Boeroer

As I wrote above, the speed enchantment is nice if you already reduced your reloading time a fair bit with Swift Aim + Gunner + high DEX. It then makes a bigger difference because your recovery phase will be nearly be as long as your reloading phase. Sadly, things like Swift Aim + Ila + Gunner - which reduce reloading - don't work together als well as speed enchantments do.

When using arbalests with high accuracy (=high crit chance) the prone effect helps your pet of course. But when using such heavy hitters plus your pet on targets (for Stalker's Link bonus and so on) there will be the problem of overkilling. I don't care that much, just saying. Arbalests: Pros: prone on crit, high base damage Cons: reduced crit damage, long reload Unique enchantments: speed (Hold-Wall), stunning (Aedrin's Wrecker) Crossbows: Pros: normal crit damage, fastest reloading Cons: lower base damage Enchantments: Coordinating (Good Friend), Predatory (Wendgär) And there's Twin Sting (soulbound) which is probably your best choice for the late game. Coordinating is a decent enchantment when you plan to attack the same targets a lot. But I honestly don't get it why they placed only two unique crossbows and arbalests into the game - and Good Friend is lvl 8 of the Endless Paths, so rather late. Good thing that Hold-Wall comes so early.

Once I find some more time I will post a build. @MaxQuest: No, I didn't to be honest. That's interesting. Why is that? Most of the time I use the charm to get rid of the adds like Adragans and the dragon is still at full endurance at that time. Spares me some figurine uses. Then I try to place myself between some xaurips but in melee range of the dragon (basically getting surrounded by xaurips + dragon) for HoF. Then the only thing that's left is the dragon with injured or badly injured endurance. Then I will finish with kiting + scrolls. But not this time. Definitely doable with other races. I did a solo barb run before with a similar approach but with a boreal dwarf and finished it, but PotD only, no ToI. But of course I played more recklessly and therefore reloaded a lot.

Well, if you want game's best ranged single target DPS (you'll have it early), combined with highest possible pet damage, you need Persistance. There's nothing better than that.

Tehehe - hopefully with at least two stacking Gwyn's Bands of Union...

So basically what you want to do is to have highest DEX (+attack speed, +reload speed), Swift Aim (+recovery speed, +reload speed), Gunner (+reload speed), a chanter with Sure Handed Ila (+recovery speed, +reload speed) and the speed enchanted arbalest "Hold-Wall" in Gilded Vale (+recovery speed), later also durgan steel, no armor penalty, no Penetrating Shot. Actually you will shoot pretty fast (for an arbalest wielder) once you have those things. I managed to shoot fast enough with Aedrin's Wrecker so that I could chain the stun/prone affliction on crit (if the afflictions crit, too). Once you get stunning shots that's no advantage of the arbalest any more, but before that it's quite nice. That, and the high base damage of course. It fits Swift Aim pretty nice. Arbalests have normal ACC, so the malus of Swift Aim doesn't hurt as much as with guns, but they have reduced crit damage, so the reduced ACC of Swift Aim doesn't lower your overall damage not as much as with bows or crossbows. Some people say that speed enchantments on an arbalest makes no big difference since the reloading is the longest part and that doesn't get speed up. But with Swift Aim + Gunner and stuff you can totally feel the difference in recovery between speedy arbalest (Hold-Wall) and non-speedy (any other arbalest). You will shoot faster and you can feel it.

That sounds more like an enchantment but not like the general property of a piece of garnment. Would make sense when naked or having no sleeves though. Undershirt wizard for the win!

ROFL Too stupid to have winking reflexes. :D

Yeah, Tyranny wasn't balanced at all. Light armor + Mirrored Image = "U can't touch this" and stuff. There were too many game breaking combos and too many useless stuff. But the basic idea was great. It needs some fine tuning. A heavy armor could have some crit-to-hit or hit-to-graze conversion as well, because devastating blows may glance off of plate and so on. But graze-to-miss with heavy armor makes no sense. The king of graze-to-miss for example should be no armor (or armor with no hinderance).

