Boeroer

Most abilites of the ranger work in melee combat. There's even a subclass (Stalker) that leans more towards melee combat (more armor, more defenses when sticking together with your melee pet). So a single class melee ranger is viable - and for those Whirling Strikes is very good. It not only does a Full Attack on all enemies in range (dual wielding prefered) but also adds a raw DoT effect that is quite potent. Of course it's not that useful for a ranger who specializes in ranged weapons.

It's Latin and the opposite of "bonus". You can use it in English like you use "bonus". But afaik in English it's mainly used with financial stuff while in German you use it more broadly. Maybe that's why people use it more frequently here: there are some Germans among us that might not be aware that "malus" is not very common in English.

Not the same developers. Balancing is not done by the people who write characters. Hence no time would be wasted.

Huh? I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe you misread something that I wrote? I can't remember even answering to you for the last couple of days. What do you mean? I'm serious - I can't remember. Edit: if you mean this: I actually liked it. I know that the request was very complicated and didn't expect it to happen - and if it would, then not so soon. I just liked the coincidential wordplay that my queue got queued. Seemed to be so fitting. Other than that I have really zilch ideas what you could possibly mean.

This was explicitly mentioned as new intended behaviour in the patch notes and thus can't be a bug.

I hope not.

You mean Nalpasca/Wizard or Soulblade/Wizard? I think the monk wins because Swift Flurry + Heartbeat with an AoE weapon alone is pretty crazy. If you paralyze some foes with Ninagauth's Shadowflame and then poke them with that combo flurry/drumming/surge/lance... Ouch!

Yeah, it's pretty devastating, isn't it? The new cloak from the Deck of Many Things is at least as good as the Mantle of the Seven Bolts for such a setup.

Haha - good find. And there I thought Obsidian did buff an item. Silly me... Of course they nerfed the discription. That actually makes sense. "If I were Control..."

Wizard/Soulblade with Citzal's Spirit Lance and Draining Whip is also very good. Soul Annihilation dumps raw damage onto every enemy you hit with the Lance's AoE. And you're at full focus after one attack (if you can hit several enemies). Good offtank as well because of the self buffs.

That penalty got removed.

Ha funny! I just wanted to do a Lone Wolf+Clarity build - but just to check if I can become immune to all afflictions when simply triggering it at the start of every fight. Didn't came to my mind that it would also prevent self raw damage to happen. Does it also work on Berserker's Frenzy and Alacrity? I suppose so...?

It depends on the enemy's accuracy. There is no hard cap. But if you look at the mechanics of attack resolution you can see how high your defense has to be so that an enemy with a certain accuracy can only miss. Attack resolution is ACC - defense + d100 roll = attack quality. Attack qualities are: 0-30 = miss, 31-50 = graze, 51-100 = hit and 101+ = crit. Now if the enemy has 50 ACC and his best dice roll is 100 you need a defense of 120 to make sure he always misses: 50 - 120 + 100 = 30 (miss). If the enemy has 100 accuracy you need a defense of 170. And so on. This why an Arcane Knight with Wizard's Double can be fun: the spell lasts forever as long as you don't get hit. If the +40 lift you over that line (that an enemy can't hit you) the spell will not go away.

You can buy them in a lot of places, they are quite cheap and you find enough of them. You can even craft them by yourself (wasn't possible in PoE). In the beginning you might want to budget with drugs and only use them when you must, but after Port Maje you can use them at the beginning of every fight. I don't use them for the easy fights though - because why bother. Nalpascas get +10 Power Level with drugs - that means they last a lot longer and are better. Alchemy does the same. So you want high Alchemy as well. How did we get from "cipher as offtank" to Nalpasca though?

It does not do DoT. Instead it pulses with freeze damage which has to overcome freeze AR every time. So the damage usually isn't that good. The blinding is very good for a lvl1-spell though.

The Lance has pierce damage, but the Blast has crush. So if you encounter pierce immune or resistant foes you can just switch targets - if there are any of course. Lance + Stunning Surge + Swift Flurry + Heartbeat Drumming ist just bonkers, I agree. Add some Merciless Gaze and at some point Martial Power for the additional ACC and mobs are just gone. For Nalpascas there is the Soul Void amulet. It gives you a White Leaf trip after each rest and is perfect to reduce "real" drug consumption. I never ran out of drugs with this one because a good part after rest is covered by the amulet. You can get it quite early. Nalpasca gets +1 wound per 6 seconds from drugs, 2 wounds per 6 seconds from Dance of Death and the usual wounds when getting damaged. So using Alacrity is a great way to inflict wounds on yourself with a Sage (doesn't end Dance of Death). The self damage of Alacrity scales with PL and MIG -> more wounds per cast the higher you level. I'm using a similar setup with a Nalpasca/Berserker (same abilites except Alacrity is Berseker Frenzy here) and I get wounds faster than I can spam them with Torment's Reach. It's quite hilarious. Unless you face wizards with Arcane Dampener Nalpasca is the no.1 monk for me right now. Helwalker is also nice, but the increased damage, paired with self damage leads to so many knockouts on my part that it's only good for chars that attack from afar (for me). Shattered Pillar comes last in my opinion - but with the Lance he's quite great as well because mortification is not altered for him and getting 5 wounds is a matter of one auto-attack if there are enough enemies.

