) add some missile spells and a Wall of Flame if needed Wizard + Cipher Wizard casts Combusting Wound Cipher casts Ectopsychic Echo Chanter with one handed single weapon get +12 ACC for all offensive chants Wizard + Chanter with White Worms and Blessed Was Wengridh: deactivate "gib" in the game options Chanter: lure enemies to a spot Wizard: cast Wall of Flames + Combusting Wounds --> kill enemies Chanter: lure more enemies to that spot where the corpses lie --> again Combusting Wounds, then use White Worms lure more enemies there: White Worms --> corpses can be used over and over again. You can clear whole maps with this one alone. don't reload in between or the corpses are gone an tank + Wizard with Blast and Kalakoth Minor Blights: tank engages enemies Wizard: summon Blights cast Pull of Eora cast Combusting Wounds shower enemies with Blights --> each hit from Blights (including AoE hits) will also trigger a Blast --> tond of hits that will all apply Combusting Wounds Rogue with spell binding gear (and scrolls): get Deathblows --> also does +100% dmg with spells get Deep Wounds --> does raw damage also with crushing/piercing/slashing spells pile up spell binding gear --> Flames of Fair Rhian, Sun Touched Mail and so on, everything that gives your rogue offensive spells get some scrolls --> especially of spells that deal pierce, slash or crush damage like Twin Stones or Concussive Missiles for Deep Wounds cast those spells on enemies who have two afflictions --> deal +100% damage with Deathblows Paladin + Fighter + Priest, get Munacra Arret and a marking weapon: Paladin is a Darcozzi Paladini with marking weapon, Coordinated Attacks and Inspiring Liberation (+10 ACC+10 ACC): cast IL on fighter Fighter uses Disciplined Barrage, wears Munacra Arret (and or Spirit Spiral, can also use Enigma's Charm) Priest casts Devotions (+20 ACC), then Inspiring Radiance (+10 ACC) Paladin attacks Dragon with marking weapon --> Fighter casts charm on dragon --> Fighter gets +10(Munacra Arret) +10(Inspiring Liberation) +20(Dispciplined Barrage) +20(Devotions) +10(marking) +10(Coordinated Attacks) +10(Inspiring Radiance) = +90 Accuracy on the charm which will crit-charm every dragon besides the one that is immune (Llengrath). Also works with Knockdown to knock a dragon over very reliably. But charm helps a ton with all the ads. Enigma's Charm doesn't have +10 ACC so its hit chance is slightly lower but it's 1/encounter. If you get Shame or Glory and Cladhaliath (with marking) or clone one of them with with the Helwax Mold you can give a +20 marking bonus instead of +10. Also works very well with a Cipher instead of a Fighter: no knockdown, but you can cast anything on the enemy. Especially if you combine Borrowed Instinct with Tactical Meld (on the Paladin): +30 ACC on top 6 Priests: Priest casts Devotions all Priests cast Aggrandizing + Inspiring Radiance all Priests cast Minor Avatar all Priests cast Shining Beacon with +10 INT, +10 MIG and +90 ACC (+10 from PER, +60 from Radiance, +20 from Devotions) --> delete even the atoms of the enemies from existence variant with one Wizard or Druid for CC and nuking: also nice if enemies are vessels then Radiance alone will evaporate everything (if not fire immune) Paladin with Outworn Buckler + Chanter with Little Savior: Chanter summons Skeletons, chants Blessed Was Wengridh + Comrades Paladin kills skeletons and triggers Inspiring Triumph Chanter keeps summoning if skeletons are all down --> endless flow of Inspiring Triumph --> party has stackable +5(Buckler) +5(Little Saviour) +10(Wengridh + Comrades) +7(Inspiring Triumph) = +27 to fortitude/will/reflex and +17 to deflection at all times with no per-rest resource costs spells etc. like Shields for the Faithful can stack on top Surely there's more but I have to go...

