Boeroer

I read through these posts rather quickly so maybe I missed it, but did nobody but me find the coral great sword? I mean with the console? You can use tab to complete commands and then cycle through all options. Therefore it's quite easy to cycle through a lot of items that are in the beta. For example type Giveitem great_sword and then press tab several times. Each time it suggests a different great sword, like great_sword_fine until it suggests the coral version. Check it out, it's good. Used it with an Assassin...

Dual scepters is great because of the modal. +20% damage and +2 PEN without slowdown or ACC malus is great. However: I played a Bleak Walker/Helwalker (so basically a Bleak Helwalker ) and the modal kills you after five shots or so if you have 10 wounds. Really easy to get wounds though.

I tried a Black JackET/Sharpshooter with 8 blunderbuss or 8 pistol shots or 4 arquebus shots + Quick Switch and it's powerful but a LOT of switching. What also annoys me a lot is that you have to activate the modal again every time you switch. Game looses the state of the modals when you switch back and forth - they are always off after switching. This means you have twice the clicks... not so nice.

Well it depends on how many slog zones we will see. In the beta there's only one, so yeah: bummer! But who knows which other slog zones there may be an which effects they may have. Imagine a black dragon who lives in a pool of tar... But generally I agree that it sounds a bit weak and situational at the moment. I don't think Black Jackets are that bad. First of all they are quite nice to multiclass with anything that wants to use guns (made a Black Jacket Sharpshooter for testing and it was quite powerful). Here you also don't need Constant Recovery. If there will be an AI scripting option that lets you switch automatically after a gunshot this would be very powerful without the tedious micromanagement. Secondly you can crank up your dps like a Devoted in the current PEN system if you play a Black Jacket and have no meta knowledge. Because if you carry around let's say a great sword, an estoc, dual clubs and dual sabres you can always choose the right weapon. Enemy with super high PEN? Attack with maces, quickly change to estoc, attack, switch back to maces once the PEN malus is gone and so on. Same if one of your party members causes an affliction and you can switch to the great sword modal to finish the enemy off very quickly. The difference between base damage (compare estoc to great sword) is quite big so you get very different results if you know how to adapt the weapon to your enemy (and his current state) properly. However, it's very cumbersome business. Also here: if there would be a way to script AI so that a char would automatically switch his weapon so that it matches AR it would make this guy better. I also think they should have come up with something else than taking away Constant Recovery.

Only listing builds with which I finished: Unbroken/Wizard: ++ (VERY tanky and nice synergy with multi-engagement + Ryngrim's Visage, but tedious self-buffing although superfast casts - with a scripting tool that would take care of that buffing sequence it would be +++) Assassin/Soul Blade: ++ (awesome offense but also very squishy) Berserker/Skald: +++ (lots of crits and lots of PEN) Berserker/Devoted: +++ (yay - 100% hit to crit and awesome PEN) Devoted/Skald: +++ (like Berserker/Skald) Priest of Wael/Sharpshooter: +++ (really good AoE damage with the summoned rod's modal + PEN of Sharpshooter) Bleak Walker/Helwalker: +++ (awesome damage with FoD+Lightning Strikes + MIG with dual Scepter + modal - but kills himself quickly if you don't watch out) Sharpshooter/Beckoner: ++ (lots of creatures, but otherwise a bit boring) Berserker/Streetfighter: +++ (good PEN paired with good dmg bonuses, +60% hit to crit) Livegiver/Priest of Wael: ++ (very powerful heals that can break the game, but tedious to play like all pure casters atm) Transmuter/Corpse Eater: ++ (fun and powerful combo, but Form of the Fearsome Brute takes too long to cast, lacks a bit PEN) Fury/Shattered Pillar: ++ (awesome ranged damage potential because of stacking lashes, but lacks PEN) Priest of Berath/Devoted: ++ (good if you finally could summon your great sword) I tried several pure caster combos, but I stopped with every one of them (except Livegiver/Priest) because they are just too bad and tedious to play atm.

That is correct

Well, with your defenses being all very high Wizard's Double will not fail in the normal fights I guess. But against dragons 150 will is not enough to prevent a hit.

