Boeroer

Well, if you only want to cast spells that have no duration (like all AoE direct damage spells like Fireball and friends) you could indeed dump INT because the radius would it drop by 1.6% per point. With 3 points of INT you would only lose 7*1.6% = 11% of radius compared to 10 INT. If you can pump RES and DEX and PER and even CON then it's totally worth it. Because 11% of radius is like no penalty at all. So either they have to give more bonus to area increase per point of INT or revert to the old solution which is better anyways. Who can imagine what +x% area really means on the battlefield compared to x% radius?

It seems that they confuse "-X% speed" with "-X% duration" all the time.

Yes, the same. I already filed a bug report for that and Cdiaz said it's the steam client on Linux which is causing the troubles and that they are looking into it: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95501-bug-loading-a-savegame-opens-character-editor/

Yeah - well this build also stands and falls with items, in this case Tidefall and Shot-in-Faith boots. Luckily those will come pretty early in the game so the "real deal" should start once you grabbed Tidefall (may be possible from lvl 6 upwards). Before it's a quite generic melee ranger with a great sword. Nothing fancy but works quite well. Rangers work quite well in the early game in general because the additional "body" (the pet) is very useful in the early game. The simpled fact that you have one additional party member makes a lot of encounters easier. That being said: don't stick to this build if you feel it's somewhat weird or doesn't fit your needs. Just use it as inspiration for a melee ranger.

Well... since you can't pick a lot of talents/abilites/items in the early levels: which build is not? But yes, it is ok until you find Tidefall/Shod-in-Faith. If you play it like a rogue + pet and not trying to engage first you will be fine. If he's too squishy you could think about taking Veteran's Recovery. The build lacks some talents/abilites because it's pre WMII. So there's room for more if you wish.

I would give him a bit of survival for DR+ and so on and also athletcis. Maybe some lore (max , too for the good defensive scrolls. Background doesn't matter that much, but Deadfire seems tempting.

I would pick Mountain Dwarf because I like the idea of a short, burly paladin/mon who uses his fists. The racial is pretty good against vessels and such. But it doesn't matter that much. The most powerful option would be Moon Godlike I guess. This would complement the Kind Wayfarer's Healing capabilites quite well. Stats: MIG: 20 CON: 10 DEX: 10 PER: 10 INT: 18 RES: 08 Abilites/Talents would be: - Novice's Suffering - Weapon Focus Peasant - Sword & Shepherd - Two Weapon Style - Strange Mercy - Intense Flames - Scion of Flame - Fast Runner - Flames of Devotion - Lay on Hands - Zealous Charge or Zealous Endurance - Inspiring Triumph - Aegis of Loyality - Righteous Soul - Sacred Immolation - Behold the Martyr Items: - head: Hermit's Hat, Executioner's Hood (if not Moon Godlike of course) - neck: Lost Periapt of the Winding Path - amor: Raiment of Wael's Eyes, later Robes of the Tidebringer - hands: Gauntlets of Swift Action or Mourning Gloves - rings: Ring of Protection, Ring of Deflection - belt: Looped Rope - boots: Sandals of the Forgotten Friar Something like that.

Well an unarmed paladin wouldn't be as tanky as one with a shield, but still tanky enough I guess. But he will do better damage. Maybe one could do a Kind Wayfarer - because he's so kind he uses only fists to strike down his opponents. Heal on FoD and on kill via Sword & Shepherd and Strange Mercy, Inspiring Triumph, Aegis of Loyalty... Behold the Martyr seems to be a must. A little Veteran's Recovery for balancing out the lower deflection because no shield... What do you think? Or a darker char like Bleak Walker with focus on max damage and fear?

In the deadfire beta paladins are pretty powerful at the moment. I do especially like Paladin/Monk and also Paladin/Rogue as well as Paladin/Chanter. Paladin/Chanter is difficult to emulate in PoE (the cross class summoning talent is very bad) - but Paladin/Monk (use Novice's Suffering and do Flames of Devotion with it) or Paladin/Rogue (Apprentice's Sneak Attack) are doable. Now that I think of it, Paladin/Monk with Novice's Suffering + FoD combo could be quite interesting with PoE. Also because Aegis of Loayality needs unarmed attacks in Deadfire(!). If you are interested I could work out an unarmed monkish paladin, using my experience from playthroughs with unarmed barbarian, unarmed wizard and unarmed druid.

Our family is also owned by a cat: Can't imagine what a pathetic being one must be to shoot at a domestic cat.

Thanks dunehunter, good to know.

Yes, unfortunately. Well, that also means that my game breaking Soulblade + Citzal's Spirit Lance combo will be in for my first playthrough - yay!