Yes, the description is misleading. Maybe it's a remnant from the days of development when two handed weapon were indeed slower than one handers. But in fact they are not. Only light weapons like fists, daggers, rapiers, hatchets, flails, stilettos and clubs are indeed faster. The rapier is the fastest weapon of all - I guess that's not intended. It has a little bit less recovery than the other fast one handers. By the way: Novice' Suffering (fists) is a viable option for priests with high MIG. Because of the weird mechanics of Novice's Suffering priests can potentially do pretty good dps with fists. Reason is that with Novice's Suffering the base damage of fists doesn't change. It still stays very low. Since all damage modifiers (includes grazes and crits) use the base damage they don't do much for fist attacks. So it doesn't really matter that much if you do a graze or a crit. So you don't need a priest weaopion talent for the added accuracy that much. The flat damage bonus that Novice's Suffering gives your fists however: that one scales with MIG. Priests can have pretty high MIG with Aggrandizing Radiance and then either Holy Power, then later Devotions, Champions Boon and Minor Avatar. Add some MIG gear and food start off at MIG 21 (like Dwarf or Aumaua) and you can reach nearly 40 MIG which not only boosts your spell damage by 90% but also highly improves your fist damage (same goes for wounding on Drawn in Sping or Tidefall - but let's put that aside for a moment). The good thing is that you won't need to invest any resources like money or enchantments on your weapons since they would scale automatically. Just some food for thought: punchy Priest of Eotahs or something. Cheesing means that you exploit some quirks of the game mechanics to your advantage. Like for example being faster that the enemy and then using a ranged weapon to kite them. Enemies will always return to their spot once they realize they can't get you - and then you can rinse and repeat the shoot-run-return cycle endlessly. That way a forum member did a PotD solo run with a lvl-1-character (never leveled up - look up "Noober"). Another would be that Chanters don't stop chanting when they are withdrawn by a Priest. They turn invisible and become untouchable but still can dish out a ton of damage with chants like "The Dragon Thrashed". That's cheesing. It's not really cheating because you are not actively breaking the game rules with software or console or whatver but it's not playing like the game's meant to be played either.

What Skaen look do you mean? Great Sword is as slow or fast as a normal sword, a sabre, a hammer etc. All two handed melee weapons are as fast as the heavier one handed melee weapons. Only with dual wielding a sword would be faster than a Great Sword. With a shield you'd have the same speed, lower dps but higher protection. With two swords you'd have higher dps, same protection but more problems with Damage Reduction. Especially in the early game where you'll have only few dmg bonuses that would help you to overcome DR. If you want to test out attack speed an recovery setups you can do that here: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/ That handy online tool is from @MaxQuest and very good. So, if attack speed is your concern then a Great Sword is not a problem.

If I would want to go into melee often I personally would not skip the priest's weapon talent that gives +10 ACC and brings him on par with a fighter. Caravan: without massive cheese (that I can't imagine right now) it will be undoable to kill the caravan as a priest. If you can do it then you'll get points in the "cruel" reputation which - depending on your deity - might hurt your Holy Radiance scaling. Priests have certain favorite and disfavored dispositions. If you get points in a disfavored disposition you will get weaker scaling. Holy Radiance with high MIG, INT and the proper dispositions scales very high (same mechanics as Shining Beacon) and can one-shot (non-burn-immune) vessels later on. I had it do 300+ dmg spikes. This can make several fights a lot easier. So before slaughtering the caravan you should first check if points in "cruel" would displease your deity. I believe Berath and Eothas condemn cruelty. Skaen fits. He likes being cruel. Skaen's also the best pick when it's about weapon dps (because of his weapon talent which not only adds the aforementioned +10 ACC but also a smaller version of Sneak Attack that can be stacked with Apprentice's Sneak Attack to a total of +45% iirc). Real nice with Firebrand which loves damage bonuses due to it's high base dmg. If you don't use summoned or soulbound weapons you are bound to stiletto and club though (for the +10 ACC). But stuff like Abydon's Hammer with an additional +45% dmg passive is nice.

Start the fight with Inspiring Radiance. It's a fast cast and thus you won't notice any difference whether DEX is low or high. This will give your party +10 ACC right away and they can start doing things like casting CC etc. Durance then has more time to cast his next spell without slowing your whole party down that much. If you also pick Aggrandizing Radiance he will get +2 to all attributes, including DEX. It stacks with everything. Also Durance had high RES. If you use him for buffs & heals mainly you can add a large shield and weapon & shield style and skip armor. That will reduce his recovery.