Or "Walther PPK"... Wait... "Walther pee pee, kay?"... that sounds more like a 1 INT ranger who wants to go to the bathroom.

Yes, a bonus to deflection and/or reflex, depending on your armor, would have been good. One thing I liked about Tyranny was that light armor gave you crit-hit-graze-miss conversion while heavy armor gave you DR. It's a good concept because it could be put into PoE2 without any change of the underlying mechanics. A few defensive abilities around heavy, light or no armor also wouldn't hurt - just so you can specialize more and get something out of it.

Yeah well, the "rangers have xy while other's don't" argument works with every term you can think of. Rangers have aim but fighters have not? Rangers have awareness but rogues have not? It's not like the other classes won't have it, it's just not their most prominent or defining property. I just came up with objective because most rangers are rangers because they have one. Be it "scout there", "hunt this" or whatever rangers do. "Ranger" itself is more like a profession than for example "Barbarian" or "Fighter" is. But honestly, I just threw "Objective" in there and didn't really think that it's fitting either. Most likely we'll end up with "Bond".

But you can play wizards or monks with no armor in PoE. Things like Iron Skin and Iron Wheel allow it to have decent DR without recovery penalty. The difference is that the game doesn't force you to go without armor. This is a good thing in my book. If there will be a subclass that gets some bonuses when wearing no armor; fine for me. But don't forbid it entirely.

Yeah, it's a bit risky. Especially because sometimes the bonus will not apply - and I can't determine what's the cause.

I once played a gunslinging, single target damage wizard. It's pretty awesome and works from early on. Basics: stack as much DR bypass and reduction as you can (Expose Vulnerabilites, Penetrating Shot, Ryona's Vembraces), pick Island Aumaua, Arms Bearer, Quick Switch (+ Coil of Res.), 4 blunderbusses and Combusting Wounds. Favour spells that will work with DR bypass and/or cause multiple hits (missiles and all other targeted ranged spells like bolts and stuff). Cast Expose + Combusting Wounds, then shoot your blunderbusses. Most normal targets only need one shot and will die from the 6 parallel Combusting Wounds. If they are tough, just keep shooting. Nothing but the fattest bosses can withstand 24 parallel instances of Combusting Wounds. Blunderbusses also work really well with Envenomed Strike (6 chances to score a crit and get the best damage roll for it). With this wizard you'll have a character who can take out a single target very quickly but is still able to cast all the other wizard spells. And it's a lot of fun, too. But it needs a lot of micro due to the switching of course. But on the other hand - all wizards need a lot of micro if they want to do anything else than spamming blasts.

Thanks. Ever tried a tanky rogue with war hammer + bashing shield (aiming for Badgradr's Barricade in Durgan's Battery)? First you pick Shatterstar + Larder Door, then later Godansthunyr. High MIG and INT and RES, Veteran's Recovery, Weapon & Shield Style, all the strike abilities, Riposte, Fast Runner + Graceful Retreat + item with disengage bonus, combined with Riposte (=+32 to all defenses when disengaging, provoking attacks that lead to Ripostes). Also add an retaliation item + Deep Wounds or try to get the binding rope (it's XOR since binding rope suppresses retaliation). It's a tanky rogue who can still dish out good damage, especially once he has Deathblows + Barricade. The proc from the shield works with Deathblows. It also procs when doing ripostes. If you get the Executioner's Hood the enemies will graze/miss even more, leading to more ripostes. With Adept Evasion this rogue is very good at avoiding all sorts of AoE attacks that target reflex (like breath attacks), too. Alternative to the scroll rogue: spell bind rogue. Get the Suntouched Mail (retrieve the scroll of Wael), it will give you 3 Sunbeams per rest. Get the Amulet of Summer Solstice (Lady Aelys and stuff, Skean Temple, Dyrford), also 3 Sunbeams. When killing Maerwald, opt to siphon knowledge. This will give you a switch in lvl 13 of the Endless Paths that opens a secret wall. You'll get The Flames of Fair Rhian, a sabre with a burning lash and 3 fireballs per rest. You can either try to get the medium shield from Azzuro (has Winter Wind) or clone the sabre. Also get Taluntain's Staff from Twin Elms (3 fireballs per rest). If you want you can add Curoc's Brand from Russetwood cave (1 Fireball) and add the White Spire (Dunstan, 3 Blizzards). Get Animancer's Boots (3 Jolting Touch per rest). Rotfinger Gloves from the guy in front of the Vailian Trading post in Ondra's Gift. Munacra Arret (Whisper of Treason) is good with a rogue, too. If you want to put out all spells in one fight you need a Island Aumaua + Arms Bearer and either Coil of Resourcefulness or Quick Switch. He can still be played as the usual rogue. But with his high ACC, his hit-to-crit conversion and Deathblows his spells will deal devastating damage. Also works with scrolls of course. And the best: he will look really badass with the mail and the burning sabres.