Another monk with The Long Pain would be the best single target dps. But either you run around a bit to catch some attacks in order to get 2 wounds or you attack your own monk right at the start of encounter to get 2 wounds. Also the summoning takes some time. If you follow the tipps from the Witch Doctor build there's nothing more powerful in terms of single target dps than The Long Pain. But it's a bit of micromanagement. Other than that... you ruled out ranger, rogue, cipher and wizard. There's no class left that's great at ranged single target dps. Ranged fighter: meh. Ranged Barb: supermeh. Ranged Druid: supergood BUT not before you get Rot Skull. Before that it's meh. Priest: meh (priest of Wael has decent ACC with a rod - like Golden Gaze - but casting spells is still better with a priest than auto-attacking). Ranged Paladin: ok, but only with spike damage (gun + FoD). Also his great defenses are wasted in the backline. Another setup which is really good but requires a lot of micro is wizard with 4 blunderbusses (basically what Jojobobo said but as wizard) + Combusting Wounds. This really pulverizes single enemies. But even more micro than just switching. You'd have to cast one or two spells first and then start the fire-switch-fire cycle. Rogue with Persistence, maxed MIG and DEX and 1 INT is nice. The dps is really high because of wounding's damage getting applied very quickly. Dump INT and RES to 3 and then put on the Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection. This rogue could also use Prestidigitator's Missiles (doesn't care about INT) aswell als missile scrolls and the CLoak of Magic Missiles. Those all work with Deathblows (not Sneak Attack though).

Mechanics that concern this build haven't changed, so it still should be viable. I did not try to solo with this build. It's build like a glass cannon and that's not good for a solo run. When soloing with a rogue I would always use Shadowing Beyond.

What happens when a tier-1-affliction like hobbled grazes? No cc at all or lowered duration?

Sorry, I didn't know you are on a console.

However, Wizard's Double + Arcane Veil is supergood in the early game, especially if you also have Weapon & Shield Style, large shield and high RES.

Just learn to be economical. Per-Rest spell use is one of the big advantages of PoE casters - if you get behind it. Because in tough fights you can spam ALL of your spells without any restriction - and in easier fights you can use only few spells or even your per-encounter-abilities only (Arcane Assault and Blast/Inspiring Radiance and Interdiction/Spiritshift). Actually an encounter based spell system makes casters less powerful. Because now you can use your spells in every encounter and their uses regenerate after battle they have to be balanced in number of uses per encounter and also in power. This makes casters stronger in your everyday-trashmob encounter (where it doesn't matter) but makes them less useful in the really hard fights (where it would matter). You can observe this in the beta of PoE2:Deadfire where caster use the exact system you proposed (and badly suck).

Totally viable. If you want you can put a few points from DEX to MIG, CON and RES. At spell level 3 you'll get Deletrious Alacrity of Motion which you want to cast at the beginning of every tough fight. It makes your casting crazy fast and thus you can do with a bit less DEX - if you want. Use CC to protect you from enemies that like to rusch shquishy casters. Confusion helps a lot here!

Yeah nice. One thing though: Wizard's Double will go away after any hit or crit. The attack doesn't have to target your deflection defense. For example a fear aura will nearly always pulverize Wizard's Double after a few pulses. Immunity doesn't help because a hit that has no effect because of imunitys is still considered a hit and removes Wizard's Double.

If interrupt value + d100 roll > concentration then an interrupt happens. Dragons have crazy high resolve (20+ - and therefore high concentration) - it's difficult to interrupt them. They also have very high defenses. You have to hit them in the first place before you can interrupt them. Arcanve Veil stacks with the other deflection buffs like Wizard's Double or Mirrored Image. That's what makes it so good. You can make yourself untouchable for over 10 seconds with this combo.

BMac said they are still thinking about this and wasn't sure if it stays this way. Let's wait and see.

They also have a much bigger range than scepters.

That is correct. But I guess there already is Citzal's Martial Power coming at higher spell levels. This is the "weaker" level 1 alternative. Remember that you'l have it from lvl 1. We're starting at lvl 6 in the beta. I think in the ealry game it will be very strong. THe good thing about he Ogre is that the increase of stats like MIG and CON is not considered a buff/inspiration but it's the natural stats of your form. Therefore it stacks with inspirations. With a berseker + Ogre you get crazy high MIG/CON score aaand abysmal INT. At the moment I agreee that it's cool for multiclassing but not very useful for single class wizards. I would also like to keep my equipped weapon OR to be able to switch to my second weapons set (Ogre with morning star or so sounds fun).