The summoning of a weapon is almost instant (0.5 secs I believe) and it has no recovery. The weapon itself lasts for 30 seconds (base duration) which scales with INT. You can always wear a backup weapon. You don't need to switch weapons: the summoned weapon just replaces the backup weapon and once the summoned weapon disappears you'll have your backup weapon again. Firebrand can also be useful as a backup weapon when you meet enemies who are vulnerable to burn damage and reistant to other sources of damage (e.g. a lot of stuff in the White March DLC).

Good thought. I guess that's the reason. Good point with Carnage and misses/grazes, too. Another question: when playing a Monk/Barbarian and using Force of Anguish you will hit the "pushed" foe with Carnage as well which usually isn't the case. Normally only bystanders get hit by Carnage, not the initial target. This is because you will push the enemy into its own Carnage AoE before Carnage itself gets rolled. Carnage then handles the foe like any other bystander (flying by ;)). The question is: does this also happen in TB Mode? Since Carnage hits a lot more often in TB it should be an even better synergy.

Hmm, why do you think Magran? First of all he didn't use the specific weapon talent of priests in his build and secondly Magran's talent (Inspired Flame) will only work with Swords and Arquebuses - which he didn't use. Since he used Drawn in Spring or Bittercut the Priest class doesn't matter (in this regard) because non of them has bonuses to Dagger or Sabre. St. Ydwin's Redeemer and Abydon's Hammer are soulbound weapons and will work with every weapon focus talent and also with every priest weapon talent (+10 ACC) no matter the deity. By the way: if you want to play a high MIG/INT priest like this one but want to do a bit more melee then Priest of Berath with Tidefall (Great Sword) is very nice. Or use Forgemaster Gloves + Royal Cannoneer Belt and use Firebrand as your main weapon. Since it's a summoned weapon it doesn't matter which deity you pick (all the talents give +10 ACC to Firebrand - like with soulbounds) but of course a Priest of Magran would fit best thematically. I played such a solo Priest of Berath ad it was fun. Tidefall's wounding (like Drawn in Spring's wounding) scales with MIG. So if you have very high MIG (like this Priest) you will do very good damage with the additional wounding lash. Of course you'll have no shield and thus be more vulnerable. I compensated with thicker armor, more CON and RES and less DEX. After all it's the spell damage that will do the heavy lifting for you. But you also might want to have some fun poking things with a weapon. A solo Priest is certainly doable for you on normal difficulty - however you have to know that the early game will be extremely hard with a Priest. He starts quite weak because he has a very limited spell portfolio and very few spell uses while his starting values are bad. Luckily his power curve is very, very steep and from mid to late game I think there is no more (potentially) powerful class - but be aware that you have to kite and cheese a bit in the early game in order to make it to Defiance Bay. From there on it's going to get much much better. This is the case with all per-rest casters by the way - Druid being a little better because his Spiritshift helps a lot early on and Wizard has helpful stuff like Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff. Preist mostly has support stuff in the early levels which don't benefit you as much in a solo game. Later on his spells just kick butts (like Shining Beacon with high MIG and INT).

Wrath otFS def. works with Penetrating Shot. Used that several times with Pallegina as alpha-striker together with FoD and Prestidigitator's Missiles (also work afair). I used Grimoire Slam on a monkish Wizard once (Novice's Suffering and all the "melee" spells like Draining Touch, Jolting Touch and also Grimoire Slam). It's 1/encounter and has fairly high base dmg (25 - like Firebrand or Concelhaut's Staff) so it scales ok-ish with high MIG (Citzal's Martial Power - that doesn't turn it off since it's not a spell I presume) and enhanced crit damage (like Merciless Hand + Dungeon Delver etc.). And because it's an ability it gets +1 ACC per level which lets if crit fairly often later in the game (esp. if combined with Martial Power and Merciless Gaze). I stacked MIG into the sky anyway because of Novice's Suffering weird mechanics that work garbage with dmg bonuses (Wizard doesn't have any anyway) but scales its flat dmg bonus with MIG. Which leads to respectable melee dps for a Wizard (who doesn't use summoned weapons). All in all it's comparable with Runner's Wounding Shot: a 1/encounter attack that can do decent damage - but you might only take it because you a) don't know what else to take or b) it fits your theme. It's not bad if you build around it but surely not a gamechanger either. Was fun though. Especially after you get spell mastery and can use touch spells like Jolting Touch, Sunless Grasp, Draining Touch per encounter. That was my PoE version of Wizard/Monk multiclass before it was even a thing in Deadfire.