How one can simply ignore math and video evidence is beyond me. But then: voting for Trump and being anti-vaxxer also is. So I have to accept that there are people out there who have a totally different perception of (virtual) reality than I have. However - we already went through this twice: with the "rogue vs. druid" and "rogue vs. ranger" debates in the PoE forums long time ago. Where you wouldn't accept that a rogue does not "vastly out-dps" a druid or ranger - despite detailed explanations from mutiple forum members that were based on math, in game data and common sense. So I guess also in this case further arguing is futile. The points were made, people can reread it and decide who backed their claims better. I (and others here) don't think the Red Hand deserves a nerf besides the obvious bugfixes that messes up its dmg bonus and its Knockback. You think it's the best weapon in the game (accompanied by the inevitable hyperbolic adverbs) and therefore needs a nerf. Let's just leave it there...

Yes, it exists in both games.

You surely can't just run into the hall and do a Leroy Jenkins.

Of course. Once you reach 100% miss every added point does nothing. The most impactful point (mathematically) is the one that gets you to 100%. @Teclis23: if I would be ranting your cheeks would turn red.

They don't.

This is nonsense. Both parts of the sentence actually. Stormcaller is decent because of dual damage types and DR reduction - but not the best ranged weapon for a cipher. It lacks a lash and also Durgan Steel which leads to suboptimal focus gain. It is very good nonetheless because it requires zero resources to be decent. Afaik the best ranged weapon for a cipher (when it comes to focus generation) is the warbow "The Rain of Godagh Field". Enchanted with a lash of your choice and with Durgan Steel it is fairly easy to reach 0 recovery with Time Parasite with it because it has the speed enchantment. With Gauntlets of Swift Action you can even use Penetrating Shot with this weapon and wear durganized Scale armor without having any recovery time. The "normal" weapon damage will generate focus just fine. Only the wounding lash will not. In terms of dps those weapons are superior, but not in terms of focus generation (they generate focus like a normal weapon without Wounding).

Dual wield is better than two-handers, but you're overstating the problem. -The talent gives a 15% recovery speed bonus, not a 20% boost. -Only some one handers are faster than two handers if you're not dual wielding, and not by 80%. Slow one handers like swords, battle axes and sabers are the same speed as two handers, at a base 4 second recovery. Fast one handers have a 3 second recovery. Your other points are correct. And there's another one that you didn't mention, which is that all other things being equal, hitting really fast, but for low damage per hit is always better than hitting very slowly, but for very high damage per hit. First, attacking quickly lets you adjust more quickly to what's happening in combat. Say you're a paladin fighting on the front line -- if your time between attacks is short, you can use lay on hands on a badly injured ally quickly. If you're a fighter, fast recovery time makes interrupt powers like knockdown more useful as well since you can react to dangerous enemy moves faster. Second, hitting hard but slow is more likely to waste damage on overkill. For example, if you hit for 100 damage every 10 seconds and attack an enemy with 20 hp left, you waste 80 damage. A character that hits for 10 damage every second, though it has the same dps on paper, is actually going to do more damage typically over the course of a fight. But, in spite of that, dual wield would be close enough to two handers to be acceptable if it weren't for full attacks. The fact that there are so many ways for weapon damage builds to deal nearly double damage when dual wielding, but almost no benefits on any skill tree exist for any other weapon styles really makes dual wield the clearly superior choice. Note that according to Josh Sawyer on the Something Awful forums, obsidian is aware of this and they're experimenting with a solution to making full attacks less insane with dual wielding. You think a one handed sword is the same speed as a great Sword? Na man your dreaming? Anyone got the speed stats for these two weapons handy? Why don't you just look them up in the game? It's in there and visible if you check the tooltip of your equipped weapons. Heavy one handers like swords, battle axes and maces have the same attack speed and recovery as all two handers. By the way this hasn't changed since the release of PoE 1.

I tested it right before posting (to be 100% sure). It only works for ranger + animal companion. Since Soul Ignition targets fortitude a ranger/cipher with Marked Prey, Stalker's Link, Survival of the Fittest, Ring of Focused Flame and Body Blows (morning star) should work nicely. Equivalent of 65 bonus accuracy... I guess Borrowed Instinct and Tactical Meld also stack?

I went to that northern island and killed some Ettins and then some Flame Nagas. I have a full party (Edér as Swashbuckler, Aloth as Spellblade, Xoti as Priest and a custom Nalpasca/Berserker with the working title "Bruise Mee" whom I'm playtesting as well).