Boeroer

Dual wielding because of Knockdown (Full Attack) and Charge (finishes with a Full Attack at the target). Also great to achieve low recovery in thick armor (dual wielding + Armored Grace). A fighter like Edér is sturdy enough without a shield. And 3 Full Attack Knock downs, combined with Disciplined Barrage are good CC- and damage tools when dual wielding. I like dual hammers a lot. Shatterstar with Annihilating + Guarding seems to be made for a fighter. If you put Shatterstar into the main hand and do a Knockdown, the offhand will strike first, most likely causing prone, the second strike with Shatterstar is likely to crit, which is great because of Annihilation. Dual sabres is also nice.

Yes, it is! Especially a barb works great with Nov. Suffering. Just don't take any dmg-mods like Savage Attack or Blooded and so on. Those only raise the base damage of weapons and Nov. Suffering leaves the tiny base damage of fists (5- untouched but gives you a huge damage bonus that is not influenced by those dmg mods. This also means that crits don't do so much for your damage. On the upside: grazes will nearly do the same damage as hits or crits. And carnage has a -34% DMG malus. But -34% of 5-8 isn't so bad. At the same time Carnage suffers from a -10 ACC malus at the start of the game which leads to a lot of grazes. But again: since a graze with fists doesn't gimp your damage as much as with normal weapon it's not that noticeable that Carnage has some serious handicaps in the early game. Nov. Suffering gets boosted by MIG though. So your goal should be to have very high MIG. High INT is always good for carnage of course. And with high MIG and INT I would always pick Veteran's Recovery. Then take Weapon Focus Peasant, Two Weapon Style. As I said skip all the DMG mods, also Apprentice's Sneak Attack. You can take some defensive talents like Bear's Fortitude at some point because you skip the dmg related ones. Maybe in this case even Greater Frenzy is viable, because of the higher MIG. Abilities like Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst are great. Even One Stands alone can still be viable because of the defensive part (more foes needed to flank you) - if you get flanked a lot. Search for the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar (bounty in WM I, Durgan's Battery map). Armor depends on your playstyle. If you want to run into the thick of it then thicker armor. If you like to flank then thinner. Everything that speeds you up is nice (Gauntlets of Swift Action for example). Also everything that raises MIG.

Good question. No idea actually. Never tried that.

Vent Pick is not especially great. It just comes durgan refined (no need to use ingots on it) with that special proc of FoD which only adds +50% lash to the one hit/crit where it procs - and it does so seldomly. Something like Godansthunyr is very nice though. If you combine Binding Rope (retaliates with stuck affliction, suppresses normal retaliation, but not from Supper Plate nor Battle Forged) with Badgradr's and Godansthunyr you will deliver lots of crits via retaliation, Rooting Pain and weapon attacks, causing stunned and triggering Thrust of Tattered Veils. Also fits the "anvil" theme.

Torment's Reach is special. It does a Full Attack with the +50% crushing lash and stuff, but the cone is a separate thing. It only does crush damage and it has a separate base damage that is not influenced by your weapon choice. It doesn't use lashes on your weapons. If I remember correctly, it also doesn't use DR bypass. This is a lot different from Carnage for example. It works more like Blast (wizard). However, it does indeed trigger on-hit and on-crit effects and also works with spell chance items (Redeemer and so on, where you have a x% chance to trigger y on hit or crit). Blast does that, too. It also procs the Thrust of Tattered Veils from Badgradr's Barricade (medium shield in Durgan's Battery). That thing also reflects ranged attacks (10% I think, stacks with durgan steel). The best shield for reflecting missiles of all sorts is Aila Braccia. It works perfectly well with Soul Mirror, because the shield will reflect all grazes (and turn them to misses) while Soul Mirror will also reflect some misses (those don't get reflected by the shield). For melee, when you get pommeled, I guess the Supper Plate is good. Badgradr's Barricade is a really good mixture between offense and defense when you use Torment's Reach. Else, the best thing to have for Torment's Reach might be fast weapons with ACC bonus (dagger, club, rapier). Because the cone doesn't care about your weapon's damage, you should be able to spam it faster and with more precision. The initial hit is of course weaker (because fast weapons have lower base damage), but the cone damage will not be altered. And since you can spam it faster, it should result in more damage. Didn't try that theory out by myself though.