Interesting with Spirit Tornado. How is Driving Roar implemented? In RTwP is takes even less time than Frenzy/Spirit Tornado. And right: it is so powerful because its base damage (which you see in the description) scales with Power Level. And since Driving Roar is in upgrade of a PL-1 ability it will scale right away from PL 1 to 9 once you pick it (meaning base dmg * 1.4, additional PEN and ACC and so on). Just mentioning it for players who don't know PL scaling yet.

Didn't test it so I don't know about your first question (blaster + wild barrage) - but it is confirmed that all projectile jumps trigger an additional instance of all imbue effects. The Penetration of the imbue effects shouldn't even rise with a caster class. If so that would surprise me big time. The shot itself scales its PEN normally but the spell effects do not. You can only alter the PEN of the spell effects with stuff like a Tenacious inspiration or Cipher's Driving Echoes etc. Or you use the mod that I linked in my signature. It scales the imbue effect's PEN with your Arcana skill. The mod did some conservative and reasonable balancing on several abilites (no OP stuff) and it also includes unique icons for all passive abilities (in vanilla they are all the same in many cases). But the mod is made in a way that you can even only use the Arcane Archer fix and use nothing else. PS: It's not me who did the mod but itv was a collaborative community effort of this forum. I only created the icons for the passive abilities.

Cool. Thanks! May I add Pallegina's "Wrath of the Five Suns" (works with Penetrating Shot)? Not really a spell but... Did you also test spell-like stuff from other classes e.g. Chanter invocations? I have the feeling that maybe stuff like Seven Nights could work with Penetrating Shot...? I have a question: I thought Grimoire Slam worked with Vulnerable Attack but I might be mistaken. Do you have info on this as well? I think I once knew the answer to my own questions but I seem to have forgotten a lot of the details of PoE...

Never had good results with a single handed Barb so far. Also because Barbaric Smash, Heart of Fury, Barbaric Retaliation etc. are all Full Attacks.

Maybe because playing RPGs used to be a nerdy thing - and people who did it formed rel. secluded groups. And maybe once you find something you can finally identify with it's hard to let go? Also: age and the "everything was better in the old days" syndrome.

Iirc the majority of PoE players who took part in the survey (after PoE and DLCs got released) wished for Aedyr or the Living Lands as place for a sequel. I think it was in that survey but maybe there was another one. Whatever... Same result in a poll we had here in the forums. Old Vailia was also among the more popular votes I believe. Not much is known about the Living Lands (seems to be a bit on the "jurassic" side - humongous beasts and plants and stuff), but it seems that all of them would have been a more classic setting than the Deadfire Archipelago is. Now I like the Deadfire Archipelago. I think Obsidian did a great job with the history, lore and worldbuilding. But if you had asked me before how I feel about the Deadfie Archipelago as setting for PoE2 I would most likely have said "meh". Man I really hope we will see some other games in the PoE universe. That world has grown on me.

I also didn't play Turn Based Mode but judging from what I read all the action speed and recovery buffs seem to be a lot less important than in RTwP Mode. Single Class Barbarian with late game Driving Roar is very potent. But I don't know if that's the type of Barbarian OP wants to play (Barb with axes and so on). Barbaric Retaliation is pretty nice with axes + modal (Bleeding Cuts). A Barb multiclass I particularly like is Barb/Monk. Especially Berserker/Monk since the Berserker Frenzy fuels the Monk's wounds and Swift Flurry triggers quite often esp. with Barbaric Smash. Bleeding Cuts get applied by Swift Flurries as well iirc. I you like 2handers better I'd vote for a Berserker/Monk with a Morning Star. It's the perfect synergy of class(es) and weapon. Barb/Streetfighter is also nice as dps character. Even though the recovery bonus isn't so important in this case but the increased Sneak Attack dmg and the high crit chance + hit/crit damage when bloodied.

