Boeroer

With raw dmg or high PEN and CON afflictons.

In my opinion the best weapon for Brute (especially if Devoted is involved) is The Willbreaker. It has two damage types (no need to switch), it has awesome enchantments and most importantly: it has Body Blows as modal which lowers Fortitude by 25. That's not only awesome for Brute Force (target Fortitude with every attack roll if it's the lower defense) but also for Knockdown and Mule Kick (targets Fortitude).

Actually you have 2-3 per Power Level per encounter. So a single class Priest has 18 spell uses at PL 9 for every encounter at least. And then you can use Empower to refresh half of it. If you think that's not enough your resource management and efficiency must be horrible. Solo is another story of course. The advantage is that all your abilities can be used when you want. They are all at your disposal right away. The disadvantage is that the resources are finite. Using a cheesy tactic to show the superiority of a class is questionable. With the same reasoning one could argue that the rogue is a better class than the monk because Gouging Strike kills every boss with 2 Guile.

Signet Ring doesn't care for your engagement. It works the opposite way: how many enemies engage YOU. The maximum is the number of enemies that can surround you. You can have like 8 engagement slots (there's no hard limit). But 8 doesn't do anything more for you than 6 slots - because very few enemies can surround you with more than 6 individuals.

Spells scale differently with Power Level.

The above number is the description of the base Finishing Blow which usually doesn't get changed - while the lower number is with the Upgrade from Devastating Blow. I agree that the info is confusing.

Was this the double tap of posting?

And people said "Conjurers are bad".

I found Tyranny was pretty awful. Although I liked certain aspects of it (setting mostly) the combat system was so bad that it gave me shivers. I don't think that was the reason for its failure though. I think the (perceived) lack of a hero you could sympathize with was the main reason - but that's only wild guessing.

The reason why (the easy to grasp) flat DR from PoE had to go was that it couldn't keep up with the increasing damage numbers. DR 0 or DR 20 doesn't matter that much once you get hit by a 200-point-damage attack. The reduction is only 10%. While it would be 50% if a 40-point-dmg attack hits you. And scaling it more steeply also wouldn't work because then weaker enemies couldn't hit you at all. So because of player feedback Obsidian decided to alter that DR system. And they came up with PEN which was even more binary in its beta version (it was horrible: PEN was THE GOD stat). Now it got some more stages, but it's still the most important thing - at least at PotD. A percentage based DR would have been better I think. More granular so you're not trying to gain that one point of PER that takes you over the edge - still it would scale with damage. And you could add MIN and MAX values if you wished.

So one more char does more than a single spell? Hm... What a ****ty character that must be... Apart from that: on PotD, Devotions for the Faithful, gained early by a single class priest, makes difficult encounters a lot easier. Not only does it give +10 stackable ACC and +4 MIG (+8 Fortitude) to your party but also -10 ACC and -4 MIG (-8 Fortitude) to your enemies. People like to overlook that. And that's only one spell. In addition to that Priests can also heal, support in may different ways and be pretty good nukers, too - without the need to collect phrases first. So they can be used more "on point". I mean Chanters are nice and all - but they can't do the same amount of on-demand support a priest can do. I never regret taking a priest. Actually I never regretted taking any class if I plan for its use correctly in the first place. And even if I wanted to substitute a Priest with another class I wouldn't take yet another Chanter. I'd take a Druid.

Right. It's bad. And that's the nicest thing I can say about it (sorry Josh). Especially bad is that a) PotD scales AR up so all things that improve PER increase in value - immensely. That makes so many weapon/ability options less viable b) double inversion of the dmg reduction (that is the result of underpenetration) leads to a hefty, hefty reduction.

Attack speed bonuses don't stack additively (so 30% and 10% are not like a single 40% bonus). But yeah, especially with Blood Thirst things get really interesting.

Devotions of the Faithful. 'Nuff said...

In the early game one handed style is good. Later on dual wieldig / two handed is def. better. Because the ratio of your accuracy vs. enemies' defenses gets bigger and bigger.