I think I don't understand the first question. Full Attack means that you are striking with both weapons if you are dual wielding or use a bashing shield. The offhand will strike first. With a two handed weapon, a weapon + shield, a single weapon or any ranged weapon you will only strike/shoot once like with a Primary Attack. Those strikes work like normal melee attacks (besides having special bonuses) - so a Full Attack like from Flames of Devotion does trigger on-hit and on-crit effects, yes. Same with Crippling Strike and so on. DR bypass also works like with auto attacks. The graze-to-hit conversion of Whispers of Yenwood only works for the attacks that are done with it. I mean the strikes you deliver with that sword. Nothing else. Same with all other weapons that have conversions.

Why are you gaming on a laptop? That's my privilege!

No. I think it simply loops through the damage types you currently have and determines which of the corresponding DR is lowest. No damage involved yet. But I think first of all the roll (ACC against defense) is done. And this is done after the attack animation. Because if you miss you can skip all the other calculations. But correct me if I'm wrong. One could of course do the DR-check first, then play the fitting animation - while keeping in mind which DR number and which damage type is used - and then do the attack roll + damage roll. It's great that the actual attack roll is done after the animation. This gives a buff more time to be applied - sometimes after animation, right before the roll.

I hope you also took Turning Wheel. Because it also works with Battle-Forged and normal retaliation. +60% burning lash (with Scion of Flame) is a pretty powerful answer when you get pommeled.

Yes, Kaylon meant Defensive Mindweb. You need one very tanky char (in terms of defense values) and once you cast it you are in god mode.

Great stuff!

That's not universally true. You completely ignore that a melee combatant has to run to his target (or the target to him) and thus looses a lot of potential DPS compared to a ranged combatant who can just switch targets in range without any time loss. This is more obvious when playing on PotD where you have more enemies and the fights last longer. That's one reason why a monk with The Long Pain is more powerful than a monk with Transcendent Suffering. It's also the reason why Boots of Speed are a DPS booster if you prefer melee and a defensive tool for ranged characters. And by the way all active offensive abilities of the fighter only work in melee except Clear Out and Into the Fray. The latter makes no sense for a ranged fighter, as do all the abilities around engagement (Defender, Overbearing Guard) and defense. You simply don't need them as a ranged fighter but you have to take some because there's no alternative. The nicest active tools of a fighter (Knockdown, Sundering Blow, Charge) can't be used with ranged weapons which leads to a very boring build which only has some passive damage bonuses and is more sturdy than it needs to be.

For me the hardest fights are Brynlod and also Magran's Faithful. Dragons are quite easy because you can charm or prone or paralyze them easily with a party and the ads are not that powerful but just annoying. The bounties however have a lot of high level casters that can really smash you in seconds if you're sloppy (especially if you choose upscaled content). The druids of Magran's Faithful will shower your casters with Sunbeams like there's no tomorrow and so on. Still not supertough if you're lvl 16 or so, but harder than the bog dragons + Llengrath in my opinion. But yes: the more you advance the easier it gets. Especially with a lot of casters there are no real challenging fights later in the game. The trash mobs you can easily dispatch with your Spell Masteries and in tough fights you can just use all your spells. Try a party without casters (wizard, druid, priest, cipher). That's a bigger challenge. Not necessarily when fighting dragons, but when meeting big groups of high level enemies (Torn Bannermen, Abbey monks, bounties).

You can agree to let Lumdala go if she gives you the name of Lord Gaderman - and when she gave it you can still kill her ("Actually, I have a more dramatic ending in mind").

Frenzy doesn't do anything for reloading time. For a barb, the only things speeding up reloading is DEX, the gunner talent and Sure Handed Ila from a fellow chanter. So the only thing that Frenzy does for a quick switching gun user is to add 4 MIG. Now that's underwhelming. I think if you want to do a ranged barb then guns is the worst decision. With Frenzy, Bloodlust and Blood Thirst you can at least achieve some nice attack speed with a war bow. I tried that and it's still totally meh.