Cleansing Flame's duration is too short to double all the ticks.

No. Everybody can wear everything exept for a few class specific items like Torc of Defiance (ranger), Cat's Whisper & Killer's Work (rogue), Voice of the Mountaintop (chanter), Zealous Boots & Outworn Buckler (paladin), Berserker's Belt (barbarian), Wildstrike Belt (druid), Cloak of the Tireless Defender (fighter), Blood Testament (monk). Maybe I forgot one or two...

Let's see. So far I'm quite pleased with the known things about subclasses. Also: it's all about the details, as the discussion about the berserker shows. Okay, the Nalpazca subclass for monks sounds a bit meh - but we don't know yet what it means that drugs are more powerful with them. I mean - if the drug has +50% or even +100% effect and the crash is less devastating, then this will be one of the best classes for soloing I presume. And we'll also have the beta to give constructive criticism if we think some subclass is rubbish. I don't know anything about D&D kits and stuff. Even though I'm quite old (for a gamer) and played a lot of P&P roleplaying games when I was a schooolkid and a student, I never played D&D and know nothing about the rules... besides the things I saw in the BG, IWD and NWN series. And I'm somewhat grateful for that. It lets me experience all those new CRPGs without false nostalgia getting into the way.

Monks have a resource pool, too. You can see how monks, ciphers and chanters are more flexible at what they want to do in an encounter than - let's say a rogue with strike abilites is. If a monk meets enemies which are immune to prone he wouldn't want to spend his resources on Force of Anguish but use other abilites instead. When a rogue has one blinding strike and one crippling strike and meets an enemy who is immune to blind he will still use the blinding strike at some point if there's nothing else left - at least it's better than an autoattack. If he had a resource system (guile) he would choose 2 crippling strikes instead of 1 crippling + 1 blinding strike. So I think the resource system works for the player. The uniqueness of the classes is not necessarily that one uses fixed per-encounter abilites and the other one resource based abilites, it's more about what abilites they have. Even with a resource pool a rogue will never play like a monk.

Some of the nicest people of all internets gathered in this forum. But as the question, so the answer - and it's not necessarily what you say, but how.

Haha - HoF + confusion can result in a party whipeout if HoF is anything like in PoE1. If Carnage's AoE is still determined by INT then -5 through confusion will reduce the AoE of carnage and the duration of Frenzy a lot though. Well, I guess it's easy to circumvent this with a bigger base AoE and duration for berserkers. Can't say if I like this confusion approach. I mean I like the friend or foe thing. Just make sure that you send your berserker in first.

Hopefully the spell's a lot better than in PoE1. I like the idea of touch-based spells (for a monkish wizard for example) but this one was so inferior to the other spells at that level. Same with Sunless Grasp. Jolting Touch was good though.

Console works as usual.

Check out a priest with Minor Avatar + Aggrandizing Radiance, using Envenomed Strike on a boss!