Morning Star: -25 forti-dude! Stacks with -10 from CON afflictions. It's so worth it...

Do you hold position before firing your guns good sir?

Sorry I typed your name wrong .. Yes sure whenever you are available. I was just so happy I finally made Ranged/Melee setup work for myself, and the playstyle also integrate really well with new subclasses so I figured I'd share it on forum. Sure! Great stuff!

Getting charmed/dominated is not dangerous in a solo game. The enemy will stop attacking you once you flipped and you can just wait it out.

DEX affects both: attack (animation) time and recovery time. That doesn't matter too much with regular melee/ranged attacks but with spells (which tend to have a longer attack animation phase). If you use a single weapon in one hand (without offhand weapon) or a two handed weapon (melee or ranged) you get a recovery penalty. If you dual wield you don't. Broadly speaking it's like a 50% recovery speed gain compared to single/two handed weapons. That's why characters who dual wield and pile up other speed bonuses can reach 0 recovery with their weapon attacks quite easily. Dual wieldig only impacts your weapon attack recovery, nothing else. Same with "speed" enchantment on weapons and Two Weapon Style. While universal speed buffs like from Alacrity or Frenzy will shorten all your recoveries: from weapon attacks, spells etc.

If you have Trial of Iron active then you should. Quests in general don't matter. The only criteria is: There were Rogues that already did this achievement - and since stats don't matter that much I can't see why you couldn't do it as well. Dragons can be charmed rel. easily by Rogue who uses Munacra Arret by the way. Buys you plenty of time during dragon fights and gets rid of some adds.

Most fun I had with Berserker/Nalpasca because the wounds fly in so quickly (Dance of Death + stoned Nalpasca + self damage). But that's squishy of course - because of the scaling self damage. Savage Defiance helps. If you have a good healer then that would be my pick I guess. Berserker/Helwalker ist just too crazy with the self damage. Interestingly in this case Iron Wheel was really good because the max health gain is substantial. But of course the bigger AoEs through Turning Wheel is still more appealing. I never tried Barb/Rogue but that would be one of the things I'd like to try next. For example Furyshaper/Trickster seems to be real nice. Or Furyshaper/Streetfighter for maximum attack speed.

Your actual general dps with an ability or weapon per attack roll is fairly easy to calculate. A second value below the overall damage done that you could reset would be really nice as well. Like in your car where the total miles will be another display than the ones you can reset. I guess this is also easy to mod. I like (small, unintrusive) UI mods. They are the only ones I use.

A single class Barb with good self healing (high MIG and INT), crazy high AR and Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst + Brute Force + Morning Star is usually a very solid build. Same with Battle Axes because HoF with Bleeding Cuts and later Retaliation is bonkers. Barbaric Retaliation comes rather late but is awesome in the DLCs where enemies will crit you a lot (again: get every point of AR and % of damage reduction you can AND use Daze's -4 PEN from Leap to avoid getting penetrated) and you will dish out enormous retaliation damage with your Bleeding Cuts + fat armor (which don't care for recovery penalty in this case and also you don't care for attacks be cause you don't get penetrated). Add Blood Storm to it and the DoTs will tick.

In PoE 1 the only thing that reduces attack time is DEX. All other speed bonuses only affect recovery time! In PoE the more speed bonuses you stack the higher the impact of every additional bonus. So with enough bonuses it's easy to reach 0 recovery which is the Holy Grail of dps in this game. Some active attack speed bonuses don't stack though because they belong to the same "group". Generally speaking "active" speed bonuses like Frenzy, Alacrity (so, bonuses from abilities you trigger actively) that increase the same speed modifier (e.g. universal speed group) do not stack with each other. But they will stack with actives that address a different speed value (e.g. ranged attack speed group). Passive ones do always stack. Some speed bonuses from items are considered passive, some active (most of the time, when an effect has a duration and is triggered somehow it's active - but not always - e.g. Bloodlust from is stacking with everything). In Deadfire the mechanics of attack speed and recovery time are totally different! MaxQuest did two very nice attack speed calculators, one for PoE and one for Deadfire. Here's the PoE version: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/