Barbarian an monk are actually pretty bad in ranged combat (besides The Long Pain which works with most of the monk's "melee only" abilities - unlike other ranged weapons). It's a lot easier to build a feasible melee ranger than a ranged barbarian or monk. Even the fighter is not very great at that. Some of his abilities don't work with ranged weapons - but maybe a ranged fighter is comparable to a melee ranger. So if Obsidian's goal was to make classes like the barbarian also suitable for ranged combat they miserably failed. Not that this is a problem for me though - I like barbarians and also monks a lot. Just sayin'...

I would use the eMail address. It's very unlikely that a developer will answer your question here. In the past Aarik D (community manager) was helping a lot, but I guess they are so busy right now with PoE2 that there's not much time for him to look into the forums. It may be that there is a user who can help you though...

Now that's bad. Why would somebody code it like that?

If nothing helps you can unlock the Yenwood map with the console and travel there. Once you approach the battlefield the fight will occur (maybe without any scripted sequence) and after you won the quest will be completed. Even works if you didn't pick up the questline in the first place.

No problem with that. Since English is not my mother tongue I expect them to improve my submission anyway. Also, one can assume that the ledger is used and filled by the same pirate. Some kind of former scribe or so. So all entries should have the same "style", vibe or color of language (however you call it). At least that's what I think is plausible. So maybe some entries will get altered just because of that.

Last time I tried it (2. something) you could cast Relentless Storm several times and observe that the intervals between impact got shorter and shorter. Same with Nature's Terror by the way: you could generate a ton of parallel shocking hits. I did that to determine if retaliation druid + Combusting Wounds (Ring of Searing Flames) was any good - and it was. It may be that this got altered, but I saw nothing about that in any patch note since then, so I think it still works this way. However - two druids casting two separate Relentless Storms is 100% doable. With six druids casting 6 storms you'll have 6*foe-number impacts every few seconds AND your speakers will definitely break. Same with 6 chanters casting White Worms by the way. Crushed my headphones...

Eh... since the animation gets played before the roll is done I really doubt that this is possible with the current approach. The game doesn't look at the enemy, sees its DR values and then decides to use piercing attacks. It just does the attack roll and then determines which DR is lower and then chooses the damage type. This is the easiest solution and thus OBS went for it. I get your idea and it would indeed be nice, but I highly doubt that OBS will implement a routine that decides which animation to play before doing the actual hit roll. It could be done of course - in different ways.

Although the ranger can use some of his abilities in melee in PoE1 (some he can't, like Vicious Aim), the stuff that makes him stand out and makes him powerful is for bows and firearms. So he clearly is focused on being ranged. He can be viable in melee, but it's nothing special and feels a bit generic unless you use very special build ideas ( https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83435-class-build-riptide-the-pit-fright-dps-offtank-melee-ranger-double-team-supreme/ ). So a subclass that focuses on melee as well as a subclass that has no permanent animal companion are both fine. That leaves two classes (original and another subclass) that might be focused even more on ranged combat. Don't understand why it's a bad thing if players have a wider variety to choose from. Nobody needs 4 ranger classes who are all ranged experts. I would have liked to see a big game hunter as a subclass, having bonuses when the enemy is large and powerful, making better use of traps and using heavy hitting weapons.

He already answered that.

Hi. The Witch Doctor is a lot more powerful in terms of DPS and also more versatile because he can also do good damage in melee, not only ranged. The Prondroni build was an attempt to create a monk who can be played effectively by the AI as well - since normally monks require a lot of micromanaging. And of course the high attack speed very early in the game makes him a good DPS tool, too. But the Long Pain is so powerful that in the end the Witch Doctor will terribly outperform Prondroni. However, since the Prondroni build uses weapons which can be obtained early and concentrates on Force of Anguish he's also a lot of fun that early in the game - at a point where you can't even pick The Long Pain.