Of course the game has its problems. It's just not easy to determine if what you identify as a problem is a problem for (so many) other players which then results in a massive sales drop of more than 500k copies. 10k reviews of 1,000k sold copies is a good sample size. If the problems you identified annoyed as many players as you said then you would see that. I think it is very unlikely that a game that has problems which annoy and put off like 500k players would have a user score about 8.3 on Metacritic. Just because you made some observations, analyzed your problems with the game meticulously and phrased it nicely doesn't mean that a big bunch of other players felt the same. Of course you will find players who feel the same. But enough to explain such a sales disaster? I still don't think so. And where is the evidence that you mentioned? You found it amusing that posters said that it might be the setting which put potential players off. There's nothing amusing about it. It makes sense. One can't prove it without a big survey but it is not a far-fetched assumption. It is more likely that a) many players see a setting/theme and decide that they will not buy the game than b) an equal amount of players watch streams, read critics on Kotaku etc. and then decide to not buy. I mean both can happen and most likely did happen and it would add up. It's not either/or. I just think that a) plays a bigger role since it takes nearly no time and no other investment than a glance to make that decision - while for b) you'd have to invest quite some time and motivation to do so. That's why I think there was no cause for amusement. If you would have said something along the lines of "What I also think played a role was..." I would most likely have agreed. But your "Setting? Lulz! It is my theory alone which really explains it all" approach prevented that.

I use Kana as Dragon Thrashed tank most of times. Not as the main tank though. Some things to consider (just pointing out generally): Chanters get +12 ACC on their offensive chants (like Dragon Thrashed) when using a single one handed weapon. When withdrawn they keep on chanting. A Chanter with a Preservation shield and another Preservation item gets +100 to all defenses when withdrawn. You can use this for Defensive Mindweb. If I have a Priest in the party I often use this to create an invisible chanting "totem" with high ACC and invulnerability. I will take Withdrawn as spell mastery then. White Worms: sometimes enemies will leave no body if you kill them with a crit. That's the case when the "gib" option is turned on in the game options menu. It gibs enemies' corpses. If you plan to use White Worms you should turn that off. In my opinion it's ridiculous anyway. Also corpses can explode over and over again (if you reload they are gone though). Because of this behavior White Worms is one of the most powerful tools to clear out maps with lots of enemies (like Raedric's Castle). You can lure them to a spot over and over again - and the more bodies pile up the quicker they die. This way I can kill Raedric very early and clear out his whole castle which gives me a lot of money from loot (esp. from plate armors).

Effort: raw lash is good - but it doesn't stack like Bleeding Cuts do. Therefore not as good as it seems. During multiple tests with several two handed weapons on several different chars it didn't perform too well (e.g. compared to Willbreaker, Oathbreaker, Amra etc.). It's my go-to weapon for a Vengeful-Defeat Barb and sometimes on a wizard for his phantoms or for Shroud of the Phantasm. The additional attack on k.o. is fun and also works on summons. BotEP: good Ngati's Tusk: nice but too late for me to build a char around pikes. Unfortunately the other unique pikes on the way are not too exciting unless you build a char who can reliably get a plant or beast effect for unlocking Lord of the Forest on Lance of the Midwood Stag. Like a Barb/Druid for example.

I'm so guilty. I sometimes oppose posters who want to start their forum career with a childish and irrational rant and then I insist on being reasonable. I know, I know: super lawful evil... Or I called out SonicMage when he used the words "fact" and "truth" every time he voiced his subjective opinion. But so did everybody else... so maybe Sonic doesn't count. But hey @xzar_monty - we clashed one or two times. Did you feel "put down" or "denigrated"? I mean I cried a bit but I got over it. I also disagree with @thelee from time to time. It's a miracle he's still here after all those nasty attacks I launched. He def. took Thick-Skinned or Stoic Steel. Or both...

The usual monk is micro heavy. Especially Torment's Reach (which is the most powerful ability the monk has in my opinion) needs a lot of micromanagement to be effective. I once made a special disabler monk who was supposed to be run by AI mostly and who skipped Torment's Reach: It worked quite well.