I don't think so. Giving flat bonuses in an otherwise percentage based system always leads to exploits that then have to be patched. For me it's ok if there is no dump stat. Barbarians had no no-brainer dump stats in PoE, same with paladins. Sadly OBS took away the concentration from RES and now it became a dump stat. Why does there have to be? Actually that's the ideal situation in my book: to not have clear dump stats for a class. Every stat should be importat in general for every class. Only problem is when it affects some classes a lot while others can still savely dump stats without disadvantages. Here it hits the cipher. But I guess it's easy to give him a slight buff then (why not a passive ability that lets Soul Whip steal 2 or 3 MIG on hit from enemies for example? Would solve all cipher problems I guess).

I don't know. I believe it's just a yes or no. If you cast it twice you don't have two concentration layers. Maybe wrong though.

I also advocated for this on twitter (because Josh said all solutions so far in the forums would wreak havoc to other game mechanics - I don't think so) but got no response. I think it's a change that gives RES meaning but at the same time doesn't need rebalancing of the game, because if you look at the average effect nothing changes. If you make this reduction/increase of duration percentage based then I believe you could just use the same code (with minor changes) that handles the altering of duration on a graze or crit. After every CC roll there has to be checked if the attack was a graze (=less duration) or a crit (=longer duration). With RES it would be the same thing. Maybe a matter of 10 minutes - only my guess as an experienced software developer (who knows the Unity3D game engine a bit and the Godot game engine quite well) though. So, from a programmer's point of view I see no difficulties. But maybe there are some hidden pitfalls from a designer's perspective...? For example it could mean that abilites/items that reduce afflictions' duration by a flat number of seconds (see Clarity of Agony or items similar to Fenwalkers or Blaidh Golan) complety nullify the affliction IF they are applied after the RES-reduction. And maybe it's harder to code if you want to apply the flat reduction first and then the percentage based...? No idea. But generally speaking I don't think it would be too hard if you don't overpower the effect too much. Also I suggested here that Concentration is altered a bit so it fits the ingame description. At the moment it's either "you have Concentration or not" while in some of the ingame texts it is said that there could be some more layers of concentration and at every interrupt one is taken away. My approach was to give everybody who gains concentration via spell or ability a base of 10 concentration with 10 RES and everybody with 10 PER an interrupt strenght of 10 (if he CAN interrupt at all). So 1 RES = 1 point of concentration and 1 point of PER = 1 point of interrupt strength. Now a char with 20 RES (who gains concentration through ability in the first place) would have to get interrupted thrice by a 10-PER interruptor (who needs to have the ability to interrupt in the first place) in order to make his spell fumble. As long as there is concentration left it would cancel interrupts. Basically like the current system, but with a bit more granularity. A high-PER character could take away concentration faster (ideally one hit like it's now) than a low PER-interruptor. Also no answer. Since I don't think that concentration is superpowerful (if you get targeted by an interruptor you will lose your spell anyway because they hit a lot faster than you can finish a lenghty spell) I believe both options could be done without balancing issues. At the same time I would take away deflection from RES. There are lots of other means to affect deflection. Why can you deflect blows any better if you are determined? Makes no sense for me. Be if it stays in it's also ok for me.

It would be useful if it only took 0.5 secs like most other buffs. Because if you get attacked you could quickly transform into an Ogre and slap the cap off of the attacker. Because the ogre weapons scale with level/power level and really hurt while health is enormous. Would be like Spiritshift (Ogre) basically - which is not bad. I just don't get why they made it such a long cast. Now it doesn't work as emergency button but you can only use it if you cast it right at the start of the encounter (where you usually want to do other stuff). Same with the summoned weapons by the way.

Still a bad solution because it would greatly favor light, fast weapons that are dual wielded.

I don't think it got changed, so I believe it still works. What stops you from testing it yourself? Load a savegame with a monk, open the console (look up the key command in the game options), type "iroll20s" --> "addexperiencetolevel 16" --> "additem war_hammer_godansthunyr 2" (without quotation marks - you have to reopen the console after each command because it will close automatically). Then level the monk with Torment's Reach, give him the two hammers and do some encounter. If the stun procs off of the cone of Torment's Reach then it still works. For example type "unlockallmaps" and go to Yenwood Field - there will be plenty of enemies.