That's right. Every stat does. To be honest RES is the one with the most options I think. But there are also several for INT, PER and MIG, some others for CON and DEX, but those last two are mostly used during scripted happenings and less in dialogue. The key point of that build is to use Tidefall to apply wounding and then let the pet add a lot of damage via Predator's Sense. You an def. raise RES for dialogue if you want and skip the part with the Shod-in-Faith boots if you have a priest/paladin/druid in the party who can heal (the pet) as well. Then you wouldn't need a lot of INT for example. For Tideall' dps it's ideal to have high MIG and low INT - but at the same time you want to make sure that the wounding effect of Tidefall doesn't wear off on the enemy so that Predator's Sense gets triggered all the time. So... 3 INT isn't an option. Also because you will get Stunning Shots (that also work in melee) later and those are quite good with not-dumped INT.

I'm pretty confident that they improved in that regard, too.

Haha - true. Yeah, but as I said: I actually find the "raise radius" approach better/more intuitive. Just the tooltip saying that INT raises area is wrong.

What if the chessboard got shart on by a peac0ck before? Isn't the pidgeon's droppings an improvement then? I mean pidgeons' poop it less stinky that a peac0ck's - so maybe it doesn't annoy the people playing chess as much. Also, a peack0ck sitting on a chessboard might be even more annoying for all the chess players than some pidgeons that drive that fat, arrogant peac0ck away. Imagine playing chess with all those pomptous feathers in your face...

Haha, a manual. Best with a correct description of the game's mechanics. Silly AndreaColumbo.

Yeah we know the math. Actually in PoE it's still the case that INT raises AoE via radius. It says +6% of "AoE increase" per point of INT. But what really happens: I have Aloth in my party with an Arcane Assault which has a base AoE radius of 1.25. With 16 INT he's having a bonus of (6*6%) +36% (says the char cheet). 1.25 * 1.36 = 1.7 His Arcane Assault's tooltip shows: 1.7 radius. The radius got increased by 36%, not the area. The area (radius * radius * PI) got raised from (1.25 * 1.25 * 3.14) 4.9 m² to (1.7 * 1.7 * 3.14) 9.1m². 4.9 m² compared to 9.1 m² is an increase of area of ~86% (!). This is PoE version 3.07 Now if in Deadfire AoE calculation with INT gets changed like so: 4.9 * 1.36 = 5.6 Or in other words from radius 1.25 to 1.37 meter radius -which is an increase of 1.6% radius per point of int in Deadfire comared to 6% in PoE. So in short clouseau64 states that: - PoE raises radius by 6% per point of INT - Deadfire raises radius by roughly 1.6% per point of INT If this is really the case (didn't test it yet) then it's a hefty, hefty nerf to INT. Of course one could always adjust the percentage values and say 1 point of INT raises area by 15% or 20% (not radius). Then it's not as bad anymore. But I always thought while the tooltips were wrong (not area gets increased by 6% but radius) that the radius approach was good enough and also more easy to understand. Because the infomation that your actual area increased by x% is less useful to a player than knowing that your radius got bigger by y% - in my opinion.

Whoa. Nice catch. And nobody else noticed yet? This would be a heavy nerf of INT indeed. Maybe this is not intended as it may be that the function got rewritten from PoE and somebody else was implementing this. And obviously two different people might interpret "+x% to AoE" differently. I hope it's an oversight. Else all nuking casters will have 20 RES and 3 INT at some point.

Ah, ok. Yes, this could also work. I guess they just wanted another value to play around with, since that might be easier to tune up and down once you have it (I mean from a coding and testing perspective). As I said: if you have a seperate value instead of a class-level-malus on abilities (so to speak) you can alter that value more easily not only while balancing everything,, but also later during the game when it comes to buffs and afflictions. This seems to be easier than doing stuff like D&D's level draining for example? Instead of tuning down all abilities for a short amount of time or instead of lowering the actual level you can just lower Power Level. But your example on Empower also makes sense of course. I guess general balancing of abilities in regard to single class/multi class could be easily done without such a concept of power levels and also the empower function on abilities would not need it. They originally introduced Power Levels when they still tried to build a multiclassing system where you could decide which class you level on each level-up. So you could have picked 1 level of rogue just in order to get Sneak Attack and then 19 levels of cipher. Power Levels were supposed to balance those obvious picks. So I believe when they changed to the actual multiclassing system Power Levels just stayed because they proved to be convenient and the concept was already build in. Pure speculation on my part though.

PoE: Start a game. Roll a priest of Eothas. Go to Gilded Vale and spreak to Edér. Get the dialogue option "Who's Eothas?". Ermmm...

Another two handed ranger focused on synergies between ranger and animal companion. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83435-class-build-riptide-the-pit-fright-dps-offtank-melee-ranger-double-team-supreme/ It's a bit old but still perfectly valid. Just use it as inspiration or so.

@Gromnir - I know Led Zeppelin is very restrictive when it comes to their IP. Maybe those vids are geoblocked or something. Because I can see all the other ones you're posting, only the Zeppelins' are not available. But nevermind, I know the song.

I hope there will be "Strange Mercy" again for Kind Wayfarers again...? In the current state of the beta paladins are great damage dealers. So the "kill for heals" approach might be way better than in PoE1. Still sad to lose Wrath of the Five Suns I guess.

Sure, I'm basically an addict.